#Christopher deserves to have three dads who he can manipulate into getting whatever he wants

[911-on-abc]

“You can ship both buddie and bucktommy” WEAK you can ship all three of them together

[clearascountryair]

Hello! I've been scrolling through some of your ao3 stuff and I was wondering if you have any headcannons for Jemma's childhood/home life? Your love for her makes me so happy :))

THIS MESSAGE MAKES ME SO HAPPY

I don’t even know where to start.  I asked @agentcalliope and she just responded with “dude you have headcanons about your headcanons.”  I guess I’ll just go chronologically.  There’s always more 😂.  I am one day going to just write a series of oneshots about Jemma’s childhood, but I’m really particular about writing in chronological order, which makes it a slow task when I really want to be writing the later stuff.  But I feel like you should know that I have Jemma’s whole family and their SOs mapped out on a spreadsheet. 

 So, @buskidsburgade, you might come to regret asking me this.

Anyway, most of this weird mixture of headcanons/abridged bullet fic is under the cut because it got long.  FYI it’s not all happy, but I did leave out the more sever specifics for the sake of this post.  If anyone wants them (or any elaborations I HAVE THEM ALL) just ask and I’ll give it with any appropriate warnings

Her father, Chris, is an English professor.  He took off a good ten or so years to take care of the kids, but when Jemma was about five, he went back to working.

He specializes in youth literature in the 19th century, particularly girls’ literature and how it both creates and undermines gender roles.  He was a little bit attached to the name Alice for a daughter because of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but when they got a dog shortly after their third son was born, they ended up naming the dog Alice.  The whole family jokes that Alice and Jemma are tied for favorite daughter/sister.

Her mother, Ana, is a pediatric oncologist.  She’s a Dutch Jew.  Her mother is a Holocaust survivor--Jemma gets her incredible will to survive anything from her.

Jemma has four older brothers: Kit (1976), Peter (1977), Matt (1983), and Liam*(1987)

*Jemma will not acknowledge that Liam is older than her, but he is by exactly 6 minutes and 23 seconds

I originally had a fifth brother but *someone* suggested that that might be too many.  I can’t remember his name at this point.

According to the spreadsheet, his name was Ben.  He’s between Peter and Matt.

There was also a sixth but he didn’t have a name and that same wise someone suggested that if there are brothers without names or even just only names and no personalities, they’re probably unnecessary.  But that’s the reason for the age gap between Peter and Matt.  There were two more squeezed in there.  I just love Jemma being from a really big family okay.

Kit, Matt, and Liam are not short for anything.  They are not Christopher, Matthew, and William.  Just Kit, Matt, and Liam.

Sometimes Liam shows up in ‘verses where I’m not getting into the whole big family dynamic, like the Secret Santa piece I wrote for @the-nerdy-stjarna.  I don’t think he’s her twin in this piece, but his personality is always the same.

Kit’s a neurosurgeon, Peter’s a biochemist, Matt’s an astrophysicist, and Liam’s a philosophy professor

Liam tried very hard to rebel against the science-yness of his family.  It was never his thing and he always joked it would lead to him being the family disappointment.  He was wrong, though, because his family’s awesome and love him anyway.

While Kit and Peter mostly went on the same school track their whole lives, the three younger kids moved around schools a lot (well, Matt a little–he’s a bit older than the twins).  When Jemma was little-ish, they refused to move her up any higher at the school she was at because, despite her books smarts, they thought she needed to develop social skills before advancing her as much as her parents wanted her to be advanced.  So they did a lot of moving around school to school if they felt like whatever school they were at was preventing their children from reaching their full potential.

They’re raised pretty secular, but definitely Jewish.  They speak a mixture of English, Dutch, Yiddish, and Hebrew at home.

Peter is horrible and I hate him.  Here’s a very abridged version of why with some of the worst bits taken out for now but he’s a piece of shit constantly battling Grant Ward for Shittiest Person Ever on Fitz’s Shit List (likewise, Ward battles Alistair Fitz on Jemma’s Shit List). This is where all that cut stuff would be.  I just want it somewhere else where I can cut it off with appropriate warnings.  This stuff references sexism and emotional abuse.  It’s all italicized if you want to skip to the end.

