A message to the Astarion fandom
Dear Astarion fans! Can we please take a step back and look at what's been happening in the tags lately?
If you see accounts whose main goal is to harass, target, or encourage dogpiling against other fans, please don't engage with them. Block them and move on.
The fandom exists because people want to celebrate characters they love through art, writing, edits, discussions, and creativity - not to be dragged into endless callout posts, personal vendettas, or manufactured drama.
Lately we've seen posts disguised as "neutral analysis" or "objective discussions" that are, in reality, little more than targeted harassment campaigns against members of the community. Before liking, reblogging, or endorsing that kind of content, please think carefully about what you're actually supporting - and whether that's the kind of community you want to help create.
We've also seen anonymous messages circulating with what are essentially "blacklists" of fans, encouraging people to block or target specific individuals. That is not normal. It crosses a line.
And to the one very persistent little spitz dog who keeps trying to drag the entire fandom into personal conflicts — please stop. Not every disagreement needs to become a fandom-wide crusade. Most people are here because they love Astarion, not because they want to participate in someone else's personal war.
And to the local space troll whose unhealthy obsession with other fans has gone way too far... maybe it's time to chill.
If you know, you know. Seven thousand reasons should be enough. This is supposed to be a fandom. Whether someone prefers Ascended Astarion, Spawn Astarion, or simply enjoys Baldur's Gate 3 shouldn't be an excuse for harassment, intimidation, or attempts to pit fans against one another.
Disagree with people's interpretations if you want. Discuss the writing. Debate the lore. But do not normalize harassment campaigns, blacklists, or attempts to publicly shame people for enjoying fictional content. We've already crossed the point where this stopped being "fandom drama." This is becoming targeted harassment, and it has no place in this community.
This path is self-destructive. Building your life around hatred and an unhealthy obsession with other fans will never lead anywhere good.
Let's put the focus back where it belongs: on creativity, friendship, and our shared love for Astarion.
@ancunin_l
While I don't disagree with the general sentiment here, I think I should add something.
Right now, with what has been going around for days/weeks, I genuinely don't see what anyone is trying to accomplish anymore?
Nobody is changing their mind. Nobody is "winning" anything.
Every post gets a counter-post, every essay gets another essay, every interpretation gets another person insisting theirs is the definitive one, and the cycle just keeps feeding itself...
Baldur's Gate 3 is, at its core, an RPG. It gives players choices. There isn't a magical hidden route where the narrator appears and says, "Congratulations! You picked the objectively correct ending!" There are different narrative outcomes, different themes, different consequences, and people are naturally going to gravitate toward different ones.
You can analyze those routes. I actually enjoy character analysis and discussing writing. That's part of why fandom exists. But there's a difference between saying, "Here's why I read this character this way," and acting as though everyone who reaches a different conclusion is engaging with the game incorrectly.
I genuinely do not care whether someone prefers Spawn Astarion, Ascended Astarion, writes an AU where he opens a bakery, mods his romance, or explores a completely different interpretation in fanfic. That's what transformative fandom has always been. People take the same source material and create different stories from it.
If you're having fun, making art, writing fic, roleplaying, making memes, or just quietly enjoying your favorite version of a fictional vampire, more power to you! That's what fandom should be!
What I do care about is the atmosphere the discourse creates. The constant essays, rebuttals, "reactions memes", screenshots dump after screenshots dump, callouts, horrible asks, bullying, and arguments have started to overshadow the reason most of us came here in the first place and are currently flooding all the main tags linked to the game. I'd rather spend my time reblogging incredible art, reading fanfiction that ruins me emotionally, laughing at ridiculous memes, and seeing people get excited about their OCs than watching the same debate loop for the hundredth time, knowing NOTHING won't change, and seeing it get worse.
Maybe that's an incredibly boring stance to have, but I don't think there needs to be a "correct" ending for Astarion because the game never asks us to find one! It asks us to make a choice, the choice we want! The one the player want!!
[Small note though, I think it's worth remembering that calling for peace while also throwing in little digs like "the spitz dog," "the local space troll," or "if you know, you know" kind of undermines the general message. If the goal is genuinely to de-escalate and encourage people to move on, it's hard to do that while still pointing fingers at specific people, even if they're not named outright.
If we're asking people to stop making things personal, I think that has to apply across the board.]
Make your choice, let other people make theirs. Curate your experience, block what you don't enjoy as always, and please people spend your energy creating things instead of trying to convince strangers that they're playing a branching RPG the "wrong" way.
At the end of the day, it's a fictional vampire in a fictional world, in a branching RPG that was designed around player choice.
Why are we treating each other worse than the characters ever could over whether someone picked Spawn or Ascended?
There are real people behind these blogs. Real artists. Real writers. Real people who just wanted to share something they enjoyed. I don't think anyone deserves to be harassed, dogpiled, or made to feel unwelcome over the route they picked in a video game.
Block if you need to block. Curate your space however you want. But for the love of every god in Faerûn, stop treating disagreements over a fictional vampire like they're blood feuds between actual real people. And stop bullying each other.😭
@raphael-balls-inspector First off, I would like to thank you for your judicious insight. There is no right or wrong way to enjoy your media. All media is meant to be consumed. We all just want to have fun. To be able to enjoy the game, characters, art, writing, etc. Life is hard as hell already.
I love seeing all the creativity across the entire board. I think so much of that gets lost and muddied when our personal opinions take us by the horns.
This fandom has a problem with witch hunts and bullying. With overanalyzing and criticizing others. You do not have to know all the facts, you do not have to be right, you do not have to make sure others are experiencing it the right or wrong way.
I'm seeing a mass exodus in these spaces, while fans cannibalize each other like an ouroboros circling the same dead horses over and over again. This is bleeding out in the real world.
I have been doxed by Astarion fans. I tell you this not to garner pity or sympathy; but because it is a fact that happened. And it happens to others and that is not cool. I hate to say this, but had it been anyone else but me, I wonder if they would have been ok. I have been harassed over the media I choose to make, share, and enjoy. We have to stop the divide. It needs to stop. When you are putting the illusory emotions of a character over the emotional well-being of real individuals; it is a problem.
We can agree to disagree about our lore, our headcanons, about how many toes a character has, and we can do this in a respectful way. Without the double-sided throwbacks. You have to just agree to disagree and cie la vie.
The majority of us are adults. We are responsible for our curating our own spaces. Use your filters. Blocking is free real estate but don't start a smear campaign, let others decide what they do or do not want to consume. Your job is not to police others. Your job is not to make sure they are understand the same material the way that you do. Let people have their spark of joy. Thank you.
-Sanguine (Cazador fan)
@thesanguinesonnet you made me cry... 💕
This is so right, let people just have fun, do content, be creative, especially in this era with AI.
There's no need to shame others for their preferences, there's no need to be investigators for right or wrong. And as Sanguine said, we're adults; we can filter out content.
And the pattern I've noticed is that some people constantly fight over others preferences without asking or understanding why.
You can still disagree but at the same time you also get to comprehend why :)
