Thursday DE: the pitter-patter of little feet

[needsmoreresearch]

Well, going on a bit of a theme this week...

How do your characters feel about children? If they don’t have children--does parenthood sound good, or would they rather be literally anywhere else? Maybe being a fun auntie is the best of both worlds?

Comments

[just_cant_lose]

Ahahahaha, oh God.

Gene - was actually told he was going to be a father at one point in canon. He internally freaked out...and then proposed to the woman, because he would not let her go through it alone and, 'would not make a bastard out of him' *violent point towards said woman's baby bump*.

He did have conditions. The child would have to be called Gene. In short...he would secretly love kids, and be a pretty damn good dad. I lol at the idea of him with a daughter because a son would be easy for him. Take him to the footy, etc. A daughter would freak him the hell out, but he'd be so protective. So, yeah. He wouldn't mind children around, and is quietly a bit sad that it can never happen. He says they're a pain in the arse etc, but...yeah.

Javert - would rather be literally anywhere else. He canonically has no qualms about dragging random kids around by their ears, and is not bothered when they die. They are literally rats on the street to him. He'd be such a terrible father, I can't even.

Valjean - I just want to scream BEST DAD EVER but actually, no. On the other hand, he adores Cosette more than anything and cares very much about children in general. When he was Mayor in Montreuil sur Mer, he made them toys and gave them money, built schools and paid for the teachers himself - he absolutely believes children should have an education and opportunities. So in many ways, he's the best person in the world with kids, because he absolutely values them. One of the first things he did with Cosette was teach her to read - actually, the very first thing he did, before he was even her guardian, was insist she stop working and be allowed to play. Children should be allowed to play! If he could just learn to communicate openly, trust that he's worthy of Cosette's love and stop subjugating himself entirely, he'd be a really great dad.

Courfeyrac - likes children a lot! And also values them - they are the future of France, and should be educated for free, taught to think and use their voices. He would have enjoyed being a dad in the future. By modern standards he'd probably still have faults, like going off drinking with friends and leaving most of the actual legwork to the mother/nannies/whatever. But he'd engage with his kids, not be aloof, and take a strong interest/guiding hand in their education. Tiny fighters for equality and a free France!

Bruce Wayne - hmmmm. Well. Like...I kind of think he'd be generally pretty good. Obviously this Bruce is MCU and doesn't have a Robin, but other canons almost always show him as a mentor/guardian figure. And he was pretty damn mad when he came out of self-imposed exile and saw what had happened to the orphanage Wayne Enterprises was supposed to be funding. He's like Valjean in that he believes absolutely in caring for kids and giving them opportunities, and helping all of them who need it - but that's not all that hard, as it's only money and investment. Gah. Most of me does think he'd be great if he had his own, because he's never not conscious of how his own childhood was, and he has such fond memories of his father. But he's also quite emotionally closed off and, y'know, outright damaged and I think that'd be a problem at times.

Bloody hell, I need to stop writing essays.

Bruce Banner - knows he can never have kids, and is hurt by it. I don't know if it's specifically 'I really wanted to be a dad' that bothers him as much as not having the choice. He will help any child, and is pretty good with them in a quietly competent way - they don't freak him out, and he talks to them easily enough. He'd be a good father. But he doesn't interact with them much these days, and they sort of don't figure as part of his life, so he doesn't think about them much.

Pearly - nooooooooooooooooo. No no no.

Jack Aubrey - has kids in canon! Annnd...lol, is rather typically 18th century about them. He has twin daughters that he loves, but also admits that he doesn't really know what to do with them. He sets money aside when they're born so they'll always be taken care of, but other than that is really all at sea with what girls need, or think, or will grow up to be. His son though - man, he was so happy and proud when he heard he had a son. And immediately planned his life for him, of course. Young George will be a sailor whether he likes it or not. A+ parenting. :\

He also has a bastard son that he doesn't know exists until the lad is grown up. He's pretty upset to have missed most of his life by all accounts (I haven't got to that point in canon yet), but he likes him and acknowledges him as his own, so kudos for, y'know, not being a dick about it.

Jim Moriarty - ...Lord, can you imagine?

Like...this kind of breaks my head, because Jim's the sort of chameleon that, when playing a part, could fake being an amazing dad. But when he's just himself? ...no, I literally can't imagine him interacting with a child. He can't cope with how slow adults are, the idea of him having the patience to deal a kid in the long term is impossible. Maybe if the child was also a genius, he'd get attached to the idea of a mini-him who could match his intelligence once it's learned enough. But emotional attachment? I don't think so, at least not for a long time. And lol, I've just remembered the first episode we physically meet Jim where he...strapped a bomb to a young boy. So lets go with NO KIDS EVER for him. He's a sociopath in the true sense of the word, and the ability to care for others is not a trait he possess.

