#consent cw

[dailydccomics]

i find this page even MORE interesting after a certain movie recently came out...

[sinmonger]

even the consent issue still doesn't change the fact that Alex looked completely uncomfortable in those screenshots. I literally was horrified seeing them and even reading your post about it. A gay man being in that situation with people who claim to love him. I don't know I still don't like it and what was written. these characters deserve better. That scene should be on the cutting room floor.

Oh i mean believe me when I say my rage is still here I’m just glad it’s not that specific rage lmao that would have been terrible. Also as Christi says if you have to scrub and slow down a scene to tell if someone says no or yes to a sexual encounter maybe enthusiastic consent should be what you shoot for next time idk! Maybe when everyone has seen it and everyone can talk about it, more things will make sense! I have no idea :/

[tarysande]

The headcanon I came across was in relation to Liara and the final "gift" she always gives Shepard at the end of M3, stating that the "gift" was Liara promising to carry on Shepard's legacy via a baby in case they didn't make it. I'm not sure yet myself so I was wondering what your thoughts on this headcanon may be? I mean, I'm Shakarian shipper all the way myself, could you imagine Garrus finding out about this/the kid!

Thank you for letting me talk by the way. I’m a nervous potato who has to be on anon and I appreciate it! Hope you have a nice day :)

Hello, nervous potato. Pull up a chair. I don’t bite, I promise <3

I’ve never heard this headcanon, actually. It kinda touches on something I’m not sure I’ve ever completely wrapped my head around, which is the melding=sex (OR DOES IT), since Shepard always has to meld with Liara in the games and the whole conflation of sex and brain magic stirs up some questions about consent and willingness. My personal headcanon is that melding is not the same as sex, although sex can be involved if both parties are fully-consenting.

I like Liara, and my Shepard likes Liara, but they aren’t romantically involved in any way. I’ve got a whole bunch of characterization for my Shepard that speaks to that (she’s not really comfortable with biotics, in general; the misunderstandings about romance in ME1, since she wasn’t interested, affected her relationships with both Liara and Kaidan; the misunderstanding–that came from a game glitch–that Liara’s dad thought Shepard was into Liara in ME3). 

To make this headcanon work, for me, a few things would need to happen: 

It would absolutely 100% need to be consensual, not just between Shepard and Liara, but with Garrus fully aware of the situation and on board with it. That’s because in my interpretation of Shepard and Garrus’ relationship, they are wholly committed to each other by the end of ME3, and rule number one of a committed relationship is that you don’t go making life-altering decisions (especially involving MANY LIVES) without discussing it with your partner. So, the question of Garrus “finding out” about the kid would happen WAY BEFORE any kid was even an idea. If he had reasons for being opposed to the idea, it would be something between him and Shepard to figure out, unless this was a Shepard/Liara/Garrus situation (at which point Liara would also be part of the conversation). 

It would need to be very clear what the situation was regarding the future of that child, should everyone survive. Is Liara acting as a surrogate for Shepard and her LI, with no other strings attached? Or is she expecting to be an equal parent figure? I’m sure that for some Shepards that could work. It wouldn’t with mine. 

Shepard has to want a kid. Seriously. Liara cannot borrow Shepard’s DNA to make a “legacy” baby without Shepard’s consent (um, the way Liara kinda uses Shepard in her time capsule without her express permission), because that’s super-duper not cool (again, for consent reasons, and personal agency reasons). My Shepard didn’t think she was going to have kids (until the ones she adopts showed up). She didn’t even know if she wanted them (and she’d never bring an unwanted kid into the world). She’d have been offended if Liara even asked her, to be honest, because a) she wouldn’t want a kid to grow up without her and b) she’s not sure at that point she wants her DNA floating around and c) I think she’d be worried about the kid being used as a political pawn/not being safe/having to live up to some dead hero’s legacy. (She doesn’t even like living up to her own legacy, most of the time.)

