#anyway. gifted kid burnout noah is canon basically to me

[kijosakka]

TD Alenoah AU, where Noah came from a messed up family like Alejandro did... When Noah was a kid, Noah's parents became divorced and Noah's mother took the sisters, while leaving Noah with his ambitious father (because the mother grew to resent anything male)... Noah's father wanted to take advantage of the fact that Noah was a genius to make Noah a scientist or something and get rich off of him... Noah's father pressured Noah to study hard all the time, to go to a great college and earn the love of his father... The father would sometimes even make Noah stay up late at night studying until Noah knows everything perfectly (which is why present teen Noah gets tired so easily)...

When Noah was finished with elementary school, his Aunt (from his mother's side) and Uncle came to visit Noah and they were horrified at how his father was treating him... Noah's father got thrown in jail and Noah's mother refuses to take care of him, so Noah was taken in by his aunt and uncle; they became Noah's true family... The aunt and uncle were very loving and kind and patient with Noah, which Noah is very grateful for... Noah's little cousins look up to Noah and idolize him, while in return Noah cares about them deeply... His cousins are currently 10 and 12 years old girls; they're chaotic, love sports and love having adventures in nature; Izzy and Eva remind Noah of his dear cousins...

Noah had NEVER told anyone this before, not even Owen, because Noah is ashamed of his past... But Noah eventually decides to tell Alejandro (who he was friends with for a super long time at that point), when Alejandro first told Noah about how horrible his family was... When Alejandro heard what Noah went though, he gave Noah a hug! 💔❤️💖

i do think exploring how noah would not only interact with alejandro in this scenario but how it shapes him outside of his canon characterization could be really interesting here.

because, and please take this with a grain of salt i’ve been patiently waiting to take my ap psych class for months and still haven’t been able to, in-universe at least, noahs general Behaviors are kinda just. there?

granted this is narratively because he’s a comic relief character but my point here is that he’s just kinda an asshole. that’s just how he Is. but here it would make more sense for that to be more of a defense mechanism than a facet of personality — leading into how this hypothetical noah would socialize.

^ sticking in a parallel here to alejandro’s family dynamic (the made-up one. in my head.), there might be a general. lack. of it.

i can imagine what with such a heavy push to focus only on academics, noah ended up missing out on having friends and further than that, potentially believing it as normal for a good while; and while he’d come to learn (pre-td) that wasn’t the case, i’d imagine TD would be the first time that notion is ever confronted head-on.

head-on beyond family, of course, imagining that when everything is said and done and he’s under custody of other family he’s rightfully touchy about the subject and prefers to not confront the issue at all — and of course the potential here for noah to lean hard into academics as a kind of escapism since he really didn’t grow up with much else.

not to say he doesn’t have any growth at all, because i can definitely see burnout hitting noah like a semi around his highschool years (not to mention chronic sleep deprivation and years of ignoring bodily cues).

so say his grades slip, and despite being in a better environment he is still terrified of punishment; he’s, for lack of a better term, really fucking stressed out. and through that, some well meaning family member brings up the idea of total drama (seeing as in-universe it’s implied it was more in-line with a talent show and all the contestants believed it would take place on a 5-star resort), and,, to be honest i can see it as possible that noah would read into it as 'we don't want you here' and accept out of reprimand.

circling back around -- total drama is the first proper thing to confront his lack of socialization; while i am a tragic fan of the 'noah got himself eliminated on purpose' theory, i do think it would make more sense here for him to have genuinely not known. Zero Social Skills.

(^ and is furthermore an example of how his childhood shaped him -- he doesn't think he needs to be good at socializing because he's academically smart and that should be enough. that's always been what he's pushed towards, and the standards are logically lower here -- he'd been taught that's all that mattered and while he's learned since then that is objectively false, this is the first time he's being forced to face it.)

anyway i'd imagine he finds eva, izzy, and owen all easiest to socialize himself with because of all their specific personality traits and how there really are no faux pas he's in fear of making (and ofc the parallels he sees with certain cousins and his friends).

post-tdi but especially post-action i think would be when noah also moves on to confronting those issues with his family specifically (bringing up things like his major stresses with academics), leading to him being pulled out of school entirely and doing self-paced online coursework,,, and of course now giving him time to Get A Job.

world tour,, ngl going full au here i do think it would work better if alejandro and noah left off WT as genuinely just friends -- what with the familial traumas and potentially rather heavy themes, i think it'd work better overall for their dynamic to literally just be friends for a while and have it develop into something more later.

also just as a concept i think it would be funny for alejandro and noah, once learning about each others terrible families and being deeper into the healing process themselves to just make the worst fucking jokes ever. most inopportune. izzy laughs along while eva and owen are quite concerned (sticking alejandro into team escope + owen here btw. put that Guy in That Group)

#anon how did you know ive been thinking of this hypothetical family set-up and how it would affect noah for months now #excuse me pulling this au Right Out Of My Ass at midnight o'clock #if i ever have a burst of random ass analysis ill rb it onto this post #uhhhh smth smth character interactions. idk. am tired. body aches #anyway. gifted kid burnout noah is canon basically to me #had to put it here #if this is incomprehensible no it isnt #sorry guys no thoughts only Wife from slay the princess 😔 #kjask #total drama