#ritual sex abuse

[jahiera]

Please,,,, please more rambles about astarion and him healing and his slowly changing relationship with (-tav-) Sex and intimacy and choice and-

LISTEN BUDDY...

Okay gonna talk about the Grave Scene. this scene truly lives in my head rent free. I've been rewatching it a few times and every way it plays out is so touching. Especially the way he.. hmm... expresses himself here? There's such earnestness to him that frankly is unimaginable to the person we met in act 1. He really went from being both so sly & yet obviously lying ("[you trusted me...] an objectively stupid thing to do.") to someone who admits and lists the way Tav makes him... feel.... SAFE? and held? and I understand why it's not something a lot of people focus on but I actually am so heart-touched by how complex and intricate his journey to reclaiming sex and desire is at the end of this conversation. None of it is gratuitous. None of it is for show. The blending of the nonsexual intimacy, and openness (the grabbing of the hands, the showing of the grave, the raw admittance of so much vulnerable material he gives to Tav; all things he would never have even CONCEIVED of offering up in even act 2.)

("I've been dead in the ground for long enough. It's time to try living again." ... "With everything that life has to offer.")

It's an extremely nuanced and thoughtful approach to an SA survivor rediscovering & reclaiming what they want to make of their desires, their sexuality, in the aftermath of what was done to their bodies without their consent. It's so thoughtful & beautiful imo. Finally here at his grave, he tells Tav that they're someone he feels safe & accepted with, & he can experience intimacy on both sides with someone who has put forth the effort, the time, the willingness to learn and wait and watch and care for his own desires in a manner no one else EVER has.

("I feel safe with you. Seen. And whatever the future holds for me, I don't want to lose that.")

It REALLY... gets me in the heart here. It doesn't avoid the difficulties of sexuality in the aftermath of abuse, and it ultimately shows one individual's journey toward reclamation and reconciliation with autonomy on their own terms. That's so vital here, that he reaches out, chooses to make the step forward, HIS choice. There's no lingering gratuitously on the trauma, if that makes sense? the descriptions and vulnerability are raw; Tav is grounding person here, Tav gives him room to speak. The true balance of intimacy in verbalizing his feelings, intimacy in being close physically with Tav, intimacy in discerning for himself what he desires, intimacy in accepting touch, contact, affection, togetherness. It's all so... [BITES INTO FIST SCREAMING]. And the ending. Where he and Tav get to set off on another adventure. Get to explore who they are truly now, with each other, without any higher powers looming over and putting a yoke around their necks. I'm personally partial to the "finding a way for you to be in the sun," ending myself but all of them are just ... so delightful. He really SHINES in a way that exceeded my expectations so completely in act 3. he went from totally closed off and locked away and unaware of how to navigate his own personal relationships, no idea what a "relationship," even was, no idea how to express boundary or unravel his complicated ideas and feelings around his body, what it was forced to do for Cazador, to:

("For nearly two centuries I stalked the streets like a ghost while the person I was lay here, dead and buried. Now I need to figure out who I am. What I want.")

also laying a flower on his grave and all he says is "cute." but there's such a minor moment of tenderness there. I weep I wept I will weep.

#I do get why I've seen the interpretation that he's totally sexless after it all & far be it for me to stop people from #interpreting it that way; interpretation and all that; but I personally really love & appreciate the narrative's conclusion here #in which sex is treated as thoughtfully as it can be; real and tangible and /yes/ an avenue of true togetherness beyond #like. getting off. that's not what it's about at all. (and the way this contrasts his post-ritual ending with all the SHOW...) #there's so much genuine intimacy & beauty here both nonsexually & at the end when it's reclaimed like whaahhaahahhahhhhh #it's hardly nonexistent in media for sexuality and SA to be something explored thoughtfully but I admittedly HAVE NOT #seen it explored this thoughtfully in a major RPG video game before. not to this level and not in this way. #SA survivors re-finding bodily autonomy ohhh boy I have. feelings. #sa tw #sa mention #abuse tw #bg3 meta #bg3 spoilers

[borderlinedolly]

The Community & Oversimplification Of HC-DID

I'm making this to talk more in-depth about the aspects of HC-DID that people seem to forget about because I'm sick and tired of people oversimplifying what it means to be RAMCOA. So here's a reminder that HC-DID is nowhere near C-DID.

So the key part of HC-DID is the programming and ritual abuse, it's what makes a system highly complex, but that says nothing about the results, so let's talk about the aspects of HC-DID that come with being highly complex.

HC includes:

- Alters that can be killed by deleting their programs

- Severe and chronic dissociation that makes it extremely difficult if not almost impossible to function

- Alters (programmed) with paraphilias like pedophilia, necrophilia, zoophilia, etc

- Alters programmed with different disorder such as personality disorders

- Therapy interference programming such as eating disorder programming that takes focus away from the RAMCOA/trauma

- More complex layers and goupings (e.g. layers within layers, subsystems within subsystems within subsystems and so on)

- Programmed dissociative structures like concentration camps, mental asylums, carousels, castles, forests, etc

- Internal (sex) trafficking and child sexual abuse

- Extreme and chronic polyfragmentation to hundreds or more commonly, thousands of parts

- Programs such as delta that make you kill or harm people when activated, beta that make you engage in sexual activity when activated, fractaline that make you split at any stressors usually resulting in tens or hundreds of thousands of parts, etc

- Internal handlers and programmers that exist to keep you tortured and programmed

- The ability to change amnesia levels resulting in presenting as different system types, such as C-DID, OSDD-1, DID, or even as a singlet

- P-DID or OSDD-1 presenting shell with no identity programmed to hide the system

- The ability to clock RAMCOA, OA, MC, RA, and other variations of survivors as well as dissociative people in general and sect members to know who is superior to you and who is useable

- Subtypes of HC-DID like Monarch, Alice In Wonderland, Bluebird, French Revolution, etc

- Chronic programmed denial periods/Speaking about your memories of chronic trauma followed with a feeling of fakeness amd 'that can't be real'

- Alters that exist in different tracks of the brain

- Mood swings that are much more severe than in the other dissociative disorders, for people with DID, their moods change too often for it to be considered bipolar type 2 but with HC, it’s constant sudden depression, anxiety, mania-esque symptoms, hallucinations, etc. it’s like suddenly developing a mood or a psychotic disorder out of nowhere for 3 months

- And much more because HC-DID is that complex

#ramcoa #ritual abuse #mind control #organized abuse #programming #ritual abuse awareness #sex trafficking #trafficking #child abuse #hc did #dissociative identity disorder #highly complex did #highly complex dissociative identity disorder #tbmc #trauma based mind control #torture based mind control #ramcoa awareness #complex did #cdid #complex dissociative identity disorder #did system #hcdid system #trauma #mental health #abuse #abuse awareness

[unwelcome-ozian]

Could RAMCOA and/or TBMC be done by a family or parents/caregivers? Or is it only done by organizations?

Because of the meaning of the initialism RAMCOA, it is difficult to answer your question as stated in the form of an “either/or” question.  RAMCOA and TBMC do not have identical meanings.  I am going to seperate some of the initials out to help explain the meaning of RAMCOA, which should help in answering your question.

The RA in RAMCOA stands for ritual abuse.  This is abuse that takes place during rituals.  This could include but is not the same as ritual abuse programming, which is trauma based mind control. RA also covers satanic ritual abuse (SRA), but not all ritual abuse includes a belief in satan.  Families or groups can participate in abuse that takes place during rituals.  Rituals could be in a home or basement or outside or another location with a larger group of people.  RA abuse can also take place in daycares or facilities where the abusers have access to children

The MC in RAMCOA stands for mind control.  It can be trauma-based mind control programming (TBMC). Trauma-based mind control programming is the kind of programming that intentionally creates DID in order to control parts or alters within a personality system that can be hidden from the rest of the world and the person, because they remain unaware of the DID.  This kind of programming (TBMC) is used by the government, rich and powerful cults, organized crime, and high control groups. It may also be found in the entertainment industry and sports.  The same kind or level of programming is not used by every group.

Most often, children born into families that have experienced generational abuse and mind control and will be selected for both ritual abuse programming and government programming.  The key is their ability to dissociate, which can be passed on genetically.  Abuse often occurs prior to birth and is initiated immediately and systematically during infancy.  Children are tested at about 18 months of age to see if they have the proper dissociative abilities in order to undergo trauma programming.  In these cases, the parents are usually aware that programming is happening and are willing participants in the abuse.

At other times, very young children are selected from day cares, foster homes, or families that have somehow been blackmailed or given incentives to sell their children for use in programming.  Here, families are aware of programming, and reinforce programming, but the trauma-programming takes place outside of the home.

The MC in RAMCOA can also also include controlling the minds of people through brainwashing or indoctrination and cult tactics, which is different than TBMC programming.  People in these groups can be controlled through the use of trauma responses, though they may not be programmed to experience DID with scripts, codes, triggers, etc.  Also, the control is not usually hidden, but it is often confusing.  Survivors can experience this kind of abuse in cults, churches and other religious groups (not all churches or religious groups employ cult tactics) high pressure organizations that claim to make you “better” somehow, hate groups, and other environments where critical thinking skills and sense of personal identity are replaced with the ideas of the group, and outsiders or outside ideas are viewed as a threat.  Sometimes families are run like this.  People who were raised with extreme, narcissistic abuse from a parent may have some symptoms similar to those raised in a cult.  If one’s family were involved in a group that employed these tactics, then the children may be exposed to this forms of abuse.  

The OA RAMCOA stands for organized abuse.  Organized abuse happens in an organized group or network of offenders.  This could describe networks of abuse that fall under any of the above mentioned initialisms along with other groups who traffic, trade or exploit children and controlled adults or or images of children or controlled adults for their gain.  Children and adults may or may not be programmed, and they will be conditioned to serve their abusers. It can also apply to other groups that use extreme torture and sexual violence as a way of control. Source

I hope that gives some understanding regarding what each of the initialisms means and the environment (family or group/organization) in which they might take place.

~Josha

#answers to questions #RAMCOA #TBMC #mind control #brainwashing #indoctrination #where abuse takes place #generational programming #intergenerational trauma #ritual abuse #sex trafficing #child pornagraphy #child exploitation #cult tactics #t.w. r.a. #definitions #organized abuse #Josha

[s-acrificium]

Nothing to give {open starter}

Nothing.

He removed the shirt, unbuttoning it slowly as the day replayed in his mind. Brown eyes distant as he began to slowly, try and decompress from the ritual that day. His shirt off, he let it fall to the floor as he walked to his bathroom, Shower on full blast, steam beginning to rise...the water hot. Scolding.

Good. Let this flesh be cleansed.

Another ritual. Another group. all begging, pleading to touch the Draconic eikon's vessel. 'Take the scourge away.' Some cried. 'I hurt please!' So many please, and cries rang in his ears. All wanted Bahamut's hand, his personal messenger to absorb the scourge from their bodies. Without a word. Without a care...He'd been shoved into that cold, dark room, the air making his flesh feel numb. His fathers personal guard locking the door, the room full of that horrid smell of death. Of sweat. The pressure of fingers against his skin, clawing, and touching and - Dion winced, his body having absorbed so much scourge... Stomach twisted in knots, he could feel it crawling in his skin, eating his flesh. It hurt so bad, he could barely breathe or keep food down. Seeing the water was hot enough... he stepped into it.

-----

Dion gazed at sky, his feet taking him on the usual rout. Far from the city, towards the simple parks and calming scenery... where no one knew who he was. His hoody up, Dion liked the moments... when he was alone. No one touching him. No one taking from him... As the gray splotches on his body attested...he was nothing but a sponge, used in Bahamut's temples to absorb the blight from the citizens. Through their unwanted touches, their disgusting pants as they took from him... he learned to shut himself off long ago because if he felt... Well, his father told him through pain there was no use in crying.

Sighing, he made his way to a large tree in the park, sitting down underneath its branches as the sky turned orange and pink. Soon the stars would be out, and it would be cold...but he didn't mind. He closed his eyes, wondering what would happen if he just...wasn't here?

Such a foolish thought. Dion laughed humorlessly, The damned dragon won't let me die so easy.

Sometimes he wished for someone to talk to... someone who would want to give him something, anything... because Dion honestly had nothing left to give.

#au #dion lesage #ffxvi dion lesage #verses 13 au #verses thirteen #dark themes #tw: ritual sex #tw: depression #tw: bad touch #tw: abuse #Verses! Dion #Bahamut is a dick #ffxv bahamut #soooo who wants to try and comfort this poor bastard?

