Drop This Sunflower🌻into The Inboxes Of The Blogs That Make You Happy! Lets Spread A Little Sunshine

I've come to describing it as: What we need to find out if we'd want sex with someone is what others complain of as "friendzoning" (aka You must be this friend zoned to have a chance to go on this demisexual ride). Which is NOT an endorsement of being friends in hopes of getting sex. No one owes anyone sex. No one should be friends with an ulterior motive. But it's hard to describe demisexuality without finding an anchor point to something we live with in society. And all too frequently, I've experienced how swiftly friends stop being friends when sex is confirmed to be off the table. Friendly greetings turn cold, plans become empty promises, and laughter becomes silence when you're not interested in sex. How do people find anyone willing to do that attractive enough to fuck?

Sex without attachment is far more prevalent I think than society is willing to acknowledge. Otherwise, we wouldn't have jokes about sex on the third date, the shame of friendzoning, the "expiration date" theme as we age, or the dreaded "frigid" label. There'd never be emphasis of "If you liked it, ya shoulda put a ring on it", "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" And all sorts of "fun" colloquialisms that imply that the temptation of sex is present without the urge to commit to a relationship. Because, why caution others in acquiring commitment first if it's in our nature to only want sex when there are emotional bonds?

Ironically, I think we ought to be de-stigmatizing casual sex and instead be emphasizing consent, safety for health and generally not being a douche to your partners. I get the sense that this sex shaming causes a kind of sociopathic treatment of each other if we're not doing it for the "right" reasons (insert disclaimer about appropriate age being needed to discuss this topic), because it doesn't take long before I'm hearing a tone of disrespect towards anyone who likes casual sex as though they're unworthy of marriage material.

demisexuality can be so hard to explain because it’s misconstrued as you just wanting to trust the other person before you have sex with them. and I get why the misconception happens. But demisexuality differs in that there isn’t sexual attraction at all before that bond forms.

I think what people have difficulty with is the idea that there are people out there who aren’t experiencing sexual attraction at all until a certain point, if ever, because we’re taught that sex, libido, and sexual attraction are all the same, both in and out of queer spaces.

And when you’re learning about asexuality and demisexuality, you may learn that people have romantic and aesthetic attraction separately from sexual attraction, and that sexual and romantic attraction aren’t necessarily intertwined, and that may challenge your worldview on sex.

But “I trust you enough to have sex with you” isn’t the same as “I’m not sexually attracted to anyone but you, and the reason I’m sexually attracted to you now after we’ve established this close bond is literally because of the bond of trust we’ve been able to form”.

It’s easy to see how those can get conflated. On the surface, if you’re unfamiliar with asexuality, they may sound the same. But it’s important to acknowledge the difference between “no sex until I trust you” and “no sexual attraction unless I trust you and maybe not even then”.

Demisexuality is housed under the asexuality spectrum. It’s part of the gray area between being allosexual and asexual. It’s part of why the definition for asexuality includes “little to no sexual attraction”. It’s a mostly asexual experience with an asterisk.

While being demisexual may have impacts on a persons sexual activity, even demisexuals have a varied relationship to the act of participating in sex. Libido and sexual attraction are not always intertwined either, which can make telling the difference tricky.

I think of sexual attraction as libido that has a compass. Since I rarely ever experience sexual attraction, but do have libido, it’s noticeable for me when that libido actually has a direction to go, rather than being a floating, nebulous, independent thing.

Remember, not everyone is demisexual. There’s a difference between waiting to have sex and not having sexual attraction at all until a certain point. This also inherently ties demisexuality to romantic attraction and relationships, and not all demisexuals are alloromantic.

But if you read what demisexuality is and think “everyone is like that” or “that’s just being a woman”, you either 1) are demisexual 2) don’t understand what it is or 3) both. And it’s okay to not know. Just as long as you’re willing to try to learn.

*Halsin kissing Tav while holding them so tightly that not one mote of light could come between them, kissing them so deeply that there is no room for thought, only sensation of his scent, the calluses on his hands, the firmness of his body, the heat emanating from him. Every touch he gives is to bring them closer until it feels like they'll be consumed by his passion before it ends.*

Halsin: *smiling* Was there something you wanted, my heart?

Tav: 😶

Halsin: ....my heart?

Tav: .......I think I forgot my name.

Coming back to Ghoulcy after a long break. Upon rewatching the show again, I honestly feel more strongly than ever that there's gonna be some canon Ghoulcy in the show at some point...

But I wanna clarify what I mean by that...

