thoughts on Jack, Vlad, children and the timeline where Danny prevented Vlad’s accident
tl;dr - Jack wants a person, Vlad wants an ideal
Jack didn’t just want children, he wanted a person, and he wanted to watch that person grow up, he wanted a baby, a toddler, a child, a teen and an adult with all in between and after, he signed up for the whole package, and he’s excited about the whole package, he’s excited for his kids to grow up and show him the kind of people they’ve become
and partial proof for that is in the lab suits he had made for Danny and Jazz preemptively, yes of course, he was a bit short-sighted in thinking Danny would come after him and Jazz after Maddie, but still there he acted out of love for something that was yet to come
and while Jack may not get everything right, while he messes up, while he tends to be overexcited about his own interests, because he loves to share, there seems to be room with him, room for what Danny and Jazz enjoy without him
because it’s part of who they are, which is ultimately why I think Jack has an easier time accepting Danny for who and what he is after the accident, regardless of how many years of research that overturns, because he wants the person, and Danny The Person is now half ghost, and now Jack wants to find out about that, no matter how messy that makes other parts of his life - because he wanted the person
but all Vlad ever wanted was an ideal, which is probably why he went totally off the rails with the cloning when he couldn’t adopt Danny, but that’s beside the point, because children cannot be ideals, that’s why he and Maddie didn’t have any in the timeline he was spared, that’s why he didn’t want Maddie to have her lab, not because he forfeited his own passion for the research, not because he didn’t love that part of her, but because allowing either would have led her to Jack and broken his ideal of a marriage and relationship with her
after all, it could be argued that they should have had at least Jazz since she takes so much after Maddie in appearance, and wouldn’t have Vlad doted on a little Maddie, no? but why would he care about that, when he doesn’t really seem to care about children themselves, and only really about the ideal they represent
now extending that logic onto their friendship, Jack wanted the person, he didn’t just want a friendship for college, he wanted joint-research papers, a shared lab, working on gadgets together, being ghost nerds together, he wanted ten, twenty, thirty years from then, he even wanted the struggle, and that’s why he so readily forgives Vlad at every turn, because he just thinks that’s part of the deal of being friends with Vlad, but Vlad just doesn’t see it like that, and even if he eventually understood he’d have a hard time coming around I imagine
meanwhile Jack would still hold on to their friendship for a good while, because if Vlad understands his point of view, surely there is a way to reconcile in Jack Fenton’s eyes, but it depends on Vlad to make that work, how willing he ultimately is