The Mists Of Avalon, By Marion Zimmer Bradley, Was Recommended To Me By One Of My English Teachers, Who

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.

I know when we talk about ~men writing women~ we usually focus on the “she breasted boobily” variety but can we just acknowledge that in The Sound of Music, a mother abbess sends one of her young, naive charges to go and work for a rich, single older man and when said young naif flees back to the abbey and refuses to speak to anyone about what happened to her except to say “I can’t face him again”, the abbess’ first reaction is “are you in ~love~ with him?” when any woman’s knee-jerk reaction would be “GIRL WHAT TF DID HE DO AND SHOULD I CALL THE POLICE”

-core as a suffix serves the exact same function as -esque and yet they throw tomatoes at me when i say something is kafkacore

Here’s my book rant for you. Boneyard by Seanan McGuire.

It’s set in the Deadlands setting, so basically Wild West but with monsters and some magic.

The book is about a traveling circus and the woman who has to tend to the monster exhibits while raising her mute daughter and running from her crazy narcissistic and abusive husband.

Overall, I’d say the book is really good, but there one thing that really sticks a thorn in my side.

So the circus has a collection of various monsters. There’s these red pirhanna things with teeth so sharp they bite themselves constantly, sending them into a feeding frenzy. They’ve got crazy poisonous spiders with skull patterns on their backs, they’ve got wasps the size of your forearm, an ENORMOUS catfish, a corn stalker which is this this pumpkin headed plant person.

Then, there’s the bloodwire.

What is a bloodwire you might ask?

I can’t tell you because apparently the author can’t either.

Throughout the ENTIRE BOOK they are constantly alluding to the bloodwire as a creature they have, but never once is it described or shown in action.

At one point the book even goes “and she told the little girl about the bloodwire” but NEVER ONCE DO WE AS THE READERS GET TO KNOW WHAT IT IS.

It seemed like for the entire book, the author was building up mystery around the bloodwire, deliberately concealing it so she could reveal it at the end as the circus’ most dangerous monster, maybe it would come in handy in the book’s final confrontation.

Literally all of the other circus monsters are used, except the bloodwire. I’m half convinced the author forgot about it halfway through.

That’s my book rant

I feel like a curse has been passed onto me because now I desperately want to know wtf a bloodwire is but I know that there is no answer. It is a curiosity that cannot be satisfied

Some good feminist YouTubers for y’all!

Annamarie Forcino

Tara Mooknee

Shanspeare

Chad Chad

Noah Samsen

Ro Ramdin

Samantha Lux

Kat Blaque

Jessie Gender

Ethan Is Online

Feel free to add!

People really out here replying to my posts and immediately blocking me

adhd makes you have purple eyes no body hair and no period

Tiktok is obsessed with trying to create their own Goncharov. I've seen several attempts at it, and they all fall flat. It's one of those things where it's so pathetic it's funny.

Also, the inherent failure comes from the fact that it's always someone trying to make money off it.

Meanwhile, a bunch of people are making videos about fake discourse as though they're in the omegaverse, and that's amazing. I love that.

Teen Wolf has the best fucking soundtrack since One Tree Hill. And OTH had a banging soundtrack

i’m suffering from divine madness so let me assign you a new identity metaphor/motif based on my own experiences with gender and being alive.

this quiz includes images of meat and viscera.