[ayaofthedawn]

Rag Doll

(October 27, 2011 9:27 pm est) I am tired of being your rag doll. I have spread myself far and wide for people who I could never say no to I have been a rag doll for many men A slave willingly offering my feminine sexuality Offering the opening of myself to be engulfed for nothing by nothing Its because of you mother, my natural predator, I was born to my enemy Having to grow up and learn that’s…

View On WordPress

#alice miller #Alone #Artist #awakening #Bad Mother #beating #Being the oldest #child abuse #cinderella #courage to find yourself #Daughter of Narcissistic Mother #Evil #evil mother #Evil Parents #hatred towards parents #healing process #horrible step father #Narcissist #narcissistic mother #poems from daughters of narcissistic mothers #processing pain through your body #psychology #PTSD #rage #ritual abuse #sadness #sex addict parents #trauma

[a-darling-thing]

Like I 100% appreciate why so many people wish they could hug Astarion right after he finally stops the ritual, kills Cazador and takes back his freedom, but as someone who has been through some shit ™ l honestly think the way the game decided to handle that was right.

When you are in that really delicate phase of coming out the back side of a chronic abuse situation and you have just had to face down your abuser (and almost been revictimized), and your nervous system is that keyed up, a hug is like the last thing you need.

I mean the poor guy has just stabbed Cazador like 20 times in a frenzied fit of grief and rage and is still standing there covered in his blood, sobbing in relief, and in a complete daze. He’s talking by the time you leave the palace, but he’s clearly not ok (thanks again for your stunning voice work Neil Newbon).

I would personally feel like a hug was something I just had to endure to make the other person happy. I think Astarion would probably snappishly draw a firm boundary, with one of his terse ‘don’t touch me.’s, cause he’s actually pretty good at that. But still…. Why make him have to muster the energy for that after everything he’s just been through. The hugs can come later.

In reality the hugs would probably come days, weeks or months later, but like ‘game pacing’, so I think having that gap of time where Astarion gets to talk to Tav about it all before the graveyard scene, hit a happy balance that gave at least the impression of the passage of time and that he had begun to process it all.

I do actually agree with others that have said him proposing sex with Tav that soon after the whole business also seems unrealistic, but again, the writers had to pace his full story to fit within the timeframe of the game, and I felt they did alright given those constraints.

This is all personal opinion, mind, and opinions may differ, but I like how they handled it.

#bg3 #astarion #astarion ancunin #abuse mention

[spacerockfloater]

The way people switched on Tamlin the moment Rhys was introduced is diabolical.

“Tamlin never really loved Feyre, it was all a trick from the start”: It is stated that Tamlin was disgusted by the idea of forcing someone to fall in love with him and considered it slavery, but ended up being so in love with her that he ultimately lets her go and choses her freedom and safety over that of his own people. Rhys confirms that Tamlin loved Feyre too much. And he loved her truly. Not because he had to. Tamlin treated Feyre with dignity when she was engaged to him. He introduced her as his lady, to be respected and cherished by all. And she really was loved by his people, too. Rhysand uses her as his lap dog to scare Hewn City and parades her as his whore.

“Tamlin never did anything for Feyre, he just used her”: He improved her and her family’s life in every aspect and offered her everything he had.

“Tamlin had sex with someone else in Calanmai”: Out of duty and responsibility because he didn’t want to force Feyre, who still wasn’t sure about her feelings, into it. All of the High Lords perform the Calanmai. Lucien says so. How convenient that this is never brought up with Rhysand. He surely does perform it as well. All the theories in here, “Lucien doesn’t know what he’s talking about/ This is a SC ritual only/ He probably just passes the duty on to someone else” are just a way for people to villainise Tam and glorify Rhys again. All of them inaccurate. The Calanmai is canonically performed by every High Lord. There’s no evidence that proves otherwise. As the son of one High Lord and the ambassador of another, Lucien would know. He is 500 years old. It’s just more convenient for SJM to never bring this up again because it raises the question of “Who was Rhysand fucking all these years?” and it makes her favourite character look bad. And once he is engaged to her, Tamlin flat out refuses to do it. Let’s be real for a second.

“Tamlin didn’t help Feyre under the mountain”: He literally could not. He was bound by a curse. He was forced to be Amarantha’s consort and a consort cannot oppose you. His powers were bound. Alis warns Feyre that Tamlin will not be able to help her. Stop acting as if he didn’t want to help her. He decapitated Amarantha the moment he got his autonomy back. Claiming that there’s no proof that Tamlin was under the influence of a spell when he literally didn’t break the curse and Amarantha’s magic didn’t allow him to use his powers is crazy. And even if he tried, he could never provide actual help. We see this when he begs Amarantha for Feyre’s life. Him showing he cares about her would only make Amarantha more jealous and vicious towards Feyre.

“Tamlin made out with Feyre instead of helping her”: He couldn’t help her run away. No one could do that. She would never make it, Amarantha would find her. In fact, Tamlin specifically could not help her in any way. He could only assure her he still wants and loves her. And she wanted that just as much. Rhys abused her physically, mentally, verbally, drugged her and much worse. And he enjoyed all of it. If he didn’t want to raise suspicions, he wouldn’t have placed a bet in her favour. Rhys is a masochist, SJM just decided to mellow him down in the next book so that we’d all like him over Tamlin.

“Tamlin ignored Feyre’s wishes and only wanted her to be his bride, he didn’t let her be High Lady”: Both Tamlin and Feyre were bad communicators going though trauma and Tam had a whole court to care for. Tamlin was unaware of how Feyre felt because she barely spoke up once. Rhys knew because he literally lived inside her head and had all the time in the world to focus his attention on her since his court suffered zero consequences during Amarantha’s reign. And Tamlin simply told her the truth: there’s no such thing as High Lady. Even her current title is given to her by Rhys, the magic of Prythian has not actually chosen her to be High Lady. The title and its power are decorative. And she said she didn’t want that anyway.

“Tamlin locks Feyre up and uses his magic to harm her”: He locks her in his humongous palace to keep her safe, after she just came back from the dead and his worst enemy is kidnapping her every month, while he runs off to protect his borders. Rhysand lock Feyre in a fucking bubble. Tamlin loses control of his magic. He doesn’t want to harm her. That’s not abuse. Abuse is intentional. Feyre and Rhysand lock Lucien and Nesta up. They lock the people of the Hewn City up in a cave. Feyre loses control of her magic and harms Lucien’s mother. Double standards I guess.

“Tamlin is a bad and conservative ruler”: Tamlin is such a beloved ruler that his sentries literally begged to die for him. Feyre had to fuck with their minds to finally turn them against him. They were his friends. He was so progressive that the lords fled his court once he became their ruler because he wouldn’t put up with their bullshit like his father did. He loved all of his people. He is against slavery. The Tithe was just tax collection. Rhysand practically rules over just one city, while ignoring Hewn City and Illyria. He treats 2/3 of his realm like shit and everyone except the residents of Velaris hates him. He collects tax, too, but we conveniently never see this. He ranks the members of his inner circle (my 1st, my 2nd etc.) and reminds them every moment that they are his slaves first and anything else second, while Tamlin treats them equally and even gives Lucien an official title by naming him Ambassador.

“Tamlin conspired with Hybern”: He was a double agent and his short lived alliance, two weeks all in all, not only didn’t harm a single soul, but ultimately saved all of Prythian as he was the only one who brought valuable information to that meeting. He dragged Beron to battle. Rhysand’s alliance with Amarantha harmed thousands and only helped save one city, Velaris.

“Tamlin is responsible for turning Nesta and Elain into Fae”: No, that was Ianthe, who got the info from Feyre. Tamlin was fooled by her, just as Feyre obviously was, or she wouldn’t have trusted her. Tamlin was disgusted by that act.

“Tamlin is less powerful than Rhysand”: Rhysand himself says that a battle between them would turn mountains to dust. Tamlin killed Rhysand’s dad, the previous High Lord of the Night Court, in one blow. He is just as powerful as Rhysand. SJM again just wants us to believe otherwise. And he is smarter, too. He was the only one not to trust Amarantha. And he was a good spy for Prythian against Hybern.

All of these takes are cold as fuck. SJM was testing the waters with ACOTAR and she made sure the main love interest, Tamlin, was insanely likeable, so that the book could be a satisfactory standalone story in case she couldn’t land a trilogy deal. She didn’t know it would be such a big hit. But once she realised she could turn this into a franchise, she had to figure out a new story to tell. She may claim otherwise, but there’s just too many plothotes to convince me. And in order to make her new main love interest seem like the best choice, she had to character assassinate the old one. There was no other way. ACOTAR Rhys was too much of an evil monster to be loved by the majority of the audience. But Tamlin was introduced to us as such a heroic and passionate man that is literally impossible to turn him into someone despised by all. Feyre’s relationship with Rhysand reads too much like cheating on Tamlin. That’s why anyone with basic analytical skills is able to realise the flaws of the narration.

#acotar critical #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acosf #acofas #anti sjm #sjm critical #tamlin #tamlin week #pro tamlin #he deserves the world #tamlin my beloved #anti amren #anti rhysand #anti morrigan #anti ic #anti inner circle #anti feyre archeron #anti feyre #anti feysand #anti night court #pro spring court #anti cassian #pro lucien vanserra

[sscarletvenus]

one thing about ptj's writing that always leaves a bad taste in my mouth is sometimes i feel he doesn't completely grasp the issues of abuse and sexual trauma, mostly and majorly for the female characters, but the male characters too.

take for example mira getting sexually assaulted by the cult leader and camp instructor, zoe's transaction with logan, club vivi, vin'mom being raped and killed by the shaman, sujin being abused and preyed upon and sexually assaulted before getting beaten to death by taejin... ALL of this feels so catatonic, almost unnecessary in its cruelty. this is a horrible world no doubt. but whatever he inflicts to his female characters seems to be done purely for the sake of shock value, almost like an indelible grief or hurt or helplessness a MALE character has to overcome in his path to nirvana. it is never shown what the woman feels about her own violation, no impact of it can be seen on her own life before she dies or simply forgets and moves on (kinda telling of the author's attitude towards how victims ought to react...).

then lets talk about the male victims. daniel gets stalked, goo and gun and eli were all minors who trained under a man who unironically touches people's genitals and brags about doing so, olly gets raped, eli gets groomed (i will not argue here about this one), sinu is shown naked often with the woman who brainwashed him. not mentioned in the comic but should be pondered upon is the fact that jake and jiho were in juvenile prison, a place with alarmingly high rates of sex crimes. dg is an idol who deals with invasive fans (sasaengs in real life are legitimately terrifying). seongji and vin were the ritual vessels for a cult. but this aspect of their trauma gets completely brushed under the rug, as if even alluding to it would take away from their strength and uhhh, masculine nature.

much to be thought about his treatment of his own characters...

#lookism #lookism manhwa #lookism webtoon #lookism long post #jake kim #daniel park #kim gimyung #park jonggun #gun park #park hyung seok #seongji yuk #seongji yook #vin jin #eli jang #olly wang #goo kim #sinu han #zoe park #park haneul #kim mijin #mira kim #dg lookism #dg #james lee #johan seong #zack lee #park jiho #soma mitsuki #cheon taejin

[another-lost-mc]

FICS FOR GAZA

As a show of support for @ficsforgaza, I will be offering WIPs that can be sponsored in exchange for donations to a vetted charity. I am also accepting drabble requests. For information about how this event works and where you can donate, please visit the pinned post.

➤ SPONSOR A WIP - $1 / 100 WORDS

If you would like to participate:

Make a donation directly to one of these vetted fundraisers. Do not send any money to me.

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Indicate which WIP you would like your donation applied to.

➤ ELIGIBLE WIPs

Feel the Heat: Remixed (Read the OG Series here)

In this remixed AU of Feel the Heat, MC is the poor human succumbing to the affects of their heat. When desperation takes hold, which lucky demon (or angel or human) will be there to help?

OM Cast x Reader. Implied heat/rut dynamics. NSFW. Each character's portion will be ~500 words each so you may sponsor a specific character if they haven't been completed yet. Characters available: all canon characters including the non-dateables and Michael (except Luke). OC Characters may also be requested. Poly!Reader scenarios (with more than one character) may be possible - check with me first!

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Rubies in the Dark Part 2 (Read Part 1 here)

As your courtship with Lucifer continues, you'll have to prove to each of his eccentric siblings that you're deserving of their brother’s affections. Meanwhile, history about Lucifer's rise to power and the blighted past of his kingdom slowly comes to light. Can you accept the prince's hand once you learn the truth?

Lucifer x gn!Reader. Fantasy AU. NSFW. Possible dark content (historical violence, abuse (not Lucifer/Reader), questionable use of magic).

