#ITS SO FUCKING !!!!!!!!!! ASTARION CODED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[justa-moth]

okay so i've been playing baldur's gate 3 alot recently and i just need to scream about the fact that OH MY GOD THIS SONG IS SO ASTARION CODED !!!!!!!!

LOOK AT THIS SHIT:

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS.

[wingsy-keeper-of-songs]

I wish I could draw better so I could get a GIF or just a drawing of Astarion in this outfit and pose:

I mean, I can't be the only one who is reminded of this movie, right? Right?

[chantryexplosion]

ppl really can’t say shit without others crying and making it into something it’s not like when ppl complain about the amount of female tav/astarion there is in comparison to. everything else theyre literally not saying astarion isn’t into women and that he can’t date women were saying that it’s tiring only seeing skinny cis white women shipped with him like not even beefy woman ???? not even a milf ???? not even a dwarf ??? god forbid its a (gasp) trans woman ???? youre all so boring

[lesbianralzarek]

i have a lot of gripes with the way mizora's sex scene (and honestly the relationship she has with wyll in general (thanks, christmas animation)) is handled, but its not necessarily a terrible addition to an rpg where you can do some bad shit (iirc you cant fuck mizora if you assaulted the grove tho, so mostly good pcs even get this option). what is terrible is the lack of gravity given to it, and the fact that you can only betray wyll in this way. if you could also fuck gortash or shar, and doing so had tangible consequences no matter what, id be much happier with it. as it stands, a player who is in good standing with wyll (or doesnt play with him anyway) and is romancing astarion, shadowheart, or even fucking karlach (why is this not a dealbreaker for her???) gets away with it. why is fucking the woman who owns an origin character's soul and calls him her pet and turned him into a devil and has condemned him to eternal torment not a big deal?

it would also sting less if (and i say this as a lesbian) wyll had a sex scene. wyll is the only romanceable character with no sex scene, and his abuser gets a long-ass full frontal cutscene. come on. do larians writers understand that abuse against men is always bad, or is it okay when the abuser is a sexy white (coded) woman? wylls selflessness to the extent of self-harm is a core part of his character, but its fucked up that everyone gets away with hurting him. he only leaves if you attack other people (the grove), but you can do whatever you want to him personally. you cant hurt mizora, even though shes hanging out in. your. camp. because who gives a shit? hurting a black guy is a victimless crime in this game

[aldryrththerainbowheart]

My thoughtsabout Baldur's Gate 3 after 50 hours of playthrough

Love that this game gives you not only class and race dialogue options but SUBCLASS dialogue options too

Enjoy playing as a paladin no problems with oath-breaking whatsoever, everybody rolling eyes at my do-goody ass

especially playing as oath of the ancients is like "in the name of trees and lakes and birds - fuck you"

made a shocking discovery that romancing companions is truly secondary and I'm just happy to survive

Astarion tolerates me and I'm afraid there's no hope for me in this playthrough but honestly, I don't really care I just want my boy safe and cared for, whether as a partner or just a friend is truly secondary

he's even more cat-coded than I thought

kind of glad he won't propose to me at the party because we legit know each other for FOUR DAYS! Like- Sir!

Lae'zel is amazing, wonderful, and showstopping wtf is people's problem with her. She's rude? Please. She's a product of her environment. As far as Githyanki go she's the nicest of them all. I won't let anyone slander her on my watch.

Gale is a bit of an intellectual snob but he's a wizard so that's part of the package. I actually enjoy his ramblings, I could listen to him for hours. maybe I'm the weird one in that

During the goblin fight, I fell into a spider pit while casting a spell and running forward. Spend the rest of the fight plastered on the wall so the spiders won't notice me. The rest of my party had to search the entire temple for the key to get me out. Truly a full dnd experience at its finest.

Love reading the books just as much as I enjoy it in Genshin.

As cheesy as it is I love playing the hero.

I bend backward to save everyone, and it makes me really happy to keep as many people as possible alive. Yes, even Kagha, even hag spawns, even tiefling children.

I love all my companions equally but Astarion gets all the jewelry.

[glamfellens]

i didnt want to put this in the tags of my last rb because its a whole other post but seriously its so ridiculous that you have no option but to let mizora stay in camp after the culmination of wyll's personal quest. imagine if viconia or cazador decided to just hang around after shadowheart or astarion's quests. if you go this route then imagine how wyll must be feeling, to think he's finally freed himself from mizora's clutches (at the cost of his own father's life!!!!!!), after years of being monitored and altered and punished and controlled by her, years of the mental strain of navigating her demands because you just know they'd always be worded in such a way that manipulates wyll into doing what mizora wants even if it goes against his own code (like with karlach). just for her to stick around. after all that she's still hovering around like a bad fucking smell. g*d

[tyrantisterror]

I'm having too much fun with these.

