#mark diy sfth

[svnnyd4ys]

[not-an-idiot]

Clarissa's DIY Wedding as a textpost

(I originally wanted to do more but ran out of ideas)

[unbelenting]

Random SFTH sketches pt.2 :-)

As you can tell I made these at least a few days ago (on account of me thinking I played a part in Amanda losing the battle royale Tom finals, even tho now she's about to win it all)... Anyway, I really need to master the art of DIWives and Sorry About My Nan, cuz I have these BRILLIANT animatic ideas but my HANDS and SCHEDULE won't cooperate!! So here we are.

[dawn-speckled]

his mother died when he was seven. he blamed himself. his father told him it was his fault. his father was drunk driving. his father was his responsibility. that's probably why mark still lives with him. he has anger issues. he talks about being ignored as being made to "feel small". he grew up with an alcoholic father. both of his parents made fun of him since he was a baby. his only other father figure is a priest. he knew he wanted to marry his girlfriend as soon as he saw her. she loves her family unconditionally while he's trying to escape his own.

[phantombegruvia]

And if I said Clarissa and Mark then what

[iamonlypartlymajestic]

I’M IN MY DIWIVES ERA ( well until my next exams anyway 😅)

Early 2000s rom-com poster:

Grease but make it gay (Mark is leading a song-and-dance ensemble somewhere idk):

[artstantpansies]

moreee hand drawn sfth text post memes - character ids in alt

yay yippee

[solo-walker]

Mark. I have so many thoughts about Mark. A boy growing up with an alcoholic for a father (he still hasn't stopped. Perhaps he can't, thinks Mark. Or won't). He turns to the local priest, seeking solace, but finds more jibes. More ridicule. More reminders of the fateful day when he failed to stop his father from getting behind the steering wheel. It's his fault, isn't it? Who cares if he was seven, he was already holding the tattered household together, he should've been more forceful, should've scolded and fought and gently guided his reeling father back inside should've done more but he didn't. He couldn't. He failed them and all he had to show for it was a coffin and his father's racous voice calling his name and a scar he swore he'd never let anybody touch because he'd be damned if he let anybody ignore him the way his father had when he'd spoken up, asking him, pleading him, to get out of the car. He'd be damned if he ever let anybody make him feel that powerless and small ever again.

Mark is such a great character and such a great example of how one's childhood affects one's behaviour as an adult. I love how you can see the traces and effects of the incidents of his childhood and his upbringing in his behaviour in the play. I love how you can see him try to deal with his problems but in all the wrong ways. Because he needs to hear an apology. He just needs his father to own up and say “i'm sorry”, to say, “it wasn't your fault, it was mine”.

But he ends up seeking this sense of closure through Clarissa.

[instantpansies]

cannot BELIEVE clarissa suzanne fumbled a dyke so hard. couldn't be me.

[thecoppersoulbox]

Gotta say, it’s fun to see AJ playing an Everyman type of character, I feel like that’s not something we see very often. Like when Mark answered the phone I had a moment of “oh yeah he is just like. A guy huh. A guy who got dealt a bit of a shitty hand.” Meanwhile everyone around him is falling apart over this DIY wedding and all the other shit they got going on.

[svnnyd4ys]

a few more sfth character tweets!!!

[a-mysterious-ghost]

Idk if this is an unpopular opinion, but I really don't think Clarissa did anything wrong in DIY wedding. Like, as someone who's extremely close to their family, if my very ill mother called me in the middle of my proposal, heck yeah I'd answer the phone. If my partner didn't understand that, then I wouldn't be dating them. Once while I was on a date, my sister texted to tell us she was in the hospital (she's fine now, but she broke her foot) and the guy I was with right away asked me if I needed to go call her. Like...I get where Mark was coming from, but imo she doesn't have to apologize for anything.

[i-may-be-an-emu]

Ok I have thoughts about Mark and his dad.

(Warning probably kinda dark/heavy stuff, pretty much what was in the play)

ok so (this might be long)

We know that Marks mother died and it’s alluded to that Marks father was responsible because he was DUI and crashed.

