I HAVE WAITED ALL YEAR TO POST THIS

despite staff's recent changes, we're... winning??????

will make a bigger post about this later but i've been thinking about my rewrite lately, specifically the jury. Was thinkin about how (Zane excluded) there were 8 jurors, and how since I wanted the DW to all be foils of each other, I wanted the jurors to all be foils of each other (idk if foil is the right word here but yall get it i think)

Then I started thinking about how I want Irena and Shad to be foils of each other, and "dang I really want Zane to have a foil, specifically for his role as an extension of Irena, but who could that be??" and it's like. Aaron is right there.

Because like?? Irena literally destroyed Shad's life. Killed his child, tore apart his family, and banished him from his home. All for her own selfish wants.

And then Zane does LITERALLY the exact same shit to Aaron. I can't remember how much of this is canon vs rewrite, but the pieces fit together a little too perfectly lmao

This just makes me think of a role reversal-ish au with everyone thinking Aphmau is Irene incarnate and Aaron Shad but actually the opposite.

You think MCD Aphmau is ever bitter cleaning up Irene's mess?

Like does she run into people slighted by Irene all the time, blaming it on her or demanding she fix it even though really, she is not the same person?

And then she does her best to make it right despite that, because that's the kind of person she is, and each time the people are just... kinda ungrateful.

And then Shad comes along, wanting to kill her because she's Irene and completely fucked him over and she finally snaps like;

"THATS NOT MY FUCKING PROBLEM! It's not my responsibility to clean up her mess! Irene is dead! And I'm too tired for this shit!"

I imagine that snaps Shad out of his murder boner. "Oh shit, it really isn't Irene." And then that starts this road of getting to know this new "Irene" who is now absolutely nothing like the old one.

In fact... Aphmau now is way more like Shad used to be. And Shad himself doesn't know how to feel about that. Meanwhile, Aaron is cackling because, "Bitch that's what I was trying to tell you!"

Aphmau: sometimes, you put a bunch of misfits together and you get a family :)

Aphmau: sometimes, you get a bunch of jackasses.

I wanna take this and run with it

wicked thoughts brewing tbh i'm sorry for what's about to happen.

anyway i'm deciding nana's alias name is aya hoshino and her real name is nana akabane because the number 7 (meaning of her name) is apparently significant in buddhism because they celebrate the 7th day of a newborn's life and grieve 7 days after someone's death and i think that's cool since nana is a shad descendant in my rewrite.

nekoette's new name is tsubame (swallow bird).

dante becomes dante akabane bc i said so.

canon: they died

fanfic: fUCK YOU

So because I am just a sucker for angst, I can just imagine that after the relics are created (i hc that the rest of DW [minus Irene] didn't realize what the others sacrifices would be) they talk of visiting Hyria and the little girl (i can't name either so) and while they do Shad seems to leave the conversation (mentally or physically) and they eventually just stop talking about it.

Eventually, they end up visiting Hyria again and don't see the little girl, asking where she is. At that the conversation stills and Hyria looks first to Shad, who was on the verge of tears, then to Irene, saying they needed to talk later. After that Hyria just avoids answering the question all together.

Throughout that vist Shad and Hyria seem much closer than ever.

[This is just my silly little rambles. I have hardcore beef with Irene.]

blazeron anon :3 do you ever think about irene and shad's daughter? because i do. a lot. it's a special ability of mine to fixate on the most minuscule characters possible :3 anyway i found an old fic i wrote where said daughter was adopted by hyria because idk man this was years ago never finished it :D

Blazeron anon are we the same person?!

I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT SHAD AND IRENE AND THEIR DAUGHTER LITERALLY ALL MORNING THIS IS INSANE

Anyways I just fully came to terms with this characters existence today when thinking about how I want to develop Shad's character, so I don't have a lot of thoughts that aren't just me making fun of MCDs writing (my bread and butter). But I have been thinking about the kind of life she had before Irene did... That. To her.

Because we don't know how old she was (at least I don't think we do), but I imagine she was at least a toddler, if not older. Alina is like 3 in MCD Season 3, and I want their daughter to be a little older than that so that way Shad feels even more pain seeing Alina because he can almost pretend she never died because she didn't grow past this age for very long the first time but maybe she can this time. I also don't have a name for their daughter because I'm terrible at naming things but I'll figure it out eventually.

Anyways imagining this five year old girl picking flowers in the forest around Hyria's cottage and coming home to give them to Hyria, Kul'zak, and Irene and all four of them weave flower crowns for each other. The Divine Warriors have a whole Flower Crown thing that's evolved into its own beast in my rewrite that's an entire post unto itself. But this girl made soooo many flower crowns. Especially ones for her Mom/Dad when she was staying with the other parent and waiting for the other to "come back home", not quite realizing the decayed state of her parents relationship, and that there's a reason "home" described about half a dozen locations important to her.

All the Divine Warriors probably knew her. Held her. Had memories with her. With Irene, with Shad, with the entire family. And I don't know if Irene ever told any of them the truth about what happened to her.

Every time I think about this child my heart breaks

stop using chat gpt. i can also feed you misinformation when you ask me questions and also im beautiful

For all my mutuals who’ve been posting about House recently

I give you this newspaper comic from 2011