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#also the concept that there are actually 3 martys in that timeline rather than just 2 is sending me fucking insane
pazithigallifreya · 4 years
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Gonna copy @jedflah and jot down a list of BttF headcanons, in no particular order. May add to this over time.
Chucking this under a cut cos it’s gonna get long and also some of it veers past PG-13, proceed or not as suits you
I used a lot of my headcanons for those fics I wrote, so I won’t rehash everything, but:
Marty has ADHD, hyperactive type. Doctor Emmett Brown has ADHD, inattentive type.
Their needs clash at times (Marty can be Noisy and restless, which is not always good for Doc’s concentration) but Doc figures out ways to accommodate Marty as needed. He’s had a lot more time to learn how to live with himself and adapt, after all.
Doc knows Marty has ADHD. He does not know that he himself does, although he is keenly aware that he is Not Normal and has been since a young age. He just doesn’t have a label to go with it. ADHD simply wasn’t a described phenomenon when he was growing up.
Twin Pines Marty started hanging out at Doc’s place at a much younger age than Lone Pine Marty did, to get away from his dysfunctional home life.
Marty never really gets past the wrong-footed feeling of the Lone Pine timeline he ends up in. He learns to live with it, like a bit of stiff scar tissue that itches from time to time. It’s just is how it is, in the end. He never quite regains his innocence.
The Pinheads put out at least one concept album crammed with arcane time-themed lyrics that fans argue over forever. The album is a somewhat an experimental piece and a massive departure from their usual post-punk/rockabilly fusion style and tends to be either fans’ absolute favorite or absolutely most hated album. Marty does all the artwork and liner notes as well, which are just as impenetrable in meaning. The band nearly broke up during its recording, as none of the other band members really understood what Marty was doing or why he was in such a perpetually weird mood during it. Marty was in a sort of fevered frenzy in writing it, and far more of an exacting taskmaster when putting it on record. The band were used to a lot of improvisation and every other record was very collaborative. This one was Marty’s personal project, though. Eventually they forgive him for it, but they never stop teasing him about it. He was sort of embarrassed about it after the fact, but he just needed to work through some shit and that was that.
Commercially, the album kind of flops, although a lot of the critics eat it up
The music videos they make for it are just absolutely fucking bizarre. At least one of them ends up censored by MTV after complaints for some reason or another. Probably just for being too freaky.
Jennifer goes to law school and becomes a criminal defense attorney. She is frighteningly good at it.
She ends up representing Marty at least once, and probably one or two of the Pinheads at some point, over something deeply stupid because Marty just can’t keep his ass out of trouble. She wins his case, of course, even though he is guilty as sin. She makes it clear that she’ll never protect him from his own stupidity again if he repeats the same mistake, as he’s officially used up his one Get Out Of Jail Free card.
Marty & Jennifer are both Disaster Bi
Marty gets pegged, just deal with it
They wanted more than two children but Jennifer had a hard time with pregnancy and suffered multiple miscarriages and eventually they just gave up on the whole idea
Marty Jr. takes after George McFly quite a bit and spends his childhood filling up whole notebooks with journals, stories, and various other bits and pieces of writing. He comes out as gay in high school, expecting his parents to hate him, but they’re both completely accepting of him.
Marlene is much like Jennifer and could argue a fish into buying water. She frequently argued Marty Jr. out of his allowance money, at least until their parents caught on to what she was doing and made her pay it back. Comes out as lesbian after seeing her brother accepted by their parents.
George McFly is the first one to figure out who “Calvin Klein” actually was, around the time the first Star Wars movie comes out. It doesn’t take him too long to surmise what old Doc Brown is actually up to in that laboratory either. His little science fiction writer heart is filled to the brim, although he kinda worries about his son, too. He keeps it to himself, though, afraid of screwing up something on a cosmic scale by talking about it before his son actually experiences it
Post-BttF 3, George really worries about his son, who’s whole personality shifts seemingly overnight.
