#wyll waking up with holes in his neck like..... arent i supposed to be a monster hunter.... why did i let him do that

[pinnithin]

yknow i didn't necessarily start my wyll origin run with the intent of romancing astarion in mind but the more i play the more i find their similarities amusing when it comes to like, the surface level personality they present to strangers in act 1.

wyll is a compulsive flirt. you see it in dialogue with shadowheart and lae'zel - he just tosses out a couple lines that clearly aren't supposed to go anywhere (asking lae'zel if she believes in love at first sight, blatantly reusing the same flirtation attempts with shadowheart) and i see this as part of his Blade of Frontiers persona. obviously a traveling vigilante would have no time for romance or relationships, but he's socially aware enough to have learned that people respond well to a certain level of rogueish charm. especially if his reputation precedes him. he can safely and positively engage in surface level flirtations with the people he interacts with because the person doing the flirting isn't real - at least not to him. he often says the Blade is his best self, but to him its an ideal he strives to achieve, not the person he really is. and i imagine that includes the ability to give discouraged people positive attention in a nonthreatening way. its safe. its superficial. he doesn't have to follow through.

this is overshadowed somewhat by astarion's tendency to flirt with anything that has a pulse, but the perspective they both have on it is pretty similar. theyre both coming from a place of not actually being interested in the recipient of their attention - whether that be through astarion's ulterior motives or wyll's lack of capacity for a relationship - but they both still put on this front because it's habitual. it's worked for them and it's gotten them through the varying degrees of social contracts they find themselves in. so they wind up trading lines easily because they've studied from the same script.

anyway what im getting at is bumping these two personalities against each other can definitely result in wyll and astarion committing to the bit so hard they accidentally wind up in a relationship. like, you're safe, you know the rules, you're speaking in a language i'm familiar with but we both understand that neither of us expect anything back on an emotional level. wait when did we start confiding our deepest secrets with one another. what do you mean you trust me.

#wyll waking up with holes in his neck like..... arent i supposed to be a monster hunter.... why did i let him do that #astarion wandering around in the woods like why tf did i bite the vigilante that was so stupid hes gonna straight up murder me #both of them return to the safety of the Meaningless Flirtation Script but something has changed #anyway i think theres a lot to explore here wrt the comedy of being mutually oblivious #crossing line after line past the superficial without really acknowledging or being aware of it #and really when you think about it wyll needs someone who doesnt... need him if you get what i mean #at least #someone who doesnt need the blade of frontiers #astarion doesnt need saving or rescuing hes a man of personal agency capable of defending and making decisions for himself and #i think being with someone like that would take the pressure off of wyll a little bit #i dont need you to protect me like so many others #i just need someone to stand by my side #idk ive just been thinking about it a lot #long post #bg3 #wyll ravengard #astarion ancunin #i never know the ship names for these #wyll x astarion