#very different things. if i say i'm doing a playthrough as astarion that's when you put me down

[eastgaysian]

#ordinary photo of yeti #they made astarion in a lab for me to be obsessed with. #like hottest man in game for me is halsin truthfully. astarion is my shitty little white dog with separation anxiety who bites people. #very different things. if i say i'm doing a playthrough as astarion that's when you put me down #main factor motivating me not to is i need to hear neil newbon's voice acting at least once a minute or i die. #i've got a dark urge concept rattling around the brain but i should maybe self-impose a gaming break and take care of. responsibilities 😐

[dreamcaught]

Fandom has Critically Failed a Media Literacy Check: Thoughts on Ascended Astarion

TLDR: Yes, he's evil. Yes, he's still in love with you.

Okay so now that I know more about both Spawn and Ascended Astarion from personal playthrough experience, I have to say it's really weird to me how much the fandom is pinning them against each other. In all practicality, they're the same fucking person.

Astarion's non-romance specific lines are practically identical. If you're his friend with high approval, he's pretty badass, if a megalomaniac. His self-obsession and self-importance make sense in context, though, and they aren't even that much more pretentious than his earlier expressions of desire for power. It's just that he has the power now. He says he's happy, is excited to be prosperous in his own way, and continues helping you. He's no more cruel than he was before. I can't speak to low-approval lines because my games will always reach "Exceptional" levels of approval for my favourite party members, but I can't imagine them being any different than low-approval spawn lines.

On Love

When romanced, the biggest fandom criticism I'm seeing is this idea that Astarion no longer loves his romantic partner. I have been looking for evidence of this and can't find anything indicating its truth. The closest thing is a post-breakup conversation which, in my opinion, is a huge cop-out. Even still, it does not say anything about his love for you -- only your love for him.

"Of course I understand love. All too well. The greatest crimes committed in this world are committed for love. A hunger crueler than bloodlust. I know how to play with it, and I can't resist playing the hand I know. I would have ruined your love, used your trust until you were nothing. So, for what it's worth, I respect you for making the choice you did. I never knew you had it in you."

I can imagine these lines were written for a very practical reason: They don't want break-ups to affect game-play. An entirely evil Ascended Astarion would just swan the fuck off if his partner left him, and that's not fair to a player who just doesn't want to be in a relationship in-game anymore. This is different than if the character breaks up with the player, because that usually happens because of some sort of cruelty the player chose. Actively trying to kill him, failing to persuade him after showing support for his ascension, or kicking him the balls after agreeing to be his spawn are all actively mean on the player's part. (Or an unfortunate dice roll, but it is - after all - still a game.)

Having Astarion leave the player after he breaks up with you is a consequence of these cruel actions; having Astarion leave after you break up with him is a game-play issue. They can't realistically account for why the player would do so. So they've thought of a realistic reason for Ascended Astarion to stick around: he respects you.

But I also think this speaks to Ascended Astarion's character.

People like to point out the way he says love in this line, as though it is something disgusting - something beneath him. Yes, he probably hates the concept, hates the feeling of it. But: he didn't like it much when he first fell in love with you either, as a spawn.

And he's only felt it once before you broke up with him, so there's that.

Astarion is insecure, even ascended, and if the player speaks for him - tells him he can't love, says he is too cruel, his actions thereby will only justify those concerns. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy, but that is not a result of him not loving you; that's a result of you saying he can't.

Reflect on this: Of course I understand love. All too well. I would have ruined your[s].

He loved you. He loves you, still. He can't say he doesn't, even if he respects your decision to leave him. However, he also feels that love is ruinous. He has become an even darker, more evil creature than he was before, and he believes your connection to him would be destructive. Consider that you have just denied him what he wanted: you. His love for you has hurt him, so he feels that he would hurt you back. He gave his trust to you, and you broke his heart, so he maintains that the same would happen to you: that he would use your trust until you were nothing, like he is. That is Astarion's nature both before and after ascension, but it is not an argument to show that he no longer loves you. That is an argument to show that ascended Astarion is just as lost, insecure and retaliatory as he was when you first met.

On the other hand, if you do not break up with Astarion, there are copious lines which showcase his love and complete devotion to his partner:

"You sweet, sweet thing. I want what's best for you too, of course." (In response to: "I hope you learned to love me," he says,) "What's to say I don't? I'm willing to share all of this with you. What's that if not love?"

(In response to: "I hope we can work things out and stay together," he says,) "Of course we can. You're the one that I want, the one that I love... My dark consort. My right hand. My most beloved spawn."

("So what would I be? A vampire, or your spawn?") "You wouldn't just be some spawn - you're far more than that to me. We could be together for eternity, ruling this world side by side. We could have it all."

("It sounds like you'd have it all.") "I already have everything. Except you by my side."

These lines come from the conversation before choosing to become his spawn or breaking up with him. All of these responses explicitly demonstrate Astarion's love for the player. Now that he achieved his greatest goal to become his strongest self, his desire is to share his success with you. As a vampire, that means to become like him, to become his. In a very real but evil way, he is very obviously asking you to marry him. And he's being very honest about it.

I've seen a lot of arguments about these lines which pretty much come down to: he's lying. But, kindly, fuck off. That isn't an argument; there is absolutely no reason to think he's lying here unless you have already chosen to think he's lying, and that's just another self-fulfilling prophesy.

Astarion being evil does not automatically mean that he's lying. Astarion's voice acting here does not automatically mean that he's lying, either. Yes, he sounds different: he is more self-assured, more powerful, more arrogant - but he's not fundamentally different in his ideals or desires from his spawn self. There is no evidence to support the claim that Astarion is manipulating you or lying about his feelings to - what? Stay with you? Why would he? It is through this very conversation that he allows you to decide for yourself what you want to happen next, so trying to claim he's manipulating or lying to you here is shallow.

And at this point, people will bring up the wisdom check. Look, I have no idea why this check means that Astarion couldn't possibly love you or respect you. In fact, I argue that it's much the opposite: he respects the player so much that he thinks that they're degrading themselves to be with him. He thinks so little of himself that you are lowering your standards, lowering yourself, to be with him:

He will always see you as degrading yourself if you continue to be with him. But perhaps you wish to degrade yourself. And he knows it.

Your choice to become his consort is beneath you - not beneath him. Your wanting to remain at his side is not what you deserve because he thinks you deserve better: but he knows, at this point, that it's what you want anyway.

Dominant/submissive Undertones

"On your knees, darling." A lot of people feel uncomfortable with the new dynamic created when Astarion ascends. His relationship with the player is significantly more defined than it ever is when he's a spawn. This is true throughout a spawn playthrough, as well: it is only at the very end of the game, in the epilogue scene, that spawn Astarion confirms your relationship as fully established. Whereas with ascended Astarion, he considers you his established partner now - his eternal lover and consort.

The Dominant/submissive undertones created by the master/spawn dynamic makes some people argue that ascended Astarion is abusive, for some reason. But - no, it's not. Just - understand that actual abuse is a sensitive topic wherein claiming Astarion's dominant aspects are abusive is actually offensive to both people in D/s (Dominant/submissive) relationships and to survivors of real abuse.

But a few things:

Astarion is evil. Astarion is always evil. Astarion is chaotic evil as a spawn and more lawfully evil ascended. He is cruel with his words, has a twisted sense of pleasure and pain, acts selfishly and relishes in having power. He "has a casual relationship with murder," genuinely dislikes children/the weak, and legitimately does not care about most people. Ultimately, Astarion craves for control - over himself, over his life, and over others. But as Astarion learns in his own story arc: being evil does not mean he cannot love. These things do co-exist, and you are the exception. Your friends are like salads (side-dishes, add-ons, auxiliaries... they don't really count as much as the main course). So yes: he can be mean and he can be cruel - because he is, from the start, fairly evil. But since that's true for both spawn and ascended versions of him, this doesn't matter. You must accept this as part of his character; if you don't, that's on you, not the text.

Being dominant is not fundamentally abusive. There are countless real life examples of D/s relationships which are based on love and respect. These relationships are just as real and just as valid as any other kind of relationship. They are not based on abuse and should not be seen as such.

This relationship, as degrading and submissive as it is, is still based completely on consent. Astarion never forces you into your agreement, whereas he does thank you for it twice: "You have given me everything. Thank you." and "Gods, you're beautiful. And you will be beautiful forever. Thank you, for trusting me." Many people will see the subsequent inability to break up with him as abusive, but I must insist: he is very clear that this pact is eternal. That this is forever. If you break the consent of forever, then that's you being cruel again - not him.

On Possession

Another line he says in this post-breakup scene is this:

"And if we were beholden to each other? Well, how is that too different from being enslaved?"

In my opinion, this line is much more significant than the previous. It speaks to Astarion's tenuous grasp of relationships in general, but also how he views both himself and you when partnered.

Importantly:

"beholden to each other" is not "my ownership of you"

From the beginning of the game, he's using you and he's expecting you to use him. For Astarion, every relationship in his life has thus far been transactional. Every relationship except yours, which is the only one he wants to be real.

If the player breaks up with Astarion, the reality of this relationship is broken. He reflects on it once again as being transactional. He is no longer attached to you romantically, and so he strikes a business deal with you instead.

This devolution of Astarion's understanding of relationships does not happen if you choose to stay with him. He doesn't think of your relationship as transactional at all - in fact, he shows trust, devotion and reciprocation of possession and affection. He considers the relationship to be established and the most authentic one he's ever had.

Ascended Astarion considers his consort his "right hand," "by his side," -- these are just different, fancy ways of saying that you are his equal without saying it outright. He is as beholden to you as you are to him.

Astarion may be more open about his possessive tendencies toward his partner - but saying "my treasure," "my beloved spawn," or any other endearment with the possessive "mine" at the start of it isn't nearly so damaging as some people are claiming it to be. Spawn Astarion's "my love" is really no different. That Astarion is open and vulnerable with these endearments is just showcasing his trust in your shared devotion to each other. Think of it this way: you could very well be calling him something similar right back.

