#My theory (more like a headcanon that definitely isnt true) is that he was a grilled and/or seared corn movie star back on cybertron

[arabianbeans]

Yall already know what time it is-

[luque-moreau]

y'know i think its about time ive refurbished my psychonauts headcanons/theories

what??? me??? rewriting my psychonauts headcanons in a more comprehensible and informed way???

ye

alright, i think everyone knows what im talking about, by headcanons i mean headcanon as in singular, and as singular, i mean my "raz is somewhere on the spectrum of adhd".

so lets just get into it:

what is adhd actually?

adhd by definition stands for attention deficit hyperactive/hyperfocus disorder (yes, let me get into the details in just a sec). it is a nerodevelopmental disorder that is almost completely reliant on genetic factors, however conditions during pregnancy can sometimes contribute to certain aspects of how adhd manifests itself.

long story short, people with adhd have a smaller frontal lobe, and therefore less dopamine in general (even though yes, it is more complicated than that).

theres also a little bit of "chicken or the egg first" goin on here, certain behaviors or personality tendencies can also affect how adhd is presented in one individual to the next, however its still not clear if that is because it is an accommodating for a certain thought process or if someones experiences and personality shape their symptoms of adhd entirely. its a very blurry line, and the answer is different for everybody.

hyperactive type

hyperactive type is probably the closest to most stereotypical depictions of adhd, think the 5 year old whos parents brush off their child’s hyperactivity as something that will “go with age”. however, this isn’t only present in children, adults with adhd have to deal with a constant need for stimuli to make up for the lack of dopamine their current activity is providing them. this results in someone fidgeting frequently in repetitive or predictable motions, unable to hold attention to a specific task for long periods of time, or many other of the symptoms associated with adhd.(i sadly cannot provide more information in this area, i am not knowledgeable enough to...)

hyperfocus type

hyperfocus type is a tricky one, it can look like the complete opposite of adhd in theory. hyperfocus can look similar to special interests or hyperfixation, a great deal of time and knowledge dedicated to a very particular thing (although it is important to note that even though hyperfixations and special interests are incredibly similar, special interests is a term more typically used within autistic-circles, and isnt really the best word to use if you happen to be neurotypical). Think of maybe that kid who knows all the cool animal facts and won’t shut up about them. Its because certain trains of thought or activities might release more dopamine then others, so to get more of that dopamine, someone of hyperfocus type will be mentally unable to stop thinking or doing a very specific task or topic. this results in someone seemingly always spacing out, unable to change subjects or changing subjects too fast or with little to no correlation, or being completely unable to have enough motivation to do simple things.

personally i tend to fall under the category of hyperfocus myself rather than hyperactive, however the two are not mutually exclusive, its more common to find people with both types rather than just one. even myself, i might exhibit more tendencies to place me under the label of hyperfocus, but that doesn’t mean i don’t have any symptoms of the hyperactive type. its my personality that affects my mannerisms, which then makes certain aspects of my symptoms more or less apparent. Thats because im an INTP-T, i just tend to be more to myself and constantly in a state of thinking abstractly. I have trouble communicating and even sometimes recognizing my needs, and get to a point where im unable to do the simplest of things without feeling emotionally drained. Thats just my experience though, everybodys different. 

so what the fuck does this have to do with raz then?

well lets think about it, rather than have it just be me projecting myself onto a comfort character:

raz finds issue with connecting to kids his age

lets be honest. none of the campers really like raz that much. or at least some do the bare minimum to be try and be polite. it doesn’t seem like any of the other campers besides dogen, whos also socially outcasted, are really fond of raz. lili might like him, but that can definitely be interpreted as curiosity in someone new and different from the norm. It might not be that the kids despise him, but nobodys opinionated enough to care whether he is around or not.

social isolation is one of the most damning things i had to experience from an early age and still feel even today. there is a sense of feeling that you are different among your peers, whether that is a good thing or bad thing. it feels difficult to interact with other people you are not familiar with, and can really stunt you emotionally and socially. from a really early age, theres somethin in you that knows something is very different between the experiences of your peers compared to your own, and it can feel incredibly isolating.

raz and his borderline stupidity

time to get real again. raz is a fucking idiot. at least in the sense that sometimes his decisions seem incredibly spontaneous and not really thought through. he runs from home to attend a summer camp, not really thinking about the logistics of how he will get there, how the staff will react, how long its gonna take for his parent to find him, and so on. it doesn’t seem like he over or underestimates his abilities, he just goes for it without considering. that doesnt seem like the smartest thing to do, even though we know hes incredibly intelligent when it comes to larger, abstract situations. its the little details that he misses, small minuet things that seem unimportant that he overlooks, which can sometimes make things harder for him in the end.

