Heya, how’s it going?
You can call me Midnight or Mercury. I’m nonbinary with a handful of xenogenders; my main pronouns are they/them, but I also like ae/aers and star/stars. I’m 22 years old, so no topic is off-limits here so long as you respect my boundaries!
My main fandoms are DSMP, BG3, Undertale/Deltarune, the Portal games and Pokémon. Don’t be alarmed if I suddenly reblog content from another fandom; my hyperfixations jump around frequently. I rarely create my own posts, but I reblog a lot and sometimes share my thoughts on things. My actual content is fanfiction, headcanons and analysis!
I hope you enjoy your stay :D
BYF
Please read my Carrd & boundaries before interacting. If I don’t follow you back, it’s nothing personal; I follow blogs based on my own interests. If we’re not mutuals, don’t expect me to be particularly sociable outside of reblogs and comments.
DNI
Basic criteria; cc!Dream supporters/stans & c!Dream apologists; cc!Wilbur supporters/stans; abuse apologists & victim blamers; people who view c!Prime as anything but platonic; people who harass others online or support cancel/cringe culture.
BOUNDARIES
Tone tags are appreciated and I use them sometimes too.
If you break any of my DNI criteria, you will be blocked.
If you’ve upset or harrassed me or one of my mutuals, you will be blocked.
If we are not mutuals, please NO personal questions in asks or comments.
Do NOT accuse me of stuff I’ve already said I don’t engage in. I sometimes reblog takes on discourse I agree with, but will not discuss it publicly.
FEATURED TAGS
Fanfic Writing
My DSMP Fics
My DSMP Headcanons
DSMP Analysis
DSMP Fanart
c!Primeboys (Derogatory)
ADHD Gang Unite
LINKS
My Pronouns.cc page
My witchcraft blog
My AO3
My Pinterest
My “attraction layer cake”
USERBOXES
{Under the cut so y'all don't have to scroll for ages!}
The specific pain of having the perfect sentence arrive in your head at the exact moment you cannot write it down. driving. shower. falling asleep. never at the desk. never when the document is open. i have lost more good sentences to the gap between the bed and the phone than i have ever actually written.
PSA to fic readers, it is so hard to freak a fic writer out with your comments. we are just as crazy about the fic as you are.
tell me you love it. tell me it made you slam your laptop shut. tell me you brought it up at your college lecture about kink. key smash in all caps. quote the passage that made you think. i promise, we’ll love it.
we spend hours thinking about it, writing it, editing it. there is no such thing as over enthusiasm when you’re talking about our fics to us. we are sooooo weird about them, i assure you. you are just matching my freak. the freak bar is already set so high. feel no anxiety about enjoying something and letting the creator know.
no one did lore like tommyinnit. changing his nintendo music on the fly. slipping in and out of character at will. important discussions during the diet coke part of the stream. streaming the most accidentally dramatic pet non-rescue on april fool's day. telling tubbo about his medical issues on the way to the big confrontation. ending stream immediately 'cause he remembered he had an essay due. nobody else did it like him.
many have informed me of this fact since I made this post and honestly that just makes the whole thing 100 times more iconic. who was doing it like him
I have a question about your opinion on Astarion's romance scene in Act 1 and his answer to the question of what he wants. He says pleasure. However, in his confession later, he says that for him, sex is still tainted. Do you think he had hope in Act 1 that the sex would be better now? Why else would he want to do it?
Hey, hi! Thanks for writing to me, and sorry it took me so long to reply.
Unfortunately, I have far too many things to do and far too little time to do them. Sob. I wish I could split myself in two, at least—so one version of me could handle Tumblr while the other dealt with real life. (Though honestly, I’d probably need a third version of me just to rest on the couch and watch my favorite TV shows, lol. And now that I think about it, my daughter would say there should be yet another version of me, so one could always stay with her.)
Anyway. It’s a complicated subject. Obviously—as always when it comes to Astarion.