--

If you have not actually played an ascended playthrough - or, heck, if you haven't played the game at all and are making loud opinions about Ascended Astarion as a lying liar incapable of love or of Spawn Astarion being the better choice -- maybe stop. Maybe just enjoy what you like and let others enjoy what they like. Maybe practice some media literacy and note that Astarion is Astarion is Astarion - he's the same character, both beloved and hated by many, with virtues and vices that are compelling and flawed.

The writers have created a rich story. Understand that the story being told is the one being chosen by the player - whichever direction they choose to take it.

#astarion #ascended astarion #spawn astarion #baldur's gate 3 #meta #bg3 meta #on love #long post

[glitteryinknotes]

Okay, but what kind of person would Astarion be most attracted to?

I have the image of Astarion softly confessing to Tav "you're incredible" stuck on a loop in my mind, but other than that, it actually got me thinking, just the simple way he says that and the look and yearning behind his eyes. What kind of person would he most likely perceive as such, for reasons he himself might not even understand at the beginning, couldn't resist falling in love with and be most happy & pushed to grow in an eventual relationship with? Here are some my instinctive thoughts.

(please do not get discouraged if you're basing the relationship of your MC & Astarion on different attributes & different ideas; those are only my own thoughts, propably influenced by the kind of character I'm planning to make on my Baldur's Gate playthrough.

Those are both headcanons for the first act, as well as for the official relationship parts.

And please share your thoughts if you have any, i'd be glad to compare my ideas to other people's impressions of this beautiful spawn)

Alas;

Someone joyful, proud & full of life. Astarion yearns to live and taste life on his own terms, having been denied any kind of autonomy & free will for the last two hundreds years, like he himself admits in the spawn ending; presence of someone genuinely full of life, shining, cheerful, dedicated to every small & great bliss the world can offer AND proud of it, despite their precarious situation about the whole tadpole business, would be intoxicating to him. That kind of person around would, for him, be an embodiment of everything he's been deprived of i'm Cazador's slavery; a being so fascinating in their pure, unabashed lust for joy in life, he wouldn't be able to keep them off his mind despite his best efforts.

Someone self - assured. For similar reasons as above. His trauma pushed him to depend entirely on himself & forever be in defense, from a place of terror, insecurity and loathing his past deeds. And so, I believe anyone carrying themselves with their head up high, with true confidence and class, not just masquarading bravado to mask their fear, facing everything fate throws at them with the same unrelenting attitude, would be something irresistible for him on some level. No matter if that very person was luckily spared from harsher life experiences, or traumatised as much as he had been. He would wish with all his soul he could be more like them and learn from them, perhaps even hide behind them to some degree.

Someone with fine taste. It's no surprise Astarion enjoys fine things; it would be his pleasure to be matched in his love for comfort & luxury.

Someone open, yet respectful in their everyday affections. Someone who would proudly peck him on the cheek or neck in the presence of everyone in the camp, but won't be aggressively throwing themselves into his arms each second; someone who would greet him each day with the most blissful smile or a warm embrace, but not too overly dramatic. Someone who wouldn't shy from openly referring to him in front of others in his own renditions of "my love", "my sweet" and "my darling" and who'd always keep an eye on him from the distance at camp ground to smile whenever your eyes met, but wouldn't publicly boast about every single detail between the two of you and allow him to keep his space & secrets. Somene playful, yet incredibly authentic in their feelings. All of that would provide him the so desired feeling of safety, love & genuineness, keep him amused and most importantly, provide him with a trusted learning example of how to act, express feelings & treat the other in a relationship. He might & absolutely will try to publicly brush all those affections off and go his usual suave way about it, but inside, or even openly on his face when taken off guard? His undead heart is singing with joy

Someone gentle & considerate. He surely enjoys someone with fantasy, a playful side and some art in lovemaking, but what he craves more than anything is tenderness & love. Anything you do with him in his mind delights him, and over the time he'd learn to accept it without shielding himself with sarcasm. From some minor gifts, asking for his opinion on matters he wouldn't expect to be asked about, to being considerate & delicate in intimacy, everything is such a gift to him even if he doesn't even know how to receive it & respond properly

Someone with wit. I think he would feel quite at home with someone who would at least partially share his gift for words; maybe in an entirely different manner than him, but even so someone to understand, match and carry on a conversation with him along his suave mannerism and irony.

[Thank you for your attention, might edit or add up later]

#baldurs gate astarion #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate astarion #astarion #astarion headcanons #baldur's gate astarion x oc

[monstersandmaw]

First time romancing Astarion, and I'm all aboard the ace-spec interpretation of Astarion that I've seen floating around. As someone who's ace, I definitely resonated with him in this scene anyway. That hug reaction from Astarion. Oof.

And the fact that if you also romance Halsin, one of the dialogue options Astarion can give you is to say something like: 'it's not because... we haven't... in a while... is it?'... My heart cracked painfully at that, I'm not going to lie. I have spoken almost exactly that sentence before, worrying that just kissing and physical affection is not enough for someone who's not ace. To have that validated by Astarion was really special for me.

(aka, I really didn't get to know Astarion very well in my first playthrough because he didn't approve of my absolute doormat of a Tav (Kaerlyn the drow) and I didn't spend much time with him, but now with my sassy monk...? I get it. I totally get why you all love Astarion so much).

EDIT: additional dialogue from Raphael talking about Cazador indicates that it might be linked to vampirism (my own headcanon for vampires anyway is they can't get aroused without having fed recently, not just BG3 vamps, but in general)

[some poly-ace-astarion thoughts under the cut too]

I'm not 100% convinced that Astarion is really ok with the consensual poly situation in-game, because he famously doesn't say what he actually wants and is the king of manipulating others, especially in sexual situations (e.g. what Cazador sent him out to do, and how). I'm not sure if I'll reload a save and just have Halsin as a friend...

The dialogue when you check in with Astarion before the Halsin scene is... strained? Odd??? Maybe it's just me over-analysing it. He sounded strained though - his tone high pitched and more grandiose than he'd been in previous cut-scenes, where he was more softly-spoken. It sounded more like early-game Astarion to me...

Also, my dialogue options may have been totally randomised the next time I approached Astarion after a steamy night with Halsin, but they sounded kind of strained there too, and I got the 'I can never say no to you' one, which set my ace people-pleaser alarm bells ringing...

As someone who's poly-romantic but asexual, I can project/imagine here that Astarion has come to care for Tav a lot (more than he ever expected, for sure), and he genuinely wants Tav to be happy. He trusts Tav enough to know that Tav respects his autonomy and right to decide things for himself, and values Astarion for who he is, so Astarion is intellectually/conceptually happy for Tav to get something from Halsin that Astarion is not providing (sex), but perhaps emotionally that additional fact and dynamic is harder to deal with.

That could totally be me projecting though, because that's how I'd react if my husband (not ace) and I (ace) were in that situation (we've discussed it between us, actually XD). Feelings of guilt and inadequacy around sex itself are apparently very common with us ace folks, even in very healthy and happy relationships.

Anyway, that turned into a ramble I didn't intend on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I'm not looking to start any discourse about this though. If you don't see Astarion that way, or had a different experience and interpretation, that's all totally valid and I'm not trying to invalidate it in anyway.

#my two cents on ace-spectrum astarion #astarion #ace astarion #ace spectrum astarion #halsin x astarion x tav #my headcanons are gonna be a lot more nuanced than the game allows i think... #ace #asexuality #bg3

[dreamingofthewild]

After that post, I got thinking about Bloodweave again. Specifically the way Gale loves and how he would be just as a good fit for Astarion as Karlach, Wyll, or Halsin.

Gale's devotion to his loved one is absolute. He's a kind-hearted soul— the very reason he could summon Tara. He's willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. In an origin run, he proclaims, "...one wizard for the whole of Faerun seems like a fair trade to me."

Gale may not be your typical storybook prince or hero, but his hopeless romanticism shines through a belief in altruism and selflessness. This is a man who says things like "you put the stars to shame" and "with you, I forget my goddess." His devotion transcends physicality, even embracing a romanced, illithid-infected Tav. No mere 'gosh' escapes him when facing the reality of Durge's Bhaalspawn heritage.

Gale approves of helping people, and two of his mini-romance scenes are after you have saved someone. He can only be manipulated into joining you in an evil playthrough because of the orb in his chest. He is a good man, a good man who cried because he accidentally burnt a neighbours rose bush when he was 8.

His love is rooted in personality, not appearances. Gale values commitment, believing sex is an act of profound connection between body and soul. He's the antithesis of the shallow encounters Astarion's was forced to endure. Gale's steadfastness would have made him an unlikely victim for Astarion's seductions. A fact that annoys me in a Gale origin run, as you should be able to say that you can't have sex like you can in a Karlach origin run.

Astarion would find Gale's authenticity refreshing. He doesn't need to put on an act in front of Gale. In fact, Gale prefers the truth. Gale, ever kind, would even offer to help kill Cazador without asking for anything in return. That's simply who he is.

Astarion needs someone selfless, patient, and understanding – qualities Gale possesses in abundance. A romanced Astarion, in turn, deeply cares for his partner once his masked as slipped, and he realises that he is in love (albeit I haven't played his romance out yet).

He repeatedly encourages Gale to think independently ("Where is Gale's will?") and challenges his self-sacrificial tendencies.

Their bond grows over books and shared interests. Contrary to belief, a romanced Astarion would not want Gale to ascend to Godhood. A romanced Astarion would selfishly want Gale to himself.

I'm convinced Gale offers a fulfilling romance for any companion.

Gale and Wyll are not too different. If one is a good fit for Astarion, then so is the other. And if Astarion is a good fit for one, then he is a good fit for the other.