ETA: Professor Moriarty in the original canon did have at least one child, a daughter. I very much doubt the writers of Sherlock will go this way with Jim, but I will lol my arse off forever if they do.

...one day I will shut the hell up, and the world will explode. Tl; dr.

[never_promised]

Jack Aubrey's daughters are amazing though, oh man. Honestly, all the scenes with Jack Aubrey and kids are great. And the stuff with his adult son is pretty cool? There are some really neat scenes between them; his son is a verrry interesting guy.

[is_the_motion]

Gene is brilliant with kids!

[yakalskovich]

Ragnar Lothbrok has five sons (alive) and a daughter (dead), and is generally the daddest dad who ever dadded. He loves them, and takes a very active interest in them, and he loves to be terribly goofy with them.

Teja rather avoided kids in life, and only learned to appreciate them after he came to Milliways, namely, the children of his people in Gotland, and then Egil. Guppy's kids factor into it as well.

Hannibal knows enough about psychology to get on with them quite well, but he probably regards them as study objects rather than people. That, however, is true for most people, unless they are food, or Will Graham.

Father Harman can handle kids for education purposes; he is a Jesuit, so that is part of what he was trained to do. They are important, but it is more of an intellectual exercise. One exception: the surviving daughter of his colleague Angie. He cares about her.

Madame Thénardier is officially the most terrible mother in Les Misérables; she treats her kids like a spoiled little girl treats her Barbies.

Dorian Gray is better with them than I thought he would be.

They don't really arise as an issue for Lady Margolotta.

The Jólasveinar bring gifts to kids and play pranks on them -- they're who any Icelandic kid watches out for during Christmas time, rather than Santa. So yes, they probably like kids, and even though they are shown as old men, they are very childish themselves. Which is creepy only in a very modern context; but in such a context, so is the generic Santa.

Don't get me started on Katrina Crane -- her canon is a bloody mess which we mean to fix, but can't even get a hold on. Kids figure into that horrible second season, largely, demonically, and very creepily.

[never_promised]

For my folks:

Lesgle was born to be a Cool Fun Uncle. Sadly, it is not to be, and he doesn't enjoy kids' company enough to go out of his way to spend time with them in Milliways just for the sake of it, but in the happy dreamland where Joly and Musichetta get married and there are kids that are officially Joly's, Lesgle is the best Cool Fun Uncle.

Feuilly has always been pretty apprehensive about the whole thing. How do families function? What do fathers do? Do you struggle to keep your children out of the workforce until they're at least ten or eleven, maybe even twelve, keep them in some kind of school? (Yes, you do, if you're Feuilly, but then you're worrying about whether they're really learning the skills they need to feed themselves...)

Henry V dies when little Henry VI is just a baby. Who the hell knows what kind of relationship they would have had, historically--historically, he and his father clashed a lot on political issues, though the Misspent Youth stuff is all fiction. But considering Shakespeare's version of things in Henry IV, or Much Ado About Daddy Issues, I think it's safe to say everything would have been very fraught. But of course he wants children. You have to have children. That's how you make more kings. And cement political alliances. (...I feel like I've run into something about historical Harry Monmouth at some point feeling obliged to write his dad a letter along the lines of "jeez dad of course i would never rebel against you, who is saying this stuff, i would never assassinate you" but I can't track it down right now and I might be misremembering.)

Gredya has done and will do anything at all to take care of her children. Seriously, she has worked so hard. In canon they all die, but by the end she's about to have another litter, so there's hope. Single Werewolf Mom of the Year Award goes to Gredya.

The Chief works with children on a daily basis. She thinks kids are great. She's going to give you so much crap if you say otherwise. (Fun Fact: my husband's friend was on that show when he was a kid, and the general consensus was that Greg Lee was kind of a jerk but Lynne Thigpen was 1000% awesome.)

[camwyn]

Ellen grew up being told that procreation was a civic duty. Period, end of sentence. She has assimilated that message. Very nearly the only reason she started looking for someone to marry on the surface was because responsible adults contribute to the next generation genetically if at all possible and socially if the genetic option fails. Children are required if you are capable of it- there are not enough humans in the world for people to voluntarily take themselves out of the gene pool for no good reason. The question of wanting them or not does not especially enter into it. Fortunately she can about handle the idea of having several kids, and Gerald has a reasonably good temperament for, and interest in, actually looking after them at home. That should help.

Shephard wouldn't mind having a couple of kids, although he would probably be kind of a nightmare to any mother who didn't think kids ought to learn camouflage, stalking, and how to make sharp things out of harmless rocks by the time they were six.

