#and if tav says “i want you to live” IT LITERALLY MAKES HER SO UPSET........... bc thats what YOU want and she wants to live too

[avernusdamned]

not to be like "avernus is actually her bad ending" but... avernus is her bad ending...

even if she has wyll or even if she has the pc it still is not a good ending for her. she even tells you in the beginning when she learns that she's on a time clock she tells you that she would rather die than spend another second in the hells. if you bring her to the HoH she literally tells you repeatedly how much she hates being there and i can just imagine her skin crawling even though it's the first time she's been able to breathe and exist without feeling like every step is closer to her last.

she doesn't care!!! she does not care!!! if the choice is to die free and in her home then she is TAKING THAT CHOICE because it's her choice. it's hers and she will die in the comfort of knowing she helped save the world and she got to see the sun, the ocean, the stars, the moon, the city, one last time before she got to say goodbye.

convincing her to go back to avernus is her bad ending because she doesn't get to live for herself anymore. she doesn't want to. there's no reason to. she's living for wyll (or the pc) because she loves them. gods she loves them but this wasn't her choice. this isn't really karlach. THE FURY OF AVERNUS is exactly that. there are still moments of sunlight and joy that radiates from her but they get rarer by the day. at least she's alive. for you

[wetcatspellcaster]

If it’s not [REDACTED] material you plan on covering further on in Pieces, would you mind talking about why Hemlock is so jealous of Rosalie? It seems like every time she’s “on screen” she’s making some sort of jab at Rosie concerning either Astarion/Rosalie’s past relationship, or Astarion and Hemlocks (insinuated?) carnal activities, but hardly anyone ever comments on it. Like poor Hemmie practically spat the fact Astarion comes to her bed in Rosalie’s face during Chapter 12 in front of Shadowheart but no one acknowledges that she’s constantly trying to make Rose upset with this info. Is it just the power of the Ascendant that Hemlock is drawn to and makes her wish she was on Rosalie’s level (in Astarion’s eyes), or is it the bond between vampire and spawn that makes her act like this?

Hey anon! Thank you for the question! I'll try to answer you as best I can without spoilers :)

Firstly, the reason no one ever comments on Hemlock's behaviour or the buckwild things she says is because.... they all find it kind of cringe :') In my mind, by this point in the timeline, this party and Tav have encountered Gortash, Orin, Cazador, Raphael, Mizora, the Emperor's bullshit... not to mention any villains Rose encountered in her post game life, and in Avernus. They've had their fair share of villain speeches! They're used to it! They feel like water off a duck's back at this point! It's easier to simply not acknowledge it, than engage.

(Rose talks about the social energy it takes to interact with evil people in another fic I've written, she's just like "more than anything, it's exhausting to act like I value their opinions and pretend I care".)

Hemlock also thinks her and Rosalie are fighting over an Ascended Astarion... they're not. Rose doesn't want Ascended Astarion. So when Hemlock's like, "yeah, did I mention we fucked", Rose is just like "...and? you and every other person in that house. happy for you, i guess?" Like yes, it does sting a little in the sense that it shows how much Astarion has changed... but it's kind of missing the real mark? And most of Rose's friends know her well enough to know that, but especially Shadowheart, who walked round that awful dungeon with her.

That being said, Rose is more petty with Hemlock when they're alone and no one's there to judge her, but that's more because of the Feeblemind than anything.

As for Hemlock's motivations, it's unfortunately a mixture of all of the things you list above. Astarion's spawn are all people he recruited post-Ascendency, so all of them buy into his spiel to some extent. Hemlock, in particular, is a person who was already evil-aligned before she became a vampire. She was promised a lot of power and a position of supposed equals (where have we heard that before?) I do think, if she doesn't have feelings for Astarion, or may now have started to reach a point where some of the sheen of this hot, all-powerful vampire man has been tarnished, she does at least want the peak ascendency romance: the glamour, the debauchery, and the power that comes with it (she is, essentially, a Tav that picks all the pro-evil plan lines in the dialogue tree and means it).

Instead, she's forced to live a circumscribed and domesticated life, because of some girl she's never met, who Astarion waxes lyrical about whenever he has a free moment to pause for breath. In Chapter 13, I reveal that all the spawn have to live according to Rose's dictate of 'no harm' - notice that Astarion enforces that perfectly on all the people he can literally command, meanwhile he is the only person with freedom in that situation, and he can act however he likes and keeps 'messing it up uwu'. He thinks he's being 'good' and doing vampirism 'well', but what it actually is is just hypocrisy, and a way to continue to exercise power over those he controls, to some extent. Hemlock is someone who actually wants to be an evil vampire, or even a Cazador, and can't, because she's not given the free will with which to do so.

