#i don’t hate astarion i think he’s fine but i will never understand some of the way people write him

[g4ll0wd4nc3r]

idk how to word this but bg3 fans have convinced themselves that astarion is some dark suave devoted romantic with surprising humor. the people yearn for minthara but settle for a man.

[spacebarbarianweird]

Astarion with gnome Tav HC?

Ok, we all know Astarion hates gnomes. And his facial expressions during the first date if you play Gnome Tav are priceless. Like, he doesn't smile and definetely does his best trying to hold back slurs.

I have been to his shoes coz I found gnomes weird and freaky. To write this Headcanon, I read manuals about them and got to this description:

It’s rare for a gnome to be hostile or malicious unless he or she has suffered a grievous injury. Gnomes know that most races don’t share their sense of humor, but they enjoy anyone’s company just as they enjoy everything else they set out to do. It’s rare for a gnome to be hostile or malicious unless he or she has suffered a grievous injury. Gnomes know that most races don’t share their sense of humor, but they enjoy anyone’s company just as they enjoy everything else they set out to do.

And then I googled gnomes.

Source

Honestly, if you think gnomes are ugly - you've met the wrong gnomes!

Thanks @evillittlebirdie for the next concept

A gnome that hates elves and an elf that hates gnomes

Masterlist

Headcanons

Astarion x Gnome!Tav

You are tiny, only 3.2 ft.

All your life you spent far from "big folk", living deep in the woods.

But you were always warned against the elves, those arrogant pricks who think the world belongs to them.

Astarion… hates gnomes. It's not uncommon for elves to be weird about them but he has some personal issues.

Maybe it's his "brother's" fault, maybe some dating preferences.

"Dwarves are fine, but gnomes! Freaky and ugly."

You can't understand where this comes from.

Gnomes are peaceful. Kind. Never malicious to anyone. Always accepting strangers in their homes and caves. So why is your kind so hated?

You bicker but eventually you fall for Astarion's charms (and he suppresses his disgust to seduce you).

Maybe elves aren't that bad, after all.

And Astarion suddenly realizes he isn't averted by you.

Tiny. Yes. You are barely tall enough to reach up to his hips.

But you are cute. Beautiful, even.

Like a small elf.

Finally, Astarion confesses to you.

That he manipulated you. That he used you.

And what is worse, he hated the mere idea to touch you. As if you were some nasty creature.

Like a goblin.

He apologizes for that and is waiting for your verdict.

He expects you to yell. To curse him.

You do nothing of that. You approach Astarion and hug him.

Well, for him you are the most beautiful person in the world.

To kiss you, he has to kneel (or pick you up like a child)

You were embarrassed first to be carried around - besides, you are considered "tall" by gnome standards!

But you learn to like it. Your weight is 40 pounds and Astarion can carry you on his shoulders as long as you want

And, the hells, you enjoy it!

Firstly, because Astarion can go faster and longer if you don't slow him down, and, second, you can see the world around not being blocked by taller people.

When you go like that, you play with his curls and carefully touch his ears (it's impossible to resist when you are so close).

He loves your feather-like touches.

He still laughs at your height, though

"Oh, I am sorry I can't hear you from up here!"

"Apologies, darling, I thought someone was squeaking!"

And you wait for the opportunity to mock him for heing the tall one.

"Oh, I am sorry, I forgot I travel with a brainless giant!"

As a gnome, your desire to help is innate. It's just against your nature to deny someone's needs.

And more often than usual, Astarion has to carry you away before you agree on something too dangerous or too cheap.

"I am Astarion and this is my micro-wife. Ouch!"

When you stay together in taverns and inns, you don't have to pay for two beds - a single bed fits you both.

And Astarion always presses you to his chest - you drown in his arms. You feel safe and protected.

Sometimes, you hear mockery and evil laughs.

"An elf and a gnome, can you fucking believe it?"

You usually let these words go but Astarion doesn't.

He beats those who dare speak ill of you two and makes them kneel and beg for forgiveness.

Gnomes live long, up to 400 years. And you are young. As a gnome, you want a stable home (when you get tired of travels) and somewhere to stash things.