The short answer: Astarion chooses to use sex to secure his own survival despite what he truly thinks of it. And no, Astarion did not think sex would be different the first time with Tav/Durge. Quite the opposite. And that is precisely why he was pleasantly surprised and affected when in my humble opinion it turned out to be really different despite his pessimistic expectations.
The long, elaborate answer full of digressions (lol):
“The pleasure” he says he wants during the first sex scene is part of his script. He is not being entirely sincere when he answers Tav/Durge’s question. In essence, he is telling them what he thinks they want to hear. As he later reveals in his true confession in Act 2 of the game, he was following his “nice simple plan” to secure his own survival. And he was doing so in the only safe way he knew: through his charm and his body, by seducing the person he considered the strongest and most reliable—someone capable of protecting him.
If he had managed to awaken feelings in the other person, he could have used them to avoid being abandoned. But, as we know, his plan fails the moment he is the one who unexpectedly begins to feel something. Something he had never planned for, and something entirely outside his “nice simple plan.”
Why does Astarion decide to deceive the player even after they have shown themselves to be open and compassionate toward him:
I’m not justifying his behavior, of course, but I am dissecting it in order to understand it better, even though I personally believe he could not have done much better given the condition he was in during Act 1 of the game.
So, Astarion can certainly be described as an asshole, a manipulator, and an opportunist—but for him, these are not merely personality traits, which in many cases is an attribution error among the so-called cognitive biases. That does not mean it is entirely false, of course, because Astarion does manipulate and take advantage when he can.
But for Astarion, breaking out of old patterns is extremely difficult, because those behaviors are not mere habits or character flaws: they are survival strategies forged through two centuries of abuse and coercion. It is not simply a matter of “changing his attitude” or “stopping being an asshole,” but of giving up the very tools that kept him alive for two hundred years.
Patterns such as seducing others to gain protection, manipulating before being manipulated, hiding vulnerability behind sarcasm, reading other people’s desires in order to adapt, distrusting kindness, or associating intimacy with a transactional exchange do not come out of nowhere. They are trauma adaptations.
There is also another important aspect: trauma does not live only in thoughts, but in the body as well. Even when Astarion rationally understands that Tav or Durge are not Cazador, his nervous system may still react as though the danger were still present. And he acts accordingly.
Moreover, his identity has been warped for centuries by devastating messages: that his only value was his body, that charm was his only talent, that without a master he was nothing, and so on.
What Astarion truly thinks and feels in relation to sex:
Now, as you said, sex is a troubled, layered, and sadly contaminated concept for him. And not only that, but the very concept of intimacy is as well.
It is all condensed into this line:
“Even though I know things between us are different, being with someone still feels… tainted. Still brings up those feelings of disgust and loathing.”
Astarion says, “Even though I know things between us are different…” and already here a fundamental distinction emerges. On one side, there is the rational mind, which recognizes that with Tav/Durge the situation is not the same as before—that there is no coercion, that there is affection and respect. On the other side, however, there is the emotional and bodily level, which still cannot keep pace with that awareness.
When he adds, “being with someone still feels… tainted,” he chooses a very significant word. He does not simply say that being with someone is difficult, frightening, or unpleasant. He says tainted: contaminated, stained, corrupted. It is as though intimacy itself, in his experience, has been poisoned by everything he endured. It is not the present that is wrong, but the past that has left such a mark that it stains even what could now be good.
Even that small hesitation before the word tainted—the ellipsis—is eloquent. It feels like the sign of someone struggling to name what he feels, searching for the right word for something painful and shameful. There is vulnerability in that silence.
Then comes the second part: “still brings up those feelings of disgust and loathing.” The word still is extremely important, because it conveys that all of this is still happening, even though he knows the situation is different, even though he wants to open himself up, even though he is trying. There is a sense of frustration and helplessness in it: he would like to experience the present in a new way, but the past keeps resurfacing.
