No Actually What Is Wrong With The World That I Can See "12 Murdered" And Go Oh Only 12? That's Not So

no actually what is wrong with the world that I can see "12 murdered" and go oh only 12? that's not so bad

perry the... Hepatitis A virus,,?

maybe for the universe, it was fate, but for me, it was just a coincidence

life hack if you want you can read "gm" (good morning) as "game master" and that way when people greet you through text abbreviation in the morning you can read "gm!" and go. hehe...... they are excited to greet me, the game master........ they call out my title with joy in their fingertips....

last thanksgiving I ended up eating in a little room with a few of the cousins around my age. only 4 of us. really nice, actually. very peaceful compared to the rest of the house (full of children).

I can't remember how it came up. something about people getting offended by the wrong things, I'm not sure. one of my cousins said something like "sometimes people get mad at me when I'm talking about my black friend because I'll refer to them as 'my black friend,' but it's just like. they're black, my only black friend, and that's a description people will recognize so they know who I'm talking about." like I said, I don't really know what exactly we were talking about, but she definitely took it the wrong way. I know that much.

so yeah. all the rest of us were very uncomfortable with that, but none of us really knew what to say, so we kind of just sat there unenthusiastically and maybe made a noncommittal noise or two. picked at our mashed potatoes. (I would've pretended to suddenly be much more interested in my food, but I kind of lost my appetite a little.)

the thing is that it's not necessarily wrong to do that sort of thing- call your friend by a characteristic they have when you're talking to people who don't know them. my friend with the purple hair. my friend who ate a whole family sized bag of skittles in one night. my really tall friend. my accountant friend.

but the thing is that the people who you're talking to know about this person based on what you've said. why is them being black the important thing? how did that come up in conversation to be memorable?

maybe they've seen pictures, maybe of you and all your friends. but why is that still the first thing you think to describe them?

it's not bad because you describe them that way, I think, it's bad because you've left that as their defining characteristic.

lol I posted this literally like 1 episode too soon I'm pretty sure dacchia is supposed to be the main love interest actually. I still stand by what I said tho I still think he had a crush on a man and hope with all of the part of my heart which I have set aside for this web comic that I am not really especially invested in. I hope that he is on the aro spectrum. because that would be cool.

I fully understand that Marnac is probably supposed to be viewed as hetero, ok? like. if nothing else, the fact that every female character he meets becomes attracted to him is telling.

I definition think popular opinion is probably that the reason he doesn't actually have a harem (just a bunch of willing candidates) is because he's so devoted to the Goddess of Decay. Like, romantically. I mean, we can't really understand most of what she says, since it's just "murder," but her displays of jealousy indicate that she at least likely feels this way about Marnac.

Personally, I think differently. Although I agree he is very devoted to the Goddess of Decay and this plays a role in his disinterest in a relationship with another woman, I don't think Marnac is romantically interested in the Goddess of Decay.

First of all. Gotta get this out in the open- he calls her "mother" and is officially (as her disciple) her "son." Obviously she's not actually his literal mother and they don't actually have a parent-child relationship; it's a religious language thing, but it's still kind of weird. Also, I haven't caught up yet and I'm sure this will eventually change, but the whole child-looking body thing is honestly weirder than if he just got into a relationship with her disembodied sentient hand.

My second thing is really just that I don't view Marnac as feeling romantically attracted to the Goddess of Decay. Yes, he views her as important. The most important, even. But that's all. The way I see it, she is 'the most important' to him in the same way as anything or anyone else could be. The way he treats her is the same as he could treat a sibling or even an object. There is nothing in particular about it that is 'romantic.' Perhaps he stays out of romantic relationships with others because he is devoted to her, but more in a "this is the most important thing to me right now" way, like he doesn't have time or brain space for it.

Part of me thinks he may have been in love- or maybe even in a relationship- with Sanctus. After all, he clearly still places a lot of importance on his memory. While a relationship between them would have a pretty big age gap (at least to my knowledge; I'm actually not sure if there's any place to reliably be sure how old Marnac is, but it does seem like he's around mid-20s to mid-30s), that doesn't mean it couldn't have happened, and it certainly doesn't mean Marnac couldn't've had a crush. It's not crazy to harbor romantic feelings for someone who saved you during your time of need. In fact, it's a trope.

(You could also apply this logic to the Goddess of Decay, but I would argue that since she came to give him destructive power, she doesn't fit the firefighter-carrying-me-out-of-a-burning-building collapsing-and-being-fed-soup vibe very well.)

By the point where the story begins, however, I believe Marnac is on the aro spectrum. It could be due to trauma (caedromantic), and not just the hypothetical crush on Sanctum. Goodness knows he's got plenty of trauma to go around and mess with all sorts of emotional responses. It could be that he was always on the aro spectrum- maybe full vanilla aro, but I'm drawn to the idea that he might be demi.

It could be that he is making the choice to not act on any romantic tinglings he has, which I probably wouldn't call aromanticism, but still may manifest as looking like he's aro.

Any way I decide to look at it, though, heck, even if I decide to headcanon that he's fully allo and straight, I hope he doesn't get in any romantic relationships because it honestly makes more sense that he wouldn't. Even if he's gotten used to this world, he's still under a lot of pretty constant stress. He hasn't got any room for dating.