And you understand Astarion craves stability as well - so he will get it with you.

A comfy home in the woods among your kind.

Gnomes are accepting, after all.

Even if it's a vampire.

--

Tag list

@tugoslovenka @marcynomercy @wintersire @vixstarria @not-so-lost-after-all @ashiro20 @theearthsfinalconfession @herstxrgirl @starlight-ipomoea @micropoe10 @astarion-imagine-archive @veillsar @elora-the-slutty-songstress @fayeriess @lumienyx @astarion-beloved @tallymonster @caitlincat-95 @tragedybunny @valeprati

[lets-go-hurt-someone]

I love Shadowheart. She was my bae throughout my first (unfinished) Tav run. I abandoned that run because Astarion convinced me I needed to restart as Durge for him, but Shadowheart forever holds a very special place in my… well, heart.

I’ve been thinking about the contrast between them and their arcs and the way fandom interacts with them.

They both start off as characters that by D&D standards are “evil.” Shar is an evil aligned goddess, and vampires are evil aligned creatures.

However, Shadowheart isn’t evil. She disapproves of actively evil decisions and approves of kindness to animals and the helpless. She just doesn’t like it if you seem to be putting do-goodery above your search for a cure to the tadpoles. She is fine with killing the grove, but the contrast between her at the tiefling party and the goblin party shows pretty starkly how she really feels.

Astarion starts off the game evil. I will fucking fight anyone on this. He has very very good reasons to be evil, but so does Shadowheart… and she’s not. Astarion enjoys chaos, he likes murder, he likes hurting people. He thinks being “good” is weak and stupid and that might be a trauma response, but it is how he genuinely feels at that point in his story.

And yet. AND YET. For some reason, I have never seen anyone complain about making Shadowheart a Dark Justiciar. If she likes you, you actually have to encourage her to kill Nightsong. Even on my evil run, she spared Aylin if I didn’t tell her not to. You have to either not care about her or intervene to make her evil, and right up to the end where she kills her parents and Shar wipes her memory again, she is just so miserable and resigned to what she’s been influenced to be.

But people do it to get the hotter sex scene or whatever and that’s fine.

But Astarion? The man who spends the whole fucking game begging you to help him take over an evil cult and murder his “family” so he can become a living vampire as soon as he realises it might be an option? The guy who will throw a fit and leave you if you don’t either succeed in a persuasion check or help him eternally damn 7007 people— no matter how close you’ve gotten to him?

Apparently you’re an evil piece of shit if you find his “bad” ending compelling or, dare I say it, hot.

I don’t really care which ending you prefer for either character— I think the game does a great job on its own telling you what you should think and it’s fairly nuanced for both characters. I just don’t understand why Astarion has to be so woobified and his “bad” ending fans vilified as if they’re naive morons with no media literacy.

Shadowheart, the character, hates her “bad” ending way more than Astarion, the character, hates his. And fandom can’t reflect this because I don’t know…

Oh god. It’s sexism isn’t it?

[sailorgundam308]

Long ranting post about unhinged bg3 fans harassing other fans. Skip if you don’t care.

Second post I see today of other people targeted by some unhinged people in bg3 fandom with a moral superiority complex.

Dude. This is not a crusade. We’re in tumblr. Let’s get over ourselves a bit, shall we.

And, so far, aside from some backlash to problematic and shitty mods in Nexus, I’ve only seen people being harassed by frothing “fans” for things that are project onto them - not for things that were truly said and done. It’s been wild.

Some in this fandom need to learn how to read, how to contextualize and most of all, learn that the shit they wanna use to propel themselves onto their high horses is coming from inside the house. You’re projecting too much? Maybe it’s time to take a look at where that’s coming from.

Also, to these harassers: grow the fuck up. It’s a videogame and the characters are pixels. If someone doesn’t like a character, it doesn’t mean they hate the voice actor, what that character said, their gender, sexuality or whatever. It means they don’t like- guess what - the character. Period. Read what’s written, is my advice, and not more.

People have the right to care less or even straight up hate fictional characters. It doesn’t concern anyone but them. I f they wanna say so in a personal blog, it’s also fine. If it makes you MAD, there’s an unfollow and block buttons on this platform, and they’re free to be used.