i think its obvious that impulsivity is one symptom of adhd. however i cannot stress how difficult it is to think at supersonic speed and still feel incredibly stupid. i mean, thinking faster doesn’t inherently mean you will have better ideas, you can always be stupider faster, but being able to realize stupid mistakes or inconsistencies in your own thought process is annoying as hell. it feels like every time you try to recognize the issue, fix it, and move forward, you only end up not paying attention to another issue that gets bigger and more annoying than the first. Its always two steps forward, one step back, constantly making the same mistakes even though you try everything in your power to avoid them or grow as a person. The simplest of facts, ideas, or just things to remember end up being forgotten, and once youre reminded of them you remember them and feel like an idiot. however, arbitrary things and complex issues are much easier to digest and remember for me, things like history and the whole blame game charade of it all, biology and how every minuet thing has a greater impact on others and intertwines with every single factor of its environment, philosophy and theorizing why we think the way we do and what can be changed. but oh shit, im a dumbass i forgot to do my laundry. shit. god fuckin dammit.

empathy over sympathy

one of the basic themes of psychonauts is empathy. simple as that. raz goes around into other peoples brains, and tries to help them as much as he can, even if his efforts are not always successful in the way he intended. he never demonizes anyone to the point of unredeemability, and can empathize and understand other peoples perspectives. hes open to new ideas and

although some studies out there theorize that empathy is impaired due to adhd, from my perspective i feel like that is simply not true. if anything, i would say the sensitivity that comes with adhd (hypersensitivity) only enhances that empathy. i could definitely see social disconnection being one of the reasons it might appear that someone with adhd is less empathetic, however i would doubt that adhd would impair a persons empathy. adhd tends to also entail heightened emotions, this doesn’t necessarily mean a more outwardly emotional person, however it definitely shifts a persons perspective of their own emotions as well as others. the concept of hypersensitivity also completely contradicts the idea of people with adhd be less empathetic.

miscommunication and disconnect

sigh, the dad thing. yup. raz has that very iffy relationship with his dad at the beginning of the game which is eventually resolved. very abruptly, might i add. but thats not what this is about, thats a topic for another day. miscommunication seemed to be the root of the issue, however we only get razs side of the story. not to mention the severity of his claims and willingness to seemingly drop everything afterwards. kinda sus, ngl.

alright this ones a doosey. this, i feel, cements my theory pretty well. like i mentioned before, social disconnect and hypersensitivity are side effects of the symptoms of adhd.  this means people with adhd are highly more likely to either misinterpret someones words or actions if those in question are not completely transparent, its because they tend to overthink and interpenetrate responses with too much thinkin n such. the social disconnect makes a whole lot of it worse, it can just pile on top of already established feelings of inadequacy and isolation. and oversharing as a poor coping mechanism isnt an exclusively adhd related thing, it tends to be shared within similar neruodevelopmental disorders such as autism or even ptsd. i find it incredibly easy to disconnect myself from my own emotions at times and think critically at what i feel and how it affects me. which is a bad thing. if i dont acknowledge my emotions like they are my own for too long, everything falls apart. its not fun. but, that disconnect can make talking about certain more traumatic experiences or instances that had deep personal effects on my life and development as a person much easier to just share. and not always in an appropriate manner, comedic opportunity can be   v  e  r  y   enticing. this also explains why raz might have been able to drop everything about his dad after he apologized. he didn’t really, he probably still suffers just as much afterwards as he did before. but he probably wont realize that for awhile, since logically, the issue has been resolved. long story short, he has not had the time to cope, and to put that off he detaches himself from those feelings. w a c k

of course i have other reasons why i feel like raz could potentially have adhd, or at least be accurately represented in headcanon with adhd, some minor mentions being:

he uses his camp map as a journal to track his in-game progress, list of goals, and notes/snip-its of information. writing down information on some form of notepad or book is a common tool used by kids and even adults with adhd to help them keep track of minuet, individual tasks. its just using a planner, but with a bit more information. 

just from my personal perspective, the lengths raz goes to pursue his dream of being a psychonaut feel more like a special interest/hyper fixation sort of thing. he can jump between having genuine conversations with his fellow campers and just exploring the campground, to investing himself entirely in obtaining his goal, even when it seems almost impossible. thats some serious dedication to one very specific thing, y’know?

