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jokocraft · 3 years

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Aroace Legolas & Aro Gimli Headcanons

I read this post and was so moved I made some self-indulgent headcanons for these two besties.

- Legolas is, of course, aromantic and asexual. He has zero capacity for noticing if anyone has a crush on him and in fact did not know what a crush even was until he was like four centuries old or so. He knew what marriage was, sure, but he didn’t understand that special feelings were not also a social construct, but something that came naturally. Somehow. By nature. It never happens for him, and it doesn’t really bother him until adulthood, when people like he cares about start having relationships. Like Gimli.

- Gimli is perpetually annoyed that Legolas considers his casual sexual exploits “relationships.”

- Sure, sometimes Gimli spends evenings having sex with people, and sure, it’s often more than a one night thing, but they aren’t relationships, and none of it is tender. He finds tender sex a turnoff - an even setting aside the fact that it’s a turnoff, he doesn’t understand how he could possibly feel tenderness with a near stranger anyway. (Does he want his sexual partners to be more than near-strangers? Hell no.) He is mostly romance repulsed. Sex is easy and satisfying. Genuine intimacy is trickier. He has always seen it in a certain light that makes things like kissing and hand holding seem rather silly.

- Legolas is not romance repulsed and secretly moons over tragic, romantic stories. In theory, he likes the idea of being swept off his feet. But when anyone actually tries, either with suave gestures or bedroom eyes or even pickup lines, he only feels empty and awkward.

- (Except he has been swept off his feet before, and it happens every time Gimli performs some impressive feat, either to help a stranger or Legolas or himself.)

- In his years of friendship with Gimli, Legolas has become deeply attached to the friendship they have. Gimli is not only his best friend, but the best of the best. No other friend has ever been kinder to him, more contentious of his needs and feelings, more interested in who Legolas is, more interested in putting in the effort of friendship. Of course Legolas is attached.

- So sometimes he’s insecure about the sexual relationships Gimli has. Legolas knows there aren’t meant to be emotions tied up in them, but what if something strikes a cord? What if Gimli finally decides to settle down and keep a particularly good sexual partner around forever? Legolas knows he doesn’t want to live his life as a third wheel.

- His worries, as often as they come up, fade just as often, because Gimli never fails to return home to him as if all was right in the world, being at Legolas’s side. What Legolas doesn’t understand is that Gimli feels he already has settled down.

- Legolas is oblivious. He may not notice it, but Gimli’s friends and and friends with benefits do: Gimli has a massive soft spot for one Legolas Greenleaf. Having come to trust him implicitly as a long time friend and companion, he adores Legolas’s quirks and mannerisms and passions and singing. He wants to see Legolas succeed in whatever he does, and he likes to be there to help when Legolas inevitably needs help. He likes being the person Legolas turns to; in fact, being the person Legolas turns to grounds him.

- Gimli feels emotions no less deeply as anyone else, so he sometimes is afflicted with strong feelings of devotion. He enjoys doing practical tasks for Legolas most of all, or spending time with him, but sometimes his desires are more odd - such as wanting to tease Legolas saying that he may enjoy sex most with women twice his size, but it pleases him even more that the stunningly beautiful, blonde man so many covet is his. His. (Gimli keeps his mouth shut when these desires strike him.)

- Legolas doesn’t ever keep his mouth shut. He spews all kinds of accidentally intimate phrases, blurring the lines of sincerity even to himself. Oh, I love you or I would kiss you or Why spend another night in wild pleasure when you could be cold and watch the stars with me? He trusts Gimli does not take him seriously, but more and more often Legolas frets over his own words. Why couldn’t he kiss Gimli? If only he wanted to, he might completely win over Gimli’s heart and never worry about losing him again. But he doesn’t want to, just like he has never wanted to kiss anyone.

- He doesn’t know that Gimli has never wanted to be kissed. He doesn’t know that Gimli takes comfort in how, while many sexual partners have to be reminded he doesn’t like it, Legolas is in his same boat of feeling queasy at the very thought. He doesn’t know that what makes Gimli feel special and wanted isn’t some attractive person’s effortless, bountiful physical affection, but Legolas’s rare instances of tentative, trusting touch. Resting his tired head on Gimli’s shoulder. Holding his shoulders when he’s excited.

