Danny needs a few...odd things. A few dietary and emotional requirements unique to his physiology.
Meat is one of them.
But like, raw meat. He doesn't have to eat it often, maybe twice a month, but it does need to be completely raw.
He also needs to eat non-sentient blob ghosts, which are very different from sentient ones. Same amount, maybe twice a month.
He's weak to hot temperatures, where most humans require some sort of positive contact he needs to fight, if he gets too much sunlight his dopamine levels drop, and oddly enough as he got older milk or products with a lot of milk started to affect him like alcohol affects humans.
Now that he's made it to college, hiding most of these things is easy enough.
He chose Gotham, because of minimal sunny days and naturally cold weather. He regularly goes for walks at night, to fill his need for fighting. He says he has a milk allergy, and avoids milk products.
The blobs and the raw meat are a little uh. Those are a little hard.
He's taken to ducking into a bathroom stall to just swallow the blobs whole. But the meat...
He decides to sear the outside and leave the inside entirely raw. Does this detract from the nutrients by cooking them off? Yes. Does it mean he needs to eat raw meat four times a month instead of twice? Yes. Does it mostly hide that he's doing this in front of humans? Kind of.
Until he got a vegan roommate.
Said roommate is far too sharp-eyed for his own good, and now the guy is being weird.
Or: Damian's roommate is a meta who clearly has dietary restrictions outside the norm. It's fine; Damian understands that like animals in the wild, people have different diets. But the cuts of meat Fenton is eating are...subpar.
Damian isn't sure how to be...civil, or appear polite, or not be a "snob" if he suggests Fenton allow him to procure farm fresh cuts of steak from cows raised in an open pasture and were well taken care of.
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one of the things that i think we should pay attention to, socially, about the disney v. desantis thing is that it is really highlighting the importance of remembering nuance.
in a purely neutral sense, if you engage in something problematic, that does not mean you are necessarily agreeing with what makes it problematic. and i am worried that we have become... so afraid of any form of nuance.
disney isn't my friend, they're a corporate monopoly that bastardized copyright laws for their own benefit, ruin the environment, and abuse their workers (... and many other things). this isn't a hypothetical for me - i grew up in florida. i also worked for the actual Walt Disney World; like, in the parks. i am keenly aware of the ways they hurt people, because they hurt me. i fully believe that part of the reason florida is so conservative is because it's been an "open secret" for years now that disney lobbies the government to keep minimum wage down, and i know they worked hard to keep the parks unmasked and open during the worst parts of Covid. they purposefully keep their employees in poverty. they are in part responsible for the way the floridian government works.
desantis is still, by a margin that is frankly daunting, way worse. the alternative here isn't just "republicans win", it's actual fascism.
in a case like this, where the alternative is to allow actual fascism into united states legislation - where, if desantis wins, there are huge and legal ramifications - it's tempting to minimize the harm disney is also doing, because... well, it's not fascism. but disney isn't the good guy, either, which means republicans are having a field day asking activists oh, so you think their treatment of their employees is okay?
we have been trained there is a right answer. you're right! you're in the good group, and you're winning at having an opinion.
except i have the Internet Prophecy that in 2-3 months, even left-wing people will be ripping apart activists for having "taken disney's side". aren't i an anti-capitalist? aren't i pro-union? aren't i one of the good ones? removed from context and nuance (that in this particular situation i am forced to side with disney, until an other option reveals itself), my act of being like "i hope they have goofy rip his throat out onstage, shaking his lifeless body like a dog toy" - how quickly does that seem like i actually do support disney?
and what about you! at home, reading this. are you experiencing the Thought Crime of... actually liking some of the things disney has made? your memories of days at the parks, or of good movies, or of your favorite show growing up. maybe you are also evil, if you ever enjoyed anything, ever, at all.
to some degree, the binary idealization/vilification of individual motive and meaning already exists in the desantis case. i have seen people saying not to go to the disney pride events because they're cash grabs (they are). i've seen people saying you have to go because they're a way to protest. there isn't a lot of internet understanding of nuance. instead it's just "good show of support" or "evil bootlicking."
this binary understanding is how you can become radicalized. when we fear nuance and disorder, we're allowing ourselves the safety of assuming that the world must exist in binary - good or bad, problematic or "not" problematic. and unfortunately, bigots want you to see the world in this binary ideal. they want you to get mad at me because "disney is taking a risk for our community but you won't sing their praises" and they want me to get mad at you for not respecting the legit personal trauma that disney forced me through.
in a grander scheme outside of disney: what happens is a horrific splintering within activist groups. we bicker with each other about minimal-harm minimal-impact ideologies, like which depiction of bisexuality is the most-true. we gratuitously analyze the personal lives of activists for any sign they might be "problematic". we get spooked because someone was in a dog collar at pride. we wring our hands about setting an empty shopping mall on fire. we tell each other what words we may identify ourselves by. we get fuckin steven universe disk horse when in reality it is a waste of our collective time.
the bigots want you to spend all your time focusing on how pristine and pretty you and your interests are. they want us at each other's throats instead of hand in hand. they want to say see? nothing is ever fucking good enough for these people.
