#when I say I’m in denial…….

[sublimeinal-messages]

How great would it have been to have Lila and Diego’s marital problems actually be that they’re both tired of normal marital life, when both of them are secretly getting back into the superhero / assassin gig behind eachother’s backs?

Like, ok Diego can still has his infidelity suspicion plot, thinking lila is cheating on him with five (which is fake. Didn’t happen at all. We all agree right?) but it turns out that Lila and Five are actually meeting up to plot, talking about old commission stuff on the downlow. Diego sneaks out to find them having dinner and he’s heartbroken, but it’s actually them eating takeout over assassination plans with files all over the table detailing how to kill someone without a trace, with pictures of alleyway vantage points and sniper rifles.

I didn’t expect this to end up being A Whole Thing but I had to write it out. Full thing under the cut:

Meanwhile, Diego’s been lying to Lila about losing his job. He hasn’t shown up for work in weeks, and recently got fired. Levaing the family financially unstable. Diego’s still showing up to be a dad during his usual scheduled times, but he hasn’t been paid in a while and both parents seem to be pulled away in different directions. And now the kids have begun to notice. This comes to a peak when one of their kids spot someone in their house at night dressed in black, and they tell Lila later that they saw Batman. Obviously Lila sees right through this and confronts Diego, who confronts her right back over her infidelity. Lila laughs in his face, because he’d have to be insane to think she’s ever do that, and with Five?? The barely-legal teenager who killed her parents? Are you stupid?? (Stares directly at the camera). But Diego’s hurt. He can’t get a clear answer on what they’re doing because she doesn’t want to admit she’s tired of being a housewife and wants to kick ass again. All they can agree on is that this isn’t working anymore, neither of them are happy, and they just hurt each others feelings.

So this fight ends in Diego storming out. They’re on a break. Lila is heartbroken, the kids don’t know what’s going on, and Diego throws himself wholeheartedly into being a vigilante again. It’s shown he’s fighting some shady organization that seems to have far reaching ties—related to Reginald, Abigail, and their new reset empire. Lila doesn’t know what to do, she gets some in-laws to stay over and look after the kids as she goes out to look for him (to no avail) and it ends up being the day she and five planned on their big assassination happening. Lila caves and says to five he’s gotta do this himself because her family is falling apart. Five is annoyed and makes a quip about how this is why he never lets romantic attachments get in in the way of him doing a job (stares directly into camera).

So five takes his sniper rifle and goes to the location early, where he’s positioned to take out their mark. Lila is out looking for Diego, and Diego is kitted up, on his way to take out these shady people he’s been making a case on, and intends to stop what they’re doing before they do it.

Anyone pick up where this is going yet?

Diego shows up at the location—a shady laboratory owned in secret by Reginald Hargreeves. The place is familiar. Diego slips into an alleyway. but what’s this? We’ve seen It’s the exact same alleyway but from a different point of view! Five is perched on the roof with a sniper, looking down at him. He gets his quarry in his sights and takes one final, steadying breath. This mission is going exactly as planned. The idiot showed up right as predicted. He didn’t even come with backup this time. It’s a textbook fish in a barrel. It’s almost disappointing how this couldn’t be an easier kill. But maybe Five’s glory days are just behind him. He puts his finger on the trigger.

Cut to diego and Lila’s house. It’s dark inside. Gracie and the twins have been put to bed and the in-laws are tired and in the living room. A phone rings, and it’s Lila, calling to say she hasn’t found Diego and is hoping he came back, but it’s not the case. Lila says she’ll be back soon and the in-laws begin packing up to go home. Gracie stands in the hallway, overhearing. To her, her whole world is falling apart, and she runs back to the twin’s bedroom in tears. She can’t believe this is happening. The lights are turned off in the hallway and the house grows quiet. The front door opens and closes and it’s implied that the in-laws have just gone home. Mum will be back soon, but the twins won’t stop crying, so Gracie gets up to get them some milk and cookies to make them happy again. She steps out into the dark hallway

To see a man dressed like Batman, in full fight gear. And she looks up at him with hope in her eyes, saying “daddy?”

Only surprise! It’s not, and they grab her as she lets out a scream. We cut to Diego as he reaches to open the door at the end of the alley only to find it locked, and realize he’s been set up. He spins around only for a gunshot to sound, and it cuts to black.

Lila comes back to the house. Finds it trashed. Finds her Inlaws murdered in horrific fashion in the driveway. Gracie and the twins are gone. And the little domestic life she and Diego made destroyed as we cut back to Diego, bleeding out in the street from what looks like a fatal gunshot.

Then five comes down from his perch to confirm his kill, only to realize what he’s just done.