Peter very much liked being the smartest of his siblings and he got 10 pre-Jemma years, plus two pre-communicating-Jemma years of being that sibling.  He skipped two years in school, thus being the first of his siblings to go to college.

He’s determined to be a biochemist from a fairly young age, at least as far back as Jemma can remember and he’s so smart and charismatic and all Jemma wants to be when she’s little is just like Peter.

Peter disagrees.  He doesn’t take well to his much little sister getting so much attention for being so smart (and in his field!) and it manifests horribly.

He was always going to be an asshole probably because he’s selfish and narcissistic, but his unwarranted resentment of his sister caused his assholeness to manifest in a lot of sexism.  A lot.

The first major incident is when Jemma is about five.  I actually wrote it as the first chapter of what was gonna be a longer piece, but I’m gonna make it a one-shot in the series.  I just keep forgetting about it.  Whoops.  Anyway Jemma likes to help all of her brothers on their school work.  Kit indulges her and Matt and Liam actually find it useful.  Peter gets pissed and alternates between telling Jemma she’s stupid and that no one cares what she has to say anyway because scientists don’t care about girls.  He tells her no one will take Jemma Simmons seriously.  So she starts going by her initials (It’s JJ in my story, but I guess canons has now made it JA which doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily.  So they’ll just call her J).  It’s not until after she’s started at the Academy that she starts getting comfortable using Jemma in any situation.  It takes getting Peter out of her life for her to do that.  That will come later.

So it starts out as him constantly reminding Jemma that there’s a lot of sexism in STEM fields but evolves into him becoming that sexism.

He’s the source of most of her self-doubt.  And it’s really intense when she’s young.  He’s incredibly manipulative and cruel, but he’s also the person Jemma wanted to be when she was little and before he got that way.  So it’s hard for her to reconcile the two and she ends up being pretty susceptible to him.

When she gets her first fancy internship/job/ta gig/I’m not sure yet, he frequently questions how she got the position, often telling her it’s just because she’s pretty and the men who hire her are interested in her for not her brains. And she knows she’s smarts and she knows she deserves her positions, but Peter’s been putting this idea in her head since pretty much puberty, so by the time she gets to the Academy, it’s pretty much a constant nag in the back of her brain of “What if I’m not enough?  What if I’m a fraud?”

It’s obviously a problem for the whole family.  Peter’s pretty smart about keeping these conversations between just him and Jemma, or saying stuff ‘as a joke.’ So there’s a long time of “Peter’s an asshole, take him with a grain of salt, he doesn’t mean anything by it” before they really recognize it as abuse.

The summer before she starts at the Academy, she’s biking at night with Liam and Liam’s girlfriend and they don’t have reflectors or anything and Peter’s back in town and hits Jemma at an intersection.  He takes her to the hospital and she’s mostly fine, just a broken leg, but Liam’s convinced it wasn’t an accident.

Anyway by the time she’s at the Academy and meeting Fitz, Peter’s spent a good five years building up all the self-hatred and loathing and doubt in sixteen-going-on-seventeen Jemma Simmons.  It’s easy for her to assume Fitz hates her because everyone probably hates her.  When she and Fitz are presenting one of their first projects together to a lower level SHIELD higher up, he asks, “And when will Dr. Simmons be joining us?”  Weaver and Fitz throw a fit (Weaver maybe even gets him fired), but Jemma’s just kind of both unphased and traumatized by it at the same time.  That’s the first time she completely opens up about her personal life to Fitz and why she never uses her first name and what it was like growing up with four brothers, one of whom is awful.

That’s also when Fitz opens up about his father.  Jemma’s said maybe just a couple sentences about Peter and it’s causing all these realizations and maybe it’s the first time that he brains is using abusive to think about their relationship and Fitz says “he sounds like my dad.”  And speaking of it and giving it a name is so helpful to them both.  That validation of their emotions and of their brilliance.  It doesn’t end the self-doubt, of course, but it’s a nice moment of clarity.

She starts going by Jemma after that.

