Windy Garden

[windbelle]

I have a theory about Astarion's magistrate background...

I've always wondered how Astarion can still remember his magistrate professionalism and can even offer it as a skill to Wyll to find any loophole in Mizora's deal in the origin run despite the fact this guy doesn't even remember his eye color. After reading "Astarion's book of hungers" by WotC I got an idea.

So in the book Cazador is a vampire infernalist and in his circle there's one type of devils called "harvester devil" who specializes in making contracts with people to trade for their souls. But they are often too quick to make deals and they may leave loopholes in their contracts. The key to dealing with these devils are finding loopholes in their contracts. Astarion even has a comment about them: "Unfortunately, finding these dandyish devils' contractual loopholes is not nearly as much fun as I had hoped." It implies Astarion has dealt with them and tried to find loopholes in their contracts quite often. That's why Astarion still remembers his magistrate background, because he had to recall and use the skills.

It may even fit as an explanation why Cazador chose him. There could be multiple factors in it but one of them could be that Cazador knew he had to deal with these devils and he wanted to get himself a spawn who seemed to be especially good at it. Astarion might be the kind of magistrate who got the cunning skill in finding and utilizing loopholes in rules to his benefit.

However, there's also one loophole in this theory: Astarion doesn't know infernal. He should be able to read infernal if he's often played finding loopholes in the devils' contracts. Instead, he knows Abyssal according to his official character sheet. That's really confusing but I can think of a reason. It's probably because Cazador prohibited him from learning infernal to stop him learning the meaning of the scar on his back by any chance.

Furthermore, it can also be the reason why Astarion was eager to make a deal with Raphael and why he could immediately figure out how to finish the ritual to make himself ascend, because the ritual is basically a contract with Mephistopheles.

Anyways, I know there're a lot of loopholes in the story and WotC's book might actually make it even more messy, but these are just my headcanons and my efforts to connect the dots.

[windbelle]

Anthony Warlow talking about Les Miz, and how his Enjolras blonde wig got dyed black...

[windbelle]

A snippet from Larian's livestream "Aoife talks with Head of Animation Greg Lidstone, with special BTS footage" showing "the lovely Neil" doing various stances. You can see how Neil embodies the physicality of three different characters: Astarion, Minsc, and Gortash. I love watching his body movements. Never tired of these behind the scene stuff.

[windbelle]

Is there any more interesting theory than the old "dark kiss""vampire bride" theory?

I think it's been said a lot of times but sometimes I just feel like I want to repeat it again and again, so......here's my reply to a video a while ago and I just copy and paste it below:

I don't want to argue whether Astarion loves Tav or not, but the vampire bride/groom theory is from an outdated 2e DnD accessory book "Van Richten's Guide to Vampires" which cannot really apply to BG3. If you want to argue if Tav is a true vampire or not based on this theory, you also have to remember the setting of "vampire bride/groom" was 2e DnD lore where there was no spawn at all. There was no such thing as spawn in the setting where there was "vampire bride/groom", and in that setting vampires only create true vampires. Every offspring of a vampire was a true vampire. Moreover, in that book a vampire master didn't have complete control over its sired vampire minions. The book says the newly fledged vampire has an inborn will to bow to its creator but after a few years this will wears off. The vampire master couldn't mind control its minion like how vampires control their spawn in 5e setting. They would control their vampire minions by manipulation and intimidation like mortals do. When a vampire minion had grown powerful enough to destroy the master, the master would choose to destroy it first or just set it free. So essentially vampire minions in 2e were not puppets since their creation, not like spawn in 5e DnD rules which BG3 follows. It's true in that book a vampire bride/groom had free will since its creation, but all sired vampires had considerable free will when they were created and they would have complete free will after a few years. So it's not like a vampire bride/groom was closer to a true vampire who had more free will than the puppet-like spawn. They belong to different settings and they just cannot be compared.

Also, in the updated 5e Ravenloft module "Curse of Strahd", there's no mention of "vampire bride/groom". Strahd has a lot of spawn consorts, and some of them are sealed in the crypt because he got tired of them. He is constantly looking for consorts and he would turn his object into a spawn, not a special species called "vampire bride/groom" or anything.

I don't know what kind of things Astarion has turned Tav into, and the game is sorta vague about it. But "vampire ascendant" is a new thing without previous lore so the game can basically say whatever about how Astarion creates his spawn or his consorts and how they are bonded. It's possible that a spawn of the vampire ascendant is different from an ordinary spawn and has more free will. You can have your headcanon. I'm just surprised to see people still take this "vampire bride/groom" thing out of context and apply it to the 5e BG3 like it's canon or something. It's really not canon.

[windbelle]

There's a pretty recent interview with Astarion's main writer Stephen Rooney. Most of the things he said have been mentioned before but it's still worth a listen, I think. I didn't know Swen also had such a say in the development of Astarion.