- Years in the future, they grow so emotionally close and so settled in their ways that bringing up these topics no longer makes them wary. In the future, Gimli makes it clear that he has no interest in spending his life with anyone else, and Legolas feels comfortable telling Gimli that he truly does love him, very much.

tl;dr: gimli takes bros before hoes to a new level as aro-spec and legolas is so aroace that even tho he could have the perfect cinematic romance with some hottie, all he really wants is gimli to be his bestest friend forever Really, Really Badly

#legolas #gimli #lotr #gigolas #aromantic #aroace #i repeat: gimli takes bros before hoes to a NEW LEVEL

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aroworlds · 6 years

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First off, I loved your ask post about erasure, Scrooge, and representation. Anon, if you’re reading this, you’re a legend. Second, I haven’t read A Christmas Carol in a while, and I was curious how Scrooge is coded. In what ways do you see him as aro-ace? Thanks bunches!

First, I’m going to @ mention @thatmrgold, because I think they’re also a fan of Scrooge, additional to the original asking anon (or at least I’ve seen a reblog on one of my posts that suggests this–many apologies if I’m mistaken). I have read A Christmas Carol several times, but it’s many years ago now–my most recent engagement with the story is The Muppet Christmas Carol adaptation, seen last year! For this reason, I encourage anyone more familiar with the source material to expand upon my answer. I don’t have the detailed familiarity with the canon to answer save in broader strokes.

The main points where I think thatEbenezer Scrooge can be coded or seen as coded involve a previous failed romance (it’s depicted that he comes to love money more than hisfiancée, for which she leaves him), his long-running single-man-in-the-world status (he lives on his own, no partner, which is meant to indicate his hatefulness) and his isolation/disconnection from the world around him (demonstrated in a lack of compassion for his tenants, a refusal to allow his workers their Christmas, etc).

I’m going to explain why these points are effective coding, because written in a paragraph like that, they don’t seem like much. Thing is, they don’t have to be!

I’ll stress that much of this ties into long-running antagonistic aro-ace (and often autistic*) coding shared with other characters. A lot of a-spec coding is less about certain qualities suggesting a character’s being a-spec and more about those qualities being part of a broader literary canon of similarly-viewed characters. In other words, characters where people read those qualities together as having associations with a-spec identities, not because those character qualities are always inherently associated with being aro-ace or a-spec. In this sense, Scrooge is a-spec coded because Sherlock Holmes is a-spec coded and Clariel is specifically aro-ace and early The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper is aro-ace coded, and all these characters have commonalities in how they see the world, how they connect to the world and, most particularly, how the rest of the world views them. Viewed in isolation, Scrooge isn’t necessarily aro-ace-coded. Viewed in a social and historical context of other characters interpreted as aro-ace, on the other hand, he is.

I’m going to use The Big Bang Theory to explain my point, because I think Sheldon Cooper is the most recognizable character, and despite not liking the source material, I’m quite familiar with it. The Big Bang Theory doesn’t properly describe early-seasons Sheldon as aro-ace; it compares him to aliens, to plants and the scientific understanding of asexual reproduction. I think it does once or twice use “asexual” but it’s never in the current understanding of “lacking sexual attraction” and more like “a being without sex”. He’s constantly dehumanised for the aro-ace qualities the show won’t name. He talks, though, in ways that clearly demonstrate a lack of sexual and romantic attraction, and because of amatonormativity, they later give him a slow-growing romantic relationship as part of character “progression”. (Which is handled so disrespectfully and antagonistically, but that’s another post.) When people first hear the words aro-ace, they’ll commonly think of early-seasons Sheldon, because that’s the undercurrent of his character compared to characters like Scrooge or Sherlock. Even people who’ve never heard words like asexual or aromantic have an idea of what they think it is on first listen, because they’ve been exposed to so much unlabelled coding: in a world lacking intentional and meaningful representation to properly educate audiences on lived experiences, coding instead forms the basis of understanding.

(And it’s unexplored amatonormativity and aro/ace antagonism, of course, for why negative character traits are so often a-spec coding.)

This is why we end up with a character being aro-ace coded for things like not having a relationship and not connecting with people. These things do not inherently mean anything about the aro-ace experience, but they’re part of a social context where qualities indicate identities. Only the people who have a true need to understand–either as allies working with us or because they’re a-spec–go to a-spec communities to learn the diversity of experiences associated with our words, to look beyond the clumsy outline of coding.

(In fact, they have no concept of coding as distinct from representation.)

Additionally, especially because we a-specs are raised in a world where we are not seen or understood, we ourselves often come to relate to those qualities, however negative the coding and context, too. Not having a relationship says nothing about one’s lack of attraction, but many a-specs struggle to have a successful relationship, are pressured into ones we don’t want or are non-amorous. In a world where so few characters are depicted as long-term single in late adulthood, we’ll take that character for our own. Not connecting with society–well, I suspect the majority of aro-specs respect the need for Christians to celebrate their cultural and religious holidays, but when being a-spec is always a wall between us and the rest of the world, we feel and relate to that distance, that disconnect. When Christmas means people pestering us about our relationship status or lack of attraction, don’t we feel a bit like saying “Bah, humbug”? A romance failed by not loving someone else enough–not loving enough has been or will be levelled at many aro-specs, and I know that I’ve felt that because of my lack of romantic attraction, I must have loved something else over the “proper” romantic love for another person. It fits close enough to the amatonormativity we experience.

