If you've seen trivia posts going around, may have seen ones about the baculum, a bone in the penis whose purpose is to help support erections which is present in most placental mammals, including non-human apes, but which is conspicuously absent in humans.
Those posts typically don't go into why this is the case, which is fair enough, since the question is far from settled. However, there are a lot of hypotheses about it, and some of them are pretty fucking wild.
I think my personal favourite is the recently proposed idea that, since soft tissue injuries tend to heal more rapidly and completely than broken bones, a flexible and resilient boneless penis constitutes a reproductive advantage in situations where genital trauma is common, possibly as a result of the development of upright posture rendering the penis more prone to blunt encounters.
Like, imagine humanity's proto-hominid ancestors going "actually, bipedalism is great" and promptly getting whacked in the ding so much that it exerted evolutionary pressure on the morphology of the penis.
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the more i think about how we (as both f1blr/f1 fic writers and the more general understanding of f1 fans/the f1 world) mythologise nico rosberg, the more i think i slowly begin to understand why he's such a divisive figure. it's actually not that much to do with taking sides over brocedes and the popularity of lewis hamilton, or even just that some people really really don't like his personality. it's because he's a living symbol of the trauma that motorsports, particularly f1, inflicts upon its participants and embodies it in an almost entirely new and much more viscerally upsetting way.
think about the other people that have had a similar role. many of them are motor racers who died tragically, mostly in some kind of vehicle or after an on track incident. we can mythologise these people in the ancient ways set out by tragic heroes. they have a few subcategories, the dead champions going out in a blaze of glory (senna, rindt, even schumacher in some ways) like achilles. the dead that should have been champions, taken cruelly early and depriving the entire world with their loss, grieved (gilles villeneuve, francois cevert, didier pironi, ronnie peterson, elio d'angelis) like hector. the minor characters who die, who had yet to make any particular impression on the world of motorsport, but whose deaths motivate their loved ones to achieve on their behalf, or inspire rage against a cruel system (roland ratzenberger, jules bianchi, anthonine hubert) like patroclus.
even those that didn't die like that generally bear some sort of physical mark of trauma, like niki lauda's burns and alex zanardi's amputated legs. these figures are held up as triumphs of endurance and willpower when they go on to succeed in motorsport, or elsewhere in sport. if they cannot succeed in some sporting capacity afterwards, then they are allowed to quietly fade into obscurity, like robert kubica and his damaged arm, clay regazzoni, paralysed from the waist down. the trauma of motorsport is understandable when it is rendered physically.
when we render it instead psychologically, emotionally, it becomes incomprehensible to us, uncomfortable for us to entertain. why does someone retire after winning the world championship? because it's dangerous? because you are hurting yourself? in professional sports, people carry around constant pain until their body breaks enough that they can no longer compete, which typically happens sometime in the mid-late thirties, frighteningly early in the average human lifespan. sports is not man vs man or man vs nature so much as it is man vs his own body. this is not the only way competitors hurt themselves, there is constant restriction: food, habits, time. how do you win? see family less, see friends less, practice hobbies less, spend more time training, focusing, studying, converting yourself into the perfect machine.
and then there's the individual traumas: the bridges burnt, the marriages sacrificed, the children neglected, the rival that becomes a nemesis, the best friend that becomes a mortal enemy, the self that becomes lost to become just another part of the car. richard siken says "how much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?". and then there's the losses, the disappointments, the criticisms from the team, from the press, from the fans. the constant battering of yourself against wave after wave of grief. the slow erosion of hope for all but a chosen, golden few. the knowledge that even if you win, there will come a point, inevitably, again, where you lose. you a winner until the next race. you are a champion until the next season.
what do we say to someone who says "i want to go home" and means it? who doesn't have to be dragged out of the race kicking and screaming? if they aren't a winner, we say they were never going to be. they are no one of any worth, they will be quietly forgotten. can you name a single one? if they are a winner, though, then what? what does this mean? we snatch at their winnings, their titles, try to take it away, retract it, somehow. but how do you say to them then that they aren't a winner? it is over. it is done.
they leave because they are hurting somehow, and their leaving leaves us hurting. it's betrayal, abandonment of the highest order. we as spectators are part of the race, the system. for nico to leave voluntarily is to criticise somehow, to point out the suffering and say you have hurt me. and we are included in that you, we know it subconsciously. that is why nico rosberg makes us uncomfortable, because he pulls back the curtain, reveals the trickery of it and all of us are suddenly standing in the light.
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“Will. Hey.” He reaches out when the medic doesn’t react, forcibly stilling his hands. Even then, he can feel the minute twitches, the fighting he’s doing with himself to keep still. “It can wait until tomorrow.”
“They leave tomorrow,” Will stresses, finally pulling his hands free. “The Romans are early risers, Nico, you know better than anyone, I need this done before they —”
He cuts himself off, too invested in the sprawl of paperwork completely covering the nurse’s station. Under his eyes is almost completely bruised black, not unlike the war paint he wore so long ago, and there’s a grey dullness to him. If he stays in one place too long, he sways on his feet.
