#this is also absolutely influenced by those lines and dev notes for a karlach origin romancing astarion

[cannibalisticskittles]

alright so i talked about this way fucking more than i thought i was going to when i started, so this one gets a readmore for length. below the cut is just a bunch of thoughts on how amity views sex, and how astarion views sex, and how the relationship could’ve started just a bit differently in light of that.

when i do amity's astarion-romance run again, i am going to be extra analyzing everything. in general but also specifically with the aim of figuring out how likely an alternate start for amity's romance would be. don't get me wrong: i really don't think it would be out of character for amity to accept astarion's proposition(s) the way it all happened in-game; i wouldn't have gone ahead with it otherwise.

but. that doesn't mean that it's what she's most comfortable with. and given how astarion viewed this whole thing, and his complicated view towards sex....... it does make me wonder how things could've played out a bit differently. 

it is hard to not contribute to that sense of ‘sex as a tool/self as a tool,’ until he starts to unwind the skein of how he views sex and his own value and disentangle those concepts. and i think that having some intimacy with him, such that he believes you are going to trust and look out for him, builds some of the pathway to that mindset. not that he couldn't get to where he does in the game without that, but that it would take longer, and he might not be ready for that at the point when it happens. 

but wouldn't it be nice to… feed into that less?

plus it's a bummer! a bummer to be another time when astarion had sex with someone because he felt like that's what he had to do to survive, even if the circumstances are different and he didn't technically have to do that now; we know that that's how he felt about it still. and it's also a bummer to think that amity makes what is, for her, a pretty big personal step forward by deciding that yes, actually, it's probably okay if she's intimate with someone else when they are being very clear that they view this as a good thing, a thing they are interested in, a thing that would be fun for both of them…… only to find out later that, no, actually, there is trauma in pain wrapped up in this.

(she would probably also feel like, if she had been less wrapped up in her own head, she would have noticed that he wasn't truly enthusiastic and she could've avoided contributing to that sort of pain. she'd feel guilty for not declining.)

so, alright. first thoughts, focusing on amity. 

amity definitely has hang-ups with sex, but they aren't sex-specific. they're tied in with all the other hang-ups she has about her appearance and her value as a person and her mindset that romance and intimacy aren't something she can realistically expect to ever happen for her.

she has no view of sex as sinful; she's barely religious anyway, and oghma and gond genuinely would not give a shit. she doesn't view it as needing to only happen after marriage, or even within a committed romantic partnership; her own parents never married, and if they ever had any romantic inclinations towards each other, those were gone long before amity was old enough to perceive them. they're just work and business partners who happened to have sex and had amity as a result of that, and now they platonically co-parent well together (To Her. objectively they are both shit at being parents, but subjectively, amity believes they're good at parenting together).

those hang-ups are still there, though. being seen as Funny-Looking by all her peers, her appearance being taken as a sign of something infernal or demonic or otherwise non-specifically evil, and knowing that when she's disguised as a regular human, she gets a much warmer welcome – all of that feeds into an extremely strong belief that she is awful to look at and to be around (and thus she must preemptively make up for that fact by being as useful as possible to everyone around her). 

and then, when she's older and the family business is experiencing a boom and her father becomes part of parliament, she starts getting marriage proposals and propositions – sometimes from the same patriar shits that mocked her mercilessly as children, as though she could ever forget that. she has a tendency to forgive far more bullshit than she should, but there is no world in which she would ever believe that anyone, let alone these rich motherfuckers who made her life hell as a child, think that she's attractive now. (she would phrase that more kindly, but that's what it comes down to.) she knows it's just another play at power; she has money and status, and her father has money and status, and so a union with her is now seen as palatable. 

and it's awful. she wishes they'd just leave her alone. 

i imagine she has, sometimes, received a genuine proposition. she did get lightly flirted with during her first campaign, after all. but unless someone is exceedingly clear and direct with her, she is going to assume that they aren't actually romantically or sexually interested in her at all, and that it would be extremely presumptuous to think that. and the few who have been clear and direct about it came at times that were less than convenient. 

like hey, sorry, you are very nice, thank you for being direct, however, her party has been out in the wilderness for weeks and she was really looking forward to walking around athkatla at night for an hour or two, and then she has to speed back to her party so they can crack open a lich's skull, sorry! good luck… getting lucky with someone else tonight!

or… she just didn't want to. even if the timing is a bit more convenient, like if she's settled in one place for a few days or weeks and doesn't actually have anywhere else to be, she's going to have doubts. why on earth would a stranger approach her about this? why not someone… nicer to look at?? her self-esteem issues make her view the idea with extreme incredulity, and she'd turn them down. 

so. sex is not something she has any personal level of comfort with. 

secondly… look, amity isn't, like, wise. wisdom is famously her dump stat. (she actually has a higher strength score than wisdom score -- 9 vs. 8. it's bad.) 

she has a tendency to somehow still roll well on insight but she also doesn't know what the fuck to do with this information because it feels rude as hell to be looking for reasons to doubt what someone says. plus, even if someone thinks something different from what they say, they might be determined to act in alignment with their words rather than their thoughts. so amity has made the deliberate decision to nearly always take someone at their word, even if that means she lets herself be manipulated or lured into a trap, because she feels that demonstrating this form of trust is the Right and Good way to go about things. maybe it'll help them out. (she’ll just… carry around a knife and a rope so she can get out of situations like that if/when they go wrong.)

so she wants to take astarion at his word, and trust what he says. and yes, he propositions her, he's the one that brings up the idea. and, yes, he did make it seem as though it's something he's interested in. and yet….

is he, really? 

amity would have less doubts in this instance than she would in those cases where she was propositioned by a stranger – all that a stranger has to go off of is how she looks, and she knows that can't be a draw, so what the hell is it? but with astarion, well, they know each other better than that. not much better, mind you; they still hardly know each other at all. but they have fought in battles together, they're in the same boat regarding tadpoles in their brains and are working towards a shared interest. so, there isn't that same, immediate doubt as to why he's asking her; it's not her appearance, it's the fact that she's there. that's acceptable. that's logical. 

and yet. 

sex seems like a pretty big way to repay a favor. it's so intimate. so vulnerable. so… fraught with potential danger. so many ways someone could hurt you in those moments. 