(I feel like I should mention that, as shitty as Peter is, Kit, Matt, and Liam are amazing.  They love and support their sister unconditionally and are a bit quicker than their parents to really see what Peter is doing to Jemma and do everything they can to act like a buffer at family gatherings)

It all culminates on Christmas Eve during Jemma’s winter break from the Academy.  That’s when Chris and Ana decide enough is enough and make the impossible decision that it is dangerous and unhealthy to allow Peter anywhere near their other children.

That’s also the same time that they meet Fitz and his mum.

Ana and Bea are a lot like their children in that it’s a crime against humanity that they spent so much of their lives not knowing each other.  Every couple weeks, Ana drives the four and a half hours to Glasgow for a girls’ weekend.  Chris jokes that he’s the real third wheel.

Kit, Matt, and Liam are quick to accept Fitz as family.  If he’s important to Jemma, he’s someone special.

They do all their holidays together now, even when they go to Amsterdam to be with Ana’s mother.  As far as they’re concerned, Bea and Fitz are family.

[amorremanet]

Star Wars, the trilogy of ur choice for the ask meme!

I am indecisive as Hell and couldn’t pick and as such just did all three of them, ooops?

original trilogy

my all-time ultimate fave character: um. I have loved Darth Vader since I was five and decided that he was my husband now and this meant that he was going to hold my stuff while I ran the galaxy and also buy me a puppy, because my parents wouldn’t let me have one but he’s the head of an evil empire, so I assumed that he had enough credits to buy me a puppy. Anyway, my answer hasn’t changed. He’s garbage and I love him.

a character I didn’t used to like but now do: Lando is a sort of complicated answer, because it was never that I disliked him?

But when I was younger, I bought into all of the nonsense about him, “betraying” Han, Leia, and Chewie (which is ridiculous, because: 1. he was trying to save his entire city,

and 2. Vader turned the tables on Lando and sprung a bunch of shit on him that Lando cannot be held responsible for, because Vader is the one who made it an issue and it’s not like Lando didn’t read the fine print because there was no fine print for him to read)

—and yeah, basically, I never disliked him, but have come to appreciate Lando more.

a character I used to like but now don’t: …well, it isn’t that I dislike Yoda or Obi-Wan (though the latter benefits from the prequel trilogy a lot here, since Ewan McGregor kinda saved the character from the gigantic dumpster fire of GLucas’s bullshit retcons and Alec Guinness being a huge tool), but when I was a kid, I took everything they said at face-value and have since learned that both of them are totally bullshit unreliable narrators, at best.

a character I’m indifferent about: idk, the Emperor, probably. Like, my biggest feelings about him in the OT are, “Excuse me, you’re in my seat. Trophy husband, please be a hunny and murder him for me so I can get back to my ridiculous power-fantasy daydream of being an overpowered evil overlord with no chill and an OTT evil laugh like a bad girl in a late 90’s anime.”

a character who deserved better: Lando Calrissian, full stop.

a ship I’ve never been able to get into: uh. ……pass?

a ship I’ve never been able to get over: Han/Leia remains one of the only m/f ships worth caring about, for me, but ijs, Han/Luke is good, too.

a cute, low-key ship: Luke/Wedge, Luke/Lando, or Luke/Biggs.

an unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it: Han/Lando (it’s not unpopular in my particular corner of tumblr but for most people out there, it’s Not A Thing that they can see happening). ……but come on, they act like exes! If they aren’t secretly married (probably under questionable circumstances, for pretty ridiculous reasons) in at least two star systems, I’ll shave Jean-Ralphio’s head.

a ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened: —technically, my answer never did. But when ROTS came out back in 2005, there was a commemorative issue of Rolling Stone that I stole from my Dad because it had a special feature about Darth Vader, and in it, Kevin Smith proposed the idea of Vader/Leia (which he apparently kiddie LARPed with a girl he liked before they knew that Vader is her bio-father), and…… ew, Kevin Smith, what the fuck. Like, even without the parental incest factor, ewww.

my favourite storyline/moment: if it happened in Empire, I will probably never be over it because I am a human cliche and Empire is my favorite (but in my defense: it was not written by George Lucas, and that has a lot to do with why it is noticeably better-written than the other two OT movies). If I had to choose? “I love you” / “I know,” or the final confrontation between Luke and Vader.

