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jacksprostate · 4 months

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f Narrator wanting to murder maim mutilate m marla.. or marla/ male marla and narrator/f narrator worsties/besties. or marla/male marla and tyler… or anything with marla/ male marla..

Marlon called me, interrupted me at work, and he said he had a bruise. He said I needed to come and look at it right away, because he needed to know.

This was him, asking me, pounded flank steak, to look and tell him the nature of his bruise.

Marlon hasn't had health insurance in years, so he tries not to think about it, usually. It's easy, since there's no difference when you have health insurance. It's old hat.

But today, he thought about it.

And he noticed a bruise.

So I'm walking up to the Regent hotel after work, and he's in the lobby in his limp little tank top. He'd call it a wifebeater and imagine himself in place of the wife, I'm sure. I wonder if he isn't cold all the time. Mr. Marlon Singer, such a masochist just so he can show off his skeletal body with all the cigarette burns I have to hear him and Tyler laughing over.

I am Jane's abnormal hemorrhoid development.

He doesn't mention what Tyler and I stole from him, even though I think it was all the cash he had. Even though just three days ago he tried to chase me around the house and beat me with a broom. He made me and Tyler go sleep in the junkyard. Buried under our furs, howling at the moon. Maybe I can't fault him for that.

He couldn't keep it here where the guys he brings back could get at it, he said, and sure. But he should've known better than to tell Tyler about it, because now it's bags upon bags of lye being kept in the driest room in the house.

I work on grinding cracks into my remaining teeth as he grabs his neighbors Agatha and Dianne's Meals on Wheels kits. The delivery lady remarks on what a good young man Marlon must be, helping out these old ladies. Oh, yeah. A real, upstanding, mummified rat of a man. Maybe he helped them into the ditch. He yaps at me the entire walk up to his room, and I don't hear a word as I methodically rip up the skin around Tyler's kiss on my hand with a broken nail. It's been infected since Tuesday, and the ring of puffy red flesh makes the ghost of her lips white like the center of a neon tube. Always buzzing.

We get to his room, he says to me, "One of these boxes is for you, you know."

I think about all the women who bother to use what little time they have to operate charities that keep the poor and destitute alive enough to want to kill themselves. All that time spent cooking mac and cheese en masse and putting little packets of powdered milk next to little cartons of the liquid, like they get at schools and prisons, packets that can only be opened by the nimble fingers of caring relatives these elderly recipients do not have.

Sure.

Tyler told me I need to be eating at least two meals a day, or she'd steal a blender and make me drink raw chicken. So I eat the Meals on Wheels box. Sorry Agatha. I rip open the powdered milk packet, dump it into the carton, hold it closed, and shake it. Twice the calories. A recipe for palliative care.

Marlon's sitting there, quiet, eating Dianne's latest last meal. All the urgency is gone. Sucked dry. He's got pallor like a hospice heart failure. When dogs get treated for heartworms, the worms die, and sometimes, not all of them break apart. Sometimes, there will be thin, dead cords of necrotized nematode strung through their heart waiting for the right beat to fall apart and clot a vital artery. This can take years to happen. Your pet recovers perfectly from treatment until seven years down the line, you give it a doggy cupcake and a pulmonary embolism for its tenth birthday.

Marlon looks like he's had his first melarsomine injection and his owner is thinking about taking him to a dog park instead of bothering with the second. If you let a dog get its heart rate up too high when getting treated for all the parasites you let grow in it, its heart will explode. Or all the worms will clog its lungs. Whichever one it is, it's happening to Marlon here in this room. On this bed.

