#especially Cazador since durge will be on their own getting astarion down

[rawrsatthetree]

I’ve been doing a run with only Astarion and a rouge dark urge. I thought it was going to be like really hard but lmao it’s so easy. Half of the battles only one of us takes out like ten guys while the other never even enters combat. It’s literally just us splitting up, finding a good hiding spot, and one shoting every enemy while they fumble around not able to find us and on the rare occasion we are found we just gut them with duel wielded light weapons.

[brain-rot-central]

In Sonnet AA is just a more powerful Astarion or the ascension changed him drastically in some way?What do you make of Mephistophele's deal (or any deal with a devil in general)?

So... My interpretation of Astarion is that UA and AA both exist within him from the start.

Throughout the game we see the two sides of him warring for dominance. And tbh, he's kind of an asshole from the get. Like, he isn't a nice person. He's a jerk, but he learns compassion as the game goes on because someone (Tav/Durge) finally extended a hand to him. Someone finally sees him. It's the theory of "love breeds kindness" being displayed.

The ascension route his him choosing himself despite this, strictly out of fear of another being having control over him again and it exacerbates all of his worst qualities since he's delving deeper into his paranoia. He's walling himself off, basically. Regressing, which happens a lot with abuse victims.

And as much as he tries telling himself that the ascension "killed the weaker version of himself," all it really did is shove that part of him down beneath six feet of dirt. He never made peace with it so much as he views it as an embarrassment and a source of shame. But when it comes to Tav, that part of him screams the loudest. And he hates it, because it reminds him of how weak and vulnerable he felt.

Basically reminds him that the concept of love makes him uncomfortable because to love someone is to be vulnerable. You'll do and withstand things you normally wouldn't with other people. Love is an opportunity for you to be softer and to have someone hold you. That scares the shit out of him, because he's no longer totally in control. You essentially become a willing participant for the other person, and you hope that they'll continue to extend the same courtesy to you.

I also don't agree with the notion that just because he's ascended, he now suddenly knows everything. Nothing about the ascension changes what has already happened to him, or his experiences. He may put on an air as if it has, and the whole point of it is to distract you from the realization that he still doesn't know shit about being an ascended/true vampire (his first humanoid blood was the PC and that was literally like... one/two months ago).

The man has zero idea how to turn someone and it's probably a nerve-racking experience for him, which is why he becomes so personally offended if you refuse his offer to become his consort. Because in a way, it's him being vulnerable with you. He has no idea what he's doing but he's willing to try if it means you both get to spend eternity together. He's essentially proposing to you in the only way he knows how. He also doesn't know SHIT about any of his powers/abilities yet.

He's a little fledging vampire who's been given the keys to the Lamborghini, essentially. But heaven forbid anyone else see that.

I don't think he lost his soul in the deal. I think moreso he's riding an insane high of 1) finally being free of Cazador's influence and 2) no longer having the insatiable hunger that plagued him for 200 years. For the first time in two centuries his mind is completely clear and his own again.

But I do believe there are some trade-offs to the ascension. Like for instance, uncovering a werebat form if he's too emotionally charged/cannot control himself. I also hc that he eventually starts hearing the voices of those sacrificed during the ritual, especially if he delves too deeply into a dark path.

TL;DR: the UA/AA versions of Astarion exist from the beginning and I still think they exist post-ascension. Just with the ascension, he's letting the worst qualities of himself win. I don't see that as a permanent thing.

The deal with Mepho changes nothing about him on a personal level; he doesn't lose his soul in the deal but there are some consequences of the deal -- becoming grotesque and/or hearing voices of those sacrificed in the ritual. He feels good and it just reinforces the arrogant behavior he displayed early on, as it's a point of regression for his overall development.

[shewhowas39]

Title: "Hard to Concentrate" Rating: Explicit Pairing: Spawn Astarion x female Durge/OC (my girl June) Words: 4.3k Summary: Astarion is bored and ants attention. June is trying to concentrate on a spell. Whatever is a man to do? (this is pure smut, a little fluffy, not even a hint of angst, late act 3)

A/N: this is set in the same universe as my longfic, Juniper & Starlight. it's going to be ages before that fic hits act 3, but that doesn't mean we can't have some fun. you don't need to read J&S to follow along with this. but if you do read J&S, this may contain some spoilery previews of things to come.

***

PREVIEW

“Remind me again what you’re doing,” he says, picking at his fingernails. 

June flexes her fingers and the Steel Watcher turns one direction and then the other.  “Gale showed me some illusion spells. If we’re going into the Foundry tomorrow, I figure it’d be real useful to be able to create believable distractions. Just trying to get this perfect.”

