Marc Spector, Moon Knight š³ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
reflectedlight) wrote2026-01-20 07:06 pm
reflectedlight) wrote2026-01-20 07:06 pm
APPLICATION: Sometimes a great wave of forgetfulness rises up and blesses me
(AND OTHER TIMES THE SICKNESS HOWLS AND I DESPAIR OF ANY REMEDY)
CONTENT WARNINGS: Child abuse, child death, alcohol abuse, attempted suicide, disassociation
User Name/Nick: Fire
User DW: n/a
Discord: glitchlich
Other Characters Currently In-Game: n/a
Character Name: Marc Spector. Along for the ride against their will are bonus characters Steven Grant and Jake Lockley.
Series: Moon Knight (MCU, 2022)
Age: 38
From When?: While off-screen in episode 1, Marc canonically jumps out of a fifth-story window to escape a gunfight. In the show, he survives, just bleeding and concussed. Here, he dies.
Inmate Justification: An exploitative, lying moon god has been telling Marc which people to kill for several years now, and Marc is so unable to believe that he's capable of not hurting anyone that he's fatalistically accepted this and has just been killing people. At his pull point, Marc's kill count on the orders of the moon god is at least two dozen. The only thing keeping Marc from being outright a force of evil is that the moon god actually DOES have good intentions for humanity as a whole, uh, sort of.
Marc has deliberately ghosted his wife, who is frantically trying to find him and thinks he might be dead. He is currently doing some absolutely diabolical gaslighting on Steven (who I will explain in a moment) in order to maintain the illusion that Steven is a normal person who has a sleepwalking problem a normal life and two living parents. Steven is ACTUALLY a deeply traumatized amnesiac with two more personalities living in his head and an abusive mother that just died two months ago. Marc arranging Steven's reality to conceal this from him keeps Steven from healing or dealing with any of those problems. Marc, like the moon god he serves, has good intentions and his core drive is to protect, not hurt, but there are elements of his own life he's so afraid of that he would rather get people killed than be honest with anyone about them. He bounces from terrible destructive idea to terrible destructive idea without setting any boundaries to protect himself, because it's all he thinks he deserves. He assumes people who hurt him and people who care for him are the same thing. He assumes that it's normal to hurt the people you care for. This assumption process derails the lives of people who attempt to care about him.
Arrival: He agreed to come, because while he would be fine dying and probably even feel relieved about it, Marc dying would also kill Steven and maybe lead to the end of the world. These priorities are paid attention to in the order previously stated. Marc made this call for not just himself, but for two other people who have no idea the choice has been made for them. (Again, we'll get to how that works.) This is in and of itself sort of a dick move, but it's a very Marc dick move.
Abilities/Powers: Marc has the ability to magical-girl-style summon a divine suit of healing armor that transforms him into Moon Knight. A Moon Knight is an avatar/divine champion of Khonshu, the ancient Egyptian god of the moon. There is usually only one on Earth at a time. All Moon Knights have enhanced speed, agility, strength, and healing, and can summon specific melee weapons out of the material of the suit. Marc's version of the suit has a crescent-shaped glider built into the cape that allows him limited flight. The weapons that Marc's version of the armor can generate are moon-shaped throwing knives. He also appears to be unable to be killed by being impaled or shot. He doesn't even bleed. Since the suit appears to abruptly mummify him, I wouldn't be surprised if being suited up as Moon Knight is a temporary state of un-life.
Bonus characters Steven and Jake, if empowered and in charge of the body they share with Marc, can also summon Moon Knight suits. Steven's version does not have a glider, and in place of the throwing knives has a pair of white truncheons. Jake's suit specifications and weapon are unknown.
For all three, their position as the avatar also means that, whenever they're on the same plane of reality as Khonshu, they're able to see Khonshu and be aggressively bothered by him, as well as see other creatures from the same magic system that would normally be invisible to mundane living humans.
Moon Knight's status as avatar functions as something like a Dungeons and Dragons paladin. With the connection to their god severed, none of them can do anything that any other non-magical human can't do.
Inmate Information: One of the most confusing things about explaining Marc is that there are two totally unrelated kinds of weirdness going on with him. The non-magical one should be explained first.
Marc accidentally caused his younger brother's death when Marc was eight and his brother, Randall, was seven. Marc witnessed the drowning, and barely survived himself. Marc's mother, devastated past her limits by the loss of a child, had a mental breakdown. She ejected Marc from Randall's shiva, screaming that it had been his fault, and would repeat the sentiment over and over throughout the next decade of Marc's life.
Between the ages of ten and eighteen, Marc repeatedly suffered severe, traumatic abuse and violence at the hands of a primary caregiver, his mother. Emotionally, this was framed to child-Marc as a deserved punishment and justified vengeance for "killing" his brother and causing his family grief and pain. Marc was the problem, Marc was the weed choking out the garden that should have been uprooted before its nature caused it to jealously kill the roses.
This abuse, although it shattered child-Marc's fundamental sense of self and sense of safety and severely impaired his development of identity, attachment, emotional regulation, trust, emotional closeness, and other important things, did not kill him. He grew up. He grew up as a person unable to separate himself and his own soul from the things that had been done to him.
We meet Marc as an adult deeply ashamed of who and what he is; not just convinced he is malicious and harmful and someone who deserves suffering, but also someone who is now old enough to be aware that these thoughts are a result of abuse. He is a tragedy, he is broken, he will never be a normal person. How do you go on with that knowledge? How do you explain to anyone you meet that you're sorry, but things that happened to you decades ago are still controlling your behavior, and maybe always will?
Marc's most dramatic and specific lasting symptom is that the child version of Marc Spector is gone, and has developed into three distinct adults, only one of which still calls himself Marc. The present versions of Marc Spector, Steven Grant, and Jake Lockley are three identities or āaltersā that share a mind, body, and developmental history. While present day Marc Spector is the man with his name on the inmate file, he should not be mistaken for the only alter that represents the "original" Marc. All three of them are constructs, the way any identity is a construct. They serve purposes, and all three share traits that would have been inherent to a version of child-Marc that was allowed to grow up normally.
While Steven and Jake are not the inmates that the file is about, Steven and Jake are also present on the Barge. Living alongside them will be a fact of adult-Marc's life forever. He cannot separate from them any more than he could separate from the events that shaped the three of them.
"Marc Spector," the alter who identifies with the wallet name of their shared body and the primary inmate for this application, functions as an emotional and physical protector. Unlike Stevenās total ignorance of the rest of the system, Marc has memories of Steven existing, remembers when Steven was first formed, and seems to know and see what is going on when Steven is fronting. Marc sees his role as being the evil twin/the bad guy/the one that has been tainted by the world, so that Steven doesn't have to. Marc thinks of himself as broken, and bad, but itās fine: Steven can be normal, and good. Marc is probably the alter that has "fronted" (piloted and controlled the shared body) for the majority of their adult life. Marc has been inevitably shaped by abuse, and those shapes are all negative traits: Marc is mistrustful, wary, hypervigilant, cynical, exhausted, angry, and depressed. He's nearly humorless in person, utilitarian, with no ability to emotionally connect with people, no self-preservation, and a flat affect with a perpetual sour glare. He is also, although he is unable to see it in himself, brave and resourceful, defiant in the face of injustice, indefatigable, valorous and incredibly competent, deeply dedicated, and unconditionally loyal. Even before his title, there was always qualities in him that would have made him a knight. Marc would die to protect his loved ones, they are his entire world. Marc would set himself on fire just to keep them warm. It's just that he'd do a lot of other bad things to protect them, too.
