#acestarion

Say hello to Mer! Mer (she/her) is my BG3 Tav~! She's a sorcerer who leans into fire and necromancy spells. She's very cold and distant, and finds herself taking on more morally grey quests and tasks in the group.

Though, the reason for such a harsh front comes from her complex history with an ex partner. One who permanently scarred her in ways she won't discuss, but is rather... clear. (Blue hues and all).

She and Astarion end up romantically involved, but through a difficult to traverse way, as the two both have to come to terms with their asexuality... something neither know about themselves at the beginning of the campaign.

I like to think of Astarion as a sex-repulsed asexual. There's one person he ends up being comfortable enough with (his partner), but even then I believe he rarely initiates, and when he does it's more about trust, care and closeness than horniness.

i get not wanting to impose your reading of the text on other people—there are a fuckton of posts floating around about how that's a shitty thing to do and how x read isn't any more canon than y read and people who insist x IS more canon than y are jerks. and i don't disagree! people who insist there's One Canon in a choice-centric RPG are fucking dicks.

but i was also here in 2014, at the peak of exclusionist discourse, when every single time someone said "it's not that i have a problem with asexual people, i just wish they weren't taking up the resources meant for [REAL gay people/rape survivors/people dealing with comphet/etc]." what they actually meant was "I will not be satisfied until you shut the fuck up and never talk about your experiences in a place where i have to hear about it again". and it fucking worked; people recloseted themselves, blogs centered on the aspec community deactivated, real life organizations stopped explicitly including asexuality in their documentation when they had the previous year. for a solid three years, the only time any "big name blogs" mentioned asexuality was to make a joke out of it. i watched this shit happen with my own two eyes.

i don't have a problem with people who disagree with my reading of a character as asexual. i don't have a problem with allosexual people who say "this same thing resonated with me too, just in a different way" and move the fuck on. what i do have a problem with is the implicit vibe that comes up any time asexual and aspec people decide to talk about their experiences and things that resonated with them that we shouldn't take up too much space when we talk about that, because there are other people who don't feel that way and their interpretations deserve to be heard too.

i have not seen a single person on the acestarion train saying "you HAVE to think of him as asexual." i have seen multiple comments saying people who do see him as asexual are delusional or reaching, or that it's insulting—to whatever other identity—to read asexuality into his sex-repulsion. and i am really fucking annoyed [not at all surprised, but annoyed nonetheless!] that not only does the compassion for different takes not go both ways, but that people discussing their resonance with astarion from an asexual/aspec perspective are instinctually or habitually ceding ground by couching it in "you don't have to agree!" kind of statements, when that should be the fucking baseline for every single conversation about any characterization choice in, AGAIN, AN RPG BASED ON INDIVIDUAL CHOICE.

And as a bonus, Gale in a Pansexual dress and a BloodWeave piece I never got around to posting :3