#HES PARTIALLY COLD BLODDED. NOT FULLY. BUT HE HAS A HARD TIME REGULATING BODY TEMP ESP WHEN ITS COLD

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

@intertexts I AM going to take you up on this and it WILL be everyone else's problem . this is going to be so long and disjointed and stream of consciousness and not at all organized. my enrichment for work today

GOD where do i even fucking start. im literally thinking about him constantly dude. i hate it here. i love when a character is allowed to be a bad person and also still like. care. he cares so much. he cares so much it fucking HURTS but also he sucks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and this is a good thing. i never want him to get better however i do want him to give his son a hug just once.

uhhhhhhhhhhh ok ok ok. lizard biology is a good place to start i love fucked up fantasy biology. keep in mind while i do like to talk about science and things i do also love to suspend my disbelief when it conveniences me. yes i know this would not work irl thats why i like it. anyway. hey why the fuck did they make him do that. i know overlords whole deal was fucking with dna but how insane is it that hes like. "oh you want to work for me? awesome. get experimented on idiot." awesome way to keep your employees from quitting: subject them to genetic torture. do you think he fought it. of course he fucking did hes mark winters he would not agree to that shit.

how disorienting do you think it was to wake up and suddenly have a whole extra sense. not just that but also a whole extra LIMB. what the fuck do you do. do u think it was sudden or gradual. i cant decide which is worse tbh. i guess this is a good excuse to talk about what exactly i think his lizard mutations look like.

he obviously has the scales. theyre on mostly the left half of his body, i think his right side is generally pretty untouched by any sort of mutation. the ones on his face are pretty much localized around his eye, (which i think looks like a tokay gecko btw. theyre yellow and have cool shaped pupils) but probably also extend down his cheek and maybe even down onto his neck a little. i think theyre probably scattered on his back and chest, hes got a bunch of distinct big patches rather than like a smooth transition from skin to scales. i think his left hand is completely covered with scales and his nails are more like claws on that side. he probably files them down a little (or like. just scratches them on concrete and metal and shit until theyre filed down. not healthy behavior). i like to imagine he has a tail too but its kind of short and stubby and not very. useful for anything except fucking up his balance and being generally Uncomfortable. OH also once every couple months the scales get SUPER uncomfortable and itchy and they shed. also when this happens he goes blind in the lizard eye and the first time that happened i think he was scared as FUCK that it was gonna be permanent

NOW IM GONNA START TALKING ABOUT. PIT ORGANS AND THIS MIGHT GET LONG AND TECHNICAL SO ILL TRY TO KEEP IT. SOMEWHAT SHORT. so. he can see william when hes invisible. and that has been CONFIRMED a lizard mutation thing and not just a result of one of his powers (which is still insane to me). and the ONLY WAY i can think of justifying that is by thermoreception or. heat sense. like infrared sensing. which is a thing that certain species of snakes can do!! specifically boas and vipers have these things called pit organs which are little holes usually around their nose with a membrane that is extremely sensitive to temperature changes and allows them to basically see in infrared. its not exactly SEEING and more like sensing which i think in a human would be so EXTREMELY disorienting. i havent figured out what exactly that would look like from a mark first person pov but the way i vaguely imagine it is if you overlayed an infrared camera over a normal camera and turned the opacity down to like 30% (<< clear enough that he can still see normally but still bright enough to be WEIRD). i think hes got sorta like what pythons have where they have multiple smaller pits rather than a single large one like a viper, and theyre right underneath the lizard eye so that when he has that eye covered with bandages it sort of dulls down the thermoreception. UGH.

ok enough about lizard powers i want to put you in the winters family torment nexus. actually ill talk about his powers a little bit first. so i am a little unclear as to what his powers actually ARE mechanically but based on the vague descriptions of things he can do i think it has to do with manipulating electricity and other types of energy (hence. wavelength.) i dont think its solely based on LIGHT but rather on likeeee. energy. i dont actually know a whole lot about electricity i havent taken a physics class since high school. ANYWAY. i think he was born with them and naturally theyre sort of weak and he cant do much with them which is why he uses the suits. (inserting my vague bit of worm knowledge i would put him under the Tinker class bc he makes a lot of his own tech hehe). his powers naturally without the suits manifest as like. a constant low buzzing in the background kind of like if youve ever. touched a crt monitor. sort of fuzzy and staticky. and maybe he can use them to like. run extra power through a wire or make a lightbulb glow a little brighter or power a battery. nothing really major useful for fighting but could be used in everyday activities! bizly mentioned once that he powers his suits like a battery and they amplify his powers and i have not let go of that ever since. do u ever think about how he has . holes in his back that his suits stab into. i think about that a lot. do you think he did that to himself. anyway.

