@ starryophonic
I enjoyed reading your post and I agree with a lot. I am glad, that you made your own choices and experience.
But there was one problem, which I'm sure is familiar to many of you. Every single post that referenced his Ascended form on socials was rife with comments about how awful it is to see him that way, how people immediately had to reload, how it's not the "correct" ending, how you lose the man your character has fallen in love with. Well, that kinda sucks, I thought.
. Seriously, the discourse was basically, "Ascended Astarion is always abusive. Worse than Cazador. End of discussion." People lamented losing their "sweet boy," which didn't seem in line with what I knew of him, but okay (more on that in a bit). Most of the clips I saw of Ascended Astarion didn't seem that bad, but I realized I was also lacking context for them. So I pressed on.
At a certain point, I also read such comments and those statements and was irritated by the controversy, but especially by insults towards those who help Astarion ascend, which made me think: "Everyone can play their RPG however they want." And no one should let something like that influence them (unfortunately many do) or feel bad for their game, but go their own way and have their own experience and feel with their own heart. That's how I always think. And I'm happy to try to form my own opinion (Off topic: For me, dictatorships, even in smaller forms, are the most despicable thing in humanity.) So even though I preferred to play one variant at first (ascension), I played both routes (except Spawn's ending scenes). No matter how many people want to tell a cock-and-bull story, I like the Ascencion route much better. Everyone should decide for themselves and try out what they like.
Pretty much immediately, I fell as in love with him as I expected to. I've seen a lot of comments that amount to, "If you must romance Ascended Astarion, it's only okay if you're doing a durge or an otherwise evil run." But I didn't want to do either; it's my first time playing and I wanted to play the normal Tav route, and even though it's just a video game, I knew I'd have trouble playing like a straight up jerk. I saw someone else in this thread mentioning doing a "fall from grace" type of run, which pretty much describes exactly what I did;
Yes, it's absolutely not true that you have to play a Durge or evil run. I played a naive, nice and sweet boy and it was THE perfect match and the best dark romance I was able to experience from the very beginning in act 1 to the epilogue. (Almost!) everything fit together perfectly. Astarion mentioned a "sweet man" that he couldn't bring to Cazador, one of the saddest scenes in the game, and it felt that my sweet man was the perfect match for Astarion. I loved my playthrough.
I really like that the rite scene requires Tav to link minds with Astarion. I think that provides an excellent reason why any reluctant Tav might decide to join him. First of all, the animation in this scene is incredible. I recorded it and have re-watched it so many times. His menacing demeanor, the way Tav watches him with that little smirk (do all Tavs have that smirk?), it's all just so *chef's kiss*. And through that scene, I could feel what Lethe was feeling. That this was power she didn't want to let go of, even if it meant losing a part of herself. That she was finally watching her lover unleash his true potential.
I think all Tavs have that smirk, my male Tav did it as well. I agree with you, these are powerful scenes and it's incredible to watch Astarion receiving the power he sought. The mind linking is a great, meaningful moment and you feel yourself being Justitia, the goddess of justice, and feel satisfaction when Astarion carves the runes into Cazador's flesh, like he did to him.
I recently saw a reel on Instagram by someone who regretted Ascending him (or maybe just did it "for science?" IDK), and indicated that they were triggered, or at least disturbed, by one line in particular that he speaks directly to Tav.
"In you too, I can tell. Your heartbeat races. You hold your breath while I speak. You await my command."
I got freaking chills when I heard it. This other person, and I am sad that they experienced this, said it felt like Astarion was mocking their anxieties (not sure if they meant theirs, their Tav's, or both). But all I could think was, "Wow, did the writers wild shape into flies and hang out on my wall? Because this line feels like it was written for me."
And it was written for me!
I really like that line and it gave me chills, too. On the one hand, you think: "oh-oh, what have I done" (and: "Putting yourself on an equal footing with the goddess Justitia was a bit arrogant, Astarion is and remains a narcissist!"), and on the other hand you're melting under his new power and dominance, because that's what you were hoping for, when you met him for the first time and he was throwing you to the ground and threatened you with the knife or when you found out in the goblin camp, he is into some special kink and that he enjoys to be dominant.
I love all the other ascended-specific scenes too
The way he says, "This might be the perfect place for them to die" about the Gur. Ugh, I love it
but that one just absolutely gave me an out of body experience.
This scene is also one of my favourite scenes. I like the arrogance of Astarion and how he behaves there. I also had this perfect line, you mentioned.
Unfortunately they changed Astarion's great and proud facial expressions (which really fit before patch 5) into some ugly and comical disgusted faces, only god knows why they made his facial expressions worse.. they don't make sense compared to the pride and self-confidence in his voice / the voice acting. Here you can see the difference, we also suggested to change it back in another thread, if you are interested in seeing the difference:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=934229#Post934229But I want to pause a minute and ask, does that really make sense? What kind of game is this, if the player suddenly becomes an abuse victim? Patch 6 kisses notwithstanding (which I'm willing to charitably consider a misstep and hope they'll be corrected), do the anti-AA folks really think that people would want to play a game where their partner, even imaginary, is just...a total ass? What's entertaining about that? I think it comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what draws people to dark romance.
Our character suddenly being sad and who is detesting Astarion in those new added "kisses", an extra romance thing (while Tav is and always was in love right before and after these scenes until the epilogue and also in the old kisses before patch 6) doesn't make sense and is a great failure. Plus it's a huge disservice to us fans, to survivors of abuse or violence, to people suffering from depressions and to the bdsm community as well. Hopefully, the Larian team will take this misstep back and rework Tav. I but no longer believe that Larian will be able to bring the joy back to the fans and to people who suffered from this change. I have finished my playthrough before patch 6 and now I am (like other people) not playing a second one after seeing the harm of real people after this questionable "valentine's" patch changes. I don't know yet, if I'll come back to play this game, I am enjoying other things, time will tell, but at least I still hope for all the other people, that Larian will understand, what happened, and make it better in the future.
By the way, if you are interested in reading other posts about this subject, when the patch was released, there is also this thread, where some people started to talk about the new scenes in february, maybe it starts here:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=942533&page=12Thanks for reading. Honestly, I'm surprised this wasn't longer...
Thank you so much for your post!