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Diplomatic Relations

A summit to negotiate lasting peace between the three realms begins, but long-kept secrets threaten to ruin everything you've worked so hard for. Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest ones - the only question is, will the other leaders accept your unorthodox proposal?

Diavolo x Michael x Solomon x Reader. NSFW. Explicit sexual content. Reader spends time with each character separately + one group scene.

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Untitled: Leviathan x Siren!gn!Reader (Read Part 1 Here)

As Admiral of Hell's Navy, Leviathan is required to do routine inspections of the fleet and the Devildom's coastal defenses. While walking alone on the shoreline, he senses a familiar presence nearby, watching him from the watery depths.

Levi x gn!Reader. NSFW for sexual content and monsterfucking. Implied infatuation, demon form sex, Levi's tail is its own warning.

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Mammon bites off more than he can chew when he breaks into a dragon's hoard. Fortunately, they might be able to come to some sort of arrangement.

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Size Kink Scenarios: Younger Demon Brothers x gn!Reader

The final four demon brothers come to their own realizations that the size difference between them and their charming human affect them in more ways than one.

A continuation of this post. Satan, Asmodeus, Beelzebub and Belphegor x gn!Reader (separately). NSFW for sexual content. Size kink. Implied size difference between the demon brothers and reader.

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Feel the Heat: OC Edition (OC x Reader)

The OC characters are caught off-guard when their heat/rut cycles trigger unexpectedly. How will you help them?

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Feathered Friends Part 4 (Read Part 1 Here)

The students of Purgatory Hall invite you and Karasu for dinner, with mixed results. Things get complicated when Mammon asks you for a pact.

Karasu (OC) x gn!Reader. Potentially NSFW for suggestive but not explicit sexual content. Developing relationships, relationship negotiations, hurt/comfort and (resolved) angst.

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The Fall (Masterlist)

For two wayward angels, being cast out of the Celestial Realm is the least of their problems once they realize the true challenges that await them in the Devildom.

Azra / Azazel (OC) x Metatron (OC). An on-going long-fic. NSFW for sexual content, violence, disturbing and dark themes. Warnings given for each chapter.

Current Chapter Word Count: 0.5k / Approx. 2k

Sponsored Word Count: n/a

➤ REQUESTS - $2 / 100 WORDS

I am opening up requests with a slightly higher donation requirement. Requested scenarios are limited to one character only and will be ~500 words in total. I can accept NSFW requests as well but you must contact me off-anon from a blog with an age indicator. My usual request rules apply.

Please contact me via ask box or DM to verify whether I can accept your request prompt before making a donation.

Note: I am only accepting requests for Obey Me canon characters + OCs at this time.

Current Requests

Writer's Choice (Zee x Reader) 0 / 500 words written

➤ FULLY SPONSORED WIPS

Thanks to the generous donors willing to support such a great cause, these WIPs have been fully sponsored to completion. Links to the completed works will be added here once they're finished in their entirety.

➤ Welcome Home (Read Part 1 Here)

When you return from the past, each of the demon brothers has to come to terms with what their life was like without you - and what it means for them when you're suddenly home again. (Demon Brothers x gn!Reader (separately). NSFW for suggestive content.

Sponsored Word Count: 1.5k (0 / 1.5k written)

➤ Untitled: Barbatos x Vampire!Reader

We're getting back into the vampire!AU shenanigans once again. This time, Barbatos is the willing servant of a very needy vampire. (Barbatos x Vampire!Reader, NSFW. CW: Monsterfucking)

Sponsored Word Count: 2k (0 / 2k written)

➤ Discipline Part 2 (Read Part 1 Here)

Time passes and things are good, until they're not. Your relationship with Mephisto reaches a breaking point, and he finally has his chance to be free of you - but will he take it? (Mephistopheles x gn!Reader, NSFW.)

Sponsored Word Count: 3k (0 / 3k written)

This post will be updated with word counts and completion updates as needed. Thank you again for your support!

#fics for gaza #sponsor a wip #obey me #obey me shall we date #omswd #obey me nightbringer #obey me x reader #obey me headcanons #obey me smut #jes.admin #masterlist

[whumpthemusical]

Whump: The Musical Prompts!!

As stated before, this challenge will run from March 1- March 31, 2024. All fandoms are welcome to participate despite it being prompts based off of musicals. Once again, all types of media are allowed. This challenge has the standard "choose one for the day" style, but feel free to do all three prompts if that's what you want to do!! All types of whump are allowed, but please be respectful to your fellow audience members and properly tag it!! Some of these prompts are sensitive, so make sure you warn your readers correctly! There will be an ao3 collection and an FAQ post coming soon, so if you have any further questions or comments about this challenge, feel free to drop me a line. Happy writing, my beautiful ingénues, and enjoy the show :)))

The prompts will be listed under the cut for those who have difficulty reading fonts!!

Cats- Sabotage • Second Chances • "I Can Dream Of The Old Days."

Wicked- Mob Mentality • Propaganda • "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished."

Jesus Christ Superstar- Whipping • Betrayal • "Then I Was Inspired, Now I'm Sad And Tired."

Les Mis- Survivor's Guilt • Failure • "Drink With Me To Days Gone By."

Heathers- Poison • Reluctant Whumper • "Wanna fight for me?"

Newsies- Chronic Pain • Exploitation • "Let 'Em Laugh In My Face, I Don't Care."

The Last Five Years- Infidelity • Gaslighting • "I Will Not Lose Because You Can't WIn."

Hadestown- Deals • Doomed Narrative • "Doubt Comes In."

Sweeney Todd- False Imprisonment • Razors • "Have You Decided It's Safer In Cages?"

Rent- Substance Abuse • Poverty • "Feels Too Much Damn Like Home."

Bare: A Pop Opera- Outing • Religious Trauma • "Please, See Me."

Waitress- Unplanned Pregnancy • Abuse • "She Is Broken And Won't Ask For Help."

Tick Tick Boom- Atychiphobia • Working To Exhaustion • "Is This Real Life?"

Dear Evan Hansen- Deception • Broken Bone • "Words Fail."

West Side Story- Star-Crossed Lovers • Prejudices • "A Boy Who Kills Cannot Love."

Come From Away- Stranded • Aftermath • "Blankets And Bedding And Maybe Some Food."

Spring Awakening- Withheld Information • Suicide  • "I Don't Scream, Though I Know It's Wrong."

Hamilton- Hurricane  • Dueling • "I Will Kill Your Friends And Family To Remind You Of My Love."

Falsettos- Sickness • Identity Issues • "Death Is Not A Friend."

Into The Woods- Blame • Lost • "Nothing But A Vast Midnight."

The Great Comet- Abduction • Letters • "Did You Love That Bad Man?"

In The Heights- Grief • Homesickness • "I Know That I'm Letting You Down."

Be More Chill- Mind Manipulation • Panic Attack • "Everything About Me Makes Me Want To Die."

Moulin Rouge- Class Differences • Sex Work • "Come What May."

Chicago- Cold Blood • Trial • "He Had It Coming."

Six- Execution • Trauma Bonding • "Playtime's Over."

Ride The Cyclone- Unexpected Tragedy • Forgotten Whumpee • "I Hear The Anguish Of The Street."

The Rocky Horror Show- Obsession • Wrong Place, Wrong Time • "I've Seen Blue Skies Through The Tears."

Nerdy Prudes Must Die- Bullying • Ritual • "Who Will Pray For You?"

Jekyll And Hyde- Duality • Good Vs Evil • "If I Die, You'll Die."

Phantom Of The Opera- Disfiguration • Shunned • "My Power Over You Grows Stronger Yet."

#whump: the musical #whump event #whump challenge #whump #whump community #whump writing #whump prompts #whump ideas #whumpblr #musical theatre #musicals #musical theater #broadway #broadway musicals #hamilton #newsies #les miserables #wicked the musical #falsettos #ride the cyclone #nerdy prudes must die #heathers #be more chill #dear evan hansen #moulin rouge #jesus christ superstar #cats the musical #six the musical #phantom of the opera #the great comet

[visenyaism]

Sorry if this is reaching for something that isn't there but I was thinking about how tywin basically commiting raped to both his son and tysha (while watching), and than later went on to sleep with the same sex worker his son had been sleeping with, and how...strange that all is. Like two incidents involving some sort of sexual thing going on between them (on tywin's part). Idk if it's just abuse and tywin's need to have power over tyrion but is there more to it? Am I wrong? Sorry if this is a silly thought

no you are absolutely 100% correct that there is something extremely evil about the psychosexual enmeshment of all the lannisters which goes beyond jaime and cersei and seems to originate with tywin. the first thing he did upon attaining power was having his father’s mistress whipped naked through the streets for two weeks. tywin married his cousin joanna (who i would argue really ends up as like a proxy in whatever psychosexual humiliation rituals were happening between tywin and aerys). Tywin enacts these violent sexual humiliation rituals with his children (most often tyrion who i think reminds him of himself but also cersei) who in turn enact them on each other. Tywin also appears to be very fixated on the power and authority of house targaryen and passed this to his children as well. there’s something there.

#other people have talked about this way better than me #asoiaf #did jaime kind of avoid this or am i forgetting something

[star-anise]

Fun upside of rats and spambots fleeing Twitter for Tumblr are all the new fucking, uh...

They're not TERFs this time, they're "not feminists" because "feminism is cancer", they're, uh...

"Violent Misandrists"?

Like, huge use of Judith killing Holofernes vibes. 15yos posting "Kill all men (except my male mutuals lol!)" and insinuating that banning pornography will end child abuse forever.

(deep breath)

Look.

If you are a teenager from the USA, and your parents are Republicans, please consider that EVERYTHING you were ever taught about media, politics, gender, sex, feminism, and the advisability of mass murder as a political tool

has been carefully tailored to make you feel enraged with the state of the world, which is full of Good People and Bad People (groups it is very easy to sort everyone you meet into) and the way to Fix Society is to criminalize, incarcerate, or brutally murder as many Bad People as possible. You have probably seen several different sorting systems proposed, and may not have seen much political discourse beyond debates about "Which PART of society are Bad People who should be punished?"

And yes, I realize you've also been taught that people like me insisting on bullshit like "nuance" and "tolerance" and "educating yourself" are literal Satan and probably in favour of ritualized child abuse and puppy-kicking.

We're not. I'm not. I'm like a lot of people you wouldn't think are Good People, who nevertheless work to make the world better in what we understand to be the best methods available.

I don't know why I'm saying this. I'll probably end up a target of vitriol and regret ever speaking up. Just.

You are not smart for coming to the conclusion that the world is full of Bad People who just need to be killed. You did not figure out (or find the true prophet of) The Secret Truth of the Entire Universe. You haven't figured out how to fix the world. You just followed the fucking breadcrumb trail laid down by people who want to recruit you to commit atrocities in their name.

The world is so much more complicated than you've been led to believe. Fixing its problems is so much more tedious and difficult. Cruelty is so much less useful. And you've got so much more learning to do.

#genocide tw #mass murder tw #incarceration tw #misandry tw #terf shit #csa tw #child abuse tw #us politics tw

[barbieaemond]

The King of Qarth II

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x Qartheen f!reader (use of third perspective)

PART 1 | SERIES MASTERLIST | MASTERLIST

Warnings: mentions of child sexual abuse, mentions of child bride, p in v, oral sex (f receiving), fingering, grinding, handjob, knife kink if you squint, self indulgent use of sorcery

Word count: 11k

Author's note: Aemond and the Salt Queen gets to know each other and do some good ol' bonding on shared trauma(s).

English is not my first language.

Taglist: @zae5 @arcielee @multyfangirl @zaldritzosrose @succnfuccubus @kckt88 @venmondiese @mariahossain @miraclealignertlsp369 @ilikechocolatemilkh @credulouskhaleesi @bunbunbl0gs @alphard-hydraes-blog @gemini-mama @freyaniobe @toodlesxcuddles @youngestxhearts @helen06dreamer

“Don’t run from me, kori” he screamed as she ran into the night “Please! Come here!”

He tried to chase her but her feet were faster, barely touching the ground as the nine-year-old girl ran away from the Palace of Dust.

She felt she could run forever, that she could not stop, not until she had forgotten what she had seen. What were those invocations? Why was that woman naked and screaming? Why was her father slaughtering animals on a stone altar and drinking their blood?

“Knowledge comes with a great cost.” was all Fydor repeated when the jarring rumors about what was being done in the House of the Undying reached her young ears and her mother, when the Shadow of the Evening had already stained her father's lips and fingernails blue for good.

“What does it mean, Father? What knowledge?”

“Any kind of knowledge, kori. Everything that was, that is. Everything that could be.”

