#i resurrected her after her untimely death new and improved

[lesbx]

Truly pushing the limits of the special skyrim edition with this stupid sexy goblin i’ve been handcrafting from scratch with an untoddly amount of mods

[mywitchcultblr]

Odd question for you:

So, the humor of Batstarion aside, do some people just elect to read their own biases into things involving Ascended Astarion. I recall being early in the fandom and assuming based on general commentary he just locked you in his basement and then molests you.

Then: when I actually ascended him and am looking forward to this whole fantasy I just get a goofy, camp vampire Lord who literally lets you live your life. Where do I get a refund? Where is my vampire daddy? lol

Am I alone in this???

No, you are not alone. I found a lot of people who have a strong negative opinion about endings for bg3 companion... How I should explain it in English? Playing the telephone game? Where they are only receiving bits of information and never really experienced the ending themselves or at least never really thought about it deeply because they already developed a bias from these fragmented information and encouragement from like-minded people who share the same bias. Thus, the truth and nuance became diluted amidst the buzz and discourse. For example, Gale endings

GALE HAS NO EVIL ENDING. YES, THE GOD ENDING IS NOT EVIL

People mistook his ambition and huge ego as evil? I think this rooted from "God Gale doesn't propose Tav/Durge unlike human gale, so God ending must have been bad"

"Gale become power hungry, so it must be the evil ending and a bad ending" and "Larian said power is bad"

Gale is a neutral guy, as a human he is neutral good and as a God he became a neutral aligned God. His ascension to Godhood doesn't turn him into Bane or Bhaal, developing an ego big enough to the point he became a god doesn't make him evil or this ending evil. You might dislike it, but objectively, this ending is not evil or bad...

Gale bad ending is him dying and never resurrected, never recruited or sacrificed to BOAAL because they led to his untimely death before he can destroy the brain, reach the crown, or determine what he wanted, how he will approach Mystra...

"But Mystra will kill God Gale because he challenged her!" That is a possibility in his origin ending, before the epilogue is even released, now we got to see new and improved epilogue Gale can take his lover to his realm where they will enjoy their life as Gods, and he has a lot of plan, and although he kinda insinuates that he wanted to challenge Mystra, maybe Tav or Durge can persuade him to not do it

"What if he has no romantic partner?" Maybe he will challenge her, or maybe he will not. I found the ending where Gale immediately going after Mystra to be frustrating, it feels like Larian insisting on the 'power bad' thing in such an on the nose and irritating manner

Gale might have a big ego but HE IS NOT AN IDIOT, he is not a barbarian with 8 intellect, even when he's drunk on power he is still a highly intellectual person/being, and surely he should know that it will take a lot of time and resource for him to be able to challenge Mystra, is it even a good idea to fight her? What would AO say?

He should just focus on his own domain and followers

Same thing with Wyll, this guy HAS NO EVIL ENDING. WYLL CANNOT BE CORRUPTED. Yet there are people out there who say that him becoming a Duke is an evil ending, HOW?!

Now, Astarion... God help us all with this guy. The moment I saw his picture for the first time, I know his fandom will be a disaster

White, sassy, morally gray, handsome, twink, vampire with a sad backstory... The perfect tumblr sexyman, I love him, but I knew the conversation about him will be a mess and headache inducing

Ascendant Astarion is NOT a bad ending, is it evil? Yes, is it bad? No.

It is bad for the city to have yet another vampire lord, an even MORE powerful vampire lord who has no vampirism weakness, but this is NOT bad for him. He enjoyed the power, he enjoyed the freedom, and he finally reclaimed everything that Cazador took from him and even more. I found the notion that ascended astarion 'is not truly free' to be baffling because Cazador is gone, no one can compel him and enslave him anymore, and he is freed from all vampirism weakness.

So long Cazador is dead, both spawn and ascended astarion will be free and have the choice to lead the life they wanted. An outsider moral interpretation of his choice is not his own opinion

"Ascended Astarion regret his choice." No, he never did. I didn't find a single conversation or scene that say he regrets his ascension

"Ascended Astarion is meaner and more evil, so this fate is bad." Your feeling about him doesn't translate to what he feels and how he sees his life and choice...