Marc hates what happened to him, has inevitably been molded on a cellular level by what happened to him, and therefore hates himself. Every behavior that is irrational, painful, or abnormal is a reminder that he (in his mind, where it is easier for a child to comprehend that they are bad than that someone they love would hurt them for no reason) somehow attracted and deserved hate and abuse from his mother. The cause (the abuse) and the effect (Marc's present day identity) are transposed and intertwined. He thinks he deserved it. He hates himself for deserving it. He hates himself for not being able to stop thinking he deserved it, even though he knows rationally that he did not, that the obvious truth is that nothing a child can do would ever deserve abuse, ever.
Knowing it doesn't help.
Marc will "switch out" (disassociate and push another personality into the metaphorical driver's seat) when pushed beyond his emotional limits. When simply existing as a person that abuse happened to comes too acutely painful, he survives by shunting the shared body's cognition into Steven and is able to escape into a delusion that none of it ever happened.
"Steven Grant" is a fictive-style name taken from a movie that was child-Marc's favorite game of pretend. Steven's function is explicitly to be the personality that would hold child-Marc's ability to love their mother back, to show genuine interest and affection, to be visibly excited about things, and to generally be vulnerable or show any kind of fear, shame, or distress. When Steven is fronting, Steven has no memories of being abused as a child, and no memories of ever having a little brother, let alone one he saw die. Steven thinks his relationship with his parents is healthy and that he's very close to his mother, who loves him. Steven will switch out when he is under conditions that would challenge his original function, like being faced with the reality of his childhood, or even just being in too much distress or danger. Steven is the alter that is the most sheltered and therefore the most innocent. Steven easily has the strongest moral compass of the three Moon Knight system alters. Steven, being the version of them that is meant to be not mentally ill, not traumatized, not a victim, does not know he is an alter, or even has alters. He writes off, justifies, and rationalizes away any evidence to the contrary.
Steven is an uninhibited ray of sunshine. He rambles about his interests, he fidgets, he expresses all of his emotions freely and fearlessly, he is earnest, empathetic, sincere, and a little bit dotty. If allowed to blossom, he also develops a backbone of steel, an immediate sense for when people are trustworthy, and a well of deep honesty and loyalty. At this canon point, with his wings clipped by Marc and by the circumstances of Steven's existence, he's still meek, reactive, and passive-aggressive, with a lack of common sense that comes from a lack of life experience. Present-day Marc sees Steven as what Marc always should have been: someone allowed to experience innocence. Steven is Marc's hope that he can pretend to be normal, that he can ever be happy. Steven is an escapist fantasy of the only way they can comprehend ever feeling okay again: a world where the tragedy never happened, where they can be a person who isn't broken and ruined. Much like Rosa Diaz holding a golden retriever puppy, if anything ever happened to Steven, present-day Marc would kill everyone in this room and then himself.
There is also a third alter that neither Steven nor Marc are aware of or have access to memories from. Existing as him hurts more than even existing as Marc does, so, while Jake is necessary, and while Jake allowed the system to survive, the knowledge that Marc and Steven are capable of being Jake is something their mind does not allow them to comprehend.
"Jake Lockley" is an alter with very little canon information. He appears to be a physical protector, activated into alertness when the body is about to be abused or damaged so badly that it risks being killed. Jake is probably the answer to child-Marcās desperate, forbidden question: My mother is drunk, fragile, and Iām starting to be taller than her. If it meant making this stop, couldn't I just stop thinking of her as my mother and hit her back?
Jake will front when the system is in a form of mortal danger that is beyond Marc's capacity to handle. Jake will generally front for sixty seconds of brutal violence, and then shove either Marc or Steven back into the front and vanish. He seems to come to the front already understanding the scenario, goals, and priorities that the body is in, with none of Steven's amnesia issues, and none of Marcās hesitance or disgust. It is not fun being Jake. Jake will only stick around for long enough to get out of immediate physical danger. Jake, however, does not have any extraordinary powers that the rest of the system doesn't, just a lack of flinch-reflex towards doing gruesome stuff to other people's bodies. He's always here, though. They always have the capacity to do terrible things, to become as terrible as their mother always said they were. Does that mean they always deserved it? Does that mean she was right? Does that mean she could have loved us if we'd just been better?
So, thatās the non-magical part of Marcās problems. There, is, naturally, also a whole magical issue. Strap in, we're not even to the Moon Knight part of Moon Knight yet.
The magical part of what's going on with Marc was only made part of his life in his adulthood, after all of the rest of that was already pretty well established.
The system, as Marc, joined the Marines at age 18 to get away from their mother. They were discharged for mental health reasons after "going AWOL in a fugue state" - likely Marc, who would have been fronting, unexpectedly disassociating and becoming Jake.
(Steven is not likely to have fronted during body's military or mercenary years. Later in canon, he is very frightened of violence, and will shriek and throw away a gun if he suddenly comes to the front holding one. This is not exactly behavior that would indicate that he remembers he's supposed to be a trained ex-Marine.)
With limited life skills after his discharge, and assuming killing people was still all he was really good for, Marc found work as a mercenary, working under the same horrible commanding officer he'd been under in the Marines.
Working security for a dig site in northern Africa went south when Marc's boss discovered that the archeologists they were meant to be protecting had dug up something worth more than their mercenary contracts would have paid out for finishing the job. Marc's boss made the call to kill the civilian archeologists and loot the site. Marc refused, tried to protect them, and was shot with them and left for dead.
The dig site they had been protecting was an excavation of a temple of Khonshu, the ancient Egyptian god of the moon, whose domain was healing, protection, and vengeance. Marc, fatally wounded, and miles from help, crawled into the temple's main building for shelter and was about to turn his gun on himself when Khonshu spoke to him.
(It is possible, here, that Marc died and didn't realize it. It isn't normal for humans to be able to hear or see gods, and he was already on death's door.)
Khonshu introduced himself, assessed Marcās body and soul in a single glance, and seemed morbidly interested at how "fractured" Marc's mind was. Khonshu's old avatar, Arthur Harrow (who will come up again later) had recently left his service, citing abuse and torment, and there was a vacancy. Khonshu was also interested in how desperate Marc was. He offered to heal Marc and let him live in exchange for Marc pledging himself to be Khonshu's "fist of vengeance" - his avatar in the physical world, assigned an apparently perpetual series of tasks to do Khonshu's violent bidding. Marc, in a choice he'd repeat later with the Admiral, was in a ton of pain, and agreed to let Khonshu save his life.
Becoming Moon Knight and summoning the suit for the first time healed Marc's injuries and brought him back from either death or the brink thereof. Marc began moving according to Khonshu's demands, killing those Khonshu decided were a danger to "travelers of the night" and inflicting "justice" on those who had already done harm. It isn't specified what Khonshu meant by this, or how he could tell who deserved to die, but it's during this period that Marc kills about two dozen people on Khonshu's word. ("They were criminals. Murderers. Predators. The worst of the worst," Marc reluctantly justifies, in a later canon point.) Marc, fatalistic and already resigned to being a terrible person and a killer, didn't enjoy any of this but saw it as something he'd at least be useful for and good at. At least he was taking out "bad" people, right? That's something. It was kind of like, the military, but his orders were now from an omniscient being who was constantly appearing to heckle and neg him.
(It appears that Jake is aware that they are Moon Knight, because Jake displays no surprise when suddenly pushed to the front while in the Moon Knight gear. Steven, however, has no idea. He doesn't even know that Khonshu is real, let alone that he's an avatar.)
Blaming himself for the death of the researchers on the Khonshu temple excavation (because of course Marc blames himself for accidental deaths that happen around him!) Marc sought out their surviving families. Through this, he met the daughter of one of the archeologists killed. Somehow, off screen, he fell in love with her and married her. He didn't not tell her ANYTHING ABOUT HIS INVOLVEMENT IN HER FATHER'S DEATH. AT ALL. He blamed himself, knew it was irrational to blame himself, was afraid to be abused and rejected as a monster, and decided to just... avoid the subject entirely. That's a solution, right?