[windbelle]

Saw this deprecated narrator line in the Cazador quest when I looked into the datamined dialogues. I wonder why they deprecated this line. Is it because it's too directive and they try to avoid using the word "redemption" straightforward for the spawn route?

Also there are small differences between romanced and non-romanced players. For a romanced player the line is "You see your beloved, standing on the precipice. On one side is untold power, at the cost of seven thousand souls. On the other - vulnerability and weakness. But perhaps redemption too." For a non-romanced player it's just "vulnerability", no "weakness".

Iirc the dice checks are the same for all players. Astarion has some different lines for a romanced player but the differences seem trivial. However, the small difference in this narrator line makes me wonder if they wrote the different lines to make a romanced player a little bit harder to turn down Astarion's pleading for ascension.

[windbelle]

"People are well within their power to break cycles. It is the hardest thing in the world sometimes but it's also possible. I love the fact that Larian have given a very honest open point of view on abuse and trauma and all the rest of that stuff through many different characters by showing exactly the spectrum of what happens to people without judgement which is very interesting they took that. I really appreciate the fact they left it very open in that sense because it is important to say that both things can be true."

Well said. Ultimately it's the spectrum of one abused and traumatized character, and both of the two routes can be true. It's not that one is THE real Astarion and the other is not.

Also glad to hear Neil acknowledge that it's very hard for some victims to break the cycle but it's still possible. That's why you have to really convince Astarion and talk him out of that intoxicated state of mind on the brink if you want to help him break the cycle.

[bestmusicalworldcup]

Little Shop of Horrors is so much funnier when you know that Alan Menken came from a family of dentists.

[januscorner]

Not just that his dad was the president of an organization that promoted laughing gas as being safe.

[hyzenthlae]

Visit Original Link

her singing the final "star quality" instead of shouting it 🤯

[keenenthusiastinfluencer]

Visit Original Link

do not share outside of tumblr

[windbelle]

I know a lot of people hear Dr Frank N Furter in Astarion, me included. However, Neil once explained in a stream back in Aug 2023 that he didn't reference Tim Curry when playing Astarion. He thought that'd go too far because Astarion is theatrical but not camp. Instead, he took inspiration from his friend Reuben Kaye. Neil did acknowledge there may be similarities between them, and he would love to play Rocky Horror Picture Show. I can definitely see Neil playing Astarion playing Dr Frank.

[roksik-dnd]

For everyone who asked: a dialogue parser for BG3 alongside with the parsed dialogue for the newest patch. The parser is not mine, but its creator a) is amazing, b) wished to stay anonymous, and c) uploaded the parser to github - any future versions will be uploaded there first!

UPD: The parser was updated!! Now all the lines are parsed, AND there are new features like audio and dialogue tree visualisation. See below!

Patch 7 dialogue is uploaded!

If you don't want to touch the parser and just want the dialogues, make sure to download the whole "BG3 ... (1.6)" folder and keep the "styles" folder within: it is needed for the html files functionality (hide/show certain types of information as per the menu at the top, jumps when you click on [jump], color for better readability, etc). See the image below for what it should look like. The formatting was borrowed from TORcommunity with their blessing.

If you want to run the parser yourself instead of downloading my parsed files, it's easy:

run bg3dialogreader.exe, OPEN any .pak file inside of your game's '\steamapps\common\Baldurs Gate 3\Data' folder,

select your language

press ‘LOAD’, it'll create a database file with all the tags, flags, etc.

Once that is done, press ‘EXPORT all dialogs to html’, and give it a minute or two to finish.

Find the parser dialogue in ‘Dialogs’ folder. If you move the folder elsewhere, move the ‘styles’ folder as well! It contains the styles you need for the color coding and functionality to keep working!

New features:

Once you've created the database (after step three above), you can also preview the dialogue trees inside of the parser and extract only what you need:

You can also listen to the correspinding audio files by clicking the line in the right window. But to do that, as the parser tells you, you need to download and put the filed from vgmstream-win64.zip inside of the parser's main folder (restart the parser after).

You can CONVERT the bg3 dialogue to the format that the Divinity Original Sin 2's Editor understands. That way, you can view the dialogues as trees! Unlike the html files, the trees don't show ALL the relevant information, but it's much easier to orient yourself in.

To get that, you DO need to have bought and installed Larian's previous game, Divinity Original Sin 2. It comes with a tool called 'The Divinity Engine 2'. Here you can read about how to unstall and lauch it. Once you have it, you need to load/create a project. We're trying to get to the point where the tool allows you to open the Dialog Editor. Then you can Open any bg3 dialogue file you want. And in case you want it, here's an in-depth Dialog Editor tutorial. But if you simply want to know how to open the Editor, here's the gist:

Update: In order to see the names of the speakers (up to ten), you can put the _merged.lsf file inside of the "\Divinity Original Sin 2\DefEd\Data\Public\[your project's name here]\RootTemplates\_merged.lsf" file path.