Because I am a human cliche, that’s why. …Also, fun fact: when they originally shot the Infamous Scene, the big reveal about Luke’s parentage was kept so under-wraps that even David Prowse (the guy who physically portrayed Vader) thought that the twist was that Obi-Wan killed Anakin.

a storyline that never should have been written: Okay, it isn’t that I object to how the parentage twist meant that GLucas had baited sibling incest with Luke/Leia. What I object to is that GLucas acts like this was intentional, and wants to erase and retcon real-world history (there’s a whole book about it, documenting what actually happened and how GLucas tried to retcon reality), all to make himself look like a genius Auteur™ when, actually he is a fucking hack who stole the credit for the movies’ success from the actual creative people involved.

my first thoughts on it: “pew pew pew, i love star wars, i want a lightsaber, i want to rule the galaxy, pew pew”

my thoughts now: “pew pew pew, i love star wars, i shouldn’t be allowed to have a lightsaber at all bc i would totally mishandle it, fuck george lucas with barbed wire, pew pew”

prequel trilogy

my all-time ultimate fave character: *points above* …like, I have never had it in me to hate the prequel trilogy — the closest that I got to it was, “Okay, it’s not the OT, and it’s kind of silly, but it’s not bad” — and I could never hate it because it’s primarily about Anakin Skywalker, and that’s my trophy husband. He’s space trash and I love him.

I also never hated Hayden Christensen. Like, most of my friends in high school did, but I loved him, and I said things like, “Maybe he’s not the greatest actor but he’s not exactly working with a great script here” but that was the worst he ever got from me (and if I’d known then just how shitty a director GLucas actually is to the actors in his flicks, I would’ve been even more generous).

He was definitely one of the guys who I “had crushes” on, back when I was still trying to convince myself that I wasn’t into girls at all, and all of the lingering fondness for him was a huge part of my, “okay, but were any of my crushes on dudes legit or was there a lot of compulsory heterosexuality that I didn’t get because I was a teenager with homophobic parents who went to a high school where we couldn’t even talk about the homophobia that went on because everybody wanted to think that we didn’t have a problem with it just because nobody got, like, physically assaulted or anything that we assumed happened at other high schools in the area, regardless of how we had almost no evidence one way or the other”

……In retrospect, a lot of the, “crush” that I had on Hayden was that he was a soft-featured pretty boy who was, “like… almost pretty enough to be a girl” (—all I have to say for myself is that I was an ignorant teenager), and I found him attractive because he was: 1. soft and pretty; 2. playing my favorite space trashcan; and 3. hella famous and therefore unavailable

anyway, I love Anakin and…… well.

a character I didn’t used to like but now do: …uh. I have no idea?? The closest I get here is that I went from not caring about Palpatine in the OT to thinking he’s actually an interesting and well-done villain in the PT.

a character I used to like but now don’t: can I pass on this one, too? I don’t have a lot of characters like this in any of the Star Wars movies tbh???

a character I’m indifferent about: Count Dooku (the late Christopher Lee was always amazing but Count Dooku just… really doesn’t interest me as a character), and General Grievous.

a character who deserved better: Padmé Amidala, Mace Windu, and I want to say Anakin, but not in the same way as Mace and Pamdé (who got the shit kicked out of them unfairly and got robbed of some of the moments that they deserved).

Where Anakin deserved better is in how the narrative handled his fall and the issues of agency, responsibility, how he was manipulated and how it affected his ability to be held responsible vs. all of the ways in which he was responsible for his actions and where, how spending his formative years as a slave affected everything, the ways in which the fucking Jedi Order was also culpable for some of this and how their approach to literally everything is emotionally unhealthy, and so on.

