#it needs something structured & I'd want to collect screencaps + quotes to make it all work but

[detectiveneve]

this isn't really coherent, I might turn it into an actual structured.. something something later, so don't take this as anything but my brain notes getting jotted down, especially since the nature of discussions on class, wealth, capitalism, vampire symbolism, gothic themes, etc. are all a lot to get into casually here. but I'm. endlessly fascinated by cazador's reputation as a socialite in baldur's gate, the rat motif, astarion's obscured history as a magistrate, and how the game fucks around with classic gothic vampire aesthetics to an almost egregious degree. zero trying to pretend they're not calling back to what the "vampire" imagination evokes here.

the ostentatious yet dilapidated state of the mansion. the egregious wealth but the floorboards are moldy and bloody and miasma fogs the hallways. the rooms are dark yet opulent... the corridors loom over you and are strewn with many fine paintings you can barely see for the lighting, the floors are plush and carpeted and red. but the whole place at the same time is disgusting. bloody. thick with rot and feels almost rundown. I cant remember the exact line in the companion dialogue with shadowheart and astarion where shadowheart asks what to expect of vampire lairs, but it ends with him describing them in a way that's almost--fetid. cazador's wealth is on display and yet the whole place is rotten to the core, meaty and disgusting and full of horrors.

and this works in conjunction with the way astarion plays at class, elitism, and wealth. he plays the part of it quite well; he sniffs and turns his nose up, offers to take karlach to the upper city, his introduction is him telling the player that they "move in different circles," (the implication that astarion moves in elite circles, when in fact in act 3 he reveals he mostly spent time in lower city taverns). I'm not sure how to elaborate what I'm trying to get at here with the play between the rotten wealth & astarion's "playing" nobility; astarion's mortal life is only gestured to, as a magistrate, but you can feel the bones of it in astarion's character still. he plays the role shallowly well, when everything we learn about him directly counters any notion he was ever the social elite he plays at in the beginning. how astarion interacts with the others through his still distinctly elitist + wealth-centric lens despite quite literally being enslaved for the last 200 yrs (my life was bad but at least I'm not you. that mindset is rife for unpacking in terms of how he places himself above others so often, and recoils + is aghast when he sees himself especially paralleled with those he sees as lesser or weaker). if he came close to touching high society, it would have only been through cazador's own social parties with the upper nobility of baldur's gate (and even then, we don't know if he attended, if he was expected to play a role there, or if he was sequestered away). like the mansion's finery, astarion's own display of elitism is hollowed out, rotten when you actually see it, down to the worn out hems of his finery.

astarion, whose most often reoccurring animal motif is a rat; vermin, unfit for consumption; the symbolism there is RIFE. rats play double; coward, vermin, unfit for the finery of the house; rats as symbolism for disease, decay, infestation. vampires infest and feed on baldur's gate. astarion is, in many ways, a rat himself; a schemer and fearful. the game doesn't really try to comment intricately on social structures, classism, or vampires as symbols for the parasitically wealthy; in act 3 the focus is much more on the fucked up family dynamic, the social hierarchy between cazador and the spawn (and that's an entire thing in of itself; astarion weaponizes the cycle of abuse over the spawn as quickly as he expresses sympathy for them). or if it's trying to do a real critique of wealth & using vampire tropes to do it, there's nothing necessarily.... intentionally placed there as critique. but it's still very much in line with the gothic horror symbolism that oftentimes does utilize the vampire as a way of cracking a bit at the Horrors of the Rich. intentional or not, it's very interesting. rats! the way the rich are parasites on the land! the way the cycles of power rotate between the spawn as they all claw for favor and security and power in the house but ALSO hold themselves higher than the human servants or the werewolves!