I saw a comment of yours about Ascended Astarion and I just wanted to say him sacrificing 7000 bloodthirsty vampires that can't control their bloodlust isn't a bad thing. If anything it's a mercy killing. People enjoy Ascended Astarion because it's cathartic for a lot of people who've suffered similar abuse. You lack empathy.

I think you may have the wrong person, because I've never commented on ascended Astarion. The only time I've come relatively close was when I discussed Neil Newbon's stance on him in the comments of a viral post, where a Tumblr user got mad at him for saying, "Meh. He's not for me." And even then, I made it abundantly clear that I don't have a problem with people who enjoy ascended Astarion. I was more so defending Neil for having a preference, which he's allowed to have. Is that what you're talking about? Because I haven't discussed ascended Astarion anywhere else. 😅

As for your comment ... what? First of all, an unconsensual sacrifice isn't a mercy killing, it's murder. They didn't want to die. Those innocent people—and yes, they are innocent; Cazador captured and enslaved them—don't simply die. As per the infernal contract, they go to hell. Specifically to Mephistopheles, the second most powerful and cruel archdevil in the hells. They will suffer for all eternity. That's not merciful. Personally, I'd rather be an undead spawn who has to drink rat blood every now and then.

Second, if you feel that way about all those spawn, then you should keep the same energy for Astarion, because he's the same as them. The only difference is they haven't had a chance to live in the real world or learn to control their hunger. Now, I do agree setting thousands of spawn loose on the Sword Coast is a lot, and potentially dangerous for the living, but the Gur will keep an eye on them, as is their oath. If you let them go, you give them a choice. They're still slaves to their hunger, and they likely always will be, but they get to choose how to satisfy it. If they truly can't resist harming others, then the Gur (and paladins) will surely kill them; which sounds horrible, but at least they'll be spared a gruesome afterlife.

Cazador took their choice away, as he did with Astarion. If they deserve to die, if they don't deserve a chance to prove they can live peacefully in Faerûn, then the same goes for Astarion. That's part of what makes his ascension so hypocritical. He's no better than Cazador, in the sense that he takes their agency away and uses them for the exact same purpose. Those spawn even could've been Astarion. He just so happened to be the "lucky" one who had a parasite crawl into his head. He's special to the player because we know him, but he could've been any of his siblings. He is all 7,006 of those spawn.

I will admit I didn't ascend Astarion, as I personally think it's the worst path for him, but you have it backwards. I didn't deny him ascension because I lack empathy. I denied him ascension because all I have is empathy, and that extends to characters who aren't the main focus of the game. You do what makes you happy, but I don't think becoming the worst version of yourself is healing, and I care about Astarion (and the people around him) too much to watch him continue the cycle. Sebastian, Dalyria, Chessa, all the others trapped in the cages—they have names and they're victims, too. For me, the most cathartic moment of Astarion's quest was when he realised it and set them free.

Real talk

Im sooooo tired of Vox always being portrayed as the victim and Alastor the only one 100% responsible for their friendship falling apart

Did we all suddenly forgot that Vox is a terrible person too? He brainwashes his audience, he supports Val, he is willing to offer his lowest employees for Val to kill, he's also prob abusive to his employees as well, he stalks pretty much everyone, he has like 5 cameras inside Angel's dressing room, also it's like implied he's jealous of Angel because he gets Val's attention, him being jealous of Angel for being a victim of abuse is pretty messed up if you ask me. Oh he also told Sir Pentious to fucking kill himself and he also gets hard of seeing people in pain and get hurt! (Sure it was Alastor but still messed up)

" he looks so sad at the end of stayed gone when Alastor threatens him I feel so bad for him:(("

Really ? Well maybe if he had just kept his little hate boner for Al to himself instead of feeling to need to start publicly slandering him it wouldn't had happened. Just saying. Also I don't see how people feel bad for him. If anything he looks so extremely pathetic it's laughable I want to kick him

