memoriast

[memoriast]

stumbled across this card on scryfall and oh boy is it a doozy

so. the updated wording of the card (most importantly "gender" and "as you cast") makes this potentially the funniest card in the game rules-wise. no judge has weighed in on it (probably because its an old card out of print and not legal in any format) but it begs the question

what happens if someone comes out as trans in response?

i would love to know from a judge 1) if a players gender is hidden information (and, if so, what zone (if any) its in), 2) if coming out is a special action (similar to taking off your pants to dodge denimwalk) that doesnt use the stack, cannot be responded to (can you fucking imagine getting countered on that?), and can be done whenever the player has priority, and 3) if the reveal affects the "as you cast" clause

[memoriast]

Hey guys remind me how many properties there are on ao3 where m/m outnumbers f/f for no good reason

[memoriast]

Q&A: Good Writers Steal: Understanding Dragon Age and Pillars of Eternity

You know when you compare the lore of Dragon Age and Pillars there a lot of similarities and it wouldn’t be that hard to put both settings in the same world.

No, they really don’t fit together.

This is kind of ironic, because that’s how we got Dragon Age‘s setting in the first place, and why I’m answering this.

Let’s start with what the two settings still have in common. Both games are based around evolving D&D into a new, non-licensed system. In both cases, the long term goal was to pave over some of the more idiosyncratic elements, and create new settings that could be used without raising the ire of Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast.

In both cases, they started with an approximation of D&D’s Forgotten Realms setting, and then started mixing in other inspirations; and that’s when the wheels come off this wagon.

To condense: Forgotten Realms is a “standard, Tolkienesque fantasy world,” where numerous immensely powerful civilizations have fallen into ruin. There’s a full chronology of empires rising and falling throughout the setting’s history. The modern cultures often live directly adjacent to civilizations so advanced that their residual magic defies comprehension. This is the setting of games like Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and the MMO Neverwinter, along with, literally, hundreds of novels.

Pillars of Eternity starts from that point, and plants the clock firmly in the 17th century (though the overall technology doesn’t perfectly match any specific point in history.) It then uses the altered setting to talk politics and philosophy. Up front, I’m a fan of this kind of approach to fantasy. Speculative fiction is at its best when it has something to say, and can do it without getting preachy. Taking your “normal” fantasy prejudices, and then pulling that apart and using it as allegory has a lot of merit. I’m also a big fan of taking a setting (in this case, the “standard fantasy setting”) and pushing the clock forward, asking, “what happens next?” What does colonialism look like in a world where you have dragons and wizards?

On the surface, Dragon Age may look somewhat similar. There’s no colonial themes, firearms, or advanced sailing ships, but it is building off of the same, standard fantasy setting template. Where Pillars looked to real history, Dragon Age went someplace a little different: Warhammer.

I’ve talked about Warhammer Fantasy before. A lot like Pillars it’s adapting the fantasy setting to a specific historical era, in that case it’s target is the late 15th, early 16th century. It’s less interested in saying anything, but it was designed for a tabletop strategy game, where the narrative was, at best, ad hoc. Along the way, it’s embraced the mindset of the era, and pulled a lot of the conflicting tones from that time in history together into a weird amalgam. This is a setting where the church is under siege from literal daemons, instead of the protestant reformation. It’s a setting where new ideas are starting to stream in, and simultaneously are mixed with incredibly dangerous concepts that threaten to, quite literally, rip the universe apart.

I love Warhammer; it is a brilliantly stupid setting, and within that context it has a real identity. I know I said I like settings that have something to say, but you can get by on sheer charm. Warhammer is an incredibly bleak setting that turns the pitch black horizon into comedy.

Warhammer is a postlapsarian world. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, this is a concept from Christian literature holding that humanity is a fallen race; separated from divinity for our sins. Warhammer pulls this out as part of the philosophies and outlooks that define its era, and runs screaming into the night with it.

