#astarion is honestly just. such a good well-written character. he is the universe.

[astrxealis]

i associate astarion with an unhealthy amount of hozier songs (there is something wrong with me)

[shadow-fell]

my chapter in the Great Wyllstarion Quantum Leap Multiverse Shenanigans AU is up. This fic was so fun to watch be put together, an absolute blast to write for, and has turned out so good. the stuff yet to come....i have no words.

...and, well, am I really aping Carla Speed McNeil if there aren't excessive footnotes? they are hiding, spoiler-filled, beneath the cut.

As I said in the end notes, this AU is based on Finder vol 5: Dream Sequence, by Carla Speed McNeil. While I don't think the chapter itself is super spoiler-y, the notes here definitely are, so be warned. While it might not be the start of the series it's pretty easy to read without context, so if the vibes interest you, I really recommend checking it out.

Finder is maybe my favorite comic of all time. It's kind of sci-fi/post-post-apocalyptic/dystopia. It's from the 90s, and parts of it has aged weirdly? but it's honestly more progressive than a lot of comics printed nowadays. I could talk about all the details and themes and worldbuilding and characters for ages, but I'm here to talk about fanfic, so...

It reminded him, in a way, of being teleported by that damn genie to the jungles of Chult – oh, gods, was this a world where the city had never been built? What was even the point of ascending if it left him ultimate ruler of a bunch of prehistoric cave-dwellers?

The general tone of this fic leans more on humor than angst, but this is one of my favorite beats. Astarion is getting kind of tired of all these dumb universes, and the idea of being stuck without "modern" life is absolute hell. And not just because he's finding excuses to skip worlds and put this off, definitely.

No busy street to check against, he reached up to touch his ears - elven, thankfully. He felt neither vampiric hunger nor the tadpole’s presence, but there was no sensation of blood flowing, of a beating heart, so he might just have been very well fed – this seemed like a forest with ample large prey. Looking down he had a rapier at his hip, well-crafted but not obviously enchanted. His clothes were strange, but were closer to adventurers’ garb than anything else, and definitely required advanced techniques to make, which was a positive sign on the not-cave-dweller front. Ignis summoned fire to his hands, so this world had at least some magic to make it viable for Ascension.

Added this paragraph a bit later after seeing more of the other AUs take shape , and edited around once I knew I was to be this early, because originally written the idea was Astarion has this method down. In context, being in a modern AU has kind of fucked him up (and I truly fell in love the idea he's pissed about how many human aus there are. why isn't there a world where Wyll's an elf)

Unfortunately for his little checklist, he's in VR and his avatar is decked out with magic. This is also the reason he doesn't feel his heart beat despite not being a vampire - he's not in his body at the moment.

Narrowing in on that, he snuck closer towards a clearing where a large bonfire burned. Around it were figures dancing – not humans, but a pack of silver creatures. They were headless, many-limbed, and looked almost like fluid mercury in the way they moved. A drumbeat’s rhythm seemed to come from the very air itself, and at the clearing’s edges he could see shadowy figures silently watching. 

There are a couple images I wanted to steal directly from the comic, and these strange, alien figures dancing around the fire was one of them. It's always stood out to me, and it fits very well as our introduction to the Frontiers.

Clearly, he was in the Feywild. He’d only ever heard stories, of course, but it was obvious really, and surely a fey pact could help him Ascend as easily as a devil’s. Maybe even without the full seven thousand sacrificed to Raphael; wouldn’t it just be lovely to pull off a scam on the smug bastard? 

My main contribution to the slow arc of Astarion coming to terms with not wanting to do the ritual. I really wanted to set up the idea that he is having second doubts about the cost of ascension (listening to Wyll) but absolutely refuses to admit it. Because he still needs wants it, but he admits it would be better without the killing, because (Wyll is right) it would be funny to fuck over Raphael

This ends up getting mirrored (as I assumed it would) in some of the later AUs, the idea that if the problem is the 7000, it'll be fine without killing them. right? right?

So, first things first, find this universe’s Wyll - surely a monster hunter would have all the details on what fey magic was happening here. If he hadn’t been hijacked - it seemed as if Wyll arrived some time after him, clearly trying to catch up, the bastard, so it was probably for the best to hurry and not lose what little lead he had.

This got edited a fair bit to set up being AU#2, mostly emphasizing the rules (Wyll shows up later, giving chase). He has a reason to find Wyll, and it definitely isn't just that he wants to see him!

