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merk94.bsky.social
Merk
@merk94.bsky.social
600 followers 200 following 2K posts
He/Him — Born Nov. 14, 199X

Writer, podcast host, gacha addict.
#Paragons
#Locacacast
#Nikke

Bots and bigots get blocked.
Minors DNI with my labeled posts.
I don’t do obligatory follow-backs.

https://linktr.ee/ChrisMerkelStudios
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merk94.bsky.social
#Paragons
Sameko was imprisoned by Moonlighter as part of her backstory. Being a feral child that had already killed people, he deemed her too dangerous to release, so he adopted her. By kidnapping and subsequently re-training her. Dahlia was kidnapped—along with her best friend—by a murderer with the ability to silence any sound. She manages to get herself and her friend away. Dahlia was kidnapped a second time by the Brotherhood of Eternity, who intended to marry her to the concept of Death and then sacrifice her to achieve global immortality. All three of the boys from the Vol. 1 team end up in a metahuman detention facility (Mr. Q meets the Word and Moonlighter after they’re arrested, and only joins the team a while after the jailbreak. DJ ends up a prisoner of Maximilian Midas (the grandson of the man who designed him) in Vol. 2.
December 21, 2025 at 6:02 PM
merk94.bsky.social
He’s just a little guy!
Smol rock boi
December 20, 2025 at 11:53 PM
merk94.bsky.social
This is a fun one to do for #Paragons, with it being a superhero story.
I haven’t actually thought of an in-universe answer to why Charlie Sinclair’s hero name is “The Word,” other than his powers being based on his writing. Dahlia Martinez’s hero name came from two of her classmates calling her “Black Dahlia,” like the murder victim, because her pale skin makes her “look like death.” So she sort of embraces that and makes it her own. Moonlighter was assigned his alias by the press in 1969, during the time when he was hunting down and murdering the people involved in the conspiracy that killed his parents. The press called him the Moonlighter Killer because his first victim was discovered on the day Apollo 11 landed on the moon and since then, every victim had been found displayed “under the moonlight.” Sameko doesn’t have a different hero name, but the name her adopted father gave her being a Japanese one comes from him finding her in the Sea of Japan. The name itself translates to “shark [same] child [ko].” DJ’s nickname is part of their serial number, and Dahlia picked it for them because their head is a radio. Plain Jane is another one without an actual in-universe reason beyond it being a reference to Jane Smith’s powers. Mr. Q picks his name while watching a soap opera called “The Nuke-Lear Family.” When a character named Mr. X is mentioned, it triggers a memory about someone calling him “Q,” so he decides to go by “Mr. Q.”
December 17, 2025 at 5:52 PM
merk94.bsky.social
#Paragons
Dahlia’s imaginary friend was the ghost of a child who didn’t know she was dead and just thought everyone was ignoring her. Dahlia witnessed her being consumed by the Forget-Me-Nauts, but because the FMNs are memory-proof, she immediately forgot about the event until adulthood, when she next saw the FMNs. Nocturne has an imaginary mentor. Frequently beaten by his father, he imagined Moonlighter saved him and trained him as his teen sidekick Kid-Night. In actuality, he trained himself and murdered his father. He still sees Moonlighter when he’s off his meds.
December 13, 2025 at 5:06 PM
merk94.bsky.social
#Paragons
Well… I hadn’t thought of that… But Mr. Q does now. Gonna have him just be watching an episode of The Nuke-Lear Family* and hear about an as-of-yet character called Mr. X and have it trigger a flashback and that’s where he gets his hero name (Mr. Q) from. *A fictional soap opera about Nelson Nuke (secretly the superhero Mr. Atomic), his wife (a reporter and daughter of Mr. Atomic’s archnemesis Dr. Lear), and their kids, a son who takes after his father and a daughter who takes after her maternal grandfather.
December 9, 2025 at 5:59 PM
merk94.bsky.social
#Paragons (Vol. 1 only)
Charlie Sinclair (The Word) is a mystery comic writer drawn into the insane world of superheroics after being targeted by mysterious assassins and kidnapped by vigilantes. Dahlia Martinez (Black Dahlia) is a high school senior trying to find her place in the world after learning she has the ability to perceive ghosts and return from the dead. Adam Voss (Moonlighter) is a reclusive millionaire attempting to recruit a team of heroes to prevent the end of the world. Sameko Voss is a human/shark hybrid, Voss’s adopted daughter, who wants to help her father achieve his mission. M101DJ-00-A is a robotic hermit who befriends Dahlia shortly after losing his sewer rat friends. Jane Smith (Plain Jane) is a vigilante working with Moonlighter. Mr. Q is an amnesiac with no face being hunted by assassins from the same organization hunting Charlie in his debut chapter.
December 7, 2025 at 2:27 AM
merk94.bsky.social
A commissioned piece of Sameko Voss—one of the characters from the superhero web novel I’m writing—drawn by Molly Skyfire.
Sameko, a human/shark hybrid, delivering a side kick above and to the left of the viewer.
December 6, 2025 at 1:54 AM
merk94.bsky.social
#Paragons
The Word: “No. Real life isn’t some comic book that’s already been written and can’t be changed.” Dahlia: “God gave us free will for a reason. To Him, everything is predetermined, but we still have to make up our minds.” Moonlighter: “Everything that happens is the culmination of prior occurrences. Our job is to be a disruptor when the outcome looks unfavorable.” Sameko: “We make our own fate.” DJ: “I wasn’t programmed to become sentient, but I did. If someone planned all of this out, how can we know for certain they accounted for every variable?” Plain Jane: “Doesn’t matter. Either we’re all puppets or we have free will. Might as well act like what we choose to do matters. The alternative’s too depressing.” Mr. Q: [declines to answer, knows too much]
December 3, 2025 at 6:15 PM
merk94.bsky.social
Would #Paragons be a superhero story without tragic backstories?
Dahlia almost gets herself and her best friend killed trying to get evidence from a murderer’s apartment. The reveal of her powers destroys their friendship. Voss (Moonlighter) loses his parents at 16 and his wife and stepson over a decade later. Plain Jane’s powers activated as a result of the trauma of witnessing her brother’s abduction, causing her to be basically invisible to the world and forcing her to survive on her own from an early age. DJ was one of two prototype defense robots shown at the 1964 Empire City World’s Fair, which ended in tragedy when the other prototype malfunctioned and killed several attendees. DJ, being part of the same product line, was sent to be decommissioned and fled into the sewers of Empire City, where they stayed for four decades.
November 26, 2025 at 5:30 PM
merk94.bsky.social
#Paragons
Dahlia may have to fight a bitch. Voss (Moonlighter) strikes me as the type to see it coming, let it happen, and calmly clean himself up. Mr. Q would completely no-sell it. The drink doesn’t make it past the void in front of his face if he doesn’t want it to anyway. Roentgen would hiss, boil off the drink, and then irradiate you, and you would deserve it for throwing your drink at a cat, you monster.
November 25, 2025 at 1:21 AM
merk94.bsky.social
#Paragons

