be a moon unto yourself

I posted some for Astarion a while back and obvi I can’t leave out my handsome wizard man

- snores. We all know it. Champion log cutter.

- also talks in his sleep - I believe there’s a dialogue line with Lae’zel about this… Gale calls sleeping next to him a positively educational experience or something

- grunts when he wakes up. takes a deep breath in, grumbles it out, and raises a hand to scratch his beard.

- ALWAYS yawns right when he wakes up too

- sock in bed wearer. He wasn’t before, but after sharing a bed with his beloved, he doesn’t want his ICE FEET to terrorize them at night. Such a gentleman

- also has a jammy collection. Yes his matching pajama set has little tressyms on it. What about it

- MUST have a beverage before night night time. Wine? Perhaps. Tea? If he’s not plagued by the ghosts of his past mistakes and in need of some soothing. Maybe with honey if he’s feeling particularly spirited.

- his mother used to sing him lullabies before he fell asleep. And baby Gale would sing them to Tara while he was petting her. Now he gets embarrassed if Tara mentions this, but he would start crying if you sang or hummed him to sleep.

- wants to be wrapped around you all the time. An arm over you, legs intertwined with yours, some kind of contact all the time.

- kind of a warm sleeper. This man is a furnace. If you’re also a warm sleeper, good luck not sweating to death lol

- HAS A LAVENDER PILLOW SPRAY OR A SPRIG OF LAVENDER UNDER HIS PILLOW

- I’d say Gale is highly likely to be a self care king after he’s got his energy back. After the orb took so much from him, he likes to enjoy small moments. Would want a bedtime routine with his beloved 1000%

- just a huge cuddle bug honestly. sweetheart. sweetie pie.

bad formatting for this post because I am writing it on my phone in a parking lot -_-

thinking about how Astarion likely doesn't need as much sleep (if any at all) as tav

sure, he may trance every now and again, but the more time he spends with tav, the more he's gotten into the habit of just pretending to trance until they fall asleep

and then he opens his eyes... and he keeps his rubies on them for most of the night

watching their chest rise and fall, holding a cold finger delicately under their nose and feeling the warmth of their breath, bringing his finger to his lips and touching them, feeling the humidity

the nights he actually does want to sleep/trance, he snuggles up on top of tav and rests his head on their chest, letting the thump of their heart pound against his ears

he insists that tav play with his hair

if tav doesn't, he puts his freezing hands on their ribs and pokes at them until they do

his other favorite sleeping position is moving so that his lips rest against the pulse point on tav's neck, so he can feel the thrum against his mouth

when they're laying like this, Astarion likes to give tav little butterfly kisses on their jaw

he also prefers tav to hum a lullaby or speak to him like this as long as they can before drifting off... he likes to feel the rumble of their voice on their throat

leave kisses: neck, cheek, back

There’s something reverent about the way Astarion leaves a gentle kiss on your neck before and after he feeds from you. It’s an expression of gratitude, a way to honor you and your kindness. The irony is how gentle these pecks are. If he’s feeling adventurous, he builds up the intensity of these kisses as he prepares to bite into you. It’s a game to him, and you can feel the grin he’s wearing when he indulges in that way.

He also kisses your neck as a greeting. Nothing too saucy, just a press of his lips against your pulse point. His arms would wrap around your midriff and he’d spin you around to kiss your pretty face, too.

His cheek kisses are more playful. He peppers them across your face if no one else is around. And often, he’ll nibble your cheek instead of just kissing it. Astarion is a chubby cheek lover and I’ll carry that notion for as long as I live.

He loves to kiss your back, too. Especially if he sneaks up behind you and catches you by surprise. You’ll feel a press of his lips to the space just below the nape of your neck and jump while he huffs out a laugh. He loves to surprise you, and he loves the goosebumps he brings out even more.

receive kisses: forehead, cheek, hands

He fusses if you “mess up” his hair but he adores it when you brush back a curl to leave a gentle kiss on his forehead. He melts when you do. If you can’t quite reach his forehead, a cheek kiss will suffice, but if you’re laying down together you’d better give him a forehead kiss or five. It’s expected of you, but he’d never admit it if you asked.

When you walk past him, he lives for the times that you leave a peck on his cheek. He almost always grabs you and returns your affection with a much more heated kiss. Your own cheeks will be flushed when he’s satisfied with returning the favor.

He loves when you kiss him in front of others. He’s proud to be with you, to share the bond with you that he does. He’ll show you off whenever and wherever he can. You feeling the same makes him positively giddy.

