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leam1983 · 2 years ago

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Intimacy

We had our previously-mentioned Gay friends over for dinner and, once again, booze lightened discussion topics all the way down to this lovable, if nosy pair questioning why Walt, Sarah and I weren't more forward with each other.

Sarah tried to go for diplomacy. "I think there's something more fulfilling in treating one another as something like a totality, if that makes sense. We're lovers, sure, but we're also coworkers, friends, best friends - and also mutual points of reference. Actual affection feels like the icing on the cake for me, when there's so many other ways these two guys show me love on the daily."

Walt was his usual sensual and Epicurean self. "Love needs to cook. It needs to simmer, I've found. Good on you guys if you can just go at it from the moment the alarm clock rings, but I need comfort, gratitude and love to sort of rise up to the top of the day's worth of boiling emotions. Everything gets tossed in the pot, to make that work: daily successes and failures, frustrations, annoyances, particular points of attraction..."

Our friends are of Montreal's more libertine Gay circle, comparatively. They're a couple, but they're not exclusive; and they act as though the L word could only ever refer to lust. That's a fissure that's particularly observable if you really pay attention to your local scene's LGBTQA contingent and have some friends in the community. Some of us are lovers, some of us are cuddlers - and some of us act like the eighties never ended and their local Red Light district is an open parade of flesh to consume. Crucially, we're like any other social group in that we don't always understand one another's minutiae. We can respect them, but we don't have to live them.

And, here comes my turn. I sigh and buy some time by going for a bite of Walt's apple crumble.

"Straights have a certain idea of the Gay Couple," I start. "They're fit, decently moneyed, always well dressed - and the experiential value of their existence stands in for other things Straights might recognize, like having kids or investing in a house in the suburbs. That Archetypal Gay Couple prefers to invest in luxury brands, frequent trips, maybe the occasional shot at simulated parenthood with a dog or a cat - and they wear their contentment on their sleeves. They sometimes wonder why people don't just re-jigger their finanaces on a whim - if they were able to tell their bosses to fuck off and then fly to Portofino for two weeks, then surely the Straights can too, right?"

I raise a finger. "You'll tell me this is all wrong, but I'll remind you guys you're up to your third condo renovation in fifteen years. You call yourselves a couple and then brag about finding twinks on Grindr that you then bring home and fingerquotes-added service, to use them as part of threesomes or foursomes..."

They're tense, and I can tell. They're expecting me to get judgey, and I let them stew in it for a few seconds while I drink some soda.

"Some people are happy calling casual sex within and without a consensual structure a form of love, just like some Mormon couples would do exactly what you do, just wrapped in extra layers of justification designed to appease leftover Catholic morals. I've never called Sarah a bitch to work her up, I've never called Walt a fat fuck or whatever else it is you're probably imagining, and the idea of doing what you do with the people I love rubs me the wrong way."

I shrug. "We like to think of ourselves as a big, unified movement standing up against bigotry and general misunderstanding, but the fact is we just cannot consistently understand each other - just like how I can't understand how you two are so insistent we explore your kinks, honestly."

The silence that follows is understandably heavy, but I feel Sarah's hand grip mine. Walt feels obligated to keep his hands in view, so he eventually hooks a foot against one of mine.

Let's call the older one in the couple Peter. The younger one is Bruce. Peter's the first to break out of the malaise I've instigated and nods pointedly. "Oh no, I get it - asserting boundaries makes complete sense, Grem. I'm sorry if we gave you the wrong impression; we probably lost touch with the less-demonstrative crowd from down the street, if you understand."

As Montreal has its drag kings and queens, its out-and-about Queers that aren't shy about turning their sexuality into a sizable chunk of their public image - and then there's Walt, Sarah and I, and people like us. The "stealthy LGBTQA", if you will - those of us who are indeed out to their friends and loved ones, but who chose to internalize their sexuality. I have my Bi and Pride pins, for instance, but I won't put them anytime outside of Pride season. I don't dress in the Bi flag's colors and I'd say it doesn't define the entirety of my identity. It's a good chunk of it, but it's not everything that makes up moi.

Cross me on the street and you won't peg me for a bi man. You won't peg Walt for a gay man on sight, and you won't peg Sarah for a straight woman. You'd have to get to know us to figure it out, in the absence of this blog as a handy reference point.

Bruce speaks up and things clear up instantly. "I just think it might be nice to, y'know..."