and they want their followers to think in binary as well - a binary that's much easier to follow. see, in our spaces, we attack each other over "proper" behavior. but in bigoted groups? they attack outwards. they have someone they hate, and it is us. they hate you, specifically, and you are why they have problems - not the other people in their group. and that's a part of how they fucking keep winning.
some of the things that are beloved to you have a backbone in something terrible. the music industry is a wasteland. the publishing industry is a bastion of white supremacy. video games run off of unpaid labor and abuse.
the point of activism was always to bring to light that abuse and try to stop it from happening, not to condemn those who engage in the content that comes from those industries. "there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism" also applies to media. your childhood (and maybe current!) love of the little mermaid isn't something you should now flinch from, worried you'll be a "disney adult". wanting the music industry to change for the better does not require that you reject all popular music until that change occurs. you can acknowledge the harm something might cause - and celebrate the love that it has brought into your life.
we must detach an acknowledgment of nuance from a sense of shame and disgust. we must. punishing individual people for their harmless passions is not doing good work. encouraging more thoughtful, empathetic consumption does not mean people should feel ashamed of their basic human capacities and desires. it should never have even been about the individual when the corporation is so obviously the actual evil. this sense that we must live in shame and dread of our personal nuances - it just makes people bitter and hopeless. do you have any idea how scared i am to post this? to just acknowledge the idea of nuance? that i might like something nuanced, and engage in it joyfully? and, at the same time, that i'm brutally aware of the harm that they're doing?
"so what do i do?" ... well, often there isn't a right answer. i mean in this case, i hope mickey chops off ron's head and then does a little giggle. but truth be told, often our opinions on nuanced subjects will differ. you might be able to engage in things that i can't because the nuance doesn't sit right with me. i might think taylor swift is a great performer and a lot of fun, and you might be like "raquel, the jet fuel emissions". we are both correct; neither of us have any actual sway in this. and i think it's important to remember that - the actual scope of individual responsibility. like, i also love going to the parks. Thunder Mountain is so fun. you (just a person) are not responsible for the harm that Disney (the billion dollar corporation) caused me. i don't know. i think it's possible to both enjoy your memories and interrogate the current state of their employment policies.
there is no right way to interrogate or engage with nuance - i just hope you embrace it readily.
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Thinking about Astarion and his asexual swag. You canonically stop sleeping together because he wants time to come into his own. And after you finish his quest you can go meet those drow twins and he becomes really eager to try sex again. He tell you he wants to try, and he'll dart away if he gets overwhelmed. And you have right up until the moment it begins to act him if he's alright, and okay with it. And he is! He's consenting and simingly super into it. But after the act starts you notice how he disassociates. His eyes glaze and he's no longer there. Not to mention during the grave yard scene. You can have sex with him over his own grave (hot) and he takes the lead in it, which really is a great development from the first sex scene with him, where he's hardly there and you do all the work.
But. Instead of sleeping together you can ask Astarion to just. Sit. Hold each other. Cuddle! And he sounds so surprised, then delighted at you asking it.
I don't think there's anything wrong with people who choose that option with him at the grave. He's happy, consenting and eager to sleep with your character. But he's just as happy not to. He's so, so asexual. Not sex averse, clearly. But he obviously only enjoys it with you. (And maybe Halisn idk I never tried the polyam route)
-signed, your local panromantic asexual
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I’m trying to sleep but all I can think about rn is Cowboy Ghost getting soft not only in the emotional sense, but also in the physical sense. You bet your ass Goose is feeding him three square meals a day because love is food and food is love. The transition is slow, but eventually his belly gets a little softer, forearms a little bigger. Ugh I just know he’d be so comfy to cuddle. Plus what better sign of recovery and safety than out eating his metabolism. I don’t know where this is going. I have the soft ghost brain rot.
God you're so right all the time.
Ghost definitely keeps his exercise regimen from his time in the special forces, routine is good for him and it wakes him up in the morning when all he really wants to do is stay in bed with you. Days when he can't resist that temptation he finds his feet dragging a little, his body itching to expend energy some other way. But it's the strangest thing, he notices it when it's already happened, he's gained weight. Ghost has very... neutral feelings about his body, it is a body and its his, which is fine. He isn't sure quite how this happened though. He puzzles over it as you set a full plate of eggs, bacon, grits, in front of him at breakfast. He puzzles over it when you hand him a nicely wrapped sandwich and a coke at lunch. He puzzles over it while getting seconds at dinner.
He's softer at the edges, around the middle. Out eatting his metabolism, or perhaps keeping pace with it. He isnt hungry all the time anymore. He's sleeping better. He feels better, more comfortable in his skin, more himself when you drape an arm over his chest in bed and cuddle closer to his warmth. You settle so comfortably on top of him, snuggle in like it's your job, he isn't sure he misses the hard edges. You've worn them down, reshaped and softened them like the waves gently lapping at stones along the seashore. It was slow enough he didn't notice until it had already happened: how much happier he is here with you.
Really he only takes silent notice of it, enjoys the softer lines of his body and the way you hold them, until his daughters come along. Until he has babies sleeping on his chest and he's glad there's some cushion for their little heads. Until they wrap their arms around him and smush their face against his stomach and he's glad to provide them some warmth. Until he spots one of their little fill in the blank school assignments, "my daddy is a cowboy because he eats a lot", and finds himself smiling. Softer in the places that count, healthier than he's ever been, and happier for it.
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