#this is a curated echo chamber in so many ways

[beebeesiims]

See this is why I give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to “common Simblr knowledge” because I cannot COUNT the amount of times I’ve seen someone comment about something or make a statement about a behavior while having never seen the behavior myself, just the result.

[cerastes]

This is absolutely the Lack Of Reading Comprehension Website, but there's another issue I've noticed that I never see brought up, and it doesn't exist completely excised from lacking reading comprehension, but it's definitely it's own topic.

Tumblr's a Bad Faith Website as well. Like the above, it's not something exclusive to Tumblr, but it definitely defines it in my opinion. A lot of people want to be Right, and disagreements are seen by a bunch of people as something to "win" rather than something to "have". You'll have randos that frame their entire argument against you based on latching onto technicalities to try to prove why you are wrong rather than actually engage with your argument to try and propose something else or turn it around. As someone who was in a debate club during university, I call it "debate-poisoned people" who see arguments and conversations as a sport more than an interaction or, well, an actual conversation to be had, or in other words, that consider every argument as a debate to be had, when a lot of the time, it's not that deep fam, and also the other person never really agreed to play under your rules, because, here's the thing, a debate is a very specific kind of interaction. In a debate, bad faith interaction and trying to erase the very floor the other party is standing on is a valid tactic, it's part of the game. In a conversation or an argument, bad faith interaction and trying to erase the floor the other party is standing on gets you rightfully called a moron who cannot use inference or extrapolation to actually engage with the topic at hand. I had one such weirdo like a week or so ago, even, who used so many words to say absolutely nothing, that I thought I accidentally performed a digital necromantic ritual and had actually found myself face to face with the spirit of Jacques Lacan.

Even in more innocuous, non-hostile scenarios, this still applies: A lot of people are so, so eager to Be Correct On The Internet, that they'll reblog something with a correction or an opinion seemingly so hastily that they did not in fact read the entire post or comprehend it. This feeds into the lack of reading comprehension, but in my opinion, it does also have to do with seeing something that they believe they can correct, and immediately chomping at the bit to correct it without stopping for a second to ask themselves, "Did I read this right? Does this need correction?", and a lot of the time, it turns out, yes, you did not in fact need to correct it, you just had to read it a bit slower without letting your quickdraw hand get the best of you, cowboy. The way I consider this to be Bad Faith, even if it's not really hostile or confrontational, is the long-held belief that The Internet Is Inhabited By People Stupid Enough To Actually Think Or Say Something This Stupid.

I'll be real with you: Yeah, you've seen wild stories on the internet, plenty of them true, about how stupid people can be. No, they do not define the majority of people that aren't you. A wild, flabbergasting story about idiocy gets traction because it's funny and wild. We don't hear stories about how User A made a compelling argument that seemed stupid at first but then turned out that their rationale was incredibly sound as much, because that's not funny and wild and doesn't make us feel good about ourselves, because we'd never make such a stupid mistake. You aren't a sage wearing the floatie of wisdom in an ocean of idiots, no matter what your echo chamber and/or carefully curated internet space makes you think. You are not exempt from having to think about things, and you are not exempt from having to acknowledge people that know things you don't, people wiser than you are out there. This isn't "you are dumb as shit, actually", because I personally believe most people are smart, this is "you are being superficial and too eager to be Correct, which only works to your detriment in the long run and makes you a rather unlikable person".

It's as simple as engaging in good faith, even when you disagree or dislike the other party. Rip apart their arguments properly, instead of trying to disqualify them with cheap gotchas from the get go just because you want to own someone. Yes, sometimes people don't make sense, period, but that's absolutely not as common as people like to claim it happens. Inevitably, you'll run into someone that will actually call out your bullshit and there goes your entire argument. And in less intense settings, really, no one likes a pedant who really wants to be Correct on fucking Tumblr of all places.

[gingersnapwolves]

so I had some thoughts on the burnout post but didn't want to hijack it so this is just my own rambling attempt to process the feelings I've been struggling with for two days which obviously not everyone wants to read, thus my putting a read more

I've been crying off and on for the past couple days which is really no surprise, and I've been trying to avoid political news and political posts. In fact, after this I plan to hide the political tags for a while, heavily curate my Reddit experience, and then do I don't even know what with all my new free time

because I don't talk about it a lot here, this is my fandom space, my casual space, and I'll sometimes post about personal stuff but almost never politics, but I am actually very political. 'member of multiple political mailing lists, have marched in many protests, write postcards to swing state voters' political. and I want to talk a little about why this defeat feels different. because this crushed me in a way that 2016 did not.

the thing is. over the past few days I've seen a lot of people talking about how if you didn't realize Trump was going to win, you live in a bubble. and I think to a certain extent that's true. we all have our little echo chambers. but for me, at least, and a lot of the people I know, it wasn't just that. it was this core certainty that Trump would not win, could not win, because surely our country wasn't like that. surely our fellow Americans were not like that. it wasn't about competency or about policy. it was about basic human decency. and that's what I feel like we lost. not an election. but any remaining belief we had that people are basically good.

because it seems they're not. at least not around here. the cold hard fact at the end of the day is that the majority of our country looked at a senile, racist, fascist criminal grifter [eta: how could I forget rapist in that description?] and either actively wanted him to hold the highest office in the land, or just didn't care whether or not he did. they know exactly what he's going to do, and they're fine with it. and that hurts so much that it is nearly unbearable.

how do you move on from that? how do you cope with the fact that there's something so deeply rotten at the core of your fellow man? how do you deal with that? how do you fight back?

I am full of so much grief that I literally don't know where to put it.

so I don't want to fight anymore. I'm tired. I'm nauseated. I'm angry. But most of all, I'm sad. I can't do it right now. and I think that's probably okay. I think in six weeks or six months I'll feel differently. but right now I just can't do it. and I think the most important thing really can be to take a step back and focus on something else. because I know these feelings are not productive. I know that there are still good people out there and there are still things worth fighting for. but right now, all I feel is this aching chasm where my faith in humanity used to be.

so I'm unplugging - not from fandom or tumblr, but from politics and news - for at least a little while. sometimes that's the most important thing to do if you want to still be able to get out of bed in the morning.

[anonymousredactedconfessions]

Let's have a talk, shall we?

Major Trigger Warning for rape, false accusations, and mentions of child sex crimes

I let you guys get away with a lot of shit. I let you be a little bitter, or mean spirited, or pissed off. I let you guys vent and let out grievances and complain for the sake of complaining. And i do all of this because it is important to have a space that you can do so without fear of judgement, it is unhealthy for you to bottle up negative emotions. I provide this in a public space because with the way this fandom is, if I didn't many of you would be pressured into not doing so at all. This fandom has a habit of ostracizing those who have differing opinions and interpretations, those who wish to critique the art they consume, those who have unpopular opinions, and all of it is done with the utmost aggression and vitriol. The things that have been said to some of the people in this fandom genuinely makes me lose faith in humanity if i think about it too hard.

This blog exists explicitly to counteract that. I refuse to encourage or enable it. What you are doing is actively dangerous, and I won't be having it in the space I curate within this fandom.

If you haven't noticed, this is one of my rules:

It means that you are not allowed to come in my inbox and accuse people of serious harm over this fiction.

You will not come and accuse people of something as egregious as rape apologia in my inbox. You will not accuse people of rape, abuse, assault, or child abuse/rape/exploitation in my inbox.

These are serious real world issues, and the reason they are bad is because they cause direct harm to real living people who can feel pain and can be violated. Your disgust holds absolutely no ethical weight. At All. You should have the mental, emotional, and intellectual capability to understand the ethical difference between allegories for rape, stories with/about rape, erotica of rape, and actual real life people being raped. Making accusations of this weight over make believe is abhorrent, and as a matter of fact, it shows that you don't treat these tragedies with the weight or gravity that they deserve. If you believe that it is appropriate to accuse someone of violating another person like so because of the creation of or opinions about art, then you have some serious learning and growing to do as a person if you wish to navigate these topics with any level of maturity or respect towards victims.

There is no good that comes out of accusations such as these. They only ever serve to:

Demonstrate to victims that the tragedy of their abuse is as trivial as fanfiction/art that you deem nasty (but is ultimately ethical), or even something as inconsequential as someones' love for a fictional character.

Shame those who love these characters, or this art, or creating, into hiding their opinions for fear of harassment and serious accusations when they have done zero harm by enjoying it.

Stifle creation and participation in fandoms.

Limit the spread of ideas, interpretations, critique/criticism, and general opinions in the fandom, which just turns fandoms into boring echo chambers devoid of variety and creativity.

Encourage actual censorship and moral policing. (More on that on this reblog by @escapedaudios on a post of mine. Thank you Escaped for your two cents, they are much appreciated 💖)

Spread the incredibly harmful idea that people are defined by the art they enjoy. You cannot accurately judge a person’s values or morals based on what tropes and themes they enjoy in fiction. You create an environment and culture incredibly dangerous for vulnerable individuals (like minors) when you tell them that they can know who is safe to trust based on whether they consume "the good kind" or "the bad kind" of fiction. This makes it so very easy for predators to virtue signal about fiction to lure in potential victims to abuse.

The majority of you are very good and well behaved when it comes to this, but the amount of people i have had come into my inbox and accuse others of being rapists with no evidence other than "they made X" or "they like Y" is not zero. And i will not be satisfied until it is.

