it will forever bug me that tony stark sat on his ass for five years while the universe was crumbling and struggling to rebalance their communities after the blip, but yet when he finally helped bring back the billions of people that died, he was the one to get murals. he was the one to have a proper funeral. he was the one who left a “legacy”.
not natasha, who was always there for the people and being the one to run the avengers.
not vision, who was a primary factor into trying to stop the blip from happening in the first place by sacrificing himself.
not any other hero who was murdered or sacrificed themselves during the battle of wakanda or the final battle between the avengers and thanos.
no one else got a funeral except a billionaire who spent the first thirty years of his life realizing that building war weapons was wrong, and spending the next ten years creating more problems for the real heroes.
To be fair to Wrath, he had refused to ascend the throne until the end of Dark Lover, so he wasn't in position to change it before then. Lover Awakened, when he actually outlawed it, wasn't that long after Dark Lover (from what I can tell of the inconsistent timeline).
But hell, you think you'd have a bucket list of Things I'd Change If I Could after being a Brother for that long in such a shitty society and "stopping the slave system that victimized my brother" would be pretty close to the top...
The only way I will be ever satisfied with the brotherhood and Zsadist relationship is when all of them (specially Wrath) offers a rythe for allowing blood slaving to happen after fighting by his side for almost 144 years and still judge his PTSD
Erotic fic and porn can be a lot of fun! But if you aren’t being provided with adequate sex ed through other channels (comprehensive sexual education, frank and open discussions with trusted adults, etc.), turning to fanfic and porn for your understanding of sex is gonna leave some major blindspots and may leave you with some unrealistic expectations. While there’s nothing wrong with these kinds of erotica, they are fictional and tend to leave out a lot of the more realistic, human parts of sex - they serve a great purpose, but that purpose isn’t primarily educational. The following is an incomplete list of some things you should probably know about sex that a lot of fic and porn tends to leave out:
It isn’t always super hot or super sweet. Sometimes it’s super silly. Or sometimes it’s sort of mundane and you’re both simply scratching an itch. That’s fine too. (Hell, sometimes you’re talking about comic books while boning and your partner is laughing that you’re getting REALLY ANGRY about spider-man while they’re going to town on you.)
You will probably not climax at the same moment. It’s a sweet idea, but extremely hard to coordinate, and if all your concentration is going into coming at the exact same moment, you’re probably not enjoying yourselves as much as you might.
Sometimes bodies make weird, goofy noises. Squelching, slapping, air-escaping, un-sexy noises. It’s okay to laugh at this.
Hell, it’s okay to laugh during sex in general.
Sometimes you fart. Sometimes you fart while someone is going down on you and it is embarrassing as hell. This isn’t the end of the world. Embarrassing body things happen. Heck, sometimes, with anal, there’s a little poo. You get over it.
Sometimes sex is… kinda bad? This doesn’t mean it’s assault, or something traumatic – sometimes it’s consensual but just kinda bleh and not what you hoped for. The best thing to do (if you’re talking about sex with a partner and not just a hook up who you can not call back) is talk to them about it. Figure out what went wrong, what you enjoy and what you don’t, and communicate what techniques you do and don’t like. Also don’t be afraid to stop someone in the middle of the sex act you’re not enjoying and offer guidance on how to help make it good for you too. (Side tip: masturbation makes great research into what you personally do and don’t enjoy sexually)
You won’t enjoy every sex act. Not every body is wired to find every thing pleasurable. You might find anal does nothing for you. You may find g-spot stimulation just makes you really anxious that you’re about to pee. You may not enjoy giving or receiving oral. You’re not broken if you don’t like something that every pornstar or smutty fanfic protagonist seems to have earth-shattering orgasms from. Everyone’s got nerve endings in a range of places – it’s quite literally, different strokes for different folks.
On that note, not all orgasms are earth-shattering. Sometimes it just feels warm and nice. That’s fine too.
Sometimes, if you’re neutral on a sex act and your partner loves it, you can suck it up for them, and they’ll suck up something they’re not crazy about for your pleasure in return. But communicate preferences with each other! Know that when a partner does that thing you love that they don’t get much from, that it’s an act of care, and vice versa.
Falling asleep in each other’s arms right after wild passionate sex seems really romantic, but dried and crusty fluids are gonna be a bitch in the morning. Also, after sex, you should both (regardless of your equipment) go pee to clear out the urethra of any gunk or bacteria to reduce risk of a UTI.
Putting a towel down on the bed before sex means you don’t have to sleep on wet funky sheets. (it’s also verrrrrry useful for period sex if you or your partner menstruate.)
A lot of people don’t like dirty talk, or rough sex. Always ask first. (Fanfic on the whole does a better job than porn at showing communication, but a lot of it is still highly fictive on this point)
PROTECTION PROTECTION PROTECTION. Use condoms, dental dams, etc. not just to prevent pregnancy, but to reduce risk of STIs. (Yes, even couples with the same genitals who don’t need to worry about pregnancy).
Lube is great and very important, but random goopy things around you are not good lube. Random oils especially, since oil doesn’t flush out well and can trap bacteria inside the body – oil-based lubricant also degrades condoms. Use lube specifically designed for intimate purposes. Water-based and silicone-based lubes help sex feel really good!
Bigger isn’t necessarily better. A lot of people with vaginas don’t enjoy the feeling of being repeatedly punched in the cervix by a monster cock. Some people enjoy a larger size when being penetrated by an appendage or toy and some don’t.