So there. Here’s a dramatic, non-cheating subplot that has a similar amount of stakes that we could’ve had with season 4. Maybe Lila and Five end up going on a crusade for everyone to get their powers back so they can bring Diego back from the dead. Maybe this is what leads them to the subway, to mess with the timeline again, because as commission agents they can’t let go of the idea that time can be fixed and it isn’t theirs to mess with anymore. Maybe this sends Lila over the edge, and when trapped in the subway with five—she tries to murder him instead!! After all, he’s not only killed her parents, he’s now killed her husband! Why not have five scramble to figure out a way back for all those years while running for his life? (While a scooby-doo like soundtrack plays and they get all turned around and confused). Maybe Diego isn’t actually dead in the end, and it’s all a bait and switch to fool Reginald, who was watching and lines the whole thing up to fuck with them. Taking the kids as a deterrent so they won’t dig any deeper. But maybe in the last second before five pulls the trigger five hesitates. Maybe he doesn’t have what it takes to murder anymore. He swore it off earlier—what glory is he really chasing anyway? Maybe he recognizes the gait of the person in the alley and makes a non-killing shot to just take them out. Maybe he saw ahead that this was a setup by Reginald and made an agreement with Diego and filled his vest full of blood packets. And he fully knows Lila and Diego are both doing secret little vigilante gigs behind each others backs but tells neither because he really doesn’t want to get in the way of some stuffy marital dispute. Nooooo thanks. He had enough of that when he and Delores were together and bickering constantly. Five just wants his family alive and happy in whatever timeline they end up. (Chokes the spirit of Steve Blackman just a little bit harder)

Anyway, everyone else thinks Diego is dead; and all get together again. Weddings and funerals uniting them once more, and each of them reveal how life didn’t turn out how they wanted on their own, and they get to bond and unite to track down Gracie and the twins. “One last time” they agree, to be heroes and finally do something right. To save some little kids. Members of their family! Innocent ones, who don’t deserve to be caught up in their mess. And it culminates in confronting Reginald once and for all and destroying the ill-gotten gains he warped the universe in his favor for. And Reginald’s gone the rest of them can finally have peace of mind. Maybe the timeline genuinely gets better now that one monocoled megalomaniacal maniac isn’t in the centre of the universe anymore. The very thing that doomed the timeline before. And now the umbrellas are able to disband and go on in their lives as normal people in a timeline that exists with no favouritism at all. It’s all just what they make of it

(and hey! Maybe Diego comes back out of hiding and saves the day! And he and Lila both confess they want to take more active roles outside of being parents. And their kids are wowed by the fact that their parents are both superheroes. And it’s cool and awesome and I don’t sob at a very tragic defeatist ending of all I hold dear).

I don’t know guys. There’s so many different ways the final season could’ve gone, but not in a million years would I have chosen to make it go the way it did. That’s a whole other post—but in the end, I just know I’ll be entertaining my own little ideas for what happens to these characters I’ve grown and loved, and keep them alive in my own heart and AU story ideas. Thats the true canon for me, and the rest is just… fuss and marigold dust

[sen-ya]

Still was probably reading early Dressrosa when I did this one. It’s wild looking at these drawings tbh lmao.

[ickypuppi3]

‘billy hargrove wouldn’t bottom’ i know him better than you

[oddishblossom]

He promised it to me when I was 7 years old.

SUCCESSION 4.10 WITH OPEN EYES

[kathybluecaller]

Finally got around drawing Aioros :D

[yorshie]

Anyone else have a *chest of denial*?

[simcardiac-arrested]

i don’t think we’re ever getting out of the “we’re just friends” “oh yeah those characters are such good friends (sarcasm)” “they’re not friends they’re gay” etc etc hole. we’re never getting out of that hole

[stylecouncil]

being clinically diagnosed with something (like bipolar disorder), clearly/consistently displaying the symptoms, and going "no I'm not because. um <3" counts as denial to me. but idk I'm not saying all psychiatric diagnosis is an objective good

[birdy-bird27]

hey!! do you have any skills aspec headcanons? :3

Heyy!! This is a great question I had to think about it, I just sorta had to go with my aroace gut was telling me. To me empathy gives me ace vibes but a hopeless romantic type(all the Psche group gives me slight ace vibes ngl). Also claiming vis calc as my aroace king, no reason other than he’s underrated and I like him :)

[ratcandy]

grounding techniques sound like such bs until you’re actually in the thick of it and suddenly find yourself counting shit you can touch and hear n etc and suddenly it’s like oh ok. Horrors are done

[ssruis]