This is all i have to say about the subject.

[adhdnojutsu]

I have misgivings on how Israel abuses (to mind in its limited knowledge of the situation) its position of power over Palestine and how my country, the USA, enables it. But the population is there because the USA promised to guarantee their safety years ago so I feel like that more on us for shuffling people into what could only become a war zone. And I can’t pretend to know a solution that does right by both sides, but more dehumanization is never the cure for dehumanization. And frankly, I’m sorry tumblr is such an echo chamber that they can’t see that someone who’s home and family were affected isn’t going to view October 7th and the subsequent invasion the same way they do.

This is what I wish more people would understand. Israelis and Palestinians (and Jews and Arabs at large) cannot be expected to hold much space for each other. We have hurt each other too much and are currently hurting, a lot. But uninvolved people taking sides as aggressively as they do, to the point of dehumanizing one side, is just WEIRD, especially from the left. If you got no skin in the game, I don't blame you for picking sides based on sympathy or whatever, but lay off the dehumanization and the dismissal/mockery of one side's suffering. "But Israel is stronger" okay but the individual Israeli hurts, bleeds, and dies the same as anyone else..?

One tiktok creator whose name I sadly forgot, said it best. "You cannot end one genocide by supporting another and think you're righteous" or something to that effect. Telling us to accept diaspora when we could live in our ancestral homeland is fucked up. And I mean, people including the left are abusing us in diaspora, too, just look at American campuses:

And yes, echo chambers are another weirdness the left has been way too into. Somehow, the more open-minded a group of people thinks they are, the more they curate and filter what they're exposed to. You can give them hard historical facts, even Palestinians themselves saying "Hey maybe Hamas sucks" or the literal Islamic Fatwa Council saying "Hamas is literally a scourge on Islam", and these people will still go "STFU zionazi propaganda whore". Me just expressing upset about October 7? "Genocidal raging zioscum". We can't even MOURN OUR DEAD without being dehumanized. A big part of my increasing anger is fuelled by the left's cruelty, because Hamas broadcast what they are, but the left wants to be seen as the compassionate safe space for all minorities - except Jews who don't make a huge display of how much they hate Israel.

Israelis are human beings. I can't believe this needs to be said. If, say, leftist Americans don't wish a cruel death on the MAGAs that just voted a lot of people's rights away, where do they get off screeching for more dead Israelis ("intifada" that just killed another Israeli child this week)? Even if we were colonizers, existing somewhere shouldn't be punishable by death, especially when we're born there and didn't go out of our way to move there and kick a local out of their home.

I can't speak for all Israelis, but as far as polls go, most of us wanted to co-exist until Hamas pissed all over our good will on October 7. I mean, of course we'd change our minds..? How many cheeks are we supposed to turn? The incessant missiles since 2002 were one thing, but wilful, point blank, selective cruelty? We're done and we get to be. The world really hates when Jews stop taking abuse. Remember: the American left was more outraged about a Jew teasing an allergic pro-Palestinian student with a banana from a safe distance, than it was about Jews getting burned alive in their beds. Clearly, there is NO degree of fighting back that is tolerated from us. If brandishing a banana is as bad as bombing a Gazan hospital, then the only way we can ever hope for compassion, is by surrendering and letting ourselves be slaughtered. I'm not even uncritically supportive of the Israeli government. Every single time I talked about Netanyahu, it was hostile. My leaving Israel was an act of protest. MILLIONS of us have protested the government in recent years, but are not separated from it the way Palestinians are separated from Hamas. I unconditionally support Israel's right to exist regardless of who governs it, because it's literally my home. Those are literally my people, my family, my friends. I cannot wish for their annihilation, and judging me for that is crazy. But to conclude from that that I'd cheer when Palestinian children get bombed is crazy. It's even crazier from people who don't give a fuck about Israeli children who were carefully selected to be murdered.

People like to say "Israelis are white, so fuck them". To actually rank lives by race is inherently racist (and was never the point of BLM, an equality movement). If someone murders you for your race, no matter which one, that's the ultimate subjugation: the death penalty on ethnic/racial grounds.

And this what you get when entering countries most of which are actual dictatorships or fascist. Hamas' Gaza is de facto fascist because Hamas is. The US are shaping up to be. But only Israel is all evil, apparently, and Palestine is all victimhood. Iran? Culture with a side of women's issue. This is absolutely crazy.

[shadowmaat]

Muting & Blocking are evil, now

It used to be that muting and blocking were considered the polite way to avoid people and content you didn't want to see. Common wisdom was that you could block (or mute) anyone for any reason, no matter how minor/petty.

Then came the accusations about "echo chambers" and how folks were using these very handy features in order to silence dissenting opinions so they could live in their own little bubbles of unreality.

This applied equally to Liberals who were refusing to listen to "vaccines cause autism" rhetoric and to Conservatives who refused to listen to scientists. And many many other variations of that kind of thing. SO many variations.

The point is that people tried to turn mute/block from a tool into a weapon. If you refused to listen to a dissenting opinion, you were a Bad Person. And probably delusional.

Lately the rage against mute/block seems to be getting even worse. I've heard folks say that muting someone for spamming "help me" posts from others is an attempt to silence those voices and shows that the muter is a cruel, heartless person who doesn't care about other people. As opposed to, y'know, the person only having so much money to give and being overwhelmed by how many more people she couldn't help.

I also saw a rather wild case on bluesky where someone accused an OP of "censorship" for blocking him (he was very anti-mask) because, regardless of her stance on things, he had a right to use her mentions as a soapbox for his beliefs and she was oppressing him. (on bluesky when an OP blocks someone all their replies show up as blocked within the thread).

Whatever happened to muting/blocking someone for any damn reason you want? What happened to being able to curate your own experience and/or protecting yourself from stressful content? The growing issue of "everyone assumes the worst possible thing" fits in here, too, and it gets used as an excuse to be angry and lash out.

How do you live your life being angry at everything all the time? It must be exhausting. Which probably just makes you angrier.

Anyway, I'm gonna keep muting and blocking people whenever I want. I'm not gonna get bent out of shape when people do it to me. And frankly, I have enough trouble managing my own life without trying to micromanage the lives of others. LOL!

Remember to focus on the good things once in a while so you don't get stuck in a toxic quagmire of "everything and everyone is awful, all of the time."

Anyway, enjoy this gif of a small, stripey kitten snoozing hard in someone's hand, surrounded by a big puffy blanket. There are still good things in the world, and the ability to tune out once in a while is one of them.

[sarah-lyse]

Helmut Lang : What remains behind, Curated by Neville Wakefield, MAK Center for art and architecture at the Schindler House, Los Angeles, USA, 2025

Every house tells a story. Some tell many. The famed Schindler House tells more than most. The architectural story of the first slab-cast modernist house, the progenitor of a mid-century experiment that situated Los Angeles on the intellectual and ideological coastlines of the great European and American traditions is well known. Less well known are the lifestyle experiments, contentions, dreams, allegiances and defections born within. This, the psychic architecture of the storied house, exists in the conversations around light, space, sex, the boundaries between inside and outside, between people seeking new means of manifestation that still cling to the patinated concrete slabs and fill the silent spaces in between. Within this real and imaginary framework, the work of another Austrian emigree lends its own version of what it is to be human to the concrete forms and enclosures that now house it.

Before being bound and hardened into fist-like forms whose presence now fills the empty rooms, Helmut Lang’s materials were soft, pliable, yielding and still bearing the scars of the past and the impress of memory upon them. His predilection for found or discarded material allows him, through the act of sculpting, to reshape narrative as much as form. Handed-down mattress foam, rubber and wax became the syntax of a language based on the malleability of material and memory. The results are works that both imagine the future and materialize the past. Literalizing repression, Lang calls upon the secret life of objects to reveal themselves through the prolapses of material whose meaning cannot be fully constrained. As a result, the tensions they hold are multiple. Neither entirely figurative nor entirely abstract, they bring a fundamentally reductivist approach to material that is deeply impregnated with the burden of history. Sometimes this reads as a confrontation between the body and its past derelictions. At others the current is sexual, an accumulated tension that itself becomes a stand-in for human identity, vulnerability and desire. Always they occupy a liminal space where form is in a continual state of becoming.

Within the Kings Road space, the presence of Lang’s sculptures transforms each of the storied rooms into echo-chambers reverberating ideas of materialized humanity across concrete, wood and glass. Proximity and aspect constantly change. Like emotions, they are fugitive, restless and refuse to settle into singular meanings and forms. Shape-shifting in character as much as form, depending on where one stands, they can appear mordant, lugubrious, tragic and even comic. But beneath these surface impressions is the undertow of darker sexualized forms of desire, a less palpable but more powerful energy field that forces us to confront the inherent tension between the body, the object, the gaze and the architecture that contains them. Just as all art is manifest thought, so these works are extroversions of interior conditions. Lang addresses the tensions between the public and private self. In doing so, he investigates the ways in which the invoked but absent body is both an object of desire and a site of personal expression.

Muscular and vulnerable, the contorted material is a registration of memory, a condition of post-traumatic distress that calls inevitably to ideas about the fragility of the human form and the malleability of identity. Time is compacted into the material. Disavowing the orderly rational illusion of time as steady and periodic, it pulses between the bodies of expression and reception as if to trace the unsettling arrhythmia of recurring traumatic experience. As with the architecture, what is within is without and what is without is within.