Finally, the words disgust and loathing are not accidental. Disgust evokes an almost physical repulsion, an emotional nausea tied to sex and to the way he was forced to experience it. Loathing, on the other hand, is something even deeper: self-contempt, internalized hatred, the feeling of being dirty or degraded. He is not speaking only about sex itself, but also about how those experiences have distorted the way he sees himself.
Why sex and intimacy feel so deeply tied to self-loathing for him:
Astarion’s body is capable of having sex, of feeling arousal, and of leading and completing the dance of the senses with precision and great skill. And yet he is completely dissociated—from himself and from the other person—without them necessarily noticing the enormous and heavy baggage he carries with him. And when it is all over, nothing remains but disgust and contempt for himself.
But it is not a contradiction.
A much broader discussion could be opened here, psychologically speaking, but in short: during sexual violence, body and mind can move in two different directions. The body may respond physiologically—arousal, lubrication, erection, even orgasm—while the mind is in a state of fear, paralysis, or dissociation. This does not imply desire or consent: these are automatic responses of the nervous system, not a choice. Research clearly distinguishes between bodily response, subjective experience, and consent. They are different things.
This helps explain how a person can “function sexually” while not truly being there at all (to be clear, this refers to lack of agency, not to consensual sex work).
For Astarion, as someone subjected to prolonged sexual exploitation and coercion, this is very coherent, and it can be applied in a broader sense as well.
His body “knows what to do” while the mind withdraws, so what remains is disgust. What remains is the devastating, self-loathing thought: my body participated even if I feel disgust, so perhaps I am into it, perhaps I’m broken or twisted. Perhaps I really am nothing more than something to be used for pleasure. So all the terrible things they said about me for centuries are true—for example, that it is his only talent.
And this is where a huge part of the shame may be born. The guilt, the disgust, and the cognitive dissonance between what is actually a fact and what one believes to be a fact—or between who one truly is and who one believes oneself to be. Let us remember, in fact, that Astarion’s bodily response is pure survival, a pure adaptation to an impossible situation.
So his disgust is not directed solely at what was done to him—not only at the physical repulsion of being forced into intimacy with someone he does not know, does not desire, and may even find unpleasant—but also at what he believes that experience has made him or revealed about him.
Other factors that may contribute:
Everything that is connected to the sexual act, to what it represents within Cazador’s system, and that goes beyond Astarion’s personal experience as a victim of sexual trafficking. Namely, the deception he carried out for centuries against unsuspecting victims led to their deaths, which casts him as a kind of trap—a morally devastating role, where he becomes both victim and unwilling instrument of harm. And the fact that even the most important relationship of his life began under those same dynamics.
Here, pre-existing and repressed guilt, along with a more general sense of shame, certainly find fertile ground to further contaminate his perception of intimacy.
And it doesn’t end there—there are other aspects to consider. For example, the unexpressed anger over the loss of his agency, having been completely under Cazador’s control and unable to make him pay for it or even show him the slightest disrespect without being torn apart in body and spirit. From there, that sense of powerlessness turns into a kind of shameful weakness.
Then there are the flashbacks, because for him contact is no longer just contact; it can trigger bodily memories of invasion, control, or obligation.
Finally, there is identity confusion: after centuries of playing a role, it becomes difficult for him to tell what is real—what he wants, what he feels, what he enjoys—versus what he learned to do because he had to. That uncertainty alone can be deeply unsettling.
The relationship with Tav/Durge: the difference that fractures the cycle and Astarion defenses:
All of this remains my personal interpretation, but I believe that despite Astarion’s trauma surrounding sex and intimacy, and despite the dysfunctional—even self-destructive—dynamics he carries into his relationship with the player as a means of survival, small glimpses of genuineness begin to emerge between him and Tav/Durge, even without him fully realizing it. And this starts as early as the bite scene.
Here’s why: in the first sex scene, even while following the prepackaged script he had refined over centuries, something begins to change. I talked about that HERE as well.
