Monday DE: And Daddy Made A Soldier Out Of Me

[splash_of_blue]

Mlrgh. Afternoon, chaps.

What is your pup's relationship with their parents like? This can refer to found/adopted family as well as biological parents, if relevant.

(Sorry Klaus.)

Comments

[behind_me]

Yeeeeeah I don't know that Gamora and Nebula are allowed to play this game. It's not fair on the other children.

[splash_of_blue]

Nebula says 'I won't play this game because it's unfair on the other children' has never been an issue for Gamora in the past...

[behind_me]

Is Nebula implying that she's outmatched by Gamora?

[splash_of_blue]

Nebula just silently points to their siblings, trying to 'nonchalantly' skitter out of Gamora's eyeline, and raises an eyebrow.

[configuration_birdwatcher]

Bastion was made by an autonomous intelligent factory trying to take over the Earth! It was a callous and controlling parent and they haven't talked in over two decades. Mainly because it's dead at the moment and it thought Bastion was dead before that, but it's not like Bastion would have voluntarily reconnected.

Their other parent is Torbjörn Lindholm, lead designer of the Bastion line, who they were estranged from for most of their life but did recently reconnect with. They don't trust each other very much at this point, and Torb's prejudice against omnics is grating in the extreme, but they let him give them a tune-up and he didn't take the opportunity to dismantle them so that counts for something.

[alongfallfromgrace]

Aiiiya.

Wei Wuxian has very fond memories of his parents, but they died when he was very young, so they aren't so much memories of them as people, but vague impressions of people being happy around him. He loves Jiang Fengmian, but... the man never put an official name on what WWX was to the Jiang family, which gave Madam Yu PLENTY of room to drop a shitton of rumor and hatred. WWX grew up with the constant refrain that his dad abandoned his place as head disciple, and his mom may have been unfaithful and was definitely a Bad Influence. And there was a constant low-key (sometimes high-key) Jiang Fengmian seems to favor you over his own son and That is Bad SO THAT'S A THING.

Klaus... well, he has a 'real mom' out there somewhere, if that term can be given to a woman who had 0.5s to realize she was pregnant and having a baby before it actually happened, and who sold him to Sir Reginald Hargreeves. And then there's the man himself, who... yeah. And then there's Grace, who is the sweetest mom ever... until you remember she's a robot and a) is literally programmed to tell you the things she does and b) will never protect you from the horrors of the house, so. Whee.

Jon's parents died when he was young. His grandma tried hard, but really didn't know what to do with an over-inquisitive, over-bright child who was more interested in reading than playing with other kids his age.

Cecil has a mom. ... IDEK what happened there, other than he loves her, and knows she's proud of him, and she disappeared (because she was proud of him? IDEK??) when he was in his teens. So. There's that.

[zenigatcha]

Man reading the Ep 15/16 recaps from the Canary tumblr have me a LOT of thoughts about something for Lan Zhan and WWX, much later on in canon.

It hurt though, seeing just how horrible everything was in the Jiang family.

[hat_and_dimples]

Cecil's mother died; that was in the live show they were touring in 2016. I think it's 'Ghost Stories'.

[take_that]

Gaster's parents died when he was a child, in a last stand against humanity before monsterkind was sealed underground. A lot of Gaster's actions stem from the subconscious guilt he feels about this.

Urania is quite fond of her mother (not so fond of visiting her, though - the Underworld is so dark) - Zeus, however, is terrifying.

Phoenix (headcanon time - Capcom has given us NOTHING about this) lost his dad when he was very young, and his mother, while not a bad parent, was kind of distant. Sometimes he sees Mia as more of a mother than his real one.

Snufkin basically raised himself. He knows about his parents now, thanks to Moominpapa, and while he doesn't hate them (and seems to admire his father, especially), he doesn't really have any desire to incorporate them into his life at this point.

[have_no_mercy]

Oy.

Tess has four parents. A biological dad who gave her away, a biological mom who did nothing to keep/look for her. An adoptive mother who she doesn't remember and an adoptive father who beat her to a pulp on a regular basis. Tess is happy to be alone now.

Kylo killed his father and never saw his mother again after he left when he was younger.