He says he'd found a bruise, a while back. A nasty little thing, like the crush of a plum under your thumb. Near one of his ankles. And Marlon Singer knew he couldn't afford any novel treatments, and he'd seen too many people rot from the inside out from them already. He did not go to the clinic down the street that gets its windows broken in often enough that there's just big black billowing sails of trashbags over their storefront more often than not. Marlon says he once saw a rat nailed to the door, which is something you'd think would be too neat and poetic for real life. He didn't go to the clinic because he didn't have to. And maybe if he was fucking guys he wanted to he would be a bit more cautious, but the men Marlon Singer gets to fuck are the type to have given him those bruises in the first place. They're the reason there's single mothers visiting that clinic, like half melted wax getting scraped out of the picture. He says he shouldn't feel guilty.

I tell Marlon about where I got the idea for poisoning all the food at the Pressman hotel.

He asks me what I mean by that, and I tell him about my first boss at the company I work for now.

When I first started there, I was selling our cars to companies. Bulk orders for work vehicles. My job was to not fuck up any contracts we already had. Marlon is probably aware, but the type of man involved in that sort of thing, he knows he's got you on a collar and chain. You and him both know he'll be renewing the contract, but you have to do the song and dance for him. Pretend you like how close he gets to you. Pretend you don't want to rip his testicles from his ballsack when he leans in sweaty and tells you how he likes your hair, did you go and do all that just for me?

Because he knows. And you know. But enduring this is what you were hired to do. If you were a man, you would've been hired to create a sense of the old boys club with this guy. But you're not.

There is so much pretense in the world.

Anyway, my first boss, call him Joe — whenever I'd return from those trips and dinners, Joe wouldn't pretend that it wasn't a shit job. He'd commiserate and wish me luck with the next one. He didn't overstep, he wasn't creepy, he kept his distance. The best you could hope for. Thirty days on the job, they asked me how I was doing, and I told them I was doing great. The job was amazing, I felt embraced by the company, my boss was great. One of those things was true to me.

And when Joe got his promotion, for being such a great regional manager, he cornered me in my cubicle and informed me he'd been jerking off into my nicely labeled thin salad lunches each time they showed up in the office fridge. He told me this with the same smile he'd always worn.

Marlon, he's next to me, and he leans closer like we're having a nice little confession. My skin itches.

It was before the 90 day clause kicked in my health coverage, so I had to wait at one of those free clinics like Marlon's, and I was surrounded by a lot of young men, wispy mangled pears. What little flesh was left was soft. When I told the nurse what happened, I watched myself die in her eyes. Dappling up with rashes and bruises until I was all painted and sunken like a bog body.

For the longest time, I wondered if I'd become the oral Mary. How many times I vomited in that office toilet, I don't know. I stopped bringing lunch.

The thing is, I couldn't see it in his face. Joe's, I mean. Not even when he told me. I couldn't see it in anyone. So I stopped eating out. Stopped eating altogether, really.

Marlon, his response was to go to the support groups. His tragedy was that it was a slow death, coming for him. Best to wriggle into the pile of dying bodies, see what it's like. Maybe that could muster enough suicidal impulse.

I tell Marlon, of course, I couldn't go to HR. I was a new hire with no evidence and previous record of liking my boss. I didn't want to tell my mom. I didn't want her to know. Those uncomfortable dinners became absolutely, wretchedly unbearable as I thought about the food I was being forced to share.

When the option came up for a dead end job in the least loved department in the building, I put on the best performance of my life to get the part. Best aspiring Compliance and Liability head and sole department employee, that's me. My new job was to keep secrets. It was, already, old hat.

For months I thought about waking up from a narcoleptic fit at my desk, with Joe leaning over the cubicle wall and asking if I was alright. I watched my stomach like it was nuclear. Every extra second it took until I bled like usual slid me closer to buying myself a shotgun and pumping a slug or two into my brain.

It's an unavoidable fear, I tell Marlon. You can't do anything about it. Once you know, you know. At some point, you have to find the peace in it. Imagine yourself, a balloon popping with meaty chunks flying apart, splattering onlookers and raining viscera.

For a month, six months, I had cancer. Worse than cancer. Every time I eat out, I get it again.

Marlon is looking at me, melting stained glass, drowning in that sort of shared pity you build together with someone who's dying.