Because GLucas handled all of those issues with the grace and tact of a drunk rhinoceros. Which I feel is an incredible insult to both alcohol and rhinoceroses.

a ship I’ve never been able to get into: any Qui-Gon ship that isn’t Mace/Qui-Gon, and I will fully admit that that is just my headcanon and my feels of, “Oooh, that could be cool.”

a ship I’ve never been able to get over: Anakin/Obi-Wan and Anakin/Padmé because I am a human cliché.

a cute, low-key ship: Obi-Wan/Dexx (or however you spell the name of his smuggler friend from AOTC).

an unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it: well, these days, Anakin/Obi-Wan and Anakin/Padmé are apparently on the Shipae Non Gratae list in this fandom, to the point that people who ship them will get harassed, dehumanized, bullied, and suicide-baited for shipping them, all because a small but vocal contingent of assholes don’t like them and want to enforce their own ideas about the morality or lack thereof of whatever ships they like or not on everyone — but they weren’t unpopular until very recently, so

otherwise, basically all Mace Windu ships are unpopular by default but come on, Mace/Qui-Gon and Mace/Obi-Wan would be cool

a ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened: uh. Padmé/death, Mace/death, and Star Wars Fandom/suicide baiting people over ships when they’re doing everything that they can reasonably be expected to do in terms of tagging responsibly and respecting their fellow fans.

my favourite storyline/moment: I’m sorry but actually not, but… I love ROTS, and I love the game of torturing myself by watching it like, “Maybe Anakin won’t make all the wrong choices this time. Maybe if I lovingly yell at him loudly enough, he won’t break my heart.”

Also, fuck everyone, his, “I don’t like sand” thing is endearingly doofy, and I can’t flirt any better than that so it is not unrealistic (not least since he hasn’t exactly grown up or come of age in an environment that’s conducive to developing decent social skills or learning the social scripts that one uses when doing things like flirting without saying, “I don’t like sand, but you are very not like sand, and I appreciate that you are dissimilar from sand because sand sucks”)

—I mean, I’m not saying that Luke Skywalker: actual gay space autistic has a father who is also an actual space autistic? ……But, see, I’m totally saying that, and that I also believe the borderline!Anakin headcanon that I’ve seen around

a storyline that never should have been written: idk, I just want my space babies to be happy

my first thoughts on it: “…pew pew pew, i know it’s not the OT but it’s still fun can everybody like stop hating on it, wouldn’t it be more fun to LIKE things, i love star wars, pew pew”

my thoughts now: “pew pew pew, fuck everybody, the entire prequel trilogy deserves better than it got and fuck george lucas especially, but also fuck the jedi order what the fuck, that life isn’t healthy, fuck the haters i love the prequels, i love star wars, pew pew”

new trilogy, inasmuch as i can say with only one movie (since rogue one isn’t in the trilogy and i still haven’t seen it):

my all-time ultimate fave character: Finn or Poe or Rey, it depends on how I feel at any given moment

a character I didn’t used to like but now do: *shrugs*

a character I used to like but now don’t: Well, it’s not that I outright dislike KyBen, but I was so excited for him when the first trailer came out, with his lightsaber that looked so cool, and him being all, “*aggressively fanboys Darth Vader*” — and then we got the actual canon, and like? It’s impossible for me to completely hate him when he’s so fun to make fun of, and he loves his grandfather almost half as much as I do? But…… wow, have you ever met someone who is like a letdown in human form? Because I have and his name is Kylo Ren.

I will say, he is moderately less of a letdown in the novelization of the movie (though I haven’t gotten a copy of the YA novelization and there are apparently some major differences between that one and the “adult” novelization), but: 1. only moderately; and 2. he is even more over-the-top ridiculous and dramatic and kind of asinine in the book. Less of a letdown for various reasons, but still.

a character I’m indifferent about: Phasma, I guess. Like, I am certified lady villains garbage, but she doesn’t really DO anything? She has no discernible personality beyond being the token girl with KyBen and the Annoying Fascist Space Ginger, which could actually be a cool thing — I mean, Gwen Christie is a tall, white, blonde, and physically intimidating as fuck, and it would be super interesting to use Phasma as a Star Wars style reflection of the white women who get involved in the real world movements that inspired the First Order — but?? So far, all she’s done is be an abusive shit to Finn and get shoved in a trash compactor.

a character who deserved better: #Protect Finn Stormbreaker At All Costs.

a ship I’ve never been able to get into: Phasma/anybody — like, I know it’s usually misogynistic to say, “she has no personality” about a lady character…… but Phasma genuinely has no personality, so far, because she has done a grand total of bugger all in actual facts canon.