He notices Marty shying away from Lorraine’s attempts at hugging him for a while, as well as odd little slip-ups and incongruities in Marty’s memory, but he’s at a total loss as to how to help Marty or really even broach the topic
Things just sort of shuffle on awkwardly for months as he waits for Marty to say something first. It never occurs to him that the son he raised from birth to seventeen isn’t quite the same son that he is looking at
The actual fate of the original Lone Pine Marty is a total mystery that neither he, nor Marty, nor Doc Brown ever solve, even after Marty solves the mystery of whether timelines are overwritten or split in twain (refer to previously linked fanfictions if you’re interested in that story)
Marty eventually spills the whole story to George, but it’s years later
As per my fanfiction, the original Twin Pine timeline Emmett Brown absolutely died on the night Marty travelled back to 1955. Changing the past created a parallel universe, and Marty essentially got shunted from one track to another.
Following the events of my fanfictions, Marty keeps a small locket left to him in Twin Pine Doc’s will on a chain worn underneath his clothing and never takes it off. It originally belonged to Doc’s mother, and as Twin Pine Doc never had any children of his own, Marty was his only heir.
Lone Pine Doc first sees the locket when Marty falls asleep in one of his pretzel poses at the lab and it slips out of his shirt. He recognizes it immediately, and knows where its twin is kept. He never tells Marty he knows about it, feeling like it’s something private between his deceased “twin” and this boy the man essentially raised. He sort of gets the sensation of someone walking over his grave every time he sees it though.
Doc is on the grey-asexual end of things, don’t ask him who he’s attracted to, prior to Clara, he really has no idea
Little freckly 17 year old Emmett Brown did have a little bit of a puppy crush on that Michael kid who showed up for a few days back in the 30′s, mostly because “Michael” was interested in his work and listened to him and didn’t treat him like a nut or a burden, which was a novel experience
Emmett’s relationship with his parents was strained at best. That his father wanted him to go into law rather than science was only the start of their disagreements.
His parents were very strict and not particularly affectionate.
His mother wanted him married into another good German Lutheran family and was constantly trying to set him up with Young Ladies of Good Breeding and it always went over like a lead balloon because he had no idea what to do with any of them and generally ended up info-dumping about whatever his current scientific hyperfixation was, and none of them had the slightest interest in any of it
He went on a few dates of his own choosing in college because he felt like it was The Thing To Do, or at least all his peers were doing it, but none of them ever went anywhere. He basically went into them like science experiments, thinking if he just met the Right Person, then suddenly he’d understand what the hell everyone else was going on about when they talked about romance and attraction and shit, but trying to boil women down to some kind of mathematical equation was, uh, not really a great way to go about it.
He gave up on the whole thing somewhere around his mid twenties, throwing himself into his work and writing off the whole idea of romance
Doctor Emmett L. Brown learns to take care of himself very well, thank you very much. He has his work, and eventually he gets a dog, and everything is Just Fine thank you very much
He’s actually deeply lonely, but it’s one of those things he just shoves into the closet and tries not to pay attention to
Marty showing up in 1955 gave him some hope though. He knows he’ll have at least one good friend in the future.
Clara Clayton was married once, before she ever met Emmett Brown.
