#but mostly astarion has taken up all the room for now lol

[nagito-kissmaeda]

hi bree <33

i heard that you’re into Astarion and Nagito so i was like ooh you’ve got great taste! :D

then i was like ooh wait- do you think Astarion and Nagito are similar? (other than the white hair and the “pathetic lil meow meow” (/endearing) vibes they’ve got)

and what are the differences between them?

(no need to answer if you don’t feel like it lol i just got curious since i haven’t played Baldur’s Gate yet and am writing this on the spur of the moment haha)

have a great day/night! and remember to stay hydrated :)

This is a good question! Especially since it is actually kind of hard to boil down EXACTLY what my type is when it comes to fictional characters but here are my thots

They are similar in only a few aspects. obviously the white hair, skinny little guy situation (astarion has abs in the game but this is wrong and untrue. i have a mod installed to rectify this game breaking issue). Also TRAUMA, and how they deflect it. This is actually kind of more similar than you might think, UNTIL you look at the motivations. so bare essentials, Astarion and Komaeda both do bad things as a way to regain control over their lives. For Astarion its more of a 'i lived a living hell for 200 years its time for me to have some fucking fun or die trying' where komaeda is doing it so he feels more in control of his own luck cycle. similar, but also very very different. I actually kind of think they would hate each other. Astarion uses a lot of manipulation tactics to try and gain the trust/protection of other people and i think tbh Komaeda is kinda unmanipulable. That kind of thing just wouldnt work on him, cause yeah, he will likely do anything you ask him to, but he will do anything that anyone asks him to, there is no exclusivity with him. Also i think it would be funny for Komaeda to finally do some insane shit and Astarion would be like, "Oh good! What fun!" Komaeda would reply, "Ah! I am glad to have your approval, lets hope that this tragedy leads us all into a more hopeful future, don't you agree? :))" and Astarion would say, "Never mind! he still SUCKS!" Astarion does bad things for a hee hee hoo hoo silly time, but komaeda always ascribes some weird bullshit to it and he would find that INSUFFERABLE. Astarion would also absolutely despise Komaeda self-deprecating tenancies, but is kind of vain, so as long as Komaeda compliments him enough i think he will survive, but he will complain the whole time. anyway. this has been long. please play baldurs gate 3. im reblogging a lot of stuff about it on my main (Daveth-isnt-dead) if you are inchrested.

[meanbossart]

the drow hates female drow and thinks male drow are weak and pitiful... does he have any room in his mind to account for drow (and people in general) not being male or female?? i know you can make nonbinary characters in bg3 and everyone in game is cool with it, what does he think of that sort of thing??

also, im curious if you have any gender hcs going on with any of the party and anything about du drow...

you probably already know but in a lot of dnd stuff elves are often ambiguous in gender (looks-wise mostly) and the god that created them (corellon) even can and Has swapped between male and female, as well as giving some elves the blessing of corellon, making them able to swap sexes with each long rest...

this is a ramble but im curious what goes on in that mans mind and his opinions on other drow based on gender are interesting to me

I briefly touched on this a while back, but I didn't get too deep into it. I think, since drow center their cultural hierarchy around gender so severely, that I'm still waiting for an eureka moment regarding how exactly a non-binary drow would operate in DND society as I personally see it- which influences how society itself treats them in turn. I do have a drow character who, later in his life, stops abiding by gender norms, but he doesn't identify as non-binary as much as he just lets people ID him however they like, it just doesn't bother him, in fact it makes his living situation a bit safer since he's always taken for a woman.

Right now, I would wager that a non-binary drow can pretty certainly be assumed to have been entirely ostracized from their community (if they were even raised in the underdark in the first place) - and hence, pose less of a threat/inspire less repulsion from the general population up above. Since DU drow was overwhelmingly influenced by surface culture and THEIR ideas of what drow are like, he would think similarly. So, if he met a drow that doesn't conform to gender ideals/whom he can't tack a gender onto, he'd probably be a fair bit less derisive towards them. Don't get me wrong - he still thinks that drow are in general a pitiful race and will find a way to be dick about it, just not as badly since gender has been taken out of the equation, along with his go-to insults and assumptions.

I don't really have any headcanons about it for the party, other than that they all seems chill about that stuff and I think that's neat, LOL. Also, kind of like you hinted at, I would assume that Astarion and Shadowheart are particularly indifferent to gender norms and expectations. DU drow is too, he only harps about it in regards to the drow race BECAUSE of their emphasis on differentiating between sexes, which he sees as a kind of self-fulfilled prophecy that resulted in their weak men and insufferable women.