SUBMITTED REPLY IN RESPONSE TO MY POST ASKING FOR ANGSTY DESCENDANTS HEADCANONS!!!
TWs include:
Extreme child abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, disordered mindsets and thinking patterns, maldaptive ideas of sex and intimacy, mentions of homophobia and bigotry, discussions of death, neurodivergence and related topics, traumatic experiences and C-PTSD, manic states, mental disorders, and unhealthy coping mechanisms
Alright angsty descendants headcanons for you!
(Continued under the break)
1) The Isle is Literally Hell
I'm not even exaggerating here. There are dead people living on that island solely to experience eternal torture and suffering. Hades is there. It's actually hell. And since it's actually hell, you know what DOESN'T happen? Staying dead.
Don't get me wrong, you can still die, and it still hurts like all get-out, but your soul has nowhere to go and inevitably finds its way back to your dessicated corpse. This means that the most unfortunate people have damaged their bodies so badly that every time their soul finds its way back, they just immediately die again, so their entire existences just become a never ending haze of actually deadly agony. This allows me to combine the "death is no escape" routes and the "death is coming for you all the time" ones!
2) All the Villains are Post 3rd Act Breakdown
Forget the fact that most of these people are known child abusers who have attempted to murder children in canon. Remember that every single villain here has passed the point of extreme mental breakdown that happens when Disney Villain's plans stop going their way, and they are all in a state of homicidal mania by the time they are imprisoned on the Isle.
In canon, this is either played for laughs (movies) or seems to have resolved into apathy (books), but I think we all know it would not be that fortunate. I do genuinely think every single child on the isle has been the victim of greivous bodily harm at the hands of their parent at least once, most with alarming regularity. The poster child for this will of course be Carlos, who probably has the single most unstable parent and who is not present enough in reality to do any semblance of raising him. He is either her dog or her henchman or the object for uncontrollable violence, but never her son.
Other children who have a particularly bad go of it are Jay, the Hooks (who have it REALLY bad because I believe Captain Hook would project all his hatred for Peter Pan and Wendy onto his children), the Tremaines (although she's more into treating her offspring as slave labor), Ginny Gothel, Claudine Frollo, Yzma's kids, the hypothetical children of the Coachman from pinnochio, the hypothetical children of the Huns, and the hypothetical children of the Rescuers franchise villains. But do keep in mind that this is a universal problem.
Also, beyond domestic abuse in the home, I firmly believe that the adults of the Isle are very happy to give the kids they meet in public just as much brutalization. If you see an adult on the isle, you aren't safe. Not that you ever are, but the threat levels are significantly decreased when it's just the kids with less desire to hurt for fun.
3) The Myriad Mental Disorders
Tbh, you could write an entire fic just explaining every single Isle kid's mental problems, so I'll just focus on the Rotten Four for this segment
Mal:
She was constantly told by her mother that she wasn't worthy. That she had to become more powerful, more evil, more perfect. She grew up without ever receiving approval from her mother for anything ever. Some small part of her, buried deep inside still wants it, but it's led to her mostly covering up her deep self-loathing problems and feelings that she will never be good enough with an "I don't need you or anyone" attitude.
If she can just be strong enough and powerful enough and alone enough, then she doesn't need her mother's or anybody else's approval. Attachment is a weakness to her. The rotten four are her greatest guilty pleasure and she sees it as a failure that she cares for them so much. She has no idea how to accept praise and assumes it's a trap---baiting her into getting close so people can hurt her.
Mal also suffered extremely high levels of neglect. She was never worth her mother's time. From the moment she was old enough to walk, Mal has been providing for herself. What little magic Mal can use made her a natural leader and has honed her FIGHT instinct to the highest (with a little bit of FAWN mixed in, which comes out in Auradon when her more basic survival needs are filled).