She didn't suspect a thing! This was such a bad idea! They got married?! This was fucked up. Layla was and is genuinely the love of Marcās life, and it's very unlikely his intention wasn't to get himself into this specific situation, but also, god damn!
Khonshu, upon noticing that Marc now had someone he cared about, started making regular threats to Marc about her: If Marc ever tried to quit being Khonshu's avatar, Khonshu would then enslave Layla instead. This is all later proven to be just a lie to manipulate Marc, but Marc wholly believed it, and his service to Khonshu became a self-sacrificing way to shield Layla from harm.
Marc did not tell Layla that Khonshu was threatening her. Marc did not tell Layla about his mental health or abuse history. Marc did not tell Layla that he had alters. His justification for this was that he "had it under control," but these desicions were probably motivated by shame. Most of Marc's desicions are motivated by shame. Marc did though, tell Layla about his powers, suit, and mission from Khonshu. This was good. It turns out sharing information with people you love is good! Layla and Marc being on the same page about Moon Knight meant they could handle Moon Knight problems together, and they teamed up to stop an apocalyptic threat.
Former Khonshu avatar Arthur Harrow was beginning to draw attention to the pantheon. He had become the avatar for the god Ammit, another ancient Egyptian entity. Khonshu's philosophy was to take vengeance on those who have already done harm, but Ammit sought to use divine pregognizance to prevent tragedy by killing those who would do harm before they were able to commit the sin.
(Harrow, later, will point out to Marc that if Ammit had killed Marc as a child before he was able to cause Randall's death, that his brother would be alive and his mother would be sane and happy. Two lives saved for the cost of taking one.)
Ammit's policy would mean meant killing just tons of people who hadn't actually done anything wrong yet, and the rest of the pantheon strongly disagreed that this was just. She had already been imprisoned by the rest of the Egyptian pantheon for thousands of years to prevent her carrying out her desires. Her imprisonment kept humanity safe from her, but Harrow, traumatized by his avatarship to Khonshu, decided that Ammitās judgment and leadership would be best for the world. (Maybe he saw her as someone who could have prevented Arthur from being harmed by Khonshu.) Harrow set about trying to free her. Marc, Khonshu, and Layla, working as a team, tried to stay one step ahead of Harrow's murderous cult.
The magical half of Marc's life was pretty well-in hand, and the mundane half of what was going on with him was something he had ample energy to repress. Steven was not fronting at all, because Marc was happy(ish) and didnāt need to escape, and if Jake fronted he could, as usual, hide himself from Marc. Marc thought he finally had this "living his life" stuff figured out! Pretending nothing was wrong would surely be a strategy he would be able to stick with forever!
Then, for the first time in twenty years, Marc's father called him. He wanted to let Marc know that his mother had died, and that Marc would be expected to come home for once (Why didn't you ever visit her?) sit shiva, and pay respects to her memory. (Don't you know you're the only son she had left? You had your disagreements in the past, but doesn't how badly she was in pain mean anything to you?)
The last family shiva Marc had tried to attend was the one for his little brother. He was not permitted to sit with the mourners, because the sight of Marc would send his mother into screaming fits. With his mother's death, Marc also lost any hope, no matter how irrational, of reconciliation for her years of abuse, redemption in her eyes, of closure for himself, of catharsis for himself, or for justice.
If asked before her death, Marc probably would have said that he assumed he wouldn't grieve his mother, when she passed. That he'd feel either nothing, or relieved.
On the street outside of his childhood home, with his father staring expectantly at him through the window, Marc had a meltdown as the grief he was unprepared to handle - for her, for his brother, for himself - found his heart too heavy to balance the scales of truth, and swallowed him whole. Unlike his mother's breakdown decades earlier, at the very least Marc didnāt turn any of his grief outward. Marc turned it in on himself, or intended to, anyway. He just happened to catch all his loved ones in the blast radius.
Marc, triggered past his ability to tolerate existing as himself, disassociated fully into being Steven Grant. Steven, with his protective walls of amnesia surrounding everything that made Marc miserable, didn't recognize Marc's childhood home, or his father, and cluelessly wandered off and away. Marc did not return to front. Marc didn't intend to return at all.
As far as Layla knew, her husband dropped off the face of the earth right in the middle of their world-saving mission. As far as Steven Grant knew, he woke up and then stayed awake for once. He was on the wrong continent, with no money and no idea how to get home, but this marked a period of lucidity for Steven like he'd never been able to experience before.
Steven Grant got a job working at the British Museum, because Steven Grant likes archeology. Especially ancient Egypt! :) Steven believed he had a sleepwalking problem, enough to take precautions against it. This probably meant that Marc was fronting when Steven was asleep, after dark, but since Marc never fronted during the day time, it also meant he was always willingly surrendering back to Steven before morning.
Marc, during this time, sent Steven postcards, addressed from Steven's mother, telling Steven all about her world travels. He paid for an apartment as Steven's mother, the fictional Mrs. Grant, and let Steven live there under her name, with her blessing. Steven called his mom every day, and she never picked up the phone, but, well, she was in all sorts of different time zones, wasn't she? He just kept leaving her voice mails :) If there was ever a chance of Steven figuring out that his life was a lie, Marc would front long enough to cover it up, long enough to give Steven proof that his mother was alive and loved him. While this was done out of love, out of a desire to build an escapist fantasy for Steven to inhabit, none of that cancels out the fact that all of this, on Marc's end, was just really, astoundingly fucked up.
Marc, at some point in these months, paid attention to the impending apocalypse for long enough to buy a storage locker and a burner phone. He contacted Layla to inform her he wanted a divorce, then started screening her calls, hiding all evidence that he ever existed, and working solo with the guidance of Khonshu to stop the cult on his own. This had the bonus of keeping Khonshu, who was still threatening Layla, away from her entirely. Marc seems to have decided that keeping the cult of Ammit as his sole responsibility was what was best for Layla, in order to protect her, and that Layla was better off without him, anyway.
Marc has a problem with making condescending and bad decisions on behalf of other people. Also, of letting his shame drive when his common sense should probably be listened to more.
Had he lived, in the next episode past his pull point, Marc stated his intent with all of this behavior was to shut down Ammit's cult and then vanish into blissful ignorance as Steven forever, effectively letting "Marc Spector" die. This action, if heād been able to go through with it, would also have stranded Layla with never being able to know what happened to him, and leave Steven with an unreliable and even downright false memory of who he was, what he was, and what his life circumstances were.
Marc, fighting Ammit's cult totally on his own without Layla's help or knowledge, gets himself and therefore Steven and Jake, killed. They end up on the Barge.
Path to Redemption:
TELL THE TRUTH, MARC
Tell the truth, stop killing people because the moon told you to, confront your issues instead of ignoring them and letting them dictate your actions, stop manipulating people, TELL THE TRUTH!!
In the show, Marc almost gets kicked out of a different form of afterlife, because his heart is too weighed down to be lighter on the scales of Anubis than the Feather of Truth. TELL THE TRUTH! STOP BEING AFRAID OF IT!
Marc has to stop being so afraid that he will be rejected as unworthy of love. He has to stop being so afraid that the truth about him is that heās awful, and a killer, and that anyone that learns it will hate him. Although this belief is pretty obviously a result of his upbringing, it is causing him to not just shut out the people he cares about, but to refuse to tell them vital information. That lack of information has put them in direct danger and seriously limited their ability to run their lives as independent adults and make good choices. Marc doesn't want them to make choices, he wants to make the choice on their behalf so that he never has to find out if theyād choose to reject him. He also has to stop this shit. He has to stop lying to Steven and Layla in order to control them, even if he thinks it is for their own good.
