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hades-in-bloom · 6 months

Text

The Bigger Person

Spawn!Astarion Ancunin x Redeemed Dark Urge!Reader

summary: after saving Baldur’s Gate, Astarion and his partner descend into the Underdark to take care of Cazador’s misdeeds. All seven thousands of them. Was it something the elf truly wanted to do with his freedom?

spoilers for Act 3/Pale Elf and Epilogue

warnings & contents: teethy fluff; established relationship; comfort, sass, and class; hints of existential crisis; the reader could be any gender; mentions of trauma; some hugs; assumed drow or half-drow background of the reader but could be any race

a/n: I am kinda terrified of writing for Astarion as I respect Larian’s work SO MUCH (so Larian, please forgive me, if I ever do this goofy dagger-happy love wrong). This blurb came out of nowhere as I was bored during my long ass flight. As always, proceed at your own risk. Minors DNI! Masterlist xoxo

soundtrack: miley cyrus — used to be young

***

You watched Astarion from afar as elf was basking in the azure light of a Sussur tree. His pale skin glowing, eyes half-lidded—one of, if not the most beautiful sight you’ve seen in your entire life. Radiance of a Sussur flower might have been the closest thing to the sunlight the vampire spawn had now, after the ever-protecting tadpole was gone.

It was barely a couple of weeks since the Netherbrain crushed into the Chionthar. The exhausting journey was finally over. Your thoughts for a moment went to Gale—how was he fairing now, taking into account his condition? And what any of you was supposed to do with your lives now, after saving the world?

You shook off your guessings by and by—only to notice that it was Astarion’s turn to stare at you. His smooth lips curved into a mischievous grin.

“My once murderous little love, what were you daydreaming of?” The man wondered as he stepped towards you, stretching out a hand for you to touch, inviting you to feel the soothing coldness of his forever-young skin. The elf tilted his head a bit, curiously; studying you.

“You seemed… far from here.” Although his tone was lighthearted, you could see concern in the wandering gaze of garnet eyes. After all these weeks traveling—and now living— together, you could read him quite well.

“It’s nothing,” you mumbled before coming to your senses; a gentle, slightly teasing smile appearing on your face. “I was stalking you, actually. You fit quite well with the Underdark, you know.”

Astarion didn’t seem to object your observations.

Obviously.

“Well,” he gestured abstractly, pretending not to care, although he cared quite a bit. “You don’t say, my sweet. Although I'd assume that my features should look aesthetically pleasing in most of the attention worthy places.”

You couldn’t keep a straight face as you laughed, enjoying his lazy attempts to hide a proud smile.

“Behave, Astarion. There are kids in the close vicinity, after all.”

The man changed in the face and let out a soft groan. “Seven thousand of them,” he muttered with slight annoyance in his voice.

Despite grimaces Astarion made regularly, you could see him enjoying it—taking care of the murderous horde of vampire spawns to whom the elf showed mercy in the palace. He was their mentor, their leader now—a counterpart to what Cazador was, the monster that created them all. Now so much better than him.

“I blame you,” Astarion continued in the meantime, playfully pointing a finger in your direction. “That’s all your nasty influence. Be the bigger person, dear!..” he passionately—and painfully accurately—mimicked your tone of voice while saying the last piece. You, though, weren’t offended in the slightest. You liked him even more when he dared to show the silly side of his complex, wounded personality.

You felt his hand crawling around your waist as he huffed next to your ear shortly after. “Why should I be a bigger person, darling, when I can be happy and petty?”

You snorted. “I don’t think you’re holding back on pettiness, love.”

His smile stretched across the skin of your neck in a silent, although eloquent enough reply. None of you said a thing for quite a while, staying motionless close to each other with heads buried deep into your own thoughts.

“Thank you.” You blurted out eventually.

Astarion shifted, looking into your face with his eyebrow raised. He was visibly confused.

“Thank you for choosing this. Choosing them.” you continued as you met his gaze with yours. “Instead of your… freedom.” You struggled to find a better word for that.

Astarion didn’t seem to be convinced; didn’t seem to follow at first. “I’m free,” he replied gravely. “The bastard is dead.”

You shook your head slightly. “You could’ve been anywhere. Doing anything,” you retorted with care. “But you’re here instead.”