— Neville Wakefield

[fierceawakening]

So somehow I ended up with a post from one of the rationalist types I'd eventually blocked and man... it's interesting to look back at what they have to say after having curated it away for a while.

Because at the time I was arguing with them, I felt like it was really important to figure out the flaw in their logic and prove it, and now I just feel like... it's such a profoundly different way of thinking from my own that... it's not that I'm saying "stay in your echo chamber, it's not worth it to consider other ways of seeing things," but it is that... "that's an interesting way of seeing things in the abstract, but it's too foreign to me for me to use it to make any policy recommendations. I wouldn't know where to even begin."

The issue at hand was guns, and the person was basically saying that in order to have an opinion on gun control you'd need to demonstrate basic understanding of the mechanics of how guns work, including specifics about the AR-15 if that's the gun you deem most in need of regulating.

Basically, the argument was "I wouldn't be a good person to opine on infrastructure policy if I'd never studied how bridges work. The people deciding policy about guns should be the people with the intense special interest in them."

The OP attributed why this isn't the case, why so many people who are vocal about wanting gun control are clueless on how guns work, to a strange moralization of disgust. They shouldn't be grossed out by the gun. They should study and examine and think about the gun, in a dispassionate way.

And this is where they lost me.

At the time I was arguing with it, "does empathy matter for morality" was the animating discussion I was having with these people. And they were saying that no, it doesn't, it's all emotiony and reckless and all that weird lizard brain junk makes people fearful and reactive, not good.

Where the thing they're glossing as "weird disgust at a machine" Is, very often, "horrible memories of someone using that machine to induce the worst trauma of my entire life."

Yes, they care about the machine. But they don't care about it in a nerdy kind of, "is this the best machine for the goal of killing my best buddy in homeroom?" kind of way. They care about it in "when the person pointed that at my best buddy in homeroom THEY DIED" kind of way.

It's not... right... to just gloss over that as disgust, I don't think. It misses that what people are reacting to aren't just DISGUSTING acts (though they are that), but profoundly and fundamentally IMMORAL ones.

Is an AR-15 immoral? Not any more than a cross is that someone has set on fire.

But if someone has set a cross on fire, it's LIKELY that they mean for their action to be interpreted in a particular way that IS immoral.

Which is what people think you're doing when you wear your rifle someplace random. "I know that this has been and will continue to be used to slaughter the innocent. I'm wearing it precisely because that makes me look badass."

Is that what those protesters actually mean? Not necessarily (though I think the Three Percenter types probably do, sorry not sorry.) But it's reasonable for people to see it that way.

Which I think is the whole reason I was defending empathy as a part of morality anyway. Whatever the specifics, moral emotion isn't something that's just tacked on to morality I don't think. We're social, so actions carry meaning.

When we do actions that we know frighten or horrify others to make a point, we're not ALWAYS assuming they'll be neutral observers or that they'll have an exposure therapy that wasn't so bad experience seeing us.

Sometimes, we're FUNDAMENTALLY BANKING on the idea that they won't.

And that's a bit mean, hence me (perhaps overly) recommending empathy as a point against doing that.

[radiomogai]

as a staunch anti-radqueer, I don’t really know what people expect to happen if you reblog a transid from a radqueer creator as opposed to a nonradqueer creator. I’m anti radqueer, as I’ve said. I use transids. Sometimes I use transid flags made by radqueers. as I sometimes use flags made by anti-endos, despite being pro-endo. this affects nobody. I don’t engage with the posts, out of preference. I simply acknowledge a term was coined that applies to me.

I think some people forget that radqueers are people behind a screen and not these amorphous insidious beasts. yes the community causes harm. often the people cause harm. I’m anti-radqueer due to this. However, I think that this is getting greatly dramatised. I believe if you were to reblog transcat flag from a radqueer, people may look at it, think ooo I like that flag, click the blog, see it’s a radqueer, and elect to block or ignore it. use the flag, or not. at their preference. (there is the possibility for harassment towards the rq but for the sake of my point I will argue how this causes no harm for the average anti radqueer)

I think my general point is that these people, these flag makers of xenogenders and transids, they have still contributed to the community. you do not have to use rainbowsparklegender (fake example) created by a radqueer. you are not forced to, and you may filter the made by a radqueer tag if you don’t want to. but you cannot deny that it is part of coining history. you cannot deny that by blocking tags, by curating your space, it likely will not have this dramatic impact you expect

From what self understand from hearing from other asks, expect for is platform and show people radqueer ideas, allow people way get there. Admit self confused by. Part of is point, in that hope allow people better understanding of what it is that are combatting, try prevent second-hand game telephone. Know thy enemy. But more than that in part of point is that hope will give radqueers who are themselves unsure what to think will give way for exposure outside, exposure to other beliefs without aggression so hope allow prevent polarization, pull out of echo chamber. Have personal experience in knew someone deep in pro-contact spaces who was only able re-learn and understand why harmful through non-aggressive discussion with anti-radqueers, radqueer-criticals, etc. Had been shut off from, would not have been able confront harm in those ideas and leave. But above all that, main point is just attempt unbiased archive as possible. Archive.

Self admitted also been concerned in some asks generalization of radqueers paint broad brush. Did not feel comfortable in responding to those asks, not felt comfortable in pointing it out, tried focus respond other aspects instead when wrote responses. Did concern self though. Generally dislike generalization for in anyone overall. Selfves also believe radqueer community allow for, propagate many possible harms, many members also. Not want condemn entirely shut off as for because of as think only more harm long-run close doors entirely, prevent communication discussion and sharing ideas, prevent explanations for why ideas. Selfves firm belief that one should not just hold their morals but understand why. Selfves firm belief that one of best ways develop one's morals is to discuss with those who disagree, even strongly. That allows more thorough understanding of not just what one's morals are but how apply to specific situations, allow real-life application of.

Self wondering if reason people upset at idea of reblog from some radqueers here even with provisions set that is upset of idea of anyone being exposed to those ideas at all. If that is case, then may simply be situation where cannot agree on matter. Yes, are some people very easily swayed. Think perhaps most important for them above others be able see other viewpoints, so they can develop their own opinions morals based on their own experiences and not on what others have told them. Addition, terms reblogged from radqueers would be small amount, would be thoroughly tagged so easy avoid, and selfves would be speaking reblogging about harm in them. Would not be exposing people solely radqueer ideas with no pushback. Frustrated, admit.

Agree on anon's point that have still contributed to community and is part of why selfves so confused by concept radqueer term, by concept of if xenogender coined by radqueer include no harm in itself then still is radqueer term, even if in line-up indistinguishable from xenogender coined by anti-radqueer. Selfves really wish commit to being unbiased in what save as possible. Not want cut off contributions by people that perform harm and bigotry because not want allow make room for historical revisionism. Good bad everything.

[cherrari]

miss cherrari

what are your thoughts on f1twt? I found some accounts whom I rlly enjoyed and some incredibly smart nice people but overall it was a bit too reactionary (not that tumblr is that much better but you can curate your experience better here) and mean? ig in a way

it's just not for me bc the temptation to fight with ppl is too much so I left but as someone who also argues with ppl in subreddits what are your feelings

it's just like any other stan twitter pocket on the internet. i would never go on there expecting measured opinions. that's why when i see stans of other drivers shit talking charles it doesn't bother me. it can be fun to be involved in that sort of community, even if it's an echo chamber (it DOES bother me if it's on reddit because i expect opinions there to be more levelheaded. but i am impervious to stan twitter)

the main difference i think is that the average age of twitter users is much lower so you face the natural consequences of having a bunch of 18 year olds leading the rhetoric. also this is not exclusive to any particular group of people but i HATE the rampant "being mean is cool" mindset on stan twitter. like it's just so frustrating that so many people believe being empathetic is cringe. but i've gone over this complaint many times IRT my last fandom <- of course all this exists on tumblr too but like you said it's much easier to curate your experience on here

anyway i can't diss f1twt too much because i still browse it. but i think there's a reason people whose main social media presence is tumblr are on tumblr and not twitter, and vice versa

[lemonhemlock]

bg3 anon!

i would have replied sooner but... well, you know. i didn't want to be on any sites at all, truthfully, so i've basically only been playing a bit and looking at build videos, some limited stuff on the bg3 subreddit, that sort of thing. i'm just... so tired.

anyway. i'm currently out of the underdark and investigating rosymourn monastery. i did all the underdark quests (i think) but did not take the elevator to Moonrise Towers because i wanted to explore as much as i could.

" Yeah like with all due respect because I don't want to sound offensive or god forbid try to diagnose people I don't know in real life, but many Astarion fans (plus a few others in the fandom) need to seek out a good therapist. It's clear many use this character as an emotional crutch to cope with the problems and traumas they have which in theory should be fine but after interacting with them it's obvious they are not doing so in a healthy manner.

It's understandable to identify with a fictional character and it's normal to use fiction as escapism but they take it so, so far that they just can't differentiate the actual canon between what they projected onto him anymore. Some unfortunately also have the habit to (un)intentionally trauma dump onto everyone else and constantly use phrases like "As a survivor…" likely to guilt you in order to sell their own interpretation of the text as the only valid one. After all, if a survivor tells you something it means it must be true and moreover, it's shitty of you to contradict them, you know? If you try to politely argue against them, they lose their marbles and hit back with "just say you hate survivors". It doesn't even matter if you are also a survivor who may or may have not decided to come out as in a fandom space (why would we though, many of us are private persons).