The play is set in New Jersey, and if that’s where this occurred then the charge for vehicular manslaughter while DUI is apparently 5-10 years in prison (plus a fine I believe) (Let’s say 10 years for plot reasons >:))

Marks father mentions that Mark lives with him, but also that he was 7 at the time of the incident.

Surely Mark would have gone to live with family or been put into foster care, and probably had a lot of complicated feelings about his father- so how did he end up living with him after he got released?

Personally I’ve been thinking that Mark just felt responsible for his father, he was notified that he got released, went and picked him up and then took him home so that he could live with him.

I wonder if the guilt of what marks father had done, killing his wife and leaving his son without parents, had taken a toll on his mind. I wonder if when he got out of prison if he was a wreck or if he was doing better, but slowly it crept back up on him.

I wonder if Mark had gone to visit him when he was a kid and hated his father for what he’d done, or if he’d even understood it at all. Maybe he went when he was little, confused and scared because his father who’d always been drunk and possibly abusive was now locked away. He was told he had to go visit him because he was his father, but maybe he didn’t want to. Maybe when he started to understand it all as he got older he stopped going, and then when his dad got out he was the one who reached out to Mark.

Maybe Mark actually ignored him. He was 17 and hated the man for what he’d done and how he’d acted, and now he wanted to be back in his life?

I like to think that by this point Mark was living on his own, dropped out of school and got a job to support himself to get out of whatever situation he’d been put in.

Maybe his father guilt tripped him. Telling him he had to care about his father- they were blood! Telling him he should care for him because he’d sacrificed everything by going to prison when really it was Marks fault. Telling him lies until he caved and let him stay with him.

Then his father turned back to alcohol, Mark tried to stop him, pouring bottles down the sink. But it wasn’t any use.

And now he’s stuck, trapped back with the man who he never wanted to see again and living half believing that he was the reason for everything that had happened.

idk it just. makes me think :)

[dawn-speckled]

mark's father says the reason mark barely reacts to his physical assault is that he's "raised [mark] to be a tough, tough boy", implying a history of violence or at least toughening him up. other than that i'm fine.

[oosyerdad]

If I had a nickel for every time AJ assigned himself the title character only for there to be confusion when the other player wants to be that character I’d have two nickels!

(I firmly believe he wanted to be Clarissa and not mark, kind of like in Susan’s Holiday when he wanted to be Susan but ended up as the best friend)

[iamonlypartlymajestic]

Mark from SFTH's Clarissa's DIY Wedding is Aro/Ace and should be in a QPR with Clarissa x Amanda. In this essay, I will—

[Okay, it's not really an essay (wow it became much longer than I thought it would) but this is the first time I've actually written out a headcanon I've had. I wasn't expecting to go into detail, but I posted this idea casually in the SFTH discord, and then some people actually started to vibe with it and add on to it (thanks so much btw <3!!), so now I want to write out all the ideas in case I (or someone else) want to write fic for it lmao.]

Main Idea: Mark from Clarissa's DIY Wedding is Aromantic and/or Asexual but because of his mommy/daddy/religious issues thinks he needs to have a heterosexual romance to be fulfilled because he couldn't see that in his own parents/family life and was pressured to do so. And while Clarissa and Amanda (who are now in a romantic relationship) help him discover his identity, they form a queerplatonic poly relationship of aro/ace!Mark x sapphic!DIYWives

Read ahead for my surprisingly long headcanon for this sad AF fictional man from an improv *comedy* bit whom I've now adopted. (disclaimer: I'm aroace spec but unfortunately I'm not really a good writer and thus, not very good at explaining things)

Headcanon:

Mark could be a closeted aroace person who unfortunately has been in several shortlived "stereotypically het" romances: lost his virginity at a young age, has had one-night stands, and frequent girlfriends

Much like Clarissa x Amanda is a "Good Luck, Babe" dynamic, Mark not knowing he's aro and/or ace can have his own Good Luck, Babe (which honestly he deserves it because angst is delicious). As Clarissa wakes up next to him in the middle of the night with her head in her hands, thinking about Amanda, Mark is lying facing away from his wife wondering why he doesn't feel the satisfaction society has told him he will have after marriage. Unlike Clarissa however, he doesn't know what that missing piece is.