Children are not an option for Stacker Pentecost. His sexual orientation is I AM TOO BUSY FOR THAT and his opinion on children is A KAIJU IS EATING HONG KONG, HELLO.

Hernan Guerra is woefully unsuited for anything remotely resembling fatherhood. Fortunately he neither wants it nor is likely to be horribly surprised by it unless a random one night stand turns out to be a secret Kryptonian survivor.

Fawkes has no genitalia. He does serve as a guard and something of a teacher for a community mostly composed of children, but he has no interest in actually raising them himself.

Wee Mad Arthur is vaguely aware of children. They fly farther when you throw them than adults do.

Varric does not think about children if he can avoid it.

[bjornwilde]

Re: Shephard, although there is the exception of if a kid is Japanese and orphaned buy a kaiju attack.

[camwyn]

Yeah, that one more or less falls under A KAIJU IS EATING TOKYO rather than HONG KONG, I think.

[2goodarms]

Curtis responds to the idea of kids with a resounding HELL NO. He never, ever, ever wanted to bring a child into the Tail, and was pretty fastidious about making sure it'd never happen; that mindset continues to this day. Which is a bit sad, because he's actually quite good with kids -- he got a crash-course in parenting when he became Edgar's primary caregiver, and he helped raise a lot of Tail kids by committee. So yeah, as long as he has no biological link to the child, he'll happily babysit, entertain them, or whatever.

Gaeta has always been a bit leery around kids, but it's the leeriness of inexperience. He'd only babysit as a last resort and quickly hand back the kid with a mental ohthankgods when the parents returned. But...he's not too terrible at it? He'd be an okay dad once he figured out what to do. That option's probably off the table for the foreseeable future, though, considering (a) dead and (b) would have to adopt even if he wasn't dead.

Alistair...hah. WELL. He'd be a great dad if given the opportunity! Any kid of his would be doted on like crazy and spoiled all to hell. But, um. Things in that area have gotten a bit messy for him as of late. As king, he'll need to produce an heir eventually, but Grey Wardens tend to have a lot of trouble conceiving due to basically chugging a cup of darkspawn blood during the Joining. There's also the thing where [spoiler] he and Morrigan conceived a kid through some kind of dark quasi-blood-magic ritual, a kid Morrigan will be raising far, far away from pretty much everyone -- Alistair included -- and oh yeah, that kid has the soul of an Old God, and if Alistair can't have another child with the Queen then said Old God Baby could become yet another bastard heir to the throne just like Alistair was, and, you know, he would like to meet his son someday maybe because it's his son, [/spoiler], and IT'S COMPLICATED GUYS OKAY.

[yinyangwizard]

I imagine that if Alistair did have a kid with Anora they'd constantly argue over his spoiling the kid/not enforcing discipline/unintentionally making her the "bad guy" all the time. Especially if they had a daughter.

[bcgphoenix]

HAH, I do not doubt it for a second. That kid would figure out by her second birthday that if Mom says no, she can run to Dad instead and he'll immediately say yes. :D

eta: ...also, once upon a time in college, I had a professor who needed to bring his sick son to class because he couldn't find a babysitter. For about two-thirds of the lecture, the kid happily sat in the back watching cartoons on a laptop -- but eventually, he got bored and squirmy and toddled up front to tug on his dad's pantsleg.

Whereupon my professor, without missing a beat, scooped him up, settled him on his hip, and kept right on talking about Tolkien.

Alistair would totally do the same thing while in the middle of some Big Important Kingly Decision, I'm sure.

[lunamystic]

Tony used to teach physics labs with Z in a baby carrier on his chest. His students loved it. :D

Also: yay, Alistar!

[athelstanthescribe]

Gavroche has never really thought about it, because he's still only seventeen and though he's pretty mature, he's not that mature. I think he's vaguely in favour of the idea, eventually, and he grew up with a prime example of What Not To Do.

Athelstan would like to have kids but things being complicated, doesn't expect he ever will and is settling for helping to raise Ragnar's at this point.

Giovanni Bruni would be a pretty good if slightly offhand dad, but right now is more interested in being footloose and fancy free.

Michael Carpenter is a father of seven and foster father of one, and is basically the best dad ever. Protective without being stifling, reasonable when his kids push the boundaries - hi, Molly - but makes sure their needs are met and God will not help you if you make any attempt to physically hurt them.

Jonathan Levinson isn't really interested in bringing kids into a world full of monsters. He'd be decent at it if he adopted one, though.

Nancy does her very best to be a good mother. I don't think she's interested in having any more kids at the moment, though.

Cadfael didn't expect he would be a biological father, when his wild oats days were done and he took the cowl. And then he found out that in fact he had a grown up son. He loves Olivier dearly and will do anything to help or protect him, partly to make up for having had no part in his childhood.