I had witnessed similar behavior in the HOTD fandom where antis were employing similar tactics when trying to harass people for shipping incest, claiming they are were a danger to real survivors like themselves without knowing that many of those who were targeted by their horrible behavior were also survivors who simply chose to interact with problematic media because it's a safe environment that allows you to control the outcome. Not everyone is the same nor are survivors a monolith, in the end it's on your own responsibility to curate your fandom experience.

So, so true. The weaponisation of trauma survival as a means to lord over people in fandom spaces is such a creeping blight in online discourses and serves no one. It alienates fans and traps the perpetrators in an echo chamber from which they themselves might have trouble healing. And this whole nonsense is not even about enjoying the Ascendant storyline or writing fic about it (anyone can do that and entertain themselves or find a form of catharsis), simply about insisting on it being the good and non-abusive ending. The bar is in hell!

The self-insert nature of the game doesn't help either, you can tell most of them self-insert into their Tavs. This isn't a problem in itself, but when you express a negative opinion about some of the things you can do it in the game, they will take it as a personal attack because that's what they would've chosen to do had the situation been a real scenario (hope this makes sense!). I know this sounds crazy and again it's more of a personal opinion, but I think it explains a lot of their behavior.

I get what you mean and I do think there is a strong urge at play here to "justify" oneself and one's choices. Similar to how, in the HotD fandom, we had so many people siding with Rhaenyra automatically because she is a woman and of course women should get to rule and are not wrong ever.

But, in truth, I actually wager that some of them would truly, really NOT make the same choices if this were actual real life somehow, they're just blending fiction with reality in an unhealthy way. Like, if a fey creature showed up and asked to drink their blood, pretty please, they would most likely say no, like any normal person in that situation. Because the threat would then be immediate and not diminished by the safety blanket of fiction. "Realistically"-speaking, this is a strange man you don't know, who threatened you with a dagger at your neck just a few days ago, who's not even particularly nice to you and is rather obviously out for himself. No, I don't really believe even the wives would be so eager to indulge him if this were a real scenario. So, it's all the more embarrassing to be stirring shit up and making discourse out of nothing.

And, you know, it's FINE if you want daddy dom Astarion to ravish your delicate flower self and what-not, but there's really no need to find ethical worth in a horny fantasy, nor is that something achievable! Nor does it have to reflect back to one's moral character. There's no shame in finding the handsome vampire hot! Just have fun with it.

But these wives are forgetting that, just because someone is charming and dandified, it doesn't translate into sound judgment or moral worth, not in real life and not even in fiction. He can be very charismatic and still unable to make the best choices for himself.

Also, while there isn't a definite canon in BG3 since it's an RPG game and your playthrough is your playthrough and what someone else chooses to do in theirs doesn't mean it's something that applies to yours, when analyzing Astarion (or anyone else) as a character you have to take all dialogue options into consideration to reach an informed, valid conclusion. You shouldn't cherry pick the dialogue option(s) that's more likely to validate your preferred interpretation, that's now how it works. The AA situation is a good example of it: it's true that by choosing the loving options where you don't cross him, you can perhaps say he is loving partner but it's also true he will be awful and show his true colors if you go against him. Likewise, just because you do not choose to break up with him, it doesn't make his refusal to let you go away after the tadpoles are gone ("your future is mine to decide") is any less valid. In conclusion, yes, he does become abusive if he ascends. Constantly stepping on eggshells around your partner and only saying what he wants to hear from you is a sign of the relationship turning abusive, if it hasn't already.

Yeah, this is so true and I've had one of these lines already. The first time in the goblin camp I refused to give him a tadpole and he went all feral cat on me (and this was after he came onto me!! the knave!!). But when I did my second playthrough, I thought I'd make Mirta a little bit of an avatar for the Beholding / Eye (since I already gave you The Magnus Archives podcast link, it's one of the fear entities the show is about. this one in particular deals with things like scopophobia, the absolute terror of being known, of being judged or the pure experience of fear or of the unknown). So, she'd be a little like "oh, so you insist on being an absolute idiot? Might as well get a little entertainment out of this" and hand him just enough rope to hang himself with (you know, the kind of morbid curiosity that lends itself to terrible things sometimes). And so, I told him he could have the tadpole and he was all polite smiles and smug demeanor. Pompous prick!!! 🙌

It does seem to me that this part of the game is kind of broken, or at least not integrated enough, because 1. I don't think it's fair that you can ingest even a couple of extra tadpoles with no consequences (this is my understanding at least) and 2. I didn't get any approval or disapproval points from him. He just said that he'll pop one out of my backpack later. Now, I know he's not going to rummage through my stuff and steal it, like, I actually have to make him take one mechanically if I want his Illithid menu activated, so it was purely for show. But it feels rather empty, still.

Anyway, this is also just a game at the end of the day and its complexity is limited in that it can mimic real life, but not truly represent its quagmires, because character development is not linear for living, breathing people. So, I definitely agree that AA harping at Tav and biting back whenever he encounters the slightest resistance is meant to be a Red Flag, but irl sometimes, when you navigate a difficult situation with the "right" conversation, it allows the person to calm down and even grow from that experience. Like, they can later reflect on their bad behaviour and how wrong they would have been to lash out if they didn't hear what they wanted in that moment. But this is obviously something that doesn't really translate that well to becoming an immortal vampire lord with superpowers or whatever - like, by that point, they're too far gone to be able to interrogate their wrongs. But it could, perhaps, apply to Act 1 stuff when everything is still very raw from their trauma and still indulging in unhealthy coping mechanisms.

I want to add something rather surprising I've noticed about some wives. There are a few of them in the fandom who even claim to have degrees in literature (one is even teaching English literature at a university) and complain constantly about the state of media literacy in the fandom, the puritan culture that's been sweeping up fandoms lately…yet when you see their take on Astarion, ugh, they are the types who genuinely believe the ascension is his good path and that he 100% turned Tav into a vampire bride. Like how??? I won't elaborate further but yeah…I'll just add that your average gamerbro who likely hasn't read more than two books in his entire life never had such issues in getting the actual message of Astarion's story. They may not like his character (quite the opposite) or paid any particular attention to him and his romance, but at least they immediately understood ascension isn't his good path.

Yeah, when your garden-variety basement-dweller gamebro has a better understanding of the basic "good v evil" divide in a piece of media, it's time to rethink the tuition fees you paid for that literature diploma. :))

Ridiculous to think because, even IF Ascended Astarion was the consummate gentleman and the most loving waifu on the face of the earth, how is it helping anyone to bring another vampire into existence? By definition, vampires prey on other living creatures, it's parasitic and hurtful and frightening. They bring misery and problems into any community. Why would you even want to become one? And, again, even if it's like a fantasy kink or something, it would be detrimental to everyone else living nearby! We used to live in a society! It's just so harmful to your fellow man!

All of them have some baggage but he's certainly the one with most of it. It gets worse when you realize that's all he has ever known considering he can't remember his life as a mortal/elf (he "died" at 39 years old), having lost most of his memories because of the amount of torture and trauma (although in D&D lore vampirism itself could be another cause behind the memory loss). He can't even remember his face or the color of his eyes. When you confirm/ commit to the relationship with him in act 2, if you decide to friendzone him he'll tell you he's happy to have a friend because he can't remember ever having one. :( Being with Tav is really his both his first actual friendship and/or romantic relationship if going forward that route. I'm sure he had friends and lovers when he was alive, but it's irrelevant since all those memories are lost.

Yeah, this is what I mean, he's really had an awful turn. Two centuries of that! It's admirable he still has his wits about him and can function. But he needs A LOT of therapy (or the Faerun equivalent). He told me about not even remembering the colour of his eyes or what he even looks like anymore. Which ties a lot into the loss of personhood. If you don't know anything about yourself, what kind of life is that? What would he even like to do in a normal life, if given the chance? The only thing he knows is that he wants the pain and degradation to stop. Or to know that no one in your former life cared enough to try to help Elves, for example, live a very long time, even in DnD and he "died" very young for an elf, so his parents must still be alive. Where are they? Do they even care that their son is condemned to eternal torment? (I know they're probably absent because the writers wanted him with no attachments for story reasons, but, still, if you want to RPG properly, it must suck to think about it).

Which by the way, some Astarion fans hate it when you say that perhaps he needs a friend rather than a lover. It's okay not to vibe with his romance anymore guys!! But they've treated some people so awfully when they dared to say they prefer this option, as if everyone's opinion was in bad faith (the "you are just infantilizing survivors" type)…they should realize not everyone wishes to roleplay a character who got themselves into a situation where someone only started to have sex under false pretenses (he wanted protection so you wouldn't throw him away like you correctly pointed out), nor should they feel guilty into going forward with the relationship just because Astarion will feel bad about it. He's also happy if you remain friends! Just because he is now in a relationship with Tav, this doesn't mean all his issues will disappear, nor will they go away once Cazador is dead. You don't heal in an instant from centuries of constant abuse, torture, mind control and sexual trafficking. Also, just because he doesn't ascend and remains a spawn doesn't mean his relationship with Tav is actually 100% healthy and without issues, at least not from a modern POV or perspective.

Absolutely, not everyone wants or knows how to offer that kind of help to a romantic partner, and feeling way more comfortable to do that for a friend is understandable. It's OK to also have romance goals for your Tav, everything doesn't have to revolve around Astarion. :)) He is obviously very confused about the whole issue himself.

