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communistkenobi · 2 days

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Hi, genuine good faith question if you'd like! How is TOS racist? It was my understanding that the OG Series was like, huge for equality in media?

I’m speaking primarily about the content of TOS itself, not its historical impact - I understand it had various historic firsts in terms of having characters of colour in respectable roles, which I’m not dismissing. My experience with the discourse on here surrounding the show is that people front-load these character representations as emblematic of the show’s progressive politics. Which, if we want to go that route, TOS was contemporary to the US civil rights movement, which provides us with a handy measuring stick to see how TOS actually grapples with race, not just the presence of characters of colour themselves. I'm going to be kind of defensive in this explanation, not towards you specifically, but because I have had this conversation with people online many, many, many times, and so any defensiveness on my part is in anticipation of arguments I know will come up as a result of making the basic claim that a show made in America in the 1960s is racist. I'm also going to be copy + pasting from an older post I've made on the subject since it's been a while now since I've watched TOS so some of the details are fuzzy.

Like okay, the premise of TOS is that the Enterprise, as an ambassador of Starfleet/the Federation, is seeking out new alien life to study. The Prime Directive prohibits the Enterprise crew from interfering with the development of any alien culture or people while they do this, so the research they collect needs to be done in an unobtrusive way. I think this is the first point at which people balk at the argument that TOS is racist or has a colonial conception of the world - the Enterprise’s mission is premised on non-interference, and I think when people hear ‘colonial’ as a descriptor they (understandably, obviously) assume it is describing active conquest, genocide, and dispossession. Even setting aside all the times where Kirk does directly interfere with the “development” of a people or culture (usually because they’ve “stagnated” culturally, because a culture "without conflict" cannot evolve or “develop” beyond its current presumed capacity - he is pretty explicitly imposing his own values onto another culture in order to force them to change in a particular way), or the times when the Enterprise is actually looking to extract resources from a given planet or people, I’m not exactly making this claim, or rather, that’s not the only thing I’m describing when calling TOS racist/colonial.

The show's presentation of scientific discovery and inquiry is anthropological - the “object” of analysis is alien/foreign culture, meaning that when the Enterprise crew comes into contact with a new being or person, this person is always read first and foremost through the level of (the Enterprise’s understanding of) culture. Their behaviour, beliefs, dress, way of speaking, appearance, and so on are always reflective of their culture as a whole, and more importantly, that their racial or phenotypic characteristics define the boundaries of their culture. Put another way, culture is interpreted, navigated, and bound racially - the show presents aliens as a Species, but these species are racially homogeneous, flattening race to a natural, biological difference that is always physically apparent and presented through the lens of scientific objectivity, as "species" is a unit of biological taxonomy. Basically species is a shorthand for race. This is the standard of most sci-fi/fantasy genre work, so this is not a sin unique to Star Trek.

Because of this however, Kirk and Co are never really interacting with individuals, they are interacting with components of a (foreign, exotic, fundamentally different) culture, the same way we understand that a biologist can generalize about a species using the example of an individual 'specimen'. And when the Enterprise interacts with these cultures, they very frequently measure them using a universalized scale of development - they have a teleological (which is to say, evolutionary) view of culture, ie, that all cultures go from savage to rational, primitive to advanced, economically simple to economically complex (ie, to capitalist modes of production). And the metrics they are judging these cultures by are fundamentally Western ones, always emphasising to the audience that the final destination of all cultures (that are worthy of advancing beyond their current limited/“primitive” stages) is a culture identical to the Federation, a culture that can itself engage in this anthropological mission to catalogue all life as fitting within a universal set of practices and racial similarities they call “culture.”

This is a western, colonial understanding of culture - racially and spatially homogeneous people comprise the organs of a social totality, ie, a society, which can then be analysed as an “object,” as a “phenomenon,” by the scientists in order to extract information from them to produce and advance state (ie Federation) knowledge. The Enterprise crew are allowed to be individuals, are allowed to be subjects with a capacity for reason, contradiction, emotion, compassion, and even moments of savagery or violence, without those things being assigned to their “race” or “culture” as a whole, but the people they interact with are only components of a whole which are “discovered” by the Enterprise as opportunities to expand and refine the Federation’s body of knowledge.

Spock is actually a good example of what I'm talking about, because he is an exception to this rule - unlike the others in the crew, his behaviour is always read as a symptom of his innate Vulcan-ness, where his human and Vulcan halves war for dominance in his mind and character. Bones (the doctor, one of the main cast) constantly comments on Spock's inability to feel things, that he is callous and unsympathetic, ruled by Vulcan logic to such an extreme that his rationality is a form of irrationality, as his Vulcan blood prohibits him from tempering logic with human emotion and intuition. Now you can argue that Bones is a stand-in for the racists of the world, that Spock proves Bones wrong in that he is able to feel but merely keeps it under wraps, that Vulcans are not biologically incapable of emotion but merely live in a socially repressive culture, but this still engages in the racial logic of the show - Vulcans are a racially-bound species with a single monolithic culture, and Spock's ability to express and feel 'human emotions' is the metric by which he is granted human subjectivity and sympathy.

And on the flip side you have the Klingons - a “race” that is uniformly savage, backward, violent, and dangerous. In the episode Day of the Dove, where Klingons board the Enterprise along with an alien cloud that makes everyone suddenly aggressive and racist (this show is insane lol), the Enterprise crew begins acting violent and racist, but the Klingons don’t change. They aren’t more violent than before (because they already were fundamentally violent and racist), and they don’t become less violent when the cloud eventually leaves (because they are never able to emerge from their violence and savagery as a social condition or external imposition - they simply are that way). Klingons are racially, behaviourally, psychologically, and culturally homogeneous, universally violent and immune to reason, and their racial characteristics are both physical manifestations of this universal violence as well as the origin of it. The writers and creators of TOS are explicitly invoking the orientalist idea of the “Mongolian horde,” representing both the American fear of Soviet global takeover as well as blatantly racist fears about “Asiatics” (a word used in the show, particularly in The Omega Glory where a fear of racialised communist takeover is made explicit) dominating the world.

This is colonial thinking! Like, fundamentally, at its core, this is colonial white supremacist thinking. Now this is not because TOS invents these tropes or is the origin of them, it is not individually responsible for these racial and colonial logics - these conceptions are endemic to Western thought, and I am not expecting a television show to navigate its way outside of this current colonial paradigm of scientific knowledge. I’m also not expecting an average person watching this to pick out all the intricacies of this and link it to the colonial history of Europe or the colonial history of western philosophy/thought. But this base premise of Star Trek is why the show is fundamentally colonial - even if it was the case that the crew never intervened in any alien conflict, never extracted any material resources from other people, this would still be colonial logic and colonial thinking. The show has a fundamentally colonial imagination when it comes to exploration, discovery, and culture.

