Recently I’ve started my second d!Urge playthrough (this decision had been motivated in part by me wanting to take notes this time; I guess it has been working fine just yet).
My character, Lovage, is going to be a resist d!Urge and part of the roleplay is to (force myself to) do some bad stuff too, since you can’t write a redemption arc when there is nothing to redeem, right? So I decided for Lovage to have a d!Urge episode in the Emerald Grove, when she approaches Timber the squirrel who’s guarding her tree. But it didn’t go as planned and despite me reloading the save few times in a row I couldn’t get the response I was hoping to get from Astarion (my d!Urge’s future love interest) or at least the one I remember from my latest playthrough… and then it dawned on me: maybe this scene is different if you are a Dark Urge? Because that would totally make sense! Under those circumstances I created a Tav just to follow this hunch LOL.
I must add that I absolutely hate this scene since animal cruel*y is something I abhor and even replaying it to get you this video and the screenshots was awful. That’s why I decided I’m going to show you only Astarion’s reaction to what happens.
There you have it, “d!Urge” reaction and then a regular “*evil* Tav” reaction:
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You don’t see it on the video but the beginning of the scene is also different for d!Urge and Evil Tav which I feel is something very important story-wise. While the Evil Tav is attacked by Timber as soon as she arrives, nothing like this happens to the Dark Urge.
Now imagine the scene from the POV of Astarion: the Dark Urge approaches Timber, smiles an evil smile and kicks the squirrel with such force the poor creature is k*lled upon hitting a tree. I think we all can agree that this is not only evil but pretty fucked up. And while Astarion is much used to cruelty, this is not something even Cazador would do; you can see later in the story that everything Cazador does is motivated by personal gain: in this context you can see that tortur*ng people is not mindlessly cruel, it serves (in part) maintaining control. I have this HC however that some of the patrons he handed his spawns off to for sure had such kinks which would also help to explain Astarion’s almost immediate response to you kicking Timber.
I say “almost” immediate because when you watch the video in slow-motion you can see this:
This is his expression just before he makes his ironic comment, and I am amazed again by the amount of detail in this game and so grateful for it here especially because the way they made his expression “bleed through” one frame to another proves that what you saw a moment earlier was not a pragmatic choice to use the same reaction for a character in the background, it was a writer’s decision.
Astarion’s comment sounded so awful to me I kept wondering if I’m a hypocrite, since there seems to be almost no difference between his two snarky remarks except for the wording maybe, which, to be honest, didn’t sound convincing even in my own head. Now I come to the conclusion that whereas in the “Evil Tav” version Astarion’s comeback is clearly a cover up lie of something he has blurted out in shock, while in the “Dark Urge” one he has detached himself fully emotionally at this point (again: Neil deserves ALL of the rewards for his brilliant performance <3), which makes it sound so horrible and cold and makes an immense difference in reception.
With the Dark Urge Astarion knows immediately that he has to do with a complete psycho and he is (quite understandably) scared SHITLESS. Why it doesn’t make him leave? Well, does anything, ever, really? This is why I think that he must be used to much, much worse, if not by Cazador’s hands then surely by those of some degenerate freaks Cazador wanted to make happy.
Nothing seems too extreme to Astarion and if it proves to be, then well, he can always switch his emotions or even consciousness off and then let every terrible thing go on. That’s why he is one of the few companions who stick around no matter what you do and he appears happy doing so. Remember that he is also the one that is willing to give it a go to try to take control of the tadpole? He reminds me of a PTSD patient who is struggling with both substance and hazard addiction. Imagine driving a race car with no brakes and trying to maintain balance between an increased need for stimulation and an overwhelming feeling of all of this being too much.
Astarion from the “Evil Tav” version of the video reacts with fear and sadness in the initial few seconds but then the lines “no, what did you do?!” are delivered with anger and contempt and I believe that this is what he is trying to conceal adding his snarky comment, which is brilliant, to be honest: if you know by this point that he is a vampire Astarion can hope that you attribute his strange outburst to his vampirism (idk, maybe vampires are revolted by the idea of wasting blood?), and if you don’t know about his true nature then his disgust is even more understandable because you just made the scene needlessly bloody.
And while all of the companions show disapproval here, only Astarion is distressed so much he forgets for a moment about his well practiced act.
Let me know what you think!
THIS ^^^