Okay this is kinda out of the point I want to make it's just many people who make him the victim seem to forget he's a terrible person so I just wanted to friendly remind everyone that he's as awful as Al ^^

Anyway

I think, we should acknowledge, that it's a complicated, and probably tragic, situation. What if, maybe, they're both as equal at fault for shit going down hills for their friendship. Vox because he doesn't respect others wishes and cannot take no for an answer, he prob tried forcing Al to move on with recent technology, which Al hates. ((His request to Al to join the Vees also prob meant catching up with the nowdays stuff and new technology, like the rest of them)) and Al because he was prob unnecessary cruel and brutal with his rejection.

I don't think Al was just using Vox like I've seen many people say. He allowed Vox to take a picture of them together. For Al to do that I think it confirms their friendship was genuine. "Ah but it's Alastor so that means it was fake cuz he's an evil manipulative bastard who only cares for him-" You're wrong, but also right lol. He's an evil manipulative bastard, but , he's also capable of genuine friendships with others (( did y'all forget Rosie lol? )). What I think happened is that, time passed , things changed. Vox became obsessed with new technology and tried to force Al to follow in, Al didn't like that, but instead of communicating with eachother and solving their problems by talking it out and respect eachother's wishes, they had an unnecessary argument and fight. They're both to blame for this, they're no victims in the situation and it's okay you can still sympathise with eithers side

Also people who make Al the villain for like not returning Vox's confession and feelings in most One sided Radiostatic videos/fics I've seen-- yikes.. I really hate that I have to literally say to PLEASE don't villiantise the aroace character for being aroace and rejecting confessions. It's extremely ace/arophonic (and yes I get to have a say to this, I'm a replused aroace videos/fics like this genuinely make me feel negative emotions) even if he was extremely cruel with his rejection -- villiantise the fact that he's an asshole- not his rejection.

yes I agree!! this is essentially a consolidation of points I've made before ksdlfglg

like yes, alastor's an absolute shithead but I think there are some people who forget that vox is also... not a good person. I don't think there's anything wrong with there being sympathetic aspects to vox but I feel like there's such a huge amount of fanwork where he's the only one portrayed sympathetically without showing his own bad points in their relationship, and I absolutely hate it when alastor is fully blamed for how vox is now and vox is seen as

yeah

vox got pissy at a rejection, that's not being able to take no for an answer, that's incel behaviour LMAO

feel like there's something to be said about people feeling the need to sympathise with the one with unrequited feelings compared to the one who has to deal with someone expecting romance from them when they don't feel the same. does it have to do with society's expectations about romance that unrequited feelings are more sympathisable?

but yeah I am glad that at least the "complicated" part of the description of their relationship implies to me it won't be as simple as "vox was the poor victim and alastor was just using him", I think it is much more interesting if there's no clear victim and both were at fault in a way

Hi so I’m 15 and in a relationship for the first time so I don’t have experience with any of this stuff. My partner and I have been doing sexual stuff for a few months now I just have some questions.

First, I was wondering how we can do sexual things in a way that doesn’t bother other people in the house. Like maybe that’s a dumb question and the answer is just be quiet but idk it’s hard bc my partner is very vocal. Also there’s very few opportunities to do stuff without anyone else home so that’s not rly an option.

Also my parents have been very weird about my relationship with my partner. Making lots of odd comments such as “i wonder if they’re having sex up there” (to my brother who is a *child*) and giving me lots of looks that just kind of make me feel really bad about my relationship. I know that sex is natural but they make me feel really bad about it and I could use some advice on what to do about that

Next, my partner and I are both interested in getting in to kink but I don’t really know how to go about it. I’ve never heard of people getting into that stuff as minors and we don’t want to do anything too crazy especially since we don’t really have access to any supplies.

You’ve definitely talked about this before but could you tell me what kind of protection is best and easiest to use and obtain for f/f sex. School didn’t teach me how to use anything other than a male condom.

Thank you so much. Sorry for asking so many questions

hi anon,

your first question is going to be pretty circumstantial; I don't know what the layout of your house is like or how realistic it is to wait for privacy. the ideal if of course to wait until everyone else is either asleep or out of the house, but I recognize that the former may be difficult if not impossible for someone your age and you've already said the latter is hard to come by. using other noises, like music or TV or white noise, can be helpful, although it's unlikely to prevent your parents from speculating.

to address your second problem most directly, I'm afraid there's no much that I personally can do to rectify that. it is unfortunately very normal for parents to have an anxious, awkward, and difficult time adjusting to their children becoming sexually curious. I think the most crucial thing to remember here is that this has nothing to do with what you're doing being gross or wrong, and most everything to do with how your parents were raised to think about sex. unless they have specific concerns they want to raise with you about sexual safety, their reactions are most likely coming from a place of discomfort that they don't know how to channel appropriately. that's not a shortcoming on your part, but on the people who failed to help them develop a better way of understanding their own feelings about sex - and, yes, on them for how they're handling those feelings now.

I'm unsure exactly what you're interested in exploring, since kink covers a very broad array of activities and "supplies" could mean almost anything, but I would definitely recommend an abundance of caution in your explorations. kink is great, but that doesn't mean it's easy for for everyone. there's a reason that you seldom hear of people your age getting into kink, which is that it generally requires a great deal of practice with navigating partnered intimacy and communication - something that few teenagers have had time to develop the skills for. kink is also something that many people find works best as a communal activity, by finding others to help introduce them around and sharing experience to help safely explore their fantasies; for obvious safety reasons, few kink spaces are looking to admit 15 year olds. by all means, do your research - Evie Lupine's youtube channel is a great place to start, with a backlog of hundreds of videos covering all kinds of kink-related topics - but be careful with how you act on it, and recognize that kink comes with more potential complications and risks than "vanilla" sex that cannot be taken lightly.

if both parties have vulvas and vaginas then you can use dental dams for protection during oral sex, latex or nitrile gloves or finger cots to cover hands/fingers, and external ("male," although there's nothing inherently gendered about them) condoms for any penetrative toys (or cut them down one side to flatten them out and make the aforementioned dental dams).

please don't apologize for asking questions! questions are how you learn and stay safe :)

your post about people mischaracterizing call of duty chars is kinda giving misogyny. i don't support noncon but seriously you act like men being mischaracterized in comfort fics is some kind of hate crime. they're fictional characters that spread military propaganda and kill people.

the fictional man is not oppressed bro. it rubs me the wrong way how many of u focus on berating female fanfic writers. focus on the fact that nearly every female character since the beginning of time (especially underaged ones) has been sexualized by men to the point of having their personality erased, features changed, actors harassed. especially female characters with strict storylines of trauma and family issues and mental health right in the source material. you have to read wikis and shit to even find out about ghost's trauma (besides the grief) and there are fics posted every day of trauma comfort, accurate portrayals of his ptsd, cute 141 friendships etc. can you name a single time a woman has been written with that much care by a straight cis male fanfic writer? i can't. i promise a "tiktok girl" mischaracterizing ghost isn't the end of the world.

don't even say "they're both bad" as a copout or mention how ghost has ptsd or something and would never mistreat a woman. like bro, i agree, but the people writing noncon of him are 99% of the time REAL women who are also sa victims, likely to a man. which btw, ptsd never stopped men from being the majority of sa perpetrators, but that's beside the point.

yes it's inaccurate when sum1 writes konig like a baby or ghost as a sex god. yes, some tropes r problematic. but let's not act like our "accurate" writing is realistic. in a group of men like the task force (especially knowing how military men are) i highly doubt even half of them would be respectful, open to love, loyal, good politics, etc. yet we all write them like husband material. because it's cope for the real world.

throwing real women's coping mechanisms under the bus in favor of fictional men will always be weird, sorry.

