Has your opinion/understanding on Astarion's character changed much as you play through the full game?
Actually, yes! Big spoilers again btw.
So, I will admit, my perception of characters is always slightly biased. It's always tilted in favor of my own predilections and desires, so I tend to see things in a skewed way. The less information I am presented, the more my brain will fill in the gaps thusly.
In the early access, Astarion is presented as a selfish vampire spawn clawing for his own survival from the vicious vampire lord that spawned him and has held him captive for centuries. It should be noted that he is one of the only companions open to the idea of abusing the tadpoles rather than removing them and only seeks to cure them if they cannot be controlled. It becomes apparent that he craves power above all else. He dislikes altruistic speech options, tends to veer directly towards ones that bolster said power, especially at the expense of other people. He seems the closest to a stereotypical 'chaotic' follower that you really get.
However, he isn't evil. He's a very rounded character despite his inherent selfishness. He is manipulative and vicious, but he is also desperate and afraid and slow to trust. Most of what he does, he does for his own survival and comfort rather than active malevolence-- though that isn't always the case.
You get an alright idea of him in the early access, as in enough to know if you're going to want to keep him around and invest time into him as opposed to just dropping him at camp perpetually. You catch glimpses of the man he is behind it all, but mostly he appears flamboyant, resourceful, flirtatious, and of extremely dubious morality. Fun, right?
Very, very wrong, actually.
As you progress through the game, you come to understand him better, and it's... tragic.
The first thing to slip is his explosive temper. He is confused, bitter, and frightened. He expects Cazador around every corner, stalking in every shadow, watching and waiting to sling the collar around his neck and yank once more. Paranoid. He has mystery scars painstakingly carved into his flesh that he cannot see because of his condition, in a language he cannot read, with horrible memories he doesn't want to recall. He is angry, and he isn't in the company of people he trusts even remotely at first and literally cannot remember the last time he was in centuries. He bottles up all those emotions to avoid the devastating vulnerability of showing emotion and shoves them down beneath his posh and nonchalant facade, and eventually, it finds a way out.
Occasionally, he snaps. He becomes enraged and has these moments of intense anger.
And then, there is what you might think to be a moment of connection.
Astarion, once he decides that he approves of you, will make a move to seduce you. Should you accept, you might find that he says something along the lines of "Isn't that why you came? To lose yourself in me?"
It seems like typical seduction dialogue at first, but this is very deliberate. The wording is very deliberate as is everything he does. Like a choreographed waltz that he has danced again and again and again--
Until it comes as natural as breathing.
After your night together, he evades a conversation that would take anything any further. No relationship, no nothing. Just a one off that turns you into the equivalent of ye olde fuckbuddies. He stays by your side, of course, but nothing changes between you other than him acknowledging what happened.
So, you progress a little more.
Eventually, both through necessity and happenstance, he does end up opening up little by little. And you find out bits and pieces about him. But there's one that stands out to me:
The crazy blood bitch in Moonrise dehumanizes him, speaks down to him, and refuses to even acknowledge his personhood. She only speaks to you, and makes you an offer regarding your 'property.' An invaluable potion for a moment with 'your pet vampire spawn.'
And he has a visceral reaction to this.
If you have a fucking heart and you don't make him do this, he comes to speak to you later and confides in you. Cazador had used him essentially as a honeypot, forcing him to use his body to lure unsuspecting citizens back to the vampire's den-- against his will. He was so degraded, so dehumanized, and so looked down on for so many years that he has genuinely come to believe that it's the truth. He thanks you genuinely for considering him and viewing him as a real person with emotions and feelings, but is also... confused. He doesn't understand, because that rotten, stagnant belief is still a truth to him: That he is nothing but a tool and a means to an end; that he doesn't matter. That he is a filthy thing to be used and cast aside when convenient. He doesn't understand why you didn't make him do it when it was only his comfort on the line.
And if you ask him to drink from her, he will. He stiffens his upper lip and drinks despite the fact that something is wrong and he knows it. He does it because you command him to. Because that's what he has done for so long that you don't have to have the lord's control over him anymore for him to follow orders.
