During the war between angels and demons, humans are the collateral. They are continuously used by the two forces for their advantage until humanity decides to just kill both.
This is so important, stories like this need to be told. The cultural insistence we have that parenthood is some kind of magical bonding that happens every time without exception does real harm to both parents and children, as you can see from some of these stories:
My father recently told me he never wanted kids, but my mother wanted them. She thought he would love us when we were born.
and
I didn’t realize that a maternal instinct is not universal. You know how
you see parents in the delivery room and they are crying tears of joy? I
felt nothing.
[…] My boys are well cared for and I am always here for them, but it feels very unnatural and fake and unenjoyable. It
is a bit like a retail job you don’t like where you put on a fake
persona and slog through it the best you can. I don’t get to leave this
job, though.
and
I also thought I wouldn’t mind missing out on all the partying and holidays because I would have the ultimate gift, a child.
and
I always said I would never have children. I hate kids..I do. I am just not that type of nurturing person. I was always very careful to make sure protection was in use (condoms, birth control) but I am that .1% and apparently very fertile. I do not have that natural motherly instinct that all women seem to have, you know..that one that kicks in the moment they know they’re pregnant. I have to work really hard at it and it’s exhausting. I miss my solitude and being able to “check out” of reality from time to time.
and
Because kids aren’t the life completer we believe they are.
Are there people for whom having children completes their lives? No doubt. Are there parents for whom the downsides like sleeplessness and loss of personal time are outweighed by the love and joy they feel? Of course. Are there people who change their minds about wanting kids once they have them? Sure. But that’s not true for everyone. It doesn’t happen every time, it’s never guaranteed, and the consequences are grievous when people who don’t want children have them anyway trusting that they will love the child and be happy.
We need to dispel the starry-eyed myths around pregnancy, childbirth, and marriage and create more realistic expectations. Parenthood is too important a choice for people not to go into it with their eyes open.
“It doesn’t happen every time, it’s never guaranteed, and the consequences are grievous when people who don’t want children have them anyway trusting that they will love the child and be happy.”
There’s a book on this topic that was groundbreaking when it came out, called Regretting Motherhood: A Study by Dr. Orna Donath. The backlash was insane. This is a topic that simply wasn’t discussed, and as the book became more famous (was translated into multiple languages, received a lot of public attention), the responses also became more incendiary. I had the utter honor and pleasure of studying with Orna - she read us some of the death threats she received, in her calm and measured manner, using them to further show just how deeply society expects motherhood of women.
I haven’t read the book myself, but knowing Orna, and having read some of her other work, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
look me in the eyes. you are aware some asexual people have sex, right. you are aware some asexuals aren’t sex repulsed. you do not need to baby asexuals and act like the slightest mention of anything sexual will cause them to die of a heart attack
Addition: you also don’t need to baby asexuals who don’t have sex. I dont have sex. Sex jokes do not bother me. Sex education does not bother me. Reproductive body parts do not bother me. Sex repulsed aces will also not have a heart attack at the slightest mention of sex.
The median artery is an artery that is occasionally found in humans and other animals. [1] It is present in 35% of individuals born in the late 20th century. [2]
occasionally I’m reminded that biology just sucks to think about
patients often experience disruptions to splenic development during embryogenesis, resulting in an overall lack a spleen (asplenia) or development of many spleens (polysplenia)
hey what the fuck
people are like ‘aspects of biology and human anatomy need to be nearly delineated and sorted into distinct boxes’ and then actual biology is like 'roll 2d3+2 to determine how many artery branches your cerebrum has’
In my degree (Human Anatomy), in our final year we had an entire module dedicated to human variation.
We learned that some humans are born mirrored. Their heart is on the right, their liver in their left, etc. Sometimes only a few organs are flipped which can present problems. Other times the person might have no idea until they seek medical advice for unrelated issues.
We learned that only a very small amount of blood vessels are genetically programmed to grow where they’re meant to, and the rest get built as your body grows from embryo-size, blood vessels form where blood vessels are needed. Everyone’s vein patterns are really different as a result, more individual than fingerprints.
We learned that kidneys and spleens have a high amount of variation.
We learned that pelvic bone structure is at most an indication of what sex/gender the person might have been, with at least 4 different types of pelvic shape, and none of them confined to only biologically male or female people.
