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absolutebl · 9 months ago

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Since we have a new version of this airing right now with Taiwan’s Unknown, I’m doing a repost.

Stepbrother Trope & the Nature of Taboo in BL

Taboo is an interesting thing. Anthropologists have a saying that goes something like this:

There are no cultural universals that cross time and space except one: every culture has taboos, and in every one of those cultures the taboos are broken.

Taboos can revolve around consumption (from we don’t eat shellfish/dogs to we don’t eat humans), to death (don’t kill your parents), and of course sexuality (don’t have sex with a child or a family member).

Generally speaking, you can identify taboo within your own psyche if you react viscerally to an idea - as in the very thought makes you physically ill, changes your heart rate, engages a fight or flight response, etc…

Okay so. I hope you can also see how taboos would be culturally based, even apparently simple and universal ones like:

Don’t have sex with a child.

This proscription rests on how we culturally define child vrs adult. Do we assign an age to the transition point (e.g. 18), an achievement (e.g. education, killing your first big animal), a physical manifestation (e.g. period, voice cracking), an individual choice in attire/appearance (longer skirts, a shaved head).

(The fact that in reading the above you probably got a little frightened and maybe sickened is taboo in action. I call it the “squick factor.” This post is at risk of being taken down simply because i mention this subject. That is cultural enforcement of taboo.)

Some taboo nuances are achieved (like education) while some are ascribed (like age of consent). Same thing for family dynamics: ascribed = biological birth links, achieved = social links like marriage. Many taboos will change over time even within the same culture: like age of consent, acceptability of cousin marriage, and being queer (e.g. sex between adult men, was/is in fact taboo in many cultures).

Taboos & Family Dynamics

Family dynamics are similarly culturally flexible around incest taboos. The nuclear (Western concept) family dynamic is generally protected by the incest taboo in most cultures (that would be sex between direct biological lineage: grandparents, parents, children, siblings). Of course, there are exceptions, like marriages between brothers and sisters in Roman Egypt.

However, there are cultures that linguistically include cousins in the filial (so cousins would be referred to as brother or sister there isn’t a separate word), in such places, cousins sleeping together is more likely to be taboo. Cultures where the term cousin exists as a separate linguistic concept are more likely to condone unions between cousins (e.g. Regency England), so, not taboo. Or not AS taboo. Although these kinds of things can, and usually do, change over time.

Like with how we define what is means to be an “adult,” what it means to be a family member is also culturally defined, which brings us to… stepbrothers.

The Stepbrother Trope in Origin Yaoi

Taboos are often fetishized, which in romance means they can often become tropes. The stepbrother trope is pretty simple:

stepbrothers fall in love with each other, often one of the two (usually the seme character) has a long held crush on the other, sometimes since childhood

BL has a long tradition of using this trope. One of the most iconic examples of this is the yaoi manga Brother by Yuzuha Ougi (published in English by DramaQueen in 2005). It is INFAMOUS for being beautifully drawn, completely explicit, and one of the highest heat mangas ever produced. But A LOT of other yaoi used this trope before and after Yuzuha Ougi.

Why This Trope Wigs People Out

Stepbrothers means objectively:

the parents of two boys marry each other (these boys are not biological siblings or blood related), and because of the social and legal construct of that union, the society recognizes that the two boys are now siblings.

What’s interesting about stepbrothers and taboo is that the original act of the parents marrying means there is (by default) no blood-relation taboo in place (they could not marry if they were blood related). So if the parents had not married and the two main characters met = no taboo. It was the act of someone else’s marriage that rendered the two characters somewhat arbitrarily taboo (they are, after all, not blood related, and yet now they have been assigned sibling status by someone else’s action).

So what actually renders this taboo aside from ascribed status?

What squicks people out about this trope? Here’s what many people would say:

1. Childhood Exposure

It’s sickening if the step-brothers grow up together and thus they were children together.

How much time and how much of the childhood spent together renders this taboo? If the characters are already adult when the parents get together, does that make the trope okay?

2. Proximity

It’s cohabitation that makes it disgusting.

What about best friends who grow up as next door neighbors then fall in love? Is that taboo? Does living under the same roof together make all the difference? How about a defacto adopted son, who seeks shelter in the neighbor’s home and ends up living there, then falls in love? How about the orphan taken in (see Cherry Blossoms After Winter)? Is that taboo too?