And, fuck buddies or not, it does sting to think that he only slept with you because he wanted your favour, because he goes out of his way to make it seem like he's over the moon about you and finding out he really doesn't rate you is unpleasant. Because it was never presented like the exchange he sees it as; not that Astarion presents it as true love or anything either, but he insists on it hinging on Tav's allure or attractiveness. And that's a delicate topic for people - no one wants to think that having sex with them is a chore.

No one's love life is something that they must sacrifice in order to "help someone out", like, that's not how it works. Your body is your body, not an instrument to cure someone's mental illness. I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way, but it's fucked up to expect that from people. Like, this person is just pretending to want to have sex with me and I'm supposed to not feel any kind of way about it? :))

Also, this is anoter fairly sensitive topic and I would not like to overstep, but I would urge anyone who is identifying with Astarion because of various disabilities or mental health issues and may feel further isolated or hurt by seeing people uncomfortable with romancing him and appeasing him to please not conflate their condition with vampirism. I think these comparisons can work to some extent, but only up to a point. I get the dependency aspect and needing a strong support system in order to manage their affliction - those are reasonable similarities that can help people identify with his character.

But vampires literally suck their victims' blood - it's not reasonable to expect the people within a settlement to be willing to offer their bodies up to feed the resident village vampire. Media often sensationalises this topic (and it's hard not to, since it doesn't exist IRL and there's really no way to tell how it could be managed by real-life people), but it doesn't take a genius to understand that it could very well be a frightening and painful experience for any such blood donor. It's often portrayed in fiction as this quasi-erotic, pleasant experience, but, as we all know, sexual acts especially can quickly turn extremely uncomfortable and traumatic in the absence of consent. Even if the person involved would theoretically consent, for the good of their community, they may very well not desire it at all and it could leave them feeling violated regardless.

This is why it's crazy for me to hear that some wives will accuse you of being 'ableist' if you'd want to find a cure for Astarion's vampirism and that you should just 'accept' him the way he is. Those two things are not the same at all! Let alone any kind of situation which leads to bringing more vampires into the world.

"Gale is most definitely NOT approaching godhood in any capacity. I could not STAND this mediocre white man overpowering ME! I am, though, debating on whether I should let Volo perform brain surgery on him. Mayhaps I will!" I think Volo's eye gives you the "See Invisibility" ability? It's useful but later own you'll find plenty of scrolls and potions of that kind. But if you want to sacrifice Gale's real eye just for the sake of it, then go for it!

Gods above, I did it for the morbid curiosity and it was just awful. Not even Gale deserves that, so I reloaded. I figured that it would be absolute blasphemy for the Beholding to take out one's eyes, so Mirta would not be on board with this. I booted Volo from my camp after I got out of the Underdark, because I wanted to at least give that fumbling idiot a living chance at least. For RPG reasons (I know he leaves anyway after the "surgery" wherever you set camp).

And, anyway.... *drumroll*... I respecc'd to lvl 4 wizard and lvl 2 bard and now I have fairy fire, which allows me to see invisibility anway so I don't need Volo's Trojan horses. Being a bard is so fun, you were so right about this, I can now play the flute(!) and have bardic inspiration as a bonus action. I also got annoyed at how much damage I'd get during fighting and switched Mirta's class to Abjuration - now she gets a cool spherical shield around her when she's hit and it's so much better!

Don't be so sure about Gale not approaching godhood! With Gale, the choice on whether or not he will become a god depends on certain dialogue options you will choose and 3. Unlike Astarion who can be convinced with a persuasion check, with Gale there's a point system behind his decision so the more options you check that lean in one direction, then that will be the result. Quite a few players actually thought they picked the right dialogue choices that would result in him not ascending to godhood but they still woke up with God!Gale in the end. We call it Sneaky God Gale lol. I won't spoil you too much, but you kind of have to push really, really hard against his stupid ideas even if he gets mad and gives disapproval.

He gets more infuriating the more I learn about him! I watched some romance scenes with him from Act 1, out of curiosity, and, gods above, he is SO smarmy. I could never. 😂

"Even if it were manipulation, I’d still do it for his own good. Dumbass needs all the help he can get. " See, if you were to post this opinion in pro AA space, the consorts would've canceled you. How dare you say you know better than him? He says he wants to ascend, do you not get that?

Here's to being his no 1 bully, first and foremost 💪

I know, right? I see where they are trying to come from when saying that it's beautiful to accept him just as he is, drawbacks included (the vampirism) but accusing people of ableism is just not it. Also, the idea of curing him and getting to live the remainder of his life in human years…I LOVE THIS. I don't think I've ever seen this headcanon from anyone!! Anyway, posting it in an Astarion fandom space will likely get you some angry fans who will say it's toxic and abusive lol.

Yeah!!! I'll give him the best human years of his loser ass life! Wizards live longer anyhow (from what I understand), so there's more than enough time for marital bliss. 🤡

"I’m also thinking I’m ready to change the difficulty to medium now (I heard I can do this mid-game). The goblin battles weren’t really challenging on easy and I am intrigued by multiclassing, which I can not do on easy. Dror, for example, was SO easy to kill, I just put Lae'zel and Karlach nearby and they made quick work out of him, he was gone by the third turn max. Elixir of Bloodlust on Karlach is insane." I think it's worth it. The game isn't hard at all on medium once you learn the basics and the multiclassing is worth it. If you want to get into that, I suggest multiclassing Astarion into Rogue/Ranger. For Rogue, I would suggest getting 4 levels in the Thief subclass because you get an extra bonus action for choosing it. The Assassin subclass is also good, but just avoid the Arcane Trickster one. Put all the rest of the levels into Ranger, specifically the Gloomstalker subclass. As for feats the most important ones for him would be +2 DEX and Sharpshooter. You can look into this build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBREg0F0TCc - I suggest checking out his other ones as well if you need some help with other companions. You don't need to follow his exact stepts but his builds are a good starting point.

Oh, yeah, I had watched videos like that and thought it was a good idea so my Astarion is currently a lvl 3 rogue and a lvl 3 ranger. I also got a mod that gives you a feat every 2 levels, so I'm not worried about battles anymore. I'm not really one to use potions too much and I'm not going to activate the tadpole powers, so it's whatever, I'm not some overpowered demigod either way. I mostly just want to have fun during battles. So I was able to spare an Alert feat for Mirta and now she & Astarion go first almost every fight - who's a cute wittle power couple?? 🎃

" Also, there is a barn in the Blighted Village where an ogre and a bugbear are having sex. If you go there BEFORE entering the goblin camp and let Astarion interrupt them*, you get 5 bloody approval points in one go. Crazy. After that, he made his advances towards Mirta and then the sex scene triggered when I hit long rest.

*you will have to separate yourself form the rest of your party and just knock with him at the door" I thought you did that already!! Did he not ask you to let him open the door? Because when I played and romanced him he asked my Tav when she was about to open the door "please, let me do it!" . Perhaps they patched it out and now you have to do it separately with only him.

No, I had missed this! This particular barn is somehow a little off from the rest of the houses and I went past it completely. That's one of the reasons I reloaded - so many easy approval points, it was a shame to waste. Also, it was pretty funny.

"If nothing else, Halsin will be nice to have for some added flavour and the ability to play with a druid. Minthara, too, because she is a paladin and I have none in my party. Pity you can’t make Volo a companion!" Sadly, even in this regard he's not unique as you will be able to recruit ANOTHER druid in act 2 at about the same time when you can officially get him to join the party: Jaheira. She was one of the companions in BG1 and BG3 and far more interesting than Halsin. There will also be Minsc who is a ranger in act 3, another former character in the previous games. She and Minsc are good friends and they have some good content in act 3.

Unless they fixed some of this in patch 7, he is also very bugged and many of his dialogues are flagged as "flirting" despite them being innocent. At the tiefling party when talking to him you can pick any non-flirty dialogue option you want to and it won't matter. The next morning, if you talk to him again at camp you will have the option to apologize for coming so hard onto him at the party the evening before. Lmao, like when did I do that??? Later, if you later ask him how he fares at your camp he will say something about books, to which you can answer with "you'll find plenty of books, I come across them everywhere"…yeah, that's considered flirting and so is the other option if I recall correctly. And this can go on and on all the way throughout the game…In my case (and it happened to lots of other players, there are tones of complaints about it on the internet) when he finally confessed his love and I rejected him he hit back with "I thought you felt the same way, are you sure???" & "you saw to my needs at camp with the care of a lover, not a host" oh my god just go away dude because I did NOT treat you like a lover lmfao. In this instance he reminded me of those type of guys who think that just because you were nice one time, you must be attracted to them and down to fuck if given the opportunity, but when rejected they complain you were the one who led them on in the first place lmao.

In patch 6 they supposedly introduced a friendship/platonic path for him due to all the complaints but for most players it barely works considering how easy it is to accidentally flirt with him lol…very few people have managed to avoid all of this apparently by not talking to him AT ALL except the quest he gives you in act 2 and by avoiding all the dialogue options that give you a lot of approval.

Gale had similar problems at launch where he took ANY interaction with the player character as flirting, which eventually led him to confessing his love to you unprompted. It was hilarious. Fortunately they fixed it quite rapidly in the next patch which begs the question, why are they not doing it with Halsin...unless he's intentionally coded like this.