Sameko’s childhood was so far from normal.
Spent the first several years of her life as a feral child hunting in the Sea of Japan until a whaling boat brought a whale she was hunting onboard, where she was attacked by the crew and forced to kill them in self-defense. Then right after that, she fought a man in a costume who knocked her out, abducted her, and spent months feeding her and gaining her trust before he started teaching her how to read, write, communicate in sign language, and fight.
November 19, 2025 at 6:25 PM
merk94.bsky.social
Blackbody (from a post-apocalyptic parallel universe in #Paragons) actually has tattoos on his back of the long-term nuclear waste warning message:
This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
November 13, 2025 at 5:50 PM
merk94.bsky.social
We posting cats? Have a Siri.
Chonky gray and white cat stretched out on her side, her head on a binder.
November 4, 2025 at 3:43 AM
merk94.bsky.social
#Paragons
Charlie (The Word): Seamus Hart, PI, the main character of his comic book series. Dahlia: A chupacabra, a terrifying creature from her family’s culture. Voss (Moonlighter): John Wayne, an action hero from Voss’s childhood. Sameko: Her favorite character from one of her romance or magical girl mangas. DJ: A rockstar like David Bowie or Gene Simmons. Plain Jane: Bride of Frankenstein. Mr. Q: Michael Meyers. Roentgen: A pumpkin.
October 31, 2025 at 2:48 PM
merk94.bsky.social
Post something random.