3. Legal Standing in the Eyes of Society

The social legality of the relationship renders it unpleasant. The mere fact of the parents being married has redefined the relationship of the children to such an extent that any sexual contact is verboten.

What if the boys were in a relationship first, their parents met after they had already been together as lovers for years? Then the parents got married. Is the boys’ preexisting relationship rendered null and void?

What about an adopted brother, same rules apply?

4. Power Dynamic

The stepbrother trope in BL often includes an age difference as well (one of them is older, sometimes a great deal older). This casts the older brother in a parental role, which many find repugnant.

In BL and yaoi, one way they circumvent the inherent disgust of this power dynamic (especially if the characters grew up together) is to make it so that the older bother is the innocent ignorant uke character. It’s the younger one who has the crush. And it is the younger one who confesses first and acts on that crush.

(And it’s one of the reasons we see the stepbrother trope so often in gay romance and so rarely in het romance - although it does exist - because het would require the female character to be the aggressor in order to subvert this power dynamic and the companion squick factor, but in het romance a woman with sexual agency is kinda taboo. *joke*)

Why this post?

All of this messiness makes the stepbrother trope and it’s interrelationship with taboo fascinating to me. Sometimes, when I encounter it, I find myself utterly unbothered by it, other times it squiks me out.

For me, this largely has to do with the nature and intent of the characters involved.

What HIStory 4: Close to You has given us is an older character who genuinely believes he is in a brother-only relationship. Who loves and acts (and has always done so) as an older brother. Contrast this to an obsessed younger adopted stepbrother who has never believed in them being actual brothers, who has refused even to change his name because he so desperately wants never to be perceived as brothers. His obsessive desperation drives him to commit predatory acts of stalker-ism, physical violence, and ultimately statutory rape.

It is particularly hard to watch because it’s pitting a pining seme character against a lonely uke character, but the ideology that ultimately separates them is how each character is defining taboo and family. Their world views are entirely different. It’s difficult to imagine how this can be reconciled well by the story. Even if they manage to somehow condone the seme’s actions, even if the actors have really great chemistry, we are in troubled waters here and the natural inclination on a storyteller’s part would be to end this tragically.

I don’t have a pithy conclusion for this essay, I just wanted to unpack the trope a bit. Especially as it’s rearing it’s ugly head in two dramas right now (Brothers & H4).

BL Using the Stepbrother Trope

Addicted Heroin - China RECOMMENDED

Brothers - Thailand

HIStory: Stay Away From Me - Taiwan

HIStory 2: Crossing the Line (subplot) - Taiwan RECOMMENDED

HIStory 4: Close to You (subplot) - Taiwan

Love By Chance, TharnType (subplot) - Thailand

My Bromance (movie, series, series 2) - Thailand

Top Secret Together - Thailand

The Promise - Vietnam

Melting Night: Secret Kiss - Japan (short) RECOMMENDED

Transit Girls

Alternate Versions of the Stepbrother Trope

Servant who grows up in or tangential to the household, kind of like a brother but much lower class. Or adopted brother/live in friend. This is often also a version of the whipping boy trope.

Because of You (subplot) - Taiwan

Irresistible Love - China RECOMMENDED

Love By Chance 2: A Chance at Love (subplot) - Thailand

Love Stage! (subplot) - Japan

Golden Blood - Thailand

Cherry Blossoms After Winter - Korea HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Friend Forever - Thailand

Tin Tam Jai - Thailand

Maybe brothers but it all turns out to be a scam or mistaken identity.

Because of You - Taiwan

Precise Shot - China

Paint with Love - Thailand

(source)

#addicted bl #brothers the series #brothers yaoi #stepbrother trope #romance trope #history 4: close to you

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luxaofhesperides · 4 months ago

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the beginning - danny

The Lazarus Pit brings Danny back.

The child who went into them, however, is gone forever.

Danyal al Ghul is the soul who should reside in this body. Danyal has a life still to live and Danny died ages ago, old and surrounded by loved ones, ready to spend the rest of his forever in the Infinite Realms.

Something's gone terrible wrong, he thinks rather wryly, squinting through the cold green water that surrounds him. An ache echoes through his body and he brings a hand—small, a child's hand that shouldn't belong to him— to his stomach, where he can feel a large wound slowly pull itself together.