He's obviously never gotten familial love from his dad and his mom died when he was young (and idk if he has any other family) so his yearning for what should be unconditional familial love transferred over to a want for unconditional romantic love because that's what society has placed on a pedestal. But because he has no proper example of what a healthy couple relationship should look like and because he doesn't have that romantic attraction, he's just willing to take what he can get.

AND THE CHURCH!!! OMG THE CHURCH. The church also doesn't help, just promoting het marriage as the end all be all which is unfortunate since the church seems to be the only place he goes to for help in his life and even then, all he's given in answer is unwarranted guilt.

As suggested in the discord, Amanda somehow convinces Clarissa to convince Mark to go to therapy instead of the Church. For Amanda, it's at first a way to separate Mark and Clarissa because they'll realize they aren't actually compatible. After several therapy sessions (including couple's therapy for both of them), Mark and Clarissa realize that their current relationship is unhealthy. Clarissa realizes she's bisexual or pansexual and that those friendly feelings for Amanda weren't strictly friendly at all. Mark realizes that while he does love Clarissa, it's not the romantic love that is typical for a married couple but he's been treating the marriage more of a bandaid over his abandonment trauma and guilt. They get a divorce and Clarissa gets together with Amanda and Mark tries to find himself somehow (spoiler alert, he has no idea how to do so by himself).

Much to Amanda's dismay, Clarissa and Mark still miss each other and want to hang out on friendly terms (Amanda also has to go through her own issues of abandonment and thinking that Clarissa will leave her for a man). However, the more they hang out all together, Amanda starts to actually like Mark as a friend and she knows now that the way Mark and Clarissa love each other is not the same love as Clarissa and hers is, but it is still very strong in itself.

For example: Mark and Clarissa have cuddle sessions because they're used to that already. Amanda gets jealous because her insecurities are convinced that Mark and Clarissa will get back together romantically and leave her as the third wheel again. But as it continues, she realizes that the intimacy is soooo not romantic or sexual in nature and entirely just for comfort

At this point, it may be the start of a QPR but they don't know it yet shhh...

Since hanging out more with Clarissa and Amanda, Mark is very much introduced to the LGBTQIA+ community. Mark learns that he may not be straight after all.

*cue montage music*

• Mark gets invited to gay bars with DIYWives to experiment. He's introduced to Amanda's sapphic friends as Clarissa's ex-husband, but he's cool and part of the "girlies".

• Mark gets hit on by several gay men. He at first declines, but looking at Clarissa and Amanda dancing with each other and having fun in the middle of the club, he wants what they have. Clarissa found out she likes women, maybe he likes men too, and ends up hooking up with some of them. He learns that the way he feels about men is the same way he feels about women which he thinks makes him bisexual but that doesn't seem that correct to him.

• Finally, he meets other aro/ace people and something just *clicks*. While he very much loved (and tbh still does love) Clarissa and feels extreme fondness for her, he never actually felt romantic/sexual attraction towards her.

• Mark comes out to Clarissa and Amanda who obviously support him very much. Now, when they go to bars since Mark still gets hit on by all genders, he begins to wear shirts with several aro/ace puns on them (lmao). It isn't very long after that—maybe Amanda does the research actually—DIYWives end up having a queerplatonic relationship with Mark.

As a friendly joke, Clarissa or Amanda introduces Mark like this:

Clarissa/Amanda: "Yeah that's Mark, my/her ex-husband. She/I hated him, but we're all good and in a relationship now."

Mark's like, "Hi! 👋😎"

...

It is now 1:30am and I can't think of anything else right now lol, sooooo thanks for coming to my TED Talk! *drops microphone and walks off stage*