But she did not want to know. Knowing had cost her her mother. She just wanted to run, but the black-barked trees with blue leaves seemed to envelop her like shadows in flesh, a labyrinth changing its thousand deceiving paths with every step she took.

For a moment she turned, her father was running after her but he was far. Until he wasn't.

She went crashing into him as the other Fydor continued to run behind her. He had done this before, all the Warlocks of Qarth did, appearing in several places at once.

White as a sheet, she watched her father lower himself toward her in that strange embroidered tunic like one who performs a ritual. Even in the darkness of that labyrinthine wood, the blue stood out on his lips and in the sclerae of his eyes.

“You don’t have to be afraid...but why? Why did you come here?”

“I heard the screams.” the little girl said with her lower lip trembling “When is Mother coming back?”

“She won’t, kori. It’s only you and me now.”

It was the first and only time she set foot in the Palace of Dust. Visits to her father were rare, although he longed to see her. Sometimes she could swear she could hear him talking in her head, telling her that the shadows protected her, that he protected her through them. Other times she would give in and invite him to the Palace of Salt, almost glad to see him but not quite.

There were always two opposite grooves in her lips when she looked at him. He was the man who avenged her and lost his tongue for it; he was the man who drove her mother to flee, abandoning their daughter.

She felt like that right now as she walked away, as she ran away from him, just like when she was nine. She could hear him echoing in her eardrums, as she left the courtyard with Prince Aemond, with the voice of the past, as if he had regrown his tongue.

“What did he say?”

“Trees wail…leaves are bleeding…” she hears, not the Prince speaking.

Aemond pulls her arm and feels her tensing at his touch, blinking at him as if she wasn’t there up until now. “What?”

“Your father. What did he say before we left?”

"Nothing of your concern.” She says lightly and resumes her walk. He stands still for a moment, sure, as he is sure of the noble blood in his veins, that whatever the warlock said through his hands, did concern him.

Unfortunately, he’s forced to set that thought aside as they leave the Palace; Aemond halts his stride, narrowing his eye at the strange wheelhouse waiting before him. A wheelhouse without wheels, and not even a carriage; more like a bed waiting to be moved, with veils and curtains on each of the four sides. A palanquin, he recalls the word from some book he read. This is how aristocracy moved in the East.

He turns his head as air shifts behind him, and a moment later he’s almost growling at one of the Sorrowful Men, bold enough to lay hands on him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The Salt Queen rolls her eyes and walks to him. “Leave it. I’ll deal with the Prince. He’s already accustomed to having my hands on him, am I right?” she says with a tight, luscious smile, and oddly enough, but perhaps not so much, he doesn’t flinch as she starts to search his blue silks for any weapon.

Her hand slips beneath the soft fabric, gliding on his bare skin, chest and ribs, and she stares at him deliberately, just like him. “Perhaps your Highness just couldn’t wait to get her hands on me again.” he retorts with the ghost of an obnoxious grin.

She says nothing, staring at him as she searches his waist and then through the blue folds underneath. “Ah.” she tuts at one point, slowly drawing his faithful dagger. “And here I thought you were just pleased to see me. You won’t need this.” she says, keeping the blade. “Unlike you, I don’t bite. Unless asked of course.”

He hears the stretch on the word asked and nods slowly, plastering a fake, chastened frown. “I see. My deepest apologies. I didn’t think I had to ask since you have been throwing yourself at me at every corner. Speaking of which, your husband seemed quite proud of your performance earlier at breakfast. Will you be rewarded for your noble services?”

She only blinks at his vitriolic remark, but there is not a trace of outrage on her face. “Someone might say it is not wise to insult someone, especially a woman, when she is armed.”

“Why, do you know how to use that?” he asks, lowering his gaze and tilting his chin to point at the blade.

“No, but how difficult could it be considering how little it takes me to get you to let your guard down? Just like any man, I might add.”

He has no time to bite back, annoyingly moving his jaw at being deemed an ordinary man who crumples at a woman’s touch, while she turns her back and moves the curtains aside to enter the palanquin.

Aemond follows and finds himself cursing internally as he tries to adjust inside that odd, restricted transport. He wouldn’t even call it that. It’s nothing but a mattress with soft cushions on it.

Were Qartheens accustomed to doing everything lying on those damn cushions?

He might just sit, but he is too tall, and the canopy of the litter is too low, greeting his head with a slight bump. The Queen stifles a smile, already settled on the cushions with her legs tucked under her, and she watches him sigh deeply, resigning himself with clear annoyance to lie down on the cushions, holding onto one elbow.

Aemond tries to look at ease, not bothered by the woman and how much she's close to him, as close as if they were to confide a secret to each other, and just as he thinks he has settled down, the Sorrowful Men are lifting the litter, and he is jolted forward, slightly on top of her.

She lifts her arm to hold him by the shoulder, and in that split second, Aemond ties his hand around her arm to keep his weight off her. She tenses, just as before, just as she did the night before in his room. To her misfortune, she is now the one who suffers from too much proximity, or rather, a total lack of space. She feels the long single braid dangling on her, tickling her chest. She can see the specks of blue in his iris, the small cleft on the tip of his nose, the way that vicious mouth flaunts a perfect shape.

If only she could actually read minds, she would know that that last thought mirrors in his head.

He shouldn't care, he shouldn't even linger on that thought. This woman has done nothing but trample on his pride, has done nothing but mocking and taunting, and she seems quite adamant on keeping doing so. But perhaps it's because her mouth is close now, and for once silent, slightly open; an offering hiding a thousand more. And he had not taken it. In the throes of rage and pleasure, he had not kissed her. And he wishes. He wishes to know. Would she taste sweet? Tart?

Would she taste like salt?

The thought slips to the back of his mind as she clears her throat and straightens up, forcing him to distance himself, although they are still uncomfortably close. With one hand she knocks twice against the canopy, and the Sorrowful Men start walking.

Aemond leans better on his elbow to curb the swaying of the litter, and sighs glancing at the woman beside him. “Never heard of horses in this part of the world?”

“Horses barely survive in the desert, ask any Dothraki. Besides, what you Westerners do with those poor beasts is barbaric.”

His eyebrow is raising, ready to rebut, but as he opens his mouth, she offers him a small plate full of dates and dried figs. He moves his hand to dismiss it, causing her to frown. “Do you ever eat?” she takes one fig between her fingers and bites. “You should try one. Perhaps it’d make you less…bitter all the time.”

He glares at her but in doing so, he stumbles upon her mouth and the saccharine juice pasting her lips. She reads this as if he is reconsidering, so she stretches the half-bitten fig, and given their closeness, it takes her little to bring it to his mouth.

Aemond tilts his head back to decline and sighs. "Do you always think about eating here?"

"God no, we have much more pleasant pastimes." she says, chewing the other half of the fruit. "Would you like to hear about some of them?"

Aemond is not looking at the woman, and yet he can feel her luscious smile like something vivid, prickling his skin. "I can imagine."

"Can you? It doesn't seem so."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, perhaps our intimate encounter misleads me, but...you seem that kind of man who fucks his wife only on all fours, to feel in power and all those manly excuses."

"I am not." he hisses.

"Really?” She tilts her head curiously and looks at him closely. “Ever let her be on top? Ever been tied up? Blindfolded?"

He looks away at that, scoffing. "So, it's either eat or fuck."

Aegon would have thrived here, he thinks dimly.

"Fine. What should we talk about then?"

"Why do we have to?"

"The war? I, for instance, think it's only your father's fault. He wanted a son, right? And he had three. People unfit to take a decision should not be allowed to rule, if you ask me. On the other hand, though, what your mother did upon his death—"

"Keep my mother out of your mouth."

She hears the threat in the hissing way the words come out of his mouth, so she hushes, and turns her head toward the bustle of the city blurred by the veils and curtains of the litter. “Silence it is.”

And silently, he thanks the Gods for a moment of peace, free of this constant enquiring and teasing. That same silence though, only makes him think of Alicent. Is she still in chains? Is she wondering about him day and night or did she choose to banish him from her mind as he banished her?

Perhaps now that he is in a rather civil city, he could send word to her? Let her know he’s alive and that he was…what was he doing here?  

But even if he did know, he could not trust any of these people.

“What is exactly your husband’s plan now?”

“What do you think? You promised them dragon eggs. They won’t let you go until they have their little lizards to play with.”

Aemond scoffs, glancing distractedly beyond the curtains “Do you think you can fool me? Speaking of them as if you are not into it as well.”

“I am not. We may have different customs, but even here women are pawns in the hands of men. Men choose what we shall do, who we shall marry…how they shall fuck us.” He drags his eye back on her at this, watching her as she adds “But I have no interest in keeping you here, or having a creature spitting fire as a pet. I prefer cats, if you must know, or snakes.”

“I see. So, you just follow his orders? He tells you to fuck whoever is housed under your roof, and you obey?”

“I fuck who I wish to. And if you don’t want to taste how sharp your dagger is, you might want to stop addressing me as a whore.”

“Who you wish?”

“Yes.” She catches a glimpse of his eyebrow raising in a rather boastful way and looks away, huffing. “Quit it, dragon prince. You might be handsome, but it wasn’t that special.”

“Why? It was hard to tell in the midst of all that begging.”

“Because I don’t like to feel like I’m ten again.”

The smug expression on Aemond's face disappears as quickly as the Salt Queen speaks those words, wrinkling his forehead as he grasps their meaning. But she looks at him with a passive face, and she speaks of this person, herself, and yet another, with the distant tone with which one speaks of the dead.

“I was raped when I was ten. Bent over my small table while I was painting seashells.”

Aemond looks genuinely startled, and why wouldn’t he? He is not sure he can trust this woman’s word, but something in the back of his mind, namely the way she was tensing like steel as he took her from behind, tells him she’s speaking the truth. After all, it seems her tongue is made of nothing else.

“Don’t look at me like that.” she says “I’m not telling you to make you say you’re sorry. Everyone knows. There is no such thing as secrets here. It helps the trades, makes for more honest negotiations.”

The litter stalls as Aemond barely registers they must have reached the walls, but he doesn’t move, staring at the woman, cautiously, enquiringly, as something unfolding right before him.

“And what are we trading?”

She was starting to move to get out of the palanquin, but she halts at his question, raking his half-lying figure with her eyes, the long slender hands laced together on his abdomen, the little smooth portion of chest peeking from the blue silks. “It depends on what you are offering…”

They share a long earnest look, unwavering on both parts, until the curtains are moved. “Your Highness, we have reached the walls.”

The woman blinks and takes a light breath. “Let’s go, shall we? Before your lizard starts chewing the walls.”

She barely moves and he’s seizing her wrist, drawing her eyes back on him instantly. The Queen witnesses something new curling his features, cracking his mouth open and then shutting it back—a reluctance, almost a regret that does not settle well on that ever-so-strict face; it seems unwanted, rejected, and yet it keeps coming back, twitching his mouth twice. “Had I known…I would’ve behaved differently.” He says staring down, whereas she stares right down at him, at the grimace twisting his lips, as if tasting salt. “I know how it is…to feel—”

“Powerless?”

In more ways than one.

He doesn’t utter the words, but the way his eye pierces through her is nothing but a confession. 

“You could have stopped me.”

“Yes, I could. That’s what troubles me.” She says in a hushed tone, and now she’s the one staring down, grimacing. “I didn’t want to.”

Being a dragonrider, one might think Aemond should be used to deal with strange creatures. And yet, his brow is furrowing steeply as soon as they’re out of the city walls. There are some men waiting for them, common men dressed in dark robes, acting as keepers for a four-legged animal that Aemond has never seen in his life. A camel.

The Salt Queen fakes a frown upon reading the confusion on his face and says “Surely you didn’t think we would walk in the desert.”

“Because it’s hot or because it goes against all the lying around you do here?”

She bursts into a short laugh, drawing his eye to her, and says “It seems you have found your humor. I’m glad. I like men who can make me laugh.”

It was not really his intention, rather a mere observation, but he says nothing, lingering for a moment on her lips curved up, before returning to look at the creature before him, slowly ruminating something as it stares at him with two dark, waning eyes.

“I don’t know how to ride this—thing.”

“Ah, it’s a bit tricky. You see,” she goes to stand right beside him, leaning against him so that he feels her bare shoulders against his arm, and as she gestures towards the camel, she says “You have to get on it and keep yourself balanced on the hump with one knee. Very dangerous, I must warn you. Most men die by merely trying.”

She turns to look at him with her lips cracking in amusement, but as she sees the earnest, not at all amused, face he’s wearing, she sighs deeply. “And it’s lost again.”

“It’s just a bit slower than a horse.” She explains taking a step away as one of the Sorrowful men hands her some blue fabric, like a scarf. Aemond sees her handing one to him and she speaks before he asks about it. “For your skin. To shield you from the sun if you don’t want to peel your face off because of burn blisters.”