Tav/Durge truly takes Astarion’s real pleasure into account by offering him their neck—through their blood. And, in my view, it is precisely through the blood that a first genuine bond is formed between the two of them.
Something that, if we think about it, is entirely new for Astarion. Tav/Durge is his first, as he says himself after the bite night. And he says it almost like a blushing virgin. In this sense, he truly is one, given that Cazador always fed him nothing but putrid rats and insects. He’s not lying; it’s simply the plain truth.
This small detail places Tav/Durge outside of anyone else Astarion had ever encountered in his entire existence as a vampire spawn.
In this sense, Tav/Durge is special. Unique. But the moment is even deeper than that. By offering their blood, Tav/Durge also unconditionally accepts Astarion’s vampiric nature—the very thing for which he feared being cast out and killed. And that, too, is something entirely new. Someone knows his nature and trusts him.
It is the first time he can begin to feel safe, accepted, truly seen—not through the lens of a monster, but simply as Astarion.
So, in my humble opinion, Astarion truly begins to open up and experience new sensations (not feelings yet, mind you) from their very first encounter in the woods. This is regardless of whether he finds the player objectively attractive.
Sex has little to do with it—that’s part of the script. Everything else isn’t. After all, there’s a reason that in Act 2, despite his unhealthy behaviors, Astarion makes his confession, saying he wants something real, while also opening up about his vulnerabilities and what a relationship with him would actually entail. And he does so because, from the moment of the bite scene, Tav/Durge treats him like a person—offering him what he needs (blood included—for me, that’s where it starts; when it comes to a vampire, it’s not just a detail) without conditions and without judgment—completely outside of every pattern he knew.
In fact, if you reject him the second time he offers to spend intimate time together, he says that he has had countless lovers he can barely remember. But he will remember Tav/Durge.
And in that moment, he no longer has any need to lie or play the part of the seducer, since he has just been turned down.
Anyway, Astarion develops genuine feelings for Tav/Durge even as he moves through these internal conflicts, which make any form of true intimacy complicated and hard-won. What follows is a gradual process of reconciliation—between body and mind, and eventually between himself and another person.
And again, this is not about sex. That comes later, only once intimacy with Tav/Durge begins to exist beyond the purely physical.
Ok, I’d say I’ve rambled quite a bit, as usual. I hope this helps clarify things a little, even if it doesn’t fully resolve the contradiction. With Astarion, there’s rarely a simple answer—and I think that’s part of what makes him so interesting to explore.
cniki is not an emotionally intelligent character it is so odd to me when people write her that way. she is very outspoken about her feelings and defensive of others so maybe that’s where it comes from but soo many times are her feelings misplaced . crazy crazy crazy does anyone remember. gosh we used to live in a world with crainduo people !!!!
What’s crazy about “what am I without you?” “Yourself!” Is that that it is genuinely such an insane line to conclude Tommy’s arc in season 2 like, because all season people have been expecting Tommy to be a certain thing. Tubbo wanted him to be more mature, Techno wanted a loyal ally, Dream wanted a plaything. Throughout it all, Tommy’s struggled to say for himself who he is. And now, here at the end, when met with the prospect of never seeing his friend again, Tubbo tells Tommy that he’s himself. That that’s enough. That he will continue to be himself with or without him. Because through this whole season Tommy’s fucked up and been fucked over and made mistakes and suffered the consequences and that’s okay, that it’s who he is, and that it’s all he has to be.
literally it's so. like quackity and tommy spent all this time trying their fucking hardest to keep wilbur alive. theyve worked together, even separately, forced to focus not only on trying to protect l'manburg but to stop its creator from blowing it and himself sky fucking high. and theyre finally celebrating. theyve done it! theyve won! they saved l'manburg! but for a moment they forgot that saving l'manburg and saving wilbur are no longer one and the same. wilbur has a death wish that l'manburg isn't completely divorced from but has become secondary to wilbur. he blows up l'manburg. he wrecks a bit of the foundation. but it's not enough. until his body is one with the wreckage, it isn't fucking enough. quackity and tommy failed to keep wilbur from the button, they failed to keep the foundation protected, they failed to keep wilbur from himself. "tommy, why didn't you keep an eye on wilbur?" it's not tommy's job. it's not quackity's. but theyre the only ones who ever managed. tommy is the only fucking one who had even a chance of stepping foot in that button room and coming out the other side with wilbur in tow. and it's not fair but that doesn't make it not true.
