The Astarion fandom needs to be studied
Do people actually understand what consent is? Or do they think it's only about consenting to sexual intercourse, while everything else doesn't matter?
That's the feeling I get when I look at the state of the Astarion fandom (and spirits help me, I hate fandoms, but this one seriously needs to be studied).
It reminds me of the old hardened Alistair debates all over again. The similarities really strike me as someone who was an Alistair fan back on the forums in 2010.
We have two characters who state very clearly what they want or don't want, yet people keep telling themselves they know better.
And alright, they're just video game characters. That's fine. If you want to roleplay your character one way or another, I don't care, they're fictional. The whole point of fiction is to experience things without real-world consequences, or simply to have fun.
What bothers me is how people justify their opinions online, and how they won't even listen to the characters' own dialogues, characters they're supposedly fans of. (I'm not talking about headcanons. Headcanons are perfectly fine, but they aren't canon.)
In one game, we have Alistair repeatedly saying that he does not want to be king.
In the other, we have Astarion repeatedly saying that he wants to ascend.
Both of them clearly state, multiple times throughout the game, what they want or don't want. Then it's up to the player whether they choose to listen and care. But some people go online and argue that the characters themselves are wrong, or that they're simply too traumatized to make rational decisions for themselves. (Ugh… that last argument bothers me so much.)
But that doesn't even matter, whether they're right or wrong.
It's their choice. Their wish. That's what consent is about.
It's about your character listening to them and taking their opinion about their own life into account.
Sure, you can persuade them. You can persuade Alistair (or harden him) that he has to suck it up and stop complaining. You can persuade Astarion that spending the rest of his immortal life suffering as a spawn is the right thing to do.
Of course you can. They're characters in a choice-driven RPG. It's simply a game mechanic that gives the player influence over them, unlike most story-driven games where you just sit back and watch the story unfold, whether you like it or not.
But that's exactly the point.
These characters tell you, very clearly and multiple times, what they want for their own future. As the player, you have the choice to respect those wishes, or not.
And I'm not saying I'm against King Alistair or Spawn Astarion. I love angst, tragic routes, and drama. They're fun. I enjoy writing fanfics about them for the love of the tears.
What I don't understand is why some people insist on calling those routes the "good endings" for the characters themselves, when you literally have to persuade, or even pressure them into a future they explicitly say they don't want.
Maybe it's a good ending for your character. But not for them.
PS: I love both Alistair and Astarion, and I like both Warden and King Alistair, as well as both Ascended and Spawn Astarion.
But I don't buy the idea that denying them the right to choose their own future is somehow good for them. Maybe they would regret their choice later, and that's fine. It would still be their choice, not someone else's (well, the player's, in this case).
