Meme Goes Floating Around: I Follow After Like A Duckling.

[soteriophobe]

Said meme:

Give me a character and I'll tell you a piece of my personal headcanon.

So...yes! Yay! Please do? :D

On another note: very bad couple of weeks. In hospital on and off. Very sad. Feeling better now. Could just be the excessive amounts of Cinnamon Toast Crunch I had for breakfast (OMG SOMEONE IN AUSTRALIA SELLS IT!). But! Now about to start

Comments

[sholio]

Peter. ^_^

[soteriophobe]

Oooh, I am going to write a whole fic about this, and so…this is basically an outline of that fic, but

[soteriophobe]

His Dad could see that Peter was ridiculously intelligent and wanted the best for him, so he made Peter go for scholarship exams for all the fancy-pants private academies in Upstate New York (The Albany Academy and such), and Peter won said scholarships - so he went to a ridiculously upscale private school. He loved the curriculum but hated the atmosphere - he wasn't a popular kid. He was a huge nerd (he was on the mathletics team, I bet, which is why it was such a sore point when Neal brought it up) and he was there on scholarship, so none of the rich kids thought he belonged there and made fun of his blue-collar origins. Fortunately, he was also a jock - baseball, of course, as well as some other teams (never football, though) - and that earned him enough "cool points" that he wasn't openly bullied. He was just kind of a loner. This weighed on him heavily, and he felt very lonely - but he did manage to form bonds with some of the teachers. His math teacher, especially - the one he admitted to having a crush on - would often sit with

[sholio]

Oh, Peter! *petpetpet*

Some of this was already my own headcanon -- that he grew up blue-collar, that he was lonely in school because of his smarts and his background, and a little shy with girls. It totally rings true that his dad would have been, well, an older Peter, basically -- a guy who tried his damnedest to instill a strong sense of morality in his son, and didn't shy away from being affectionate and stern in equal measures. I get the impression, both from the way that Peter talks about his dad and the way he is with other people, that there's a strong parental bond in his background.

I would read the heck out of that story. :D

[soteriophobe]

I get the impression, both from the way that Peter talks about his dad and the way he is with other people, that there's a strong parental bond in his background.

Yes! That's why I put his Mom out of the picture, actually - not only does it make his shyness around girls make more sense (growing up with a Dad who was probably like "YOU MUST TREAT WOMEN WITH RESPECT, IT IS THE GENTLEMANLY THING TO DO" combined with a lack of actual women around tends to make men view women as like…these mysterious things that are all at once inviting and frightening, I think), but if his Dad was a single Dad, it makes sense that he and Peter were like…a team. All male-bondy and stuff. I like to think his Dad adores Elizabeth and is relieved that Peter didn't screw up his marriage, like he (his Dad) did. :D

But yay for headcanon! And awww, thank you! I was going to have it be my Big Bang story (when Paranoid!Peter never panned out bb-wise), but life got in the way. :\

[sholio]

*nods* I can see it working out that way if he had both parents at home, too -- I know a few guys from a similar background to Peter's (blue-collar, working-class, rural) who grew up with very separate "mom" and "dad" spheres of the household, where moms did mom things and dads did dad things. So I can also see Peter ending up similarly if he'd had a very momly sort of mom who was always baking cookies and such, and Peter spent a lot of time trying not to track mud on the carpet.

But I adore the idea of Peter and his dad having been a closely-bonded, all-testosterone-all-the-time family unit, and Peter growing up with very firm ideas from his dad of how a proper man is supposed to act around girls ... then having to learn to interact with actual girls in the wild. XD

[soteriophobe]

Huh, that is true!! And also very possible. Also, I think his mother may be canonically alive (he has her on his speeddial), so…I could be extremely off-course. A lot of this, too, I feel like I'm flying a bit blind - because the blue collar cultures of America vs Australia are a bit different (a lot more disrespect for/ambivalence toward women in Australian blue collar culture, and less distinction between genders, I think?). But it's all good - headcanon fun

[pipilj]

Adored this story. Loved the way u bought Peter's strong bond with his dad, while explaining his awkwardness around women. The reasons for joining for joining the FBI and may be his affenity to Neal's cons he found it ridiculously thrilling and cool and felt this sweeping sense of liberation.