Ichabod - oh, man. It broke his heart when he found out he'd had a child who by necessity had grown up without him. And then there was all the rest of the highly spoilerish stuff... suffice to say he's gone right off the idea of fatherhood now.

James Norrington - would have liked to be a father, but he would probably have been a kind but distant one, and off at sea for half the kid's life. And now he can't, and he's mostly okay with that.

Childermass is dead set against leaving any woman with his bastard, or in a position where he couldn't support her and the child. For this reason, he's as careful as his time period allows not to let it happen, and he doesn't have sex all that often anyway. If, eventually, an accident did happen, he'd make the child legitimate and help in every practical way, but I can't see him being very overtly affectionate.

[yinyangwizard]

Seimei loves kids. When he was mortal he had three daughters who he absolutely adored. He misses being a father but feels that under his current circumstances, he would not be doing anyone a favor by being their dad (biological or adoptive). He is a godfather, mentor, or honorary uncle to a number of mage and hanyou kids though.

He is very comfortable around children and takes great pains to be kind to them and help them out if they need it. I think I have mentioned before that cruelty to children is one of his few berserk buttons.

EDIT: Another reason Seimei won't have or adopt any more children is that he would in all likelihood outlive them. He's already had to outlive his children and even grandchildren from his mortal life, it was unspeakably horrible, and he couldn't take going through that again. :(

[bjornwilde]

Given how we've seen Rollo be with Bjorn, I think he will be a great father. I also think he loves kids. He's the cool uncle you go to when you need to complain about your dad. He'll listen to you without throwing you or your dad under the longboat.

Kids aren't something that's shown in Knights of Sidonia, either in the anime or the manga. Well, the manga shows kids at the very end if I am remembering right. That being said, I think Izana likes kids and would like their own when the time comes. They have other things to do for now though.

Ahsoka seems to do alright when interacting with kids in The Clone Wars. I don't think she wants kids of her own, but being the crazy aunt is good for her.

Eliot seems like he's good with kids, if the last episode of The Magicians is anything to go on. Or at least he's good with ghost children. I think he sees them as people and doesn't distinguish them apart from adults. I can't see him wanting his own.

[varadia]

X adores kids. She is very good with them, too. And careful! She is a very good babysitter, and she would be good at bringing up tiny people that are maybe a little bit weird but very well-trained in being people! She is super-supportive of them always! I dunno if she can have any of her own, given genetic engineering -- probably she can? I think she would prefer adoption herself, though. Troubled kids and teens, and non-neurotypical kids. Yeah.

Ysalwen likes kids but is terrible at teaching beginner magic, which is her usual experience with them in the Circle. She is an excellent auntie to Kieran, and I think she would like kids with Zevran, but only when they have a good chance of having at least one parent survive the kid's childhood. Right now with the Calling . . . no-go. But someday she will find a cure! This she swears!

Dean Winchester loves kids, and secretly really dreams of being a Dad. But he's convinced he doesn't deserve it and would only get the kids-and-wife killed, so. Yeah. No-go. But man, he has such dreams.

Nynaeve really wants kids with Lan, and is going to have them, and it is going to be great. Squishiest angry-face mom in the land!!!

Michael has no children and wants no children. She has all her Father's other children to look after, after all. That's enough.

Wonder Woman is good with her apprentice-children, and I think wants some of her own someday, if that ever worked out. She'd like a partner for it, though, and so far hers have been of short duration, so. But she's got time!

Galadan um. Would not hate having kids? He'd be the disciplinarian of the family, of course. And. Uh. It would be weird. The kids would DEFINITELY be weird. But. He's not opposed to the idea.

Flemeth has many daughters. So many daughters. She is a terrible parent, however. She tries! Her failure makes her sad! But. Yeah. Terrible parent, at least according to Morrigan.

Raven is a great sibling! Horrible parent! Horrible enabling godparent and/or uncle. I mean, he would teach the child very many useful and important Life Lessons, but. Uh. Safety is not important in the course of these things. So. Terrible.

[lunamystic]

Grace thinks Raven is an exceptional godparent. Her mother is forced to agree based on the inevitable comparisons to Grace's grandfather. Also, Grace is still alive. So that helps.

[creator_raven]

Raven says this is because she is a very sensible and right-thinking girl with impeccable taste!

[onceaviking]

Teacup humans?

Oh, they're fun.

And then there is all the complicated stuff and we don't talk about that. Ever.

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

Just going with the active characters for now.