a ship I’ve never been able to get over: …I feel like it’s too early to say this because this trilogy isn’t even fully out there, yet? But solely in the sense of, “this is my favorite”… Finn/Poe/Rey, because it means that I don’t have to choose between Finn/Poe or Finn/Rey when both of them are so good.

a cute, low-key ship: I am literally only putting Rey/Rose and Rey/Jessika here because we know nothing about Rose yet, aside from how she works in maintenance with the Resistance and is adorable, and I love Rey/Jess, but it’s objective fact that Finn/Rey has more to work with, because Finn is a major character and Jess isn’t.

an unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it: eta: okay, I forgot to do this one, because all I could think of was, “idk I’ve read some Ky*lux fic that didn’t suck because I wanted one of my kinks satisfied and I wanted Star Wars and the only game in town was Ky*lux so I read it, and… eh, it didn’t suck?” — but Ky*lux is objectively not unpopular (it’s unwelcome among some fans and that’s their prerogative but the numbers don’t lie and they say that it’s not unpopular), so idk

Also, the nicest thing I could say is, “those fics didn’t suck” but in fairness that’s probably less a function of them being Ky*lux and more a function of how they’re for one of my kinks, and the writing that exists for said kink is largely pretty…… Not Good.

a ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened: I’m waiting for the reveal that Rey and Kylo are cousins or something, because I’m expecting it to happen, and then a lot of the people who ship it, “because Kylo is totally better than Finn because of reasons that have nothing to do with racism because the shippers said so” will jump ship and I will go, “I told you so, did you not pay attention to Luke and Leia or what.”

Note: I am specifically only talking about that particular kind of Rey*lo shipper, because in fairness, there are plenty of people who ship it in ways where they don’t actually want Rey and Kylo to be together, and in ways where they don’t bash Finn, and yes, it’s a pretty fucked up ship, but there are people who ship it in fucked up ways and tag all their shit responsibly, and I will have nothing to, “I told you so” about at them, in the event that Rey*lo gets jossed by them being blood relatives.

my favourite storyline/moment: the one where KyBen is all, “*ACCIO GRANDPA’S LIGHTSABER*” and Finn is all, “NOT TODAY JACKASS” and then Kylo tries it again and the lightsaber is all, “NO I LIKE REY BETTER” and the theme music swells and FUCK IT YESSSSS

a storyline that never should have been written: … *shrugs*? the trilogy is still being played out, we don’t have a lot to work with here yet

my first thoughts on it: “pew pew pew, i love star wars, i love the theories that kylo ren is actually jacen solo, zoom zoom fights in space and flying in space, whoosh whoosh shiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnng lightsaber noises, i love star wars, pew pew”

my thoughts now: “pew pew pew, i love star wars, lmao i am so glad that kylo ren is not jacen solo, jacen sweetie i am so sorry that i ever wanted that you deserve so much better, finn and rey and poe and rose and jess should all be happy and like adopt a puppy, also luke is gay now because fuck george lucas, i am so proud of my gay autistic space son and how he now wants the jedi to end because he has realized that the only way for the force to have balance is if there are NO jedi and NO sith, whoosh whoosh shhhhiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnng lightsaber noises

“like seriously how has it taken this long for this idea to make it to the main canon (since lbr most people don’t know jack about the EU or KOTOR or anything), i mean wow it is almost like the jedi and the sith are both totally fucked up beyond all hopes of salvaging either faction not least because having either faction in the first place makes humans more likely to fuck up everything with the force because people suck, WHOOSH WHOOSH SHIIIIINNNNNNNG MAKES SAID LIGHTSABER NOISES EVEN MORE LOUDLY TO PISS OFF GEORGE LUCAS AND HE CAN’T DO SHIT TO STOP ME BECAUSE HE DOESN’T OWN THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO THE UNIVERSE ANYMORE HA HA FUCKEDDY HA HA HA, #KreiaWasRight #TotallyVindicated, i can’t believe that rey and luke are going to be queer autistic space icons together #blessed

“i love star wars, pew pew pew”