It also wouldn't hurt to get some friends that aren't someone who is married to him, someone who is sharing a body with him, or someone who is Khonshu. He will undoubtedly hurt whatever friends he gets on the Barge. This will be a good learning experience for him, because he will then have to deal with that shit. He has to fuck up, lie, manipulate, be caught confess, and apologize, be forgiven, and NOT try to escape by ditching the consequences onto Steven or Jake. Marc absolutely has to experience being genuinely forgiven, or none of this will stick.
Marc needs a patient warden who can understand that Marc is not always in control of himself, but also that Marc has a responsibility to be good to people on the fronts he can control. LIKE THE LYING.
Be Nice To The Alternates
The first thing a warden has to do is fucking find him, though. Arriving on the Barge, he's going to be zoned out as Steven for as long as he can get away with it.
A successful warden must be able to get to a trauma-informed and DID-acceptant position regarding Steven and Jake's personhood. Steven and Jake did not ask to be created. At this point in the system's development, they are not curable symptoms or imaginary friends. Marc isn't a child, and neither are they. They know who they are, they are sentient, and they have self-worth and do not want to stop existing. They may have all been the same mind before the trauma, but as adults the three of them have developed into three complete people that show up in the Egyptian afterlife as distinct individuals, each with their own hearts. Yes, they are all aspects of the same splintered man. This doesn't mean that any of them have more right to exist than any of the others. The Marc alter is not more or less real than the Steven or Jake alters, he just fronts more often. The show is very clear that it is wrong spiritually, emotionally, and ethically for Marc let Steven die off when he "doesn't need him any more," even when magically offered a permanent peace that he can only accept if he leaves Steven for dead.
Steven, if approached correctly, is also an ENORMOUS asset to Marc's warden. Steven is not just escapism, Steven has agency that is distinct from Marc's. He's the one that gets Marc a solid chunk of the way towards redemption in the TV show, once Marc stops being able to hide from him. If a warden can think of him as his own person, Steven has unmatched access to Marc's psyche (because he lives inside of it) and a huge, compassionate heart. He is literally a sapient coping mechanism for Marc's grief and survivor's guilt, which means he's often going to be exactly what Marc needs. Although he's naive, Steven is very sharp, and his emotional stability and secure attachment style means he's a much better critical thinker than Marc. He will come around to wanting Marc to be alright. Do not keep Steven in the dark. Team up with Steven against Marc for his own good, in fact. Let Steven help!
A successful warden has to be able to challenge Marc to not treat Steven the way he treats Layla: as someone who can be kept in the dark and lied to. (He shouldn't be doing that to either of them, to be clear!) Marc's ability to control Steven's perceptions of reality is causing a really messed-up power imbalance there, and that should be rectified by forcing the two of them to communicate and getting them on equal footing. They should probably deal with Jake at some point, too, even if Jake would greatly prefer to simply not be dealt with.
(Jake will need to be found before he can be approached, and Marc and Steven will need to be talked into accepting him. This is its own challenge, but if Marc's warden can't rope in Jake's cooperation, it won't keep Marc from graduating, it'll just be something to work on in the future.)
Don't Just Repress Everything
Marc is deeply avoidant, maybe the most deeply avoidant that it is physically possible for a human brain to be. He's so avoidant that he's figured out how to completely exit his mind and body for months at a time when he doesn't want to fucking do it any more. A good warden will not reward this strategy or let him use it to get away with stuff. He's been through a lot, but, seriously, don't be too soft on him. It'll take both Marc and his warden working together to fight upstream against the deeply ingrained currents of Marc's disassociation.
Marc won't mind the Barge, in that Marc is so emotionally deadened that he'll approach anything happening to him as Just Some Shit I Have To Deal With Now, I Guess. He's not curious, he's not shocked, he's just going to do his job. This is the same mindset that leads to him not questioning Khonshu nearly enough, and getting him to admit that he's irritated with some aspect of his imprisonment or that he's questioning its methods is actually a good step in the right direction and means he's starting to give a shit about whether he lives or dies and whether things are right or wrong. You can do it, Marc! Marc really has to stop passively trying to kill himself? This will go naturally with the self-worth thing. He doesn't want to die, per se, he would just love to not exist any more. It's the ultimate disassociation!
Marc doesn't actually enjoy being the bag man for a bloodthirsty god, he just thinks he doesn't deserve anything better. Getting the self-worth to stand up for himself will ultimately be good for both him and everybody Khonshu decides he doesn't like. That'll mean a lot of trauma work, probably.
Marc thinks he's going to keep his head down and just do whatever his Warden wants. He's thinking of the Barge like the Marines. Just follow orders and you're fine. In reality, it's going to involve a lot of talking about his emotions and therapy shit, and no amount of willpower can get Marc through that without balking, fighting, fleeing, disassociating, switching purposefully or accidentally out for Steven or Jake, and even resorting to violence. Everything inside of him during key developmental years was formed to keep Marc from having to face his demons by any means necessary. He doesn't mean to fight you, but oh boy will he ever fight you.
The Marines thing isn't a bad point of reference, though. A military-like predictable schedule where he has goals and can physically work out excess restlessness might be really good and comfortable for him. Marc loves predictable stuff. Predictable is safe, unpredictable is dangerous. Give him a routine, he'll eat that shit up. This'll also help with accounting for Marc's time - losing time by burying himself under Steven or disassociating is another form of avoidance. Marc's a very obedient guy, you'd have to push him pretty far before he'd start skiving off of assignments given to him.
History: Here at the Marvel wiki, which is much better maintained than the MCU-only wiki. Their pull point is when Steven wakes up in Austria.
Sample Network Entry: Marc
Hi.
This is Steven Grant's communicator, but it's not Steven talking. Don't worry about who it is. I'm a friend.
A lot of noise is happening, because even though Steven tells everyone he's a warden, he can't see messages sent to warden filters, which proves he's an inmate, blah blah blah.
Well, he's not. He's not an inmate, he just came along for the ride by accident. He's not trying to hurt anyone, he's not a bad person, so lay off. You're going to freak him out, and then I'm going to have to meet with you one on one. Neither of us want that.
[You can almost read the subtle little head-shake in the text, the dead-eyed stare. Don't do that. You do not want to do that.
Look, if you take this sentence as a threat, then you take it as a threat. If you don't, then you don't. Marc is just going to leave it up to you.]
I just want to do my job, and you just want to do yours. Alright?
He's happy, and he can't leave even if he did know the truth, so this is the best solution. Quit bothering him about it. It's being taken care of.
Steven
Here, at the TDM
Sample RP:
Marc
Here, at the TDM.
Steven
Here, at the TDM
Special Notes: In the show, it's easy to tell which alternate is speaking because of their different accents and body language, but that's not so easily conveyed over text. Having played in games that allow exact duplicates before, I've experienced playing across from sets and being incredibly frustrated with not being able to remember WHICH Joker-from-Persona my character had just been talking to. My plan is to tag from this account when Marc is fronting, and fromde_nile when Steven fronts. I'm hoping different usernames, different names in the notification email, and two different icon pools without any overlap will make it easier for muns to keep track of which identical Oscar Isaac they're talking to.
Additional notes 2/2/26: This app was written to pitch just one alter, Marc, as the inmate. When I was accepted to TLV, it was decided that the system as a whole would share the inmate status.
Since the app was written for Marc, it emphasizes Marc's flaws, problems, and history more than any flaws, problems, or history related to the other two alters. I also wrote it to emphasize his self-loathing, so it contains a lot of untrue/toxic things Marc thinks about himself that lead to him making emotional decisions that hurt himself and others, and doesn't show much of the untrue/toxic things that Steven or Jake think about themselves. All three boys are fucked up ♥
If their warden needs more data about Steven and Jake, I'd be happy to give more details!