this one isnt as solid as the other but: m̶̖̰̯̫̍͝o̵̦͖̟͈̹̤̥̝͐̿̄̀̀̎̓ņ̶̛̭̠̐̊̆̍͝ķ̸̝͈̺̙̰̊e̶͉͚̼̅̔͗̂͐̍̕͝͝y̶̦̖̼͖̪͎̝̖̠̐̑͋̾̔̑́͐͘ ̵̢̲̘͎͉̔̀͒̄͌͊̀͌̀m̴̲̫̮̪̖̍̐͆̕͜͝ͅả̶͙͚͗n̶̗̳̩̙̘̼̦̦͇͝ ̷̡̨̡͔̗͕̘͍̥̑͒̎̐̃g̴͔̔̈̅̐̏́̌̔̈́́o̶̥̱̽̆̂͌̀͗ ̶̝̩͙͕͛́s̴̛͓̥̲̜͓͚̣̠̆̓̌͌p̶̜̹̯̦̫̯̣̎͐̽̉̾ḙ̴͇̬͑̈́̐̈́͘͠ͅȅ̶̡̗̞̩͔̫̪͈͑̓͗d̵̠͇͎̜͔͇͒̈́́̀̅̈́̒͘y̸̡̦̠̻̖̥̿ͅ. yeah, its the most generalizing reason but look, hes moving nonstop the entire game, climbing and running around the entire goddamn place wrecking havoc. a bit of imp can be found in most people with adhd if you look hard enough.

so thanks for reading this far i guess? im oversharing even right now with this, like an i d i o t but yknow what i dont want to read the great gatsby rn, so ive got nothin better to do. who knows, maybe the second game will give us more info to either support/discredit this theory? gotta wait for pn2 i guess

:^)

[transvoxman]

hold on, isnt it shadowy in the carl episode? its shadowy pretending to be venomous. its not actually venomous. this is heavily implied since we HAVE an episode with ven and ko to compare their interactions to, and he straight up wears shadowys gloves driving home. thats why he was trying to get tko out. "teaming up with shadowy" was more shadowy taking over and locking venomous away (like we saw tko do once or twice to ko)

It IS heavily implied, but I’m not sure what I headcanon personally. For one thing, I don’t trust shadowy figure as far as I can throw him, so when he says that venomous tried to reach an agreement with him, I can’t decide whether venomous really did try to work together with shadowy at first, or if venomous was genuinely trying to get rid of shadowy 100% and shadowy completely took over before venomous could succeed.

I do think that by the time he’s wearing shadowy’s gloves driving home, shadowy’s definitely fully taken over, but there’s so many possibilities for how much venomous was in control up until then.

SO many theories under the cut I’m so sorry for this oncoming wall of text

The most straightforward theory is that shadowy’s been completely in control ever since venomous found out about him in Let’s Get Shadowy -- it would certainly line up with his threat to take over venomous permanently if fink told venomous about him. BUT on the other hand, I feel like it’s one of the less interesting explanations, because it doesn’t give venomous the chance to be confronted with the choice between getting rid of shadowy and pursuing more power.

Then, there’s the possibility that venomous came back at the end of Let’s Get Shadowy, and was genuinely trying to get rid of Shadowy like he promised KO, but for whatever reason (the intense anxiety of knowing how high the stakes are if he fails to get rid of shadowy, the panic of realizing how much he’s upset fink and boxman and so many others while in a form he can’t control or remember, etc) he transformed into shadowy against his will, and THEN shadowy fully took over and didn’t let venomous come back. This one gives venomous the most benefit of the doubt, and like, yeah, I’d love to believe that this is what happened, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because we got barely any episodes in season 3 to develop venomous’s character, or just because I love angst too much, but I don’t 100% buy that venomous has grown enough as a person yet to do this. It would’ve just been SO EASY for him to rationalize not completely getting rid of shadowy, like “I’ll just figure out a way to stop myself from transforming against my will, and then I can very carefully learn how to gain control over the power and it’ll be fine”. Like, this man has such poor impulse control, and is so bad at standing his ground in certain cases, y’know? So then there’s the possibility that venomous really did succumb to the temptation to see if he could control shadowy instead of getting rid of him, but as soon as he tried it out, shadowy instantly took over completely, which would mean that shadowy’s in full control from the very beginning of the episode Carl. This Might be the one I think is most likely? But it’s totally fair if everyone disagrees with me here, I’m Here for angst and super flawed characters but I know not everyone is. And finally, there’s the option that I think is the most fun, although I’d need to rewatch the episode before I said anything about whether I think it’s actually likely or not: venomous DID give in to temptation, made an agreement with shadowy, and for a little while, shadowy let him co-pilot, so venomous would let his guard down a little and get some hope that he really COULD have it all. So then, at the beginning of the episode Carl, venomous really is mostly in control. He might’ve lied to K.O. about getting rid of shadowy, but all that matters is that he’s got it under control, right? He could even tell himself that this was even better, because now that he has shadowy under control he can teach K.O. how to get TKO under control! A win-win! Another fun thing about this would be the parallels it has with the episode where KO and TKO co-pilot his body together and it briefly seems like it’s working out fine. But anyway, over the course of the episode, shadowy takes over for brief moments that get more and more frequent, and then by the time venomous realizes that shadowy’s trying to fully take over and never meant to keep his end of their agreement at all, it’s too late, and sometime later in the episode, shadowy’s taken over completely. AND ALSO, all of these theories aside, I’m really conflicted on what the show’s trying to say about whether the dark alter egos are separate people or not, and by extension how much responsibility they should take for what their alter egos have done. On the one hand, there’s this entire heartfelt message about KO realizing that he and TKO are the same person and he has to stop thinking of them as separate people, but on the other hand, TKO repeatedly gets angry at people for calling him KO, so he clearly wants people to respect them as separate people, and I think it’s common decency to respect that! And yeah, the obvious thing to point out here is that TKO and Shadowy Venomous do things that KO and Venomous would Never Do, AND in venomous’s case he doesn’t even REMEMBER what shadowy does while he’s in control, both of which are big points in favor of KO and Venomous not needing to take all that much responsibility for their alter egos’ actions. BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, the entire climax/message of the show being about TKO and KO accepting that they’re the same person is a pretty big point in favor of the completely opposite view. And since I’m so torn here, I think the best thing I can do is set my stance on a middleground--venomous and KO should absolutely not be held COMPLETELY responsible for their alter egos’ actions, but they still need to take SOME amount of responsibility. It would be shitty if people blamed them for causing so much pain and destruction in their turbo forms, BUT it’s still their responsibility to work towards learning how to be in control of their alter egos / emotions so their alter egos can’t hurt people like that again, and I think it would also be a good idea for them to help with damage control when they DO regain control of themselves--like in the episode TKO Rules, KO cleans up after TKO even though it wasn’t exactly HIS fault, he doesn’t just say “I didn’t do this, so it’s not my problem”.

