ive been thinking a lot about fighting evil lately
as you do
and I wanna talk about it for a sec
we tend to think of fighting evil as an epic quest to destroy a mcthingie and break an evil spell all at one go or this big climactic battle where the bad guy falls off a tower at the end
evil is more like a wall
sometimes you can bust through it like the hulk and stomp on the pieces and go you when that happens but its easy to think that if you cant find that battering ram youve failed and its hopeless
in real life most of the time the fight is little bit by little bit
maybe you correct someone in conversation or you call a politician or you vote or you put your pronouns in your profile and a little piece of that wall gets chipped away
maybe sometimes you can knock a whole brick loose and maybe sometimes you can only damage the mortar but youve just made that wall a little weaker for the person behind you
and the one behind them
and the one behind them
and the one behind them
and the one behind them
and maybe youll never get to stand on the ground cheering when the evil tower falls or be there to gloat when the villain gets dragged away in chains yelling about how he would have succeeded if it werent for you personally
but dont you for one second think you arent fighting
and dont you for one second think your fight doesnt matter
Stand up, warrior; you are not yet finished.
Beaten you may be, but broken?
Angels have fallen from greater heights
and survived, so why shouldn’t you?
Never mind what you are made of;
you are more than this flesh that binds you.
There is nothing you have to fear
that should not fear you a thousand times more.
Your heart is a galaxy, and your soul is lined in stars.
A consequence of being pagan in the modern world is that sometimes you just aren’t taken seriously. I’m not claiming that our religion is necessarily directly targeted by oppression, but in a Christocentric world a lot of pagans still have to keep themselves under wraps and go to worship a god they don’t believe in, and even those of us who can be open about it get treated like crackpots.
I would love to be able to say “I worship the gods of Olympus” without being treated like I’m intellectually deficient. After all, the Greeks were a primitive and superstitious people, even though secular western society has been falsely tracing its lineage to Greece for centuries.
But in trying times, when it just seems like it’s silly to burn incense to gods most people think belong in Mythology for Dummies books, its important to know that these gods were real.
Imagine being ill and being brought to the Temple of Asclepius, and sleeping there, feverish and shaking, and being told of your cure in the night.
Imagine being a bride burning a lock to Artemis before her wedding, hoping that her husband would be kind and her new family welcoming.
Imagine being a sailor near drowning praying to Poseidon and washing up on dry land, and taking a bowl to his sanctuary that tells the world how the god saved you.
The gods were real to these people. They were real to Sappho, who called Aphrodite down resplendent with a word. They were real to Homer and all the poets who begged the Muses to sing through them. They were real to the initiates at Eleusis, who went into the dark unknowing and came out knowing that even in death they would be thrice-blessed. They were real to the people who came to their sanctuaries and decorated them with pottery and marble and art, and who built some of the most spectacular buildings the world has ever seen, just to house their gifts to the gods.
It was not a matter of faith, but of knowing. The gods were real to them, and to us too, they are real now.
I’m a kemetic polytheist and this still resonates with me.
I’m a Gaelic polytheist and this brought tears to my eyes. It’s incredibly touching and a reminder that our gods aren’t just characters in a book or figures lost t history. They are here with us, and are just as important and valid as any other.
Listen: In the future, there is a small, quiet room that is just yours, where you are safe and you are free. In that room your shoulders will finally start to come down from around your ears. Nobody can come into that room unless you let them. In that clean quiet place, you will work and you will study. You will love and you will heal. I know this is true because I am there with you. We are there together because you saved us. You saved us because you were brave and because you never stopped believing in that room.See you there,Your Future Self
Platonic love is not a runner up to romantic love. Platonic love isn’t second place. Platonic love isn’t less real, less valid or less powerful than romantic love. Don’t let your platonic love take a back seat to romantic love.
I think about these pages a lot, every time I read meta about Steve not being as… expressive or emotive in the MCU as other characters.
Steve is an artist. And a bookworm. Who loves fantasy most of all. This is canon, none of these things are indicators of someone who is stoic and taciturn by nature. So what we can deduce from this is that Steve learned to keep things close to the chest through nurture not nature.
Why?
Three factors, all summed up above.
1) Steve was heavily bullied as a child. Picked on, beat up, tormented. There have been depictions of this in almost every single Cap run I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot of Cap. I could show you panels that would make you cry, where a child!Steve is laid out on the pavement bleeding because his childhood bullies got a hold of him.
This is not solely indigenous to 616!Steve, as in the MCU!Steve also indicated to Peggy that he was beat up a lot as a child.
Someone who is targeted by that kind of physical and mental abuse learns to keep it all in, so as not to show any weakness less his tormentors use that against him.
2) Steve lived through the Great Depression during his most informative years. The small, sickly child of a single mother. The dialogue here breaks my heart:
“And with every broken bone or black eye I knew I was letting my mother down. Sure I was scared of the bullies waiting for me but my REAL fear was that I’d get home and she wouldn’t be there. I knew it was irrational, she was a GREAT mother, but that’s just how life felt back then, like it could all fall apart at any moment.”
Loss. Steve’s greatest fear and the heartbreaking thing is that it’s he’s had to live through again and again and again. And it all started because he was raised during a time when the bulk of America had lost everything and were starving in the streets. If we look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the most basic necessities for survival weren’t being met for a very large population of people: food, water, safety.
