yes, i am well aware this is, like, a year out of date. but.

[bedlamsbard]

So until the PTB broke the news that Louie was Danny's big brother, I was actually quite enamoured of the idea that it was the other way around: Danny was the elder, Louie was the younger. Because it would work. Now, I'm an only child, so I'm obviously no expert, but Danny has always pinged as "older brother" on my radar. The mature one. Not necessarily in the Lab of Dysfunction, but...I don't know how to explain it. He does not read as a younger brother, at least the way I look at it. He reads as the one that always had to bail his baby brother out, the one who practically had to raise his kid brother, the one who had no childhood, basically. I can see him as a younger brother, if I quirk my head and squint and look just so, but most of the time, he reads as older. Even when I wrote identical twins Danny and Louie (which the show so should have done), I was still looking at Danny as the older one -- and Louie as the favorite. We basically have no canon evidence for this at all, even in -- oh, god, what was that ep, the Tanglewood follow-up. Run Still, Run Deep -- I have no canon evidence at all, except that, uh, Louie actually is the older brother. But it would work much better if he wasn't!

Danny's an older brother. Flack's a younger brother. Lindsay's a younger sister of a family consisting all of boys, or, alternately, the last chance to have a boy out of a lot of girls, but my money's on the first. Mac's an only child. Hawkes is an only child. Stella -- I can see her as older, younger, or only, but I can actually see her making a pretty decent younger sister, even though I wrote her with a younger sister in the Bardverse. Aiden is a middle child of a large family, angled a little more toward the top of the food chain. Hammerback's a younger brother of several sisters (Can't you just see him? "Check this out! This is so cool!" "Oh my God, Sid, that's disgusting, you're disgusting, get away from me!").

Thoughts?

Comments

[mentalhygiene.livejournal.com]

Danny, if older or younger, seems to ping to me as... well given what we've seen of him, always-in-competition. Like, perpetually uncertain of his status to him and his siblings (he definitely has siblings and probably a boatload of misc. cousins) and to their parents, so, always in conflict and role-shifting (protector often, but when he needs to save his ass, forget it.)

I think Flack is the youngest, probably of a family of girls. Father trying to get a boy. If not that then he's the oldest son, but not the oldest child.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

If Danny was an older brother (damn you, canon!), my guess is that he's not much older -- or, alternately, enough older that he looked on the coming of Louie as a major encroachment. Very competitive, but also the protector of the family -- however, not of himself. He's spent so long taking care of other people that he doesn't know how to take care of himself. The PTB should have done this, damn it.

I can see Flack having an older sister -- probably not more than one. Mostly I picture him having an older brother -- said older brother being the perfect one, and Flack being the rebellious one. (I really, really want to write the story where Flack is revealed as almost being a concert musician until, alas, Papa Flack pulled him back to New York, but maybe after NaNo)