So, I don’t know exactly where I stand on literally anything I’ve written here, but the bottom line is, I think it’s more complicated than shadowy taking over venomous against venomous’s best efforts to get rid of him, and I’m conflicted on whether I absolve venomous of ALL blame for what shadowy does. I tend to lean towards whatever I think is the most interesting to explore in my headcanons, which Also tends to be the least charitable interpretation, BUT I realize that this show’s tone can often lean towards being more lighthearted, so what I think is most interesting to explore has no relation to how likely it is to be true.

So yeah, personally I THINK I lean towards venomous being in control for part of the episode, and even if he’s not in control for any of it I think it’s a little too straightforward to say that he’s 0% at fault for anything shadowy does. But that’s completely just my edgy headcanon/theory lol

[foolgobi65]

meta re: figuring out how old bhadra is, and also when exactly bhalla got married and spawned a child lmao. (also some about the poor woman who had to be his wife.) under cut for length lol

hmm so i just saw a meta which puts bhadra as just a few months younger than mahendra which is interesting, and i can see that being possible given the two actors, but where i disagree is the part of this theory that implies bhalla is married when baahu and devasena are still together. i think if bhalla were to get married, baahu and devasena would have to be invited, just in terms of propriety. i think bhalla would actually enjoy the huge state ceremony that would serve to show how small devasena and baahu were now in contrast. i also think that at this point in the story, while baahu is still alive and married to devasena, bhalla has no interest in his own marriage -- he’s definitely not married (at least imo) at the time of their exile, and even if he wanted a child to compete for the throne at that point baahu’s kid would still be a good 6 months older regardless. i think bhadra must definitely be a few years younger than mahendra (who i believe is around 24ish years old.) bhalla’s obsession with devasena reads to me as about possession rather than a singleminded love or want to make her his real wife. the fact that we don’t see bhalla’s wife at all later makes me think that she’s either dead, or he never married and bhadra is bhalla’s child with a woman bhalla never married. i can see bhalla being obsessed with devasena his entire life, particularly as a transference of both his prior obsession with sivagami as the mother and queen ruler figure who in is mind loved baahu more, and also his obsession with baahu who was just better than bhalla at the things that bhalla wanted (primarily the easy adoration of the people and sivagami.) devasena, both as legal queen mother and clearly sivagami’s annointed heir at her last moments, and as baahu’s love, becomes the object of bhalla’s lifelong hatred and to me he tortures her daily as both substitute for sivagami and baahu who are dead and beyond his reach, and also for her own sake because let’s not underestimate devasena’s ability to piss off bhalla. i think on a surface level when he saw her picture he did feel lust, and so i think there is a very gross and terrible sexual aspect to his need to keep her in chains and under his grip. bhadra clearly states some very disgusting sexually tinged insults at devasena (calling her a whore multiple times) which is obviously a learned behavior from i assume bhalla and maybe biju. all this to say that for me, the main woman in bhalla’s life until his death is devasena. his last words are even to devasena, rather than mahendra who is the clear baahu replacement, and he tells her to join him on the pyre which is reminiscent of what this society demands of good warrior wives.