Steve’s words here are actually very accurate. I have a 96-year-old grandmother who can personally collaborate the sentiment expressed here. In fact she told me that it was very common for children to be sent away to relatives who could feed them, for families to be split up because the parents could no longer afford to provide basic necessities. And in other families children were actually put to work in factories. In fact, Steve worked. As early as six he was selling newspapers when he wasn’t in school (Remender’s run, Cap vol. 7).
3) War. The most destructive war in recent history no less.
The highest suicide rate in the country goes to veterans. This is fact.
In 2014, an average of 20 Veterans died from suicide each day. 6 of the 20 were
users of VA services.
Any war related issues such as PTSD and Survivals Guilt would have been even worse during WW2 because no one recognized PTSD as being valid. In fact General Patton once slapped soldiers who were bed ridden due to exhibiting PTSD symptoms. This is also fact.
So, as a soldier, your choices were try your hardest to keep a stiff upper lip or exhibit your symptoms and be considered a coward and a traitor.
And yet despite all of this Steve said this…
“And I think THAT was what shaped me. How the whole world felt unfair… unjust. That’s why I tried over and over again to enlist before we were even in the war. Because I wanted to punch Hitler in the jaw.”
This is it, this is the essence of Steve Rogers.
The underdog. The defender of the maligned and the targeted.
Steve Rogers took his pain and rather than letting it make him bitter like others would in his circumstances, he became determined to help others.
….I just think that maybe we, as a fandom, should not assume that the silent type aren’t grappling with unimaginable pain just because they’re silent. I think we should recognize that perhaps the silence, itself, is also a symptom.
I’m not usually one to do really deep, pained posts, but I just saw something that hurt me and I don’t want to keep it silent and stuffed away, because I deserve to talk about this. Every aromantic person does.
So I was on this blog, just looking around because it’s very nice, and I stumbled on this ask the person got about relationships in college. They answered that they had never been in a serious relationship and how they had casual flings. They ended it with talking about how they met someone that they’re really connecting with, and how they can open up to them, how they’re finally doing something really “human”.
And seeing things like that, seeing romance being equated to humanity, I don’t think people realize how much that hurts to aromantics. It feels like small knives getting thrown into you, and the more you see those remarks, the more knives you get stabbed in you. It just builds up, more and more, until you break and drown in your self hatred again. And when someone you trust says a tiny thing like that, like a friend, the knifes go into your back instead of your front. And it hurts much worse.
And what really freaking sucks is that society doesn’t care. Aromanticism is barely known to anybody. Everyone is so used to the idea that romance = everything that if you dare to deviate away from that, you’re wrong and strange and unnatural. You’re considered disgusting, a freak, and worst of all, a monster.
Even the most open-minded, friendly people often see aromanticism as something terrible and sad, something that needs to be fixed, because oh it’s okay sweetie, you’ll find someone, you won’t be lonely and unhappy forever.
But being alone isn’t equal to unhappiness, and I’m so tired of the world insisting that it is, that you can’t possibly have a good, fulfilling life without romance. I’m so exhausted of going through this day by day, waiting for society to care about us. Even though there’s been a little progress, it’s still so tiny, and I. Am. Tired.
I’m so angry that I’m supposed to just sit here and take all these little insults like they aren’t literally demonizing a part of who I am. I’m furious that aromantics haven’t gotten proper attention, and still aren’t getting it. I’m TIRED of everyone claiming they care about us, when they just join the crowd and kick us down the next moment. When they say they support your aromanticism, then go on to talk about how it’s sad that the old man is sitting by himself at the park, when he could have a romantic lover at his side instead.
Aromantics have so much expected from them that no one wants to give back. We’re supposed to suck it up, be happy for romance, even when it reminds us of how society considers us as monsters. We’re expected to put on smiles, force ourselves to watch that movie that puts romance on the highest pedestal. If a friend has a wedding, we need to congratulate them in bright spirits, because if we don’t we’re horrible, mean people that have no soul.
Being aromantic itself in this kind of society is already crushing, but then you also have all of us that have intersecting identities, like if you’re a person of color or mentally ill. And all of this demonization and negativity skyrockets if you’re aromantic but not asexual, because sex is so heavily stigmatized and taboo, and if you like sex but not romance, you’re the absolute worst kind of monster. Because you must be heartless and enjoy using people for their bodies, right? You can take it from me, someone who is bisexual and aromantic, who has seen the awful stereotypes people speak of those orientations, how they’re so eerily similar.
Romance doesn’t equate to being a human being. Aromanticism is not a screw up in our biology or a flaw that needs to be cured. It doesn’t make us freaks, or monsters, or sob stories. It’s just who we are. We don’t feel romantic attraction, and often don’t enjoy romance either, and that’s okay. We don’t deserve all this hatred, this self loathing society creates in us. It’s okay to drift away from the norm, from what everyone wants you to be. It’s okay to have flings and not relationships.
Romance is not a goal you must achieve to be wonderful.
all right guys here it is THE BIG GAY ANIMAL SEX POST
or in other words, “Why Nonhuman Homosexual and Asexual Behavior has both Survival and Reproductive Benefits” aka that lit review i’d like to write if i could ever be arsed to get around to it
yes reproductive benefits you heard correctly we’re gonna get there but first we better do a basic rundown of what I mean by homosexual/asexual behaviors
IRREVERENT DISCUSSION OF ANIMAL SEX BEHIND CUT YOU’VE BEEN WARNED
There's a Mirror on the Wall 