Or like you said about people claimed. "Astarion will lock Tav/Durge in his basement and molest them" Now, is ascendant romance more toxic and darker than spawn romance? Yes (although it is pretty tame by vampire/yandere standard) but how he treat his lover also depends on Tav/Durge attitude towards him, their personality, their goal and YOUR OWN ideas/ interpretation...

Baldur's Gate give you 'hard canon' and things that you can interpret on your own because it is dungeon & dragons! Hard canon or fixed canon is something like "Orin will die either way" and "If you don't spare nightsong then Last Light will be destroyed." and then there are things that you can decide and interpret on your own such as how your Tav/Durge fare after the last battle, their background, their family, and how their romance with companions play out

There are dialogues or scenes that hinted the future but at the same time there are several options and each dialogue option will lead to a different universe such as whatever you encourage Wyll to be the blade of avernus or becoming a Duke

What irritated me is that there's people who doesn't like his ascension romance, and they be like "Well I don't like this romance and i don't like him now, so I see your Tav/Durge WILL NEVER BE HAPPY WITH HIM AND IT IS A FACT!" NO, THAT IS NOT HOW IT IS WORK!

You cannot enforce your own narrative perspective into other people's. "What about the 'freedom' dialogue in patch 5?! If you clash with Astarion he will-" like I said each dialogue choice lead to a branching multiverse, just because one person have a conflict with ascended astarion doesn't mean my Tav who is very devoted to him have the same problem or will not be happy

Also, patch 5 confirmed the theory that Astarion turned his lover into a bride/groom instead of regular spawn. If you chose a dialogue option that hinted Tav/Durge feel trapped and doubted if they are truly flourishing, then Astarion will say something like (I'm paraphrasing here) "Well, I give you everything! And I will make sure that you live your best life, even if you don't appreciate it!"

A bride/groom has an emotional and mental link with their creator, if Tav/Durge is not happy then Ascended Astarion will feel unhappy as well. Mind you my Tav (Astaroth) doesn't say he feels trapped, he said that he is happy with Astarion and grateful to share everything with him and then Astarion said that he is blessed to be with Astaroth as well then he also said:

"I may have power, but it would be nothing without you. You complete me."

I don't do Karlach romance, and although I have my own thoughts that if Astaroth romanced her (tbh the guy is gay so he has to be bi/pan in alternate universe) in the end he will feel a bit disappointed with being trapped in hell, doesn't mean I have the rights to ENFORCE that Karlach/Tav romance in general will be unhappy and tragic just because of MY OWN interpretation...

People also shouldn't enforce their own choice for Astarion as

"THE TRUE AND CORRECT CHOICE FOR ASTARION AND IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ME YOU ARE DELUSIONAL AND DUMB"

[ayearofpike]

Remember Me 2: The Return

Pocket Books, 1994 210 pages, 16 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-671-87265-6 LOC: unknown (catalog down as I wrote this) OCLC: 30986560 Released September 1, 1994 (per B&N)

Shari Cooper, having passed into the light after her untimely death, is learning to be one with the universe and accept it with love and grace. It makes her a perfect candidate to return to the realm of the living — only she’s not going to have such an easy, pampered life. Rather, she’ll have to take on the life and struggles of a downtrodden minority who has given up, and work to improve the lot of everyone in her circle.

So here’s the one that Pike said he should have refused, that the publisher talked him into a sequel but in retrospect it damaged the story. But ... I don’t hate it? I know, that last entry was super vitriolic and angry about sequels and Pike’s slide into essentially irrelevance. Still, I was surprised that this book is not totally horrible — save one major racial problem that we’ll get to.

One thing that definitely annoys me about this book: the new die-cut covers. When I picked this one up at the store, I thought it was the awesomest thing: extra-spooky typeface that shows the art THROUGH it rather than just a generic script along the margins? But then I got the next one and stuck it on the bookshelf by this one, and the back cover caught the fingers of the E and PFFFTT. It took them a couple years to catch on and just print it, which, while a kludge, is preferable to the six or however many torn ones I have.

But narrative-construction-wise (as opposed to physical-construction-wise) the book actually holds up. Pike alternates between the first-person consciousness of Shari and the third-person observation of Jean Rodrigues, a poor and unmotivated but hot Latina living in the projects in Los Angeles. It’s not really a spoiler to say that Shari ends up taking over Jean’s body, and the realization marks a nice in-time shift in descriptive perspective as she suddenly understands that “she” is “I.”