Saying that Gale is too easily corruptible or morally ambiguous to be "good enough" for Astarion is really doing an injustice to Gale. Gale is kind-hearted and morally sound enough to encourage Astarion to be a better person. Gale is neutral good, just like Wyll is. Gale's actions always have good intentions behind them.

Also, I'm not saying people have to like Bloodweave, but I just understand that there are often deeper reasons people like the ship.

#bg3 #bloodweave #queued post #character analysis #I just think Gale is neat #I could be misremembering but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Wyll and Gale's characters were inspired by the same character trope #Until they decided to create two different characters #I may write a post about their similarities #bloodweave discussion #As a Galemancer I don't like the implication that Gale wouldn't be good enough for Astarion #I want to tag the characters but I don’t want to annoy people

[y-rhywbeth2]

So glancing between the original games and the third - again - and thinking about the difference between the feral and Chosen bad endings and how I'm going to interpret them in my own canon. BG3 lore is irrelevant to me from now on I'm entering the phase where I'm assimilating my playthrough into my own Realms canon.

Also, Durge appears to be soulless. I am aware of the way the game treats Durge as though they have a soul, but BG3 makes strange choices where lore doesn't match up all the damn time. Astarion is clinically dead but the rest mechanics still need food. BG3 talks like Wyll is a devil, and they definitely don't have mortal souls. Dark Urge identity crises and complicated relationship with personhood, how I love thee.

Major BG2 spoilers, so I'll put that under a cut just in case anybody would like to play those games blind.

I noticed this a while back, but Durge's situation is reminiscent of a soulless Bhaalspawn. When their soul - the portion of them that is "them" and not entirely Bhaal - is removed they start displaying the same symptoms and slipping into what is basically the feral ending, judging by Imoen's behaviour:

"Who-who... who is that? Keep back... Keep back! [...] Who is Imoen? I don't know that name. I don't know that name! She's not here! [...] Get away from me! I'll... I'll kill you! I'll rip your eyes from your filthy faces! Do not tempt my wrath! Do not... I... she's not here. I do not know that... name. [...] I see... yes... I see... She's not here... Someone else will come..."

We have dizzy spells and risks of blackouts (otherwise known as Bhaal threatening to take over):

"Your step falters, your vision spins, and you feel something is very wrong. For an instant you are conscious of nothing but the rushing of your blood."

Bhaal literally just assuming direct control rather than flooding you with the urge to murder. Also pain caused by said attempt at taking control:

"A shock of pain passes through your body, and you feel you mind slipping away, forced aside by the darkness within." - "Your blood cools, and mind and body are reunited under your control. Your will had faltered, and the essence of Bhaal was there to take advantage. The void where your soul once was overflowed with murderous fury, the mark of a deity that no longer exists. The taint of Bhaal has affected you differently than Imoen, reacting with your strength of will. You will eventually lose yourself unless your stolen soul is restored. A fate, as they say, worse than death." - "The madness fades, and the essence retreats, but if this continues you will lose not only yourself , but also everything you hold dear. The uncertainty of your condition has obviously worried those you travel with. The quest is treacherous enough without having to worry about what you might do."

Most Bhaalspawn have mortal lineage and were left to develop their own identities until they hit adulthood and Bhaal decided it was time to start pushing them into killing each other as part of the resurrection plan. Their souls are explicitly divine in nature, but they had time and freedom to develop those souls. Each demigod is a potential fledgling god.

The soul and the conscious mind aren't the same thing, so personality and decision making can continue but the emotions and personhood are... not quite there, only the echoes of it. It's been compared to wearing a mask and acting out a part in a play, rather than actually living as that person.

Durge it seems was engineered from the very beginning so that they would never have that chance. Created directly from Bhaal, with no other parent (let alone a mortal one) to dilute him; Bhaal started forcing their hand to kill from a far younger age (before puberty) rather than waiting for them to reach adulthood. and Sceleritas was following them closely ensuring that people would be around to have "accidents", like Alfira.

But it's also notable that Bhaal doesn't just want a puppet, he needs a Bhaalspawn with the drive and power to be his avatar. He somehow needs Durge blindly loyal and lacking in independence but also in possession of "strength of will" to be worthy of/able to house and use his power.

It seems that Durge does not have a soul the way their siblings do, all they have to resist Bhaal with is their mind and sheer willpower. If they disappoint Bhaal then he will simply assume control - something he can do any time he likes. Over the course of BG3 they start developing something like their own soul - judging by the way Bhaal and Sceleritas are still in touch and seemingly testing them, I can only assume this is actually according to plan; Durge is supposed to cultivate a spark of their own divine soul over the journey (and also get tadpoled and help Bhaal take over the Netherbrain and thralls through them, as Sceleritas kind of mentions).

If they fail then Bhaal goes for the feral ending; they go into the "Imoen" category where they're not worthy of his attention and he just uses Durge as a puppet.

Mystra can't force mortals to become her Chosen, they must consent, so possibly that rule applies to Bhaal too? I don't know, but it explains why Bhaal needs them to accept. If they resist then they're clearly strong enough to be worthy but wilful enough that Bhaal decides the risk of that spark of a soul is too great a risk to him and his plans and tries to destroy it but fails because it's too late, and Jergal cuts this fledgling divine soul free.

If they accept becoming Chosen then they are agreeing to be imbued with a fragment of Bhaal's divine essence. Bhaal gets what he wants and merges it with another fragment of his divine essence, presumably setting the stage for him to become a full deity walking the face Toril through Durge's/his body. The fledgling spark of individual is lost in Bhaal when the two fuse; the threat of the resist ending isn't present, because that spark is gone, so if you defy him again he just takes over and we get the punishment ending.

#/durge #headcanoning. #babbling #bg2 spoilers

[bettsfic]

it took 140 hours, but i finally finished my first playthrough of baldur's gate 3. overall i'm insane about it but there are a few things that really pissed me off. my (many) thoughts in no particular order under the cut.

i forced myself to play the full game totally vanilla, no mods even though i'm so bad at games i usually need cheats to make it to the end. not to mention i've hated inventory management in every game i've ever played (except genshin. love u, hyv). but i was patient, and i played on explorer mode, and i savescummed the hell out of it (hence 140 hours). but as SOON as i finished the epilogue, i turned around and installed 30 mods, most of which are QoL things that shouldn't even need to be modded (vertical camera pitch, WASD option, stackable items, sortable inventory, highlight ALL interactable objects).

i decided i wanted to play both a Dark Urge playthrough and an I'm Just Ken playthrough, but after making two new characters and, through my endless youtube diving, accidentally getting spoiled on what i think is the major durge reveal, i decided simply to make Ken the Dark Urge.

every other minute he goes, "Hi! I'm Ken," and then thinks about murder. it's great.

obvs he's going to romance Shadowheart (although i may download the poly mod and romance everyone).

MAJOR SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

here are my Thoughts, in no particular order, because i don't know where else to put them:

i didn't enjoy romancing Astarion as much as i thought i would, because i came to see him less as a romantic interest and ended up identifying with him more than my Tav. that said, i'm very excited to do Astarion's origin playthrough

i ended up enjoying my Halsin romance more, because it was a more traditional slowburn, and Halsin's quest was totally external conflict. on one hand, that made me less interested in him as a character overall; on the other, it was SO SATISFYING to find out he had been Pining for me the whole time. sometimes i just need a little bodice-ripper content, as a treat

obviously i'm also into Astarion/Halsin and Astarion/Halsin/Tav

however the only viable fic idea i have is Astarion/Shadowheart? i blame this fanvid

no, really, what was so different about Early Access that OP got this much Astarion/Shadowheart material? the description in the video says they were disappointed by how their dynamic had changed for full release

okay, time or my biggest beef:

Haarlep pissed me off almost enough to stop playing the game. not in a purity way, but in a "this is just bad writing" way

i mean, your options are to kill him or fuck him. that's not consent. and when you agree to fuck him, you have to roll several checks to keep him from killing you. then he steals your likeness so that whenever he has sex with someone else, you have a spontaneous orgasm

i wanted to dismiss it as dead dove, but the point of dead dove is that 1) it is labeled, and there was no indication whatsoever i was about to walk into this, and 2) dead dove implies the creator is aware that the content is filth for filth's sake. i saw no evidence that that quest was anything more than the sniffing panties buff of D:OS2

the sadist in the goblin camp? that's good filth. you have a little public BDSM demo that you can easily nope out of, and if you finish it you get a permanent buff. your companions have fun things to say. and there's no major quest attached to it, so you can completely walk past it. and the Drow twins were the same. and Mizora. just horny content for players who enjoy that kind of thing, and easily disregarded for players who don't. i don't understand why Haarlep had to be different

like, you're looking around for the hammer. you come across Haarlep, who is bored and wants to have fun with you. maybe he offers the promise of a buff that will help in the coming battle with the Absolute. if your romanced character is in the party, you have a dialogue option to talk to them about it first. maybe in parting, he gives you a hint about where to find the hammer, and it's in a completely different room

but no, you *have* to interact with him to advance the quest, can't talk your way out of it, and it leaves you with a skeevy pseudo-debuff

when i went to look it up, i saw so many forum posts of people being like, hmm this made me really uncomfortable, and (presumably) men responding, it was consensual! you have the option to kill him! and it's frightening that so many people think that way

also when you have a female Tav and you choose a male Haarlep, the animation doesn't change to account for the position. Haarlep straddles you the whole time. and that just made me interpret the scene as a male succubus rape fantasy

and your companions have to WATCH. and they don't intervene or even say anything about it. if you've romanced Astarion and he's in your party, you get one point of disapproval and that's it. like he wouldn't have an Opinion over that kind of coercion? i saw some youtube videos and know that he says something about it much later when you spontaneously orgasm, but that's it

i hope there's something i'm missing, and someone will come into my ask and go "ummm actually" and tell me some important factoid of game development that will make me interpret the scene differently

i ended up resetting and just not doing the House of Hope questline. i didn't bother with the hammer, either. honestly the whole Githyanki plot confused me and i was more invested in my conflict with the Emperor. i ended up siding with him and killing Orpheus so that no one would have to turn into a mindflayer. i was expecting to have to persuade him out of taking the crown himself, but he just noped off for some reason

this is another thing i wonder if i missed. i never understood his motivations or goals beyond "protect you" and "manipulate you." so he's Balduran and he killed his dragon and...what else? to what end? it would have been more satisfying to me if he planned to take the crown for himself but decides not to because of the bond he's forged with you. but maybe i can interpret it that way anyway

yes i fucked the Emperor

but i fucked him in Guardian form

like a COWARD

i was very torn about all the characters' final decisions. in the end, i kept Jenheart and spawn Astarion. i let Wyll and Karlach choose for themselves (and loved their ending together). i couldn't prioritize Gale or Lae'zel this playthrough because i was focused on too many other things, and i got their bad endings (although i ended on good terms with Lae'zel despite killing Orpheus?)