Some context:

I did research on the Dark Urge route before playing it, because I'm the kind of nerd who feels the need to plan out their strategy for Role Playing Games before heading in, and ultimately decided to keep the default race of the Dark Urge as a white dragonborn while changing his class from sorcerer to paladin - the former because the evil albino snake aesthetic is pretty killer, and the later because I think playing a capital H hero with a code of capital H honor while dealing with a supernatural urge to be an evil murder man is thematically fun.

But I also had an ulterior motive in keeping the white dragonborn option - you see, if you romance Karlach, she'll ask you to try to figure out a way to cool her down, and being a white dragonborn gives you the option to blast your girlfriend in the face with ice breath so you can smooch.

I made intelligence and dex my dump stats since I knew Astarion would cover the later for me while Lump the Enlightened would cover the former. Thanks for the Flowers for Algernon crown you man-eating bastard!

I spent one section of the game adventuring with Lae'zel and Wyll in place of Astarion and Shadowheart, because there were two storybeats I thought they'd be well suited for (Karlach remained for obvious reasons). Eventually there was this dowry hidden in a hay bale that NONE of my characters spotted, so I quick went back to camp and swapped Wyll out for Astarion to get some fresh eyes on it. Well, when we go back to the main map, Astarion is inexplicably on the roof of the building and won't leave of his own volition. So I take control of him and make him jump off, which deals a significant amount of damage to him (which I imagine is why his AI wouldn't make him jump on its own) - and worse, during the five seconds or so I was controlling him, the Dark Urge and Karlach jumped on the roof and now have to be made to jump off. It became a very stupid back and forth for a bit and I like to imagine that's why Lae'zel doesn't go out on that many missions with the gang.

One last, "serious" comic about this run after the cut.

(well, last for now I suppose, I might make more of these if the mood strikes me)

So, like I said before, I initially tapped out of this playthrough when I hit the moment where the Urge unavoidably kills Alfira, because I grew to really like her in my Tav playthrough and it kinda fucked me up to see her, you know, die by my hands. I just didn't have the stomach for it.

But as my brainrot sketching has shown, the hook of this playthrough struck a chord with me. There is something so damn compelling about a Dark Urge trying so damn hard to be a good person, to be helpful and kind, all the while his own instincts and even the omniscient 3rd person narrator conspire to make him look at everything through a lens of cruelty and violence. I didn't want to kill Alfira, but I didn't want to abandon the Dark Urge either.

So I read up on the work around where you knock Alfira out cold so she doesn't show up in camp - the game compensates by having ANOTHER bard show up, establish her own distinct and likable personality, and get killed by you instead. Which I guess means that if I had to kill someone, I'd prefer it to be a stranger than a person I know? I don't know, it's emotionally affecting either way, but at least Alfira's alive.

We're going to get through it, Durge my buddy. We're gonna get you the help you need.

[wetcatspellcaster]

Hi, me again. I hope you enjoy being appreciated because a few days back I’ve commented on ao3 under Honest Lie how I’m not sure about reading Pieces (fear of angst) and now I have reached act 3 of it and I have no words for how it kept me on my toes all this time. I love the vampire soul concept and I am also a Spuffy preacher through and through so it makes me even more happy that I can read about it somewhere. Generally, Buffy is one of my favorite fandoms and I believe it to be a pop cultural gem of its times. (also - Angel is such a boring person in Buffy, though he does do way better in his own spin-off. And he has a very high voice? Or is it just me?) I fell in love with Spike when he asked if he can bum a fag, lol. But also - Giles, omg. Rewatched recently and Giles is hnnggg.

I wanted to ask if the general soul-shape was inspired by Howl’s Moving Castle concept? The way Rose held on to it you know when reminded me of Sophie so much. And I loved it of course, I even cried a little!

Second thing I wanted to ask - have you ever seen ‘The Magicians’? It has this amazing plotting that reminds me of someone’s campaign where everything goes wrong and whatever you do you have to fix it afterwards and it of course causes other things to go wrong. I have a feeling you would love it. Also - it’s fucking heartbreaking at times and has amazing characters and archs.

So - again, thank you for all your work, as a fellow ‘I’m sorry that I exist person’ I wanted to tell you that you are precious and must be protected at all cost!

hahaha, thank you so much lovely! I'm sorry that An Honest Lie is currently in a place where Pieces becomes the better option to read in terms of angst (the next chapter of HL is so close, but um... Chapter 26 of Pieces is still my priority) but I'm glad that you liked it!! When I put an 'eventual happy ending' tag on a fic, I do mean it!! I promise!!

