Kurt Bio mom and dad were Mystique and Azazel and, of course, he never learns either fact because Dark Phoenix was shite for a lot of reasons. So! I headcanon he was raised by the entirety of the circus, sort of a communal parenting sitch.

(theres' been multiple origin stories of this in comics and more I haven't read, from abusive manager who kept Kurt drugged to all was peachy-keen and he even had a crush on another performer. I basically take bits and pieces from all of 'em.)

If there was a singular matriarch of the circus family, I picture a Kathy-Bates-in-Freak-Show type. No-nonsense, firm but fair, sagely advice or smack upside the head, whatever the moment calls for.

BUT IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE... Azazel doesn't get captured/tortured/experimented upon/killed by Trask, and Mystique isn't played with flighty disdain by JLaw, and the writers actually give a shit about all three characters. Anyway.

pines for Raven getting to raise her son....rip

Renfield Total HC but he's a rich boy with absentee parents because he wasn't the first born and Victorian era attitudes. Though the 'rents were probably shitty even by that decade's standards. Really helped formulate a lot of his ways of thinking, further enforced by his own terrible actions.

tadcooper Right??? I could be wrong here but there's like no timeline where Kurt is raised in a happy home (well, I mean. as happy as one could be with those two). Mystique always abandons him to the circus, and Azazel... oof.

Azazel only became Kurt's dad in one of the worst comic series and the most hated storyline. I went down the rabbit hole on that awfulness (tl;dr Azazel in comics was knocking up earth wimmenz so he could use teleporters for a ritual that would... enable him to come to Earth. Yes. That dumb.)

which especially sucks because THAT VERSION IS LIKE THE ONLY ONE IT WOULD'VE TURNED OUT DECENT

FUCK. YES.

XMCU RAVEN COULD BE A DECENT MOM HOT TAKES ONLY

I used to play her and have such fucking feelings

She really could've! Especially post-FC when she'd sorted thru her issues, and Azazel needed some more character expanding but like. I def picture him as the fiercely protective sort.

god how I crave that Azazel getting...characterization...... please god let me have that weird family

But nope. Teleporters are reduced to their powers and that's literally it. Kurt existed in DP just for get people from one place to another (which totally breaks his ONE RULE of 'I have to see where I'm going' or at least have the place memorized. Naw fuck that, he can jump from the school to Central Park because Reasons. fumes)

tadcooper my kingdom for an Azazel on the barge. I'd throw Kurt on that ship so fast.

I PINE

and then you would have Mystique and my gods... WE COULD HAVE OUR BEAUTIFUL AWKWARD FAMILY.

FAMILY

at least JLaw knew what was up. its regulated to a blooper reel but at least she acknowledged Kurt was her son.

I've posted it before but here it is again anyway. Beast during Mysty's speech still gets me.

ONTO MORE OF THE SADS

Dirk his mum gave him up to a military research facility. Soooo. Yeeeeah. Not exactly a picturesque loving family sort. Dirk would still send her a card if he knew where she lived.

Sylar Dear lord. His mom had One Episode and she was neurotic, religious, overzealous, smothering... And then Sylar accidentally stabbed her with scissors. Then the show did the 'no wait Sylar you're totally Peter's bro' storyline. Retconned into 'syyyyke, Angela is a lying POS' and THEN Sylar killed Nathan, Peter's actual bro...

so Angela made Matt mindrape Sylar into thinking he was Nathan and that totally worked out well for some months. The Petrellis are not a very healthy family is what it all comes down to.

Oh yea and then there was that episode - prior to the killing Nathan and mindrapey stuff - soon after Sylar gained shapeshifting abilities and was waking up as other people. So, having a conflict of self, he turned into his mother to have a last conversation as he needed the advice. It was literally an excuse to have Ellen Greene back on the show.

Quinto acted tf outta that godawful writing tho most of the fandom had checked out long before then lololols

...out of all my crew, I think only Caduceus has the healthy parental figures. Hah.

There's a very depressing issue of "What-if" from the 90s where Mystique raises him, but the style at the time was to answer the titular question with "fuck you, everything would be worse."

Also I remain pissed that the original plan (Mystique is his biological father because she can do that if she wants, Irene is his mother) was nixed because literal demons from hell were fine with the brass but gender-bending lesbians weren't

oh also +1 mad at less Irene in general

fiercebadrabbit ye gods... yea and considering how godawful that Azazel storyline was? I almost think gender-bending lesbians would've been so, sooo much better. Just not by that writer.

Irene was in X-Evo and I think the fact they were ~together~ was obvious even within the limits of Saturday morning cartoon fare.

the What-if comic has him growing up with Rogue (and, uh, falling in love with her, because the X-men love them that pseudo-incest, thanks Claremont I guess), but he's a secret and the Brotherhood find him and think he's an X-men spy and kill him and Rogue kills them but absorbs his powers permanently like she sometimes does

it's... they're all like that

I want...........a good one

I just want one blue family that taps out at like, only one notch above normal dysfunction, maybe

with an Azazel AND Irene

fiercebadrabbit oh! is that the one where Rogue's basically fem!Kurt for a while except with her trademark hair? I've seen that crop up in image search results

but also ugggh at the psuedo-incest. or just. het!Kurt in general. in Ultimate he's a homophobic douche towards Colossus and later kidnaps Dazzler as he's obsessed with her. Sigh

Yeah, it's a mess, they're all messes. What if Magneto's oldest daughter had lived? She gets so resentful over being a human that she murders her siblings for some reason. What if Storm had become the Phoenix instead of Jean? everyone dies I guess

it's like.. the writers were resentful of having to write AU storylines and picked the worst possible outcome for all of them tf

the only happy Wagner family I can think of is TJ Wagner's, and that's the next generation of blue weirdos because that universe's Kurt learned healthy coping skills and also didn't pine over his adopted sister

this was the art I meant. of course Rogue's version of Kurt's uniform is booblicious. u g h

Oh, no, that's not from this comic, though I have seen it before, I forget what it's from

It's this
But I can't find any images of the Roguecrawler reveal online

I have a physical copy but I haven't dug out my paper comics in years

BETTER AUs, COWARDS

"healthy coping skills" ... awkward cough in movieverse's direction and their self-scarring tattoos

oooooooooof. Kurt, no, don't make out with your half-sis that's just... no.

tadcooper total cowards. give us bisexual Logan and/or gay Kurt. or intersex Kurt, but whoooah now that's all just too radical for a comic that deals with demons from hell and planetary invading galactic forces and time travel.