#and some poor soul comes by years later having fallen in love with orchid and wants to know more

[hua-fei-hua]

*makes grabby hands* give me the sequel spoileriessssss (★ω★)

*eVIL CACKLING*

spoilers under cut (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧. we’re talking about so many spoilers.

WHOO so this is like the number one spoiler that i keep under wraps but anyway. 

while iida the horse is a reincarnation of someone, it isn’t actually the iida in the dekusquad -- it’s actually tensei. that’s part of the reason why he never talks in orchid, even though deku sometimes would with uraraka. the other part of that reason is bc he’s currently unaware of his status as a reincarnation. 

the fact that he even reincarnated into a horse and not, like, an actual human being is like this whole thing. i hadn’t thought about it much during the writing of orchid, but in this down time between, i read this nice chinese novel (translated bc i am not literate enough o(TヘTo)) abt these two gods who had to reincarnate into mortals seven times as punishment for fighting, and for one of the lifetimes, they were reincarnated into animals bc they’d gotten into the wrong reincarnation pools bc they were fighting. basically what i’m guessing happened to tensei is that there was some crazy shit happening in the afterlife (i’ll elaborate on that in a sec) that led to him reincarnating into an animal. 

i didn’t actually come up with the plot twist that iida wasn’t dekusquad tenya iida until probably around chapter two, hence why at the start you get that one iconic line where iida gives momo the “some sort of horse lecture” look, but i lucked out with no lines there. i had a friend sketch designs for humanoid versions of uraraka n deku in orchid, but not iida bc spoilers LOL

i also mentioned a lot in comments that the bakugou that appears at the start of orchid is already in the middle of his character arc due to some shit happening that led him to be the co-captain in the first place. what actually happened is dropped at the very end of orchid (that he was neighbors with deku and he kinda killed him), after its foreshadowing, but i don’t think people have connected all the dots. it’s one of the things that gets focused on in peony so now i get to talk about it hereeeeeee :D

so what happened a few weeks (maybe months) before the start of orchid was that bakugou was being his normal asshole self hanging out with deku, and they decided to have an archery contest to see who could shoot more accurately with a bow and arrow. The idea was to see if they could shoot a plum or an apple hanging off on a branch over a river without disturbing even a single leaf on the tree. Bakugou went first, obvs, and izuku went to fetch the arrow back and climbed the tree, but the bough broke beneath him, and he was swept away by the current before bakugou's eyes. 

bc the contest was bakugou’s idea, he blames himself bc even though he never particularly liked deku, he’d never paid his behavior much mind. it’s kind of like a what-if for in canon when deku was like “what would you have done if i’d actually jumped?” where suddenly he has to deal with the permanency of his consequences and the fragility of life. 

nezu knows all this bc he’s a celestial rat man who runs the government and sees great character development potential in him. bc literally no one wants a seventeen-year-old (todoroki) running a military thing by himself, nezu gives bakugou the position as co-captain knowing that his experiences would have him greatly valuing individual life. 

side note, this is why in chapter six, when bakugou’s doing the archery demonstration and kiri volunteers, this is a moment that’s not only important to kiri (in his arc of becoming bravery) but also bakugou bc it was with a bow and arrow that he accidentally killed deku. 

anyway, on the topic of nezu, bc he’s an immortal celestial being, when he calls endeavor only “second best” of his generals, he’s referring to all time. this is bc all might’s status has kind of waffled around through time.

at first, when writing orchid, i was planning on keeping him alive and he would just be a general of another army that i don’t remember if he was gonna be elaborated on. later, i decided “nah he actually just died a long time ago and has become an epic legendary figure that inspired bakugou n deku to become great military leaders” and then more recently, i decided, “actually, wait no. he’s a semi-celestial being, who, for reasons i haven’t yet decided, came to the mortal realm, but due to reasons i haven’t yet solidified, has accidentally ruined his body, gotten captured by demons, and has gone missing” and that’s what’s been messing up everyone in the afterlife that ended up in deku n tensei getting reincarnated into animals

that’s actually one of the main plots of peony. i’ve always planned to have two plots going on in peony, the first one obviously being abt tdmm getting married and all the crazy preparation that goes into it whilst also diving into how the war affected them with the overall question to be answered is “how do you go back to normal once all the previous pressures have been removed but bc your biggest successes were the result of that pressure, you have no idea how to cope?” 

