#people who hold power frequently do not like to think that their own violence will be met with resistance or retaliation

[brother-emperors]

Do you think Cassius haunts Caesar's line ?

yeah, the escalating paranoia about conspiracies is really revealing (especially when you reach Caligula and the Cassius Incident) but I also think Cassius and his legacy haunts any tyrant. Caesar just happened to be the guy who climbed his way to the top in a place where Cassius could do something about it

Plutarch, Brutus (trans. Scott-Kilvert)

#brutus gets the title of idealized tyrant killer but that's because he was an indecisive wet cat about the whole thing #in addition to being a sellout and a nepotism hire. he's nice so that makes him easier to manipulate into a tolerable icon and paragon of #virtue. contrasted to cassius who had sharp teeth about the whole thing #people who hold power frequently do not like to think that their own violence will be met with resistance or retaliation #and will choose a better martyr and icon to trick people into thinking that emulating the virtue being sold to you will give you #whatever. imperialists and tyrants will repackage a martyr into a version they approve of and convince you that this is your guy #justice for cassius or whatever. these tags aren't even about cassius anymore. #ask tag #something something 'my name is not king but caesar' echo for how caesar will become synonymous with kings and emperors and tyrants #GOD these tags got off topic. i think the ides of march as a concept bothers a lot of people so cassius in turn haunts all of them too

[andreal831]

Klaus and Rebekah -- Abuse

I often call Klaus out for his treatment of his siblings. Just like I call out the majority of the characters for their behavior. However, Klaus stans get very offended when I do this, even though they are the ones who say they love how evil he is. I often get accused of being biased and 'hating' Klaus. I promise you, I don't. I do not care enough about any fictional character to hate them. I may not like them or they aren't my favorite characters, but I clearly still tolerate them enough to watch the show. It's also funny because I don't talk about my least favorite characters specifically because I don't like them. Therefore, the fact that I spend time talking about Klaus means I like him to an extent. I like aspects of his character and was disappointed in his lack of development.

Too many people want to erase his abuse towards Rebekah or, even worse, justify it. As someone with a degree in Psychology and who works every day with victims of abuse, I wanted to break this down for the fandom.

First, I cannot stand it when Klaus stans want to pretend Klaus's actions are justified. Abuse is never justified. Mikael's treatment of Klaus was not okay even if Mikael thought he was creating a strong warrior. And Klaus' treatment of Rebekah is not okay even if he thinks he knows best.

Second, being abused and having trauma does not justify or relieve responsibility from someone if they then become an abuser themselves. It does happen, unfortunately, but they need to be held responsible as abusers.

Third, there are different types of abuse. One is not more damaging than another, they are all terrible and cause long-lasting trauma.

Psychical Abuse

"Involves the use of physical violence, or threats of it, to maintain power over an individual. Because of this, survivors are afraid and uncertain when more abuse will occur. This often reinforces the regular use of other, more subtle, types of abuse."

Physical abuse is the one that is talked about the most because it is so easy to see. Klaus has been physically abusing Rebekah for about 900 years. He does it so frequently that she often flinches away from him. She never knows what to expect from him, if he is going to be a loving brother or revert back to her abuser. This creates its own trauma as she loves the caring side of her brother but is terrified of what he can turn into. It's part of the reason they have such a codependent bond. She still sees the brother she loves and wants to save him.

The first moment of physical abuse that we see is after the Hunters dagger their family and Klaus slaughters them all. Klaus grabs her roughly and screams in her face. This is after Rekekah wakes up covered in blood and sees the man she loves dead. She is clearly terrified of Klaus in this scene. People will try to justify this and say Klaus was "in the right" since Rebekah shouldn't have trusted the Hunter. But, I'll refer you back to my first point, we do not blame victims for their abuse, we do not justify abusers in their actions. Rebekah did not plot against her family. She made a mistake in trusting someone, a mistake that everyone in that family has made. Hell, Klaus is sleeping with Genevive while she is actively trying to murder his child. He sleeps with Aurora while she kidnaps Rebekah and throws her into the ocean. But Rebekah was in love with the Hunter. Even after what he did, she still buried him in peace. Klaus was not in love with the women he allowed close to him and hurt his family. He does not have a moral high ground. And even if he did, again, we do not justify abuse.

This event starts a cycle of abuse. Klaus holds onto the weapons, even though, at this time he is not any stronger than his siblings and they cannot be used against him. He doesn't do it to protect them but to threaten them. Anytime they disagree with him, he threatens to take years away from them, to strip them of their bodily autonomy. They are so scared of those daggers that they won't even stand against Klaus for each other.

We don't see much of their lives, but in every era after this, we see Klaus physically abusing Rebekah. He is constantly waving the daggers around and using them against her. This is physical abuse. He is stripping her bodily autonomy away from her and taking years of her life away from her. We don't know how many times this happens but we know she lost 14 years of her life in the span of 200 years, so I can only imagine how much of her life she truly missed out on.

In the 1800s, he threatens her away from Marcel and when she doesn't obey him, he daggers her and costs her 52 years of her life. In 1920, he daggers her for wanting to be with Stefan, taking 90 years of her life away. In Season 4 TVD, he daggers her for months because she doesn't want to help him make his hybrids.

He has no problem choking her and breaking her neck after he left her to be abused and tortured by vampire hunters. He compels Marcel to kill her witch body if she disobeys him. Not to mention the sanitorium episode where she is running, scared for her life from her brother. He constantly threatens her with bodily harm if she goes against him.

Emotional Abuse

"Includes non-physical behaviors that are meant to control, isolate, or frighten someone. These behaviors are often more subtle and hard to identify but are just as serious as other types of abuse."

Even as a human Klaus is condescending to Rebekah, telling her she cannot play with knives because she is a girl, despite the fact that Rebekah is the only one of his siblings who has ever been brave enough to stand up to Mikael. I know it is the times, but as a reminder, Viking women often wielded swords.

Klaus emotionally manipulates Rebekah from early on. He continues to gaslight her and make her emotionally dependent on him. He even jokes about his abuse to her and their siblings, often make jokes about daggering them and finding a place to store them if they disagree.

The first time is right after they are turned when Klaus tells Rebekah their father killed their mother. This is a lie. He killed Esther and he knows it. He tells Rebekah that so she won't leave him. Even if it comes from a place of fear, this is emotional manipulation. He does not allow Rebekah to make an informed decision. Their entire vow is based on this lie.

Klaus is very good at framing himself as the victim and making his siblings feel guilty, even when he has done the same or worse. He refers to himself as their "bastard-brother" often and talks about them abandoning him, which is just a lie. Rebekah and Elijah never once abandoned him for 900 years. Elijah only left to lead Mikael away and the only time we see Rebekah leave is when she is daggered. Yes, Rebekah begins to act in reaction to Klaus' abuse, but it takes about 700 years of being abused before she even does this. Also, you can't use Rebekah calling Mikael as an explanation since he didn't find out about that until 2012/2013.

I would also like to point out, Klaus is celebrated for killing his abuser but Rebekah is condemned for 'trying' to kill hers. I also hold that she didn't actually want him dead, she acted in pain and instantly regretted it. He is also the one who abandons her multiple times, even leaving her in Mystic Falls after she has been daggered for 90 years.

Klaus has no compassion for Rebekah's feelings. He is constantly belittling her for loving or caring for others. He would often make comments, especially in front of others, about her being stupid or naive. Like making fun of her love for Alexander in front of Stefan or making fun of her in front of Marcel. This is a very common way for abusers to control their victims. If the victim feels small and insignificant, they do not feel brave enough to leave. He constantly makes her feel like she is nothing, that she has nothing so she has no choice but to stay with him.

He lets her think he is dead for days, despite what he knows it will do to her. When he reveals himself, he leaves her in the hands of self-declared vampire hunters and makes no move to rescue her even later.

And then Klaus' moment of 'growth' is when he doesn't kill her in the cemetery in Season 1, but "sets her free." Again, this is a way for him to exercise his control over her life. He is exiling her but frames it in a way that he is the good guy. He has complete control over her life still. She is not allowed to return to see Marcel, Hayley, Elijah, or anyone. She only is able to return when Klaus needs her.

Sexual Abuse

"Sexual abuse is when a partner controls the physical and sexual intimacy in a relationship. This often involves acting in a way that is non-consensual and forced."

I think we can all admit, Klaus and Rebekah have a very strange relationship. He is very possessive of her and it often comes across as a toxic boyfriend.

For some reason, Rebekah has to ask her brothers' permission to turn her boyfriend, Emil, into a vampire. Further showing her lack of autonomy. Klaus laughs at her and shames her for her love life. He then takes it a step further and throws Emil off the balcony, proving to Rebekah once again that she is not allowed to have anyone in her life outside of him. He even does it with his siblings when he sees Rebekah and Elijah acting too close, he attempts to victimize himself, pretending they are excluding him because he is their half-brother, rather than for the real reason that he has hurt them once again.

The next romantic interest for Rebekah is Marcel. I'm not going to get into the problems there, but we do need to acknowledge the grooming that occurred. But that is not why Klaus is opposed to the relationship. He doesn't want Rebekah to pursue Marcel because he views them as being his. He doesn't want them to have anything in their life outside of him. When she disobeys, he punishes her. He doesn't punish Marcel even though Marcel was the one who pursued her. He only punishes her. Not only does he dagger her, but he barters her life for Marcel's desire to become a vampire. He does this specifically to drive an even deeper wedge between Rebekah and Marcel, so that when he undaggers her after 52 years, she will not seek a relationship with Marcel.

Klaus then wants props for later "giving permission" for Marcel and Rebekah to have a relationship. It is completely sick that he thinks he is allowed to regulate his sister's love life.

Rebekah next forms an attachment with Stefan. She actually meets Stefan first, but because Klaus is jealous, he is constantly throwing fits in the 20s and wants to separate the two. When it is time to run, he doesn't give Stefan the chance to come with them. He compels Stefan to forget about them, despite it being Rebekah's boyfriend. Rebekah decides she wants to stay with him and he daggers her for 90 years for this 'betrayal.' In fact, he only releases her when he plans to use her against Stefan. When he is done with her, he abandons her in Mystic Falls to go create his own family of hybrids.

And if you think this is okay because Rebekah is 'breaking their vow,' I want you to really think about that. Rebekah is 900 years old and not allowed to essentially move out and start her own life because her older brother never learned to make his own friends/romantic partners.

I also think we need to evaluate the vow. While Klaus may have kept to the words of it, he did not keep to the meaning of it. "Always and forever" was meant to show their loyalty and love for each other. Not that they were not allowed to have their own lives. Klaus broke his vow by keeping them in a box and robbing years of their lives. That is not an act of love but an act of abuse.

When they are back in New Orleans, he is constantly using her past with Marcel against her. He blames her for the issues with Marcel even though he was the one who introduced Marcel to the family and supposedly raised him. It is just another way to emotionally manipulate her as well as control her romantic life.

And then at the end of The Originals, the only glimpse of remorse we see is that he tells Caroline to get the cure for Rebekah. He doesn't apologize for the thousand years of abuse he inflicted on her and acts like this one act (which he has very little to do with) will make up for the rest of it. Someone recently pointed out the timing of it. Klaus didn't want her to take the cure before, but now that he is dying, he is fine with it. Since the show did very little to show growth in his relationship with Rebekah, it's not out of the realm of possibility that he has it in his head that Rebekah will be able to join him in the afterlife sooner if she takes the cure.

All of this to say, Klaus spent 900 years abusing his sister. Yes, she began to react against him, but that doesn't make it okay for him to continue to abuse her. It is fine to like Klaus' character, but it is not fine to justify abuse. People suffer this type of abuse every day and justifying it on social media allows this abuse to continue to be justified in real life. Don't be so blinded by a fictional character as to hurt real-life victims.

#anti klaus mikaelson #not really anti #but accountability #rebekah mikaelson #the vampire diaries #tvdu #the originals #klaus mikaelson #the mikaelsons #tvd

[lakesbian]

okay so 2.8. overall thoughts on rachel's introduction.

rachel not wanting a fifth person to join the team is ostensibly about the money she would lose from it, but it's more importantly about the fact that, as a disabled girl deeply unwanted by society, she has absolutely no trust in people. she can tolerate brian, lisa, and alec for the sake of the security and stability, but she doesn't trust them beyond the bare minimum. a strange person being brought into her house is deeply scary. she's used to every single new person she meets being a threat, someone with motives she can't read expecting her to operate based on arbitrary rules she can't understand. and because she has been taught that the only way to keep herself safe is to hurt people before they can hurt her (everyone will always want to hurt her), her immediate reaction to taylor Being There is to sic her dogs on taylor with hopes of scaring her off & securing her environment again. rachel autism lindt <3

brian is the second person we see breaking out the not-so-repressed violence and anger in this scene. he clocks rachel in the face, he says

“I fucking hate it,” Brian growled at the girl, putting emphasis on the swear, “When you make me do that.”

and he does some yelling about God Fucking Dammit. i think the crux of brian is that he consciously fervently does not want to be like his abusive stepfather, but the only alternative he's been taught was by his father...who is, unbeknownst to brian, also abusive. he's been taught that masculinity = good + mandatory and strength = masculine. his vision for himself as a Good Man who Takes The Lead and Cares For People involves stifling his 'weak' emotions and running himself ragged. he's not even very good at repressing himself compared to the other undersiders, so he's prone to outbursts like this sometimes--where, regardless of whether or not the violence he's engaging in is rationally justifiable, it's immensely charged w/ undertones of reminding him of exactly who he wants to avoid being.

it is Fully Understandable why, as a 17yo w/ zero training in conflict deescalation, the only way he can think to solve the matter of rachel violently siccing her dogs on someone is socking her. but "i fucking hate it when you make me do that" is still eerily reminiscent of some things his abusive stepfather has likely said to him before. he doesn't Want to be like that, but he doesn't know how to let himself be anything other than that.

(this situation w/ rachel and taylor sucks for him, ftr. he was so genuinely elated that he'd Acted Normal Enough to snap up this cool addition to the team, a girl with a good power who actively thinks along the exact same rational lines as him. which is important, because he needs the undersiders to succeed so that he can care for aisha like he feels he needs to. and then rachel busts in ruins what he's viewing as this great success by attacking taylor to drive her off. brian laborns bad day. rachel lindts bad day. tayor heberts bad day. lisa wilbourns deeply stressful day. alec vasils depression slump day.)

AND we get to watch taylor be violent and angry as well. that one is very simple there's not much to say about it. she's full of violent repressed anger (it's why she imagines beating the shit out of emma & co when she's being bullied in the halls prior to meeting the undersiders again), she usually holds it back because she recognizes that it would just cause the system to fuck her over more in the long-run, and here she realizes that there's no consequence of fighting back and proceeds to whale on rachel.

(i think that the reason she's primarily violent with her own human body here instead of w/ the bugs is because her usage of the bugs is frequently a form of dissociation--and here, rather than having to dissociate her way thru a violent situation, she's finally allowed to confront it head on and fight back w/ hands and feet As Herself. sucks and traumatizing to be attacked by dogs, but cathartic to be able to fight back.)

meanwhile: lisa is presumably vividly imagining slamming her own head into a brick wall and alec (badly depressed, seen far worse) doesnt even care with all the shit he's got going on

#wormtime 2 #wormtime 2 arc 2 #parahumans #wormblr #this is NOT a coherent post but thats how liveblogs work!

[momthesearemydinnerguests]

Re: My last reblog

IDK if reblogs were turned off or I've been blocked, so I'm responding here. I hope this doesn't come across as argumentative because i don't mean it to be. I'm just bad at tone. but I promise I genuinely want to have a discussion because i adore this fandom with all my heart.

@virginiaisforvampires Oh, don't get me wrong!! I am in no way trying to justify Armand in this scene. i 1000% agree that his "seduction" of Lestat in that scene is an act of incredible violence and cruelty. Armand DID try to rape Lestat, and Lestat absolutely should have wrecked his shit. I apologize if my wording made it seem like i was team Armand in this instance, because I absolutely am not. Lestat is 100% the victim in this instance. I'm a CSA survivor myself and I am deeply sorry if my wording implied that I was blaming Lestat. But I bring it up because 1) the obvious mirror in the show, and 2) it demonstrates how ridiculously powerful Lestat is even as a fledgling only a couple weeks/months old.

I also want to be clear that I am not saying the ep 5 scene happened in the books. It didn't. Like hands down. I don't even think that lestat is physically abusive in the books. I know it came across that way in my original response, and I apologize. i was in a rush and not separating my points out the best. I agree to an extent that In the Interview!book, Lestat and Louis do get into physical altercations and both parties are at fault. Hell, I'll even concede that in the physical altercations we see in the book, Louis is usually the aggressor (for example, when Louis almost kills Claudia, it is Louis who pins Lestat against the wall and rails at him). However, there is an inherent power imbalance in the Loustat relationship. Of course, i also FULLY believe that Lestat would do his best to hold back because he loves Louis with 100% of his being and wouldn't want to hurt him. But that doesn't mean that the imbalance isn't there. If Lestat's capable of doing that much damage to Armand - a vampire 200 years older than him who was also created by an ancient one - it's difficult to picture Louis and Lestat being evenly matched in a physical fight.

I also want to point out that reactive abuse is a very real thing... When Louis lashes out in the book, it's not without reason. And Lestat himself admits this, multiple times, throughout the books. When I say Lestat is abusive, I'm not talking about the physical violence. I'm talking about the way he targets people Louis cares about (Frenier, for example) - even if he has valid reasons (Frenier's plot to betray his family and leave his sister's with nothing), Louis is never made aware of these reasons and Lestat makes no attempts to explain. i'm talking about the fact that Lestat frequently projects his own trauma around being turned, and mocks Louis for his struggles with vampirism as a way of punishing himself. I'm talking about how he does to Claudia the exact thing he hated magnus for - turning her without her consent, condemning her to a life he didn't even want, without regard for what that transformation would mean for her. He denies them access to information, and even though he has good reasons for it (fear of marius's retribution, fear of the destruction of the vampire race, etc.), he's far from kind in the way he does so. In my experience, most abusers aren't sitting in their chair rubbing their hands together Bond villain style thinking of ways they can hurt you. Often they genuinely think that they are trying to make you stronger or to protect you from the world. it doesn't make their abuse any less real, it just makes it harder to see if for what it is.

As to @nalyra-dreaming's point about proving my own objection... I'm not objecting? My whole point there was that Armand is absolutely twisting the narrative. It's a thing he does all the time in the books. He will do anything to not feel alone, and that frequently involves tampering with memory and perception. The fact that the ep5 DV scene so closely mirrors his fights with Lestat in TVL is intentional. I absolutely believe that it could reasonably (and probably will) turn out that Armand is twisting the narrative and passing his own memories off as Louis's. While I personally don't like it for the reasons I stated , it fits with the narrative. But if it is a deception on Armand's part, the deception is effective precisely because Lestat is capable of such violence, even if it was never directed at Louis personally. After all, he's witnessed the violence lestat has directed at people less powerful than him (the priest in ep1, the tenor, their victims on murder night). I grew up in an abusive household, and even if it was never directed at me personally, I spent a lot of time waiting for the moment when the other shoe drops and it is directed at you. And Louis himself isn't immune to fits of excessive violence! If he himself struggles so hard to contain his rage, it makes sense he would fear Lestat doing the same. And if Lestat is capable of that level of violence, that means that it is also possible that it's not a deception. Rejecting the scene outright to me feels like turning a blind eye on that aspect.

Long story short, I agree that the DV scene in ep5 probably didn't go down the way Louis has presented in season 1, as much as I hope otherwise. I don't think that the story we've been presented so far is the WHOLE truth, but I don't see any reject it as a flat out lie. Even the books (at least the first five) I don't recall Lestat saying that Louis is a liar, but that Louis omits details and context, and/or misunderstands the situation. I do take issue with the idea that idea that Lestat isn't capable of that level of violence (not saying that's what y'all are doing, but I've seen a lot of that on my dash lately), and I do take issue with the statement that Lestat isn't abusive. The whole story is about a cycle of abuse (Marius+Santino to Armand, -> Armand+Magnus+Gabrielle to Lestat -> Lestat to Louis+Claudia) compounded by existing trauma, and the ways in which the characters struggle to break the cycle. And that's why it is so rewarding when they do succeed.

I personally don't want the scene retconned. I don't think it's necessary, and it would rub me the wrong way because of my own history with abuse and not being believed, or being told that I somehow deserved it. I don't think it takes away from Lestat's inherent goodness to have him fall so low in a moment of weakness. I don't think it changes the story either way. I'll also understand if they do, though, because it does fit with Armand's character. I don't understand the animosity I'm seeing between people who want it retconned and people who don't, because either way, it's all just speculation until season 2 actually aires. Both paths are capable of staying true to the characters and the story of the Vampire Chronicles.

#amc interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire #lestat de lioncourt #louis de pointe du lac #the vampire armand #iwtv opinions

[dynamightmite]

It's my own fault for going on reddit to read people's opinions about the manga (I'm sorry in advance, this is gonna be long) but I swear to God if I see one more half-assed hot take about someone hating Bakugo that effectively boils down to "overt violence being casually dismissed bad" I'm going to start smacking people over the head with a newspaper.

Like. Yeah, bro. That's literally it. I mean, it's kind of hard to talk about the violence inherent in the system without, y'know, showing you the violence inherent in the system. It's almost like Bakugo was being used as a vehicle to get that message across from an early point (Deku vs. Kacchan 1, specifically) in a way that is mitigated by circumstance so that it can later be dissected and eventually forgiven.

The entire purpose of characters like Bakugo and Endeavor is to show the audience the cracks in Hero Society's shiny facade that will eventually lead to its downfall. In fact, it's framed as being inevitable; hero society actively selects for competetive, ambitious, powerful people, and the obvious end result is heroes like Endeavor. Like what Bakugo could have been without intervention. The implication, however, isn't that characters like Bakugo and Endeavor are inherently evil, but began from a point where their actions and goals were understandable, if not admirable, but eventually devolved based on the encouragement they got from the system.

The big difference between them is Endeavor is a character who didn't recognize the flaws in hero society until it was too late, whereas Bakugo did. Unlike Endeavor, Bakugo is designed to be forgiveable. He's a child, he's placed in a situation that frequently encourages violence between unpracticed children who have questionable control of their quirks, he's got a quirk that can almost exclusively be used as a form of excessive force, and he has a lot of personal issues that stem from the society he grew up in.

