you, the sword; i, the shield

local matchmaker losing it over yet another unrealistic demand from the clientele 🤣🤣

Despite the most common interpretation, Astarion doesn’t disapprove of all good actions and approve of all evil actions. If you try to apply that logic there are a handful of moments where his approval and disapproval makes zero sense.

Take Glutt for example. The evil thing to do would be to agree to help Glutt slaughter the Sovereign, but Astarion approves if you turn down Glutt and kill him—because the alternative forces you to take on the entire myconid colony and be put in unnecessary danger. He usually approves of you going the persuasion/deception route to get out of conflict for the same reason. Despite his gleeful “let’s go hurt someone” line, Astarion’s primary goal is to never fight unless it’s either necessary or easy.

Astarion disapproves when you make decisions that puts him (and the whole party) at risk. He hates when you take on extra dangerous tasks for strangers out of the kindness of your heart, but not because he wants those people to suffer. It’s because he has one goal: survive. Astarion has been in survival mode for 200 years and that goes into hyperdrive with the tadpole. He didn’t come all this way and have his first taste of freedom in centuries to die just because you have a hero complex.

I know how it sounds, but like, bear with me.

I (28/F/former paladin), had been travelling with a cursed greatsword (Immeasurable/F/Sword) and was really into her for a long time. When we first met she told me she was the disembodied spirit of an ancient warlord and beamed images of a beautiful raven haired warrior in gorgeous blackened Gothic armor into my mind, she told me it was her true form and I was super into it so I forsook my paladin oath and we started hooking up

Early on in our relationship she was really supportive when I started to transition, telling me she was "nearing her apotheosis" as well. I didn't think much of it at the time, and dutifully listened to her when she told me to travel the kingdom and assemble the ritual objects for her ascension. There was a team of adventurers that tried to stop us and she told me to kill them but one of them was my former best friend Sir Roderick The Bold (25/M/Paladin) so I refused and only incapacitated them. She didn't like that and we had a huge fight about it after we'd left

Long story short after I'd done the ritual and assembled the artifacts she revealed her true form was a ruse and she was actually just a mass of tentacles and eyes (which I don't mean to yuck anybody's yum mentioning, it's just that tentacles don't really appeal to me lol)

She said she was going to consume the world, "starting with you" and that I had "outlived my usefulness". I felt really shocked and betrayed and helped the adventuring party that was following us around to defeat her and seal her back in the sword (which I left there), but I feel really bad about it