You know, I feel like some in the fandom don't quite see how belittling it is for them to automatically make Astarion incapable of ever enjoying sex or wanting it. As someone who has been through a lot of sexual abuse in my life, violent ones at that, it was a difficult path (and still is) to realize it's okay to want sex, to enjoy it with the right person. We have trauma, but we aren't broken. It took me a long time to let myself enjoy it, with the right people, because I spent years telling myself it was wrong due to my past. That I shouldn't feel good because I've once felt disgusting and bad.
It's a struggle and even married, I sometimes dissociate. But I have a partner willing to listen, to be patient when I need it. But also not afraid to ever touch me, to pleasure me.
So it drives me a little mad when fans seem to think Astarion is incapable of ever having it again with Tav or whoever. That it's wrong to place him in a relationship that's sexual. He isn't fucking broken, if you romance him, you become his good experience. Just like my husband was for me. The right person, the gentle person, makes all the difference in finding yourself again, and learning it's okay to feel 'good' (not just sexually) in your life. We have temptations, urges, happiness, trust, fear, disgust, anger, shame. The list goes on but those emotions don't need to cancel out one another. Let us feel them. Let us determine what we can and can't do. Don't write us off as damaged goods to be cooed over and treated like celibacy is all there is to healing.
Yes, this is a rant, but having felt those experiences myself, I just hate being viewed as broken or being treated with kid gloves. We're still people, we're still allowed to have fulfilling sex lives. It isn't wrong to see Astarion and let Tav be that someone he trusts enough to eventually get back to that point. I also know he's fictional lol but I just get upset when perusing the tags and watching some say him wanting sex or fans writing him or drawing him in such situations is wrong. HE ISN'T BROKEN. Sexual trauma will always be with us types, but we are not broken goddammit...we are people, we just need someone to see that in us.
We are allowed to live a life, remember that. You don't get to dictate our traumas path to healing. That's precisely how abusers want it to be. To take all of our freedom of choice, and twist it to forever be 'tainted' (as Astarion says too). Fuck that. We can be people again. We're allowed that.
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i know the whole "do you think jon ever used his powers to Know what his parents looked like" thing is far more devastating than this but what if he tried using his powers to remember original sasha?
jon and sasha always seemed closer than the rest, he picked her (and tim) to work with him and tolerated a lot more nonsense from her than anyone else (using his password to access his computer [161], debating his pronunciation of calliope [25], etc)
and ofc jon and martin became significantly closer as the podcast went on, but in the beginning he was cruel to martin when he gave a statement but accepting of sasha? idk i think their friendship was a lot deeper than we realized (ESPECIALLY since his first murder in season 5 was because NotThem provoked him about sasha) and i think jon wouldve used his powers to Know the original sasha, not sure if it wouldve worked though
so so sorry to distract from the post but can yall read the tags for me because i suffered immensely for this post
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Something I can't stop thinking about is that Snape began the series being perfectly okay
He was actually at his best. He'd spent ten whole years in Hogwarts without the Marauders and before Harry Potter walked in.
Of course it wouldn't have been easy for him to adjust, but he did. And I just can't help but think of those first months where the other teachers got to know him, and got to realise that this boy needed them, needed their help, and took care of him. I can't help but think of how they promised him that it's okay, it's over, everyone's safe and he's not what he thinks he is. He's okay.
Like, for ten years he would have been happy. He had friends. He had a job. He had a home. Hogwarts was his home.
And then Harry Potter came and everything went wrong.
Can you imagine, him seeing Harry's face for the first time? After so many years of actually being content and happy, suddenly he sees James Potter's face, Lily Evans' eyes. Suddenly he's reminded of Voldemort who will return now, and now he's got a ticking clock, a countdown warning him that that's it, time's up, everything you've built in these ten years are soon going to break. And then come the events of the first and second year. Okay, so they're chaotic and stressful, but it's fine, they're all stressed, they're all in this together.
Then it's Harry's third year.
And that's when everything falls apart.
Remus Lupin, one of his abusers and a serious gaslight, is here in the job he wanted, and acting like everything's fine between them while simultaneously disrespecting him and forgetting to take the potion and being a huge risk to them all. Sirius Black, one of the two main abusers, is on the loose. And no one is ever gonna believe him about Lupin, are they? Suddenly it's Lupin's home. Lupin's safe space. But what about Snape? Do the past 13 years mean nothing? It seems so. And in the end, he has a complete breakdown because it's all coming down.
Then comes the goblet of fire. Okay, normal, right? But then there's moody. And there's the visiting schools. And then there's Kararoff who will not leave him alone! And then...
And then Harry Potter comes with the dead body of a teenage boy, crying and screaming that Voldemort's back.
And now Snape knows that time is up and things only get worse. Everything happens after that, from spying to dealing with that wretched Umbridge who's trying to destroy the school.
And then...
And then he has to kill Dumbledore.
And that when it all ends.
All he built in the past 16 years....
All the promises that they'd never leave him...
That they'd always look after him...
That they know he's not that person he used to be...
That everything will be okay because he has them to look after him...
They mean nothing now.
He's not okay anymore.
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