(her mother, a cold, calculating, manipulative, Literal Actual Devil, made sure that amity was well-briefed in all the ways that vulnerability could fuck you over. amity chooses to ignore that most of the time, but she's still aware of those lessons. get lectured enough on all the ways you make it easy for someone to plunge a knife into your back and that lesson will stick with you.)

sure, she let him drink some of her blood, but that's not really that big a deal, right? it was hardly an inconvenience, she barely stumbled over her own feet the next day, anyway, and she could still mostly see straight when flinging spells. 

there is also the fact that she has extremely little experience with anything like this. she has never been in a real relationship. she has technically kissed someone/been kissed before – but like, as part of playacting with a childhood friend, or an adrenaline-fueled 'i can't believe we survived that' post-battle moment. never an intentional kiss. 

and. she's never had sex with anyone before. 

she doesn't put too much stock in the idea of The First Time, or view it with particular reverence; anything that can be done has to have a first time, right? but. first times don’t always go great. they're messy. flawed. and she's nervous! about her inexperience and about potentially fucking things up and being a shitty partner and ruining it for him.

now, amity has A Hard Time Saying No to people. and it is extremely hard for her to say no to someone when she wants to be useful and helpful and be on good terms with them. 

this situation is no different. astarion has made an offer. for all her trepidation, it is hard to refuse. and… he's very pretty, and they might all die suddenly and painfully and maybe it would be nice to not die without having had this experience. so it's not that she has no desire to do this, she's just… nervous!

so, she accepts. and then… tries to deflect. put it off. busies herself with setting up camp each night so there's never a free moment and then, oops, she's already asleep. or she just offers to let him drink her blood again when she sees him at night; maybe she can distract him enough for him to forget about the whole thing entirely. that'd be swell. at least, it would be preferable to feeling like she's somehow bartered sex from him by letting him feed on her. 

but he’s not going to forget about it. he needs to secure protection of some kind, and this is The Way He Knows How To Do That.

i'm not sure if i think astarion would lean more towards bemused acceptance of this, viewing it as just. an extremely slow seduction. earning her trust and her affection bit by bit, each time she lets him feed – and she does make that offer quite a bit, and my, how she shivers, how she squirms at the lightest touch on her face, her neck, her chin to reposition her. maybe he doesn't even feel the need to push it farther, even tho this isn't quite what he's used to; maybe she's just exceptionally easy to win over. that's less effort for him, overall. his midnight snacks double as reinforcing her interest in him. 

or, perhaps he'd be more annoyed by this, not thinking that anything is secure until he's put his full range of skills into use. all this… waiting for her to let down her guard more means that this is far more time and effort than he'd like to spend on this sort of thing, why on earth does she have to be this apprehensive? isn't that just his luck, for things not to go his way?

now, here's the other thing – for all her inexperience, i think amity would at least want to be an active participant. she wouldn't be content to, like, be lavished on, or have the majority of the attention on her. she'd much prefer it the other way around. 

and that's… not astarion's bag! not at this point! 

it does make me think of a dynamic where he expects to take things further, as is The Expectation That Has Normally Been Set For Him, gently pushing past mild protests of 'oh, you don't have to do that' (re: the 'you've done me a favor, and now i have a favor for you, xoxo' proposition [maybe a semi-pointed 'i don't have to do anything now, darling.' this time, it isn't at cazador's behest]) bc hey, he's gotta carry out this seduction; gotta secure that protection……… but then retracting when it becomes clear that she's eager to put the focus on him.

telling himself that drawing back is really for her sake because, after all, she said she's fine with that, and he supposes that listening to her builds her trust more, doesn't it? when it's really mostly borne from his discomfort at being vulnerable and the association with sex as a tool and the attention being on him… challenges that, juuuuust a bit. 

it ought to be, 'i do this thing for you, you are won over, you give me trust and protection.' he shouldn't need to have to… put on an act where he's lapping up the attention. it's too much. 

and, to be clear, i don't think that having someone want to focus their attention on him would be entirely strange to him; i'm sure some of his previous victims wanted to lavish him with attention. 

but. now is… just a bit different. even if he's not recognizing why he's feeling this way, the fact that he doesn't have to put up with something he doesn't want means he's subconsciously allowing himself to shy away from it, when he would previously (have to) put up with it as part of His Purpose For Cazador. 

so, he pulls back, and things stay intimate, for sure, but… there's less of that direct seduction.  and she speaks up for him when his vampiric nature is brought up, and she has no qualms with his feeding habits, so it seems to be going swimmingly, but it's still a bit strange. 

i think that could work. …my astarion romance scenes actually triggered at different times than they were supposed to so i'll have to keep all this in mind the next time i go through his romance, but these are the thoughts i've been having. 

anyway jesus this is four fucking pages and i don't really have a conclusion, uh. goodbye.