Avelera

A few headcanons about what was going on with Newt’s parents during the Uprising years (that I’m writing out for organizing my thoughts for fic purposes):

– First of all, I personally headcanon Jacob and “Uncle” Illia Geiszler as a married gay couple rather than as brothers. I see Monica Schwartz as Newt’s biological mother but who is either 1) a good friend of theirs who agreed to be their surrogate 2) a woman Jacob had a fling with before he married Illia. Either way, Newt’s parents are Jacob and Illia and Monica is his “mother” but not really part of his life (and part of his joke about “Only my mother calls me Newt” is for Hermann’s benefit because Hermann knows he has two dads). I know this contradicts canon and all, but honestly, born-in-the-1990s Newt probably WOULD refer to his second dad as “uncle” to avoid trouble with bullying and whatnot in those days and it just fits his personality, I think, with being comfortable with himself and his sexuality and going to protests and stuff like what we saw the Drift that he would have that social awareness from a young age. 

– I know the canon also says that Newt is from Berlin but like… Charlie Day just isn’t portraying that. At all. So I’m totally willing to keep that Jacob and Illia are from Berlin but to my eyes, Newt either born in Boston or moved there so young that he has no other cultural identity. The man oozes New England in his mannerisms.

– So onto Uprising, while I do think it’s possible to keep Hermann and the PPDC at arm’s length I do disagree with the idea he cut off contact entirely, even with Hermann. I think he definitely isolated himself, and contact was sparse, but I don’t think it ever got so sparse that suspicion could be raised enough to prompt an intervention. 

– But the thing is, Newt was clearly a workaholic all his life. If we keep the ridiculous “6 PhD” thing or even if we don’t, the guy’s enormously accomplished by a young age at 35. I know people see Newt as messy and alternative but he is not lazy or a slacker, he simply couldn’t be with his background or what we see on screen. He is intellectually and just action-wise extremely high energy and proactive. Tragically, this leads me to believe his years at Shao wouldn’t necessarily raise any alarm bells with his family.

– Whether you see Jacob and Illia as living in Berlin or Boston, Newt’s move from Hong Kong to Shanghai wouldn’t impact them much travel-wise since they’re only a two hour flight apart but at least a 15 hour flight from both those locations. Aside: I tend to headcanon the latter, basically my fictional biography of Boston Newt is that he got extremely lucky at a young age at a time where over medication of kids with ADHD was extremely common, and instead of getting drugged to the gills he had loving, artistic/engineering dads who saw his potential and got him enrolled at an MIT kids program that quickly morphed into going straight into MIT at a crazy young age and effectively channeling all his overabundance of energy and intellect Matilda-style into a place that could actually handle him. Most kids are not so lucky and this only worked out because they were living down the street from MIT.

– So basically, you have a situation where Newt has been living away from home at least since he joined the Hong Kong Shatterdome, which is 5 years, but he was bouncing around to Shatterdomes before that. His dads are probably used to not seeing him except over video calls (when even THAT is possible given Kaiju disruption of communication lines) or a few times a year during good years in person. So him going to work for a high-powered job in Shanghai with a company that demands a lot of his time wouldn’t really change things very much. 

– The one thing that might raise eyebrows is that he’s working for a weapons manufacturer at all, but that’s only if you headcanon (like I do) that Newt was protesting the military industrial complex with his dads ever since he could walk. But again, a lot changes with the Kaiju, and even more changes for people like Newt especially when the Kaiju go away. Him making a dramatic switch in field might be odd, but who knows how losing the focus of his life’s work with the closing of the Breach would impact him? And he was working for the PPDC, a military organization, so him going to work for a weapons manufacturer isn’t really that out of the blue given the way private and public sector tend to pass people back and forth.

– While I think the Precursors would work to keep Hermann away, I think Newt would be able to convince them that he needs to keep at least light contact with his dads or they’re going to worry and maybe try to intervene. But again, we’re talking the occasional video call and a few in-person days of meetings (at most) maybe once a year. Either with Newt flying out for a “whirlwind” stopover in Boston/Berlin, maybe for just a few hours during a business trip because he’s “in the area” and he’s gotta rush out of there, or with them coming to Shanghai to visit and him being “tragically” busy with work so he can only grab a quick dinner with them. Again, sad, but probably not all that different from his Shatterdome schedule.

– The more gut-wrenching thing I can think of is: Newt’s making seven figures. He’s firmly upper class now, and with Jacob and Illia being a musician and an electronics engineer, they’re probably middle class but hardly wealthy. That means it would make sense for Newt to support them financially. And you know what supporting someone financially helps you buy? Control. Wielding status as a financial benefactor could mean he puts his dads in a position where they can’t really ask questions or make demands on his time without feeling guilty, and he can hold that over them, something I can 1) see Precursor Newt doing because he’s a douchebag 2) see as serving the Precursors’ plan for Newt very well. 

And frankly, his dads would be getting older at this point. Probably not traveling as much, not able to come out to Shanghai as easily if he doesn’t come out to where they are, and probably living on retirement and savings. Their senses may not be as sharp and therefore able to pick up the micro-expressions of distress Newt puts out. And Newt has probably always been pretty self-sufficient from a young age given when he got his degrees, so besides a certain coldness and level of distraction, there’s nothing you can really pin his odd behavior on except that, well, he’s working as a corporate douchebag now and that environment changes a person. But he’s making good money and he’s not in trouble or anything, so you can’t really intervene, can you? At least there will probably be the wedding at some point when he finally gets hitched with this Alice girl he can’t stop talking about, right?