#what i'm saying here that he's deeply deeply morally corrupt lol

[noctvrnal9999]

Thinking about how Astarion constantly blames Cazador for taking things away (the eye color he forgot, the reflection he doesn't have, for turning him into a vampire) but it's like... it was his own choice to become a spawn. He makes it out to be as if he was given no choice - not true. Vampire lore is known in Baldur's Gate and I will assume here (and build on this) that it was known 200 years ago as well. With that logic - Astarion knew perfectly well what becoming a vampire will entail if not what will being a spawn to a vampire lord will.

So no, Cazador didn't take things from Astarion, he gave them up willingly for immortality and then didn't like that Cazador didn't pamper him like a spoiled brat. Vampires are evil aligned in dnd, it's a fact, Astarion must've known that it's not going to be wine and roses if he signs up and yet he still did. What that says about who he was before becoming a spawn? Quite a bit but that's not what I'm talking about here.

Point is - Astarion rarely takes any accountability for being a vampire, for choosing to be a vampire and blames everyone and everything for his own choices. Cazador didn't take away things, Astarion surrendered them. How Astarion is presented to Tav is through a very human lens and that's why he succeeds making people hate Cazador. But I have been fan of vampires since I was a little kid, my perspective is simply this - he is pathetic as a spawn, he rebels after he doesn't like what he himself signed up for and when he gets punished for it he again blames Cazador for doing what a vampire lord just... simply does - manages his spawn to keep them in toe. Yes, Cazador is awful even by vampiric standards but it just shows that he's not a great leader of his coven lol. Maybe he's only this much sadistic because he has no other way to control the spawn. But I digress.

My point is - whole sob story Astarion presents and that so many fans eat right out of his palm is him refusing to take accountability for his own choices. And that's why ascension is something he desires and will achieve if not talked out of by Tav (with a dice roll when helping him right away requires none of that iirc). He wants power and he wants freedom and again, by vampire standards he's just getting what every vampire desires, there's no amorality involved because morals are already shady at best for vampires as a whole. The whole discourse about Astarion ascending or not literally only comes from human houlier-than-thou attitudes and ignoring that yes, Astarion is an awful person from the very beginning. I mean who attacks you with a fucking knife when you have your back turned? Even Lae'zel faces you upfront. Who attacks you in the night for blood instead of talking? His excuse is lame too "oh you would've staked me" and finding him bent over tav's sleeping form with horrible intentions would not lead to that? You even have an option to stake him several times during the whole scene. He's deceptive, manipulative and he will weasel and lie in every interaction to protect himself. He's not your little meow meow or whatever, he's a vampire. And Astarion himself says that he would trust a devil over a vampire any day.

So all the girlies who think Astarion is this cuddly prince that suddenly becomes a monster the moment he's allowed to become who he always was meant to be just get a reality check. He isn't changed, he's just showing his true colors and finally coming into power that he craved for so long (not ascension per se, just power in general and ascension gives him ultimate power). Does he deserve it - that's another matter. But he craves it and needs it. To quote Astarion himself: "Because those with power can do whatever the Hells they want."

And he's right.

[transmutationisms]

saw that you finished twin peaks! do you have any thoughts you'd like to share? also, if you haven't already, i high reccomend watching fire walk with me!

ya i saw fwwm after season 2 and before 'the return'. honestly i think my twin peaks opinions are fairly unpopular bc i simply cannot read the series in any way besides as being deeply conservative lol. this becomes especially clear to me in 'the return', which is largely motivated by a narrative of the loss of american innocence (the double r subplot, the numerous instances of drugs and violence tearing nuclear families apart, the encroachment of electricity and processed snack foods and gambling, &c). but this viewpoint is seeded too throughout the first season-and-change of the original series, and fwwm; because what was laura palmer if not the series's first use of rape as metonymous for what lynch sees as a broader process of social breakdown and irreversible change? i understand that some people try to read bob and laura as a critique of the family, in the sense that the violence comes through the father, but i don't think this reading holds even in the original series and it certainly doesn't after part 8 of 'the return', in which bob is explicitly and directly invoked in reference to the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki, here construed as an originary act of american evil.

i think in david lynch's mind, the spiritual forces and influences in the show are literal and apolitical, and frequently he seems to mean to depict them more as sources of artistic inspiration than anything else ('twin peaks' is in many ways a tv show about making a tv show, hence the double use of electricity throughout 'the return' and fwwm, in particular). but i find this really irritating frankly, because it's at best ignorant of the inherently political nature of the constructions of small-town americana, teenage innocence, violence as an act of moral corruption, and so forth—and also because, after the return, it's simply impossible to deny that the show's overarching narrative IS plugged in to political and historical lines of critique. like, i am not trying to 'force' a reading that deals with us imperialism—lynch put the show on this discursive terrain explicitly and deliberately, through not just the bomb footage and the penderecki threnody but also the inversion of classic symbols of american 'greatness' (the unlucky penny, the evil lincoln impersonator), culminating again in the violation of a young girl's body by the forces of evil. what this all adds up to is the invocation of american empire as a kind of universal moral struggle, stripped of its historical specificity or even the barest pretense of material critique or commentary. if it sounds like i'm asking too much of network television... i mean, maybe i am, but again, these were deliberate choices lynch made and specific historical events he invoked on purpose, lol. see also the jacoby trump commentary in 'the return' (cringe and yawn).