He grabs the cloth, unfolding it between his hands as, out of the corner of his eye, he sees the Queen wrap her own around her head, leaving only a crevice for her eyes. He tries to mimic her gestures, but his braid gets stuck, so she walks to him raising her hands, and without a word she helps him, wrapping his head and face in blue.

“Come. Since it’s your first time, you’ll ride with me.”

Then, she moves towards the camel, while the armed men will follow on foot, dragging the cart of dead pigs and goats. With silent relief on his part, Aemond finds out that it seems even easier than riding a horse. At first.

The camel kneels on the sand on his four legs, and Salt Queen straddles it, sitting in the saddle. She swings each leg on both sides of the creature, her silks gliding like water, effectively baring her skin from the ankles to her thighs; she makes room for him, turning her head to beckon him to sit behind her and, inevitably, she sees him staring down at her bare legs. “So, you found something else to stare at other than my breast. Good.”

Aemond looks up and then away, moving to get this over with. He sits on the saddle, behind the woman, their bodies barely touching, at first. As she grabs the reins, she slightly turns her head saying “Follow my lead.”

She pulls at the reins and since camels stand up with their back legs first, Aemond is jolted forward, colliding against the Salt Queen who promptly instructs him. “Lean back…”

He does so, and she does too, resting her shoulders against his chest. “And now forward.” She adds when the animal gets onto its front legs. Aemond lurches forward, and having no handhold, he grips her left side not to crash his body on her.

“Pigaí.” She says in Qartheen and, slowly, the camel starts walking. Aemond briefly looks behind, watching the Sorrowful Men move accordingly, four of them dragging a wooden cart full of carcasses, but soon he finds himself too occupied with keeping balance to spare a glance behind.

A camel’s walk is nothing like the gait of a horse. It’s odd, irregular, jerky; it keeps jolting him backward and then forward, each time forcing him to bump against her back, to hold onto her, sometimes her arm, sometimes her hip, her thigh even, like a toddler who's just learning to walk.

Hearing his short and clearly annoyed sighs, the Queen smiles behind the tajel, keeping her gaze fixed on the dunes at the horizon, and softly shakes her head. “Always so rigid…”

“What” he asks without even intoning the question, because the camel and this hiccup-like swinging is getting on his nerves, not to mention the heat, sticking the silks on him, or the woman's body which, for all the right reasons but rather inconvenient under the circumstances, is making his blood flow down too fast.

“You are too rigid.” She says, slightly raising her tone. “You have nothing to prove to this poor beast, or me.”

She takes his hand that he held like an iron clamp on her side and turns her head a little, enough to catch his eye. "Let yourself sway, don't fight it."

Keeping his eye on her, his grip lessens, just as all the stiffness in his body. She feels him sway, brushing naturally against her without tensing every time their bodies touched. And yet her throat stiffens as he keeps swinging against her, and she’s glad she’s giving her back and wearing a tajel, so he cannot see her lips parting as air hitches in her mouth.

The camel’s hooves avoid human and animal remains in what is nothing but a Garden of Bones; the sun is scorching, the air so humid, heavy, it feels like cotton when swallowing. But fortunately for them, she is not late to come into view amid those white dunes.

"By all the Gods..." The Queen cries out in disbelief, widening her eyes as she sees a huge black spot in the middle of the yellowish-white desert; a mountain, of flesh and fire.

The camel must sense her agitation, or perhaps he’s wise enough to know what he is up against. He starts to flail, to paw, and the Queen is forced to pull on the reins, unbalanced back and forth. Aemond holds her by the arms with his eye strained on Vhagar, but the quadruped seems to have no intention of staying there a minute longer.

He screeches to the point that both Aemond and the Queen are thrown from the saddle, landing on the sand, one on top of the other. The camel flees, despite one of the Sorrowful Men attempts to catch him.

That little cackle, however, awakens the dragon, or perhaps she simply sensed her rider. Vhagar raises her huge head from the cat-like crouched position she was in, her amber eyes wide as well as her giant wings. Aemond is barely in time to stand and help the woman do the same when the earth beneath them shakes as if in an earthquake.

The Queen of Salt whitens like a sheet as she sees that terrifying beast advancing from a distance, a distance that drastically runs out because each stride of the dragon covers miles.

She freezes on the spot, her mouth wide open, because the dragon keeps advancing, and for a moment she seriously thinks she is breathing the last breaths of her life.

Aemond shields her with his body, and Vhagar stops, opening her mouth wide and roaring so loudly that the queen has to cover her ears. Even Aemond scrunches his face under the scorching gust that sweeps over him, so scorching that the glimmer of flames ignites at the back of her jaws. She's not happy to see him. Or rather, she's not happy about being abandoned to starve in the desert, even for one day. Ageing makes even beasts more irritable.

“Lykirī, Vhagar!” the Prince shouts “Lykirī!”

But she does not listen, not immediately at least. She continues to roar, intent on voicing her disappointment. Then, finally, she closes her jaws. The Queen looks at her with wide eyes, her chest rising and falling quickly, her hands laced firmly around Aemond's arms. Vhagar lowers her head toward him, still showing her fangs, and flares her nostrils, smelling something, someone, foreign.

“What is she doing?” the Queen asks in a whisper.

“Hush.”

She tilts her head back, looking at him from behind and still whispering, says “Need I remind you my father is a warlock? If your dragon eats me, I will come back to haunt you.”

He doesn’t bother to retort, even more so because Vhagar makes a sudden movement, turning her head sharply as her nostrils smell what she has been craving for too long. Aemond follows her gaze, barely having the time to register the Sorrowful Men on the right, at a good distance but not far enough for a starving dragon.

“Get away from there!” the Prince warns them “Move!”

As soon as that last word leaves his mouth, Vhagar moves with impressive speed, given her size and age, but hunger quickens her limbs. Her head sinks on the cart as the armed men scurry away without logic, raising a cloud of dust and sand as her fangs pierce wood, flesh and bone.

She perches on the sand to enjoy her much-needed meal, which disappears by the second under the gaze of Aemond and the Salt Queen, still pale as a sheet and stunned by what she's witnessing, flinching every time she hears jaws snapping and bones cracking.

“Where are you going?” she asks as Aemond tries to take one step.

He turns, glancing at her hand gripping his arm, and looks at her for a moment before raising his eyebrow “Scared, are we?”

She gives him a flat look as if he has just informed her that the sky is blue. “Self-awareness is not cowardice.”

Aemond moves, circling the beast, and the woman dims it wisely to never leave his side, keeping a constant eye on the beast, unaware she’s still gripping his arm as she moves. The Prince stops somewhere near Vhagar’s left wing and the Queen watches as he seems to inspect it closely. Out of curiosity, she does the same, spotting a large wound toward the right end, healed but not quite. Aemond places one hand on the scales but as soon as he does that, Vhagar turns her head sharply, blood coating her jaws and fangs, and growls, clearly still annoyed with him or maybe just unhappy to be bothered during her meal.

“She’s just like you, isn’t she?” the Queen remarks “Sour and petty.”

Aemond ignores her, taking a step back, momentarily resigning not to tend to his dragon, as long as she’s in that mood. “Perhaps you could stop gripping me so hard now.” he says at one point, feeling the Queen’s nails digging through the silk.

She looks lost for a moment, and then withdraws her hand, looking away. She finds though that all she can look at is Vhagar, her giant dimension blocks her view entirely.

“How did you manage to tame such a monster?” she asks at some point, eyes full of dread, and yet wonder.

“She is not a monster.”

“No, of course not. She’s as sweet as a kitten.”

She observes the beast, her green and bronze scales, battered in several spots and frowns. “Correct me if I’m wrong, and I rarely am, did not dragons take decades to grow? She seems very old and you...” pausing, her eyes scan him from head to toe “you don’t look older than twenty-five?”

Aemond keeps his gaze fixed on Vhagar as he answers, that empty egg made of nothing but stone lost somewhere in the back of his mind. "My egg didn’t hatch. I claimed her when I was ten.”

"Ten?” she asks, disbelief and awe running together on her tongue.

He turns his head and tilts his chin down, and then up, as only pride can do. "Ten.”

She looks at him, not able to hide a righteous gleam of admiration, but then she’s crinkling her forehead, in that peculiar way of hers.

 "Was it worth it?” she asks, upon acknowledging that new piece.

"What?”

"The exchange. Was it fair? Your eye for a dragon.”

Do not mourn me, Mother. His mouth twitches as he remembers, almost relives it. It has been years and yet, he can almost feel the right side of his head numbed with too much pain, the stench of his own dead flesh. The needle going in and out but not actually stitching anything back together.

“How did it happen?” she asks, and her tone is different now. That constant veil of mocking in the way she phrases her questions is nowhere to be found.

“Do you want me to believe you don’t know yet?”

"I told you twice. I cannot control this…power, it comes and goes. I must admit though, it is coming quite often in the last few days…I wonder why…”

Aemond looks at her, sees her search on him a mystery to which he has no answers in the first place. He learned this from Alys.

Magic repels answers, it must live and thrive on mystery.

On chaos, you mean.

And what’s the difference? That’s what you really yearn for. Chaos.

He sighs to cast her out, and says “My nephew took it with a knife.”

"And you killed him. This is why they call you Kinslayer, is it not?”

She cannot see his expression behind the tajel, only his good eye, still, cold and unwavering, like a star, and beautiful in the most cruel way.

"We may have shared blood but he meant nothing to me. And he got what he deserved.” he said, trying a flat empty tone, but she hears the edges quivering, crumpling, like salt eroding rocks.

"And what about that boy? Did he get what he deserved?”

"What boy?”

"The ten year old you.” His eye seems to glow with new light at her words, like the sun catching the flashing steel of a blade, and even with the blue scarf hiding his face, she knows his teeth are grinding.  "I was never one for revenge.” She concedes, turning her head to the desert. "It may be the sweetest morsel, but somehow it never leaves you sated.”

"It sounds like you have tasted it.”

"Yes.” She admits, turning to look at him. "But it’s stuck in my throat.”

Aemond doesn’t need to ask, because as she said, there are no secrets in Qarth.

"You must have wondered why my father cannot speak.” she tells him, looking away, dredging up from her mind, from her memories, traces of a child who is no more. “There’s an ancient tradition here, when a wedding takes place. It’s called the sacred exchange. The bride and the groom can ask each other for one favor, anything, and they cannot refuse.” She returns her gaze to him, and says “My husband asked for my father’s tongue as my sacred gift.”

“Was it him?”

"No, not him…the night before our wedding, Irryo, Xavos’ brother, came into my room to give me his wedding gift. The purest silk I’ve ever seen. He made me wear it, stripped me bare with his own hands…said he wanted to see how I looked...”

She doesn’t need to utter the words. Aemond sees a little girl, a child, painting seashells, unfinished, falling from the table in a clatter of tinkles and choked cries.

"The wedding took place in a hurry an hour later. I said my vows with my silks still stained with blood. They were scared of my father’s wrath, you see. But it came anyway. Irryo died during the wedding feast. His eyes burst into his skull.”

“Your father’s doing.”

“Perhaps." she shrugs "I didn’t know what to make of it at the time, as I don’t know what to make of it now. I didn’t ask him to avenge me. All I wanted was for him, anyone, to say they were sorry for what had been done to me.”

Did he not want the same?

Apart from punishment, and then revenge, did he not want just one word of kindness from his father? Some sort of regret from Lucerys? 

She feels his eye on her, even if he’s not really looking at her, perhaps at some ghosts locked in his mind, so she glances at Vhagar, quite contented after her meals and currently resting on the sand. “We should go back to the Palace before it gets too hot out here. I will give orders to save more dead beasts for your dragon.”

The journey back to the walls is a silent one. It spreads, silence, like an oil stain as they climb back onto the litter; each of them has caught something of the other, something similar, different cracks etched with the same cruelty, and matching.

Their gazes match, as they remove the tajel from their heads, as she hands him some water. She looks around distractedly, but the curtains are closed and even if they weren’t, the sound of water rushing down his throat brings her eyes on him, and then closely, she watches his tongue flicking outside for a moment, she watches a drop of water running down his chin. And wishes to lick it off with her tongue.

Somehow, it’s like he can hear what she’s thinking, locking his eye on her. They don’t speak, it’s almost as if both of them are waiting for something.

"Your braid needs to be redone." She says at one point, and he turns, not looking at her face, not at first. She sees his eye trailing slowly over her until he speaks.

"Is that your offering?"

Closely, she rakes her eyes on his chiseled features, and she is not even aware she is imperceptibly leaning closer. A moth to a flame, they say. But she has always been the flame. And now, she finds she’s the one willing to bathe in the light, or burn.

