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Daily Entertainment: Another Childhood Edition!

Good morning, ladies and gents! In the spirit of our kids-week, I bring you today's Daily Entertainment:

Is your character different from when they were a kid? (other than the obvious, duh, they grew up) If so, was there something/someone/a moment that changed them?

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Uh. Steve might have one of those. Kinda. Sorta.

You know, if you consider your mother being killed by a car bomb, your father becoming an alcohol laden, family separating, shipping you and your sister off to opposite sides of the mainland not even in your home state-island, and everyone pretty much not seeing each other again for twenty straight years the kind of thing that changes someone from the kid they were.

Not really. The child, as they say, is the father to the man. And the fact that Cy lived through tragedy didn't really alter him (as it did in the comics).

Though I suppose that younger Gibbs never thought he'd be a pirate. But a sailor is a sailor, and in the real world many men jumped back and forth from pirate to navy to privateer.

The Evil Queen murdered her father, and then sent a huntsman to kill her, too, just shortly after. Which, though he didn't kill her, made her an outlaw and forest dweller and rather did change everything that ever was. (Except who she'd always be at her core.)

Joshua is much quieter than when he was younger, and less sweary unless he's pissed. He's also much more of a researcher and less of a builder. Two things changed this: First, when Claudia was born, and second, when he built a proton pack when Claud was three and almost set her on fire. Oops.

Helena is one hell of a lot less demure than when she was little. She decided that trying to be a lady was a load of bollocks, and decided to become a Curiosity Hunter and Author instead. And wear trousers. And sleep with half of London. (which half is up for debate.)

Fantine is much more broken. Thanks, Mr. Hugo.

Valentine is still twelve. The jury's out. However, in her actual canon-arc, she lost some of her sass, and became pretty boring. Alas.

A moment? More like a series of them, scattered over the first couple months of the Battle of Stalingrad. Before that, Natasha was many things she still is: linguistic genius, charming, a geek who dreamed of dinosaurs and space-ships, and weirdly moralled thanks to growing up underneath Stalin's regime (her statement that she 'started young' to Bruce is not the literal truth, but still quite honest). But she was very much a civilian, and headed down the course towards academia.

WWII exposed to her violence, and anger enough at that violence that she reacted violently. I'd say one of the bloodiest battles in human history is enough to change a slightly pampered only child into a teenage solider/vigilante - and from there, she got talent-scouted by the NKVD, and post-war espionage just added layers over the top of that.

She's not a completely different person from how she would have grown if she hadn't been involved in the Eastern Front. Her current :DD!!!! in the bar for de-aged plot is partly and subconsciously fueled by the fact that she's not subconsciously terrified. Normally, she's quieter, and more well-behaved (although, I think her behaviour in the Heist shows a few adult!Natasha traits that are there already). But she's certainly colder, far more ruthlessly pragmatic, and violent than she otherwise would have been.

(I suppose I should add that this is all headcanon - MCU!Natasha doesn't have the same backstory as Comics!Natasha, and I've taken a few select elements from comics while ignoring most of it. Comics-canon is that she IS from Stalingrad, so ignoring weird comics-things, that's where she logically is when WWII happens. Good times.)

Edited 2013-10-17 22:07 (UTC)

Oh, yes, Amascut is very very different. But she changed because of some sort of trauma during adulthood, if you can call it that. Godly lifespans and all. The game's creators are still being tight-lipped about what that trauma was. She was supposed to be a judge of the dead and offer reincarnation to the worthy as an alternative to passing on to the Afterlife (whatever that is). She did do that for a good long while but she's doing the complete opposite now.

Gordon was a very angry child- one who wanted to be a scientist, but still a very angry child. When he flipped out at his brother for trying to push him into athletic competition one too many times and punched out some of his teeth (somewhere around age six to eight for Gordon, eight to ten for Jay- I've never really decided) his mother got them into family therapy, and the therapist's suggestion of silently counting to ten or a hundred before acting on anger set him on the very long road to 'I am neither talking to you nor listening to you, I have science to do'. Which then also got derailed by finding out 9/10 of humanity had pinned their hopes on him and he had to become a badass now, so.... yeah, he kind of changed a bit.