Creed's father kept him chained up in the basement and used to pull out his teeth and claws hoping they wouldn't grow back. They always did. His mother died when he was very young. He is named after her and he sort idealizes what she would have been.

[bjornwilde]

Ahsoka has no idea who her biological family is, like most Jedi. The closest she has to a specific family would be Obi-Wan and Anakin who are really more like older brothers or maybe uncles. She would say their relationship is good...until she discovers (spoiler) Vader is Anakin. I'm still grumpy she never got any clue about OBW.

Sabine has a difficult relationship with her biological mother and anything further leads to spoilers. It's not pretty. And her father is currently being held as a hostage by Mandalorians sympathetic to the Empire. Plus Sabine has that whole exiled from Mandalore thing to complicate matters.

Her adopted parents are great and she loves them. She gets to harass Kanan as often as she wants and she knows Hera has her back and is there for anything Sabine might need help with (same with Kanan). This is a big plus.

Viv has a good relationship with her father, The Vision, though they are still figuring out what it means to be a family. Her mother is no longer functional and Viv misses her.

Jess does not have parents and she does not talk about what happened to them.

Tybalt does not remember his mother and his father (really adopted/purchaser) was an abusive tyrant whom Tybalt killed to save his Court.

Ben does not have any sort of relationship with Reginald Hargrevees nor his "mother" Grace. I'm sure Ben has some affection for Grace, but Reggie is nothing but an abusive ass.

With Alustin I have no clue.

[childofrebellion]

I could see Bail at some point letting her know about OBW or hinting since he's clearly the only one who knows where he is.

[bjornwilde]

That is certainly possible, but on the other hand, the fewer people who even know OBW is alive let alone guarding Luke, the better.

[aberration]

Hera had a strong streak of independence that, coupled with her parents' focus on their work in the Twi'lek Resistance during the Clone Wars, meant that she had a level of distance from both of them from a fairly young age. She grew up closer to her mother, who was the more primary caregiver parent especially when the resistance was in active combat against the Separatists. Her mother was killed during an action against the Empire sometime before Hera was 15 (I've written this as happening when Hera was 13).

After her mother's death, Hera's father became even more focused on the Free Ryloth Movement that was now fighting the Imperial occupation of Ryloth. With Hera and Cham it's a lot the problem that comes with a parent and child really being too similar to one another - the overlap can actually cause friction, especially when they have similar underlying beliefs and goals but different ideas of how to act on them. I think they both also tend to see their own flaws and shortcomings in one another, which can just make it hard for them to be around each other. But Hera's same streak of independence that her father shares made it easier for her not to demand his attention or time when he was already disinclined to offer it. My headcanon is that starting as a young teen, Hera spent less and less time in her home on Ryloth, taking cargo/transport jobs to get piloting experience and to save for her own ship. Her father approved of her independence and self-reliance, and also otherwise had a lot going on and, you know, she always came back safe enough, but was caught off-guard by her ultimate intention to leave Ryloth and work apart from his movement. Her decision led to a very heated argument, and Hera hasn't been back to Ryloth or spoken to her father since (she sends him periodic messages to let him know she's alive, but avoids actually having to speak with him as much as he does her). But, who knows! Maybe that will change soon!

Kanan never knew any biological family. His adopted family was the Jedi Order, and he had generally felt an uncomplicated comfort in the Temple and an eagerness to take up his place in the Order. His feelings about the Jedi and the Order have become more complicated since growing up through Order 66, but he still generally looks back at the individual members of the order with a familial fondness.

[zenigatcha]

Zuko... look. Dad wanted to become some firebending God and rule the world. Mom ripped her own face and memories away because she was tired of being sad in exile, and wanted her kids to be safe. His sister is trying to murder him. The shining beacon in all this is his uncle is a better father to him than literally anyone else has ever been.