Like it doesn't strike you as relevant that Bakugo attacking Midoriya was put in the context of them being in a facility designed for children to fight in, at a school specializing in teaching children to fight as part of their future career? Under supervision of an adult hero who chose not to stop them from fighting when he could have? When Midoriya and Bakugo both have equally destructive quirks and, if they had actually wanted to kill each other, they absolutely could have, considering Bakugo's control of his quirk and Midoriya's comparative lack? You don't think maybe, just maybe, there was an underlying purpose to that?

Now, Bakugo is supposed to be like Endeavor in the sense that you see how, from a young age, these types of people can appear and become heroes despite their flaws and the dangers they can pose to the people around them, and why it is so important that they have some kind of early intervention to prevent them from taking advantage of a position of authority for their own gain. Can you imagine if there was no Midoriya for Bakugo to measure himself against, and find himself lacking? If nobody showed him how to hold himself accountable? He probably would have ended up being the kind of hero who only cares about winning in the sense of coming out on top, rather than doing so to protect people. Instead, the manga basically provides a step-by-step instruction manual on how to evaluate your life choices and appropriately atone for past misconduct. It has Bakugo choosing to work towards compassion and empathy as a motivator, as opposed to following Endeavor's path towards attempted greatness, which is framed as being the correct choice, because, well—it is.

"But the narrative sometimes still glorifies violence—" for fuck's sake, yes, I know. And guess what, it does become convoluted by the narrative's mixed attitude towards violence. I am not the first person to acknowledge that a lot of BNHA's worldbuilding and general themes contradict each other, nor will I ever be the last. Horikoshi is not exactly a master class on writing critiques of society, okay, and a pacifist superhero story has some fundamental problems that aren't really addressed or worked out in the manga. None of that negates how important it is to have a main character like Bakugo, who visibly and consistently struggles with trying to learn how to be a good person in a system that is set up to allow him to succeed without having to make any real changes to himself. That matters. Not only because it shows the flaws in hero society, but because it helps acknowledge how baked-deep societal ideologies can become, and how incredibly difficult and unrewarding it can be to break out from them. If all the characters were like Deku—ready to throw himself out of the mold at a moment's notice and be aggressively compassionate all over everyone—there wouldn't really be a conflict for the story to deal with. Just because Bakugo's character development can be painful at times doesn't mean it's not important for it to occur the way that it does.

#bnha #bakugo #bnha meta #bkdk #i guess

[readychilledwine]

Incoming extra long post 💜

Pushing something a little different today-

Let's talk banned and challenged books

Warnings- this post is going to mention racial and gender issues, violence, and use some foul language. I do not graphically discuss anything, but I want that warning out there right away.

I've gone through 5 different banned/challenged books lists, and I wanted to share with you my favorite books on these lists and why I think everyone should read them.

I want to start with WHO creates the banned book lists and what it is. The banned or challenged book list is a list of books that are not allowed within a school district, and sometimes, when pushed hard enough, public libraries. It is meant to limit access to materials deemed "explicit in nature." It's not made by the government. It's parents and average people create these lists and typically threaten schools if they teach from them or offer these books to kids in libraries. I fully believe and support parents having the right to ease their kids into adult topics, but challenging your kid is the point of school.

I did notice there's common themes in the books on these lists

Race and race theory is discussed in the books

Mental health is discussed in the books

Body autonomy is discussed

The women's rights movement, LGBTQ+ movement, BLM, or any other minority movement it discussed

The book is critical of the government or religion

The book discusses war and the toll it plays

Slavery is ACTUALLY discussed

The book contains sexual content (consensual or nonconsensual)

The book questions society norms

Magic (Yes. Magic)

This list is updated almost weekly in some school districts, and 99% of the time, it is not to remove a book. It is to add one.

A few of these I won't discuss in as much detail in fear I will risk a community guidelines report, but I wanted to discuss some of them and why I love them.

Always keep in mind that you alone are responsible for your reading intake, and check your triggers on all the books mentioned. I will be posting my personal feelings on which age I feel the books are appropriate for as well. I also have not read a few of these in a bit, so hopefully, I have everything as accurate as possible!

If the ✨️ emoji is by the book, it's one of my personal favorites. Like, I may have multiple covers and editions favorite, or it is a book I frequently think about, or it holds a special place in my heart. Without further ado, I present to you Elizabeth's 21 favorite banned books in no particular order:

Maus by Art Spiegelman - banned for discussions of violence, torture, and death- This is a comic book/graphic novel series based on the author's father, who was a Polish Jew and is a survivor of the Holocaust. It is gut-wrenching. It is disgusting. It is heartbreaking. I do not recommend it for anyone under 16, but I personally think it's okay to be uncomfortable and learn from the past.

✨️Animal Farm by George Orwell - banned for open criticism of the government - I LOVE Animal Farm. Animal Farm is based on the Russian government/monarchy being overthrown (which is why it surprises me that it is banned in so many districts in the US.) In summary, animals over throw their human masters and create a society of their own. It is meant to challenge and discuss the fact that no matter how small a person is, the revolutionary mindset is a powerful one. I highly recommend Animal Farm to 16+.

✨️Beloved by Toni Morrison (get used to her name. You'll see it one more time. I could make a post solely on her.) -banned for violence, SA, realisitic depictions of segregation and slavery - Beloved is about the treatment of black women in the south during and after slavery, and how things circled for them. This book has haunted me since I read it at 15. I'm 27 now. Toni is a superb writer who truly pulls at your heart with her stories. I do not feel this book should be banned. What happened in the United States needs to be discussed openly to work on the racial divide. Please consider reading this if you haven't, and if you have siblings 16+, let them read it as well and have an open discussion with them on how it made them feel. This is one I also recommend checking triggers for.

Burned by Ellen Hopkins (you'll see this name several times, too. I'm shocked her name isn't plastered as the first thing on every list honestly) - banned for questioning religion and parental figures - I also love Ellen Hopkins. I have paid to listen to her lecture several times. I love the way she writes. I love her willingness to challenge society. I love her openly discussing hard topics. This book is one of those topics. It is about a young group of kids sent to what my brain thinks is a religious reformation camp in Nevada. They are supposed to be finding salvation and redemption in Christ, but instead find love and acceptance in each other. There's a few heavy topics (the whole book is heavy. Her books, in general, can be heavy). I'd recommend it to anyone 14+.

Call of the Wild by Jack London - if you're my age and grew up in the American School system, take all the time you need to process the fact that this book is on all 5 of the lists I looked at- banned for animal cruelty and violence - this was required reading when I was in school. I was 12. It is focused on the Klondike Gold Rush, and arguments could be made that it is more based on the treatment of animals at that time. I do not feel I should have been exposed to this at the tender age of 12, but I tend to carry more sympathy towards animals than I do people. I feel safe saying 15+ with discussions being had regularly.

✨️ Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury - banned for challenging the government and violence - I have chills as I am getting ready to write about this book, tears are welling up, this is my coming of age novel. It is one of the books I read by choice in high school that actually began my question everything and look at all angles mindset. I can not recommend this book enough. It is about book and media censorship and a dystopia based society where common practice is to burn books, a real thing that has happened in so many countries, on government orders in order to keep the general population conformed and uneducated. It discusses the consequences of that on society and humanity, it discusses the dangers of rebellion against that mind set, and I could not put it down. 15+. Please please please read this book if you never have. Especially as an adult who can recognize the behaviors discussed in the book and how it parallels modern society

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernst Hemmingway - banned for discussions of war - this book graphically discusses the consequences of war. I am not overly comfortable getting too far into it. I will say, this one will shatter you if you are an immeserive reader who gets so into a book it becomes your surroundings and reality instead of just a pleasure reader. Please read with caution. 17+

Lord of the Flies by William Golding - banned for violence and language (I personally think there's more reasons and those two are the scapegoats) - again, if you are my age, take the time to process your shock. This book centers around children who survive a plane crash on an island and are forced to create their own society and government, and it quickly goes to hell in a hand basket. Everything from sex, to racism, to discrimination against disabilities (does it sound familiar yet) is discussed and challenged by the groups formed in this book. 15+ with supportive discussions

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck - another one for people my age to go "wait what" to - banned for "depressing themes" and "antibusiness" - this book discusses the tragic lives of two migrant works and the conditions they were forced to endure. It's main lesson is about humanity and compassion. This is a really educational book that I feel should be in classrooms. 14+

Tricks by Ellen Hopkins - banned for SA and sexual nature - this one I would not recommend to anyone under 17. It is about teens trapped in sex work. Please check your own triggers before reading this.

✨️The Crank Triology by Ellen Hopkins (Crank, Glass, and Fallout) - banned for open discussion of drug use and addiction - these novels are actually based on the life of the author's daughter and her downwards spiral into m3th addiction. They are heartbreaking (fallout will hit you HARD if you have friends who are the kids of an addict or you are a child of a parent who is an addict). They were the first books I read by her, and I am sad to say I live in a community where they were banned hard enough that it passed to all three school districts and the public library. 16+ and please check triggers

Hold your breath, my loves. ✨️A Court Of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas -banned for sexual content, violence (domestic and situational), and ✨️magic use✨️ - if someone can explain to me why this is the only book from this series I've found on a banned/challenged list and why NONE of the Throne of Glass books are on them, I'm all ears. Do I think your 13 year old should be reading this? F no. A 16 year old, though? Yes. Let them have that Rhys Crease in those paperbacks. I'd rather my kid read smut than watch it. Also, kudos and congrats to SJM for being a banned author in 12 school districts, thus making her one of the top bans for the 2022-2024 school years. There's some great authors and novels on this list. It was pretty cool to get to include her.

✨️The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison - banned for race theory, racism, abuse - oof. This one is hard. Be ready to cry if you read it. It takes place after the Great Depression in the US and is mainly about a young black girl. It centers a created inferiority complex she developed because, due to societal norms regarding beauty, She does not see beauty in herself and her skin. Definitely 14+. Definitely should be read in classrooms as it is one of the most powerful books I've read that centered on black women and their voices that need to be heard.

✨️ Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur - banned for sexuality and representing the feminist movement - this one is quite frankly insulting. This is a poetry novella about healing and finding power inside of yourself as a female and finding your self-worth. It's banned in 10 districts, making it part of the top 10 bans. I might actually cry over this one being banned. My daughter will read it 14, and we're going to discuss it. I think it is that worthy and powerful. I will leave you with my favorite quote from this one "I am not a hotel room. I am home. I am not the whiskey you want. I am the water you need. Don't come here with expectations and try to make a vacation out of me."

✨️ The Catcher in The Rye by JD Salinger - banned for teen rebellion - this is the first book I gave to my younger brother that I thought would resonate with him, he still has that torn up, creased, and notated copy that was passed from my mother to our big brother, then to me, and now to him. He told our parents once he's pretty sure it saved his life. This book centers around 16 year old Holden after he is expelled from school. He begins to challenge adults and societal norms regarding children. It critiques a superficial society and brings to light the consequences of some choices we make. Teens can relate to this book. My siblings and I all did. This book has sat on a pretty much national ban list for far too long. It needs to be brought into classrooms, especially classrooms in schools with behaviorally challenged teens who've never found a book that speaks to their soul and feelings. 16+ with guidance and open discussion.

✨️I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing by Maya Angelou - banned for "bitterness and hatred toward white people" in the majority of the state Texas - break my heart harder, Maya. This is the only autobiography on I have on my tops list at the moment. It focuses on young Maya Angelou and the discrimination and racism she faced. There is so much symbolism and history to dive into with this book. Have tissues ready if you read this. 16+

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - banned for open discussion of war and violence - another oof. This is another book I handed to my little brother and said, "Read this and get back to me." It was not one of my personal favorites until he sat me down and told me how the book made him feel. I genuinely wish I could have him typing this one out, but he's off doing his adventures and seeing the world. It is a beautiful coming of age novel set in the Middle East during the invasion of Soviet Russia to the United States and the downfall of the Taliban. It centers around the importance of paternal figures, friendship, and key relationships. 15+ there is a SA scene that is rarely mentioned on the banned books list so keep that in mind.

✨️The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - banned for discussions of childhood SA, pedophilia, and murder - one of my top 10 favorite books of all time. If you've watched the movie, please read the book. It is about a family struggling after their daughter is SA'd and killed by a serial predator, and it is told from the daughter's perspective in the afterlife and from the eyes of her family. You will go on a roller-coaster of emotions. Anger, sadness, joy. I really do love this book. I have a hardcopy for display purposes, and a paperback with a separate note book filled with notes, quotes, etc. 16+ just due to the heavy nature of it, but for a mature reader and personality 14+

✨️I want to scream from the rooftops on how bullshit this one is. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - banned for open discussion of segregation, racism, violence, and "general hatred towards white people - this book should be required reading. This book openly discusses consequences of false accusations based on race, it discusses the mistreatment of minorities, and it discusses a white superiority complex. It needs to be read and discussed, and I will die on that hill. 14+

This one also makes me want to scream✨️The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - banned for violence, alcohol promotion, anti business beliefs- this book is a classic and it brings to question a lot regarding income levels, old and new money, and financial segregation. It has beautiful symbolism that you have to be paying attention to catch, and is so much more than a Leonardo Dicaprio movie. 14+

It is with a heavy sigh and heart I introduce the next author: ✨️JRR Tolkien✨️ if I would have just listed his books, it'd be this whole list - banned for violence and ✨️magic use✨️ - these novels and short stories are the back bone of the modern day fantasy writer and have even created countless table top RP games. The fact that so many Middle Earth based novels are banned is almost a stab in the back to the idea that schools are supposed to push and celebrate growth, individuality, and knowledge. I have the Lord of the Rings and the books that prequel it on a pedestal. They are my comfort novels and go tos when I'm feeling down and truly want to lose myself into a well-done and built world. I recommend them to anyone who already loves Fantasy or wants to get into fantasy 15+

EDITED TO ADD ✨️Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut - there's a lot of reasons this book is now banned, and I was just informed by my best friend she saw it had hit an official list - If you want science fiction mixed with anti war look no further. This book addresses a very deadly and tragic bombing in ww2 using a narrative from a character who is "stuck there" over and over again. Please really check triggers for this one. It's easily another 16+ book.

Theres a few books I came across on these lists I haven't read yet, but currently have in my cart to purchase. Do any of you have a favorite banned book? Are you interested in any of these books? If you are and have questions, please shoot me a message or comment. I'm always happy to discuss banned books. They're my favorites. 💜

#readychilledwine's random thoughts and blurbs #banned books #banned and challenged books

[ddantelion]

RICH KID! GN! PC. feat M! WHITNEY

warnings. very shitty PC, attempts to drown whitney, spitting, OOC whitney

You hail from nobility that has resided in this town for generations. You reside on Danube Street in the largest estate. Wherever you go you are driven in a black, slick limousine, accompanied by guards twice the average person's size. Your parents are recognized as directors of several successful corporations, as well as popular, influential socialites. You, even from your earliest youth, has been known as the golden child. You are endlessly envied by your peers.

You are also Whitney's greatest enemy.

Just like Whitney has his own posse, you have yours. They come from powerful families, and are the only students who are able to jab at him and his friends, and get away with it. In fact, your friends are the only students who are able to get away with beating his friends up, enough to land them in the hospital (which, to his horror, has already happened several times before). Every single time your friends are caught, they argue that they had acted in self-defense. And every single time, your friends get off scot-free. The next day at school, they'll approach him and his friends in the hallway, mockingly asking them where the others are with a horribly infuriating grin.

You don't lay a hand on his friends. You don't lay a hand on him either. You believe that you're above violence, but more than anything, you believe that you shouldn't have to sully your hands for people so insignificant. If you believe that someone deserves a punishment, then you will simply contact your guards to get the job done.

Whitney hates your guts. He wants you dead.

The teachers love you. They think you're entirely incapable of causing trouble, which, to an extent, is true. After all, you're not the one who's throwing pencils and erasers at him in the classroom -- it's your damned friends. Your friends are the ones kicking his seat and throwing open water bottles at him. You do nothing -- You sit with your chin resting in the palm of your hand, watching in amusement. When Whitney reaches his breaking point and snaps at your friends, he's the one who gets in trouble. River will harshly scold him in front of everyone, and in the corner of his eye, he sees your shoulders shake as you turn away to face your friends, laughing quietly.

He can't escape you at school. He can't even escape you when he's not at school. Because on rainy days, you also frequent the park, sitting by the fountain with your usual guards by your side, one holding an umbrella above your head, and the other offering to bring you snacks, blankets, and anything else you might need. He glares at your from his spot beneath the tree, and you will turn to him, giving him a smile. You always look pristine, and your skin glows and your eyes glitter, and you don't even need to try to get people's affection.

One day, Whitney was in an especially foul mood, and he made the mistake of approaching you when both of your guards had briefly left their posts. You saw him marching towards you, and you tilted your head. You opened your mouth to greet him, but before you could --

Whitney had snatched you by the collar of your shirt and tugged your face until it was inches away from his. He took satisfaction in the way your eyes widened in surprise, even if it was only for a moment.

"You really can't take a fucking hint, can you?" He scowled. "Think I don't have the guts to lay a hand on you? You think you're invincible?"

He pulled his head back and gathered all of his saliva on his tongue, before spitting violently in your face, causing it to land on your cheek. You slowly, gingerly lifted a hand to wipe it away, your eyes still trained on his. His lips carved into a grin, and you smiled back.

In one swift motion, you grabbed the back of his head. You grasped strands of his hair between your fingers, tugging violently, before suddenly shifting positions -- Shoving his body against the edge of the fountain, one knee pressed against his back and both of your hands burying his head deep into the water. They stayed there, even when Whitney immediately began to thrash beneath you.

His eyes were wide with panic, and he could see the coins at the bottom of the fountain. He could hear you laughing from above.

"You should make a wish." You said cruelly. Something about you that always struck Whitney was your voice. It was smooth, charming, like every other part of you. If he didn't know any better, he would do anything you wanted, just to hear your voice. He thinks that he could even die for it... Which, it doesn't really seem like he has a choice.

You held him there for several agonizing seconds, although Whitney could never know how long you actually kept him in place. Not long had passed before he could hear your guards quickly approaching, asking loudly what you were doing, but not asking you to stop.

"I'm teaching him a lesson," you replied, as though it were obvious. "Has the driver finally arrived?" You asked nonchalantly, as if you literally weren't drowning Whitney, pushing him inches within his life.

He's sure the guard answered, because you finally lifted his head back up. He began coughing, sputtering, already cursing you out. Your fingers were still buried in his hair as you pulled and pulled until he was looking up at you. You retracted one of your hands to grip his jaw, forcing open his mouth. You shoved your fingers deep into his throat, making him gag, his legs kicking to try and force you off.

You pulled your fingers out, and as Whitney opened his mouth to begin gasping for air, you spit right into his mouth, on his tongue.

You clamped his jaw shut.

"You should swallow," you said, "Or I'll drown you again."

You finally showed your true colors, your soft smile turning sinister.

And he did, as much as he didn't want to, because he knew you were telling the truth, and you would happily keep doing it if you could.

There was a fond glow in your eyes as you leaned down to kiss his forehead. "Good boy," you whispered, sending tingles up his spine. Whitney tried his best to ignore the sudden pulse of his dick.

You let him go, leaving him to crumble against the fountain.

The next day would be like any other day. Your group would approach him and his friends in the hallway, except this time, you followed.

You were at the front when you suddenly stepped forward, towards him, and abruptly grabbed his jaw, forcing your lips against his. The kiss was rough, and you forced your tongue into his mouth the second you got the chance, your teeth clicking together. You kept your eyes on him the entire time, calmly watching for his reaction.

When you pulled away, there was a string of saliva you shared.

You stared at his swollen lips and smiled, giving another kiss.

"Good boy," you cooed, and it made his knees weak.

#degrees of lewdity #dol #degrees of lewdity whitney #whitney the bully #degrees of lewdity imagines #dol imagines #degrees of lewdity whitney imagines #dol whitney imagines #tw drowning #tw spitting #writing

[ivyprism]

Mafiadance Skeleton Boys (Info Dump)

Warnings: Violence, dance, death, etc.

Nils - Mafiadancetale Sans

Personality: He is a formidable and powerful force of nature. He is often a distraction and is well aware of what he causes to others. He is quite confident in his abilities, although he is quiet and frequently keeps to himself. He knows how to convert conflicts into dances and is really skilled at it. He appreciates dancing, and even if he does not do it much, he enjoys it. He rarely dances in public, but it doesn't stop him from doing so. He's a funny, outgoing, and easygoing guy. He is really quick on his feet and can pull anyone out of a tight spot. He has a strong sense of fairness and dislikes lying to people.

Appearance: He has blue eyelights. He has a large scar on his left eye that crosses into one on his cheek.

Savion - Mafiadancetale Papyrus

Personality: He is a trump card, frequently coming across as a joyful and upbeat skeleton. He goes for the throat and is an excellent shot. He is a knowledgeable informant who learns quickly. He is outgoing, confident, and courageous. He enjoys being a public person, but he is neither arrogant nor overconfident. He will offer to dance with someone he thinks is lonely and tough to dislike. He is an extrovert who helps his brother when he is in need. If necessary, he will also transport you. He is careful and gentle, and he enjoys teaching and interacting with his students. He is quite quick on his feet.

Appearance: He is very orange-eyed. He has a scar on his eye that crosses his nose ridge.

Ezra - Mafiadancefellswap Carnelian Sans

Personality: He is a dancer who keeps his dance private from those he does not trust. He is rough on the outside, yet soft on the inside. He is a feral, angry cat, but he is also really approachable. He is extremely cordial to high-level envoys. He might be rude and gruff at times, but he is honest. He is highly excited about everything. He is highly protective of his friends and will snarl at anyone who gets too close if he believes they are a threat. He is constantly throwing hands and initiating fights, but he is also serious and stern. He is an excellent shot who is unafraid to get his hands dirty.

Appearance: Ezra has a scar on his mouth that looks jagged. His scar on his right eye meets it.

Python - Mafiadancefellswap Carnelian Papyrus

Personality: He has a flirtatious and cool dance style. He doesn't miss and aims for the throat. He is a joker who values a good prank. He is an open flirt and lover, and this is clear. He enjoys pulling practical pranks. He reaches for the throat to protect his family. He is an excellent leader and knowledgeable man. When he is around someone he perceives as a threat, he acts like a feral cat, but believe me, he is a good man. He may be a jerk to his brother, but he adores and admires him anyway. When someone harms his family, he goes for the throat. He appreciates being close his loved ones and holding and soothing them.

Appearance: Pythom has a single gold tooth. He has two large nasty scars on his right eye. He has more red with his outfit. He has a large heart tattoo on his chest that covers a big old scar.

