#astarion and his trauma

[gwen-writes]

Chapter 12 Excerpt

“Oh, is that right?” Astarion’s typical smirk was shrouded by maroon lips. “You and Simon had little fights? How adorable.”

Fiora scowled, “I bet I could land one or two punches on you. Even a good kick. Your dick makes you vulnerable - easy target.”

Astarion looked at her with taunting eyes - condescending, but amused, like watching a child.

“Your pretty head would already be on the floor before you’ve even had the impulse to swing, love,” He coaxed.

excerpt from my modern AU/classic dnd quest OCxAstarion fic called A Vampire in New England!

desc: Gale was meant to send Astarion to the Limbo dimension, a place where chaos and high powered entities thrived, to find a caster of Wish. Instead, whether it be from Gale's ego, idiocy, or coincidence, he sent Astarion tumbling into the dorm of a New England college.

word count: ~45,000

(some of the) tags: modern era, slow burn, strangers to lovers, friends to lovers, plot, fluff, fluff and humor, romantic comedy, third person narrator

[oonalovesastarionssimpleplan]

Ascended Astarion has his own way of perpetuating the rules - as he knows it -by performing.

*But Astarion is not like Cazador, he will not continue the cycle of abuse*

[veillsar]

WAIT WAIT HANG ON-

Hang. the fuck. on.

Look at this.

Don't mind the poor quality, I literally took a photo of my laptop screen with my phone cuz I needed to post this right now.

This is our camp in Balder's Gate Lower city, do you see what I'm seeing?

They have drying laundry hanging above them.

On Gale's side, look up toward the right corner - we see colorful laundry hanging there to dry, probably some carpet or blankets, those are almost definitely Gale's judging from the aesthetic. Normal, fun detail.

On Astarion's side, there's also things hanging out to dry, except they are rags. Colorless, dirty, disgusting pieces of cloth that might as well have been sitting in a trashpile. They have holes in them, have been torn, damaged beyond a normal person's tolerance for fabric - but Astarion keeps them and washes them like normal laundry....because those rags were probably similar to what he had used for the last 200 years, so he doesn't know any better. What the fuck?

You can't....you can't just silently put details like this, waiting for someone like me to notice it and have my heart shattered all over the floor. I will cry.

FYI, I do know about the visual comparison between the outside of his tent and the inside, it just adds to the sadness I feel for this man even more. Again, Cazador, when I find you, you'll be a dead man walking I swear to the gods-

[eff-plays]

Is this your remorseful and selfless and uncorruptible meow meow.

[loversandantiheroes]

Listen, I am an extremely sex positive person and there is little I like more than a good old fashioned "idiots fuck around and fall in love" smut fic, but I feel like there just isn't enough exploration of Astarion falling in love through feeding on Tav. Like, seriously, the man has been subsisting on rats and insects for two hundred years, and the first person he ever feeds on just...lets him do it? Willingly? I mean it's not exactly a surprise that Tav has to practically throw him off to get him to stop - it's not just that their blood is the best meal he's ever had, but he's never bitten anything with the intent to let it live before.

And then it has to go off the rails so fast for him if Tav lets him do it again. This man who has had everything stripped from him for so long now having this person who's willing to actually give him part of themselves to keep him fed and happy. Like, he outright tells you this is a gift you're giving him, one he surely did not expect to ever receive again, but now he's watching them stagger off to the healers in the morning for a lesser restoration before they even bother to stop at the fire for a cup of coffee, and all he can do is marvel at the sheer novelty of the situation, because to examine it closer, to really think about someone being selfless enough to give him what he needs for no other reason than that he needs it might send him into a spiral of paranoia.

And then for that to become habit. Coming to their bedroll as quietly as he can, learning to gentle his bite to something less feral, something more easily controlled. It's slower this way, careful and measured to make sure they don't wake, and he's sinking a little more into that embrace every night.

[leopardmuffinxo]

you make me feel things I didn’t believe in anymore

[lesfir]

I'm every time someone calls Lord Astarion a “cardboard villain” (+ parodying Cazador), briefly - in this nasty way:

Fr since when has he not been an evil trickster who says evil trickster shit.

Uh, no, back off.

It's an FreakStarion. When Astarion does the cringe, pompous it's pleasurable and sexy because in slavery he wasn't allowed to do it, he had to be an invisible shadow, small worm - now he's free. In both cases and it's sad for those who don't see it in Lord Astarion aka Astarion with power.

The man is talking about gold goblets and virgins.

In Act 3, sunshine.

A bed of dead bodies (he says totally chillin, almost laughing at that) I mean Stephen Rooney loved ‘What We Do in the Shadows.’ Vlad dusted the floor with a corpse.

brilliant

I'm sure he has the same attitude towards children as Lae or Minthara. They can be fun, interesting like Arabella. But if someone dies, he won't care long because someone was weak.

A child has lost his mum and is asking for help

The man is grieve about his father's death. Astarion: Well, it's a sacrifice, especially since you're going to be a Duke - cool.

You know, he likes drow armour, armies. So he likes something dark and cool. Flowers are bright, he doesn't mind, because he says he likes the luxury, brightness and the colours - but most importantly they don't have much practical use. Poison can't be made :<

Everything can be turned in the direction of nastiness. You know who else liked to watch people fight to the death? Cazador. Monsieur Calvin J. Candie.

If you look at the approvals you will see an even paler Astarioniс wtf :D

+2 +5 - it's rare. Usually everyone's +1.

[wellthebardsdead]

Halsin: My precious star. How old were you when you were taken from the light?

