In an Alternate Universe, the many gifts of the Madrigals go to different members of the family.
In this version, Bruno gets the ability to talk to animals and lives a fairly glamorous life compared to his canon-counterpart. Instead, Isabela receives the gift to forsee the future.
How Far Do These Roots Go Down? is an Encanto fanfic by GlitterFairy_21225. It can be read on Archive of Our Own here
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This fanfic provides examples of:
- Adaptational Angst Downgrade:
- Since Bruno didn't get his canon gift and instead got Antonio's, he's much more popular in the town and even has a husband.
- In canon, Pepa is shown to be a ball of anxiety due to her weather powers forcing her to stay calm at all times. Since she has Isabela's gift in this story, she is implied to be much calmer. Helps that she still has Felix for times when she does get worked up.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: While Isabela isn't free of angst in the movie, she has it even worse here as she got Bruno's gift, turning her into the Black Sheep of both the family and the town.
- Adaptational Personality Change: Isabela, due to not being under constant pressure to be the perfect one and being Alma's least favorite, has developed a rebellious streak towards her, having realized that gaining her approval isn't worth it.
- Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: While they still don't exactly get along, Isabela and Mirabel are much more civil with each other due to Isabela not having her golden child status.
- Adaptational Sexuality: Both Isabela and Bruno are gay.
- Adaptational Superpower Change: Being a Role Swap AU, each of the Madrigal's gifts are swapped with one another.
- Instead of the ability to see the future, Bruno receives canon Antonio's animal-speaking ability.
- Instead of having her ability to make magically healing food, Julieta gains Super-Hearing.
- Instead of having her Empathic Environment weather control abilities, Pepa has Isabela's Green Thumb abilities.
- Instead of her Green Thumb/Petal Power ability, Isabela has Bruno's ability to predict the future.
- Instead of Super-Hearing, Dolores has Julieta's ability to create magically healing food.
- Instead of Super-Strength, Luisa gains Camilo's shape-shifting.
- Instead of shape-shifting, Camilo has emotion-based Weather Manipulation.
- Instead of being able to talk to animals, Antoino instead has Super-Strength.
- Blessed with Suck: Compared to Bruno's ability to talk to animals and Pepa creating flowers from nothing, Julieta has a much harder time with her Super-Hearing. This also applies to her oldest daughter Isabela, whose future-telling ability has made her The Un-Favorite to Alma due to its unpredictable nature.
- Brutal Honesty: Isabela does not bother to mince her words and just tells people what they need to hear.
- Cool Big Sis: Isabela, in spite of knowing that doing so would only lower Alma's already low opinion of her, shattered the vision of Mirabel without a second thought.
- Crazy-Prepared: Isabela had specially prepared note cards just in case anyone ever found the vision of Mirabel and the cracked casita.
- Disabled in the Adaptation: Since Julieta couldn't heal him, Agustín walked with a limp until Dolores got her gift.
- Disappointing Older Sibling: And cousin. By the time the movie starts up, Isabela is considered to be a massive disappointment by Alma for almost never using her gift and being disrespectful. When everyone is heading into town on the day of Antonio's birthday, it's noted that Isabela was still in her pajamas when she went out, hinting that she doesn't care about her image. In fact, Isabela is Alma's least favorite grandchild since, while Mirabel doesn't have a gift, she still tries to help the Encanto. Isabela does have a gift, but purposefully chooses not to use it to do anything.
- Exact Words: Isabela, knowing that Alma still wants a vision about Mirabel even though she shattered the one of her with the broken Casita, proceeds to create mundane ones and shows them to her grandmother, giving her what she asked for.
- Foil: Mirabel and Isabela are the family outcasts, but how and why they are like that are completely different. Mirabel, for whatever reason, never got a gift, yet she still does her best to prove herself and be seen as helpful to both her family and the town. Thus, while she's still considered to be something of an outcast, she's overall well-liked by the townspeople. Isabela, on the other hand, did get a gift. However, said gift ending up causing her constant problems as she couldn't control the visions she had, meaning she was often giving out bad ones even when she didn't want to, leading to her getting shunned by Alma and the townsfolk over something she had no control over. In response, Isabela took a long, hard look at the family's dynamic and saw just how toxic it was, leading to her becoming a feared rebel who is only really liked by her parents.
- Genre Savvy: When Isabela gets the vision on how Mirabel not getting a gift will affect the miracle and sees that it has two parts (one with Casita cracked and one with it still whole), she knows exactly which one Alma will focus on and it factors into her choice to shatter it.
- In Spite of a Nail:
- Pepa still marries Félix and Julieta still marries Agustín.
- The Madrigal who can see the future is still the Black Sheep and shattered the prophecy to protect Mirabel.
- Mirabel does not get a gift.
- Luisa is still driven by a desire to be seen as useful.