I could probably have spent more time fucking around establishing the dreamlike quality of the frontiers, but sometimes it's better to just get to business, and he is on a bit of a time limit (impending Wyll)

There was a field of corpses. Given the lack of clothes and the way some of them were still posed embracing each other, a once-impressive orgy had clearly been absolutely slaughtered. Some of the bodies lay across the ground, shattered, while others are twisted up and impaled on spikes. A gruesome sight. He was not at all surprised to find Wyll at the center of it, kneeling down and inspecting one of the bodies.

The other really iconic scene I knew I needed to keep in was the traveling orgy server getting brutally not-murdered. There's something about the combination of sex and twisted corpses, and also, just a hint into the stock horrror of what it means to have your imagination, your mind, your waking dreams just another online site. Since I was eight, like, what a panel.

His clothes were simple, mostly pure black cloth without even the pretense of armor, but a rapier hung at his side, not one of the magical ones Wyll favored in their home, but cold iron alone was protection against fey, wasn’t it? He had no horns, or any other devilish features—maybe he was bound to some Archfey instead of Mizora, a better world indeed—and his hair was longer, what would reach well to his feet if it wasn’t floating upwards weightlessly with the magic of the Feywild, locs mixed with thin strands of silver, both braided in and growing from his scalp, not grey hairs but shining metal. His face had a black circle on it—hopefully some sort of makeup and not the world’s worst tattoo—which emphasized the concerned expression on his face. 

This is the image that kind of inspired the fic - the dream of Wyll with very long locs, floating up in the air like cables (and being literally the cables hooking up to the VR).

The fic doesn't go deep into what the world is like outside of the Frontiers; while there are some things implied, Astarion is very much an outsider POV to what's going on. Mizora is definitely one of the people on the company board manipulating things, though - and with the politics of Anvard, that could go very poorly for Wyll.

I went back and forth about the weird circle on the face, and decided to keep it for what it represents - Wyll, like Magri, isn't fully aware of what it is, and it doesn't quite come up in the fic, but it is his repressed anger - the monster - and having that pointed out is what triggers the final breakdown in Dream Sequence.

“Well, not you, of that I’m certain.” Wyll said – clearly still this world’s Wyll, thankfully. “I’m sorry that you’ve been dragged into this – no one would listen, when I said you weren’t a part of it, that it only wore your face—”

AU Astarion and Wyll haven't actually met. Wyll is a more active character than the very disassociative Magri, but however things went down, he didn't stop the company from grabbing Astarion as a scapegoat.

Even if he's not as dissassociative, Wyll still has to lock himself away from a lot of his thoughts; in canonverse, I imagine there's quite a bit of his time with Mizora he's locked away in a vault. But escaping to a dreamworld is a bit different when it has guests.

“Did they not…? No, I suppose they wouldn’t have. Scapegoats aren’t worth interrogating, after all.” Wyll shook his head. “We recovered memory data from some of the victims who were recording when it attacked my father’s men. It has more than just your face – your full bodyprint.”

I don't actually explain what AU Astarion's deal is, because we never actually interact with anyone who knows him. I thought about it, but the explanations are all awkward. If I'd had him start out on the streets, he'd piece it together quickly, but that loses the Feywild angle.

In Dream Sequence, the monster wears the face of the main character, Jaeger, because ever since he got caught on film in vol3, his face and body have become common in movies, and, as a recurring beat through Dream Sequence, porn. Given some of the framing and setting, that's the context Magri saw him and took his face to be the monster; there's an underpinning about sex and discomfort with the sexual to the monster beyond just the anger issues - the reason why the comic ends with the two making out.

Astarion is definitely not Jaeger, so how his bodyprint came to be a porn star is left up in the air, but you can fill in the gaps that he's had some canon-typical trauma re: sex. And Cazador. And bodily autonomy.

“It’s a traveling server. They move between different sites to avoid moderation. This isn’t the first time they’ve inflicted themselves on the Frontiers – it’s like people don’t even care about the host. For motive… the shareholders would tell you it’s corporate sabotage.” / “If this was a simple hacker, I could kick them out,” Wyll explained. “I have that much strength at least. It’s why I know you’re not the one behind this – they know it too, it’s just easier to have a person to pin the blame on. Because I host the Frontiers, they’re resistant to viruses – even when they do take hold, I can partition them away. I’ve tried that, isolated the victims, blockaded whole sections of the Frontiers. It just keeps coming.”

