#I know I'm not the most conventionally attractive person. but I'm definitely not unattractive

[justsomeweirdbandkid]

God I'm tired of being the one nobody falls in love with

[ego-meliorem-esse]

is there a reason why you made the Lord Father Rat Bastard (arthur) so devilishly handsome? I want to hate him with all of my heart but I just can't

sighhh I know I say that he isn't attractive in the conventional way, but oh man hear me out. He has this air of confidence around him that makes him so very punchable,,,,, but oh so very attractive (to certain fucked up people) to some. Most of the time the same people who would personally drown him in a shallow river, are the ones who would get down and dirty with him.

That being said, he isn't unattractive per se. The thing is, and I'm sorry in advance, that he is fucking surrounded by conventionally and relatively handsome lads. Think of his dumb, huge, himbo firstborn son. Definitely more of a looker than the mighty Lord Kirkland himself. Then we got my sad and nasty pretty boy Matt. In my hc he is as pretty and gorgeous as he is sad and anxiety ridden...

Also there is Francis who, yes, is attractive but with whom I have a personal issue with so fuck him. He owes me money.

[f0point5]

It's also interesting how being pretty is so different when talking to a woman and a man. Like I got complimented countless times by female co-workers and friends but very very rarely by men.

I don't count myself as ugly ugly, but I know I'm not conventionally attractive because I'm plus size. I have a more masculine face when I put my hair up or if it's short, and no amount of make up changes that, so essentially I have to put a lot of effort into looking like a conventionally attractive woman for men. I can count on one hand how many men approached me and asked me out my whole life.

And my girl friends think it's weird bec they genuinely think I look good. I trust their opinion on this, and I think I have a healthy view of myself despite being the "ugly" friend.

It's insane how men view female beauty and what you said about their brain activity. I can even find ugly dudes beautiful, especially after finding their personality good. But I just know that men think they're doing you a favour if they give the "ugly" girl a chance. Wild.

The funniest thing is when unattractive guys still always shoot their shot with hotter women and they succeed so much more often then reversed. These uglier dudes wouldn't even blink an eye in the direction of a girl on their level.

Yeah “girl pretty” and “boy pretty” is two different things and there’s overlap but they’re not the same. I think boy pretty is like, “attractive to men” whereas girl pretty is like “objectively nice to look at”. I’m definitely “boy pretty”. definitely not photogenic, features very meh, but it seems to all come together in a way that appeals to men, but I’m definitely not just randomly nice to look at. Everyone always tells me I’m hot/sexy/gorgeous(if the guy is trying really hard 😂) but I think only my mum has ever called me pretty lol

Here’s my other tidbit about men and this is just based on my own experience and all my male friends have confirmed this to me - men date for the validation of other men. So they go for the girl they think has the most social capital, which is overwhelmingly based on her looks. Men are literal clout chasers. Sometimes I wonder if some of them don’t even know what they actually like besides liking whatever they feel like other men can’t get.

Yeah, I used to say that men have no internal regulation system. They lack the self awareness to be like “nope out of my league”. But the last couple of years ngl I’ve seen that change. Now nobody has any sense of regulation. On the whole both genders are at a whack with their expectations nowadays idk dating is the trenchessss. You got women thinking everybody needs to fly them to dubai, you got men living in their childhood bedrooms sleeping on one pillow thinking Sydney sweeney should date them. It’s Brutal out there.

But yeah don’t EVER let any man treat you like they’re doing you a favour. It is never what you bring to the table, girl you are The Meal. If he’s confused he needs to eat elsewhere

[bagel-boy-sama]

Astarion Baldurs Gate 3 Isn't A TumblrSexyMan™, He's Just A SexyMan™

I've seen a large number of people, most of whom are in the Astarion Disliker/"I don't get it" camp most who are not on this particular hell site, cite Astarion as Tumblr's latest sexyman. Today, I will be explaining why I do not believe that to be the case. That instead, as the title states, he's just a sexyman.

No real knowledge of the hell site is required, I'll explain things for the new people.

Setting The Definitions

First, definitions because this is now Intro to Writing and Rhetoric. A sexyman would be anyone, usually masc or a man, who is concidered sexy by a wide range of people. Fascinating.

A Tumblr Sexyman, on the other hand, is a thing - usually fictional entity - that is incredibly popular on Tumblr.com to the degree it escapes it's fandom sometimes, in the most extreme of cases, becoming far more popular than it's original fandom. It is characterized by a few major characteristics. Ranging from Twinkism* (be it the character or fan interpretation), generally unconventionally/perceived to be unconventionally attractive in a non physical sense (character traits that wouldn't otherwise be desirable, like absurd behavior or generally evilness), to impeccable drip (either in the original media/design, or done by fans in fanart).

