I've Come To Describing It As: What We Need To Find Out If We'd Want Sex With Someone Is What Others

Wasn't expecting to get called out so early this morning.....

That's neurodiversity babe!

During a fight with Lorroakan, an allied Deva got shoved over the railing. To my surprise, he didn't die but landed on a level below....which I did not know existed as an actual accessible level. It was there I discovered that there was another level below it that can only be accessed by a Weave button according to the placards in front of them. Getting there revealed a unique robe that resembles a beige copy of Elminster's robes and a Legendary Draconic staff:

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

https://stopproject2025comic.org/

Also, another flaming hot take, but it kind of irritates me when people put Halsin confessing his feelings to you on the same level as Mizora literally trying to use you to mess with your companions, I see so many comics with people using that as a joke and like...no??? Mizora is literally a manipulative monster and an abuser who is trying to use you to mess with your friends and feed her ego. Her coming on to you has everything to do with wanting to hurt Wyll (because sleeping with his abuser is absolutely betraying him whether you are romancing him or not) and sow dissention in your group (because your love interest will generally be upset). Halsin is literally pouring his heart out to you because he trusts you and he accepts rejection gracefully, sorry you're not attracted to men, that's 100% okay but it doesn't mean your bad faith freak out is canonically accurate. Sorry if you're attracted to men but just not Halsin, that's also valid, but it doesn't make him a creep for expressing his feelings and gracefully accepting your rejection. Believe it or not, it is 100% okay to not be attracted to someone and just move on when they politely accept that an apologize. Stop being weird.

I’m just going to leave this here…

When you're used to being critiqued and undermined constantly on your feelings and reactions, it often leaves one feeling like you've been picked over like a Thanksgiving carcass.

Don't criticize. Don't be rude. Never show your anger or annoyance. Don't be that killjoy when someone makes a sexist/racist/ableist joke that everyone else is laughing at. Always be accommodating even if you know that they're going to manipulate that good will to make you do work that's not yours to begin with. You still can't be cold and shut them off.

So when you're tip toeing and side stepping the thorns of social expectations, only to witness someone committing to an action that would have gotten you scoured and punished for, you'd think they'd be facing the same kind of consequences, right?

Nope.

Watching those moments where others are laughing their way through a sassy remark, a defiant gesture or a cheeky comment while you've had to filter and bleach your personality until it's dull, flat and tasteless to the world (and giving the world that classic "autism" impression) because you can't afford to weather the long cold ostracism that could cost you your job.

Is it any wonder why our emotions are fucking bombs by the time something finally sparks that long stored volatility under pressure?

Autistic and ‘Over-reacting’ to the Little Things

Neurodivergent_lou

Gortash fans are saying this?! Gortash fans?! Fans of a guy:

-Who violated Karlach's bodily autonomy

-Sold Karlach into slavery

-Who experimented on people

-Streamlined the interrogation of people's brains in a jar by using an elven woman's head to voice their thoughts in that Mindflayer pit. One of those brains was a child's by the way.

-Ran a dictatorship through the Steel Watch with innocent civilian brains running them

-Whose own fans admit that part of Gortash's appeal is his "rapey" look?!

And they have the gall to act self righteous about nonexistent creepy behavior from a character?!

I fucking HATE the Facebook girlies sometimes.

Ripped this from the comments of a post in a Gortash simp group that was talking about which of them smelled better/worse

The amount of people who think he's creepy TRULY confuses me. Like where do you get this from, who hurt you????

He's an autistic man who loves animals and nature and has a soft spot for orphaned children????? If you romance him, he is the most loving, comforting, and supportive character in the game and is ALL ABOUT CONSENT????? And you think he's A CREEPY PREDATOR????

I have an assignment due this week, so naturally I’ve spent all day thinking about a relatively minor aspect of Halsin’s characterisation: his sense of humour.

I haven’t often seen Halsin being funny in fanfic, and while there are probably good reasons for that (writers, including me, love to put him in angsty situations – or just PWP – where humour doesn’t necessarily fit) it makes me a little sad, because his sense of humour is something I really love about him. So I thought I’d do a little bit of analysis of his sense of humour as it appears in a few moments in canon.

First up, this comment he makes to Karlach, saying that being in the Underdark ‘dampens one’s sense of fun’ because ‘noises such as laughter tend to attract predators’:

He’s ostensibly talking about the Society having a dampened sense of fun, but of course it’s also an allusion to his own time in the Underdark, and so I think it’s reasonable to read the 'dampened sense of fun' line as referring to himself as well. I have Thoughts about what this quote says in terms of his time with his drow captors and what a formative experience it was for him, but keeping on topic, it points to something that’s backed up by the rest of canon: his sense of humour is dry, it's not performative or showy, and while I think he’s quite often joking he’s not often telling jokes.

Secondly, we have a moment from one of the conversations you can have with him in act 3 about his dislike for the city. He talks about his dream to find a better way where everyone can be cared for, and then he chuckles and says ‘Listen to me, preaching like an initiate in his cups.’

To me, this is quintessential Halsin sense of humour. He’s not telling a joke, he’s not even really trying to make the PC laugh; he’s just poking fun at himself in a wry sort of way. He’s also using humour as a defence mechanism here, I think; he’s minimising the impact of a potential dismissive response from the PC by undercutting his own speech before the PC gets a chance to do it.

Thirdly, we have his interaction with Lae’zel about the chimera:

I know some people seem to take this quote as him seriously admitting he’s fucked a chimera, but I will die on the hill of ‘he was joking’ (a chimera is functionally an animal! it has an INT score of 3! Halsin is canonically on record as uninterested in having sex with actual animals and has the scars to prove it!)

So this is one of the few instances I can remember of Halsin making an outright joke. Note though that it’s still in keeping with his particular sense of humour: it’s dry (to the point where it’s easy to miss that he’s joking at all) and it’s also self-deprecating, in a way: he’s playing with the conception of him as someone who’ll fuck anything that moves, leaning into that characterisation and by doing so, making fun of both it and of himself.

And finally, the other instance I can recall of him outright joking: when the PC tells him he’s quite large for an elf and his response is ‘I am?!’ I really love this one, both because it’s such an obvious example of him deliberately being funny and also because for once, the person he’s poking fun at is the PC (for stating the obvious) rather than himself.

Looking back at these examples, what strikes me is how much his sense of humour shows itself in relation to other people’s assumptions about him. It’s clearly an important way he copes with people misunderstanding him or being dismissive or seeing him as a caricature. Much of the time he seems to be joking to himself rather than anyone else, which makes sense given the interpretation that it’s a defence mechanism rather than a means of connecting with whoever he’s talking to. (I also have a theory that humour is one of the main ways in which he feels safe expressing anger – c.f. the interaction where he tells Shadowheart that she bleats too much – but this post is long enough as it is.)

In any case, I’d be interested to know if anyone else has thoughts on this, or if there are any canon moments I've missed that might contradict these theories.

Rejection Sensitivity

Neurodiverse Journeys