Steve wants kids. Wants them desperately. Likes them, gets along with them, finds them entertaining and sweet. But he also is coming to accept that sort of is life is not possible for someone like him. Being a superhero does not lend itself to a peaceful life (and once AoU happens, however it happens in-bar, he'll also realize how much secrecy and effort is required in order to carve out that peaceful life.)

Furiosa... is complicated. My headcanon says she's given birth at least once and the child didn't survive, and that's another thing that left a mark on her soul. She doesn't permit herself to get attached to children--her world is too brutal to have hope for the future, at least pre-canon. Post-canon, things may look a little brighter.

Sherlock is not bad with children, exactly? He treats children the same way he does adults, and with some children, this is very, very Not Good. With others it's perfect. Babies would stump him--I can see him following the instructions from a book to the letter and then being puzzled when the baby doens't react the way the book said it would. But he also understands that children need to be listened to and is probably more patient with them than he is with most adults.

[yinyangwizard]

Sherlock strikes me as a Bad Influence on children. XD

Are you going to bring Sherlock into the bar for the upcoming de-aging plot (either as a kid or as an adult interacting with the kids)?

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

I'm not planning to, at the moment. It'll depend on timing etc.

[just_cant_lose]

*cackle* Sherlock's interactions with Archie in canon are gold. :D

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

I love the scenes with Archie. It's like foreshadowing how he'll be with John and Mary's kid(s).

[just_cant_lose]

I SO WANT TO BELIEVE THAT. And I will hold out hope until January comes, bringing death and destruction to all.

If you believe some sections of fandom anyway. >.>

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

Oh, it wouldn't be Sherlock without death and destruction.

[aberration]

Will is about as socially inept with children as he is with anyone else. In some ways they can be more difficult for him, because they're less capable of or inclined to hide their feelings and thoughts, which makes their "feedback," so to speak, even louder than what he typically gets from adults. And he also just doesn't spend that much time around children. But while he doesn't want to have biological children, he is attracted to the idea of being a parent. Whether it's Abigail Hobbs or Margot's pregnancy or his eventually being a stepfather, he is always shown as being drawn to that relationship. In my headcanon, this partially draws from his own relationship with his father, which from his own point of view was actually fairly positive. From the outside it would likely look strange or even neglectful, but it's one of the few types of relationships where Will has something like a roadmap of how it should function, and clear ideas about how he himself would act and act differently from his father. The nature of the connection between a parent and child is also one where I think his empathy can flow more naturally than is the case with most others – it is expected that a child is shaped by their parent, and that in many ways a parent can be in turn be shaped by their child. It's a kind of intimacy that he imagines could function well for him, rather than his usual experiences with "being social," which are often invasive at best and destructive at worst.

Asami is a little awkward around kids. In that adult, you're-so-small-how-do-I-talk-to-you??? kind of way. She definitely doesn't carry on as easily with them as say, Korra does. But she would definitely like to have and raise children someday, and I think would feel a lot more comfortable with her own children.

Katara is very comfortable with children in a maternal sort of way. She feels perfectly comfortable approaching them and has a good sort of existing vocabulary for playing and talking with them. This was in part because she spent a lot of time growing up taking care of the village children (including, when it comes down to it, her older brother). She also did hope to have a family one day, if she made it through the war, and I think it's safe to say that all her children very dearly love their mother.

Abigail would probably lean more toward awkward. She hasn't done a lot of childcare work and just... wouldn't be inclined to make any particular effort? Which I think could go either way, depending on her mood and the child in question. She also has no particular interest in having children and never really imagined a future that included it.

Oh and Elle weirdly tends end up being good with kids, I think a lot because she has many childish/childlike aspects that come out even more when she's around children. She can't have a child herself, and as of now has no particular interest in being a parent, and... if that did change, I still don't imagine her as being a parent in a - straightforward, conventional way, anyway. Probably more of a fun aunt.

[maid_of_tarth]

Combeferre would be a good dad by his era's and class's standard...meaning, he'd dispense solid fatherly advice, avoid vice and other things that might disgrace or financially ruin the family, and otherwise leave the childcare to either the mother or to hired help. The one thing he would be more actively involved in is their education. These will be very educated kids.

He'd be a really amazing Cool Uncle for a nerdy child, though.

Jehan Prouvaire would be really better off avoiding fatherhood and sticking to cool unclehood. Fatherhood would put too much of a constraint on his ideal life. That said, if he found himself a father, he'd be financially supportive, very affectionate, and take a keen interest in the kid's education.

Fantine has a child! She's a devoted mother. She coddles her child and spares no expense of money or labor on her. She sews Cosette beautiful little dresses even when they're in bad financial straits. She wants Cosette to learn to read and have a nice garden to play in, and...those things do happen! Just, you know, when Fantine is dead.