i played as a beast master ranger (i mained a beast master hunter in WoW for years) and i've seen in several places on the internet that it's supposedly the worst subclass, but let me tell you...

the bird companion. nobody is talking about the bird companion. by the end, it has two actions, the ability to blind, and your bird can call in two more birds. you can have a total of FOUR BIRDS

the red dragon in the final battle? couldn't do shit. it spent the entire time blinded by my bird. nearly everyone on the battlefield was dead by the end, but my bird still had over 50% of its HP. the bird is BROKEN

in my I'm Just Ken playthrough, i'm going to multiclass Shadowheart into a raven girl. the birds spoiled me and i can't imagine playing without them now

it's weird to me that there's penis physics but no boob physics. did anyone else notice that? you wiggle the male avatar and the dick moves. you wiggle the female avatar and her boobs are like rocks. even when she's lying down, the boobs stay exactly as they are

listen, i have a lot of complaints. the bugs made the game nearly unplayable for me. i know they're putting out patches fast, but i think it'll still be years before i would recommend this game to someone who is on the fence about playing it. if you're not immediately dropping everything to fuck the hot sad vampire, you might as well wait until the game is cleaner at like hotfix 856

BUT

i've never experienced anything like this game. every decision matters. every character has a story. there are so many potential paths and opportunities that it's literally impossible for the fan wiki to be completely accurate. i cried at least 4 times, and by the end, saying goodbye to Karlach, i was actually sobbing. i'm old enough now to know that these states of immersion into fictional worlds are rarer than they used to be, and i'm so grateful to this game for giving me so many hours of fun and escape

unlike books, movies, and tv, where i get invested and move on and rarely read or watch anything twice, video games are always such a learning curve for me that when i get into a game, i stay there. i have thousands of hours into Genshin and SDV, and i have a feeling BG3 will be the same. this game is so, so flawed, but it's ambitious beyond any narrative i've ever encountered, and i really admire it for that

i would love to find a Discord server for it that's not overwhelmingly huge, just the people writing fic and making art. it's been a long time since i've been involved in a fandom and i really miss it

#bg3

[random-introverted-blog]

Guys, our blog is growing, I'm so proud of us.

We must spread the gospel of Dark Justiciar/Sharran Shadowheart. I mean, yes, we all adore the fluffy and sweet nature of Selunite Shadowheart, my heart melts and eats that shit up but there's a wealth of untapped potential for Sharran Shadowheart and the fanfiction/Shadowheart fandom are cowards and scared of her power. To that end, I am providing the following information that you may have seen in that meme I posted a little bit ago. There will be spoilers. I'll mark these red as best I can.

First off, she has access to memory magic.

Modify Memory is the first spell that comes to mind though it's limited to 10 minutes of memory. Also, the range of time is decided by the level you cast the spell. You need to cast it as a LEVEL 9 SPELL to be able to have full access to their memory, with level 8 being within the last year. I have no doubt Shar has better usage and can grant more flexibility to her followers if you go by what Viconia did to Shadowheart. Repeatedly.

On that note, she can manipulate/edit memories as well. Modify Memory doesn't mean total erasure after all, but that is something its capable of.

Memory suppression is potentially different, and Shadowheart says suppressed specifically. She also says that her memories will be restored to her after she completes her mission, but I'm not sure if she ever does, actually. If someone has dialogue or a clip of her saying she does after a full Sharran Shadowheart playthrough [including her parents] then I'm interested in being proven wrong.

She is Shar's Chosen [CANONICALLY THE FAVORITE PRINCESS OF A GOD GUYS]

That's not a title/position to scoff at.

When you take Dark Justiciar Shadowheart to the cloister for her coup attempt, she informs the entire place that Shar now uses the wound on her hand to funnel her power into her.

She doubles down on this after she kills her parents. When she rises from the floor and is all agog (thanks Astarion) she says Shar's power is at her fingertips. She could very well be speaking metaphorically, but Shar backs this up, saying prior, and I quote, "It is done. And done well. They are with me now, in my endless dark. And from them, you can draw endless power." I haven't had the time nor the full courage to get far enough in a DJ playthrough to confirm if she gets any cool powers like Ascended Astarion does. Far as I can tell from googling around, she doesn't.

It's not mentioned in the epilogue, you don't see this power the same way you see Ascended become Batstarion. But the point remains. She stands at the helm of Shar's church.

Deception, secrecy and infiltration, oh my

Shadowheart comically has a -1 to her charisma rolls, but canonically she is an expert at lying and hiding secrets. If you try to pry her before she's ready to tell you about Shar, she will pretty expertly thwart you before you can get too far along. While that's moreso her being a prickly asshole to shrug you off her and less cunning, it's still a testament to her ability to bunker down on things she can't/won't talk about.

So imagine my surprise when I realized people were sitting on the fact that Sharran/Dark Justiciar/Mother Superior Shadowheart has a cult of people obsessively devoted to secrets and deception and manipulation at her disposal, under her command... And not a single soul is considering the yandere/obssessive implications. The limits to this are almost endless. Shar is a narcisstic goddess but we're talking fanficition/fanart guys, we create our headcannons under creative license. If we wanted canon, we'd just play the game again.

The Church of Shar is big on indoctrination and has no shame and virtually no limits on how far it will go to achieve this

This, roped in with memory magic, can be a DEVASTATING combination. I've touched on the memory part already in Flickers of Loss where the reader had some of her memories suppressed and the gaps were padded with Sharran brainwashing.

Do even a fraction of reading on the Forgotten Realms wiki for Shar's church and you find out pretty quick that some of her followers probably didn't (initially) choose her.

Due to the perception of Shar's church among most folk of the Realm, open recruiting for new members was not an option. Novitiates of the faith—whether they served as spies, agents, or clergy within the temples—were brought aboard individually, a process that sometimes took an inordinate amount of time. Sharran clergy often sought out secrets held by prospective members, and manipulated them to secure desired converts.

If we're saying Tav completed a full Sharran playthrough and Shadowheart is Shar's Chosen, that Tav saved Baldur's Gate, then converting them would make a lot of sense to Shar. And Shadowheart has said herself, "rules aren't meant to be broken, but they are intended to be bent." She can justify many acts as service to Shar, to manipulate a conversion from Tav. Few finer torments, after all...

In I Want To Live, by Chapter 8, Shadowheart has successfully abducted Emily, and obviously has a twisted obsession with her. Why isn't Shar striking Shadowheart across the face for turning her attention, even slightly, away from her? Because Shar wants a conversion from Emily, and is allowing Shadowheart to use any means necessary to get it. Shar wants what she wants, and so long as she gets it, she doesn't really care how (she'll make a show about it, sure, but in the end its narcistic theatrics)

Shadowheart is still a terrible Sharran [This whole segment is epilogue spoilers]

She's knowledgeable, absolutely, but she fails to apply that knowledge. Often. It's part of why Viconia had such an issue with her. Not only was she grooming her own replacement, but her replacement was, in her eyes, an incompetent fool.

In the epilogue, we see this trend continue. Romanced, she's like "yeah we can't officially be together but I'm totally down bad to show you my PRIVATE WINE CELLAR" guys please I'm begging yo—

If you try to lowkey brush her off by saying "you're not the same woman I fell for" she will come at you with "yeah, but there's still something of me you want to pursue, right? Right?"

Non-romanced, she basically implies that Nocturne has become this. "Yeah, I'm playing favorites and I dare them to call me out on it, they won't because I'm built different and they're scared of me and they should be because I'm playing favorites and they're not my favorite and—"

If you ask her to take leave from her duties, she doesn't rebuke you for suggesting it HOW DARE YOU SPEAK SUCH HERESY MY LIFE IS FOR THE DARK LADY TO DECIDE. Nothing like that. She just says "would that I could, but this is my life now, sooo..."

If you ask her how running the cloister is going, she will go off on a rant. "All-consuming. Endless decisions to make, underlings jockeying for your attention, threats from the outside, threats from the inside... there's times I miss when it was just our little group against the odds. Simplicity is a luxury that has drifted out of my reach, I'm afraid. But at least for tonight, I can have a taste of how it used to be."

And if you tell her you're living a quiet, peaceful life, she says, "I won't pretend I'm not a little jealous. Lady Shar is a demanding mistress - as is her right to be - but a little calm and solitude would be a tonic."

She's unhappy, and she does a poor job concealing it. She wishes she had more freedom to pursue her heart's desires. Calm, peace, friendship, intimacy.

So all she needs is an excuse/exemption from Shar to pursue Tav. All she needs is Shar to let her off the leash. And even if Shar doesn't, I'm pretty confident that this woman will comb and rake through scripture to find the vaguest of loopholes to have Tav.

Conclusion

You guys are cowards and are too intimidated to write Dark Justiciar Shadowheart. She's definitely more complicated to write because of her religious beliefs and the restrictions therein. She's not as simple to write as Ascended Astarion, a man who is beholden only to his own ego. But there is plenty to scrounge up to justify and headcanon a fanfiction or fanart of Dark Justiciar Shadowheart being yandere and obsessed as well, and a pretty believable one at that. You just have to be willing to put in the work.

