Behold. Powerful Ascended Astarion

behold. powerful ascended Astarion

I'm becoming more and more enamored with the idea of Ascended Astarion becoming an accidental/unintentional service dom because either:

1. If you enjoy the vampire bride/groom lore/angle, Astarion's happiness becomes partially dependent on that of his consort (potentially with a more direct mental link), and he learns making them happy isn't actually that hard, and when he does, it hits him like cocaine and he ends up spending all of his time chasing that high.

2. If you don't subscribe to that lore, there's also the angle of love being twisted into obsession for vampires. He will be taking over the world, of course, but first, he MUST make sure his consort has the prettiest outfits. Every single day. (He has an eternity to dominate the universe, what's the rush?)

And in either scenario, coupled with his smooth brain/lack of strategic planning, he never really does fulfill the big bad evil villain endgame because he's too busy conquering his consort's every whim (the exception being any request for becoming a 'true' vampire, which I just don't see him entertaining, but that's just me!). But if you prod him about his big evil plans, he'll become very grumpy and mutter something about how his grand plan is definitely in motion, you don't even know!!

(This all makes me think of the A!A epilogue dialogue if you ask him about freedom, and he rants about all the things he's made sure you have/how he'll see you living your best life no matter what). 👀

I love him

I did it, after 1.5k hours I finally DID NOT ascend Astarion.

Never felt more disgusted in my life when playing a game lol. How is that supposed to be the "good" ending? All I heard from him (on a romance path too) is him horribly coping.

At first I failed to pick right options during the Cazador scene and he fucking just left and I was like "you know what, yeah, he should dump Tav's ass for this" and my bf spent at least 30 mins trying to convince me to reroll a save and do it right (I wanted at least one goody-two-shoes playthrough).

Epilogue is so horribly unrewarding too. The romance path ends up with just him... barely even acknowledging the relationship (big big contrast from Ascended where he constantly reminds Tav that they are together) and there's only one miserable "uwu" line when asked about what Tav is to him?

I legitimately don't get how people prefer this. I feel icky for not Ascending him and I'm never doing it again but at least I did it once to have all the save files for reference and I guess that's enough.

Yuck.

❛ Your heartbeat races…you hold your breath while I speak. You await my command.❜

Les Jardins de Nuit (Yoann Lossel)