sdvniscanon

Main explanation and plot

This AU's goal is to explore the Beasts and Ancients as characters rather than focusing on intense action and war. In this AU:

The Soul Jams are cursed items due to the large amount of power they hold. Their power is enough to slowly corrupt the user's mind over time, heavily exacerbating their flaws and negative emotions. This power can be neutralized if their component soul jam stays in close proximity.

Dark Enchantress Cookie was never reborn after the Dark Flour War. Pure Vanilla Cookie erased her using Dark Moon Magic, in exchange for his and White Lily Cookie's memories. They roamed the world without their memories until the Gingergang brought shards of their destroyed soul jams to them. After White Lily regained her memories, she set off with the Gingergang to find the other Ancients to make amends with them.

Eventually, White Lily and the other Ancients come to Beast-Yeast in order for them to meet with Elder Faerie, which is when they witness the Beasts escaping the Silver Tree and reforming their bodies. And although the Ancients all end up coming into conflict with their counterparts, hope is not lost for the Beasts to find some sort of peace and redemption, aided by the fact that the Beasts and Ancients can calm each others' minds and neutralize the corrupting aspect of their soul jams just by being in each other's presence.

Some other major changes from canon

The Witches are neutral beings who just do not see the cookies as important. They stopped watching over the cookies some time after the Virtues were created, losing interest in them and trusting them to run their own society. The First Cookies do not exist and therefore did not create the Beasts.

The St Pastry Order- or at least the religious group that would go on to become the Order- was founded much earlier.

Extra things, AU acknowledgements, and content warnings

For full transparency, this AU was made as a fix-it AU in response to Beast-Yeast 15 and Act 2. This AU does not account for any plot past Beast-Yeast 12, and does not account for anything released after Beast-Yeast 15. (I say this because some aspects of BY 13-15 will be used, but I will not watch Act 2.)

This is a very ship-heavy AU. Every main Beast x Ancient ship (shipped with their counterpart) is canon (with the exception of possibly silentlily because I like other lily and salt ships more and I don't think they'd work with those other ships in mind) as well as some other non-counterpart ships. Some one-sided, unrequited, and ex-partner ships among the Beasts and Ancients as well as non-soul-jam-holder characters are canon. Very Shadowvanilla heavy because they're my favorite.

The AU can be found under the tags:

#ltloofa fix au

#ltloofa crk au.

#cursed souls au

#crk cursed souls au

#cursed souls crk au

If the name changes, the AU's new name will be added to the tags of the previous posts.

This AU will take on a darker and more mature tone than the actual game. This AU is heavily focused around exploring the mental states of the characters and how the trauma they have been through affects them. This AU will contain depictions of:

Mental illness

Disordered eating

Physical and mental abuse

Toxic relationships

Physical violence

Cults & Religious trauma

Queerphobia

Suicide and suicidal ideation

Post Directory

For now, I'll sort the posts by what character or ship the posts are focused on. Also, to note, the Beasts' names change after they're redeemed, which is why I refer to them by different names in some posts.

The main story will be told through comics, which are sorted in chronological order. Things that aren't ready to be made into comics will occasionally be posted as miscellaneous posts and will be listed in order of when they were posted.

Shadowvanilla

Comics

Inhuman (Fount of Knowledge comic) -> The Fount of Knowledge's Execution

Misc. Posts

Shining Milk & Post-Awakening Pure Vanilla Profiles

Miscellaneous SDVN characterization

Mourning what was never there (Art + Post Pure Vanilla awakening lore)

Pre-Redemption Shadow Milk, Awakened Pure Vanilla & Pre-Awakening Pure Vanilla designs + design notes

Poly + Miscellaneous Beast/Ancient ships

Misc. Posts

Eternallily + Eternalhollylily with wips for their designs

Other

In the meantime, here are this AU's designs for pre-redemption Shadow Milk Cookie:

I like to make his designs more detailed because making jester designs is fun and I'm slightly annoyed that his official designs don't lean into it as much. Shadow Milk's hair was originally a hat instead of twintails, but I decided to make it his actual hair because I realized I got rid of one of my favorite parts of Shadow Milk's design (His hair looking like a hat because deceit. He's deceiving you into thinking hes wearing a hat) and also because Shadow Milk having twintails is just fun.

And the designs for Awakened and Pre-Awakening Pure Vanilla Cookie:

Unfortunately, I can't detail these designs too much without spoiling what will be in the comic. For his Awakened design, I used both black and blue and white and gold to represent him the "dark" parts of his personality alongside the selfless and kind parts of his personality, and his pre-awakening design is only white and gold to over-represent his kindness and "purity". (The Pure Vanilla design that I have in the Shining Milk and Pure Vanilla profiles post is his regular design after he awakens- all of the ancients will have something like this)

Physical Violence warning

Physical Violence warning below the cut

AU Directory

AU Directory

After a while, I've written the update to the main AU story.

The AU now has a proper name: Cursed Souls AU! I'll tag every previous AU post with this new name (while also keeping and still using the old tags. there are also 3 new tags just in case: #cursed souls au, #cursed souls crk au, and #crk cursed souls au), and the main AU post will be edited to contain the below information and will be updated as needed.

The AU is written upon two main ideas:

-The Soul Jams are cursed items due to the large amount of power they hold. Their power is enough to slowly corrupt the user's mind over time, heavily exacerbating their flaws and negative emotions. This power can be neutralized if their component soul jam stays in close proximity. 

-Dark Enchantress Cookie was not revived after the Dark Flour War. Pure Vanilla Cookie erased her using Dark Moon Magic, in exchange for his and White Lily Cookie's memories. They roamed the world without their memories until the Gingergang brought shards of their destroyed soul jams to them. 

Some other major changes from canon include:

-The Witches are somewhat neutral beings who just do not see the cookies as important. They stopped watching over the cookies some time after the Virtues were created, losing interest in them and trusting them to run their own society. They eat cookies in the same way that humans eat meat.

-The First Cookies do not exist and therefore did not create the Beasts.

-The St Pastry Order- or at least the religious group that would go on to become the Order- was founded much earlier, or at least has a bigger role earlier on.