The amount of utter shit I got from people straight up LYING about what I said is nuts. What I say in MY blog, about what I think, and towards no one in particular. About a videogame. From people sending me unsolicited screenshots of decapitated Karlach, to unhinged flooding calling me a cunt over and over because I have my own opinions about what kind of character looks good with Astarion. It’s my blog, my opinion, my prerogative. Astarion is not a real person and not your boyfriend - and I’m not talking to you if you think he is.

I’m starting to think there’s a mob with a flag of moral superiority loose on tumblr looking for shit they can twist and flip to fit their angry narrative. Like a fake morality locust plague.

Let us remember we know nothing about who’s behind most blogs here, and sometimes we need to take a chill pill, then use the block button.

I know I do it. A LOT. It works. I never had to badmouth people because we disagree on a videogame, nor did I ever went to someone’s inbox to harass them.

You know the same shit we do with fake news and those moral panics of the 80s and shit? That we go after the source and figure what’s all about before raging wrong? Maybe it’s time we do the same with the shit being dropped by some people on others in this fandom. All times I’ve checked, people here or on twitter were being targeted FOR PETTY BS that someone else projected onto them, their work, their words.

Now, to my plague of locusts, who apparently still keeps tabs on me: I never deleted a post here, you morons. Go look for it if you’re so serious about this. Then read it again. If you knew how to fucking read you’d understand what words mean and what they don’t. You might not like me, or my taste, or me shipping Astarion with Karlach. But it doesn’t give you the right to lie about my views and values, to actively try to “sabotage” my work or whatever shit you thought you were doing. As someone else who was harassed here has said, I bet you’re all whiny white bitches who know shit about real struggle and prejudice, who need to push people down to feel good. Be better. Cause the way you’re acting, you’re no better than “even” me.

[nellyofthevalley]

truths, ch.3

astarion x fem!tav rating: explicit

content: piv sex, fingering, biting/blood drinking, emotionally repressed losers who can't communicate, angst

summary: this fic is mostly an excuse to write a bunch of dialogue bouncing around in my head. astarion is a sad little idiot who turns his fears into a self-fulfilling prophecy because he never learned how to love. it may or may not turn into a tragedy

“I’m mad at you.” Tav says she’s mad, but her brows soften and she doesn’t stop him, doesn’t ask him to apologize. “I… I don’t know why I came over here.” She glances over her shoulder, uncertain, like she might leave, but no matter how much she thinks about it, she can’t. She feels stuck, as if the palm he laid on her restrains her with magic.  “I do,” Astarion taunts her, gently caressing her over her clothes. “He left you wanting. I can hear your body and blood calling for me. Your heart races for me when I touch you.”

chapters: ch.1 | ch.2 | ch.3 | ch.4 | ch.5 | ch.6 | ch.7 | ch.8

read it on ao3 or below the cut

Astarion hates the way Gale looks at her, particularly because he knows it’s his doing. Of course it is—his worst punishments are always by his own hand. Cazador liked to remind him of that often.

It’s not jealousy that negs at him, it’s a sense of possession. All the time that Gale spends talking to her, making her laugh; Gods, that was his spot once, and she’s so easily replaced him. Gale hadn’t marked her like he had, can’t drink her life’s blood like he does… he knows she enjoyed it, and anyone else would leave her wanting. Her taste from a week ago still persists on his tongue like a brutal burn, to be soothed only by another visit.

Perhaps Tav has replaced his charm and wit with whatever it is that wizard has to offer, but from where he’s sitting, it’s his coat she clings to every night. Whenever Gale leans into her and inhales, it’s Astarion’s scent that lingers on her skin. That’s what he tells himself when Gale leans in and kisses her goodnight.

Tav looks over, and in spite of his best efforts to dive right back into his book, he’s sure she caught him staring. It’s fine, he shakes it off; she’s equally as guilty. To meet his eyes right after kissing another? How scandalous. How rewarding it is to know that even if her mind wanders, her body thinks of him. 