Like, Warhammer, Dragon Age is also postlapsarian. The specifics are different, and more solidly tied to human hubris. It’s setting mimics middle ages Catholic church politics, complete with the schism between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. It skips over the Protestant reformation that dominates Warhammer’s thoughts on the subject, but some of that is a function of time.

The biggest difference is tone, and part of the reason why I’ve spent 700 words leading up to a tear down.

Dragon Age wants to be a serious game, about serious people, doing serious things. If it would make up its mind, or lighten up a bit, it could have been pretty great. (Or, arguably was.) Now, let me explain why I sidetracked into talking about Warhammer up there: Dragon Age is a poorly executed riff on Warhammer, not Forgotten Realms.

In Dragon Age/Warhammer, mages are unstable and risk corruption by demons/daemons from the fade/warp. They’re constantly struggling to keep control over themselves, and the demons/daemons are always nibbling at the edges of their minds. If a mage loses control they can become possessed by a demon/daemon, and become an abomination/a daemon, physically transforming the unfortunate mage in grotesque ways. Because of this, mages are hunted down by Templars/Templars of Sigmar, sometimes/usually called Witchunters, who have enormous authority granted to them by The Chantry/The Church of Sigmar.

Travel through the fade/warp is possible, but extremely dangerous without a trained mage (or a functioning Gellar field in WH40k), this can allow an experienced mage to travel vast distances (Warp travel is technically an FTL system.) The fade/warp is a substructure of reality shaped by the subconscious psychic energy of the universe’s population, and the demons/daemons within are direct manifestations of vices/base emotions.

Civilization is threatened by incursions from the Darkspawn/Chaos, a mix of strange fade tainted/chaos warped creatures, who come from the south/north, but can pop up nearly anywhere.

Now, to be fair, there are differences between the settings, the Dwarves are being pushed to the edge of extinction in a handful of holds, having lost their once grand empire because of prolonged combat with the darkspawn/greenskins (orcs, goblins, and some other critters.) I also, don’t really want to get into a full discussion of the similarities between the Lizardmen and the Qunari, because that quickly gets esoteric. There’s also a lot of armies in Warhammer that simply don’t appear in Dragon Age. Some like the Skaven and Greenskins appear to have been rolled with the Chaos armies, others like the Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings, High Elves, Dark Elves, and Wood Elves are basically absent.

So, where’s the problem? A couple things.

It doesn’t bother me that Dragon Age was heavily inspired by Warhammer. After all, Warcraft also began life as a Warhammer game, and that splintered off into its own identity. Everything we do as writers builds on things we’ve consumed. The material you read will seep into the things you write. That’s fine. That’s the nature of being a creative. Look outside yourself, see things, take a look, and incorporate the parts that make sense.

You’ve heard the old quote, “good writers borrow, great writers steal?” That’s here. You see a neat thing in text, in a game, or on screen, you’ll remember it, you’ll try to snarf it up and consume it. It becomes a part of you, it affects how you look at the world (even in a small way), and will affect your writing. This means that, most of the time, when you see someone saying, “they just ripped off X,” and list one or two things, it’s not.

In taking inspiration, see something you like, take it, digest it. Look at the concept from all sides. Roll it around in your head. Ask yourself what it means when it gets dropped into your work. Don’t just lift entire systems, or characters, and transplant them without considering them. The goal is that, on the other end there’s no way to know, and that the previous paragraphs I wrote where I describe both settings with a simple proper noun replacement scheme can’t happen. (And, I could have gone on for a lot longer. The similarities vastly outnumber the differences.)

If Dragon Age‘s setting is Warhammer, it’s rules are Forgotten Realms. This is something of a problem. You’re presented with one system for how the setting works in text, prose, and fluff, and you’re presented with a completely different setting when you actually engage with the material directly. I wish I could say this is a problem unique to games with narratives, but that’s not entirely true. This can become a problem any time a writer establishes one set of rules for the, “little people,” of their world, and a different set of rules for their protagonists.