If I think of more to add, I'll probably add it as an edit.

Now go forth, my fellow Dark Justiciar Shadowheart simps! Take this sermon and manipulate convince the nonbelievers of our truths!

#baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate #bg3 #shadowheart #baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate shadowheart #baldurs gate #bg3 shadowheart #dark justiciar shadow heart #dark justiciar #sharran shadowheart #shadowheart is queen #shadow daddy #drink my blood and spit it in my face #you guys are really sleeping on this shit I swear #spread the gospel of obsessive/possessive Shadowheart #a sermon for the church of Sharran/Dark Justiciar Shadowheart simps

[ryttu3k]

Feeling Some Kinda Way about Astarion's mirror scene (which I just got in my playthrough). Spoilers for later parts of his storyline.

For reference, you can watch it here. I picked mostly the same options, aside from 0.04 ("Just looking. What are you doing?" "I'm looking too, but not seeing very much. Another quirk of my... affliction"), 1.34 ("I'll be your mirror. What do you want to know?" "I want to know what the world sees when it looks at me. What you see"), and 2.06 ("Karlach is beautiful. You're fine, though." Same reaction, approval included).

His current relationship with my Tav is... mostly platonic (they allowed him to feed from them, and he came onto them pretty strongly at the party, but they turned him down), so not meant to be a romance run. Have seen almost the same dialogue set with romance runs, too.

And honestly, on its surface, it's played as 'vampire can't see reflection, wants to be reassured about physical beauty'. But the fact that he approves when you say you're attracted to someone else is a pretty whopping indicator that it's not the surface interpretation, and we do later find out that... he really, really doesn't like being seen as attractive, given how Cazador forced him to use it as a tool. To use himself as a tool.

Oh sure, he also approves when you call him beautiful, listing the stereotypical 'attractive' traits (you can watch that here). And yeah, that plays in with wanting to know that he still has his primary weapon, his ability to flirt and charm and use the tools at his disposal. But the voice acting comes across as... pretty different. He still has up the flirtatious wall when you call him attractive, but when you're commenting on laugh lines and the way his hair curls and how attractive you find your team mates? He sounds a lot more... unguarded, I think. He's not expecting it, even if (going by the approval) he likes hearing it.

And I think that the more traditional romance route is what he was expecting and wanting to hear. The other options, on the other hand, are what he needs to hear but didn't realise it was even a possibility until now. Not that you see him as beautiful, he knows he is, he likes the reassurance that he can still use his appearance to keep himself safe. His approval with the whole, "Yeah, Karlach is beautiful, but you're okay too :)" thing, the genuine pleasure and amusement in his voice, comes from the realisation that his new companions are seeing him, Astarion, as a person and not an object of lust.

Not Cazador's tool, the one he's used for two hundred years to survive. He has people on his side now, and they see him.

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 spoilers #ry plays bg3 #astarion #the pale elf

[luxlightly]

Larian studios giving us everything, huh?

The box of letters....from everyone you helped...the wooden duck...the new stuffed animal for Karlach....

Everyone is just so happy to see each other and they're all doing so well.

It's just really nice to see Larian studios take to heart all the feedback on the game and do so much work to add this extra content! The amount of extra stuff they've added and tweaked in the relatively short time since the game was released is so extremely nice.

And even just little stuff like adding a box with all the clothes and dyes in the game so you can just play dress up and see what looks good for your next playthrough. What a nice little detail!

They definitely seem to be leaving themselves open for future content down the road. Karlach and Wyll's quest for the forge, for one, then Withers basically saying "I can and will summon you all together again when the world needs you again".

I also noticed how Jaheira seemed to make a point to tell you that the lower city is more or less exactly as it was but the upper city is completely different. If they have no immediate plans for it, it at least leaves open the possibly of an upper city dlc or expansion. Having her mention that the upper city is totally different gives them the freedom to create a new one without needing to adhere to the layout from the final act.

I love how Misnc also mentions frequently visiting Astarion.

It's just like...the ending they had before left it off at the moment of triumph. It was meant to keep the energy up until the very end, instead of dragging on with a really long epilogue that might feel unnecessary to a lot of players and kill the energy of the final battle. Which I can totally understand as a creative decision.

But then when the game came out, the players were like "we prefer to possibly sacrifice the impact of the ending in favor of feeling more connected to the world and especially to our companions. Knowing how they fared and feeling like our friendship extended past the final scenes is the most important thing to us" and Larian was just like "okay sure :)" and did so much work to make sure you get a sense of reward and accomplishment as well as closure, while still leaving open the possibly of future adventure.

I'm getting all welled up. I'll say more about it soon I'm sure. I'm just really really happy with this update. I couldn't be more pleased.

#bg3 spoilers #bg3 #mild spoilers for patch 5 #baldur's gate 3

[thedomesticanthropologist]

I have something that's been bugging me regarding a moderately popular request from fans to add a way to romance Astarion without having sex with him.

There are so many reasons why this is a very sweet but poor take. I'll start with game reasons and then explain the trauma connection

That route would then become the "Morally pure" or "Only Right" option. Now I know you're just thinking personally you would be more comfortable with that kind of story but people absolutely would not leave it alone. I already see how the ascended versus spawn ending conflict looks, now imagine having a completely morally pure Romance run where you never once do anything that has a perceivable negative connotation.

I could carry on, but now I'm going to move into speculation, fueled by my perspective, which is informed by my experiences:

He wouldn't have gone for it. Certainly not in act one where he's doing everything he can to pin someone down, and this is the only skill he thinks he has at this moment, he's acting on instinct his instinct is to seduce.

You can say that you try to build a friendship throughout act one just like you would in the regular route because hey we also have halsin and minthara who you don't even get to romance until later on in the game, sure, I hear you. So in that case, having not romanced you in act 1 he is now on par with however he would be in a friend playthrough.

He is also in a completely different mental space by the end of it, and since he never had to pretend to be in love with you, he never had to keep up a facade of a developing romance because he wasn't banging you, which he considered a transactional thing that was part of the whole "getting protection" thing

Let me expand a little. Even if you were flirty back, Astarions plans were always "seduce you, sleep with you, manipulate your feeling so you'd never turn on me" and he believes that the sex is part of how you get something out of it too, since he sees NO VALUE in himself as a person, and states in game that he has little to offer but complications.

He would close the book on you romantically the minute you didn't let him sleep with you, just like he does in a regular playthrough. If you wrote it as him going along with a slow burn seduction, same romance talk but no sex, maybe even teasing him along, you may have gotten through Act 1, I will give you that that could be written, and would make great fanfiction. But we are talking about putting this in the canon, in the game, keep that in mind.

Say you get to act 2, the point where he says he needs a break from sex. If this gets you excited, thinking "this is where it pays off" .... No! Because he would never have that conversation, due to not having had sex.

How could you re-write it? Maybe he wasn't in a relationship with you this whole time even though you were pursuing him but you said no sex which would have frustrated him (you see where I'm going with this)

Maybe this is the point where you say like I would like to help you fight Cazador and do everything as your partner because I love you, or... However. You'd have to have the romance confession, because he couldn't confess to you because the only reason in his mind he confesses to you is out of guilt from having used you for you guessed it

SEX

So now let's say you fully support him when you're saying romantic things to him and for some reason you write in that he's tolerating this and it's fine,

He's a complete wreck all the way up until the end of the Cazador quest. This is not the time where he would be getting cuddly and snuggly and Kissy or even spending more time with the main character because in the Canon he is so upset that he's pretty much snapping at everybody, if you romanced him he's taking a break and he will not commit to what you guys are and he's still putting on a bit of a front with the same kind of language and tones of voice he used when he was manipulating you and act one showing that he's kind of going through the motions right now.

So you would have to rewrite the entire romance that from this morally pure point of view he would be in such a better place emotionally with you or the romance wouldn't be able to start until after cazadors quest.

Then you get into endgame where you either ascended him or you left him as a spawn, and the friendship route does what it does but how would you write the graveyard scene how would you do any of this because he would have had no reason to confess any of his trauma to you ever because you were so supportive how would you have gotten that information out of him?

If you didn't know any of that stuff then why is he bringing you to the graveyard how deep did your relationship really get? How did you get a relationship that's deep with him when he wouldn't have divulged that information?

You even see in the love test he is a very private person and the only reason he was ever honest with you was to apologize for how he manipulated you with sex.

I actually could keep going on about this but I'm using voice to text and it's midnight and I should probably just go to bed so anyway I'm not here to super duper put you guys down or anything I think it's very very sweet I think it is beautiful and I think you should write fanfic about it.

I do not think it belongs in the game

Now you go enjoy the things you enjoy, I will read all of your fanfiction, I will love all of your art. I enjoy the hell out of you beautiful creatures who just want the best for this sad vampire man. And wait, can you make it work in his Origin?? Idk maybe try that idea out I haven't thought that one through.

Sometimes really good writing puts us in positions where we feel a little uncomfortable. And that just makes it good writing. I love you all thanks for coming to My Opinions Based on the information I Currently Have 😂

#baldurs gate 3 #baldur's gate 3 spoilers #astarion spoilers #astarion romance #astarion route

[morgana-ren]

Hi Morgana :)) hope you're having a good day. So I stumbled upon this video and the discourse in the comments https://youtube.com/shorts/cbtSWTjXvZQ?si=8g19VZHJUNI-5niU

And quite frankly got curious as I didn't get to play much of an early access Astarion but I do remember how his attitude at the tiefling/goblin party seems a lil different from early access to launch as well as his noble to charlatan change. So I thought that I could ask the Lore Mommy do you think he was changed that much and or how these changes shifted your perspective on his character. Because personally I do view him as a decadent and somewhat hedonistic as Ascended and those traits do show in his Spawn persona as well.