(There’s a reason why LGBTQIA+ and queer people so commonly relate to antagonistic characters, as their experiences of disconnection and alienation are as close as many of us get to our lived experiences. Only recently has there been, for some identities, anything close to representation, including representation that positively explores our alienation, enough that we might first see ourselves in anything other than antagonist characters.)

Lack of mainstream/broadly recognised representation, too, drives us to forge more intense connections with flimsier points of similarity than would be reasonable for a white, abled heterosexual cis woman connecting with white, abled, female cishet characters. She can be choosy about personality and character type in the characters she deems to be like her; we have the unconscious-but-constant knowledge that there’s few others like us and connect, in relief, just to have someone vaguely like us in the story, even if they’re clearly an antagonist.

On their own, these things are flimsy pieces of connection, but in a social context of coding and lack of representation, they become so much larger.

Does this make sense? A lot of what I see as aro-ace in Scrooge is less about descriptions of lack of attraction as it is broader brush-stroke images that correspond to lived experience or negative coding. Folks more familiar with the source material may be able to offer you more detailed examples, but for me it’s about the type of character Scrooge is in the social context of similar characters seen a particular way by a-specs and allosexual-and-alloromantic folks alike.

* Explanation of why I mention autistic coding under the cut for those who’d rather ignore the tangential murmuring:

A lot of aro-ace coding is also autistic coding because allo allistic writers cannot conceive of autistics being anything but aro-ace and aro-aces being anything but autistic. Both identities are seen as lacking empathy and connection to others, and both are subject to the dehumanising assumptions behind this kind of antagonistic coding, where aro-ace coding is used to show an autistic character as inhuman and autism coding is used to show an aro-ace character as inhuman.

Please note that the tendency for combining the coding does not mean that autistic aro-aces have full representation, as I see too many people argue: most of these characters are antagonists who don’t offer full, celebratory, supportive, intentional and beneficial depictions of aro-ace and autistic experiences. Aro-ace autistics are not positively depicted in the broader literary canon; surface aspects of their experiences are used to tell the audience a character is antagonistic. Given that I’m starting to see a few romance novels with autistic characters, by autistics and allistics alike, the idea that autistic aro-aces (and I don’t know of any autistic allo-aro character outside my own work!) are somehow more represented in fiction is raging amatonormativity. Again, coding is not representation and it’s disingenuous to conflate them.

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childrenofthedas-a · 4 years

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THE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME.

First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all had witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat. Long post!

MUN NAME: JINN AGE: 21 CONTACT: IM, Discord

CHARACTER(S): Mahariel, Tabris (HoF), Lavellan, Trevelyan (Inquisitors), 4 OCs.

CURRENT FANDOM(S): Dragon Age

FANDOM(S) YOU HAVE AN AU FOR: I don’t have any yet for the moment!

MY LANGUAGE(S): Italian (native), English (proficiency), French (Intermediate)

THEMES I’M INTERESTED IN FOR RP: FANTASY / SCIENCE FICTION / HORROR / WESTERN / ROMANCE / THRILLER / MYSTERY / DYSTOPIA / ADVENTURE / MODERN / EROTIC / CRIME / MYTHOLOGY / CLASSIC / HISTORY / RENAISSANCE / MEDIEVAL / ANCIENT / WAR / FAMILY / POLITICS / RELIGION / SCHOOL / ADULTHOOD / CHILDHOOD / APOCALYPTIC / GODS / SPORT / MUSIC / SCIENCE / FIGHTS / ANGST / SMUT / DRAMA / ETC.

PREFERRED THREAD LENGTH: 2 PARA / NOVELLA

ASKS CAN BE SEND BY: MUTUALS / ANONS

CAN ASKS BE CONTINUED?: YES / NO / OCCASIONALLY - only by Mutuals?: YES / NO

PREFERRED THREAD TYPE: CRACK / CASUAL / SERIOUS / DEEP AS HECK. / ALL

IS REALISM / RESEARCH IMPORTANT FOR YOU IN CERTAIN THEMES?: YES / NO / DEPENDS

ARE YOU ATM OPEN FOR NEW PLOTS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. (college)

DO YOU HANDLE YOUR DRAFT / ASK - COUNT WELL?: YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. (irl makes coping difficult sometimes)

HOW LONG DO YOU USUALLY TAKE TO REPLY?: 24H / 1 WEEK / 2 WEEKS / 3+ WEEKS / MONTHS / YEARS.

