#phoenix meta

[phoebehalliwell]

listen... hot take. the phoenix witches? if they wanted to kill the charmed ones, they would've been one of the rare ones that actually could. they're literally more combat ready and skillful than the charmed ones. in that gif where bianca puts a knife to piper's throat? anyone of them would've been able to do it hence the p3 would be gonezo. charmed wiki says the loyalty is to themselves so they could go either way. true assassins.

litchrally tho!!!! the phoenix are imo like The most powerful magic group like triad whomst?? fuckin zankou is shaking in his lil boots. the charmed ones?????? lemme tell u Could Not Beat The Phoenix [note: could not beat the phoenix as a collective, different situation in a 1v1] now u might be saying margaret these r some real spicy words considering that the phoenix are Right There in the charmed universe and yet the charmed ones are still alive so what's ur excuse there huh to which i will respond dear reader i've definitely got one let's talk about killing the charmed ones. almost everyone wants to do it bc it's an automatic in to a seat of power it basically crowns u king. and besides the elders, the charmed ones are like the most prominent beacon of good magic (think like how everyone piled into the manor when the titans were on a rampage). so if evil takes them out it's a huge blow to the good magic side. but the phoenix aren't evil. they're a neutral party, they don't pick sides, they mostly stay to the shadows (presumably, bc we literally never see them). taking out the charmed ones is too much of a statement. not only is there an insane risk (killing the sisters is difficult enough but afterwards i feel like u could definitely anticipate some retribution from the magical community), it also leaves a huge What Now. i don't think the phoenix want to be a figurehead i don't think they want power if they did then we'd see a lot more of them. so they're not gonna fill that power vacuum. so then what? some demon who paid a shitload for the charmed ones' heads is he gonna take the throne? that asshole didn't even do shit, and now you're gonna have this huge shift in the balance between light and dark, which is gonna impact the neutral parties. it's not worth it to take on the dangers only to create a world in which u can't be sure where ur gonna stand. and on a more sentimental note, i also think the phoenix wouldn't kill the charmed ones because they are powerful witches. like take out an elder? sure. an upper level demon? np. but the charmed ones really represent the power of witches and an iconic female led magical bloodline. i think the phoenix don't want to see that erased.

[phoebehalliwell]

okay anyway here’s another piece of phoenix lore bc it’s on my mind i think phoenix aren’t allowed to have phobias any irrational fears. fear itself is not a horrible thing to have it’s an instinct it can tell you when somethings wrong, but a phobia? it’s useless, it’s debilitating, and there’s no room for it in the phoenix. and this is a lesson learned the hard way. bianca had arachnophobia as a child. her mom had hoped that it was just a casual fear of spiders, something that could be cured with the well aimed place of a heel, but it quickly became obvious that was not the case. if young bianca saw a spider in a room she would refuse to enter it until she knew the spider was gone. now, when you're basically a gun for hire, irrational fears can be an inconvenience. when your main target is demons, however, this fear could be the difference between life and death. so that phobia has to be removed. bianca was given a spider. at first it started off a little smaller than a dime, but she was promised that for each day she let her fear control her, the spider would grow, and it would not leave her side. and they made good on that promise. god, the first three weeks were just a blur of tears and no sleep and a scuttling sound that got louder and louder with each day. at the end of the first month the bug was roughly the size of a bulldog. and it followed her. and bianca tried every spell, every potion she had to get rid of it or to get rid of her fear or to do anything to escape that horrible unyielding eight eyed gaze, but nothing worked. her room started to get covered in cobwebs. week five she developed a plan. the spider was now the size of a husky. she snuck into the powers vault early one morning. of course the phoenix were aware, but they wanted to see what she’d go for. she took retrocognition. she swallowed her fear the best she could and with tears in her eyes reached out to touch the spindly leg of the spider. of course the answer was obvious. she should have been able to guess that. the day you overcame your fears was the day they let you kill the thing. it was the day they’d let it stay dead. and bianca was well verse in lying. it was her second language, if not her first. so the next morning she walked right up to the head phoenix and told her she could take the spider back, she wasn’t afraid of it anymore. and of course the head phoenix asked if she was sure, if she was sure that she had no fear of spiders anymore, and bianca said yes. stone face. steely eyed. and from the head phoenix’s hand, spiders poured out, as if falling out of her skin, flooding the floor, crawling over to bianca, but she refused to scream, she refused to even blink, and with that, her own spider dissipated with the rest of them. and an hour later bianca had to wrap herself tightly in bed and silently scream the horrible sounds she wasn’t allowed to make, but she had passed the lesson. and she would see the same things done with her fellow witches. she once caught a glimpse into the trypophobia room. an unending caverning of tiny holes that almost seemed to be pulsating. or breathing. and her heart leapt into her throat and she felt almost feverish, but she wouldn’t let it show. if she even squirmed at the sight she’d be stuck in the with the poor girl who couldn’t take her hands off her eyes. no. the phoenix taught her two lessons. there is no fear that can’t be suppressed. and never blink at the sight of terror.