These bits from Wyll are the hit you over the head reveal we're actually a cyberpunk au and not the feywild. Because he's not explaining the world, it gives a pretty succinct view of his power - he's both creator and moderator of the Frontiers. It's a parallel to Ascension, but also to being Grand Duke.

Astarion has picked some stuff up from this version's memories, but not enough for him to realize that he's not in the feywild because that's already fucking weird, you know. he's still not used to modern aus.

“…Kill it,” Wyll repeated.  “You don’t need to start moralizing, we’re talking about something that did…whatever this was, to all these people. And it stole my face! That alone should be a death penalty, honestly.” “The fact I can’t kick it means it isn’t a person,” Wyll said. “I’m not sure if it’s a thing that can be killed.” “Have you tried?” 

Wyll in this isn't necessarily anti-murder, but he's definitely confused - and while he may have the rapier at his side, he's not actually a monster hunter, he's more like a popular fantasy writer running a massive larp. Astarion is very pro-murder and does not have time to deal with Wyll not being down with that (I mean, he's searching for a Wyll who's cool with killing 7000 spawn).

"it stole my face. death penalty" is one of my favorite beats from Astarion.

He turned away, and as he did, the world turned with him. No more bodies, no more forest; they were in a graveyard now, large crypts and shining stones that seemed to stretch for miles.

So, there are some visuals that were huge multi-page things that stuck in. And then there's this one panel, that hit me hard enough it made me think the setting came back for a larger sequence.

Practically, the switch is meant to be jarring enough to force Astarion to break with the Feywild idea, alongside any readers who haven't yet caught on. The graveyard is here for the tomb that Wyll keeps all the things he's repressing in. But mostly, it's because

Ulder is alive and running the company in this, and I doubt there's the same rumor about Francesca's "retirement" - but Wyll is just as haunted by his mother's death, albeit in a different way. His head is full of graveyards, it's a miracle people aren't constantly stumbling over them.

Tagline, marketing – someone had made a business, inviting people into Wyll’s dreamland. Vile, but not exactly surprising. Could anyone do this, make a world in their mind? Get a bit of ultimate power? Was it this world’s alternative to ascension, perhaps?

Once he realizes they're in Wyll's head, he puts the AU together quickly. He may not fully understand the technology, but he understands greed and abuse. This isn't a full parallel to ascension, but it is fundamentally about what would you trade in exchange for ultimate power.

Astarion is someone who disassociates as a response to trauma, and that makes the idea of your own mind not being private worse - because where else is left to escape to? But as someone who has so thoroughly been compelled, the idea of having control over your mind and those intruding on it has its appeal.

Because it isn’t an external threat – it’s internal. There’s something wrong with me.” “No, no, it makes sense, doesn’t it? I was annoyed, I was angry, that the server came to the Frontiers, and the monster attacked them for it. Which means, if I want to keep everyone safe, then all I need to do is stop having any more negative feelings!”

This is the core of this AU idea. Dream Sequence is mostly a story about imposter syndrome, well, that and "hey, maybe staying awake for a decade straight turned your anger issues into a full on psychotic break". Wyll has shades of this, but I think true to form, it's more about the stuff between him and his father, and his own self worth issues.

Wyll needs to be perfect. He has to uphold the ideals his father set out for him, and failings that are fine from others are inexcusable to him. The Frontiers are his creativity, his joy, and they've been packaged to be sold, and that's fine, because it means he's doing something, that he's helping people, that he's worthwhile. And if that goes away, then he's not the Blade, he's just Wyll, and he can't be just Wyll.

I mean, the core thing about Wyll is that at seventeen he decided his soul was worth less than the lives of a city. He's self sacrificing to a tee. He will become a devil to save one innocent life. Of course his reaction is that he has to be perfect and save everyone, otherwise, what is the point?