“If you wish."

It comes out like a whisper, drawing his eye on her lips, unearthing that same desire from earlier, the thirst to know what she tastes like. "What If I wish for something more?"

“Such as?" she asks, raising one hand to touch his braid and undo it, smoothly, as if she had done this countless times before.

"Don't be shy now. Everything is a trade in Qarth. Even pleasure."

Swiftly, he clamps his hand around her wrist, stopping her, drawing a slight wince beneath her skin.

"Pleasure is not something to be traded.” He says, and it’s the flame now that is moving. “Only taken."

The short intake of air she breathes on his mouth is a seal. His lips meet hers abruptly, they part instantly and ravenously, like a starved man tasting a morsel, and then loosening to taste it, to taste her. Perhaps it’s desert, perhaps it’s herself, but she does taste like salt. She’s bitter on his tongue, in his nostrils; she muffles his ears until he hears only her sweet sighing in his mouth as he slips his tongue inside.

And he wants more of that, just as she wants more. He feels her unfolding beneath him as he towers over her, so differently from the previous night. She’s not tense. She’s loose like water, he feels her seeping in everywhere, around his neck and shoulders, in his mouth when her tongue darts in, in his blood when she softly rubs against him. His breathing becomes heavy, from lack of air, from hardening, and maybe he shouldn't, maybe this isn't really the right place. They could wait until they get back to the palace, but then she lies back on the pillows and reclines her head, offering her neck. Without thinking, he lowers himself down on her, in fact lying on her, and she instantly makes room for him by spreading her legs wide.

She gasps softly as he trails wet kisses on her neck, growing greedy as he travels down, to what he’s been secretly coveting since the first time he unapologetically landed his sight on.

Cupping her bare breast with his large hand, he holds it firmly, humming pleasurably as he takes the hard nipple into his mouth. Accordingly, she bucks her hips against him, feeling his hardening tease her center through that thin layer of silk. Between that and the swirling of his tongue, hot and wet around her nipple, she is panting, spreading her legs wide to cage his hips and push him against her, desperate for more friction.

Despite his ache for the same and more, he glances up, still torturing her nipple, hard and slick at this point, watching her as he grazes his teeth over that darker spot of skin, forcing a choked, loud whimper to escape her mouth.

“Careful, your Highness” he teases “lest you want to give your peasants a show.”

“What do you think these curtains are for?”

“You want me to fuck you here? Now?” he asks with a playful scorn in his voice, but she can hear his breath creaking, his tone lower and throatily.

She raises from the cushions, holding on one hand while the other slips between them, hovering on his groin, brushing feathery. “I believe you want to.” She breathes on his lips, parting as soon as he rocks his waist to catch her palm.

“We could wait to be in the Palace but…” she takes his hand and brings it between her legs, on that thin layer of silk, damp again his knuckles. “Would you be so cruel and leave me like this, for so long?”

He swallows something close to a growl upon feeling how wet she is for him, how her cheeks are barely flushed as she exhales heavily, her face scrunched lustfully for the little, shallow pleasure she finds from his fingertips.

Curtains or no curtains, Aemond is deaf and blind to anything else around him. With his fingers, he moves the fabric and twists his wrist, so that his palm is straight against her pulsing core. She sighs hoarsely as her wetness coats his hand, arching just as slightly, goading him to do more. She has been watching and coveting his fingers once too many times, the thought alone of having them inside her crumples her face in a pleading way, and she has no shame in voicing it. “Please, Aemond…”

Upon hearing his name, spoken in that exotic and alluring way, he bares his teeth and harshly slips not one, but two of his slender fingers inside, watching her tilt her head back, her mouth open and out of breath, but she’s looking at him and she’s quick to regain air, barely curving her lips up. “So you do know how to use your hands…”

“You never shut up, do you?”

“Well, make me.”

His cock twitches on its own at her words, and he kisses her, roughly, flexing his hand to start pumping his fingers in. She moans loudly on his tongue, lacing an arm around his neck, still holding herself onto the cushions with her other hand, angling her back so he can reach that special spot more easily.

“Oh God—yes---” she moans when he does, rocking her hips to meet his deft fingers in a sweet lewd sound that muffles any other coming from the fuss outside that litter. Her breath grows short and labored, mewling obscenely every time he curls his fingers, his gaze on her fixed and focused like on some holy mission.

He desperately wants to bury himself inside her, right there; he’s almost thankful for the much more loose clothes they wear here instead of the constricting breeches he was used to, even though he feels his flesh on fire, and he’s practically panting on her pleasure; his own is of no concern to him right now, not when she’s so close, not when he can watch a little more of her face distorting with wanton abandon, her neck lumped with sweat, the way her breast swings with her motions.

But she, on the other hand, seems eager to end this torture, and start another. The tensed muscle in her arm gives away, making her back fall on the cushions once more, but the other is still tied around his neck, so she drags him down with her and then she’s rummaging through the blue silks, eager to free his length, but he grips her wrist and holds it firmly above her head. “No…I have a score to settle with you.”

“What? You proved quite enough you know how to use your hands.” She says breathlessly, cracking half a smile “I swear on all the Gods, yours and mine, I won’t doubt you again.” 

Aemond is just about to retort but suddenly the palanquin stops, and they are abruptly brought back to the reality just outside those curtains. They hear a male voice and he looks enquiringly at the Salt Queen who visibly rolls her eyes and says something in Qartheen which, given her tone, Aemond is sure is some kind of curse.

She fumbles with her thin gowns, covering her nudity while he takes some distance, returning to lean on one elbow with once more clear annoyance, this time much more justified. And once more, he’s thankful for the loose silks, able to hide his otherwise plain arousal.

The Queen sighs deeply, to keep herself together, to stop the ringing in her ears and the aching stir below her navel; then she opens the curtains and smiles warmly. “Syradhor! I thought I recognized your voice.”

The man in yellow silks, with several sapphires embroidered in the fabric and worn on his fingers, bows for a moment saying, “Your Highness.” He takes her hand that she promptly offers and lightly kisses her knuckles, trailing his eyes on her with two eyes blind with admiration. “Any man who finds himself in the presence of such beauty can count himself as the luckiest in the world. What a blessing for me to be granted such fortune once more.”

Aemond is staring at the man, unimpressed, doing all he can not to scoff at the love sonnet-like speech, and a rather dull one. “Prince Aemond. A pleasure to see you again.”

Aemond recalls the man as one of the Merchant Kings who greeted him at the walls two days prior, but his face is all he remembers. “Which one is this?” he deadpans to the Salt Queen, evidently not happy to have been interrupted. She hears the annoyance in his voice and stifles a smile saying “This is Syradhor, the Ore King.”

The Prince barely tilts his chin down to greet him and the man in yellow takes a step forward, addressing the Queen. “Your Highness, since you are here, I am gladly extending my invitation to you as well.”

“Extending?” she asks.

“I—Yes, I was expecting Prince Aemond today, to formally receive him in my Palace.”

“Were you?” he drawls.

The honeyed benevolence leaves the man's face like a summer storm, because that's the way he is, as eager to please as he is quick to anger. “What is meaning of this? Did Xavos not inform you?”

“Of course.” Of course not, is what she means to say. But before she can utter another word, Aemond speaks. “Well, I’m afraid we have to delay this formal reception.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Syradhor.” The Queen steps in “you must understand, the Prince is new to our customs. He’s not aware of our welcoming traditions. As it happens, that was precisely what the Prince and I were discussing before you interrupted us.”

“Were we?” he says lifting his eyebrow.

She flashes daggers at him and continues with a broad smile. “I told him not to delay his visit to your Palace, for if ever a foreigner refused to visit one of the Thirteen—" she looks directly at Aemond, informing him at that very moment. “It would be considered the highest of insults.”

Aemond looks at her, unblinking, before sighing deeply, and deciding to play along. “Yes, I do recall now. Her Highness was quite vocal on the matter.”

She keeps smiling, for reasons entirely different from what the Ore King might think, and then he raises one hand towards the crowded street. “Please. My Palace is just around the corner.”

Aemond comes out of the litter, being careful to let the silks fall over all the right places.

“I hope you have a good time, my Prince.”

He whirls his head watching the Salt Queen stay still on the cushions and the Ore King looks just as stunned. “Will you not delight my Palace with your presence?”

“I am afraid I can’t, Syrhador. I was just asking the Prince for advice on some urgent matters I desperately need to attend to.” She pointedly looks at Aemond with a ghosting smile and then she shrugs, lightheartedly. “I suppose I shall take those urgent matters into my own hands.”

Her words and what they mean, stir something within him, more annoyance at the mere thought of wasting time with this little man —his shoulder reaches just above Aemond’s ribs— when he could be fucking her senseless on that litter, on his bed, hers, he’s not picky at this point. And more giddiness, making his blood boil at mere thought of her chasing her pleasure with her own hands.

But then she’s shutting him out, shutting the curtains, and ordering her men to move.

The sky is of a delicious pink-red shade when he returns to the Palace of Salt.

Four hours, that was the torment he had to endure in the presence of Syradhor and his family. Four hours in which he barely opened his mouth, and when he did, all that came out were monosyllables uttered from time to time in a manner closer and closer to snarling.

The Ore King had embarked on a soliloquy about alum, a precious mineral useful as mordant for dyeing wool, embalming animals and human bodies, and making wood fireproof. It would’ve been interesting for a former scholar as Aemond was, but it was difficult to think straight amid the chattering, duck-like squawking of Syradhor’s daughters, and even more difficult when he had brought the cup of wine to his mouth and sensed her intimate sweet-tart smell stuck on his fingers, awakening all the wrong thoughts.

In the end, he was so sick of the whole affair that he had curtly refused to be escorted to the palace of Xavos on another litter, and the Ore King had sent four of his guards to walk with him, along the streets of Qarth.

His spirits when he crosses the threshold of the Palace of Salt are at an all-time low. If only he didn't have to face another litter trip lying on cushions after spending four hours sitting on those same fucking cushions, he'd go straight to Vhagar. He's always been a solitary creature, just like her, and all these talks and pleasantries, fake or true, were like pouring a barrel of water into a narrow vase. He was toppling over.

Surprisingly though, as soon as he sets foot in his chambers, his foul spirits seem to instantly improve as he finds his room lit with candles, and not at all empty. The Salt Queen is sitting comfortably in an armchair, with her legs dangling graciously over the left armrest; a little book is clutched in her hold.

“My Prince.” She greets him as he lingers on the door, lifting her gaze from her reading.

Aemond closes the door, never tearing his gaze off her. It betrays nothing, only the faint irritation for the four hours wasted, but not the way his lungs swell upon seeing her.

“Did your Grace have fun?” she asks with sheer curiosity, closing the book with a light thud.

“Fun?” he repeats, as if she had just suggested she had proof unicorns from Skagos were real.

“Surely it was not that bad? I mean, yes, Syradhor is boring and yes, he has that annoying habit of touching you as he talks, but he has a great collection of wines. I should have told you. There’s no other way to survive him.”

“He has a litter of daughters” Aemond sneers, walking to her “each of them duller than the other.”

“Well, that happens when you fuck your relatives. You, above all, should know that.”

He looks at her questioningly and she leans forward to place the book on a little table, the soft fabric of her lilac gowns slips on her skin just as his eye slips on her bare thighs, glowing as gold under the candlelight. “His wife is his niece.” She says, looking up and catching his staring.

His eye trails slowly over her until locking her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“You forgot this.” She says, raising her hand with his dagger held between her fingers.

Aemond stops before her, raising an eyebrow as he looks down at her “You were waiting for me, to give me back my dagger?”

She takes a good amount of time, while looking at him, feeling his eye, darkened due to the dim light and boring into her, to utter a simple “No."

“Then why?”

She rises, handing the blade, and says “I believe we had a score to settle.”

Aemond takes the blade from her hands, nodding slowly, and then circles her to go sit where she was a moment ago, placing the blade on the armrest, along with his hands. “And what was it?” he asks with a faint smirk. If she’s keen on playing games, he will let her play this one. “Somehow, it’s eluding me now.”

She watches him cross his long legs, tilting his head as he awaits, and she says “Your braid needs to be redone.”

“Hmm.” Aemond looks around, almost amused, and sees his bed, not exactly in order as it was when he left, but slightly crumpled.

Did she lie on his bed? Did she touch herself and peak, writhing on his sheets? The thought alone tickles his spine, but still, he betrays nothing, only the faint tapping of his fingers against the armrest. “You’ve been here all this time to give me back my dagger and redo my hair.”

