6

[soldierly]

THIS ROUND IS NOW CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS.
ROUND SEVEN WILL OPEN ON FRIDAY THE 15TH.
The first Golden Oldies post will be up later tonight!
ROUND SIX
closing at 5000 comments
Please read the [rules] before commenting!
ASK-A-MOD

PSA 1: Please DO NOT change subject lines when you're commenting back on prompts. You can add your tag (OP, RTYI, etc.) in

Comments

Gen or Any/Any Bad Childhoods

[anonymous]

So, a conversation among friends made me realise that the Avengers are, at the least, 4 for 6 for really shitty abusive childhoods:

- Bruce Banner: Dad an abusive alcoholic who beat him and his mum (eventually, IIRC, killing his mum)
- Clint Barton: Dad an abusive alcoholic until he killed both himself and Clint's mother in a car accident, then orphanage and then some allegedly abusive relationships with his mentors in the circus (well Swordmaster did put him in hospital at one point).
- Natasha Romanoff: Trained as a KGB assassin from a ridiculously young age
- Tony Stark: Alcoholic and potentially emotionally abusive father (less cannon evidence of physical abuse).

As far as I am aware, Steve Rogers had a normal family but was probably bullied heavily at school.

Thor is pretty much the only one to have a happy (although not by human standards normal) childhood.

So, I'm interested in something that explores this, preferably

Re: Gen or Any/Any Bad Childhoods

[anonymous]

Doh - posted before I finished.

Interested in a fic that explores this, preferably from the perspective of either Steve (who strikes me as someone that assumes that even if things are tough, most family's basically love each other and probably never occured to him that his team-mates had such shitty parents) or Thor (to whom the idea of anyone doing that to a child is probably alien).

Preference towards Gen but if pairings happy with any except Clint/Natasha (who in my mind work better as BFF)

Re: Gen or Any/Any Bad Childhoods

[anonymous]

Steve wasn't only bullied regularly, but IIRC he was raised by a single mother. His father died before he could know him. He also was very sickly, and this was during the Depression so medical bills were obviously problematic.

Steve DID, however, have a very loving mother, but I think on balance it would be fair to count his childhood as "bad" (or at least "suboptimal") in at least several important respects.

And Thor, well, Odin was a very distant and demanding and harsh father. Loki may have had it worse (and this would've impacted on Thor too, since Thor loved his brother), but I wouldn't say Thor had a good childhood either. After all, remember that in the Thor film, he needs to prove himself worthy of Daddy's Love... someone Thor's age wishing to please his father seems indicative of Odin being a pretty awful parent at least.

In short, they all had crappy childhoods!

FILL part 1

[ingvild]

Thor has never doubted that his parents love him

FILL part 2

[ingvild]

“Look, it’s nice that you knew old Howard and everything, Spangles, but I’m afraid I haven’t got any happy memories of him to share with you. Why don’t you just swallow the disappointment and go polish your shield or something

FILL part 3

[ingvild]

“He’s right,” Stark says, sauntering over to his brother in the quest for knowledge. “I mean, his dad? Drunk and abusive. My dad? Alcoholic, cause he was rich, and emotionally unavailable. Merida’s dad? Drunk and abu…” He gets no chance to finish the sentence before Barton’s shoe hits him in the face. The fact that Barton and Romanova had been in the room had gone unnoticed by all others

FILL part 4

[ingvild]

They all turn to stare at him. Finally, Stark groans

FILL part Author's Note

[ingvild]

A/N: This fic was from Thor’s perspective, so I tried to emulate his speech patterns in narration as well. He calls everyone by their last name because that's what he hears most often, except Pepper, who asked him to call her by that name.

Romanoff/Romanova: In Russian naming conventions, Romanoff is masculine (yeah, I spelled it wrong in the fic) and Romanova is feminine. I imagine that Natasha simplified hers when she came to America. However, since this is from Thor’s perspective and he doesn’t actually speak English but Alltongue, I decided that he would go with the correct rendering of her name.

It got a bit Thor-heavy, I’m afraid. Sorry about that.

Re: FILL part 4

[maevebran]

Aww. Now I want to see Frigga coming down to mother the Avengers. It was a great fill.=)

Re: FILL part 4

[zodiacsnake]

I second the so hard!!!!!

Re: FILL part 4

[longbca]

Excellent

Re: FILL part 4

[anonymous]

This is fantastic!

Re: FILL part 4

[anonymous]

If the qualifications for being an Avenger are a shitty childhood and superpowers, I'd totally have one foot in the door.

Anyway, awesome characterization. Had me laughing out loud in parts, which is always good.