ashenhartkrie

[ashenhartkrie]

Hot Take: Astarion does NOT hate flowers. You just missed a few subtle hints through Act 1 and early Act 3.

Astarion's negatively is directed toward just about everything at all pleasant as you move through early act three, starting the moment you leave Wyrm's Rock. First thing after Gortash's coronation he marvels near tears at the colors of the city in daylight. If you ask if he's alright, it pisses him off.

There's other instances I can't quite remember but he's a straight crank throughout early Act 3 and it took me several hours of gameplay to have a lightbulb moment about his newly crappier attitude.

He just spent the last two hundred years seeing everything in the overwhelmingly warm dim tones of indoor lighting via sconces, rushlights, and braziers, or the dingy blue gray of moonlight outside. Daylight colors are something he had more than a lifetime to forget and now that he has a chance to remember that vibrancy in his own home town, he knows he's going to have to forget it all over again either by death or by remaining a vampire spawn forever. The worm isn't going to live rent free in his head forever, and killing Cazador to ascend in his place likely feels like an insurmountable and impossible fight against a literal titan who could stomp him flat without a corm of effort.

He doesn't hate flowers, he hates EVERYTHING right now because it's all going away very soon and if he convinces himself he hates everything then he won't miss it when it's all gone again. He was denied this for two hundred years and he's PISSED at what was stolen from him and PISSED it's all going away again.

He behaved a similarly in Act 1 about anyone besides him enjoying physical intimacy. Some of this content was cut, to my best knowledge, but the overwhelming majority of his dialog addressing the PC romancing anyone but him are negative or backhanded. This is for two reasons, I think. A: his Simple Plan just dissolved right before his eyes when you chose someone else which in his mind means he has zero safety net, and EVERYONE gets to enjoy sex (key wording being ENJOY, not simply having) except him... And it pisses him off.

He also gleefully interrupts the bug bear and the ogress, I think for the same reason as the above paragraph, being: If he doesn't get to enjoy intimacy neither do they.

He reacts with anger and disgust at anything he's being unfairly denied. Which... That's fair. His feelings are valid, but his reaction to it is pretty shitty and meanspirited.

The other companions I tend to keep in my party, (that is Lae'zel, Halsin, Karlach, and Wyll) however, are actually appearing to behave pretty patiently with him in Act 3 which I find interesting.

In the instance with the flowers Karlach doesn't bother trying to convince him otherwise of his opinion, she just tells him how they make her feel instead and rather than getting snippy or doubling down he more or less agrees to disagree. I also don't recall anyone disagreeing with him during Gale's last quest tasks when he mentioned that he quit praying to gods who wouldn't hear him a long time ago but to be fair, I think the gods did everybody in this crew dirty and they all know it. It seems like they're consciously giving him the space to be mad about things, is what I'm saying.

Everyone I know including myself who gets out of a long-term hot garbage situation kinda went wild for a bit with freedom, spoke poorly, behaved strangely, had extreme emotional reactions to things, and made some particularly terrible choices. I think that's just a part of recalibrating yourself, healing and learning how to be okay again.

Point is, I wouldn't conflate too many of the turbo-negative things he says with how he actually feels about anything. We certainly know what he says and what he feels are two very different things.

[ashenhartkrie]

A Solitary Centaur by Ferdinand Keller (1842-1922)

[ashenhartkrie]

i like it when pit bulls do this

[ashenhartkrie]

Q+A from library visit where I read my comic about a skeleton that plays the fiddle

Kid: Is this fiction?

Me: Yeah

Kid: I kinda thought so

Me: Oh really? Why?

Kid: Because skeletons aren't real

Me: Skeletons are real. You have one!

Kid, jumping up out of his seat: Yeah but they don't move around!!

Me: Your skeleton's moving around right now!

Kid, yelling: THAT'S!! DIFFERENT!!!

[ashenhartkrie]

we used to have normalized whump. remember what they took from you....

[ashenhartkrie]

redpandaar on twitter

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hey bud, would you mind pinning me to something and letting me struggle against your weight for a while? it’s good for my mental health

[ashenhartkrie]

mischaracterization of alucard hellsing is always so funny. like are you sure that freak is a womanizer or does he just have a cool voice

[ashenhartkrie]

shared by homohistoric on instagram

[ashenhartkrie]

When I was a teenager and still on Neopets I was part of a pretty big Star Trek guild and eventually became part of its council, with the solemn duty of creating weekly polls. Well one day I created the poll "Which would win in a fight? Borg Cube or Death Star?". Naturally, since this was a Star Trek guild, the answer was overwhelmingly "Borg Cube", but someone did have the rationality to point out we were biased.

So I look up a pretty prominent Star Wars guild and message one of their council and ask them to poll the same question and get back to me in a week. They do, and naturally the fuckin geeks said "Death Star".

So then I look up a Stargate guild and messaged the lead council member, saying the same thing, and they get back to me almost immediately saying that the Death Star would immediately one-shot a Borg Cube but they would never be able to do it again to another Cube. And I took that wisdom back to my guild and we were mollified, and for one moment the Nerd World was peaceful.

[ashenhartkrie]

This machine kills AI

[ashenhartkrie]

oh uh. scuse me. just a lil snail crossing your dash

[ashenhartkrie]

[ashenhartkrie]

Hey everyone, please consider buying the 2024 itch.io Palestinian Relief Bundle- it's 373 games, game-making assets, tabletop roleplaying games, zines, and comics for a minimum of just 8 USD! They have a goal of 100,000 USD, and as of the time I'm writing this post, they have 8 more days to reach it.

Link will be in the reblog!

[ashenhartkrie]

the nala stomp!

[ashenhartkrie]

ladies

[ashenhartkrie]

SO fun fact about me, dragon age is literally my favourite game series of all time and I think about it every day and I have for like 13 years.

I've also NEVER done fanart for it before because like. I love it so much it feels like nothing I draw could ever do those feelings justice?? but I'm trying to change that before dreadwolf so here's a zevran!!

Expect much more to come in the future 💖💖