The year before we had already seen this in action during dissection classes, where no two bodies looked the same, and none of them looked like the pictures in the textbooks.
The real world is messy. Science is messy, biology is messy, anatomy is messy. You learn about statistical averages in school and if you keep getting educated after school you’ll learn that it is never that simple.
I have to laugh at the folks in the notes claiming this is fake because “no 2-yr old is that advanced”. My guys, I work at a daycare almost exclusively with 2-3 year olds and let me tell you some of the wild shit I heard this last week alone,
“Uhhh, i ASSUME we’re going to the playground soon??” -2.5 year old girl
“[3 year old boy] pushed me because he doesn’t have a manners.” -2 yr old girl
“Did you spill your water?” “No no no no it’s not a concern” -2 yr old boy (while running away, dripping wet)
The two year-old is now a solid two and a half. Just now, he was sitting on the couch playing with his pretend flip phone and he frowned and said “for gods sake. My battery is empty.”
The other day at breakfast I asked him if he was going to eat any more of his oatmeal and he said “no, I think I’m just gonna move on with my life.”
If you don’t have a lot of interactions with young children:
Kids are smarter than you think
Six months makes a really big difference when that is 1/5 of the total time you’ve been alive
All this, and also, they can tell you lots about their favorite things. My 2 year old nephew can tell you all about Star Wars (the 8 movies he’s seen at least) and loves going out of his way to bring up how Anakin was good and bad and good again when he died. Trust me, little kids learn and mimic and reenact all the things they get attached to. Also, he named his first fish Jengo Fett, and all following fish Boba Fett, so juries still out on how much he understands clones.
Kids pick up the language that’s used around and to them. Mannerisms too. They are tiny, efficient mimics and it will come out at the WEIRDEST times. Young kids will ABSOLUTELY say all the stuff listed here.
My cousin was somewhere between two and three, and I’d just arrived at her house, and she’s animatedly telling me a story of some kind, and I listen as I make my way through the house, get to the couch, and kick my shoes off. She stops dead in the middle of her sentence, puts her hands on her hips, levels me with a glare the likes of which I haven’t seen since, and goes, “WHAT are they doing there? Do you think the box at the front door is for DECORATION?”
Her mum, standing in the kitchen and watching all this, was GOBSMACKED. Apparently she said that exact phrase more often than she realised, and her kid had picked it up verbatim and started using it on unsuspecting guests (me).
(I got up and put my shoes in the box at the front door immediately)
My family’s lore includes the time my mother offhandedly said to Cousin’s son–who was maybe five–that Cousin’s wife certainly did have strong opinions about some minor thing, and the kid let out a sigh and said, in the driest and flattest and most world-weary tone you’ve ever heard, “Tell me about it.”
i love pitting classically trained magic users against self-taught magic users in sci-fi/fantasy but it shouldn’t be snobbish disdain for them it should be terror
“WHO TAUGHT YOU LIGHTNING BEFORE BASIC TELEKINESIS. LOSING MY MIND WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU JUST DID IT. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAST WITH YOUR BARE HANDS”
WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT YOU’VE ‘HACKED’ MANA DRAIN
WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘DRINK SOME JUICE’
WHAT IS ‘LOW BLOOD SUGAR’
WHY IS THIS WORKING
I HATE YOU SO MUCH
Okay but other direction can ALSO be a lot of fun
“What do you mean I don’t have to burn half my blood to create a fireball?”
“Why can you teleport more than once without vomiting? WTF is ‘quantum displacement awareness’???”
“You know HOW many spells? HOW? … What do you mean ‘my spell book’?”
“Ooooh, you’re just summoning water portions from the Plane of Water… Lol I thought I HAD to combine hydrogen and oxygen molecules to generate water in small amounts. That’s so much easier then what I was doing!”
you cannot separate monsterfucking from queerness.
& for the love of fuck i don’t need babygays coming at me with “you’re equating being gay with being a monster!” go back to tiktok, this is for the adults.
monsterfucking is so queer bc so many of us feel unlovable, so many of us can’t relate to real world affections & attractions. (aces & aros in particular)
so yeah, i wanna fuck that monster, bc deep down, i hope someone will love the monster i think i am.
also monsters are Very Hot & that needs no explanation so.