Magic in Warhammer is dangerous. A wizard is channeling the power of the warp, and hoping they can keep control over it. In Dragon Age, magic is described as dangerous, and in both cases the characters risk drawing the attention of a demon/daemon. But, in actual game play, the only threat Dragon Age mage faces from casting is running out of mana. Magic can never slip from their control reeking havoc outside of a cutscene. Untold horrors can’t spill forth from a tear in the fabric of reality. They’ll never be possessed against their will (again, outside of a scripted sequence, when the power of plot compels them.) Dragon Age‘s magic is built off of Forgotten Realms (even though it ditches D&D’s Vancian system), because the gameplay was designed without regard for the setting. Or, put another way, the protagonists follow different rules from the rest of their setting.

As a writer, if you look at Dragon Age you need to assess that fundamental cognitive dissonance first.

There is another piece of dissonance between Dragon Age and Pillars, their approach to humanity. (I’m abbreviating here, as both settings have many non-human individuals that fit inside this context of this argument, while still being explicitly something other than human.)

Postlapsarian views humans as fundamentally fallen. Pillars solidly rejects that entire thought process. There’s a full state of nature debate in there, and if you really believe people can’t be trusted to managed their own bowels, you have the option to say so, but the story doesn’t endorse this. Dragon Age enshrines the idea that people broke the world, and all of the horrific monsters wandering the world are their fault. In Dragon Age magic is an emblem of (and conduit to) that original sin. In Pillars magic is another tool for advancing civilization’s understanding of the world (in addition to being a highly destructive weapon that’s significantly affected the setting’s history.) In fact, the metaphysics of Pillars are under the control of characters. This is reminiscent of how D&D’s gods tend to be ascended adventurers, but it creates a setting where the sentient races are in control of their destiny, and aren’t being told they need to atone for anything.

If you want to take two settings and blend them together, the first step is to pull them apart and start sifting through the individual pieces. See how they connect to the rest of the setting/story, and ask yourself what it affects and if it makes sense. Also, remember you’re free to disagree with the authors on their conclusions. Don’t simply take something, make it your own first.

-Starke

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Q&A: Good Writers Steal: Understanding Dragon Age and Pillars of Eternity was originally published on How to Fight Write.

[memoriast]

I realized that the updated Tag Search function makes it way easier to attempt to parallel search relationships including a specific character.

This method works better for characters who are not glitter and shipped with every person and creature and object under the sun.

This tutorial is written for people not familiar with tag ids. If you know how tag ids work, you should read the last two paragraph of this tutorial first.

You can find the Tag Search by looking at the menu at the top of the AO3 page that’s off to the left side.

Click Search and click Tag (the third option from the top).

Type in your character. If the character only ever appears in one fandom, you also include that. If the character you want to search as a very common name, you will probably have to include a fandom to avoid pulling in unrelated tags. Do not include more than one fandom otherwise the result will only pull up any tags that exist in all the fandoms you listed.

Select Relationship for type

Select Canonical

Hit Search Tags

The results should pull up every relationship that includes that character for that specific fandom or if you did not restrict by fandom, every relationship that has character with an identical name to the character you’re searching for.

For the character I picked, “Arm”, there are 29 results.

Open the Work Search page in a new tab or window. You can find a link in the same menu as Tag Search.

Or you can also open it through button labeled Work Search beside the Tag Search heading.

On the Work Search page, find the Any Field box. 

This next part will be time-consuming but you will need to format all the relationships you want to parallel search like this: “X/Y�� OR “X & A”  OR   “B & Z”.

The tags need to match how they were shown on the Tag Search page. Each relationship needs to be placed between straight quotes. Curly quotes will break this search. Between each relationship tag, there needs to be an OR in all caps, but not one at the start or end.

After you’ve formatted things like this you can paste it into the Any Field box. (You could have just composed your search in there but if you’re parallel searching many relationship tags, doing it in notepad or something may make it easier to see what you’ve already included.)