if bhalla was married, it was a grand alliance where she was probably fabulously wealthy and beautiful and the marriage was conducted with lots of pomp and circumstance in order to distract people from the fact that baahu and sivagami were dead alongside mahendra, and devasena was in chains in the city center. biju found the bride, sent the single most annoying proposal on earth, which implied invasion if she wasnt promptly sent having tied the mangalsutra to bhalla’s sword. definitely wealthy, may or may not have military importance. definitely a beautiful woman, a quiet woman with no personality who was promptly destroyed by having to live under a cruel sadistic man who was obsessed with his dead brother’s caged wife. if bhadra didnt seem so old that he could probably be only max a few years younger than mahendra i would say that bhalla’s wife probably takes a few years to concieve: bhalla would probably be the type of terrible man to treat a woman so badly she would miscarry. but bhadra is pretty close to mahendra’s age, so bhalla’s wife must have conceived pretty quickly. as he desperately needed an heir at the time bhalla, once she is pregnant, ignored her almost entirely except for once a week when he had her carried in a palanquin to see devasena so that he could gloat about his impending fatherhood. the poor woman would by this point be of a sickly sort, even if she had been healthy at the time of her marriage, have a difficult pregnancy exacerbated by her sheer terror at the thought of having anything less than an exceedingly strong male heir. ( i cant imagine biju or bhalla would be anything less than extremely direct about the consequences if the child was born with a disability, or god forbid was a girl.) her entire pregnancy would be one folk remedy after another guaranteed to produce a strong, healthy prince, all eight months after the pregnancy announced to the public an empire wide endeavour to ensure the safe arrival of the prince to be. thousands of ceremonies across the kingdoms would be funded, each sending her the fruits of their sacrifice for her to eat. everything about her day would be micromanaged from the time she woke, to the clothes she wore and the direction she faced when she slept. devasena, who spent the last three months of her own pregnancy exiled in a mining community and yet delivered a strong child, looks at the queen who somehow seems to be weakening every visit and wonders at the great gods’ irony. 

one of my headcanons about the weird family strength is that these babies take a toll on their gestating mothers, and so only a particular type of woman is capable of surviving the pregnancy and birth -- sivagami and devasena are both of this type, and so they find their pregnancies relatively easy, and their births are normal and safe. you can either take this to be something physical or mental, or if you’re more into magical explanations for magical strength, its a (terrifying and horrible) way of the family line basically validating the queen: if she survives, she’s deserving of being queen mother.  baahu’s mother and bhadra’s mother aren’t sivagami and devasena, though they’re probably wonderful women in their own right. the pregnancies sap them of their strength and nutrients (kind of like a leech), and when they give birth it is a long, drawn out process in which the babies had they not had the family strength would have died. the mothers both bleed out. the kingdom barely mourns the queen it barely had a chance to know -- if she becomes pregnant so quickly after marriage, bhalla would never have risked her out in public. instead, there is a massive celebration to anoint the heir to the empire, and bhalla invests heavily in propagating a narrative that has bhadra solely his son: his wife the queen is erased from the stories entirely, it is almost as if bhadra sprung straight from bhalla’s skull, the perfect son. 

the queen’s death doesn’t break the alliance of her marriage, but it does downgrade them from slightly favored allies to just one with the rest -- there is a rumor that does not die no matter how hard they try that she died of a broken heart, that she grew so sickly in the heart of the empire despite the best of all medicine because she did not want to get better, or try to mother the son of her demon husband. (they are half right: the queen, delirious in her last moments, does not regret leaving her husband who happens to be the worst man she has ever met, nor does she regret leaving her disgusting father in law. she regrets somewhat having to leave devasena, whom the queen had nursed a slight hope of helping somewhat in the future when her place as the heir’s mother gave her a little more leverage. most of all, she regrets that she leaves her son, whom in her heart of hearts she had viciously wished to be a daughter, to the cruel mercies of his father. she was never going to be a strong woman in this palace, but even something might have been better than nothing, she thinks. just a little kindness, she hopes for someone to teach him, a little mercy. and then, thinking again of her burning hatred for her husband, whom she damns to all the hells that exist, the only true empress mahishmati has in 50 years dies. her first marriage anniversary will be in one month.) 