Now back to serious matters…Halsin can have a purpose in act 3. Without spoiling too much, there will be a kidnapping plot and he is one of the characters that can get kidnapped (don't worry, you'll be able to easily save anyone once you find the location). The other kidnappable companions are Gale, Lae'zel and Minthara, plus a NPC kid who will potentially join your camp. Also, no romanced companion will be taken. You can metagame your way into getting whoever you want kidnapped by leaving at camp the character you want to get rid of while having the rest in your active party. The thing is that Gale and Lae'zel have major quests in act 3 so you'd best want to keep them in your party if you don't want to fuck the result to those quests, Minthara has a past with the character who does the kidnapping (it's her former abuser) so you'd want her in your party when you go to confront them. As for the NPC…if the kid gets kidnapped, her cat will get killed no matter what you do. And that is unacceptable because no innocent animal is going to be harmed. Which leaves us with Halsin. Considering he really has nothing going on in act 3, he's the best candidate for this. Currently most fans have him kidnapped just to send him to horny jail. Many even kill him then, but I chose not to do it because if he stays alive he will take care of and raise some orphans and I don't want to take that away from them. It's a cute ending for him.

It's a pity because his character is okay if you ignore all of the issues and the fan service around him. Sadly, all Halsin does these days is ending up being a subject for discourse every two weeks or so…he also has a few annoying fans who will try to gaslight you that none of this is happening and it's your fault if you flirt with him (as if it's so easily avoidable) so…that's that.

I'm beginning to see what you mean about Halsin. I've had him in my camp for a while now and he does nothing, just stands there like a weirdo. He doesn't even have his own tent (neither do I, and I'm still salty about it). Doesn't interact with any other companions. And I can't even play with him! It really does feel like he was added as an extra thought.

I got the same experience in talking to him re: flirting. I spoke normally with him at the party because I wanted to lock my second night of passion (😂) with Astarion and the next day I had the option to act all embarrassed for flirting with him. Crazy. Now he's giving me moon eyes. :)) I don't really mind it that much since I do like him, he has a kind of rugged charm, but he's definitely not integrated in the best way in the game mechanics.

"I am so looking forward to hear her dunking on Gale." Minthara also has some nasty banters with Astarion. She says he would make a good pleasure servant in Menzoberranzan which is icky given his past lol. In another party banter she jokes about him probably having some STDs due to his decades of philandering. She is really vicious.

He'd better not have anything though!! :O Just kidding, I doubt vampires can contract and get sick from diseases.

I am so curious to see them together, since Minthussy is bound to be a dommy mommy who'd eat Astarion alive for breakfast. She should be scaring the living daylights out of him, given her background as a former Lolth-sworn drow. I learnt that they really don't treat men nicely down there. :))

In relation to this, I wish there was some options to explore the character of True Soul Nere more, since he abandoned Lolth for the Absolute and comes from a society in which he'd be a second class citizen. At one point, in one of his racist remarks, Astarion even says "I understand saving a drow, but gnomes?" And I was itching to reply something like "really? A male drow? Shouldn't they be considered weak underlings judging by your standards?" or even instill some fear of God into him, since he is also a male elf. 🫵

"Frustratingly enough, Lae'zel and Karlach have me at the lowest approval ratings in the party :)) 31 and 29, respectively. But we’ll do the creche next, so I’m hoping they’ll grow." Once you get to the Creche with Lae'zel to advance her personal quest you will gain A LOT of approval. Don't worry. But yeah Karlach was a bit hard for me, not gonna lie!

"Yes!!! Thank you!!! And, in any case, I think you can fight Raphael even if you didn’t take his deal, so I’m not missing out on anything. I think Mystra is equally lame for cavorting with (and discarding) a human like that, but groomer? Let’s bffr." You will eventually fight Raphael depending on your choices, don't worry…but you may want to deal with him in act 2 in order to help a certain pale companion, just saying! Make sure you have Astarion in your party when you reach the Last Light Inn. If you're now romancing him I guess you have him all the time, I assume?

You know, I was ready to switch him out regardless and leave his ass at home to fulfill the rotation, but he is really fun to have around, so I haven't had the heart to leave him in camp (*he was a punk, she did ballet, what more can I say* 🤡)

"Gale is NOT autistic coded, what the hell? If anything, he is privileged rich kid coded. " Fans will try to woobify their favorite characters, what's new. And yes I think Gale is indeed rich? Not filthy rich but well enough for sure.

I think I'm starting to see why they are rushing to his defense with this diagnostic - he has a tendency to ramble didactically on any given topic without stopping and I guess that COULD be interpreted as having a hyperfixation or a special interest? But Gale does possess good manners, because he can access them on a whim, apologises and stops. IDK, there's this tendency to pathologize any normal behaviour and turn it into something resembling neurodivergency that I don't think is necessary sometimes. People can just be arseholes! FFS, Gale introduces himself as Mystra's fuccboi and he will not let you forget how special and talented he is to have slept with her. Who does that??

"I did get Harold and managed to trade with the merchant. I tried to make the painter make a portrait of Astarion, as I figured it would be a nice gift for him to be able to see himself, but I could only free him. (Of course, Astarion disapproved both that and me giving him money for the road)." NO WAY YOU GAVE HIM MONEY! I REFUSE!!! I'm sorry but had you refused to do it, he would've told you he actually intended to spend the money on getting drunk. Lmaoooo. Sorry!

!!!! I thought he was going to die on the road if I didn't give him money?? 😭 You can't trust no man!!! ☠️

You will meet him again in the city though! If you successfully complete his future quest he can make you a portrait. But no companion will react to it. As for Astarion, yeah it's a missed opportunity that we can't show him what he looks like. However, Ascended Astarion will be able to see himself in the mirror and react accordingly…fuck him anyway.

Whelp....not on my watch! Not before we give him an anti-vampire vaccine like in the movie Blade. 😂

"I think I completely forgot about the shipment though! That cave is so big and I kind of lost myself picking up everything from the ground, so I don’t really know where it is? Or if I can go back? Was it where Zarys was standing?" You can loot it from Zarys' corpse if you gave it to her.

"Phew! I even had Lae'zel come onto me unprompted at the goblin camp. With 30-ish level approval!! She’s crazy lol. She gave me the “I want to taste you” line. Before that, she asked Astarion at the waypoint why he hadn’t attempted sleeping with her. After he slept with Mirta!! Lae'zel!!! " She came onto me after I killed the owlbear mother in the cave. I never got that banter with Astarion though…a lot of the party banters were bugged before patch 7. :(

Fun fact, if you aren't dating either Lae'zel or Astarion, they will hook up at the tiefling party and sleep together. By the way, if Astarion isn't available she will try to fuck Wyll. However Wyll will only want to talk, leaving her disappointed. There is also a bug where she will say to you she slept with Astarion even if you were the one to sleep with him, which led to some Astarion haters to say "see, he went to fuck someone else the moment your Tav fell asleep". Lmao.

Wyll was such a downer at the tiefling party, I gotta say. I'm having some trouble connecting with his character because he doesn't seem to get involved in anything and I don't really understand how to play warlock. It's gonna be ages until I find his dad, so I don't really know what to do with him lol.

"Yeah, I just made the decision that I don’t want to have the Illithid menu activated, even if nothing will happen if I just take 1-2 tadpoles. But, for RPG reasons, we’re doing all of this shit to get rid of them, why would I add more of them, you know?" I didn't eat any tadpoles in my first playthrough either. But I will indulge in them this time with my Dark Urge bard. He's crazy enough to do it lol. Plus, some of the abilities the tadpoles will give you are pretty great. It's just that indulging a lot in them may have some consequences…

"Right?? It would work so much better if he took it down a notch or two. Atm it’s mainly pantomime. I nearly gagged when he talked about “our mutual ecstasy”." You'll get another offer to sleep with him (but no cutscene this time) and he'll try some new lines! Watch out for them!

"I managed to knock her out and free Halsin so fingers crossed!" I hope she won't end up bugged. Before you rescue her in Moonrise Towers from the prison, make sure to make some saves. There will be others who will need saving as well!

Also I don't get why the fuck didn't Halsin transform into a rat or something and escape from the prison lol. Plot reasons, I gues? But it's stupid nonetheless.

I think I may have mentioned something about some recent Astarion discourse… There is this group of "Astarion is actually gay" fans because he acts flamboyantly and two of his former victims she was forced to seduce and bring back to Cazador were men...For many of them it's just their personal headcanon though, which is okay! But some (as well as a few others) often shit on f/m Tav/Astarion ships, headcanons, fan art and even fan fics bemoaning the fact that he's often mischaracterized in a lot of this type of content. It's also apparently heteronormative to ship Astarion with a woman or something lol, that we are delusional to think he would actually be into some of our female Tavs. Some even went as far as saying that Astarion fulfills some women's fantasies of being with a gay man and that's why we like him. Lol what? At first these people tried to excuse it "we are just curating our own fandom space, that's why we mention our dislike for f/m content and we block it on sight because we're gay!" which I fully get since it's understandable for a gay man to avoid f/m content, you know? Here's the thing though: they keep complaining about it even after supposedly blocking this stuff which begs the question: why keep talking about it so much if you hate it so much? Unless your purpose is to gatekeep the character and make women who like him feel bad about it? Because that's what it looks to me lol.

