Being met with complete indifference or straight up hostility in the already nearly nonexistant Disc Room fandom is pretty much an RSD death sentence. If nobody can prove to me that I'm not wasting their time (and my own time) by continuing to work with it, I'm just taking what I made home with me.
It IS nice to give By Dark/Brother Disease and Brother Mend some actual meaningful interaction outside of their own family, or just being mentioned in lore dumps for other things. The way both of them work - and have always worked - lend very well to a serial immortality survival 'horror' narrative
Like, in a perfect world, I wouldn't need to do this, but I consider it an escape rope of sorts, so that I don't feel like I wasted ALL the time coming up with so much backstory for characters who aren't even mine, who nevertheless were never given enough when my mind craved more.
A'ight, Mari and Amy expy narrative is complete... and I was able to actually include *most* of the potential culprits, all participating in said narrative at different points (starting with a Kalhallaran Cell, then going to Brothers Disease and Mend, THEN the Red Hearts guild providing closure).
The weird interdimensional flesh hive powering Mari's abilities in my headcanon honestly fits how Diafanics already work in my headworld, but there are SO MANY ways for Diafanics to be made that it's hard to choose. The main difference and deciding factor is Mari staying externally/visibly human.
Kalhallaran was the first thought - Immune Cells already resemble The Disc in so many ways (giant sapient cells with insane interdimensionality and "antibodies") - but there's no incentive to 'experiment' on a human... but others would (like the Red Hearts guild, Ovo, By Dark, Brother Mend, etc.)...
I'm pretty certain I'll have to abandon working with the fanon versions of Mari and Amy and just immediately export their backgrounds to new characters in my headworld, but what's crazy is I actually have decision paralysis because at least three headworld settings could take them in easily.
As cringe as it is to say "adulting", it really do be that way, and it sucks. Having to adult completely solo also sucks. I have so little free time between my job (for pay that mostly just goes to a landlord) and chores, and I'm STILL neglecting SO many things that need to be done because no energy