I’M OKAY INTERACTING WITH: ORIGINAL CHARACTERS / A RELATIVE OF MY CHARACTER (AN OC) / DUPLICATES / CROSSOVERS / MULTI-MUSES / SELF-INSERTS / PEOPLE WITH NO AU VERSE FOR MY FANDOM / CANON-DIVERGENT PORTRAYALS / AU-VERSIONS(ish)

DO YOU POST MORE IC OR OOC?: IC / OOC / BOTH IN A BALANCE

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WITH FOLLOWING OTHERS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

BEST WAYS TO APPROACH YOU FOR RP/PLOTTING: Honestly? Come up to me and talk! I swear I’m friendly and don’t bite. I’m not particularly shy so I am the one writing first at times.

WHAT EXPECTATIONS DO YOU HOLD TOWARDS YOUR PLOTTING PARTNER: Just honesty and mutual respect. I like to throw ideas and memes at plotting partners, and I will acknowledge if someone isn’t into a particular idea. I like having the same :)

WHEN YOU NOTICE THE PLOTTING IS RATHER ONE-SIDED, WHAT DO YOU DO?: Usually I write to the partner for new ideas, maybe to spice up the thread a bit.

HOW DO YOU USUALLY PLOT WITH OTHERS, DO YOU GIVE INPUT OR LEAVE MOST WORK TOWARDS YOUR PARTNER?: I often throw as many ideas into the story as I can, I don’t mind if some of the ideas that land are mostly mine but I like the concept of two people throwing ideas around, given that there’s the same interest in the plot!

WHEN A PARTNER DROPS THE THREAD, DO YOU WISH TO KNOW?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. - AND WHY?: I don’t mind if people drop one liners. They’re supposed to be casual and entertaining to a point. Ih the thread in question is a plotted one, I don’t mind if the other wishes to drop it — just let me know!

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY LEAD YOU TO DROP A THREAD?: I usually never drop threads intentionally, it’s mostly due to... the drafts nightmare that this website has. However, I may drop casual threads. Rarely plotted ones, and in that case it might be because of lack of time.

WILL YOU TELL YOUR PARTNER?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

IS COMMUNICATION IN THE RPC IMPORTANT TO YOU? YES / NO. - AND WHY?: It’s nice to get to know the person you’re plotting with. Sometimes I forget to reply to messages, but I enjoy talking with other people on Discord, even if it can be brief. Communication at any level keeps a point of understanding for the plot as well.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH ABSOLUTE HONESTY, EVEN IF IT MAY MEANS HEARING SOMETHING NEGATIVE ABOUT YOU AND/OR PORTRAYAL?: Naturally, as long as it’s constructive. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to accept every critique I will eventually get, since writing is what I do for my job. Given that this site is a guilty pleasure and only that, I use trophies / cliches / repetition in some characters / backgrounds, because it’s fun. So there’s not a high level of seriousness on my part here, honestly.

DO YOU THINK YOU CAN HANDLE SUCH SITUATION IN A MATURE WAY? YES / NO.

WHY DO YOU RP AGAIN, IS THERE A GOAL?: I love stories, I love writing. It’s something to keep me in training with english and writing in general. Keeps my mind active.

WISHLIST, BE IT PLOTS OR SCENARIOS: I will eventually make a wishlist post for each and everyone of my characters. Though the ones that would be more interesting, for the moment, would be an arc for Milot in which he grows a bit from the idiot bigot child he is while getting some recognition for his abilities an arc for Feirun who has trust issues and would simply like to feel like she belongs somewhere, thus indulging in friendships — and an arc for Dianor regarding the Calling, to see where it could lead, whether to the finding of a cure or to his death.

THEMES I WON’T EVER RP / EXPLORE: There aren’t specific themes I will never explore, but some themes, however, like suicide, I’d be willing to explore if done with taste and regard to others and with a person who would be willing to explore it with me. I’m about realism, and given that some themes are a bit heavy for me as well I always do it in a manner that does not diminish neither the theme nor the person involved with it.

WHAT TYPE OF STARTERS DO YOU PREFER / DISLIKE, CAN’T WORK WITH?: I can usually work with anything, but one liners that feel empty in attempt are usually really frustrating.

WHAT TYPE OF CHARACTERS CATCH YOUR INTEREST THE MOST?: Going for the cliches: innocent young ones, honor-bound ones and villains. I don’t have much of a preference but these tend to be more fun for me.

