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hereforthefunnyguys · 2 months

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okay okay marik ishtar getting psychosexual in the club brain time. (Sorry in advance for the bigass text block. also if you are an ace/aro marik truther then A) I can see it but also B) this is very much not that. be forewarned.) I know things along these lines have been said before, but I truly cannot picture him being some kind of crazily sexually/romantically liberated flirt like you see a lot in fanon. Feel free to argue with me if you want in the reblogs or comments or whatever I am not sure about what I'm saying here. (+1500 words of Help Me under the readmore!)

He grew up underground, with no one else around but his abusive highly religious dad, personal manservant/extremely protective brother figure, and what seems to be the only even somewhat normal family relationship he has with his sister that's almost as isolated and frankly seems moderately socially awkward outside of telling mysterious prophecies. I do not think he was not getting Helpful and Informative Sex Ed, to say the least, and also if/when he started going through puberty he would have functionally nowhere to project those urges. Maybe he can get a crush on a particularly well-drawn wall carving or statue idk but the point is that he doesn't have any actual human reference for what the feelings mean other than his immediate family which is a uhhhhhh different and much more uncomfortable conversation!

Also, even when he and Rishid finally get out of there and start up the Ghouls, I don't think Rishid would bother with telling him about sex and romance as he gets older - if anything, he would be less likely to tell him, because if there's one thing Rishid would want to do as little as possible, it would be to allow more opportunities for Marik to act out in more "depraved" ways - I mean, come on, the guy already forces people to commit suicide, brainwashes them to fight in death matches, and do weird little dances in public for his entertainment (I know that one isn't as intimidating as the other ones, but I do think it's important to establish the sheer level of pettiness and self-indulgence he's at by this point.)

We've already established by this point that his ability to empathize and sympathize with other people is currently somewhere at the bottom of the Marianas trench, assuming he may not have had low empathy before then, which he might've judging by how he treats his siblings (diversity win! the arc villain has low-functioning empathy!), though that may also be due to being the "favorite" and getting what he wants all the time and not being raised to consider them real people on par with him and his father. But I digress. I do think Rishid would be at least considering the ways that those behaviors would intersect with teenage hormones, to say the least (plus the whole Yami Marik thing, which I'll discuss. Later.)

But by contrast, I don't think it makes sense to say Marik's completely innocent to the concept - he may be a very socially isolated 16 year old, but he's still like. a 16 year old. He regularly pries inside of peoples heads to manipulate them, and if you go by anime canon, he is definitely aware of very strong romantic feelings (and therefore possibly sexual ones, though maybe not? arkana ace king ig) in the form of arkana/pandora's little anime lost love scenario. Also, I think its fair to assume a Good Number of the Ghouls would possess sexual or romantic feelings as well. However. However. I am going to go out on a limb and say that learning about sex from people's personal fantasies is to sex ed what learning about how to cook from Hell's Kitchen is to chef college; everything you absorb is overdramatic, unrealistic, extremely emotionally charged, and often involves a surprising amount of violence and degradation for a day-to-day activity.

I'm going to say Marik then is Aware of sex, but doesn't fully "get" it. Like. It makes him uncomfortable to think about it for too long, and in general, it's just something Other People do. It's something he can use to get close to people (sign that says ASK ME ABOUT FEMME FATALE MARIK ISHTAR PROPAGANDA), but its not really something he fully accepts as something he would do just for the sake of it. He's aware of it, but it's still a moderately alien concept to him, at least that's how he would think about it.