Bodies are hairy. Genitals are hairy. You may get a pube stuck in your teeth at some point. If your partner is WAY fuzzier than porn ever led you to believe they’d be, well, that’s normal.
Not everyone loves the taste of ejaculate. Sometimes it’s nasty (flavor tends to vary from person to person depending on their diet, but sometimes you just really don’t like it no matter what. Some of us hate the taste of peanut butter. People don’t always like things). It’s okay not to swallow, or to request a penis-having partner warn you so they don’t ejaculate in your mouth (in fact, it’s polite for them to do the latter).
If you’re gonna have shower sex, get one of those rubbery mats for the shower floor that gives you traction, because otherwise it’s super embarrassing to call for an ambulance while dripping wet and naked because you slipped and accidentally broke something and your partner got a concussion while you were trying to bang in the shower.
Moaning and screaming wildly during sex is fun but it will make the neighbors in the apartments adjacent to you hate you. Make choices accordingly.
I don't know how people came to think that "the banality of evil" means "evil people are people too".
That's also true but it's not what the banality of evil means.
The term was coined by Hannah Arendt in her report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the "final solution" in the Holocaust.
It describes the way in which the Nazis at large and Eichmann in particular have turned the horrendous act of mass murder into just another job, disconnecting themselves morally and emotionally from their actions.
Before the death camps and gas chambers, Nazi soldiers simply shot Jews into mass graves by the hundreds of thousands. It was a lot cheaper and faster, but it caused great psychological distress for the murderers who pulled the trigger.
The leadership's solution was a massively upscaled version of the "gas vans" they used to mass murder hundreds of thousands of Germans with disabilities and mental health issues.
Shooting bound civilians in point blank range over and over is something you can't just pretend you're not doing or is no big deal. But if you're just the guy who sorts people into groups. Or just the guy that funnels them into a room. Or just the guy who opens a cannister on the roof. It's much easier to distance yourself from what you know is happening.
The same principle applies to much lesser evils, like soldiers operating drones from a distance, or insurance workers denying coverage for life-saving treatment.
I think what scares me the most about fandoms like MARVEL and Stranger Things is the amount of people who think that just because there are unrealistic concepts in most of the movies/episodes that all of it is unlikely to be “relatable” or “realistic”, when, in fact, that is not the case.
Civil War is between a bunch of superheroes with advanced weaponry and impossible abilities. But what people don’t seem to realize is that the very thing they’re fighting over is so much like our world and its politics that you don’t realize how much damage you’re doing by taking one side over the other. If you’re Team Iron Man, you were actively for a law that would limit the rights of enhanced individuals (voluntarily or not) just because of how much “destruction” they caused trying to save the world from worse threats. And, we can see that by the end of the movie, the “rogues” were trapped in the Raft (a highly secure prison made for villains like Rhino, Electro, Shocker, Goblin, etc.) and Wanda, a sixteen-year-old who was manipulated into being experimented on, was even in a straight jacket. They were locked away because they tried to fight for their rights as enhanced individuals against men who either: were not advanced, or had the privilege to take their powers off (Iron Man and his suit). While you may consider this as fiction and nothing more, this is real to lots of people all over the world who are fighting for their lives and rights every day against men like Ross and Tony.
The same applies to Stranger Things, that, although is based around monsters and scientific concepts that are near-to-impossible in our reality, still contains themes that may be relatable to struggling children and adults. We see that in the very first season with the Byers family, and how they were all traumatized by Lonnie and his mental/physical/emotional abuse. In the second season, we also saw the relationship between Billy and Max, which ultimately led to multiple fanfics trying to portray Billy as anything but a monster. A manipulative, romanticized monster whose actions were brushed off simply because of his troubled childhood.
“It’s literally fictional/a fictional character. It’s not that deep.” Maybe it doesn’t apply to you or anyone you know, but to many, those topics are a constant in their lives.
Mdzs Fandom: JC suffered so much, he lost his entire family and sister and even his clan, surely his taking out his anger and resentment at others is totally misunderstood and reasonable, I relate to him so much 🥹
WN (who lost not only his sister and entire family and clan but also his literal life, and was held captive and experimented on for thirteen years as a trophy, watches his relatives die a second time, is treated with prejudice and disdain and fear by most of the cultivation world, yet despite all this still manages to retain a bone-deep kindness and humility, as well as a sense of righteousness as fierce as himself): Am I a joke to you?
This is what I meant when I said characters who are constantly declaring what they went through are put up on a pedestal for their non existent resilience. It's so easy to forget that other characters went through much of the same pain and handled their circumstances better, like WN who went through literal hell himself, because he barely mentions and even downplays his suffering.
Today I was chatting with two guys and mentioned I was aroace. It went a little something like this.
A: wtf is that
B: it means she’s not attracted to people in that way
A: bro you can’t just not pick a side, that’s crazy
B: nah, it just means she’s spectator mode
A: OHHH IT MAKES SENSE NOW
I have never felt more validated or laughed so hard
The disproportionate hate on YQY is doing more to kill any scant sympathy I had for SJ than anything else
tbh i dunno why so many sj apologists are anti-yqy. because like????? he is your mascot. he was the originator. the head honcho of excusing sj's levels of unmitigated villainy. look into my eyes and tell me that qi ge wouldn't blush and kick his feet if he saw xiao jiu commit murder. actually we don't NEED to imagine bc jiumei did just that and yue qi just grabbed his hand and ran, no thoughts head empty. arson? child abuse?? yue qi doesn't care. whatever makes xiao jiu happy <3