She watches his fingers moving and she’s moving. She would like to take his hand and pick up where they left off, but she just sits on his lap, forcing him to uncross his legs, and spread them a little to make her room. “I deeply cherish my guests and their welfare under my roof.” She jests, although it’s partially true.

The only difference is that she never spent hours waiting for one of her guests, or any man, nor fantasizing about all the ways that man could take her, not as fervently as she did as her hand moved relentlessly between her legs, finding but a mere flicker of the pleasure he had just started to spill from her.

“And did you…” his tone is coarse, so he pauses to swallow. He hates that his voice is coming out so low, he hates that this woman can reduce him like this in a matter of minutes, that his cock is already stirring. “Did you eventually take that urgent matter into your own hands?”

She takes a long lock of silver hair between her fingers, running them through it while she quietly answers

“Twice.”

“Here?”

“Yes.” She looks at him, while her fingers start to work on that lock, making a little braid using only one hand. “Disappointing.”

“The room or your hands?”

“Oh, the room was quite fine.” she lets the little braid rest among the other locks and trails her fingers on his chest, and a moment later underneath the silk, like tentacles. “I only wished I had your hands inside me.”

Her touch licks flames on his skin, on his chest, collarbone, and neck; she touches him with intent, as if she wishes to know what he is made of. “You could have come with me.”

“I didn’t lie, I had some matters to attend to. Besides, coming with you would have left us in quite a situation.” She reasons with diplomacy, not making a blink as her other tentacle slides over his stomach, disappearing underneath. “Sneaking around the Ore Palace to find a place to fuck.”

Aemond exhales heavily as she takes hold of him, parting his lips as she palms him thoroughly.

“Did you think of that while you were with those pretty girls?” she asks, watching his eyelid flicker “I know they’re pretty. Dumb, but pretty.”

He has no idea who she’s talking about. He rests his head against the armchair and opens his mouth as her ministrations grow cadenced and yet unbearably slow.

“Did you think of me?” she asks, softly panting along with him for the mere sight “of taking me in some hidden corner? Of putting your hands on me if I had been there?”

His nails dig into the armrest, around his dagger, until his knuckles go white. Truth is that he did. Sipping that cup of wine, the smell of her on his fingers only made him think of her, and how she would squirm if he touched her right there, under the table. How she would bite her lower lip to swallow her moans as she came all over his fingers.

“I did.” She admits with almost religious honesty. “I came twice thinking of your hands.”

Not a moment later, they are both growling with need as he slams his mouth on hers in a mess of tongues and teeth, and then she gasps, because his hand is on her core, moving already, gathering her wetness and spreading it. “Did you think of this? Hmm?” he croons, watching her closely, rejoicing upon seeing her face scrunching just as it did earlier, wantonly, pleading.

“No…” she mumbles.

“What do you mean no?”

Her hand slips behind his neck, in order to keep his head firm and his face glued to hers. “Inside…” she cooes urgently “I need them inside.”

It’s almost shameful for a proud man like him, how swiftly he obeys, but even if he didn’t want to, she’s so wet for him, dripping and coating his palm, that his fingers would’ve eventually slipped inside.

He sticks them all the way in, flexing and curling, hitting that spot and spilling a loud moan from her, who instantly sinks her hips down, rocking to goad him to start moving. He grants her this other little mercy, pumping nimbly with a squelching sound, going rock hard as she arches on top of him, keeping one hand clamped around his neck and the other on his knee, to find the right angle.

“There you go…” he rasps, watching his fingers disappear inside, feeling her spongy walls hot and squeezing “’Tis what you wanted?”

She is too occupied with trying to catch a puff of air to be bothered to answer, but he wants one. He stops altogether, winning a whine of protest and a flashing glare before her face wrinkles with desperate need.

“Not talking now?” he mocks and then swiftly, he is curling his fingers in a cruel way, drawing a choked whimper out of her throat.

“Yes. Yes, it is what I wanted.”

“Hmm. Go on, then. Take it.” And he spreads his legs a little more to give her room “Fuck my hand.”

Exhaling a small breath of air, she talks almost to herself. “A woman must do everything these days.”

“You won’t be saying that later.”

“Why, what happens later?”

“I’ll fuck you until you can’t walk.”

“That sounds a bit pretentious.”

“And you should have learned by now not to doubt my word.”

And doubt him she won’t, not now. She starts to move, swaying her hips and arching her neck as soon as pleasure washes over her. She would like to savor it, to take this slow, as she likes it, but her low muscles are so tensed and aching; she feels the peak near and can't do anything but run towards.

Aemond watches with labored breath as she rocks and grinds on him desperately, growing frantic by the moment, feeling her arousal down to his wrist, dampening his own silks, spilling a faint unbearable pleasure from the way her flesh grinds against his cock. And he finds himself moaning out of pleasure and pain as she draws near to her peak, gripping his neck hard, pulling at the roots of his hair while emitting a string of short and sharp cries next his ear, until she’s trembling all over, coming with a free and loud moan on his hand.

She tries to regain some air, panting in his ear as she rides the last throes. This, this is what she’s been fantasizing, even dreamed of it. No man has ever made her feel like this, a pulsing heart pounding in every inch of her body, a living flame bathing in fire.

Slowly, she tilts her head back and he takes his hand off her hot, pulsing flesh. She looks down, at her pleasure wrinkling his fingertips, and then up, straight into his turbid eye. He brings his fingers to his mouth to clean them, to taste her, but she snatches his wrist and, staring at him, she engulfs his index with her lips.

He’s tempted to look away, and not wonder how her perfect lips would close around his cock, but he keeps watching as she keeps tasting herself, on his middle finger, and then the ring one.

“How do you taste?”

“Me? Oh, this is not me.” She draws close until she nudges her nose against his and says “Pleasure tastes like the ones we desire.” She kisses him, slowly, darting her tongue in his mouth until he’s humming, tasting bittersweet. “This is your doing.”

A moment later she gasps, holding onto his shoulders because he rises abruptly, lacing his arms around her to hold her and take those few steps that separate them from his bed.

They fall on the soft mattress and her hands fly to his silks, willing to tear them apart until he’s bare. And he helps her, moving his lean shoulders to let the slippery fabric fall. She had thought Qartheen silks suited him perfectly, but now she thinks she’d rather have him like this all day. Her eyes roam freely on his lean body, dented in a few spots by burns and scars of war, a soldier’s body and yet not burly: he’s all refined and graceful, like a sculpture. It makes her mouth go dry, pushing her eyes down, on the thin waist and the prominent v-shape of his muscles.

Willfully, she grasps the soft belt cinching his waist, but he stops her wrists.

“Do you know what this is?” he asks with short breath, and the candles around catch the flashing steel of his dagger, held in his left hand.

“Valyrian steel?”

“The sharpest blade in the world.” and deftly, he twirls it.

It catches her eye for a moment, but then she drags her gaze back on him, relaxing on the sheets with an ounce of challenge in her eyes. “You will have to show me.”

Something wild bursts in his eye, wide and piercing. “Are you offering?”

She cracks a half heated, half cunning smile and says “I’m demanding.”

Aemond lies beside her, holding himself up on one elbow, and with bated breath, she watches his other arm move, bringing the dagger, and its pointy end, to the lilac woven shielding her torso. Slowly and cautiously, he slips the steel under a stripe of silk, locking his eye on her as she startles from the coldness of the blade. He flicks his wrist up, and the steel cuts the silk instantly and smoothly. But he doesn’t stop there, dragging the blade down, cutting all, unraveling her body, and not missing the way her stomach jolts, her breath hitches, and not out of fear.

He trails his eye all over her body, glowing under the candles, lingering on the soft patch of hair below her navel; his mouth goes dry and his mind blank. He lets the blade go and drifts down, grabs her legs and forces them open, hardening impossibly more upon seeing her previous peak still coating her cunt in a glistening veil.

She sees him hovering right on her center, anticipation quickens her breath but perhaps also a faint reluctance for what he’s about to do. She would complain about it with Dora, saying most of her lovers just sat there lapping at it like some thirsty dog in the desert. Once, she had even opened a book while having a man’s head between her thighs.

It is therefore with great shock that she abruptly gasps, out loud, when he slams his mouth on her cunt, raising his eye to watch her. She tastes sweeter than he’d expected, and he’s not one for sweet tastes, but this one, he wants it all.

His tongue swirls up and down her folds, circling slowly, making her back arch, her  jaw slack open. “Oh God—” she moans once, and twice, unconsciously pushing her hips against his face, feeling the sharp bone of his nose nudging her bundle.

“If you have to sing my praises, then do it properly.” he rasps against her flesh, stopping, but not quite. He brings one hand on her apex, circling it with his thumb, torturing but not as she wants. “Please—” she begs freely, writhing beneath him.

“Please what?” he teases, licking his lips “You like to talk, don’t you? Then use your words.” He presses his thumb deeper and faster, and she whines, in pleasure and protest. “Please—with your tongue”

“Please…?”

“Aemond—”

“Again.”

He has half a mind to make her say his name until she loses her voice, but at the second time she utters it, her vowels even more open given her debauchery, he caves and grips her thighs harshly to keep them as spread open as he can. What happens next is a string of cries and choked moans as his tongue licks and sucks and pierces inside; he eats her thoroughly humming with sheer delight and occasionally groaning as, without being able to avoid it, he grinds against the mattress to gain some relief. 

Pleasure coils in her belly as it never did before. She’d never been able to reach her peak like this, whether the occasional man was not that good at that practice or maybe because she’d never longed for anyone as she longs for the Prince. She’s not able to control her voice as she comes straight into his mouth, she’s not able to control her muscles shaking all over, nor her hand, flying into his hair, pulling and pushing him against her as she practically rides his face in the last spasms.

She lies there for a moment, ears numb and heart pounding like a hammer, but she has little time to come to her senses; he moves, leaning on top of her, mouth and chin slick. It makes her strangely proud to see it. This time, her hands are free to roam, discarding the last silks until he’s completely bare. Aemond slips between her legs, hissing at feeling her moist flesh against his. He cannot wait any longer, as he moves to angle her hips and bury himself inside her, she grabs his face, forcing him to look up.

“Show me.”

It takes him barely a moment to get what she means. He freezes on the spot, and looks down with a grimace.

“You saw mine.” She says sofly. And it’s true. Even if he didn’t know, he saw, he touched, her wound.

And maybe it’s because he did, and he knows it to be true that this time there’s no reluctance, or rejection choking down his words. “I am sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter, you couldn’t—”

“No. Not about last night.”

All I wanted was for him, anyone, to say they were sorry for what had been done to me.

Air hitches in her throat as she stares at him with wide eyes. He has that unwavering stone-like look on his face and she knows he means it. No second purpose could ever force his tongue into saying that, because he doesn’t have any. He had her already, and he would have her again, whether he had spoken those words or not. But he means it. He chooses all his words too carefully to waste them on lies.

All she knows now, is that she wants him. A foreign, fierce willing like the one that possessed her the night before, urging her to stay right where she was, to goad him to take her harder, instead of begging him to stop.

She grips his neck and surges to kiss him, moaning with liberation into his mouth, swallowing his soft growl as her hand slips between them, grabbing him and guiding him against her entrance. He pushes in ever so easily, and she throws her head back on the sheets, gasping at the stretch while he rests his forehead on her chest, struggling to breathe as he buries himself inside her.

The bushes pierce through his feet, bleeding on the ground, a pain he is well accustomed.

One must walk barefoot in the Wood of Shadows.

The long blue robe rustles in the wind; it is loud in his ears, wailing, as it does nowhere else.

He stops next to a black barked tree and leans his ear against it. Glancing up, a mantle of dark leaves wave in the sky, bleeding blue.

He hurries up, resuming his path. His right hand trembles incessantly as it always does next to it. Fortunately, he holds the little vial in his other hand, safe.

The Palace of Dust is covered in dark, not even a torch lighting the way. They say there are no walls or ceilings there. They say there is no such thing as time in the House of the Undying.

He opens one door and enters a round room, clothed in dark, except for one, faint white light coming from a hole in the ground. A water well, translucent; soft waves curl the surface, rippled by no trace of wind.

There is only one man standing in the light, looking into the water. The others are scattered around the room.

“Is he Seeing?” asks the man with the trembling hand.

“Hush. Did you bring it?” answers another, coming into view under the faint white light.

“Here.” He hands over the vial. “I’ve never seen so much of it. Leaves are bleeding as we speak. It’s like an awakening.”

“It is awakening.” says the other, his eyes barely visible under the cloak.

“But why?”

He receives a long scornful look. “You are weak. That is why you’re reduced like that.” the other says, glancing at his hand “You cannot bear it.”

“We are awakening.” Says another voice from somewhere “We awaken in the presence of the most ancient and powerful magic.”

