#astarion and his trauma

[gwen-writes]

Chapter 12 Excerpt

“Oh, is that right?” Astarion’s typical smirk was shrouded by maroon lips. “You and Simon had little fights? How adorable.”

Fiora scowled, “I bet I could land one or two punches on you. Even a good kick. Your dick makes you vulnerable - easy target.”

Astarion looked at her with taunting eyes - condescending, but amused, like watching a child.

“Your pretty head would already be on the floor before you’ve even had the impulse to swing, love,” He coaxed.

excerpt from my modern AU/classic dnd quest OCxAstarion fic called A Vampire in New England!

desc: Gale was meant to send Astarion to the Limbo dimension, a place where chaos and high powered entities thrived, to find a caster of Wish. Instead, whether it be from Gale's ego, idiocy, or coincidence, he sent Astarion tumbling into the dorm of a New England college.

word count: ~45,000

(some of the) tags: modern era, slow burn, strangers to lovers, friends to lovers, plot, fluff, fluff and humor, romantic comedy, third person narrator

[oonalovesastarionssimpleplan]

Ascended Astarion has his own way of perpetuating the rules - as he knows it -by performing.

*But Astarion is not like Cazador, he will not continue the cycle of abuse*

[veillsar]

WAIT WAIT HANG ON-

Hang. the fuck. on.

Look at this.

Don't mind the poor quality, I literally took a photo of my laptop screen with my phone cuz I needed to post this right now.

This is our camp in Balder's Gate Lower city, do you see what I'm seeing?

They have drying laundry hanging above them.

On Gale's side, look up toward the right corner - we see colorful laundry hanging there to dry, probably some carpet or blankets, those are almost definitely Gale's judging from the aesthetic. Normal, fun detail.

On Astarion's side, there's also things hanging out to dry, except they are rags. Colorless, dirty, disgusting pieces of cloth that might as well have been sitting in a trashpile. They have holes in them, have been torn, damaged beyond a normal person's tolerance for fabric - but Astarion keeps them and washes them like normal laundry....because those rags were probably similar to what he had used for the last 200 years, so he doesn't know any better. What the fuck?

You can't....you can't just silently put details like this, waiting for someone like me to notice it and have my heart shattered all over the floor. I will cry.

FYI, I do know about the visual comparison between the outside of his tent and the inside, it just adds to the sadness I feel for this man even more. Again, Cazador, when I find you, you'll be a dead man walking I swear to the gods-

[eff-plays]

Is this your remorseful and selfless and uncorruptible meow meow.

[leopardmuffinxo]

you make me feel things I didn’t believe in anymore

[wellthebardsdead]

Halsin: My precious star. How old were you when you were taken from the light?

Astarion: ugh don’t be so poetic about it dear, I was 40 if you must know.

Halsin: *brain short circuiting knowing as an elf himself they don’t fully mature until they reach 100 in age* … *tenderly hugs him close and strokes his hair* So I’m going to introduce you to this thing called, therapy-

[vole-mon-amour]

is it just me or the way Wyll blushes and hides the pic of Mizora in that xbox ad doesn't sit well with you as well?

so Mizora traps him in a contract, owns him via contract, can boss him around, yank his invisible leash, and, if he disobeyed or if she dies, he either dies as well or immediately goes to hell for an eternity. I'm a way, he's her slave. as far as he knows, he can get out out of the contract by sacrificing himself (or he can sacrifice himself to save his dad).

sure, you can go behind Mizora's back and save Ravengard, buy we'll go with Wyll Doesn't Know That for the sake of my point.

and canonically Wyll dislikes Mizora and her company. he wants to get rid of her. he hates that she turns him into a devil. he hates how he looks. he hates everything about that.

and what Larian say in that xbox ad? oh, Wyll actually blushes and keeps the implied sexy pic of Mizora and it's implied that he has a crush on her/would have sex with her.

