ATTENTION, THESE ARE ALL HEADCANNONS. I’ll refer back to canon when there is information but we don’t know much of Alastors early life. Or of anything about him at all that much. This is gonna be a loooong one…
I also think, I’ll colour code a little; orange is what is actually canon and blue is the stuff that i thik ive read somewhere but might not be true or might become outdated.
I. Alastor and mental health
I think it is very likely that Alastor has ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) othervise known as psychopathy. Now people with this disorder are not inherently evil, but I’d think their upbringing takes a lot more care, attention and knowledge than the avarege person because people with aspd don’t experience empathy, and regret after hurting someone or at least these feelings are very limited. They are also very likely to disregard rules, be reckless, agressive, impulsive, decietful, etc…
Alastors childhood propably stems from the 1900s to the early 1920s roughly (we don’t know when he was born, only that he died in 1933 and was in his 30s-40s). Psychology was not as advanced as it is today, and it was especially propably unavailable for a child of colour.
So I think that Alastors behavior was very poorly managed throughout his childhood, leading to him becoming a not very good person (a serial killer).
II. School life
In school he’d act violent toward classmates he didn’t favor. It’s been said that he has a messed up moral code, but a moral code still, so I’d imagine that means either getting revenge for those who were wronged in some way and could not protect themselves (and Alastor actually liked them) or protecting those who cannot protect themselves. Either way, these likely ended up in Alastor beating another boy up, putting glass shards in his sandwich or ruining his stautus or reputation in some way. In fights he’d be creative and use his surroundings, other than mindless punching. Oh, look, a rock! And a scissor! Oh, boy is it my lucky day? It must be becuse there is a glass bottle at hand!
Towards his friends (whom were very likely all girls) he’d act very polite, charming and even kind. He’d enjoy spending time with them instead of other young boys who were a lot less mature and sometimes straight up repulsive and barbaric. Him and his friends would hang out, gossip, dance, etc, he was always just *one of the girls* lol. This is also where I’d imagine the moral code comes in, because of early 1900s mentality and sexism and boys bothering girls and Alastor standing up for them and those were very different times and Alastor just seems like a very uniqe case.
So he’d get into trouble all. The. Time. His poor mother is just tired and at a loss at this point. Nothing makes this kid behave better, there is no use of punishing him, she (or his father) can beat him (reminder that those were different times), talk to him, talk to teachers, punish him with chores and work, nothing works. It is a miracle he wasn’t arrested yet.
III. General behavior and perception
I think he was always very confident, charismatic and passive agressive rather than outright violent (which he reserved for those he particularly hated and actually could fight or trick). He was polite usually (his mother thought him well in that regard, and being polite is very useful anyways) and very intelligent and tactical. People rarely caught onto his mischief and the targets would usually be too afraid to speak out. Usually. Or just be annoyed and if the target was an adult, hooo boy.
I think the people who knew him would see him as a troublemaker but someone who would have great potential if he wasn’t such an annoying pain in the ass. He is theatrical, dramatic at times, they just really didn’t know what to make of this kid. People who didn’t know him would see him as a good kid, who has a strange sparkle in his eyes that could be something harmless and innocent or something that is very worrysome. Family thought he was strange, worrying, but outside that, helpful and a sweet kid. Other than the beating classmates up.
IV. Family stuff. God help me…
So… this is the part where the source of angst for every Alastor fanfiction comes from.
-About his mother:
I have two versions for this.
The first one being that his mother was a caring, sweet as candied apple but a very troubled person. Troubled because of her husband, his son and society. But she was also very firm and and had a spine, and she was a great scource of inspiration for Alastor. He loved her very much (in his own way) and enjoyed being around her.
In the second version, she was very unstable, propably had some kind of mild to severe mental illness (along the lines of scizofrenia or psycosis). She had her good or better times and then the bad times. It got worse as time wnent on and again, no psychology help for women especially creole or poc women (fyi we don’t actually know, which of Alastors parents was creole and which one was white or smth else. All we know is that he himself is mixed creole and I assume, people gave the creole part to his mother because it fits the story better I guess). Again, troubling husband and son, even though Alastor would recognise her need for help and would decide to help her in the little ways he could. She was still kind to him and loved him very very much, but her illness and her son’s just made everything so much more difficult.
Alright those are the two versions. Some common traits would be that they liked to cook together, Alastor loved his mother’s cooking and they’d both like jazz and swing and all these types of fun. She encoureged him throughout his life, though she likely didn’t know about his serial killer hobby later in life.
And oh boy, oh, man, the father of the year.
-Dear old Dad.
I don’t think that for Alastor to have a valid reason to hate him (and by extension almost all men) his father had to be phisically abusive, even though beating or hitting your child was common practice to punish them. What I mean is he didn’t have to throw bottles at his son’s head, beat him to a bloody pulp or strangle him and his mother for Alastor to hate his guts. I think that him being pathetic and disgusting in Alastor’s eyes is very much enough and maybe makes even more sense. Hear me out.
Think about the stereotypical man. The ones women oh so hate. He drinks, he smokes so much, you can’t see him, he cheats and lies and he is just a mean little bitch.
(I’m a man myself, don’t kill me, I wrote that from the perspective of Alastor Manhater.)
And if his father did these things that were (are somewhat still unfortunately) not at all uncommon among other men, Alastor’s hatred of this can be easily extended to every man who cannot prove otherwise. Maybe even those who can or could.
So I think that while it is possible that dear ol’ Dad was horribly violent towards his family, it would be a lot less clichè and maybe even make more sense for him to be a pathetic cheater who drinks and smokes and is just unpleasant to be around.
Alastor would fucking hate his guts. His father is rude to his mother and to him, he is useless, he is pathetic, he is spending the hard earned money on cigarettes, alcohol and brothels. He lies, he’s mean, he’s just a horrible person.
Alastor would never want to be like him, though ironically some traits he can’t help but learn from him. Lying, being mean to others, he’d also as an adult would occaisionally smoke.
I also think that his relationship with his gender is not the best, in a sense that he doesn’t like being a boy, because all boys are douchebags and he doesn’t want to be a douchebag. Not like his father anyway.
Okay, closing words.
First of all, I’m not a native english speaker and i wrote this very very late.
Second of all, this is, again all just my idea of what Alastors early life might have looked like. Season 2 is coming soon and it was said that Alastors backstory would be important and would be explored, although that could mean his arrival and early times in Hell as well, we’ll have to see.
If you yourself have any other ideas or thoughts or you think I got something wrong, comment it, I’d love to read other fans’ thoughts!
Anyways, thank you for reading this far! I’d love to write in a similar format about Alastor’s time as an adult or a mixed person working in radio in the late 1920s to early 1930s, so let me know, if that intetests you! I’ll propably do better research for that, in this one most of the history knowledge is from memory, so if ive made any errors, again, let me know.
Alright, goodbye now.