>The effort it takes to do the mental gymnastics of seeing anything in my posts from when I first made this account where female writers are NEVER mentioned is so weird. Some of my most popular works are noncon, and as a victim of rape and CSA/SA who has changed her views on writing that type of content and most of the stuff in those posts, I sort of get what you mean, despite the weird rant in anon.

Please remember that anything you read in here are just words baby, they shouldn't disrupt your soul this much. 😭😭😭

Please send me strength for the next few days, my sister's American host family from last year has been here for an hour and I'm already so uncomfortable I locked myself in the bathroom while my sister is cooking.

I was painting and the religious-fanatic teacher came to me and started asking questions about my work. I answered them and I was ready to go on with my day and she goes "we used to talk more when you were well..."

And I stopped dead in my tracks and looked at her like "wtf" because lady you are under 2 wrong assumptions here:

I would let YOU of all people be aware of my mental state or personal life or anything that concerns ME at all.

That we had some kind of amicable relationship to begin with? No, I don't know how you got the wrong impression since I just ever talked to you after I disagreed with your views, criticized you and almost fought with you because you said something both incredibly stupid and triggering... just because I've kept things civil doesn't mean I don't consider you anything other than a pretentious asshole.

The audacity of this woman, to think she can come to me and act all motherly and attentive while trying to get her nose in my personal life while bringing up a past bond which never fricking existed????? What like do you miss our disagreements???

And I just told her, "But... I'm good tho" which is not 100% true, but that's none of her business anyway

And she goes "yeah but you were even better"

BITCH????? No I wasn't? I'm not doing super now but I've vastly improved since last year so idk are you tripping or something???? And then she says something else about my work and keeps talking to me and I'm being civil and cordial because I'm not a rude asshole even if he doesn't even deserve this courtesy for the way she treats us.

Idk what's wrong with her, like she thinks I'm some kind of "problematic kidTM" for the way I look who needs salvation?? Which is not true, I don't need you as a mother. I already have a loving family and friends. Thank you and get the hell away from me????

And even if I were looking for someone's help for anything, I would NEVER in a hundred thousand years go to her for it. Not even for a broken nail lol.

She would probably tell me to go to church and confess or some shit. She already told me to call a confessor for my grandma because she had a little accident when she heard me talking about it with someone else... fkn hell.

there's a conversation happening on tiktok right now about why there has been such a sharp rise in people wanting to watch female-led anime instead of being so focused on shonen and the girl who posted the video listed her reasoning as shonen constantly fucking up "power creep" (her words but i'm pretty sure she meant power scaling).

anyway i'm going to subject you all to my thoughts on this because i refuse to post anything on tiktok. (i'm also putting this under a read more because it got longer than i thought it would SKJDBVKJDBVJ).

now, i don't think complaints of power scaling in shonen is a bad thing, but i also don't think it's actually the problem with shonen (nor do i think it's the reason that there's an increase in interest for female leads bc i think that's literally just people wanting to see more female main characters which is not new or surprising or weird, but that's not the point of this rn).

i think the problem with shonen (most of the time) is the lack of actual story content - like fucking... plots and themes and motifs.

her two examples were mha and jjk because to her they sit on opposite sides of the spectrum in regards to power scaling (in mha the villains are so weak that children can defeat them, and in jjk the villains are so strong that no one can defeat them), so i'm also going to work off of these two examples.

mha's problem is not that the children are the only ones who can fight the big bads, it's that we don't get to see proof that the kids are actually stronger than the adults. sure there's evidence of adults fighting the villains and losing vs the kids fighting the villains and winning, but there's no setup for like a mentor/mentee moment of the mentee finally besting their mentor and us the audience getting to see that they're finally stronger. in fact it's... typically the opposite.