Mal engages in self harm. Many types, most commonly burning herself. Sometimes it's to release emotion, sometimes it's to punish herself for failure, and sometimes it's simply habit. By the time D1 starts, she's inflicted just as much on herself as the rest of the isle has inflicted on her.
Mal being a natural leader also made her highly protective/possesive of her belongings, her territory, and her people and she constantly feels the weight of the world on her shoulders from having to fight to keep it all safe every second of every hour of every day. The paranoia is very strong with this one and it presents itself primarily in the form of aggression---Mal has found offense to be her best defense, since then she can at least set the terms of the fight.
Jay:
His father had him stealing to stock his shop since before Jay was old enough to comprehend language. When he "failed," (which was most of the time since nothing was ever enough for Jafar), he would be beat and starved. Jay literally cannot stop himself from stealing. It has become a reflex more passive than speech. It is one of his single most important survival mechanisms.
While Jay was turned loose to steal things from the streets even earlier than Mal, his father does actually keep track of him. This is not good. Jay has expected report times and he will be tracked down and beaten and starved if he fails to meet them. Jafar has been using his son as a tool for his greed and wealth since basically forever, and it's not one he's ready to give up.
Jay (and Evie, but we'll get to her) has been using his body as a tool for a really long time. Flirting and favors come very naturally to him and make it a lot easier to make his needed haul. He sees sex and other physical intimacy as exploitative and transactional and treats it as just another bargaining chip.
Jay, being one of the most physically imposing of the group as well as getting most of his survival training from the highly physically abusive Jafar, quickly became a brawler and has associated violence with release of emotions. It's highly cathartic and he and Mal both frequently feel the need to beat the crap out of someone just so they'll stop feeling weird.
In addition to all this, I headcanon that Jay has ADHD and dyslexia. His spread-thin focus and inability to stop his hands were capable of being an asset and his difficulty reading didn't come up much in the isle, but it makes adapting to Auradon highly difficult for him in particular.
Evie:
Her mother always saw Evie as an extension of her own self, and that of course meant her vanity and obsession with appearance was projected onto Evie as well. Evie always had to look perfect. She had to be flawless, and she never could be. She was always either too fat or too skinny, too pale or too flushed, too colorful or too plain. When she failed to meet the Evil Queen's impossible standard, she was punished, although more with long nights in the cellar without food than getting physically beaten, since EQ couldn't leave marks on Evie.
Consequently, Evie is equally obsessed with her own appearance, but not because of vanity, but because she will literally not survive if she doesn't look perfect all the time. If there's even the slightest chance that her makeup is smudged, or that her hair is out of place, or that her posture isn't perfect, or that her clothes are wrinkled, or any other number of minute details, Evie's life is in very real danger. She also struggles with eating disorders and is constantly paranoid that she's either eating too much or too little.
Due to the Evil Queen's exile, Evie's only socialization for most of her childhood were the long days of her mother hovering over her and criticizing everything about her and imposing upon her that she must woo and marry a prince or else she is completely useless. The only exception to this was Carlos, who managed to find his way into Evie's house during a mad dash from Hell Hall, and they both found comfort, safety, and combined survival skills in one another, quickly becoming a bonded pair. They are both incredibly intelligent, and, since Evie's home was one of the few with books, were capable of teaching themselves a lot of information.
When Evie was finally allowed to leave her mother's vulture gaze, it was because her mother's presence of mind was slipping and she was forgetting to constantly hover over and check on Evie, leaving Evie with long hours that eventually turned into days, then weeks where her mother would forget about her existence. The first time she left it was for freedom, and it never stopped being a part of the equation, but providing for herself became a necessity after a little while---the Evil Queen was not cognizant enough to actually remember to provide basic care like food, clothes, and water.
Joining Mal's gang was a turbulent process for Evie, as she was first seen as a vapid stupid obstacle due to her naivete making her seem dumb, then as a threat when it became clear she had a lot more up her sleeve, then a burden when Jay claimed Carlos, who's a package deal with Evie, then as a resource when Evie proved she could pull her weight, then an ally for Mal as she watched Evie protect Jay and/or Carlos from their parents, then as an actual trusted person when Evie saved Mal at great personal risk to herself when she could have just left her for dead.
The Evil Queen taught Evie about poisons and potions and the like, and Evie became the witch of the group: both the healer and the deadly alchemist. The Rotten Four have "killed" plenty of people to stay alive and Evie's poison is just one of the ways they off some of their more difficult enemies.
Evie, like Jay, was raised to see her body and her beauty as a tool and uses it however she must to survive.
Carlos:
To put it quite plainly, Cruella is both incredibly violent and incredibly insane. She's almost always in a state of mania, and is not on speaking terms with reality---she still thinks she's a fashion baroness working on her fur coats and trying to kill the dalmations. She oscillates wildly between seeing Carlos as her "puppy" who she smothers with violent affection, her servant/henchman who she treats exactly like Jasper and Horace, and the source of all her problems in the world, who she violently takes out her rage on. Unlike Jafar and the Evil Queen who are methodical and present in their abuse, Cruella does it on wild whims and throws anything in reach: shoes, bottles, cigarette lighters. She was unstable enough that Carlos did not have a choice---he either had to leave Hell Hall or die.
His first flight landed him on the streets, which went very badly for him. His second landed him in Evie's castle, where they were able to take care of each other. Carlos has a tendency to go nonverbal when he's uncomfortable (which is often), as drawing attention to himself only ever brought bad things under Cruella's care. His instinct is FLIGHT---he will run through anything to get away from danger, be it a diseased bog river or actual fire or jumping off a roof. It's all a better option than being violently attacked. When he can no longer flee the situation, he fights like a feral animal, tooth and nail and kicks and the whole nine yards, just trying to get away.
He's claustrophobic, as Cruella would lock him in her closet for days and forget he was there. Carlos is also highly HIGHLY intelligent, and has a bit of mad scientist to him, frequently disregarding his own and others bodily safety in the pursuit of knowledge. He's just as fidgety as Jay, and is usually tinkering with a gadget of some kind or another, which causes some people to target him, since he has an obvious thing he cares about that they can destroy. This is stupid, because he will win the fight about it, but he gets into a lot more scrapes than desired.
While Cruella de Vil isn't mentally present enough to expect Carlos home like the Evil Queen is at the start or like Jafar is, she will occasionally go into fits of rage when she realizes he's missing and send Horace and Jasper after him. The Core Four all work very hard to make sure he isn't found, since they're not sure if he'd survive another trip back to hell hall.
4) the c-PTSD
Even beyond the abuse from their parents, the isle is living in sub-human sub-prison conditions. All of their food is literal raccoon dumpster garbage, all their air is heavily polluted, there is little to no temperature regulation for storms or hot summers or cold winters, all of their possessions are ALSO garbage including their clothing and bedding, and everyone has to be ready for a fight or to be stolen from at literally any second because none of them can trust each other.
Every single Isle character will be suffering from who knows how many diseases, instincts to hoard supplies and to create barricaded, hidden, and reinforced shelters, instincts to fight, and extreme paranoia all the time. There is no such thing as relaxed for any of these people.
5) Lack of education
Technically, there are schools, but literally nobody goes---and not just for "it's evil" reasons, but because they literally don't have time between scavenging and dodging threats. Anything the isle kids know beyond some basic math and language skills is self-taught, which makes Evie and Carlos' prowess in the sciences all the more impressive.
(This also includes a lack of sex ed, which means all the kids are just guessing through any kinds of sexual relationships as well as about puberty. I fully expect Mal and Evie thought they were dying when they finally got enough nourishment to start having periods).
