I Know When We Talk About ~men Writing Women~ We Usually Focus On The “she Breasted Boobily” Variety

cis people when a trans person turns out to be a bad person: oh so i can misgender them now? i can misgender them now right? now it’s okay for me to completely disrespect their identity and show other trans people their pronouns are a privilege right? i can do that now? i can be blatantly and violently transphobic to this person even though it has nothing to do with what they did right?

I swear to God I'm getting fucking ads on my keyboard

Using predictive text and it keeps suggesting titles for shit I've never heard of

Trying to text Zan and type the letter g and fucking swiftkey is immediately like "Ghosts of Tsushima" and I have no fucking clue what that is

I look it up cause I'm curious now and it's a goddamn game. It's some fucking video game that I don't know anything about, have never talked about before, have never typed out before, but the fucking keyboard is telling me about it

And then it happened with other shit

Movies, shows, other games that predictive text has no reason to assume I'll be talking about

I am aware that we live in an advertising saturated hellworld but I really don't need it rubbed in my face like this

Hawke's job is so much more interesting than mine. It pays better too. Come watch me be jealous.

Sunrise. Instagram: AngryFluffy Twitter: @Angry_Fluffy DeviantArt: AngryFluffy

I am absolutely terrified of modern grind culture. No matter what your occupation is, there is an immense pressure to constantly work.

I work at a grocery store and I am constantly staying over my scheduled time by hours, or going in on my days off.

Content creators have to basically push out new content at all times, and it's expected to be quality content at that.

Even fanfic writers have this expectation that they will constantly be putting out new chapters, one shots, headcanons, etc. And they're not even freaking paid for it.

It's just this constant, ever looming, abjectly terrifying pressure and expectation that you will always be working. Always be producing. And never stop until you have an absolute breakdown, for which you will get very little sympathy and expected to recover from asap so you can get back to work.

I am in an absolute mental panic right now over this

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.

“you can’t ship that, it’ll never be canon!”

look, when I was your age, we shipped characters who never even met in canon. uphill. both ways. in the snow.

People really out here replying to my posts and immediately blocking me

Years after it came out, I have finally decided to check out Diablo III. I absolutely love Diablo II and will definitely rank it among my favorite games of all time. So let's hope III can live up to the ridiculously high standard I have set.

My computer has been moved. Unfortunately, that means no stream tonight.

BUT you will get to see my awesome poster wall when I stream tomorrow!