#haven headcanons

[demisexualnathanvuornos]

Random headcanon:

Before Garland became a cop and Nathan followed suit, the Wuornoses were fishermen.

[mypralaya]

“Just stay positive!”

Haven doesn't believe you need to STAY positive. There is a time for grief. There is a time for mourning. There is even a time for rage and self-pity and petty blame; a brief time, yes, but that catharsis is often necessary for recovery and moving to something better. The idea that one must STAY positive, to be in STASIS, to not REACT in ways that are not only perfectly reasonable but ultimately HEALTHY so long as in the right amounts, is not a philosophy she supports at all. A return to positivity is ideal, of course. But to remain there always is not always what is right for the moment.

There is a time for everything, and everything has its time.

[mypralaya]

One of the few feel-good healing spiritual/philosophical sentiments that I don't reblog for Haven from any of those sorts of blogs I follow for her is the idea that hardships are blessing in disguise, that we should learn from the bad things that happen to us and they're lessons, etc. I don't think she'd agree with that. It honestly sounds like saying people should be grateful for horrible things (heck, I've seen some quotes that say exactly that)

I feel like it might have been something she believed as a younger, more naive person who was looking for some kind of good in the awful things she was seeing around her, especially as a very religious person who I think would definitely want some kind of divine answer for the poverty and pain she saw others going through, as it tortured her so much...but as an adult, and especially post-Adversary, I don't think she still feels that way.

Because what happened with the Adversary didn't make her better or stronger or teach her anything. It just hurt thousands of people and took away her child and twenty years of her life she'll never get back. She may go forward without undue angst because she's not wasting another minute now but she hardly considers that any sort of blessing or lesson, considering it's not like she's not doing exactly what she was doing with her life before it took hold of her.

Sometimes, suffering is just that, with nothing to justify or ennoble it in the grand scheme of things, no great plan that's a part of, no way to explain it as not really as bad a thing as it seems. It just is what it was. And she's made peace with that fact. And she won't tell anyone else to feel any differently than that with such patronizing platitudes.

[mypralaya]

Haven doesn't know why the Adversary chose her, and to be honest, she doesn't think about it or question it. She doesn't really see how that makes a difference now, after all.

But I've got my theories. I don't think it was just ONE single thing that made her/her fetus the perfect host for the Adversary. I think it was multiple factors and she was theunlucky  person they all came together in.

- She was pregnant. The Adversary needed a new body to be born into the world again. 'Nuff said.

- She was pregnant with a mutant that, apparently, could already use their ability even in-utero (assuming the Adversary didn't jump-start its powers) The powers that Haven shows come, according to her, from her unborn son, and since they don't seem to be the same powers that the Adversary has on its own have, most likely these are indeed the natural abilities of her would-be child. I'm guessing that the Adversary couldn't use its own vast magical powers while it was waiting to be reborn, so it searched for a host whose powers it could use through the mother while it was still gestating. As it indeed did with Haven.

- She had the money/resources to fund a cult. Haven comes from one of the wealthiest families in Mumbai, and we see that her American base has some amazing hi-tech stuff, and she even had a satellite she used (or planned to use) to trigger mass simultaneous earthquakes. Presumably her cult members had weapons too, though we never see them attack anyone. The Adversary wants to cause mass destruction and chaos, and it's hard to do that with just one person unless they're the Phoenix or Magneto or someone like that. But money can sure help! As can followers! Haven had the means to get those.

- I've noted before that I find it more than a little Problematic how Haven professes to have been taught all major world religions by her parents, and to believe in the core principle of love at the heart of all of them...and yet her cult beliefs and doctrines that come from the Adversary are based entirely in Hinduism. On a meta level that's just the writers being shitheads I think, but in-universe, I think it's because...Haven does embrace all world religions, but she lived in a predominantly Hindu area/culture and had a Hindu father. So she was probably at least a little pre-disposed to listen in particular to a "divine vision" shown to her that was based around the Hindu teachings she already knew.

- Haven was at the lowest point in her life when the Adversary possessed her child. She had fallen in love with a man, given herself to him, and then once he had what he wanted he ran away, leaving her pregnant. She was not only personally devastated, but spiritually and culturally as well. People are fucking awful to young single mothers today, can you imagine what she went through in 1970s India? She doesn't go into detail about what happened much beyond a single sentence, but she says the pain was inexpressible, describing it as a "dark night of the soul". And then...there was a Voice. I don't think it's any coincidence that the Adversary came to her in her darkest hour, when she would be most easily swayed by anything pretending to be light.