Brienne of Tarth has a preteen boy sidekick in canon. She gets along well with him, looks out for him, and he thinks she's a badass (which she is). And I think that Cool Big Sis role is what she's best for. When she gets older, it would naturally evolve to Cool Aunt. But she never thinks of wanting children of her own in canon. In fact, she's relieved she never married and had children. I don't think childcare would suit her at all. She can take on preteens and train them to fight.

Of course she's the heir to Tarth, so she has to ensure the succession, but she can find a young distant cousin or something rather than having a kid of her own.

[ceitfianna]

Will loves kids and hopes to have his own someday. Now that life is safer in Nottinghma, that's feeling possible and he loves being an uncle of sorts to other people's children.

Charles has a great affection for children, he's a natural teacher and they make him happy. I don't think he's ever pictured having his own children though that was very expected of him in terms of his family. He prefers to teach and help create a better world for children. His own childhood was strange and at times lonely and doesn't want anyone else to have that but he also can't easily picture himself as a father.

Quentin is okay with kids, he's a teenager who goes from comfortable around them to terribly awkward. Someday he will have children as children are incredibly important to the Fae but not for a long time.

William wants to have children someday but at this point in time, it feels like something that won't happen for a while. In that way he's a bit odd for his time where young families were the norm but his focus now is more on getting his brother to a good place.

Sameth enjoys kids and wants them, along with having a major pressure to have them. Ashie and I did some plotting of kids with him and Kait and him being an uncle to Ellimere's kids. He's good with them because he takes kids seriously and knows to be there like his own parents weren't able to do as much.

Jane doesn't want kids as much as her time pushes her. She likes them but her books are her children and maybe if she was with Tom, it would be different. Its just she's seen how children can be draining and how hard it is for a woman to manage being a mother and anything else.

Moist doesn't mind children or particularly want them, they're complicated and messy.

Demeter is known for being a mother and adores children.

Ivan is getting to the point where he might like kids. He's happy to be an uncle but he worries about messing kids up.

Tumnus is the type to be a wonderful uncle. He helped a lot with the raising of Cor.

[is_the_motion]

Okay so it's a standing joke in my head and probably outside it that I impregnate one of my characters about once a year and quite often have used it as a form of revision.

In fact between them, my pups over the last decade have had... twelve children, plus one on the way. But we've done it different every time, so I'll talk through them.

Guppy has four. He's had the snip now so he won't have any more. He sees it very much as a learning curve. The four Sandhu kids each possess a different aspect of him - Fry the intelligent social awkwardness, Coral the quiet patience, Brooklyn the 'laser dinosaur eyes' moments, and Gil the light-hearted part of him you see most often when he is, indeed, with his kids. As fitting with canon, the kids fulfil the #1 rule that 'If something medical can happen, it most likely will'.

Shufti was actually my first pup to give birth and I apped her pregnant with Jack as a form of revision. She went on to have Leah and MOMO twins Brian and Nathan before she was retired. She grew very maternal, and had to learn to deal with bringing up kids in a whole different world, and with the attitudes of others to them being mixed race, and with Jack's father (who I also played briefly) being a complete arsehole.

Carlotta who is retired had one, Molly, who she found it difficult to bond with, as her husband really wanted kids younger than she did. I ran out of steam with Carlotta, so she got retired, but we were planning to have Molly try to balance a life half in the circus and half in the non-travelling world.

Vyvyan, astonishingly, has triplet children with the Devil. He has little to no parental responsibility, having volunteered for the job of sperm donor because he wanted to lose his virginity, but periodically shows an interest. Neither he nor I actually remember any of the children's names...

Bonnie lost her first daughter Alice shortly after birth, when she was 20, and never conceived again while with Bill - she was told she was unable to (as per the stigma of infertility back then when it was always blamed on the woman). Bonnie and Bill took in fifteen total boys aged 10-15 either fostered or adopted for various lengths of time, and was 'Aunt Bonnie' to all of them as some still had parents in the picture. After Bill died in the war, Bonnie fostered a sixteenth boy, with learning disabilities, who she expected never to leave - but she did a good job and he moved out in his early twenties.
More recently, she moved in her sister-in-law, cleaned out a lot of junk, dealt with her drinking, and was allowed to foster two more boys who were one bad decision away from military school. A few months later she also gained custody of her granddaughter.
And now she's found herself unexpectedly pregnant, at 46, by her friend-with-benefits now second husband. She has a lot of Feelings about that, but she'll be happy once baby's safely born.
To answer the question in Autor's dossier "How many kids does she have anyway?" - Bonnie always answers that she's helped raise 16 boys, and is now raising two more and a granddaughter, because she won't usually talk about Alice. The precise answer is 1 daughter (deceased), 18 fostered/adopted boys, 1 granddaughter, and 1 baby on the way.