Of course some of the wives got a bit pissed and one of them even used a slur against gay men in response. It was the one I mentioned about pretending to be into a real relationship with Astarion. Anyway, at this point I don't even care this much about them getting shit and being shamed for liking their f/m Tav and Astarion ship because in the past many of these wives joined fandom mobs against others for silly reasons so in a way, it makes me feel lowkey happy they are finally getting a taste of their own medicine. Fellow wives, please do enjoy being called homophobic!!! Meanwhile think of the times you were throwing "-phobics" accusations at others!

Another ridiculous thing to fight about. :)) I mean, Astarion will sleep with you no matter your gender or race or how you look like, so I'm pretty sure he was always meant to be pansexual, all the companions were. It's so goofy to fight about this, it's in the game mechanics.

But, yeah, I understand the feeling of schadenfreude. 🙏

Now seriously complaining about fanon content it's a bit useless. When it comes to fan fic, Astarion is mischaracterized in most of it, INCLUDING m/m ships. In the end many of these authors are really young and honestly? Most are writing for themselves and what they personally like. You are not owed anything. I don't like several tropes either but I won't complain about them existing you know? I just don't read fics including them.

I also want to clarify that not every f/m Astarion ship is getting dunked on, it's mostly those ships where the woman in question doesn't fit the archetype modern fandoms think a strong, capable woman is supposed to look and act like. You've been in the HOTD fandom for long enough to see what I'm referring to lol...what type of women these fans dislike and consider weak.

By the way I'm having flasbacks to those Aemond/OC fics right now, heeelp! I admit to complaining quite a bit about those during season 1 but man...to think Aemond would betray his family to be with Rhaenyra's daughter? And the incessant Alicent bashing every other paragraph?

Yeah, I have done my fair share of complaining (hello lucemond and Rhaenyra's daughter LOL), but, like in all things, I have always been of the opinion that moderation is key here. It can be a relief to have a space to complain about all the things that annoy you and people should be allowed to talk about what they don't like as well, but, if you find that's the only thing you focus on, it's time to take a step back. I hated the Alicent-bashing myself and I'm glad I talked about it and I'm sure a lot of other things will annoy me in the future and I will also talk about them, but some people do make hateposting look like a full time job, when it's really not that serious.

Speaking of goofy HotD tropes, I was browsing the Astarion/Tav tag on AO3 and, of course, I found Tavs named Rhaenyra and Visenya, if you can believe it. I noped out so quick. 😂

I've also noticed that many BG3 bullies finally moved on to the new Dragon Age game and like I correctly predicted, they are now causing discourse over there. I am interested in the DA series but I'm not touching it as I don't want to share a fandom with these people anymore. Playing BG3 and interacting with the fandom (Twitter, reddit, Tumblr) at the height of its popularity has proved to be really tiring and by far my worst online experience.

Oh, yes, I've heard that game is causing quite a ruckus. I've been watching some clips out of curiosity with my boyfriend while eating, just for the sake of having something on the screen, but, I have to say, the fact that most of these commentators sound like incels who have not known the touch of a woman in a long time (if ever) is not helping the critical landscape. :)) Like, I've seen the ridiculous bharv (?) scene and, yes, it was cringy and I understand the game pauses many times to lecture you, but I still haven't properly understood why the game play is that bad, because they're not focusing on that and are instead frothing at the mouth at the idea that your tav can have top surgery scars, you know what I mean? The companions do sound annoying and it's silly that you can only be a goody two-shoes over there.

BONUS 1: https://imgur.com/a/72SRYya - I hope this is bait for their own sake but why do they always talk as if he is real? Not surprised though. I mean it's common even for those wives who seem normal to pretend he is real and say something like "Astarion would hate you for thinking/believing this" as if he's real. Also, him possibly hating some of my takes would be a good sign if you catch my meaning. ;)

"Tactless" - excuse me? I can't believe the way this is worded, I had to pause for a second there. 😂 "Telling someone their partner is an abuser" - he's not your partner!!! And if your partner were behaving like that, I'd hope someone in your life would tell you! Good Lord.

Yet again I'm having flashbacks to Aemond discourse when antis tried to make Helaemonds feel bad with "He loves her like a sister you freak!!! Aemond would actually hate you for shipping him with her!" yeah Aemond is also not real, hope this helps!

Ah, what a golden goose of a discourse this was! We did have some fun in our time! 🤌

BONUS 2: https://wanderingbardtoys.com/collections/astarion-the-vampire-rogue ;) Astarion inspired dildos lol

Holy godsdamned hellsssssssssssssss 😂😂😂😂😂 Why are they coloured like that????

I do have to admit, though, that these are much better than the oversized tick of a penis that toy statue of his had. The one that looks like what I imagine Jabba the Hut's "throbbing member" would look like if I were to entertain the idea and be completely insane. I was even cursed today to see a thumbnail of it when I opened the YouTube app on my phone.

EDIT: Wait a minute, I just had a look at length and girth.... Is he a man or a donkey???

Daddy's "home" - what home?? He doesn't have a house. ☠️ He's jobless.

By the feel free to ignore this if you don't feel like replying, it's okay if you only want to address a specific point. This got way too long..

No, but I do enjoy our little talks very much. It's just I wasn't really feeling like being online that much these past two weeks. I hope you're well and get to read this! 🫶

[queenburd]

hmm i am also thinkin abt the curator line “they need each other” …. something something, can a narrator survive without his stanley? just like a human can’t survive without food/water.. quotes in the skip button ending:

“One single thing I need -…- is to know that someone else is taking it in.”

“When you press that button,… the emptiness folds itself outward in between the two of us, and I am suspended in its unyielding quietness. I can feel the edges of my reality curdling inward and decaying. I can tell that I am becoming less and less real.”

so in the same way.. i assume that all of those narrators banding together would provide some kind of support, but. they’re all so busy trying to be heard, they don’t actually listen to each other. it’s just a big game of giving water to the man starved of food. each others’ company is enough to sustain, but it won’t be for forever.

which is why they go after stan’s narrator; they’re not 100% certain what he’s been doing, but surely he’s hoarding all of these stanleys to himself, right? why would he not hold onto them? where is he hiding them?

but there are some narrators too, that read the room and say “what the hell. the only people here selfish enough to hoard stanleys are the ones suggesting this.” and they form their own coalition which isn’t an echo chamber. they all spent their parables making assumptions on themselves and on their stanleys. this was cruel, yes, and basically a death sentence, but they recognize the self-loathing faster than a counselor in the foster care system. and some of them are still in denial about how they treated their stanleys. but they all recognize that We Need To Hear This Guy Out.

and obviously there’s a lot of infighting from both groups. it’s a high-stress situation, who wouldn’t be stressed out by the end of their life suddenly being a thing that is real and also is approaching rapidly. and there are plenty that just give up and let themselves melt away out of guilt or hopelessness.

so the hate group finally gets this guy. and he gives 0 fucks about them. which is frustrating since they did their best to strip him of his power, but he’s been heard by so many stanleys and they haven’t, so they’re still substantially weaker than him.

the sensible group of narrators aren’t able to even get a look at him. and so they’re busy scheming, but less than the hate group. so when the stanleys come to save the narrator, they notice sooner and they make a break for it. “there’s a lot to discuss, but first we want to help save your narrator.” “there isn’t much time before the others notice.” “we’re trying to hide your presence as long as possible.” “do what you do best—tune them out when they want you to listen.” “yes and that punch was deserved. i deserved that.”

the stanleys are suspicious. who are these fuckers with feelings and what have you done to our original narrators lol???? but they’re willing to go with it. how else would they have escaped their parables without trusting an unexpected offer for help?

you said you didn’t have a lot of thoughts but luckily i did ❤️ i might write smth about this au or the original au. still deciding. but my drafts folder is still overflowing so i probably won’t start until there’s a little more stanley stuff fleshed out. ok it’s my bedtime

THE PUBLIC NEEDS TO SEE THIS. I HAVE LITTLE TO ADD TO THIS GEM other than I have genuinely begun to wonder if any of the narrators, having seen this fellow, who theyve been trying to BREAK, just refusing to be broken, begin to.... wonder.

because again, and again, he just keeps telling them "you didn't take care of him. he only had you and you only had him and YOU DIDNT TAKE CARE OF HIM." and he's relentless.

"I dont get to be with my Stanley either, but god, at least in the time I had him I appreciated him. Our story was supposed to be about him finding happiness, and you all forgot that."

I absolutely can see some of them, who werent the cruel ones but were more invested in their story and in their art, starting to wonder "....was he right? did I forget why this was so important? did I--"

YOU HAVE SOMETHING HERE.

