#Violet Goodfellow - Hypotheticals

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(If you’re still accepting these at all lol) What if Atlas never became such a thing? If atlas just stayed as Mantle? (For any!)

Let’s play “What If?”

For this I want to add on a few hypotheticals to this what if. We’re going by what would happen if the kingdom of Atlas was never founded and as a result I’m going to make the following assumptions:

Because a brand new kingdom isn’t created to balance the arrangement, the Atlas Military also isn’t instated and Mantle is set up more like a traditional kingdom.

As a result, the wealth disparity between Atlas and Mantle isn’t nearly as drastic and it’s only one region with less barriers between social classes.

Technological development in Atlas remains the same and James Ironwood is still elected to the position of headmaster of Atlas Academy (May as well let the academy keep its name.) This is mostly for the sake of the show’s consistency.

Knight and Paladin robotic units are still in production by a council-subsidized company and sold as privatized security (and in heavy use by the Mantle council, bringing its own controversies) and the SDC still maintains a monopoly on dust.

With all that in mind, let’s see how this affects Team OLIV’s story.

For starters, let’s go into how this affects the people who benefit the most from Atlas’s wealth and are crippled by Atlas’s lack of it.

Without the creation of a hyper-wealthy upper class, the Baskerville family isn’t nearly as powerful. With sympathetic ties to the previous Mantle regime ideology and nowhere near as much of an upper-class bubble, Cassandra’s family remains little more than an old-money family like many other non-business Atlas families with old histories. Without as much security in her position, she is in less of a position to talk up Tyrael opening an investment business when they meet and eventually marry.

The Cheshire Financial Group is still founded, but in a more mellowed political landscape and with Cassandra having less justification to shut out Tyrael’s old team, the company also heavily finances its partner service- Blood Brothers LLC which Tyrael never leaves in this timeline. Redmond is still hired as an analyst and accountant on Cassandra’s behest.

Without the Atlas military to enlist in, Cobalt also remains with his old team as the mercenary group’s fourth member. He still meets Poppy Goodfellow and marries into Shin’s family, now that the financial base of the company remains in Mantle. Blood Brothers LLC becomes a renown elite huntsmen company that charges premium rate and is often only hired for the most dangerous of jobs. They still charge millions for their services with no questions asked.

The Goodfellow family, without the wealth disparity of Atlas and Mantle nor the military getting preferential treatment on huntsmen missions to stop them, grow up in a more middle class environment than before and the need for money is lessened, Robin is not recruited by Jade out of desperation and without Jade to act as an enabler for Robin’s baser impulses, he instead becomes a heavily-respected huntsmen in Mantle much like his parents. Violet is also never attacked in a panic to keep her away from Jade as a result, giving her more confidence going forward in Atlas Academy.

With the Cheshire Group not having to worry about illicit means to make a lot of money, Tyrael never meets Jade and Ivory instead grows up like any other upper class girl in Mantle. However, she still joins Atlas Academy when she’s old enough, growing tired of the lifestyle, something both her parents and the core Blood Brothers Group support fully. They give her private training, leaving her just as skilled as when she enters Atlas in the canon timeline, on genuine huntress internship this time.

Jade, for his part, is struggling more than he would have. Without Tyrael’s financial backing the Red Arena remains an elusive small-scale red room operation and has no resources to go beyond Mistral’s seedy areas and doesn’t cater to wealthy criminal interests especially without Robin to rocket the bloodsport up to noteriety. While events aren’t kicked off to start the Red Arena plotline as in canon, Jade remains a present and dangerous element of the Mistrali underground despite his lesser role in it.

However, this butterflies away several major events:

Because Jade’s primary players are never recruited, Cassandra Cheshire isn’t killed and Lilac never goes on her crazy revenge ploy. She doesn’t test her weapons out in the mine by Pineyard, freeing Lapis and Lazuli from their entire situation. She and Morado have an uneventful wedding without anyone exploding.

Lapis enters Atlas Academy without the major chip on his shoulder or the horribly negative view of his peers. His sister follow suit and they eventually begin travelling back and forth to Mantle to help their home village. Lazuli is slower to realize how her semblance works, however, and it takes her quite a long time to really learn how. As a result, she initially fails out of Atlas Academy two years after she enrolls before seeking private tutors and leaning on Lapis for support in the meantime.