I don't want Marlon to feel guilty.

I tell Marlon, that's why I poison the food at the Pressman hotel. Someone's got to do it. Blood in the tomato sauce, spit on the steak. Imagine what you could do to a soup. The men who go to the Pressman hotel, they're the kind that leave Marlon bloody and walking around Paper Street calling for Tyler to come out and burn more holes into him. They're the kind that get promoted from regional manager. They're the kind that lean in close, pull your wrist towards them, and say there's one way they know you could secure the contract renewal. The kind that almost ruin it in a temper tantrum when you don't, resulting in an upper management intervention on the 24th day of your new job. They're the kind that hear that shit and say you should've been more appeasing. More polite.

Don't feel guilty, Marlon.

I hope all of them rot so everyone can see the maggots eating their insides.

Marlon isn't smiling. I am unavoidably bad at distracting him. There's something final in it, when he sighs, and takes off his tank top. He says it's on his back, and I should just tell him.

I look. I see it. Black hole, botfly, necrosis. There's so many things these broken blood vessels could be. Withering, snapping apart like mummified heartworms. I imagine driving the two inch melarsomine needle deep into the muscles bunched upon his spine.

I look.

I press my hands into him, and I grip like I'm trying to rend my fingers through his skin, deep into his body cavity to rip out his guts. Like I'm trying to grab the rope of his small intestine and strangle him with it. Marlon's yelling at me and trying to hit me, arms flapping like a chicken, and I am bruising ten deep circles into the soft pearskin of his abdomen. It's the only place left on him that's mealy, that isn't frayed rope under worn out leather.

I tell him, you've got bruises. They look mostly normal, to me.

Don't worry too much about it.

And Marlon, he leans into me, and I let him.

#asks #fight club #female fight club au #my writing #obv directly in parallel to the book chapter #this has been sort of floating in my head #in the book its probably the most caring moment the narrator has for marla #and i think that is the same here actually #its just female narrator off the charts detestes marlon more in the first place. puts all her sense of sympathy and shared solidarity into #Tyler. but. yeah #anyway made marlon's life absolutely miserable #and the narrators #i actually went back and forth on that #i dont want to... necessarily... give her Solid Reasons in a way male narrator doesnt have #but its sort of inescapable that fucked up misogynistic shit would happen #and i was thinking how to resolves the food contamination question in my head #hard to explain #inherently more horrible shit will happen to her than male narrator #but not excessively and i want it to feed into the same issues. in this case her complete subjugation in the office and inability to freely #reject the horrific shit shes forced to play along with #resulting in her doing the same to the fat cats rolling by #anyway #she does care about marlon #its complicated

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whentherewerebicycles · 2 months

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#i am being like. bullied for taking maternity leave. lol #and i will admit i naively thought that wasn't going to happen in an all-female office where everyone has children #like wow #things have been challenging with [redacted] since the pregnancy loss over the summer but #when i told her i was taking my full leave (or close to it) it was like things went from a little tense to absolutely impossible #just SO personal and SO mean and SO relentless about it #ok. ok! shake it off shake it off

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pippastrelle · 3 months

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The misogynistic pitfall of anti-misogyny morals (ATLA and Artemis Fowl)

[Note: everyone both suffers from and upholds misogyny no matter what. It's everywhere and in everyone's subconscious biases. People of all genders make the world a better when they take that effort to listen to others' experiences and recognise we're all human.]

‘Show, don’t tell’ is one of the most fundamental rules of writing because nothing takes you out of a story like battling with what you’re reading for the right interpretation. It forces you to back out of the reading experience and re-process everything.

This is where the pitfall of anti-misogyny morals lies in otherwise very well-written media like ATLA and Artemis Fowl.