So how the hell am I going to summarize this, considering the construction and flipping between astral plane and physical realm is what makes this book work? I guess you’re just going to have to trust me, and read it if you want. I’m going to punch through the world beyond the light first and then come back to Jean, even though it’s her who opens the novel.

We know Shari’s dead, and we know she planned to go into the light at the close of events of the last novel. Our first encounter with her here has her talking with a more-enlightened being, who acts as a teacher and a guide to help Shari understand that the love she gave and the services she rendered are the more important elements of her life, beyond the expensive house and the indulgent parents and the fucking Ferrari. As she starts to get it, he suggests that she should become a Wanderer — a soul that takes over a living body rather than being reborn from the beginning and works to make things better. She’s interested, but she also wants to talk to Peter before she goes back.

Yeah, remember Peter? Well, I never said his name in the first summary —  the spirit guide who loved her in life. He was able to get through too. He overcame his fear that he wasn’t good enough, and now he’s on the eternal plane with Shari. They construct the prom that they never went to, but just before they can get it on in the hotel room afterwards Peter lets his body get ripped open by the alien xenomorph that he decides to turn into as a joke. I have to admit it’s funny, but it highlights what Peter might still be afraid of: love, intimacy, getting too close, not being good enough still. So instead of boning, they explore the stars, and there’s some metaphysical shit about a black hole and how everything is interconnected that makes Shari realize she’s ready to be alive again and start making a difference.

Of course Peter wants to go too, but the fact that he killed himself is going to be an obstacle. These fears that he can’t quite release, and the circumstances of his death, mean that he’ll be resurrected into a body that is less than whole. Peter’s willing to take the hit, and the teacher accepts because he senses Peter’s love is pure. Also, the teacher lets them know that they’ll need some kind of a shock to the system in order to remember what they know about the cosmos, but even if they don’t they’ll still know they have some kind of higher purpose.

So now I’ve gotta jump all the way back to the beginning and talk about Jean. We get more male-gazey description of this hot brown mamacita, but I wasn’t quite as grossed out this time because her looks are the only thing Jean likes about herself. She’s down on her prospects, down on school, down on her family and what her life might turn into — because she’s pregnant with her boyfriend’s kid at 18. And tonight is his birthday party, and she’s going to tell him.

The birthday boy is Lenny Mandez, a gang dropout who finished high school at 20 and is trying to get clean but still has too many connections. He lives in a ramshackle house on a hill surrounded by oil wells, dirty but good enough to get wasted at. And I don’t really like the fact that the first time we have a whole cast of Latinxs they’re gang-bangers and dopeheads and dropouts — but the picture is real. I had plenty of friends and coworkers as a young food service employee in the Southwest who felt like this was their ceiling, this was all they could get, this was all they should aspire to. Which is part of why this story starts to piss me off later, but we’ll get to that.

So Jean tells Lenny about the baby, he’s less than thrilled, but then there’s a meeting. Kind of parallel to what happened in the first book, only with fewer people. It seems that a friend just got gunned down in a drive-by, and his girl wants revenge. She and Lenny are planning everything out, Jean’s best friend (who is a lesbian but again, don’t be squicked out, kids in 1994, because she totally doesn’t hit on Jean or anything!) doesn’t want to get involved, and Jean really doesn’t want them to pursue this. Why do they drive themselves down, Jean asks? Why can’t they aspire to anything better? Nobody’s hearing it, so she goes out on the balcony (because, sure, there’s a balcony in a two-bedroom house in the projects) to pray for help and understanding.

And the thing collapses out from under her.

She wakes up in the hospital three days later, with a concussion and several broken bones. Her mom is there and just breaks down out of happiness, because there was no sign that she would ever wake up until just a little bit before she did. She had a miscarriage too, which ... is sort of glossed over and forgotten quickly. But Lenny was on the balcony too, and he broke his back, severed the spinal cord and will probably never walk again, and now he just wants to die.

See, maybe I gave away too much too soon by breaking the story down the way I did.

But anyway, Jean suddenly feels less selfish and more giving, and she wants to help. She starts volunteering in the hospital as soon as she’s well enough, and has crazy ideas for stories about aliens and monsters and things. (Because evidently the best way to give your family and community a leg up is to become a horror and sci-fi writer. Getting less and less sly as we go along, Pike.) One of her patients (who is dying of leukemia, because everything old is new again) actually inspires her first short story, a tale of a successful writer whose muse wants in on the action and starts blackmailing her, which includes this frustrating little nugget.