Emu 🤝 Rui “I’m so selfish for pursuing the thing I want and feeling basic normal human emotions (that I don’t think I should be allowed to feel)” l… emu saying that for the longest time she felt like her dream to keep PXL (and the wonder stage) from drastically changing was selfish and feeling like she was the only one who wanted that after her grandpa died & becoming shackled to that dream & being unable to leave PXL because it’s what she’s been fighting for for so long and it’s what she has left of her grandpa and it’s so hard to let go and trust that she succeeded and isn’t abandoning or failing her grandpa if she’s not still putting everything she has into the park vs rui viewing his desire to keep his friends together and hold onto wxs as something selfish/something that is interfering with what his friends are working towards (even though they all want to stay together as well) and wishing that he didn’t have to feel any emotions because he’s spent so long without connections like these that fighting for them & being anxious about losing them is entirely alien and new to him and to wish for anything but letting wxs go is something he views as selfish. Dreams and desires as a burden and source of constant guilt instead of them being the light at the end of the tunnel. “I’m a bad person for pursuing what I want/what will make me happy but I’m still going to pursue it I’m just going to berate myself for it as I do so” & the fear of letting go of the happiness you’ve found after looking for it for so long because surely if you do you’ll be right back at square one. Emu struggling to accept that nene & tsukasa have dreams that will take them beyond the wonder stage and rui struggling to accept that all of their goals (including his own) are incompatible in the long run and to reach them they’ll have to split up.

[skhardwarevers1]

yappped to him about my feelings for him to read in the morning……normal behavior

[thefaultinoursprinkles]

I hate thinking about my fucking gender so much man.

[circular-bircular]

“Saying DID is trauma based will make DID systems dig for trauma.”

At 19 years old, I remembered my system. We heard about DID in school, and we realized, “oh my god. That’s us.”

We panicked. Our brain tried to latch onto anything and everything to make us feel safe — and the only way for us to be safe, based on my life experiences, was if I didn’t have DID. DID was bad. It was a mental disorder, it was dangerous, I was dangerous if I had it.

I started looking into it, and I found the All Inclusive Communities, the radinclus, the pro-endos who supported every identity. And they told me “🥰 Oh, don’t be scared. It’s not scary. You don’t need trauma to have DID.”

I was so relieved. I leaned into my systemhood, because I was so happy to know it would be okay. I wasn’t dangerous, I didn’t have trauma like those other dangerous people.

Every weekend, I hid my systemhood from my abusive parents as they caused me to dissociate and split further and further, while I thought all was okay. I crashed my car while purposefully dissociating to handle the stress of going to these people while sleep deprived. I allowed myself to be screamed at, to have things thrown at me, to be horrifically emotionally neglected as I always had been, even while the Endogenic systems around me said the same thing anti-endos did: “Your mom yelling at you isn’t traumatic.”

The people around me fought hard to get me to leave. They fought so incredibly hard for me to realize I was in active danger, and I was hurting, and they were traumatizing me. I’m grateful for them, and for the parts of my system who fought back against those of us who denied it all.

This year, at age 26, I finally managed to cut off my parents. And to this day, I still have to convince myself that it is trauma that I went through.

In an alternate universe somewhere, I find a CDD community first. I ask about the possibility of me having this rare disorder. They tell me what I’ve seen said in every CDD-exclusive server I’ve joined that believes trauma is the only cause of DID.

“DID is a childhood-trauma based disorder. It also comes along with amnesia, though, so it’s possible you don’t remember the trauma you went through — or you could be downplaying what you experience, because that’s what feels safe. Our advice is to not go digging, because that’s more dangerous for you right now.”

In that alternate universe, I become knowledgeable about trauma and trauma responses before I’m 22, living with my abusers 24/7. I understand by the time that I graduate that my parents are abusive. I don’t tell my partner, “no, not yet, I can’t move in yet, I need money and I can handle my parents for a year or two, it’s not that bad.”

In that alternate universe, I don’t need to thank the fact that I got Covid, because it meant I needed to move out months earlier than expected, “to keep my family safe.”

I wish I lived there, sometimes. But at least I’m able to share my experiences here.

[loveoaths]

i am very weak for a specific kind of din-centric romance that i’ve yet to see anywhere (probably because it would be tedious to write). i want din to have an Arthurian romance where his Creed and his besk’ad are not obstacles for his partner to vault over into his arms, but part of him, more of him to love. i want din to have a romance where they will love him whether or not they ever get to see his face, or touch his skin, because when din said the helmet is my true face he meant it, and when his paramour said they loved all of him, they meant that, too. the Creed is his blood and the besk’ad his skin and his heart the steady tattoo blasterfire and his soul is the manda and to love a true mandalorian is to love them because of the old ways, not in spite of them. din may walk the galaxy’s gray meridian but his faith in the Creed is absolute. to love him you have to love him for that faith, too.

[quietstime]

🚪