[phoebehalliwell]

okay but if bianca was already like....5/6/7 before chris was even born, is that the age difference in the "evil world" canon? or is it a weird thing with phoenixes + aging?

i mean,, i can’t think of a reason it wouldn’t be bc like. at that point we are still very much on track for a dark future chris has not made the change necessary to save wyatt as evident by the fact that when bianca drags his ass back to the future it’s still the dark future. so like. if we were to eliminate futureboy!chris from this timeline right now the future would carry on into the dark future where this age gap would still be there, and then obviously it’s still then in the altered/changed/fixed timeline bc like that’s the timeline we’re following. we already saw kid bianca and we saw chris y’know be born and exist. i don’t really wanna tinker with aging for phoenixes bc like. i feel like it just gets difficult defining the rules and figuring out how they apply all that how she ages into the future like this that and the other and then if you’re doing that you also have to take into account how they mentally age bc it doesn’t matter if bianca physically ages slower than chris so like idk they’re both physically 18 at the same time, she’d still mentally have 5 years on him which i feel like the only reason to change the way bianca ages would be to make this age gap less weird and that doesn’t quite do that if anything i feel like it makes it weirder if i were to add anything to the lore with phoenixes & aging it would be something to do with what happens when they die y’know like some “phoenix rising from the ashes schtick” and if i were to do that it would be like okay so this is just the origin myth i have in my head blah blah blah we have our og phoenix who’s a witch in salem and she’s just a normal witch seeing all these witch trials and is like ruh roh and this is an au where they actually like burn witches in salem but also an au where witches actually exist so let’s start there and she’s seeing all these women burned at the stake and idk maybe they got her coven or maybe someone ratted her out she knows the end is nigh so she goes out to seek some mythic phoenix and something something something or other idk she completes three great tasks and earns a phoenix feather and she fuses herself with the phoenix magic (thus giving her the phoenix mark) and then the witch hunters find her and burn her at the stake and uhh that hurts like a motherfucker an she ends up extra crispy and they’re like okay that was fun and idk everyone goes to bed for the night in their little puritan village as our lovely og phoenix’s charred body starts to slowly try to heal itself and basically drags it’s charred skeletal ass into the woods and lays there for three days and three nights as her body slowly starts to reconstitute itself blah blah blah give it a week and she’s basically a full human again and she finds that while she retained basic magic she lost her active powers blah blah blah she swears to get vengeance on those who wronged her and idk stick to the shadows somewhere along the lines she finds she can obtain new powers when she has her daughter (not her first bc she first was burned in the witch trials rip) her daughter is born with the same phoenix mark and no active powers and blah blah blah she becomes really really old as you do when you age something or other she’d like on deaths door and let’s say idk her house is burning down or something so she goes in to save something idk an heirloom or like her great granddaughter and saves her but like dies in the fire but wait what’s this once again a charred skeleton is trying to pull itself back together it’s the original phoenix and she’s now the same age she was when she was first “reborn” from the fire and so the first phoenix i’d say lived for probs a couple centuries just you know self immolate on her deathbed & be born again until she finally like tapped out you know lived a full enough life that she’s like okay this has been fun goodbye fr now But i do not think all phoenixes have this power (which uhh can really only be learned the hard way) i think maybe like three people tops (including our original phoenix) have this rebirth gift the rest like if you burn to death u burn to death end of story but this also then gave the phoenix traditions of a) burning their dead and b) a firewalk to symbolize the final steps into adulthood. and i do think there are some like really extreme crazed phoenixes (is that really the plural? okay google says the plural is phoenix or phoenixes or phoenices which are all fun imo) who do like think they’ve been blessed with this gift but it’s like. it’s all or nothing. you have to actually die in a fire to find out. so like. is it worth it? some people have said yes, but the answer is actually No. Okay All That Being Said yes i’d give bianca this gift bc she is Chosen she’s Special also i love her and think it’s sick as fuck so it’s like. she could have died in a fire when she was like a toddler or something blah blah blah and then let’s say when she was like idk six i guess she was stabbed? for some reason? we’ll say a demon and her mother, knowing that she was born with this gift promptly uhh lit her daughter on fire and then out of the ashes got a lil toddler again then that would put her at the same biological age and relatively closer to the mental age of chris as i image lynn would have wiped bianca’s memory a wee bit after all that But that is like A Lot bianca dying as a kid so i don’t think i’d do All That i’m just keeping them with a slightly under 5 year age gap (bianca’s a sagittarius born in 1999) and just give them the journey of Not knowing each other’s ages to bianca learning she’s like Five Whole Years older than chris and proceeding to tease him for being like a tiny baby child despite chris being like what 21 when he knows her she’s like oh sorry shouldn’t you be like studying for your sat or something? or idk they’ll be watching some movie made in like 2008 and bianca will be like oh didn’t this come out the year you were born? can you even legally drive? (no, he can’t, he does not have a driver’s license) bc like. it’s weird. they bridge the century y’know i think it really freaks her out that he was 2004 bc mentally she’s like okay you should be like 15? 16? but again it’s like i really want they’re relationship to be this slow burn so while they might meet when he’s like freshly 21 and she’s 25 going on 26 they probably won’t start dating for idk like 3-4 years so then they’re like what 25 and 30 which like. idk i don’t think is that weird. it’s like how in university undergrads will date grad students and there’ll be like a four year split but it’s not incredibly weird bc they’re both relatively at the same states in their life but like an undergraduate dating a high schooler is a major red flag bc they are both in insanely different places in their life like bro if ur dropping them off at their parent’s house & then driving back to your apartment you share w three friends like reassess. please. but i think in regards to chris & bianca and their age gap, when they meet they’re both relatively in the same “era” in life (is there where i mention chris is a college drop out bc he is) and when they grow they grow together