Yep, people can enjoy whichever version of Astarion they like, or no version! And they can tell their own Tav/DU RP story with him, thats the entire point of an RPG

This^^ I am personally not a fan of spawn route. But I would never expect people who like it to share my opinions and feelings over it. I can totally see why the route is appealing to others and that's great

No judgment on my end! I like both paths because that means I have more Astarion content in Astarion's Gate 3 😆. But seriously, I can absolutely understand how people may not like one path or another. Thanks!

This is the correct take. Also, both routes are predicted by the writing, which is to say both routes you can take have seeds and hints at them throughout the character’s story. None of those routes is “truer” to who Astarion is, so debating it is pointless anyway. It all comes down to which version of him the player prefers. That’s it.

Oh 10000% I think they left all of these clues in there without stating anything explicitly so that people could still freely roleplay their own headcanons for their Tavs/Durges.

@@LegallyBoopy they did it this way cause they couldn't use this book as a part of the lore. Copyright and stuff.

Villains also make better lovers imo. ❤️‍🔥

@@MizuMing Lovers that are selfish for you, will burn the world for you. And hold dedication above morality...I'm inclined to agree with you >;)

Kind of related to your point, I often wonder how much of the "Astarion discourse" is actually a result of there not being more in-game lore and a general unfamiliarity with vampires within the fandom? Sometimes it seems as though people aren't even aware of the fact that he's undead and classified as a monster tbh.

@@RPG_NoMeDiga I remember one guy from about 4 months ago arguing his head off, because he was adamant that the bride HAD to bite Astarion and he needed to succeed on a 18 Strength check to get her off of him. He completely ignored the fact that an Ascendant Vampire was a whole new creature with rules we didn't know yet, because it was a Larian homebrew. You can still be on the same page, but get wildly different reactions to the same information. 😅 Another thing that I see over and over is people talking about Astarion's humanity, but forgetting he has never BEEN human. I get that it's *our* only frame of reference personally, but there is a lot on the subject of elves available for them to see how they may be correct/incorrect on certain topics. I mean humans were literally snapped into existence, but elves- they were literally born from the fallen blood of a god. We aren't the same type of creature, we are different on so many levels, so human-centric focus is silly as far as I think about it. 😅

@@MizuMing jajaja, oh... yeah, you're right. I think many of us are saying, "this is possibly where the idea came from" and others are saying, "well, if it's not identically created in the game, then it can't be the case" while ignoring all of the similarities. It's this desire to play the "right" way and get the "right" ending and pick the "right" dialogue options that I find so bizarre. It's not a standardized test, there are no "perfect scores", the "goal" is to have fun. Then again, they even ignore the in-game evidence. He describes how to create a "true vampire" and people ignore that, too. Even though Astarion repeats multiple times that the player has had his blood and at the end of the game, after the tadpoles are destroyed, a vampire player doesn't catch on fire unlike UA. Yes, very good point! It's always fun to dive into lore, but somehow many people are armchair diagnosing and incorrectly using mental health terminology to describe behavior that can be summed up as "vampire". For example, instead of an interesting discussion on "would it be possible to dissolve the creator/creation bond" between AA and his spawn, the conversation is instead "you can't break up with him, this is evidence of xyz in real life." No, it's evidence that you have two vampires, one that created the other, and it is not unusual in any vampire lore for vampires to not dissolve a blood-bond willingly/easily. And a lot of the information is freely available online, all they have to do is google it, lol.

@@RPG_NoMeDiga Right, they often see it as 'not 1 to 1' so it must be wrong. Right also in that it's not a standardized test, it's a personal journey for your character, yourself and the relationships that you fostered along the way in game, but for some reason if you don't do it exactly like X individual did it, then you 'failed' or got the 'bad' endings. That's not true in the slightest! 🙅 As of patch 7, we'll cross over 17,000 variant endings. They aren't all good and they aren't all bad. Calling my ending bad because I didn't do what you did is silly and vice versa. 🤷 If you are satisfied at the end of the day, that's all that matters, that's all that *should* matter. The random hate from parts of the community and even some Larian staff is baffling. There was someone working on Gale animations talking about the AA kisses we got back in February, they said the most baffling thing I think. The kiss animations needed to be made for the 'Majority'. The majority of who? Players? Of 1 million players, over 80% aren't going to see said kisses! Only the people going out of their way to Ascend Astarion and romance him at the same time will likely see it, and of the Astarion community, those who really like AA are around 20% give or take, so why the majority? Only a minority of dedicated people will reach that point and most of us hate the animations. 👀 Gawd~ yes the armchair diagnosis is crazy. Then you have people telling you to 'go get therapy' or get mad at you for not having trauma, so you CAN'T possibly understand something. 🙄