the other option for bhadra’s mother imo is that she’s a favoured courtesan of bhalla. for this i think its definitely possible that their relationship can be established even before mahendra’s birth -- there’s no reason they aren’t together even prior to the kalakeyan war. this might be a way to make it easier for bhadra to be closer in age to mahendra, where bhalla, despite being consumed with his obsession for devasena continues to visit and the courtesan becomes pregnant (whether she plans this after reading the room and realizing bhalla has ruled for 3 years and has no heir is up to you.) there is obviously no pomp and circumstance here for the duration of the pregnancy, almost no one is aware of the child’s paternity. many kings have many natural born children, and bhalla initially believes that this child will be like any other though unique in a sense for himself because it will be his first child at all. then, he thinks, realizing that he isnt really inclined to marry but requires an heir. within this option there is the possibility for a queen who simply cannot give bhalla a child (maybe she miscarries, whether because of bhalla’s behavior or on purpose because she doesn’t want to have his child) or just ... bhalla doesnt want to get married because he’s obsessed with devasena. the courtesan is sent a message, and under the utmost secrecy is moved to a chamber in the inner palace where her every want is cared for in the hopes of her delivering a strong, male child. she is treated as a queen for the eight months and when she gives birth she probably survives. she is definitely not allowed to raise the child -- bhalla announces that bhadra is his heir, his natural born son, and does not announce the mother. bhadra is raised entirely as bhalla’s son, never allowed to question his mother’s identity or to meet her. either she remains within bhalla’s palace, as a continued object of his favor or is allowed to leave mahishmati after a vow of silence regarding bhardra’s parentage. 

anyways, i’m putting bhadra at 20/21 to mahendra’s 24, and if bhalla gets married he probably thinks about it a year after baahu’s death, gets married a year after that, the queen dies within a year of the marriage (all a space of 3ish years.) option 2, it’s been 3 years and bhalla keeps pushing off thoughts of marriage and then opportunity falls into his lap. in general this is in line with my belief that bhalla at a base level does not care about any woman except for devasena, particularly after he has her in chains. before this, his sole object was the throne, and if he married at that point it would be a political alliance to make him a more favorable candidate for the crown for sure. needing to get married doesn’t occur to him (and to be fair doesnt seem to occur to baahu until he falls in love.) as king he’d only consider marriage in terms of getting an heir, and he wouldn’t care about the woman he married at all -- he’d treat her horribly, probably venting all the anger and frustration he cant with devasena because she lives in the cage which in a sense protects her from the worst physical/sexual abuse. the only respite his wife, another woman entirely under his control, would have is probably becoming pregnant. a favored courtesan, particularly one who had a relationship pre the whole devasena obsession, would have a different dynamic with him, especially since she’s technically “his’ but also not entirely in the way a wife would be. less abuse imo for sure, and the significantly less scrutiny and pinned hopes on her pregnancy results in her general good treatment rather than the exhausting micromanaging characteristic of a wife/queen. 

both of these options basically result in bhalla and biju having total control on the raising of bhadra to be the Worst, and for bhadra’s identity to basically be “bhalla’s son” more than even regular princes who define themselves as their father’s sons. the woman is erased entirely from the narrative, and exists entirely to give bhalla an heir and then conveniently disappear, as distasteful as that is. 

as usual, any other ideas/opinions/complete negations are welcome!! please comment or reply i’m really interested to see what you all think!!!

@teammahishmati @teambaahubali

[marsixm]

edit sorry this post is both long (if the readmore fails i am truly truly sorry) & longwinded im just reflecting and thinking; (another edit: u can probably just read the tl dr and get it)

anyway allow me to spin some very personally based theory here for a mo while i put off/warm my fingers up from the cold in preparation to email my therapist

so growing up i had, i think only, het ships, but i never quite had the ones you were (narratively speaking) “supposed to” have

in most media i recall when i was a kid, there were like, 2 diff structures of character romance plot arcs in media i consumed, there was the main lead and 2 best friends model, where thered be the star of the show who had outside romantic leads and the 2 best friends (who were always a boy and a girl) would have their secondary romance, OR there were ensemble shows where there was a more clear romance set up between the main boy and main girl, then side characters whod pair off in whatever ways ended up happening. in the first, see: hannah montana, the second, see: zoey 101. obv this isnt a hard rule and there were loads of exceptions but like, lets just say i tended not to care for the romances set up for the main girls in the trio models, or quite as hard for the main boy and girl in the ensembles, and in general if there was an obvious romance between two leads i either didnt care or outright hated it

basically i never liked the ships they set up for us in straight media, as a kid (namely, a girl) i liked being that “ew pink!” “i hate valentines day” sort of contrarian, but what i remember actually disliking was the predictability of it, because i clearly still shipped characters, so it wasnt /really/ that i hated romance, per se

looking back on it i think it was probably or at least to a degree more like that i hated the hetero expectation of it- i can nit pick down to more specific examples of why i disliked the main pairings (kataang, for example, i thought was weird bc katara acted like a mother/older sister figure to aang, and i didnt feel like there was romance between them at all except where it felt shoehorned in) - maybe it was also that i thought it made more sense for a main character to be with someone they clearly already spent a lot of time with and not some random new hot boy in town (i very distinctly remember shipping miley and oliver on hannah montana, and i believe that was the first time i ever read fanfiction @ age like... 11 lol) as is often the case w like these things.