CONTENT WARNINGS: Child abuse, child death, alcohol abuse, attempted suicide, disassociation
User Name/Nick: Fire
User DW: n/a
Discord: glitchlich
Other Characters Currently In-Game: n/a
Character Name: Marc Spector. Along for the ride against their will are bonus characters Steven Grant and Jake Lockley.
Series: Moon Knight (MCU, 2022)
Age: 38
From When?: While off-screen in episode 1, Marc canonically jumps out of a fifth-story window to escape a gunfight. In the show, he survives, just bleeding and concussed. Here, he dies.
Inmate Justification: An exploitative, lying moon god has been telling Marc which people to kill for several years now, and Marc is so unable to believe that he's capable of not hurting anyone that he's fatalistically accepted this and has just been killing people. At his pull point, Marc's kill count on the orders of the moon god is at least two dozen. The only thing keeping Marc from being outright a force of evil is that the moon god actually DOES have good intentions for humanity as a whole, uh, sort of.
Marc has deliberately ghosted his wife, who is frantically trying to find him and thinks he might be dead. He is currently doing some absolutely diabolical gaslighting on Steven (who I will explain in a moment) in order to maintain the illusion that Steven is a normal person who has a sleepwalking problem a normal life and two living parents. Steven is ACTUALLY a deeply traumatized amnesiac with two more personalities living in his head and an abusive mother that just died two months ago. Marc arranging Steven's reality to conceal this from him keeps Steven from healing or dealing with any of those problems. Marc, like the moon god he serves, has good intentions and his core drive is to protect, not hurt, but there are elements of his own life he's so afraid of that he would rather get people killed than be honest with anyone about them. He bounces from terrible destructive idea to terrible destructive idea without setting any boundaries to protect himself, because it's all he thinks he deserves. He assumes people who hurt him and people who care for him are the same thing. He assumes that it's normal to hurt the people you care for. This assumption process derails the lives of people who attempt to care about him.
Arrival: He agreed to come, because while he would be fine dying and probably even feel relieved about it, Marc dying would also kill Steven and maybe lead to the end of the world. These priorities are paid attention to in the order previously stated. Marc made this call for not just himself, but for two other people who have no idea the choice has been made for them. (Again, we'll get to how that works.) This is in and of itself sort of a dick move, but it's a very Marc dick move.
Abilities/Powers: Marc has the ability to magical-girl-style summon a divine suit of healing armor that transforms him into Moon Knight. A Moon Knight is an avatar/divine champion of Khonshu, the ancient Egyptian god of the moon. There is usually only one on Earth at a time. All Moon Knights have enhanced speed, agility, strength, and healing, and can summon specific melee weapons out of the material of the suit. Marc's version of the suit has a crescent-shaped glider built into the cape that allows him limited flight. The weapons that Marc's version of the armor can generate are moon-shaped throwing knives. He also appears to be unable to be killed by being impaled or shot. He doesn't even bleed. Since the suit appears to abruptly mummify him, I wouldn't be surprised if being suited up as Moon Knight is a temporary state of un-life.
Bonus characters Steven and Jake, if empowered and in charge of the body they share with Marc, can also summon Moon Knight suits. Steven's version does not have a glider, and in place of the throwing knives has a pair of white truncheons. Jake's suit specifications and weapon are unknown.
For all three, their position as the avatar also means that, whenever they're on the same plane of reality as Khonshu, they're able to see Khonshu and be aggressively bothered by him, as well as see other creatures from the same magic system that would normally be invisible to mundane living humans.
Moon Knight's status as avatar functions as something like a Dungeons and Dragons paladin. With the connection to their god severed, none of them can do anything that any other non-magical human can't do.
Inmate Information: One of the most confusing things about explaining Marc is that there are two totally unrelated kinds of weirdness going on with him. The non-magical one should be explained first.
Marc accidentally caused his younger brother's death when Marc was eight and his brother, Randall, was seven. Marc witnessed the drowning, and barely survived himself. Marc's mother, devastated past her limits by the loss of a child, had a mental breakdown. She ejected Marc from Randall's shiva, screaming that it had been his fault, and would repeat the sentiment over and over throughout the next decade of Marc's life.
Between the ages of ten and eighteen, Marc repeatedly suffered severe, traumatic abuse and violence at the hands of a primary caregiver, his mother. Emotionally, this was framed to child-Marc as a deserved punishment and justified vengeance for "killing" his brother and causing his family grief and pain. Marc was the problem, Marc was the weed choking out the garden that should have been uprooted before its nature caused it to jealously kill the roses.
This abuse, although it shattered child-Marc's fundamental sense of self and sense of safety and severely impaired his development of identity, attachment, emotional regulation, trust, emotional closeness, and other important things, did not kill him. He grew up. He grew up as a person unable to separate himself and his own soul from the things that had been done to him.
We meet Marc as an adult deeply ashamed of who and what he is; not just convinced he is malicious and harmful and someone who deserves suffering, but also someone who is now old enough to be aware that these thoughts are a result of abuse. He is a tragedy, he is broken, he will never be a normal person. How do you go on with that knowledge? How do you explain to anyone you meet that you're sorry, but things that happened to you decades ago are still controlling your behavior, and maybe always will?
Marc's most dramatic and specific lasting symptom is that the child version of Marc Spector is gone, and has developed into three distinct adults, only one of which still calls himself Marc. The present versions of Marc Spector, Steven Grant, and Jake Lockley are three identities or āaltersā that share a mind, body, and developmental history. While present day Marc Spector is the man with his name on the inmate file, he should not be mistaken for the only alter that represents the "original" Marc. All three of them are constructs, the way any identity is a construct. They serve purposes, and all three share traits that would have been inherent to a version of child-Marc that was allowed to grow up normally.
While Steven and Jake are not the inmates that the file is about, Steven and Jake are also present on the Barge. Living alongside them will be a fact of adult-Marc's life forever. He cannot separate from them any more than he could separate from the events that shaped the three of them.
"Marc Spector," the alter who identifies with the wallet name of their shared body and the primary inmate for this application, functions as an emotional and physical protector. Unlike Stevenās total ignorance of the rest of the system, Marc has memories of Steven existing, remembers when Steven was first formed, and seems to know and see what is going on when Steven is fronting. Marc sees his role as being the evil twin/the bad guy/the one that has been tainted by the world, so that Steven doesn't have to. Marc thinks of himself as broken, and bad, but itās fine: Steven can be normal, and good. Marc is probably the alter that has "fronted" (piloted and controlled the shared body) for the majority of their adult life. Marc has been inevitably shaped by abuse, and those shapes are all negative traits: Marc is mistrustful, wary, hypervigilant, cynical, exhausted, angry, and depressed. He's nearly humorless in person, utilitarian, with no ability to emotionally connect with people, no self-preservation, and a flat affect with a perpetual sour glare. He is also, although he is unable to see it in himself, brave and resourceful, defiant in the face of injustice, indefatigable, valorous and incredibly competent, deeply dedicated, and unconditionally loyal. Even before his title, there was always qualities in him that would have made him a knight. Marc would die to protect his loved ones, they are his entire world. Marc would set himself on fire just to keep them warm. It's just that he'd do a lot of other bad things to protect them, too.
Marc hates what happened to him, has inevitably been molded on a cellular level by what happened to him, and therefore hates himself. Every behavior that is irrational, painful, or abnormal is a reminder that he (in his mind, where it is easier for a child to comprehend that they are bad than that someone they love would hurt them for no reason) somehow attracted and deserved hate and abuse from his mother. The cause (the abuse) and the effect (Marc's present day identity) are transposed and intertwined. He thinks he deserved it. He hates himself for deserving it. He hates himself for not being able to stop thinking he deserved it, even though he knows rationally that he did not, that the obvious truth is that nothing a child can do would ever deserve abuse, ever.
