>> It's interesting to see the way you portray Bruce as an adult and Bruce as a four-year-old. <<
Part of that may be because I got adult!Bruce primarily from The Avengers but borrowed significant amounts of little!Bruce from Hulk.
>> As an adult, the major symptom of his crappy childhood- the 'is-everybody-else-calm-and-safe-to-be-around' fawning behavior and the tight, 'disappearing' body language could have come more from his problems with Ross and the Hulk, It could have come from being treated like a lab specimen by the vast majority of authority figures he's run into since the accident, and it is most likely certainly a combination of the things I've listed. <<
Yes, it's a combination. Bruce is very resigned and withdrawn. He's had long enough to incorporate the idea that people take advantage of him and nothing he can do really makes a difference.
>> But Bruce's four-year-old body language is very different. Game nights let us see into what Bruce thought of himself at age four, and in a lot of ways there's a MOUNTAIN of more damage there. <<
Yes, there is a lot more damage. It's also more feeling than thought. Adult!Bruce lives in his head. Little!Bruce is more in touch with his emotions, but doesn't know how to express them, so it takes a while for any of that to come out. He started repressing very early, as some abused children do. Also Hulk is much closer to the surface -- but as we've seen, not inclined to pop out, because game night is where Bruce starts expressing emotions himself.
Uncle Phil sets this up right at the beginning by asserting that Bruce and Natka are allowed to feel -- and show -- their wariness of each other. Once they're allowed to work through it in a safe environment, it starts to lose its grip on them.
>> Clearly, Betty has already had a positive effect on him, in ways he doesn't yet recognize. <<
Absolutely. There are hints of this in the next Hulk story, which shows JARVIS handling the early scene when Bruce hurts himself and Hulks out in the tower. Hulk keeps thinking of Betty.
>> The canon from the Hulk movie is that Bruce went into foster care sometime WHEN he was four. <<
For some reason I've got it in my head that Bruce's mother was killed when he was a toddler, so that's the way I've been writing this. Given his pernicious idea that family is bad, he may have bummed around with relatives before winding up in care.
>> Why did Bruce choose that age? Why not three, or five? Not merely to match Tony, though that was his spoken reason. <<
Left to his own devices, I think he would be two or three. He has shifted that young before. It's Tony who pulls him older. They don't like it when Bruce is older than Tony; they found that out the hard way. But Bruce yearns to be close to him. I think Bruce shifts around the most because of his erratic personality, but also because he can't feel himself very clearly. That makes it hard to know what to do without trial and error.
>> Maybe, because it gave him a chance to explore how the situation with his foster family could have developed. <<
That's possible.
>> Phil is working out some of the details everyone else in his life has overlooked, for decades. <<
Yes, that's true. Phil is one deep reader.
>> Bruce is finally putting a direct but tentative weight on the bond forming between himself and Uncle Phil, testing to see what happens. <<
Sooth. Bruce has a compulsion about testing people and situations, much as Tony does. Fortunately Uncle Phil can take the weight.
>> By breaking the chapter where you did, there's only a slight feeling of suspense; Phil has already done the hardest work to identify Bruce's needs, and the only question is in the details of how things will play out in private. <<
Likely so. The scene breaks are primarily set by wordcount; there are only a few that I set in advance.
>> I fully expect Bruce to have a sudden bout of bewildered tears, and his usual response of trying to stuff everything down-- Phil's going to have to tread gently in acknowledging the emotions as genuine and valid but NOT push Bruce into talking about it. <<
Sadly, Bruce isn't that far along yet. He is in no way ready to deal with strong feelings, so they only creep out in quiet ways.
>> Because that-- a truly safe adult who didn't heap expectations on Bruce due to /x/-- is one of the things he didn't get, even after escaping his family life into foster care. (If he had, he would be much closer in mannerisms to the mainstream of 'shy geek'.) <<
There is some delicate handling of that in the final scene, with Phil supporting Bruce's very tentative explorations of other people.
In foster care, as in dysfunctional families, there is a strong trend for the quiet children to get overlooked. There's just too much else demanding attention to stop and worry about anything that doesn't. So it's a very effective strategy for Bruce, who wants to be ignored. Unfortunately it means that none of his emotional injuries got treated, and now everything has grown together all wrong.
Which, yeah, now that I think about it is the exact emotional equivalent of all those times when Steve got hit by a tank and was so healed up by the time they got back to camp that everything had to be rebroken before it could be fixed right. No wonder Bruce is dragging his feet, later in the storyline, about not wanting to repair his relationship with Hulk and not wanting to give up the bad tape. I think if Steve and Bucky make the connection with untreated injuries healing wrong, they'll understand Bruce-and-Hulk a lot better.
It's interesting, I think Bruce is the kind to pick off a band-aid very slowly, while Hulk is the rip-it-quick kind. It shows in how they relate to the team. Bruce is extremely hesitant. Hulk is volatile and easily upset, but he also adapts fast to new situations and therefore goes through the initial unpleasant stages sooner.