I think a good place to end is the opening sequence. The show's first line is always "Space! The final frontier." I do not think the word frontier is meant metaphorically or poetically - I think the show is being honest about its conception of space as an infinitely vast, infinitely exotic frontier from which a globally Western civilisation (which the Enterprise is an emblem of) can extract resources, be they material or epistemic

#tos.txt #< have more posts in there also

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misscammiedawn · 24 hours

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Legitimacy vs Selection Bias in Hypnosis

This has been on our mind a lot recently. It's mostly been sparked by the recent Mindless Banter podcast run by @theleeallure @enscenic and @hypno-sandwich where the three hosts spoke about how they dislike academic models of hypnosis and a recent post by @h-sleepingirl discussing why they herald hypnotic education.

One thing that is always going to be true about the advocates of our kink who have been involved with the community for a long time is that we are going to be experienced and capable hypnotists and/or hypnotees.

Likewise those who join and find themselves brought in to the fold tend to self-select; if a person is not able to find any success or joy in hypnosis because it's not working or they do not gel with the styles taught and practiced then they will not hang around.

This means that we have a functioning ecosystem of people who know the lingo, who are primed to react as they should and tend to have things work for them.

Which is great! It makes it so much easier to work out when everyone is on the same page.

But it also creates an insular community.

I've written before on why the insular nature of our community worries me.

One of the lines I wrote in that post was this

One of the big differences between the online erotic hypnosis community and the NGH (National Guild of Hypnotists) who rue our existence is that we do not require legitimacy to function when they themselves exist in a half-truth state where when receiving both of my certifications it was impressed that we needed to perform an uneasy dance of providing services without practicing medicine because hypnotherapy is not licensed psychology in the same was that chiropractors are not performing medicine.

Legitimacy is the idea of taking what we do, what we are, what we believe and what we practice and trying to make it valid to those outside of the community. It's performing studies, it's building a framework of hard rules, it's about pretending that we understand how the brain works beyond the anecdotal evidence that we witness it every day within our corners and communities.

Fact is, hypnosis is a malleable and belief-based practice that rests right in the middle between faith and science. As mentioned in the above linked post, trance can be detected on an EEG:

Source

Our last post on this topic just spoke about accepting that we exist in a soft science where what we believe, how we approach our beliefs and what ideas we allow to take root in our minds will have a firm impact on how the minds of the hypnotists and hypnotees we interact with.

Today I want to talk about why keeping the education and the science involved in the conversation is important.

Because, like the Mindless Banter crew, I have reached the point of my career in hypnoplay where should Dawn wish to induce a trance she need only find a partner, lay out what will happen and perform. The rest of it just happens.

Once you reach a level of confidence and community, it pretty much takes care of itself. The interaction between a hypnotist and a person who has never experienced trance before and the interaction between a hypnotist and an enthusiast will play out differently.

What I mean by this is if Dawn is approached in DM by someone who wants a session she will be able to pick up a number of tells without even noticing it on their confidence and experience. Someone shy, unsure and untrained will not dive straight in. Which makes the encounter less likely and even if it does happen it comes from the power dynamic of a teacher and student rather than two enthusiasts going to town.

This is normal and it's not a bad thing. It just means that the typical educator in the hypnokink community is typically aware of the "weight class" of their hypnotees which paints their expectations of how things will go and allows for a line between the way hypnosis is taught in 101 and how it is practiced in enthusiast circles.

It's why Progressive Muscle Relaxation is something which gets scoffed at a lot in our circles. The typical enthusiast does not need to spend 20 minutes on an induction when their typical partner is someone they can hold the shoulders of, stare at with intent and give permission for the hypnotee to drop.

That isn't to say that experienced hypnotists only play with experienced hypnotees. It just means that the majority of the play from those who educate does not match the material that we teach to beginners. Not a bad thing.

But it does breed this divide I mentioned. Between the experience of those who do this all the time and what is "academic".

So, besides helping new people into the community or playing in pure theoretical space, why must we keep the academic approach involved?

Well, first... the science does inform what we do. Yes, a lot of this is based on belief but there is a large amount of the science which is just fact no matter what we do. The neuroplasticity of traumatized brains is a topic we type about a lot given our dissociative disorder. I mentioned in my Dissociative Disorders and Hypnosis post that there are multiple studies that there's a higher hypnotic suggestibility in those with conditions that include dissociation as a symptom. The fact that this was being taught in a 101 class was why I made that post to begin with.

From my Mind Makes It Real post I mentioned that we need to be aware of the truths to keep ourselves in check. We should always be wondering "am I wrong?" about everything and the moment one lets go of the academic framework and commits to the loose ethos of "it just works" you lose a little bit of that footing and external perspective. We're an insular community and there's an element of "the popular ideas win out", not to stress a point too much but the whole hatred of the progressive muscle relaxation induction is a good example of this. I know a few community leaders who reflexively rant any time they hear it. These people have the ability to control the con schedule. They teach classes and part of their lesson is their personal disdain for that approach. This goes into the minds of those who were taught by that person and becomes part of the internal dogma. Suddenly you have a situation where a minority of people in the community need to defend the PMR.

I do not actually care too much about PMR but it really is one of the most accessible entry level trances and the disdain for it is a little gatekeepy, if I am being honest. I don't think any individual means for it to be something they keep out of the community but enough individuals following a trend creates a community concept, a widely held belief.

And hypnosis is entirely about widely held beliefs. Thus it is now a fact that PMR is boring and ineffective and there's more fun ways to do trance. That is an example, hopefully one that is understandable to an audience who are also into hypnokink (apologies to my non-hypnosis Tumblr followers, I hope if you're reading this you enjoy this peak into a little internet sub-culture).

Which brings me to legitimacy.

Do we really need it?

Hypnosis is both science and fantasy. A person attending a hypnokink convention could treat hypnosis with the technical skill and care that one would approach as roleplay, learning all of the different terms and all of the safety procedures and treating it as a psychological version of what can be physically observed.

But you may also have someone who treats hypnosis as roleplay and improv with a framework not too dissimilar from a tabletop sourcebook for D/s shenanigans that they can learn and play within much the same as a D&D player can switch to World of Darkness. I guarantee there are a large number of people in the hypnosis community who do this and they're not wrong for doing it.