And Ellen, well. Ellen was not liked very much in Vault 101 as a kid; the Overseer resented having to bring outsiders into his Bastion of Pure Humanity in order to keep his people alive, and generally made things less than pleasant for James in general despite his role as the Vault doctor, so that trickled down to 'don't let your kids be friendly with his kid' attitudes. The closest she came to anything like martial discipline or badassery was that for her tenth birthday she got a BB gun, which she practiced with every day for the next nine years. Aside from making some mild 'but why?' protests about various Vault rules she was pretty much compliant in the Vault, because that was the way things had to be; then Dad left and the Overseer and the security forces went crazy, and I think you know the rest.

Yyyyes, you could say that.

For Felix, the turning point would be the storm when he got kidnaprescued. Being trained as a warrior and learning that the world is in jeopardy can have an effect on a boy.

Fluttershy's change happens, to a greater or lesser degree, to pretty much every pony: she got her cutie mark and discovered her particular "special talent". It's not one she would have gotten a lot of chance to practice up in Cloudsdale.

Hannibal is much more candid and obvious as a teenager; he is much more nakedly ambitious, too. Only as he grows older and accomplishes some things and reaches some goals does he learn to hide. I don't even know if this Hannibal has killed a person yet.

Heh. Uh. Yes and no? Like, Hotspur is definitely the warrior-knight he always wanted to be -- best general, best fighter, best etc. He's... also completely rigid and childish as far as his temper and his personal code. And marriage is going to be good for him, but wow, all the luck to Kate Percy, because this dude is a project.

Gavroche is a lot calmer, much less brash. I don't know if anything changed him to that other than time and maturity, but if it did, meeting Courfeyrac may well have been what started it off.

Jess is definitely different than she was as a "kid". I put kid in quotations since she went from 7-8 year old to late teens in the blink of her eye. She is less trusting and less shy than she used to be, though she still has her moments of insecurity. She just doesn't show it anymore.

Oh, and she's not an assassin.

Several events shaped her:
- Her dad attacking her mother, which caused her to use her venom blast for the first time and nearly die.
- Spending what should have been her pre-teen and teen years in a stasis/medical pod that kept her in a coma until her body developed enough to handle the stress of her powers (head canon here since this wasn't clearly explained in her retcon).
- Given a second chance at life by Nick Fury after years of HYDRA training and conditioning.
- Discovering all she had ever been to her dad was a successful experiment.
- Saving and befriending Carol Danvers.
- And, since growth happens even in adulthood, being replaced by the skrull queen and made the face of Earth's invasion.

Edited (my typos, let me fix them) 2013-10-17 14:50 (UTC)

For the most part Tommy is pretty much the same as he was when he was a kid, at least from age ~5-ish on, I think, but I need to check with canon again for specifics. As a young child he was actually skittish and shy. His mom dangled him over a balcony or something like that to make him get over his fear of heights (sitting in his high chair terrified him) and his dad threw him into a pool to force him to learn how to swim. That was all just to 'toughen him up,' so says his father. (Also, he has a childhood fear of bees getting into his hair.) So I think as he grew up, he got bolder and more confident and less inclined to behave or follow orders. Which is pretty much him as an adult.

We know nothing of Stacker Pentecost as a child beyond the personnel dossier's mention of his reaction to his father's death in a knife fight. My guess is that when he got sent to military school after that*, it got him to shift from hotheaded angry youth to disciplined and controlled and dedicated young man.

*This bothers me so much, because from what I can tell the American idea of military school is about 75% 'a place we send exceptionally troublesome children to in order to force discipline on them' and 25% 'a place we send promising children to in order to prepare them for actual military careers, possibly including going to West Point or Annapolis or Colorado Springs or New London for college'. When I did a Google search to turn up a possible military school in the UK for him to have attended, the impression I got was that in the UK, military schools exist for... children of members of the military, basically. Who were going to go into the military themselves when they finished school. The one I wound up choosing for him was a selective school that was definitely not a thinly disguised euphemism for 'prison that still meets national educational standards', but it was the only one I could find that admitted children from civilian families in anywhere even close to the right time frame, so... *sigh* Canon. What can you do.

Emma had what she calls a "complicated history," and I imagine that she wasn't too different as a kid as she is now, considering her lack of emotional maturity. Probably she was more prone to lashing out (.....er, relatively speaking): I picture her as getting in a bunch of juvie trouble, up to and including setting private or public property on fire, stealing cars (canon!), breaking and entering, and petty theft. She's less of a criminal now, but only because she's started using her powers for good instead of evil.

