The Power At My House Is Flickering Due To The Storm, So No Stream Tonight Guys. Sorry

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.

every time i listen to “you’re a mean one mr. grinch” i can’t help but sit there and think “what did the grinch do to hurt you?” because dude just stands there for 2 minutes and 58 seconds and drags the grinch into the dirt

I love it too and I want more of it. Might Blaze that post again to get some more

I got this book, "The Girl Who Drank The Moon" by Kelly Smith. It made me SO mad. It's super well written, the plot makes sense. It has poetry and the poetry is nice too. You root for the characters. But it randomly switches perspectives between the two storylines endlessly and discombobulates you so bad you lose all momentum. Now all of sudden you can't read. In the end I had to just skim the fight sequences cause my brain stopped brain-ing thanks to the sheer amount of perspective shifts suddenly colliding into one.

10/10 would recommend.

It's always disappointing when there are multiple perspectives, but only one of them is actually interesting. Especially when they're very disconnected from each other

Okay I need to talk about Dragon Age.

Specifically, I need to talk about Cailan and Loghain.

So Cailan is presented to us as, well, a glory-seeking dumbass who refuses to listen to the advice of those around him. And that's how he's seen and treated by fans. I'm going to say that's wrong, but I do think it's incomplete.

There's some crucial information that we're given at Ostagar that tends to be overlooked. Ostagar is the fourth battle against the darkspawn. So Cailan has already fought three battles against them by the time we meet him. And nothing in those battles suggested any actual intent or tactics from the darkspawn. No signs of organization. Nothing to suggest an archdemon.

So to me, it does make sense that Cailan isn't taking the idea of a Blight too seriously at this point. All he has to suggest a Blight is Duncan's word. And Grey Wardens have been shown repeatedly to be secretive almost to the point of self sabotage. No one outside of the Wardens knows how they are connected to the darkspawn and can literally hear the archdemon.

We also see that Cailan's other advisors are telling him that it isn't a Blight. There's also the fact that the Wardens were banished from Fereldan for years for revolting against the king. It's only relatively recently that they've been allowed back.

So, while yeah, Cailan's kind of a dumbass, it makes perfect sense that he isn't buying into the idea of a Blight. If you remember that he is operating without the information the audience likely has at this point, he doesn't really have a reason to think it's anything more than an unusually large hoard. And he is taking the perceived threat seriously. He has only seen evidence of a large hoard, and he is responding appropriately to the threat of a large hoard.

It was not his fault that the Wardens won't tell anyone anything.

Now, onto Loghain. First off, fuck this guy. I hate this character so much. He's so fucking boring and I couldn't stand it.

With that out of the way, he fully and intentionally betrayed Cailan at Ostagar.

I will agree that retreating was the most tactical choice and that sending in his troops would not have swung the battle. It would have just been even more slaughter.

But I don't think that's why he retreated. He retreated to ensure that Cailan would die, and that he would be the one who got to control the narrative of what happened. It also made sure that he would still have all of his troops, giving him the advantage in the civil war since the other nobles lost so many troops at Ostagar.

He was also pretty fucking stupid. I mean, the guy went and found the one noble that absolutely everyone else hated and fully allied himself with him. Dumb. Just fucking dumb. Literally everyone other than Cousland hates Howe, and Loghain chooses him to be his right hand man. Honestly, dude probably would have won over a lot more nobles if he hadn't done that.

I don't really know how to end this. But, yeah, Cailan isn't as stupid as he's treated, and Loghain sucked so hard.

Some reddit incel got big mad when I called him a misogynist for saying that Andrew Tate hasn't done anything wrong and just sees the world through a different perspective.

I'm really curious how I can be a fake feminist and a nazi feminist at the same time. And I guess not being okay with sex trafficking makes me a hypocrite??

These guys really are just a frothing sea of rage forever in search of rocks to break against

Playing Far Cry 5 on twitch RIGHT NOW

Just finished replaying Dragon Age Origins and uh I forgot to deal with the dragon at the Temple of Sacred Ashes

Didn't realize it until I saw the slide at the end about all the failed attempts to deal with it so they could actually get to the urn

Um.....oops?

Bakugou vs Artemis Fowl.

I actually really want to see that now

Your current fictional fav gatekeeping you from your first fav <3

Guess who's fucking sick again.

It's me. My immune system fucking hates me.

I am so bored with the trope of the poor character constantly trying to emulate a rich character, negatively comparing themselves to the rich character, wishing they could be more like them.

Like, where's my poor girl who doesn't care how her secondhand cardigan measures up against the rich girl's Balenciaga sweater? Where's my poor girl who doesn't gush on and on about how graceful the rich girl is while disparaging herself for how she occupies the same space?

Why does the poor girl always have to hate herself and be embarrassed about her background? Why does she have to idolize her wealthy counterpart?

Why can't authors imagine someone coming from poverty who doesn't feel the need to put on the mask of class privilege? Who doesn't wish they could perfectly imitate and perform an extremely limited view of sophistication? Who doesn't automatically see those with more privilege as being automatically better than themselves?

I'm just so freaking bored with this stock Poor Kid Character. I know there are people born in poverty who desperately wish to be accepted by a higher socioeconomic class, but there are plenty of us poor people who don't care about their acceptance of us. And I wish more authors knew that.