But as I mentioned above. Hypnosis is a scientifically observable phenomenon and it is dangerous if abused. Heaven knows I know that more than most. One must not believe in the dangers for them to be real. An immature hypnotist is a danger to a hypnotee regardless of if they think they are roleplaying or performing edgeplay. And the same is true for a hypnotee, too. If one believes it's all roleplay then their limits and safety will be at a different level than someone who is aware of the risks.

One need only look to the dark corners of our community where covert hypnosis is practiced eagerly, recruitment is a game and personality erasure is an aesthetic to know that there are uncomfortably large swaths who are practicing hypnosis from the perspective of fantasy. I do not want to pull out the news articles about how Disney Deer brainwashing ruined people's lives again.

The good news is that within the educator/convention going portion of the community we do teach this stuff. We do make everything clear. We're not currently in a community where academic approaches are shrugged off.

But it makes me uncomfortable when experienced educators in the community forget how far their words reach and dismiss the academic for the sake of "what works".

We do not need to seek legitimacy for the eyes of those outside of the community. We do not Demand To Be Taken Seriously. We have a community where people are welcome to join or not join. We do not need external legitimacy.

But we need internal legitimacy.

We need the people who practice within our care to know that they're practicing with dangerous tools that can and will mess a person up if treated without proper care.

Safety and education require we keep room for the academic and seek to legitimize what we do or those who look at hypnosis as pure fantasy will not be able to recognize the risk.

At least, that's my opinion.

For more of our ramblings on hypnosis and the hypnosis community, please check out our Hypnokink Writing tag for other bits of education and commentary like this <3

#camden posting #hypnokink #hypnokink writings #hypnosis #hypnosis community

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noistanaccount · 6 hours

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Ryoko Kui Does Not Believe in Epiphanies (or: why Marcille and Mithrun's endings are great actually)

I have seen a couple of people who are upset about the way that Mithrun and Marcille's stories were resolved so I'm writing this to clear some things up. Ryoko Kui does not believe in epiphanies. An epiphany is a sudden and usually brief realization, an "aha" moment. Epiphanies are emotionally powerful moments. Both Marcille and Mithrun have powerful moments of realization, epiphanies.

Whether or not you like these resolutions, there's something you need to understand, Ryoko Kui does not put that much stock into these moments. Immediately after Marcille has her realization, Tansu responds like this:

While this is mostly his own opinion, what he is pointing out is that epiphanies are brief, they are singular moments that do not define a life. Life is long, and epiphanies do not sustain you. Marcille might feel like this now, but what about tomorrow? what about nex year? ten years, a hundred years, five hundred years from now? How often have you felt a sudden understanding? a burst of inspiration, or perhaps a realization that everything is pointless? It generally passes quickly, and you make dinner, and go to bed.

Think about the best meal you have ever had, it was probably a special occasion, maybe it felt like something magical, in the moment you might have felt like your life was changed. Then, in the morning you were hungry, so you ate breakfast. You cooked, you did the dishes, you went on with your life. What "meaning" did that meal have if you were hungry again the next day? Mithrun has to rebuild everything, every day he has to come up with new desires to do the very basics. None of it comes naturally, he has to find a reason to eat beyond being hungry, a reason to want to do anything when he doesn't want anything. Ryoko Kui tells us outright, that there is no magical solution:

The same thing applies to Ryoko Kui's representation of racism in dungeon meshi. Around when the orcs appeared in the anime I saw people gripeing about the way racism is treated. They seemed to think that Laios's party having dinner with the orcs was presented as them "solving" racism. Once again people misunderstand, they did not solve racism in a single moment. A few people, understood each other a little better, came to an arrangement and then parted. This was merely a moment in their lives. The characters continue to do micro-agressions, hold stereotypes, and have implicit biases. In dungeon meshi, characters don't suddenly stop being racist in the course of an evening. Life is a process, learning about others is a process, it's about the accumulation of experiences through the meat and potatoes of life, the daily activities that we actually fill our lives with, not the sudden realizations. Once you make learning about and living with other people into part of your routine, once it is embodied, then it is part of your life.

This is the real conclusion: life is not lived in a state of epiphany. Life is about chores, cooking, eating, shitting, working, and sleeping, it's everyday. Life is about doing simple things and doing them well. An epiphany is a useful tool for telling the reader that everything is going to be alright, we love to read epiphanies and be swept up in them. They can also be a breaking of a pattern, an escape from a spiral.

This is the other take away, it's about the people you do those things with, the way they rub off on you, the way they help you be human. For Mithrun and Marcille their paths would be impossible without other people pushing them back on the path as they stray. Mithrun literally would starve to death except for the thought that kabru and others don't want him to. Eating is a communal activity, so is living, you can have an epiphany on your own; you can't live on your own.

#dungeon meshi #dungeon meshi spoilers #this is important to me I hope I articulated it well #rant

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bonzos-number-1-fan · 22 hours

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TMAGP 13 Thoughts: Phone Bug

A big episodes for small reasons. Not much world-shaking happened but just enough was said about just the right things. A lot to get into in this one around the incident. We're starting to have the curtain pulled back. Just a crack right now, but that's just more reason to be cracked.

Spoilers for episode 13, and all of TMA, below the cut.

Not a huge amount to touch on in the date portion of the episode other than a couple of sentences. Yeah, Sam is a gifted burn out that's sad about not getting experimented on. Same old same old. But Celia has a baby. Jack being Celia's kid I wasn't expecting mostly because of how that figures into her timeline. She's very heavily implied to be TMA's Celia but based on what she said if she is then she's been in TMP's universe for at least 4 years. A "couple of wild years" and Jack's "just over a year old". Plus 9 months and it's a lot longer than it might've appeared. None of that stuff tripped Freddy's possible lie detector either that I heard.

If you work under the assumption that the voices are who most people think, and they started roughly when they arrived, then that's a fairly major time discrepancy. The voices are about a year old but Celia has been around for 4.

However, it doesn't strictly rule that out either. Firstly, we know that moving between universes isn't actually one-to-one time-wise. Anya Villette went backwards 2 weeks when she crossed over. So them arriving at different times could support the idea that she's TMA's Celia further. Her general explanation of events could also be explained by this too. If she's not there willingly, or is there willingly but it didn't quite go to plan, a couple of wild years while you get your footing in a world you don't belong to isn't far fetched. If she was there looking for the voices then her showing up so relatively late could be explained by her baby too. So it's certainly not a dead and buried theory yet.

While Jack isn't Jack Barnabas he and the voices are about the same age. If people want to go rabid over that.

Gwen and Lena's little chat has a similar amount to really dig into. It's nice to see Gwen dealing with it all, and it's annoying we still don't know who died, but Lena does have a lot to say in a few words.

