i am working on getting these all on tumblr but it'll be a minute!
Nicest Thing
“You deserve it, though, Wyll. You deserve a fairytale. And you’re too fucking nice, so you’re trying to convince yourself you don’t want it, but you do. And I’m going to keep you from it.”
“I have the fairytale,” he shrugs. “I’m living it. Every second I get to spend with you, every kiss, every time you make me laugh, it’s…perfect.”
Your eyes are stinging now, and you blink furiously, avoiding his gaze. “Those stories, those fairytales, I’m not in them. They’re not about girls like me. Those girls are sweet and pretty and delicate. They’re not insecure, or angry. They don’t have horns and a tail. They’re not fucking turquoise, Wyll.”
“They are when I read them.”
You went to school with Wyll for 12 years, and then he disappeared months before graduation. 10 years later he shows up as The Blade of Frontiers, the celebrity folk hero you've been singing drinking songs about in bars all over Baldur's Gate. You have to work with him to try and bring down the Absolute, but he's got some secrets standing in the way.
Not quite enemies to lovers, but not NOT enemies to lovers. I'm mostly just trying to give Wyll a more fleshed-out story and romance bc there's so much to work with!! He's such an interesting character and I will die on that hill.
Read on AO3
Too Good (formerly Overlooked)
The hope makes you think ridiculous things, like how it would be the easiest thing in the world to just tell him how you feel. And maybe if you did, he’d be receptive. Maybe even tell you he feels the same. That’s completely ridiculous of course, absolutely unthinkable, but then he leans in so attentively and stares into your soul and it really, really starts to feel true.
So the words rise in your throat and move to the tip of your tongue and—hells, it would be so easy to just say it. It would be such a relief.
And then the fear claws at you, pulling the words back before they can escape.
You and Astarion are besties, but he's been really weird the past few weeks and you don't know why... friends to lovers and verrryyy slow burn, just yearning as far as the eye can see, will likely end with some smut
“I think, my love, that if we survive this, I have some work to do.”
Mina/Astarion | 11/11 chapters | Mature (I'll mark the smut chapters!)
This began from the idea that Astarion's friendship ending feels (to me) like his most happy and self-actualized ending, and maybe he needs those 6 months on his own before he can have a romantic happily-ever-after.
But it turns out she was used to being the one in the relationship with her shit together and when that's no longer the case she has some shit to figure out as well...
Read on tumblr: only chapter 5 is posted here so far (because it's my fave and it stands alone decently) but i will update as that changes!
A flip of a switch (formerly At Your Mercy)
Being as beautiful as he was, people wanting him the way they certainly seemed to everywhere they went, it must be impossible for him to feel safe anywhere. To feel whole. To feel like a mind attached to a body rather than floating outside of it. Gods, but he had such a good mind.
… Did he know that? What if he didn’t know that? What if he thought she only wanted his body? Surely he wasn’t that dense?
Oh gods, she realized. He absolutely is.
Mina/Astarion | 6/6 chapters (for now) | Mature
A prequel to Disarmed, picking up a few nights after the tiefling party/the first time they sleep together. Focuses a lot on Astarion working through his shit, the two of them figuring out sexual and non-sexual intimacy, all that good stuff. Also very fluffy. I took destiny into my own hands and changed the title and I don’t hate it anymore!
"I left you alone, and I’m sorry, and it kills me knowing I hurt you, but everyone is going to leave me alone in the end, even you.”
Rielle/Astarion | 4/? chapters | smut-free just sad as hell
Rielle hasn't seen Astarion for two centuries, and then he shows up at her art show (where several of the paintings are of him) for a painful reunion.
This is set 200 years after the events of the game, so the only surviving members of the core party are Rielle (tav), Astarion, Halsin, and Shadowheart, and Halsin and Shadowheart are near the ends of their lifespans. It's about Astarion wrestling with losing the first people he ever allowed himself to care about and the fact that he's an immortal spawn who's just going to keep losing people- is it even worth loving them in the first place?