In the Book 1 finale of ATLA, the protagonists arrive in the Northern Water Tribe where Katara is told she cannot learn martial Waterbending because she is a girl. Katara and the other protagonists revolt against this and the episode ends with Katara being able to join the boys’ class. Similarly, in Artemis Fowl (Book 1), Holly Short is the first female Recon officer. She revolts against surrounding male officers who tell her she should not be in Recon because she is a woman and she continues despite it.

Surely, the interpretation is meant to be “Don’t exclude or look down on people just because they’re girls/women”. However, what do they actually say about girls/women at large?

In ATLA, we don’t see any other girls discuss their inability to learn martial Waterbending, either for or against. We don’t see any other girls join Pakku’s lessons even after he acknowledges Katara as a master. When the Fire Nation invade, we don’t see the women’s healing or general Waterbending skill come in handy. The interpretation you could reasonably come to is no girl or woman in the Northern Water Tribe wants to learn martial Waterbending or has anything to contribute with their Waterbending.

In Artemis Fowl, we learn of one other female officer in the LEP: Lili Frond. But Short balks at the idea of her being in Recon because she’s a “bimbo”. In other words, Frond cannot be Recon because she is unintelligent in a specifically feminine way. Of course, this could reveal Short’s biases. She’s been so degraded for being a woman, she’s internalised that femininity is not appropriate for her profession. However, Frond only ever appears in reference to her rising ranks because she’s an attractive woman riding her family’s coattails. We never hear of other female officers trying to follow Short’s lead or involve any other female fairy. The other prominent female characters in the book are Juliette Butler, who’s a distractable teenage maid that Short mind-controls, and Angeline Fowl, who spends the book catatonic in grief over her husband’s disappearance. Minor roles. The interpretation you could reasonably come to is no woman advances in the LEP on her own skill or has anything to contribute in the central kidnapping plot.

When you set up an anti-misogyny plot in a piece of media that doesn’t lend much agency or interest to other girls/women, it becomes an issue of ‘telling’ not ‘showing’. “Girls can do anything” becomes “Well, Katara and Holly Short can do anything”.

#atla #the last airbender #avatar #artemis fowl #holly short #katara #people can be very good writers but forgetting to acknowledge the other half of the population gives it shaky foundation #importantly avatar got much better in this regard #the very next season gives us toph azula mai and ty lee who are all distinctly motivated and important #lok got even better by involving a lot more women in the plot (rather than just girls)#but this was why i wasn't fundamentally against making root a woman in the film (if only the film hadn't thrown out the rest of the book)#holly can still battle misogyny and have it be a part of her arc with other female officers around her #root was already established as not geniunely looking down on holly as a female officer but feeling the need to push her to appease others #you've also got non-recon staff who could be involved a la foaly

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terrorbirb · 2 months

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Also I am VINDICATED that literally all bosses and p.e.s at my new job has said to me "wow you're good at this. This is the fastest anyone has picked this up. You'll advance fast if you actually stay here" Because I can spot design flaws that take like idk engineering sense? I just know what kinds of things are important in design.

So vindicated that I'm a good engineer. Vindicated that I held that company together. They can keep it going (because I set them up to be able to do that) but there is nothing to hold them together. I told the principals that what they'll lose with me is someone to make sure all the parts of the business work together and someone who can make holistic solutions, and that's what they're seeing.

The implication was always that I wasnt a talented engineer. That's what they thought from literally week two (which I know from sources). I wonder what about me made them think in two weeks I was bad at engineering 🤔 I wonder what about me made them think that when I was still learning things like who our customers were and being introduced to people 🤔 literally before I ever took on an engineering project 🤔 not sure! A mystery!

As I was saying in the 'think of things no one has thought of' business class: I have come up with industry standard systems. Is it small? Yes. But it was 100% my design with no co-designers.

