Have functions work outside the loop with 404 override

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The timing of relevant parts of the process is following:

  1. Query executes and fetches posts (or in this case no posts)
  2. template_redirect fires
  3. Template file is determined from query variables and loaded

When you change query variables in template_redirect you change template choice (which you observe), but you still have no posts in query.

The functions still work, they just don’t have a post to work on.

It’s quite a peculiar case, because which posts would you expect in an archive that is 404 and has no posts?

I am not sure without playing with such a setup but I would probably try to redirect “ahead” rather than “fake” valid page out of 404.