interactions and scenarios

mat doesn't belong to a solid 'canon', so feel free to put them in any AUs or crossovers you'd like. im fine with alterations to their appearance so long as they are still recognisable and as long as it doesn't involve anything in the 'please don't' category!

when mat is shipped i would prefer them to be the sub and bottom but they can switch if needed, it's just they are heavy emphasis on the masochist in 'sadomasochist'.

i love violence and guro lol.

selfship backstories!!

mat & hugo strange (see manikin outfits above!)

• Mat previously worked for Don Falcone. They were probably also fucking noncommittally :)
• Falcone hired them to kill Hugo (who was working with his mob using the power from his high-powered arkham job and under-the-table medical experiments… but then he double-crossed him)
• Mat falls into a trap Hugo sets. Hugo holds them captive, brainwashes them.
• They emerge months later, assumed dead. Now they are less person than object, surgically enhanced for combat (quickened reflexes/increased flexibility), and bearing a new moniker: Manikin.
• Hugo gets the security of an eternally loyal bodyguard and weapon, and gets to learn the joy of working as a pair. Fitting Hugo’s desire to be Batman, I sort of see them as a twisted parallel to Batman and Robin (as well as, to a lesser extent, Joker and Harley lol) and befitting Hugo’s loneliness and desire for companionship and vulnerability that he, like, refuses to admit.
• Hugo has a lot of different versions! Just let me know if you need refs for a specific Hugo as I almost definitely have them. One thing to note is that Mat is a little taller than Gotham (live action) Hugo, but shorter than Arkham Hugo and most of the comic versions.

mat & rusty venture & brock samson

mat originated as a venture bros OC!

• They are the assassin protegé of Herr Trigger, the guy who fucks his guns who Brock killed in that one episode.
• They also tangentially know Molotov as part of being part of the assassin world. Molotov is refusing to admit to them that she is the reason Herr Trigger was killed and she will probably never tell them lol
• Mat therefore aims to get revenge on Brock and the Venture family, but they end up like… bonding weirdly. They arrive at a bad time, during an attack on Venture HQ by the Guild of Calamitous Intent, and wind up fighting alongside the Ventures.
• They end up becoming friends... and a little more, with Brock and Rusty (who are, themselves, romantic/sexual partners). I think that Mat appeals to both of them for different reasons. Brock enjoys having an equal opponent, Rusty has darker urges that Mat is more than willing to satisfy (and they are, like, shockingly eager to sign up for ill-formed superscience experiments).

mat & otto mentallis (see psychonauts au design above!)

Mat and Otto’s relationship is based on my Evil And Fucked Up expansion of Psychonauts lore. Apologies, this is longer than the others lol:

• The Grulovian mob is the biggest crime syndicate in the world that deals specifically in illegal psychic weapons and substances.
• It’s a whole thing where the mob sort of, like… ‘saved’ Grulovia, or at least, its economy, after the civil war when the post-war international aid they should have received was wrapped up in red tape, which gave them the power to expand and exploit and play on people’s fears of a second Maligula.
• The mob is now an international operation, quietly controlling the remnants of the nation’s military and defences, and it’s bankrolling Psychonaut experiments into psychic defences and neutralisation. They are also selling Psitanium, sold by the Psychonauts, on the black market.
• Otto has been facilitating these deals with the mob for years in order to keep the Psychonauts in the black. He feels responsible and feels as though this is the best way he could be involved, now. He is squashing his own remorse to do it, possibly via the Astralathe.
• Mat grew-up post-Maligula orphaned and in poverty, and joined the mob at a young age.
• They encounter Otto because their boss has sent them to go and… nudge him towards a particular deal he’s been indecisive enough. Just intimidate him enough so he’ll go the right way.
• Instead, Otto opts to repurpose them as a double agent, his 'man on the inside'. it's also useful for him to have a nobody to imprison in his lab and do all his most unethical experiments on, the ones he can't get approval for.
• But! Like! Otto isn’t, I would say, wholly evil. He feels genuinely justified in what he is doing. And while it’s true that there are secrets he keeps about his responsibility in Mat’s country getting fucked up, he is genuinely interested in Mat and kind of… healing the wounds that brought them to his lab. Giving them a space to just actually feel and voice all the trauma they shove down to do their job, and gain some catharsis, is… important to him, beyond simply being strategically sound in bonding them to him.
• Important character design note: Mat's snakebites in this universe are Psitanium purple! That's because they quite literally contain a small amount of Psitanium. The mob is trying out lots of different options to unlock the psychic potential of its members. The science is actually sound; Otto nudged them in that direction as trace amounts of psychic resonance can be found in everyone, so it follows that trace amounts of Psitanium can enhance it without causing the ill effects of Psitanium poisoning. With their piercings in place, Mat has a minor ability to call on Clairvoyance.

stuff i like! yes! yes!

themes and common traits

moral ambiguity, violence, Crime Crime Crime Crime Crime, power differentials, horrible and mutually destructive relationships, unrequited feelings of any variety, age gap between adults, fucked up crime dads, bad ends, corruption, obsession, horror (especially the horror of just regular people doing horrible things... or horrible people doing regular things? both?), ANGST, depression, the intertwining of sex and violence and the aestheticisation of both, battle of wills between evenly matched enemies, conspiracies, superhero/villain/cape comic stuff, mentor-mentee stuff, killing the one you love

kinks

noncon, hypno/mind control/brainwashing, somno, violence, guro, weapons (guns/knives/anything really!), fistfights because it's 1999 and fight club changed my life, kidnapping, hand stuff (finger sucking!!!!), d/s, medical kink, body modification as a kink, choking/breathplay, drugplay/drugging, leather/latex/shiny fetish gear in general, bootlicking, bondage, and the most disappointingly vanilla daddy kink in the universe

please don't

give mat tits, or make them look especially feminine.

i don't like any of these: scat, piss, aging down, lolisho, decomposition, pregnancy, emeto, vore (cannibalism is ok though lol), inflation, tickling, food kink and feederism, overly detailed foot fetish, feral, depiction of any real-world fascist groups and/or hate groups (tricky to quantify. i like several characters who are war criminals but some stuff is too heavy/squicky for me personally. but please use your best judgment lol)

reposting

reposting art made for me is fine. please tag me on the social media platform (i am serpentinemalign everywhere but twitter, where i am malignedserpent), or link my neocities homepage!