Astarion’s been avoiding her, sat inside his tent with a book. He’s lost, he can’t make sense of what they’re doing—what he’s doing—or how to approach what he’d done. It’s simple, or it should be; the art of charming people is supposed to be a skill he excels at. After so many years stalking the streets for Cazador, he’s grown a tough exterior and learned how to shield himself from the atrocities he’s committed.

But she’s different. There’s something about her he can’t quite understand, and when he talks to her, it’s not him speaking; it’s some innate being that possesses him and speaks with his voice. Astarion still dreams of seeing his plan through to the end, but when they speak and their eyes meet, when he touches her, it’s as if that shield has simply disintegrated.

When Tav finally starts to gravitate towards him, he feels like he’s won. It doesn’t matter who spends all day talking to her, so long as she keeps coming to his tent at night. 

“Well, hello,” he says, not looking up from his reading. “So, you and Gale?”

She kneels at the entrance of his tent, a bit shocked that he’d bring up the topic so quickly and brazenly.

“You’re jealous, aren’t you?” She’s teasing him, fishing for any hint of what he’s thinking.

“No, I feel bad for you,” Astarion says, flippant. “He must taste dreadful.” He sets the book aside and finally eyes her. A mistake. 

“It just happened,” Tav explains. “I didn’t know he saw me that way.” She’s justifying herself, and he didn’t even have to ask for it. There are few things in this world better than watching Tav fumble over her words and let slip her truths.

“Ah, but you so eagerly reciprocated.”

“I—What business is it of yours? You had your chance.”

“Give me a second one, then,” Astarion asks, offering his hand. “Let me make it up to you, darling.”

“Say ‘please’,” she says, toying with him again. “Say it like you actually mean it.”

“Let me prove to you I’m more worth your time than he is,” he pleads. Tav hesitantly accepts his outstretched hand, and he takes full advantage, yanking her forward and guiding her thighs to his lap. “Please.” Already, she’s a bit flustered, and she thinks she’s in control. How fun.

“Tell me another truth,” she demands. 

Perverse imagery of Tav as his spawn had continued to plague his mind; how he’d be her tutor in the ways of the sanguine, how they’d one day exchange blood, her cutesy eyes turned into a sinister shade of red. Oh, and her teeth; those pointed little things are adorable compared to the fangs she’d grow. It’s not pretty, not at all, but it is a truth.

“You’d look lovely as my spawn,” Astarion says. “I’ve been haunted by the thought ever since you did such a shit job drinking that wine.”

“Fortunate for me, then, that you can’t, isn’t it?” 

She’s not harsh when she says it, but Tav’s stare on him is so fierce it cuts him like a wound. He wonders what lies behind it—a touchy subject? A warlock patron as grating as Mizora has been? She hasn’t mentioned anything about her own, not yet, and as much as he wants to know, her face is telling him not to ask.

It’s for the best. He’s already struggling with her. She needs to be another lost face to him, if he can manage it. 

“Try again,” she demands. 

“Oh, no. If anything, you should be telling me a truth,” he says, allowing his hand to slide further up her thigh. “I’ve given you so many already.”

“I’m mad at you.” Tav says she’s mad, but her brows soften and she doesn’t stop him, doesn’t ask him to apologize. “I… I don’t know why I came over here.” She glances over her shoulder, uncertain, like she might leave, but no matter how much she thinks about it, she can’t. She feels stuck, as if the palm he laid on her restrains her with magic. 

“I do,” Astarion taunts her, gently caressing her over her clothes. “He left you wanting. I can hear your body and blood calling for me. Your heart races for me when I touch you.”

“Ugh,” is all Tav can muster; it’s maddening how weak she is, incapable of making him truly plead for her forgiveness, as she wants to. He broke her trust, left her bare and alone. Without a mention of it or even a sad, guilty look, she’s still a mess in his hands. All she could wring out of him was a half-hearted ‘please’.

Though the evidence of his jealousy seeping out of every sentence he speaks is a gift all on its own. He acts so polished and authoritative, but behind it is something else entirely; a man who would run away from her, yet still grows green with envy when another bids her goodnight. 