Team MINT doesn’t go through the horrible trauma they faced at the Red Arena and are significantly more adjusted when they eventually enroll in Beacon Academy.

Because Jade’s reach never goes to Vale, Officer Melina Briar is never declared dead, no is her family ever attacked. Molly and her older sister, Clover, both attend Beacon Academy with Molly graduating with honors. She never meets Ivory or Team OLIV, but her status as the daughter of one of Vale’s most celebrated cops helps her and Clover’s careers greatly.

However, things aren’t all good for everyone:

Onyx Cheshire never existed. The young Jett was still captured by Mistrali slavers and sold to Jade’s operation where he grows up in a more bloodthirsty and unhealthy environment than even the cutthroat politics he does in canon. Auburn still spends her formative years with her neighborhood being terrorized by crime and rackets and only barely manages to make it to Mantle’s prep academy like in canon. However, she stays to attend Atlas with Lazuli, but finishes graduation. Once that is done, Auburn returns to her home to try and exact vengeance on the people who ruined her life, resulting in a long-standing hatred between the two cousins. Auburn is maimed much like she was in her canon fight with Onyx and vows to see Jett and his master either jailed or killed.

Lucianna never joins the Atlas Military as it doesn’t exist, but becomes a formidable huntress. Instead of the failed mission that caused her injuries and cost Cobalt his arm, she is injured in a separate mission and retires early to a live of contemplation and prayer in the Consecration. Again, she adopts a radical doctrine and rises to the head of the church. However, without Atlas to use as a target for her new crusading ideals, she extends her doctrine to Mantle at large, insisting they have lost their way and that the kingdom must be purged much the same as in canon.

Without Violet leaving her home for a few years due to the events of the Red Arena, she is indoctrinated alongside her old friend Sapir and joins Lucianna’s ‘purification’, a choice that puts her at odds with her family who are now around to oppose the high priestess’s ideals.

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(What if) Tyrael died instead of Cassandra?

Send me ‘What If’ scenarios for my muse to answer.

In a reversed scenario where Tyrael is the one to have been killed, things change quite a lot. Cassandra, unlike her husband, is not prone to ever-changing plans and unloading work to subordinates and partners whenever convenient. The first thing she does is call for an investigation into this “accident” and refuses to speak with Leroux first, completely nullifying any chance he has at influencing the situation.

Redmond is called to investigate the crash and realizes his daughter’s role in it, just as before. Again like last time, he works to ensure Ivory isn’t punished too harshly (effectively sparing her life) and is in agreement with Cassandra that Jade must be held accountable before anything else.

Jade is confronted with evidence first and the conviction of the crowd around him makes it impossible for him to use his semblance to ease the situation like he did with his one on one conversation with Tyrael. The Red Arena looses a large portion of its funding, severely dampening their ability to function abroad.

With Jade’s fall a bit swifter this time around, Pineyard isn’t attacked as a testing ground for Lilac’s total destruction. He enters Atlas Academy with a far more positive and heroic outlook than does in canon and his bickering with Onyx isn’t nearly as severe.

Ivory is still sent to Atlas Academy but under a far more watchful eye with Cobalt still acting as an intermediary between the Cheshires and Team OLIV’s actions. With Ivory’s attachment to Jade removed with a combination of distance and a far stricter oversight being put on her, she doesn’t sabotage the missions her team is on. This time they get a legitimate invitation to the Vytal Festival where she vanishes following the Fall of Beacon.

She meets up with Molly whos primary concern is now retrieving Ivory instead of hunting down new blood for the Arena. Lazuli, Auburn, and the future Team MINT make it back home safely to continue more normal lives. Auburn is still an awful person, but without Jade and the Arena to enable her, her capacity for chaos is greatly diminished to that of a simple bully.

Things wind up far better for most of the others who get involved. Marianne stays in Vale but remains ignorant of the fact her daughter is still alive. Morado still goes AWOL to protect Haven, but without the fires in Mistral to stop, he’s soon found and court martial-ed but Lilac helps him get a lighter sentence due to his intentions. A year later they marry and Morado helps Lilac distance herself a bit from her family’s nastier activities even though he remains ignorant of them. Cobalt also doesn’t get killed trying to convince Robin to turn on Jade.