#totes bro #is this me not being humble? maybe #but I legitimately think im good at engineering. like i really think im not bad at it #now that everyone around me keeps telling me im good at engineering at the new job (lol)#working in an over 50% female (over 50% nonwhite too) office is great because people dont automatically assume im an idiot #the misogyny in engineering is unbearable #apparently all of the contractors my coworkers work with commit misogyny crimes regularly so its not my imagination #also our whole kind of thing is men make us do their work for them for free because we check for the publics interest #and they dont even try to work inline with what is best. they just try to get away with shit.#EXCEPT for the female PEs! they try to do a good job! so we dont have to pick up their slack #anyway women are simply better engineers. having everyone assume youre bad at engineering makes you better imo #will anyone ever tell you youre better? no.#OH. ALSO. at my last job if the fraud engineer sales guy presented my solutions and products as his own he would get praise from customers #so i eventually stopped saying things were my designs because at least i could get credit that they were good when he presented them #this isnt engineering ethics this is me bitching about misogyny #also with the last post all fields are subject to the military industrial complex. let mech e (and aerospace but you should have known) is #a specific hell because its such a conservative engineering still

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annamariedarkholmes · 8 months

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that aipt interview didn’t say anything that rogue and gambit fans didn’t already know about that office or this era lol:

-that jdw dislikes them both but dislikes rogue more (gambit got a solo and she didnt; she’s also the one that’s been missing from every single event poster, that new tarot deck, and now, even the 60th anniversary ‘90s variant covers)

-that the idea of marriage makes characters “stale” (these dudes are married irl, btw, which… hmm!!!!!!!!)

like… yeah wbk lol

#can u imagine if this dude admitted to disliking one of the other biggest female x-men lol #swifties and beyhive etc have nothing on those certain fans #so the way those dudes in that office feel comfortable kicking us around is very #weird how they’re okay with the OTHER x-couple being married 🧐#im sure that has nothing to do w how they all project onto that male character #yet find a character like gambit a threat lol

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thetimelordbatgirl · 3 months

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Okay can someone explain to me where people are getting the idea the next avatar after Korra will be a male one? Because people referring to the next one as such on an announcement about an Earth Avatar series set after Korra is just confusing as fuck.

#before anyone asks im not starting shit with people's male avatar ocs after korra #i've seen some and they pretty creative and shit #i refer to the canon next avatar here #because yeah they used a image with a male earth kingdom soldier #but like i dont think thats the biggest sign it'll be a male one #for all we know it could end up being a female one or just shrug at gender #also was it offical image or because i dont see them offically revealing the gender this early #and ngl if it does turn out to be a male one lord im not ready for the shit that will happen #aka the sexists coming out of the wood works to compare new one to korra and trash korra all over again

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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 1 year

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Hey Syn, I have a very serious question: do you think Matt and Frank can co-parent or would these two be constantly at each others throats?

I mean, they have a lot in common but the way they deal with it is so completely different.

Not to mention that Frank sees Daredevil as a pain in the ass and above the "dirty work" aka killing while Matt condems Franks killing spree. Or their background concerning family (Matt = his dad and Stick; Frank = old parents who didn't know how to control him + Maria and their kids)

I mean, it really depends very heavily on the context.

Like, if you pull them out of canon as they are, hand them a random baby, and assign them to raise it like it’s a flour sack for Health class, then that’s gonna be a hard no. They hate each other, Matt definitely does not want to be a parent, frank wants to be a parent but of like, his kids, specifically, and neither of them are going to want to cooperate on an indefinite basis. They would find the nearest fire station and leave the baby on the steps. But, in the spirit of the question, I think it’s important to note that parenting is something you do not something you are.

Like, it’s a million little choices stretched out for as long as both you and the kid is alive. Decisions you make in the interests of the kid. So, lots of room to fuck those choices up. It’s extremely difficult being a parent, I don’t want to diminish that, but you don’t get whacked with the parent stick once you become in charge of a child. It’s something you have to pick, again and again and again, multiple times a day, seven days a week, including holidays, and a lot of parents don’t pick to like, be parents.

