ok like 1 of my mutuals will know what i'm talking about but i NEED to talk about what an unintentional trans metaphor the main cast was in Super Powereds. Like, there's the obvious transition element- the 5 of them go through a medical procedure that, despite them genetically being Powereds, functionally turns them into Supers. And this has an immediate and significant positive impact on their mental health and social functioning.
But even beyond that- throughout the first book they have to go stealth, because people finding out about that transition would pose a risk to their safety. When they're forcibly outed, several of their friends get mad because they felt entitled to know this detail about them, despite it having quite literally 0 impact on them or their friendships. Dean Blaine notes that part of why people react so negatively is because society has developed around the binary system of supereds vs powereds, and their mere existence threatens that.
And what particularly hits for me is that their decision to transition didn't have anything to do with that kind of societal change. They made a personal decision to improve their own well-being, and the world decided to take issue with it.