There is a moment of stark, dreadful realization that sex and seduction have an entirely different meaning to him but he has still been doing it. That the love and connection that he truly needs might be support and a friend and not a bedfellow. That his agency and personhood have been stripped away for so long that he doesn't even recognize them anymore. He is bitter and mean but vulnerable and confused and terrified and he doesn't know how to seek comfort, so he resorts to what he knows while simultaneously distancing and degrading himself.
He does not believe that he is worth loving or caring for, or anything but being an object to be molded. Used. Discarded. He suffered for so long that this is a fundamental truth to him. He is a monster. A filthy vermin barely a step above the rats he's been fed.
You do what you should do: You give him the power. You try to build him back up. Try to help him understand that he isn't a monster or a tool. He is a man; he is a person, and he deserves a say in his own fate. His wants and desires matter. What he wants matters.
If you've done things right, he will take a gigantic leap of faith. He will be with you-- truly be with you. It's slow and he doesn't understand, but he knows he wants it, and you take it as slow as he needs-- but he's still hurt. He is still scarred.
In the Sharess Caress, there are a pair of Drow twins that will attempt to seduce you into what is essentially a foursome. If Astarion is there and he is a love interest and you attempt this, he will say "I'm really not ready for this." while looking extraordinarily uncomfortable, and almost panicked. The scars are still there, and they're barely healing over, and still so, so tender. Easy to tear right back open. Easy to push back into his shell to never come out again, because he tried vulnerability and it burned him.
He does not think he is worthy of love or happiness. He doesn't get to have a loving partner who adores him. Even slipped free of Cazador's yoke, his claws are still stuck steadfast in his soul. He is taking it slow and barely learning to trust another being again, leave alone put his neck out and care for one. He wears his misery as a shield because it cannot hurt him that way. He is a monster who has done horrible things and deserves to be alone forever. And even if that isn't the truth, then Cazador is still lurking out there, waiting to strike-- to rip away that newfound happiness.
Astarion is, above all things, a truly tragic character, and one that I empathize with. It makes my adoration for him slightly guilty. I'm not all the way through the game quite yet, but what I have seen hurts my heart something dreadful. With my character, he is slowly learning to trust and love again, but it's painfully apparent that he thinks he doesn't deserve this, and he is simply waiting for something to fall apart and send him back into the spiraling black chasm that is his life. He still believes all these miserable things about himself. He was forced into immortality, and he believes he's going to spend it alone, reviled, and wretched - not to mention enslaved.
As fun as it is to have a sexy, dark, controlling Astarion, I don't think it's necessarily true to his character as he is presented if you choose to do things right. He isn't evil - he is a complex, tragic man who desperately needs to be able to see his own reflection in a way that isn't horrifically warped by everyone else's eyes.
Vampire. Monster. Killer. Slave. Pet.
It's been so long he's lost track of himself. Of Astarion the man.
He needs to find himself and find peace. He asks to view himself through your eyes, maybe because he's looking for something-- anything-- within himself to hold onto.
If you ask me again in a few days, I'll probably have a fully fleshed out idea of his character, since I'll probably have completed the game or at the very least gotten a bit further, but this is what I have at the moment. Doesn't mean I'll stop writing Astarion as I adore, but I've always openly admitted that my writings on characters are skewed despite their actual content lmao.
People that get invested in fiction and examine fictional lore need to learn how to tell the difference between which lore is actually important to the series and which lore is an excuse for something.
“I know the women are treated poorly, but its set in an era when women weren’t respected” its an entirely fictional world, not a historical documentary. They didnt have to have it set up so women are treated poorly in that culture. That’s a decision they made.
I literally told some dude who had it in his apartment in college and he cursed me out. Then my white friend Jeremy explained it to him and he took it down. They just dont believe the people who tell them if they arent white bc being white is being American to them.
imagine trump just dying from covid-19. imagine trump dying alone in a hospital bed and going to hell. Imagine trump and pence burning forever in Hell for murdering 80,000 people in just a month and a half. That’s seeming more and more likely as time goes on here.