Vulture - Mafiadancefell Sans

Personality: He is fierce and aggressive, yet also loving. He reaches for the throat and moves to his own beat. He does not hesitate or back down when it comes to safeguarding his loved ones. He is incredibly daring and smart. He's a feral cat who appreciates the attention he and his sibling get. If you insist, he will dance with you. He adores dancing, as evidenced by the way he moves. He's a hilariously flirty asshat, but once you get near to him, he becomes kind and cuddly. He is very passionate about what he does and enjoys teaching people. He is quite quick on his feet.

Appearance: Vulture has a single golden tooth. His hoodie is red and black. He has two large nasty scars on his right eye.

Sanguine - Mafiadancefell Papyrus

Personality: He is hard and chilly, moving to his own beat, and he is excellent at it. When you become his friend, he gets nicer and more understanding. He might be tough and severe at times, but his intentions are good. He's a dancer, and he never leaves somebody upset or alone for long periods of time. He is an excellent fighter who actively trains in both dance and combat. He is a kind individual with his close friends and brother. Because of his fame, he has saved many people from difficult situations. He adores teaching. He is quite quiet but understanding.

Appearance: Saguine has two scars on his left eye and they're jagged.

--------

#mafiadancetale sans #mafiadancetale papyrus #mafiadancetale #mafiadancefellswap carnelian #mafiadancefellswap carnelian sans #mafiadancefellswap carnelian papyrus #mafiadancefell #mafiadancefell sans #mafiadancefell papyrus #info dump #info #lots of info #so much info #oisdhgoei

[hadesoftheladies]

it’s not that I think women are better than men innately because of some weird gender stereotype, i don’t think there’s anything in a vagina or penis that makes someone moral or not

BUT i do not believe that women are equal to men in guilt for the patriarchy and it’s systems of violence. and it rubs me the wrong way when people throw mud in the water with “women can be just as immoral as men” that’s not the point, the point is that women are NOT responsible for the misogynistic, sadistic regime that is patriarchy, even while some may be complicit in the system

women do not hold equal guilt or equal responsibility for the crimes committed against men and women in the name of patriarchy. just because there are female pedophiles (and they should be killed like all pedos imo) doesn’t mean that women have expressed the same enthusiasm for it as males have, much like other violent crimes, and i believe in that difference. many victimized and brutalized women do not go on to offend and brutalize others the same way that many non-victimized or victimized men do. women who have reason and opportunity to be violent do not do violence as frequently or to the same degree that men do.

I think both the nature vs nurture arguments have their own set of important questions to ask, and it’d be helpful if we asked them without trying to slap tape on each other’s mouths. men being “naturally” sadistic doesn’t account for their moral compasses and humanity, even while it may explain their predatory nature, since we’ve seen it in other animal species where males are concerned. the patriarchy and misogyny rising out of certain historical developments and men being sadistic because of culture, also doesn’t fully explain why women in the same culture and in worse circumstances do not commit the same amounts of violence. if power corrupts, women would have abused their power over other women and children more frequently and to the same extent. the men do it because they have the “ability” to do it (hence access and additional temptation to do it) may account for structural inequalities, but still begs the question why so many men choose to do it.

these are all worthwhile perspectives, and they should be scrutinized and thought-through, rather than radfems calling each other names for not ascribing to any one theory. and again, it’s okay to not be sure and to not know. AND TO DISAGREE. just be respectful about it. @unabombastic made a great point that it isn’t a priority that we find out WHY men do it, but that we create a society in which they can no longer get away with doing it. some may argue that we need to know so we can prevent it from happening again, but I do think liberation is more important than spending all our time diagnosing the condition of man.

regardless, men engage with violence in a disproportionate manner, and evil women do not level the playing field, and radfems that point this out aren’t “forgiving female abusers”, it’s just a fact, and THAT IS A DIFFERENCE WORTH TALKING ABOUT

#feminism #radblr #radfem

[pullakori]

Febuwhump 2023

Day 7. Made to watch

TW: Torture, violence towards a minor, mentions of death

Charles was becoming numb. In the beginning he had tried to talk to his captors, to bargain with them, even begging for them to stop, but all in vain. One after the other, mutant prisoners were brought to the cell next to Charles' to be tortured and finally killed.

And Charles was made to see and feel all of it. Something about the walls intensified his powers when it came to hearing other people's thoughts, yet they managed to weaken other usages of them. He couldn't reach out to call for help or make his captors to release him and the others, but he also couldn't escape into his own mind when there was someone else in the other side of the glass wall, seperating the two cells. He couldn't make the tortured lose consciousness, he couldn' make their pain go away.

They had not told him what they wanted from him. They hadn't told who they worked for, but their mannerisms made Charles think of the military. He only hoped that this wasn't doings of the goverment... His faith in humanity was too frail to withstand that.

He didn't know how long he had been there. But he remembered every prisoner they had killed. It felt like the right thing to do. With the first ones he tried to comfort them, to ease their pain, but eventually it had become too much. No matter what he did, it wasn't enough to save any of them. Some of them begged him to help them, some of them were scared of him and some were angry, blaming him for their faith.

And maybe that was the truth. Maybe they had to endure all this pain because their captors were trying to break Charles. And if that was the case, Charles could never forgive himself.

With the last few prisoners, Charles had tried to keep his distance. He felt their pain and desperate thoughts, but he did his best to not react, turning his back to the other cell and staring at the wall of his own. And after 17 people, he was starting to get used to the second hand pain. His captors had noticed this too, bringing other prisoners less frequently to the other cell.

In hindsight, Charles should have known that something terrible was about to happen.

When he heard the door of the other cell open, he braced himself, keeping his eyes locked on the opposite wall. The panic hit him immediately, like a bird that was trapped in a room, flying erratically, desperate to escape. Nothing Charles hadn't felt before, but the thoughts that accompanied the panic made him feel like someone had dropped him in ice cold water.

He rolled over on his mattress, praying that he was wrong, but then he saw the mutant that they were strapping on to the table. He had purple skin, webbing between his fingers and big dark eyes that were full of fear. But most importantly, he was too small to be an adult, barely even a teenager and his mind was screaming, while aloud he was begging for their captors to let him go home.

Charles pushed himself up with his arms.

"Let him go, he's just a child!" He shouted at the masked men on the other side of the glass, but only one of them glanced at him briefly, before turning back to the boy. Jonathan. His family and friends called him Nate. He was 15 years old and his mutation had manifested a month ago. He had been terrified as well as his parents had beem, but they had tried to find answers and help him.

Unfortunately, that path had led Jonathan in here.

Charles pushed himself off the mattress, crawling to the glass wall.

"Just let him go!" Charles screamed and punched the glass, Jonathan's panic filling his own mind as one of the captors took a scapel from a side table. "Whatever you want from me, leave him out of it!" Charles begged, he had to, even when it had never worked before, maybe it would this time. Please let it work this time...

But the first cut to Jonathan's webbed hand proved that he was completely powerless once again. Jonathan screamed and so did Charles, taking a hold of his own hand because of the phantom pain. It would only be getting worse from here...

Jonathan was crying and screaming, unable to talk properly anymore and amongst feeling his pain and fear, Charles could feel his own heart breaking. He couldn't save the boy, but maybe he could make his pain more bareable.

He reached out with his mind, making his presence known.

'I'm so sorry...' He whispered to Jonathan's mind, who's confusion barely made it through his pain and panic.

'Please help me!' He begged, new flash of pain making him cry out.

'I can't. I'm sorry, but I can't' And Charles truly was, his regret seeping throug the frail link that they shared, even though he tried to stop it.

And from Jonathan, he could feel deep sorrow and a loss of hope. But soon, those were followed by something that hurt Charles even more. Forgivness.

'It's okay. I understand, they took you too.' And he meant it, he didn't hold it against Charles that he couldn't help him. Distantly, Charles could feel how his own cheeks became wet with tears.

The next cut was especially painful. Charles quessed they had severed a nerve.

'Hurts!' Jonathan's mind screamed.

'I know.' Charles tried to comfort the boy, tried to wrap his power around him like a protective blanket. 'You're not alone, I won't leave you.' He promised him, ready to stay with the boy through it all.

'I wan't my mom. I wan't to go home.' Jonathan cried and Charles held him tighter with his powers. He might not be able to save him, but he would not let him suffer alone.

#this got dark #so beware #charles whump #febuwhump 2023 #charles xavier

[c-is-for-circinate]

As promised: let's talk Hades, and how acts of abuse can create toxic environments for everyone around them, and also how people react to those environments--and to them being disrupted.

(For reference, I have just kicked Theseus's ass for the first time, it was exactly as satisfying as it was intended to be, and then I got predictably slaughtered a couple of chambers into Styx. Spoilers for everything through that point, but please no spoilers in reblogs/comments for anything after that!) Also, TW for a whole lot of discussion of abuse, particularly verbal and emotional abuse, and abusive familyworkplace dynamics.

Okay, so. To start out with, Hades is an abusive parent. He engages in innumerable acts of verbal and emotional abuse towards his son, because yep, that's what you call it when a parent constantly berates and belittles their kid for every perceived failure, including the ones the parent themselves could have prevented. Sometimes especially the ones the parent could have prevented. Zagreus failed at his office clerk job because Hades refused to teach him how to do it and then blamed him for not already knowing how. Cerberus tore up the lounge because Hades, who was actually there, chose not to stop him. Hades created, possibly deliberately, and then took full advantage of every opportunity he saw to insult and demean his kid, and the clerk job flashback shows us that he was doing so even before the escape attempts started. I'm pretty sure we're all on the same page here, but: yep, that all constitutes abuse, even if they're gods. Even if Hades has reasons for Being Like That. Even if you think Zagreus seems okay and unharmed by it (which: repeatedly throwing yourself into a gauntlet of violence that inevitably ends in your own pain and death because you're so desperate to escape home, not actually an indicator of someone who's okay). We all good on that?

Cool. Because I'm not really here to talk about how Hades' abuse directly impacts Zagreus right now (although there's for sure an essay in that too). I'm thinking about how it impacts everybody else.

Hades isn't as obviously unreasonable with anybody else in his kingdom the way he is with his kid. When we see him lecture somebody else, it's usually for an actual failure to do their job: Hypnos for literally falling asleep on the job and not doing anything that was assigned to him, Megaera for letting us past her so many time, Orpheus for being a court bard who refuses to sing. His attitude is super confrontational and unpleasant, but on the surface it doesn't necessarily look as fucked-up. Thing is, though, whether any individual act of aggression towards an employee/family member is justified or not (I would generally argue 'not', because aggression towards employees/family members is, y'know, not justifiable)--it's not about the individual acts. It's about the entire cultivated atmosphere of toxicity and abuse.

One of the very first things Meg ever says to us is, "I'd rather be on your bad side than his." Up until that point, we've got no reason to believe Meg has any history whatsoever of fucking up at her job. In fact, we've got plenty of reason to believe she's good at it. She's fiercely proud of it, she's frequently Employee Of The [Time Period], and we've apparently never even met her sisters because she handles her shit herself. But she's still scared of Hades. Dusa, who is an anxious wreck at all times because oh god what if she gets fired what if she gets fired what if she gets fired, in spite of apparently being absolutely exemplary at her job, is scared of Hades. Every single shade in the Hall is clearly terrified of Hades, and it's not because of what he's done to each of them. It's what they've seen him do to other people.

Which is how toxic environments work, whether they're work environments or families. The Court of Hades is of course both, always, with the bonus hell layer of you can't quit even if you DIE. An abuser in authority doesn't have to target you in order to make you feel scared, cowed, and desperate to please them. Humans (and gods who are basically extra-powerful humans) are good at learning by example. The residents of the Court get the picture.

So this Court is a minefield--and everyone except Zagreus is very good at tiptoeing around mines. We see it in Meg, so desperate to do her job well. We see that Hypnos very clearly does not give a shit about anything, but he still makes sure to have a list of excuses ready if/when Hades ever confronts him about failure to do his job, just in case. We see it when Achilles tells us that my ability to help you is constrained by the authority your father gives me, or whatever the line was sixty runs ago when he couldn't let me into locked chambers. The system, such as it is, works, and if Nyx talks to Hades as little as possible, if Thanatos avoids the Court entirely, if Achilles treads very carefully and knows how to keep his head down--well that's just the system, right? That's just how things are.

Even Zagreus seems to have had a role in that system as the court fuckup. He's the kid who didn't have a real job or purpose. He could take the focus of Hades' generalized, day-to-day ire off of everyone else, without triggering some of the more direct and violent ire because the work he was doing didn't really matter (a LOT of Hades' rage-triggers seem to be related to job performance, which means that the people with real jobs are of course the most at risk). And he could do so "safely" (big emphasis on the quotation marks there) because he alone of the court is Hades' actual kid, who's Prince of the Underworld no matter how much he fucks up. If one of Nyx's other kids gets something really really wrong, she might be able to protect them from some consequences, but Hades doesn't have any layer of supposed parental affection holding him back from getting violently furious about it. Zagreus gets a nice bedroom and the abuse is limited to words rather than divine power, and Hades is a dick to everyone but he only occasionally condemns people to eternities of torture, and only for good reasons like refusing to sing when your job is to be court bard, so it's fine, everybody's fine, everything's totally fine, right?

Except it's not fine when everybody is so clearly worried about anything going wrong. And it's especially not fine for Zagreus, who's the person to finally say no. He's leaving, for his own sake, because he deserves better and he's finally convinced he can have it. And that turns the whole system into disarray.

I am endlessly fascinated by the ways this game portrays different characters reacting to this upheaval in their carefully-mapped minefield. It's different for authority figures and peers and servants, different based on how people are positioned in the house under Hades' rule, and it's so spot-on and I love it.

Nyx, for instance, is absolutely calm about the whole thing, because Nyx has power. Hades can't hurt her. Hades can't even really do much against her children, not when Hypnos and Thanatos are gods in their own right. Yes, Hades rules the kingdom, but Nyx owns the land, and she gives no shits about his rages. And it's interesting, too, to see the lines she doesn't draw. The deal seems to be that Hades doesn't fuck with her, and doesn't outright threaten her kids (because Hypnos is bad at his job, demonstrably so, and Hades hasn't ruined him yet), and she doesn't interfere with the way he treats the people around him. She gives Zagreus advice and support and the mirror, but she also doesn't take a direct stand against Hades. He can't hurt her, but he could make life...difficult. She's protected, her position in the minefield is more of a safe viewing platform than slogging through the middle of it, but the mines are still there.

And then we have Achilles, who is one of my favorite characters in the whole game because of how he reacts to this whole situation. Achilles, like Nyx, is so supportive. Every single time you see him he has something encouraging to say. He gives us his Codex, secretly finds us weapons, trained us for years, clearly wants us to succeed. And still he's limited, not necessarily out of fear for himself (though he has to be scared for himself, he knows what Hades does to people who anger him), but out of concern that if he gives Zagreus too much help in one way, he won't be able to provide help at all later. He's still so careful.

Achilles and Nyx are so fucking important to this story because they're the only authority figures Zagreus really has in his life except for his father, and they are so supportive. They're what keep this story from being a nightmare of psychological horror and depression. They can't stop the pressure from Hades and this life in his house being miserable for Zag, but they can give us hope, remind us that Zagreus is still loved. And they have such an incredibly important role when it comes to guilt, which is one of the biggest ways toxic systems maintain themselves.

If Zagreus leaves, what happens to everybody else? Who takes Hades' wrath then? Who becomes court scapegoat if he's not there, and also, who gets punished for his escape? These questions matter, and we see him worry about it! He asks Nyx and Achilles both, is it going to be okay that you're helping me, are you going to be alright, will my father hurt you for this? And they are both so firm about telling him no. No, I will be fine. See, here's the list of reasons about why I'm going to be fine, why my position in this minefield is secure. They make a point of telling us that it's fine, that we do not need to hold ourself back from getting out of this abusive situation for their sake. That is instrumental in Zagreus's ability to keep making these escape attempts without feeling too guilty and worried and selfish to go on. (Another thing that's actually really important in setting up that dynamic--we see that Hades cares about Cerberus, even if he's using him as a pawn against us, and Cerberus seems to be the one figure in court who Hades doesn't get mad at. The dog isn't at risk, and that is really essential in keeping the story from getting too grim.) These people who we care about refuse to let themselves be held hostage to secure our good behavior.

It's also really useful for raising the stakes later in the story--we see Hades arguing with Nyx once or twice, and we see Zagreus feeling guilty about it, but it's also a sign that we're making enough progress to piss him off. After I finally made it out of Elysium on my last run, I came home to find him furious with Achilles in a way that actually makes me nervous, because Achilles does not have nearly as much security in his position as he says he does. (Achilles is such a good teacher/authority figure, because he knows goddamn well what Hades could do to him, and still refuses to let fear for his own situation stop him from helping the abused kid under his care escape his. And no, not everybody has the capacity to do that, but it matters so much coming from the guy who helped raise us. It matters so much. I do not even have the words for how much.)

It's also no mistake that many of the people we find supporting us along our journey are either the people with the most power in their immediate environment, or the least. Sisyphus helps us because what more could they do to me than this? Orpheus is a little wild around the eyes and somewhat disconnected from reality, and he wishes us the best because someone should get what they want and also he no longer gives a single fuck what happens to him. Eurydice has her own cozy little corner of Asphodel, as safe from Hades' rage as anybody anywhere in his realm because she's tucked in such an out-of-the-way middle place she's outside his notice. Dusa is so scared of everything anyway that, crush aside, she isn't any more threatened by us escaping than she is just by her everyday life here. Charon is unfathomable and unstoppable; Skelly literally exists to be a punching bag, and yet he also seems basically immune to pain, no matter what we do to him. There's no threat from Hades there.

So the people most at risk when I flip the world on its ear are the ones who have so much standing that they have something to lose, but not enough to protect them from losing it. Which of course brings us to Than and Meg--who are, of course, the two people who also seem by far the most upset by my attempts to leave.

As authority figures, Nyx and Achilles are constantly reinforcing the message that it's Hades' fault, not ours, if they or anybody else get caught in the crossfire of his wrath. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, and it's not my guilt to bear. From Megaera and Thanatos, we get the opposite message--I am fucking with things, I am hurting people, and I need to stop. Zagreus isn't just abandoning them, as a friend or brother or lover or all of the above they're Greek gods who even knows. He's betraying them. They were in this together, as friends or lovers or whatever, but now Zagreus is sending earthquakes through the minefield they both still have to stand in. He is about to capsize this boat in the middle of a thunderstorm, he is fucking with the system, and they're the ones who are going to get most hurt.

I'm so curious how this is going to work for Than, who out of everyone we meet holds the closest role to Nyx's in terms of being sheltered from Hades' wrath. He's the guy who gets to leave, after all, even though he always has to come back. I've seen the least of him out of anybody so far because it took forever for me to get to Elysium, but two things really stand out and I'm so interested to see where they go. One, he really genuinely does care about Zagreus. He wants us safe, he wants us unhurt, the accessory he gives us only grants its bonus if we clear a room without taking injury, he keeps showing up to help. And two, he wants us to give up and go back and recognize how good we had it. Which is SO fucking interesting, considering how miserable Zagreus so clearly was, and how legitimate his reasons for being miserable were.

It makes me wonder so much about Than's standards for comparison. Does he know something we don't about what's waiting for us on the surface, something that might theoretically hurt Zagreus even more than staying down below? Has his life, which apparently allows him more freedom than anybody else in the Court, sucked horribly in ways we haven't seen, and that's why he spends so little time there in the first place? Either of those things is plausible, both of those things are plausible, and yet either one leads to this sense of patronizing, because he refuses to simply tell us. If something terrible is awaiting us, don't give us vague warnings, tell us what it is and let us decide for ourself! If you're fucking jealous because we might get out entirely and you're still stuck coming back here, say so. If you're worried about your mom--and he does bring her up, how could Zagreus turn his back on her like that, does seem to worry for her--then let's have an actual conversation about how many times she has insisted I do this and also how much I love her.

And, right, it's clear that a lot of Thanatos being upset is simply, you were going to leave me without even saying goodbye, you want to leave ME, which is understandable! But, like, he is demonstrably the one god who gets to visit the surface. He's the one person we actually COULD expect to see again. And he is absolutely also upset because there's an Order To Things, and we're fucking it up. We used to be his careless callow reckless friend who could talk back to Hades and get away with it, and now we're not, and everything is changing and we might leave him altogether, and we might leave him alone in that court without us, and he hates it.

Is it a short-sighted, selfish fear on his part? Yes, absolutely. Even if he's not scared of Hades on his own behalf, he is still frightened by what happens if we upset this system--and maybe it's the sanctity of a much bigger system than the Underworld that he's worried about! Maybe it's the whole divine and cosmic order. Whatever system he wants so badly to protect is enabling the abuse Zagreus has been dealing with for however-long he's been alive. Whatever system he wants so badly to protect OUGHT to be overturned, or at least shaken up. But this is what toxic systems DO. They convince the people within them that they have to be maintained, that a broken system that hurts the people within it is far better than no system at all, that changing the world is too scary and too dangerous. And Thanatos wants his whatever-Zagreus-is-to-him to be there, because he loves him and also because that's how the world works, and those things are all tangled up in one another, and that is how relationships are in a messed-up family like this so therefore I love it.

And Meg. Meg, the best for last, my dear, beautiful, furious, bitter, scared angry tired girl. I adore her. I am absolutely never going to date her, because the thing Zagreus needs most in his life hurts her, more directly than anybody else in the story, and that sucks, and it's not Zag's fault but they still shouldn't be together. Meg has taken more injury from this situation than anyone, quite literally as well as metaphorically, and it's not her fault any more than it's ours, but oh boy it has made her lash out and it's awful and it's perfect.

Meg's place in the Court of Hades is unique because she's not dead, not a mortal, not anything other than a god--but she's also not family. Nyx is not her mother. She's very much part of this system, she and her two sisters belong to Hades-the-realm and therefore also Hades-the-king, she can't leave, but she also doesn't have that protection of Nyx watching out for her in the same way. She's not royalty. She and her sisters (if you ask Hesiod instead of Virgil, which seems to be the interpretation the game's going with here) sprang from the blood of maimed Uranus at the same time as Aphrodite, but fuck knows Aphrodite isn't claiming them as siblings. And she can't be fired, exactly, but she sure can be demoted, and she sure can be made miserable in her job. Meg is vulnerable in a way very few people in Hades' employ are. She's a lot harder to do away with than any one random shade, but she's also a lot harder to miss blending in with a crowd.