*note: Twinkism (which I did just throw in on the spot this is entirely bullshit for my own amusement) is the phenomenon of skinny, young looking, pretty/feminine white boys who are within media. This is different from twinks, who are understood to be young and skinny - being pretty, popular, or white is not connected. All those who participate in Twinkism are Twinks, but not all Twinks participate in Twinkism.

Does Astarion Baldurs Gate 3 Fit The Definition?

First rule: must be at least a twink. Is he?

No. Yes. Kinda. In a way. Many people would describe Astarion as someone who's gone through "Twink Death". No this is not because he's literally undead. Twink Death, in it's simplest form, is when a twink no longer looks young and/or feminine. Astarion has aged. His crows feet and laugh lines, while beautiful, do not make him look 18. For some this would disqualify him from being a Twink. So perhaps he has failed at the first step.

I, however, am not satisfied with that. Moving on, is Astarion - or would Astarion - actually be considered conventionally unattractive in any way that is disconnected from his appearance? I argue no. Vampires are considered very well, normal to lust after. They're right below succubus on the "This isn't considered weird to find attractive" scale. You aren't romancing The Emperor here. Outside of that he's well groomed, shown to be muscular in game (headcanon does often disagree and while I wish it was true we are working with facts for this specific discussion), and an elf. In personality, while not for everyone, he's the pretty standard fruity sarcastic gay who's a bit selfish. We all know a fruity sarcastic gay who's a bit selfish, and they get laid. So it can't be considered that bad. Probably.

I feel important to note here that I am aroace and have no idea what I'm talking about right now. This is an educated guess.

Astarion has lost now, two for two. He's barely a twink, even going off of his model he's more a twunk. He definitely doesn't fit the Twinkism phenomenon. He's not weird to find attractive, I assume, so what else is there? His drip? I'm sorry, but his base outfit is a bit well Goofy to say the least. Much fanart leaves him in this outfit or a simpler version because drawing ruffles is enough to make anyone want to willingly jump headfirst into the underdark, so he fails the drip test as well.

His final hurtle: is his popularity Tumblr™. In this context Tumblr™ is different from Tumblr. Tumblr™ is the fandom side, where a sexyman would flourish and find their own fandom. Importantly, this fandom needs to be very insular to the site. It's a *Tumblr* sexyman after all. So that begs the question, is Astarion highly liked by mostly or purely Tumblr people/those who have the vibes of a Tumblr user? No.

Astarion is well loved by many people of various vibes. He has affected (previously) straight men on Reddit. Few can escape him and his 10 charisma.

Conclusion

Astarion is just a sexyman. He's just a fictional character that many think is neat and attractive for a variety of reasons. He's the Ryan Reynolds of crpgs. He's some dude, who's generally considered attractive by a lot of people who you both would and wouldn't expect to find him attractive.

[nerves-nebula]

Your OCs are very beautiful to look at. By which I mean they are extremely ugly. If showed them to random people on the street most of them would go ew. They are extremely strange and unconventional. Sometimes even inappropriate. Truly horrid subject matter surrounding most, lots of weird implications. And that is beautiful to me.

(P.S Sorry if this came off as insulting. I only mean they don’t meet typical beauty standards, and are wonderfully real in the details of their design)

no this is exactly what i'm going for you are 100% correct and i'm glad you've picked up on it :)

im not going for Popular Standard of Beauty when it comes to a lot of them, to the point that a character of mine being notably conventionally attractive is lowkey a sign that they might be evil haha.

what i'm going for when it comes to a lot of them is the most gorgeous creature, monster, or beast you've ever seen. or something ugly, or feral, or when it comes to my human characters just not conventionally attractive. partially cuz its more fun to draw and partially cuz it means more to me (and i know it means more to other people too, cause I've had people tell me they're happy i represented them) than drawing like. idk. a thin white woman.

and partially because I do just genuinely find them gorgeous. like, what is there to be enamored about a fashion model? i don't mean this in like a "pretty people are ACTUALLY the ugly ones ooh im so enlightened" kind of way I just generally find them uninteresting to look at or draw.

and like, my worldview is very heavily based on seeing the humanity in monsters and seeing the way society demonizes me and my favorite people- so it's not really any wonder i design my characters this way.

that being said- i definitely think i can make them MORE conventionally unattractive. i think i'm not going hard enough tbh. though part of that might just be because my art style is too simplistic to really hammer home some of the smaller details (like Caseys acne) but we'll see.

