Hey, I saw you were posting BG3 stuff. What are your thoughts about it? Fav characters, pairings, dynamics? Do you like the game story or are you mainly into the fan content?
Hiii! Sorry I didn't answer last night lol I was getting too tired.
SO! I played the game back in 2023, or rather, a friend I was visiting played it while I made all the choices because I hate strategy and turn based combat lol. I had fun, romanced Karlach, and then had to leave after just getting to act 3 and forgot all about it.
I got properly into it like 2 months ago because I read one random Astarion/Dark Urge fic while browsing through a tag on ao3 and realized that Astarion is basically my ideal fictional character lol. I have a huge thing for trauma in fiction but I am also incredibly picky about it and easily squicked, and Astarion's story manages to thread this incredibly rare needle of being everything I love while herding fic writers away from all the related tropes and stuff I hate and that routinely ruin it for me. Plus he's just fave material anyway.
I didn't realize this while playing the game because I didn't romance him, didn't finish his quest, never got the nuances of his story, and I wasn't paying very close attention in general lol. But I am playing it again now, properly this time, so I can refresh my memory and get all the first hand info I can. I had to beg an old gaming laptop off my brother for this, but it worked out. It's slow going, but despite still hating the combat lol I'm having a lot of fun! Don't have a lot of specific thoughts though yet, I'm still pretty early on and I don't remember enough from 2023.
So yeah I'm here mainly for Astarion but I do love all the origin characters! Karlach and Wyll are tied for second fave, and I'm not actively reading fic for them but I love both Shadowheart and Lae'zel and their dynamic.
I'll read any ship if Astarion is written well (and not daddy domified ofc lol), but my favourite pairing by far is Wyll/Astarion, they are like, a perfect ship imo. You'd think it would be too fluffy, and sure it's often pretty sweet, but Wyllstarion shippers do not shy away from getting fucked up with it either, it's an amazing fanfic scene honestly. And I even really like the fluff in this context, since even there Wyllstarion is all about the characters' issues and how they intersect and clash and parallel etc.
I've heard Wyll is underwritten in the game, and I can't comment on that yet until I get through his story, but if so then you'd never know it from fanfic. The fans do a great job of making him fleshed out and interesting. Even if he's more the straightforward hero to Astarion's damsel in distress he's still always entertaining in his own right, and when his own problems with his exile and Mizora etc are delved into he's got more than enough going on to carry a fic. And he's just so perfect with Astarion, like, let me count the ways:
monster hunter/monster; heroic prince/damsel in distress (or hero/dude who dreamed of being saved by a hero for 200 years and then met this guy a day after being coincidentally 'saved' by monsters); relatedly, guy who won't stop going out of his way to help people/guy who is so fucking bitter about that; too self sacrificing/too selfish; kind and considerate/enormous bitch; idealist/cynic; kid with humble beginnings who became heir to the leader of the city and then a folk hero/former upper class asshole who's now a slave; views sex as an expression of love/views sex as transactional; inexperienced sexually/has described sex as his only skill; doesn't acknowledge his trauma/knows very well how fucked his life is and trauma dumps all the time... So many ways to clash and contrast and pull each other towards the middle.
And then you also get stuff like: corny yet charismatic theatre kid/ridiculous drama queen; neither one gets assigned shy awkward nerd by fandom; they're both bitter about gods letting people suffer; they're both going to hell if they can't get saved from the assholes who own their souls; both went through involuntary transformations into a more monstrous form; an excellent age gap vs life experience gap especially in non magic AUs where it's more relevant; the fact that Astarion's canonically got a weakness for "sweet" men despite his bitterness (and calls Wyll sweet several times); the fact that they're canonically attracted to each other and Wyll finds Astarion charming lol; the fact that they're both from Baldur's Gate and both... involved in the upper classes, so there are so many good ways for them to meet in a canon divergent AU.
There's just so much to play around with! And it's all fun and good and extremely relevant to my interests and I have to dodge practically zero of my usual dealbreakers while looking or fic.
Anyway yeah, thanks for asking and giving me an excuse to ramble about bg3 for a bit <333
How about you - are or were you into the fandom, any particular favourite characters/ships/etc? And how do you like the game in general?
