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Ship Tournament, Round 2 — Match 5 / 15

Astarion/Wyll

"Much has been said about how Wyll's romance better fits what Astarion seems to truly want in a relationship, that Wyll is happy with a more chaste relationship, etc etc. But what's often missed is that Astarion is actually a fantastic match for Wyll! Wyll is self-sacrificing to an unhealthy degree, and often minimizes the abuse and trauma he's been through. Astarion, meanwhile, is much more open-eyed to what he's experienced. He's happy to choose himself when needed and pushes those he cares about to do the same. And if you play as Astarion, you're given unique dialogue options to compare Mizora and Cazador and urge Wyll away from being passive in response of how she abuses him. Astarion needs someone to teach him how to empathize with others, and Wyll needs someone to teach him to fight for himself as much as he does for others. They complete each other!"

vs. Ansur/Emperor

"THE doomed exes ship. ansur loved balduran enough to search for him, shelter him, try to save him, and then couldn’t accept what he’d become. the emperor loved him enough that killing him is still framed as this huge buried wound centuries later, even through all the mind flayer emotional repression and manipulation. it’s horrible because neither of them is uncomplicatedly “wrong” in the emotional sense? ansur sees the person he loves transformed into something he believes is a monster. the emperor sees the person he trusts most deciding that mercy means killing him. they loved each other and it still ended under the city with a dragon’s corpse and a sword in the dark. what the fuck man."

"sometimes romance is a dragon looking at the illithid wearing your lover’s memories and going “i can’t live with this” and the illithid going “i am alive, why is that not enough”"

"Is the Emperor still Balduran? Is Ansur loving him, mourning him, or rejecting him? Is the Emperor’s anger betrayal trauma or the cold self-preservation of a mind flayer? It’s messy and awful and romantic in the gothic “this ends with both of us ruined” way. Exactly what I want from a dragon and his fucked up squid ex."

Where is this outcry when other Wyll ships were losing? It's ONLY racist if he's not winning next to the popular white man? Y'all are really telling on yourselves. If people like a side ship this much just accept it instead of trying to guilt people into voting for your ship