Feel free to ask if you have any questions! Please let me know if you modify the parser, I'd be curious to know what you added, and will possibly add it to the google drive.

[bestmusicalworldcup]

In the latest news regarding Proshots:

Six the Musical's proshot (that was filmed in 2022) will be released in British cinemas on April 6. No word on international releases.

The Waitress proshot will stream on Max and National Theatre at Home February 14.

Waitress is already available on digital and Blu-Ray.

[ishmaels]

A special gift for people who enjoy Anthony Warlow switching between voices, making funky noises and generally sending it in Jekyll & Hyde:

Visit Original Link

Not a bit reprehensible :) It's so defensible :)

(ft. Lucy Maunder as Roxie Hart, S. Valeri as Mary Sunshine and Asabi Goodman as Matron "Mama" Morton)

**PLEASE DO NOT RE-POST ELSEWHERE**

[windbelle]

BALDUR'S GATE 3's Neil Newbon Gets Candid About Astarion's Most Emotional Scene, Head-Canons, and How 'Darling' Came to Be

Neil Newbon spoke to Nerdist about all things Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3, including his most intense scene, Darling's inception, and more

Is there any aspect of Astarion that you feel you specifically created in him?

Newbon: I think it’d be remiss of me to say I brought this to Astarion. I took Stephen [Rooney]’s words, which were beautiful, and I did things with them. This is what Stephen told me after the initial demo when I sort of quasi-auditioned, demo-ed for Asatarion. Stephen reviewed it. He liked what I was doing… He didn’t predict the things that I was doing with the character. So they were a surprise to him, which he liked. He then started writing towards the rhythm that I was trying out with the character because he liked it. I think the word “Darling” became more of a thing after he heard me say one line that had the word “Darling” in it, and it wasn’t supposed to be like a thing for him, but it sort of became like an anchor point for Astarion, which I think was really interesting.

Newbon: I didn’t improvise any of the lines. The lines of dialog were beautifully written. But what I did do is the cadence, the habits, the mannerisms, the different jumps and changes, the theatricality, the facade of him, all that kind of stuff I brought in, which isn’t scripted per-se, but I’m obviously following Stephen and the other writers who contributed towards the Astarion’s words and just brought my own take on it, my own flavor on it.

I did a lot of background work, I did a lot of character creation work myself. I spent a long time, over four years, really cultivating different aspects. And I thought a lot about his habits. I brought in a lot of different methodology, from method work, movement work, creature and character design. I spent a lot of work.

This was not something that I just switched on and got into. This took a lot of experimentation to find what was right, especially with things like the voice and particular habits he would do for deflection or dismissing you. I wanted to build very strong habits into him so that even if he was saying one thing, his body might give himself away or what his real intent was. And I think largely we got pretty successful at that because I think you can watch his physicality and realize he’s saying the opposite of what he’s saying.

There was a lot of fun to be had. But yeah, I worked my socks on this role and it was great. It was four years of joy. It was great. Four and a half years of joy.

So, speaking of that work, you did building his lore…

Newbon: Not his lore, the lore is set by the writers, building his life, I think.

Perfect, building his life. Given all that work, do you have, in the fandom, we call it a head-canon? Do you have any headcanons about Astarion that are not explicitly said in the game?

Newbon: I have his background, and I developed aspects of his background that aren’t talked about because that’s a method tool to help live the character’s life. Okay, well, in the past, he used to do things like this. Therefore, that’s a habit that he would carry on into this new life, being a vampire and being a slave, essentially.

So, I took habits from his past that aren’t scripted and developed those myself. Nobody knows that. Nobody needs to be told that. But what it does do is that if I’m put into a new context of a new scene, I know how he’s going to react habitually and also his wants and needs and objectives, anyway. All of that factors into the choice I will then make in-line with physical movement because I have his life in my head. So, if you want to call that a head-canon. That’s kind of like a historic head canon.

What I don’t do is head-canon the future of beyond the story because that story’s happened.

Is there anything you can share there? He loves wool and socks or something.

Newbon: Yeah. There’s a thing where Astarion always checks his nails when he is trying to just dominate people. He dismisses them with a head turn, usually to the left. He does this to put people in their place. To make very them acutely aware that he’s in control.

......

[windbelle]

Stephen Rooney: “There definitely was one point which is extremely spoiler heavy so I won’t get into it but there was one point where I’d written kind of some fairly basic lines and Neil just gave such emotion to them that it fundamentally changed the scene for me. So it does happen.”

I’ve always wondered which scene and what lines he was referring to.

[bluepeets]

This is outside the O'Neill. (I wonder how long they're going to keep it up.)