Hi so I’ve thought for a while now that I may not only be asexual but also aromantic. But - problem is, I realized I have no idea what the definition of romance is, or what ‘romance’ would mean to *me*. I think for the longest time I thought ‘romance’ was just like… a vibe. A descriptor for a vibe. Like how someone may be ‘bubbly’ someone else my be a ‘romantic’
And I’m not sure how to figure out if I’m aromantic or not if I can’t even figure out what romance is! Can you help me out perchance?
As I've been repeating today it seems – I'm so so sorry for replying so late TwT Life's been a bit crazy, in a good way but still...
...I'll be honest, it's probably gonna be disappointing but I'm in the same ironic conundrum. I can't even explain what is not in me properly when it comes to romance, because it's so hard to even understand what it entails in the first place!
It mostly comes down to a gut feeling for me, that I developed from observing my peers, of "I don't know what romance is really but I sure as hell don't feel whatever these other people describe as romance", or something like that. Like... The gut feeling that what I experience isn't romance. I can't pinpoint the factors very precisely, but I guess I don't feel the "grandiosity" that seems to come with the feeling of romance, that whole all-encompassing importance that people put on these relationships. I also don't have a favorite person, personally – I have like, favorite groups of people, but that's about it, it's tough for me to fathom the idea of putting one front and center above the others, if it makes sense. And I guess that's another thing from romance that I don't understand. The tunnel vision on one person above others. And possessiveness, too, in a sense. I don't know. There's a fair amount of those things that intersect enough for me to be like "yep I certainly don't tick enough 'romance boxes' to be feeling romance", if that makes sense.
Certainly isn't a very scientific approach but that's the best I have TwT I hope it helps even a little bit!
Hi is it true that squids can pass the mirror test? I remember reading it somewhere.
It looks like this has been studied in Reef squid and the common octopus. Neither really seemed to "pass" the mirror test. You can read more here:
In Octopus vulgaris https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2022.951808/full
In reef squid https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1111/j.1444-2906.2007.01485.x.pdf
A bunch of work has been done on cuttlefish cognition, including studies of them passing the marshmallow test. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.3161
My nephew turned 6. A more complex version of zhis conversation happened at his birzhday party.
After I drew zhis and sent it to my wife Plume, she pointed out somezhing even more frustrating, and I had to continue za comic.
And zhat's not even taking into account zhat education unions are different from construction unions, and my school is an atypical format anyway, and you don't just want any union, but za RIGHT union, and it's honestly a low-priority issue in my life right now.
I will join one if we get one, but I'm not gonna be za one to lead za charge, and nobody should shame me for zhat. Between worrying about my trans wife's safety in zhis political climate, my upcoming surgery, my DEI task force, mourning my feline son, super recent car woes, and more, I'm basically doing triage wizh my mental healzh.
Thalia & Garrett Hawke - “I’ve got you!” from PUT THEM IN SITUATIONS XD Shenanigans
HEYO thank you for this prompt. I've always been curious about the Hawke you meet in the default Inquisition world state because for so long I believed he was just A Guy and not the protag of the previous game. So here's an attempt to capture that character as I saw him then.
For @dadrunkwriting
WC: 1776
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“Where did that damned Inquisitor go?” Hawke asked Varric. They sat in the shadow of a tumbledown stone tower, which seemed untouched since the time of the Second Blight. They were taking a break, Hawke had thought, for lunch. Only once he and Varric and the large Qunari had unwrapped their meager rations of stale bread and hard cheese, Lady Thalia Trevelyan was nowhere to be found.
The Iron Bull lounged against a stone wall, taking a hearty sip of their precious canteen water. “Saw her go out that way.” He pointed. “Something about wanting to find out where that ladder we found near the canyon went.”
“Bloody hell,” Hawke groused. “It’s the hottest part of the day. And there’s quillbacks and varghests about, not to mention darkspawn, bandits and the Venatori. And the girl goes off on her own?”
Varric chuckled from where he sat beside by the burnt out shell of an ancient ballista. “You didn’t have to come out here with us, Hawke. We have it all well in hand.”
Hawke ground his teeth, biting back his response — that he’d seen Lady Thalia picking her current field team back at Griffon Wing Keep. He’d been aghast that she found it perfectly acceptable to head out into the simmering heat with his best friend, a Qunari spy, and a boy who couldn’t be a day over sixteen. (“It’s a bit more complicated than that with Cole,” Varric said unhelpfully when Hawke had complained.)