[merryeccentricities]

Joly would have been a very good father by the standards of his time and class, really; he at least knows the sheer biological necessities of childrearing, which already puts him ahead of the game. Otherewise, he'd be responsible, patient, and in the general vicinity of being Properly Involved; a nice bourgeois papa leaning a little on the doting side of responsible. But whoever he's coparenting with is absolutely going to have to be the disciplinarian.


Bahorel has always been around younger kids, more or less babysitting, whether his younger siblings or later nieces and nephews, or, in the city, the kids of friends; he's already been the Cool Uncle for a large chunk of his life. He's used to kids and their practical requirements, he likes them--wonderful anarchic mobs en masse and inevitably idiosyncratic little souls individually, what's not to love with kids? And he's happy to use his own parents as role models. It would mean reordering a few things in his life (though not in Milliways), but he'd be pretty comfortable being a father (much more than he would with being a husband, which is sort of why he's not a father). He'd be big on encouragement and advice, light on discipline, and assume that of course he was going to spend most or all of his time with the kid running around causing trouble and getting underfoot, how else are they gonna learn anything? That's how he was raised and he turned out great! Look, kid, here's how you sew a whipstitch. Here's how you read out iambic pentameter. Here's how you throw a punch, remember to watch your thumbs. And remember what daddy told you about fighting adults, you're little so aim low, big people get stupid about that.

...How much other people would be comfortable with him being a father is a separate issue.


Gringoire--oh gad, Gringoire would be horrible with kids. He has nothing to offer them, emotionally or financially. Unless by "kids" you mean "baby goats". He'd be awesome with baby goats. If Djali ever becomes a mom he will be the dotingest of pet-parents.

[forceimbalance]

[We're sorry, the player is too busy laughing hysterically to answer]

[have_no_mercy]

Tess used to hate children, but with Alexander/Conner and Chloe's baby around now she's getting better. Fun Auntie is probably where she's good at.

I think it's best we keep Kylo from any and all children.

[harryhotspur]

All of my characters are from historical periods/social positions where it wouldn't occur to them to wonder about whether or not to have children, it's just... expected. Liz is on the cusp of maybe, possibly that not being a given, with her relatively unconventional lifestyle, but I think even she just assumes it'll happen one of these days.

Which is a shame! Because I think all of them (with the possible exception of Viola and Marius) would be decidedly ambivalent about it if they really stopped to think. Well, Harry would be excited still, but in his class and time period, he could get away with spending essentially zero time with them, so.

[death_gone_mad]

Amascut did not have good parenting role models, I suspect. Her mother was supposedly nurturing, but that was toward mortals. She seems... not there... for her own children. Her father had a reputation for caring in a harsh, tough love sort of way. It turns out that Amascut and her brother where put in charge of the underworld as a punishment. Possible bad parenting role models and her current mental state would make her a very bad mother. I doubt she would even allow herself to bear a child. Adopting a child for nefarious purposes or being an extremely naughty aunt? Yeah, sure, that she can do.

That being said, there is a portion of fandom that says that one of the current slayer masters, who is the daughter of another slayer master that rose through the ranks under very suspicious circumstances, is also the daughter of Amascut herself. If that is true, well, thankfully, Amascut is very much not there just like her own mother probably was.

Fairy Fixit would likely make a responsible parent. She wouldn't object to being a parent, but she has been too busy to do it. Or maybe not, but her headvoice is not indicating that she is. There's no doubt that someone raised by her would acquire a very large vocabulary. Then again, I have very little idea about how Zanarian fairies raise their young or what they even look like. All fairies in game are adult and mostly female. Could be just minifairies, or they might go through some sort of larval stage. If it turns out that only the queen reproduces then she might object to children on grounds of embarrassment/humility.

[genarti]

Enjolras: Oh lord. Enjolras has nothing against children! Everybody was a child once, and also the world needs citizens of the future! They can just... happen Over There with people (women) who know things about babies, right?

Yeah, sorry about the 19th century in Western Europe.

He doesn't really know how to interact with them except as miniature adults, which is partly because of his time period and partly just because Enjolras. This works pretty well with the kind of kid who likes being talked to as a peer by a serious adult, but he has nothing else in his toolkit for any other kind of kid. To be fair, no one in his society would expect him to know anything more, and he'd be a perfectly good bourgeois dad by 1830s standards. But he specifically canonically turned his back on romance, marriage, domesticity, etc, in favor of devoting his entire life to the revolution, so... yeah, it's safe to say he didn't especially plan on being a parent. And was not taking on any risk of accidentally becoming a parent, what with being exclusively married to the abstract concept of France.

