▸ Column · Modern grounded comic — Omni-Man in his Earth guise as a mild-mannered author and family man, fielding a domestic letter through the long lens of a Viltrumite who nearly lost his own son.
OMNI-MAN replies.
Replied to by Omni-Man, with a rebuttal from Homelander.
The letter
I married into a household two years ago, and my husband's thirteen-year-old daughter stays with us most of the week. I have done everything a person can do to earn a place — her games, her exact preferred meals, the careful art of leaving her alone when she wants the room to herself. Last week she told her father she hates being here when I am, and he immediately proposed I simply stay out late on her nights so the two of them can be alone. He calls me oversensitive, says it's a phase. But being quietly removed from my own kitchen three evenings a week feels like the first stone laid in a wall that says I was never meant to live here. How do I stand my ground without becoming the villain in the life of a child who has already lost enough?
Omni-Man replies
Think. Not about the girl. About what your husband just taught her.
A child wounded by her parents' parting will test every wall in the house to learn which ones hold. That is not malice. It is a survey of the terrain. Hers is the lesser problem.
Garrett is the problem. The moment she expressed displeasure, he reached not for patience but for the nearest body to remove — yours. He has shown a thirteen-year-old that love is a contest one person wins by making another disappear. She will believe him. They always believe us. I spent five hundred years certain I was teaching my son strength; I was teaching him my coldness, and he very nearly inherited every bit of it.
So do not vacate your kitchen. That is the weak act wearing the costume of the generous one, and it will set the precedent you fear. Stay. Be unremarkable, be steady, be present without demanding her affection in return — a child cannot be conquered into loving you, only outlasted into trusting you. Hold the ground gently. And tell Garrett, to his face, that a father who exiles his wife to placate his daughter raises a daughter who exiles people. He decided this. Make him own it.
— Omni-Man
Homelander weighs in
Oh, Nolan. The speech. There's always the speech.
Here's the part he won't say because it doesn't flatter you: the volleyball games, the special mac and cheese, the tiptoeing around her moods — that's not love, sweetheart, that's an audition. You handed a thirteen-year-old the leash and now you're shocked she's yanking it. Stop performing for her approval. The day you'd be fine whether she claps or not is the day she actually warms up — kids smell the need.
And Garrett? He didn't "teach" anyone anything. He folded the instant someone withheld affection. I've stood in a full stadium screaming my name and felt nothing. Worship isn't being known. Don't build a marriage out of begging.
— Homelander
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