AND Karlach, who was also a slave with no means to get out, who was sold to slavery by a person she trusted and protected, elbows Wyll and goes, "what, you don't want it?" Karlach who KNOWS how it feels and who wants to kill Gortash for what he did to her, and Mizora is Wyll's Gortash in a way.

so first we have Halsin being a sex slave for three entire years and he feared for his life every single day. yet, that info is hidden very deeply and is easily misseable, and its written in the manner of him victim blaming himself with "i was a young druid" and he chuckles as he says that and it's presented in a way way as if he had fun? as if he was there willingly? as if it's all a big joke and not a big deal?

like, i know it's a big topic, but why is only Astarion's trauma taken seriously? why is Astarion's story written and loudly told in a way that we know that Cazador tortured him in every way, including rape, and not once it's treated like a joke? but when it comes to other's slavery, abuse, and trauma, it's suddenly treated like a joke?

Halsin's story is generally badly written/portrayed & he deserves way better, and maybe I'm reaching with this because neither Shadowheart's or Gale's stories show their captors as something good (still not as detailed as Astarion's though), but somehow that slips/gets dismissed when it comes to others.

I think Larian should stop with memes and hehe haha teeheee and be serious when it comes to others' trauma, not just Astarion's.

[rossy-mossy]

Tav as a Fenhawke love child has the potential for some hilarious (and heartbreaking) scenarios.

[astarionposting]

interesting... ascended astarion likes it more if you just let him bite you.

[podcastenthusiast]

Sure it's all fun and games Tav telling Astarion to "say please" and calling him a good boy before having sex, but he'd have a mini panic attack if Tav explained safewords and like actually gave a shit about his wellbeing in bed.

[gwen-writes]

okay my personal headcanon with astarion is that he’s not stupid at all. first of all, in game he has 13 intelligence, which offers a +1 perk to all dice rolls - meaning that he IS smart!

but even beyond that, i couldn’t fathom a magistrate being stupid in the first place. many people have different interpretations of who astarion was before he was turned (and honestly, i love all of them) but regardless of your own personal belief, i doubt him being truly unintelligent would be part of his character.

i would argue that from his trauma alone, astarion could also develop immense emotional intelligence, post-game especially. with the right tools and proper encouragement, he could develop deep empathy and self awareness. this kind of growth would take decades, i’m sure, but our little vampire elf has all the time in the world! even in the main line plot, many people have pointed out how slowly, astarion will begin to approve of “good” actions in act 3. the first thing for me, that i noticed, is when he *act 3 spoiler*

insists you save yenna (the young girl) from orin and kill gortash.

he plays it off as though he doesn’t truly care, but clearly he’s motivated in a particular way.

second of all, he can be very impulsive, but a lack of planning doesn’t mean someone is flat out stupid. instead, i think his rash decision making is caused by the fight or flight mentality he has been subjected to for 200 years.

in terms of social intelligence, he’s very capable of perceiving what someone may want and saying the right thing to manipulate them (not necessarily a good trait, but this understanding of cues and psyche could point to intellect). he is a victim of severe abuse, so of course he struggles with intimacy, genuine connection, even friendship - as we see in the main plot line of baldur’s gate.

and yet, despite all of this, he’s actually a great communicator. he identifies his struggle with other’s sexual perception of him, his lust for power, his hatred for cazador and processing his torture. he says outright that he doesn’t know what you’re really doing romantically because he’s never experienced it, but that he enjoys it and wants you around.

also - humor! vocabulary! i don’t think an idiot could make me laugh with witty lines the way astarion does! needless to say, i just find it crazy that people genuinely consider him stupid!!!

[rackartyg]

astarion doesn’t remember who he was before cazador turned him because who he was then is not relevant to who he is now. healing from trauma doesn’t mean going back to who you were before it—that’s impossible. healing means making the best of who you’ve become

[eff-plays]

Also it's so so so fucking funny that nobody's getting Astarion's face right. Like not even Larian got his face right on the cover. He really is just a handsome little guy who looks ever so slightly fucked up in subtle ways that are so hard to get right without either a) making him look entirely fucked up and losing the pretty/elegance, or b) making him look like some other hot guy who is very much not him.