Knowing it doesn't help.
Marc will "switch out" (disassociate and push another personality into the metaphorical driver's seat) when pushed beyond his emotional limits. When simply existing as a person that abuse happened to comes too acutely painful, he survives by shunting the shared body's cognition into Steven and is able to escape into a delusion that none of it ever happened.
"Steven Grant" is a fictive-style name taken from a movie that was child-Marc's favorite game of pretend. Steven's function is explicitly to be the personality that would hold child-Marc's ability to love their mother back, to show genuine interest and affection, to be visibly excited about things, and to generally be vulnerable or show any kind of fear, shame, or distress. When Steven is fronting, Steven has no memories of being abused as a child, and no memories of ever having a little brother, let alone one he saw die. Steven thinks his relationship with his parents is healthy and that he's very close to his mother, who loves him. Steven will switch out when he is under conditions that would challenge his original function, like being faced with the reality of his childhood, or even just being in too much distress or danger. Steven is the alter that is the most sheltered and therefore the most innocent. Steven easily has the strongest moral compass of the three Moon Knight system alters. Steven, being the version of them that is meant to be not mentally ill, not traumatized, not a victim, does not know he is an alter, or even has alters. He writes off, justifies, and rationalizes away any evidence to the contrary.
Steven is an uninhibited ray of sunshine. He rambles about his interests, he fidgets, he expresses all of his emotions freely and fearlessly, he is earnest, empathetic, sincere, and a little bit dotty. If allowed to blossom, he also develops a backbone of steel, an immediate sense for when people are trustworthy, and a well of deep honesty and loyalty. At this canon point, with his wings clipped by Marc and by the circumstances of Steven's existence, he's still meek, reactive, and passive-aggressive, with a lack of common sense that comes from a lack of life experience. Present-day Marc sees Steven as what Marc always should have been: someone allowed to experience innocence. Steven is Marc's hope that he can pretend to be normal, that he can ever be happy. Steven is an escapist fantasy of the only way they can comprehend ever feeling okay again: a world where the tragedy never happened, where they can be a person who isn't broken and ruined. Much like Rosa Diaz holding a golden retriever puppy, if anything ever happened to Steven, present-day Marc would kill everyone in this room and then himself.
There is also a third alter that neither Steven nor Marc are aware of or have access to memories from. Existing as him hurts more than even existing as Marc does, so, while Jake is necessary, and while Jake allowed the system to survive, the knowledge that Marc and Steven are capable of being Jake is something their mind does not allow them to comprehend.
"Jake Lockley" is an alter with very little canon information. He appears to be a physical protector, activated into alertness when the body is about to be abused or damaged so badly that it risks being killed. Jake is probably the answer to child-Marcās desperate, forbidden question: My mother is drunk, fragile, and Iām starting to be taller than her. If it meant making this stop, couldn't I just stop thinking of her as my mother and hit her back?
Jake will front when the system is in a form of mortal danger that is beyond Marc's capacity to handle. Jake will generally front for sixty seconds of brutal violence, and then shove either Marc or Steven back into the front and vanish. He seems to come to the front already understanding the scenario, goals, and priorities that the body is in, with none of Steven's amnesia issues, and none of Marcās hesitance or disgust. It is not fun being Jake. Jake will only stick around for long enough to get out of immediate physical danger. Jake, however, does not have any extraordinary powers that the rest of the system doesn't, just a lack of flinch-reflex towards doing gruesome stuff to other people's bodies. He's always here, though. They always have the capacity to do terrible things, to become as terrible as their mother always said they were. Does that mean they always deserved it? Does that mean she was right? Does that mean she could have loved us if we'd just been better?
So, thatās the non-magical part of Marcās problems. There, is, naturally, also a whole magical issue. Strap in, we're not even to the Moon Knight part of Moon Knight yet.
The magical part of what's going on with Marc was only made part of his life in his adulthood, after all of the rest of that was already pretty well established.
The system, as Marc, joined the Marines at age 18 to get away from their mother. They were discharged for mental health reasons after "going AWOL in a fugue state" - likely Marc, who would have been fronting, unexpectedly disassociating and becoming Jake.
(Steven is not likely to have fronted during body's military or mercenary years. Later in canon, he is very frightened of violence, and will shriek and throw away a gun if he suddenly comes to the front holding one. This is not exactly behavior that would indicate that he remembers he's supposed to be a trained ex-Marine.)
With limited life skills after his discharge, and assuming killing people was still all he was really good for, Marc found work as a mercenary, working under the same horrible commanding officer he'd been under in the Marines.
Working security for a dig site in northern Africa went south when Marc's boss discovered that the archeologists they were meant to be protecting had dug up something worth more than their mercenary contracts would have paid out for finishing the job. Marc's boss made the call to kill the civilian archeologists and loot the site. Marc refused, tried to protect them, and was shot with them and left for dead.
The dig site they had been protecting was an excavation of a temple of Khonshu, the ancient Egyptian god of the moon, whose domain was healing, protection, and vengeance. Marc, fatally wounded, and miles from help, crawled into the temple's main building for shelter and was about to turn his gun on himself when Khonshu spoke to him.
(It is possible, here, that Marc died and didn't realize it. It isn't normal for humans to be able to hear or see gods, and he was already on death's door.)
Khonshu introduced himself, assessed Marcās body and soul in a single glance, and seemed morbidly interested at how "fractured" Marc's mind was. Khonshu's old avatar, Arthur Harrow (who will come up again later) had recently left his service, citing abuse and torment, and there was a vacancy. Khonshu was also interested in how desperate Marc was. He offered to heal Marc and let him live in exchange for Marc pledging himself to be Khonshu's "fist of vengeance" - his avatar in the physical world, assigned an apparently perpetual series of tasks to do Khonshu's violent bidding. Marc, in a choice he'd repeat later with the Admiral, was in a ton of pain, and agreed to let Khonshu save his life.
Becoming Moon Knight and summoning the suit for the first time healed Marc's injuries and brought him back from either death or the brink thereof. Marc began moving according to Khonshu's demands, killing those Khonshu decided were a danger to "travelers of the night" and inflicting "justice" on those who had already done harm. It isn't specified what Khonshu meant by this, or how he could tell who deserved to die, but it's during this period that Marc kills about two dozen people on Khonshu's word. ("They were criminals. Murderers. Predators. The worst of the worst," Marc reluctantly justifies, in a later canon point.) Marc, fatalistic and already resigned to being a terrible person and a killer, didn't enjoy any of this but saw it as something he'd at least be useful for and good at. At least he was taking out "bad" people, right? That's something. It was kind of like, the military, but his orders were now from an omniscient being who was constantly appearing to heckle and neg him.
(It appears that Jake is aware that they are Moon Knight, because Jake displays no surprise when suddenly pushed to the front while in the Moon Knight gear. Steven, however, has no idea. He doesn't even know that Khonshu is real, let alone that he's an avatar.)
Blaming himself for the death of the researchers on the Khonshu temple excavation (because of course Marc blames himself for accidental deaths that happen around him!) Marc sought out their surviving families. Through this, he met the daughter of one of the archeologists killed. Somehow, off screen, he fell in love with her and married her. He didn't not tell her ANYTHING ABOUT HIS INVOLVEMENT IN HER FATHER'S DEATH. AT ALL. He blamed himself, knew it was irrational to blame himself, was afraid to be abused and rejected as a monster, and decided to just... avoid the subject entirely. That's a solution, right?
