#chuckletons

I'm not too sure... I like approaching canon less on an individualised ship or friendship basis and more of like... a zoomed out view of overall cohesion/sociology of the village or individual smurfs (focusing more on the individual smurfs themselves as opposed to the dynamics that exist between them and other smurfs). If that makes sense. I like the idea of Smurfette & Vanity friendship. I love the one-sided friendship that Sassette extends to Gargamel so much too it gets to me...

The thing about the smurfs (and a big cushy comfortable appeal of it) is that there's just a general sense of camaraderie among everyone which is really sweet and nice. They have a lot of good will amongst each other so they'd all consider themselves friends with everyone else, so I like thinking of them in those equalised bonds kind of sense and don't focus on the unique nature of different bonds a whole lot. Like obviously there are kind of established duos like Handy and Hefty and stuff like that but yeah. And obviously there isn't a sense of automatic "camaraderie" ALL of the time... obviously there's hostility and disagreements and fights sometimes. But the status quo is always skewered towards friendliness. And some smurfs are obviously less popular than others (lol) but you get what I mean... there's still (supposed to be) some sense of friendship extended nonetheless.

So yeah not much of a substantial answer more just me talking about my specific approach. not to say that I don't think about the nature of some of the specific friendships sometimes of course! But off the top of my head I can't automatically pinpoint favourite friendships.

10. If you were a smurf, what do you think your name would be?

HAHA okay so back in my DeviantART days I did make a smurfsona called Bookbinder Smurf/Bookbinderette (the latter formation SMH AAA but I was like. 14. okay guys. Also the whole -ette thing was so extremely common back then). I am well and truly not much of a self-insert person it's just not a concept I really do or one that appeals to me much, though I support my self-insert-ing friends 100% in their endeavours and love seeing the stuff they come up with. BUT. Making sonas was just so commonplace/"expected" back in the deviantart era so I was influenced by that at the time. And also, there were a bunch of people who made sonas to selfship with Brainy which I personally was not interested in doing, so I thought it would be a nice change of pace to have a sona who isn't shipped with Brainy but is just like. his assistant or whatever. dbsdhsdjds aaaaaa. The name "Bookbinder Smurf" is because they would like... help take care of Brainy's books because it's extremely common for his books to incur damage in the show. So this sona would like help "fix up" the books and protect them and stuff (even though I have no actual bookbinding skills irl LOL). And I thought it was a bit funny/interesting to have Brainy the self-appointed assistant have a self-appointed assistant of his own. He'd like the veneer of Officiality that would give him for sure.

(An IRL friend of mine like lightheartedly bullied me about Bookbinder Smurf omgggg and this was like. years and years later when I'd forgotten about the sona and then my friend found it and just. omg)

As for the present day, I really got no idea! It's just something I haven't really thought about at all. My place in relation to canon remains, as is often the case, comfortably outside of it! XD All power to self-inserters though again like I said. I really love seeing the stuff a lot of my friends come up with. But yeah it's just not my general personal approach, really.

13. What are your lore/worldbuilding headcanons?

Yesss this is something I really enjoy, looking at the smurfs as a Species, a Society, their history and how did they get here etc etc! So, I published an incomplete draft of a fic a while back, The Law of Murphy, which I still intend to return to and improve/finish when I can, that starts getting into some of this stuff. But it's important to note that I was very much inspired by other content/fics that exist out there. Well, I have one specific fic in mind - the one called "Brainy's Glasses" which does its own worldbuilding/explanations about smurfs and their history which really inspired me, but I still kind of sought to adjust to something different for my own thoughts/ideas.

One idea proposed by the fic Brainy's Glasses (for anyone reading this, if you're not aware, this fic was NOT written by me lol but I love it) which I thought was really cool was the notion that Baby Smurf's magical abilities are actually the default state for all smurf babies to exist in... The idea is, there was a time where baby smurfs would just... land in the forest at random; there was no designated village for them to land in - so the new baby smurfs would need to fend for themselves and would mostly grow up solitary, so they would have a lot of magic when being a vulnerable baby in order to protect themselves from danger, and then that magic would fade as they got older as they learned new/different skills in order to protect themselves and survive.

(The fic had an explanation for why this didn't happen for all the smurfs in the village to not have had that magic growing up btw, it all tied together neatly enough. And also gave a backstory for Brainy's poor eyesight too - hence the fic title "Brainy's Glasses"! I recommend anyone reading this to check out that fic if they're curious enough, it's a good read ^_^)

Now, there are pros and cons to a headcanon like that - if you use it outside of the context of that specific fic, then like... you'd still have to "explain" why e.g. all of the smurfs didn't have Baby's abilities when they were young, since they don't seem to have (if you want to be canon compliant). And it also detracts from the notion that Baby is Special(TM). And I like to believe that Baby just happens to be a really really Special Guy for any number of possible reasons. So it's a fun headcanon to consider but yeah I don't necessarily "adopt" it for the canon itself.