His facial features softened as he understood why you were saying what you were saying. There was a pinch of truth in your words—he spent some time thinking about it, too, after you’ve both descended into the Underdark and began building this fort; the safe harbor for Cazador’s cursed—as although perpetually hungry vampire spawns now, these people deserved to have a place to call home, no matter how dangerous or uncivilised per human standards it was.

You heard Astarion letting out a reluctant sigh as he came to terms with his own decision once more.

“This was the right thing to do.” The elf concluded at once.

Mild aversion to his own heroism that manifested itself in his whole appearance in that particular moment made you giggle suddenly.

“My, my. Who thought you'd be up for doing The Right Thing the first time we met.”

The elf gave you a friendly, tad fiendish stare as he rolled his eyes, and you scoffed as he spoke. “Not that you were a paragon of virtuousness back then either, being your daddy’s scion.” You made an unamused face that made him smile.

Astarion reassured you then with playful seriousness, letting his lips and teeth slide affectionately to your neck. “Don’t keep your hopes up, darling. Now my quota of the rightful deeds is fulfilled for the upcoming century.”

You smirked as you locked him into a hug, not believing a single word of what that man just said as you felt him hugging you back.

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mybg3notebook · 3 years

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Loving your analyses of Astarion's behaviour and character so far! It has really reaffirmed in my eyes just how much of a bastard he really is. (I say that fondly, of course.) Do you have any thoughts on why the general reaction on tumblr has leaned so much towards woobifying him? After looking at his actual (explicit and implicit) morals in game it seems quite odd that some people are reading him as an edgy soft boi who just needs a hug from the right person to fix him.

Hello!

Thank you very much! I really enjoy seeing chars in a deep way. It makes me change my opinion on them, sometimes. That's why I like to do these analysis, even though it's a lot of work for a person who doesn't speak English as a native.

Lol, please, I won't be offended. Astarion is a bastard in the whole sense of the word, lol.

However, I find Astarion an interesting evil (evil neutral imo) char to explore the narration of “abuser who found a greater abuser”, with all the topics I talked about in those posts. I would feel a bit disappointed if Larian suddenly changes him into a man who always had a gold heart (because for that, you need to give hints, even in EA, and none of that has been seen so far).

An example of how this is done is with Shadowheart, she is evil and she supports a lot of cruelty that Astarion does too, but we got meta-knowledge (and not so much meta when we see her heavily drunk after killing the tieflings) that gives us enough reasons to believe she has some heart in her, despite Shar and her teachings. I do not support the idea of “she is a softie”, because she is not, but she doesn't have the same level of cruelty nor revels in murder so much as Astarion does. They represent different degrees of evilness. What plays in her favour is her face, which gives the idea of more softness than she truly has; the same happens with Astarion. Lae'Zel is less cruel than Astarion in general, with more logical reasons to be so because her brainwashed culture made her to be more pragmatic than a taster of cruelty, and yet, she receives a lot of more hate in the fandom... and it is clear to me why: she is not “beautiful” in the traditional white euro-centric standard sense.

And this is my point to answer your question (remember all this is personal opinion): I think there are many reasons why people woobify Astarion (not only in tumblr, but also in Reddit or in Larian Forums, it's a big part of the EA fandom).

First and foremost, I believe it's his appearance. If he were a bugbear or a goblin, few in this fandom would give a thought about his abuse, his pain, Cazador, etc. They would focus on his “bastard” side and leave it at that (again, Lae'Zel has this treatment). I want to make clear that I'm not questioning people's taste, everyone can like whatever they want to. I'm saying that, for me, there it proof enough to sustain this idea that Astarion is woobified because he is beautiful: when you read that a lot of people in this fandom never had an interest in Larian's previous games, or isometric rpgs, or even turn-based combat games (there are some people who are giving feedback against the game being a turned-based combat one! It's the nonsense because it's basically Larian's style), but they bought bg3 because they saw Astarion, even though they knew nothing about him.... All this, clearly, shows to me that a lot of people approached this game for only one char, for only his design (a big amount of them say it explicitly), and it is not far-fetched to know that people justify more easily beautiful villains than ugly ones. We can explore a lot of examples of this in many fandoms. People can love villains because they have real complex reasons to be so (like Loghain in DAO), but they also can like whimsical villains just because they are “hot”. I feel this is Astarion's case, he is a “beautiful villain” who apparently has always been evil. His reasons for his whimsical evilness is more like “it's always been in his nature”. Unless the family part has a different role in his backstory (mirror option) and it's not a mere line for a player to play a “good aligned” Astarion when picked as Origin. I don't like to read much about it in that scene because the game still doesn't have companion Tags; those options in the mirror can be there just for the player to pick, flavoured with each origin, but not necessarily the three of them are canon. This will be seen once we have the companion tags activated as it happened in DOS2.