6) Auradon Sucks Too
People's basic survival needs are being met in Auradon, but even in canon, the place is rife propaganda, strictly enforced gender roles, blatant fear towards most magic, and the kinds of authority figures who are so afraid and hold so much hatred towards the villains of their past that they literally resurrect them to force them to suffer torment. Beyond just the complete social reconstruction and everyone's extreme issues from living in the actual cesspit that is the isle, the Isle Kids also have to deal with things that really shouldn't be a problem.
Here are some of my biggest headcanons:
Auradon has a lot of homophobia. Which is a serious serious problem for the isle kids where that mattered exactly none. It adds another huge weight that makes them want to continue masking their mutual affection. Not only were they all raised with affection being a weakness (especially Mal), but now there's a bunch of weird gender rules that means it's not allowed. It's also a big reason why Chad and Audrey are . . .Chad and Audrey. They are soooooo far in the closet.
Auradon has a poor understanding of mental health neurodivergence. They've never really equipped themselves to deal with people like Jay or Carlos who are not wired for a regular school system, and certainly nobody is sure how to deal with the PTSD and the other stuff from living on the Isle. Everybody tries, but their education about it leaves a lot to be desired. Lonnie is better at it than most because her parents are actual war vets and have some similar issues.
While some people go the route of making King Beast and/or Fairy Godmother terrible people, I actually like it when they genuinely thought they were doing the right thing and as soon as the Isle Kids come over, they're struck with the full horror of their actions and have NO IDEA what to do about it, and their overwhelming guilt makes their actions. . .unhelpful most of the time. King Beast maintains his distrust and fear of the Isle Kids for a long time because if they really aren't evil, then that means he's been sentencing thousands of innocent children to literal actual Hell, and he can't cope with that. It isn't pretty when he finally accepts it.
Fairy Godmother attempts to help, but she makes a lot of assumptions. She assumes that just because they grew up on the Isle, they have no concept of what any good behavior looks like (could not be further from the truth, see: their relationships with the D3 kids that were built BEFORE leaving the Isle), but also doesn't realize the extent of the abuse they went through, and makes the same "even villains love their kids" assumptions that Lonnie did.
People are VERY afraid of magic---even "good" magic like the Fairy Godmother and Jane---and it means any magical beings are forced to hide their nature and are severely undereducated on their own magical capability.
Also, this one's kind of just canon, but I definitely think when the Rotten 4 were told "this is the boys dorm, this is the girls dorm" they were like "Okay, so we're not listening to that rule AT ALL right? We're too codependent for this."
So yeah
I thiiiiink that's just about everything? Oh yeah, I also think Mad Maddy (book exclusive character, Madame Mim's kid), and a number of other people are making homemade drugs, and while it's not a problem for the Core 4, I think addiction and substance abuse IS a problem fof a lot of Isle Residents. This didn't even get into Uma and the Tremaines being treated as free labor by their guardians, or Gaston's misogyny being highly damaging to Gil and his siblings, or the Hooks' lack of a relationship/combative relationship with each other down to being in opposing gangs.
But I think I've gone into enough detail here for you to get the idea! Everything is terrible everywhere, but it's definitely MORE terrible on the Isle, and it leaves all the kids deeply messed up in the head! What do you think?
Camilo Madrigal headcannons because i will always love this movie
**not all of these are mine and some may slightly divert from canon!
ambidextrous but with a slight preference for his right hand
he’s a great singer
grows up to be 6”3 tall
antonio grows to be 6”4 but camilo denies this and still says he’s taller
double jointed
when he first got his gift, he had to have a talking to so he wouldn’t use it irresponsibily
he loves cooking and is actually pretty good at it
he’s a hopeless romantic
though camilo loves pepa, their relationship was always strained due to her reliance on him for emotional support. things improve after the miracle returns though!!