She didn't suspect a thing! This was such a bad idea! They got married?! This was fucked up. Layla was and is genuinely the love of Marcās life, and it's very unlikely his intention wasn't to get himself into this specific situation, but also, god damn!
Khonshu, upon noticing that Marc now had someone he cared about, started making regular threats to Marc about her: If Marc ever tried to quit being Khonshu's avatar, Khonshu would then enslave Layla instead. This is all later proven to be just a lie to manipulate Marc, but Marc wholly believed it, and his service to Khonshu became a self-sacrificing way to shield Layla from harm.
Marc did not tell Layla that Khonshu was threatening her. Marc did not tell Layla about his mental health or abuse history. Marc did not tell Layla that he had alters. His justification for this was that he "had it under control," but these desicions were probably motivated by shame. Most of Marc's desicions are motivated by shame. Marc did though, tell Layla about his powers, suit, and mission from Khonshu. This was good. It turns out sharing information with people you love is good! Layla and Marc being on the same page about Moon Knight meant they could handle Moon Knight problems together, and they teamed up to stop an apocalyptic threat.
Former Khonshu avatar Arthur Harrow was beginning to draw attention to the pantheon. He had become the avatar for the god Ammit, another ancient Egyptian entity. Khonshu's philosophy was to take vengeance on those who have already done harm, but Ammit sought to use divine pregognizance to prevent tragedy by killing those who would do harm before they were able to commit the sin.
(Harrow, later, will point out to Marc that if Ammit had killed Marc as a child before he was able to cause Randall's death, that his brother would be alive and his mother would be sane and happy. Two lives saved for the cost of taking one.)
Ammit's policy would mean meant killing just tons of people who hadn't actually done anything wrong yet, and the rest of the pantheon strongly disagreed that this was just. She had already been imprisoned by the rest of the Egyptian pantheon for thousands of years to prevent her carrying out her desires. Her imprisonment kept humanity safe from her, but Harrow, traumatized by his avatarship to Khonshu, decided that Ammitās judgment and leadership would be best for the world. (Maybe he saw her as someone who could have prevented Arthur from being harmed by Khonshu.) Harrow set about trying to free her. Marc, Khonshu, and Layla, working as a team, tried to stay one step ahead of Harrow's murderous cult.
The magical half of Marc's life was pretty well-in hand, and the mundane half of what was going on with him was something he had ample energy to repress. Steven was not fronting at all, because Marc was happy(ish) and didnāt need to escape, and if Jake fronted he could, as usual, hide himself from Marc. Marc thought he finally had this "living his life" stuff figured out! Pretending nothing was wrong would surely be a strategy he would be able to stick with forever!
Then, for the first time in twenty years, Marc's father called him. He wanted to let Marc know that his mother had died, and that Marc would be expected to come home for once (Why didn't you ever visit her?) sit shiva, and pay respects to her memory. (Don't you know you're the only son she had left? You had your disagreements in the past, but doesn't how badly she was in pain mean anything to you?)
The last family shiva Marc had tried to attend was the one for his little brother. He was not permitted to sit with the mourners, because the sight of Marc would send his mother into screaming fits. With his mother's death, Marc also lost any hope, no matter how irrational, of reconciliation for her years of abuse, redemption in her eyes, of closure for himself, of catharsis for himself, or for justice.
If asked before her death, Marc probably would have said that he assumed he wouldn't grieve his mother, when she passed. That he'd feel either nothing, or relieved.
On the street outside of his childhood home, with his father staring expectantly at him through the window, Marc had a meltdown as the grief he was unprepared to handle - for her, for his brother, for himself - found his heart too heavy to balance the scales of truth, and swallowed him whole. Unlike his mother's breakdown decades earlier, at the very least Marc didnāt turn any of his grief outward. Marc turned it in on himself, or intended to, anyway. He just happened to catch all his loved ones in the blast radius.
Marc, triggered past his ability to tolerate existing as himself, disassociated fully into being Steven Grant. Steven, with his protective walls of amnesia surrounding everything that made Marc miserable, didn't recognize Marc's childhood home, or his father, and cluelessly wandered off and away. Marc did not return to front. Marc didn't intend to return at all.
As far as Layla knew, her husband dropped off the face of the earth right in the middle of their world-saving mission. As far as Steven Grant knew, he woke up and then stayed awake for once. He was on the wrong continent, with no money and no idea how to get home, but this marked a period of lucidity for Steven like he'd never been able to experience before.
Steven Grant got a job working at the British Museum, because Steven Grant likes archeology. Especially ancient Egypt! :) Steven believed he had a sleepwalking problem, enough to take precautions against it. This probably meant that Marc was fronting when Steven was asleep, after dark, but since Marc never fronted during the day time, it also meant he was always willingly surrendering back to Steven before morning.
Marc, during this time, sent Steven postcards, addressed from Steven's mother, telling Steven all about her world travels. He paid for an apartment as Steven's mother, the fictional Mrs. Grant, and let Steven live there under her name, with her blessing. Steven called his mom every day, and she never picked up the phone, but, well, she was in all sorts of different time zones, wasn't she? He just kept leaving her voice mails :) If there was ever a chance of Steven figuring out that his life was a lie, Marc would front long enough to cover it up, long enough to give Steven proof that his mother was alive and loved him. While this was done out of love, out of a desire to build an escapist fantasy for Steven to inhabit, none of that cancels out the fact that all of this, on Marc's end, was just really, astoundingly fucked up.
Marc, at some point in these months, paid attention to the impending apocalypse for long enough to buy a storage locker and a burner phone. He contacted Layla to inform her he wanted a divorce, then started screening her calls, hiding all evidence that he ever existed, and working solo with the guidance of Khonshu to stop the cult on his own. This had the bonus of keeping Khonshu, who was still threatening Layla, away from her entirely. Marc seems to have decided that keeping the cult of Ammit as his sole responsibility was what was best for Layla, in order to protect her, and that Layla was better off without him, anyway.
Marc has a problem with making condescending and bad decisions on behalf of other people. Also, of letting his shame drive when his common sense should probably be listened to more.
Had he lived, in the next episode past his pull point, Marc stated his intent with all of this behavior was to shut down Ammit's cult and then vanish into blissful ignorance as Steven forever, effectively letting "Marc Spector" die. This action, if heād been able to go through with it, would also have stranded Layla with never being able to know what happened to him, and leave Steven with an unreliable and even downright false memory of who he was, what he was, and what his life circumstances were.
Marc, fighting Ammit's cult totally on his own without Layla's help or knowledge, gets himself and therefore Steven and Jake, killed. They end up on the Barge.
Path to Redemption:
TELL THE TRUTH, MARC
Tell the truth, stop killing people because the moon told you to, confront your issues instead of ignoring them and letting them dictate your actions, stop manipulating people, TELL THE TRUTH!!
In the show, Marc almost gets kicked out of a different form of afterlife, because his heart is too weighed down to be lighter on the scales of Anubis than the Feather of Truth. TELL THE TRUTH! STOP BEING AFRAID OF IT!
Marc has to stop being so afraid that he will be rejected as unworthy of love. He has to stop being so afraid that the truth about him is that heās awful, and a killer, and that anyone that learns it will hate him. Although this belief is pretty obviously a result of his upbringing, it is causing him to not just shut out the people he cares about, but to refuse to tell them vital information. That lack of information has put them in direct danger and seriously limited their ability to run their lives as independent adults and make good choices. Marc doesn't want them to make choices, he wants to make the choice on their behalf so that he never has to find out if theyād choose to reject him. He also has to stop this shit. He has to stop lying to Steven and Layla in order to control them, even if he thinks it is for their own good.