- In spite of Isabela keeping Mirabel and Agustín from talking and preventing Julieta from hearing about the vision, Dolores still learns about it and reveals it during dinner.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Isabela is a rude, snarky, lazy troublemaker who would rather be doing anything but actually be helpful towards the family, but when push comes to shove, she truly does care, as shown by her still being happy over Dolores and Mariano's relationship and protecting her sister by shattering the prophecy of her in front of the broken Casita even when she had nothing to gain from it.
- Metaphorically True: When Mirabel doesn't get her gift, Alma asks Isabela to use her gift to find out how this relates to the Miracle. When she has a vision of Mirabel and Casita's collapse, she hides it and instead gives her various visions of innocuous moments she's involved in.
- Mood Whiplash: The 5th birthday of the triplets is filled with a wonderful mood as Pepa and Bruno receive magical powers along with magnificent new rooms. But the mood sours when Julieta unlocks her power of Super-Hearing and has sensory overload.
- Not a Morning Person: Isabela. Upon waking up, it's noted that she left the house still in her pajamas and during Mirabel's song, is implied to very much not be fully awake yet.
- Original Character: Bruno's husband, David.
- Politically Correct History: In the time period that the movie was set in (implied to be somewhere between the late 19th century and The '50s), a gay marriage would not be accepted, let alone legal. Yet, it's implied that Bruno married his husband David with no problems. In fact, Alma actually objected to Julieta's spouse choice instead of Bruno's. In addition, Isabela
is confirmed to be an open lesbian which, again, has nothing to do with Alma's dislike of her. - Politically Correct Villain: Alma, while still be a Control Freak who all but shunned Isabela and Mirabel when they were unable to live up to her standards for whatever reason, is not homophobic. She had no problems with Bruno marrying a man and Isabela being a lesbian is one of the few things that Alma doesn't dislike about her.
- Poor Communication Kills: When Mirabel goes into Isabela's room and finds the shattered vision, Isabela was attempting to explain things to her, but her tone of voice as well as them not having the best relationship led Mirabel to believe Isabela was angry with her and flee.
- Rescue Romance: Julieta heard Agustín having a tragic accident while venturing through the jungles. She soon spends time with him as he recuperates in the hospital.
- Role Swap AU: The fanfic is set in a version of Encanto where the Madrigal's gifts go to different members of the family. Isabela gets Bruno's gift, Bruno gets Antonio's gift, Dolores and Julieta swap gifts, and so on.
- Rule of Symbolism: The more distant Isabela becomes from her family, the more stairs get added in her room.
- Shoot the Messenger: One of the first moments that led to Isabela deciding to never use her gift was when a man nearly attacked her when she saw that his wife and unborn child would die in childbirth, in spite of the fact Isabela was clearly broken up about it as well.
- Shout-Out: Isabela has evidently used her powers to watch West Side Story.
- Song Parody: All of the songs from the movie get this treatment.
- The Family Madrigal is basically the same, only with some lyrics switched around the reflect everyone's gift changes.
- Surface Pressure is renamed as "Shifting Pressure", although the basis of the song is the same-Lusia telling Mirabel about the burdens she faces.
- We Don't Talk About Bruno underwent the most changes to become "We Don't Trust Isabela", talking about Isabela's slow descent from perfect child into teenaged troublemaker, as well as all of the ways she's acted out since then.
- Stopped Caring: Isabela, due to realizing that her gift has left her an outcast in the town and that she will never be able to please Alma with it, basically gave up on anything relating to the family's image, having decided that if the town will treat her like the Black Sheep over something she can't control, then that's what they'll get.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: This is implied to be the route of Isabela's behavior. Since the town can only see her as the Black Sheep who makes bad stuff happen with her visions, why not play the image up?
- We Used to Be Friends: Isabela and Dolores used to be extremely close, with the latter even comforting the former whenever she had a bad vision. However, as Dolores got more praise and respect for her gift while Isabela continued to get shunned, it led to them drifting further and further apart, leading to Dolores tattling on Isabela when she tried to sneak out to attend a party.
- What If?:
- Since his gift is completely different, Bruno has no reason to leave the family when Mirabel doesn't get her gift.
- Since Isabela is not the Golden Child and Alma's least favorite grandchild, Dolores and Mariano are a couple from the start.
- In canon, it's implied that, even though Mirabel didn't get a gift, Alma preferred Julieta's side of the family to Pepa's due to Isabela's golden child status and Luisa and Julieta's extremely useful gifts. Here, due to the gift swap, Alma is implied to prefer Pepa's side since they got the more useful gifts, combined with Isabela's rebellion and Mirabel being giftless.
- In canon, no one believed Mirabel when she said she saw cracks in the house. Here, Julieta overhears it and Isabela already knew it was possible, so both believe her.
