Mark Juniper/Relationships

Family
The Junipers are a well-off family, despite not being too well-known. They live in a large house in Germany, surrounded by sheep and suburbs, where buses whizz around everywhere like flies in summer. It's not a very quiet existence, but it sure is an entertaining one.

Mother – Marlene "Marl" Juniper
Mark's mother, Marlene Juniper, was one of the worst Marlinchens in history. As a teenager, she arrogant, loud-mouthed and always up to fight someone. A self-proclaimed punk and rebel, Marlene often wagged school, flirted with upper-class girls and did everything except what was expected of her.

Still, it was deniable that she was brilliant. Instead of learning how to sew and cook and clean, like Marlinchens were supposed to, Marlene picked up business skills, taking economics classes. At age 14, she started running the tax and check books for her house. At age 15, she started a small enterprise. At age 17, she recieved her acceptance letter for a prestigious business course at some prestigious German university. And in the year she turned 18, she saw her mother die in front of her.

That changed Marlene. Gone was the dyed hair and the combat boots and flirtatious attitude. In that one afternoon, she realised the fleeting nature of life and death. No longer caring about her reputation, she put her efforts in what truly mattered – her job and her family.

If there was anything void in Mark's life, it definitely wasn't a mother's love.

TBA

Father
His dad's a lawyer and makes ordinary dad jokes, such as: Since Mark's father was a non-legacy, he doesn't have much of a opinion on his son's destiny, believing that "it's just a thing that happens, I guess".
 * Dad: Alright so you got your acceptance letter to that weird fairytale school.
 * Mark: Yeah, I’m honoured
 * Dad: Hello Honoured, I’m dad.
 * Mark: THAT WASN’T FUNNY I’M CALLING THE JOKE POLICE.

He met Marlene at a protest. The two were both social activists. He accidentally got caught up in the middle of a fight, but Marlene ended up intervening and saving him. He offered to buy her lunch, and the rest is history.

Icarus Juniper
dude i have so much to write about these two

– icarus is like super supportive??? but icarus has a bad habit of treating Mark like a kid and even often hands him over to his friends to "babysit"

– practically more like sibs than cousins

Lea die Birke
Mark's stepcousin.

– basically she had the potential to become the next Marlinchen, and she possessed a suitable personality for that and Mark felt threatened by her

– he has yelled at her and avoided her and generally just doesn't like her because she's scary and smart and seemingly nice

– later he learns that she's not the next Marlinchen and that he is still truly Marlinchen

– he could reconcile with her and attempts to, but Lea is too stubborn and doesn't want to interact with him

– so now he sees her as this random who came into his family and doesn't even belong

Friends
Generally, Mark's a lot better at making friends with girls as opposed to guys. Mainly because he finds most teenage boys annoying and intolerable, and finds girls (and non-binary peeps) a lot more approachable.

Tenley Rosewood
"You're my one and only Marlinchen, dude."

- Tenley to Mark

Mark's closest friend used to be Tenley Rosewood, the next sister in the Rose-Tree. They were incredibly close, often exchanging quips and the driest jokes in the history of dry jokes. Since the two have been friends for ages (since late pre-teens, early-teens), they were great at picking up each other's quirks and nuances. Mostly though, their friendship was "hey dude do this stupid thing I dare you" "hell yeah I'm gonna do this thing".

That was, of course, until Mark's uncle got remarried and his Marlinchen destiny seemed threatened.

The first thing that happened was that Mark talked less to Tenley. Then, when Tenley began to date Lea die Birke, Mark, not wanting to force Tenley to choose sides in the destiny-fiasco between her best friend and her girlfriend, stopped talking to Tenley altogether, isolating himself to other friends.

And when Tenley tried to get Mark to speak and tell her what was going on?

He slammed a door in her face and refused to apologise.

Later they became friends again but man that was certainly a trial and tribulation.

Airmid Valerian
Out of Icarus' friends, Airmid is definitely Mark's favourite. He looks up to the next physician, and they get along due to sharing a lot of similar interests (for instance, they're both anglophile trash).

Airmid treats Mark as an overhyped child who needs some chill, but they genuinely like to listen to what Mark has to say. Mark sees Airmid as an omniscient source of scientific knowledge.

Polynices Crawford
In other words, the demon that Mark summoned purely by emotions.

Polynices "Nick" Crawford is essentially one of Mark's many caregivers, who's been forced into hanging out with Mark because of a deal he struck with the poor dude. Luckily, Nick is a good listener and a generally chill guy who doesn't mind hearing about Mark's emotions and ramblings and even occasionally tries to help the boy work through them.

But why does Nick try to help so much? Because Mark reminds Nick of his own sister, Antigone. And goodness, Polynices would never forgive himself for not helping Antigone enough, and tries to make amends by doing the next best thing – helping Mark.

Damon Gale
red converse for days

mark is fantastic at obtaining older brother figures

also pls read this

Birds
They love him. By love him, I meant treating him like their child.

Everyone babies Mark and birds are no exception.

Pet
If it isn't obvious, Mark is incredibly fond of birds, and the birds are fond of Mark. Even though he can't exactly speak to birds like others can, he understands birds quite well by watching their body language and trying to pierce together some familiar sounds of their twittering.

Mark generally doesn't see any of the birds as pets. That also includes Tesla, the pigeon that flew towards him during Animal Calling. Mark named her Tesla as a nod to the scientist Nikola Tesla who was obsessed with pigeons. Tesla is less of a pet and more like one of the bird friends he has, except that she lives with him.

Tesla is a douche. There's no doubt about it. Tesla pokes fun at and makes jokes about all of Mark's friends, any potential baes, and pretty much everyone else. The only exceptions are her fellow birbs, whose company she adores the most. The other birds are also the only "people" she thinks should hang out with Mark.