Astarion: ugh don’t be so poetic about it dear, I was 40 if you must know.

Halsin: *brain short circuiting knowing as an elf himself they don’t fully mature until they reach 100 in age* … *tenderly hugs him close and strokes his hair* So I’m going to introduce you to this thing called, therapy-

[vole-mon-amour]

is it just me or the way Wyll blushes and hides the pic of Mizora in that xbox ad doesn't sit well with you as well?

so Mizora traps him in a contract, owns him via contract, can boss him around, yank his invisible leash, and, if he disobeyed or if she dies, he either dies as well or immediately goes to hell for an eternity. I'm a way, he's her slave. as far as he knows, he can get out out of the contract by sacrificing himself (or he can sacrifice himself to save his dad).

sure, you can go behind Mizora's back and save Ravengard, buy we'll go with Wyll Doesn't Know That for the sake of my point.

and canonically Wyll dislikes Mizora and her company. he wants to get rid of her. he hates that she turns him into a devil. he hates how he looks. he hates everything about that.

and what Larian say in that xbox ad? oh, Wyll actually blushes and keeps the implied sexy pic of Mizora and it's implied that he has a crush on her/would have sex with her.

AND Karlach, who was also a slave with no means to get out, who was sold to slavery by a person she trusted and protected, elbows Wyll and goes, "what, you don't want it?" Karlach who KNOWS how it feels and who wants to kill Gortash for what he did to her, and Mizora is Wyll's Gortash in a way.

so first we have Halsin being a sex slave for three entire years and he feared for his life every single day. yet, that info is hidden very deeply and is easily misseable, and its written in the manner of him victim blaming himself with "i was a young druid" and he chuckles as he says that and it's presented in a way way as if he had fun? as if he was there willingly? as if it's all a big joke and not a big deal?

like, i know it's a big topic, but why is only Astarion's trauma taken seriously? why is Astarion's story written and loudly told in a way that we know that Cazador tortured him in every way, including rape, and not once it's treated like a joke? but when it comes to other's slavery, abuse, and trauma, it's suddenly treated like a joke?

Halsin's story is generally badly written/portrayed & he deserves way better, and maybe I'm reaching with this because neither Shadowheart's or Gale's stories show their captors as something good (still not as detailed as Astarion's though), but somehow that slips/gets dismissed when it comes to others.

I think Larian should stop with memes and hehe haha teeheee and be serious when it comes to others' trauma, not just Astarion's.

[rossy-mossy]

Tav as a Fenhawke love child has the potential for some hilarious (and heartbreaking) scenarios.

[gwen-writes]

okay my personal headcanon with astarion is that he’s not stupid at all. first of all, in game he has 13 intelligence, which offers a +1 perk to all dice rolls - meaning that he IS smart!

but even beyond that, i couldn’t fathom a magistrate being stupid in the first place. many people have different interpretations of who astarion was before he was turned (and honestly, i love all of them) but regardless of your own personal belief, i doubt him being truly unintelligent would be part of his character.

i would argue that from his trauma alone, astarion could also develop immense emotional intelligence, post-game especially. with the right tools and proper encouragement, he could develop deep empathy and self awareness. this kind of growth would take decades, i’m sure, but our little vampire elf has all the time in the world! even in the main line plot, many people have pointed out how slowly, astarion will begin to approve of “good” actions in act 3. the first thing for me, that i noticed, is when he *act 3 spoiler*

insists you save yenna (the young girl) from orin and kill gortash.

he plays it off as though he doesn’t truly care, but clearly he’s motivated in a particular way.

second of all, he can be very impulsive, but a lack of planning doesn’t mean someone is flat out stupid. instead, i think his rash decision making is caused by the fight or flight mentality he has been subjected to for 200 years.

in terms of social intelligence, he’s very capable of perceiving what someone may want and saying the right thing to manipulate them (not necessarily a good trait, but this understanding of cues and psyche could point to intellect). he is a victim of severe abuse, so of course he struggles with intimacy, genuine connection, even friendship - as we see in the main plot line of baldur’s gate.

and yet, despite all of this, he’s actually a great communicator. he identifies his struggle with other’s sexual perception of him, his lust for power, his hatred for cazador and processing his torture. he says outright that he doesn’t know what you’re really doing romantically because he’s never experienced it, but that he enjoys it and wants you around.

also - humor! vocabulary! i don’t think an idiot could make me laugh with witty lines the way astarion does! needless to say, i just find it crazy that people genuinely consider him stupid!!!

[astarionposting]

interesting... ascended astarion likes it more if you just let him bite you.

[podcastenthusiast]

Sure it's all fun and games Tav telling Astarion to "say please" and calling him a good boy before having sex, but he'd have a mini panic attack if Tav explained safewords and like actually gave a shit about his wellbeing in bed.

[eff-plays]

Also it's so so so fucking funny that nobody's getting Astarion's face right. Like not even Larian got his face right on the cover. He really is just a handsome little guy who looks ever so slightly fucked up in subtle ways that are so hard to get right without either a) making him look entirely fucked up and losing the pretty/elegance, or b) making him look like some other hot guy who is very much not him.

[atsadi-shenanigans]

When I said I was dragging Astarion kicking and screaming into acknowledging feelings, even I didn’t know what an utter bitch he’d be about it. The man is not having it.

[rackartyg]

astarion doesn’t remember who he was before cazador turned him because who he was then is not relevant to who he is now. healing from trauma doesn’t mean going back to who you were before it—that’s impossible. healing means making the best of who you’ve become