Did I get stabbed?

He means to continue the thought, but a sharp pain hits his head, making him curl up. He gasps and air bursts from his lungs, water rushing to fill in the empty space. Danny chokes, panicking, as memories slide into place, the lives of Danyal al Ghul and Danny Fenton fighting for dominance in his head. His lungs burn, throat working futilely to push water out, but there's nothing to be done.

Danny is a child again, and just like last time, he dies young.

1. So.

Assassins.

Danny honestly can't tell if this is a step up or a step down from mad scientist parents. On the one hand: he knows they loved him, as clumsy as it was, even though they loved their work more. On the other hand: assassin cult sounds like something out of a fairy tale, and while cool, is definitely not safe for kids.

And Danny, somehow, is a child again.

This really wasn't what he expected when he woke up on the sandy bottom of the pit. He's in ghost form, which is an unpleasant shock, but at least its familiar.

He is also, if his memory as Danyal serves him correctly, nine years old.

Kinda sucks that he died so young this time round. Didn't even make it to the double digits before he was taken out of the running.

He can't remember what it was like being so small in his last life. He can't imagine how anyone would look at a child and run them through with a sword. It's a cruel world he's woken up in. It's made worse by the fact that he's alone.

At least being down here without needing to breathe is giving him valuable time to think.

Danny has lived a full life already. He didn't really need or want another one, content to be a full ghost in the Infinite Realms. But going back isn't really an option, now that he's in a new body. The kid he could have been deserves to live fully, and the least Danny can do is live that life for them.

It'll be hard, but Danny's sure he can manage a decent life for himself.

Being presumed dead will make his escape from the assassins easier, though he'll miss getting the chance to meet his new mother; assassin as she is, Danyal knows her not by her blades but by her soft lullabies and jasmine-scented hair. The loss of her child must be hurting her deeply, but it's necessary. If Danny wants any semblance of a normal life, he has to leave her behind.

Besides, he's seen enough death. He doesn't want to ever be the cause of it.

So, he needs a plan for this new life.

Step one: get out of dodge.

The rest he'll figure out on the way.

Turns out assassins weren't the most shocking thing in this new life.

No, that honor goes to superheroes.

Genuine, honest to God superheroes! With powers and everything!

To think that Danny once called himself a superhero. Ha! As if! He's nothing compared to the likes of Superman or the Flash or even Green Lantern. They're in another league. Literally. They're part of the Justice League, which has a whole slew of other heroes, and Danny is possibly their biggest fan.

Not like that's weird; most people in this world are huge fans of superheroes. Makes sense, since they're the ones who rely on their protection the most.

It does suck to know that his background belongs to that of a villain. Assassins aren't known for saving people, after all.

Part of him contemplates becoming a hero again, taking up the role of Phantom and joining the ranks of Superman. But he's had many years to come to terms with the loss of his teenage years and the bitterness that came with it. That experience, that life once lived, helps him decide each time that being a civilian is the gift this life owes him.

At thirteen, Danny lives in a foster home with six other kids. He's the oldest and has his hands full taking care of everyone else while their foster parents work three jobs between them to keep them all afloat.

When his younger siblings play superheroes, he gladly takes the role of the villain, swooping in with a blanket to kidnap away an innocent bystander that has to be rescued. He falls over dramatically at the end of each fight and praises his siblings' strength and teamwork, making them puff up with pride.

It's all fun and games so long as it only stays fun and games.

Superpowers are cool and all, but his came at the cost of his life, his health, his future. He knows, better than anyone, the price of being a hero. He knows that even Superman carries heavy losses on his shoulders, struggles under burdens no one can see.

He's lucky that the small town he ended up in—Luray, Virginia—has no heroes or villains. Too small a place to be on anyone's radar, apparently.

His classmates often complain about how they wish they could live in a big city where there's more to do, more to see, superheroes flying through the streets to protect them.

Danny is happy where he is. It's quiet, and small, and nothing like what he's used to, but it's safe.

That's all he really wants.

Here's something that stays the same no matter what world he's in: Danny is a magnet for trouble.

If the trouble stopped at bullies, everything would have been fine. Danny could handle Dash, and he could handle Justin just as easily.