There are filter options on this page. If you want to sort by completed or such, this is the point you need to do it at this point. This kind of search does not allow you to filter after you have clicked search. Unlike filtering on a specific tag, there is no filtering sidebar. A few other caveats:

If you want to exclude tags, you will have to input them into the Any Field box alongside the relationship tags. Those excluded tags will need to be formatted like such: - “tag 1"  - ”tag 2"

Basically they just need a minus sign in front of them. You do not need to include OR between them.

If you include more than one tag in the Character, Relationship, or Additional Tag boxes, the search will only bring up results that match all of your search parameters. So if you inputted “Fluff” and “High School” into the Additional Tag field, it would only bring up works that have both the “Fluff” and “High School” tag as well as any of the relationship tags in the Any Field.

I just want search for every work that includes Arm so I have no other filtering added. It looks like something below.

Once you’ve finished setting up your search, click the search button.

In the case of my search, I only set it up to pull up any of the 29 relationship tags I found  that included Arm. When I saved this screenshot, there were 412 results.

A few important things to note. While AO3 doesn’t really restrict how many text characters you put into the Any Field box, most browsers have a limit. So if you want to parallel search a lot of relationship or any tags in fact, you may run into your browser breaking your search.

If you’re searching a high number of tags, it’s better to use tag ids instead because they’re shorter and so you’ll be able to include way more information with less text characters. The tutorial works similarly except the list will be formatted like such: filter_ids:123 OR filter_id:456

You will not need to put quotes around a tag id. To find a tag id, you can open a specific tag and look at its RSS Feed, or by using the following script: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/29917-ao3-display-tag-id  

[memoriast]

i love that post thats like “never trust how you feel about your life after 9pm” that shit changed my life. every time i feel bad i look at the clock and i’m like Aha It’s 10:26 PM You Cannot Fucking Fool Me

[memoriast]

hiii, do you have sources for the whole ao3 situation? where the volunteer didnt actually get kicked out for being pro palestine?

Sure! I'm getting all my information from the "official" sources that everyone is sharing, which is this tumblr post and this Google Doc. (I believe there's a "new year" Dreamwidth post that people also reference but I haven't read it so won't reference it).

First, a direct quote from the Tumblr post: "I left because I was horrified by the org and all of the racism they promised to work on but never ever did." -> didn't get kicked out, suspended, or anything from AO3, the user (Bjorn) voluntarily left the organization.

The rest of the screenshots from the Google doc are from a Slack channel you have to opt into about I/P, which is a place you are most likely to find Zionists.

I'll break down the conversation here.

Here's the first included warning:

I'm writing to you on behalf of Tag Wrangling Chairs due to a few serious issues which have been brought to our attention.  A number of volunteers have approached us, either privately or through VolCom, to convey concerns regarding your behaviour in the #x-politics-society-current-events and #x-politics-israel-palestine-events Slack channels.

Our Code of Conduct,, which you agreed to in our most recent Still Willing to Wrangle, requires that all volunteers maintain a level of civility when interacting with one another.  Specifically, "We never lose sight of everyone's right to be treated with dignity, compassion and respect."

The language and tone that you have been using do not convey compassion or respect toward your fellow volunteers.  For example, you accused a fellow volunteer of defending murder and war crimes, and have referred to another as a "fucking asshole".

We understand that this is an emotionally charged situation, and that with so much death and destruction happening, it is easy to misdirect the anger and helplessness you might feel.  However, to the best of our ability, we need to assume that our fellow volunteers are well-intentioned and speaking in good faith, and not devolve to insults or name-calling.

Please understand that should we receive additional complaints or note that you have continued to violate the Code of Conduct in your treatment of other volunteers, we Chairs may step in and remove you from certain social Slack channels, either temporarily or permanently depending on the number and nature of the complaint(s).  We hope that this will not be necessary.

