The Guild of Fandoms

Carol drags her felt-tip marker from one mole to another, and then down the curve of Steve's cheek to the dots on his neck.

She thinks about it.

They're only five but Carol had a lot of opinions. It makes it easy for her to conclude, "No."

Steve slumps.

"That's okay though," She decides. "My mom doesn't like my sister very much either."

"No one likes Cathy, Carol."

Steve slumps even more until he's lying on his back on her bedroom's pink carpet. Carol follows the movement, hovering over him as she connects more freckles together.

"My mom doesn't like Cathy but she loves her," She says. The statement hangs in the air just long enough for it to hurt when she adds, "Your mom and dad don't love you either."

The hurt is instantaneous.

It hits numb at first. Icing him to the veins and then exploding in the center of his chest. It feels like a knife. It feels like he suddenly can't breathe.

He has to move.

He sits up suddenly.

Carol doesn’t move back fast enough and - "Ow! You hit me!"

"Wha- no, I didn't!"

"Yes, you did!" She accuses, hand to her forehead. "You hit me with your big head!"

"You - you hit me first," Steve shoots back. "You hit me with words. You hurt my feeling."

"I didn't hurt your feeling. I told the truth. Maybe you're just a baby."

"Maybe you're not my friend."

Carol gasps and then turns towards her bedroom door and wails, "Mommy! Mommy, come here. Steve hit me!"

Steve gasps this time.

"You're going to get in trouble now," Carol taunts. "You should've been nice to me."

Steve has a split second.

He decided to meet Carol right where she's at and burst into tears when Mrs Perkins walks through the door.

He sobs about Carol being mean and about her drawing on his face, and he's going to get in trouble at home and - and -

They both end up in time out.

Sitting on opposite ends of the couch, Carol stretches her legs into the space between them until she can nudge Steve with her foot, "Psst."

"What?"

"You're really good at fake crying."

"So are you."

"Thanks," She says. "...It's okay that your mom and dad don't love you 'cause I love you. You're my best friend."

At minimum about 4.5 thousand people liked this without reblogging it.

Progress.

“Ghosts aren’t real” it’s very fair and rational that you believe that

“Ghosts aren’t real anymore” I’m about to hear a poem or very sad story

Here’s a quick handy reference list or anyone who isn’t sure:

Homosexuality does exist in almost all social species.

“Alpha males” are not a real phenomenon and in fact the most aggressive males tend to be the least reproductively successful.

“Survival of the fittest” simply means that the success of a species hinges on how well it “fits” its environment. It does not mean that stronger or smarter individuals are supposed to succeed. Those things can even be a detriment in nature by wasting too many resources.

“Race” is not a biological concept. Someone who looks different from you has the same human genes, just a different grab-bag of dominant traits.

Evolution is not a march towards higher complexity, more intelligence or even more adaptability. It’s just a fluctuation of characteristics dictated by environmental pressures and mutation. A slime mold isn’t “less evolved” than a hawk, just adapted for success under different parameters.

People didn’t evolve “from apes.” It’s more complicated than that. We are a category of ape, sharing a common ancestor with the other apes.

No human on Earth is “closer” to an evolutionary ancestor than any other. We all descended from the same one.

Neanderthals were also a “sibling” species of ours. We didn’t evolve from them.

Humans are actually more genetically homogeneous than most people suspect. This is possibly due to a population bottleneck at some point in our evolutionary past. Two chimpanzees from different sides of a jungle are likely more genetically different to each other than any two human beings in the world.

Our big brains may help us use tools, but what was really principal in their development was the need for empathy, communication, and cooperation.

Humans. Are. Social. So social it drove an incredibly energetically costly increase in our brain size.  Don’t believe anyone who says its our nature to fight “every man for themself.” We’re humans, not bears. We fight for each other.

And we always have. Fossil remains are found of ancient humans who bore signs of crucial mobility impairments that lived to notable ages. Some even have sticks or other mobility aids – community care and support is our way. We don’t cast off those with impairments, we stand by them.

Human sexual dimorphism is on a decreasing trend. Our ancestors had greater difference in canine size and overall size. Our dimorphism gap has gotten smaller.

Occam’s razor is the principal that whatever is the simplest explanation is probably the most likely one. Don’t believe someone who says the reason we evolved bipedalism is so that males could carry gifts to females to woo them. Yes, this is a real ‘theory’ on how bipedalism evolved.

Skin tone is an adaptation of UV levels vs vitamin D levels. Both come from the sun. UV is harmful, so where sun is plentiful populations develop a darker skin tone for more protection. The skin needs sun to create vitamin D, so where sun is scarce, the skin tone lightens to allow more sun in. This is literally all it is.

Final thing: No one’s mind is really equipped to fully understand how long a billion years is, or a million, or even tens of thousands of years. Evolution takes place over a loooong time. Its very, very, slow, slower than we can really comprehend. We can’t “stand in the way” of natural selection by caring for our ill. We don’t need to “help” evolution in any way. It inevitably happens, but not on any sort of timescale we could possibly affect, so don’t fall for anyone that tells you not to “stand in the way” of natural selection. That’s fascism, and its utterly pseudo-scientific.