I’m reaching out with a quiet hope in my heart. These days are heavy, and my family is living through a reality filled with uncertainty—but I’m still here, doing my best to hold on and keep going.
If you have a moment, please check out my pinned post.
A simple share could help it reach someone who might be able to make a difference.
If you’re able to give, even the smallest kindness can bring light into the darkest places.
Your time, your voice, your compassion — it all matters more than you know.
With deep gratitude,
@nadinfamily
I don't know when this was sent, tumblr didn't notify me of it or display a timestamp. I hope this hasn't been sitting in my inbox for long.
I decided to rewatch Once Upon a Time....well, I guess it's not really a rewatch....I watched the first two seasons while it was airing, but dropped off after that.
Anyway.
I got reminded of how people reacted to the reveal of why Regina hated Snow White so much. People kept complaining about how it wasn't really Snow's fault, it wasn't bad enough to make Regina hate her that much, it was really Cora's fault, blah blah blah
But that was always the point.
Regina's hatred of Snow wasn't intended to be justified. Snow was never supposed to have deserved it.
Regina dealt with her grief and unhappiness by finding someone to blame for it. Her mom? She's terrified of her mom. Her mom isn't safe to hate.
Snow is safe to hate. She's innocent, naive, defenseless, and she's always there. Snow is always there. Regina can't escape the person who she has made into a symbol for all of her trauma and misery.
So of course the reason for Regina's hatred isn't enough to actually justify that hatred. It was never supposed to
All I can think about is Fenris and Solas glaring at me, arms crossed, demanding that I explain exactly who this "Astarion" is that they've heard so much about
And then while I'm stuttering and panicking, Astarion just waltzes up, stands next to them with his arms also crossed, and with the biggest smarmiest grin says "Yes, darling, tell us. Who is Astarion?"
In other news, I have been reading through the 3 hour (!!!) gaylor powerpoint, and it is beautifully unhinged and ridiculous. It's perfect. No notes. Delusional masterpiece
All I can think about is Fenris and Solas glaring at me, arms crossed, demanding that I explain exactly who this "Astarion" is that they've heard so much about
Scrolling reddit and this bullshit showed up in my feed.
If I had a penny for every time I saw a true crime fan act like these real events, real actual tragedies, are just some fun little story....I'd be one of the richest fuckers in the world.
I don't know if there's an actual term for this. An actual term for when people become incapable of processing reality as anything other than media to be consumed. The only thing I can think to call it is media poisoning.
JonBenet Ramsey isn't a real person anymore, her family aren't real people, the victims of Oakland County aren't real people and neither are their families. They're just characters. What happened to them isn't real, the tragedy, the pain, the death, the soul-shattering grief....it's not real, it's just a story.
If they were real, you couldn't make posts like that. You couldn't have a podcast called My Favorite Murder. You couldn't have people dressing themselves or their kids up as serial killers for Halloween. You couldn't have a wildly successful youtube series casually discussing murders while putting on makeup or doing mukbangs.
So they can't be real. They have to be media that you consume. And that's all they get to be. A product.
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.
There is an issue in this community with misstagged fics on AO3, specifically in the FxF tags. I don't know if it's going to reach the actual people or not but I'm still going to put this here:
A lot of MxM and FxM are tagging FxF ships in the main relationship category despite the ship itself only being written in the background.
Which is a problem because when you go into your ship tag to find fics of your ship, a ridiculous amount of them are off topic. And while yes you can lower that amount significantly by filtering and tag exclusion, AO3 has a built in feature that is made to avoid this.
I am going to use the Shadowzel tag for that because it's the most popular FxF ship on there and it's also one of the most misstagged rn. As of right now, there is 607 fics in the Shadowzel tag without filter. If you restrict the search to only include FxF, you are down to 397 fics. That is more than a third gone!
And it gets rid of some shadowzel content as well, so it's either you filter that out or you have to scroll through a tag where 1 out of 3 fics are about Astarion, Gale, Halsin, etc instead of the ship you looked up.
If your fic, let's take for example a Tav x Astarion, has either consistent mention of Shadowheart x Lae'zel, the most popular wlw ship, or has them in the background as support characters, or even just mentions them as a funny little wink and you want to make sure your readers know they are in here, you do not use the relationship tag! You go down to the additional tags and add "Minor Lae'zel/Shadowheart (Baldur's Gate)".
Unless the pairing you are tagging is the main focus or have a significant role and spotlight on them, you should not use the relationship tag! It clogs the feed for no reason, AO3 is not a website where you have to advertise your posts to the most tags possible.
I also want to add that it is extremely unnecessary to tag your main character as being in a relationship with every other character if it's not a massive poly situation.
For example: if your fic is Tav/Astarion, you don't need to also tag it as Tav/Shadowheart Tav/Gale Tav/Wyll Tav/Karlach etc etc. If you want to indicate that those characters will be in the fic, you can tag with just their names or with Tav & [character].
Baldur's Gate 3 has me in its unrelenting grip. I am obsessed.
Especially with the problematic king himself, Enver Gortash.
I love him. I want him as a romance option for both Durge and Tav. I want my Durge to reunite with the lover she can't remember. I want Tav to drag that man kicking and screaming through his redemption arc.
Tavtash is definitely my preference out of the two. Because god forbid I just have a normal ship with an abundance of fic. No, of course not. My dumbass has to go running for a rare pair.
