#was listening to material girl on repeal while drawing this i think that says a lot

[stiffyck]

all of them have chompers

[jorelassicpark]

Imagine Being Thanos (AU, spoilers, duh)

Something I wrote really quickly.

Apologies for turning Titan into Man of Steel’s Krypton.

Imagine this: you're young, you're optimistic, you're among the brightest and best of your planet. Your family loved you. You're among friends who'd die for you. You've had one of the best upbringings you could ask for. You never go to bed hungry and you've got a job lined up for you once you complete your well-earned education.

But outside of your circle, what your family and friends ignore, is strife - poverty, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, nationalism, us vs. them, politics vs. politics, riots, hunger. Resources are dwindling while the population rises. Your hometown was once quiet, even if it was big - now it's stuffed to the gills with the rich getting richer while the middle class can't afford a house now because all the jobs are being taken by either the overqualified or the rich, while criminals prey on the poor and rich alike who're moving in hoping to snatch up a job. The schools are stuffed to bursting and the teachers get paid for shit. Your friends who start families have to start homeschooling them or scrape up money to send them to a private school to get a quality education, or keep them away from gangs that are popping up. You're assaulted twice, and criminals looking to start fights with you because you were born big break your bones. Even your family can't afford the bills anymore. You're followed by beggars - some you recognize as your old classmate from high school, hit by another recession. Some are completely out of their minds, talking to Gods that aren't there and screaming and hollering. One nearly slashes your throat open with a rusty blade because he thinks you're recording him with your phone.

You notice the summers getting warmer, earlier. Winter doesn't feel like winter anymore. Everyone knows it's the factories struggling to keep up demand spewing smoke into the air. The leaders of each country repeal the fragile environmental laws in place. Your dad used to take the family jetskiing and fishing. You can't do that anymore - the fish are completely gone and the last person who took a swim is dying in the hospital from Gods-know-how-many chemicals. Last week, it hit

In your lifetime, one war after another pops up, in one way or another. Nation A accuses Nation B of meddling in their politics. Nation B invades Nation C that used to be a part of it. Nation A's citizens argue back and forth about Nation B. The right is cleaved in half, one finding Nation B a right-wing aliy, while the other half can't forgive the shadow war waged for the last century. The left fares no better - one half despises its lack of free speech, its own bigotry, while the other half believes it to be an ally against Nation A's own longstanding issues with hatred - slavery in the past, subtle racism that keeps minorities in ghettos now, police brutality. Your nation elects a bigot who seethes against the other every day. Your university shuts down several times. You're tear-gassed by police as you try to make your way to the laboratories. You're mistaken for the Other by one faction or another and you barely escape with your health more than once.

You try to help. You donate to charity, and find the board has been stealing what should be cancer research funds to go party on their yachts. You give blood, only to read that 99% of it goes unused because the collection methods spoil it before it can be used. You

Then it hits. War comes home. Half your family is dead. Half your friends go missing, disappeared into prisons to never be seen again or simply *gone*. You used to share a room with your brother and it takes a long time for you to stop coming home and start talking until you realize the bed above yours is empty. You don't see the sun for days because there's so much thick smoke choking the air from all the bombings. What's left of your family huddles in candlelight after the power shuts down for the nth time, hoping the rifle cracks don't get closer.

The war doesn't get better. Nations are gone overnight. Another half of what remains of your family is drafted to die in a land they don't know. Half of your university is gone, also drafted into the war. In the break room, the professor of philosophy - a man you respect, a man who taught you how to debate, to question what you see, to make sense of other people's suffering - watches the news. The damage is catastrophic. Nuclear weapons poison lands irreversibly. Another scientist is quoted that out of a once roiling planet of one trillion, five billion are left, and dropping *nightly*.

The city mayor calls an emergency meeting. The food supplies are dwindling. Medicine is zero. The remaining hospitals had to put the old, the terminally ill, the critically wounded in palliative care and lie to them that they'll make it.

Something inside you snaps. Maybe it's the fact you barely made it out of an artillery shelling last night. Maybe you're so hungry that you've considered eating the bugs coming out of the rubble. Maybe you're tired of the arguments on who to banish next for some petty thing - banish him because he looks fat and maybe was hoarding food. Banish him because he used to be a racist. Banish that guy because he voted for the party that got us into this war.

You suggest everyone draw straws. One half with the tallest straws get to stay. The other half... you want to say banishment, but you've seen the girl down the street die of radiation poisoning in the gaping crater when she took the wrong path out of town.

Everyone - even your own family - stares at you like you're pure evil.

You work alone, now. Trying to find a cure, and it's hard without anyone to help you move isotopes or work the microscopes or bring you raw materials. But what you can do is math. Prove that your plan, as evil as it is, is right. You draw up statistics. You call on census records and the remaining orbital satellites to determine who is left. You sample soil and watch the clouds and orbit and temperature and all the food sources - animal, plant, and otherwise. Math is simple and easy to understand - it didn't make fun of you for being different, it didn't care if it couldn't understand you.

You have your final plea to save the world. There isn't much time to execute it, and a shred of you hopes you are wrong.

You broadcast your plea. End this. Save what we have left.

You find nothing but mockery. Your plans are broadcasted to other nations to prove yours is an evil, genocidal one when you meant nothing like it.

Another half of your city is destroyed in a bombing sweep trying to target you. The cowards didn't even spare one of their foot soldiers to do the job personally.

One night, your father wakes you up. His eyes are red, and there is something other than hollow shock in his eyes. He leads you to what is left of the laboratories. The readings are getting worse - the tremors are shaking continents apart. The oceans will evaporate in a year, no matter what anyone does. Soon, everyone who survives the quakes will have their lungs collapse into a poison sludge - if the last leaders of every 'great' nation just finally settle for Mutually-Assured Destruction.

He used to be a rocket scientist. He helped Titan meet other worlds, trade peacefully, explore the stars - and that technology is now used to deliver more missiles to nations no longer there.

His personal ship can only fit one. He says he was trying to modify it to fit the family, but that's moot now. It's just you and him.

You're not going, you say. You don't want another hole in your heart. You don't want another ghost haunting this world. You tell him he's older and wiser and he can orate and argue and that he was a diplomat. They'll listen.

You know you screamed at each other, begging not to go. You don't remember much of the exact details - but you remember one. You remember the strength you inherited from him picking you up and tossing you bodily into the cockpit.

You are in orbit when your father is proven right. Nuclear strikes scour light into your eyes. For days, you can't see anything but the memory of your planet turning to the sickest pitch black for a second is burned into your eyes forever.

You drift through space. Your father had set coordinates for the nearest friendly planet. You hope and pray for a diplomatic mission to meet you, to have some kind of shelter. You look forward to a bed and clean food, even though you know they'll probably ignore you at best.

You're beset upon by pirates, beaten to an inch of your life, your ship scrapped for parts. But you live. You manage a living doing hard labor. You work your way into the sciences. You hope this planet avoids another war.

And this world repeats what your world did.

Once again, you escape with your life on a one-man ship. And this time, war has spread through the system - into the next one. You see ships burning unnatural fires into colonies. You see planetary rings formed from endless dead fleets.

It is here, alone in the galaxy, utterly, completely alone, that you decide you will make them listen.