what is it about Peter Parker being somebody else's kid?

[edenfalling]

Random question that is obviously unrelated to anything, really, I swear:

Can anyone explain to me the appeal of stories in which Peter Parker is the biological son of and/or raised by people other than his canon family?

Like, I absolutely get the appeal of people mentoring Peter. That lands squarely in the found-family trope, which is one of my personal favorites. And I can see the appeal of giving a loving family to characters whose backstories involve unhappy stints in foster care (Matt Murdock gets adopted, Scott Summers gets adopted, etcetera). But while Peter is an orphan, he already has a loving (and reasonably healthy) family. Ben is vital to his origin story, and May is awesome. So why do so many people want to give Peter a different background that there is an entire subgenre ('superfamily,' I think?) wherein he is the biological and/or adopted child of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, to say nothing of stories that attach him to a variety of other characters/ships?

I would really love to hear the perspective of someone who is into this trope, because it makes no sense to me on either a plot or emotional level, and I would like to at least get an intellectual understanding of its appeal.

Please help?

Comments

[branchandroot]

I do not get this either, viscerally or narratively, but my /guess/ is that this is a case of Kidfic trope plus OTP completely overriding Peter's own story. Peter, in these cases, functions mostly as a handily canonical teen without any mentorship/parent-figure for his super-life. And never mind that this tension between his super-life and family life is a core part of his character, in these particular stories Peter's own story arc is hijacked to give $pairing a child a la mpreg tropes without actually invoking mpreg. The commonality of super-powers is the lever for accomplishing this, and the only part of Peter's story that is carried through. So, my guess is that, emotionally, this is all about the pairing and a lust to do pairing-related family-fic under the shield of a canon character, not about Peter at all except insofar as he's present in the continuity.

[edenfalling]

*ponders* Yeah, I can see that. That would explain why so many of those stories start with Peter as a toddler or elementary-school-age kid (which is an aspect I have found especially baffling!) -- he gets de-aged to better fit the kid!fic trope, regardless of the havoc that plays with his own archetype. And I don't think I've ever seen one of those stories that wasn't also strongly shipfic, whereas the somebody-mentors-Peter stories are often purely gen or keep any ships relatively backgrounded, so the OTP aspect also makes sense.

I think the commonality that's kept depends largely on the pairing Peter gets attached to. So with Steve/Tony fics, it can either be Peter's powers (if the attachment is initially to Steve) or Peter's scientific bent (if the attachment is initially to Tony). With other ships, it can get more nebulous until with some the only connection is 'canonically both from NYC'... but Peter IS still a canon character (for whatever values of canon are left after this trope has its way with him) and therefore a shield against the accusations often flung at OC children of canon characters.

[musesfool]

Ugh, I hate it so much, not just because Peter already has a family who are important to his backstory and his characterization, but also because the term superfamily should be reserved for the ACTUAL SUPERFAMILY OF SUPER PEOPLE FROM KRYPTON AND ASSOCIATES. Ahem.

Anyway, there's a line in one of the comics at some point where Peter - as a full grown adult - cracks a joke about "mom and dad fighting again" in regard to Steve and Tony, and that's part of where it comes from, too. It makes the Peter Parker tag on Ao3 totally unnavigable, or at least it used to when I checked it pretty regularly.

[edenfalling]

The amount of filters I have had to use to get rid of superfamily stuff when searching for other Spider-Man stories is ridiculous... and some of it still slips through because people are not consistent about tagging. *headdesk* And you are totally right that that term should belong to Superman et al, which makes its misapplication even more annoying.

I suspect you're also right that that line is the origin of the trope, and the reason why Peter the generic all-purpose Marvel kid gets attached to Steve/Tony more than to any other couple. But I have seen him attached to a bunch of other ships (some of them seriously random, like, the ship itself is a niche crack!ship and then 'also they are raising bb!Peter Parker' gets tacked on for extra weirdness) so I think the trope has, bafflingly, taken on a life of its own.

[sabriel]

I don't get it either and it's not something I enjoy since it's very often just written very badly.

[edenfalling]

To be fair, significant percentages of ANY trope are written very badly. It's just easier to forgive iffy writing when the trope in question happens to resonate with one's own id. *wry*

I have been getting some interesting responses over on Tumblr, and I think I'm starting to get a picture of what people find appealing about the trope, which is also helping me clarify why I don't find it appealing.

[sabriel]

:p So then I skipped over to your tumblr and skimmed over the responses to your ask and I'm with you in that I too, grew up with the 90s cartoon version of Spiderman where Peter is more or less an independent adult already. Last movie version I watched of Spiderman was the one with Tobey McGuire and he too, was also an adult. High school!Spiderman was never really my thing so I skipped AMSM.