Mal-Adjusted, In Retrospect (Patreon)

I’ve been digging into Mal’s backstory and relationship with her (estranged) adoptive parents, and it occurred to me that Mal’s adult personality is just a liiiiiittle incongruent with her upbringing. I don’t buy that she’d be quite so kind and maternal. We saw in her younger years, Mal was kind of an uptight prick. Arrogant, pretentious, often rude. Also quite inexpressive and stiff- this being because Mal’s parents emphasized the importance of composure and calm to her through her entire childhood, so now she’s just kinda like that forever. She relaxes a little as she ages and transitions and gets the fuck away from her parents, but her core personality changes only slightly. Mal doesn’t emote much (though she can certainly be pushed) and speaks bluntly and flatly. People find her very tricky to read.

Except Topher. Who sees Mal so clearly it pisses her off. She’s not supposed to have wants and feelings, she’s supposed to be cold mechanical musical genius. Stupid dog!

When I first created Mal, I forgot the special secret ingredient that makes character writing really fun…making them just a teensy bit pathetic. Mal may be one of the greatest musical minds of her generation, but she’s also lame and weird in several ways (and we’ll see them soon), and a notable one is being stupidly down bad for a mid-tier midwest dog man. Above we have:

1.) Professor Mal deciding to take her stupid twunk bitch TA up on his invite to his stupid trash rock show she didn’t find intriguing at all

2.) Present day Mal attending a concert by her stupid twunk bitch roommate/inexplicable life partner

3.) Mal fielding annoying questions. Honey can’t help it, she’s a big ol’ romantic!