WHAT TYPE OF CHARACTERS CATCH YOUR INTEREST THE LEAST?: Self-inserts that claim to be self-inserts and that end up being straight up mary sues. I like self-inserts when portrayed naturally and truthfully, even if it’s the type of character that doesn’t catch my eye at first.

WHAT ARE YOUR STRONG ASPECTS AS RP PARTNER?: I’m very laid back and I’m patient. Given that I actually spent a lot of my time on this site and know the kinds of people wandering these halls, I know who to avoid in case of senseless drama and how to handle it if directed at me or at my rp partners. I would also like to add feel lucky to have met people who are the same on this site.

WHAT ARE YOUR WEAK ASPECTS AS RP PARTNER?: It can often be consistency. I can be really pumped up for a plot, then be extremely slow in replying to threads. Right now it’s mostly due to the fact that all of these muses are new and I have to think about what they’d say and do. An initial idea shared with a rp partner, too, might fall apart the moment I realise that it couldn’t work with my muse for the same reason.

DO YOU RP SMUT?: YES / NO / DEPENDS on the character I’m writing. It has to make sense for the muse; if my current muses are, for example, Dianor, Vincent or Lottie, they have a higher chance of being open to smut. Others need an emotional connection or very specific requirements. I’m not against it entirely, though I’m terrible at writing it.

DO YOU PREFER TO GO INTO DETAIL?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH BLACK CURTAIN, FADE TO BLACK?: YES / NO.

WHEN DO YOU RP SMUT? MORE OUT OF FUN OR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT?: Again, depends on the muse.

ANYTHING YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO RP THERE?: As said above, I’m open for most “unpopular” themes, if treated with regard and taste. Big nopes are themes like animal abuse or child abuse.

ARE SHIPS IMPORTANT TO YOU?: YES / NO. Ships can be of any kind — platonic, romantic, familiar and so on. Human connection is important in stories, and to find some is always a good thing for me.

WOULD YOU SAY YOUR BLOG IS SHIP-FOCUSED?: YES / NO. I do have some ships going on but I’d still run my blog if there weren’t many. I like exploring different kinds of relationships, not just the positive ones.

DO YOU USE READ MORE?: YES / NO / SOMETIMES WHEN I WRITE LONG STUFF.

ARE YOU: MULTI-SHIP / SINGLE-SHIP / DUAL-SHIP — MULTIVERSE / SINGLEVERSE.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE TO EXPLORE THE MOST IN YOUR SHIPS?: I enjoy it when particular romantic ships lead to internal conflicts within my muses. For example, Feirun has 0 interpersonal skills and has never been with anyone before, therefore seeing her accepting the fact that she has feelings for someone, and growing a sense of worth that leads her to go for it, is fantastic. For Octavia, too, despite her lack of interest in sex, she can still be romantically interested in people, which happens rarely due to her difficult character; when it does happen, she tends to become a bit softer, and that’s my jam.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- WHAT COULD POSSIBLY MAKE YOUR MUSE INTERESTING TOWARDS OTHERS, WHY SHOULD THEY RP WITH THIS PARTICULAR CHARACTER OF YOURS NOW, WHAT POSSIBLE PLOTS DO THEY OFFER?: Dianor is the worst warden on the website, probably, reckless and a troublemaker; he can lead to plots with adventures, theft and unexpected camaraderie. Tristan is an Inquisitor who only wishes to be strong enough to protect everyone, he can be all about love and support to other muses or create interesting conflicts. Feirun is a feral squirrel, honestly, but due to her background she can lead to interesting plots tied with Tevinter or the Qun. Milot is a young soldier who wishes to prove himself, he is often in need of guidance but he himself can teach a thing or two about being comfortable with one’s self. Vincent is a particular kind of abomination, thus it could be interesting to have him interact with other mages / templars / really, anyone who has a problem with demons. Lottie is an orlesian spy and a functional psychopath, it can lead to many interesting plots with a large variety of characters. Octavia could be one of the most interesting ones given her background, since the actions of whoever surrounds her in the Inquisition could lead her to find actual morals and discover emotional intelligence rather than having her stay the same person she was before.

WITH WHAT TYPE OF MUSES DO YOU USUALLY STRUGGLE TO RP WITH?: Characters who see everything in black and white.

WHAT DO THEY DESIRE, WHAT IS THEIR GOAL?: Dianor just wants to find a cure for the calling and live freely. Tristan thinks he wants to save everyone, but he really needs people who help him overcome his own issues. Feirun wants somewhere to belong, people to be close with, having been alone for most of her life. Milot wants to become a knight and be treated like the other soldiers, without the special treatment he often gets due to his age. Lottie just wants money, I think. Vincent wants to either find a way to get the demon out of his body or die. Octavia would like to take revenge on her father and go back to Tevinter, but she might need some emotional guidance at first.