mha shows us multiple times that even the strongest characters in the main cast of kids are not stronger than, say, kids who are two years older than them or their teachers, let alone the best and strongest professional heroes in the verse. and that's not a power scaling issue, that's a storytelling issue. because you can set up stories where kids are stronger than the adults in their verse, and you can write it in a way that makes sense, but mha does not do that.

and of course mha has multiple other storytelling problems, not the least of them being the fact that it set itself up to be one of those "if you believe in yourself and try hard enough you can do anything" stories only to immediately undermine itself by giving the mc the most powerful ability in the verse free of charge, making the entire opening sequence have zero emotional payoff (a problem that continues on and on forever in the anime/manga).

jjk, on the other hand, set itself up to be a story about cycles, about the past repeating itself, about the inevitability of curses and hardship and never learning from past mistakes, but all of that was completely abandoned somewhere in the middle of the shibuya arc and was never touched on again.

all of the main characters in jjk have direct mirrors within the main cast - yuji & geto, fushiguro & gojo, nobara & shoko, maki & toji, nanami & mei mei, the list goes on - and it had the perfect opportunity to either be a story about the inevitability of trauma cycles OR a story about breaking those cycles, but instead half the cast is now dead and it's become a manga that's just about cool-looking fights.

the problem with jjk is not that the villains are too strong/unbeatable (i actually think there could have been merit to making jjk a story where the villains win, but that would have required focusing on the theme of cycles which, again, has unfortunately been lost) - it's just that there's no fucking plot anymore. there's no meat. there's no point. even if the goal of jjk from the beginning was to subvert a lot of typical shonen tropes, it's so so hard to care about that anymore because there's no reason. the plot is gone, the themes have vanished, the emotion is no longer in the room with us, and it has absolutely nothing to do with (im)balances of power within the verse.

but of course this is not a new problem in shonen. it's so incredibly rare for shonen to have a good story that maintains from start to finish in a satisfying arc, and that's almost a staple of the genre now - training arcs and a war arcs and lots of fighting and very little actual substance. the ones that do have it are gold mines. but again, this is not a new problem and it's not a new conversation, and i don't think it's the heart of why that girl posted that video or why all those people agree with her.

i truly think the actual reason this conversation is happening is because there's a new set of people who have recently turned twenty-something and are realizing that they don't identify with shonen protagonists anymore because they're no longer teenagers. and i think those people are upset that the characters/stories aren't aging with them and are finally looking at all the shows they like and are realizing that they're constructed around a trope of, essentially, child soldiers fighting battles that the adults in their verses cannot. and these people are realizing that they maybe don't like that anymore.

because when you're a teenager, shonen is escapism or a power fantasy or both. it's more relatable because it's made for that age group. but when you're an adult you start going "hey... where are these kids' parents?" because you realize that it's unfair and unreasonable in real life to put so much pressure on literal children. (i always think of that post that went around tumblr a few years ago that was a gif of this character in a tv show saying something like "i'm 13. i'm practically an adult." - bc when you're a 10 year old watching that, you go Yeah That's Right She's So Old, but when you're 30 watching that, you're just internally groaning because you have been a full legal adult for this child's entire life and they're barely older than a baby to you).

but of course shonen (and YA lit and superhero cartoons/comics and the list goes on) is not meant to be "realistic."

but just because it's not crafted as realism doesn't mean it shouldn't have story elements or themes that can reflect reality and/or be applied to real life. it also doesn't mean it can't have a fucking plot SKJDBVJKDVB