The world is full of opposing forces, some benevolent, most not. In order for the wheels to keep on turning, all these forces need to be monitored and balanced. That is where we come in.

This probably the most information we've had on the OIAR to this point from the show itself. I think most of this was safely assumed before this point. They've been doing a lot of monitoring, categorisation, and the only responses we have seen have been tamping major spikes down. A world of opposing forces is also a given. We are being led to believe that these are analogous to the 14+1 but there being benevolent ones if that's true is a big mix up. If you take the above timeline idea a step further and say the 14+1 arrived much earlier (or it doesn't matter because of how they're temporally weird) the benevolent ones could be native to TMP. They could be all TMP had.

Her assertion that the OIAR is a balance on these forces is interesting. Beyond the obvious stuff it also leans into an idea I've been throwing about regarding Starkwall. In the perception of Starwall might not really be the whole picture. The San Pedro Square massacre could've been an easy scapegoat to pin on them for the OIAR to split with them. A split caused by a disagreement in ethics. Starkwall thus far hasn't been shown to have an incredible disregard for human life based on Ep 7. The OIAR definitely has been. It could just be a PR move because the massacre was too big to contain but that feels like the least interesting way to handle this. A faction that's all in on monster hit men splitting with a faction who is against it has more room for interesting drama and worldbuilding IMO.

Balance was also a very large aspect of TMA in the end. The OIAR working towards that balance isn't as noble a goal as it might sound. Or it at least has the potential to be an incredibly misguided goal.

Okay, with all that mostly out of the way onto the incident itself. I enjoy this one a fair bit. Very different to what's come before it but with another recurring theme. We're starting to see a couple of patterns emerge now although it's too early to start naming things. I don't think there is a lot to really get into but this one was written by Alex, had a new VA, and was a recurring idea. Which does all point to this being quite important as these things go. All the episodes will likely tie up quite nicely in the end but this one seems quite relevant currently. In any case this was a fun one and I'm kinda curious how some of the elements within it will tie together. Mainly the gambling and insects.

Also, super weird they went with Zorrotrade for this. Because that's a real thing. Or was a real thing? It might be dead now, but still.

Post-incident chat has nothing I really want to comment on. More Alice and Sam is always good, even if Alice is trying really hard to not seem very upset.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet

DPHW Theory: 4622 doesn't seem particularly noteworthy. It's interesting from a thematic angle how this differs from Rolling With It. Both obviously very linked to gambling but this one lacks the compulsion elements. Which is a good indicator that H is linked to that sort of thing. Not that I need to convince myself of that further.

CAT# Theory: 3. Insert screams et cetera, et cetera. More seriously there still isn't a convincing pattern to this. Although I might be swinging back to my original tria prima and/or triple deity interpretation.

R# Theory: B is where I was thinking it'd end up while listening. So that's nice. Not much to add to this. Much like with DPHW the more information that lines up with the theory the less there is to talk about it because I've already done the hard bit.

Header talk: Gambling (Application) -/- Murder. Other than Application being a pretty weird Subsection I'm not sure there is much to dig into here. Although it does likely confirm he's dead. Which does make it a little strange that his statement wasn't read by one of the Freddy lot.

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #tmagp theory #tmagp speculation #klaus = kl4-u5

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beatingdrumspouringwine · 3 days

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Words from the Gods

Communication with the Gods is daunting. There's something about the many ways by which it can happen, the strange ways by which it can happen, and also how it is seen online versus real life, all of which can lead to confusion and a bit of dismay. I remembered reading a lot of stories about people's encounters with the Gods, which seemed to be these casual conversations, like those you would have with friends. I definitely wasn't getting those kinds of communications, and had a lot of worry that I was doing things Wrong, Somehow. There was definitely some time where my worship was based more towards "man, I hope this God/Goddess gets me some cool experiences I could share with my friends!" instead of wanting to focus on building a relationship with the Deity Themselves.

Over the years, I've grown better at understanding and picking out communications from the Gods. Obviously, I'm not an expert on it, and I wouldn't claim to be. However, I'm starting this series (words from the Gods) to hopefully help with explaining the different ways that I have encountered the Gods (mostly Dionysos), and how they impacted me, as well as how to discern these communications. As the old saying goes, your mileage may vary, but I do hope that this will help people in their worship!

I can't quite say when the first post comes out, seeing as I'm swinging terrifyingly close to finals, graduation, and the Great Adult Life that lies beyond college. But, I'll try my best to keep it going and updated!

edited this to remove the line markers that i sometimes use to mark how much i've written lol, my ADHD needs some fun little thing to keep me writing

#dionysian #dionysos #dionysus #hellenic polytheism #hellenic polytheist #dionysos deity #dionysus deity #hellenic pagan #hellenic gods #hellenism

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radio-sepia · 3 months

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god my current theatre classes at the local centre turned out to be kind of a bummer. I cannot back out now since I have a role but I'd really want to... fortunately in less than few months it should be done

#txt #euuuugghhh #idk im tired i dont wanna go there this week but like i have to cause everyone is frustrated and wants to just get this play that we've #been dragging around for far too long to finish #just get it over with #good thing that there wont ba any lessons during the winter break hehe #but like. my exams are also a thing and i hope they dont expect me to be there every week. as callous as this sounds #like i see many problems which result in this situation #but if people arent coming regularly which tbh i understand why #and im there every week #then yeah #let this be a lesson for the future: we need to go into theatre of movement and dance more. the classical old type method #that we are taught with #is so fucking exhausting to me beyond comprehension #damn. now thats a rant amirite #it did give me some good things too so its not all bad and im glad i got to have this shitty experience #the only way out is. painfully through the fucking thing