But the universe loves to escalate with Danny, specifically, which is why Danny had to reveal his powers when some villain-wannabe school shooter attacked his high school.

And to think he felt bad for Jackson when he didn't make it onto the track team.

Luray does not have a meta population. They're too small to have much of a population at all, and much of it is white which made him, half-Iranian, stand out even before he threw out a barrier of ice to protect his classmates a second before the gunfire began.

"Danny?!" his seatmate, Clarrissa, cries out in alarm.

"Everyone get out the window and run for it!" he orders, "I hold him back as much as I can!"

"You can't stay here!"

"Don't worry," Danny says, offering her a tight smile. "He couldn't kill me even if he tried. Now go!"

His classmates hadn't wasted any more time, sending him shocked looks as they escaped the classroom. A glimpse of his reflection in the window revealed glowing green eyes and blue mist wafting out of his mouth.

Looks like his time in Luray is up. He hopes his foster siblings won't be too mad at him for running away.

The gunfire stops, and Danny takes his chance to leap through his ice, intangible, and tackle Jackson, easily knocking the gun away from him.

"Monster!" Jackson spits at him, and Danny laughs.

"Bold of you to say that. I'm not to one trying to kill people."

He doesn't want to hear anything else that comes out of Jackson's mouth, so he knocks the guy out with a solid hit to a pressure point on his neck. Hopefully that'll keep him down long enough for the cops to get him.

Danny stands and means to leave, but something hits the back of his head hard and he's out before he realizes what's happened.

When he wakes up, he's strapped down to a table in what is undeniably a lab, and sighs.

At least he made it to sixteen before he went into another lab. Maybe in his next life he might even get all the way up to twenty before he's pulled back down here.

4. Though he has all his powers and a ghost form, that doesn't mean he is a ghost in this life.

No, he's fully a meta, which means meta-suppressing cuffs work on him.

It's not exactly a discovery he was hoping to have while locked up in a lab, but it's what he's got, so he has to roll with it. The cuffs are heavy on his wrists and around his throat, keeping him from escaping as a group of people in masks and lab coats bustle around, ignoring him.

His head is still foggy, though likely more from the drugs than the hit he took to his head.

He doesn't bothering talking to any of them; they don't see him as human, and Danny's dealt with enough of that in his past life.

Mad scientists love to talk though, so he still hears the gist of their plans: recreating the meta gene for normal people, making a profit from selling powers, getting rich and famous from their accomplishments. They had been using Jackson to get corpses for human testing, but they got Danny instead — someone they can harvest bio material for, a much better find than a couple dead kids.

If he had the energy to rage, Danny would have killed everyone in the room already. They planned to kill his classmates just for test subjects.

He doesn't want to be an assassin, but he'd gladly lean into those old lessons to make sure they never hurt anyone again.

But the cuffs and drugs do a good job of keeping him docile, barely able to think, as they transport him around to different locations and cut him open.

He's not sure how long it's been when they ease up on the drugs a bit. It still takes time for his body to work through everything, and he comes too with a throat that's dry and a stomach that hasn't had anything in it for quite some time.

The first thing Danny does when they start asking him questions is throw up on them.

If they wanted cooperation, they should have treated him better. This is fully on them.

It makes for a convincing argument for food and water and a bathroom break, at least, so he gets what he demands and takes care of his human body under the cold gazes of three scientists.

"You guys suck," he says conversationally. "Keeping test subjects alive is like basic knowledge. No wonder y'all suck at your jobs."

"Your comments aren't needed," one of the scientists says primly. "Get up. We need to study how using your powers affects your body."

They hook a bunch of different things onto him, then lock him in a glass cage and use the cuff around his throat to send jolts of electricity through him when he doesn't do anything. He throws a chunk of ice at them, watching as it breaks apart into small pieces when it hits the glass. The scientists scribble in their notepads, and when they look at him again, he flips them off.

He gets shocked again, but it's worth it.

The process repeats for another few hours, then he's pulled out of the cage, gets an IV stuck in his arm, and drops off into drugged oblivion before he has time to start throwing hands.

It must have been months. Danny's not sure; it's hard to keep track of time when locked in isolation.

He knows he's fed at least once a day. He's been getting a tray of bland food at random times, but he's counted over 50 trays sliding through the little slot on the bottom of his cell door.