But let's look at another headcanon that "Brainy's Glasses" story gifted me with - the notion that smurfs, back in a time when they were mainly solitary creatures that grew up fending for themselves, generally just had the name "Smurf" because if they weren't in contact/communication with other smurfs, there was no real need to distinguish.

I took that notion and modified it for the story draft of The Law of Murphy. So here are some possible headcanons/ideas about smurf society/history that I (began/want to) explore in that fic:

Smurfs used to live collectively in a village historically, just like in the "present day" of the show canon. But they were a lot more "closed off" from the outside world and insular back then, and more suspicious/"hostile" to outsiders/places outside the village compared to the "present day" canon.

Every single smurf used to uniformly be called "Smurf". No modifiers. Everyone would be treated interchangeably - they still recognise each other to like, be individual beings, but that individuality simply isn't deemed important to them or matter a whole lot. Everyone's just called "Smurf" because that's all they really like, need to get by with. Also, everyone dresses identically - no outfit modifiers. Uniformity. Except for the village leader who does wear a different colour akin to present-day canon.

Over time, modifiers to names would get very slowly introduced... but it still wouldn't be a smurf's official name. So instead of "hey, Smurf, come help me with this" it might become "hey, happy Smurf, come help me with this" (where "happy" does not denote a name or an expected default/standard state of being, but rather, merely the present state of being - a smurf who just happens to be cheerful and be in a good mood at that present moment). This would kind of be necessary, because if everyone is called Smurf, if you were to only say "Hey Smurf, can you help me with this?" every smurf in hearing distance may think you were talking about them. If you instead say "Hey, Smurf in a particularly good mood, can you help me with this?" or "Hey, Smurf holding a hammer right now, can you help me with this?" then only that specific smurf knows to respond.

This would evolve into a kind of pseudo-name... like... "happy Smurf" might become a smurf's default point of reference if they are in a good mood often enough to get referred to in that way. Still not an official name, they still might get referred to in different ways, or as just "Smurf" but nonetheless.

This would just keep becoming more commonplace until official names become the norm, like in the cartoon

All of this is inspired by comics lore and how things kinda work(ed) in the comics, with the comics having been in a later transition stage to having regular names, but still seemingly in an "earlier" stage compared to 80s cartoon lore in terms of their approach to names vs "basic way to distinguish one smurf from another, but not necessarily an official Name per se" (language obviously place a role here too I think, just the structure of French in the comics vs English in the 80s cartoon)

Same thing with outfits. Everyone (except Papa) dressed the same in the beginning of the smurf comics, but that changed over time. (Even Brainy didn't have his iconic glasses at first). So yeah, this was me taking inspiration from smurf comics and applying it to like headcanons for smurf history for the show.

Additional worldbuilding/lore headcanons/thoughts:

I've spoken about this before on this blog, but: Smurfs used to have absolutely no concept of gender whatsoever. When they had some interaction with humans, the humans assumed the smurfs were all male and gendered them with he/him accordingly etc. Smurfs, still without any concept of gender, weren't even aware of how they were being perceived/gendered, having a concept they didn't have applied to them by outsiders, so they couldn't exactly "correct" the humans if they never realised the misconception in the first place.

They accept (and adopt) he/him pronouns as default (and from their perspective, genderless) as influenced by the humans. So when they interact with other humans in future, they will readily use he/him, but both parties having a different understanding - smurfs still have no concept of what gender is despite use of the pronouns, while humans' assumption that they have a concept of gender and are all male is reinforced by the smurfs' use of he/him pronouns among themselves.

Over time, smurfs and smurf society comes to be slightly more influenced by outsider humans, and learns about (and adopts) the human concept of gender. Because they have all been using he/him for so long at this point, and the humans have been gendering them all as male for so long, they simply naturalise/"assume" the notion that they are all male. (I know pronouns are not gendered and not necessarily a marker of gender - anyone of any gender can use any pronoun - but the correlation of "he/him" with "male" is a driving force behind the naturalisation of "maleness" in smurf society, because of human influence/perception).

By the time of the 80s cartoon shows' generation, human concepts of gender have been very naturalised/adopted.

Smurfs used to use smurflanguage a lot more heavily. This is influenced (somewhat) by comic canon and such too - smurfs can talk in a way that's not understood by humans (they just conveniently don't most of the time because the human readers of the comic/watchers of the show need to be able to understand them lol). So I'm gonna assume in the Past when there was less influence from humans their language was a lot more heavy on the use of "smurf"! And they lost it quite a bit over time.