So... I did not realise Pieces was Howl's Moving Castle until so late in the game. Truly embarrassing of me. Fake fan behaviour. Picture me at 2am, staring at my ceiling at around the point Chapter 10 came out, shouting "FUCK." But i didn't deliberately lean into the imagery, in the way you think - I'm not saying that parallel is not there (it is and it jumpscared me).

The image of the soul/Jarstarion came during the outlining stage from the fact that everyone at the time was talking about Astarion's name meaning Star (we were that early into the discourse around his character, this is months ago now) and so it left me with this image of the soul looking like starlight, in reference to that. Obviously that means it's also calcifer coded. bc calcifer is also... a star. (HOW DID I NOT SEE THE HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE PARALLELS. HOW? HOW????)

I haven't seen the Magicians! I know the books have a bit of a reputation for being edgelord fodder so it put me off the tv show, but I'll be sure to check it out :)

[sincerelystesichorus]

astarion, anne carson, & autobiography of red - small character study blurb

In which I've written 40k words of Astarion character analysis fanfiction and I'm definitely still normal.

Astarion used to be blue, but ever since that night two centuries ago, he was reborn red. And he had spent at least the past century thinking that red was irreplaceable. It was – red, it was in his blood and the little blood Cazador would let him wring from rats, corroded and stained. His very life force. He was Cazador’s, his spawn, his jewel, his ruby. There was no cure for red. Not until you became the successful means to an end. He had been sure of it. Being red wasn’t good. It made everyone who wasn’t red, and that felt like most everyone, stare at you like you put off a certain aura… like they knew you were a monster that could only act off of instinct and emotion. And it was so frustrating, because parts of Astarion were blue still, knew what was better, but they were nothing in comparison to the suffocation of red. The emotions, and especially anger, fear, came on so strong. It was hard not to act on them, to test out what the boundaries of pure action were. Astarion knew the color and impulse all too well.

I expand way more on the idea of people as colors within my writing than Autobiography of Red does, where Geryon is the only one who is red. This further pushes Geryon's feelings of being separated from humanity in his narrative, but there's a lot of inherent evil and fucked up things within Faerun so I felt expanding on colors and specifically shades/hues was a better way to communicate this for Astarion.

Geryon's red is tied very instinctually to emotion though, and so representing red as a chaotic force of emotion in my fic didn't feel like too far a step. I took a lot of inspiration from Magic: the Gathering's color pie lol. While you never get an exact description of what's wrong with Geryon, you get a lot of the symptoms, reminiscent of some sort of innate childhood mental illness, on top of the obvious trauma present in his story.

Back to Astarion, though. I've just never not been able to code him with CPTSD, I think that's obvious, but I also know that poor bastard has a personality disorder skffkjdf. The game always hammers in he has no sense of self outside of his looks, which he can't even be sure of because he can't see himself. Astarion has to work his confidence and self-image off of memories of his body and face from two centuries ago, and from his master's word. Cazador has assigned him to this seduction role (or, I feel its at least implied that Astarion was ultimately forced into it because he was seen as the Szarr runt, he was pretty and easy to push around, and I'm also pretty sure Petras has a line about getting to eat dogs now and then?) and Astarion fulfills it because it's all he can do. All he feels good for. His actions aren't his own for two hundred years, and in a morbid way of coping with constant sexual trauma, he functions off of "Well, at least I'm pretty," but even that assumption comes from Cazador's rule.

Astarion had decided he was mostly pure red, splashes of black and blue coming in, bright and visible. The remnants of his past and an even deeper level of Cazador’s corruption, bruising his psyche.

Carson is again sparing with other color imagery as to fully emphasize Geryon feeling like this big red monster, but I love this little excerpt on fearful anger.

Black/shadow is already a strong force and theme within the game so it was easy to work with, acknowledging it as a sort of staining evil. Astrion has his later lines about how he never stopped viewing himself as Cazador's slave, and I think showing that corruption is obviously important. He's hurt but can still heal (as opposed to an ascended Astarion... who I have little if any hope for sdfkjdskf).

Cazador had spent the last two centuries branding it into his skin and mind, breaking his psyche to the point Astarion was worried there’d always be little cracks that remained. That he’d always be Cazador’s wilted poppy, ashamed and folding in on himself, his neck miserably drooped aside for the taking. 

Cazador is Astarion's Herakles, and I think that metaphor works even better considering that whole little side lore with Vellioth in the ruins. Herakles kills Geryon because he must, Geryon is a way for Herakles to ultimately reach a life free of consequence, but it's not like Herakles is innately malicious in the act. He is hardened after already facing so many labors and the trauma that was forced on him by Hera that induced his journey in the first place.