--> so, they're being warned for not following the Code of Conduct, which includes being civil to other people. Nothing is said about "from the river to the sea". Bjorn brings up "from the river to the sea" unprompted in their response:

Additionally, if me saying "from the river to the sea" is supposedly against the Code of Conduct and grounds for repeatedly removing me from the channel, when other people are allowed to deny genocide and defend war crimes on perceived technicalities with explicit defense from the org, I believe that reflects extremely poorly on the org as a whole. If this sentiment continues to be upheld by supervisors, that is extremely concerning. Especially since I was reported and warned for accusing someone of supporting genocide, but people are allowed to accuse me of the same thing with support from other people in the channel.

It looks like two days passed before staff responded to Bjorn, and we get this quote:

Okay. To be very clear. You are absolutely entitled to your opinion and to your beliefs, and we have zero issue with you expressing those opinions and beliefs in conversation so long as you do so while obeying both the letter and the spirit of the Code of Conduct.

Now, to the other side of this.  You have been removed from the room repeatedly within the past 24 hours for Code of Conduct violations as we told you might happen, and I am now going to go ahead and remove you from the room and ask that you do not return for one week while we discuss the room in general with the other chairs.

When we wrote to you two days ago, we specifically chose not to address your Slack status "Palestine will be free" with you even though several volunteers had mentioned to us that this phrase made them uncomfortable.  While the phrase did make some folks uncomfortable, it also wasn't obviously trying to be antagonistic.  We are not responsible for making sure everyone is comfortable all the time. It was an expression of your beliefs, and that wasn't an issue we felt was appropriate for us to address since it wasn't in and of itself a violation of the Code of Conduct.

So: Having your Slack status as "Palestine will be free" is not a violation of the Code of Conduct.

We go on with their response.

What is a violation of the Code of Conduct is that since we notified you that folks were having a hard time with your behaviour in that channel, the behaviour has gotten worse.  You've gotten into arguments repeatedly and called folks names; you've accused folks of defending murder. You've been abrasive and argumentative throughout your exchanges there.

Are you the only person who has done so? Clearly not. And you aren't the only person we've spoken to about this.  If it feels like you're being singled out, I'm very sorry for that, and you are correct that you are not the only one who has caused issues. However. We do not address the behavior of other volunteers with you the same way we do not address your behavior with them.

That said, when we let you know that others were uncomfortable, instead of discussing this with us or asking any questions, you gave us a dismissive "k", and instead began relentlessly posting articles to the room and occasionally leaving long tirades about your disgust for folks who do not agree with your specific point of view.  Within about an hour of our having spoken with you, you changed your status from "Palestine will be free" to "from the river to the sea Palestine will be free".  And this was after we let you know that you were making folks uncomfortable and specifically asked you to be more mindful of your language and not to lose sight of everyone's right to be treated with dignity, compassion, and respect.

Basically, 'we talked to you about the code of conduct violations, you continued to specifically provoke people with your Slack status, you know how it affects people'.

You have been involved in enough conversations over the last month about that particular phrase that you knew or should have known the impact it would have on other volunteers to see that in your status given its fraught and controversial history. You were also aware of the impact it would have to use it in the room, repeatedly.

We are a volunteer organization and the use of Slack is, at its core, a way for us to be able to communicate with each other more easily to do our work. The social aspects are absolutely a lovely bonus, but they are not the point. If you can not have civil exchanges in those spaces and respect your fellow volunteers enough to stop when they ask you to stop, we expect you to remove yourself from those spaces. Just as we expect of every single other volunteer on our committee.

So: removed from the specific channel for violating the Code of Conduct and deliberately provoking other people.

I also want to address another part of Bjorn's accusation, as seen in their response to staff here:

when other people are allowed to deny genocide and defend war crimes on perceived technicalities with explicit defense from the org

if there was any explicit defense from ao3 about this I would expect to see screenshots, which I don't see

We don't know if other people in the channel also got reprimanded from AO3, because Bjorn doesn't know.