If you can't tell this is just pure angst lol I am hurting my own feelings by writing this fic
"She wants to destroy you—but with her, for the first time, you think you make sense."
Female Durge/Astarion | 2/2 chapters | smut-free
An exploration of Durge and Astarion's complicated relationships with their sisters. I edited these minimally so they're a little more stream-of-consciousness. Ch 1 is Durge pov (2nd person though, you are Durge and Durge is you) and ch 2 is Astarion pov.
Read on AO3: chapter 1 | chapter 2
Read on tumblr: chapter 1 | chapter 2
We Were
“If the timing had been different, do you think we ever could have been in love?”
“We were, darling.”
You and Gale are happily married, but an old friend's wedding gets you thinking about the past and how things might have been different. Bittersweet and sad in the way life is sad even when it's not.
Remember when Lil Nas X beautifully explored his sexuality, seduced and killed the devil to the banger of all time, and instead of cheering on this openly gay and proud Black artist for his artistry and fighting back against respectability politics, suddenly said respectability politics was all the Queerest Place on the Internet cared about? Hm. Wonder what happened there.
Anyway I miss him and hope he's doing better with his mental health 🙏🏾
Like say what you want about "bad queer representation", but this was the song that made me openly and happily accept that I was bisexual. To see him up there Black and beautiful, making music that I love, absolutely killing it? Yeah. You couldn't tell me shit. This man made me proud to be out. "This will make them think we're evil for being gay" hey newsflash dawg-
but ykw at least i'm not on mount everest. at least i'm not paying tens of thousands of dollars to slowly suffocate in a 300-person line at the gates of hell. never in my life will i have to be steered in a hypoxic stupor through the maze of poop and corpses atop mount everest. on this earth a lot of horrible things can happen to you without your permission but there are a few that you have to opt into. you can just say no thanks! and be guaranteed never to have to be on mount everest. much to be grateful for actually
Hey artists, C. Spike Trotman, founder of Iron Circus Comics, just posted an invaluable thread on depicting different types of black hair. I’d do the thing where you screencap the whole thread and post it but it’s just too long (which is great because it’s a whole lot of useful information!) Give her a follow while you’re there.
Anyway, go check it out. I just wanted to save it and share it because I didn’t know how much I didn’t know!
This is an amazing resource, not only for artists, but for writers too! I love this!
{ID - tweet from @/Iron_Spike that reads, “Black Hair for Non-Black Artists: a Cheat Sheet Thread. Hi, folks! Just spur-of-the-moment decided to put together some reference for folks who want to draw/model black characters in their work, but arent confident they won’t make simple, obvious mistakes w/r/t black hair. END ID}
There's this video of nuns talking about their favourite things to do outside of nun activities and one of them says "ultimate frisbee" and the other one goes "and sister you are so good at that." I literally cannot get "and sister you are so good at that" out of my head. Out of all my stims this one is my fav lolol
Everyone in Wyll's life just assuming the worst about him at all times as if he's not a walking beam if sunshine makes me want to throw hands with half of the nobility of the city. I won't, because he would want to be the bigger person, but they should understand the only thing between them and a "I didn't ask how big the room is" fireball is Baldur's Gate Prince Charming
I think one of the funniest abortion stances I've heard was from my parents neighbor. He's a like, hard-core libertarian viking larper guy who is very tall and very fat and very bald.
He believes a fetus is human with a soul, but also its "basically attacking the woman's body" so if she wants to get rid of it, that's "basically self-defense". He compared it to shooting a home invader. So he supports abortion not as healthcare, but as killing a baby in self-defense
Y'know I'm so glad someone reminded me of this. Because this was also discussed.
My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.
Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.
He brought up people consensually hurting each other, didn't go for one of the obvious answers like boxing or body mods or something, no he went STRAIGHT TO BDSM and he DIDN'T EVEN REMEMBER THE ACRONYM