“Gale kissed you and you looked at me when he did it,” Astarion continues, hand sliding down the front of her pants and taking pride in how damp he’s made her already. “What would he think if he knew what you’re doing with me right now?”

“Shut up.” For all of Tav’s good, there’s a devilish side to her, too, that she doesn’t want to face—or maybe it’s the shame that she crumbled so quickly. Both are equally enticing. 

“You’re cold,” he observes, her skin prickling and shivering as he kisses all up her neck. She stays silent, though he can feel how she leans into him, practically begging him to take her.

She cries his name when Astarion penetrates her; his fingers slip inside her and curl, his teeth break her skin and draw her blood. Warmth spreads through her as he fucks her with his hand, slowly, savoring this. When she starts to claw at his hair, he regretfully separates from her neck and drags his tongue against her weeping wounds, taking care not to waste a single drop.

Tav clings to him tightly, her body involuntarily rocking against his hand, wishing for him to go faster, wishing for more. Astarion’s happy to indulge in her, pleasing her with his thumb and controlling her with only his fingers; her hands grab his face and pull him in to kiss her, her tongue eager to find his. 

He smells blueberries on her again and can’t think of a word to describe it other than lovely. All of it—the touch of her hands on his face, how she kisses him like she can never get enough. Like she wants more than he is capable of giving. 

Astarion curls his fingers in her again and unravels her; her nails grip his face hard, her legs tremble, her mouth sings a sweet song directly into his. When he retracts his hand and leaves her empty, she gasps and he inhales it like a drug. 

“Hells,” she says quietly, recovering.

Tav reaches for his bottoms but he stops her, kissing her hand, feeling compelled to by that unknown being inside of him. 

It’s that stupid, inconsequential kiss that makes him realize he can’t do this. Can’t be with her like this again. It’s awful, how his mind wants to ruin her completely, and only a moment later, he’s overcome with these emotions of self-hatred, disgust. All he knows is that he can’t lay with her again, it’s not right. It’s not fair to her, not to either of them.

Astarion has never known how to lay with someone with care or affection; if he ever had, it’s an experience long lost to the last two lifetimes of horror. All he can see is Cazador feeding from her and killing her once he’s done fucking her. How terrible he is for dragging her into this.

“I only wanted to… take care of you, too,” she says in a sad, soft voice that hurts his ears. She’s too pure. He runs his hand over the marks he’d given her like a reminder that she had, but his eyes are distant.

It’s in this moment, when he’s somewhere else, that she realizes how much she doesn’t know about him. This little game of truths and lies they play is exactly that—a game; he rarely shared anything real about himself, and she expertly dodges conversations of her own past. She’s asked him for more, but he’s never forthcoming. He told her about his former master, and how Cazador had carved the Infernal runes into his back when she noticed them. 

“Astarion? Won’t you talk to me?”

Why he chose now to suddenly develop morals and some warped feeling of responsibility is beyond his comprehension. When she has that defeated look in her eyes, it’s like she’s peering right into his soul, like she can see something impossible in him. She doesn’t see him for what he knows himself to be: a monster. 

“You were lovely,” he says, “but I—I think you should go.”

What he’s done settles in and makes itself cozy at home, in his brain. Maybe this is the only way he knows how to care for another, by pushing them away. When he left before, he knows he should have stayed away. Being around her is dangerous, for both of them.  Self-preservation is the single piece of him left that he owns, no matter how weak it may be.

He wants to say sorry or to never have ended up here at all. He wishes any God listening would grant him the ability to do either. It never comes—they’ve never once answered him, why would they now?

“Really? Just like that? Bed me, get your fill, make me leave? Is this a joke to you? I don’t understand you.” She’s yelling, and he takes it; he earned it. “I’m… done with whatever this was.”

Tav has always been a crier, and she’s hated it for as long as she can recall. How a single tear can give you away and betray all the effort your mind puts into keeping your composure. Years ago, her brother would have been there to assure her it would all be fine, and that it’s okay to weep. This harsh, cold night is all too happy to remind her how he would never be there to do that for her again. Not until all of the water on this miserable world dries up and the sun is drained of its light.

[mybg3notebook]

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.