​@@MizuMing Yes, agreed, I hear "bad ending" and think about Mass Effect 3 where the original endings were all the same, except highlighted either red, blue, or green. But, if each person is able to craft a story that makes sense for their character, then, the ending was good for that story that they created. I agree, somehow the passion of some parts of the fanbase has turned into, well, hate, as you've mentioned. Across nearly all socials I have witnessed personal attacks, and insults, and even doxxing of fans who dare mention that they enjoy AA without 100 caveats attached. How very peculiar that it's impossible to create a Venn Diagram between the fanbase members who are the loudest about the "AA bad ending" and those who feel entitled to follow people across social media and tell them that their RP is wrong, because it is simply a circle. In what universe does someone think it's okay to force a stranger to publicly disclose trauma in order to have a conversation about a video game character??? And why, are the loudest people who want to engage in trauma competitions so completely devoid of empathy towards the very real people they're engaging in discussion with? re: the animations, I hadn't heard about that, but I'm not really surprised. I was on my first blind playthrough as the Patch 6 changes happened and yeah, I don't have any positive comments so it's better to just have no comments, jajaja. Only to say, I do hope the Patch 7 changes will reflect whoever the companions were designed to be initially as opposed to being more fan-service for the "majority". Like, I really hope Larian sticks to their original vision and let modders focus on fan-service, lol.

yeah, the banter not triggering is :( same as the Minsc / AA dialogue

sadly, a lot of the Act 3 banter is bugged on PC, too. It's all in the game files though, so hopefully the next update will fix it!

www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1420

Outfit: www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/6919 Dyes: www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/9094

@@RPG_NoMeDiga Благодарю :3

www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1420

@@RPG_NoMeDiga Ah, I see, you did something manually in the codes yourself to add that style to Astarion, yeah? I appreciate the link though, just not sure how to take it from there to Astarion's head lol

@@vicariousxiv2436 Oooh, I understand, you don't have to manually set it in the code [you can if you want]. Alternatively, you can use this: www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/899 That mod allows you to edit the appearance of any Origin character [and yourself]. You do need to have the script extender installed for it to work. Let me know if you have any other questions!

@@RPG_NoMeDiga Ah, interesting! I have individual mods changing the hair of all of the companions (except Karlach, have a mod that gives her facial scars instead) but could never find one I liked for Astarion, I never thought about mods that just let you customize them all though lol Thanks for the info!

Fr I can’t look at it 🤣

Dude just let people enjoy what they enjoy. Not everyone is going to judge an entire romance path based off of a few copium breakup lines. Tav has free will. He directly shows that by asking what they want. If Tav is his spawn and they break up with him, he never controls them to come back. And when you try to dump him in the epilogue, he never compels Tav. Just denies them. He's an evil vampire. He's not going to give Tav a daisy. Can't break up with Minthara then either. There's dialogue options for each way someone wants to RP. That's what RP games do. If you want to RP a victim you can. If you don't want to, the game has dialogue for that too. Unless you want to say we all have to take every dialogue option as canon. In which case, we've all broken up with him, he's both spawn and ascended, and we all forced him to feed on Araj. I really wish people would stop busting in Kool aid man style to repeat the same three talking points on why players can't have fun their own way.

Here, I’m presenting a specific available path and how that relates to some D&D lore. Your comments are about an alternative path, one that is mutually exclusive of the one I’ve referenced as they cannot both occur at the same time. i.e., for the path I’ve chosen to discuss they’re not applicable. In a game that has a multi-branching narrative, not all of the choices are valid all at once. They represent an option, a choice, if you will, as to how you would like that game to play out in your own imagination. If someone IRL asks how your day is going, you can reply positively "it's going well" or negatively "it was going better until you arrived" both will alter the direction the conversation then takes. It's the same in the game - this isn't a novel concept. To be clear, if your enjoyment of the game ultimately comes from RP'ing as arguing and fighting with your LI and being unhappy after the game ends, you should absolutely do that! However, as someone who appears to care greatly about consent and boundaries, certainly your expectation could not be that as an adult player of this game, I must consider your selected RP options and the "disturbing" scenarios that you've imagined for yourself, as a part of my own personal RP on my single-player game, on my computer, in my own home? That wouldn’t be very cash-money of you. It would, however, be a curious display of self-righteous entitlement, and you would never dream of doing that, would you? Happy Gaming!!!

I do enjoy hearing other peoples takes on lines. It is good to see how other people hear the same deliveries and interpret them.

@@wolficer-66 My initial comment was a bit rambly, so let me try again so I can be more concise - When ascended Astarion turns Tav, it is with the intent of making them a spawn he can compel. This is why you can't break up with him after the tadpoles are destroyed. - Ascended Astarion has an unhealthy view on love and power. He's able to put up a mask it if you never challenge his authority, but that doesn't make these thoughts any less canon. If you never trigger Astarion's bite scene, that doesn't mean he's unwilling to bite his companions, just that the opportunity never arose.

I like to think the other lines are for immersion purposes for whatever people want to see or for how they interpret things it’s all about how everyone sees their own play through if people see their tav as a slave that is what they will be it’s all about choice and each play through