So Hemlock has this mixture of 'I am actually in love with this man and want what he promised me'; or 'I was in love with this fantasy and now I'm facing the reality, after having sold my soul, and even if I hate it here now I'm trapped, I want to find any way to salvage this so I've got to continue pretending he's right'; 'I fucking hate this woman who I'm constantly compared to and can never live up to, even though, to my mind, she sounds fucking stupid'; ....AND then there's the bond between vampire and servant. Hemlock tells Rose that she's already under orders not to displease Astarion - I fully believe that order has been in place for a long time. This Astarion words commands and orders in a way that means the spawn have the illusion of cooperation and free choice, which basically means he makes the spawn complicit in their own oppression. He'll say something like "because you've upset me, you should go to the dungeon cells and starve yourself and not move, while you think about what you've done" - that's still, to all intents and purposes, an order (especially when you're already under orders not to displease him).

Hemlock says a lot of what she says to Rosalie because it's easier to hate the woman who 'ruined her life' and 'prevents Astarion from reaching his full potential', rather than examine anything too closely and realise she's ruined her life herself. If she stops buying into the vampirism she chose, she's fucked bc it's not like she can leave it, so better to hate anything else but being a spawn.

It's just also unfortunate, that she thinks the way to hurt Rose is to brag about sleeping with Astarion. But then, the only version of Astarion Hemlock has ever known is obsessed with sex, so why wouldn't she think the woman who loves him wouldn't be as well?

I hope that makes sense! Sorry, this ended up being very long!

[memaidraws]

On Repeat Playlist Tag Game

Rules: Shuffle your repeat playlist 10 times and tag 10 people. Tagged by @flymmsy 😘

If you've ever wanted to laugh at my musical tastes, no better opportunity now, folks!

I know a lot of you guys are within the venn diagram of shared/mutual fandoms, so what I'll do for this (to make things interesting) is assign a pairing for each song and a wee rationale as to why ;)

Tagging: @defira85 @atypicalacademic @dirty-bosmer @henbased @braindancer @feykiller @vasiktomis @circlejourney @chickenparm @sweatandwoe (sorry if you've been tagged before!)

SHEPARD / GARRUS (Mass Effect) Okay, Reina's technically not 'Shepard', and this is a big cheat because Jeon Somi is her voice claim haha. Definitely a song she's released out of spite when Garrus all but disappeared to play vigilante on Omega ;)

MARTIN SEPTIM / MARINA CORVUS (TES IV: Oblivion) Listen, listen, this song is so perfectly them it actually kind of hurts a lot. To people that surrounded Martin, Emperor-to-be, Marina was exactly the kind of troublemaker they needed him to stay away from. But to Brother Martin the man made of flesh? She was everything to him uwu

GORTASH / DURGE (Baldur's Gate III) Come on now, the lyrics are PERFECT for a Durge lamenting about the big dumb crush she's got on Enver and oh my god? He likes her back? (She says, kicking her feet in the air, after a bloody massacre, much to Sceleritas Fel's dismay)

MAYOR HANCOCK / LEE (Fallout 4) UGH oh my god so I know Lee Know from Stray Kids is his faceclaim but this song is very much them. Wanting to run away, seeking freedom where they can take it? Not wanting to take shit for all the crap that's been thrown their way? Yeah <3 Maybe for a modern AU <3

GORTASH / DARK URGE (Baldur's Gate III) It's not cheating! If Kill! Kill! Kill! was from Durge's perspective, I can see this being from Gortash's perspective (the fact this is one genuine emo/alt??? perfect for Gorty's aging rockstar look). Like come on, it's in the name, the lyrics, the screamo bridge? Davey Havok knows what's up.

ONMUND / ALREK (TES V: Skyrim) Oh man. Oh man so this particular album from Bastille has been very Onmund/Alrek coded to me (for reasons I won't get into yet ;D) But this is very much like Alrek watching the world quite literally burn and the only thing he can think of is courting the cute mage and throwing all his cares into the wind. After all, when the world's ending, why does any of it matter?

CAPT DELACOURT / MC (Heart of a Sky Pirate) Hey, my otome game officially lives on an app, so this counts ;D But these more upset, shanty-esque songs definitely reminds me of Delacourt and his romance route. Throwing your cares to the wind (literally) and having a grand ol' time no matter where the adventure takes you.

F!SOLE SURVIVOR / CURIE (Fallout 4) Hear me out: I think Parker's (my sole) romance with Curie is almost highschool puppy love. And it doesn't help that they both have some pretty huge baggage that they need to work through-- so having someone to lean on and love in a way that's easy, carefree and happy? Yeah they're gonna hold onto that <3

STELLE / MARCH 7TH (Honkai: Star Rail) Forever crying that my Caelus is getting so many better pulls than my Stelle, but fwiw, I definitely think Stelle and March have a very fun, easy-going relationship. Kinda need to when you're Trailblazing across the galaxy in a giant space train (and angering gods along the way, oops!)