still too hot? Ţ̡̜̮̗̟̯͘ͅA̛͈͎̤͙̳̦̱̜̺̪K̢̻̥̥̥̪̙̜̩̗̼̤̻̻͖͍̜͈͉͠ͅE̟͕̩͔̪͓͔̥̦͇̣͇̳͕͉͜ͅ ̠̝̥̖̭̦̼́͝O̩̦͓̠͉̲̲̱̪̹̻̼̭̯͎͈̕͢F̷̸̢̛̙͇͔̜̙̮̗̲̤͇̯͡F̧̨̱̤̲̫͕͔̼̭͙̠̙͙̹̻ͅ ҉̫̠͓̙̠͔̕͜͠Y͡҉̴̘̭̬̳́O̶̶̧͚̞̣̯̩̫̜̩͉̤͎͖̖͟ͅU̶̵̺̠̪̘̱̮̮̙̻͈̣̦̭͠͝͞R̨҉̦̺͓̩̺͖̘̪̥̺͚̱͚͔̪͓̖̰ ̷̸̺͇̳͇̖̥̻̳͚̗̥͙̪̣́S̡̞̳͖̭̯͉̻̠͔̥̹̫̣̼̹͇͜K͏̧͍̪̗̖̜̫̙̱̫͈̟̝̮͈̻̺̯̟̠̀Į̧̙͙͔̠͖̟̕͝Ǹ͖͎̳͍̪̱̞͇̺̘̩͘͜͠
sokka barely even liked aang or trusted him but he was still about to go sail out and attack a fire nation ship to rescue him
aang was all :(( when they visited the southern air temple so sokka played that airball game with him to cheer him up and then got his ass kicked bc sokka cant airbend!!! and aang took complete advantage of that lmao
that one scene in book 3 where katara and toph are fighting and refusing to speak to each other and sokkas like I HAVE A GREAT IDEA and writes that fake apology letter and aangs like !!!! OMG UR SO SMART AND CLEVER anD INCREDIBLE!!! but it turns out that theyre both fools bc toph cant write
aang goes to sokka whenever he wants advice on How To Hit On Girls bc for whatever reason aang apparently thinks sokka is good with that (he is not) & sokka actually is weirdly supportive and hikes up a mountain just so that aang can pick some flowers
not exactly aang/sokka but sokka made/bought an armour for appa so that he’d be protected during the day of the black sun
“You’re the idea-guy.”
actually their entire interaction during The Drill episode in book 2 where they both came up with the plan to take it down theyre both actually so clever
sokka dressed up as aangs dad once and u know he was really Feeling that role
in the ep with bato when katara and sokka were leaving but then sokka was like…. no we cant leave… i miss dad but we Need to be with aang…. i cried a Little bit ngl
this Scene
im sure im forgetting some good and important scenes so feel free to add!!
Also in book 3 when Sokka first names Combustion Man ‘Sparky-sparky-boom-man’ and Aang takes that very serious so he takes the time to scream “IT’S SPARKY-SPARKY-BOOM-MAN!!!” while almost being blown to pieces
towards the end of book 2 when sokka and aang are leaving ba sing se and sokka’s like “who’s ready to go on a trip without the girls?” while having aang in a mock-chokehold like that’s such a sibling thing to do i can’t even
once again in the southern air temple, when aang finds the room with gyatso and sokka just tells him they should leave and his voice is kinda small and soft and oh god
when aang has nightmares before the invasion and tells sokka to practice climbing and sokka actually does, he just groans and bitches all the time
in the painted lady, when sokka says the spirit could blow up the factory with its magic and demonstrates how he thinks it’d be like and aang joins in
as a build-a-bear employee it is my honor to happily inform you that we get to make everyone do whatever the fuck we want during a heart ceremony. jump to get that heart beating. rub that heart to your knees so your furry friend always needs you. rub it to your toes so it’s totally awesome! shake it up so it’s got enough energy to hang out with you all day! close your eyes, make a wish, and give it a kiss you helpless motherfucker
You can identify a fake redneck by their passionate support of “blue lives matter.” Real rednecks have been in at least one physical fight and/or high-speed chase with police officers and would do it again
So this has probably already been said on this post but I dont wanna scroll through 66k notes to find it.
The term Redneck gain prominence with striking coal miners in Appalachia. They wore red bandanas around their necks to express union solidarity.
And they fucking FOUGHT police and Pinkerton strike breaker forces. It was a period called The Coal Wars.
The poor and working classes have a long history of community support and rejecting police authority.
If you’re pro-cop, you’re not a redneck, you’re a bootlicker who based your personality on a played out Jeff Foxworthy caricature. Get bent. Your ancestors are ashamed of you.
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