So! Peter's bio dad was Richard Parker, but he and Peter's mom pissed off the Red Skull and died in a plane crash when Peter was itty-bitty, so he went to live with Richard's older brother Ben and his wife May. Though he refers to them as Uncle Ben and Aunt May they are his parents in all but name. (And also his grandparents, sort of, because Ben was much older than Richard and raised him after their own parents died. But nevermind that.)
We've only really seen Ben in flashbacks and the occasional jaunt into an AU, but between those and Peter's reverential attitudes it's clear that he was a storybook perfect dad, the Captain America of fathers if you will. (Or perhaps Steve is the Uncle Ben of superheroes -- certainly Peter sees him as representing the same kind of values as Ben, though he does not see Steve in any kind of fatherly light.) He was affectionate and supportive -- although he did gently push at bb!Peter to get away from books and try getting some sunlight once in a while, he was encouraging of his love for science and enthusiastic about his youthful accomplishments. He was kind of a goofball (well, Peter had to get it from somewhere) but placed a very high value on integrity and thoughtfulness. He could throw down when he needed to but considered violence a last resort after negotiation. Basically, Peter worshipped the ground he walked on and had good reason to.
And then when Peter was fifteen, and a newly minted superguy, Uncle Ben was murdered by a burglar whom Spider-Man was too lazy to apprehend. Thus due to his own actions (or so he believes) Peter was deprived of a father figure just as he was hitting that cusp between childhood and adulthood. So it's absolutely no surprise that Peter's left not just with the punishing sense of personal responsibility, the crushing guilt issues and the deeply buried explosive rage, but one "humdinger of a father complex," as another character refers to it in one of the novels.
Though he will never admit it and probably isn't consciously aware of it most of the time, there's nothing Peter craves more (or believes he deserves less) than the approval and absolution of his father. This has led him to make some really terrible decisions, of which the most prominent have been cutting Norman Osborn slack for Harry's sake, which ultimately contributed to the death of Gwen Stacy, and more recently throwing in with Tony Stark during Civil War, which nearly got Aunt May killed and destroyed his relationship with MJ. Meanwhile, Peter's side of the Spidey-Jameson dynamic makes a lot more sense if you consider it as a masochistic cycle in which Peter repeatedly puts himself on the line for the one guy who will never, ever give him any kind of validation.
And then there's all the comparably small potatoes stuff, like his laxness towards elderly gentleman thief Black Fox, his college mentor Miles Warren becoming the Jackal, etc etc.
It's not all bad, though! There are two older gents who've had a uniformly positive effect on Peter's life, namely:
- Robbie Robertson, who he dearly respects but holds at arms' length emotionally; - Captain George Stacy, by far the closest thing Peter's had to a father since Ben died, who mentored Peter as both a hero and a young man and who ... tragically died ... in a skirmish between Spidey and Doc Ock ... because Ock's tentacles knocked over some rubble which fell and crushed him ... which they did because they malfunctioned ... which happened because Spidey altered his webbing formula.
Okay, it's pretty bad. But hey, keep him away from dudes over 40 and he functions pretty normally!
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We've only really seen Ben in flashbacks and the occasional jaunt into an AU, but between those and Peter's reverential attitudes it's clear that he was a storybook perfect dad, the Captain America of fathers if you will. (Or perhaps Steve is the Uncle Ben of superheroes -- certainly Peter sees him as representing the same kind of values as Ben, though he does not see Steve in any kind of fatherly light.) He was affectionate and supportive -- although he did gently push at bb!Peter to get away from books and try getting some sunlight once in a while, he was encouraging of his love for science and enthusiastic about his youthful accomplishments. He was kind of a goofball (well, Peter had to get it from somewhere) but placed a very high value on integrity and thoughtfulness. He could throw down when he needed to but considered violence a last resort after negotiation. Basically, Peter worshipped the ground he walked on and had good reason to.
And then when Peter was fifteen, and a newly minted superguy, Uncle Ben was murdered by a burglar whom Spider-Man was too lazy to apprehend. Thus due to his own actions (or so he believes) Peter was deprived of a father figure just as he was hitting that cusp between childhood and adulthood. So it's absolutely no surprise that Peter's left not just with the punishing sense of personal responsibility, the crushing guilt issues and the deeply buried explosive rage, but one "humdinger of a father complex," as another character refers to it in one of the novels.
Though he will never admit it and probably isn't consciously aware of it most of the time, there's nothing Peter craves more (or believes he deserves less) than the approval and absolution of his father. This has led him to make some really terrible decisions, of which the most prominent have been cutting Norman Osborn slack for Harry's sake, which ultimately contributed to the death of Gwen Stacy, and more recently throwing in with Tony Stark during Civil War, which nearly got Aunt May killed and destroyed his relationship with MJ. Meanwhile, Peter's side of the Spidey-Jameson dynamic makes a lot more sense if you consider it as a masochistic cycle in which Peter repeatedly puts himself on the line for the one guy who will never, ever give him any kind of validation.
And then there's all the comparably small potatoes stuff, like his laxness towards elderly gentleman thief Black Fox, his college mentor Miles Warren becoming the Jackal, etc etc.
It's not all bad, though! There are two older gents who've had a uniformly positive effect on Peter's life, namely:
- Robbie Robertson, who he dearly respects but holds at arms' length emotionally;
- Captain George Stacy, by far the closest thing Peter's had to a father since Ben died, who mentored Peter as both a hero and a young man and who ... tragically died ... in a skirmish between Spidey and Doc Ock ... because Ock's tentacles knocked over some rubble which fell and crushed him ... which they did because they malfunctioned ... which happened because Spidey altered his webbing formula.
Okay, it's pretty bad. But hey, keep him away from dudes over 40 and he functions pretty normally!