NOW its winters family torment nexus time. before ashe's mom died. i think they were happy :( i dont think mark was always as shitty as he is now. i think he used to be just like. a normal dad. a little gruff and emotionally repressed because thats just. who he is. but very obviously loved his family and. idk. would take ashe fishing when he was little or something. weekend trip to the lake. he has a fucking cabin in the woods dude! i like to think heeee had a job as an electrician because it made his powers really convenient. (side note here i just really really like the worldbuilding of people casually having powers and using them to make their lives easier. i just really like that a lot and have a lot of thoughts about it.) I thiiiiiink ashe's mom worked in a library or a museum or something. something with a lot of books. maybe a museum. i think mark would take ashe with him in the mornings and drop him off at school before he went to work. i think ashe would put stickers on his dashboard when he got old enough to sit in the front seat (there are still. old faded stickers on the underside of his glove box and the old leftover residue of long term stickers dried out by the sun on the dash. the kind of shit that gets grey and kind of gross but is impossible to remove).

ashe's mom died when he was ... like 8 or 9. and i think for a really REALLY long time mark was just fucking terrified. i mean how the fuck do you recover from something like that. how do you look your kid in the eyes when you saw him do. that. i specifically wrote out part of this scene in my fic so at risk of sounding like a broken record i wont talk about it TOO much but. i think mark was at work when it happened. he got home from work and the house was way too quiet and then he found ashe still half-possessed in his room with a dead body. and his immediate first thought was that someone had broken in or something so his first instinct is to get ashe out of there but when he goes to pick him up from the floor he sees. trickster. or at least like. partial trickster. and he doesnt know what to do and theres that fucking book on the floor and his 8 yr old son is holding his mothers heart in his hands like its just a piece of meat and . whuh oh. hes just like. a regular guy. what the fuck is he supposed to do here! he considers just. running. leaving. getting back in his car and driving away and never coming back. and then he realizes thats fucking stupid and this is his child and he needs to do *something*

ashe is able to fight off full possession on his own (iiiiiii have a theory about ashes powers and what they are but i cant talk about that in detail until later) and i havent worked out the details of how i think the IMMEDIATE aftermath goes but. mark covers for him. gets rid of any sort of evidence that could POSSIBLY point to ashe being the one that killed her and sticks to the story that it was a freak villain attack instead. closed casket funeral. he tries to get rid of the book so many times and every time it reappears on ashe's bedside table the next morning. i think there was like. an IMMEDIATE rift between them. ashe is. old enough to understand what happened and since the possession was only partial i do think he remembers it. but hes not old enough to really understand why. why everything is so different now, how to process grief, why his dad is treating him so different now etc. probably goes. very nonverbal for a while. mark is a fucking wreck with grief and fear and anger and confusion and he stops going to work. they gave him a bit of a grace period due to the circumstances but eventually he got fired and couldnt get a new job and he thought about just taking ashe and moving out of that house out of that neighborhood maybe out of the city. but everything was too expensive and now he's got a 12 yr old who needs to eat and keeps growing out of his clothes and hasnt been to school in a year and a half and !!!!!!

so he starts. villain work. i dont think he really means to at first he might just. shut down a security camera here and there and make the lights flicker in a gas station and if there are a few extra snacks in his pockets whos to say. maybe he eventually tries to do hired gun work for some bigger villains and then moves to solo jobs and then gets picked up by overlord. (personally i think the overlord job was still somewhat new at the beginning of pd. maybe only like. a couple months to a year max)

ANYWAY he listens to vanessa carlton and thats just canon but i also think he likes shitty scifi movies and goes fishing for fun and finds being out in the woods relaxing (again. cabin) . and he does all the dad things in the car that we've talked about a bunch. and hes so so so paranoid and afraid all the time but he expresses that through anger but it comes from a place of love bc he loves ashe so much and doesnt want anything to hurt him ever and he just wants to keep him safe. head in hands. his methods are not good but also its all he knows how to do and i think he desperately just wants ashe to be happy and he wants to see him smile (even though it fucking hurts because he has his moms smile and her laugh and he looks so much like her when hes happy) and . take him on a weekend trip to the lake again. i think there was a moment halfway through season 1 where he saw how happy ashe was with pd and thought "maybe this is good maybe i can let him be a normal kid for a while" and then william dies and ashe gets shot and overlord has a hit on their heads and he doubles down because thats the kind of shit that happens if he lowers his guard for even a second!!!!!!!!!!! ughhhhhhhhh im insane.

um. also when he was just starting out villain work tide was still doing like active hero work and not a mentor yet and they were like rivals. smile. ("ive fought tide dozens of times and hes never spoken to me like that" << never going to forget this btw). i think tide was the one to tell him what happened at the end of season 1 . because. again. he was UNCONSCIOUS FOR THAT WHOLE THING. i think tide went to visit him in prison before he got depowered and told him everything.