So just curious about your thoughts on this:))

Okay, I ended up fucking rambling and getting off topic here. This is too long for comfort. I'm sorry I just ended up blabbing, I swear that wasn't the intention lmao. I ended up looking into the comments at aforementioned discourse and it just reminded me of shit, so please forgive me. I tend to r a m b l e with a fuckin capital R. I'm talking in a more general sense and not at anyone in particular, most especially not you, so please don't think that. It's just my observations at large. I love questions like this and I hope this doesn't make you roll your eyes.

So, I got the EA version of the game when it was still fairly early. It was Patch 2, if I recall. It was interesting watching the group develop and grow as the writers and developers decided some things fit more than others because sometimes the patches were so drastically different than the last. Wyll actually got an entire rewrite between the EA and the full release. All of the characters we had went through changes (except Karlach and Halsin because they weren't there but they were likely tweaked behind the scenes.) A lot of Astarion's concept was already written, but his character was absolutely tweaked. The art book and a lot of the released designs are very early. We had them as of patch 2 where he was drastically different. In the beginning, they very much were going more for the stereotypical 'evil' follower. You could play as a good character and he would still like you, but he was very much geared for more debauchery-based playthroughs. It's also important to note that we really didn't get to demo everything. We only got the first act, and some of the more shallow aspects of it.

The thing about Baldur's Gate 3 is it is written so well because no character is good or evil. They are rounded, genuine characters with stories and lives and opinions of their own. You can dislike them, but you have to acknowledge they aren't written to be banal stereotypes. Astarion was a bit more of an evil clusterfuck in EA, but even then, there was a deep pain inside of him, and he was using his callousness and lack of giving a shit as a defense. Even then you knew something was very wrong. He mentioned Cazador because you ran into the Gur hunter, and you knew he was kept as a spawn against his will and was tortureda and had a very dubious past, but a lot of the character development wasn't in the EA-- because they didn't originally intend for it to be there.

But that doesn't fully change his character like some of the comments and other videos and posts I see seem to suggest. It seems like a lot of people have an egregious misunderstanding of his arc-- especially on tiktok and youtube shorts where the audience is younger and more prone to projection and group-thinking, echo-chambery line of thought.

Here's the rundown from what I remember deducing with EA combined with my personal playthroughs now that the game has released:

Astarion was absolutely a shithead before he was taken and turned. We don't know about his childhood, mostly because he doesn't know or remember, but I can say with certainty that he didn't become a dickhead after Cazador. Being taken made him worse, but he absolutely was an asshole before he was taken. He probably wasn't the traumatized, terrified young man he is now, but he was probably a real shit-kicker. He was on the winding path to darkness and they make this clear.

(His childhood was not touched on in the EA at all. All you knew is magistrate, vampire, gur killed him, Cazador, slave, and his dickish, libertine attitude.)

He is a noble though. This much we knew. He is privileged. Elite. He took without caring and doled out where he saw fit. He was your stereotypical rich boy-- or that's the vibe he gives off. He doesn't give off 'I earned my way into power' like Gortash does. He gives off 'I was born into privilege and I'm making it everyone else's problem.' He's educated and very savvy with language in a way that those of higher education access learn to be. He is well spoken and snubs his nose at 'lessers' in a way you see the wealthy do so casually. He was likely living a life of luxury and emerging into his own life in an Elon Musk-esque sort of evil powergrab. He might've always been a pesky little troublemaker, but he very much has 'I'm rich and I don't care about you' vibes, even beneath all of the trauma. This did not develop from Cazador. This was preexisting.

He was young. He was impulsive and dumb. He never had a chance to emotionally mature. It's entirely possible that, had he been left alone, he might've blossomed into a better person. But do not be mistaken, he was a bad person. Honestly, it's more possible to me that he would have just become another corrupt patriar with the city in his coin purse. Either way, fate played him a different hand than the one his birth had decided on.

You are told that he is a magistrate back in the city, which is true. When you play his origin story, you get options relating to it and it's actually been referred to a lot since the EA. He absolutely was some form of up and rising politician seeking power. A man with high ideas of himself, libertine proclivities, a self-centered attitude, and very much not a good person. Probably not horrible or sadistic for fun to the degree he is now, but definitely spiraling that way with the path he was on. The seeds had been planted already before any of his trauma happened.

I assume he wasn't quite important enough that his death would cause an uproar, but probably an impudent little upstart with his eyes on high political power just getting his bearings in the political world with help from mommy and daddy. The kind of petty asshole who abuses any authority he gets and doesn't care who or what gets in his way because he has some shit to prove and a life to live, everyone else be damned. That kind of person. He had ideas and ambitions, and is probably very open to corruption from the get-go. The kind of politician that dies in the street and people go "Hmm. Shame." and move on because they weren't anything special or grand. Just another corrupt asshole getting what they deserved. Another rich daddy's boy brought to the knife by the populace.

He was mourned. Someone missed him. But it wasn't the people of Baldur's Gate. That's for sure. He was forgotten before he became a true problem. Killed and stemmed. Just. Another. Cruel politician. Just another bastard with a big head. Just another.

In short, he definitely made some enemies and had drawn the wrong sort of attention during his time as a magistrate. Being the peacocking, lovely, arrogant young man he is, I bet he'd managed to make more people unbelievably pissed off than any sort of admiration, which normally for the rich isn't a problem, but... when it is, it really is, as you can see.

Even in the EA, he is very open with you tells you that the Gur, likely unhappy with a recent ruling he made, jumped him and murdered him in the street and you can let him kill the hunter. Thing is, Gur are not a violent people. If they attacked him like that, he did something to warrant it. It had to have been pretty nasty for it to have that consequence. The main difference is in the EA (later, of course, but still) you can find out that it was not Cazador that sent the Gur hunter. In fact, it was someone different entirely. I think it was someone named Maiden Fel or something. I do not remember. They likely switched it up. It was not the Gur looking of their own volition originally, but neither was it Cazador. But the EA was also slightly disjointed and broken so it's hard to tell what was canon at the time.

Astarion, in his shitty early days, isn't shy about his slight racism. He seems to dislike everything that isn't human or elven. It's entirely possible he had racial/cultural biases against the Gur and ended up pulling a ruling that was extremely unfair. It would be fair for them to seek retaliation.

This is never officially elaborated on as far as I know, but I do honestly believe that Cazador was almost more coincidence than anything. He saw a young, beautiful boy and went "Hmm... useful." He smelled blood in the water and saw someone that wouldn't be missed and offered them eternal life, knowing this silver-haired young man would be foolish enough to grasp it. He probably reeked of privilege. He would take it with open arms and without asking why or what for because that is what he was used to. Privileged people do not ask. They take. Cazador knew this.

(The point of me running through his past is to point out that not everything can be blamed on his trauma. He was at least kind of a bastard before this ever happened. And both EA and release have the similar trauma background almost identically.)

As we know, Astarion died that night. In the street. In a puddle of his own blood. He was scraped off the cobblestone and thrown into the cemetary, where he emerged the next night to his new life-- to Cazador. He didn't die. Astarion the Magistrate died. But Astarion, the stuck up, pompous, selfish asshole very much did not. In fact, that very same noble was forced to swallow a taste of his own medicine-- and it was a bitter fucking pill.

It made him worse. Trauma doesn't always make you soft and sweet. Sometimes, trauma makes you hard and cruel and angry and spiteful. Sometimes it doesn't make you apologetic; it makes you venomous. It makes you a spitting cobra rather than a loyal, empathetic puppy.

(Notice all I say about projection) Honestly, for me, it's nice to see that representation. Because my trama did not make me kind. It made me hurt. And it made me angry. And it twisted my mind into ways of thinking that I do not like. And you almost never see that. You see a lot of people who are kind and soft and gentle, but you don't often see those of us that were ripped apart and never managed to sew back together right. We do not bend and break our back and twist our tongues for others. Sometimes we are hurtful and mean and things that people paint as evil. Sometimes you grow claws rather than thick skin. Sometimes you grow fangs rather than a bigger heart.

So, more in line with the actual question, they very much did change up his arc. He was meant to be much more manipulative and shitty. It was datamined in the original script, I believe. That much was confirmed way earlier in the early access. But more or less, they went 'Hey, maybe we shouldn't write such a vapid dumbass character because it doesn't fit with the theme of 'complexity' we're working with here. Maybe we should make him more rounded. Maybe we should make him a person.' His story had been mostly mapped, but his character hadn't quite yet. And I'm glad they did.

Having him be a vacuous, shitty stereotype would have been a massive disappointment, especially in a game that is so deep.

Here's the bit though:

It is a CONSTANT throughout the game, EA and release; Astarion very much is an asshole. He is throughout the entire game. He can get better, but he's a dick. No two ways around it. His trauma didn't make him terrible, he very much already was a selfish person who ended up getting stunted. He learned to lie and manipulate to survive, but he wasn't a sweet boy when this happened to him. He was a 'bad' person who had something horrible happen to him that opened up his body and made him defensive and cruel, because he believes the world is cruel and indifferent to suffering, which goes in line with his earlier pre-kidnap thinking of 'Who cares?' It made him bitter for sure, but he already had those ways of thinking. He didn't care who he hurt. He didn't care about anyone. That's the entire bit with 'libertines' and the elite. He was already bad; it made him worse.

He was a fucking jackass. But notice I don't say evil.

He is not a character that empathizes or sympathizes well. He doesn't care what others are going through unless you teach him to, and even then, he is still learning. He is capable of trying if you steer him there. But in general? He rejoices in cruelty, being a general nuisance, being selfish, being power hungry, and being self serving. These are not solely trauma traits. These are not all defense mechanisms, though they can be. Astarion is a rounded character that is complex but right now is not the stereotypical 'uwu sad baby' shit that people love to do to him either. They made him relatable. Gave him tragedy. And people love to latch on to that to paint us as these pathetic babies incapable of our own thoughts who need to be coddled and babied and defended.