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aeide-thea · 7 months

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ugh

saw a post with a quote that basically tidily summed up the rebuttal i'd half-started drafting to someone's post about how homosociality in tolkien ~queers amatonormativity~ [spoiler: on the contrary, male homosociality has been engaged in a three-way handshake with both misogynist heterosexuality and amatonormativity for literal millennia, and far from undermining them, more typically serves as essential reinforcement], so i was like, great, now i don't have to actually write that essay, i can just reblog this instead and tag it #tolkien! :)

but then, like a conscientious idiot, i went and dutifully looked up the book it was from, because i think it's irresponsible to cite excerpts whose context you aren't familiar with; and very predictably it turned out to be by a r*dfem and to make all sorts of claims abt so-called 'phallocratic culture' that i dislike, both as a trans person and ally myself and also as a logical thinker who can tell perfectly well from, you know, lived experience of our society that having a penis doesn't in fact confer ready social acceptance, never mind dominance, on people who don't otherwise look or act the part of a Proper Man, because ultimately what we reflexively defer to is a particular vibe, produced by a combination of physique and affect and other things besides, which may imply the presence of a penis but neither actually reveals nor necessitates one…

so like. ugh. probably i'm gonna have to write my own essay after all. :/

#i don't know much about marilyn frye and it doesn't look from a quick google as though she's on par with some of the really nasty t*rfs #but like. you don't have to be vitriolic to still be fundamentally approaching the world in a cissexist way #that gives too much credence to ideas abt Men and Women even as it resents them #like in this essay she comes out with shit like #'women generally have good experiential reason to associate negative values and feelings with penises'#and like. i don't identify as a woman but presumably a r*dfem would class me as a ''''female person'''' so like.#speaking from that classification—can't relate!!#(i mean‚ dgmw‚ i don't want to be dismissive of experiences that were forced‚ or coercive‚ or consensual but painful‚ or or or)#(and it's not that i haven't myself had experiences where people were bad about consent with me)#(but personally i would say i associate negative values and feelings with those *people* and their *behavior‚* not with Penises per se.)#and maybe it's just like. that i'm speaking after literally 50 years of gender progress #like frye does in fact concede that a reframed relationship to penises would be an improvement #(''if penises were enjoyed a good deal more and worshipped a great deal less‚ everyone's understanding of… power and of love would change #beyond recognition and much for the better'')#so maybe it's just like. hi that's me! i'm there! enjoying them! :)#but i just feel like. i don't need to be drawing from a well that takes cisheteronormative constructs this much for granted #and thinks the way to escape them is separatism #as if the knife that cuts Women away from Men weren't cutting some of us in half‚ not 2 mention being itself a cisheteronormative construct #but like. the decontextualized quote really was tempting… :/#anyway. some people vent about normal things; i vent about shit like this‚ i guess!

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magentagalaxies · 1 month

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having a moment about my gender rn and i'm just like ugggggh @ my brain do we have to. like can we just not

#i need to go to bed soon bc i have a 10am class tomorrow but shoutout to the identity crisis i've been having since at least feb 6th #idk if identity crisis is even the right word. bc like one thing about me is that i have a very solid sense of self #like i know who i am and what i want and how i move through the world and what it feels like to be me #but in terms of how i label and explain that to others? that's where the identity crisis comes in #but no one else gets to experience me in first person POV so the descriptors i use and they ways i present myself are reality to them #and tbh? as i think about how some of the descriptors i use for myself don't accurately describe me some people are getting mad???#which is so fucking bizarre bc like. what the fuck it's my gender why are YOU being offended???#but it's also making me low key be like ''wait am i a bad person now????''#even tho i don't believe morality works like that. idk it's just been an exhausting month and a half #if anyone wants to hear more in depth thoughts on all this i would love to vent about it #(but not rn bc i will be going to bed as soon as i get this all out)#but like what i will say now is even tho this past month and a half has been ROUGH (for several reasons especially gender)#and people might expect that me spending so much time with scott in february made it more exhausting #which is understandable we love scott but touring in general is tiring and also i am the most opinionated person i've ever met but so is he #and also like. if you've heard scott talk about gender it's very obvious we disagree on a lot of things and he doesn't shy away from that #but the thing is. i'd actually say spending so much time with scott (even when we talk about gender. even when we *argue* about gender)#was actually such a good thing for me throughout all of this bc even when we disagree on semantics of labels #scott actually sees me beyond that rather than reducing my identity to what i call myself #which is how a lot of well-meaning allys tend to treat me. like i'm just one thing.#so when i'm with scott i never really have to think about my gender #bc he doesn't treat me like i'm (insert whatever gender people treat me like). he just treats me like i'm jessamine #and i'm tired of having to explain myself into smaller pieces so people can pretend to get it #but i feel like there's no way not to do that in our society rn especially at my ''progressive'' liberal arts college

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todayisafridaynight · 1 year

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what do you like specifically about Kiryu?

the fact he has a laundry list of dumb things he's done throughout the games

#snap chats #LMAO LIKE IS THIS THE SAME ANON OR IS TIMING HILARIOUS #anyways to actually answer the questions #What Do I Like Specifically About Kiryu idk :) i say he reminds me of my dad a lot and that is true #mostly when it comes to fatherhood tho. and when i say that ima get people sayin 'im so sorry' but no my dads great 😭#and ik kiryu aint a saint and he aint perfect but he gives me the same vibes as my dad does #beyond that tho he's just silly :) i like how despite being an intimidating guy he's still very cute in a way #he's also very earnest about things- in his Cool Kiryu way of course #he doesnt shirk learning about things and he's always open to new experiences and that's so sweet #and sometimes his goofy philosophical speeches do get to me. Again it very much reminds me of my dad he does the same A LOT #and kiryu's just dorky i like how he likes manga i like how he likes pocket circuit #and even if he was reluctant to be ono michio it was very sweet that he took the role seriously #and wanted the successor to ono michio to be a perfect one #he's just a very sincere guy and i love it #now for the DUMBEST thing he's done. every instance he's tried to have someone else take care of haruka #off the top of my head this happens twice but its like kiryu youre DUMB #STOP ACTING LIKE YOU CAN'T BE A GOOD DAD TO HER YOU'RE MAKING THIS A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY #also kiryu just dumping the tojo on daigo. i mean it worked out I Guess but still that was the craziest gamble for this organization #and tbh poor majima for kiryu dragging him back into the tojo to watch over daigo #not really 'dumb' but inconsiderate so yeah that was p cringe #this was The Kiryu Post thanks for reading everyone i love kiryu

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beholdthemem · 2 years

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Well, on a positive note, I can at least say that I've finally started bonding with my sister's boyfriend as opposed to making awkward stilted small talk while we both wait for her to reappear and save the conversation.

#personal #he is a nice kid it's just that neither of us were ever quite sure what to say beyond just Generic Politeness #but there's nothing like a group 911 incident to break the ice and get you all to talk like normal people afterwards.#scared the shit out of him. i think this was his first experience with it poor dude.#when i left today he was still hanging out with taly because neither he nor taly wanted her to be alone and i ended up leaving him with #over 40 bucks for takeout because we have taly food here but the pickings for people without dietary restrictions #are slim and i was worried about him not being willing to leave to go eat and just skipping food altogether.#sweet thought but last thing either of them need.#just shoving him a wad of bills like 'here i gotta head out but please eat'#i think an ambulance has come to the neighborhood like. 5 times since I've lived here #and 3 of those times have been for us.#saw the older brother from the end of the block going back in without a word after coming out to see what was going on #and while normally i have no issue with that one- he's a bit of a hermit and put up with a lot from us neighbor kids when we were little #without bitching about it it's just tge younger brother i can't stand- i couldn't help feeling a little bit scathing about that.#okay there are you satisfied? did you get your look? your entertainment? you gonna go back home and be like It Was That Family Again 🙄?#gonna go back to your quiet life and your jackass brother?#ugh. I've gotten very mean lately. not to anyone in person i don't say anything that would hurt anyone's feelings #i just find myself... thinking them now. when i didn't used to.#it isn't nice. i wish i didn't.