GALE DEKARIOS / TAV (Baldur's Gate III) Hear me out: I think these two would be so into each other in the way that they absolutely would not leave each other alone. You think Astarion/Tav is bad? These two have it worse. To be more precise, my Tav for this romance, Rae, is very much into exploring his romantic curiosities with Gale. No one else makes him feel as safe and wanted uwu

[exsanguidus]

{ HEADCANON }

cw: sexual trauma, nsfw

Grim here, back again with more of her case study on Astarion and his trauma.

In this little essay, I'm going to talk about how I think it makes more sense for how Astarion seems to be genuinely kind of upset if you reject him during the party, but had previously slept with him and let him bite you during the act.

I'm going to just be straight with you and say that I think letting a vampire bite you during sex falls under the category of food play. Because vampires need blood for sustenance, it's not a kink for them the way it can be for a non-vampire. Example: Araj Oblodra desperately wanting to be fed off of by Astarion because she fantasized a vampire draining her since she was a girl.

For Astarion, it's literally just him trying to eat. He needs blood to live. It doesn't have to be humanoid blood, mind you. But the things he says to Tav when they catch him trying to bite that first time were all centered around the concept that humanoid blood was superior to animal blood and could make a vampire healthier and stronger. Akin to the way having an actual breakfast with eggs, bacon, and the whole nine yards would be superior to just downing a protein shake and going about your day. It's livable, but it's not exactly filling or the best fuel for your body long-term.

Now, you're probably asking: Grim, what in the hells does food play have to do with him actually being a little upset if Tav rejects his second proposition?

Astarion claims that his time with Tav was special and that he'd remember it, which I think carries significantly more weight to leaning towards genuine if Tav had allowed him to feed on them during the love scene.

Astarion enjoys feeding from humanoids. That's pretty obvious because he never turns it down when Tav gives him permission, and he even reacts fairly excited when given that permission. There's even a few times in-game where he compares how different blood tastes and how he feels post-feeding when he compares various animals and Tav's blood. He consistently suggests that Tav's blood - and humanoid blood in general - is superior. He also suggests that larger mammals like bears are pretty good, too, though not so much as humanoid.

So, it's thus safe to say that Astarion finds the act of feeding pleasurable. Just as most foodies in real life find the act of eating pleasureable.

Food play during sex adds an additional sensory experience to the whole ordeal. It combines the pleasure of eating to the pleasure of sex.

Astarion mentions in some dialogue that he hardly ever got any satisfaction from bedding as many people as he has. Later on in Act 3, if you make certain choices in the House of Hope, there's also a line he can tell Tav where he did try to find enjoyment in sleeping with his victims, despite not wanting to, but that it didn't last. So its safe to deduct that he didn't view sex as pleasurable when we get that first love scene.

If he feeds off Tav during the love scene, I'm fairly confident that it fried his brain a little because he was experiencing the pleasure of feeding while doing an act he didn't find pleasurable at all. That most likely was extremely confusing for him because he's not used to feeling any amount of pleasure in any way when he's using his body as a means to an end. Which is likely why he gains approval when you bite, because he does actually enjoy that. It's probably the first time he enjoyed anything while he did a sexual act, even though feeding within itself for a vampire isn't sexual.

That's part of why, to Astarion, it would have been a special and unique experience. That's likely why he would actually be genuinely kind of upset if Tav rejects his second proposition. He can't make sense of the fact he had a pleasurable experience for a fleeting moment (remember, he does still disassociate the first love scene), and he wants to experience it again.

If this was a real life patient, I'd probably encourage them to not use food play as a way of trying to bypass their sexual trauma because that won't make it just suddenly resolve and go away. It's basically a band-aid when what you really need is stitches. At some point, that coping skill won't work so well any more and then there's the chance of adopting even more extreme and/or potentially dangerous methods to cope.

Of course, I'm not trying to say that Tav allowing him to bite them during the love scene is the only valid reason he might be a little hurt if Tav rejects him the second time. The fact alone that he, on his own accord, chose to proposition Tav (even if just to manipulate them) is something special and unique for him as well.

I just personally feel like allowing him to bite during the scene gives an added layer.

Note: Vampires certainly can make drinking blood sexual. We know this because an Ascended Astarion has a line where he basically says that, after he turns Tav into a spawn, they can feed on him and then he can kiss them after to taste himself in their mouth. And he seems pretty damn into that idea. But drinking blood isn't inherently sexual for them, as its more a necessity. Again, it's like food play. Humans need to eat to survive so eating isn't inherently sexual, but you can make it sexual with food play.