If that happens, obviously that's gonna create a bit of a love triangle between Lucy, Max and The Ghoul. And honestly, the triangle's probably gonna end up being pretty one-sided. Like I can't say whether I think Lucy will develop feelings for Cooper. But I definitely think its setting it up for Cooper to start having feelings for Lucy. And I think Lucy and Cooper might bang, just because Lucy is one horny lady with not a squeamish bone in her body lol.

Of course, that would definitely complicate things between her and Max even more than they already are. (You know, her dad being the one who blew up Max's home, the fact she offered to have him live in the vault with her but probably won't want to return after what she's learned, Max now being a knight, etc.) And who knows whether they will find each other and end up being together in the end, but...

Whatever the case, I don't think there's going to be a happily ever after for anybody. Not for Lucy and Max and definitely not for Lucy and Cooper. But it's certainly an opportunity for a lot of interesting drama and frankly, as someone who's been playing the Fallout games for 10+ years, I'd honestly be kinda disappointed if there wasn't some kind of human/ghoul relations going on. I mean, it's no more weird or ridiculous than any other absurd piece of lore in the Fallout universe. It's absolutely on brand 100%.

And if you think they won't do it just because they're worried about what people think... I would argue, they incinerated puppies in the beginning of the second episode... I don't think the show gives a shit about how anybody feels lol. The people making it are obviously passionate about the games and being true to the universe they're expanding upon. They've already fully embraced the dark and quirky elements and tone of the games. And they seem pretty cool with the Ghoulcy shippers too haha. So no, I don't think it's delulu to think there might be at least a little somethin' somethin' happening between Lucy and Cooper. Even if it's Cooper just pining hopelessly over her. Obviously, I could be very wrong. But I don't think I am. We'll see what happens, though. I'm sure I will still love the show even if it doesn't, but damn it would be fucking rad if it did lol.

Garrus and Shepard on their honeymoon. Reports of her death have been greatly exaggerated.

I cannot believe there's absolutely no way to watch free shows and movies anymore, there are too many paid streaming platforms and pirating websites have viruses and ads preventing you from watching it uninterrupted((.)) id rather follow the rules and purchase media moving forward because it is too inconvenient. Seriously, free and no ads or viruses with 1080p streaming is DEAD.

Liara can technically die but it requires:

A very low Galactic Readiness score

Her to be on the Beam run

So essentially, you have to screw over the entire galaxy to ensure her death if you're not choosing the Control ending (or can't because you blew up the Collecter Base).

Thing is, death shouldn't be the only way to be "free" of a character. Maintaining the dialogue options we used to have in ME1 would have gone a long way. It's also not like Liara was the only one to suffer from Railroading But Thou Must Dialogue in ME3 as we had that with Garrus as your best bud no matter what, Samara somehow is OK with a Renegade Shep instead of defaulting to violence like she promised or Jack somehow forgot that Shep can have always hated Cerberus and blew up the base as an F U.

It's that I wish Bioware had given players more choices instead of trimming them down to their preferences. I wish they had given us the option to temporarily fight with Mordin and Wrex during the Tuchanka mission. I wish we could have fought alongside with Thane on the Citadel with him on our team. I wish Bioware had put in more time and effort to care about other teammates players might have cared more about.

I wish, that a good chunk of the ME3 cutscenes weren't so heavily reliant on Liara. When I just got done with her time capsule request, I was checking emails to find out she's looking for an excuse to see Shepard immediately after. Then I find out her mother thinks Shepard only listens to Liara because they want to sleep with her (NO. NO I DON'T. THAT'S NOT FUNNY. HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY NO TO LIARA?!).

Right after another, I'm getting inundated with Liara wanting special time with Shepard. You cannot skip the cabin requests with Liara if you want to speak with other teammates. You can't get additional war assets if you don't talk to Aethyta. You can't get your dog tags back if you don't invite Liara to your cabin in ME2. They have wound so much content around Liara's presence that you cannot avoid her completely.

The content is not subtle about making sure Liara is present in Shepard's life no matter what.

if u haven't read it a lot of liara's more action-oriented shift was told in the comics. the shadow broker DLC didn't quite capture how much effort she went thru to secure shep's body and how big feron's role. i personally welcome the change and while i like archeologist liara i think her ME1 characterization is so superficial. she's mostly just a fan girl. the shift is abrupt but it's nice that in ME2 she has her own thing going on outside shepard cos i believe the writers wrote her as the canon love interest in mind so her character often suffers from the fangirl disease. i think a lot of people in the fandom dislike how the game shove her to us so much. which is funny since another famous shepard ship is garrus, who's equally as pushed as liara and is just as much of a shep fan. it's just that he's a guy so he doesn't suffer sexist hate.