What's more, she's the one person in this whole mess who is specifically tasked with stopping us from leaving. Hypnos isn't ordered to put us to sleep and keep us in our room. Thanatos can't be compelled or punished if he doesn't hunt us down. Achilles isn't told to lock us up and keep the keys. Meg is the one stationed at the doorway to Tartarus to keep us in. Meg is the one who gets in trouble when we leave. Meg (who Hades knows goddamn well Zagreus cares for, or cared for, who he absolutely knows we used to date) is the one who has to fight us again and again and again. And she's the one who keeps dying.

Again, it's this incredibly fucked-up guilt/hostage situation deliberately designed to keep people from fleeing abusive situations. Meg's insistence on fighting us now puts Zagreus in the position of having to hurt her himself again and again. Now suddenly we're the ones sticking a sword in our ex-girlfriend. Now suddenly someone can point to our desire to leave, to flee, to escape, and say, how selfish. How cruel. How terrible of us to want to go, when we're even willing to hurt the people we love to do it.

Except, right: Hades is the one who demands Meg stand there and stop us. Hades is the one who puts both of us in that position. Meg is also in an abusive situation, and she's willing to hurt us to protect herself. "I'd rather be on your bad side than your father's." It's easy to blame her at the start for being complicit, for being a tool of our father's abuse, for being on his side. It gets harder as the game goes on. I've killed her so many times. There's no way for her to beat me. She knows at this point that she can't beat me. She still fights, every single time, still throws herself upon that spike, not because she thinks she has any chance of stopping me but because she is so damn scared of what will happen if she doesn't try.

In fact, Meg's the one person we have actually seen face consequences for our actions so far, instead of just facing the threat of them. Her sisters are here. Her sisters, who she clearly does not want here, who are wild and violent and who she does not want in her life or anywhere near her, let alone near the job she takes so much pride in. She gets to deal with them now. (Hades doesn't have to deal with them. They're still not allowed in his court. But Meg does.) She gets stabbed, and bludgeoned, and shot, and lightning-struck, and poisoned, and every other thing we do to her. Thanatos doesn't. Nyx and Achilles and Hypnos don't. Bug Meg? Oh yes. Meg pays.

And yes, ok, she is complicit in this system. Everybody is complicit in this system. Zagreus who's trying to escape on his own behalf instead of overthrowing his father for the sake of everyone he'd otherwise be leaving behind is complicit in this system. Pointing fingers and pulling strings of who's more at fault? and who do we blame for this? is exactly how this sort of system perpetuates itself. Your sister always talked back at the dinner table and put everyone in an even worse and more violent mood. Your coworker refuses to work more than forty hours a week so now you have to take overtime to pick up their slack. You're enabling your dad by asking your sister to shut up, you're enabling your employer by working as hard as you do so you don't get fired, everyone's at fault, everyone's to blame, everyone is--

It's not everyone. It's Hades. It's Hades at the root of everything, and probably something big and institutional and fucked-up even beyond him. But even if everyone down in this Underworld does have to be trapped here forever, even if he's trapped here forever, Hades is neither challenging the system that put them here nor trying to make that fate better for anyone else stuck with him. He's just created an entire kingdom of backbiting and misery and people who can either go along with his whims or suffer the consequences.

At this point in the game, Meg is so fucking tired. Every time we run into her in the lounge, hunched over a table, the venom in her voice when she tells us "Do I look like I have anything to say to you?" is so bitter and so exhausted. There was a system, and she knew her place in the system, and it was a system divinely ordered by the gods themselves, and sure it was cruel but that's the literal will of the universe as far as she knows it. She had a role, and her role was vengeance and punishment and violence against those who'd committed the most egregious of sins in life, and there was a point to it, she was the divine deterrent to convince people not to do those things, and that was just, and that was right. The GODS THEMSELVES said so. How do you argue with that? You can't possibly argue with that!

And Zagreus is arguing with that. In trying to leave, he's questioning the unbreakable rule that nothing in the Underworld ever gets to leave it. In disobeying his father to do so, he's questioning the unbreakable rule that what the gods say is LAW. He's breaking everything.

And of course he's not trying to do any of that. He's not trying to destabilize the system at all. He's just trying to get himself out of it, to a place where he feels like he belongs and maybe a parent who's slightly nicer to him than this one. But toxic systems like this one break when the people within them have access to another option. When the kids find a way to actually leave, and not answer the phone, and not come home for holidays, and not deal with it any more. When the employees have the economic freedom to quit. When opportunities granted by education, money, social support, etc etc etc, show up and give people a choice. Even if the option is only ever for Zagreus--he's demonstrating that an option exists. Which is, of course, the one thing the system cannot ever allow.

I really like this game.

#hades game #hades spoilers #C plays stuff #driveby meta attack

[tyrannuspitch]

Jumping off @kidrat​ ’s recent post on JKR, British transphobia, and transphobia against transmasculine people, after getting a bit carried away and too long to add as a comment:

A major, relatively undiscussed event in JKR’s descent into full terfery was this tweet:

[image id: a screenshot of a tweet from JK Rowling reading: “’People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Rowling attaches a link to an article titled: “Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate” /end id]

This can seem like a pretty mundane TERF talking point, just quibbling over language for the sake of it, but I think it’s worth discussing, especially in combination with the idea that cis women like JKR see transmasculine transition as a threat to their womanhood. (Recite it with horror: ”If I were young now, I might’ve transitioned...”)

A lot of people, pro- or anti-transphobe, will make this discussion about whether the term “woman” should include trans women or not, and how cis women are hostile to the inclusion of trans women. And that’s absolutely true. But the actual language cis women target is very frequently being changed for the benefit of trans men, not trans women, and most of them know this.

Cis people are used to having their identities constantly reaffirmed and grounded in their bodies. A lot of cis women, specifically, understand their social and physical identities as women as being defined by pain: misogynistic oppression is equated to the pains of menstruation or childbirth, and both are seen as the domain of cis women. They’re something cis women can bond over and build a “sisterhood” around, and the more socially aware among them can recognise that cis women’s pain being taken less seriously by medicine is not unrelated to their oppression. However, in the absence of any trans perspectives, these conversations can also easily become very territorial and very bioessentialist.

Therefore... for many cis women, seeing “female bodies” described in gender neutral language feels like stripping their pain of its meaning, and they can become very defensive and angry.

And the consequences for transmasculine people can be extremely dangerous.

Not only do transmasculine people have an equal right to cis women to define our bodies as our own... Using inclusive language in healthcare is about more than just emotional validation.

The status quo in healthcare is already non-inclusive. When seeking medical help, trans people can expect to be misgendered and to have to explain how our bodies work to the doctors. We risk harassment, pressure to detransition, pressure to sterilise ourselves, or just being outright turned away. And the conversation around pregnancy and abortion in particular is heaving with cisnormativity - both feminist and anti-feminist cis women constantly talk about pregnancy as a quintessentially female experience which men could never understand.

Using gender-neutral language is the most basic step possible to try and make transmasculine people safer in healthcare, by removing the idea that these are “women’s spaces”, that men needing these services is impossible, and that safety depends on ideas like “we’re all women here”. Not institutionally subjecting us to misgendering and removing the excuse to outright deny us treatment is, again, one of the most basic steps that can be taken. It doesn’t mean we’re allowed comfort, dignity or full autonomy, just that one major threat is being addressed. The backlash against this from cis women is defending their poorly developed senses of self... at the cost of most basic dignity and safety for transmasculine people.

Ironically, though transphobic cis women feel like decoupling “women’s experiences” from womanhood is decoupling them from gendered oppression, transmasculine people experience even more marginalisation than cis women. Our rates of suicide and assault are even higher. Our health is even less researched than cis women’s. Our bodies are even more strictly controlled. Cis women wanting to define our bodies on their terms is a significant part of that. They hold the things we need hostage as “women’s rights”, “women’s health”, “women’s discussions” and “support for violence against women”, and demand we (re-)closet ourselves or lose all of their solidarity.

Fundamentally, the problem is that transphobic cis women are possessive over their experiences and anyone who shares them. Because of their binary understanding of gender, they’re uncomfortable with another group sharing many of their experiences but defining themselves differently. They’re uncomfortable with transmasculine people identifying “with the enemy” instead of “with their sisters”, and they’re even more uncomfortable with the idea that there are men in the world who they oppress, and not the other way around. “Oppression is for women; you can’t call yourself a man and still claim women’s experiences. Pregnancy is for women; if you want to be a man so badly why haven’t already you done something about having a woman’s body? How dare you abandon the sisterhood while inhabiting one of our bodies?”

Which brings me back to the TERF line about how “If I were young now, I might have transitioned.”

I’m not saying Rowling doesn’t actually feel any personal connection to that narrative - but it is a standard line, and it’s standard for a reason. Transphobic cis women really believe that there is nothing trans men go through that cis women don’t. They equate our dysphoria to internalised misogyny, eating disorders, sexual abuse or other things they see as “female trauma”. They equate our desire to transition to a desire to escape. They want to “help us accept ourselves” and “save us” from threats to their sense of identity. The fact is, this is all projection. They refuse to consider that we really have a different internal experience from them.

There’s also a marked tendency among less overtly transphobic cis women, even self-proclaimed trans allies, to make transphobia towards trans men about cis women.

Violence against trans men is chronically misreported and redefined as “violence against women”. In activist spaces, we’re frequently told that any trauma we have with misogyny is “misdirected” and therefore “not really about us”. If we were women, we would’ve been “experiencing misogyny”, but men can’t do that, so we should shut up and stop “talking over women”. (Despite the surface difference of whether they claim to affirm our gender, this is extremely similar to how TERFs tell us that everything we experience is “just misogyny”, but that transmasculine identity is a delusion that strips us of the ability to understand gender or the right to talk about it.)

I have personally witnessed an actual N*zi writing an article about how trans men are “destroying the white race” by transitioning and therefore becoming unfit to carry children, and because the N*zi had misgendered trans men in his article, every response I saw to it was about “men controlling women’s bodies”.

All a transphobe has to do is misgender us, and the conversation about our own oppression is once again about someone else.

Transphobes will misgender us as a form of violence, and cis feminist “allies” will perpetuate our misgendering for rhetorical convenience. Yes, there is room to analyse how trans men are treated by people who see us as women - but applying a simple “men oppressing women” dynamic that erases our maleness while refusing to even name transphobia or cissexism is not that. Trans men’s oppression is not identical to cis women’s, and forcing us to articulate it in ways that would include cis women in it means we cannot discuss the differences.

It may seem like I’ve strayed a long way from the original topic, and I kind of have, but the central reason for all of these things is the same:

Trans men challenge cis women’s self-concept. We force them to actually consider what manhood and womanhood are and to re-analyse their relationship to oppression, beyond a simple binary patriarchy. 

TERFs will tell you themselves that the acknowledgement of trans people, including trans men, is an “existential threat” that is “erasing womanhood” - not just our own, but cis women’s too. They hate the idea that biology doesn’t determine gender, and that gender does not have a strict binary relationship to oppression. They’re resentful of the idea that they could just “become men”, threatened by the assertion that doing so is not an escape, and completely indignant at the idea that their cis womanhood could give them any kind of power. They are, fundamentally, desperate not to have to face the questions we force them to consider, so they erase us, deflect from us, and talk over us at every opportunity.

Trans men are constantly redefined against our wills for the benefit of cis womanhood.

TL;DR:

Cis women find transmasculine identity threatening, because we share experiences that they see as foundational to their womanhood

The fact that transphobes target inclusive language in healthcare specifically is not a mistake - They do not want us to be able to transition safely

Cis women are uncomfortable acknowledging transphobia, so they make discussion of trans men’s oppression about “womanhood” instead

This can manifest as fully denying that trans men experience our own oppression, or as pretending trans men’s experiences are identical to cis women’s in every way

#transphobia #transmasculinity #transandrophobia #this could maybe do with one more proofread but i've spent way too long on this so whatever!

[cinnamonest]

Diluc Ragnvindr - Yandere Profile

Yall are so kind and I am so undeserving hhhhh

If you stand idly by that flower girl in Mondstadt her idle line is something like "All I can think about is Diluc" And honestly same

This man exudes bde I'm sorry I just... It is a known FACT that Diluc is packing and I refuse to believe otherwise, lord have mercy I'm bout to SIMP

tws: yandere, mentions of violence

tws (below cut): noncon, kinda misogynistic in 1 part

------

What are they generally like? Lucid, aware? Obsessive? How do they behave?

Acutely aware, and in the beginning, frustrated with his own self. He's very much a loner type of guy, and he likes it that way -- in his mind, people are distractions.

He doesn't talk to you too much, but you'll slowly and subtly notice his presence with increasing frequency. He hovers. Silent, but intimidating. He's always there, in the background. Somehow, everywhere you go, you can spot him somewhere if you try, and even if you don't see him, you know someone is watching you, from the skin crawling feeling of eyes on you. It will never go away, and it's easily enough to drive you to paranoia.

In reality, he'd like to talk, really, but he doesn't know how. For the first time in his life, he actually has the urge to speak with someone, not for his own desire to speak so much as speak with you- to learn about you, to hear your voice. But the poor thing has no idea what to say. He's used to just going about his day and only speaking to others when they need something from him.

When he does talk to you, he finds himself even enjoying the silliest and most trivial of things you say. Normally he hates small talk, and he's normally annoyed by anything outside of very serious matters, but even if you're raving about something he has no interest in, he's happy to listen just because it's you.

He's fairly aware, too. Not a delusional for the most part, and he's honestly a bit afraid of rejection - he knows he's not the most pleasant or charming person to be around, and certainly not the best conversationalist. He tries to make up for it in thinking that his money, status, and protective ability can be something he can use to draw you in, so he makes sure to subtly and frequently remind you of those things.

How likely are they to kidnap their darling? How quickly will they do so?

Eventually, it's inevitable. It will happen, it's just a matter of time. His reasoning is less about your fragility and safety, even if he pretends it is, and more of a selfish thing. He doesn't want to be, and he'll certainly feel guilty for it, but he's a silently jealous person. Hearing you talk to others, seeing you smile at others, it drives him up the wall. Even during the day, he can't focus, thinking of what you're doing, who you're with, what you're doing with that person, and so on. He can't get anything accomplished, and people notice something is wrong with him. Really, it won't be a very long time at all.

He's not a very good manipulator, and he can't really think of a good reason to get you to walk into the winery backrooms on your own, so as barbaric as it may feel, he'll settle for the old fashioned way, just taking you, probably when you're walking all by yourself late at night. He is very intelligent, and will most likely formulate a way of making you seen responsible for some crime upon your disappearance, to discourage you from leaving, and to make it seem less mysterious when you disappear. People will assume that the darknight hero got to you. And, well, they’re not wrong.

How difficult is it to escape from them? How do they keep you restrained? How do they deal with attempted escape? 

Initially, he's watchful, staying at the winery so that you can't get far without him noticing. He'll cancel his plans elsewhere and make sure he's never more than sight distance away from the building. With time, he'll have to leave, and when he does, he'll probably invest in some very high quality locks to keep you in. Should that prove to not be enough, he'll have to use chains to keep you attached to the wall, instead. Needless to say, it's difficult.

If you manage an attempt, he'll be angry, sure, but he understands why. The first time, at least. Don't push it. If you manage to keep trying, his sympathy for you will slowly erode with each successive attempt, and soon he'll run out of mercy, and decide maybe just forgiving you isn't enough, and you actually need to learn a lesson to prevent this from happening again.

"Again? You really... Really don't give up, do you. This is the fourth time now... You've really pushed it, you know, I've tried to be nice. If you're not gonna get that, I'll make you understand."

How easy are they to trick, deceive, or manipulate?

Canonically speaking, he's fairly good at predicting the actions of others. He's clever like that. However, he's not the best at reading faces. As far as lies go, he will detect it maybe 80% of the time, but you can probably get away with a bit - once he catches you doing it once, though, he'll suspect you from there on out, and be much less likely to buy your lies.

When it comes to manipulation, he's one of the ones where it's like, he kinda knows, and lets it happen anyway, if it's for the sake of you being happy with him. That, and he's just flat out weak to your smiles and begging for little things. He's got his limits, though, so you'd be wise to only use this sparingly and not push it.

How lenient are they? What privileges can you have, and what will you be denied?

Protective to the maximum degree. Probably the worst of genshin boys.

Absolutely zero contact with the outside. No family, no friends, he might even go to the extent of faking your death to ensure there's not even anyone who will look for you.

Unlike Childe, Zhongli, or Albedo that I've mentioned as allowing you for walks or outside visits... That's not happening with Diluc. No, he's insanely protective, to the point that you very well might not see sunlight again, except through a window.

And he gets that it can get depressing, he really does, it's just the one thing he can't do. He'll try to substitute it, get you nice large windows to let the sun in that you can sit in front of - provided he's there - and maybe after a while build a little screened-in porch for the winery that you can walk around on - again, provided he's right there. You really can't expect him to let you out there when you're alone. What if someone saw you and tried to hurt you?

You get the feeling it's less about keeping anything else out, and more about keeping you in, though.

He's actually good about letting you do things for yourself, though. He won't restrain you from cooking or kitchen utensils or anything like that, unless you do something stupid like try to hurt him or yourself, in which case it'll be a revoked privilege.

What kind of rules do they have? What kind of punishment would they use?

Initially, he tries to go easy on rules, as part of his attempt to make you more accepting. He'll keep you more restrained for the first little while, and later on you'll be allowed to walk, but certain sections of the building will be off limits. He's fairly simple - be obedient, stay inside, don't try to fight. He'll invent new ones based on your behaviors as time goes on, but for the most part, he doesn't want to control you too much.

He fears getting too mad and making you scared of him, so, he struggles to punish you initially. He's probably willing to let quite a bit slide, but once he senses you're taking advantage of that, he'll put an end to it. Once again, he can thank the fact that he's naturally intimidating - he'll grab your jaw and force you to look at him, and honestly, just the look on his face is enough to send chills down your spine. If you're persistent, he's not able to leave you all alone and isolate you, no, he can't handle being away from you for that long. He'll appeal to the punishment of boredom, tying you to one spot and giving you nothing to entertain yourself with will get you to crack in a fairly short amount of time.

Humiliation works well, too. You're all alone except for him, you don't need clothes. So if you want them, you'll have to behave.

How do they deal with rivals, or perceived rivals? Will they get rid of them? Will they kill them themselves, or find another way?

This man only has to look at people to send them running. He's very grateful for his scowl once he realizes the power it holds. You'll be none the wiser as to why everyone you meet seems to end up avoiding you, why people get nervous when you approach, why you can walk into a public place and it will clear out within minutes of you walking through the door. It's ok, though, since you have him to go to for your problems. He'll shrug and tell you he doesn't know why it happens to you, but it's no big deal, you don't have to worry about it, because you don't need them anyway, right?

He's not above having chats with people either. If they're not driven off by the glares, he'll give them another chance by spelling out very clearly that they should back off.

With persistent offenders, though, he has to come up with other means. He's not a delusional, and he knows deep down that this is selfish, that they're not really doing anything wrong per se, but his anger is violent and ultimately overrides any guilt. He'll find a way to make them out to be criminals, spies, or some other form of bad person, and they'll meet their fate at the hands of Mondstadt's mysterious nighttime vigilante.

How easy is it to make them mad? What does their anger look like?

His default personality is... Irritated. He scowls a lot, he gets exasperated easy - even if he tries to be a bit more pleasant for you. His irritation is so common that seeing genuine anger is a bit rarer.

When he does, though, it's one of the worst. To really, really make him mad, you'd have to be exceptionally, intentionally bratty to the point of antagonism - he's understanding and lucid enough to understand why you fight him, why you try to run, but do it over and over relentlessly, or just be a childish brat and ignore his warnings, and he'll snap. His voice bellows when he's mad, it's deep and terrifying and echoes off the walls, his eyes narrow and he stomps heavily with every step. He'll grab you by the arm hard enough to bruise, and if you refuse to follow and dig your heels in, he'll just roughly swing you onto his shoulder and carry you.

He has to exert the anger in some way, though. He's not like some yanderes that can be talked down or calmed, or are going to go easy on you if you apologize and beg. Once the anger is there, it's there until he physically takes it out in some way.

So they see you as above them, beneath them, or equal to them?

It depends, really, because he's highly lucid, so he has very little delusions about you. Unlike many of the others, he's willing to acknowledge your mental competence, and if you're intelligent and have life experience he'll acknowledge it. He won't recognize physical capability, though, since you're nothing compared to his strength. If you are a capable, independent person, he won't delude himself into thinking otherwise. It will, however, have a negative effect, probably the opposite of what you hope for - he's going to feel a bit intimidated by it, really, because if you're capable and independent, you don't need him as much. He's more likely to find ways to force your dependency on him, if so, but deep down he knows you're an equal on a mental level, and it's frustrating.

Now, otherwise - if you're a little more on the ditzy, airheaded side - it will be below. He's realistic, again, and if you genuinely do fall into the category of being naive and a bit dumb, he'll recognize it. He feels more secure in your dependency, and he's more likely to baby you this way, and will absolutely be more protective.

How determined are they for you to love them? How hard will they try to make it happen? Or are they content just having you?

He really wants you to. He's not sure if he deserves it, though. He's acutely, painfully aware of how awful the things he's done are, and to top it all off, he knows that he should wish he was a better man that had self control, yet... He doesn't. He can't lie to himself and pretend to even have a shred of regret, even if he feels guilt. If he hadn't done all those things, you wouldn't be here with him like this, and even though he knows it's selfish, so very, very selfish, knowing that the horrible things he did got him the result he wanted makes it worth it. And given the opportunity to go back, he'd do it again.

He wants you to genuinely love him, and even though he struggles with human affection and communication, he'll try his best to be sweet to you, say nice things, try to be less irritable, try to talk more.

But if dependency, isolation-induced attachment love is the best he can get, well, that's still love.

Bonus: Is there anything that makes them unique, in comparison to other yanderes?

He likes to just... Spend time in your presence. He's still ultimately not much for talking, he runs out of things to say very quickly and even if you're not talking, he's very very happy to be around you. If you're being cold towards him even, he wants to just sit there and be beside you, if you get up and sit on the other side of the room, or walk to another room (provided you have the privilege to do so), he'll follow you wherever like a little lost puppy and just silently sit right back down next to you again. He soaks in your presence like sunlight, it makes him happy.

