thank you very much once again for keeping us updated over here 🙏❤️
I'll be rambling on about the Robbie skin, everyone, so don't mind me.
Thanks to the OP, I now have confirmation that this skin references the camping trip the siblings were supposed to have (but couldn't, because canonly the parents died and never picked them up for it).
I've seen people on Twitter jump to conclusions about this erasing Dolores being an amputee. But I'd like to point out that the lady in the background has dark hair & looks like she's a lot taller. The embroidery of the siblings depicts both of them as blonde.
That, now combined with the skins name, leads me to believe that the woman in the background is Mrs. White/Whyte. Their mother.
I don't think we can use the embroidery as evidence of the disability being absent, as it could've been made before Dolores lost an arm.
Furthermore I'd like to remind people of the timeline of events during the regular canon timeline;
Dolores & Robbie are at the Grant family home (their neighbors). Mabel Grant is babysitting them, as the parents promised to take Robbie, Dolores & Steve Grant (Robbie's best friend) out to go camping.
Mr. & Mrs. White/Whyte don't return back home. The family receives the news of them passing away (we don't know how, as of typing this)
Mable Grant ties her best to look after the siblings, but is struggling to feed two extra mouths
Kreacher Pierson visits the Grant family twice, manipulating Mable into giving the siblings away to the orphanage (which she, years later, informs Alice DeRoss of regretting.)
Robbie & Dolores joined white sand street orphanage. A newspaper boy named Ernest sees them arrive. ( In an interview with Alice Deross, during his adulthood, he confirms that at this point Dolores still had both of her arms)
A couple days later Ernest sees the siblings again. Now Dolores is missing an arm. Robbie befriends Ernest through the fence through multiple conversations.
Fast forward a couple of weeks (according to a diary of another orphan), Kreacher sells the orphanage to the church. It becomes White Sand Street Asylum.
The asylum staff begin to experiment on the children & abuse them further than Kreacher had already been doing.
By the end of April, Ernest finally sees Robbie again (the orphanage would've been sold during February-March iirc) & notes that Robbie looks far more unhealthy. Robbie tells Ernest what has been happening & that his sister is being hurt by the adults. Ernest tells Robbie to try breaking Dolores out & plans to help the two out of the asylum (offering they all make a better life for themselves with the little jobs Ernest has been doing himself)
Ernest waits at the fence that night. the siblings never show up. Later he sees the news article covering the incident where "a patient attacked staff" (Robbie dying when trying to break out Dolores, be that by supposed accident or by violence of the staff [which I've been suspicious of more and more])
fast forward to the end of May. Dolores attempts the massacre-suicide and is stopped in the process. We do not know what happened to her after.
Assuming that their parents never died would already mean Dolores never got abused by Kreacher, so Netease would need to re-write the circumstances of the amputated arm to keep her disability.
If their parents still died, and Mabel still sent them away, they could re-write it into the Grant family getting the children back after the amputation happened. Alternatively they could rewrite it so Robbie doesn't die that night and the siblings successfully ran away with Ernest. That is if they keep the canon timeline circumstances surrounding the amputation.
With "ONCE" being a "what if nothing bad happened" AU, I'd not put it past the writers to have the kids never go to the orphanage. In this scenario they either re-write a different situation to keep the disability, or lean into the "if they never went to WSS, then ot would've never happened"
As a disabled person I'm very aware and understanding of the frustration about the possibility of a disability being erased. Especially one that has been repetitively used as a big descriptor for the character.
As someone hyperfixated on the siblings lore, I however also understand the thought process behind possibly not having Dolores lose her arm in this timeline.
I'm not an amputee specifically, so I am definitely not the correct person to ask how they should handle this AU. If any amputees read this, feel free to let me know how you think they should handle this. I do think the safest approach would be to make a different situation surrounding her disability; not erasing it but also acknowledging that the canon events wouldn't happen in this timeline. But I'm unsure if that truly is a good approach.
Regardless of the specifics, I do think that the scarf is NOT a good point of reference, as it could've been made long before Dolores lost her arm (regardless of timeline!). And we don't know if the lady in the background is Dolores (hair color doesn't match the scarf portrait, but does match a previous black & white artwork from early development. The character likely got redesigned since) and it could very much be their mother or Mrs. Grant. I think we need to wait until IDV releases the ONCE skins lore on that one.
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