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teaboot · 12 days

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This is gonna sound rather conceited but I feel like it highlights an issue we have in Art.

I'm good at art. I've never had a hard time making art. I started using crayons before I could walk. Painting, Beadwork, sculpture, sketching, stippling, whatever- once I have a feel for the material, it doesn't take long to start doing what I want with it. It's been a common theme my whole life.

(Y contrast I'm awful at things like dancing, performance, sports, etc- in all things there is balance, right?)

Now, I've taught myself to use so many artistic mediums now that I KNOW how to most efficiently integrate them into the brain database. Once you really *understand* a material, it's much like memorizing the layout of your house, or flexing a muscle, or something in-between- it becomes PART of your brain in a way I cant quite articulate. But to get there involves just fucking around for a bit doing nothing in particular.

And I've found, especially in group settings, that nobody seems to be able to see you make something badly and leave you alone. Even if you say you're fine, you don't want help, you're happy, you're having fun, it's fine, they gotta ride your ass and hover.

I was at a class the other day for something I hadn't done before. The medium was one I've never used, so once the instructor told us the basics I started experimenting with weight, gravity, texture, viscosity, saturation, temperature, etc. The instructor had given enough info to know what was dangerous and what was safe, and beyond that I just wanted to absorb what I could about it.

And no insult to the instructor, but they kept checking in. Which was fine the first few times.

But then, without asking me what I was trying to do, started giving tips. That I told them I was grateful for but didn't really need just yet. If I had a question, I'd ask.

But they kept coming over. And touching my shit. And manipulating my project. And touching my hands. And using my tools. Without fucking asking.

And this happens every time. EVERY TIME. And by now I know the best way to get them to fuck off is to make something way beyond their expectations so they know I'm capable, then go back to doing what I want.

So I did. I wanted to keep having fun and learning, but instead I made something beautiful that I really didn't want to make, and wasted my time, and really didn't learn what I wanted to learn at all. I knew the formula to create a beautiful thing, so I followed that formula the same way I have a hundred times before, and didn't get to try anything spontaneous or ugly or exciting, just so I could be left alone.

And I know when I was a kid, I was aware aware people saw me puttering alone on something ugly assumed I had a special issue and treated me like I was stupid because of that. (I was neurodivergent.) And at at time I knew that I could do a neat trick for them like a trained pony and they'd go, "Oh, surely they aren't defective if they can do something like that!" And piss off.

But what if I hadn't known how to do that?

What if I hadn't been talented, or "special"?

What if I'd been just any other average kid trying to learn, and I couldn't pop something pretty out of my ass to get them off my back?

My problem my whole life has been that I haven't been allowed to make anything ugly in peace. I'm capable of beauty, so I have to make beauty, or get stepped on. And once people see what I can do, they get loud about it. "Look at this! Look what they did! We all know who the best is, don't we?". And that used to feel good, but it's tiring.

And how many people like me just wanted to play? Just wanted to have fun and experiment? Who were having fun with no goal in mind, or just took longer to learn, who gave up because of all the obnoxious helpers breathing down their neck with no way to shake them off?

How many of us are made to feel defective because we aren't doing things beautifully?

I have a lovely piece of art I didn't want to make.

I think I'm gonna frame it.*

(*I think I'm gonna burn it in my yard.)

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genderqueerdykes · 16 days

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as someone who has been scarred for life by experiences at gay bars, i need people to understand it's beyond tacky to mock people who want queer spaces beyond queer bars- it's dangerous.

let me explain. i went to 2 of my local queer bars a lot last year, as much as i was able to despite being poor. i witnessed a fist fight that was so bloody that ended up with a transmisogynistic drag queen getting hit in the head with a metal baton. the sight caused me to uncontrollably throw up in the bathroom of the club because of how gruesome it was. they had to close down the club and forard people out the back door because of how out of hand this person got- he was screaming transmisogynstic slurs and phrases at the bouncers were were transfem.

i was also sexually assaulted at these places, i was repeatedly groped by several people who i was not interacting with in the first place who found me attractive and decided physically grabbing me on numerous occasions was the way to get my attention. being femme in a queer bar is dangerous even if the people groping you are gay men.

i am also a recovering addict who dealt with alcohol issues in the past and could be considered a recovering alcoholic. i don't want to be around alcohol. i don't want to smell it. it triggers awful memories and also sometimes makes me consider getting a drink, but i can't have one, because the medications i take will cause a fatal reaction- i don't want to be tempted to drink, because it will kill me.

it's not right to mock someone or call them childish or whatever for not wanting to go to a club. whenever alcohol is involved, people's inhibitions are gone and they will do whatever. this includes fighting. i witnessed several other fights. just because it's a queer bar doesn't mean there won't be fights. and it especialyl doesn't m ean that you won't get groped or assaulted because, like i said, since alcohol is involved and it's a bar, there's a high chance this can and will happen.

queer people are not inherently safe angels to be around by virtue of being queer. there are still transphobes in queer bars. tranny chasers come to these bars. homophobic lesbians show up and lesbophobic gay men show up. drag queens and performers bring their cishet friends and family to support their shows. these are not perfect havens. they are not safe. we should not force other queers to interact with inherently dangerous spaces if these are supposed to be our safe spaces.

also these spaces are not friendly to people with disabilities; wheelchair users have nowhere to go especially when it's very crowded. other mobility aids get kicked and knocked over. neurodivergent people can get overstimulated by the deafening music very quickly. photosensitive people can have seizures due to the strobing lights. people with emetophobia like me run the risk of running into those types of triggers. people who are overstimulated by intoxicated people have no choice but to deal with it. dancing is one of the only activities to do other than drink and not many disabled (or even abled) people can dance for extended periods of time comfortably.

not to mention these spaces are not geared toward aromantic or asexual people at all, either. there is a long list of reasons why bars should not be our primary venues of interaction with one another. they serve a specific purpose- for people who want to cruise- but for the rest of us, it's really crucial that we have spaces that provide meaningful interactions with other queers on other levels of our identities.

some people just want to hang out with other queers in a quiet environment and craft, or shop, or drink coffee, or read books together, or just about any other activity on planet earth, and that's not "lame" or "cringy" or bad in any way- these are extremely normal and necessary parts of human interaction that we all require and crave and it's normal to want to do healthy, domestic things with other queers. we need this in our lives.

please take it seriously when people attempt to create queer spaces that don't involve alcohol and bars. it's necessary for our survival and well being as a community.

