Ralph Dibny family headcanon (reboot)
So, I'm doing a headcanon reboot. And Ralph and Sue are very pre-Crisis. Even in the late bronze age, Ralph started getting teated as less competent, which is really not okay with me. I am absolutely rejecting the post-COIE interpretation of the character where they made his reason for thinking the India Rubber Man (there's a term you don't see much these days, for obvious reasons) fascinating anything other than just thinking it cool.
So, my headcanon reboot has Ralph having a paternal uncle. And his uncle and his dad were super-duper close (and Ralph's dad is ever so slightly sad that his sons aren't best friends, too), and Ralph's uncle was just always around when Ralph was a kid. And they get along. But Ralph was always a little odd, even back then. Not like school-weirdo that no one liked, just unconventional in what he liked and how he'd pursue it. And when Ralph doesn't want to go to college or get a job right out of high school, but instead is setting off the mission he'd had since he was 10 to find out how the Rubber Man did what he did, his uncle thinks "life is going to kick that kid in the butt."
The uncle is so, so wrong (and that's what delicious about it). To be fair to the uncle, he's happy he was wrong. He likes his nephew, and wants him to be happy. But he thought what Ralph was doing was crazy as hell. Whereas the parents also thought so, but were, instead, thinking more like "well, once he gets it out of his system, he can go to college/get a real job next year." They just didn't get the unconventional life route he was taking.