ANYWAY sorry for the rant, the point is: thank you!! and thank you for giving me a chance to ramble hahafhsdfhasf.

side note: once one of my younger cousins asked me why i was drawing a fat person and i said cuz fat people look cool and he was like "no!! fat people aren't cool!!" and i was like "actually, yes. I like them." and he just stared at me and then left.

[coolfire333]

More demiaroace thoughts but it's a really long post I won't subject any of you to I'm just kinda rambling and getting my thoughts out.

Tldr: I've tried looking for demiaroace spaces but sometimes even then they lean "too allo" or "too aroace" for me to be able to connect with, and it's all so alienating sometimes being in spaces that are just bi or just aroace. I don't really know what I'm looking for but I'm not finding it.

For real though like being demiaroace is hard. My boyfriend jokes about "me and the bi gf staring at the big booba goth girls together" (which is funny to me, don't worry) but honestly it's not accurate. I don't really experience physical or romantic attraction based on looks at all.

Like I'm able to identify (I think?) what a "conventionally hot" person is, but to me it's more like if a lesbian had to point out the hottest man in the room. Like it's just an educated guess really, and it's not like the lesbian is gonna be fantasizing about how hot that guy was all week, because she's not attracted to him, she just recognizes that to some people he'd be considered hot.

Another thing is that I honestly am not sure if I've ever had a real crush before. All my "crushes" were on close friends of mine, and eventually they faded away after a few months. I had to pretend to have crushes when I was younger because nearly all my peers thought there was something wrong with me when I insisted I didn't feel that way about anyone.

I tried dating someone I didn't know well, once, before my current boyfriend. It went terribly. I forced myself to go on the date because "you never know what'll happen" even though I was petrified about going on a romantic outing with someone I barely considered an acquaintance.

When my current boyfriend asked me out, we'd been friends for a couple of months, and we had a lot in common and had become pretty close. He wasn't unattractive, and he was very nice and friendly towards me, but I had zero attraction towards him at the time he first asked me on a date (don't worry he knows this).

I knew him well enough to actually mean it when I said "oh ok!" to his proposition, because something felt more relaxed knowing that we were already friends. But I really didn't feel anything romantic towards him until a few weeks into our "dating."

I really cannot understand the concepts of "blind dating" or "one-night-stands" or "love at first sight" or even most irl crushes. For me, sex needs romance first and romance needs friendship first.

It's easy for me to become attracted to fictional characters because they're malleable and often have obvious personalities, so I can end up crushing on them easier than with real people.

I don't know, I just go into bi spaces and see people like "the real problem with being bi is that everyone is hot ;)" and I don't relate to that, so I go to aroace spaces to try to find where I fit in and all I see is "pfft, who needs sex and romance that's lame" and I can't relate to that either so I feel stuck in between both.

I guess it's kinda like my gender. I feel "not cis" enough to be cis but I definitely don't feel trans either. For simplicity I say I'm a woman whose gender is genderqueer but that doesn't really explain how I feel in ways that people would immediately understand. Similarly, I can say I'm bi to most people, or maybe sapphic to some, and then further elaborate that I'm demiaroace to others, but I always feel like I'm coming across wrong.

[dustyard]

How does it change people's perceptions when it's an ugly person with a beautiful daemon or a beautiful person with an ugly daemon

Honestly? Humans are very prone to showing preferential treatment to the things we find pretty, so it would definitely have an impact, but I think it would be a bit complicated. Very attractive people with good-looking or appealing dæmon forms would obviously be the sort of Hollywood standard, but in real life I think the appearance of the human counterpart would be most important. I can imagine very attractive people being able to "get away" with having a less appealing dæmon form because hey, they're hot. I wonder if that platitude about "it's what's inside that counts" would be changed to something like "it's how your dæmon is that matters". Do I think dæmon form would sway people's opinion? Definitely, but unfortunately I don't know that we as humans are quite detached enough from our sense of vanity to elevate a conventionally unattractive person to be considered beautiful on the basis of their dæmon. To be fair, I am a bit of a pessimist, but I have found in my own life that while looks don't always matter, they certainly can, especially if we're looking at trends as opposed to individual situations/people.

However, considering how quickly body types go in and out of fashion (especially with the internet around) I'm sure there would be cycling trends of fashionable dæmon forms, so a person might be treated differently by someone older than they would by someone younger because the different generations have contrasting perspectives on how attractive a lemur dæmon is. Equally, despite my bitching, beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, so while a handsome young man with a sea hare dæmon might raise a few eyebrows, that doesn't mean they would be constantly or notably treated worse.