#spawn vs ascendant

[onlyancunin]

"He's only being mean because you antagonize him"

(Ascendant vs Spawn)

[baldursgateanon]

For the 84687533654125th time: the player is not Cazador 2.0 nor are they taking away Astarion's autonomy and agency for refusing to help him ascend!!!

Honestly I think the best way to bowl that over is talk about the other 7000+ spawn. Why does their autonomy not matter? Cazador was going to use their souls to ascend, what would make Astarion any different from him if he took Cazador's place? The other 6 spawn may be complicit, but Astarion is just as complicit as they are.

Autonomy is not about doing whatever you want to other people. It is about the right to live your life and determine your own destiny. It stops being about your autonomy when the lives of thousands of enslaved, imprisoned people, along with some children, are on the chopping block for moving up in your station.

I agree with the other ask saying it should be said "like father, like son." Astarion has allowed himself to step into Cazador's shoes by taking his place in the ritual. He has cemented himself within the cycle of abuse, and he will die in it.

.

[baldursgateanon]

Okay.

So the actual, real reason Ascended Astarion fans get so much pushback from the rest of the fandom and have such a horrendous reputation is 100% based on their behavior. A SIGNIFICANT amount of them are extremely creepy and obsessive and have no social skills and no concept of fandom etiquette and just make the fandom experience miserable for everyone else. The game makes it very, very, very obvious that the Ascension Route is Astarion's bad ending, that AA is the worst version of himself, never healed from his trauma, and is basically Cazador 2.0, and that his relationship with a romanced PC is extremely unhealthy if not outright abusive. Astarion's writers have confirmed this, the in game narration confirms this, multiple characters have confirmed this, Astarion himself confirms this in the spawn route. If AA fans would just accept that AA is an evil dirt bag who treats the PC like a pet, no one would care, and you could write all the dirty bad wrong daddy dom smut you could ever want. But nooooooooo, you have to come up with excuse after excuse for every terrible thing he says and does and act surprised that other people actually care about victims that aren't Astarion, including the kidnapped children that he just sent to hell so he could become a super vampire. For the last time, no one cares that you're personally playing an evil route or that you want to fuck an evil character. It's when you twist yourselves into ideological knots trying to argue that he's not *really* evil because he's a hot booktok daddy dom that people get sick of this nonsense.

I also want to point out that no one else is enjoying these AA vs UA debates. It's excruciatingly dull and just a massive waste of everyone's time and I swear on a stack of bibles that absolutely no one besides AA stans ever wants to hear anything on the topic ever again. We don't care. We never cared. Nobody is fucking obsessed with AA and bride theory or any of this garbage besides you, but you guys keep constantly shoving it in our faces and taking over every single bg3 fandom space until the mods literally force you to stop.

Nobody. Fucking. Cares.

.

[baldursgateanon]

Just because Spawn Astarion rejected the ritual, it doesn't mean he can't ever become a shitty or an abusive partner like AA did.

Why does everyone bend over backwards to try and say Spawnie is just as bad as Ascended or that he could be just as bad. The whole point of him not ascending is that he's breaking the cycle and learning to be healthier and better. You know, the common theme among all the origin characters if you get their "good" ending.

.

[baldursgateanon]

What cracks me up the most is how Spawn stans freak out when people interpret Spawn according to canon instead of their OOC fanon. It’s so fucking weird, lol

.

[baldursgateanon]

also, as a an aa fan who was originally a spawn fan, please god no "grand debate" with the ua vs aa wars. the shit is OLD and tiresome. are we incapable of having an astarion discussion without drama?

.

[baldursgateanon]

"I would really love to see if AA fans are as *mentally insane* as most UA fans said they are or not."

have a look in the aa tag, then. i am an aa fan, but that tag is often filled with unhinged mile long rants about spawn fans even though it should be about aa. that's not to say ua fans don't write essays/thinkpieces, but i've never seen the same behavior going back towards aa fans, it's always about aa himself.

.

[baldursgateanon]

I would really love to see if AA fans are as *mentally insane* as most UA fans said they are or not. But again, I’m not an Astarion fan here so whatever makes the fans happy ig.

Tbh another problem with this is that since it's all anonymous, there will definitely be people on both sides sending bait asks to make the others look bad. It's just going to be a shitshow and I just don't think we need it.

.