thinking about Lành having lost his arm again and I love how that incident alone demonstrates so well the subtlities of canon vs (canon adjacent) villains au.

The boring (or rather mundane?) half: In canon he somewhat learns to live with it because he has the support system to carry him. Not to mention the connections he made with his "maybe it's actually bad to kill dragons to the brink of extinction" advocacy. (which leads him to Florin in the first place, even though they're still convinced they're human at that point in the story lol)

Villains au however. Lol. Lmao.

In villains au he is a sore loser on some toxic masculinity bullshit. He doesn't have friends, he just has employees and buyers, and losing an arm means his source of income (raison d'être?) via catching/killing magical creatures is gone. He strikes a deal with Aurel (villain!Florin) to regrow his arm, and when they finally do, something in his brain breaks.
He would never admit the massive trauma that the loss of his arm caused, and Aurel being so careless about physically hurting people (they're a healer, so they don't think this matters. plus their hatred for poachers) does something to him. The two of them never talk this out, but fall into some sort of consensual torture routine because apparently just sex is boring now.

canon!Lành fantasizes about getting spanked, maybe. lol. put the same blorbo in wildly different circumstances and observe them under the microscope

#theMoLW