Literally Learning How To Speed Read Just So I Can Get Through The Secret History Faster. I Just Want

I know when we talk about ~men writing women~ we usually focus on the “she breasted boobily” variety but can we just acknowledge that in The Sound of Music, a mother abbess sends one of her young, naive charges to go and work for a rich, single older man and when said young naif flees back to the abbey and refuses to speak to anyone about what happened to her except to say “I can’t face him again”, the abbess’ first reaction is “are you in ~love~ with him?” when any woman’s knee-jerk reaction would be “GIRL WHAT TF DID HE DO AND SHOULD I CALL THE POLICE”

People either forget or don't care that defense lawyers are the foundation of our justice system. 'innocent until proven guilty' doesn't work without them

You know our society is fucked up when people seriously think being a criminal defense attorney is like. A moral evil. Like people seriously jump to “wow you defend murderers” as if the majority of “crime” that happens on a daily basis isn’t literally stuff like addicts being caught possessing drugs or homeless people being arrested for loitering or fucking poor women stealing food and clothes for their kids like… the average person is just one or two paychecks away from also being deemed a “criminal” by society but yeah sure you should definitely act like needing to be defended against the state makes you an automatically morally bad person

I'm taking a break from the rapture to lead an inquisition.

Not a real inquisition. I don't have the resources for that.

I'm talking about Dragon Age: Inquisition. On Twitch. Come join me.

Why does Dragon Age 2 make me so very thirsty?!

Ugh, whatever. Just come join me on twitch and watch me drool

https://www.twitch.tv/therobichaud

a character can be as perceptive and insightful and intellectually curious as you can possibly imagine the fucking second they show signs of being a little rowdy or boisterous or just generally being cheerful and physically fit they instantly get slapped with the “dumbass” stamp because the faceless masses of general fandom trends still haven’t progressed beyond the immovable jock vs nerd dichotomy i guess

Okay, so here's my problem.

I have issues and criticisms of Contrapoints and Lindsay Ellis that I would love to actually discuss with people who would actually know who and what I'm talking about, which excludes everyone in my real world life.

But I also can't really discuss this sort of thing online either because both of these women have hatedoms that will glom onto any reason to harass them and I really don't want them using anything I might say to do so.

Like, look at the contrapoints tag here on tumblr and, aside from the fans just enjoying stuff they like, you'll find that most of the criticism is either full TERF bs or quickly attracts full TERF bs.

And I want nothing to do with that. I don't want to read the nasty vitriol they spew out or in any way contribute to their gross bigotry.

My issues/criticisms really don't have anything to do with either of these women being women. And I don't want to get mixed up with the crowd for whom that is their issue.

I just really don't like feeling like I need to bite my tongue because bigots want to act in bad faith

Just started watching Loki and I already kind of hate the entire premise of it.

Anything that suggests the idea of a deterministic universe already annoys the crap out of me. And that fucking awful line about how Loki just exists to bring suffering and death to people just so that the Avengers can be good guys made me want to punch my screen.

If i had a husband and he really loved me he would buy me an old victorian mansion.

Astarion's ascension is extremely popular, despite it clearly being the designed bad ending for him.

So many fans of this version want to argue that it's a "valid" path to choose if you enjoy his character, or that it's equally good as his Spawn ending. The "it's what he wants" argument is the hegemonic justification in question.

But is wanting something better than needing another thing? Yes, he talks about ascension ever since he finds out about the ritual.

Yes, when push comes to shove he's still committed to ascend. But is this enough? Should we support his choice, even when everything but his words tell us not to? Should we trust the judgment of a deeply traumatized man about the best way for him to feel better?

This may sound harsh, but the answer is no.

Because in many circumstances, we see Astarion behaving unhealthily as a result of his trauma: he's hypersexual at the beginning of the game, using sex as a survival mechanism. He's yet to learn what his boundaries should be, what it means not to be an object, to see himself as a person that deserves respect and has so much more to offer than just his body. His trauma is still fresh. And he's so scared of losing his freedom, being trapped under slavery again.

We can't blame him being so desperate to feel safe that he will trade everything he is for it.

Because that's what the ritual means, Cazador says so himself: despite gaining the ritual's power, Astarion is still part of the bargain for said power. He still loses his soul in the process, and that is clear once we see how he acts post-ascension.

Of course, someone that is still suffering from the consequences of 200 years of abuse wouldn't care if he became less of himself, in the process of becoming untouchable ever again. Astarion's behaviour towards himself highlights that he doesn't care for the person he is because that person is, sadly, the product of those centuries of abuse.

He doesn't want to be that person anymore: even better, he doesn't want to be a person anymore: people suffer, people get taken advantage of, people are submitted by more powerful beings. He is willing to give this up not despite losing everything he is, but because of it. And that's what happens after his ascension: he retains his body, which becomes an empty shell of who he once was, with someone else inside of it to fill the void left by his soul.

This situation is a perfect, brutal metaphor of an abused person that later in life becomes the abuser himself, a thing that often happens to male victims of SA.

This is what is fundamentally wrong with Astarion's ascension: he's choosing power, his abuser's tool, over healing. Instead of learning to feel like a person again, to deal with his trauma to life after having endured it, he chooses to not feel anymore, while letting thousands of spawns (like he was) be consumed to get what he wants.

This terribly selfish act is the first instance of Astarion behaving like Cazador, considering the spawns as lesser beings, as nothing but his tools, like all vampire lords do. In this process he also sees himself, the person he gives up being, as a tool. He isn't healing. He's losing all of himself entirely.

Why would someone see this sacrifice as not only necessary to leave his trauma behind, but also preferable to healing from it?

The fan-favourite characteristic of Ascended Astarion is his behaviour towards Tav: in this version of "himself", he clearly is even more sexual than he was in his first days with the tadpole. And this expression of his sexuality is drastically different from the one we got to know prior to this point.

He is dominant, prevaricating, demanding in his avances: he enjoys being in a position of power even in his relationship.

This isn't the Astarion that slowly learns to trust his partner, to build a real loving relationship with someone who sees him as equal and truly cares for him.

Everything that he learns during his romance and his plot gets nullified by his ascension; and yet, this gets overlooked in favour of this more sexually appealing version of him. For people that claim to love his character because of his complexity, Ascended Astarion fans seem to only truly love him when he's less of himself than ever.

When all that's left of him is his body, and he behaves more like the toxic love interest from a young adult romance book, a great number of his fans get wild. Is this all that they want from him? The husk of the funny, sarcastic, dramatic and complex character, filled with this more traditionally masculine attitude, replacing what he used to be? An Astarion that never heals from his trauma, choosing to leave behind everything he was instead? Who resembles his abuser more than ever?

Do his fans who like his ascended version so much to genuinely think this is the best outcome for him, or do they just enjoy being able to project this "macho" fantasy on a physically attractive male character, that otherwise isn't anything like this prototype of man?

We can't help but think that appreciating Ascended Astarion is the same as believing in, if not loving, his hypersexual facade: it's overlooking his humanity in favour of sexualising him.

Which is the biggest disservice one could ever do to his character.