It also wouldn't hurt to get some friends that aren't someone who is married to him, someone who is sharing a body with him, or someone who is Khonshu. He will undoubtedly hurt whatever friends he gets on the Barge. This will be a good learning experience for him, because he will then have to deal with that shit. He has to fuck up, lie, manipulate, be caught confess, and apologize, be forgiven, and NOT try to escape by ditching the consequences onto Steven or Jake. Marc absolutely has to experience being genuinely forgiven, or none of this will stick.
Marc needs a patient warden who can understand that Marc is not always in control of himself, but also that Marc has a responsibility to be good to people on the fronts he can control. LIKE THE LYING.
Be Nice To The Alternates
The first thing a warden has to do is fucking find him, though. Arriving on the Barge, he's going to be zoned out as Steven for as long as he can get away with it.
A successful warden must be able to get to a trauma-informed and DID-acceptant position regarding Steven and Jake's personhood. Steven and Jake did not ask to be created. At this point in the system's development, they are not curable symptoms or imaginary friends. Marc isn't a child, and neither are they. They know who they are, they are sentient, and they have self-worth and do not want to stop existing. They may have all been the same mind before the trauma, but as adults the three of them have developed into three complete people that show up in the Egyptian afterlife as distinct individuals, each with their own hearts. Yes, they are all aspects of the same splintered man. This doesn't mean that any of them have more right to exist than any of the others. The Marc alter is not more or less real than the Steven or Jake alters, he just fronts more often. The show is very clear that it is wrong spiritually, emotionally, and ethically for Marc let Steven die off when he "doesn't need him any more," even when magically offered a permanent peace that he can only accept if he leaves Steven for dead.
Steven, if approached correctly, is also an ENORMOUS asset to Marc's warden. Steven is not just escapism, Steven has agency that is distinct from Marc's. He's the one that gets Marc a solid chunk of the way towards redemption in the TV show, once Marc stops being able to hide from him. If a warden can think of him as his own person, Steven has unmatched access to Marc's psyche (because he lives inside of it) and a huge, compassionate heart. He is literally a sapient coping mechanism for Marc's grief and survivor's guilt, which means he's often going to be exactly what Marc needs. Although he's naive, Steven is very sharp, and his emotional stability and secure attachment style means he's a much better critical thinker than Marc. He will come around to wanting Marc to be alright. Do not keep Steven in the dark. Team up with Steven against Marc for his own good, in fact. Let Steven help!
A successful warden has to be able to challenge Marc to not treat Steven the way he treats Layla: as someone who can be kept in the dark and lied to. (He shouldn't be doing that to either of them, to be clear!) Marc's ability to control Steven's perceptions of reality is causing a really messed-up power imbalance there, and that should be rectified by forcing the two of them to communicate and getting them on equal footing. They should probably deal with Jake at some point, too, even if Jake would greatly prefer to simply not be dealt with.
(Jake will need to be found before he can be approached, and Marc and Steven will need to be talked into accepting him. This is its own challenge, but if Marc's warden can't rope in Jake's cooperation, it won't keep Marc from graduating, it'll just be something to work on in the future.)
Don't Just Repress Everything
Marc is deeply avoidant, maybe the most deeply avoidant that it is physically possible for a human brain to be. He's so avoidant that he's figured out how to completely exit his mind and body for months at a time when he doesn't want to fucking do it any more. A good warden will not reward this strategy or let him use it to get away with stuff. He's been through a lot, but, seriously, don't be too soft on him. It'll take both Marc and his warden working together to fight upstream against the deeply ingrained currents of Marc's disassociation.
Marc won't mind the Barge, in that Marc is so emotionally deadened that he'll approach anything happening to him as Just Some Shit I Have To Deal With Now, I Guess. He's not curious, he's not shocked, he's just going to do his job. This is the same mindset that leads to him not questioning Khonshu nearly enough, and getting him to admit that he's irritated with some aspect of his imprisonment or that he's questioning its methods is actually a good step in the right direction and means he's starting to give a shit about whether he lives or dies and whether things are right or wrong. You can do it, Marc! Marc really has to stop passively trying to kill himself? This will go naturally with the self-worth thing. He doesn't want to die, per se, he would just love to not exist any more. It's the ultimate disassociation!
Marc doesn't actually enjoy being the bag man for a bloodthirsty god, he just thinks he doesn't deserve anything better. Getting the self-worth to stand up for himself will ultimately be good for both him and everybody Khonshu decides he doesn't like. That'll mean a lot of trauma work, probably.
Marc thinks he's going to keep his head down and just do whatever his Warden wants. He's thinking of the Barge like the Marines. Just follow orders and you're fine. In reality, it's going to involve a lot of talking about his emotions and therapy shit, and no amount of willpower can get Marc through that without balking, fighting, fleeing, disassociating, switching purposefully or accidentally out for Steven or Jake, and even resorting to violence. Everything inside of him during key developmental years was formed to keep Marc from having to face his demons by any means necessary. He doesn't mean to fight you, but oh boy will he ever fight you.
The Marines thing isn't a bad point of reference, though. A military-like predictable schedule where he has goals and can physically work out excess restlessness might be really good and comfortable for him. Marc loves predictable stuff. Predictable is safe, unpredictable is dangerous. Give him a routine, he'll eat that shit up. This'll also help with accounting for Marc's time - losing time by burying himself under Steven or disassociating is another form of avoidance. Marc's a very obedient guy, you'd have to push him pretty far before he'd start skiving off of assignments given to him.
History: Here at the Marvel wiki, which is much better maintained than the MCU-only wiki. Their pull point is when Steven wakes up in Austria.
Sample Network Entry: Marc
Hi.
This is Steven Grant's communicator, but it's not Steven talking. Don't worry about who it is. I'm a friend.
A lot of noise is happening, because even though Steven tells everyone he's a warden, he can't see messages sent to warden filters, which proves he's an inmate, blah blah blah.
Well, he's not. He's not an inmate, he just came along for the ride by accident. He's not trying to hurt anyone, he's not a bad person, so lay off. You're going to freak him out, and then I'm going to have to meet with you one on one. Neither of us want that.
[You can almost read the subtle little head-shake in the text, the dead-eyed stare. Don't do that. You do not want to do that.
Look, if you take this sentence as a threat, then you take it as a threat. If you don't, then you don't. Marc is just going to leave it up to you.]
I just want to do my job, and you just want to do yours. Alright?
He's happy, and he can't leave even if he did know the truth, so this is the best solution. Quit bothering him about it. It's being taken care of.
Steven
Here, at the TDM
Sample RP:
Marc
Here, at the TDM.
Steven
Here, at the TDM
Special Notes: In the show, it's easy to tell which alternate is speaking because of their different accents and body language, but that's not so easily conveyed over text. Having played in games that allow exact duplicates before, I've experienced playing across from sets and being incredibly frustrated with not being able to remember WHICH Joker-from-Persona my character had just been talking to. My plan is to tag from this account when Marc is fronting, and from
de_nile when Steven fronts. I'm hoping different usernames, different names in the notification email, and two different icon pools without any overlap will make it easier for muns to keep track of which identical Oscar Isaac they're talking to.Additional notes 2/2/26: This app was written to pitch just one alter, Marc, as the inmate. When I was accepted to TLV, it was decided that the system as a whole would share the inmate status.
Since the app was written for Marc, it emphasizes Marc's flaws, problems, and history more than any flaws, problems, or history related to the other two alters. I also wrote it to emphasize his self-loathing, so it contains a lot of untrue/toxic things Marc thinks about himself that lead to him making emotional decisions that hurt himself and others, and doesn't show much of the untrue/toxic things that Steven or Jake think about themselves. All three boys are fucked up ♥
If their warden needs more data about Steven and Jake, I'd be happy to give more details!