#look I think it's very funny that astarion spent all of act 1 and early act 2 going 'UGH' and then. and then he got hit in the face

[antiqua-lugar]

working on my gale/caradoc slice of life thingy (too tired for dorian/wyll), having a lot of fun writing astarion experiencing what I would call friendship jealousy? like those people are HIS friends, and they are his first true friends, and fine he didn't like caradoc (or gale) much at the start but now that's one of HIS best friends, THEY saved the world together, and fine lae'zel clearly comes first but then HE is the closest one to them, thank you very much! and then he runs into caradoc's best friend from before the tadpole and no, he is not jealous, what does he have to jealous of, of a... ...of a dark gnome paladin.

[tlonista]

I love Wyllstarion but I feel like we could use more fic about why Wyll falls for Astarion alongside Wyll being Astarion's fairy-tale prince. Because look, Astarion is obviously gorgeous, and Wyll drops comments suggesting he finds him attractive, but early-game Astarion is also casually cruel and kinda goddamn irritating if you're a good-aligned character. There's a lot of free real estate around exploring what an idealistic romantic like Wyll gets from a relationship where yes, the vampire is hot and suave and funny, but he's also constantly mocking everything the Blade of Frontiers stands for, including specifically everything he thinks about sex and relationships. Contrary to romcom logic this would in fact put a lot of people off!

The most obvious dynamic for me is probably that Wyll would be fascinated by Astarion, both from the perspective of a professional monster hunter traveling with a monster (which adds its own taboo charge to everything) and a young Baldurian exile traveling with an older lifelong city-dweller. Astarion knows all the bars Wyll barely got a chance to visit before getting exiled! He remembers all the balls and festivals Wyll grew up with, even if he's a little vague about what he was doing there! Sure he can be callous and mean, but it's outweighed by him being a genuinely interesting travel companion.

And in general the game could've done more with the fact that Wyll's whole life is spent trying to be a folk hero with a literal devil at his shoulder trying to pervert his good intentions. It feels like he should be a little more shaken up about the Karlach thing - he almost killed a desperate woman by Just Following Orders! And most companions have some level of "forced to be evil to survive" going on, but especially in Act 1, Astarion is the most up-front about it. He's a natural choice for Wyll to commiserate with about Mizora, and if anything the fact that Astarion is vocally anti-heroics means Wyll's less worried about him being judgmental.

I mean look I'm very into Astarion hurt/comfort and whump and to some extent that means I'm just going to gravitate to more Astarion-focused stuff, but I read a fair amount of Wyllstarion and it seems like there's room for relationships that build out their foil-ness a bit more, from either character's POV.