“Wyll. Darling. That’s maybe the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Astarion told him. “Fuck all these people, it’s their fault, trying to have an orgy in your head. Even if it is you, and not some trick by Mizora or whoever, the solution is to take control of it. Really, you’d be so much better off if you just stopped  pretending that you’re the most perfect noble hero who’s never had any mean thoughts in his life—” / “Fuck them! Fuck your father, fuck the company, fuck everyone who thinks they deserve to have a piece of you! If having a world you control means you can’t have fun then what’s the point! When’s the last time you did something for yourself? Had a feast or fucked someone or took a gods-damned nap?” / “This is why you’re so insufferable, you know that?” he said. “You don’t want to admit that all the self-sacrificial hero nonsense makes you miserable, so you take it out on everyone else! This is why you keep interfering, because you look at someone who might be close to actually being safe and happy and need to sabotage it for your stupid morals. Because you can’t just admit you need to yell at your father for all the shit he put you through! Of course you have a monster in your head maiming people, is it really any surprise!?”

Astarion's rant. He is yelling at this Wyll, but mostly his Wyll.

Most of the shade is about all the things about Wyll that also make him unwilling to let Astarion ascend. The idea that you have to keep playing at being a perfect hero, even when it makes things worse and makes you miserable, come on, wouldn't it be better to take time for yourself, have fun, and let me kill 7000 spawn and ascend?

Which isn't to invalidate his points; the thing I like most about Wyllstarion is probably the "corruption" angle - that Wyll needs to learn to be more selfish instead of self-sacrificing, because if you give too much, it kills you. Astarion isn't always right, but he's great at getting someone to sit and take care of themselves. He helps push Wyll into being healthier at the same time Wyll pushes him to being a better person. They lose the sheen of their archetypes and instead make each other into people.

But mostly Wyll needs an Astarion to let him know he should tell Ulder to go fuck himself.

“Enough!” Wyll yelled, and it was actually angry, enough that Astarion did freeze for a moment and go quiet. “I am sorry that you got dragged into this, I truly am, but I have enough people judging me without adding a stranger to the list. We are done here, and you are done with the Frontiers.”

And our reminder this isn't his Wyll, or our Wyll. This is a very important conversation, but it's not a very effective one against a stranger. Astarion knows Wyll far better than Wyll knows him, but while some things are the same, this is a different universe.

The final straw was bringing up Ulder. They have a complicated relationship - in many ways, more complicated because there isn't a banishment, instead all these years working together, while Wyll is professionally sleepwalking through life.

He mostly takes the comics role of Chester Stilwater, the CEO who's been milking Magri and Elsewhere for profit. Stilwater is, to be clear, a really shitty guy - but in the context of Anvard's atrociously amoral feudal system, he clearly does care for Magri, having tried to advise him against the contract while he was disassociating, and giving him back majority shares in the company when he left. Ulder loves his son, but he also exists within a system.

Wyll doesn't see any of this as shit his father put him through. He sees it as a choice he made to support his father, that he's struggling to meet. If Wyll chose to move on, Ulder would likely support it - but at the same time, if events followed Dream Sequence, he would be sitting at his son's bedside listening to advisors tell him he should be lobotomized to keep things running, and not turning it down out of hand. So. Complicated.

A hand mirror rested beside the bed, its surface shimmering in the way that marked it as Shaundakul’s – within hands’ reach, this whole time, only next to where his physical body had been and not his mind.

There was a line in the overview doc about it being our choice whether the mirror was right there or had to be a Quest. I kind of fell in love with the idea it was always right there, but you needed to wake up first to realize it.

I don't think it's that monumental of a reveal - maybe if he'd spent longer wandering around the Frontiers before finding Wyll? Been confronted by the monster. Except, well...I think Astarion might actually be posessing the monster.

In Elsewhere, guests possess characters rather than appear as themselves, and the monster is another character, being passed between sleepwalkers mid-nightmare. So, he is both himself and the thing wearing his face. freaky, much. Astarion would never have figured this out, even if I'd written like 10k of this AU.

“You can’t be serious – if I sleep, I lose the Frontiers, I lose everything. I can fix this, I just need to be stronger, I just need to—”

We see Wyll angry before; this is him desperate. Because the problem with pinning all your self worth on a single concept. If he isn't the Frontiers, then his father doesn't have a reason to love him. So he has to be the Frontiers, you understand?

Canon Wyll has this but for being a hero.

Wyll’s eyes opened again, a mix of confusion and clarity. “Astarion?” he said. “Wherever we are, whatever you’re doing, please, can we at least talk?” That’s Wyll. Real Wyll, original Wyll, his Wyll – not good, not good.  Before he could think of any words to say, he pulled the plunger and injected the drug, watched as Wyll fell unconscious back onto the bed, to a hopefully peaceful, relaxing slumber.