What we can say for sure is that Larian knew what they were doing when they picked Astarion's design; they choose a dangerous white guy with white hair and evil alignment: an archetype that catches a lot of people in many fandoms.

Part of his woobyfication process has a deep root there, in my opinion. Again, if he were a bugbear, a goblin, a githyanki, a monster-humanoid... we would not have 90% of the EA fandom collapsed with his image, or Larian focused on him to the point that after 4 patches he had new scenes, lines, corrections, and development, while Wyll is still there, sitting in the bench of “the less developed chars” (with around 2k less lines than the rest of the chars, and his personal quest bugged since the first day). Yes, I don't like the preference on one single companion when I am seeing the “future Beast” (from DOS2) in Wyll.

Second, he is a vampire. Vampires are a great element in any fantasy narrative. You know you will have a lot of fans behind a vampire char. Not by chance Vampire The Masquerade is one, if not the most important product of White Wolf, which keeps still giving them a lot of profit despite being decades old. Vampires are always a good element of personal horror, of lack of control of your own body, and also an allegory of abuse, power, and rape. This concept of “being a monster without control” that they embody helps a bit more for the woobification.

Third, people tend to mix a lot headcanon with what a character gives us as canon. We can have a long useless discussion about which is more worthy: canon or headcanon, or about why one should or should not respect canon, but putting all that discussion aside, and considering the previous two points, I see that a small part of his woobyfication comes from the fact that people love denial and self-projection instead of analysing of what they are given (and let's be honest, we know in tumblr, reddit and others social networks, people lack of reading comprehension skills, which makes analysis all about self projection without a real effort in understanding the character's perspective. It's all about the player unilateral perspective. How can you analyse a char you didn’t play with or explored in all its paths? ).

So if their beautiful character is behaving in a way they don't want to, they start considering him “random” (I read this so much that confuses me, because Astarion has clear patterns for everyone who wants to see them, like the rest of the companions. He is not random, he follows pretty well all what I listed here, that list helps you to predict what he will disapprove or approve) so they end up filling this apparent “randomness” with headcanons and self-projections. Don't get me wrong, I don't despise headcanons, I love them, I have a lot of them and create with them. But I also like honest analysis and separate what I want from what I get from a company (to correctly give them feedback, otherwise I will be giving them my headcanons).

If you don't want an aspect of a given char, and you want to deny it, it's perfectly fine. Do it, it's your entertainment, but be honest with the fandom about it, acknowledge this is a personal denial you enjoy. And mainly, don't use headcanons and self-projections to attack the rest of the chars you don't like in their own tags. We know how aggressive some people in this fandom are, and it's a bit frustrating to see aggression without the slightest effort in understanding the character they hate.

There is also something sad to say, related to self-projection, that contributes to Astarion's woobyfication too: a lot of players are survivors of abuse who connect with him from trauma, and I can understand if denying his past is a way to help them to release any kind of pain or need for vengeance against their abusers. It's a natural and totally understandable projection. The woobyfication, then, ends up in an intense self-projection where they give to the char something that they needed because their own trauma.

This is why I would like Larian to give us other survivor chars that people can project onto, whose stories are really about survivors of abuse who were not evil in the beginning. Because I feel a lot of people approached Astarion as a narration of a “victim who will become a victimiser” or as a “bad behaved victim”, instead of what I think it's shown: an abuser who found a greater abuser (and his story is about punishment of the abuser and the concept of justice in a world which has none), so trauma survivors will end up with disappointment if they think Astarion is something similar to the representation of what they experienced. Plus, vampirism is never good to use as allegories of abusers/victims because the relationship Sire/Childe is too sick and twisted. So, again, this is a mere opinion from all what I've been reading since the game came out.

I hope Larian sticks to the narration they seem to follow with Astarion: an abuser who found a greater one, and now wants to become the next Cazador, and this woobifycation doesn't change the real potential of a dark deep story that I believe they want to give us: not every char is redeemable, and sometimes evilness is capricious. We had chars like these in bg1 and bg2 after all.

#bg3 early access - answers

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