Just read somewhere that as of today (17th October 2023), Natasha and Tony are canonically dead 😭
It’s bad enough that it’s been five years since Infinity War and the snap, but now these two are officially gone too? I feel emotionally attacked right now.
I think the part that worries me the most about the trend of young people who stress out about thought crimes & say “you can’t write/read about x squick because it’s bad!!!! Therefore you must think it’s ok!!” is really twofold for me. Since the beginning of time, storytelling has been a safe way to explore taboos. That’s how we get tricksters (like coyote who ate too many strawberries) & hubris (like Icarus or Arachne) & little red riding hood as a historical metaphor to warn little girls about trusting strange men. We need a safe place to explore and untangle ideas which we are not “allowed” to touch in real life or which may not be safe. Fiction gives us that space and it isn’t healthy to take it away. We’ve been exploring topics with it since we had language.
and the other part that troubles me is that it belies a fundamental inability to hold an idea in your mind without condoning or agreeing with it, which is the foundation of critical thought and analysis. Literally you need to learn to be comfortable with entertaining ideas you may disagree with or make you uncomfortable, or else you’re cutting yourself off from growth, critical exercise in empathy, and the possibility of intelligently arguing your point and winning others to your ideas. It leaves you open to propaganda and alienates you from others who might be different from you, which is exactly what fascists want.
