Okokok I know I should be asleep but I got hit with the Need to just rant about Heart characterization.

Cause I am Very Aware that from summary alone my AUs seem to reduce Heart to a pawn controlled by the narrative, that he's pretty passive and his own actions don't matter. But that's not true at all!

Heartless first. Heartless starts at ROE. Heartless branches off canon when Soul decides to keep Heart in the pit yes, and Mind is the one to push him to his final decision yes. But this is still his decision. No one held a gun to his head and told him to reject the Emotional Side other than himself. And when he get awoken he makes the ACTIVE DECISION to slide back into nothingness. He also makes the ACTIVE DECISION to throw poisoned words at the people trying to help him, because he is too angry to recognize their help. And in the end, it is his decisions that pull them out of the pit that is the Heartless AU. His decision, and no one else's, to accept the Emotional Side again. If anything Heart grabs the narrative by the throat and drags Perseverance and Penitence around with his anger and bitterness and refusal to heal.

Tangled Wisteria. It's a hanahaki au guys. There's no decisions made in emotions. But. It's still his emotions. And in the mechanics of my specific hanahaki Heart refuses to believe that his love is reciprocated when Mind and Soul try to tell him as much. Actively Refuses To Believe Their Love For Him. And after he forgets, I know I haven't talked about it much but after he forgets he does spend a lot of time trying to puzzle out who the missing figures in his memories are. He also spends time relearning who he is and rebuilding himself, with his complete identity loss. And towards the end of the AU, when Mind and Soul now harbour hanahaki for him? It's his decision whether to reciprocate their love (that he does not fully understand) or whether to reject them both. And he chooses the secret third option: I can't love you the way you want, but I can love you the way I am now. He literally breaks the narrative to give them his version of love, and they accept that happily.

Ok I will be fair to Tangled Wisteria I'm still working on the kinks BUT. The narrative is focused on Heart. A lot of the AU Heart is the only active one, while Mind and Soul give up pretty early and become passive. The narrative follows the footsteps of Purple.

Tridential Whole. The one I havent shared much on this blog lmao. But as my interp that went wild lemme just say. This bitch? Sailor mouth, biter, Would Strangle, leans into the Hateful side of emotions more than any other Heart I have written before, only reahed concord when his own Soul broke. You see this bitch? He is BITING the narrative by the throat and shaking it like the Predator I named him.

Its not a traditional way to like. Have a protaganist or to give a character control over the narrative. But I do love giving Heart a Presence in everything I write. He's just as important a character to the stories I write as Mind and Soul.

idk what I was going for writing this lmao I just wanted to talk about the idea of a character that appears beaten down by the narrative secretly being the entire driving force of the narrative.