I'd love to see a comprehensive investigation, possibly with undercover volunteers, into Ao3's zionism and racism. Unfortunately, I find this to be shoddy, sensationalist journalism. Something else that puts me off of this statement is that @end-otw-racism refused to promote/work with Bjorn on this because Bjorn refused to redact names from the screenshots in the Slack, opening up volunteers to potentially being doxxed. With the past CSAM attacks happening to AO3 volunteers, I find this extremely off-putting.

[memoriast]

takumi posted about the showcase on twitter today (relevant tweet 1, relevant tweet 2) and from the sounds of it he delivered the speech in english because he heard the capcom showcase had more overseas viewers than japanese viewers last time. so he asked janet hsu to translate a speech for him and record it, and then listened to it morning to night for two weeks so he could repeat it by memory at the showcase. he even made notes to try and get the cadence of it down.

(source tweet)

all for the experience of us turning on the capcom showcase and going "oh! I didn't know takumi could speak english!" and he can't he just memorized a script to pitch ghost trick in english because he thought it would be interesting to overseas viewers. this guy really operates on an entirely different brain level from most people and I have so much respect for him

[memoriast]

October is ADHD awareness month! 🎉

The memory issues ADHD causes are some of the scarier and more frustrating parts of living with it - so here’s a set of reaction doodles that all my fellow ADHD peeps are welcome to use whenever anybody decides to comment on your forgetfulness ^ 

[memoriast]

When are we going to talk about how utterly over the top and ridiculous neurotypical advice for ADHD and sleep is?? It’s straight up fucking bonkers. 

Someone with ADHD: I really really struggle to fall asleep at “regualr times”, no matter how tired I am I just can’t seem to fall asleep at 10 pm!!! But I almost instantly fall asleep any time after 2 am. What should I do?

NT sleep advice: You, someone who cannot conceptualize time in any way whatsoever, need to identify TWO HOURS in advance when you want to sleep and, with your executive dysfunction that makes making decisions at will almost straight up impossible, make the decision to stop whatever you’re involuntarily hyperfixating on. Then, you, with a focus disorder that makes it so that you have to be doing something at all times, sit and do nothing for 2 hours. You cannot read. You cannot be on your phone. Do not move. Do not talk to people. Just sit and do nothing. If you can’t fall asleep it’s because you Did Something and it’s your fault. Bluelight 24 hours before you want to sleep is the reason. Never look at a TV, Phone, computer, OR let one of these objects be within a 24,000 mile radius of you. Never ever go NEAR your bed unless you’re already asleep. If you are AWAKE in your bedroom ever you will not be able to sleep. 

ADHD Sleep Advice: Get a job that starts at 2 pm or later and go to sleep at 4 am and wake up at noon. 

[memoriast]

astarion deserves many things but we're gonna start with a factory reset

[memoriast]

👻 corpsecourse Follow

dni if you support relationships between vampires and the vampire they sired. i am so serious, i dont care what your justification is, that is an unforgivable power imbalance. its almost as bad as vampire human relationships (and if you support that i hope you get a splinter in the heart)

🧛‍♀️ vampbites Follow

op what the fuck is your problem? more maggots in your brain than usual? go out into the real underworld and touch some graveyard dirt. i know at least 7 vampires who are in happy healthy relationships with the vampire who sired them. me included! this may shock you but we started dating when i was human and she was a vamp!

👻 corpsecourse Follow

i hate to tell you this but you're in a toxic relationship and i sincerely hope youre able to get out.

🧛‍♀️ vampbites Follow

HELLO???????

🦇 battybrained Follow

i keep seeing people saying this shit and honestly i think it stems from the infantalization of humans. humans are capable of making decisions for themselves. do some vampires abuse their powers over humans? of course! but you cant assume that every single human vampire relationship (or sire and sired relationship for that matter) is some unhealthy power imbalance, especially when you dont even know them!!!