Lan Zhan... has to wonder daily if his mom booked it or died (since we, the reader, are never explicitly told which,) believes himself a product of rape (since his mother was married to keep her a prisoner, arguably to 'keep her safe') and his dad just decided to opt out of fatherhood completely. His uncle is so pissed about that he went Reverse Iroh, and raised him to be an unfeeling automaton that never loved anybody and then got mad when he fell for the wrong boy. '

Zenigata was raised in a very strict, Japanese household with an distant father and a mild-mannered mother (who is haifa, and was the product of an affair and had her own family drama on that side of the family,) and two sisters, one of whom is deaf. (Most of this is headcanon, mind.) He never repaired his relationship with his father and was definitely's Mama's boy. Due to having shit examples for loving family, he was pretty stupid about relationships, trying to figure out his queer identity. Then he knocked up his then girlfriend (woo, older woman, mama's boy strikes again!), who had just gotten situated with her degree and married a beat cop. They had one child together, Toshiko.

Shortly after Lupin appeared on the scene, and Zenigata's ambitions went into high gear, and he went out to prove himself, over and over and over again and sort of forgot he had a family that wanted him at home more than once a year. Then he brings home a kid and is like "honey lets adopt this feral French child named Oscar that I dragged literally out of the river," as a last ditch attempt to save marriage and prove he wants his family. This eventually lead to a messy divorce, a daughter who won't speak to him, a deeply fucked up son who later fakes his own death.

After that, he stays single and exercises his want to be a Good Dad on the occasional person who needs it, until Lupin says 'So about this kid' like, 15 years later.

Ami Enan, who is a sex-trafficking survivor (he's two for two on these adopted trafficking survivors) hacker who is probably somewhere on the spectrum suddenly becomes Zenigata's new child. He takes parental responsibility since really who the fuck trusts Lupin with a child? Right now she's in private school funded by Lupin, but Zenigata's the long-haul Dad, who is secretly resigning himself to the idea that Ami will be around long enough to get what she needs from school, and as soon as she's 18 will fuck right out of his life to go follow Lupin, her hero who she idolizes (and thinks she's in love with, due to conflating sex with love because that's all she knows with men, despite that she is CLEARLY and EXPLICITLY flagged as lesbian through the entire series, right down to having a girlfriend who she basically goes to war for.)

All of my babies have fucked up families because that's just how i roll.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

We meet both of Yamato's parents, Hiroaki Ishida and Natsuko Takaishi, in canon, and they're probably the set of parents we learn the most about.

They divorce when Yamato's seven or eight, leaving both him and Takeru in a precarious social position: Japanese society circa the late 90s and early 2000s is not kind to the children of divorcees or mixed-race kids, and it is especially unkind to the mixed-race children of divorcees.

From there, we know that while Natsuko is a pretty good mother to Takeru, Hiroaki is a terrible father to Yamato, being downright neglectful and admitting that he has no idea how to raise or relate to Yamato. Meanwhile, Yamato doesn't see Natsuko at all -- while the couple set up a once-per-year visitation, it ends up always being Takeru visiting Hiroaki and Yamato, rather than Yamato visiting Natsuko and Takeru, and it's indicated that this is mostly down to Yamato refusing to see Natsuko out of some sense of pride. All of this means that when he actually does encounter Natsuko again in 01, it ends up contributing to his later breakdown.

I remember another mun watching Adventure 01 and noting that it was alarming how little both Hiroaki and Natsuko hide the fact that they prefer Takeru, and yeah, yeah, kind of.


Eden, meanwhile, doesn't have parents, and neither does the guy he's acting as a heart container for (at least, not ones we've seen or heard about).

[death_gone_mad]

I don't know whether or not Fairy Fixit is from a eusocial species and if nuclear-ish families are a thing with her. She's loyal to the Queen,though?

Amascut's mother, goddess of the river Elid, is very absent from canon, and not very likely a huge influence on Amascut. Elidinis is and that's about it. She figures bigger in the foundation story about a random town out in the desert than she does in any of Amascut's backstory. Amascut's father, god of the sun, though. Loves what he does, loves the sun and the harsh heat, loves the idea of having a loving father, hates that he does it and hates that he still treats her like she's his daughter. A lot of what she does in canon is ultimately in spite of her dad and her brother, and apparently she's trying to kill him after finding out that he didn't die from turning himself into a mushroom cloud and glassing the subcontinent.

I still don't know what to do about canon sorta implying that Amascut and her brother Icthlarin aren't Tumeken and Elidinis's actual children and are actually a feline of some sort and a canine of some sort raised to demi-godhood. It does make the "you're not my dad!" angst a lot more pointed though.

[forceimbalance]