WHAT CATCHES THEIR INTEREST FIRST WHEN MEETING SOMEONE NEW?: Dianor gets along with other rogues. Tristan is like a dog, happy to see anyone. Feirun has a particular interest for the Qunari. Milot greatly regards knights and people in power who show honor and integrity. Octavia likes people who do their job and are unapologetic about it. Lottie enjoys meeting any kind of character that she could get something out of. Vincent is often very happy to see other mages and men, honestly.

WHAT THEMES DO THEY LIKE TALKING ABOUT?: Dianor likes to tell stories of any kind. Tristan enjoys talking about plans for the Inquisition. Feirun likes to talk about lore, archeological finds, books and magic. Milot... likes to talk about battles, I guess. Lottie enjoys discussing Orlais fashion. Octavia loves discussing magic, blood magic specifically. Vincent likes to discuss art.

DID THEY EVER WENT THROUGH SOMETHING TRAUMATIC?: Dianor lost his best friend Tamlen and had to save Thedas, now the Calling is killing him from the inside. Tristan couldn’t save a clan of dalish elves being attacked by a Teyrn. Feirun was abandoned by the dalish when she was 8 and was beaten and hunted by Templars for a while. Octavia discovered she was an half-elf and fruit of scandal and went on the run for it. Vincent was friends with a spirit who turned into a demon while saving his life from templars. Milot saw his farm, his home being destroyed by battles between mages, templars and demons. Lottie... once wore bad shoes?

WHAT COULD LEAD TO AN INSTANT KILL?: Darkspawn for everyone. Mages for Milot. Templars for Feirun and Vincent.

IS THERE SOMEONE /-THING THEY HATE?: Darkspawn. Mages in general for Milot, he’s really afraid of them and would not hesitate to bring them down in battle. Feirun and Vincent detest the Templars due to the abuse they’ve faced because of them.

ARE YOUR MUSES EASY TO APPROACH?: Dianor, Tristan and Vincent are the easiest ones to approach. The others can be... difficult to handle at first.

SOMETHING YOU MAY STILL WANT TO POINT OUT ABOUT YOUR MUSES?: I apologise for some of them being sluts or bigots. I love them all the same.

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

tagged by: indecently stolen! tagging: anyone who actually read this i guess!

#┊♞┊jinn. ( ooc )

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nancygduarteus · 7 years

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Love in the Time of Individualism

C.S. Lewis’s wife, Joy Davidman, died of bone cancer on July 13, 1960. The next day, the famous author wrote a letter to Peter Bide, the reverend who had married them, to tell him the news.

“I’d like to meet,” Lewis writes, suggesting the two grab lunch sometime soon. “For I am—oh God that I were not—very free now. One doesn’t realize in early life that the price of freedom is loneliness. To be happy is to be tied.”

When it comes to romance, Americans are freer than they’ve ever been. Freer to marry, freer to divorce, freer to have sex when and with whom they like with fewer consequences, freer to cohabitate without getting married, freer to remain single, freer to pursue open relationships or polyamory.

But what if the price of freedom is loneliness? Would you pay it?

Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, thinks a lot about the price of human relationships. His new book, Cheap Sex, is all about how the modern dating scene has been shaped by sexual economics, a theory which sees human mating as a marketplace. His idea, as you might suspect from the title, is that sex is not as costly to access as it once was—in terms of time, effort, and risk. Contraception makes sex less risky; online dating platforms make it more accessible. If that doesn’t work out, there’s always porn, which requires next to no effort to find. These factors, Regnerus argues, “have created a massive slowdown in the development of committed relationships, especially marriage.”

Marriage rates have indeed plummeted among young adults, to the point that a demographer cited by Regnerus estimates that one-third of people currently in their early 20s will never get married. But another new book about modern relationships, Eli Finkel’s The All-or-Nothing Marriage, contends that while “the institution of marriage in America is struggling ... the best marriages today are better than the best marriages of earlier eras; indeed, they are the best marriages that the world has ever known.”

Because marriage for many is no longer a gateway to adulthood, but rather an optional “capstone,” it’s held to a higher standard. Regnerus asserts that modern mating dynamics make it hard for people to find a relationship that seems worth committing to; Finkel argues that when marriages manage to live up to today’s lofty expectations, they can be extremely fulfilling. One may be more optimistic than the other, but both show how increasing romantic freedom has changed romance itself.

* * *

Regnerus’s description of sexual economics relies on a stark division of gender roles: Men provide the demand and women are the supply. There is a long history of what he calls the “exchange relationship,” in which women control men’s access to sex. In order to get it, men bring to the table resources, commitment, and fidelity.