theres another level to this though, which is that i notice i tended to ship characters who were more vaguely similar to each other, like, physically (ie, similar heights, or hair colors mainly) obviously this is funny now since my main pairing is johnlock which is such a physically different ship we can construct them from basic shapes and colors and theyre still recognizable as who they are, but i have some thoughts about this- but i think there might be two interesting things about this again in retrospect

first of all, this sounds silly ik, but shipping the vaguely similar ones as a child’s way of queering heterosexuality is an interesting concept and not that difficult, like, two boys are also vaguely similar to each other in a similar way a boy and a girl with the same hair color and height might be, which is something i thought of a while ago

the other way in which this is really interesting to me now, that i think might have been more actually pertinent to myself as a trans child, is that i think i shipped the characters i did in an attempt to morph the concept of boy and girl? to find the boy counterpart to every girl??? that second one makes more sense actually. anyway, i digress

2 start off i definitely had gender feelings starting from a very young age so i think these observations ring more true than just reflections, PERHAPS

so the first thing i remember shipping, ie wanting them to be together, thinking about it an inordinate amount of time outside watching the films, even imagining them eating ice cream together in their pjs (i was NINE DHFJGghfkg) was jack sparrow & elizabeth swan from potc (basically my franchise of choice as a kid bc i never read harry potter) now this doesnt quite fit the “visually similar” thing bc actually orlando bloom looks more like kiera knightly and is prob due to them like making out in one movie, but i think this works for the “shipping as gender expression” theory, because elizabeth swan dressed up as a boy, spent most of that movie wearing boy’s clothes, etc- meanwhile jack was a wacky pirate which like hello duh i’d want to be. so i wonder if beyond the fact that they kissed and flirted, there was something to this concept of me wanting two characters to be together, meant i wanted to marry together two conceptual things happening with two characters, or absorb the cool dude and the boyish girl characters into each other to make one whole archetype for myself? i likewise shipped aang and toph (toph who, normally doesnt really have anyone to be shipped with, since she likes sokka but he has a gf) who we all know is the VERY boyish girl character, so boyish im p sure her actually being a trans dude later in life is a p decently accepted headcanon (i dont actually delve into aatla fandom though so i can only hope) 

another thing about this ship thing, is most of my ships had brown hair (like miley and oliver), just like i always have, and in certain cases the girl character would look a LOT like me (i also shipped logan and quinn on zoey 101, which to my surprise n delight actually came true later (although looking back im like... 11 yr old me is glad they made out a lot but adult me is like uhhh why were the kids on this show making out a lot? anyway thats another issue) and i def was a weirdo girl with glasses and long brown wavy hair) which sort of further fuels my feeling that this was an attempt by my brain to do 1 of 2 things, if my own involvement really was a greater motivating factor in this thing, 1. ship MYSELF with a boy (which is like def possible for my gay kinnie ass, but not quite my thesis here) or 2. morph these boy and girl counterparts by imagining them together, seeing them together, etc

for example, i realize now, when i was a kid i drew an avatar sona for myself and said sona looked an awful lot like how id imagine a katara/zuko fusion would be, and the fact that i shipped zutara (very hard lol) was what lead me down this thought path rn

i feel like even to me this concept sounds weird and far fetched but like, gem fusion made enough sense for someone to write with its clearly, usually, romantic implications and we all “get” that, so whom knows???

another thing ive noticed while writing this is for a good few of these ships you can argue the boys in them can be read gay, like jack sparrow and zuko and aang, which feels even more strongly like me trying to marry my gay boy feelings to my tomboy realities [thinking emoji]

the biggest reason i think this makes sense to me is because when i was 10 i became obsessed with the idea that this boy i was friends with and i were secretly twins separated at birth, like i was so into the concept that we looked alike, i like hoped and wished so hard for it to be true, i wished a christmas miracle would happen for fucking real and a magic door in my house would open and be his new room and itd all work out perfectly! and you might think this was a manifestation of my difficulties with my family and wishing to leave it, but in my dream world my parents were still my parents and he came to live with us- which makes me think the obsession of ME looking like this BOY was a manifestation of my gender feelings, which i think can maybe be traced to this concept of pairing a visually similar, possibly gay, brunette boy to every brunette and/or tomboyish girl