From EA, they made him more rounded. They made him less cartoonishly gimmicky. He's still a very selfish jerkoff, but he is scared, and vulnerable, and they made a point to emphasize that. He is not just evil hot vampire. He is scared, vulnerable, rude, pompous, arrogant, selfish, terrified, traumatized, angry, subdued--

and the list goes on. He is a person. He is a relatable person. But these traits he respects in the beginning? Selfishness? Greed? Self-serving? These are traits he admired before that were amplified by his trauma. These are traits that we condemn as a human race, but we still hone and harbor. These are things we have and we see and we experience day to day.

And that is why it is so easy to judge him and condemn him and try to paint him in black or white and call him banal morality labels like 'good' or 'evil.' It's part of why we have these arguments over his EA versus now. Because you see these good/bad things and immediately need to justify your love or hatred for him and defend or condemn him because you hear them and go "No! Wrong! I know he's selfish but he's not evil and--" and all of those other posts we love. People struggle with nuance. That is why it is so easy for people to make these videos defending their views. They grab keywords and examples and go "See!" and show little tiny snippets instead of an entire person. Hell, we do it in real life too. We point out one facet of someone's life and judge and condemn them based upon it. With Astarion, we see so much more, but even then, people still struggle.

People have real experiences with these values. People have personal feelings and judgments based on those things. They feel a need to analyze it, but most people do not know how. They cannot say "No, I just don't like him" or "Yeah, I enjoy him" and leave it at that. Similar to how I'm ripping this open right now. And I'm not condemning anyone. Clearly I'm going on a tangent right now over it. It's fun to do. But people feel like it's necessary. Like they have to.

In those comments, someone points out that media literacy is dead, and I'm inclined to agree. Everything is black and white and must be tucked into neat little boxes that are easy for people to digest. A bad character is a bad mean evil irredeemable character. A good character is a good character that behaves good and does things we expect from good people. Humans are no longer humans. They are not complex. They are not nuanced. They are one dimensional creatures to be judged and executed. That is why people struggle so hard with games this well written. Because it is not that simple. It is not in real life and it is not in the game.

Also in the comments here, it seems like everyone is arguing over a nonissue. It seems to stem from the fact that there's a lot of discourse over liking a bad character. People feel like his newer design is 'justified' and even though he is 'a jerk,' he is not 'irredeemable.' The entire thing is asinine.

No one deserves redemption. That is the fucking point of redemption. That is the entire whole ass point. Someone who does not deserve it working to redeem themselves. If you deserve redemption, you don't need it. If you need it, you do not deserve it. People forget that.

I see this a lot. People demonizing others who enjoy complex or more nuanced characters that are not wholly good. People saying characters are irredeemable and terrible and if you like them, you're a bad person. If you like villains, you clearly relate and you're a bad person. If you like this person, you're just like them and must be condoning their actions.

It's so fucking stupid. I see it with books too. People jump on protagonists because they think the term 'protagonist' means hero, and people conflate the two. I could go on a whole (new) tangent about this, but the point is people are incapable of processing that now, because we've really muddied the waters with morality and we use shame rather than critical thinking. We operate off of gut instincts like 'disgust' and 'hatred' and instead of thinking about shit, we just shove it away and condemn, condemn, condemn.

A natural consequence of this is people jump like dogs to twist that character they love or hate into a victim or something beyond their actual story. They will jump through hoops. They will do whatever it takes to avoid the stigma of being a 'bad person' in the eyes of some internet tiktok teen with a billion followers or some tumblr mom because they have been raised to believe that makes them a bad person and they will deserve the ostrasizing they get. They will be bullied and driven from the internet and sent anons until they go into fucking hiding. It's not okay to just enjoy something anymore. You have to justify it to some asshole. You have to break it open and twist it and defend it or burn it. You can't just exist.

People project. And holy fuck, have they projected on Astarion. It's another natural consequence of having such an incredible, well written character. People see themselves in him. In fact, people see themselves in him so much that they inadvertently take away his agency again in an ironic twist because people with similar feelings or experiences feel like they 'get' him better and therefore have more say over a fictional character than the character himself, the person who wrote him and the man who brought him to life.

My point with all of this nonsensical and unrelated bullshit rambling is that I loved Astarion in the EA and I love him more now. I would have loved him if they left him 'evil' but kept him rounded. His ascended ending is him falling deeply into his worst instincts for control coupled with his entitlement and need for safety. His spawn ending is him relenting and accepting and trying to be better within reason. He will always be Astarion. But he can make efforts to be better-- or worse. But he is always Astarion, and Astarion is decadent, and a bit of a jerk, and a stuffy noble elite with standards. He will always be like that. He will always be Astarion. He probably does better there with someone to babysit like Tav, but even a single spawn Astarion made great strides and effort.

I think we take that for granted a lot. We get people all up in their feelings and lashing out at people who like one ending or the other. We have people calling other people horrible people for trusting Astarion in the end of his spawn ending instead of coddling him and taking his fuckin' free will away again. We have people throwing food like kids in a cafeteria and it feels like no one slows the fuck down and wonders why they feel that way.

I like Astarion because he's an incredible character. I like him more in the release because he's more developed. He feels real. He feels like me. (See, projection.) I get it. People are not always pure good or pure evil. These are words we made up because we're an idiot little species that needs to categorize, same as why we name shapes and traits. But I liked him evil too. I just liked him. He just interested me. I always liked him.

He feels better in the release. More fleshed out. Less foreboding and more understandable. He's not Viconia from BG2 who is basically just there to be an evil temptress for 'hehe evil' characters. But guess what? It's totally fine if you wanna engage with him that way! If you don't like him, or you don't want to bother with making him better, you don't have to. If that's all you want to do, then hell yeah, baby.

At the end of the day, he is a model we can use to dissect ourselves. He can help us understand how we view complex issues. But it gets frustrating when people highjack it with an absolutely egregious misunderstanding of the story. Like things are so simple, you know?

In the EA, he was cool. He was really cool. But we didn't know much about him other than 'hehe evil.' We didn't know much about anything, and man, did we like to theorize. I can remember doing it years and years ago before the fuckin' game came out. But ultimately, it was always a projection of ourselves. What we wanted. What we saw.

They made him a more fleshed out being. They filled in the blanks. He is an arrogant fucking asshole, and he is rude, and entitled, and pompous, and cruel, and self serving and greedy and all of that 'evil' shit, but he is also human. He is capable of deep and profound love. He is capable of caring. He is capable of so much. He can be selfless and loving and caring and gentle. He can be genuine and honest. These traits do not define him unless he chooses to cling to them-- and he only does if he does not learn. And when he doesn't learn? He loses himself and fills his destiny of being the wretched, terrible perpetuator of abuse both on the populace and you. And that was the point. That happens when you lose yourself and give in to fear. It can happen to all of us. And sometimes it does.

But it really also isn't that deep, in the same breath. If you like the ascended ending which is a bit more in line with his original origins, so what? It's a cool ending. It's neato. It still has a clear and blatant message, but it's a fucking video game. Do what you like. If you think it's hot? So what? If you just enjoy the goddamned doomed narrative? So?

Not everything has to be a trial of who you are as a person. Not everything is that deep. Sometimes the answer is as simple as 'shit is cool' and it ends there. If other people look deeper into it, that sounds like a 'them' problem. That's their need to justify. That's their desire. Both EA and release are fantastic. Some folks have preferences. I liked both.

He's my boy. I love him for who he is and what he has done for me. And I'm grateful I got to see his development. I'm grateful I get a well written story with incredible characters. If people think he's wholly evil or good, that's their sack of beans, my dude.

#morgana and friends #astarion spoilers #holy fuck I really just sat here and wailed forever huh #I do not expect anyone to read all of this #I think it's my way of compounding my thoughts #nothing is ever simple with me eh

[not-poignant]

Re-reading Palmarosa (don't @ me about how many times I've re-read) and all the stuff that's come up in the last two chapters has been there for a long time!!! When did you know the heist was coming?

sakljfsaf I'm not going to @ you about how many times you've reread anon because rereaders make the world go round :D

And yeah, there's been hints for a long time! Honestly I knew pretty quickly that this was coming (there's also a few other things that are coming as well and a couple of those also have foreshadowing).

So I'd say I knew about Raphael going to Mephistar probably within about 2-3 days of starting to write this story, and actually before I finished my playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3. Raphael being the son of Mephistopheles is canon, and I quickly tried to see if that becomes like anything in the game beyond a reference (it doesn't) and after some research realised what a huge goldmine that was for plot ideas.

It's also canon that Raphael doesn't have a good relationship with his father, or has a more trauma-based relationship with his father, which makes sense, because Mephistopheles is a calculated sadistic asshat who believes that freezing people to death between glaciers over centuries is genuinely a good way to spend one's time.

I actually was a little frustrated with myself once I realised it was going to take more than 10 chapters to finally get to this point. Initially I was aiming for chapter 7-9, but I needed more established between Raphael and Astarion, and I needed Astarion to start getting a lot more curious about what's happening, because Astarion is basically a cat and if you pique his curiosity, he'll want to know stuff! Even when it's bad for him!

I kind of knew this fic would come across as 'just a PWP contract fic' but I really always wanted it to be very epic in scope, and a longer story similar to Stuck on the Puzzle or The Beast that Chose Its Own Bridle. Something that starts with intimacy between two characters, and then folds out into a much broader world.

But I also wanted it to be a surprise for the people who weren't looking for it! A lot of folks who even have played and finished BG3 playthroughs never find out that Mephistopheles is Raphael's father, and if they do, they have no idea who he is even if they've played some DND (you really have to have played very specific campaigns, or played previous BG3 video games etc. to have any idea).

That's made the build up and the foreshadowing really fun to do, because people are coming in with wildly different DND knowledge (some - absolutely zero, don't even play the game, some - only the game, some - only DND but nothing to do with Ba'ator, some - DND and Ba'ator).