[forcedhesitation]

not the usual rant...

but I haven't been on twitter in a while, and all for the better really, I'm starting to accept. people will preach endlessly about how you can "curate" your experience, but I just do not think that is possible of twitter.

the practice of quote retweeting bigots/bigoted bait posts is way too common, even amongst people who genuinely have something intelligent to say in response and do not care for the engagement the qrt might bring them. I swear, it doesn't matter how many people I mute, block, or unfollow...there's always someone who's qrting some scummy shithead's terrible opinion. I really don't need to see you qrting a transphobe to know you do not stand with them... likewise, I think I can safely say that most people belonging to a marginalised and/or minority group would much rather you ignored those bigots' accounts entirely, and spent your time...oh idk...educating yourself, or directly supporting us and other peoples facing oppression.

then there's all the ignorant, and often wilful, misinterpreting of people's words...the complete lack of understanding some people have that, no, someone cannot fit an entire dissertation's worth of nuance into 200 or so characters of commentary. that, or someone will see a tweet of a partially expressed opinion and a (1/5) tacked on the end, and still only respond to that first tweet in the thread, completely ignoring the rest of the person's commentary because they were overcome with immeasurable lust at the mere opportunity to "dunk" on someone. not to get too personal, but I have a problem with understanding how sincere people are, and thus always feel as though I must make my own thoughts and intentions as clear as possible. and I feel as though being on twitter genuinely makes that problem worse for me. it's hard to tell if people are saying what they are because they care, because they want engagement, or because they are plainly an asshole.

and of course, seeing awful fandom related crap is also unavoidable because twitter has a terrible tagging system. the worst out of all the major social media sites, I'd argue. the algorithm hides posts with too many tags, so it's not necessarily possible for you to mute something upsetting or irritating, and avoid seeing those things. not that people would tag some of the things they post, anyway, because while a system to warn people of mature content exists, most users do not actually use that feature. this is a problem that obviously extends beyond just fandom, and that is where the real issue lies. regularly you will encounter videos of real life carnage, pornography, and the like, posted just...wherever! under a tweet announcing a celebrity's passing, under a piece of artwork, or through a qrt trying to "make a point." it's awful.

I hate the whole atmosphere of the site, there is so much of this...careless subjecting of others to cruelty, to violence, to bigotry...all for the sake of attention. people are so unbelievably rude to each other, because they've cultivated an echo chamber in which their negativity is being rewarded, and so they are driven to say just the nastiest things imaginable to total strangers. and this will be under the guise of "activism," or of "intellectual superiority," or simply because you tweeted something random about a character, or a musician, that you do not particularly care for. it's pure madness. I do not understand how people can willingly spend hours on that website.

[natsmagi]

I'm a fandom old, so I'd also say there's a strand of entitlement that's always been around fandom, but it's so much more normal now (for both artists and writers) since fandom's become less of a haven for weirdos and more mainstream. Fan writers and artists create FOR FREE and share with us, so complaining or being an arsehole about it is frankly shit.

YEAH....... ive been in online fandoms for like a decade now myself so 😭

if i were to guess id say its probably because nowadays people grow up online and have their whole identities and social circles online too, and its usually very young people who act this entitled towards creatives. it seems a majority of them believe that what you consume and how you consume it reflects your character because theyve made what they consume such a heavy feature of their identity but thats just. not true? you cannot get an accurate understanding of another person based solely off you stalking their page. it sucks too because young people tend to be more reactionary and react based off emotion so their judgement will be even further clouded. not to mention since theyre so judgmental of anyone who disagrees with this they end up forming an echo chamber which just. oh man.

alot of the arguments i see can basically be reduced to "this makes me uncomfortable so that means its immoral and should be eradicated" and thats just. a Really bad mindset to have..... if you cant handle certain things youre much better off muting/blocking and curating your online experience appropriately. this isnt the real world after all, our creative art and writing does not involve reality, its often an escape from it. it is not us creatives responsibility to ensure your online experience is full of sunshine and rainbows. most you can criticize us for is if we tagged the posts appropriately. and then making sure those tags are muted is YOUR responsibility. please take care of yourselves. we dont want you hurting, but we are our own individuals with our own life stories and we should be allowed to express those

the internet will never be a safe haven for everyone. what you may deem immoral might be another persons way of expressing emotions that are killing them inside, and i think thats the beauty of art. it is a purely subjective medium that can mean something completely different depending on the person viewing it. like fuck man theres so many things i find deeply upsetting so i just do my best in blocking it out of my sight. am i still gonna stumble upon those upsetting things in the wild? of COURSE i am, especially since some of what i find upsetting may not be that big of a deal to a majority of the population, and thats unfortunately the reality we have to live with. all we can really do is ask those close to us to be mindful and choose who we engage with carefully

[sapphire-weapon]

I think the problem with a lot of RE fans (and in many other fandoms too, RE just happens to be the current topic), is that there's a belief being upheld, that whatever appears in canon material has to be free of criticism, just because it's canon!

To backup my point, I'll use Game of Thrones as an example. The show literally became infamous because of the backlash caused by its last season. It's not an exaggeration to state that the vast majority of fans and casual viewers (which are worldwide!) criticised it. Am I not allowed to point out Daenerys being out of character, just because the showrunners went ahead with that arc? Is the global viewership simply "just wrong about it", because hey, the showrunners made that decision. Leave it alone. It almost entirely killed the franchise. With books becoming a lost cause, HOTD has just about saved it.

My point being, just because something's canon, it doesn't mean it's good, nor is it free from negative opinions and thought pieces. That's what gets me about certain ship arguments. They have nothing of value to add to their stance... it's just "well, this and that canon storyline happened! So you're not allowed to say it's bad or try to analyse it from a different perspective!" Genuinely, how does someone like that even finish school?

It's unfortunately quite a popular opinion to have that worms its way into every piece of popular media. Just normalise questioning, analysing and constructively criticising the things we consume. That's supposed to be part of the enjoyment in my opinion. Also to add, it's important to recognise that franchises worth millions of dollars are much bigger than your curated twitter corner. Just because you and your friends bully people online, does not mean you're the spokesperson for RE (and others) consumerism. That is a toddlers perspective of the world, lol.

>it's important to recognise that franchises worth millions of dollars are much bigger than your curated twitter corner.

this is the single most important thing to keep in mind when trying to analyze a text and/or predict where a series is going to go, imo

it's so easy for your perspective to get fucked up when you sit in an echo chamber like that

that's why when cordial!aeon anon first came into my inbox, i was like "i need you guys to play video games that aren't RE" bc like

there was absolutely zero understanding of how the games industry actually functions and/or how Joe Average, who makes up the largest majority of consumers by MILLIONS, looks at the games he plays.

i worked at gamestop for eight years and let me tell u it is actually against capcom's best interest to develop their games around appeasing shippers, because shippers are responsible for only around roughly 10% of game sales -- and even that is being extremely generous. it will come as an upsetting shock to learn that a good portion (i estimate about 30%) of people who play video games skip the cutscenes entirely. the other 60% are people who just want a game that will hold their interest and make sense as they're going through it/not be embarrassingly stupid (like RE6 was).

like. no one has a more overinflated sense of self-importance than shippers who only talk to other shippers and engage with the medium in no other way.

[septembersghost]

Literally everything about the Priscilla movie and the discourse it’s inspired is so bad man :(

not saying this in an "i told you so" way whatsoever, but yeah, i mean, we knew it would be. that was unfortunately a given. it's only going to get worse up until and when the movie comes out. EPE (presumably joel) also made the situation even uglier today by running their mouths criticizing it to TMZ and drawing more negative attention when they could've simply ignored it quietly. i realize i'm a slightly broken record here, and repeating a lot of others at this point too, but it's only noise. the people who revile him are always going to revile him and refuse to investigate any further about his person or his humanity, they want him to be a monster and their minds are made up. the people who who want to victimize priscilla to use her as a weapon with no care for her own voice will keep doing that. and the fans who love elvis are going to keep loving elvis. the people who want to see the movie will, the people who don't, won't, and either choice is valid.

this is how it's been for decades, social media just amplifies the unpleasantness, but it's an echo chamber. nobody yelling is attempting to engage with this with any nuance, or regard anyone involved as flesh and blood people who had complex relationships and made mistakes and also felt great love for one another. they're looking for trouble a reason to be hateful and to fight when they don't even understand or truly care what they're talking about. we know he wasn't perfect, we know he made some bad choices, we know he struggled with his health for several different reasons, we know he had a temper. we also know he tried relentlessly to do better, to learn and to grow personally and artistically, and to be generous and kind and giving of himself in myriad ways. which one do you ultimately find more important? because i really do believe it's the compassion and the light.

do i wish that the beautiful work baz and austin did to restore his legacy and personhood was the final word on it? frankly, yes, but that was never going to happen because elvis remains a fascination and an object of pop culture that gets projected onto depending on the agenda of whomever decides to use him as a mirror. it becomes so separated from why his music and memory remains. what they created still matters, and it makes my heart ache to think of it being undone at all, but i think it will ultimately be remembered, much like elvis himself.

i'm so much more interested in his artistry, his spirituality, and his emotional vulnerability than i am in intimate personal details about his life, but i know that's not the case in a lot of the fanbase, and that's fine, i am very selective in what i choose to engage with and i think we all have the right to curate that experience. i know it's SO hard to ignore, but when it comes to this discourse, don't read it, don't participate in it, and guard your mental health however you can. this movie doesn't change anything any more than any other of the many portrayals of him. more eyes are on it because of, essentially, brand recognition - both name of the director and due to the fast timing following the film last year, and all the press and clamor that surrounded it, the things said (both complimentary and unfair) about austin, the rabid nature of social media that lives to tear things apart. but it ultimately doesn't change anything.

this has been said more eloquently, but nothing has eclipsed or erased him, even after these decades of misinformation and spurious rumor and conspiracy theories and everyone and their neighbor exploiting (or inventing) their connection with him for a book or a crummy made-for-tv movie and cruel, dismissive jokes and cardboard cutouts and cheesy impersonators. something about the soul of him still rises above all of that. the positives we glean and inspiration and meaning we find, and the love we hold onto, rises above all of that too.