If you show him affection, especially after an abduction or when stockholm syndrome starts to set in, it's one of the few times you'll see him smile. His smile is soft and faint, and it's less his mouth so much as his eyes that seem to light up. If you show him affection, you can eventually reach a very vulnerable, very soft side of him. He keeps up walls for everyone else, and he kind of desperately wants someone he doesn't have to do that with, so he'll crumble to your affection fairly quickly, once he's assured of your love.

Also, he's one of the ones who fully understands why you're mad. He gets it, he's lucid, and he honestly knows how awful what he's doing is. He still hopes you'll get over it, though, and if confinement and isolation except for him is what it takes to achieve that... So be it. Rather than justifying his actions, he acknowledges what he's done, but he's aware that psychologically, he's already long past the point of no return, and he can't bring himself to stop.

“I know this wasn’t... what you wanted, and, I know it’s, I know this was really, really bad, but I only did it for your sake. If you just... try to get used to it... maybe you can be happy, if you try.”

General perverseness: how sexual of a person are they? What’s their drive like? How touchy do they get? Do they have any reservations about sexuality?

High, but embarrassed as all hell. He likes to maintain a very respectable and serious image, and people knowing that behind that neutral poker face is a brain running through nasty, nasty fantasies would not be very conductive to that image.

And that's what he does - working the bar gets very, very slow sometimes, and there's not much to do but sit around and let his mind wander. The more bored he gets, the more involved in these fantasies he becomes, and sometimes you might have to tap him on the shoulder to snap him out of it.

He feels guilty, really, for how he feels about you, and he knows that it's wrong and violating... But. But if you don't know, it won't hurt you, now will it? Nothing about the fact that he just thinks about bending you over the bar tables and fucking you raw is going to actually do anything bad. It's harmless.

He won't be touchy or perverse towards you by any means, and while that's nice, it causes something of a... Buildup. A lot of urges and needs have gone unmet, a lot of desperation to just feel you skin that has never been filled, and the thing about buildups is that when you reach a certain point they'll eventually burst, which is going to be what happens once you're in your new home.

How forceful are they? Do they care about your willingness?

He's moderate. He'd like you to want it, he's not highly sadistic and doesn't get off to your struggling/crying the way Childe or Kaeya would. But, in the end he's very set on what he wants, and if you're not open to it, he's not going to wait long. As aforementioned, he's got a lot of pent-up need that has gone unchecked, and while he normally strives for self control, at the point of kidnapping you, he's built up enough sexual frustration that he's not going to be very patient. Again, he's not going to be mean about it, he's more the type to just kiss your forehead and mutter a few reassuring things, even as you hiss at the pain of being impaled. That's another issue - he's convinced you might just be intimidated by the size, so he'll keep reassuring you that it's not going to last long, your body just needs time to adjust, even though you feel like you're being split in two.

He's content with knowing that, even if you mentally aren't wanting it, your bodily reactions show that you're clearly not repulsed or anything.

He's also another one to use that very thing against you, much like Albedo. He can feel you twitch and clamp down when you're close and he'll tell you that if you love him you'll cum, and if you don't love him, you won't. But no amount of trying to bring yourself down is enough to override the overwhelming stimulation.

He's also one to get rougher/more intense with time. At first, he's a bit afraid of hurting you, and he's not entirely familiar with how this all goes, and even can be a bit prudish and reserved. But the more he fucks you, the more and more he realizes he really likes having a sense of control and dominance over you, and just how nice it feels to come home when he's frustrated from a bad day and just fuck that energy out. Once he realizes you're not going to break or anything, you'll notice him gradually getting rougher and harder with time, until it becomes a norm.

What sort of kinks or fetishes do they have, or would they fill?

Stomach bulging/size kink

He's not normally an outwardly prideful person. His pride is more of a silent aloof type of pride, rather than a smug showoff type. He's not one to emphasize his positive traits just to look good. But, fuck, if there isn't something very, very pleasing about being able to physically see his dick making a bulge on your stomach every time he fucks into you. He'll make sure you don't close your eyes, grab your hair and pull your head down so you're forced to watch it fill you more than you can take, over and over.

He doesn't want to hurt you, really, but of all the things to whimper about, you just had to squeal that it's too big, that it hits your cervix, that it's splitting you apart, and as much as he really wants to be a good guy, you're really making it difficult. Hearing that just breaks something primal in him and makes him want to fuck you harder.

It's one of the few things he can actually get smug about, watching you clutch your gut and whimper from bruising and soreness even long after, and as time goes on he might lose enough shame about it all to make a smug comment. He knows he should feel bad. But again, you make it hard to.

Breeding

It's a possession thing, really. There's something so utterly satisfying about just watching cum drip out of you, listening to you whimper whenever you feel it filling you up. It's kind of cute, when he tells you he'll cum inside you and you panic, you squeal and wriggle and unintentionally clench down hard enough to make that happen, you practically just milk the cum out of him when you do.

Forced feminization?/housewife kink/I dont know what to call it but hear me out dammit

He has in his brain this idea of a perfect little housewife and you're going to fit that model whether you want to or not. When he breaks into goes back to your old apartment to bring clothes for your new home he'll only pick the most frilly, feminine of all the things you owned, and if you don't have too many, he'll buy ones for you.

He just likes the idea of having a nice, sweet little wife to come back to, especially after being so stressed with whatever bullshit he's had to put up with that day. Really, any darling in captivity is kinda sorta filling that role, but he's got a very specific image in his mind of you being very... Domestic. Submissive. Frilly little clothes and aprons and cleaning things and making food, it's very cute and gives him a weird sense of dominance that will inevitably turn to arousal - something about the whole ownership and submission aspect of seeing you walk around in those clothes, doing your little chores makes him really want to grab you and bend you over the nearest surface and just - well, you get the idea.

And he's not gonna listen to your whining, either, even if you're a naturally tomboyish person. You could have been the roughest adventurer there was out there, all ragged and getting covered in scrapes and climbing mountains and fighting monsters, but that's in the past, now. Now, is time for you to give that lifestyle up, in favor of a better one, one that will make you happier... if you just let it. 

How do they feel about pregnancy or babies? Do they want them?

He's yes and no, but mostly yes in theory. It fits into his little housewife fantasy and he feels it would be a good way to keep you attached to him. It would make you less likely to leave, it would give you something to do all day, you'd be happy. He's a bit worried about his own capabilities, though. He's not super empathetic and he's not very talkative. Ultimately, it would probably end up an accident that results from the aforementioned breeding kink.

What kind of (nsfw) punishments would they use?

Another one kind of like Razor, he's not gonna think it out too much, but holy fuck, if he's mad, just fucking feels like a punishment in and of itself. You'll realize just how much he's holding back on the regular when you see what it's like when he hold nothing back. It's bruising, it's brutal, and it's a little frightening to witness that kind of raw strength. He'd be one to pick you up into the air completely, holding your whole body up with his arms, forcing you to cling to him so as to not fall while he bounces you up and down on him. And really, once you account for the affect of gravity, so it's slamming into you at unprecedented force, and fuck, it's likely horribly painful, even if that pleasure is still there.

If he's exceptionally mad, he's another one willing to belt you, and while he'll certainly get off to it, it's something he'll only do when he genuinely has a reason to punish you.

What body parts of their darling do they like the most?

Thighs. He likes hooking them over his shoulders, grabbing the fleshy soft parts with his hands, running his hands up and down the sides. One day, one you're comfortable enough, he'd really like to just lay his head down on them like a pillow, they look so soft. And he loves looking at them too, loves things that show just enough of the curve of your hips to your legs and the soft skin underneath.

#fellow diluc simps rejoice #for i am here to feed thy needs #yandere x reader #yandere genshin impact #yandere diluc #tw: noncon #tw: dark content #tw: misogyny #sorta? #chr: diluc

[chaoticrushu]

Having read both Baru Cormorant and the Broken Earth Trilogy, and the way they treat marginalized anger, oppression, and resistance, Sanderson's works really don't hold up in that regard. For all his skill in magic systems and plot, which are good, I do still like his works as fantasy, he has this irritating tendency to write oppression in his works, and portray it so weirdly.

For one, these systems always end up background to whatever the main plot is by later books in the series. Mistborn book one was all about the skaa revolution, but by book 3, someone who intentionally reinstated the LR's system for stability was supposed to be a good guy, and they work with him to stop Ruin from ending the world. In Way of Kings, Kaladin's story is impossible without the systemic oppression of the darkeyes. By book 4, its only a small factor. It's like the oppression system is set dressing for the worldbuilding and a ramp to the main plot, not the focus in itself. By comparison, the Broken Earth is about the literal end of humanity, and yet the treatment of Orogenes remain, because of course it does. Even as all the plants die, and people starve and turn to cannibalism, and ash fills the sky, orogenes are still treated like shit. People don't set aside racism when things get bad, they tend to cling to it more! Of course, in Baru, the colonization is the main plot, so the comparison doesn't apply there.

More significantly, his stories tend to focus on the upper class/nobles. Off the top of my head, the major characters in SA are Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, Eshonai, Venli, Szeth, Adolin, Renarin, Jasnah, Navani, Lift, Moash, Odium, and Taravangian. 3 of those are darkeyes and 7 of them are lighteyes nobles. And over time, the lower class characters tend to become nobles. Kaladin and Lift are now literally lighteyes, and Kaladin is now a high lord with his own land, at least in name(I think his land is in occupied territory). Moash is now the only darkeyed major character, and we see how that's going. In Mistborn, Vin becomes empress, and most of the crew either dies, or becomes a noble house by MB2. Someone else pointed out that all the main skaa in book 3 are half skaa.

Finally, Sanderson tends to write a right way to react to oppression. WoR deliberately contrasts Moash's and Kaladin's arcs, with one turning to violence, and one working within the system to make the lighteyes see the darkeyes better. Moash is villainized for trying to kill Elhokar, who had throughout the series been shown to be a weak, ineffective king, and who had used his power as a king to punish darkeyes. Moash's grandparents were arrested and imprisoned on a made up charge, and then died in prison. Elhokar faces no consequence for this. When Kaladin speaks out of turn after the duel, Elhokar wants to execute him, self confessed as out of jealousy, but only possible because he is king. He only backs down after Dalinar threatens him. When Moash actually tries to assassinate him, Kaladin shows up at the last minute, says a lot of things against killing him that don't make sense. Kaladin, as one of the main heroes of the series, comes to the conclusion that the appropriate solution is to protect Elhokar and hope he gets better. He doesn't even try to guide him all that much. Just "no, we have to protect even those we hate, any thing else is selfish". In the process, leaving someone who frequently displayed a willingness to hurt people out of spite in the position of King. Even outside the Moash arc, this shows up in several places.

Throughout WoR, Kaladin frequently faces a variety of hostility and microaggressions. But every time he gets punished for it, sometimes in universe by the lighteyes, or by Syl, or by the narrative. At one point in the book, one character lectures Kaladin about him being angry at all lighteyes, in this conversation:

"It’s the fault of your entire class. Each time one of us is defrauded, enslaved, beaten, or broken, the blame rests upon all of you who support it. Even indirectly.”

“Oh please,” she said. “The world isn’t fair? What a huge revelation! Some people in power abuse those they have power over? Amazing! When did this start happening?”"

While Shallan has faced some very horrible things, what she is doing here is equating personal abuse with large scale oppression, and dismissing both as the fault of individual who happen to have power. IMO, Kaladin is closer to the truth here. This conversation is treated as Shallan as being right, and an important part in Kaladin's character growth. This also bleeds over into the fandom.

His character growth here is getting over his anger at lighteyes. The fact that the system enables systemic oppression isn't dealt with, its treated as an individual fault of those who are bad. When Bridge 4 are freed from slavery, they don't ever try to do anything about. No revolution, no protests, except Kaladin and Moash. Then in book 4, Jasnah is just going to legislate slavery out of existence. I like Jasnah on her own, but very little of her interactions have been tied to the darkeyed oppression, and the only time I can recall her talking to a darkeyes in a meaningful conversation was her and Kaladin's argument in OB. She just logically knows slavery is wrong and will get rid of it, entirely on her own with not form of grassroots movement. This is not common irl. I don't recall that its ever happened before, that a ruler decides to get rid of slavery without significant input from the affected groups. While this arc hasn't finished yet, and it may go in a more reasonable way that just legislation, the point of this scene seemed to be to demonstrate that Dalinar has not finished growing more than anything else.

Mistborn seems better in this regard, but its still flawed. Book 1 is mostly fine, but it does constantly try to say that Kelsier's biggest flaw is his willingness to kill nobles, as an evil trait, and not his constant manipulation of his own allies. TFE ends with a noble being made King for the feat of convincing the skaa revolution to not murder every noble in the system, in a speech that is described as amazing, but is entirely off-screen. He has no political experience, and his only qualifications are having read some political theory, and maybe thinking not all Skaa are stupid. He's not even convinced until he finds out Vin is skaa. When book 2 starts a year later, he's apparently dismantled large sections of the system, but the nobles are still around with power. A third of the council that governs Luthadel is noble. And narratively, the nobles are more important to the plot. Lord Penrod is constantly a part of the assembly actions, but the skaa workers and merchants are much less active. We don't even learn all their names, and several of the ones we do are when they vote to remove Elend from power.

Broken Earth and Baru, by contrast, focus on the oppressed people throughout the series. The main characters of both are oppressed people, and the series never really try to justify the system. In Broken Earth, when it comes to a situation of a people voting on whether to throw out all the orogenes in exchange for safety, Essun shuts it down, saying "But if you stay, no part of this comm gets to decide that any other part of this comm is expendable. No voting on who gets to be people.” Baru is about a colonized women going out of her way to dismantle the empire thats brutalized, colonized, and exploited her homeland. There's never a point where either system of marginalization is justified by the narrative, and every time its justified in universe, its questioned or portrayed as wrong. In Baru, the characters face microaggressions constantly, but they're never allowed to slip past the radar. There is always a pov reaction of anger that isn't invalidated.

#broken earth spoilers #baru cormorant spoilers #stormlight archive spoilers #sanderson critical #narrative racism #sorry for how long this got #Sanderson's portrayal of marginalization has been bothering me for a while #but these two series give such an excellent grasp on the alternative #Also #if you're curious about any more specifics about the sanderson critical stuff #check out the tag #admittedly #I'm not sure anyone will read this #I don't think there are very many people who've read both Baru and Broken Earth #seeing as both fandoms on their own are pretty small #this is bit ramblely though #the broken earth trilogy #btw #read broken earth #read baru cormorant #excellent books

[wonlouvre]

pairing: doctor!wonwoo x lawyer!female oc genre: modern royalty, arranged marriage, fluff and future angst word count: 3.2k WARNINGS: ANGST, VIOLENCE, GUNS

a/n: we are nearing the end guys :( and i promise, it’s a HAPPY ENDING! but for now we have to face the angst, i’m so sorry. disclaimer!! as i have said from the previous parts, i am not well-versed with investigations and court procedures. PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I’M WRONG. thank you very much!! please enjoy this new part and hit my ask box with what you think of it <3

nine: grief | masterlist

Wonwoo has had difficult times in his life and he has managed to overcome them all. Growing up in the public eye, fulfilling duties decreed to him even before he became a teen, a break-up, excelling both academically and physically and most of all, loving himself for who he is. He knows his parents did everything in their power and love to make it a little easier for him. They are the reasons he kept going and going. 

But his heart can’t seem to carry this overwhelming heaviness. 

His parents wanted to end the engagement immediately. It was an argument, an angry one. His mother had her ears closed even before he could speak meanwhile his father’s closed lips already said it all. Of course, he was defensive. He understands his parents concern for their citizens, but nothing is final until a verdict is reached. He has to come back to Jung and Sam and he has to come back to you. Surely enough, when he stepped out of the doors of his home, he had chosen love over duty. 

It’s just that he didn’t know that you had different plans. 

“Where’s the pretty lady?” Sam asks out of the blue while he plays with the new toys Wonwoo brought for the kids at the welfare.

He has been visiting them frequently, at least four times a week in between his hospital schedule. Especially after you decided that he should distance himself from you, he has been in and out of here because the boys are one of the only reasons he’s here other than you. He’s hoping you only meant a break if that’s what you wanted. Because he’d give it to you with as much distance as you want just come back to him. Come back to him because he doesn’t and can’t let you go. 

“She’s a bit busy now,” he tries to make up an excuse and Sam raises his sparkling eyes at his face, probably searching for some truth in his lie. 

“You look different when she’s around,” the young boy says and goes back to his toys. 

Wonwoo’s ears perk and his brows knit in question. “What do you mean?”

“Jung thinks I don’t see it, but his face,” Sam explains and gestures to his tiny yet swelling cheeks. “It changes because of this girl here that I think he’s crushing.”

Wonwoo can’t help the growing smile on his face. “Jung has a crush?”

“Yes.” Sam bobs his head cutely. “You’re just like Jung with the pretty lady around.”

“How about now?” He asks the observant boy who purses his tiny lips before narrowing his eyes at him. 

“You look a little sad.”

Wonwoo didn’t need to ask who’s the pretty lady Sam was talking about because to him, you’re the only pretty lady in his life (second to his mother of course even though she’s angry at him at the moment). He tried to not make it obvious. He doesn’t want anyone to see him that the controversy and your father’s arrest is breaking the two of you apart. He can’t let them see him falling apart for that matter because he wants you to see him confident and strong. 

He doesn’t want to further fuel your doubts and fears. If he can’t support you closely, he’ll do his best to support you even from afar.

That’s why life for him continued. He goes to work, attends to his patients and co-workers needs, he eats, he exercises and he even entertains drinking with Soonyoung despite having to take care of him because of how fast he gets drunk. 

It’s an ineffective distraction because he misses you terribly. He misses going to your office just to take you away from your computer, he misses driving around town with you in the passenger seat and listening to your stories, he misses sleeping over at your apartment after a tiring day shift, he misses your warm and welcoming embrace, he misses your shy and soft kisses against his lips, cheeks, nose, forehead, neck and everywhere else.  

Did he tell you he misses you?

He sends you messages every day. He doesn’t call and he doesn’t wait for a reply. He just wants you to know that he’s here whenever you’re ready. Jeongyeon is kind enough to keep him in the loop, but the updates are very minimal because she’s still your subject and she doesn’t want to hurt you any further. 

For a moment, Wonwoo was afraid to take the leap. But when you asked him if he still wants to marry you which could be equivalent to you ending things, he had to. If you stay or not, he had to say it with all his heart. You had to know because he was sure that whatever it is his whole being is feeling, it’s only for you. 

“I love you.”

Your heart drops at his confession, making you sob to the palm of your hands. He can’t do this to you right now. It’s already hard and painful. You want to be selfish, but it would be wrong to let him suffer with you when he has been nothing but kind and honest. 

“You’re not your father, Y/N,” he promises and holds your hands down. “Please look at me.”

You shake your head, sniffling. You want to scream you love him too. But the words are nothing but a lump at the back of your throat. You continue shedding your tears and the sight breaks Wonwoo’s heart. 

“It’s okay.” He lifts your head up by your cheeks. He wipes your tears away even though it’s futile. He wishes to share with your anguish, but he also respects the desires of your heart. 

His smile was small when he leans down and briefly presses a kiss to your trembling lips. You accept it, fearing it might be the last. You also listen to his last words before he leaves with his bag and coat because it also might be the last time you’ll ever hear them.

“I love you.”

The rain patters on the roof of the car when Wonwoo’s words echoed inside your head. Just the thought of what had transpired the last few days brings tears to your eyes. You haven’t seen him since that night and the longing is unbearable. You wish to hear his voice, feel his touch against you or just see him. But you can’t and you have to persevere through it because you owe justice and accountability to your people.   

You haven’t spoken to your mother even if you tried. She’s just tired, so tired you can’t bring a word out of her. You try to be understanding and a little more patient. After all, getting over a betrayal doesn’t happen overnight. That’s why you continued working even though almost every client you have has backed down and declined your services. Nonetheless, you still go to your office every day as if everything is okay. You drink your coffee, you run over your files and even do a little organizing and disposing here and there. 

Your father’s first trial is today and you’re on your way to speak to him at his detention center. This is the first time you’ll see him aside from the television and newspapers. You’ve been crying ever since he got taken away. You can’t help it. You already know the truth and there’s no blinding away from it. But you want to hear from your father, whom you thought you have known all your life. You want his truth and maybe find some closure. 

When you arrive at the parking lot, the rain has ceased and little by little the temperature is rising again. You really wish things were different. Something in you wishes that this is a set-up. You wish that your father was innocent and only being framed. But there is a bigger something that’s telling you to throw away those wishful thoughts because it’s wrong. 

You ask yourself, am I angry at my father? while walking to the entrance leading to the visitor’s area. I should be, right? You argue because your family name and career is tarnished. Your upcoming marriage is no different which is most likely to be over. 

“Hi my darling,” The King, stripped from his expensive suit, greets you with his usual smile.

The glass between you and your father is clear enough to see that he doesn’t look good. Your father used to look every day ready with his suit on and slick back hair. But right now, he doesn’t. Tears well up in your eyes but you hold it in. It will take a long time to get used to seeing him like this. It will take a painfully long one.

Maybe you’re not angry. Maybe you’re just hurting.

“Hi dad,” you greet back. “How are you?”

The old man smiles and warms his thighs with his hands while looking around the small room. “I’m okay.”

You nod and the cold silence engulfs the room. 

“I’m sorry darling,” he finally says and hearing those words made you burst into tears. He sees you crying and this is the first time he can’t reach his hand out to wipe the tears away. “I’m really sorry that your father’s greed has left you and your mother a wound that might never heal.”

Greed. The news, the Royal Police, the prosecution and everyone else were talking about this. They’re still talking about this. It’s scandalous, it’s controversial. It’s unbelievable too. How could the head and protector of the kingdom do this? 

How could your father do this?

“Dad,” you sob. “Dad.”

“I know,” he tells you. “I know.”

“Please tell me they’re lying,” you begged, your voice shaking.

“I cannot betray you any further, my darling,” he sadly says. “I have to set you all free from my lies.”

You harshly rub your fingers against your eyes, trying to dry the tears that won’t stop from falling. “Who’s Kim Mingyu?”

The alarming buzz! blasts, indicating that your time’s up. You’re quick to your feet and hold your sweating palm against the glass. Your father mirrors your action but it didn’t last long because he was being handcuffed again. 

“Remember,” he says, struggling a little against the two uniformed men. “You are your own person, my darling.” 

Maybe you’re not hurting. Maybe you’re grieving because you just lost your father. 

You know who Kim Mingyu is. You already knew before you could even ask your father. You just wanted to know how your father met him and entangled himself with such a man. What led him to fall for his lies and money that he could trade every ounce of dignity and integrity in his being? Something of that sort. 

