man, i continue to be blown away by the thought put into astarion's romance, even in seemingly throwaway scenes.
i just did zethino's test of love with him at the circus of the last days and there's such a stark difference between what wins you approval with him and what wins approval with the other companions.
for those who haven't played this bit, zethino's test of love involves a dryad, zethino, testing how well you know your romantic interest by asking you personal questions about their inner lives—their hopes, their fears, their likes, and dislikes. for most of your companions, this is very straightforward: when you answer a question about them correctly, you win approval points with them. when you say something untrue or insulting, you lose approval points , bc they realize that you're trolling or that you don't know them as well as they'd hoped.
unless you're romancing astarion. in which case, you have to do almost the complete opposite to win his approval.
the other characters want you to prove you know them by answering correctly. astarion wants you to prove you know him by lying—or, at least, refusing to pick the most accurate answer.
case in point: astarion does not like it if you tell the truth about his hopes and fears. like, really doesn't like it. answering honestly about his greatest fear, in particular (his fear of being enslaved again), causes you to lose a whole 4 approval points, twice as much as you lose with the other companions for outright insulting them. you can lose another one before that for answering honestly that his greatest desire is freedom. in both cases, he'll acknowledge that you're right—and then express dismay that you'd disclose that kind of information to a stranger. hell, you can figure out from the very first question that he's not comfortable taking this test with you at all; when the dryad asks what makes astarion happy, you lose approval if you say he's happy to take this test with you now.
so if astarion doesn't want you to pick the most accurate answers for him and honestly doesn't really seem to want to take this test with you at all, which answers can you pick to win approval with him?
well, whichever ones are funniest, of course! you don't win points with him for picking the deepest, truest answers, but the silly, flippant ones that make him laugh. what's astarion's greatest desire? well, me, of course! what's his greatest fear? breaking a nail, obviously. he's delighted by your refusal to take the test seriously and actually approves more of funny, light-hearted answers than badass, flattering ones.
i just think the whole sequence is such a fun and interesting exploration of his character and your relationship with him, all in a silly little side-activity where it would've been easy to just give all the characters the same win-conditions. little details like this are really the game's brightest moments, imo!
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I've noticed this idea that if you're "truly disabled," you must aggressively seek out the diagnosis and the tests to prove it, but...
I got a normal test result recently, and I'm already ready to quit trying to find answers. This is an issue I have had since I was a child, and frankly, I feel grateful to have the very basic test ordered by my doctor. I feel grateful to have been taken seriously enough to have had that basic test ordered.
Add to this the fact that if you're doing test after test after test after test, you might eventually find that your doctor's sympathy and patience run dry. Is it fucked up? Yes. There's this fine line between "is this something that needs to be answered?" and "will my doctor even try to help me?" and not every disabled person can hop from doctor to doctor to find the one who actually fucking cares enough to stick with their patients and believe them.
This entire rant is just a reminder that... disabled people are tired, man. Not all of us can even get our foot in the door of a diagnosis, let alone be officially treated for it. There are so many reasons as to why somebody "quits" trying to find answers. It doesn't mean we aren't suffering or aren't disabled, it just means we aren't trying to find an official answer.
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the thing that gets me about "well if any lesbian ever has sex with someone who isn't A Woman then how am I supposed to tell men who hit on me that i'm not interested because I'm a lesbian" is like
you should be able to end the sentence at "I'm not interested". If they don't respect that, what makes you think that they're going to respect any reason you give them?? you're throwing other people under the bus for literally no benefit.
yes exactly you get it 😤
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in secondary school my form room teacher was a really strict, by-the-book lady who took herself very seriously and generally had an odd, hard to crack sense of humour, but it was a known thing that she was married to one of the maths teachers, who was the loudest, most emotional guy in the entire world, and it was so funny bc everyone in the school was baffled that they were married but my form room, in having her as our form teacher for five years, got like. VIP extra rare insight into their marriage to the point people would beg for anyone in my class to trade gossip about it like looking back it's hysterical how invested we all were in this couple and one thing we'd always tell people was when the maths teacher would just. show up at our classroom. because basically for people who don't understand form room, it's the class you go to every morning - the same one, the same teacher, the same people - for five years to do registration, and the maths teacher didn't have a form room so sometimes when he was bored before first period he'd just. show up to ours. and every single time without fail my form teacher would rip his head off for it bc it was 'unprofessional' and he was 'bugging her' and he'd wander off again with his tail between his legs but without fail would do it again another day. like he would just show up at her classroom whenever he was free and she'd be like 'well IM not free. get out' and we'd all be there like this is fucking golden i can't wait to tell literally everyone. one time he beat her to class and started doing the register for her and making up new names/butchering our actual names as he went and when she came in i actually thought she might throw a chair at him.
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