Varric aside, Garrett Hawke didn’t trust the others as far as he could throw them, and so he’d heard himself volunteer to replace Cole, who’d been stymied by tying his own shoelaces after he’d shaken roughly an inch of sand from his boot. Now that Hawke had reported the enemy was gathering at Adamant Fortress, he’d needed something to keep him useful to the Inquisition in the mean time. Low-level mercenary work might have once felt beneath the Champion of Kirkwall, but these days, beggars could not be choosers.
And the Inquisitor herself seemed like she needed all the help she could get.
Hawke sighed, using his staff to leverage himself to his feet. He was regretting the layers of leather and metal he’d worn out to this Maker-forsaken corner of Thedas. He’d thought he was accustomed to warm climes after the years he’d spent in Kirkwall, but the boiling temperatures of the Western Approach were on another level entirely. “I suppose I’ll look for her.”
“Don’t go making it sound like such a sacrifice,” Varric cracked. “Thalia’s fine. She just gets curious, is all.”
He felt a pang of annoyance that Varric would act like he had a better read on anyone in their company than Hawke did. That had been a joint task, those years ago. And there had been a time when Hawke himself had delighted in the unknown, the adventure that might lie around every corner. Maker’s teeth, what’s happened to me?
“She’s young,” Hawke pointed out. “Maybe too young to be running an operation like this one.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Varric conceded, chewing on a crust of bread. “But she’s got the energy for it. Not like us world-weary assholes.”
Hawke trudged away, under the archway of the ruined tower, and out into the blinding orange sands. A scorching wind hit his face, ruffling his dark hair and getting grit under his beard. He stifled another sigh and wrapped the linen scarf he’d bought from a vendor at the keep around his face. He’d oft wondered why nomads in this part of the world dressed so, but soon the need for loose-fitting yet constant shade had become inescapable.
He doubled back the way the party had come, using the prints in the sand to guide him. Four sets of tracks approached, already fading into the rippled dunes. Only one fresher set led away, the side approximately that of a young woman’s boot. Hawke noted they were headed in the direction of the wide canyon, likely proving Iron Bull right.
Why must the girl climb every ladder she sees? Hawke wondered as he marched. It was a near compulsion, it seemed to him. Maker help them if there was no ladder, but only a ruined wall, or tower, or statue, or even a peculiarly shaped tree. Up she went, climbing with gusto and abandon, on the most rickety of structures, beaming down at the party with a lady-like wave. At least the Tevinter mage and the dour Grey Warden had the sense to tell her she was being foolhardy. Varric seemed oddly endeared and far too indulgent, the way he’d gotten with Merrill back in Kirkwall. Some to think of it, there was a bit of Merrill’s bright spirit in Lady Thalia. As well as her recklessness. But more than that, she reminded Hawke of someone else. Someone he tried not to think of for too long. Dwelling on the past, he’d learned, didn’t wake the dead.
He reached the lip of the canyon, where the soft sand gave way to hard rock and Thalia’s footprints disappeared. He had to rely on memory from here on out.
Hawke found the ladder jutting from an outcropping of rock, leading to a splintery scaffolding well above his head. “Lady Thalia?” he called impatiently. “Are you up there?”
“Ser Hawke?” floated the girl’s faint voice on the wind. “Is that you?”
Hawke grabbed a rung and began to climb. “You know, I’m not technically a ser. I was never knighted.”
No, the Champion of Kirkwall had been everything except officially recognized for his accomplishments. Every authority figure in the blasted city came to him for aid, but it was Varric who saw to it that he had lasting recognition. For all the good that had done him.
Hawke climbed to the top of the ladder, where a rickety scaffolding straddled the space between two cliff faces. Another ladder led down into the crevice, which led to a sudden drop off into the gargantuan gorge they’d been skirting all day. Thalia stood near the edge gazing out on the blighted landscape. The Western Approach had never quite recovered from the Second Blight, that much was clear. Ominous smoke clouds drifted overhead at odd parts of the day, and some areas were still scorched black.
Thalia gazed upon one such speck in the landscape now, the hot breeze pulling back the strands of auburn hair that fell into her face. Hawke climbed down carefully, frowning at the uneven quality of the structure. “Have you found anything interesting?”
“Oh, loads. A mosaic piece under that scaffolding, for starters. And do you see the mark of the Blight, over on the other side of the canyon? It’s a living piece of history, right there.”