It lasted a couple of years, then her first husband was killed in an accident at the mill he worked at in New Jersey
Clara had never intended to marry again, preferring the freedom of being single
She became a schoolteacher because it was one of the few professions open to women at the time, but she ended up genuinely enjoying it
Taking after her mother she’d been basically an uncontrollable little tomboy growing up, preferring tree climbing and hunting for frogs, despite her desperate parents’ attempts at molding her into an acceptable young woman (Really this is canon at least per the comics, but I totally go with it)
She calmed down somewhat with age, and learned to live with the trappings of femininity expected of her, but was never all that comfortable with most of it
Emmett Brown pulling her off that runaway wagon was like something out of the story books she’d read as a kid, and certainly got her attention immediately
She was smitten with him, but it probably would have gone nowhere if they hadn’t turned out to have very similar interests across the board, along with a shared disdain for societal conventions. She recognized a kindred spirit, though
Their wedding was a simple courthouse affair, held not long after Marty left in the DeLorean. A few of the townspeople who knew Emmett as the local blacksmith turned up, but it was pretty low-key
Their wedding night was awkward and ultimately embarrassing for both of them as Emmett didn’t really have any clue what he was doing, given that his previous sexual experience with women could be written out on a cocktail napkin. Clara’s kissed more girls than Emmett has, to be blunt, but Clara is a patient soul and Emmett Brown is nothing if not a quick study, particularly when he has adequate motivation. They sort things out eventually.
Their sex life tends to run hot and cold. It’s complicated, and Emmett isn’t quite wired like most people, but they know how to communicate and respect each other’s boundaries and needs.
Clara actually had no clue how old Emmett was when she married him. She’d assumed he was in his forties and had just gone gray early, as some people do. The rejuvenation therapies Emmett had undergone in the 21st century muddied matters even further, as he had the physical condition of someone significantly younger. It wasn’t until they’d been married for a couple of years that she started asking enough questions and doing a bit of math in her head to figure out that he was significantly older than she’d assumed. It kind of did her head in for a while, but she never loved him any less.
After returning to the 20th century, Clara’s wardrobe slowly becomes less and less formal, and the dresses all but disappear except for a couple she keeps for weddings, funerals, and the like
She actually always hated those elaborate dresses and frippery, but had little choice in the 19th century
Emmett never quite realized how fettered she’d felt by it until he sees her slowly shed all of it. He doesn’t care, regardless. The clothing and hairstyles and makeup where never Clara, they were just things Clara wore
Over time as he sees her show more of herself, Emmett feels a bit of niggling guilt over taking so long on the time train, and wishes he’d been able to bring her to the 1980′s sooner, although realistically, he could not have finished the train much quicker
Clara eventually develops a habit of stealing Emmett’s shirts. They’re comfy and smell like him. He starts buying them in doubles.
Doc & Clara aren’t as adventurous in the bedroom as Marty & Jennifer (who frankly are A Bit Freaky). They tend to have a “will try anything Once” attitude but it often devolves into laughter before they get anywhere, and if either of them aren’t enthusiastically into something pretty quickly, it gets abandoned immediately. They’re happy enough, leave them alone.
Jules’ personality is much like Emmett’s father, more than anyone else in his parents’ family trees - intelligent, very exacting and detail-oriented, and somewhat inflexible. He’s prone to social anxiety and makes up for it with a kind of haughtiness that can be off-putting. He gets jealous of the attention his parents pay to Verne, and doesn’t really get along with his younger brother until they are both past their pre-teen years.
Verne mostly takes after his mother and is basically a ball of chaotic energy as a young child. He isn’t stupid, but he struggles academically. He has a gift for the arts from a young age, particularly drawing.
Both of the kids see Marty as an older brother, hearing stories about him from the cradle and eventually meeting him once their parents bring them to settle permanently in the 1980′s.
Jules grows up to be aromantic & asexual. He goes into the sciences like his dad, and eventually gets a Ph.D. in physics
Verne, much like his mother, is a Disaster Bi. He eventually gets an undergraduate degree from the Savannah College of Art & Design on a scholarship, then moves to New York.