I'm binging One Piece fic right now, and it's come to my attention that I STILL cannot stand Expanded Crew AUs in any shape or form. I don't specifically exclude the tag, but I have to be honest - I avoid it as soon as I see it. It's not a quality thing! I'm just not interested. 😅 It took me forever to accept Chopper, and then each new member after. If Luffy didn't choose them canonically, it's an automatic deal-breaker. Lol

how and why is there discourse about whether or not certain queer identities exist/if people should be allowed(???) to use them. why is "people know their own identity better than you ever could, and they're the only one who get a say on what they are" such a tough concept to grasp

i think if you find yourself offended by the label someone uses (especially if they're a stranger) or think it invalidates your own, it's a good idea to look inside yourself and question why that may be. more often than not, it's a result of insecurity or uncertainty of your own identity (or many other things, but i won't make a whole list here). whatever reason it is, until you resolve it, you shouldn't take it out on people for having an identity you don't understand

many have said it before but it's worth saying over and over. infighting only helps our oppressors. conservatives don't care if you're a cis gay or a xenogender aegosexual aplatonic lesbian, they hate all of us either way. trying to fit in by going for people who are easier targets for them isn't gonna help you, it'll just alienate you from your own community, and you're never gonna please them. the momentary rush you get from hearing you're not like "one of /those/ gay people" is not worth it and is gonna do more harm in the long run, i assure you

also, it is important to me to say this, but having some less than nice kneejerk reaction caused by confusion about an identity you don't understand doesn't mean you're a bad person or anything. as long as you aren't mean to that person, and you take a second to think smth along the lines of "wait a minute, this isn't any of my business" after having said reaction, you're good 👍 a lot of reflexive reactions we have to things are ingrained into us simply by. well. living in a society 🤡 and you're not terrible for having those thoughts. it's your actions that matter, and your second thought (the "wait, why did i just think that?") is more defining of your actual character and morals than your reflex. i know that having thoughts like this, even tho they're unwanted, can very easily make one spiral, so it's important to me that whoever needs to hear this knows this doesn't make you a bad person 🙏 you're good, keep taking actions to be good, accept other people even if you don't understand them, and you're on the right track :)

this sure is a webbed site

:/

i think some of u need to calm down and remember this is a game. i did not pay [redacted amount of money] for a game to not explore all the options, and if you did, i think you're stupid and should have just watched a playthrough on youtube.

i need some people to learn that it's ok to just block me if they don't like seeing me and my opinions on their dash (or just. generally that it's ok to block people you don't like seeing on your dash)

seb. seb hes not smiling. and has a fatui background................

I knowwwwww he's still everything to me you do not know how smitten I am with Lyney as a character

billions(tm): it's incredible how we just provide a little snippet of material designed to be "guy we all want to push down the stairs immediately somehow" and through this amazing acting alchemy it becomes gold. electric. magnificent. we can't get enough so we will just keep writing this loser character and the actor will somehow keep bringing the dazzling transmutation through his ability

actor will roland: [is aware autistic people are real]

Live action remakes????

FUCK YOU! FROM NOW ON I WANNA SEE ANIMATED REMAKES

Comics adaptations even. Just to piss y'all off.

I hate it I hate it I hate it. This stupid trend of getting GREAT animated project and just fucking adding living people to it.

BROTHER I DONWANT REAL PEOPLE AND REALISTIC LOOKING DRAGONS. Why should I look at a watered down version of a fictional world (because honey let's be real cgi costs a teeny weeny bit too much) instead of a colorful, LIVING AND BREATHING animated world???? HUH?????

Also fuck remakes. I watched 3 remakes in my entire life and they sucked. Why should I watch something worse... or even just not as good as the original animated thing in teh first place???

I have the ANIMATED masterpiece right here I'm not impressed by your "very important actor playing this role that the original voice actor did better anyway" or your "not as bad as I thought would be cgi".

Seriously I don't get it, I'll be watching an action movie and I imagine at the cooler animated version and there's some boring-ass showrunner zapping through some episodes and going "guys here's what we're gonna ruin with realism next ^w^"

Also in 2 of the 3 remakes I watched they just flattened the characters and made them ✨️morally perfect✨️ and the third one was just the same thing with 2 scenes more that added ✨️NOTHING✨️

Also I find it insulting the existence of a remake in the first place. Like animation isn't enough and is the lesser art and NEEDS to be remade. Like fuck you? Fuck your realism-fetish.