MY DSMP CHARACTER HEADCANONS: GENDER & ORIENTATION
I've decided to start sharing some of my DSMP headcanons here! Info subject to updates. For this one in particular (LGBTQ+ identities), please remember I'm talking about the characters, so some details are different from the CCs. I'll also add links to explanations for identities that aren't as well-known. Enjoy :D
Philza: Paraman (considers himself a man, but immortality has faded his connection to gender). He/him; masc presentation. Heteroromantic, queerplatonic and demisexual.
Technoblade: Cassmale (considers himself a man, but deems it unimportant to his self-image). He/him; masc presentation. Queerplatonic and aro-ace.
Tommy: Cis man before his revival; boyvoid afterwards. He/him, sol/solar/solars/solarself; masc presentation. Heteroflexible, quoiromantic, queerplatonic and ace.
Tubbo: Boyflux. He/him; masc presentation. Asterosian, queerplatonic and greysexual.
Ranboo: Genderfaun and kenochoric. He/they normally, re/rem/rems/remself when enderwalking. Masc and androgynous presentation. Toric, queerplatonic and ace.
Dream: A-Faunic (considers himself a man, but has never felt a deep connection to it); he/him. Post-Tommy's revival, infideimagender (divine in a masculine way). Masc presentation. Aro-ace.
Punz: Demi-guy. He/they; masc and androgynous presentation. Minromantic ace.
Characters not listed here are either cishet in my HC, or I don't know enough about them to have a HC. Feel free to discuss in the comments and share your own LGBTQ+ HCs!
MY DSMP CHARACTER HEADCANONS: GENDER & ORIENTATION
I've decided to start sharing some of my DSMP headcanons here! Info subject to updates. For this one in particular (LGBTQ+ identities), please remember I'm talking about the characters, so some details are different from the CCs. I'll also add links to explanations for identities that aren't as well-known. Enjoy :D
Philza: Paraman (considers himself a man, but immortality has faded his connection to gender). He/him; masc presentation. Heteroromantic, queerplatonic and demisexual.
Technoblade: Cassmale (considers himself a man, but deems it unimportant to his self-image). He/him; masc presentation. Queerplatonic and aro-ace.
Tommy: Cis man before his revival; boyvoid afterwards. He/him, sol/solar/solars/solarself; masc presentation. Heteroflexible, quoiromantic, queerplatonic and ace.
Tubbo: Boyflux. He/him; masc presentation. Asterosian, queerplatonic and greysexual.
Ranboo: Genderfaun and kenochoric. He/they normally, re/rem/rems/remself when enderwalking. Masc and androgynous presentation. Toric, queerplatonic and ace.
Dream: A-Faunic (considers himself a man, but has never felt a deep connection to it); he/him. Post-Tommy's revival, infideimagender (divine in a masculine way). Masc presentation. Aro-ace.
Punz: Demi-guy. He/they; masc and androgynous presentation. Minromantic ace.
Characters not listed here are either cishet in my HC, or I don't know enough about them to have a HC. Feel free to discuss in the comments and share your own LGBTQ+ HCs!
What if the reason Tubbo knows all the funeral rituals is because Tommy told him back during the first L'manburg War.
Tommy genuinely preparing for the chance he might die. And he wants someone to ensure he's laid to rest properly. and who would he trust more to do that other than his bestfriend?