The polycule shares a glance. Peter looks remorseful while Bruce looks wounded and hopeful. I've never spotted his signs of infatuation, and I wonder if there are any. They're casual, as I've mentioned, so I have to wonder if this isn't some good old lecherous curiosity. Unfortunately, any hope I would've had to see Bruce being willing to commit to taking things at our speed is obliterated by his next sentence.

"Can I be honest? I just really wanna rail you, Grem."

Brought up like this, in that context - no. That is absolutely not my wheelhouse. I try not to get too icy seeing as this is Bruce making an effort at "friendliness" at the tail-end of an awkward conversation he and his beau initiated, but I think I can be excused if I'm a bit rigid, in-context.

"Not interested, sorry," I flatly reply.

Expectedly enough, Bruce and Peter leave quickly after accepting one token coffee cup. With boundaries having been set, I made an effort to warm things up by discussing our business plans. Peter seemed to take to this like a raft in the ocean, and was more than glad to see us take further steps to leaving the Other Place behind. That allowed us to close the door on them in an at least cordial manner, thank God.

Once they'd left, however, Walter glowers at the door. "What are we supposed to do; plaster a sign out in front that might say We've got a good thing going and aren't a Sainte-Catherine Street flophouse, thank you?!"

Sarah shrugs as she picks up the dishes. "It takes all kinds, Walt. Gay, Bi, Straight, whatever - some people are into building something that's long-lasting and others just want to feel something. It's not just in the Gay circle; you've heard Grem talk about his sad little attempt to visit a strip club after graduating."

I scoff and shake my head. "Some of these dancers were Postgrad students of their own. Some patrons were there to ogle at a respectable distance, others just really wanted sex. These were Straight people, Walt."

I pause to start scrubbing a plate in the sink. "Technically, I've never actually wanted to have sex with either of you, if I'm honest. What I've always wanted was to have someone to love, and to be loved."

That gets Walt to stop and give me a long and thoughtful look. After a few seconds, there's a smile underneath his mustache.

"I never thought of us in these terms before. I approve, honestly."

Sarah, of course, has to deliberately dull that moment of attempted emotional and perceptual depth with a joke.

"Bruce's idea of casual sex is weird, anyway. A little fellatio while the S.O's cutting veggies for supper, a little early-evening anal for cardio, one or two good pumps in the shower, followed by his attempt at Tantric sex, which probably stops at frenzied frottage while mumbling om mani padme om."

Sarah keeps building on this, to the point where we're left cackling and have a hard time being efficient with what's left in the sink.

#life post #love #intimacy #lgbtqa #bi-specific #queer-specific #polyamory #on divisions within the rainbow #mature post #cw: sex mention #cw: sex discourse

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majorasnightmare · 25 days ago

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taps mic

minthara

*uproarious applause*

okay so like. obviously everyone here knows and understands mintharas romance route is fucking incredible, like we are ALL on the same page here and telepathically communicating our agreement. shes a compelling fascinating character with a fantastic blend of firmly held political beliefs and hypocrisy and surprising mindfulness that makes her a thrill in any party, playing good OR evil.

her character is absolutely magnetic, made all the more enthralling by her stellar voice work and delightful party banter

so. we all know why WE love minthara. but something I find equally engaging is why SHE likes US. the way the companions experience desire is already more interesting and in depth than a lot of older, more familiar rpgs that have to make sure companions are equally approachable regardless of how exactly you spent those many hours in character creation, with actions and dialogue choices capable of boosting their opinions and engaging their romantic interests being accessible more or less regardless of playstyle. this is what gave rise to the dreaded "player-sexual" term: a romancable npcs who seems utterly devoid of sexuality or desire EXCEPT for your player character specifically, regardless of gender options selected at the very beginning. the dialogue options presented are so personalized and plot relevant as to reveal nothing at all about their lives outside of the narrative, and any ambient party chatter is loose and vague enough as to avoid potentially turning an interested player away. the end result is an npc who is technically canonically bisexual, but avoids engaging with sexuality or desire in any meaningful way and only expresses that bisexuality exclusively through the fact the player can choose either of two gender settings at creation before romancing them.