Cazador wants power, some part of him is probably truly convinced he's easier on his spawn than Vellioth was to him (a lot of insults to Astarion are about his feelings and "whining", Cazador feels vindicated in his trauma and is far gone), and sacrificing Astarion is simply a part of that journey. There is no world where their destinies do not intertwine. Geryon will always be pierced by Herakles, and Astarion wouldn't be the Astarion we know without being pierced by Cazador (and without his ultimate decision to finally separate himself from him, or to become him.) Astarion, understandably, will never not feel some sort of shame or agony over this moment, from natural emotions and I'm sure years of Cazador victim-blaming him. He consented to Cazador's help that night after all, didn't he? (And we simply won't acknowledge the coercion.)

Astarion’s attempts to prolong the inevitable were shattered by thick layers of stone suddenly slamming in front of his face, muffling sound and casting him into a void. He could hardly hear Cazador’s foul laugh as he departed. Astarion waited all night for Cazador to return. And then all of the next day, and the next one after that. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Astarion started to agree that dying would have been easier. More peaceful. He had pondered hundreds of ways to attempt to kill himself while stuck in this abyss, the voices that had started developing only giving further inspiration, but it was impossible. He was sure.  All he could do was wait. Beat and claw at the stone around him. Curse. Repeat. Sometimes he'd wonder. If he'd ever get out of here. If Cazador would remember after forgetting. If this would be his forever. The voices began to recite to him again. Just how long eternity can be.

I think this is the greatest and most obvious similarity between these two, within Carson's retelling. Geryon feels somehow trapped and doomed by the narrative from his early childhood, and receives some blunt confirmation of it when he faces early sexual abuse. This affects his entire life, his early relationships. Geryon can't be older than ten in this excerpt, but knows the pain of isolation because of his trauma and for feeling different.

Astarion was plucked up by Cazador right out of law school. While for us it's not all that young, for elves he was fiercely immature, basically just starting to come into himself at his first big-boy job. Astarion was likely raised with a lot of privilege that also made him a bit more naive, his book smarts not meeting street smarts, which has him meet his end. In his undeath, that basically flips, Astarion plays his manipulation games and indulges in petty crime and seduction, unable to dedicate himself to studies. He reads and he's witty, but can you imagine the Astarion we know as a judge? It's giving Divorce Court. It's giving Judge Judy. (Honestly maybe that's what got him whacked in the first place.)

Astarion is already constrained to what Cazador lets him be as a slave. He's less than a person, and his own body is one of his greatest trauma sources.

All of this, to be punished so supremely when making an act of slight self-preservation. Astarion wanting to maintain some of his principles and let someone go. It becomes his greatest regret, his worst and most defining punishment. It's how Cazador breaks him.

I restructure some of the circumstances within my fic, as to better tie in the main romance, but it still functions as a punished act of self-preservation for Astarion. I'm also sure most people are familiar with the pain that solitary confinement can bring, but if not, it's genuinely inhumane and dehumanizing. Lack of stimulation is extremely damaging to the psyche, I wrote in Astarion breaking into psychotic episodes while enclosed, but even in game, he speaks about going catatonic. I'm sure minorly from exhaustion after fighting, but also from the isolation. His mind likely just drifted and dissociated beyond belief, and I can't imagine it. This is my favorite piece of Astarion's story we are given, it really is just so pivotal and heartbreaking, to be punished for having freewill in the most objectifying circumstances.

In summary to Astarion Ancunin I just sorta feel like this I guess...

ddfsdfdk but yeah just emo about my poor boy feeling so weird and disconnected yet so drowned in his own emotions you know...

[my homage to autobiography of red, fic series page, my ao3 page]

[faorism]

niche crossover of the day that im too lazy rn to clean up and post to ao3 but may in the future: alec hardison (leverage) plays bg3

hardison balances playtime with hacker hours well, which means he moves through hyperfixations but has learned through working with the crew how to prioritize when there's a friend's life on the line. (there will be no more repeats of his crew sitting on a bomb without him right next to them.) sometimes though his partners lose him for a week after a new release, but now that they live together at least parker can drag him to bed for cuddles (and to sleep) and eliot will kept him fed.

it should go without saying that hardison loves baulder's gate 3. he heard such good things about it during early access from his dnd buddies, but hardison refuses to play EA because he will end up encountering bugs and basically writing the code that the devs will end up doing anyway, so why waste his time.

he plays without any prior knowledge, doesn't even know the characters really except from glimpses at their promo pics. but he's excited. he downloads the game, kisses his partners """goodbye""" for the foreseeable future (as long as a job doesnt spring up, but even then it would be a quick one because eliot sprained his ankle and needed to rest it no matter how much he complained he was good).