anyway. if you actually read all of this id love it if you lmk somehow (doesnt need to be a like) like this is clearly very long and strange but i hope it makes sense. i think i stop myself a lot from ever commenting on gender or theory or whatever but i am a living breathing trans person who has experienced things and i have opinions and i dont think im claiming anything destructive with this lol i think its not unusual to reflect on the way you interacted with the world as a gay/trans kid

also im obviously not saying that shipping straight things is somehow inherently queer, im not trying to retroactively claim something about straight ships, like, those two characters are still functionally straight, and i definitely also shipped probably all of them for normal shipping reasons (although, kid ones, so less “oh theres a lot of ACTUAL romantic subtext between these two” but rather “oh theyre friends and would be cute together!” (or like they kissed and i was like O: )) but im just trying to theorize about something its possible my tiny trans brain was trying to express- and who knows maybe im not the only one!

anyway i guess the TL;DR is: when i was a kid i had a lot of “unconventional” straight ships- i already observed that i eschewed the main canon pairings in kids media in what was probably my tiny baby brains rejection of hetero culture, but i also actively shipped side characters who looked like me, and also looked like each other (ie, both tall and brunette, a boy and girl counterpart of Each Other) OR characters who seemed to be a gayish boy and a tomboyish girl, and im theorizing that maybe the reason that was was my tiny trans brain wanting to gem fusion those two together because of my Gender Feelings and fuse the boy with the girl and this desire manifested in shipping therefore thinking about a lot these pairings of boy and girl counterparts

[william-s-churros]

Are you open for the heacanon/heartcanon/etc meme?? Why not one of each for Pete and-or Billy! (( Love your Billow btw omg!!!)

THANKS... I LOVE MY BILLOW TOO....

mmm these are really hard actually to think of ones, but i’ll try:

headcanon in this realm of stuff: this is based off of my vague memory of that part in pinstripes and poltergeists when billy goes for a high-five and white initially refuses and billy like, invoked “the rules” and white begrudgingly returns said high five... i feel like they have monthly kind of “house rules” meetings (esp when they lived in the trailer) also white just, like... completely forgets most of the rules billy makes up, but billy documents them all really carefully in like.... a massive three-ring binder that’s just stuffed with loose leaf paper and lists all the rules and addendums to rules and things like that. he probably makes white like sign off on them so when white’s like “what? that’s not a rule-- i would never agree to a rule like that in a million years, pally” billy goes and gets it and is like “SEE!??? DO YOU SEE YOUR SIGNATURE THERE???” and whites like “ugh FINE but i’m totally bringing a motion to the floor to change that crap next meeting!!!!!!” 

heartcanon: like i guess there’s a logical source for this thought process but 90% of the reason white went from someone who publicly idk... presented? as not an albino who wore relatively normal clothes to like definitely openly being an albino who also dresses like... that... is mostly because of being around billy. the comment billy made about not being able to hide the fact that he was “a freak” (if you’ll pardon the shows choice of words here), and just being with billy in general, who is just existing as he is and being himself 100% of the time igss made him kind of, idk, think about the way he was rather fruitlessly trying to fit into an alienating society by living a lie and he was like “alright fuck it, billys right, he cant hide so im not going to either” and basically just dresses like that too bc he thinks it looks cool and doesnt really give a shit anymore about what ppl think (at least wrt his appearance)... i get the vibe white, whos a bit of an attention-seeking person, is also glad to be kind of a lightning rod for shitty peoples comments if it means that they don’t go after billy as much since it seems like (based on the season 1 finale’s local yokels treatment of orpheus) they live in kind of a conservative area where it’s probably not the best to stand out

gutcanon: billy is just probably THE most obnoxious “logical” type dude on the entire internet like. i just can’t imagine that he has any chill with people and more than likely gets into a billion arguments per second with randos and he’s most definitely the kind of guy who would correct your grammar or spelling. y’know, you’d say something and he’d respond with “you’re* 😂” that said he probably reads a lot, too, so he’s not the worst kind of this, i just think if there’s something he just can’t wrap his mind around he probably thinks it isn’t true at all which can lead to some problematique behaviors... luckily he probably spends more time arguing with people about which starship is the in starfleet and like, whether or not bigger luke theory can be properly determined with no han pics, so

junkcanon: HAHA... oh... i have way too many of these bc i’m an incorrigible horndog... ....... .. . .. . .. .. . .. .. .. .. . .... uhhh oversensitive bottom pete white is the biggest one... its hot what can i say and thats 95% the reason i headcanon it

spleencanon: basically they are definitely in love with each other on a romantic and sexual level, which is a spleencanon bc it isnt actually canon lol