Kim Mingyu’s mining business was proposed to the Secretary of the Trade and Industry Department. A mining business that will have children go underground for long agonizing hours. At first, they were immediately rejected knowing that there’s an obvious and strict law disallowing foreigners to the kingdom’s mineral resources. Much more the exploitation of young children. But, Mingyu was ambitious and a sniper to every man's weakness. It didn’t take long for the Secretary of the Trade and Industry to bite. It was easily followed by the Secretary of the Justice Department and your father. They all, among many others, eventually fell for his trap. Everything worked out for Kim Mingyu. 

Your hip is against the hood of the car as you watched the prison guards surround the vehicle your father will ride to the court. Everyone is on high alert. Well, they should be. No one else is more high profile than a criminal king. It’s only the first trial but you’re already more than aware of how things will turn out in the end. 

You clutch the lifebuoy pendant of the necklace you’re wearing, nervous and trying to keep everything together.

You could leave now, but the time and opportunity to see your father is running out. This prison is the only place you could linger just to see him, even for a short while. You won’t be able to follow him at court because Seungkwan advised you not to. Which you understand. This whole case involving your father is already causing a media frenzy so staying away is the smart thing to do. 

As you wait, your phone suddenly rings with an unknown number flashed on the screen. You blink, wondering who could it be at this hour. After a beat of hesitation, you answered and held the phone against your ear. 

“Hello?”

“Ah, Princess Y/N. How’s the King doing?”

You’re not that forgetful to not recognize this voice. “Mr. Kim, how did you get my number?”

“That’s not important right now,” he dodges the question. “What’s important is what I am about to tell you.”

“What do you want from me?” You say with gritted teeth and from your peripheral you can see the guards scramble. Your father is about to come out.

You can hear him scoff. “I don’t want anything from you, Your Highness. But listen…”

Your heart starts to beat faster. It’s a hard visual but your father is nearing the exit. Your bottom lip is starting to hurt from how hard you’re biting it and the few seconds of pause and suspense that Mingyu’s giving you is not helping at all. 

“Listen you sick---” He cuts you off and your blood runs cold.

“I’m going to kill your father.”

What is the fondest memory that you have of your father? 

They’re too many to count and every memory with him, small and big, will always mean everything to you. But as an example, it would be the day you finally took oath as a lawyer. He didn’t tell you, but he, together with your mother, was secretly present at the venue. He told you beforehand that they shouldn’t go because he didn’t want the people to make you uncomfortable and steal the spotlight. You ignored his lame excuse of fame and told him that he can do whatever he wants. 

But he was really there. Tears brimming on his eyes together with pride beaming on his heart. Your mother had to calm him down because he got a little out of control, almost screaming with all his chest at the venue that you’re his daughter. 

You only found out when you hopped on the car and they’re inside with a small cake, flowers and party hats on, shouting loud congratulations and surprise simultaneously. 

Your father was always there. Your parents were. 

You remember those when you ran and pushed your way against the guards blocking your father’s view. You were frantic as you screamed at them to get your father back inside. You fought with all your strength and thrashed against their hold just to reach your father. When you slipped away from them, you ran again, fast. 

You did your best to not get caught. You just have to be close to your dad and push him back inside. You just have to be close to him. You just have to protect him.

You have to be there for him. 

“Please stop!” You shout when another guard takes hold of your waist, locking you to the ground. “You have to bring my father back inside!”

“You’re Highness, please calm down!” The guard shouts back and you fight against him. When he didn’t let you go, you stomped the heel of your shoe on his feet, making him fall in pain. 

“Dad!” You call when you’re finally nearing him. His head lifts up at the sound of your voice and searches for you among the sea of men. “Please! You have to take him back inside! I received a call from Kim Ming---”

BANG!

BANG! 

It was searingly fast. Your whole body collapses on the sweltering concrete before you could reach your father and when his eyes finally find you, you are already swimming in the pool of your blood.  

“It’s always good to see you Mrs. Wang,” Wonwoo compliments the old lady who’s starting to frequent the emergency room. “But not in this manner.”

The old lady gives him a cheeky grin and pinches one of his cheeks. If Wonwoo doesn’t know any better, she’s doing this to not get scolded any further. 

“Your blood sugar is high and I don’t think your granddaughter appreciates her grandma endangering her own life,” he lightly scolds her, if that’s how he can put it. He’s still a doctor after all. “She loves you and she wants you to be healthy when she walks down the aisle in the future.”

Mrs. Wang gives him a silent nod at the mention of her granddaughter, promising that she won’t disobey anymore. That relieves Wonwoo, his lips lifting in a smile. He signs her clearance and hands it back to the nurse. After a few more instructions, he takes his leave and walks back to the information desk. 

He takes one of the patients charts to read. The phone rings and the nurse in charge immediately picks it up and answers. At first, Wonwoo didn’t bother looking up from the paper because emergency calls happen every three seconds. But when there was an eerie silence amidst the loud and busy room, his curiosity made his head tilt up only to get surprised at the widened eyes the nurse was giving him. 

He was about to ask what’s wrong but when he heard the sound of the siren nearing, he ignores his suspicions and runs to the entrance. 

The ambulance parks at a safe distance and the paramedics get out. They move quickly to get the patient out and when they see him, their mouth falls open but no words come out.

Wonwoo didn’t notice so he proceeded to ask, “How’s the patient?”

“Wonwoo!”

Soonyoung almost tripped on his feet as he tried to get a hold of his friend. He takes his arms and tries to pull him away from the ambulance he’s about to open. Wonwoo is starting to get irritated at the bizarre and disconcerting feeling that’s starting to settle in the emergency room.

Wonwoo knocks him off with a glare. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Wonwoo, please,” Soonyoung begs with an unsteady voice, clinging to his friend. 

“Female, late twenties, two gunshot wounds,” one of the paramedics finally yet carefully reports while the other opens the doors of the ambulance. “It’s Her Highness, Princess Y/N.”

Wonwoo roughly removes his friends hand from his arm to step closer to the ambulance and when he sees your lifeless body, he didn’t waste any more time and helped the paramedics move the stretcher out. Soonyoung can see his friend’s hands shaking as he takes hold of the bloodied gurney. He knows he has to stop him right now. 

“Baby,” Wonwoo calls as he runs and wheels you inside. You can’t hear him, but he has to try. He observes proper protocol of transferring you to the bed of the emergency room before applying more pressure to your wounds. You have lost a lot of blood already and it’s not helping Wonwoo that he can’t see your eyes.

“Please, please, please,” Wonwoo whispers as he removes all the obstructions on your body and when his eyes catch the necklace he gave around your neck, his legs grow weak and removing it from you made his tears fall.

“Baby, please,” he pleads. “Open your eyes, hmm?”

Soonyoung steps in together with the doctor who will perform the surgery and take everything from here. He slowly pulls his friend away from your body. Wonwoo didn’t protest anymore, there’s nothing in him left to do so. Your blood is in his hands, in his white coat, it’s everywhere. 

This is not the distance Wonwoo wanted. 

He can’t be apart from you forever.

#seventeen #wonwoo #seventeen scenarios #wonwoo scenarios #seventeen imagines #wonwoo imagines #seventeen scenario #wonwoo scenario #seventeen fluff #wonwoo fluff #seventeen imagine #wonwoo imagine #seventeen angst #wonwoo angst #seventeen wonwoo #wonwoo seventeen #fic: ifliys

[rae-gar-targaryen]

alight with the lights out | diego hargreeves x reader [tua]

A/N: Thank you for all of your interest after I posted the teaser! It was VERY surprising and humbling; I’ve NEVER had so many people ask for a tag before. I only ask that if you asked for a tag, you interact with this fic SOMEHOW. And go find another story you love and REBLOG IT! LET THAT WRITER KNOW YOU LOVE THEM!

I’ll be honest, I’m very nervous about this one. I’m not sure if it turned out as good on paper as it did in my head. Please let me know what you liked and what you didn’t!

Pairing: Diego Hargreeves x vigilante, powered!Reader; this one may read a bit more like an OC because I’ve given the reader backstory, powers. She’s (you’re) a vigilante who regularly runs into Diego. I keep the physical description vague, so I hope you can still imagine yourself! 

Warnings: Language; who doesn’t love getting a little sweary? Violence, fighting, references to a shitty childhood, and separately, implied sexual assault (nothing graphic, I promise); angst and angsty dialogue; SMUT-- 18+ ONLY PLEASE; lots of cocktease dialogue, fingering, pierced nipples (the reader’s not Diego’s-- sorry), biting, rough sex, choking. Romance is its own warning. Fluff.

Word Count: 12.1k of sexy, self-righteous vigilantism, half-baked metaphor and of course, at least one literary reference. 

Summary: Diego Hargreeves, aka The Kraken, is secure about few things in life; one of those things being his vigilantism. He’s a hero. Until he meets a fighter who shares the same hobby, albeit with different methodologies. Diego isn’t quite as certain about her, but her mysterious abilities make him think he and his siblings aren’t the only ones in this world with power. If only she and Diego could just stay out of each others’ hair. It’s a good, old-fashioned ENEMIES TO LOVERS, lads!

Link to my playlist of songs that inspired this fic: here

NOT MY GIF

----

You wouldn't hurt anyone who didn't deserve it. That was rule number one. Hell, if you could get away with it at all, you wouldn’t hurt anyone. 

But Mr. Adler hated children. And he had made it his mission to not understand you. To regard you with the utmost disdain. And unfortunately for you, Mr. Adler had married your mother when you were six years old. 

You had never known another father. Your mother refused to talk about the circumstances of your birth, or of the man who had supposedly been responsible. The lack of identity loomed like a large question mark over certain portions of your life. 

And Mr. Adler, that loud, controlling lout, was not about to fill that void. 

When you were in elementary school, you began to feel like you were different from the other children. Watching them carry about their days with their steel-pressed pop culture lunch boxes and not a care in the world. While you sensed your music teacher’s sadness when her cat had died. You could feel every anxiety that passed through your classmates on the day of a spelling test. You didn’t know why you could feel these things. You just could.

Prominently above them all, you could feel Mr. Adler’s hatred for you, like a thick, toxic wall every time you passed through your front door and into what was supposed to be your sanctuary. 

He shouted at you for inane things, like the pantry door being left open, or the fact that your mother was tired after cooking dinner, insisting you never did enough to help. As a child of eight, what did he expect you to do? You kept your room clean, cleared and set the table, helped your mom water the plants in her garden. What more could Adler want from you?

Still, Mr. Adler’s hate for you colored your every interaction with him, the world you saw him through tinged with an orange-red lens of rage. 

You had never tried expanding upon your grasp of others’ feelings until you had witnessed a boy in your class push your pigtailed classmate, Annabelle, down on the playground. Anna’s shock, fear and sadness had bitten into you from the other side of the sandbox like an unwelcome spider bite, sudden and itchy. 

It didn’t sit right with you. To you, how was this boy any different from Adler? Reigning terror over someone else just because he thought he could. You’d recognize that red-orange tinge in another person anywhere. 

You stood, marching over to the boy, gripping his wrist firmly in your stubby, grubby fingers. Quick as a flash, you were met with every emotion this boy had ever felt -- annoyance at Anna (she wouldn’t share her toys. How selfish, the boy had thought); anger (how dare you grab him!); and finally, prominently, fear. 

Fear looked different for everyone, you had noticed. For some, like this boy, it was an ugly green, so like jealousy. For others, like Adler when he’d been drinking, it was an inky black you could drown in. Fear was clearly the strongest. You knew that now.

You gripped the boy’s fear in your own mind, pushing it to the forefront until he began to cry, his eyes welling with the sudden fear he couldn’t understand. 

“You won’t do that again,” you said. Turning to Anna, you offered a hand to help her up, but she just shook her head, pigtails flying, and scampered away from you. 

Your teachers were clearly afraid of you after that. Could sense that something wasn’t right. Anna? You thought she’d be grateful ... but the chilly pale yellow of her fear, and everyone else’s, followed you wherever you went. 

Fine, you thought. If they wouldn’t be grateful for what you could do, you may as well help yourself. 

From then on, you exploited your teachers’ happiness -- pop quizzes became less frequent. Everytime they wanted to scold you for incomplete homework, they were left grasping at straws and with the daze of an emotion they couldn’t name. 

Adler hated you for it. 

“I knew there was something wrong with you,” he sneered over your mother’s weeping objections. “I don’t know what it is, but I know there’s something.” 

Once you reached 18, you left for the neighboring bustling metropolis and didn’t look back. The world was full of people like Adler, like the boy in the sandbox, like your teachers, who tried to use their own fear to feed their hate, to exploit others. To exercise false power over them. 

Well, you wouldn’t have it. If it meant a few of those assholes got hurt, well, so be it. 

You lived like that for years. Until --

---

"I hope you choke on it," you hissed, watching the smoky black tendrils slither their way around the man, constricting -- bringing him to his knees, hacking and gasping. "I see your fear, I feel it all. You deserve this, you know you do," you lectured, advancing toward the man, your hands raised. 

He was seconds away, you knew it-- and then one more scumbag would be off the streets for good ...

Things were going your way, you were in your favorite position in an altercation-- you know, the one where you had the upper hand? Everything was coming up you, until--

Your ears were met with a whizzing noise mere seconds before a sharp, shiny something nicked your cheek and lodged into the wooden beam just past you. 

Your gaze left the piteous man before you long enough to see what looked like a small, but dangerously sharp, knife embedded in the beam. You reached up and plucked it from its resting place, spinning it in your palm before catching the hilt in a clutching grip. You turned to see where it had come from, your eyes catching a dark blur flipping from the fire escape of the opposite building, before said blur landed at your feet.

Standing at his full height, the blur-- no, the Kraken himself-- towered above you.

You had to admit, the stories didn't do him justice. Standing before you in head-to-toe black and a harness replete with shimmering, twinkling edges and danger, you could've sworn he was your knight in shining leather. His cropped hair and facial scars gave him the air that he was every bit as sharp and deadly as the many blades that adorned his body. His oilslick eyes so like mirthless pits of danger, daring to suck you beneath their surface. He was, in a word, imposing.

Regarding you from behind his Venetian domino mask, he spoke, "Miss I'm gonna need you to drop the knife and let this man go."

You snorted.

"You're joking, right?" Not giving him a chance to respond, you chuckled as you swung at him with the hand still holding what you now knew to be his blade. 

You'd give credit where it was due, Diego Hargreeves, aka Number Two, aka the Kraken, was every bit as fast as they'd said. In this regard, the stories and Umbrella Academy-related media hadn't been wrong. 

Diego dodged your swing, bending his body back before twirling around to strike at your torso, like a snake, with his heavy, hammered fist.

The hit knocked the wind out of you, effectively breaking your concentration, and, devastatingly, your connection with the previously fear-choked man cowering in the alley behind you. As you recovered from Diego's hit and swung around to check your quarry, you could only watch as he shook himself from your fear-induced trance.

He scraped and scrabbled to get up off his knees as Diego shouted at him to "Go, just get out of here!"

You snarled and swung a well-aimed high kick at Diego's head, connecting with just enough of his jaw to drop him. As soon as your proverbial window opened, you turned from Diego to run after the man. But even grounded from a blow, Diego was formidable. He shot his arm out and snagged your ankle, yanking you to the ground. 

The gritty pavement scraped your palms as you attempted to catch yourself on your way down, growling as you glanced up to see that loathsome cockroach of a man slip out of the alley, huffing as his bloated legs carried himself far away from you. 

You tossed a glance over your shoulder to see Diego righting himself as he stood up, looking down at you before shrugging, offering you his hand.

"Not a chance," you scoffed, knocking his hand away. You rolled slightly back, arched up, and used your hands to help you spring as you lept to your feet in one smooth movement. You landed with a thud of your boots, your feet spread apart, and arms raised in a boxer's stance. 

Diego had the decency to look slightly surprised at your obviously-dangerous athleticism. He shook himself slightly as he regarded you. 

Besides, he thought, taking in your stature, it's not as though you were any match for him. No way.

"Why would you get in my way, Umbrella douche?" You bit out harshly, glaring daggers at the knife-wielding Kraken.

"Come on, hot stuff," Diego shrugged. "If you know who I am, you gotta know it's not like I can just let you mug that man with … well, whatever you were doing to him." What he had seen you do in the alley seemed to be catching up with him as he cocked his head and queried, "What exactly were you doing to him, by the way? I mean, other than hurting a civilian?"

"A civilian?" You spat. "You don't know what you're talking about, do-gooder. If you knew what he was, you wouldn't be defending him so staunchly." 

“And what was he?” Diego pressed. 

“That dickless fuckhead would-be-rapist isn’t worth the shit on your shoe,” you snarled. “And you let him get away. Nice job, hero,” you sing-songed the last word mockingly, taking advantage of Diego’s lowered guard to level a swinging hit to his nose. 

Your punch landed with a satisfying crack, Diego stumbling back, shaking his head. 

“What in the ever-loving FUCK is wrong with you, lady?” Diego shouted. 

“Take your hits like a big boy. Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of ‘Big Deal?’ ” you asked, advancing toward Diego, fists raised. 

“Honey, my reputation precedes me for a reason,” Diego quipped back, blocking your next swing and making one of his own toward your gut. 

The two of you sparred in the alleyway, whirling and spinning in a very violent dance between two unwilling partners -- Diego, clearly pulling his punches, while you were obviously preoccupied with your rage at your escaped quarry. 

Diego flipped and spun and swung his fists with a speed that bordered on unnatural. His jabs and kicks annoyingly landed, as you were really only able to block just about every other hit. Fuck him for being so fast. 

So it was true, you thought, the superpower hype was real. Well, two could play that game. 

At Diego’s next hit, you caught his fist, allowing the contact to create the connection you needed, feeling for Diego and any underlying emotion that would be his undoing, before latching onto your favorite-- past the overstuffed confidence, you tasted simmering rage. Beyond that? A tiny prickle of … was that??…Ah, yes, the stinging, burns-so-good zip of lust... File that one away for later … and beneath it all lay Diego’s stammering, stuttering, suffocating fear. 

You dug your proverbial claws into it once you found it, bringing it to the surface, manifesting it into your signature smoky tendrils. 

Drag them down with their own fear. 

Diego’s eyes widened as he looked down to see his legs wrapped in what looked like snakes. Suddenly, his worst memories of fearful days under his father’s tyrannical reign were the only things in his brain. The shouting proclamation his own inadequacies in his father’s too-posh voice pounded within his skull. It was all he could think about -- Your presence before him seemed to dwindle, he couldn’t focus on you, try as he might-- when he was overcome with the feelings of every bad memory he had ever suffered through bearing down on him like the crushing weight of the ocean, pulling him under with the riptide of his own panic and inadequacies.

What the fuck was this shit? 

He pushed through his sudden indifference toward you to regard you, the woman stood before him. Diego’s fist clenched as he took in your own grip clutching around his wrist. Your eyes were closed as your face was screwed up in concentration. 

Repulsive. You were repulsive, he suddenly thought. How could he have cared so much about hurting you when his own terror and agitation sat heavy on his tongue, like ugly curdled cream?

But he hadn’t always felt this way-- not his usual modus operandi, was it? So what was this? Was this-- you?? Was this what you had done to that man?

Diego began to dredge himself through his own agitation, past his father’s lilting abuse… through the mire of never-quite-being-enough against Luther... dragging his proverbial feet through a bog of his own self-hatred. Just long enough to wrench his wrist from your grip, grabbing you by the shoulders and spinning around, slamming you probably a little too hard into the wall behind him. Your eyes snapped open as your head made a minor thwack off the  alleyway-- you had just enough time to tilt your head to the left as Diego brought one of his knives down, driving it into the wall a sliver from the space your face had previously occupied. 

Diego bore his weight on his toes, leaning his imposing height into and over you, panting and snorting heavily through his nose. You looked at his eyes behind his mask-- hardened flints of pissed-off-superhero glared back at you.

“W-wh-What the F-f-UCK was that?” Diego spit, lip curling over his teeth in a gruesome snarl. 

A fleeting flicker of shame passed through you. He hadn’t really done anything to deserve that, had he? Before you shook yourself out of it-- No! He let that rat-faced motherfucker get away! 

You fixed your face into an impassive mask of your own before you chirped, annoyingly, “What was what?” 

Diego chuckled mirthlessly, shaking his head.  “Nuh-uh. How did you do that?” Diego pressed, leaning even closer to you, if that were possible.

“Do what?” you chimed innocently, tilting your chin up, eyes meeting Diego’s from beneath your lashes. Maintaining your feigned ignorance.

“Don’t do that,” Diego snarled. “Don’t play dumb. I think we both know at this point-- you’re alot of things, and dumb isn’t one of them.” 

“You’d know all about playing dumb, wouldn’t you, pretty boy? Or for you, is it not really playing?” You reached up and ran a finger along his sharp jaw before tweaking his chin and dropping your hand back to your side. You sighed at Diego’s stone face. Honestly, it was so boring when they didn’t bite back.

“I don’t know what to tell you, cutie pie. I can’t help it. People are just drawn to me,” you quirked an eyebrow. “Or repulsed by me. I really haven’t decided.” You fluttered your eyelashes at him, ever the pretty picture. 

Diego leaned further into you, pressing your back further and further into the wall. All the while, his leather-gloved grip creaked around the handle of the knife he’d plunged into the wall next to your head as he gripped it tighter. 

“Huh,” he mused, scoffing at you lightly. “Ya know something, doll? I just don’t fuckin’ buy it.” 

“Babe, if you wanted to play bad cop, all you had to do was ask,” you smirked as the stone face slid from his features and gave way to "surprised face."

“Honestly, honey,” you slinked up Diego’s body, propping yourself onto your toes and brushing his lips ever-so-lightly with your own as you spoke into his mouth, “Did you really think you and your reject siblings were the only ones in this whole wide world with a little … taste … of power?” you purred. 

Ah, you thought, and there it was. 

The warming, zinging hum that your ability recognized as Diego’s lust crept through your fingertips that were currently resting on his chin. You were sure if you took the time to analyze exactly who was feeling what, that this feeling of craving wouldn’t be as one-sided as you’d otherwise have hoped. Diego was, you had to admit, very pretty -- for a man. 

The swirling galaxies in his midnight eyes regarded you with confusionangerwant.  Had you really just -- kinda kissed him?

You took advantage of Diego’s surprised state to knock his grip from your shoulder and shove -- hard. Diego toppled back, and you took off as fast as your enhanced body would carry you, cutting down the alley and away from your fascinatingly frustrating new rival. 