“I’m fine,” he says, suddenly, as if remembering Nico is there. He pauses briefly to shoot him a small, strained smile, then returns to his frantic sorting. A red thumbprint bleeds onto the corner of the page of one of the files. He doesn’t seem to notice.
Without straying too far, Nico gathers the supplies he needs. He pulls out a tray to grab some antiseptic, swipes a Pac-Man bandaid off a box on the counter. Arms laden with his spoils, he nudges the half-door open with his hip, setting the supplies down when he’s inside the round desk-station.
“Will,” he says quietly, wrapping his hand around his elbow. He jumps.
“I’m — fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
He blinks, staring down at his hands; brows furrowing as he notices the several scattered paper cuts crossing almost every finger. Many of them are clotted, scabbed over; dried blood streaking between his freckles and swirling around stark white scars.
“Come here.”
Without protest, for once, he does. He sets down the pen clenched in his left thumb and turns to face Nico fully. In the minimal space between them, his hands shake.
“I didn’t notice,” he murmurs, flinching as Nico soaks a cotton pad and presses it to a cut on the inside of his thumb. Nico can’t quite read the expression on his face, although there’s a choked quality to his voice. “I need to — before they —”
“Not everything is your responsibility,” Nico interrupts. He meets Will’s gaze head on, his own gaze steady, heart breaking at the fragility in his ice blue eyes. “Not everything is your responsibility, Will,” he repeats, firmer this time.
Will’s face crumples. “I haven’t slept in five days.”
Nico closes his eyes. “Gods, Will.”
“I’m sorry.”
In moments like these, Nico hates working for his father.
He had left to relative chaos. Relative, meaning in comparison to what the rest of the eight billion people on the planet would consider calm, camp wasn’t it, but by demigod standards it wasn’t too bad. Several Romans, including Reyna and Hazel, were due to arrive the day after he was summoned by his father, which was a bummer, but he had assurance from both of them that they’d stay long enough to see him. And reassurance from his father that the errand wouldn’t be too perilous. And, lastly, a threat (warning out of love, he would say, but Nico knows a threat when he sees one) from Will to take it easy.
He got back to debris and blood and a flurry of stress — a weapons development disaster, he’d been quickly informed. No deaths, at least not yet, but several in critical condition that were quickly approaching it.
And Kayla and Austin, back at school, and Will in the infirmary by himself.
“Will,” he repeats for the third time, a little more urgently this time. He places a gently finger under his chin. “Look at me a second.”
He regrets asking, almost, when Will meets his eyes, although he immediately feels guilty for the thought. The son of Apollo is so rarely vulnerable, stubbornly intent on carrying the burdens he’s stuck with without half a hand of help. It wears on him, and the proof of the weariness hurts Nico somewhere, deep in his soul; he hates bearing witness to it.
Worse, though, is the knowledge that Will is struggling with it himself.
“Everybody critical has been stabilized,” he says firmly. When Will opens his mouth in protest, he adds, “I can feel it, Sunshine, do you trust me?”
“Yes,” he says, immediately. He snaps his jaw shut. “Yes.”
Nico’s own shoulders slump when Will exhales, long and exhausted. “Good. This —” he gestures to the paperwork — “this is secondary, Solace. I don’t care if they want to leave tomorrow. You need rest, and, hell, if they’re that pressed about it, I’ll make them do the fucking paperwork.”
“Please, don’t,” Will says, laughing feebly. He swiped quickly under his eyes, pulling away, and Nico lets him, if only because his small smile seems genuine, if not exhausted. “The idea of that actually makes me want to puke. I hate paperwork, but I hate anyone else doing it more.”
“Right, right.” Nico nudges his shoulder, something like teasing showing in his eyes. “Heaven forbid someone dot their i’s incorrectly.”
“Exactly.” Will looks so serious that Nico stills, trying to figure out just how anal, exactly, his friend is, before his face breaks out into a wide, genuine grin. Nico’s stomach flips. “I’m only teasing, Death Breath. I don’t actually care if people dot their i’s incorrectly. And I would appreciate the help.”
“I feel like it hurt you to say that,” Nico says, once he recovers from the staggering force of one million megawatts of smile power.
“It did.”
“Also, you implied that there genuinely is a wrong way to dot your i’s.”
“…Of course there is.” Will looks at him strangely. “Maybe I’m not the one who’s sleep deprived,” he muses, reminding Nico that oh yeah, dumbass, Will is actually genuinely sick with how little sleep he’s gotten, maybe fix that.
“Will you sleep, now?”
Will hesitates. “There was a girl with a — skull injury.”
Nico understands immediately. (He saw the mangled mess of Lee’s shroud.)
“Come sleep in my cabin,” he suggests, squeezing his wrist. “I’ll keep watch, and you’ll have some privacy.”
“Okay,” he says quietly. He allows himself to be tugged out of the infirmary, only looking back a couple times. “Thank you, Nico.”
“Anything for you,” Nico responds, just as quiet, and his heart races when Will beams.
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