he decides to play his chaotic good halfling wizard mendula from two campaigns back - fresh enough in his mind to remember the character, but not too recent so that he wont feel conflicted if the tav storyline doesnt allow for precise oc characterizations. hardison gets super into it, but he doesnt linger on side quests, not yet: he wants to get a feel of the game without mods and follow its arc. hardison doesnt usually romance on a first playthrough, but wyll!!!!! wyll was right there being perfect and beautiful and righteous and black and bi and yeah, hardison had to fan himself off during the dance sequence

his party is wizard tav, shadowheart, wyll, and lae'zel, and barely switches them out. when astarion drains him dry and kills him, hardison is so annoyed he kills astarion. he feels very proud of himself when he sniped wyll's devil karlach without much fuss. then he skips a lot of the companion sidequests because he just wants to rush to the end. he gets married to wyll, then starts right over and plays wyll origin, now able to take his time and understanding the mechanics of the game. he also downloads QOL mods that have already come out for EA, and he has notes about ones he will make if no one else does when he's ready for playthrough #3. he purposefully avoids any major ones (so no Polyam Mod for him, though he does eye it, but he wants to see how multiple romances play himself).

he plays will as accurately as possible, which means engaging heavily with the very companions hardison spent ignoring because wyll? wyll cares (and fuck, hardison loves him for that because yes yes, that's him too!). and......

ah. okay so. maybe hardison shouldn't have ignored the companions so much since they do add a lot to the game! and..... maybe, just maybe, hardison was too hasty killing astarion and karlach the first go around. maybe a lot. he thought they would be companions for evil tavs/origins only! he played kotor and [insert game references here, i dont play games like this usually...], so he thought he knew what was up.

anyway, he is drawn so much to these two out of the novelty of them that he puts them into his party (the fourth spot he switches around, thought once hardison gets him, halsin is a fun mainstay because BEAR. hardison gets up romancing both astarion and karlach (and a little halsin, HALSIN IS SO EASY TO FLIRT WITH, larian WANTS you to fuck him)

and....... okay. okay. maybe romancing them both at the same time was a mistake because. because he loves them both. so much. for very different reasons. hardison feels so deeply and then he's forced to make a decision, and hardison crumples a bit. considers downloading the polyam mod but opts out of it to suffer vanilla game logic to its very end.

when he breaks up with astarion, who plays it so damn cool, hardison had to walk away from the computer to mourn by burying himself in his nearest partner's arms (eliot, this time).

he finishes the game, makes wyll go to avernus with karlach (as he made them do during this tav playthrough) and... thinks about astarion.

hardison had carried over the breakup scene save this whole time, and he decides fuck it, and goes back and tries it the other way this time.

he didnt know karlach will just... die on the pier. wtf. wtf. or wyll will go and there wont be any interaction with astarion?? hardison is Distraught. he downloads the polyam mod and while it doesnt force the issue, he can just feel at the edges that nope, this isnt authentic

finds partner's arms again. parker this time. she asks whats wrong with his make believe people, and he pauses for so long that parker thinks he fell asleep or didnt hear her, and then he quietly says that wyll has a heart big enough for two, a romance can be fairytale when made for three, dont they know there's nothing more beautiful than being held between by both the people you love?

parker kisses his temple as tears legit well in his eyes (and he feels embarrassed) and she yells for eliot for emergency group hugs.

eliot, with hardison squished between his two partners, usually doesnt get involved with hardison's gaming but this time he's just like, okay what is it about these characters that's getting to you like this? and why them together? who are they?

and hardison had already talked about wyll a little because disney prince. so he reiterates some of that with a major case of projection. and then when he turns to talk about the companions, hardison stops. and just.

oh.

a black man who was forced to make impossible desperate choices when he was still a teen, which got him into trouble as a consequence, and then being alone and wandering for years until he ran into a pack of different people come together for a common purpose. trying to be good, the best he could be, and hiding behind a flashy name to hide some of the more raw parts underneath. ravenguard and nana have strikingly similar cheekbones.

then theres a rogue with a deeply traumatic past who can be selfish and kinda insensitive and likes shiny things. a pale thief who likes a little bit of chaos even when running good alignment, and who can't help sticky fingers reaching for unsuspecting belts and also... well, also is a top, through and through. a top who likes to bite. vicious when upset. also... also touch adverse and who at first laughs at sincerity and then basks in it but only once your commitment is fully and well established. the only bit of code hardison wrote as he played his wyll origin was to remove astarion saying dont touch me when you switch to him; hardison flinched every time, hearing the cadence of parker's voice scratching at him when she's triggered.