And on that note, I really need fic writers to remember that Durge is not Tav!! They are not the same. Durge can be evil or good. Tav can also be evil or good. But they are fundamentally different characters regardless of how you play or write them.
So, please, please please please stop using Tavtash tags for Durgetash. I keep getting so excited that there's finally another piece of Tavtash content, only to find that it's actually Durge.
I like Durge, and I like Durgetash, and I will still enjoy Durgetash content. But y'all are getting my hopes up and then crushing them. So please stop using Tavtash tags for Durgetash content.
ITS SO UNDERRATED and listen I don't know if there's controversy about the book or the author, probably, but HOLY CRAP THAT ENDING BLEW ME AWAY
I literally had to put the book down and cry because I was just so taken aback by how devastating and totally world ending that is for the characters. I mean come on, the whole city? A WHOLE CITY? The way it's described is beautiful and I read it over a year ago, that scene is permanently engrained in my brain. It's just so...real. I just felt so bad for them. I can't help how frustrated I get over the lack of love for it.
Its appreciated as a work of "classic" fiction but not for how emotional it is
Well this was entirely unexpected.
Let's all take a moment to bask in some positivity
Also, have you watched the movie? The one from the 60s, not the newer one. It's very good, and has a much nicer ending
I have no idea how old your book rant post is, but here I am, about to be your problem
I HATED THE SUNBEARER TRIALS
Yeah, okay cool, it’s a book with a trans author and trans main character. EVERYTHING ELSE WAS TRASH
It starts off great, with the MC graffitiing (spelling???) a wall with two birds and then he never does anything interesting again in favor of pining over/think about/hate a guy from his childhood that was mean to him once ten years ago. Before you go thinking the MC’s hatred of him is justified, just know all that is because the guy pulled a mean girls and said YOU CANT SIT WITH US a literal decade ago.
His best friend is a part of a group he hates, but it’s okay because she’s one of the good ones
And now: The cardinal sin
THIS BOOK IS MARKETED AS PERCY JACKSON MEETS THE HUNGER GAMES YET HAS NO CHARACTER DEATHS AT ALL AND SAYS **** IN THE FIRST LINE
WHO IS THIS FOR????????
I adore Hunger Games, but I mean it when I say that if I could travel back in time to stop those books from ever being published, I would do it in a heartbeat just so I would never have to see a book marketed as "X meets Hunger Games" ever again.
If you put even the slightest hint of competition in a YA or YA-adjacent book, it gets called Hunger Games. I could write a full rip-off of Bring It On, but the competition element would guarantee that it would be marketed as an HG style book.
The same thing happens with Mean Girls. Does your book have teenage or early 20s girls being in proximity to each other? Well it's Mean Girls now.
And it's really not doing these books any favors. Cause people pick them up expecting something in line with the brutality and messaging of HG, and end up disappointed as hell when that's not what they get.
I think publishing houses might actually be my mortal enemy
⬆️ Me fighting publishers for all the bs they pull (especially Red Tower - hate them)
I read “Before I Fall” because for a high school class, and let me tell you- I have NEVER in all my life hated a narrator more. The book itself was fine, but the main character did not under any and all circumstances deserve any grace nor any moment with Kent (the potential guy in the story). She bothered me soooooooo much. Like there’s no way a girl who actively hates everything about her boyfriend would be willing to lose her virginity to him, especially if it’s something she’s guarded like Fort Knox. And when I say she hated everything about the boyfriend, there where pages (PLURAL) about how much she hated his clothing and his hair and the way he kissed her and how his lips were gross and yadayadayada. It was the literal worst!! Also, she’s like if a Walmart version of Regina (Means Girls reference for you youngins) had one single brain cell of a conscience. Oooooooh I was bothered. Kent was great. An absolute adorable specimen of human. Top tier book boyfriend material. But the main girl… we would’ve thrown hands in my high school.
Everything I have heard about this book has been negative. Like, how is dying in front of all your friends supposed to end bullying?? When I say I don't get it, I really mean that I do not fucking get it
Girl is signing up everyone in her life for a lifetime of intensive therapy and acting like that makes her a saint
hello there, just wanted to say I just followed you FOR THE JUICY DELICIOUS BOOK RANTS hae a good day, evening, or whatever time it is when you read it <3
Thank you!!
The book rants are delicious. I love them.
Also, sorry to everyone that I have been neglecting them lately. I accidentally let them build up a bit and got a little intimidated by how many there are. I'm going through them, though, and should have them responded to within the next few days
There's this book I read as a kid. I don't remember what it was called and I don't remember the author.
It was about this princess who had long, curly red hair. I don't remember her name. She had three older sisters, two of which were twins. She was being tutored by the eldest's love interest. I don't remember why, but her family got put under a curse, and her eldest sister turned into a weeping willow tree and the twins into swans. So she had to run away, and she cut her hair to pretend to be a boy. And there was a girl named Megan or Meghan with her (the only character whose name I remember), and Meg(h)an had blonde hair that was slowly turning black because she was infected with evil raven magic. I don't remember how it ends.
Anyway, it's not so much that I want to read it again but more that it bothers me immensely that I can't remember what book it was.
I tried to look up what book this could be. There are endless books about older brothers being turned into swans, but I couldn't find anything where it happens to older sisters. The tree one got me a lot of recommendations for parks and botanical gardens. And the hair search returned a bunch of articles about Megan Thee Stallion.
So I have no idea what book this could be.
But I did find a website that might be able to help you out