It’s about putting your kid first, and doing what you think is best for them. Sacrificing for them if that’s what it takes. Teaching them not to be a serial killer and taking an interest in them and trying to keep them emotionally, physically, and mentally healthy. A million different things. So, for me, the question isn’t more if they can co-parent, but what, if anything, is a situation where they’d both be willing to take on the responsibility of parenthood together, and then we hit whether those choices you make as a parent are gonna be the same for them.

A few notes:

1. They fucking hate each other.

2. They agree on nothing.

Which is really bad for co-parenting because 1) kids can tell when their parents fucking hate each other, and 2) you need to agree on like, parenting at the very least, or you’ll constantly be fighting.

Really, it’d be a matter of finding the hyper specific situation where they have to make it work for the kid and neither of them are willing to walk away.

Because like, hating each other, not agreeing on anything—those are mindsets, not choices. They still have to make choices. Hypothetically, they could choose to suck it up, be civil, and learn to cooperate for the sake of the kid. I just see very few instances where that would ever happen.

It sounds mercenary, but it’s cost and worth, right? It costs mental time and energy as well as physical money and resources to raise a child. Stack on the costs of having to do it with a guy you fucking hate, and the cost of raising a child is enormous.

The thing is, with Matt and Frank, it’s not like the traditional routes of accidentally finding themselves coparenting is open. Like. Okay. One of them cannot accidentally knock up the other, if we’re starting from canonical sexes assigned at birth and assuming like, no mpreg. They have no way of finding themselves with a biological offshoot of the two of them combined. Before we get to the logistics of “would they be able to work out co-parenting logistically,” any mutual kid of theirs is going to first have to jump the hurdle of getting them to choose to co-parent in the first place. This is going to be the step they almost inevitably fail at.

Choosing to parent a child when you're one of the two most unstable men alive is a big decision. It's an even bigger decision when the other parent is going to be the other most unstable man alive. And that big big decision gets even bigger when you simply fucking hate the other guy. So if Matt and Frank are facing the threshold question of "Are we willing to raise this child?" they're going to almost inevitably say, "No, we need to leave this kid on some nice fire station steps."

And I don't want to make it sound like the kid isn't good enough for them. It's more that if Matt and Frank are being faced with the very important decision of deciding whether they are what's best for this child, they're almost invariably going to say "Absolutely fucking not, get literally anyone else."

Because honestly? Matt and Frank are almost never the best case scenario for a child. Matt's business model is "trust in Jesus to provide for the light bill, yes we will accept half a banana and this 1997 copy of the phantom of the opera as payment for our expert legal services, god bless and amen." Frank does not have a single legitimate income stream. Both of them are profoundly mentally ill and would not get therapy at gunpoint. They've both faked their death on multiple occasions, depending on what canon you're talking about. Falling completely off the grid and having all of their loved ones sobbing at their funeral is a repeated life event for them. Both of them could actually die on any given day. There's warrants out for their arrest. There's probably a shoot on sight policy for them. they both have a proclivity for collapsing, bleeding and dying, to the floor. I'm not convinced they know how to file their taxes.

Matt and Frank electing to take a child in involves a much higher level of choice than having an accidental biological child. If we're like, living in the mpreg or gender bend world or whatever and accidental pregnancy was on the table, while termination would be an option and a choice they could make, they have time to plan and get their shit in order if Frank decides he wants to go for parenting round #2 and Matt like, presumably has an undiagnosed head injury or something if he's decided to voluntarily continue his genetic line.

If they are taking in a child, then that is an immediate choice they have to make with immediate consequences. They don't have nine months to get into more stable positions--the child is standing right in front of them in need of a home, has a set personality, has unique and tangible needs and problems, and their life is probably in fucking shambles if matt and frank are even in the running for consideration. At this stage of the game, Matt and Frank are almost always going to say "Hey, I've developed a great deal of fondness for you, in this, our time saving you from that faceless drug lord or whatever brought your life to such a state of crisis. But i'm sort of a fucking mess and there has got to be a better option for you out of the 7 billion people on earth. i will personally find them and make sure you have a home, but it's not going to be with me."