Twine Pines Marty had his own bed at Doc’s place, that Doc set up in a corner when Marty was about twelve, a little over a year after they first met. Marty didn’t ask for it, and Doc didn’t explain it, it just Appeared one day. The next time Marty crashed on the couch for the umpteenth time because he didn’t want to go back home while his parents were fighting, Doc just picked him up and tucked him in without waking him. Nothing was ever said out loud about it, but Marty knew from that point on that he had somewhere else to stay when things at home got too heated
His parents knew he didn’t come home some nights but they also knew where he was, and both felt too guilty about their marriage problems spilling over onto their kids to punish Marty. At some point George ran into Doc Brown in town and they briefly discussed the fact that Marty was staying over at the lab, confirming what George had guessed. George & Lorraine both decided to just let it slide, figuring Marty was safe enough at Doc’s place and it was better he stay somewhere an adult (even Crazy Doc Brown) could keep an eye on him rather than wandering the streets after dark with other kids or by himself
Which Marty had done more than once prior to meeting Doc, slipping out and wandering the streets, then coming home at stupidly late hours for an elementary school kid and scaring the shit out of his parents.
Marty was prone to nightmares but also too used to not asking for support from a family that was never going to provide it and it never occurred to him to actually wake Doc up and ask for help.
Did Doc trip over Marty who on a few occasions curled up on the floor next to Doc’s bed in the middle of the night? Yeah. The first time it happened he cussed at Einstein, who looked up from his basket across the room wondering what the fuck he did.
Did Doc pick Marty up and tuck him back in his own bed? Yeah. Did he drag a chair next to that bed and stay there for hours til he dozed off in a supremely uncomfortable position because Marty didn’t want to let go of his shirt? Yeah.
Lone Pine Marty didn’t start working for Doc until he was almost fifteen, and his home life had never been that fraught. As such, he’d flopped on Doc’s couch a few times when projects ran late (after calling his parents and letting them know) but there was no need for him to have his own bed, and thus after the events of BttF3, Marty’s bed was absent. He was kind of sad about it, to be honest.
After Doc brought Clara & his kids back from the 19th century, he built a new house for them on the remaining land of his family’s estate behind the garage. Most of the acreage had been sold off to developers after the fire (hence ending next door to a Burger King), but there was still enough left out back for a decent sized house and a yard for the kids. He included a spare bedroom that was technically a guest room, but in reality was Marty’s, and later Marty & Jennifer’s.
Marty & Jennifer went through a rough patch during Jennifer’s pregnancies and the kids’ toddler years when she wasn’t working much, and the Pinheads had briefly broken up. Marty was trying to make a living off solo gigs, but the pay just wasn’t enough and while they had saved up during the good years, some bad investments had consumed most of it.
They end up living with Doc & Clara for about four years. It wasn’t too bad, really, given that Jules had already gone off to college and Verne had gotten his drivers’ license and spent most of his free time away from the house anyway.
The Pinheads eventually get back together though
Jennifer also goes back to work, although she only spends a couple years at the old law firm before she decides she prefers doing things her own way and splits off to start her own
They get their own place again once their income rebounds, but they start spending more time at Doc & Clara’s.
Doc returns to the future for continued rejuvenation therapies as needed. He's pretty much replaced all of his organs by the time he’s in his 110′s, it’s amazing what they can do in the 22nd century you know...
Clara undergoes a few but not as much. The whole thing kind of creeps her out.
Doc offers to take the McFly’s to the rejuv clinic, but Marty & Jennifer both decide they’d rather age naturally.
This has the unfortunate side effect of Doctor Emmett L. Brown outliving basically everybody he’s ever known.
Marty literally dies cradled in Doc’s arms. Marty is a tiny little 121 year old walnut by the time he passes, but Doc is still heartbroken.
Doc doesn’t bother with rejuvenation anymore after that. He lives another twenty years or so, and is proud of his grandkids, great-grandkids, and great-great-grandkids, but his heart’s not much in it after that. Clara’s several years gone at this point as well and he decides it’s finally time to hang up his hat. He’s had more adventures than anyone else, to say the least. Jules’ eldest adopted son inherits the time train, and one of Verne’s granddaughters (a mechanical engineer by trade) gets the rebuilt DeLorean. Time rolls on...
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jimmyandthegiraffes · 3 years
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not me breaking out in a nervous sweat at the concept of telling other people abt my hcs abt the 1985A timeline
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