But Jean isn’t satisfied just being her new self. Something is drawing her away from the hood and out to the rich developments. She takes a bus to Huntington Beach and walks with no goal in mind until she finds a bloodstain on the concrete by a condo. The property manager assumes she’s a friend of the poor girl who fell to her death the previous year and helps her find the family house, which of course she goes straight to and finds Shari’s brother moving out. She gets him to let her help in exchange for a ride home, and after reading the short story at the grave of her patient she feels compelled to go see him right away.

He lets her in and they immediately start talking about the dead sister. They’re both unnerved, but they keep going because something compels them. In fact, the brother reveals that he has a file on his computer that he’s never shared with anyone — a story written while he was sleepwalking that tells about his sister’s death and the events around it. Jean starts reading it, but she doesn’t have to finish because of course she wrote it. She is Shari. Shari is her. Shari has taken over Jean’s body in light of her prayer for help.

And this right here is where I get pissed. Like, Pike has constructed the realistically untenable situation of undereducated Latinxs in America. He’s written it with ... well, if not tenderness and understanding, then at least care and consideration. And he’s got a protagonist who wants to help her family and her community rise up and get out of the problematic cycle. BUT THEN. As soon as Jean Rodrigues realizes she’s Shari Cooper, the whole fuckin’ community goes out the window and Shari takes over and wants to try to reconstruct her old life. I mean, yeah, she gives some lip service to where she came from, but right away she’s like, yeah, let’s see my birth mom, let’s get my old best friend in here, let’s find the detective who cracked the case. 

More than that: we’re getting a white savior story. Yes, this was many years before we understood the problems endemic to this trope, but still, that’s what it is. It requires the soul of a white girl going into the body of a Latina for her to want to start improving herself and her situation. It didn’t bother me then, because hey actual brown people in YA lit, take what I can get. But now? It bugs the fuckin’ shit out of me.

But Shari/Jean does actually still care about Lenny. Knowing she’s Shari, she’s surprised by the depth of feeling she has for him. (I mean, we’re not, because I gave away the reveal already.) What’s more, she still wants him to live a meaningful life beyond vengeance. Word is he’s gotten out of the hospital and out of rehab, and is mobile in a wheelchair, and is tracking down a gun. Shari/Jean knows what that means, and she goes to collect him and get him out of the projects to meet her new/old brother. 

Lenny is surprisingly amenable to going with her — but only because it’s Jean that he’s going after the whole time, and now he’ll have ample opportunity to kill her away from where people know her and will suspect. See, he knows that he used protection every time they had sex, so he knows he can’t be the father of the (now-non) baby, and so she must have cheated on him. In fact, he figured it was his best friend, based on their prior relationship, and so he got the dude into the rival turf so that he’d be a target. And now he’s going to end Jean, who doesn’t love him and never did, and save a bullet for himself.

Lenny doesn’t see the parallels to the end of Peter’s life, because he never reads. (He says so himself.) But Shari/Jean does. She does her best to try to talk him out of his actions, but still ends up hanging from another goddamn balcony as he shoots at her fingers. It’s only as she’s slipping away, millimeters from death, that Peter wakes up and realizes who he is.

It’s too late to grab her hand, and Shari/Jean falls. Lucky for her, there’s a pool under this balcony, and she lands in the deep end. (Her best friend makes a joke out of it, actually, which did get a chuckle from me.) And then, just as everybody knows who they are and where they’re from and what they’re supposed to do: we get another goddamn “to be continued.”

I really don’t like ongoing sagas. Not sure what it is, but I have increasingly lost patience with them as I get older. (I think this is part of why I had such an angry reaction to The Last Vampire.) So the idea that I have to wait for another book to get the rest of the story bugs me, even though a) I have it on the shelf and don’t technically have to wait and b) this resurrection story hangs together OK. As I recall, the “white savior” and “forgetting where you come from” elements are even worse in the third book — as in, I’ll stop calling her Jean or even Shari/Jean, because she’s just Shari. Still, this one wasn’t as painful as I expected it to be, especially reading it for the first time in, I don’t know, 20 years after so many Pike Facebook posts regretting it.