Frank loved Amy in Season 2 of the punisher, but he still sent her off to live in a different, more stable home. "Being raised by the Punisher and daredevil" is just not a very good environment for a kid. It's going to be really really hard to ever get them to consider coparenting simply because them parenting a child at all is not going to be good for the child, and they will find them a different home.

Honestly, the only thing that could really tip them into deciding to take in a kid would be 1) if the kid's life is just that fucked to begin with and 2) overwhelming emotional complications making it so they can't give the kid up.

TO BE CLEAR i am not making any promises about the "these stupid hells we keep" verse but lisa actually happens to be a perfect case study, so we'll bring her in for illustrative purposes.

Lisa actually just is in a unique position where her life is that fucked. Matt only decided to take her in in the first place because the chaste put him in a bind. On a psychological level, Lisa needs some major help right now. She needs support to do it. But she can't get it, because she can't tell anyone about what happened to her without putting them in immediate risk of the chaste and/or hand killing them. She also doesn't want help to begin with, and wouldn't reach out for help and let people in with the way she is right now. Even if she did, Stick's brainwashing was so fucked that it makes it hard for most average adoptive parents to be able to help with that level of abuse.

Matt doesn't even know if he can find the chaste, let alone take them down. Even if he did take down the chaste, he'd effectively be taking out the only force keeping the hand in check, so now the world may fall to fucking ninjas, who also may go after Lisa. On the other hand, Matt would conceivably be able to provide her the support she needed. He already knows about the dangerous facts, so they don't have to worry about him being killed for knowing. He has none of the problems that almost every other adult on the planet would have for lisa's willingness to open up--he's on the inside of Stick's special group. She sees him as someone like her. He can start chipping away at Stick's brainwashing--if he got his shit together and stopped being such a fucking mess. prayers for him on that. it's the fact that Lisa's interests are so boxed in by the threats on her make the chances of Matt and Frank's co-parenting coming into play much higher.

That being said, if matt knew "murder dad" was an option in therianthropy, he probably would have said "good luck and god bless you seem like you have this under control" and fucked right off to be mentally ill and unstable in peace. Frank is sufficiently dangerous enough on his own to keep lisa safe and, as her father, may be a better candidate to give her support. Like, Matt wouldn't leave her life entirely, but he'd be like the sitcom neighbor who shows up on the occasional special episode and helps her through her brainwashing. Matt legitimately only gets to the threshold of "willing to be this child's permanent adult figure" if there are literally zero other options. And I specify adult figure because matt in hells verse very much is thinking of himself as less of lisa's father and more of her adult roommate who can claim her on his tax forms now. he's the spencer to her carly at best.

Lisa is Frank's daughter. There is not a world where he is willing to walk away from her. So he would have to ignore whatever logistical issues there were and find a way to make it fucking work. Matt is one of those logistical issues, and the question is whether Frank decides to resolve it with like, fuckin' couple's counseling or with kicking matt in the ribs.

The other question is whether Matt stays if there is another option.

Because say like, the day after therianthropy ends, Frank Castle shows up on their doorstep ready to take Lisa back in. He hasn't gone on his murder spree yet, amen and god bless, and won't be doing it at all. It's weird that you asked that question, actually, who would even think of such a thing. He has a daughter to raise and will be devoting his time and effort to that.

Matt's already pretty emotionally involved. Like, he already loves Lisa, even if he may not be able to admit as much. But he's very much still in the capacity of doing this as a necessary evil. He does not view himself as like, a good option--he took in Lisa because he viewed himself as the only option. If he has another option? He'd probably bow out pretty immediately and call it a near-brush with adult responsibility. If there was more time to establish a relationship with Lisa?

