Wanted interactions: x-mcu characters (following what I wrote in the rules because I'm not a Marvel-specialist and haven't seen all the shows nor memorized them by heart) and characters that can dimension-travel there.
Open to ship with: I see Darcy as straight but I cannot ship her with Thor. I'd ship anyone with Thor because I love him, but I feel they went past that.
fc: Kat Dennings, none of the icons are mine
triggering content ahead: (potential, can be switched with option b) abusive mother who is an alcoholic, nearly no-contact unless she needs money, no father. In option b she's been abandoned and taken in by her grandmother.
I'm following the same backstory I gave her in the early 2010s,and her age may change depending on the thread, but she's 30+ by now and while she's met many milestones career-wise her personal life is very chaotic.
option A, default UNLESS you tell me you'd rather have B because A is triggering: raised by an emotionally, verbally, and at rare times physically, abusive mother, and her many boyfriends, Darcy started working as soon as she could to put aside money so she could leave. She always had a great relationship with her grandmother, who unfortunately couldn't take her in. Darcy still managed to get good grades because ridiculously smart (we see her display hacking skills from the very beginning, and she easily switches from a political science major to getting a doctorate in astrophysics of all things, in the span of a few years and with the Snap situation happening in the background).
Despite this, due to her upbringing and her naturally carefree attitude often seen as a sign of immaturity, she's often been called stupid and has interiorized it quite a bit, the typical 'I did this well only because it came easy to me, so it's worth nothing, if it had been any harder I wouldn't have been able to do it because I'm an idiot' way to see things.
As an adult, she's STILL paying for her mother's everything (because "she's still my mom, what am I gonna do, get her arrested?"), and also repaying student loans (though she did get partial scholarships), so despite doing well-paid jobs she's poor-poor. Shitty apartment in a dangerous neighborhood, little side-jobs, and so on. Always been that way, hence having a trusted taser at all times.
option B( skip if A works), everything is like the above except that her grandmother took her in, and it's only several years later that her grandma's health deteriorated and Darcy started working to pay for her care, the house and everything she needed. While her mother is less in her life here, having been basically ditched at such a young age has still left a sign on Darcy. Living in extreme poverty and having to deal with all kinds of consequences of it also did. Same poor-poor situation as before while her grandma is in a very nice retirement home, same lack of confidence in her skills but she's faking it until she makes it.
No matter which option you choose: Darcy is CHILL. That's the first, most important trait: she's not going to be particularly shaken by meeting Gods and aliens because of all the things she went through even BEFORE aliens turned to be real, so nothing else she sees after is going to truly shock her. The only thing that impresses her are muscles, as seen in Thor. She's probably cracking jokes here and there about stuff that traumatized her too. However, once Jane dies, Darcy will retreat even more behind her 'dude, chill' persona because the pain is just too much. And as I said before, she doesn't actually think she's half as smart as she claims to be, she's "faking it until she makes it" (part of the character arc I envision for her is for Darcy to finally believe she is *that* good).
She may keep a casual attitude and find embarrassing to give emotional speeches, but when she cares, she cares. Jane and Erik were her found family for years, and she stuck by Jane until the end. In her head, Thor is a part of that, is a part of having found her family in New Mexico.
She's just rolling with the punches and has sympathy for Wanda, so obviously she's not a judgy person, and I think that makes possible to have her interact with everybody.
If we follow canon-ish, it'll be nice/fun to have her meet other Avengers through Thor, but she'll also be there for Thor himself during the 5 years of the snap, as much as I hate that storyline and would love to skip it (but I know we can't, too many shows are based on Endgame and people having disappeared for 5 years).
If we don't follow canon and you want to pull an 'avengers were friends all along, living together, still are' we can let her work with them/for them as a researcher on top of her other jobs.
Also: she's obviously not going to publicize her personal misfortunes, current lack of money (embarrassing! but she's stealing extra food from the work kitchen) and life-sucking mother (or at least, she won't mention that her mother is still making her money disappear, she'll only mention their messed up past if she can joke about it).
Added: May 23rd 2025