Negative Hit Points

I was wondering how people play negative HP when targets are not indestructible.

A minion with 1hp is damaged for 5 hp, do they:

1) take 5 damage, drop to -4 HP and then are destroyed?

2) take 1 damage, drop to 0hp and then are destroyed?

This is important for AZ and Thermal Shockwave, but even for Fanatic (since she can Martyr herself to death if she has Aegis).

The original ruling that involves the idea of negative HP was in response to Fixed Point, and it reads:

Certain specific situations can make you go into negative HP temporarily and perhaps recover.

I therefore play it that only when a target is indestructible can they enter negative HP.

But does hitting 0hp actually stop any more damage from being dealt?  Or can you overkill and get benefit for it?

If Fanatic has 1hp and Aegis, can she drop herself into negative HP before recovering to 10, or can she only take 1 damage?

I don't know of any official confirmation, but forum consensus seems to be that the amount of damage dealt is not constrained by the HP of the target, so Shockwave and Martyr both count overkill.  Granted, the person who I remember most recently pointing this out was Foote, and I seem to recall you two tending to disagree on pretty much everything.  But in general, the safest assumption seems to be that there are no "invisible rules" other than those in the Glossary (eg handling of duplicate Limited cards) or on the official website (eg shuffling your deck)...if you're mentally inserting a rule such as "damage dealt to a target cannot exceed its current hit points", where no such rule is explicitly stated, you're probably doing so in error.

I'm not inserting a rule, the ruling that allows for -hp states that only in Certain Specific situations can a target go into negative HP.  We seem to have interpretted that to mean things always go into negative HP if they take more damage than they have hp, which doesn't seem like the intent of the ruling at all.

Targets can go to negative HP, the original Baron Blade's flip side says "When Baron Blade is reduce to 0 or fewer HP". Can't get much more official than the original villain!

OK, I guess the wording just confused me, I can roll with that.

Fanatic's Aegis of Resurrection also says "reduced to 0 or fewer".

I think Apostate has similar wording as well.

a LOT of cards have that exact wording. Overkill exists.

Over-healing, however, does not. So if you were supposed to regain 2 hp, but you only regain 1 because you hit your max, you only get to Mortal Form for 1, not 2.

Somewhat unfair, that.  Makes playing the Scholar much trickier, and it just seems out of character for him to be tricky.  He's supposed to be taking it easy...why does he sometimes say "please hurt me a bunch more so that I don't max out on healing"?  Doesn't seem...copacetic, somehow.

Well, you can uber-tank or take a bunch of damage and heal it back to deal lots of damage. Not both, reliably.

One of my favorite things with scholar is Fanatic and Legacy with him, get the +damage and embolden on Scholar and Scholar can rock all day long without ever using solid to liquid, even if the villain isn't hitting him.