Additionally, I don't think his vision of romantic love is going to be any better. In between societies massive effort to romanticize (ehehe) those specific feelings as the end-all-be-all of affection and the fact that, again, he didn't really grow up with anyone (and still really doesn't have another outlet) other than his dad and siblings as who he "loves" - I do think he loves his siblings, and, tragically enough, probably his father as well. (Thats something else people ignore a ton. We as The Audience do not like Peepaw Ishtar but Marik himself has NO clue what he did was wrong or bad or unforgivable. If anything Marik considers himself the problem for not being able to take it. But that's another convo. God I'm going all over the place today.) Anyways what I'm trying to say here is that Marik probably sees romantic love as something that's present and he should Want but doesn't quite fully understand the emotional implications of it or investment necessary to make it work. If anything he would know less about romance since while old Egyptian myths do mention sex and sexuality with fair regularity - albeit not with much that would help a clueless 12 year old that associates said myths with his imprisonment and doom - there is very little talk of True Love in there. The fact that his knowledge of marriage extends to "my mother died a horrible painful death in childbirth having me and my dad didn't really care" probably is not helping matters!

Also tying this all together is the fact that Marik seems to have a Fraught and Uneasy relationship with his own body, to say the least. Like. I'm just going to go out on a limb and say he seems to consider it just another damp, dark prison he's stuck in, one that has done nothing other than provide an easy way to hurt him and keeps him tied to the Tombkeeper legacy. And who wouldn't? The guy has a massive scar carved into his back permanently reminding him of how trapped he really. Additionally, that's another barrier to intimacy, since there's no way on Earth he's letting anyone touch his back without an INSANE amount of trust - I imagine even Rishid is somewhat suspect in allowing him to touch his back.

The only time he seems really happy is when he gets to extend his mind outside of himself, into other people's brains and giving him a sense of power in an otherwise very controlled life. So that's definitely one barrier there! How do you even begin trying to make your body feel good when all your body has felt like all your life is completely awful? Especially when it would involve letting another person have access to it in a very vulnerable state??? Nuh uh no way thank you sir but we're staying repressed forever and shoving any and all Perverse Urges into a box deep deep in our Mind Room and ignoring them until we die, which we never will because we're Special. This is to say nothing of the fact that one of his tombkeepers duties is theoretically to procreate and create a new generation of keepers which is. Wow. Another conversation entirely but for our purposes means that he already is not going to have a good relationship to that! (Bonus points if it turns out he's homosexual. I'm not saying he is gay, but layering the Problems with "not attracted to women" would be an interesting intersection.)

Anyways the cherry on top of this miserable sundae is the Existence of Yami Marik, the Good-Times Ruiner. Point number one: in between the weird sadomasochism thing he has going on and the fact that he seems significantly more physically and emotionally liberated than Marik, I think it would be fair to call him a moderately sexualized character, though not a straight-up succubus (yes I am aware the term for men is Incubus. quiet).

Point number two: Yami Marik is generally seen to represent Marik's repressed urges and grudges, so we can pretty easily make the assumption that Yami Marik being sexualized comes from an attempt to absolve Marik of such uncomfortable distractions. So there is the thought there that he considers his sexual urges on par with or at least related to his violent and vengeful ones.

Point number three: You would have thought that at least partially realizing this by the end of Battle City would result in Marik realizing he should stop repressing his emotions. But it won't! Because that's not how that Highly Functional Ishtar Brain works! It goes "I now associate sexuality with one of the worst and most publicly humiliating and traumatic times of my life, so I now consider it an Active Problem to get rid of instead of just a uncomfortable quirk of mine." So no actually I think he would be getting worse! Someone send him to a therapist please or at least figure out a way for him not to simultaneously hate himself while still hating everyone else More.

anyways tl;dr: Marik ishtar knows about an extremely warped version of sex but good lord he is repressing it fifteen feet underground. Again feel free to argue with me if you want I'd like to hear other opinions. Anyways hope yall have a nice day and thanks for reading thru all of that!

#In summation: kazoo cover of paradise by the dashboard light plays while Marik miserably stares into a mirror with smudged eyeliner.#Marik ishtar #malik ishtar #yami marik #yami malik #ygo #yugioh #yu gi oh #if nobody likes this I will be Very Sad jk it just means ill post more about it. Well I will be sad but also Filled With Determination.#my stuff

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