In previous eras, this exchange was effective at producing marriages (though it also went hand-in-hand with strict sexual mores and women’s subjugation). But now that sex before marriage and sex outside of relationships is common, safe, and less stigmatized, men don’t have to work as hard for it, according to Regnerus. So they ghost and flake and dither about committing to one person. Many women don’t need what resources men have to offer, anyway; they have their own. But men have more power in the mating market in this model, which leads to women also embracing, or at least going along with, cheap sex and some of the rude behavior that comes with it.

Regnerus doesn’t talk much about LGBT relationships, except to say that these market dynamics might make women more likely to “experiment with same-sex relationships,” to circumvent the problem of noncommittal men. He also writes that because there is no gatekeeper in gay men’s relationships, they are less likely to be sexually monogamous.

When it comes to heterosexual relationships, Regnerus sums up his theory like this: “It’s not that love is dead, but the sexual incentives for men to sacrifice and commit have largely dissolved, spelling a more confusing and circuitous path to commitment and marriage than earlier eras.”

This all smacks strongly of gender essentialism. Regnerus’s underlying premise is sound: Many studies have found that, on average, men want sex more than women, and women value having sex in the context of commitment more than men do (though of course individuals differ). Still, throughout the book, Regnerus takes this theory pretty far. He sounds a bit like your proverbial grandma cautioning that a man will never buy the cow if he’s getting the milk for free.

Regnerus writes about one woman who would sometimes have casual sex with men she didn’t like that much and who felt frustrated because she wasn’t finding men she did like: “She wishes to be a free rider—in this case, to find a good man—without contributing to the kinds of normative relationship behavior that make men better. It won’t work. It can’t work.”

He goes on: “In the domain of sex and relationships men will act as nobly as women collectively demand. This is an aggravating statement for women to read, no doubt. They do not want to be responsible for ‘raising’ men. But it is realistic.”

Even under a theory that believes women, through sexual gatekeeping, control how relationships unfold, it’s quite something to imply that men do not have responsibility for contributing to norms around how romantic partners should treat each other.

Regnerus also argues that the easy availability of sex makes men less motivated in their professional lives, because they don’t need to become successful, i.e., marriageable, to woo women to their beds. While this may sound dubious, there is an established precedent for this theory in the field. Regnerus quotes the famous psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs, who write that “giving young men easy access to abundant sexual satisfaction deprives society of one of its ways to motivate them to contribute valuable achievements to the culture.” Still, it seems extreme to suggest that men need to be dragged by the dick into being productive citizens.

Overall, sexual economics discounts the other things men and women have to offer each other—besides sex and “resources” and commitment. Am I naïve to think that companionship and attention should have some place in this equation? If the modern mating market has made people more isolated, and if smartphones and other technology are increasingly mediating human relationships and driving us to distraction, shouldn’t the value of a present and proximate companion increase?

Still, there is a lot in Regnerus’s analysis that is uncomfortably astute. He’s right that it can be hard to escape these old gender dynamics when dating, especially online dating. Popular dating apps put women in the position of gatekeeping, whether deliberately or not. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a smartphone will swipe right on basically everyone. This forces women to be choosier about who they say yes to. Even if they also swipe with abandon, they end up with more matches to sort through—yet more gatekeeping. On Hinge and OkCupid, which don’t require a mutual opt-in before people can send messages, women’s inboxes are deluged with men whom they must then sort through. Bumble just went all-in and made gatekeeping a selling point: Women have to message men first, putting them in control of who has access to their attention.

While Regnerus believes that the “cheap sex” mating market gives men the upper hand in relationships, he notes that after spending a long time in the market, men and women alike grow frustrated and exhausted. This is something I’ve found in my own reporting as well—that prolonged use of dating apps often leads to burnout and ambivalence. “Online dating,” Regnerus writes, “forces participants to play by its rules.” And many find that being able to hyperefficiently move through romantic options doesn’t actually make it easier to find a relationship.

This is only further complicated by the fact that what Americans want from their relationships is radically different than it’s been for most of history.

* * *

In The All-or-Nothing Marriage, Finkel, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, traces the history of the institution over what he sees as three thematic eras. For a very long time, people married for pragmatic reasons. Most of the clothing, food, and other goods a family used were produced by the household itself, so an eternal bachelorhood would be a serious liability. People needed the labor of a partner—and often multiple children—to survive.

Things eventually became less dire, and people started marrying for love. Finkel dates that transition to around 1850, but notes that it was a shift that took place over centuries. In contrast, the transition from love-based marriages to the current era of what Finkel calls “self-expressive” marriages only took about 15 years, thanks to the counterculture shake-ups of the 1960s and 70s. During those years, the second-wave feminist movement pushed back against breadwinner/homemaker marriages and helped women earn more individual freedom. Meanwhile, concepts like “self-esteem” and New-Agey “self-discovery” found footholds in the culture.

