#(But these are some of my top favorite Pan specific headcanons which I also appreciate!!)

[lilacsolanum]

Okay kids gather 'round, I'm about to lay some unpopular ass truth bombs at your doorstep.

Marco can't cook.

"But Lilac!" you say. "He does the cooking and cleaning for his dad!" Okay let me explain you a thing or two about being a kid and experiencing negligent abuse. This shit's about to get personal.

My dad left my mom when I was 11. My mother was the Womb Haver, which CLEARLY made her the Best Parent, so we stayed with her and she left us to our own devices while she went to work and parties. Lots of parties. Whole shitton of parties. That woman is 58 and can out party me any night of the week, bounce back the next morning, and do it again. She is a warrior! She is an amazoness! She's an alcoholic and my siblings and I raised each other.

As I was The Incredibly Responsible Eldest Child (TM), I cooked for my siblings. What did that mean?

I cooked 25 cent ramen packets. I heated up two cans of Campbell's soup on the stove. If mom had enough money that week, my siblings and I might rock a frozen pizza. I dumped shit into a pan, put that pan on some device that generated heat, and grumpily walked away to go back to the hand-me-down family desktop computer and read Final Fantasy VIII fanfiction.

Not everyone in my particular situation "cooked" the way I do. Please do not think that because my situation worked out in this way, that I assume EVERYONE'S situation was the same. I lived in a low income area and went to a low income school and I wasn't the only Incredibly Responsible Eldest Child (TM) (or Only Child, y'all can hang too). I knew tons of kids that were using the stove top to make elaborate dishes. Also, some kids legitimately enjoy cooking, and learned a lot about food even without A Dark Past. If you want to headcanon Marco in that way, I support you? But sometimes the reading of his past gets a little woobie-ish, like, look at this poor ‘lil abused kid, isn't it cute that he knows the difference between baking soda and baking powder because of his sad sad dad. As someone with a somewhat similar history, that reading tends to make me stiffen and twitch my upper lip with repressed frustration. Especially because it’s NOT REALLY IN THE BOOKS.

Yes, multiple times, it’s mentioned that Marco does the cooking and cleaning for his house. But at literally no moment is he expressly shown to be cooking or enjoying cooking. Here’s what we know about Marco:

In #5, he goes “grocery” shopping. At a convenience store.

Which is why what happened on my way home from the 7-Eleven was so dumb.

I was walking down the street with some low-fat milk, a loaf of bread, and a bag of peanut M&M’s. Since my mom died, I’ve gotten stuck with a lot of the shopping and stuff for my dad and me.

Yes. The 7-Eleven. Grocery shopping. First off, he’s clearly doing a Man Shop, which is when you treat the closest food store to you as a personal pantry and buy two or three items every other day. That’s not really how people who cook for themselves do it up, and I know this as a recovered Man Shopper and current Good Cook. Also, that 7-Eleven? That’s where this kid is going to get ALL his shopping done. Groceries! Cleaning supplies! Toilet paper! 7-Eleven. It’s in walking distance and Marco is thirteen. And convenience stores have mark-ups on their items specifically BECAUSE they are convenient. That loaf of bread is probably 2$ at a real grocery store, but is going to be 3$ at the 7-Eleven, so that’s something to remember when you think about Marco handling his family. He doesn’t have a ton of budget here.

Also, the 7-Eleven isn’t going to have things like fresh vegetables or proteins. How is he going to make carbonara without, like, bacon. He’s beholden to whatever awkward sad trucker food happens to be at that 7-Eleven. He can’t … make much, guys, even if he wanted to.Peter’s not going to get it together long enough to drop Marco off at the local Albertsons and ALSO come back for him. Maybe sometimes on a Saturday Marco makes a day trip to a real store on his bike, but then he can only grab what he can feasibly bring home on said bike. Nothing frozen for sure, perishable items from the coolers are risky, and heavy things might throw him off balance. And it’s not like he had the internet available to look up all the clever things you can do on a budget or have access to recipes for college students. Ya boy is heating up some sphagettios. He’s using that loaf of shitty cheap Wonderbread from 7-Eleven to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He’s a kid, and he’s eating like a kid, and he’s cooking like a kid.

Also, shout out to Marco for spending what little money his family has on peanut M&Ms. That is honestly one of my favorite Marco details of all time. You deserve those peanut M&Ms, buddy. You earned them.

There’s also this passage from #45:

When it’s my night to make dinner, I don’t order in. I don’t crack open a can of Chef Boyardee and call that a meal. Please.

I go the extra mile.

I use the oven.

I know. You’re saying to yourself, “But, Marco, man, you’re fighting a war against alien invaders. You and your friends, you guys battle Yeerks twenty-four seven. How do you find the time to cook?!”

It isn’t easy. But with a little help from the freezer aisle and a guy I know called Red Baron, it’s a lot simpler than it could be.

Plus, this particular night, I was trying to make my stepmom feel, well, glad that she’d married my dad. Even if I wasn’t one hundred percent behind the whole thing, she made my dad happy. That’s worth something. “

He’s basically saying “I’m doing what I can to surprise and delight my step mom, because she makes my dad happy, and I hate her and this whole situation but I’m making an effort for my family.” If he really spent ages eleven to thirteen caramelizing fucking onions, would he show his appreciation with Red Baron? Which isn’t even that great of a frozen pizza brand? We were a Tony’s family. Sure, you can interpret it as Marco only putting forth the barest of efforts and holding back his Real Talent of serving pecan crusted salmon over lemon risotto because he doesn’t like Nora if you WANT, but you better EARN it.

Do I think he spent all two years not even making an effort to cook? No. I think maybe he goes to the library or a local bookstore, whatever is closest, and finds a cookbook full of recipes based in his mother’s country of origin. He looks up a dish he misses, something she loved to make, something that was uniquely her and her family and her culture. He carefully writes down each and every ingredient, some of which he never really heard of, because he only had eleven short years with his mom and they didn’t have time to go over spices and flours. He carefully budgets for the next few weeks, trying to find extra money here and there so that he can bike to a real grocery store and find everything he needs. He takes the ingredients home and tries his damnest to follow the recipe and he burns shit. He tries again a few days later and uses a half cup instead of a quarter cup at one point. He tries a third time and everything went perfectly and it tastes wrong and it will ALWAYS taste wrong, because she never taught him how to make it the way she made it, because she never wrote down the recipe and now she never will, and he cries wildly in the quiet way he’s invented so as not to disturb his dad. If his dad hears him crying, sometimes he comes to check up on Marco and that’s awkward -- and sometimes Peter hears him crying and doesn’t check up on Marco, and that’s worse. Marco doesn’t attempt the dish again. She’s gone, and she’s not coming back, and so he throws mayonaisse on bread and feeds himself and his dad Oscar Mayer turkey sandwiches.

But he gets to buy all the groceries himself and feed himself whatever he wants and sometimes he has cookie dough ice cream for breakfast and that’s bomb as fuck.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #don't worry guys my mom's cool it was a long time ago