The one story we have from Danny's childhood describes him handcuffing his brother to a tree and solemnly telling his parents "We lost him," so it's clear he always wanted to be a cop. We've had some hints that this childhood ambition fell by the wayside and that he started making some pretty poor life decisions until cleaning up his act and going to the Academy, but we have no idea what those things might be.

Caspian as a child was selfless, adventurous, kind, occasionally reckless, noble, loyal to a fault, and maintained a deep love of all things magical and Old Narnian. He is much the same as an adult.

Wolfwood shot the man calling himself his father when he was eight years old. His philosophies and problem-solving skills have not dramatically improved over the years since.

Jack, like Caspian, maintains much of his childhood appeal; his dreaminess, his optimism, his love of the rodeo and his deep desire to earn his father's pride. As an adult, he's much more cynical, but not drastically different.

Will's much the same as he was when a child just better fed and with more of a purpose thanks to having Robin in his life.

Charles changes a good deal and its all because Raven comes into his life. Before her, he's quiet, odd and doesn't always have an easy time making friends but she brings him out and by existing and being like him does him a lot of good.

Moist hasn't changed a lot, I think he was always quick in mind and thought, its just now he's away from Uberwald and not as afraid. He knows what he can handle and that he's someone to be if not feared, concerned about.

William's still growing up but he hasn't altered that much since he was small. Mark's been sick since he was little so William's always been the big brother who worries, he's steadier now and more mature but that's about it.

Sameth is quieter than when he was a kid and not as close with his sister. Their duties and fears got in the way and they're working on finding their way back. For him though, this sense of feeling better by working got stronger the older he grew.

Jane hasn't changed a lot, she's always been a writer, she knows more and I think she was as much of a tomboy as she could get away with at some points too. She's more ladylike now.

Demeter's a goddess and so she never had a normal childhood but she knows who she is and is comfortable being apart from her family. Her priorities shifted.

Tumnus is happier since he grew up during the White Witch's occupation which meant he spent a lot of his childhood being quiet and careful. Now that's turned towards helping the Pevensies run Narnia.

The Pirate King hasn't changed a lot, he was always a kid who pushed the boundaries to see what he could get away with.

So this is a mix of actual canon and my head canons for Stiles.

Stiles isn't an adult yet, but as a teenager he's had some pretty major things happen to change his life. Starting school was the first really big thing, when he learned that school had a lot of rules that didn't make much sense to him and had nothing to do with being smart. It's when he was first diagnosed with ADHD and first discovered that most of the time, the other kids are laughing at him, not with him. He's not really as nice to people as he used to be because... why bother, really?

Canonically, the show has now established that Stiles's mother died when he was eight years old of a yet to be disclosed illness. (I don't think eight fits with some of previous canon, but the showrunner is known for being epically terrible at ages and timelines, so...) Neither he nor his father have ever recovered, and the biggest effect it had on Stiles is he now holds his loved ones incredibly close, his father and Scott especially. He's developing a track record of doing incredibly dangerous/foolish things to protect them.

And the final obvious big catalyst was Scott being bitten by a werewolf and all the ensuing drama. Stiles was a pretty happy go lucky kid, and though he's still got a healthy sense of humor these days, he's stressed pretty much to the breaking point. There's a lot of feelings of anger and helplessness (because he's a human in the midst of a bunch of supernatural craziness) lurking just below the surface that he definitely didn't have as a kid.

Henry is a kid. Arguably, though, he's already had a huge change: being given the book of fairy tales and waking up out of a fog.

Eriond now speaks in complete sentences! This was induced by sufficient exposure to real people. ...Oh yeah, and he's a God and not ostensibly human anymore, and that was brought on rather directly by the last EVENT in that universe.

Tavi and Lois are so convoluted, they are coming in a moment.

Lois is quite, quite different, at least Smallville-flavored. She's still snarky, competent, caring beneath the awkward and brash and tactless cover, inquisitive, and reckless. But Smallville variety didn't expect to be what she is now. A series of events has and will change this:
1) Chloe seeming to die, which sends her to Smallville which sets off meeting Clark and his parents and staying for a while;
(1.5: her first article writing in early season 4)
2) Managing Jonathan's campaign, because suddenly someone trusts her to be competent, and by extension working for Martha after
3) Nearly getting killed by a flying barn door (Clark sneezed) because it results in her first reporting job
4) Dating Oliver Queen and finding out his whole Green Arrow thing, because she starts figuring out what she wants in a guy (IMPORTANT)
5) Finding Kara's space ship, because it results in her getting hired to the DP and suddenly she learns to want to be the best investigative reporter.