likes playing soccer even though he’s not that good
had his first kiss when he was shapeshifted into another boy and his girlfriend came up and kissed him
he was really upset when antonio was born because he had become a middle child
he got over it after meeting his baby brother though
had a bit of a rebellious phase but got shut down really fast by his mama
probably has adhd let’s be real
super annoying in class but he’s actually very smart
teachers either hate him or adore him no in between
shapeshifts into made up people all the time
he and his high school sweetheart mia quintero break up at 20 but get back together and end up getting married
"oh wow i thought this fandom was dead" you ignorant slut no fandom is ever truly dead. there will always always always be at least three mentally unwell freaks on the internet irrelevant-posting about their little blorbo(s) who have not been relevant for fifty years. this is the way of the world and they are stronger than you will ever be you FOOL
For Camilo, it has always felt like every day is one of those days. As a member of the magical, fantastical famila Madrigal, he has secretly believed that his gift is the least useful.
His cousin, Isabela's, gift to make the town go wild in attention as the flowers bloom. His sister Dolores gift to hear a pin drop if needed or in danger to rush his Tia into the scene. Rather than the cause for or behind it.
What is Camilo's gift?
The ability to shift into anyone. At face value, it seems amazing, flashy, cool skill- until some of the jokes don't land and the shift doesn't. What once was cool and fun begins to morph into a hidden insecurity.
From Abuela's subtle glances to looking in the mirror and noticing a flaw he sure wasn't there before.
A jack or all trades but a master of none. An actor whose smiling mask is beginning to crumble to nothing behind it but a void. Stage Fright...but to whom... himself? What a load of bologna!
But one person - his newly best friend from outside the mountains, Lorenzo whom he begins to idolize from his tales - is more than willing to help him change the way he believes everyone perceives him.
With Lorenzo mentorship, Camilo, a master adaptation, alters how he dresses, how he acts, and how he doles out.
A new mask is able to cover the void, as suddenly, there are lines of people eager to see the newly, flashy popular teen. Taken seriously and new dates with a boy to come.
As always, nothing goes as smoothly for a Madrigal.
The family take notice of Camilo's sudden change.
Especially Mirabel Valentina Rojas Madrigal - meddler at heart. Finds herself worried for her cousin. His new friend who begins to weasel self in more and more as shoves her to the side.
Something she never liked...
As time ticks down, Camilo has a major decision to make. Is he brave enough to face the dire future head-on as he warms to the family but at the cost of revealing the void or will he revert to his old ways.
Isabela sprouts mistletoe and leaves it in random, hidden areas of Casita. (All the couples try to find them all before the night ends.)
Julieta and Antonio are an unexpected cooking team, with the former suggesting animal-friendly meals while the latter taste-tests.
Luisa and Agustín each perform a little holiday-esque piano for the Casita and everyone inside.
Sometimes when the house becomes too crowded with too much noise, Felix and Mariano perform a private music show to help Dolores safely listen to music.
Sorry this took so long but!! Owl House!Madrigal sisters !
Luisa specializes in construction magic, Isabela plant magic (though she hasn’t had as much freedom exploring her powers yet), and Mirabel is born without magic, but she’s figuring it out !!
In the au, the Encanto is closed off from the rest of the owl-house universe, but there’s still remnants and elements from that outside world within the Encanto, like a few articles of clothing, spells, traces of magic, etc. So Mirabel kinda fashioned the Hexside cowl for herself here, even though it’s much farther removed (plus more lil parallels between her and Bruno for this au!! With their mixed relationship/association with ‘outside’ magic and sweet little hoodies). She’s still a witch and got pointy ears too!! Just born without a magic sac organ that lets her produce magic.
I’d also like to kinda poll !!
I’m kinda debating on this (feel free to offer thoughts !!) but what if Agustín was a human? Humans are incredibly incredibly rare in this universe but there’s enough for them to be gossiped about I suppose— it’s not like there have never ever been any humans to cross into the universe, so I’m imagining Agustín (being the accident prone guy he is) just kinda. Wound up here and decided to stay??
That or Agustín is born and bred in this universe and mirabel’s non-magicness is just something else entirely (I like this alternative itself for Mirabel)— idk, thoughts??
