It ain’t sexy, it’s man dinner🤌

A digital redraw of a silly little comic I made of Astarion and my Durge, Cadaver. I know damn well this has happened to these fools at least once you cannot convince me otherwise.

I redid this work. I love the result!

First art post in honor of reaching 400 hours in bg3, I had so much fun with the little details in this

an alternate universe where bg3 is just a netflix show and theyre all acting ... here is astarion and cazador rehearsing their lines together.. more of these "behind the scenes" au content coming soon because its fun :)

Bat bath!

Sorry I am procrastinating. 😅

I am very distracted lately. I got the watercolor brushes for procreate and just needed to try it out. This is the first installment of the "Dancing Across Faerûn" set.

"Before confession"

> THE JESTER

haarlep

An assortment of BG3 text posts featuring some other fools who come through the camp (and also Gale)

Tread here.

Squeaky Toy Syril (+bonus Dedra)

🥴🍷

drunken little bat

Ascended Astarion's thing

How BG3 characters would react if you were turned into a worm

Halsin: He is building you your own terrarium and it is a worm paradise. Every night before he goes to trance, he tells you how beautiful and shiny you are, and how wonderful your mucus is. Wyll: You're his friend, his comrade in arms! Nothing could ever make him stop caring about you, wormhood included. He's consulting Halsin on all things worm care and seeing to your every worm need. Sometimes he loves you so much he cries about it a little. He will love you if you are a worm forever, but he'll also never stop trying to find a way for you to turn back Shadowheart: Conflicted. You're her friend, and she loves you, but you're slimy now. Still learns "Speak With Animals" so she can catch up with you once a day. Lae'zel: Repeatedly advocates for putting you out of your misery. Does not believe Halsin and Wyll when they insist you aren't miserable. Once shot an arrow through a thrush that landed on the lid of your terrarium, though. Astarion: Avoids you, and steers the conversation away when the subject of you comes up. Still sneaks over to your terrarium to spritz your tank with water every night without fail. Would deny this to the death if asked. Karlach: Still loves you so, so much, but she's also so scared she's going to accidentally squish you or dry you out. Asks Halsin a thousand worm care-related questions a day Gale: Devotes all of his time and energy to finding a way to reverse your wormification. If you're romancing him, he *is* still willing to marry you as a worm. Minthara: Has sworn to lay down her life in defense of you until you're yourself again, which is really sweet, but she said it in a really weird, intense way, like she wants nothing more than for someone to try to hurt your defenseless worm form so she can kill them brutally. Jaheira: She's taking a back seat on this one. You seem fine and everyone else is handling things, she's just going to hang unless you need her. She's diligent about mixing fresh veggie scraps in with the substrate of your tank Minsc: So, so scared that every worm he sees on the ground is you

What are your thoughts/takes on Astarion's relationship with sex? How does that reflect on his relationship with Drow?

(Obvious disclaimer: this is just my opinion, and my goal is always to entertain myself - never to argue or be the most correct about canon interpretations or themes.)

Hm. So, something that I find very unique (and frankly, overlooked!) about Astarion's previews experiences, is that when speaking specifically about his M.O for luring marks for Cazador the majority of the encounters he seems to have had were not, primarily, "negative".

They weren't positive either, of course. There is no way around it: having sex against your will is rape. But in his case, the perpetrator was never inside the room. From the way he speaks of the people he slept with, he seems to hold a mixture of contempt and pity; but never anger; from the way he speaks of and with Sebastian, it even seems like, sometimes, perhaps in the early days of those 200 years he might have even allowed himself to indulge in small, brief attachments and hopes. Then, as fatigue settled in and the permanence of the situation hit him, I'm sure the motions became mechanized at best and agonizing at worst.

But I think whatever harm the experience has done to his sexuality or self-value, it's damage struck him tenfold in the concept of object permanence. Imagine it: throughout the course of two centuries, you are not allowed to form a connection with a single person who isn't damned to die later the same day. You never see the same face twice. You are never allowed to progress past impersonal first encounters. Astarion says he wants to be seen and known, but a reality that hurts almost more than being invisible is that there were probably thousands of people who would have loved to do that. But you ruined them as much as they ruined you.

I wholeheartedly believe that he was sick of sex, and that for decades to come there will be times when he still turns the lights off during the act, or, ideally, just says No Thank You and moves on, but the hypothetical that really haunts me is that other thing: the almost pavlovian association between sex and looming demise. That people are going to be taken away from you, so why bother being present?

This is a feeling he struggles with sorting through and vocalizing. And in turn, DU Drow often is under the assumption that this is all about sex, and about whether he truly wants it or not. This is yet another small theme in A Novel Experience but, in summary, for a while he still doubts Astarion's own agency to initiate or participate in it - this reduction of the issue as a matter of physical touch, while the big picture is much more complex.

And this does not always externalize in the far more palatably tragic "woe is me, everyone I love leaves" way. Sometimes Astarion still catches himself thinking of the ones he loves as disposable, and acting with due disregard for their lives like it's second nature.

But back on subject: he can have, does have, and likes sex. By finally being allowed to form a friendship and rapport with a sexual partner for whom he does not feel the need to perform to, he can finally enjoy the silly, the awkward, the gross and even the subpar aspects of sex with true intimacy; the anxiety sets after the fact, as he wonders about what comes next once you're out of his sight.