It sounds bad to say, but it's really hard to say whether Matt would decide to stay not as legitimately the only living candidate on the planet, but as a voluntary parent, just because he loves the kid in question. It goes more to his own doubts as to his ability to be a healthy influence than his ability to love a kid. He just has a lot of issues and he knows that it wouldn't be good for a kid to be dealing with his spiral. It'd definitely require a lot of growth and healing on his part. But it would take this kind of extreme circumstances to even get to the threshold question of "is matt even willing to try to be a parent?" and he will dive back over that threshold if another option arises.

For Frank, it would be more of a question of getting him to understand the severity of the situation. Frank is very stubborn and set in his ways. To get him to accept co-parenting with Matt, especially as Lisa's like, actual father who has some primacy in this situation, he has to accept that Matt's someone who should be in Lisa's life. It would be a question of whether he actually grasps the depths of what happened to Lisa and the things that make Matt good for her life.

Honestly, I just think that the circumstances to get Matt and Frank to agree to coparent in the first place would have to be so hyper-specific and extreme that it'd almost necessarily exclude them as coparents. That being said, the fact that the circumstances would have to be that extreme actually goes in favor of matt and frank working out coparenting. Like, the situation is already fucked beyond all hope if they are the two parenting options on the table. If they had a kid that needs them that badly, and that they loved too much to leave, then they're going to be in the position where they have to work it out. If they don't, they'll fuck up the kid.

Will they be perfect parents together? By absolutely no stretch of the imagination. They are going to fuck up so bad and so often. But, at their core, they do care deeply about the people they love. They're going to try fucking hard to fix their fuck ups and do better. It would be messy and painful and absolutely riddled with mistakes, but I think they'd conceivably make it over the finish line at the end of the day out of sheer burning necessity.

It does help that most of their biggest problems are going to likely be sidestepped. Like, take Matt's "no kill" code versus Frank's "yes kill" code.

They're going to dodge it just because neither of them are likely to actually want a kid to turn out like them. Like, if they're raising a kid, it's not for the kid to be the robin to their batman. They're not raising them to fight crime. The core of the issue ("How do you ethically run a vigilante career") is going to not come into play because they're probably not raising this kid to be a vigilante. It's probably going to be a very touchy subject that Dad and Other Dad simply do not discuss ever.

Honestly, thoughts and prayers for the very confused couple's counselor they're going to have to get, because they'd have to learn how to bear each other's personalities sooner rather than later. But if they don't figure it on their own, Karen or Foggy is going to threaten their lives and manhoods if they don't get their shit together and take care of that kid properly. They'd have to either come to a truce or find a different living situation for the kid, because it'd be toxic to raise a kid in a household where they actively fucking hate each other.

Daredevil and the Punisher is an entirely separate can of worm. Are they both keeping up the vigilante career? That's a huge problem independent from their relationship--they are constantly risking death or prison, and it's going to be stressful for the kid to have them come home injured constantly. If we assume neither of them are giving it up, eventually they're going to have to either come to some kind of middle ground as to working together or take a very extreme "leave it at the office" approach where they simply do not ever talk about it at home ever. Like married professors who are academic rivals.

The is a very long way of saying that it's incredibly unlikely that they would ever willingly coparent and it'd be a non-issue, but if they did end up in a coparenting situation, then they'd probably manage it. It'd take a lot of fucking work and would be extremely far from perfect, but they would presumably love the kid and put in the Herculean effort required to actually exist in each other's presences for an extended period of time.

#matt murdock #frank castle #asks #like do i think it's in the least bit probable NO #but somewhere out there in the multiverse captain america married female tony stark #and johnny storm married reed richards #both of which are wild fucking comic book plots that we all have to live with #so sure #somewhere out there in the infinite cosmos frank castle and matt murdock are having a very tense appointment in a couples counseling office #their very confused therapist does not know What They Are #Are they married?? exes?? dating?? Where Did They Get Their Child #they're never going to be World's Best Violence Dads but they would really love the kid and try hard #the kid would live to see their 18th birthday (probably) and be mostly happy and HOPEFULLY not a serial killer #jury's out on that last one

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