Her future will include the major turning point of "Clark grows the hell up, FINALLY," as it is the catalyst for a lot of changes in her work situation, romantic life, and involvement in the hero world. (Darkseid trying to end the world and Superman taking openly to the air isn't important, right?)

Ahahahahahahahaha excuse me.

Having written a thing which neared 1k words, I gave up. The problem with Tavi is that events that changed him aren't generally instantaneous; while they're huge, oftentimes they're only expressions of the deep and dramatic changes that go on between the books. That's an essay. Ditto the list of people who change him most between childhood and adulthood (the Vord Queen, Fidelias--complicated and I would save that for its own essay--Varg, Max and Ehren, his son). I think I can focus on three events and three people:
1) Person: Kitai and event: bonding to her in Furies of Calderon. She's his wife, the balance to his soul, reminds him of his ethics sometimes, his partner, part of his life. But that's a long-term thing.
2) The end of Cursor's Fury, when he shifts into a commander and his ruthless streak really blossoms, which really prepares him for the latter part of the series. Besides that, his crafting finally starts trickling through.

3) Gaius Sextus, his death, and Alera. After finding him, Sextus spends seven or eight years carefully molding him into the best of himself, Septimus, and the earthy understanding of the Calderon family. He teaches by example, just letting Tavi watch both his successes and failures and come to his own conclusions. He also saw to people being placed around Tavi who would trust him and give him their loyalty, and who he could in turn rely on. By trusting Tavi's judgment on a few matters, he encouraged his native creativity and initiative.

Sextus' death does as much as his life. Besides the deep loss for Tavi and physical changes to Alera, Sextus leaves the weight of the Crown and Alera as his inheritance. She's the third person to change Tavi, and besides finally opening up his crafting, she dramatically changes his perception of the world and his subtlety (er, what little he has). But she also 'dies' as a result of Sextus' self-destruct. He mentored Tavi as long as he could and left a teacher for what little time there was to save the empire.

Uultimately, despite Kitai being the eventual greatest influence on Tavi's life, within the scope of canon (and thus from child to adult) I think it's Sextus who changes him the most.

Cata hasn't told me anything about her childhood, so I don't know.

Sam's life would have been very different if his mother hadn't been magicked out of coherence, but he doesn't remember a time he didn't expect to become an assassin. Expecting to help save the world, not so much, but. I think his base personality was shaped by his time with his mother and hasn't altered much since then.

Claudia: YES. And it's down to Joshua's teleportation accident.

Apollo is a god; your argument is invalid.

Imp: ...Yes, I think. His family was more oriented in the druid thing, but once he realised you could make a living off music if you play your cards right, that was the end of that.

Regulus: Yes and no. The Christmas-ghosts plot left him more inclined to stick up for what he personally believes in rather than what his mother and Bella think is right, but he's still drawing on his basic childhood personality.

Red: OH YOU BET. At her core she's always been pretty adventurous, but the werewolf thing has made her a much stronger person overall, now that she knows what to do with it.

Woolly: Yes. The Warehouse did him a world of good.

Waco Kid: Again, fictional. Perpetually middle-aged.

Borgel: To the extent that you can believe his stories about the Old Country at all, then as a child he was impoverished, starving, and perpetually in fear of his father. Still very probably eccentric, though.

Leela: Sevateem children grow up fast, especially when (if the Past Doctor Adventures are to be believed) they lose their mother and their sister. She was probably already very experienced at killing things at this point. Traveling in the TARDIS does have a way of changing people, though - she's learned an awful lot.

Kane: Um...next.

Caius: No idea. He was probably much as you would expect him to be.

Garyn: Different like you wouldn't believe. He didn't have it easy growing up (the Jagar Tharn business resulted in a LOT of dead parents), but he hadn't acquired that hard, stoic edge that a decade under the Old Man gave him. I'd have EP'd him during the age spell plot if I could find an icon that were at all suitable.

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Daily Entertainment: Another Childhood Edition!

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