#i just wanted to see what people thought about cazador's voice lmfao...

[ansburg]

bro

[wetcatspellcaster]

For the ask - I really just want to copy and paste the entirety of the interrogation scene but since I can’t this bit really sticks out to me:

“She paused, then added, “but on the other hand, the cruellest you ever got before Ascending was when we fought over Cazador and then… well… you kind of did it, didn’t you? I basically lost that argument. If that’s what we fought about before, and then it just happened, it wasn’t like we could make up.”

Astarion was still watching her. Gods, she needed to make sure she was saying the right thing.

“And you were the one who was always telling me to be less selfless,” Rose offered, as a last resort. “And well, you know, staying with you just to be yelled at and degraded is perhaps the most selfless thing I could do, but you used to never want that from me. It used to annoy you, more than anything. I don’t know, I thought I was honouring you in a way… well, you know, not you. The lessons you taught me. Before-”

“Before I changed,” he said, a dangerous note in his voice. “The other me.”

“Um... just to check, do you prefer to think of yourself as two separate people, or is that actually the case, metaphysically?” Rosalie said nervously. As he glared at her, she clarified: “it would be useful to know, more generally, but mostly I’m asking because I just want to make sure you’re not upset, or if I’m being unfair to you. I don’t want to hold you to standards that you’re simply not capable of reaching.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said with a wave of his hand.

Thank you for wanting to play the ask game! :) x

So, it's one of the only pieces of drama (except for... *gestures at the general trauma congaline that is Act 3*) in An Honest Lie so I won't go into laborious detail, but Rosalie was obviously horrified that Astarion ever wanted to appropriate the Black Mass in the first place. Even the death of his siblings is too much for her (given that she values family, but also wants him to have some kind of a family survive in tact). When Astarion argues that none of the spawn or his siblings are worth saving as they all have blood on their hand, she just assumes he's also talking about himself.

In the 'canon' playthrough fic (or in the fic, someday soon), she actually gives Astarion the silent treatment over this conversation, which is how you know shit has gotten real lmfao. So writing the timeline where she lost that argument has been amusing to say the least. We'll see how that argument unfolds in real time in the other story ;)

Writing a charmed pov was super interesting because of the parameters of the vampiric charmed spell. The exact text was: The charmed target regards the vampire as a trusted friend to be heeded and protected. Although the target isn't under the vampire's control, it takes the vampire's requests or actions in the most favorable way it can - this means that at certain points, where the real Rosalie would've just left the room, she had to search for a favourable take on the situation, even if (given the circumstances) it occasionally strains her credulity and her ability to censor herself, meaning she does let a couple of bitchy things sneak through.

In the case of the section quoted here, Rosalie is just trying to appease Astarion however she can, but the 'trusted friend to be heeded and protected' also influences the conversation. She cannot find anything to heed in the current Astarion's words, so she reaches into the past, to the times he complained about her being selfish, and argues she's heeding those instead. That is the version of him that was a trusted friend, so that's what comes most easily to the fore of her mind.

"“it would be useful to know, more generally, but mostly I’m asking because I just want to make sure you’re not upset, or if I’m being unfair to you." - Rosalie, when charmed, is genuinely trying not to hurt Astarion if she can help it, and that's why she asks if he's not the same person he was before. The intellectual part of her - the part that frees her from the charm eventually - is fishing for information (absolutely it is!) but her guilt about 'making' Astarion this way and then punishing him for it is also absolutely real.

As to why Astarion cuts her off and in response to whether Astarion is metaphysically two different people before and after the Mass - [REDACTED]

DVD commentary ask