KISS HIS HANDS. The notion is so tender, so reverent, that the first time you do it he has to tease you to mask his awe. Of course he whispers filthy things about what his hands have done, what they’re capable of, but he’s hoping that you don’t notice the shyness behind his words. Take his hands and kiss his knuckles. Tell him how you love him… *all* of him. He’d be weak in the knees.

O is for Owlbear.

...or more like "Oh well, I fell asleep and almost forgot to share this", today with our special guest, Shadowheart! Both of them deserve all the kisses 💕

BG3 Alphabet Challenge

By not human, I mean, elf. He’s first and foremost and elf, something which people often ignore and I blame Larian for that because they really do not go very deep into the Elven lore, though there are obvious hints that they have read up on it and have taken them into account when they created Astarion.

While I don’t have the time nor the will to get into specifics now, I highly recommend you read DnD Elven lore. Read up on their customs, family dynamics, the way they view life and death, the way they view other elves, their gods, the Seldarine and their afterlife, their history and connection to the Feywild.

Most importantly read up on vampire elves, because they’re very much different to human ones and terribly tragic. Read up on Jander Sunstar, probably the most well known Elven Vampire in DnD. I promise you you’ll understand Astarion better and stop projecting human behavior and psychology on him.

All of the BG3 companion quests tell you the key aspect of their story. Astarion is “The Pale Elf”…Elves value nothing more than freedom and he’s been made a slave. They crave light & beauty and Astarion has been kept in a dark dungeon, essentially since childhood. Elves can remember literally everything and Astarion can’t remember the color of his own eyes.

Cazador, also being an elf, gives a callback to tons of DnD lore about the cruelty of elves to one another (specifically Sun elves which Cazador totally gives that vibe…Jandar Sunstar is a sun elf)

I could go lore deep and tell you that there IS a way to cure Astarion of vampirism that doesn’t involve God Gale…but that’s for your dungeon master to do.

Anyway, Ascended Astarion is a beautifully TRAGIC ending, if you understand elven lore..like achingly beautifully tragic.

Spawn Astarion is a better “DnD” ending, because it sets up another adventure.

Y’all, did it never occur to you that maybe Gale “I’m So In Touch With My Emotions That I Tell You I’m In Love With You Before We’ve So Much As Kissed” Dekarios is the way he is because he was raised by two moms?

Well, three moms if you count Tara (& I do).

What I’m saying is Morena Dekarios is a lesbian.

Morena Dekarios

is a lesbian.

Well firstly I don’t think any of the endings are a binary of good or bad, they are breaking and perpetuating cycles.

And secondly, there is a lot of nuance in the relationship between mortals and gods. It’s a terrible, awful dynamic because they are not even starting on the same footing, they are so far from equals that it becomes reductive to frame it that way.

Because to meet her as an equal, to be able to address the awful thing that happened with the orb, he would have to sacrifice parts of himself (parts that she as Midnight had to sacrifice to become Mystra too) that make him human. To pursue his view of justice, which is really based in anger, shame and a desire for vengeance and recognition, he would have to let go of those things.

Sometimes the greatest victory isn’t that. Sometimes it is moving past survival into something new. Sometimes it’s looking across a room and seeing the patterns that made a person who they are, or even stopped them being a person at all, and deciding you just don’t want to lose yourself to the same things.

All of the endings where people break cycles come at a huge cost. Shadowheart and Lae’zel have nothing in the world but the clothes on their backs. Astarion loses his ability to walk in the sun. But they are able to start carving something for themselves, as imperfect as it is, and that’s the victory of this kind of choice (I won’t go into Wyll and Karlach here because I think their writing is even less defined in the binary of a good and bad choice, but that’s for another post.)

A sentence which got stuck in my head💔

So I decided to sketch something for it

(I still need to post my older artworks here, or some of them. So don’t be surprised that it’s not in the right order! And sorry for the wait!🫠)

No text version below!

Ulder Ravengard thinks in a similar way, and we have to imagine that Wyll learned much of this thought patterning from him. What’s so interesting about Wyll’s story in particular is that he must bear the repercussions of his father’s moral categorizing. When Wyll takes Mizora’s deal, he gets shunted straight into his father’s Bad Category. In Wyll’s own words, “He thought I was a fool or a traitor, and Duke Ravengard suffers neither.” Notice it’s “Duke Ravengard” and not “My Father”, but I can’t explore that rn.

Though Wyll gets redeemed in his father’s eyes depending on the players choices, we fall short of seeing Ulder acknowledge that his way of looking at the world is fundamentally cruel. Instead of fully confronting that the world is complex, Ulder simply shifts Wyll back into the Good Category. Wyll is reframed as Good, and thus worthy of love again. Nothing has really ontologically changed for Ulder Ravengard. Love from Ulder Ravengard was conditional and remains conditional.