minthara, and all of the origin companions, are NOT that, thank GOD. the degrees to which companions openly discuss their desires vary, but are nonetheless fairly consistently present, but we arent here for them. we are here for lolths specialest princess and her 4d8 smite not including paralyzing critical damage. and minthara specifically is a fun choice for analysis because she is Loudly and Proudly Menzoberranzan. which means WE get to play with drow gender politics and cultural influence on the expression of gendered desire! YIPPEE

okay so the biggest misunderstanding I get repeated by people who kill minthara at the grove is that she hates men. which is crazy because, last time I checked, her personalized greetings actually only check for being a high elf of any gender, being a drow man, or being a drow woman, and everyone else gets a more generic true soul greeting. and i KNOW most of these people arent playing male drow. she MIGHT call female true souls sister offhandedly when she implores you to attack the grove, but admittedly its been a while since I checked her dialogue and this is an off-the-top-of-my-head ramble and not a cited analysis. anyways back on topic. minthara is pretty openly biased against drow men, specifically, which continues to a lesser degree even after being rescued from moonrise, but is highly contextual and pointedly SPECIFIC. minthara does not, in my experience, make off the cuff derogatory comments towards men as a general thing. she has menzoberranzan politics and ideology, for sure, but her phrasing around those tends to be more careful (saying the honor of matricide better belongs to a daughter than a son, which really only tracks through the lens of menzoberranzan politics and less so through a lens of generalized man hatred).

something else that i think gets widely overlooked, (and this will be relevant), is that minthara is funny. she has a very flat deadpan style of humor that relies on a rugpull at the end for its punchlines. why exactly is this relevant, you may ask? well as i was discussing how minthara tends to specifically demean drow men, you may have thought to yourself "wait, but minthara says LOTS of rude things to my male party members ALL the time!" well. shes literally joking. and that isnt me speculating, either! if, playing as origin gale, you recruit minthara and spend your playthrough interacting with her, and survive to the epilogue party, you get a dialogue option remarking on how she consistently calls gale "the wizard". in that dialogue branch, minthara goes on to explain she has been consistently paying close attention to gale AND the kind of person she is, and says she does things like refuse to use him name SPECIFICALLY because she KNOWS hes taking it as teasing and that she enjoys doing that! we know gale tends to interpret minthara's harsher dialogue more positively just by his reaction to her recruitment, and this dialogue confirms its a two way street for them. her calling gale a third son after he asks if shes going to say something awful? thats them playing with each other. canonically. and this is consistent with ALL of the male companions! she playfully insults astarion by calling him a pleasure servant, knowing astarion prides himself on vanity and his good looks, and astarion responds equally playfully about how shes inadvertently complimented how beautiful he is, knowing she dislikes saying nice things so openly. minthara teases wyll about mizoras flirtatious nature and her MO of seducing people into pacts specifically because she knows he prides himself on being a slow burn romantic, and then teasingly compliments him by saying a failure to seduce him would be a bruise on her pride (revealing that she thinks highly enough of wyll to consider him a prize worth bragging about, even in the hypothetical context of an impartial one night stand).

mintharas FUNNY and while she rarely lets herself openly admire others, she DOES try to joke with them! understanding this about her recontextualizes a LOT of her party banter and makes a lot of her interactions more genuinely wholesome. the only male party member minthara actively dislikes is minsc, and its explicitly because he repeatedly refers to ass so often (in the context of butt kicking but. it IS a lot), and her tone there implies it has an objectifying feeling to it when minthara overhears the things minsc says.

minthara also openly admires gortash, repeatedly and without prompting, and she admires him specifically for a lot of the traits she finds enjoyable period. hes competent, pragmatic, and ambitious, but willing to compromise and ally himself with others if it suits him, and i feel like a more quote-unquote "misandrist" minthara would not so blatantly admire such a man for the very traits that allows one to excel in Lolthite society without making at least SOME passing mention of gender, at the very least something closer to her comments regarding dolors matricide. as far as ive experience, minthara only really brings up her explicitly gendered distaste ONLY in regards to drow men. minthara is generally fairly good at contextualizing her own experiences to the culture she was raised in, and avoiding generalizing those experiences to other cultures. shes MUCH more likely to assume something is specific to her home than assume it to be universally true, and i feel like this is especially true regarding gender politics. as far as i can recall, her only slipup is referring to the ruling body of baldurs gate as matriarchs before correcting herself to patriars, and pointedly those are both highly gendered terms associated with positions of political and familial power.

this has been a whole lotta Post about why minthara does not in fact Hate All Men, but thats honestly because theres just more to discuss there. minthara openly admires and desires women, and unlike some of her subtler character traits, minthara being sapphic is one of the few things people can pick up on right out the gate. there simply isnt as much to say here that doesnt veer into more cut and dry upfront aspects of mintharas desire, rather its how she engages with and desires masculinity that has the caveats here. mintharas desires in women are what she finds baseline attractive: she enjoys a go getter. she finds ambition and hungry power seeking to be attractive, and ruthless pragamaticism is a major selling point for her, and admirable all on its own. she enjoys when someone is coldly calculating, and she thinks its hot when you kill people and dont give a shit. none of these desires are gendered, rather, they are simply traits more common and encouraged among the women she grew up and around. these are not innately feminine traits, but they are culturally feminine in mintharas experience. in short, gortash is admirable because he acts like any other admirable drow woman minthara would find back home. minthara understands both of these things to be true: that this is not inherently gendered but simultaneously how SHE expresses her gender, and furthermore are culturally gendered from a society she admires and misses in equal measure (even if she no longer agrees with the underlying theocratic reasoning behind it).