Re: Phil is Awesome Again!
Part of that may be because I got adult!Bruce primarily from The Avengers but borrowed significant amounts of little!Bruce from Hulk.
>> As an adult, the major symptom of his crappy childhood- the 'is-everybody-else-calm-and-safe-to-be-around' fawning behavior and the tight, 'disappearing' body language could have come more from his problems with Ross and the Hulk, It could have come from being treated like a lab specimen by the vast majority of authority figures he's run into since the accident, and it is most likely certainly a combination of the things I've listed. <<
Yes, it's a combination. Bruce is very resigned and withdrawn. He's had long enough to incorporate the idea that people take advantage of him and nothing he can do really makes a difference.
>> But Bruce's four-year-old body language is very different. Game nights let us see into what Bruce thought of himself at age four, and in a lot of ways there's a MOUNTAIN of more damage there. <<
Yes, there is a lot more damage. It's also more feeling than thought. Adult!Bruce lives in his head. Little!Bruce is more in touch with his emotions, but doesn't know how to express them, so it takes a while for any of that to come out. He started repressing very early, as some abused children do. Also Hulk is much closer to the surface -- but as we've seen, not inclined to pop out, because game night is where Bruce starts expressing emotions himself.
Uncle Phil sets this up right at the beginning by asserting that Bruce and Natka are allowed to feel -- and show -- their wariness of each other. Once they're allowed to work through it in a safe environment, it starts to lose its grip on them.
>> Clearly, Betty has already had a positive effect on him, in ways he doesn't yet recognize. <<
Absolutely. There are hints of this in the next Hulk story, which shows JARVIS handling the early scene when Bruce hurts himself and Hulks out in the tower. Hulk keeps thinking of Betty.
>> The canon from the Hulk movie is that Bruce went into foster care sometime WHEN he was four. <<
For some reason I've got it in my head that Bruce's mother was killed when he was a toddler, so that's the way I've been writing this. Given his pernicious idea that family is bad, he may have bummed around with relatives before winding up in care.
>> Why did Bruce choose that age? Why not three, or five? Not merely to match Tony, though that was his spoken reason. <<
Left to his own devices, I think he would be two or three. He has shifted that young before. It's Tony who pulls him older. They don't like it when Bruce is older than Tony; they found that out the hard way. But Bruce yearns to be close to him. I think Bruce shifts around the most because of his erratic personality, but also because he can't feel himself very clearly. That makes it hard to know what to do without trial and error.
>> Maybe, because it gave him a chance to explore how the situation with his foster family could have developed. <<
That's possible.
>> Phil is working out some of the details everyone else in his life has overlooked, for decades. <<
Yes, that's true. Phil is one deep reader.
>> Bruce is finally putting a direct but tentative weight on the bond forming between himself and Uncle Phil, testing to see what happens. <<
Sooth. Bruce has a compulsion about testing people and situations, much as Tony does. Fortunately Uncle Phil can take the weight.
>> By breaking the chapter where you did, there's only a slight feeling of suspense; Phil has already done the hardest work to identify Bruce's needs, and the only question is in the details of how things will play out in private. <<
Likely so. The scene breaks are primarily set by wordcount; there are only a few that I set in advance.
>> I fully expect Bruce to have a sudden bout of bewildered tears, and his usual response of trying to stuff everything down-- Phil's going to have to tread gently in acknowledging the emotions as genuine and valid but NOT push Bruce into talking about it. <<
Sadly, Bruce isn't that far along yet. He is in no way ready to deal with strong feelings, so they only creep out in quiet ways.
>> Because that-- a truly safe adult who didn't heap expectations on Bruce due to /x/-- is one of the things he didn't get, even after escaping his family life into foster care. (If he had, he would be much closer in mannerisms to the mainstream of 'shy geek'.) <<
There is some delicate handling of that in the final scene, with Phil supporting Bruce's very tentative explorations of other people.
In foster care, as in dysfunctional families, there is a strong trend for the quiet children to get overlooked. There's just too much else demanding attention to stop and worry about anything that doesn't. So it's a very effective strategy for Bruce, who wants to be ignored. Unfortunately it means that none of his emotional injuries got treated, and now everything has grown together all wrong.
Which, yeah, now that I think about it is the exact emotional equivalent of all those times when Steve got hit by a tank and was so healed up by the time they got back to camp that everything had to be rebroken before it could be fixed right. No wonder Bruce is dragging his feet, later in the storyline, about not wanting to repair his relationship with Hulk and not wanting to give up the bad tape. I think if Steve and Bucky make the connection with untreated injuries healing wrong, they'll understand Bruce-and-Hulk a lot better.
It's interesting, I think Bruce is the kind to pick off a band-aid very slowly, while Hulk is the rip-it-quick kind. It shows in how they relate to the team. Bruce is extremely hesitant. Hulk is volatile and easily upset, but he also adapts fast to new situations and therefore goes through the initial unpleasant stages sooner.