Turns out insulting scientists and their procedures is a bad idea, especially when he has the language to really bruise their egos.

So.

Isolation sucks.

But at least they don't drug him anymore!

The cuffs do their job of keeping him in place, and if he didn't have memories of another life to keep him company, he definitely would have lost his mind long ago.

There's other people in here, other metas. He's heard them screaming and begging for mercy. He's heard them go chillingly quiet. He wonders why there are so many superheroes in this world when not a single one has come to save them.

Surely at least one would notice metas disappearing and would investigate?

But no.

No one ever comes to save them.

So Danny needs to figure out a way past the cuffs, and then he can be Phantom again long enough to free the other metas and make every scientist involve pay for their crimes.

He just needs to wait.

He just needs—

When Danny wakes up, the alarms are ringing. It makes his head pound, throbbing with each piercing sound.

He stumbles up, using the wall to keep his balance, and freezes when he sees that the door to his cell is open.

…Huh.

The hallway is bathed in red light when he steps out. No one's around. He wanders around the facility, searching for answers and only finds more questions.

There are other cells, also empty. Certain rooms have blood splattered across the walls and the floor, but no bodies. Labs are destroyed, broken glass on the floor. But every room is empty.

He wanders until he finds what must be a security room. There's a strange device dangling off a keychain on a rack, and Danny eyes it curiously. He runs his fingers around the cuff on his throat, feels the little depression where the collar comes together, and takes the rounded device. If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work.

But if it does work…

The cuff pops open easily, as if it hasn't been his greatest foe these past few months.

All at once, his strength returns to him. He has forgotten what it was like to breathe easily, to feel his powers come to his call so easily, to be reassured that he can take care of himself.

It's almost like coming back to life.

He transforms, settling back into his ghost form with relief, and flies through the facility in search of any other metas that may need help. He finds no one, but he does catch a glimpse of the outside.

The sky is so blue it almost hurts to look at. Part of the facility has been blown apart; rubble surrounds the place and the surrounding forest has been flattened. It looks as though a fight has moved through the area.

Maybe a superhero did come to save them? Rude of them to leave only Danny, though.

He continues his search, poking his head into different rooms and hallways. He finds a staircase going down and follows it into the basement. More labs greet him, and the glow of computers and strange vials of liquid leave him unsettled.

There's a green glow coming around the corner than reminds him of the Lazarus Pit he flew out of, once upon a time many years ago, and that's what draws him forward.

Tucked away in that familiar glow is a small body, floating in a tube of liquid. There's an oxygen mask attached to her face, but that doesn't stop Danny from recognizing her.

"Ellie?"

Just like in one life, Danny is cloned. The difference is that this time, there's no reason for it, no insane godfather trying to recreate a version of him that will choose him.

No, this time it's from a group of scientists who should have known better, who decided to mess around with his genes, and brought his once little sister now daughter into such a cruel, dangerous world.

Danny barely remembers breaking the glass to get her out of there. He doesn't know where he found the coat to bundle her up in, flying out of the facility as fast as he could. He feels sick, knowing it's his fault that she's here now, forced into a painful, terrifying existence because he wasn't strong enough to save himself.

He's a runaway meta victim of mad science. He can't take care of her.

"I'm sorry, Ellie," he whispers to her, pressing a kiss against her head. "I'm so sorry."

She small in his arms. She barely weighs anything.

Danny blinks back tears and tries to find some place he can stop and rest, somewhere safe he can gather his thoughts and figure out his next steps.

This isn't like when he first woke up in this world, with both sets of memories.

This is Ellie.

She deserves more than just a wish and a half-baked plan for a better life.

She deserves a family that wants her, that can care for her, that can protect her. She deserves to grow up normally and not worry about destabalizing or being a replacement for him or being hunted down.

She deserves one life to be a kid and grow up safe and be whoever she wants to be.

Danny will never be able to give her that.

But maybe he can give her to someone who can.

Danyal grew up with an assassin mother and a cruel grandfather who expected far too much from a child. He was taught to kill and be more weapon than child. He was taught the world was something for him to take, to protect, to water with blood.

Danyal was meant to be the next Demon Head, and the next Bat.