things that are culturally feminine in menzoberranzan are her baseline point of desire in seeking a partner, and she seeks those traits in potential partners regardless of gender. however, things that are culturally masculine in menzoberranzan are general traits she finds distasteful. the gendered politics of menzoberranzan are such that the gendered role of a drow man is one of being a sycophant, one who bolsters his own social standing by attaching himself to a powerful woman and then people-pleasing enough to avoid being discarded. The role of being a drow man is one of debasement, victimization, asskissing, and servitude, with the permissible reactions to this role being a kind of desperate ambition to carve a bit more breathing room within the box without meaningfully breaking free of it (see: most wizards being drow men). And minthara almost universally dislikes all of that. However, something thats culturally masculine in AND out of menzoberranzan is a trait minthara DOES desire in her partners, with it even being one of her key emotional lynchpins: protectiveness. A lot of male drow consorts are expected to both go out of their way to protect and give their lives for their matriarchs, and the biggest threat to a matron mother is usually only other matron mothers, and the agents they move through. a consort CAN be weaponized as a threat in this way, but its more like poaching, in that a consort is promised a better position with a higher ranking house in return for aiding the destruction of his current house. In this way Menzoberranzan maintains its culture of duplicitious intrigue and discouraging vulnerability, while simultaneously having an admirable model of masculinity one can idealize in a culture that actively subjugates men as a gendered role.

The safest thing a drow man can be without being pathetic to the point of disdain, is a loyal guard dog. And thats something minthara openly craves in her partner, having someone to guard her back and protect her from threats, and more importantly someone to guard her vulnerability. minthara admires the culture of menzoberranzan, and views her childhood (and the traumas it inflicted) positively because of her pragmatic acknowledgement of her skillset, knowing that it would not be nearly so keenly focused and practiced had she not grown up the specific way she had. Simultaneously, the loneliness and paranoia it instilled in her is something she desperately wants relief from, and only really seeks that out from a romantic partner.

Mintharas bisexuality is so compelling to me because of how her desires are so couched in her heritage while she avoids removing them from that context. The things she wants, what she finds attractive, the traits that take her from a passing fascination to a deeply committed relationship, are gendered in a way that would make it difficult for her to be satisfied with the average gender conforming individual from her home city. And this is more or less confirmed by Minthara only really mentioning one actual lover, having a plethora of suitors instead. Minthara desires a partner who has to come off to her as feminine to be attractive, but masculine to fully commit to them, and that particular set of traits would be hard to reliably find in a society where gender dynamics are harshly enforced and strictly stratified. Its a very distinctly bi-and-pan experience where even if you DO find a partner thatd hypothetically pass as a het couple, you do so in such a way that fails to conform to the gendered norms of your partnership and STILL manages to trip flags for being queer even if your literally a m-f couple.

Its a deeply lonely experience that echoes so much of mintharas character, that i find it difficult to engage with her narrative without coming back to HOW minthara experiences attraction in the first place, what she wants and how she wants it and who she wants it from and when she feels shes allowed to have it. Her romance route is endlessly rewarding to me because of it, engaging with this deeper level of her character and her desires and how she expresses them and how Minthara herself interacts with gender roles in the context of drow expressions of romance and sexuality (not even getting to her alurlssrin dialogue! an eilistraean expression of love!!) and its just SO immediately interesting and engaging that even though minthara has a full act LESS of general content, she manages to be equally as dynamic and in depth as most of the origin companions.

i just. love minthara and i love the way she loves.

#bg3 #bg3 minthara #minthara #minthara baenre #bg3 headcanons #bg3 analysis #long post #MY WIFE. WHOMST I ADORE #obligatory this user understands bisexuality and pansexuality as distinct orientations with broad overlap #obligatory this user understands that neither bisexuality or pansexuality are transphobic innately #i personally headcanon mintharas specific relationship to sexuality as her id-ing as bi because of how she specifically contextualizes-#-her experiences with gendered attraction. but thats a headcanon.

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