This is actually a huge reason why I say the story isn't canon compliant, because it literally can't be. There's too many moving parts and a lot of Forbidden Realms isn't even canon compliant with itself. And I love that, and that gives me room for movement. FR is about creativity within structure, and that structure can be what FR and Larian gives us, and even then we'd already be picking and choosing what works for us because those two things aren't fully lore compatible. There's a lot of good threads about how Larian was quite selective in how they built up their version of Faerun. And I love that.

But also, same. :D

Anyway, so the TL;DR is I knew juuuust about from the beginning! Not from the first few chapters, but I'd say definitely by the time I started chapter 2!

#asks and answers #palmarosa #thespectaclesofthor #pia on worldbuilding #i was always very curious about the fact that #raphael had a lot of portals to elsewhere in Faerun #and then a portal that specifically goes to Mephistar #i guess that's the second reference to who his father is in the game actually #so he's obviously accustomed to travelling to Cania #and needing to have quick access #and digging deeper into Raphael and the hierarchy of devils #led me into a really rich vista for plot ideas #which also had me depart a lot from utilising most of the companions #i will say that so far absolutely NO ONE has guessed who the first companion we meet will be #though folks have suggested Gale because of the Waterdeep visit #and Karlach because of being in Avernus #Karlach is closer to who we'll meet #but it's neither of them

[blackjackkent]

Oh my god bahahaha Lae'zel is coming onto Hector again, this time in broad daylight in the middle of the road to the creche. HOW? WHY?

I know they patched out the awkward thing at the tiefling party where she would try to seduce you even if she didn't actually like you yet, so...what, has Hector really come up that far in her estimation? She's been in CAMP most of the game.

What is happening.

(I have nothing against a Lae'zel romance, in fact I'm romancing her in the playthrough I'm doing on stream, but WHY is she of all people the first one to be having this conversation with Hector?)

So uh. Ahem. I was going to have Hector talk to Lae'zel bc he wanted to follow up on the whole question of whether the gith actually murdered all the monks in the monastery, but instead I was offered this conversational option:

"Is it me, or have you been looking at me differently?"

Surely, said I - surely this is not romance-related. This makes sense; after all, she's had a few recent conversations of expression more trust in him, surely this is about how they're becoming more comfortable with each other as teammates.

Surely.

"I have a confession," says Lae'zel. "I was too hasty to judge you. I thought you witless, gutless, unimpressively bland."

OK. This is all still fine. It's true they didn't start off with a very good impression of each other. "And I thought you cruel, stubborn, and judgmental," I have Hector say, already planning out in my mind writing a post about how they have grown to see past the initial impressions and find some respect for each o--

"Yes. All that is true. I am cold as the Sea of Night," says Lae'zel. "But you have stoked fires I didn't know I possessed. I swear, you would tear the horns off one dragon for plunging into another. You've gained my respect, and more still, my yearning. When I come near, your odor alone is enough to make my neck sweat and my hairs stand on end."

...

...

[blink][blink][blink][blink]

Excuse me, what?

I'm fucking dyingggg because this is all playing out while Karlach is standing directly next to him and this is all incredibly awkward.

I don't even know what to say here. This isn't *quite* as out of left field as it was at the tiefling party, but it's up there.

...

"Hold on," Hector says, as awkwardly as humanly possible, his neck flushing bright red. "Are you coming onto me?"

Lae'zel gives an exaggerated, exasperated sigh, as if even after all this time she can't quite believe he can be this dense. "Isn't it obvious?"

She squares off in front of him, arms folded, eyes direct, jaw set, as if going into battle, and stares him down. "I want to taste you. Perhaps tonight. Perhaps later. But I want it all the same."

Her eyes narrow to slits, demanding an answer. "Do you?"

Hector is red as a tomato at this point and just stares at her for a minute, trying to think past the intensity of her gaze long enough to form words. "I'm...flattered, but the answer is 'no'," he finally gets out, in a rather strangled tone.

Even having lived as isolated as he has from such matters, he's not immune to the fact that she is attractive. He's not even immune to the fact that what she's offering is probably, on some level, something he needs - he's already begun thinking, back in the Zhent hideout, about how the people he is traveling with are the first he has known at the degree of intensity required for true bonding, even for romance.

And even before that - in the midst of the Weave with Gale, or even when Astarion drank his blood that night in camp - he's had moments where he's been reminded of the reality of his body as it exists beyond dusty books and dry rituals, out here in the "real world," and has felt the need to ground himself in physical experience even if he hasn't known how to express it.

But Lae'zel...is not who he would have chosen. She is simply too intense for him; she intimidates him tremendously. He *is* growing to respect her, but she would run roughshod over him and he is fully aware of it.

And...he's also acutely aware of Karlach standing nearby watching this whole interchange, for reasons he cannot articulate either.

Lae'zel raises an eyebrow at him. "Your loss, I fear," she says coolly, appearing thoroughly unembarrassed by either the confession or his response to it. "One day soon, you will wonder how my lips might have tasted, how my fingers on your skin might have felt. And you will wish you had returned to this lost moment."

#bjk plays baldur's gate 3 #hector carlisle #absolutely wild #one of her lines is duplicated from the tiefling party scene actually which leads me to believe this might be the same trigger just fixed #after the recent patch #but who even knows #lmao

[rattlingmycage]

I finished the ascendant ending tonight finally. Some random thoughts/observations/screenshots below the cut. Nothing special if you've already gone through it, I just thought it'd be fun to document my own playthrough a little.

He's a lot more entitled when he complains in it for certain lines, like when the stones don't work he says this, but in the spawn version it's more along the lines of "I really thought the stones would work".

I don't think this was ever a line in the spawn route, but I'm not entirely sure. Just like a bougie vampire to judge lair decor:

Also this was very funny to me.

My dude, we are broke and so are you. I traded our gold for health potions to cover your fragile ass. (Also, murder pit wow, he's like the closest thing to corrupt magistrate here and I'm kind of for it.)

THIS was cool though, I didn't expect he was going to have an actual power beyond the Ascendant bite.

He actually summoned werewolves!!! Wow! I am weirdly proud of this shitty cat. It seemed like such an OP out of reach thing for him in Act 1 ("He can summon wolves, turn into mist" etc etc) but now he can do it himself! I mean, at the cost of his identity and soul yada yada but y'know. It's just neat. Also, if it's a different character, in my case Lae'zel, she says "Awaken your undead servants, Astarion!" during the summon. Neither his nor her lines seem to be voiced, they only appear as text. But it's still a nice detail I enjoyed.

When we got to the part where you can betray whoever the illithid is and take over the Absolute, he said this:

Which I thought to mean he wanted Tav to take over, but it seems like that wasn't what he meant...

It just ends up in him becoming enthralled...

Then I went back and killed the Netherbrain properly. Got to the end scene, and wow, this bitch doesn't even let us break up with him LOL. Alas... my toxic malewife whomst I wish to divorce...

I kind of was hoping to see him throw a bit of a bitch fit but this is good too, it's accurate to his delusional need to feel "safety" forever. I feel like ascendant ending wasn't as rewarding narratively to me as his spawn ending, which is surprising because I'm usually such an edge lord I have to be dragged kicking and screaming into happy endings. But still, it has its charms. The murder gremlin-ness, the deviousness. And... I don't think this was the intended effect, I think it's just my Astarion-bullying-streak coming in again, but I find his ambitions to be hilariously misguided. Like they're endearing in an "awww, baby's first time trying to rule the world" way. He wishes he was as nasty as he thinks he is lmao.

#bg3 spoilers #ea habits die hard

[sun-marie]

Okay okay okay. So I'm insane about this game and I need somewhere to just. sort my thoughts

So, I am on my second playthrough, and I am definitely the kind of player that likes to replay the story and make the same choices, just exploring extra stuff I missed the first time. For example, my first pt I skipped the Gith Creche and missed a big chunk of Lae'zel's character quest, so this playthrough I did it. But I didn't like kill the tieflings when I sided with them in my first playthrough or something like that.

I bring this up because it's made for a very interesting situation regarding Astarion. See, the first time I played through the game, I considered Zephyr and Astarion to be pretty good friends in the end who butted heads a lot due to their conflicted moral compasses. He never got more than like mid-level approval of her, and his dialogue reflected that.

This playthrough has been different though, after a certain point he started calling her "my dear" and his "favorite traveling companion" in a sort of... heartbreakingly unnerving way? Imo, at least, but its beside the point. And then, when his siblings try to kidnap him at the Elfsong, when Zephyr asks if he has sympathy for them, he says "No one said a kind word word to me, you're the only one. Not everyone can be like you, you're special." (paraphrasing) Which is WILDLY different from how he reacted in my first pt, where he disapproved and basically said "Everything's different now, Cazador's going to be so mad once I kill him" (paraphrasing). And checking at this scene, his approval of Zephyr was, unexpectedly, mid-level. Around the same it would have been in my first playthrough.

And so I theorize that it must stem from the only extra thing I did this pt and not last pt regarding Astarion: I encountered the drow who wants him to bite her and I did not pressure him to do it. My first pt I just completely missed her, but in my current, we had kind of a sweet heart-to-heart afterward, and that's when the "my dear"s started.

If I'm correct, that's extremely cool to me, because it means that the drow encounter specifically meant something to him. Apart from the gameplay mechanic of "approval", he remembers this specific time Zephyr treated him like a person and not a tool and it left an impact on him and changed how he sees her. That is such organic character writing and the definition of companion reactivity, and is another example of how much care went into this game.

#of course this is all assuming I'm remembering my first pt correctly and didn't just choose a different dialogue option ajdhghdgf #but still the new greetings where he calls her “dear” and such are enough for me #idk I really like the idea that the approval rating doesn't *necessarily* line up with how they see you #bc Astarion doesn't agree with most of the shit Zephyr does but he still sees and appreciates how she cares for him and other people #idk idk it's just cool #bg3 spoilers #baldur's gate 3 spoilers #astarion #zephyr skybreeze #marie speaks