Or don’t. I’m not your mom.
October 30, 2025 at 4:12 AM
merk94.bsky.social
Meanwhile me when I haven’t seen or heard either one of the two cats in this house in the past two days (they’ve still been eating their food and using the litterbox):
Chicken Run farmer: “Those bastards are up to something.”
October 20, 2025 at 5:11 AM
merk94.bsky.social
How about Kefka?
Kefka Palazzo (FF6)
October 17, 2025 at 8:24 PM
merk94.bsky.social
The celebrities I’ve thought about for #Paragons basically fall into two categories: Lawyer-safe cameo and industry parody.
Black Dahlia’s favorite band is Drown Your Sorrows, which is basically not My Chemical Romance. The frontman of the band, who is not Gerard Way, is named Jerry Method. One of the antagonists fought by the West Coast Paragons is Major Motion Picture, a reality warping Hollywood exec that basically embodies everything wrong with the movie industry. His son, Chris Picture, is an actor who basically represents nepotism.
October 17, 2025 at 6:25 PM
merk94.bsky.social
Currently writing a story about superheroes. This here is one of the main characters, Sameko. (Drawn by @mollyskyfire.bsky.social) She was adopted by the superhero Moonlighter after he found her as a feral child on a derelict whaling vessel a few miles off the coast of Japan.
An anthro blue shark woman delivering a standing side kick. Drawn by Molly Skyfire.
October 9, 2025 at 1:20 AM
merk94.bsky.social
In #Paragons…
There’s Martians, specifically one ancient Martian city brought back to life by a Department of Temporal Corrections “reset bomb” that was stolen and activated on Earth but then launched to Mars before it detonated. There’s also the Oberoons (inhabitants of the planet Oberon Prime), Migo the Conqueror’s species. The Statesman, Earth’s first publicly known metahuman, is a Promethean, launched into space as an infant by his parents to spare him from a period of worldwide ethnic cleansing on Prometheus.
October 8, 2025 at 2:44 PM
merk94.bsky.social
#Paragons

If we assume this is an AU where the fate of the world isn’t at stake (or at least where the nature of the threat is one where they’re can solve it through sportsball)…
The Word’s never really been one for sports, so something low-key like bowling for him probably. Dahlia’s dad is a big baseball fan and would definitely have taught his kids how to play (side note, Dahlia’s immediate family is almost large enough for a full baseball team). Sameko would be an absolute beast at water polo. Moonlighter is already built like a linebacker, and still has a lot of strength for an old guy. (American) football it is. I could see DJ applying what they from observing their rat friends in the habitat they built for them to hustle at billiards. Plain Jane would probably be pretty good at breaking through defense in basketball. Hard to guard someone who’s hard to perceive in the first place. I’m thinking golf for Mr. Q. His enhanced dexterity means he could hit the green on the first swing every time, and he wouldn’t even need a golf cart or caddy as long as he could get spectators to look away long enough for him to teleport to the ball’s location.
October 5, 2025 at 3:42 PM
merk94.bsky.social
But wait, there’s more: Absolute chonker Siri.
Laying on a cat bed in the laundry room, kinda drowsy. Same cat bed, but now sleebin’. Same cat bed, but she’s sitting up and looks done with everyone’s shit. Loafing in the living room, looking up the stairs at the photographer.
September 27, 2025 at 9:23 PM
merk94.bsky.social
Fluffy being a spooky gorl.
Sitting in the entryway, looking at the photographer. Lying in her cat bed in the laundry room, still staring at the photographer. Under a desk, staring at the photographer, looking real spooky. Sitting in the living room, looking back at the photographer with spooky eyes.
September 27, 2025 at 9:20 PM
merk94.bsky.social
Gonna answer this specifically for some of the fliers in the #Paragons universe.
The OG, the Statesman, is a very skilled flier, and varies his form, typically using bullet-position when he needs to go fast, hovering when he’s at a standstill. Maelstrom flies by pointing his hammer in the direction he wants to go. Unlike Statesman, he can’t hover, but he can glide by holding his hammer up while falling. Ironclad flies using a suit of armor with various rocket propulsion systems. The operator is a skilled pilot. The original Ad Astra is an android who isn’t particularly concerned with appearing human. She flies in a standing position at all times. The second Ad Astra isn’t as skilled as Statesman when it comes to flying, as seen when she hovers (arms out to stabilize her). Bombshell (not the electric zombie Marilyn Monroe, the other one) has powers fueled by her confidence. After suffering a major defeat in her career, her confidence is shattered to the point where she can’t fly without getting drunk, and when drunk, her flight form is very sloppy.
September 27, 2025 at 7:12 PM
merk94.bsky.social
#Paragons
Charlie (The Word) is a jovial drunk, more extroverted than usual, and more willing to take risks. Dahlia is not old enough to drink in the first volume. She tried a beer once and didn’t like it. Voss (Moonlighter) is a teetotaler. Sameko is a sleepy drunk, and due to her digestive system not being optimized to process alcohol (not a lot of fermented fruit in the ocean), it doesn’t take a lot to get her drunk. DJ cannot consume alcohol or become intoxicated. Jane is a friendly drunk, like Charlie, but more likely to take a complete stranger home to bed with her. Mark (Mr. Q) is a belligerent drunk, but typically knows when to cut himself off.
September 21, 2025 at 4:13 PM