then, a barbarian who handed from one handler (who ended up being a totalitarian dick) down the road until being owned by the literal devil. body put through hell, scars littering a body that spells strength at a distance. once escaped from the nightmare, only wanted their own perseverance. their own life. wanting so desperately for a touch, to be loved, to be held in a way that didn't spell murder. "heartless" after years of working for, again, literal devils, but so full of life and kindness and (also eliot is more coy about it) a deep sense of joy for the world. kind to children. protective of children. wary of deals too good to be true. willing to die than return to a life they once lived. death feels imminent, despite the protestations of everyone around them. really good bedroom eyes.

so.

yeah.

maybe... maybe

hardison couldnt get the words out to say all of that. all he says is, they're a lot like us. (like with astarion, if hardison spelled out the exact overlaps of the characters.)

the games dumb then, parker says. or at least broken. if the game isnt right, just go fix it?

and hardison has protests about the limits of what is possible within someone else's game and...

parker is like, you made a guy hold up a bank in like, 10 min? on a laptop with spotty internet and without a mouse or any preparation?

and this takes some time between other projects he really has to get to, but.... he does it. codes like a motherfucker and bribes eliot & parker into mocap and also genuinely pays the VAs to voice lines for him. shit hardison does for the love of his ot3:

script out unique banter for karlach and astarion in your party that hints of their attraction to one another

code in an extra option when astarion or karlach confront you for to prompt them to consider their own feelings for the other (different from the current but i want to be with you both! line)

a short nighttime cutscene that with dialogue that implies the three have just finished talking and have agreed to be together. they are all holding hands

include astarion and karlach in each other's act iii scenes (they arent the most chatty, admittedly, but they are there and integrated)

outside of camp, if you three are standing near each other, you can cast a spell that cuts to astarion and karlach kissing either of wyll's checks (this is admittedly somewhat buggy but!

edits out astarion cowering on the pier from the sun, just rushes the three to avernus which hardison doesnt have to edit; just uses astarion origin version for wyll.

nexusmods community begs desperately for him to do this for some other ot3s and he is willing to hear them out for shadowheart/lae'zel/tav, he absolutely refuses to break up karwyllstarion and only offers wyll pov. will not even allow for edits being made for a tav/karlach/astarion mod. he deeply pisses off some people, but overall this mod is downloaded a fuckton as the only truly viable polyam romance option in the game. people start writing fanfic specifically for this one mod and eventually it is just integrated into canon lore that karwyllstarion exists as an option

[emetkoto]

i know i talked a lot about how sun/moon coded emetkoto are but my fucking god i couldnt make a pair MORE sun/moon coded than kotostarion. im normal about astarion calling him 'my sun' and not ever really missing the sun too devastatingly much because k'oto is so bright and warm its basically like he's surrounded in it's warm all the time anyway....

[thedragonagelesbian]

For the uncommon questions asks:

For Pally Cyrus 6) Does he consider laws flexible, or immovable?

Ranger Cyrus 2) How easy it for your character to laugh?

Yiseeril 11) How does she cope with confusion?

Durge Cyrus 14) What animal do they fear most?

For you! H) What trait do you admire the most (for any of them, all of them, or just in general)?

thank you smmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm <3333333333 ily (uncommon character asks here!)

Pally!Cyrus

6) Does he consider laws flexible, or immovable?

Cyrus will always be someone who prioritizes people over laws & institutions. He's not personally an active rule breaker, but he defends those who are-- protecting the other orphans from the headmaster or from the Flaming Fist, for example. Of course, when it comes to his own personal code of ethics & his oath of devotion, he is much less flexible. Do good, all the time, and if you make a mistake, your soul is going to be a little bit empty forever. Lol.

It's why breaking his oath is so devastating at first-- and why Karlach persuades him to keep it broken. To punish himself less for the impossible standards he's set for himself.

Ranger!Cyrus

2) How easy it for your character to laugh?

It's VERY hard lol I have a post somewhere in my drafts about Karlach & Astarion getting together in this playthrough after bonding over a bet to get him to lighten up for one miserable fucking second. Especially early game, Cyrus is all business. No time for mucking around or having fun, there are people to save and tadpoles to extract and a mind that will not stop looking for threats around every corner. On guard, always, like he has been for the last fifty years.

Wyll has the easiest time of anyone. He's just so silly!! And it doesn't compromise his sense of duty & purpose. It makes those burdens easier to bear, where Cyrus is so used to just bearing it without even the lightest of reprieves. It really catches him off-guard the first couple of times, but it's nice to laugh again

(How long had it been anyway? Did it occur to Cyrus, sometime before he killed her, before the life transference spell, in the decades of their normal life together, that he wasn't laughing as much as he used to? Or was it only after everything that he realized it was another thing she had taken from him?)