Diego took in your retreating form from his final resting place in the disgusting alley’s concrete. Slamming his fist into the rough-gravel ground, groaning out his frustration and anger.

You were gone. 

What were you? 

Were you really like him? Like the others?

---

Diego shuffled into Hargreeves Manor, determined to see who else was around. Surely they, or Pogo, would know if there were others like them out there. Had he been the only one to run into one? Was it all a hoax?

As he wandered into the cavernous, but simultaneously stuffy, living room, sure enough-- there was Klaus, sprawled across the couch, arm slung over his face in a restless nap. 

“Klaus!” Diego barked, startling the spindly man from his perch on the couch and onto the floor. 

Klaus looked balefully up at his brother from his spot on the carpet. “Jeeeesus, Diego, really? What do you want that made that necessary,” Klaus grumbled.

“Have you seen Pogo?” 

“I haven’t seen anything but the back of my eyelids for the last several hours, thank you very much,” Klaus replied, “Although, I did have a very good dream about running into an old friend of mine in the grocery store. He was always so convinced he was straight. But I think the rest of my dream calls bullshit.” Klaus chuckled to himself. 

“Yeah, whatever, man. I need to talk to Pogo,” Diego stressed, turning to leave the living room.

“Well, wait, wait, wait. What is so important?” Klaus queried, clambering up and lumbering across the room to catch Diego’s arm.

Diego sighed, facing his brother. 

“Do you think … Do you think we’re the only ones like us?” He asked.

“Well, there’s no one like you, brother,” Klaus chuckled, taking on a rumbling, Diego-esque mocking tone, “I’m Number Two!” He cackled to himself for a moment before coming back to himself with a sigh. “And honestly, we all know I’m an original. So I’m not sure I take your meaning.” 

“I mean… it couldn’t just be the seven of us, right? There’s a lot of other people in the world… it just makes sense others could do things like what we can?” Diego pressed.

Klaus started. He had never seen this look in his brother’s eye before. The unhinged mania of a fight? Sure. Crushing doubt? Obviously. But not this … fierce certainty buried beneath a question. This was new for Diego. He must be serious. 

Klaus blinked, regarding his brother, before slowly nodding. “I mean… sure… theoretically, there could be others. But I don’t know any. Why? Did you find someone?” 

Diego drew in a breath, unsure of how much he wanted to reveal to Klaus. After all, you were his nemesis. His pain in the ass. His whatever you were. 

Diego crossed the room again, back to the couch Klaus had previously occupied, before sitting down in a creak of leather and clink of blades still strapped to his harness. Propping his elbows on his thighs, he placed his head in his hands. 

“I don’t know. I think so? I found her while I was out patrolling, and I … I don’t really know how to describe what I saw.” 

Klaus placed himself next to his erstwhile sibling, tucking his feet beneath himself as he sat, reaching up to pat Diego on the shoulder.

“There, there, big guy. Just… tell me what happened,” Klaus crooned.

Diego launched into the story of finding you in the alley, choking the man with your smoke without even laying a hand on him. He described to Klaus how the two of you had fought, and how you had called the man a “would-be-rapist” before knocking Diego to the ground and making your getaway. 

“Well, she sounds hot.” 

“Helpful, Klaus,” Diego deadpanned. 

“Oh, isn’t it obvious, sweet Dee?” Klaus chimed at the end of Diego’s story. At his brother’s nonplussed look, Klaus continued. “She’s just like you! She likes to put on her Batman underoos and fight crime,” he chuckled. “Even if she is like… us… she clearly can do something different. But I think the most telling thing is how obviously into her you are.” 

Diego sputtered, “Wh-what?? I am not into that … psycho. Whatever she can do, that’s all I want to figure out.” 

“The lady doth protest too much,” Klaus sing-songed. “Whatever you say, brother. But I think the only way you’ll really figure it out is if you run into her again. I mean, we know dad had his secrets. If he knew about other powered children, don’t you think the Umbrella Academy would’ve been a lot bigger? The world is a big place. I’m sure there’s more out there, but, um… we just didn’t know about it until now?” 

Diego sighed deeply. “Oh, joy,” he muttered. Ignoring the tinge of excitement that passed through him at Klaus’s suggestion he seek you out. 

Klaus clapped his hands joyously, cuffing Diego’s shoulder, shaking him. 

“A nemesis, Diego! How sexy! How exciting!” 

---

Your encounter with one of the Umbrella Academy had left you slightly shaken, to say the least. You were so careful when you went out. No one missed those assholes you took care of. Honestly, you were doing the city a favor. 

Patrolling on any given night would yield one or two men who were plotting something less than savory. And all it took was a brush of skin to determine their true intentions. 

You sighed angrily, ripping off your bodysuit and stomping across your apartment to your shower, yanking back the curtain and twisting the knob forcefully. 

Hot water began to pour from the showerhead, steam filling your bathroom. You regarded your reflection in your bathroom mirror, a distinctly palmlike-bruise adorned your shoulder from where Diego had clutched it, not to mention the scrapes that lined your body from your repeated meetings with the concrete during your sparring. 

You met your own eyes in your reflection, regarding yourself as balefulness gave way to venom. 

Honestly, that toadlike little nobody had deserved what you were about to do to him. You had watched him from the back of the bar as he had annoyingly pressed his presence onto a poor girl who was just trying to enjoy her drink. Her drink that the toad had slipped something in when he thought she wasn’t looking. He even went so far as to grab her wrist with his stubby little hands. That was the final straw. 

You steeled yourself, letting the lustful, rowdy feeling of the other bar patrons that permeated the air like thick smoke take you over. Putting on your best, beguiling smile, you crossed the room and brushed your hand over the man’s bare arm, letting him feel the tingling want that you had absorbed. Simultaneously, you felt everything of his disgusting intent-- the hateful, possessive desire for the girl, the hurt he intended to inflict to trample his own inadequacies and sadness. 

Oh, yeah, you were right about this asshole. 

He looked up at you, disgusting gaze lingering on you, before forgetting all about his intended prey, pushing back from his barstool and venturing behind you out into the alley. 

The rest, as they say, is history. And an annoying vigilante type who had an ass that just wouldn’t quit once encased in black leather just had to rain on your proverbial pain parade. 

Diego Hargreeves… Of course you knew who he was. Everyone knew about the Umbrella kids. And you knew the man once-dubbed The Kraken was still doing his best Caped Crusader (sans cape) and kicking ass by night. Annoyingly self-righteous, really, you thought. Choosing ever-so-delicately to ignore the hypocrisy laden in your thought. Is that not, in effect, what you were doing? Albeit with a little more emotional manipulation and bloodshed. 

As you thought of Diego, your fingers traced the slim, sharp cut his knife had made in your cheek as it surged past you. 

You let the remnants of Diego’s rage that you had felt overtake you, amplified by your own, as you slammed your fist into the small mirror over your sink, letting the shards clatter to the ground around your feet.

Payback was a bitch, and so were you. You didn’t know if Diego Hargreeves was a praying man, but he had better hope to whatever deity would listen that he didn’t run into you again.

You wouldn’t be so kind twice, you told yourself, climbing into your shower and letting the blood and grit from your body swirl down the drain. 

---

As luck wouldn’t have it, your gods were decidedly not on your side. And clearly whatever deity you had mentally implored Diego to pray to was on vacation. 

Because you ran into that maddeningly beautiful dipshit, several times over the following weeks. He would do his best to bust up your party, stopping you from exacting your special brand of vengeance. You’d exchange a few quips and blows before running off before he could ask you the question you knew was burning in his mind. 

You managed to evade prolonged encounters with Diego until about another two weeks later. Too soon, honestly. 

Or not soon enough? God, your inner voice was desperate and annoying. 

You encountered Diego again while you were propped against the wall of a seedy dive on the other edge of town, assessing each person as they passed. While your power worked best if you could touch, some feelings were perfectly easy to pick up from a distance. 

So far, nothing. Just a few gross, horny bikers and depressive barflies. It was a maddeningly slow night. And you doubted you were needed here. 

Just as you were about to call it and head to another hotspot, a familiar prickle passed through you. You glanced up, across the street. 

Sure enough, on the neighboring rooftop, perched Diego Hargreeves in the flesh, surveying you like some kind of Great Value Nightwing. 

You sighed, pushing off the wall and crossing the street. Diego watched as you clambered up the fire escape to meet him on the rooftop. 

“Of course you would be here,” you chastised. “Are you fucking following me? I’ve been a good girl. Haven’t killed anyone in a week. I promise!” You held up your hands in mock surrender, coming to stand in front of Diego’s gloriously firm, leather-clad figure. 

“If you say so, Princess. Maybe I’m just here for a drink?” Diego cocked his head toward the shitty bar whose entrance you were haunting mere moments ago. 

“Doubtful, Underoos. I think…” you trailed off, circling Diego, tapping your finger to your chin in a pondering gesture. “I think you’re babysitting me. Making sure I don’t do your job for you and clean up the streets too well.” 

You ceased your vulture-like circling, coming to stand before Diego. His eyes bore into your own, once again partially obscured behind that stupid mask. As if you didn’t know what he looked like without it. Your eyes weren’t deceiving you when you saw Diego’s eyes flash a quick up-down of your body before resuming his stern visage. 

Oh good, you thought. You recognized the latent feelings buried beneath Diego’s anger. A new one brushed over you-- confusion… He still hadn’t figured you, or, more than likely, your power, out…

You weren’t left in suspense too long. 

“Tell me about what you can do,” Diego pressed, advancing toward you. You took a step back to maintain some distance… best if you can perpetuate some veil of advantage. 

“Ah, ah, ah, baby. It doesn’t work like that,” you chided. “You think I’m just going to spill all of my secrets because why? You’re cute? Try again. Ask nicely,” you smirked, pushing your lips into a tantalizing pout.

Diego rolled his eyes. You weren’t going to play fair? Fine, neither was he. Honestly, his fuse was too-fuckin-short for your shit. He wanted answers, even if he had to beat them out of you. Quick as a flash, he strode toward you, jumping into a flip and kicking you down to the ground upon his landing. 

You looked up at him, standing over your body as it lay on the gravelled rooftop, bringing your hand up to touch your jaw, where his boot had collided with your face not moments ago. 

You grinned widely, savagely, around bloodied teeth and split lips. "So that’s how we’re going to play? Do your worst, Big Deal. I like when it hurts."

With that, you swung your leg at Diego’s, causing him to topple beside you, where you promptly rolled over, coming to straddle his hips, bringing your hands to his wrists, the direct contact allowing you to bring his fear to the forefront. 

Just as you were about to choke him with the smoke of his own fear, Diego surged upright, his arms breaking free from the grip of your wrists, his own hands coming to close around your throat. He squeezed insistently, enough to break your concentration-- the smoke dissipating as soon as it had come. With that, he had managed to roll the two of you over, you flat on your back as one of his thighs came to rest between yours. 

You gasped, looking up at Diego with fiery shock looming in your eyes. 

“Wow,” you rasped, “I told you before-- if you wanted to play bad cop, all you had to do was ask.” 

Diego removed one hand from your throat, bringing it to his own head and ripping off his flimsy excuse for a mask. He regarded you with nacreous, tarpit eyes that glowed and glittered with the streetlights, his breath coming in ragged, uneven puffs through his sinfully full lips. His cropped hair was glistening with sweat borne equally from the heat of the night and your encounter. 

“Baby, I think you owe me an explanation first,” He pressed, squeezing your throat lightly, free hand pulling a knife from his harness that he spun in his fingers while gazing down at you. 

You whined, rolling your hips against where his thigh rested between your legs. 

“This would be so much more fun if you’d just do things my way,” you pouted at Diego. 

“Maybe I would, if you would bother to tell me what your way is,” Diego retorted.

“I could tell you, or I could show you,” you purred, rolling your hips again. “I’m all about more fun.” 

Diego sighed. The familiar buzz of lust radiating from your skin-- or was it his own-- that always seemed to hang over your encounters was pressingly prevalent and it was all he could do to not just give in. He gritted his teeth, and shook his head. 

“No. Come on. I know what you’re doing… whatever it is. Just … tell me what it is you can do. Tell me why you’re hurting those people,” he implored.

You scoffed, rolling your eyes, using your free hands to knock his grip from your throat and coming to a sitting position, as Diego remained crouched over you. 

“All you hero-types. You’re no fun. You want to know what I can do? That pleasant little hum you feel? That’s you. Well, it’s me. But it’s you. I don’t make anyone feel what they don’t already… but I can use it against them. That first night at the bar? That,” you shuddered, “That rat was going to force himself on some poor girl. I could feel his every feeling as he was preying on her. I had to stop it. It’s simple, honeybunch. I do what you do, but better. I’ll make them choke in it, their own fear, their self-hatred, their inadequacy, their lust, I’ll drown them in it, and they’ll thank me for it. Because I’m nothing if not merciful,” you gritted out. 

Diego’s mind reeled, jaw slack from your confession. He knew it! You were an empath, an enhanced emotional manipulator. Except you seemed to be able to manifest emotions into something tangible, something harmful. 

Suddenly, the weight of your confession seemed to crush Diego, you had exploited every feeling of his during your encounters to gain an upper hand. And he hadn’t truly known about it until now. 

You felt the surge of his rage, his disgust, his fear with you before he could say it-- 

“You c-can’t-- you can’t do that,” Diego said. “Kililng people who haven’t even done anything yet? It’s w-wrong. Y-you’re w-wro-wrong,” He stuttered out, clearly distressed, but advancing even further into your space.

“As opposed to you?” You bit out. “You wait until someone’s already hurting or hurt someone else to do something. How are you any better? Who are you to judge me,” you spit through gritted teeth. 

“You’re a killer,” Diego pressed, pushing back from you and coming to stand.

“Sticks and stones. So are you. But I don’t hate you for it,” you snarled, jumping into a standing position, squaring your shoulders before Diego’s imposing form. 

“You could always work with me,” Diego offered, “ We could take what you can do and just… re-tool it a bit.” 

You ground out a harsh laugh. 

“Unlikely, you absolutely patronizing dick. You don’t want anything to do with me other than to change me, control me. You’re just like them.” 

With that, you unleashed a slew and flurry of attacks on Diego, swinging your hips around to level a kick at his gut, knocking him to his knees, where your arm was ready to strike a heavy blow against his cheek, your rage fueling the unnatural strength behind the hit. 

Diego sprawled against the concrete of the rooftop, half conscious after blows you’d dealt him. 

You stood over Diego now, looking down at his prone form. 

“I would never want anyone who only means to stifle me. To take me apart until there’s nothing left. Never.” You spit a glob of bloodied saliva at Diego’s feet, leaving him in his semi-conscious, battered state-- the guilt only slightly prickling you. 

His fear-- choking on half-gasped words from behind the tremulous task of tripping over his own tongue-- followed you like a stuttering stormcloud. It stung. Knowing that he was afraid of you.

---

Okay. The guilt was more than slight. 

All he had wanted to do was help, right? 

Years alone with your power, the sting of Adler’s rejection as a child, it all weighed down on you like the crushing magnitude of Atlas. You didn’t really want to hurt him. 

You sighed, resolute. You just needed to make sure.

With that, you headed out in the storm. Headed toward Diego. 

---

The rain pounded on the walls of the Fighting Lion, plunking heavily like half-hewn nails tossed onto the small window in Diego’s back bedroom. He could hear as it landed on the brick, the wet stone and stormy atmosphere making the air thick with the scent of sagebrush and rain. 

A kind of whoosh passed through the room, prompting him to turn from where he was folding his laundry on the bed to see you propped against the door, legs crossed at the ankles, looking every bit as if you belonged. 

“Wow, Big Deal. Nice digs,” you said as you sauntered in the room, staring at the case at the foot of the bed that was full of Diego’s knives. “Not what I’d expect coming from a dude who hails from the city’s biggest mansion. But still -- homey.” 

Diego ignored the jab about his upbringing in favor of the real question.

“How did you get in here?” He asked, seemingly --and to you, maddeningly-- disinterested in your presence as he continued stacking his paired socks into their rightful place in his bureau. 

“Uh, have you seen this place? It’s not exactly rigged with ‘Entrapment’ levels of security,” you snarked, folding your arms across your chest.

“Does that make you a cat burglar? Are you Catherine Zeta-Jones in this scenario?” Diego glanced at you from his socks, cocking a strong eyebrow. 

“If you want me to be, sweetie,” you shrugged. “But, uh -- and don’t take this the wrong way, Diego, but you don’t exactly have anything I’d want to steal.” 

“Then I’ll amend the question. What are you doing here?” Diego asked, finally turning to fully face you, taking in your form as you stood by his bed. The sight causing a pleasantly-unpleasant little something to prickle across his skin. 

No, no, it’s not like that, he chided himself. Besides. You were an absolutely monumental pain in his ass. And his head. And basically every other body part of his you came in contact with. Nope, nope... Don’t think about her body parts “coming into contact” with anything of yours, he scolded. 

“Aw, well now, Big Deal. Maybe I just missed you?” You mused. 

“Doubtful. Did you come back to kick my ass with your freaky little homicidal chokehold some more?” Diego snapped.

Ouch. Maybe you had gone too far in your last little encounter. After all, wasn't that why you were there? To check on your favorite knife-wielding antagonist? To make sure you hadn't actually hurt him?

But what came out instead was--

"Is there any other kind of chokehold?" You hummed, arching your brow. 

Before he could stop himself, Diego retorted, “Based on our last meeting, I think you know there is." 

Momentarily stunned into silence, feeling the heat rush to your cheeks at the memory of his hands on your throat, you dropped your arms from where they were crossed at your chest down to your sides, hands flexing nervously. You chuckled.

"Heh. As tempting as that offer is, pretty boy, I only came to make sure I didn't ring your bell too bad."

Diego leaned against his dresser, tilting his head back and looking down his perfect, strong nose at you. 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I must be going fuckin' deaf. Did you just say you slunk in here with your little kitten tail between your legs to say you were sorry?" Diego snorted, obviously pleased with himself as he saw the obvious fluster cross your face.

Okay, now he was pissing you off. You came here with good will and he sasses you? Two can play at that, as you two so often do...

"You must be fuckin' deaf, dipshit. I didn't say I was here to say I was sorry. I did say I wanted to make sure I didn't kick your sorry ass into oblivion. Which, you're obviously fine, so I'll just be going." You crossed Diego's room, breezing for the door.

Honestly, why did you think this was a good idea? Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Diego caught your arm as you passed him in your hurried attempt at an exit. You gave a half-hearted tug to pull your arm from Diego's grip, surprised to find how firm it was. You turned your head to meet Diego's gaze, throat closing around your sudden nerves. Diego's eyes were molten, boring into you with quizzical questions and low-burning heat. His grip on your arm afforded you an insight into the unique blend that was his confusion and simmering passion.

"What are you doing?" You asked.

"Come on," Diego drawled. "You clearly know what I'm feeling. But I have no idea what you're feeling. You have me at a disadvantage. I don't like it."

"Every time we meet, I have you at a disadvantage," you snarked. At the brief hurt that flashed across Diego's face, you sighed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I meant what I said when I told you I was coming to check on you … I just--" 

You looked down at your feet, the laces in your boots suddenly incredibly interesting to you. Diego's other hand gently gripped your chin, his thumb pressing into its apex, fingers curled beneath your jaw.

"D-don't do that-- keep going. Tell me what you're feeling for once," Diego implored, eyes meeting yours once more, lips ever-so-close to yours. “Please,” he added, softly.

Had your heart been thudding like this the whole time?? Was your jacket always this hot? All you could hear was the pounding sheet of rain, pressing itself into your brain, growing fuzzier. Diego's proximity to your person was decidedly distracting. Wholeheartedly overwhelming. 

Could he really not tell what you were thinking? You were certain at this point it must be written all over your face. Were you not being obvious?? Your burning ardor for him creeping through every inch of your person, drowning your intentions and better sensibilities in anything and everything Diego Hargreeves. You swallowed the lump in your throat before speaking.

"I'm feeling-- was feeling … guilty. The last time I saw you.. I h-hit you...  pretty hard. So, you win. I guess I am here to tell you I'm sorry." You brushed your fingers softly over the bruise that adorned his prominent, proud cheekbone. "I… I just wanted you to be okay. Because I think you were just trying to help. And that's stupid. It's stupid. I'm sorry," you hurriedly stammered. 

Diego relinquished his grip on your arm, allowing his hand to travel down your side until it met your waist. He cocked his head and studied your eyes with his own mercurial ones-- searching for any hint of mistruth in your confession, but seemingly finding none. 

After all, he too knew the honesty behind words that struggled to come out.

"You were… worried about me? You?"

"Let's not make a big thing of this, big boy. You're obviously fine. I shouldn't have come… An honest mistake. Won’t happen again," you started to turn your head, breaking his gaze. 

But Diego's grip on your chin firmed, forcing you to look at him again before surging forward and crushing his lips to yours. 

And, oh, this was bliss-- you were just sure of it. Your yearning manifested itself in the hand you had placed on Diego's cheek, cupping your hands to the sides of his face before dragging them back to thread through the closely-cropped hair at the nape of his neck, then passing your hands up through his longer hair toward the top of his head and tugging. You took advantage of the gasp Diego elicited at that sensation, sweeping your tongue into his mouth. 

Your shared lust bled through your connected skin, hands on faces and elsewhere…  washing over you both like warm static, a pleasant buzz akin to drinking just a little too much champagne. 

Diego’s hands tugged at the hem of your rain-dampened hoodie, tugging it over your head. Your newly-exposed skin prickled with goosebumps at the sudden chill. You had run over here in the rain, after all. Diego’s darkened, honeyed gaze reverently took in your form. 

Never one to waste an opportunity, you took the break in action as your chance to respond in kind-- peeling his skin-tight black crewneck shirt from his own gloriously-sculpted body. 

The two of you stood, staring at each other’s exposed torsos, ragged breaths dragging through the air of passion so-stifling the room like incense you’ve left burning for too long. 

Diego stared at your chest, breasts heaving from behind the scrap of lace that constituted your bralette-- were those piercings that made your nipples poke so prominently through the lace? WIth this realization, Diego felt himself harden. He lunged for you with a growl, scooping you by the waist and dropping you with a bounce onto his bed. 

His mouth latched onto your throat, sucking insistently while his powerful hands rested at the edges of the delicate lace trim of your bra, passing almost reverently across your ribcage. 

You gasped as he brushed a thumb over your nipple, feeling yourself growing wet beneath your leggings. You hmm’d a whine as Diego’s mouth found that spot on your throat, his thumb still rolling circles over your nipple. 