“Right.” He watches for another moment before walking up to stand behind her chair. “June?”

"Yeah?”

“I’m bored.”

She huffs out a little laugh.  “You don’t gotta stay here with me, you know. You’re free to go out and have some fun if you want.”

“But I want to have fun with you.”

“I’d like that, too, but getting an illusion just right takes time. Especially when it ain’t my strong suit. I don’t want us getting caught because my Steel Watcher looks off.”

“It looks good! Perfect! I’d never know it wasn’t the real thing! You’re a master illusionist, my love. Gale wishes he could do illusions as well as you.”

“You’re just saying that because you want attention.”

“Yes.”

June laughs, but then she writes something down in her spellbook and goes back to manipulating the illusion, adjusting the placement of a few of the construct’s bolts. 

Astarion’s hands begin to play with her dark blond curls, carefully moving his fingers through them, pausing to massage her scalp in a way that makes her sigh with pleasure. Slowly, he slides his hands down her neck. He kneads at her shoulders, working at the stress-induced knots he can always find there. He can feel June relaxing beneath his touch. Then his hands slip lower, down her chest and into the cups of her bodice.

The press of his fingers on her nipples causes June to jump and her illusion to flicker briefly.

“Astarion!” she protests with a giggle.

“Hm?” He tries to sound innocent even as he lowers his mouth to suck on the pointed tip of her ear. 

“Oh…” The Steel Watcher flickers again as June’s pale cheeks turn a very fetching shade of pink. She swallows, then gently tilts away, swatting at him and his wandering hands. “You’re insatiable lately.”

She’s not wrong. Since defeating Cazador and reigniting the physical part of their relationship, Astarion is hardly able to keep his hands off of June. For the first time in two hundred years, he is able to enjoy sex without the heavy feelings of shame that once accompanied it, with a partner who takes his wants and desires and boundaries seriously. It isn’t as if his complicated relationship with physical intimacy has been magically repaired, but each day with her brings a little bit of progress. 

And, by the gods, it feels so good to be able to make love to her and then smile and laugh and bask in the afterglow. It’s what he wanted for so long, and now that he has it, he cannot get enough.

It doesn’t help that he finds June so bloody sexy. He always has, but lately, it seems like anything and everything about her can set him off: those big, blue eyes blinking at him, the way she gets so excited to talk about historical events anyone else would find dull, the ink stains on her hands after she has transcribed a new spell…

Hells, two days ago he found his trousers growing tight because of the way she yawned. It’s ridiculous and intoxicating, this constant desire for her. 

Which is why it is especially cruel that she is here, being so obscenely delectable, and not paying attention to him. He needs to change that. Immediately

[crossdressingdeath]

Can I just... okay, there's something that's been percolating in my head ever since the Durgetash patch 6 crumbs dropped and I think I can finally put it into words. Because everyone was getting so mad about Durge (and it was about Durge, not Gortash; it was an origin character getting their backstory acknowledged in the game at a point where it should've been from the start, saying it was about Gortash is like saying... I don't know, any unique dialogue Cazador gets in Astarion origin runs is Cazador content) getting five or six new lines when Wyll got nothing and... well, personally I think that's a little silly, first because adding a few new Gortash lines to Durge runs would not be taking away from Wyll content (the two characters have different writers, VAs and mocap actors, for the most part they would not have been pulling from the same resource pool), but more importantly because... if you want to point at an origin character taking resources from Wyll, don't point at Durge. Point at Karlach.

I mean, think about it. Think about how the game runs with these two characters. You likely meet Wyll first unless you go out of your way to avoid speaking to him until you meet Karlach. He asks you to help him hunt down and kill a devil, and you go and you look and you find her and... now you're doing Karlach's quest. They interrupt Wyll's quest in the middle to do Karlach's quest. And she keeps piping up during the conversation with Mizora afterwards, and it turns out that Wyll got sent after Karlach to begin with because Karlach is Zariel's extra-special favourite mortal, and suddenly Wyll's sharing his post-quest transformation cutscene (something which I think we can all agree should be entirely about him) with a character who wasn't even playable until a ways into EA. You can't even properly commiserate with Wyll afterwards, you can only even be nice to him if you choose to read the lines that way; you spend more time chatting to Karlach about Wyll's transformation than you do Wyll! Wyll's act one quest gets almost completely taken over by Karlach, I'm honestly kind of surprised I haven't seen anyone else talking about it. Even him being turned into a devil is barely about him because Karlach's backstory is butting in! There is a reason why no other origins share villains, but where Karlach's connection to Gortash is overshadowed by Durge in a Durge run here she's overshadowing Wyll in every run except maybe (I say maybe because I haven't done it) a Wyll origin.

And it gets even better! Remember how originally you couldn't save Karlach at all? Remember when it was death or mind flayer? Remember what Larian did when people complained about that? I'm fucking amazed I didn't see more complaints about that, given the number of complaints I saw about Durgetash getting five whole lines. Do you want to keep Karlach alive? Do you want to end the game with all your companions still breathing and reasonably happy? Well then fuck what you think is a good, happy and/or narratively satisfying ending for Wyll; you're packing him off to the Hells, because that's the only way to keep Karlach alive if you don't want to go with her (which you probably don't if you romanced someone other than her)! Like, I want you to really let that sink in; they made Karlach's survival completely reliant on how you end Wyll's quest. If you want Karlach to survive and don't want your character's epilogue to be "go to the Hells" (which, again, odds are most players don't) you have to end Wyll's quest accordingly. They could've put that into Karlach's quest! Give her an actual character arc (instead of the line-with-maybe-a-slight-curve she got) where you can encourage her to choose life and go to Avernus on her own or... I don't know, go with Dammon or something! Especially since as it turns out Zariel apparently doesn't actually give a shit, which the PC should be able to point out given Zariel's track record in this game of giving barely enough of a shit to make a token effort at getting Karlach back or killing her! But instead the climax of Wyll's whole damn arc has to share space with Karlach. Maybe not in the game's text proper, but from a meta perspective? If the player doesn't want to go to the Hells but wants Karlach to live, that's likely going to be if not the deciding factor in Wyll's quest then certainly a major one in—as with the transformation cutscene—a situation that should be entirely about Wyll.

I don't really know how to end this. I guess... I fully admit part of it is me being super petty about the sheer number of posts I saw getting mad about Durgetash getting literally five or six lines (crumbs! Barely crumbs! Crumbs that didn't impact Wyll in any way!), but it also really is like... people complained about that but I haven't seen anyone complaining about how Larian warped Wyll's whole story around Karlach. And I think more people should complain about it. Wyll's story got dragged off-course the second they started rewriting it, but they wrapped the whole thing around Karlach when they made her an origin companion to the point where at times it feels like Wyll's playing second fiddle in his own arc, and that's... well, honestly it just pisses me off.

[nebulousfishgills]

As much as I love playing embrace Dark Urge runs (discussion in therapy pending), there's something so narratively satisfying about how a Resist Durge playthrough can go once you get to the Bhaal Temple. Your character steps into the ring with Orin, it's intended to be a duel, but odds are you're getting eviscerated pretty quickly. You then switch to one of your other characters in your party and throw an attack, effectively breaking the duel and setting the whole temple upon you.

(Adding a cut because this ended up being longer than I thought)

But, I think it's a very satisfying way to play. Your party members have grown fond of your Durge, seeing them as a friend, a family member, even a lover. They've watched you and your pain over your Urge and what it makes you do or want to do. Maybe you've slipped up once or twice, but you've been trying so hard to be the hero they know you can be, that Faerûn needs. So, when it comes time to finally face your demons and you're getting so horribly hurt in the process, they can't help but rush to your defense. It'll put all of them in danger, but it doesn't matter because they want and need to help you, their ally and companion.

Bonus points if you select your character's romanced companion as the savior/duel interruptor to make it extra delicious. They've fallen in love with you, stayed with you when your Urge craved their blood the most, maybe by this point in the game you've helped put their demons down as well. They see you in pain, a final valiant effort to overcome your Urge against the power of Orin, a whole cult, a god of murder himself. They want to protect you, save you as you saved them.

I'm also fond of the extra beauty of Astarion being your Resist Durge romance since it puts the two of you in very similar situations. Fighting against the will of your masters, finally defeating your demons with your newfound companions' help and being offered the greatest power you could ever fathom... only to deny it, ignore power in favor of your party and your love.

This isn't even mentioning just how goddamn good the Withers resurrecting you cutscene is. This skeleton in your camp with unknown and unfathomable power (also apparently supposed to be Jergal himself if I've done my research properly?) is able to bring you back to life, free of your Urge. The line along the lines of "Bhaal could only destroy what of you that he knew, but because you've grown past your Urge and become your own person, he couldn't destroy that new growth" is just so weirdly powerful narratively. Tav may be a default character for you to create upon making a new save file, but Durge is the canon protagonist and I think that entire scene shows it the best. It's a beautiful secondary climax of the narrative (primary being battling the Netherbrain of course).

And, perhaps it's just an oversight on Larian's part or something that'd be a bit difficult to work into the cutscenes mechanically, but I think that it could only get more impactful if your companions could comfort each other during these moments. Everyone and their mother wishes you could hug Astarion after he kills Cazador, but also imagine your romanced companion cradling your body after Bhaal kills you. It seems just a little odd that they all (meaning your party) kinda just stand around staring at your corpse, especially with how close y'all have gotten.

Idk, I have a lot of thoughts about this section of the game in this particular type of playthrough and some of them are hard to articulate into words. It's just such a damn good narrative peak and can really make you feel things.

I've completed I think two resist Durge runs and just hit this point on my third and it really stuck out to me this time (then again my new antidepressants are kinda fucking with me so that might be playing a role). I left it as my last mission before dealing with the Netherbrain and I think it helped build the anticipation of that moment. Everyone else has been helped by you, and now it's your turn to come into your own. I really felt so connected to my character walking into the temple, feeling like everything has been building to this, that regardless of what happens our suffering will finally end. And you have your party there to help you in your time of greatest need as you've done for them.

There's a reason this game was Game of the Year, the narrative is just so powerful and the replay-ability is just insane. I've beaten this game ten times, heading for my eleventh and it truly just never gets old and never fails to make me feel so many things so strongly.

[vividiana]

for the fic asks: 3, 16, 20, 27, 57! hope you have a great day as well! ❤️

hiiii thank you so much for the questions 💕

(the list can be found here)

3: describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

it's a bit all over the place, but it usually goes something like this:

when I get an idea for a scene, I need to write it out asap. depending on the type of scene, this either takes the form of a stream of consciousness or just the dialogue without any tags or descriptors (or some mix of the two.) I write that way for as long as I can without stopping, just to get the ideas out

after a day or two, I return to this chaos and turn it into something more comprehensible by building on it, revising, adding descriptors, turning key phrases into actual sentences, etc. if I encounter any blocks, then I just put some placeholders like "[they share a cute moment]" or "[describe the room]" and I leave it for now. I just focus on the parts that are the most exciting and interesting to me. I reread and edit that multiple times

I now arrive at the point at which I need to figure out how to fill all those gaps and placeholders and how I want the fic to begin and end so that it's a complete story and not just the part I'm most excited about. this is where things get difficult and where I often ask my friend for feedback/we brainstorm ideas together

once I have a better idea of how to fill all the gaps, I give myself permission to write those parts very poorly just so that I can finally have a complete draft. after that, I reread the whole thing to see how it flows and I edit those newer parts. I ask my friend to beta read and incorporate her suggestions

I reread and tweak the complete work so many times that words stop making sense, at which point I post it (and then I still somehow find typos and end up editing a bit on ao3)

16: how many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? share one of them?

I have many ideas for future chapters of my post-canon fic, and three ideas for one-shots. one of them that's a relatively recent idea is built around Astarion's worst memory and the "darling boy" he met one night whom he could not bear to bring back to Cazador. I love exploring Astarion's pov (and breaking my own heart apparently), so this is a story that I am really looking forward to sharing, but I definitely want to take my time with it because it's so far from my comfort zone and what I usually write

20: have you noticed any patterns in your fics? words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

one time my friend pointed out to me that I love to have Eve "nestle her head in the crook of Astarion's neck" and ummm... yeah, I did a word search for that phrase and it came up an embarassing amount of times so I have since changed that (though to be fair, there is not much I can do about that? that's just her favorite spot??). in terms of themes, I tend to write a lot about self-forgiveness, just because I think that's a crucial part in both Astarion's and Eve's (i.e. redeemed Durge's) journeys, and something they both struggle with. also I just realized I tend to write a lot of descriptions involving hands. these idiots are constantly holding hands or their fingers are "tracing soothing circles" on each other's skin or someone's hand will cup the other person's cheek, "thumbs wiping away the tears," etc... which tbh I find funny because I'm quite ticklish myself and I can't stand if someone runs their fingers against my skin, but IN THEORY it seems very soothing and intimate

27: what is your most and least favorite part of writing?

it's hard to pick a favorite, so I chose three: (1) brainstorming with my friend, (2) feeling this rush when I need to get an idea out onto the page and I just sit down and write paragraph after paragraph without stopping, and (3) reading the final product, especially if it's weeks or months after I've written it, and having my own writing elicit some sort of emotional reaction or even a chuckle or a "damn that's a good line" *pats myself on the back*

my least favorite is having to fill in all the gaps/placeholders that I left in the story for my future self to worry about and then suddenly the future is today and I want to finish this piece and it's like pulling teeth

57: do you prefer editing as you write, or waiting until it's finished?

I edit as I write. like I mentioned above, I usually don't have a complete draft until quite late in the process, because I just keep rereading and editing the parts that I already wrote instead of writing the rest