Durge!Cyrus

14) What animal do they fear most?

Durge!Cyrus is scared of very little external to his own ruined psyche. Like every other iteration of the character, he has a mild fear of dogs, stemming from a pre-Urge incident in which one was sicced on him after he stood up to its owner for harassing someone.

But for most fear... does the slayer form count? I mean I know it's a monstrosity technically, but... even pre-amnesia Best Boy of Bhaal Cyrus was terrified of being bequeathed this particular 'gift' from his father. It really is all of Cyrus' worst fears--being a mindless weapon & having his body transformed by magic--in one gory package.

Yiseeril

11) How does she cope with confusion?

99.9% of the time, Yiseeril embraces confusion readily as an opportunity to learn more. The unknown is tantalizing, bursting with its promise of discovery when the right mind (hers) is applied to it.

The edge case is anything to do with her own desires, esp re: her faith, which she obstinately refuses to interrogate beyond what is most advantageous for her to want in the moment.

H) What trait do you admire the most?

Cyrus: His heart. There's a real element of wish fulfillment to his character for me as a person trying to do/be good in an unjust world. He can do it!! It's hard and it takes a lot out of him but he can do it!!! And I can keep trying to do it too.

Yiseeril: Her zest for life. Which is ironic/tragic because I have a number of songs on her playlist about death/being dead/dying as a metaphor for her illithid ascension, but before that, her love for the most trivial of mundanities is, I think, wonderful. It reminds me a bit of the program house I was in in undergrad, which really loved to grab furniture off the side of the road & collect random books & hoard strange odds & ends. I want to live life like that, invested in the material & aesthetic pleasure of small things.

[newtabfics]

kinda wanna feed the self-insert brain rot but tabby. astarion. flirting?

here's the thing: i'm enemies-to-lovers coded af. ngl, i haven't followed the MAIN plot at all. I have no idea wtf it's about. i solely focused on Astarion scenes so I'm just making up my own thing.

tw for blood drinking, poison, and kinda spicy. like not exactly but kinda.

"Well, that was exciting," Astarion sighed. "Let's do that again!"

"No!" I snap out. "No, absolutely not!"

"Why not?" The vampire whined. "It was great! Didn't you enjoy the running for our lives or the part where I had to rescue you?"

"You mean I had to rescue you," I corrected. "Whose spell was it that got us out of the cave?"

He sighed, gesturing to my body as we made camp. "Your spell."

"And whose brilliant idea was it to grab the magic artifact without letting me check for traps?"

He gestured to himself. "My idea." He smirked up at me. "I love it when you get bossy. Makes you so much more fun to play with."

"Astarion," i sighed, sitting on my bedroll. I winced as my thigh ached. We both froze upon seeing the cloth slowly dampen with my blood. "Fuck." I looked over to see his red eyes fixated on them and tenderly touched my neck where he bit me last. "What? want a taste?" I teased.

"i want more than a taste. I want the whole meal," He said, eyes meeting mine. "But I don't think a little kitty like you could handle me, Tabby."

"Wanna bet?" I shot back. i almost ripped off my pants. Almost. The pain was too much.

"Let me," He said, approaching. Carefully, we worked off my pants to see that it was just a knife wound. Before I could say a thing, his tongue touched my skin, working along the cut.

His hands held me in place as I could only squirm when he licked tenderly, as though he were a kitten wanting milk from its mother's tit.

Astarion's eyes met mine as he straightened before spitting the blood onto the ground. "Goblin poisons," he whispered. "I...i should..." His eyes darted to my leg again as he loomed over me.

"How is it you always manage to find a way to taunt me even when I'm gonna die...again!" I snapped at him, making him smirk.

"Because I love to see that feisty spirit of yours. Lay back. And try not to kick me. I'm already struggling just looking at your thighs."

[oogalaboogalabich]

Goddammit that kiss got me sick. I cant stop feekin dyin o typhus long enough to do anything productive so here.

I built the AU Astarion from my kinkfic and im runnin him as an abberant mind mage.

This backstory is entirely off the rails of canon. So effin self indulgent. I apologise for nothing.

Astarion in this AU met Cazador a few years earlier, barely weeks after the guy commited Vampire Patricide. Cazador just up and tried to go for it, nearly ripped Astarions throat out and scared him off so bad the elf skips town.

Ends up in the underdark and finds himself hanging out with a bunch of pirates for a few decades. Almost immediately after marrying this noteably redheaded crewmate ("she had a penchent for silk ropes and putting twats in their place") their crew gets fucked by a new ring of slavers. He doesnt actually know how long he was with them, but hes narrowed it down to almost two years on that ship before being sold to a house in the underdark. He escaped fairly quickly from there, helped by an unusually large druid, whod been their captive long before astarion arrived.