After Ivory vanishes following Beacon, Violet still finds the scroll that proves her connection to Jade but she doesn’t run off to go find her, convincing her father to come with him to find Robin. However, this time Cobalt gets involved earlier and with Cassandra Cheshire’s backing, a group is formed to help find Robin, Ivory, and push Jade into submission, sending Redmond to act as information and to fetch his daughter. While the Goodfellow family aren’t fully on board with the Cheshires’ plan, the mutual enemy helps. Onyx insists on coming along and he and Violet decide to reach out to Lapis to join them. This more comprehensive team fares far better than before and has Lilac to back them up in Mistral now that she isn’t planning to destroy the entire block.

Cobalt suggest hiring the services of Auroras and Hari to help as well, hoping he could pull them in with promise of revenge for their old teammate’s death, but Cassandra refuses to pay them and no one else can meet their asking price so Auroras insists they stay out of it.

Molly and Ivory are discovered and captured over time and Jade’s operations get discovered and the authorities notified, but Robin proves far more difficult to subdue. Despite the combined efforts of a much larger group, he evades and/or defeats whomever manages to get near him and disappears following Jade’s final capture. His whereabouts and current actions are still unknown.

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what if a different member of oliv had been team leader?

Team OLIV “What If?”s

Let’s ignore what other wacky acronyms would have resulted and focus on the character dynamic changes. Most of it has to deal with Ivory’s initial sabotage of missions.

Lapis as OLIV’s team leader would have altered the flow of things slightly. Without Onyx’s implicit trust of Ivory hampering discipline, Lapis takes a far more direct approach to the fact that Ivory kept failing missions, being far more strict and direct with orders to keep her from messing up. This stops the team looking like a ‘screw up’ but also means that Ivory’s final plan goes through and the team is captured. How that goes from there is already explained here.

Normally, Ivory in the leader position would have given her exactly what she needed to follow Jade’s orders. The problem is that she’s really bad at trying to set things up on her own and she requires a lot more direct communication with Jade in order to keep things going without just piggy-backing off of Onyx’s rather thought-out plans. She tries to get Onyx to do most of the planning for her and things handle roughly the same for the most part. However, failing the missions also now reflects poorly on her as a leader as well as a student in general and in the face of expulsion, she’s forced into the Atlas Specialist Program which keeps heavy tabs on her activity, all but shutting her down. Because of this, she’s unable to rejoin with the Cheshires after the Fall of Beacon and does not join Onyx in Menagerie. This also means she cannot flee to Mistral to fight Violet. Instead, when Violet discovers Ivory’s scroll in the mixup delivering their salvaged belongings back from Beacon’s wreckage, she’s immediately arrested and put on a military tribunal. No string Tyrael can pull will save her from prison but the Atlas military does nothing further with the information as the military lockdown and border closure soon takes effect. 

Cobalt, Shin, and a far healthier Violet instead sneak out to try and take him down themselves. Since all other events still happen as normal, they begin by searching for Robin.

Violet in this position would have changed a lot more far more quickly. Violet would do less of a directly good job as team leader than Lapis or an aided Ivory but would likely have relied on her uncle for support a lot. The moment she starts to get suspicious of how often Ivory is screwing up and actually has the authority to act on it without being persuaded otherwise, she shares her findings with her uncle and Ivory is taken in for more serious questioning. Her scrolls are confiscated and Jade’s operations are brought directly to General Ironwood upon discovery due to it happening on Atlas grounds and the information is forwarded to Mistral authorities to begin searching for him- all before the Vytal Festival begins.

This also means that Lilac has a more surgical approach to killing Jade rather than just blowing up the lower section of the city. With Robin outed, he flees while he’s ahead. Molly stays behind with Jade while they try to salvage the situation and are annihilated before Mistral police can find them. They don’t have time to set up an ambush in Vale and Lazul and Auburn are brought safely home again.

Tyrael manages to salvage his reputation and an investigation by cutting all ties with Leroux after a heads up from Cobalt to destroy evidence. Without Jade around, there is far less encouragement to funnel money into rebuilding Beacon and placing himself or Jade at the head of it to continue the “failed missions” to fuel the growing popularity of his bloodsport with unwilling competitors. The Cheshire Group makes only a nominal donation to Beacon’s restoration effort and Onyx is never sent to Menagerie, saving him a huge pain later down the line but also robbing him of the development he gets from it.