“I’m not sure about the living part.” Hawke had seen a lot out here in the Approach, and couldn’t shake how most of it was dead. Bleached white bones of those long deceased. Abandoned remnants of mines, quarries, outposts, forts. At first Hawke wasn’t sure that Serault fellow was even truly alive, behind the obscuring mask. “But I’m… glad you’re getting something out of it.”
He couldn’t bring himself to scold her, although he wanted to. But he had no right; she was not a troublesome sibling, strayed too far from home. Hawke strode up behind Lady Thalia, and tried to see the landscape as she saw it, scowling when he failed miserably.
“So,” Thalia said, turning to him. “What do you need?”
“Need? Ah, nothing.” He crossed his arms and avoided her gaze.
The young woman frowned. “You came all this way… and you don’t need anything?”
Hawke shrugged. “Is it a crime to wonder if you’d be all right by yourself?”
“Are you worried about me, Ser Hawke?” Her voice was light and teasing, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Something flickered inside Hawke; a lightness he hadn’t felt in so long he’d forgotten himself capable.
“Listen,” he said gruffly. “With the position you’re in, we can’t afford to lose you.”
“I appreciate that.” The way she said it made him suspect she was merely being polite.
An awkward silence stretched, during which Hawke struggled to come up with something else to say. Instead, he thought of Bethany, her bright smile and cheeky demeanor, that damn bandana she always wore around her neck. There was too much of her memory wound up in his perception of this girl, he was beginning to see it now. But who could blame him, when in reality they seemed so much alike.
Thalia looked away first, down the chasm that stretched out before them. “Hey— hang on, do you see that?”
“What?” Hawke peered over the side, to where Thalia was pointing, and a cold trickle of dread wound its way down his spine. On an outcropping of rock, twenty or so feet down, was a pile of skeletons. All of a sudden, he wondered what the scaffolding, the ladders, this entire strange little establishment in the middle of nowhere meant, in the past or in the present. “Maker have mercy.”
“I need to get down there,” Thalia said with impressive resolve. “I need to see how recent this was. Maybe there’s something there that can tell us who these people were.”
“Thalia, I wouldn’t.” The side of the cliff had nothing in the way of footholds. The outcropping itself seemed narrow and unsteady, and beyond it was a drop that would surely kill anyone.
But she was already pacing the space, looking for a way to climb down. “I think if I just braced myself like this—”
She planted her boot against the rock, but lost purchase and slid out from under her. In horror, Hawke watched her fall. Without thinking, he reached out into the open air, seized her arm. She let out a yelp, but stopped short, banging against the cliff face. Hawke jerked with the weight of her momentum, but seized the wall for support. “Hold on. Hold on, I’ve got you.”
It took a few harrowing moments to rebalance themselves, but Hawke managed to drag Thalia back over the edge. She stumbled against him, panting, trousers torn and knees bloody. Hawke grabbed her shoulders to steady her. “Thanks,” she muttered, clinging to him and catching her breath.
“See what I told you?” Hawke demanded. “You’ve got to be more careful.”
“You don’t have to be so self-righteous about it,” Thalia retorted. “Who do you think you are, my father?”
Hawke opened his mouth, but words failed him, so he closed it. That wasn’t a can of worms he wanted to open. Not now, not ever.
For Hollow People, I can defo see Jimmy getting shit if the fact he hadn't immediately executed the Faunus who participated in 9/11 on crack (really felt like the show glossed over how much anti-Faunus sentiment that'd have caused).
What drives me up the wall is that you just know that people used that attack to be like look!!! at the bad faunus!!! a good faunus would never do that! and then bc RWBY has the morality of a chessboard they're right
Ironwood has essentially put Adam on death row as of chapter 8. Like from the moment Adam was captured by the Ace-Ops that was the assumed outcome. He's just making sure the execution is a decision made by the entire council (since Adam is a very high-profile criminal and Atlas is not a dictatorship) as opposed to a unilateral one. There's also the minefield of how the faunus of the kingdom will take his execution, particularly if it's made into a spectacle
oh yeah also i finally read that SSC(/AST) post that I think kicked off the education conversation this week, and (in relation to that post but also the bigger scott-troversy that i've been ignoring) an IRL friend dug up some stuff about Scott's high school CV...
apparently I went to the same high school as scott and did pretty much all the same clubs, and I apparently had a much better time of it than he did. I don't really have a conclusion here, but it's kinda weird