I haven't read/seen anything outside the games, no! I've been thinking of getting into that, but first I'd like to sort out all of my feelings wrt the main event - the games. I feel like if I got into the "peripheric" media, it could maybe influence how I view the games and i want to analyze those by themselves (i'm thinking i'll finish this playthrough + another one in which i might or might not play as mshep) and then see about everything else. Thank you for the rec, though! I knew there was extra stuff about tali and garrus but this is the first i'm hearing about liara <3

And well... let's be real, most of the squad is part of the Shepard fan club, even those that can't be romanced, like Grunt and Wrex. The fact that Shepard gets a breeding request in Tuchanka after completing grunt's loyalty mission is like the most Mary Sue thing ever (and I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way). The asari, sex symbols of the galaxy, are throwing themselves at them left and right (Liara, Shiala, arguably Sha'ira, Morinth...). Shepard is the main character, everyone wants a piece of them. It's one of the entertaining parts of the games (or at least I have a lot of fun with it, if maybe a little bit ironically).

I suppose people might single out Liara because she's the one whose actions are the most extreme, and thus it crosses the line from "cute" to "creepy", but she's not the only one. Legion literally wears the armor off their dead body. As I said in my post, maybe her actions and/or attitude aren't 100% justifiable, but they are understandable.

I'm not sure about the game pushing Garrus as a love interest (I think the game itself is skeptical of the player making this choice, like when Shepard says she "can't believe she finds comfort in the arms of a turian" or something like that), but I do think he's definitely meant to be one of the characters that's most influenced by Shepard, regardless of gender.

Personally, I think him being so popular a choice (at least on Tumblr, which has a mostly female userbase compared to other social media) is due to him being a man, yes, but not necessarily because of sexism (or not always), but because het ships are farrrr more popular than femslash. Also, it's very clear how much he respects Shepard in basically every aspect, and it's incredibly fucking rare to see a het relationship in such equal ground, especially with a """bad guy""" lmao. (though ME in general does quite good in that regard I think, the romances in general are not toxic™️ or unequal) (mostly... ignoring that Shepard is basically everyone's boss... lol).

I completely agree that there's a double standard in how female characters are expected to behave vs male ones, and from what i've seen Liara is 100% a victim of this (I had the very bad idea of reading some threads on reddit...yikes). I don't know the fandom enough to know how it compares in relation to Garrus in particular, though, or if there's a correlation between Shakarian fans and Liara haters.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Larian doesn't abandon BG3 and continue making new patches and adding new content. Hovewer, I find it very exhausting: I played the game when it came out. I saw how unfinished it was. I played the prologue when they released it. But I still have either the same or similar issues with the game since the day they released it?

Halsin's trauma (and his personality somehow) is still being taken as a joke. He still isn't an origin companion and doesn't really have much lore behind him.

Astarion, as great as his story is written, still has the most interactions with the character you're playing as, the most quests. They poured a lot of resources into him at the cost of forgetting everyone else (especially Halsin and Wyll).

Lastly, what about people that can't bring themselves to replay the entire game for the second, third, fourth, fifth (etc) time? Why do I get to experience the "finished" game at the release and then a year, two years later I learn that there's tons of new content I'm missing on because it became clear that the devs actually didn't finish the game when it came out of Early Access?

Technically, I can replay the game. But I find it way too boring, exhausting, and overwhelming to do all the quests for the second, third time. I can't even push myself thought the main quests, knowing I'm missing on so many missions, and interactions, and leveling up, and romance. So I just... don't?

I just want to experience the game the way it's supposed to be. Like wiyh red Dead Redemption 2—what a masterpiece. Rockstar took their time and created exactly what they wanted people to experience. How is it too much to ask for BG3, too?

Yeah, patch 7 is live. That's great. They couldn't made it into the finished game, though? Upon release? The game should've been in early access for another year or two. And have much more closed beta testers of every kind. They wouldn't get such a huge feedback as they got after "full" releasing the game, but they could've still improved it tremendously.

I don't know, man. I'm sad and exhausted. I want to experience all those new interactions, but I don't have the energy and motivation to do so. It's way too repetitive and, as I already said, overwhelming.

"Do you know how hard it's been for me to contain myself?"

A little comic about Halsin.

The Ghoul will give it to him; that poor sod Cooper Howard was right about one thing, at least. Quittin' showbiz and movin' to a ranch to raise Janey in the fresh air was just about the best idea he ever had. He just had the wrong woman at his side for it at the time.

Unmute !