Aro is culture is HAAAAAAATING denial tropes in Romance.
"OKay so we share a room, and a bed, and we moved in together recently, and we sometimes hold hands on instinct, and I feel a bit bubbly inside around him but HE'S NOT MY HUSBAND!!"
YES, COOL, FUCKING GOOOD FOR YOU. V E R Y GOOD FOR YOU ACTUALLY, WE LOVE INTIMATE FRIENDSHIPS IN THIS HOUSE!!
BUT NOOOOOO, THE POINT APPARENTLY IS THAT HE'S NAIVE AND STUPID BECAUSE "Of CoUrSe ThEy'D bE hUsBaNdS iF tHeY dO tHaT! No FrIeNdS dO tHaT wItH eAcH oThEr!!!" mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you mauling you
he would not fucking say that, but with disability.. he would not fucking be able bodied. sick n tired of characters walking away from multiple life changing injuries without a scratch. let’s get some natural consequences in here.
give that knife/sword fight survivor nerve damage. give the character who was shot in the gut a stoma. give that fire survivor lung damage and an oxygen cannula. give that leg injury survivor a cane. give that starvation survivor gastroparesis. give that spinal injury survivor a manual chair or powerchair.
while we’re at it, give your characters congenital disabilities too, just because. give them intellectual and development disabilities. give them acquired and postviral illnesses. dare to make somebody bedbound. for me.
Aroace culture is seeing all your friends in be paired up in explicit relationships, and being like no thank you, I don’t ever want that for me, I just want just someone i can have a close emotional bond and occasionally cuddle with, nothing else. No sex or dirty comments or feeling romantic stuff. And feeling left out when it ends up just being you, because everyone assumes you just don’t care and just want to be alone when that’s not the case.
because let’s be real, no one talks about their dynamic enough.
(tw for suicide mention!)
i was thinking about more zemo hcs today since a lot of people liked my last post (tysm btw!) so here are my thoughts on this dynamic duo :)
oeznik is probably old enough to have raised zemo, or at the very least has been around him his whole life/from a young age. most likely oeznik was left to be an instructor to zemo, or maybe even perhaps a nanny of sorts.
we don’t really hear much about zemo’s family outside of his wife, son, and briefly mentioned father, so i like to think that he had a great relationship with his immediate family growing up, which is rare yet refreshing in super villains these days.
zemo mentioned sometime when he was younger that when he’d go to royal events and parties that he was highly unaware of the politics and what not. i like to think that as he was growing up he was expected to care more about those things, gently being guided by oeznik at parties about certain political topics - or, at least, how to say enough to look smart in front of pretty girls (or possibly even his future wife at the time)
speaking of his wife :) i 100% know that oeznik was the first person he told when he met her. i like to think they met at one of those royal ball sort of events, and when it was time for oeznik to drive his half drunk pupil home, he was raving on and on about the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. while his father probably disapproved in the beginning (royals seeming to have arranged engagements), oeznik worked behind the scenes not only to arrange zemo and his lover’s more public dates, but arrange for “coincidental” run ins with her and zemo’s father, to show how kind and caring she was to him.
when zemo’s son was born, oh man, you KNOW oeznik was right there with zemo in the hospital waiting room to comfort him. zemo looking nearly as pale as the hospital tile even thinking about what responsibility he was going to endure as a father, but oeznik is there to reassure him in sokovian and say “if i could handle you as a child sir, i’m sure you can handle your own.” it gets zemo to laugh and lighten up, and of course when they call them back to the delivery room, after zemo gets a chance to welcome his son into the world, he gladly makes oeznik his god father.
and then, of course…ultron happened. i don’t think oeznik and zemo found each other right away - perhaps oeznik was on a well deserved vacation at the time, and seeing what was happening in sokovia on television, he raced to the phone to call for zemo’s family. he most likely called every estate he could, until he got a hold of zemo’s father, who at the time thought they were safe and reassured oeznik that they were fine - but that was before they were killed in the aftermath of the avengers. after zemo’s father’s reassurances he hangs up the phone, but then later sees sokovia be absolutely decimated on live television.
once the rubble settles and it’s deemed clear to even remotely go back to sokovia, oeznik flies his own damn plane down there and investigates what little was left of the zemo estate. he finds helmut in the rubble, sobbing and probably almost shoving a gun into his mouth, but once the two see each other, it’s a terrible and emotional reunion. oeznik gets zemo on the plane and out of sokovia, since there’s basically nothing left there anyhow. he asks zemo what happened, and his stomach drops when he realizes no one survived - he could have saved zemo’s family, his family, if he had just trusted his instincts, but he was unfortunately a loyal servant to the end.
he’s there for all of zemo’s rage, his festering anger, and then, his obsession. his obsession with revenge and taking down the avengers, at first proposing very physical and basically suicidal plots and schemes that oeznik made sure to shoot down with careful reason. eventually zemo starts to have an idea that leads to his plan in civil war - and he tells oeznik to leave.
this man. the zemo family’s only loyal servant left alive, a man who has only ever know these people as his family for literal generations, is being told to leave. to not stick around for the horror show that’s bound to follow from someone he considered his own son. oeznik refuses out of pride, but zemo insists, offering him literally anything and everything for him to leave, and when oeznik still refuses, zemo grabs him by the shoulders and looks into his eyes, tears streaming down his face and he looks him in the eye with a searing, neutral stare.
“I don’t want to lose the last person I have left, Oeznik. I don’t want you to be destroyed when my wrath finally consumes me - so please, listen to my orders one last time, and leave.”
oeznik realizes there’s nothing he can do. he simply nods, packs his things, and leaves the young baron to his devices. he makes sure to tell him to call if he needed anything, anything at all, and zemo just nods wordlessly. he leaves with out turning back - orders are orders.