the second plot revolves around izuocha going on some magical quest (at first i had no idea but now it’s all might) in which there would be a subplot containing the reveal of iida == tensei =/= tenya and then going over to the iida family home to check out what’s going on there (i will elaborate more on that later), and then at the end ochako n izuku would be transformed into humans (maybe temporarily, maybe permanently) as reward for their good deeds (tensei would choose to remain a horse i think), and then it would end w/izuocha going back to wherever tdmm is at that time (i’ve always imagined it to be at the wedding itself, but we’ll have to see where the pacing takes us; bc this is going to be a slightly anachronistic story, i have to do intense timelining) and revealing the whole secret story of why they were gone. and probably giving bakugou a mindfuck bc oh my god man he just spent like two or three years accepting what happened how could you do that to him

side note, bc of the tdmm wedding plot, peony is the first story i’ve written where, if i wanted, i could organically work smut into the plot, but bc i don’t like smut, it’ll just be a fade to black if i choose to allude to it at all.

so among the things the trio sees in the iida household is actually fuyumi, and although that’s basically been in my plans since the conception of peony, lately i’ve been waffling on it lately lol.

see, what happened there was a ghost marriage btwn fuyumi n tensei bc that’s a thing. your fiance/e dies? ghost marriage will make them happy. women don’t typically take second husbands, which is part of the reason i’m waffling over this choice now bc really if we’re going with advantageous arranged marriages, then huwumi would have been the more obvious choice (though hawks didn’t exist yet at the time of this idea)

anyway another cool trivia fact about orchid that gets elaborated in peony is the fact that momo had a sworn sisterhood back home that included more than just itsuka and camie, although those two would have been the ones she was closest with. a sworn sisterhood is basically just a group of girls living in the same village/area that are all around the same age, and their parents pool resources for the girls’ dowry later on in life. once they all get married, they typically go their separate ways (unlike kindred spirits/laotong), although they will attend one another’s weddings. among the girls in the sworn sisterhood also include tooru and mina, the latter of which implies that momo and kiri actually lived very close by all their lives, but for various reasons have never met. 

tooru would obviously be married to ojiro bc c’mon they’re cute and deserve more attention. mina, before i settled on the idea of her being childhood friends with kiri while their families aggressively try to turn into lovers, was actually supposed to be married to just some dude living far away who came back for the tdmm wedding, but i couldn’t figure out who that dude would be. i considered aoyama, as i was partial to that ship at the time, but he’s the matchmaker. now, i think if i were to pair her up at the end, she’d marry sero bc i’ve come to prefer that a bit more now. 

i know that sero is also a horse here but hear me out. i retconned this in my head at around the time i came up with the all might idea. what happens is that when they meet sero everyone’s just like "wait but dude like. we thought you were talking about your horse" and kaminari's just like "nah that was just as a joke" bc kamisero are childhood friends/neighbors and they have joking homoerotic subtext while mutually acknowledging that a) they are not each other's types and b) kamijirou is canon

oh i almost forgot to bring this part up lol. so what happens to natsuo also gets covered in peony. he’s still alive and perfectly well; he’s just living with his maternal grandparents, who work in the death industry. 

this has to do with color symbolism. red is for luck and prosperity; white is for death. the reason endeavor wanted to marry rei in this au was bc he saw her white hair (which made her a very undesirable bride) not as a curse or bad omen on himself, but rather upon his enemies. that’s why dabi, who has naturally red hair (in this au anyway), became heir to the estate and shoto (whose half red, half white hair represents equal parts prosperity and death) the military legacy. 

despite being an undesirable bride, rei was still an only child, however, and so as part of the marriage contract, endeavor was to return the first male child with white hair to that side of the family (technically making him no longer part of the todoroki family) to carry on the family business. after scarring shoto, rei would have also been sent back as a form of divorce.

hmmm i think that’s all the major trivia for peony/orchid that completely recontextualizes some moments of orchid