[ghostthostt]

astarion & virtue. more of them

[astarions-wife]

You can hold Astarion’s behavior in early act 1 accountable without discrediting his trauma btw. You can in fact, do both.

[vorestarr]

thoughts on vampirism as a symbol of trauma

i've been thinking about this in relation to Astarion's story arc for a while and started writing this post a couple times, only to have it become much longer than expected, so for now this post is just going to be about the different paths of ascension vs spawn from the end of his personal quest. (i think there are multiple ways to read his story, and this is just the way i've been reading and thinking about it.)

the basic idea of this post is that Astarion's vampirism is a physical manifestation or symbol of his trauma, and therefore the two different ending paths for him are distinguished by how he addresses his vampirism (and therefore trauma).

it's pretty clear that the vampirism itself is a traumatic experience for Astarion, from how he describes almost dying, then actually dying, and then everything that comes afterwards at Cazador's hands. but i think of this a step further, in that the actual symptoms of vampirism are also part of this. there's an idea that there are physical manifestations of traumatic experiences held in the body, even if the trauma itself was psychological in nature (i.e., the body keeps the score). this is how i read vampirism for Astarion, specifically.

to start, he's turned into a vampire after a traumatic experience (almost being killed by a group of people one night). he's "saved" from this by Cazador turning him into a vampire, but still his body literally dies when he turns into a vampire, which is another separate traumatic event where he feels himself die and then has to climb out of his own grave. (also noted, i believe it's hinted that Cazador orchestrated the attack on Astarion that almost killed him in the first place, so Cazador is the cause of all of this trauma in one event that is Astarion becoming a vampire.)

his body is physically changed by the experience. he loses things because of it, maybe things that were not particularly important to him but now seem incredibly important once they're gone (like walking in the sun) or things that were previously important to him and now he can no longer enjoy (living indulgences and pleasures like food, or his own reflection). also critically, he cannot get those things back. his life is changed (literally ended) and there's no fixing it.

he learns coping strategies during the subsequent 200 years, which i will not get into in this post, but suffice to say that he learned things that he believed would protect him in the moment.

after the tadpole when he experiences freedom from Cazador's influence for the first time, there are some critical shifts that happen to start him on a path to address these things, or not. the recent interview where the devs mention that the ascended path is one of fear, i really agreed with and have said similar things in previous posts, because to me, i think the main difference between how Astarion acts in those paths is that for ascension, he relies on the methods he learned in those 200 years to survive in the moment, while in the spawn path, he learns new ways to cope.

to elaborate on that, i think the ascension path specifically is about avoidance.

in trauma, avoidance is what it sounds like: avoiding any triggers or negative emotions related to the traumatic experience. the avoidance can manifest in different ways, but a key idea is that by avoiding those negative feelings, they are never actually addressed.

i think there are two big ways this manifests in Astarion's story, related to vampirism:

ascended Astarion is avoiding those negative feelings of fear of Cazador (or someone else doing what Cazador did) by focusing on seizing power and control. if he's more powerful, in control of a situation, then nothing bad can happen to him again. the way this ties back to vampirism as a symbol of trauma is that this is literally described to us in the game as the natural course of life for vampires: they live in fear of other vampires, fear of their own spawn seizing their power, etc. this is the story of Vellioth and Cazador, and then later Cazador and Astarion (regardless of the choice he makes to ascend or not). we even get a list of vampires where ALL their life spans/eras of power are timed so that we can infer that each subsequent vampire has killed the previous vampire to dethrone them. so, vampirism itself is trauma and the known course of vampirism is this same cycle we see repeated with multiple vampires and histories in game. by taking a different path and not becoming a full vampire, spawn Astarion has started to learn a new way of dealing with his vampirism/trauma, rather than avoiding it.