What Americans want from their marriages nowadays, Finkel argues, is love, yes, but also someone who will give their lives meaning, and make them into the best versions of themselves. “Marriage has a self-expressive emphasis that places a premium on spouses helping each other meet their authenticity and personal-growth needs,” he writes. “The pursuit of self-expression through marriage simultaneously makes achieving marital success harder and the value of doing so greater.”

Taken together, the changes described in Finkel’s and Regnerus’s books illustrate how intensely modern American relationships have been shaped by that most star-spangled of values: individualism.

“The marriages Americans are fashioning today seldom emphasize the idea of marriage as a functional form, enabling two people to accomplish things they otherwise could not alone,” Regnerus writes, very much seeming to mop what Finkel is spilling. “Now we can accomplish a great deal—certainly enough—on our own. Hence, marriage in America has shifted away from being a populist institution—a social phenomenon in which most adults participated and benefited—to becoming an elite, individualist, voluntary, consumption-oriented arrangement.”

Even outside of marriage, in any romantic entanglement, Westerners value what British sociologist Anthony Giddens calls the “pure relationship.” The pure relationship is one which people are a part of only because they want to be, because it satisfies both individuals. It’s different than romantic love, which assumes you’ll find The One and stay with them forever, for better and for worse. In a pure relationship, if someone is no longer satisfied, it’s assumed they’ll leave.

“While the dyad—the couple—is the basic structure to the union, it is never to usurp the individual’s primacy and will,” Regnerus writes.

According to Baumeister and another psychologist, Michael MacKenzie, the self is now seen as a “value base”—that is, a good so self-evident that it doesn’t even need to be questioned. Just as a devout Christian would not question the importance of God’s will, a modern Westerner would likely not question the importance of being “true to yourself.”

But Americans are unique, Finkel writes, in that they not only believe in being true to themselves, but they also still strongly value commitment. So the United States has higher rates of both marriage and divorce than many other countries. The sociologist Andrew Cherlin calls this “the marriage-go-round.”

* * *

Modern Americans are freer than ever to spend their time finding the right person, the one who will improve their lives. And they’re freer than ever to leave. Not just in the sense of “you can get divorced now,” but cultural norms have created an environment where it’s easy to feel like if something doesn’t work out right away, you should pull out your phone and look for other options. Where high expectations are often disappointed. Where, after enough letdowns, people may lose faith in finding the kind of fulfillment they seek outside of themselves. Where they wander through the mating market, halfheartedly picking up the bruised wares, then putting them back in the bin when they’re not shiny enough.

Regnerus recounts a post he saw online where a man in a long-distance relationship discovered his girlfriend had posed for some racy pictures and was asking for advice on how to talk to her about it. One of the responses the man received was “She doesn’t belong to you.” True enough—she’s her own person who can make her own choices. The phrasing, however, prompted Regnerus to “reflect on the place of belongingness in the ‘pure relationship’ era. Do people belong to other people?”

As people’s search for romance becomes increasingly divorced from their communities, many relationships start with two individuals, who know next to nothing of each other’s context, trying to figure out if they’d fit into each other’s lives. In the best of circumstances, according to Finkel, they each elevate the other, and live meaningfully—if not always happily—ever after. In less ideal circumstances, individualism leads to loneliness.

“Interdependence has faded, leaving only independence,” Regnerus writes. “It is freer but also far more vulnerable than many wish to acknowledge.”

C.S. Lewis would likely agree.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/09/love-in-the-time-of-individualism/540474/?utm_source=feed

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ionecoffman · 7 years

Text

Love in the Time of Individualism

C.S. Lewis’s wife, Joy Davidman, died of bone cancer on July 13, 1960. The next day, the famous author wrote a letter to Peter Bide, the reverend who had married them, to tell him the news.

But what if the price of freedom is loneliness? Would you pay it?

* * *

This is only further complicated by the fact that what Americans want from their relationships is radically different than it’s been for most of history.

* * *

Taken together, the changes described in Finkel’s and Regnerus’s books illustrate how intensely modern American relationships have been shaped by that most star-spangled of values: individualism.

“While the dyad—the couple—is the basic structure to the union, it is never to usurp the individual’s primacy and will,” Regnerus writes.

* * *

“Interdependence has faded, leaving only independence,” Regnerus writes. “It is freer but also far more vulnerable than many wish to acknowledge.”

C.S. Lewis would likely agree.

Article source here:The Atlantic

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