- Haven was pregnant at the right TIME. See, here's the interesting thing about the Adversary...it stays in her womb for twenty years getting ready for its rebirth...but just a few years ago in 1988, it has a huge fight with the X-Men, with the whole team having to sacrifice their lives to defeat it (they get better pretty fast) So, how is this possible? How was it at full power fighting the X-Men when it was supposed to still be inside Haven then? Well, the Adversary has INCREDIBLE powers. Like, incredible. There's very little it CAN'T do. So I think time travel would be easy for it. I think that after the X-Men sealed it away, it used its magic to go back in time however many years it needed to recuperate and entered an ideal host (Haven/her child) so that once it was done with the twenty years inside her it needed, it would be reborn into the world just a few years after the X-Men thought they were finished with it. It'd get a kick out of that, I think.

- Haven was good. Haven was so, so good. She was a little girl who prayed every night to God to stop the suffering in the world, and when she was a goddamn teenager she had left her wealthy home to go work with the sick, the destitute, the suffering poor in the streets. Her entire LIFE was based around HELPING PEOPLE. Her name was Haven long before she became a "villain" and you know how she got it? She used her family's funds to build a CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL called "Haven" and THE KIDS THERE STARTED CALLING HER THAT. I didn't make any of this up, this is all canon. The Adversary is a DEMON. I think it would LOVE to corrupt the purest soul possible, relish the PERVERSITY of a compassionate person causing so much suffering with the contradictory goal of alleviating that suffering.

Haven was just the right combination. She was a wonderful compassionate person, she was the right number of years in the past, she had money to fund a cult of mass destruction, she was emotionally and spiritually vulnerable, she had a baby with powers that the Adversary could hijack and use while its own were unavailable to it, and was she was pre-disposed towards a worldview that be easily twisted towards doing the Adversary's work for it.

TL; DR Her brother may be Monsoon, but poor Haven was the perfect storm.

[mypralaya]

Even though what happened to Haven with the Adversary was so intimate---this thing was inside her body and mind for twenty years--she looks at it less like, say, an abusive situation, and more like, say, a natural disaster. In the case of abuse, there's a perpetrator. There's someone who did it to you. There's blame. But the Adversary isn't a person. He's a being, yes, but not like a human being. He's an entity of cosmic evil, a powerful demon of the highest order. And he was just doing what such things do. It's not like another person choosing to hurt her, it's more like she was caught in a fire or a storm. She just happened to be the one its path.

It's unfair, certainly. It's tragic, certainly. But it's...just what happened, and that's that.

[mypralaya]

When mutant kids angst about NOT BEING normal, Haven's response isn't to tell them that they ARE normal, or that normal is relative

It's to ask them firstly if normal is better, and if so, why they think that is, and go from there based on their answers

And, sometimes, if it's right for their case, to also ask them

If all you want to be is normal, how will you be extraordinary?

[mypralaya]

I feel like the idea that pain and adversity are lessons in disguise and you can learn something from every bad experience no matter how awful, are things that Haven once believed as a much younger woman, but something she does not believe now. Sometimes, that can be the case, but sometimes, pain is just pain, suffering is just suffering, and it is not on the shoulders of the victim to craft something 'better' out of a terrible experience or else they're 'wasting' a 'learning opportunity' or the like.

She also does not believe that "you can't choose what happened to you but you can choose how it affects you" because no, no you can't, you cannot dictate what impact something has on your psyche. What believes is that you can choose how you cope with how it effected you. That you can find what works best for you, what won't make things worse for you, what won't hurt others, etc. But you can't choose HOW it effects you in the first place, any more than you can choose whether to get wet when splashed.

[mypralaya]

There are some cinnamon roll type characters like Haven who are people who think everyone is really good and compassionate inside no matter how bad they seem, or how bad they actually are...and I think Haven ISN'T one of those people.

I think that rather than denying the darkness in others, she accepts it. She looks it in the eye and recognizes it for what is, but does not always condemn it, and certainly does not condemn the person who holds it. She doesn't need to believe a person is "actually good" to see their value and their place in the universe and something to learn from them.

Darkness, too, has its value. Evil must be known for good to be understood. Haven understands this.