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daloy-politsey · 2 years

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“They’re trying to discharge her constructively. Do you know what Constructive Discharge means?” She asked.

As soon as I heard the term ‘Constructive Discharge,’ I knew I’d never seen it on a vocabulary quiz.

“No. What does it mean?” I asked.

She explained.

“Constructive discharge is a fancy way of saying “being forced out.” It’s not good. And if you’re not a lawyer or in human resources, you’ll probably learn what it means when it’s happening to you.”

“Oh my God. I’ve seen this my entire career and never knew it even had a name.” I thought.

You’ve seen constructive Discharge too. You may have experienced it. We’ve all made choices to avoid it.

Constructive discharge defined

“We can’t fire you, but we’ll make you so miserable you’ll quit, and then we won’t have to pay your unemployment.”

Then there’s the textbook definition:

“A constructive discharge occurs when your employer has made working conditions unbearable, forcing you to resign.”

Or as one person put it.

“I didn’t get handed a pink slip, but when you’re not wanted, people have a way of letting you know.”

HR isn’t always the secret police.

Employees aren’t always victims of evil-doers.

However, employers push employees out all the time to maintain and protect the, “We didn’t do anything wrong, YOU did,” power structure.

Constructive Discharge looks like this:

— Meeting invitations slow to a trickle, and you’re excluded from emails and generally looped out of what’s going on.

— People stop talking to you or stop talking when you walk in.

— Your emails don’t get answers, or they arrive too late to be of value.

— Suddenly, your work is not good enough, though nothing about your work has changed.

— Reviews, once good or even glowing, are now mediocre or bad.

— Instead of a bonus, you get a Performance Improvement Plan.

— Warnings and write-ups start so they can justify your eventual termination with documentation of your “poor performance”

— Your work, clients, assignments go away, or they overwhelm you with work.

— The words “Set up to fail” were practically invented to describe this scenario.

Constructive Discharge is illegal

It isn’t easy to prove you’re a target, and it’s even more challenging if you don’t even know constructive discharge is a real thing.

If you’ve ever experienced this and don’t fully understand what’s happening to you beyond knowing you’re in the process of being excommunicated, it can be hell. It’s not uncommon for the experience to leave long-lasting scars.

Talk to anyone who’s ever been through it. They’ll tell you.

Knowing constructive discharge exists and how it’s used gives you power to predict what’s coming and to protect yourself.

Seeing the endgame helps you in two ways.

You know what to expect. Having a sense of what’s coming next is enormously empowering. You can go on the offensive and protect yourself. Constructive discharge works to crush your ego, making you feel you did something wrong and deserve this treatment.

Without strategy, you end up being a miserable pawn in your employer’s endgame.

Remember, they’re almost certainly building a case to fire you in the event the hellscape they create for you doesn’t persuade you to quit.

If you’re getting pushed out, and you know what to look for you can prove constructive discharge and you can get unemployment benefits, be released from payback obligations on a signing bonus, and protect your mental health.

You’re not crazy, incompetent, or a failure. This is real and it’s carefully executed to leave you holding the bag and feeling like you did something wrong.

If they force you out, in addition to feeling horrible, you lose your paycheck, benefits health insurance, and possibly owe them money.

#labor

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etherealkissed88 · 6 days

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how i manifest when i feel anxious •°. *࿐

i decide i have what i want…

when i feel anxiety -> i let it pass while knowing its only a human reaction

◦ since i am beyond just a human (i am limitless imagination/self), i know any anxiety is below me and it has nothing to do with my limitless self. i have exactly what i decided i have, regardless of any anxiety.

know anxiety usually comes from a fear of failure

◦ so, i cannot limit myself based on what i see or what i negatively assume my future will look like bc i am always beyond the 3d, no matter what feelings/anxiety my human self experiences.

◦ i become indifferent/i dont care about what i see or what i assume i will see because i know everything comes together in the 3d once i change self/know its done. fact: everything always comes together and works out in the end. being indifferent to the 3d = being indifferent to emotions, anxiety and everything that doesnt serve you.

dont fight it, dont avoid it, tackle it head on

◦ acknowledge you are experiencing anxiety bc you are. yes it can feel like shit but it doesnt have to affect who you are being (whatever version of self you are embodying). again, i can choose to be indifferent to this anxiety. you dont have to be scared of the anxiety. it is a natural human response. cry if you need to, let it all out. dont try to suppress it bc that will only come to bite you back in the ass, believe me.

◦ take care of your mental health in whatever ways necessary. when i used to experience anxiety, i used to take walks in the park, clear my head, meditate, express myself and my emotions through art and journaling, etc. remember nothing you do (or feel) in the 3d has to affect who you are being/your state.

"how can i still have anxiety yet still be a desired version of me?"

anxiety has no affect on anything unless you allow it to change your identity. you are the one with power, the anxiety is only an experience, similar to breathing in oxygen and using our sense of touch; its all neutral. when you start surrendering to the anxiety, you are creating and accepting negative stories that you create based on the feeling of anxiety. allowing that anxious feeling to change your state/identity is surrendering to something you view as more "powerful" than you. stop transforming that anxiety into a state that you embody based on the false, negative stories u imagine.

remember a 3d experience or anxious feelings doesnt have to influence who you are being. an example: a model who knows (fulfilled) that she is graceful and beautiful can have anxiety about doing her catwalk. the anxiety is normal, she can experience the symptoms of anxiety (shortness of breath, dry mouth, shaking) but her core identity/state is still a graceful model. the anxiety is only a temporary feeling. usually when we experience these feelings, they occupy all of our attention in that moment which is why it seems so scary but in reality, its not that big a deal. know that anxiety is just a feeling. you are safe. you can still experience shitty feelings while knowing you are a bad bitch!

you dont always identify with everything you experience. for example, a lot of people experience good things and still identify as people who are unworthy of good things. so its really up to you to choose what to identify with.

i know my only job is knowing its done

◦ if i just decided its done, as the operant power, as i say goes, therefore its done. so my job is done. anxiety is part of the 3d, not my limitless self, imagination. so i can be indifferent and experience it without identifying with it, the same way people manifest what they desire while experiencing their shitty circumstances daily (because they do not identify with those shitty experiences).

