#his in-the-moment spurs of villainy where he gets caught up in just how perfect is plan was. rewires my brain.

[fujii-draws]

Ultimatum

[jxckspxcer]

What are your headcanons for jacks parents? Are they good to him?

JACKS PARENTS HEADCANONS ™

Laura Spicer Née Dubois (fc: catherine o'hara) & Jian li Spicer (fc: leslie chung) are busy, IMPORTANT people. The Spicer family has a tenuous grip on power in China, their family not quite fitting the perfect mold that garners one praise, so it takes hard work to keep in the favors of their allies and to make themselves desirable business partners. Jack certainly has had no shortage of examples of kissing ass and being duplicitous from his parents, though his mother claims it to never be more than business, Jian li’s time spent away from home is always, questionable at best. 

Though that isn’t to say they are not impressive on their own merits, the genius of the Spicer family seen clearly in Jian li, who used to contribute many inventions of his own, but admittedly he has become more caught in the social aspects of his work over time, taking more often the ideas of others to bring them to light where their skills may not allow them to. Laura is a natural socialite, with a large family back in France who have long since groomed her to be perfect. She’s poised, she’s graceful, multi-talented, she can talk business, politics, knows how to read a room. Jack takes a bit more after his father (as much as he tries to emulate his mother), who can come off a bit excitable when he speaks of a topic he is passionate about, rather than subtle and wise. 

Jacks parents…. believe, that they are good to him. Or at least Laura does. She is doing exactly as her parents would have done for her, and is even more lenient at that ! She tries to cultivate Jacks skills, move him away from singular hobbies. She tries to show interest in his passions (at the same time, precisely manipulating what she praises and what she disapproves of), but also push him towards the family business, which she believes would be the best for his future. Laura wants to mold her son just as her parents molded her, but she also recognizes he’s a ‘sensitive boy’, so tries to let him have fun, as long as he’s showing to be responsible and not actively destructive to their livelihood. She often loses her patience when he gets hurt, or damages the family reputation. Laura is a busy woman, and is not always home, much like her husband. She too has business to carry out, as Co-chair, hosting banquets and making good with the families of their allies. But when she is home, she would once cook for her son, to show her affection, which Jack is always starved for. But since Jack has reached his late teens, she more often calls ahead telling him to make something for himself, and the role ends reversed, her coming home to food on the table, while Jack holes himself in the basement, hoping for some sort of approval. He has a hard time deciding whether he despises or idolizes his mother. 

Jian li, worries he may not be doing the best by his son. Mr. Spicer feels a bit of a rift between the two of them, and has for a long time. He’s not home often and never has been. As chairman he is often traveling for business and spending much time in his Hong Kong office, rarely getting to do more than call his family. He used to send letters to Jack, thinking that it would mean more to have something physical, along with gifts he obtains while traveling, but Jack just felt frustrated with them. Buying his love, making him read when it gives him a headache, just not being home. Jian li is also, much in line with Jacks Grandmother, cognizant of the wealth of opportunity available in underground connections, though not quite in a way she would have ever approved of (a staunch social-anarchist). Spicer Innovations has always been a wonderful place for the military to request weaponry and political rivals to obtain the equipment to spy on each other. So if anyone saw the worth in Jacks inventions, it would be him. He just wished they could… make ends meet.

Both parents have never had the most time for Jack, and both had narrow views of what parenting was to be like. 

Jian li feels uncertain, for while he never knew his father, his mother had always been there for him. He hoped, that Laura would be there for Jack, but he knows too that she is a busy woman. He believes Jack is an independent boy, because that is what he says he wants, to be left to his own devices, to not be told what to do. Jack is… nothing like what he expected from a son, from the very beginning, and when he was younger, when he came to visit it was easier to interact with him. But as Jack got older, he got… stranger, edgier, more fanatical, and while Jian li finds it easy to love whatever Jack is interested in at the time, because it makes him happy, it doesn’t mean he understands, or feel any more understood in return, as Jack still tends to be rather single-minded in his interests. Laura too, molds how he sees his son. She claims his interests to be a problem, something to be pushed away from, citing his numerous social issues and troubles with school and the law, often leading Jian li too, to disapprove at times. It causes a bit of a schism between them, as Jack craves both his fathers attention and time, while growing more and more frustrated as he sounds like his Mother, always disapproving, always wanting something More. 

Laura was, of course, groomed among her sisters, to either carve her own path or marry rich. Fitting in with the social hierarchies is ingrained in her deepest values. Nothing is more important, than being important. Self-image is entirely built around the perceptions of others, your very being a costume to be dressed up for the occasion, depending on what will gain you the most favor (which is why she finds Jacks gothisms so much more amusing than annoying, as they seem so absurdly opposed to what she had been raised to know, but she thinks she understands the mask he wants to wear: leave me alone, but look at me. She knows he’s had a difficult time with self image, being born how he was and asks only he be presentable in public). Along with her sisters, she was used to being pushed into a variety of lessons, trained with a strict ruler to the hand, used to having to earn affection except for the spur of the moment shows of love that came from a parent in a good mood. She in turn, enacts thus upon Jack. 

But of course, he is her only child. She wouldn’t say she loves him more deeply than her parents loved her among her siblings, but she is rather doting compared to her parents. Pushy, Jack would call it. 

She was around more when he was younger, it was only normal for her to keep close in his first few years of life, to accompany him to all his first lessons, to show up to all his competitions. But as he got older, and socializing seemed only to lead to hurt, he began to detach from people. She tried to encourage him back, but he seemed to believe she was brainwashed. Stopped going to a proper school, kept getting kicked out of extracurricular classes, began to dress in all manner of darkness. So she began to distance as well, once being the sort to check in on him every night, she found basement doors locked and bedrooms never visited. He’d come back around, she was sure! Nobody could be like this forever. 

It’s… complicated. They believe in their best intentions, but they’re neglectful and in Lauras case, manipulative. They love their son, but feel at odds with him. And as he delves into villainy, as his machines get more dangerous and they are often left in the dark, they– well, Laura, get more and more uncertain about his future. 

(which of course, leads to a completely isolated and discontent Jack post XS getting kicked out for being virulently aggressive and manic about the memories he succumb to through the paradox. Laura doesn’t cut him off completely, but she believes it’s for the best that if he wants so badly to be on his own, that he learns to live on his own).