Comment on of death potential and death absolute

  1. Raayide Mon 19 Feb 2024 03:00PM UTC

    ahh?? thank you?? oh my god??

    I'm so happy you like my prose!! writing something so long and divided after my last Astarion stories have been essentially one scene was pretty nervewracking, since showing it over so much time can be a lot, but happy to hear that it works! writing all the proper unreliable narrator metaphors and Astarion-isms was very fun lol

    him thinking they're all aspects of himself! I remember when I first had this idea, it was mostly centered around him not realizing it was over until Cazador was actually dead, but when I started piecing out how I wanted to write it I wondered how he would react to everyone, and my first instinct was that while he wouldn't think they were real, he would wonder WHAT they were, and the only possible outcome would be that they were him. and then I thought about Lae'zel. and Karlach. and Gale. and I was like oh yeah I think I've got a story here. they're all just mirrors of each other in uniquely broken ways and he did his best to heal them, healing himself in the process! rip king!

    and Astarion himself he's just,,, going through it. I really like this scenario because in all honesty, I don't think he's ever been scared of death - he's scared of the LACK of it. that no matter what happens, he will always heal and then it will start again, because Cazador shackled him to eternity and he can't escape. so in a world where he knows it's real, there's the small part of him that knows if he messes up enough they'll just kill him and he'll be free in that way - but not here, because if they kill him, he thinks he'll just wake back up in the kennel. and that's SO much more fucked. and his character growth coming from introspection you're so right! he's finding the metaphor in everything that happens, whether in people or in situations, and realizing that it's not right! that the way he's living is not right! he's diving into the minutiae instead of seeing the dream for what it is, puzzling out what everything must mean instead of what it is, because he's so scared of believing it! and oof [like there was some grander meaning that if he could just grasp he would know why he was there, why he wasn't waking up] ouch?? that's such a good way of putting it?? devastating??

    this is all a dream! a kindness to cruelty to reality! him wondering what aspects of himself he's seeing! him wondering why this is happening! him wondering what it's trying to tell him! him wondering what will happen when it all comes crumbling down! I've never seen this kind of idea before but I desperately want more of it. there are so many wonderful things you can do to characters when they think nothing is real. and you're so so right on the sky, on what it means to him; it's familiar and a backdrop to everyone else, but he's been deprived of it for so long he can't even remember what it looks like - and in the end, it's not even the sun, it's just the blue. just the sky, endless and yearning. is this normal? is this what it has always been?

    thank you so much for this absolute wonder of a comment!! it means the world to me <333

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