“Fire?” tries the trembling man.

The one with the vial turns his head, nodding. “And blood.”

He walks to the man standing before the well. He is looking into the translucent water. He doesn’t blink. Seems like he’s not even breathing. But there’s a strange curve on his blue lips, hardly visible. Almost a smile, a fond one.

“Fydor.”

Only then, the man blinks and turns his head.

“Freshly collected.” the other lifts his arm, showing the little vial. Under the well’s light, the liquid shines with a vivid blue.

The mute warlock takes it and swiftly lifts the cap. The other hurries to take a step back, while the one with the trembling hand widens his eyes with almost dread. His fingers start to shake maniacally, as he watches the man in the light drinking the Shadow.

All the others, at once, seem to emit a choked snarling sound, as thirsty men in the desert upon seeing a pool of water.

The empty vial falls to the floor, breaking in little pieces, the water in the well moves as rippled by an opposite wind, and Fydor makes a choking sound; his eyes rolls over like in a seizure, and then they stop.

The pupil is gone, all is left is the white, but it is not white, not anymore. Too much Shadow of the Evening. His lips, nails and white of his eyes are blue for good.

At times, it lasts for hours. Others, it’s barely a minute. But there’s no time in the House of the Undying.

When it ends, it could be morning outside, they do not know, and they do not care.

“Fydor?” the same one asks when the warlock’s pupils are back in their place. 

The man looks at him for a moment, and then starts moving his hands jerkily. “It is time.”

“Time for what?”

“Time to act.”

“What about your daughter?”

For a moment, Fydor looks into the well. “Kori is on her own path now. I cannot interfere. She won’t let me. But seeds must be sown.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Keeping his blue eyes on the water, transfixed, he moves his hands. “What do you do with an old forest so new trees can grow?”

“Burn it.”

The man with the trembling hand looks between the two, warily. “What does it mean?”

Fydor turns, slowly, a shadow falling on his face. “It is quite simple, acolyte. For there to be order, there must be chaos first.”

thank you so much for reading!! 💕💕

#the king of qarth #liv (in la vida loca) #aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen smut #aemond targaryen x female reader #aemond targaryen fanfic #aemond x fem!reader #aemond targaryen x you #ewan mitchell #aemond x you #aemond x reader #aemond x y/n #aemond smut #aemond fanfic #aemond targaryen fic #house of the dragon #aemond targaryen imagine #aemond fanfiction #aemond one eye #prince aemond targaryen #prince aemond

[whereserpentswalk]

All of these are at around the same power level. None of them look fully human, though some look more human than others. Sorted from eldest to youngest.

#196 #my thougts #worldbuilding #fantasy #urban fantasy #my worldbuilding #writing #my writing #vampirism #vampires #vampyr #vampire #vampcore #history #historical fiction #polls #queer #monster lover

[bogkeep]

being in aroace education mode has me all fired up...... one thing i talk about a lot when given the opportunity is Deconstructing How We Think About Relationships - in short, if we put all of our relationships with other people into a pie chart the 'romantic partner' slice is likely to be a very small slice but gets a disproportionate amount of Relationship Infrastructure compared to other categories, such as vocabulary, rituals, attention and narrative scaffolding - entire systems such as dating / finding "the one" / break-ups / the relationship escalator, etc. on the flipside, 'friend' is such a vast category consisting of a plethora of different relationship, all ranging from Friendly Acquantaince to Extremely Close Childhood Friend You Share Everything With, but we have a lot less language and structure for how we think about these relationships even though many of them can be deeply important and intense to us.

the line between romance and friendship is really blurry, maybe even non-existent, but it feels like the way we think about these categories is that Romantic Partner is this one very specific, formalised box of a category, while Friend is a vast and vague landscape where anything can happen - and it's on this free real estate we have built structures like Queerplatonic Partner. the concept has probably existed since forever, along with many other different types of relationships throughout time and cultures, but it's our current attempt at having a Word for it.

are you with me so far? i want to write a blog post about Deconstructing Intimacy.

just putting a CW here that i'm going to say the word sex a lot and touch on the topic of sexual trauma.

one of the very thorny things about This Whole Topic is that sex and sexuality is extremely political. we just do not live in a world where there's any neutral ground to stand on regarding sex. every demographic comes with a lot of assumptions and expectations and moral judgement tied to sexuality. some demographics are desexualised, some are hypersexualised, some are Both At Once, and in addition to that there's lots of stigma, moralizing, pathologizing, and lawmaking. just a whole mess.

so all of That makes it kind of impossible to fully Dethrone Sex. and by dethroning sex i mean stripping it of the baggage it's accumulated in our cultures. Sex Is A Thing You Can Do With Your Body (And Your Mind?). this does not have to make it any less or more meaningful to you than what it already is. what each person considers intimate is very individual. many people find hugging completely inconsequential and will hug anyone at any time, and for some people a hug is A Lot. For some people, sex is a very fun and casual activity, and for others it's Sacred and carries a lot of meaning and a very close bond. sex is intimate - it requires trust and vulnerability.

it is not the only way to achieve trust and closeness, nor the only thing that requires it.

whenever i take the bus somewhere, i trust the bus driver to take me there safely. i put my literal life in a stranger's hands, but it's a very casual affair i don't think about too much. it's not an act of intimacy, just someone doing their job.

i think the way we talk about sexual assault as the evillest most horribly irredeemably worse-than-death thing, and sexual trauma as a unique kind of trauma amongst traumas, is... indicative. and please do not get me wrong, SA is a horrible thing in every way. it's a violation of trust, vulnerability and personal space. it's an abuse of power. those are the things that make it so horrific - but it's not unique.

an abuse of power, a violation of trust and vulnerability, can happen in so many different forms. emotional abuse, non-sexual violence, medical abuse, et cetera - i don't think it's possible to place trauma into a hierarchy from least to most bad. trauma can be incredibly complex and it's different for everyone. if one day the bus driver on a whim decided to drive off a cliff, i think that would severely fuck up my ability to trust other people to drive me around. if i trusted someone with my innermost thoughts that i have never shared with anyone else, and they used them to be cruel to me, that would severely impede my ability to connect with others.

i just... don't think it does anyone any favours to separate sexual trauma from all other trauma - making it seem like sexual trauma is The Worst Trauma Possible You Can Never Heal From, and on the flipside, make it seem like Well Your Non-Sexual Trauma Cannot Possibly Be That Bad.

TRAUMA TOPIC ASIDE, i think the concept of intimacy has a tendency to get flattened into just the one kind. there are many, Many ways for people to be intimate, many activities that require some form of mutual vulnerability or physical contact, but it seems like we're just very used to placing Acts of Intimacy into the Sexual category. kind of like a venn diagram where the two circles are Sexual Intimacy and Non-sexual Intimacy that are largely overlapping. but what if, instead, it's more that Intimacy is a really big circle, and sex is just one of the circles within it?

the way i think this slots into the whole Relationship Infrastructure thing is that We Like To Categorize Things. if we see two people being very intimate in a way that's not explicitly sexual, it's tempting to think ah yes they are in love AND they're having sex, OBVIOUSLY, because they are clearly capable of having that level of trust and vulnerability together. but what if they're not? does that devalue their relationship? does it make them any less close? these are very chewy questions to ask even without bringing shipping discourse into it, and i would prefer Not To because sexuality is political and there is no right answer.

another way this flattening can be frustrating is all the times non-sexual intimacy is treated as Sexual By Proxy. let's say, for example, you're telling a story, and all forms of intimacy within that story get read as metaphors for sex, despite your actual intentions. there's nothing wrong with using metaphors for sex, especially since Sex Is Political and sometimes we gotta be clever about the storytelling - but it can get very messy if people read sexuality between characters who don't have that, especially characters between which it would be very problematic to portray that. we gotta be able to tell stories about all kinds of close relationships, and surely it should be possible without bringing freud into it at every turn.

intimacy is context-dependent, i would say. a moment of vulnerability can be platonic or romantic or sexual or maybe something else depending on a situation and all the factors involved. human connection is an boundless spectrum, not just a couple boxes.

did any of this make sense? they're just my Thoughts, i'm not a scholar on this i just

#too long for twitter #aro ace tag #asexuality #aromantic #and look. i too am a proponent of calling things gay (complimentary) without it being Explicitly Gay in a sexuality sense.

[absolutehomosexuals]

Astarion's ascension is extremely popular, despite it clearly being the designed bad ending for him.

So many fans of this version want to argue that it's a "valid" path to choose if you enjoy his character, or that it's equally good as his Spawn ending. The "it's what he wants" argument is the hegemonic justification in question.

But is wanting something better than needing another thing? Yes, he talks about ascension ever since he finds out about the ritual.

Yes, when push comes to shove he's still committed to ascend. But is this enough? Should we support his choice, even when everything but his words tell us not to? Should we trust the judgment of a deeply traumatized man about the best way for him to feel better?

This may sound harsh, but the answer is no.

Because in many circumstances, we see Astarion behaving unhealthily as a result of his trauma: he's hypersexual at the beginning of the game, using sex as a survival mechanism. He's yet to learn what his boundaries should be, what it means not to be an object, to see himself as a person that deserves respect and has so much more to offer than just his body. His trauma is still fresh. And he's so scared of losing his freedom, being trapped under slavery again.

We can't blame him being so desperate to feel safe that he will trade everything he is for it.

Because that's what the ritual means, Cazador says so himself: despite gaining the ritual's power, Astarion is still part of the bargain for said power. He still loses his soul in the process, and that is clear once we see how he acts post-ascension.

Of course, someone that is still suffering from the consequences of 200 years of abuse wouldn't care if he became less of himself, in the process of becoming untouchable ever again. Astarion's behaviour towards himself highlights that he doesn't care for the person he is because that person is, sadly, the product of those centuries of abuse.

He doesn't want to be that person anymore: even better, he doesn't want to be a person anymore: people suffer, people get taken advantage of, people are submitted by more powerful beings. He is willing to give this up not despite losing everything he is, but because of it. And that's what happens after his ascension: he retains his body, which becomes an empty shell of who he once was, with someone else inside of it to fill the void left by his soul.

This situation is a perfect, brutal metaphor of an abused person that later in life becomes the abuser himself, a thing that often happens to male victims of SA.

This is what is fundamentally wrong with Astarion's ascension: he's choosing power, his abuser's tool, over healing. Instead of learning to feel like a person again, to deal with his trauma to life after having endured it, he chooses to not feel anymore, while letting thousands of spawns (like he was) be consumed to get what he wants.

This terribly selfish act is the first instance of Astarion behaving like Cazador, considering the spawns as lesser beings, as nothing but his tools, like all vampire lords do. In this process he also sees himself, the person he gives up being, as a tool. He isn't healing. He's losing all of himself entirely.

Why would someone see this sacrifice as not only necessary to leave his trauma behind, but also preferable to healing from it?

The fan-favourite characteristic of Ascended Astarion is his behaviour towards Tav: in this version of "himself", he clearly is even more sexual than he was in his first days with the tadpole. And this expression of his sexuality is drastically different from the one we got to know prior to this point.

He is dominant, prevaricating, demanding in his avances: he enjoys being in a position of power even in his relationship.

This isn't the Astarion that slowly learns to trust his partner, to build a real loving relationship with someone who sees him as equal and truly cares for him.

Everything that he learns during his romance and his plot gets nullified by his ascension; and yet, this gets overlooked in favour of this more sexually appealing version of him. For people that claim to love his character because of his complexity, Ascended Astarion fans seem to only truly love him when he's less of himself than ever.

When all that's left of him is his body, and he behaves more like the toxic love interest from a young adult romance book, a great number of his fans get wild. Is this all that they want from him? The husk of the funny, sarcastic, dramatic and complex character, filled with this more traditionally masculine attitude, replacing what he used to be? An Astarion that never heals from his trauma, choosing to leave behind everything he was instead? Who resembles his abuser more than ever?

Do his fans who like his ascended version so much to genuinely think this is the best outcome for him, or do they just enjoy being able to project this "macho" fantasy on a physically attractive male character, that otherwise isn't anything like this prototype of man?

We can't help but think that appreciating Ascended Astarion is the same as believing in, if not loving, his hypersexual facade: it's overlooking his humanity in favour of sexualising him.

Which is the biggest disservice one could ever do to his character.

#bg3 astarion #bg3 #bg3 tav #bg3 companions #baldur’s gate 3 #baldurs gate tav #baldur's gate iii #baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate astarion #discourse #ascended astarion #spawn astarion #tw: sa #cazador szarr #astarion ancunin #astarion ancunín #astarion x tav #astarion romance #bg3 ending #tav oc #anti ascended astarion