Like my Shepard, I would not personally be okay with (knowingly) entering into the situation of having a kid who would never know her mother. I can absolutely see how this headcanon could become a narrative for other Shepards–both deftly-handled and less-so, though. A lot of it comes down to how the kinds of questions/situations I raised above would be answered by the author, I think.

SO. TL;DR: Fully, 100% consensual: personally not for me (I’m pretty sure), but okay. Unknowingly having DNA harvested in the form of a baby Shepard (and her LI) may not know about or want to have her “live on”: WOW. NO. N .O.

[itwasjustmisplaced]

Wait if Robert passed out how did he consent like I confused if it even happened like?

ANON I AM SO FUCKING GROSSED OUT RIGHT NOW. HE CANNOT DESCRIBE EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED AND HE BASICALLY SAID SINCE SHE GOT PREGNANT THEY MUST NOT HAVE USED CONDOMS. HE LITERALLY DOESN’T REMEMBER. Y I K E S.

IT’S SO FUCKING CREEPY. IT MAKES MY SKIN CRAWL.

[think-queer]

Please stop saying that characters are "mentally a child" or that they're "coded to be a child" based off their behavior.

The fact that mentally disabled people are infantilized and said to be "mentally children" is actually a huge issue in the real world. Disabled people often have our independence and rights taken away because we're seen as incapable of caring for ourselves or making decisions. Talking about fiction using these terms just feeds into the culture that takes away the rights of people deemed "mentally immature". The fact that many people think that mentally disabled people can't consent to sex because they're basically children is incredibly ableist and actively hurts disabled people.

If there's a character from a game or tv show that you're not comfortable seeing sexualized, that's fine. Just say you don't like to see that character in a sexual situation. Don't say that their personality means they're "child coded" or "mentally underage"

Something making you uncomfortable doesn't necessarily make it immoral, and there are plenty of ways to avoid triggering material without enforcing ableist ideas about consent.

[hummusandcoriander]

Emmerdale in 2019 really leading with a storyline that basically says "hey guys don't worry if she says no, because what she really means is yes. So keep trying!" is astounding in all the wrong ways.

[definitelynoteeee]

Anyone else really struggle to like... not parse out/analyse every millisecond of a hookup while it’s happening to the extent that any pleasurable sensation is lost, even/especially when ur chemically altered?????

[lozenger8]

I think it's necessary in fiction to have categorisation, tagging and a naming of tropes that wouldn't and shouldn't fly in the real world. 

For instance, the term ‘dubious consent’, used by writers and readers of fic for a very long time. 

There needs to be some kind of term for a fic where the ability to consent is blurred, because in fanfic, that kind of thing happens a lot in a way it doesn’t in real life. If a fic is tagged dubious consent then I know that something hinky is going on, but if that hinky thing was removed consent would freely be given. 

In fic, there are tropes like sex pollen and heat and amnesia where, as a reader, we know the characters want to be with each other, they want to have sex, they wanted to before the sex pollen or heat or amnesia, but their choice was in some way coerced by the situation, or they were missing a piece of vital knowledge. And there’s a ‘maybe’ there, a sliver of doubt, from the characters’ perspective that the story may or may not deal with. 

The ‘dubious consent’ tag then lets readers know that there is something going on - it gives them a warning bell - it says ‘hey, I want you to know if this hinky thing wasn’t here, this would likely be no-holds-barred enthusiastic consent - just - a head’s up - something hinky’s going on’. Readers can then choose not to read that story because they know their own threshold.

That's what that term means for me, it's how I've used it in the past. Maybe other people use it differently and it’s a YMMV situation. Either way, it’s a signal as to the content of a fic, and I honestly think it’s better to have a wider variety of signals and categories than to narrow them all down to one unwieldy amorphous group that makes it harder to distinguish whether you could or would like what’s going on in a story. 

In this case, I feel like absolutism and saying ‘there’s no grey area, there’s no such thing as dubious’ ends up obscuring the situation even further. I definitely prefer readers and writers of fics like this having a tag they can use compared to the years when there was no warning used at all.