“D-Diego,” you gasped, sucking in air like you’d never properly breathed before.

“Yeah, baby?” 

“Take it off,” you glanced down at the scrap of lace that adorned your chest. “Please,” you intoned, sweetly. 

“Since you asked so nicely,” Diego said,” creeping his fingers beneath the lace to lift it off your skin. Suddenly, with that preternatural speed he’d come to recognize as a gift of those who were enhanced, like himself, you seized his wrist and squeezed. 

“It wasn’t meant to be nice,” you ground out. “Take. It. Off. Now.” 

With that, you released his wrist, and Diego gripped the lace where it rested beneath your breasts with this two hands and tugged, ripping your bralette cleanly in two, exposing your tits to his roving gaze. 

“There you go, Big Deal,” you preened in satisfaction, taking your own hands from where they had previously been resting along his strong abdomen, trailing them down to the top of his jeans. You popped the button on his fly and began tugging his zipper down, before Diego caught your hand as quickly as you had just done to him. 

“I’ve got this, baby,” Diego assured. 

With that, he brought his mouth down to your left breast, swirling his tongue around your nipple, taking the hand still clutching your wrist and planting it above your head. He released your wrist, trailing his hand, down your side until it met the waistband of your leggings. He pressed his fingers beneath the waistband, raking his fingers under your panties, to where you wanted him most. 

As he dragged a finger through your wetness, you gasped out a keening sigh. Diego’s long fingers working magic against your center, rubbing up and down your slit before pressing one, long finger inside. He lifted his mouth from your breast, pressing it to yours to swallow your moan with a searing kiss.

After a few more moments, Diego slid his finger from your center, retracting his hand from your pants, his other hand coming to meet it, peeling your leggings and panties from you in one fluid motion. You lifted and wiggled your hips to assist him. As soon as the leggings were free from your legs, you wasted no time in wrapping your bare legs around Diego’s waist, locking your ankles behind him and pulling him to you, dragging your hands up his neck and into his hair, hissing in pained pleasure as you rolled your hips against Diego’s still denim-clad hardness. 

Diego groaned as he felt your hardened nipples press against his chest, the microscopic bite of cold from your piercings as they touched his warm skin made him sigh.

The room felt like it was bordering on a hundred degrees, the previously champagne-drunk feeling of your shared lust now replaced with a frantic urge to taste and mark every inch of the other as their own. 

As you continued to grind your hips into Diego, he kissed you deeply, tongue sliding into your mouth, running along your own tongue and teeth, tasting every bit of your want for him as he succumbed to the heated buzz of the room. 

Your power had its benefits, he reasoned, if it meant this would feel so… resplendent. 

The mutuality of your shared passion was enough to do you in. You couldn’t be imagining that Diego wanted you as much as you wanted him. If that wasn’t the case, you both wouldn’t be burning like this, writhing atop his bed with pent-up passion and aggression. 

Diego broke his hands from where they had previously been digging bruises into your hips, coming up onto his knees to start shucking his own jeans and underwear off. 

And oh, he thought, you were a vision. As he looked at you while he stripped himself, he was overcome. Your half-lidded gaze swimming with hazy, unfulfilled promises, swirling lazily like the drizzle of sinfully sweet syrup over something forbidden. Your lips were flushed, swollen and lightly bruised from the punishing pace of your shared kisses. Your wickedly luscious curves and the glimmering slick between your thighs on display for only him. In this moment, he felt he could die under whatever your power would dish out, if it meant he died feeling like this. 

Now bared to you in his entirety, Diego positioned himself once more between your legs, his impressive length sliding to where he had guided it along your opening. 

You tossed your head back, eyes closed at the glorious feeling of his skin finally meeting yours where you wanted it most… but, still, it wasn’t enough. 

“Di- eh - go,” you panted, your glimmering gaze meeting his lustrously darkened one. “P-please, I need it. I need you,” you cried piteously, clutching his shoulders and grinding your hips once more against him.

Diego chuckled, only to happy to oblige. With a guiding hand and a smooth flex-and-thrust of his hips, Diego entered you with a powerful, needed thrust. You cried out, sound going straight to his cock, twitching from its rightful place inside of you. 

“There, now, baby,” Diego crooned, bringing his mouth back to yours and humming into your open lips. “Doesn’t that feel ... So. Much. Better?” He punctuated each of his last few words with hard, firm thrusts of his hips. 

You nodded, eagerly fusing your mouths together, rolling your hips in kind to meet Diego’s sweet, but punishing thrusts. 

“After all that shit you pulled with me,” DIego ground out, “It’s nice to know-- this is what you really wanted. Fuck--” he broke off as you clenched around him just right. “This is what you needed.” 

You whined your assent, keening and high-pitched. 

“Mmmm, I want y-you, as much as you want me,” you gasped out, Diego’s brutal thrusting brushing your clit with his pubic bone, bringing you ever closer, closer, closer to that teetering edge. You lifted yourself up to balance on one hand and meet Diego’s face where he was hovering above you, your sweat-slicked bodies pressing into one another with a delicious, filthy heat. You looked into his eyes, your jaw slack with the stupidly good feeling of everything he was doing to you. 

You turned your head to face his sculpted shoulder, and grazed your teeth there, biting into the apex of his arm. Diego hissed, obviously pleased with the feeling, bringing his hand to your neck, fingers wrapping around your throat and tearing your teeth away from his shoulder, guiding your mouth back to his with the pads of his fingers lightly pressing into your airway.

You gasped, the combined feeling of his kiss, his pressing, insistent touch, and his cock inside you brushing repeatedly against that spot of your inner walls causing you to clench, crying out your sudden, gushing release. 

Diego guided your head back to his pillow, clenching his fist, the same battered-knuckled boxer’s fist that had previously clutched your throat, now clutched around his bedframe as he hammered his final thrusts, pounding into you until he met his release, groaning as he came down from his sudden, bursting high. 

He sighed into your neck, the lovingly sticky heat of your sweaty bodies pressed together as he eased himself from you, pulling you into his side.

You sighed in contentment. 

Was everything Diego Hargreeves did punctuated with such beautiful, forthright power?

---

You both lie in the after, bodies pressed firmly together. It would have been romantically intimate had the primary motivator not been the lack of space on Diego's too-small mattress squeezed along the wall in his room. 

Nevertheless, you lie there in complete contentment, basking in the afterglow and Diego's delightfully even, rhythmic breathing.

Said lothario had his head turned into your cheek, nose brushing against your hair. His arm around you, curling you to him and trailing his fingers up and down your side at a slow, steady pace.

Why couldn't it always be like this? 

After all, fire doused with water still burns brightly at one time, but loses its penchant for destruction, tampered in cool, calming depths and leaving behind cooling steam. So, too, had you and Diego drawn a peaceable, but joyfully sweaty truce. 

In that moment, you could see yourself loving him. You know he'd let you, if you gave him enough time and enough of yourself. The man had not had enough love given to him in his life-- he fought for it, tooth and nail. And had come up woefully empty, like clutching at soft sand that slips through your fingers. He'd had the love of his siblings, sure. But this was -- understandably-- different. You recognized a chasm in him that you often thought you'd never mend within yourself. 

But he was so deserving of love. Whereas you? Well, the jury was still out. 

When you think of Diego, you couldn't help but think of strength. Assuredness. Agility. His aura burned red in your deeper sentiments. Power. You do associate his memory with annoyance, sure, but also a biting wit that he so-oft concealed. And an endearing sentimentality. And an iron will suffused with stubbornness.  

You had gleaned some of this from your foray into exploring his emotions, sure. But you don't use your power at every turn. The rest of it was every impression Diego had devastatingly left you with. You had learned so much of him, you yearned to share a piece of yourself, similarly eager for acceptance. Which then prompted you to share--

“You know,” you piped up in the dark, “You remind me a bit of the main character of my favorite books series-- Ever hear of ‘The Dark Tower?’ You know, the legendary Gunslinger?” 

Diego scoffed at that.

“Guns are for pussies, real men throw knives,” he stated primly, but still unable to conceal the smile in his voice.

“That sounds a little rehearsed, Big Deal. But I’ll let it slide. Besides, you don’t know what you’re missing,” you acquiesced, turning your head to face him, your noses brushing.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m not into all that bookworm stuff. Cuz, ya know, I’m not a fuckin’ virgin,” he chuckled. Obviously pleased with his middle school-grade burn. 

You met his eyes, yours widening in mock surprise. “Oh no?” you gasped. “Well, then why do you dress like one?”

Honestly, it had to be some kind of world record, how fast Diego’s face fell.

"I'm kidding, big boy. You know I dig the black leather," you crooned. Ever eager to smooth the waters of this moment, of his now furrowed brow, back to the placid lake it had been.

"You're goddamn right, you do," Diego chuffed, his grin now prominent in his voice.

You looked at him, your eyes travelling between his shining, ochre eyes and his full lips.

"I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye. 

“I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind.

"I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart," you recited.

Diego regarded you for a moment before brushing his lips across yours, kissing you warmly.

"What was that?" He asked.

"'The Dark Tower,'" you replied. "What? I like to read. You really do remind me of him. Surly, but just. Lost, but ever-searching. Pinpoint accuracy. Deadly. But hasn't lost hope." 

Diego kissed you again, running his hand down your body beneath the covers to grip your bum and roll your body over his, urging you to tarry with him on another burning exploration of one another's bodies.

Yes, you think, sighing as Diego's teeth graze that spot on your neck, his warm palm on your breast. You could easily fall in love with him… if you let yourself. You were probably more than halfway in love with him already.

Oh, no.

---

You awoke to the early-morning sun peeking weakly behind the remnants of fat, overstuffed rainclouds from the night before, purpling the sky as sunlight met grey. 

You took in Diego’s, sweet sleeping form-- his long lashes fringing his sweetly-closed eyes, his cropped hair mussed from a night of tugging, rolling, writhing. He breathed deeply, evenly, peaceably, as evidenced by the repetitive motion of his muscled torso, his long-fingered hands resting along his stomach. 

You couldn’t do this. Couldn’t taint someone so noble and beautiful with your special brand of poisonous manipulation. 

You couldn’t stop yourself as you spoke softly to the sleeping man beside you, coming to sit on the edge of his bed and brushing one hand through his soft hair. 

“You wanted to know about my power? It’s a curse. You think I want this? This? It’s isolation, Diego-- it’s eternal damnation. I shouldn’t be able to do what I can do …  No one should. It’s not a gift, it’s a curse. And it dooms me to a life alone,” your voice cracks as your breath catches in your throat, hitching over tears that were now, suddenly pooling in your eyes. “There’s no trust. It’s what I … It’s what I deserve.” 

With that, you left Diego’s room. Leaving him to wake alone to a cold one-half of his bed, fingers clutching over air and the warm memories of the night before. He blinked in confusion, the sting of your rejection settling beneath his skin. 

---

When you saw Diego again, it was nearly a month after your last… encounter. The sharp knife of anxiety and longing you so regularly felt in yourself since that day, you recognized immediately as emanating from Diego as you watched him limp away from what you assumed was a particularly nasty fight. 

“Big Deal!” You shouted across the street and through the darkness. 

Diego’s head whipped up, head turning to the direction of your voice, before meeting your gaze. He shook his head, looked away, and kept walking. Away from you. 

Ouch. 

Honestly, you could understand why he would. You had done the same to him a month ago. Walked away. But the pinging sting of his rejection dug at you, like glass into the thin skin between your knuckles. 

All you had ever wanted was for other people to understand. But mostly, now, you realized… You really only cared that Diego understood. 

You took off after him, enhanced speed helping you catch up to his limping form outside of a boarded-up, long-closed bar. 

“Diego!” You called, stopping in front of him, causing him to halt.

“What could you possibly want with me, after all this time?” Diego spit.

“I.. I deserve that, Big Deal. I do,” you glanced at your boots, scuffing the toe into the pavement. “Please, just… hear me out?” 

You looked up at Diego. Really looked at him. His beautiful, tawny skin damp with sweat from a fight, his usually bright and mischievous eyes sunken under the weight of tired bags that sat beneath them. He looked drawn, more exhausted than you remember. You caught sight of a particularly nasty, jagged cut on the side of his neck that had clearly only recently stopped bleeding, the splotching clot like a raised, splintering cut from a large cat’s claws. A particularly nasty bruise was already forming around his left eye and onto his beautifully-sculpted, prominent cheek. 

You rushed to meet him, your fingers coming to brush along his cheeks, mindful of the bruise. He closed his eyes at your touch, lashes fanning downward in defeat. 

“Who hurt you? What did they do, Big Deal? Who the fuck did this? If anyone hurt you, I would make them hurt. I’ll make them pay”

Diego dropped the knife you now noticed was previously-clutched in his right hand, bringing his hand to meet your wrist. 

“Don’t do that,” he whispered.

“Don’t do what? Kill the fucker who hurt you? Fine, I’ll just break their knees--” you started, before Diego shushed you.

“No,” he said, “Shut the fuck up. D- Don’t act like you give a shit. Someone who gives a shit wouldn’t bounce for a fuckin’ month. Not after a night like that.” 

Your hand left Diego’s face. 

“I… I deserve that,” you said. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” And with that, you plopped yourself onto the pavement, sitting on the sidewalk at Diego’s feet. Annoying? Sure. Dramatic? Sure. But if something is stupid and it works, then it isn’t stupid. 

Diego sighed at you, rolling his eyes before coming to sit beside you, gasping out in pain and clutching an obviously bruised rib or two on his way down. 

“Fine. Tell me what the fuck happened. Why’d you go?”

“Diego--” you started… “I-- I can’t be with someone when I’m like this. It never works,” you confessed. 

“Like what?” He pressed, bringing his hand to your knee. 

“I’m-- I’m a monster,” you cried. “Adler knew it. Everyone I meet knows it. It’s only a matter of time before you know it too. I just… I don’t know how to stop.” The tears you thought you could hold at bay were now creeping up and causing your throat to close around your words of contrition. 

“You’re not--” Diego began, but you silenced him with a harsh wave of your hand. 

“You don't understand. You wanted to know how it works? I’ll tell you. The power works based on the other's emotion, sure. I amplify what they feel. Cripple them with it, even. But that's not all… it only works, really works, if it's something I can draw on. They feel what I want them to feel-- because I feel it too …" you admitted. “Everything I ever do to someone else I can only do because I know how it feels. If I want someone to hurt, they’ll hurt… I -- I don’t want to do that to you, too.” 

“You won’t. Not with me,” Diego pressed. 

“And how can you be sure? Even now, I feel how pissed you are at me for leaving. It’s humming beneath your skin. I can feel it.” 

Diego nodded, picking up the knife he had previously dropped and beginning to spin it around in his hand. 

“I know it because I felt it. When we were together,” he sighed. “We both, we both can do these things. Anyone else would piss themselves if it was turned against them. But you look the danger of what I am in the face, and you laugh. When we’re together, we’re matched. The way that room felt? I know what that was.” 

You sat, stunned at Diego’s read of the situation. 

“I take back what I said the first night we met,” you said. At the question in his eyes, you continued, “You’re not dumb. That was… that was… something. But I know how to flex my power. I know what fells all men. Fear is a powerful emotion." 

Diego smiled at you. 

“I hate to break it to you, princess, but I’m not scared of you. I know you think I am, but I’m not. And you know what's even stronger than fear? Love."

You looked at Diego, blinked. He blinked back. You then turned your head with a mocking, retching, gag.

"Jesus, Big Deal. They teach you ‘Hokey Catchphrases 101’ at Dysfunctional Superhero Camp?"

“Hey,” he jostled your shoulder with his. “You know I’m right.” 

You stood, offering Diego your hand.

“Come on, big boy. Walk me home?” 

Diego acquiesced, coming to stand with a stifled grunt. 

“You’re lucky I heal quickly.” 

With that, the two of you walked down the street. You matched Diego’s stride, mindful of his injuries. As you walked side-by-side, your fingers brushed. Before you could stop yourself or think better of it, you took Diego’s hand. 

When you reached your door, you turned to Diego, fiddling with your keys. 

“Everyone’s distinct, you know? Everyone feels differently. Wears their hearts on their sleeve, so to speak. But with everyone, it’s a different emotion. Some flaunt pride. Some are more passive. Do you want to know what I feel when I see you?” 

Diego glanced down to where your hands were still joined. He brought them up to his mouth, pressing a kiss to your knuckles. 

“I want whatever you’ll tell me. You’re such an open book,” he admitted sarcastically. You rolled your eyes.

“Come on, I’m being serious here. You feel... you feel...” 

At Diego’s urging look, you continued. 

"You feel like warmth. Like I could wrap myself in you and never feel the biting cold of my heart again. And when you're not around? The absence of you is worse than any feeling I could ever exploit. I hate it when you aren't here."

Diego stared at you in silence for a moment, before he spoke, “I really think you should open the door now and let me take you inside.” 

You smiled, pleased that your honest confession had gone over well, the smile morphing into a smirk. 

“As you wish, Big Deal.”

And in the morning? Well, In the morning, you and Diego were still wrapped up in one another. 

You looked into Diego’s swimming, honey-and-tar eyes, tracing your palms down the sides of his jaw and cupping his cheeks as you told him, “You have my whole heart. It’s yours -- crush it, hold it, bury it in whatever you feel ... Do whatever you want with it, I don’t care. Just say you want it-- that you want me.” 

“I want you.” With that, he kissed you deeply.

---

You were a master of emotional manipulation. To do that, you had to have a decent handle on your own emotions. For years, you’d rested on your own laurels of your mastery of self, indulging only in the most passing of forays into others’ feelings for the sake of your own.

So why on Earth were you so fucking nervous? Why couldn’t you get it under control?

Yet, here you were, hand in Diego’s, fingers laced, on your way to Hargreeves Manor to meet his siblings, months after your mutual confessions of want. The two of you had been inseparable. 

Diego clearly sensed your unease, because he turned to you, squeezing your fingers in his own, planting a sweet kiss to your forehead. 

“They’ll like you,” he promised. 

“How can you be so sure?” You worried, trying to keep all of them straight in your mind based on Diego’s stories, anecdotes and descriptions. 

“Because I like you, and they love to annoy me. So they’ll definitely want to buddy up,” he chuckled with a shrug. “Baby, you’ll be fine.”

With that, you found yourself standing in the ornate living room with five nonplussed persons who introduced themselves to you one by one.

As the largest of the group approached you, you beat him to the punch.

“You must be Luther,” you said, pumping your arm in a handshake where his hand comically dwarfed yours. 

Luther blinked. “How did you know?” 

"Easy,” you said, “You look like a 'Number One.’ " 

Luther straightened, obviously pleased. "Important?" he asked.

"Self-important."

This caused the lithe one with the smudged eyeliner who had introduced himself with a wink as, “Klaus, darling,” to howl with laughter. 

“She’s fuckin’ got your number, Luther,” he gasped out between his chuckles. He turned to the seemingly-empty air beside himself and said, “I know! She is fun!” 

The group found itself sitting around the living room on the various, overstuffed furnishings, in a fun little Q-and-A circle, which was only getting easier all the time, as you found the Hargreeves siblings’ obvious bond to be so endearing. The glamorous one you knew to be Allison had queried about your power, curious as to how you and Diego had met. 

Diego had recounted your first meeting to the group, and proffered an explanation of your powers with, "She takes the idea of 'wrapped up in your emotions' and makes it literal."

“And how did this come about?” Klaus queried, gesturing his long fingers between you and Diego. “It’s not like that first meeting was full of warm-and fuzzies.”

“I don’t know … We’ve …  run into each other a few times,” you offer with a shrug and a shy grin. 

Klaus clapped his hands, a large grin adorning his face.

“Oh-ho! I like this. Diego’s girlfriend beats the shit out of him on the regular!” Klaus happily sang to the massive living room. “Or is that how you two, you know, keep it exciting?” he intoned to Diego in what must have been the world’s loudest and worst attempt at a whisper.

“She does not beat the shit out of me,” Diego protested, rolling his eyes at his brother’s swaggering antics.

“Right, right, you beat the shit out of each other. Honestly, I get it. Kinda hot. No judgment from me, you crazy kids,” Klaus smiled and held up his hands in surrender, flashing you the “Hello” and “Goodbye” on his palms. “Diego told me about you the day after you first met. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it myself when I’m ever-so-alone at night,” he added with a wink. 

All you could do was chuckle. Who couldn’t love Klaus Hargreeves? 

After that, the questioning from the gathered siblings dissipated into a casual little party, with people pairing off to speak in groups of just them, and with drinks from the open bar being passed around amongst the siblings. Even Five. If you were honest, it was strange to see a thirteen-year-old boy drink frozen margaritas. But you’d had to remind yourself that he was actually older than all of you. Honestly, you’d tried not to think about it too hard. 

In between drinks, you found yourself engaged in silly banter with Klaus and Vanya, laughing at Klaus’s stories of eating bagels from dumpsters and his bantering memories with their brother Ben. You responded in kind with stories of your own-- making your elementary school teachers believe they’d had crushes on one another by exploiting their repressed desires, making your classmates piss themselves every Halloween with some prank or another ...

While Vanya was a bit more reserved with her amusement, you’d caught a smile playing at her lips. Klaus outright howled. 

“Oh, you truly belong here, don’t you? Reggie would’ve haaaated you,” he gestured at the stern portrait of their father. “Which means you’re absolutely perfect for our dear Diego,” Klaus proclaimed, lacing his fingers through your own. 

With that, Klaus turned to you with a conspiratorial giggle and hmm'd into your ear, "You know what they say, peaches. 'A scrub is a guy who thinks he's fly.' And if we're being honest, Diego deeeeeeefinitely thinks he's fly." 

You laughed, choking on your sip of margarita. You’d never felt a kind of discordant unity like this one. 

With Diego’s family… with Diego, you felt like you truly did belong.

As you and Diego lay together in bed after the day with his family, he’d asked if you felt comfortable.

“Of course, love.” You pressed a small kiss to the tip of Diego’s nose, nuzzling your own against his. “They were wonderful. You’re wonderful. Thank you for sharing all of this with me.”

Diego gazed lovingly at you, eyes, a deep, endless pit of an eclipse, brimming with golden honey streaks of mischief. 

“I can’t wait to share everything with you,” he whispered, pressing a kiss into your shoulder and settling beside you comfortably. 

Ah. So that’s what that warm, soft, cotton-y, cloud-like feeling you had begun to experience since you’d began your relationship with Diego was ... Comfort. Funny how it blended so seamlessly into the burning, cinnamon-tinged, blooming one you’d come to recognize as his love.

---

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