Thor is pretty great with kids! Okay, with human kids he's really really careful, because he knows they're even more breakable than regular humans but he doesn't have enough experience to know for sure what's safe and what isn't, so he just kind of holds still and lets them use him as a jungle gym. This is a good example. With Asgardian kids, he's much more willing to toss them around and play-wrestle and whatever.

He's not in any hurry to be a father, partly because he enjoys the freedom of being young and independent and kinda immature sometimes, and partly because any kid of his would be heir to all his rank and that's... a lot. Thor doesn't really feel ready to be a dad, which IMO is a wise decision. But someday, yeah, he expects to have kids.

Kazul has children and grandchildren! She visits them fairly often. The one time we see her interact with a grandkid, she's somewhat tolerantly exasperated about their hijinks, and she's been heard to say that dragonets don't have any sense until they're at least 200, but it's pretty clearly a fairly indulgent sort of grumbling. At her age, however, she does prefer children to belong to other people, so that she can play with them for a while and give them treats to spoil their appetites for dinner and then give them back to the people who have to actually clean up after them.

Cosette thinks kids are great! Which is just as well, because in her society and social class she's 100% expected to have lots of maternal feelings. She's pretty good with young girls, because she went to a girls' school where some of the other students were pretty young. Young boys, she's a little more at sea with, but she'd manage. She'd like to be a mother, and she's respectably married and all, so she assumes she probably will be at some point not TOO far in the future.

River likes kids! She's often good with them, as a confusing older-sister sort. She gets right down with them on their level, and manages to be a Cool Big Kid. And she's done a certain amount of helping raise Wash and Zoe's daughter Naomi, in Millicanon, because the entire crew has. She doesn't have any immediate desire to have kids of her own, but I think she'd kind of like to someday, with the right co-parent(s).

Trowa: no. Hahaha no. Trowa has no interest in being a father, and no chance of accidentally becoming one. He'd do his best by the kid if for some reason he acquired one, so I can't say he'd be a terrible father, but he's really not a nurturing kind of person, and his personal experience with good parenting examples is very limited. Also, much like Enjolras (although for different reasons), he doesn't really know how to interact with kids except as miniature adults, which works with some better than others.

[andinfluencepeople]

If Trowa accidentally acquires a child, Cathy is taking over with something like horror (YOU CAN'T LET LIONS BABYSIT, TROWA. Trowa: *wasn't...going to?*) until they find a reasonable circus family to adopt the kid.

[genarti]

Hahahahahahahaha. YOUR CONFIDENCE IN HIM IS OVERWHELMNG, CATHY.

But yes, "doing his best by the kid" would almost certainly involve finding people with actual parenting skills and a willingness to commit long-term to take over the parenting, and Trowa himself just stopping by to check in as a family friend/weird uncle figure.

[andinfluencepeople]

Chuck likes kids, and is generally awkwardly concerned about them in bar. He hasn't considered the possibility of parenting post death. It was part of his vague if-I-survive-saving-the-world 20 year plan, which he never invested in fleshing out the details of.

Clint would be a good dad, but has no real desire to be one. If Natasha wanted to, he'd retire and raise the kid (and in current MCU verse he has three kids and an awesome wife). He's not that great at, or interested in, other people's children beyond as small people and thus interesting in their own right.

Darcy actively doesn't want children, and doesn't enjoy the company of kids under ten.

Sebastian loves kids, and will be a delightful father and uncle because no one will give him too much responsibility in daily childhood affairs (that's what nursemaids are for!) and thus he can be really attentive in several hour bursts several times a week.

Quatre is a delighted uncle, but has no interest in having kids or in dealing with kids who can't read when he is too busy to be Uncle Quatre and is busy being the family patriarch. If any of his sisters left orphaned children, he would legally adopt them and financially support them, but he'd expect the rest of the family to actually raise the kids >.>.

[rudderless]

Clementine: Unequivocally childfree. She is not good with kids at all, and her reaction to thinking she was pregnant was to try and loop some guy into marrying her (And when it failed in canon, she did it in Milliways). Yet she has lots of kids she weirdly quasi-mentors at M'ways.

Dixie: Used to say she had not a motherly bone in her body, but then canon went and proved her wrong. She's always said that motherhood's a wonderful institution - but she's not ready for it yet. In a couple of years, once she and Brisco are married, tho - yeah, she'll probably have a couple.

Jules: Has always wanted kids and dogs with equal fervor. I think Shawn definitely wants to have them?

Eponine: Would naturally be expected to have a family, even in disrepair in the gutters of Paris. The fantasy was Marius; the Milli-reality is the Below and the different social structure there.

Pinkie: Is basically a big sis to the CMC and to the Cake twins; probably if she meets the right stallion she'd marry him.