He gets an escort back to his family home, where he learns hes a little past overdue for his coming of age.

After all hes experienced, and a mind freshly robbed of any comfort or escape his previous lives used to bring him in reverie, he doesnt much care about picking a new name. Something he knew would come off as practically sacrelidge to certain parties.

In the end he picks "Astarius" as his adult name to avoid the trouble of getting used to something new. Its a bit ambitious in nature, and the drama behind "God of Stars" pleased his father well enough.

He spends a brief time trying to heal himself with a group of gith monks who have taken over an old lethanderan temple.

But when their methods dont quite work for him, he falls back into pirating, though he acts as more of a legal advisor and launderer these days.

He was about 200 when he simultaniously opened two practices. One in Waterdeep, the other in Immurks Hold. He found it invigorating having to juggle the Immurk Code of Conduct and the laws of Waterdeep.

He found hed gotten over most of his developed fears through the fairly prominant presence of vampire Lord Artor Morlin in his dealings. Though always under the pseudonym of different mercantile captains, which Astarius thought to be very funny.

He was on a business trip in the underdark near Waterdeep when the events of baldurs gate 3 take place.

No matter where he goes, everywhere in the underdark is suddenly swarming with illithids, and its even worse up on the surface. The world is in shambles, theres nothing left after a mere few months. The world made utterly barren, the soil salted and waters poisoned.

The animals die off, the people left behind are systematically rounded up and slaughtered or turned.

Less than a decade later the last bastion (at least in faerun) is ironically Menzoberranzan, where Astarius is forced to return. But when he arrives, people have for the most part let go of the prejeduces that ruled them. Its a fairly plesant place to live for the year or so it survived after his arrival.

He didnt stay for a fight when they heard the illithids were finally going to launch an attack on them directly. Almost nobody stayed in the end. And an attack never came.

For whatever reason. They all just...left. all the illithids gathered in their nautiloids and left the planet behind.

The few hundreds, maybe a few thousand people left on Torill spread out. Even with nothing fit to grow or drink naturally, they still get by with magic if they are lucky, summon creatures and glean vegitation from other planes etc.

Until Magic ceases to exist. After four or five years. It just...stops happening. Something or someone has killed Mystra again. And this time it doesnt come back.

Devils have stopped answering summons, or showing up at all. Warlocks are the last to lose their powers.

Astarius survives because he must. And instead of being content to live in this barren waste of a planet, he sets to work on finding a way out. Either off the planet, into a new world. To the astral plane for all he fucking cared.

Somewhere...anywhere but here.

Hes nearly 400 by the time he makes an ounce of headway.

Near the dregs of what was once reithwith town, he finds a crypt nearly untouched by the desolation of time, and even deeper still, lay the literal gauntlet of bloody shar.

Most importantly theres meat. Actual real food that isnt insects or what few digusting plants can still grow.

An entire colony of rats to live off of for as long as he can keep them breeding faster than he, or they, can eat.

He lives in what he jokingly calls "squalid luxury" for days, exploring and narrowly escaping death a few times. Shar was still ever present. Of course she would be. Torill was perfect for her now.

Theres one area he avoids simply because of the rank stench, but eventually curiosity gets the better of him.

And there...near a pile of corpses deep within the temple, he finds a polyhedron relic, covered in what was clearly tir su script...

[iron-hearts-ablaze]

Astarion required no invitation. He frankly didn’t care. He sat between her legs leaning back against Karlach as he worked on oiling his daggers. Why? The night was cold, and she was oh so very warm. “So— We should be at Moonrise tomorrow. Ready to slaughter a few cultist, my dear?”

Unprompted Ask | Astarion is cat-coded, confirmed

Karlach had been running and chipping her nail against the blade of her axe when he waltzed over, testing for its sharpness. She saw him in the blurred peripheral of her vision but didn't react until she realised just how close he was getting. She only just moved the axe to the side as he placed himself between her bent knees. Karlach froze for a moment as he got comfortable against her, his alabaster curls tickling her chin for a moment.

She scoffed slightly, rolling her eyes at his audacious behaviour, but she was very much getting used to it by this point, so she didn't even grant it a verbal response. Instead, a smile had settled on her lips as she just leans back against the cushion she had propped up against the rock, reclining them both ever so slightly.

"Fuck yeah, I doubt I'll get much sleep tonight, I'm absolutely buzzing. It's about time we got somewhere, get some real answers. Plus, these goblins have been all too easy to take down, I'm looking for a real challenge now. I was going to say 'find something to sink my teeth into', but that'll be your job."