the OTHER major way i see this manifest in the game is how ascension and spawn paths deal with the literal symptoms of vampirism: walking in the sun, Astarion's reflection, food versus drinking blood, the vampiric state of undeath, etc. these are all things that changed about Astarion when he became a vampire, and things that (in the normal course of events) cannot be changed back. he died, he's dead, there's no curing his vampirism. in other words, there's no going back to who he was before the traumatic experiences. that by itself is a neutral statement, the same way that there's no going back to who a person is before any major event (be it meeting someone important, choosing to take a certain job, etc etc), because we are all constantly changing and growing. HOWEVER, i think the places with Astarion where this stops being neutral is how he addresses that fact: with acceptance or avoidance.

to elaborate on the second point, which is my main reason for making this post:

on the spawn path, Astarion learns new ways to be and to live with his vampirism. in his epilogue, he can mention that he's not bothered by losing the sun again, he can describe finding a sense of belonging with others who share his vampirism, and he can define himself in new ways that he's picked for himself rather than stay in the definition of vampire that Cazador held.

in the ascension path, Astarion avoids all of those difficult realizations and choices. he falls back on the same strategies that helped him survive in the moment for those 200 years, but which can and do hurt him after escaping that environment. he's working hard to keep from addressing those negative feelings -- and on the surface, this works! he can walk in the sun without the tadpole! he has new vampire powers and he can do all the things he lost when he died! he can see his own reflection again! but, he's still a vampire, still has his fangs, still has his red eyes.

this is why i think the route is characterized by fear and why i found that interview with the devs interesting: by focusing on all those avoidance behaviors, Astarion ends up being stuck in a state of mind that's all about fear because it's all about avoiding that feeling. he feels great in the moment because he has been able to claim back some of what was taken from him, but this is not a solution because he's still a vampire.

personally, i do not read the ascension path as continuing a cycle of abuse, but as the continuation of avoiding the painful process of healing from trauma.

ascended Astarion is elated after killing Cazador because he feels the power flowing through him and it makes him feel safe in the moment, and because he is avoiding addressing any lingering feelings of pain or negativity, including avoiding addressing that he just killed 7000 people.

spawn Astarion meanwhile looks absolutely miserable immediately after killing Cazador when he cries and breaks down, and then he feels numb later because he's so overwhelmed. this i think resembles something that can happen in trauma therapy, where a person feels worse when they initially start addressing and working through their trauma, because it means actually feeling all of those negative emotions they've been avoiding.

in the end, ascended Astarion has not changed how he addresses his trauma or vampirism, and the ascension has actually given him more tools to continue avoidance. spawn Astarion meanwhile is exploring other ways of living with his vampirism, and can be experiencing success with that by the time the epilogue rolls around (even if there are some bumps and regressions along the way, like losing his ability to walk in the sun again).

because this is my main reading, i also don't think this makes ascended Astarion evil or irredeemable -- i think he shows that he does still have all the emotions that he's displayed through the game and therefore he still has the potential to follow the same path that spawn Astarion did in healing. but, the critical thing with the ascension path is that he does not have the clear motivation or triggering event to start him down that path. he's further away from that, and it will take more work to get there. everything he did after all comes back to the ways he learned to survive under Cazador, so those behaviors helped him at one point. the issue is that he's past the point of those things helping him, but he can't let them go.

tl;dr: i like looking at vampirism itself as a physical symbol of trauma and as a way to read Astarion's potential storylines, because it provides a context for me to view how the ascension and spawn paths treat his vampiric symptoms -- avoiding them in the ascension path by giving him an "out" of sorts to avoid addressing how those symptoms impact his life because of the extra abilities granted to him by the ritual, versus being forced to grapple with them and figure out a way to life with them and even enjoy them on his own terms in the spawn ending.

if you read this whole post, thanks for sticking with me and feel free to share your thoughts too. :)