⚰ fangs4fags Follow

i think op is forgetting that humans can be just as harmful to vampires as they can be to humans. dont tell me you completely just forgot about the existence of vampire slayers

🧛‍♂️ coffincreeper Follow

next thing you know op is gonna be saying that a hundred year age gap between fully fledged vampires is problematic

👻 corpsecourse Follow

it literally is. i dont care if you are a 1000 years old vampire, if your significant other is 100 years older than you they have more life experience than you. god you guys are stupid why dont you all step into a sunbeam

🩸 f33d3r Follow

hey guys i just went to ops account and their pinned post was about how they dont consider werewolves part of the monster community cuz theyre not undead. just block and move on it is NOT worth it

🐺vamplovingwolf Follow

isnt it funny how whenever theres some rancid discourse like this its always made by coffinscrews

[memoriast]

NATHRAE — URCHIN OF MENZOBERRANZAN

[ TEMPLATE | FONTS ]

[memoriast]

In a surprising twist that I think no one saw comming from early access, Astarion and Halsin are like totally opposite ends of whatever gay motherfucker spectrum theyre on

Astarion presents himself as alluring, flirty, desirable, sexually available, ect ect, but it's entitely preformative. If given a choice he'd happily go without it all for as long as he can.

Meanwhile Halsin is the most regular, sober, sensible dude ever who probably smells like damp leaves and dirt, and then he just show up one night like "i wanna fuck nasty like the oak father intended"

[memoriast]

Fenris tarot card because why not. Inspired by death tarot card and inquisition tarot cards.

[memoriast]

I really wanna do a character analysis about Astarion regarding something I've noticed, and that's the fact that (I believe) his approval is related to the fact that he's only familiar with cruelty.

From what I've noticed, he doesn't *really* object to a good character. He'll whine about the extra effort, but you can get his approval almost maxed without playing an evil Tav (I've done so). And I've noticed that he's neutral to a lot of the "I'll see what I can do" dialogue options. He only really opposes things when you make promises, and I think that's significant.

I think he doesn't like promising to help people not because he's selfish, but because what if you can't? What if you're just giving them false hope?

I've also wondered if he approves of the crueler, more deceptive options not because he's a evil man, but because it's familiar. It's safe. He knows the world is cruel. Cruelty is predicable. Kindness isn't.

I haven't gotten to the hug scene yet but I think the reaction we saw in the trailer confirms things, that Astarion is really thrown off by Tav being genuine and that he's not opposed to kindness or softness - he just isn't used to it. When was the last time someone wasn't trying to manipulate or control him? When was the last time that he wasn't trying to manipulate and control someone else?

I think his romance is very interesting because he's so flirty and cocky and confident at the start but that's because it's purely physical and seduction and sex are what he is good at. If you sleep with him before the tiefling party, and then at the party tell him that it should stay a one-time-thing, he's really quite heartbroken. He plays it off, of course, but there is hurt there, real hurt.

Idk, it's just cool to see a character who isn't reduced to being evil for the sake of it - it's more of a trauma response and a self-destructive attitude because destruction is familiar and Astarion is terrified of the unknown.

Just some thoughts.

[memoriast]

Astarion in Early Access: "Hahaha yes I'm very charming and deceptive and evil and sex is so much fun and I really don't care about anyone."

Astarion in the Full Game: "I haven't had bodily autonomy in 200 years and I've forgotten how to be intimate with someone beyond using it to lure people to their deaths and I have so much trauma regarding sex and I seduced you because it's what I've had to do to survive for literal centuries and I needed you to be on my side but I wasn't supposed to fall in love with you but you're so kind and amazing that I fell anyway and I'm terrified of real emotions but I want *us* to be real because you deserve it and I really care about you but I need you to help me because this is all so new and I'm so scared but I want this to work and I-"

[memoriast]

the bg3 brain rot is REAL