I think the two scenes I had most clearly was Wyll standing over the murdered orgy while Astarion was like "what the fuck" and this, where Astarion injects Wyll rather than have an awkward conversation.

Big "go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep" energy. I technically offered content warnings but in my heart I know this is a comedic beat.

This world didn’t seem to be one for infernal rituals – only strange, technological horrors. As interesting as the dreamlands were, he wasn’t looking for a new set of downsides to ultimate power. Even if he wanted to stay, free from vampirism, Wyll’s state made it clear this was hardly a paradise, and he didn’t want to see what his own life was like, not kidnapped to be made scapegoat for some monstrous killer. He turned towards the mirror, picking it up.

While plenty of the AUs are horrifying, a lot of them are tempting. Worlds where he's alive, where he can walk in the sun and eat, where he isn't stuck with Cazador. That's what he wants, after all, more than the power, it's comfort and safety. This one could be all those things - but it's a risk, especially coming right out of realizing Cazador was in even light happy ballet world. He can't risk it, and he's probably right; Anvard is not a great place to live, especially if you're worse than a tourist. There's a reason I put dystopia in the genres Finder falls into.

I don't actually know the full details of what Astarion is like in this world, beyond the fact he is definitely 100% not Jaeger outside of this single specific storyline. But Dream Sequence is the furthest chronologically we've seen from Finder, the most we've glimpsed of what seems to be a happy ending, and I'd like to believe that Astarion is similarly already at the end of his arc, and that waiting just outside the door are the rest of the tadfools arguing with lawyers to get him free, and not Cazador.

When Wyll woke, his whole body ached. He was overwhelmed by the sensations of hunger and thirst, and it felt as if he’d slept for days. His head itched, his mind rang, and there was this sense of absence, of something gone.

It wasn't until after reading the draft of the first AU that I chose to end on Wyll's POV, for a bit more structure and consistency. Being in this Wyll's body is a nightmare, especially coming from someone who, while maybe not the best of self care, has a baseline level of maintenance required to do the things he does.

Having slept, the Frontiers are gone. Wyll wasn't awake in this world long enough to feel them - and given he's a different version, who knows what it would have been like if he hadn't been immediately drugged - but their absence is still a very physical loss.

For all it hurt, Wyll was right that staying awake is what kept the Frontiers running - there's only so long after waking you can remember a dream. Although, to be clear, like Magri, he needed to sleep, and there are ways to keep the Frontiers without it Literally Driving You Insane, Wyll. Please I am begging you to take care of yourself.

 A prayer to gods he doubted would be listening even if they were in a normal world, to whatever fates are dragging them along this winding place, that this world had a happy ending, and that Astarion might finally stop long enough to listen instead of drugging him to run at first sight.

Pray for Wyll, he's got another 17 chapters to go and it's not getting any better. He is not surprised about being knocked out, but. Come on, Astarion, he just wants to talk. Also, confirming the beat that it's important for him that they're not fucking too much with the worlds they leave behind, and he wants all their AU versions to be happy.

I believe the vague ruling is the AUs snap back to before the transfer point happens (since, well, it would be weird if this happened in the middle of grand adage). For how it would go without bodyswapping shenanigans...

Astarion isn't going to be quite so up front about confronting Wyll; even if they do meet, it probably won't spark the same realizations. Without being drugged, I think things will probably follow closer to the comics, with a massive breakdown before Wyll finally is drugged into unconsciousness. So, a rougher ride, but I'm an optimist; everything will be better so long as Wyll gets some sleep.

the title is a joke on several layers - obviously, there's the joke about the fact it ends with both Wylls being forced to take a nap, but also, it's an adaptation of a comic titled "dream sequence" that's spent entirely in Wyll's waking dreams. there's a whole undercurrent about needing to sleep, to dream, to live, and naps are the epitome of that most 'selfish' kind of resting.

Reclaim the idea that napping - that sleeping - is lazy. You shouldn't sacrifice yourself for work - no matter how important and meaningful the work maybe, even if it's creative and fulfilling.

But mostly, well. The title is because my favorite panel in all of Dream Sequence is the very last one, and it's where I want to shove both Wyll and Astarion: out of danger, out of the limelight, surrounded by love, and taking a nap.

Drink up, dreamers.