i'm not a lynch scholar but i do think there's a tension throughout his work (what i've seen) between the desire to make art about what he sees as the purely spiritual process of making art (heavily informed by his own TM beliefs), and the conservative elements that creep in anyway, noticeable especially in his commentary on american history, corruption, modernity, &c. the idea of any pure, transcendent, apolitical spiritual dimension of human existence is itself, i would argue, at best a misguided conservative fantasy, and 'twin peaks' ultimately shows these cracks more blatantly than some of his other work (say, 'inland empire') because it tries to subordinate the material to the spiritual in a kind of fantastical historical parable. but, you can see this recurring tension throughout his filmography, eg, the loss of small-town innocence ('blue velvet') and a kind of generalised modernity anxiety ('eraserhead', though taken on its own this one would permit other readings depending on how you interpreted the role of german expressionism in it).

i don't think lynch is an ideologue or even considers himself particularly political, but nevertheless his narratives do idealise a certain conservative vision of post-war america, mourn its loss, and wax nostalgic for its perceived ethos (& it's not a coincidence lynch is/has been a reaganite, lol). anyway, i thought 'twin peaks' had some really incredible moments of visual artistry (part 8 of 'the return', for example!) and i found much of it frankly beautiful and compelling to watch. so, i don't mean any of this to dismiss lynch as a filmmaker—he is, if nothing else, highly technically adept. unfortunately i did just really hate most of what the series was actually saying, lmao.

[mareenavee]

From the OC asks, but I am a cheaty mc-cheat and an incorrigible crow, SO... these are for your version of Ondolemar, in your future project. Yes, I'm mean like that. Hey once an NPC is a POV, that's pretty much your OC, same rules apply. :-P 2, 14, 29 and just for fun and to balance it out, 33.

Skyrim NPC-to-OC ask for a technically-unannounced spin off fic I have brewing in the background LOL (Please feel free to ask more of these! Post is here.)

You really are an incorrigible corvid, aren't you LOL But no, thank you for this!!! Really. It's only been brewing in the back of my head, and in tiny fragments, so I really had to put some thought into these answers!!

First I'll say this fic is going to be a thing. It's not necessarily a sequel, but more of a spin off. I hinted at it in this post here.

As the ask states, this one is for Ondolemar (:

2. Do they worship any deities, be it aedra or daedra?

Maybe not worship specifically, but he does acknowledge the Aedra and not just to put on appearances. He will repeat the general Thalmor things regarding Auri-El and the other divines when he has to. He admonishes Talos when he has to, and, truthfully, he doesn't actually understand the point of that god to begin with, even without the influence of the Concordat.

He's truthfully not overly religious, really, but he feels indebted to Mara, the goddess of compassion, among other things. Without spoiling too much of the fic, one of his main goals is to help his people get out from under the thumb of the Thalmor. Considering his legacy and parentage, he could have easily been as indoctrinated as the rest of the Thalmor, but he isn't and doesn't subscribe. Something or someone cared to spare him from that or gave him the strength to be able to avoid falling into the whole thing far too deeply to get back out again.

On the other hand he finds Daedra worship repulsive, again due to backstory things that will spoil World and this fic, so I can't reveal here. (:

14. What's their morality like?

It definitely would depend on who you ask. By association with the Thalmor, a lot of people assume he's terrible and evil. He leans into this to keep up appearances, but certain characters know it's not like that at all. He might not be the kindest person on the face of Nirn, but he's got noble goals in the grand scheme of things. Those who really know him and his goals know to trust him, even in situations that would seem otherwise impossible.

The thing is, he still needs to keep up appearances in order to further his goals. Sometimes he has to do things in the name of the Thalmor he'd rather not to protect himself, because he absolutely cannot be caught. Too many lives depend on him. This can sometimes bother him, he does still have to deal with the consequences of behaving in the expected way. He likes to pretend he doesn't care and will do whatever needs to be done, but certain things will weigh on him. Imprisoning a Talos worshiper for appearances? No. But other things will be much more of a struggle for him.

29. What do they think of Skyrim politics? (Jarls, Thanes, empire, high kings, etc)

Skyrim itself is not his primary concern, personally, but because of his job and his status within the Thalmor's presence in the province, of course it has to be front and center in his mind. He needs to know the details of all of this in order to function and to keep blending in. In all, he doesn't mind the idea of Jarls governing huge swaths of lands and working together to select the most qualified High King/Queen.

He believes it could, under normal circumstances, be a decent, almost fair system, if not for general hubris and corruption that power often brings. But then again, he's used to something of a totalitarian government in what's now called Alinor. Now regarding the Empire...he's not impressed with how they've failed to stand up for its people. But he deeply, deeply understands that individual states cannot easily stand up to the Aldmeri Dominion. He knows how bad things can and will be under their complete control. So while he doesn't like the idea behind them at all, and honestly, in another life, would prefer if they'd just collapse already, he recognizes them as perhaps the last line of defense against a greater evil.

33. Do they have a specific color scheme?

WELL. We kind of know his color scheme already, at least in his Thalmor regalia, right? Black and gold. But I'll describe him more generally, I suppose, for this question.

So yes, he still wears his black and gold uniform. He's got a very warm, gilded skin tone. He's a little more on the light skin tone side, probably by virtue of being stuck in Understone Keep more hours than he'd normally prefer. In my hc, he has grown out his hair in recent years, but still keeps the sides shaved/undercut more or less. He ties it back out of his eyes, normally. I figure occasionally, he'll wear a man bun instead of a ponytail lol. Speaking of, his hair is silky, shoulder length and silvery-blonde. His beard is the same color, when he lets it grow out more than it already is. When he's in civilian attire, he'll usually wear light gray clothing. Maybe a slate blue-gray travel cloak, depending on what he's up to out of uniform, anyway.

I know this was only little glimpse of this project, but I hope it was fun to read anyway! And that there's some hype for the story, maybe? (: