#he feels like a poe pastiche thrown into a video game
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bhaalsdeepbat · 7 months ago
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just to add:
Using Poe rather than any other Dark Romantic writer that was his contemporary to pull a quote from was such a good choice. Of his sotries, "The Tell-Tale Heart" was the perfect one for Astarion, but Poe very specifically believed stories should be written in a circular manner - like a snake biting its tail - which fits so perfectly with all the little ways Astarion's story and romance references itself.
Direct quote from my source:
Poe believed in “fashioning a tale like a kind of ouroboros, with its tail in its mouth, beginning with the final effect and working backwards to that the story’s beginning is a natural derivation of its conclusion.”
It's the setting up of the Romantic Astarion in act 1, finding out he's not as fine as he keeps insisting as the narrative swings into Dark Romantic territory, the paranoia starts to really come out (relating back to tell-tale heart), and then he is literally given a choice: continue the cycle or break free. The cycle of abuse is literally a circle here. He can take up Cazador's place in the ritual and step into his role entirely, reentering the ouroboros I mentioned earlier.
The "Thank you" when he first bites the player being referenced later when they see past his paranoia and how unreliable of a narrator he is about his own feelings and seeing that he doesn't want power. He wants safety in a world that he believes isn't capable of kindness or good.
I love how Astarion quotes The Tell-Tale Heart every once in a while. It's a rarer line, and initially I thought it was out of place (Neil is very well versed in theater, so I assumed it was a riff from him), but since reading an analysis of the work I think it was pretty purposeful.
The piece is all about fear and paranoia, things we know Astarion is plagued by despite how he might act. Similarly, the narrator of the story also tries to convince the reader that they are not as troubled as they seem. In the end, the narrator is consumed by the beating of the heart of the old man he killed and dismembered, the sound growing louder and louder until in a fit of rage he reveals the body to the police to absolve himself from the persistent beating.
Except the police never heard the heart beat, because it wasn't the old man's heart at all. The narrator was consumed by the sound of his own heart beating more and more rapidly in his chest from fear. He was the owner of the thing that forced him to reveal his true nature, he is the owner of the tell-tale heart.
And what happens with Astarion after you romance him? He realizes over time that, while he tried to deny his feelings and was initially only interested in manipulating you for his own means, he actually has grown to care for you. You have done something to his heart that hasn't happened in centuries, you have made it feel as if it has started beating again.
Therefore, his tell-tale heart leads him to admit his transgressions, which were committed out of fear and paranoia for his safety.
So the line is actually very, very apt. His confession during Act 2 is his own version of "Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!" Except, of course, it is his own heart that he is unearthing for us (and it's not so hideous, after all).
#this got my brain churning as someone who studied Poe's writing techniques and stuff#i did an intense study of his writing style back when i was in college lol#i'm so sorry if this derailed a bit#i was gonna make my own post but this was the one that got me thinking so#here i am#i literally saw this at like 6:50 am so my thoughts aren't as full as i'd like#but i wanted to add this bc i've been thinking about it a lot for the reasons i stated above lol#my writing style is very heavily influenced by poe due to how much i've researched him for analytical papers & for mimicking his style#i also think some of his more difficult writing may come back to like#he feels like a poe pastiche thrown into a video game#and all his difficult convo trees where you get no information?#astarion is an unreliable narrator of his own story#he doesn't WANT the truth out there#they also very well could have chosen like#the black cat or one of his poems#but tell-tale heart very specifically has to do with the paranoia that causes you to hurt people who never hurt you#the only thing the old man did was stare with that vulture eye#i also have Thoughts about how Astarion's story is a Dark Romantic Gothic Horror#but one that ends on a good note OR can end with him back in the cycle of abuse#and his good end rejects the pessimism that comes with dark romanticism#while also seeing the world not as perfectly good#but finding hope that in spite of the bad parts of life#the good outweigh the bad and make it worth lowering your defenses and truly living#or else be trapped by paranoia and fear for eternity#he has other things that are repeated in ways i don't see the same like#thread of connection through in other companion romances#for example if you ascend him he uses the “i love you” line#same tone as when he used it before while trying to convince LI to sleep with him a second night#and the fact that the cycle he's in now is just a reflection of what cazador and vellioth did#the family abuse cycle that traps and destroys
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