Danny knows he can't go to his mother. If they're both lucky, he will never have to see her again. Knowing his luck, he's already planning explanations for why he never went back to her.

Danny's father, on the other hand…

It didn't take much to put the pieces together. The notorious Bat is Batman, Gotham's vigilante and one of the founders of the Justice League. While a child would have been left confused by the many comments his mother made about his father, it was simple enough for Danny to line them up with what he learned about the heroes of this world and realize, oh, that's my dad.

It takes a few weeks of research, using public libraries with Ellie tucked securely in a wrap to his chest, but he's able to learn more about Batman.

The most important thing being that he has kids.

Of course, none of this is officially acknowledged, but everyone knows that the Robins are his kids. Current Robin, especially, likes to remind people that he's 'the son of Batman'.

Okay. Cool.

Danny has siblings.

Awesome.

He's… not looking forward to those conversations.

At least it means more people to look after Ellie. Assuming they take her in, which Danny's really hoping for.

But it's the best he can do, so Danny sets course for Gotham and hopes that just this once, everything will work out.

Meeting the Bats of Gotham is a lot harder than he expected.

A week in the city and he's barely caught more than a glimpse of them. He can't dedicate a lot of time to tracking them down either, needing to break into grocery stores to get food for him and Ellie.

She's so quiet as a baby, and it terrifies him. She's only cried twice the entire time he's had her, and Danny spends every day begging her to hold on.

Time during the day is spent catching naps and researching common vigilante spotting areas in Gotham. He's got a map of Gotham taken from a library and has been steadily marking it up, putting stars in the best places to find a Bat. There are places all over the city, and Danny has no idea how to know which ones are the best.

The only thing he can do is wait at a different rooftop each night, clinging to Ellie, wondering if this is the last night he has with her.

On the ninth night, someone finally arrives.

"Step away from the edge," a voice demands.

Danny turns to see Robin approaching, hands held out as if to catch him. He's bigger than Danny was expecting. Which makes sense; most of the stories Danny got online are from when Robin was a kid, and it's been a few years since then. He must be a teenager now. Older, but still young.

"Robin," he manages to say, his throat tightening. It feels almost like there's a noose around it. It feels like that meta-suppressing cuff has clicked back into place, leaving him helpless.

"Step away from the edge," Robin repeats. "There is no need for this to be your last resort."

"But it is," Danny whispers.

Robin darts forward and wraps a hand around Danny's wrist, yanking him towards the center of the roof. "Why on Earth would you come up here? Surely you must have known that someone would stop you."

"Batman," he gets out. "I need to speak to Batman."

"What for?"

"I'm… I was told, once, that I'm his son."

10. Robin stares at him for a long moment.

Then he takes off his mask.

Danny knows those eyes: he sees them every time he looks in a mirror.

"Danyal," Robin breathes. "You died before I was born."

"I did. Are you…?"

"Mother told me about you."

So he has a little brother. If only he hadn't left first chance he got, he could have known his little brother, gotten away from that place before it hurt him too. Danny has made many mistakes since he arrived in this world. Missing a little brother is perhaps the worst of them.

"Mother…" Danny repeats. "She put me in the Lazarus Pit. I remember that. She didn't want me to die."

"I was born to replace you."

Just like Ellie.

So many mistakes repeating. He's never felt like more of a failure.

"Batman. Our father. He treats you well? You are safe with him?"

Robins brows furrow, but he nods, which is enough for Danny. "Yes. Of course. Isn't that why you're here now?"

"I'm not asking for me." Danny carefully, gently, unwraps Ellie. "I'm asking for her. Please, take care of her. She deserves more than I can give her. Ellie… she'd be your niece."

Robin's eyes are wide. He's frozen until Danny pushes Ellie against his chest, forcing him to lift his arms to hold her.

"Wait, what about—?"

When Robin looks up, Danny's already gone.

It's for the best.

(masterpost for all parts)

#dc x dp #dp x dc #dcxdp #dpxdc #demon brothers #dcxdp fic #the harmless series #gonna make that a full series. all posts will be part of that. heres the beginning of it all!!#reincarnation + demon brothers + baby ellie #tw human experimentation #dw there will be more #i'll have a full masterpost to add to the end of each post once i write and post the next part #which will be damian's pov and the aftermath of danny revealing himself and leaving ellie #my writing

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