◦ ive heard/experienced situations were we know its done yet we cried and felt like shit, and what we wanted still manifested into the 3d. bc anxiety is only a feeling. do not allow your feelings to take hold of your state, but if it does, its never the end of the world... just get back in the state. 3d shit/anxiety doesnt have to intervene with who you are being/what you identify with.

kisses, jani ☆

#etherealkissed🎀#etherealkissed #law of assumption #loa blog #manifesting #loassumption #neville goddard #edward art #imagination creates reality #loastates #loass states #loa assumptions #law of manifestation #master manifestor

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emmafrostyyy · 6 months

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y'all sleeping on Astarion/Lae'zel bc this moment is so...the way the flippant demeanor drops and he doesn't hesitate to call her out for sticking with her version of Cazador like their relationship is so underrated fr...

sitting down writing this bullshit like let me peel it like an onion a bit and elaborate why this pairing is fascinating to me

It's really interesting how during the most cathartic, life-altering moment in Astarion's questline, the reactions of the other companions are more about the moral wrongness/guilt of sacrificing innocent lives. Lae'zel doesn't do that and instead relates to his hurt.

She knows what's he's feeling, the lack of control, the unfairness of being powerless for too long. This is a woman who just found out her entire life purpose was built on lies, discarded and hunted by her own people after outliving her usefulness, and groomed to basically die for an insane power-hungry lich queen. She knows all too well that power isn't always real freedom. Her first instinct is to empathize with Astarion to steer him away from his hate and resentment.

Astarion/Lae'zel is so interesting to me because they're such a classic "can we make each other worse or make a better person out of the other?".

They both have genuine appreciation for violence and respect each other's ruthlessness. Astarion was used as a weapon of seduction while Lae'zel was of warfare. Sex with people is meaningless and not real intimacy for them, and while both have little understanding/experience of interpersonal relationships beyond the physical, they still feel and love very deeply. They have no frame of reference for things like friendship and warmth, but they badly want all of that and more, even if they don't know it yet.

In-game they can sleep with each other, which is basically the foundation of the normal Tav/Astarion romance. Lae'zel saw him during combat and got horny, who knows. Astarion who's used to luring people with his charms, takes up Lae'zel's blunt offer because she's a strong hardened warrior that can provide protection and be a worthy ally, and he doesn't know how to say no. Navigating the complications between one who wants to be seen beyond as a sex object, and one who comes from a totally alien culture with no concept of love/family/connections and only sex is honestly really compelling to me. It's a transactional, mutually beneficial thing with no emotional expectations. Once you get past the skeevy rockiness of their early relationship, I really like the idea of them slowly seeing something past the exterior and realizing they may have harshly misjudged the other, an unspoken friendship blooms, and in comes the realization that they are essentially loners longing for kindness and a comforting touch in the most desperate of situations.

Lae'zel is prideful, direct, has no sense of courtship talk, and doesn't hold back her thoughts the slightest--she's not sweet/agreeable and what you see is really what you get, which I imagine would be disarming for Astarion who's used to vacuous flattery and has difficulty trusting others. But she's also insanely protective, passionate, loyal, and an initiator-- every romance scene is triggered by her first and she's always showing effort towards her relationships, which would mesh well with Astarion who does need someone to nudge him.

She doesn't purposely suppress her feelings, she's just simply at loss at how to express them sometimes due to her wildly different upbringing. She stops the sparring match you agree to and an easy vulnerability slips instantly out of her: "I don't want to hurt you. I want to protect you, and for you to protect me." and "Thus far I've taunted you, devoured you, battled you. Now I want more than anything to soothe you." are romantic as fuck and Astarion of all people really needs to hear that tbh.

Astarion is also someone who struggles with reinforcing his boundaries, and a key theme in Lae'zel's romance is that she encourages and wants you to challenge her and learn to stand your ground. It's not gentlest method, but hey, relationships are about having to make an effort to learn each other's language.

I think he also would take pleasure "educating her on the matters of Fay-run" (I believe there's a whole banter with him teasing her and teaching her pet names) and would get a kick out of coaxing Lae'zel out of her shell with her shyness at showing public affection, and making her blush. Also it simply would be fucking funny to see Astarion who's used to easy seduction, trying to pass a persuasion check just to get a smooch and generally having to work to earn regular kisses from Lae'zel lmfaooo

Lae'zel also initially struggles to see her chains as chains. When she learns about Vlaakith's betrayal, she copes instantly through denial and shuts it down. Astarion is NOT having it and calls her out, he knows her well enough to recognize that she would value blunt honesty above all.

I imagine he also despises her lack of self-preservation, the way her entire identity is tied to duty and being in service of others, and doesn't understand her desire to still help/liberate the people that want her dead and are hunting her down. He wants to make this duty-bound soldier realize that looking out for herself, and putting herself first may not be the worst thing in the world.

They're so similar to each other but are also polar opposites in some ways that make a more equal, balanced romance I think. It's not a simple, one-sided, feel-good "she/he can fix her/him" fantasy because both of them have to earn each other's love, actually cut through the other's flaws, and actively motivate each other to be better versions of themselves.

They're not at all the other's ideal guiding hand. It's rough, jagged, and imperfect, but that's how healing goes. It's so far from being the healthiest relationship -- but even if their belief systems differ, their moral compass does often align. I imagine it's a slight relief for them to have a partner where there would be less shame and judgment when they expectedly, occasionally slip up and fall into their bad habits.

Also, man, the "You showed me the betweens and beyonds. Beyond war and peace, beyond passion and obsession, most importantly, you showed me freedom.", "First you were my wound, now you were my cure.", "But you saw something else in me - someone else I could be. Someone who could break the cycle of power and terror that started centuries ago.." lines really hit hard when applied to them.

Of course, they can also make each other worse, feed into the other's negative traits that will bring out the worst part of themselves. It's this duality of their pairing that is very interesting to explore, the way it can steer in either direction because it's an intense, fraught relationship at its core.

#when he gets called by omeluum “child of the dark” and her “child of the stars” like yeah..the squid man is being literal but he Gets It fr.#lae'zel #astarion #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 meta #astarion ancunin #astarion x lae'zel #lae'zel x astarion #the rarest of rarepairs they dont even got a ship name...this is so tragique we need to discuss the pathos and potential of this pairing #bg3 lae'zel #bg3 astarion #also im a sucker for stoic knight/court darling trope and whatever variations of it yeah #bloodbruise

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