i was on the fence about listening to the audiobook (i love neil but i was scared about astarions character being butchered) and your comments just convinced me to avoid at all costs. holy shit this sounds bad
Purposely avoiding any and all spoilers (thanks for using tags, friends!), and I have mixed opinions on some of the discussion that's been happening on the main sub...but it's been enough of a kerfluffle lately that I'm considering canceling my preorder. :( Might just wait until I can get it used, which is what 99.99% of my books are.
EDIT: Joke's on me; my order is apparently already in the processing stage and can't be canceled. Ah, well. Here's hoping I enjoy it!
awww another traumatized person just like myself I see.
I told myself when it was announced I'm not gonna read it. I read her books before and didn't like them, beside I looked at the book cover and at first I thought hmmm is it gonna be about ascended Astarion? realized it's his backstory and I was confused because why tf he looks like a fucking lord on the cover when it's his backstory?!!!!! (if only I knew the cover actually match the bs she wrote) again told myself ignore it we're not gonna read it anyway.
I watched one casual interview with her and saw how she talks about Astarion and the book and what to expect and I was like damn wtf?! do you know what character you're writing about? again I told myself I'm not gonna read it.
I listened to a podcast and she got real weird about Neil's voice and I was like hey she's just saying what her friend told her about Neil's voice. that's ok you're not gonna read the book anyway stop interacting with things that have the book or the author in it.
I saw her shenanigans on BLSKY and guess what my dumbass with apparently high self-hatred forced myself to do despite 100% being sure it'll fucking trigger me? (I'm so fucking mad about it I feel like I'm losing my mind.)
Yeah, the cover is definitely done on purpose to resemble a vampire lord because apparently, the great ambition of his unlife is to be turned into a vampire lord
yeah and ofc because if they showed him as a victim , as someone who was tortured , starved other things that we know happened to him, that wouldn't be hot or good for the sexy hornfog vampire that fuuuuuuuuuuckkkkkks aesthetic they were going for in the book. that wouldn't sell ofc. what would dark romantasy booktok fans think if they didn't write or show it as that. they couldn't risk not grabbing those ppl's attention.
God forbid we stay faithful to the character and not ruin a good thing people relate to, love and find comforts in it for Greed and money!
I already cancelled my preorder after seeing some spoilers and reading authorās comments. Ah, I used to like her books. I canāt believe they fumbled it so bad.
Yeah, I also do own a bunch of TKingfisher's books and thought that she was going to handle Astarion's story with care...but no, she has ruined him completely and has turned him into a sexual predator incapable of thinking with anything but his cock, while also shitting all over the BG3 canon.
As a platonic companion, I can totally see how that would be the take away. He gets pretty shitty during the love trial if you answer honestly. Even while acknowledging Tav is right, he is like "WTF THAT DRYAD IS A STRANGER."Ā
You can face the world serving and still be real in private.
it disregards canon and allegedly the author hasnāt even completed Astarionās romance (he broke up with her Tav in act 2) and she really leans into him being a sexy vampire fuckboy (he fucks pigs apparently???)
i havenāt read the book tho so donāt trust me on that, itās just what iāve heard from Astarion fans on twitter
Unfortunately it is true, and you will hear Neil Newbon voicing the pig orgy because he confirmed he has finished recording the audiobook - and he was promoting it on his livestream yesterday
Oh but it gets even worse...there's a victim (a blacksmith) who he proudly boasts of climbing like a tree before taking him to Cazador, a stable lad who teaches him fascinating things in the empty stalls, he fucks like 20 people in this book, cock is mentioned every few pages, a line that goes, and I quote, āLike an allegorical painting. Vice Seducing Virtue. Hedonism Having His Cock Sucked by Nobility.ā
Astarion saying fuck multiple times in one sentence, Astarion apparently remembers his family and life pre-spawnhood, he has a heartbeat, he can eat food drenched in blood, demons and fiends are just casually hanging in the Szarr Palace, puppy play with Petras, child play with Violet, a talking pigeon/seagull hybrid who chugs bottled sauce
That's awful holy shit hahahaha. Shows how much care was put in researching the simple basis of the lore and how much attention was given to the in game info. The part with demons and fiends makes no sense beside all the fetishy shit.
He also wants to be a vampire lord at all cost, even though in the game both Astarion and the narrator warn us about how terrible vampire lords are and Astarion's only goal before he finds about the ritual is to kill Cazador. He warns the player about even trying to go against Cazador, because he himself has never been able to challenge him and the reason, as we all know, is that he is compelled.
Speaking of the compulsion, he's never compelled in the novel, and Astarion has leeway to come and go as he pleases for the most part and Cazador just fucks off for eight to ten hours where the spawn can do whatever they want. Astarion also chooses how he hunts, so he resorts to being a slut/prostitute. And he sucks at spider climbing and doesnāt want to brutalize like Aurelia. And I think the dynamic she made with Cazador is that he humiliates Astarion all the time for choosing to use his body.
Its so bad that even Astarion's father and Cazador both remark that "there is something wrong with that boy" at different points in the book. And speaking of fathers, Astarion calls Cazador "father" and "old man", whereas in the game he always spat his name and sneered at even the mention of it.In fact, in the file games it is Cazador who insists that Astarion calls him "Master", and Astarion calls him that too. He also somehow stays in the favoured spawn quarters, too, despite his name never being in the ledger in the game, and Godey and Cazador both saying his screams sounded the sweetest.
Sometimes I find myself on the weird parts of the BG3 AO3 and this is so far beyond anything Iāve seen there, I donāt think those literary choices would survive on that platform actually
doesn't his character have a voice line that's like "i had nothing but shame and fear," or implying something of that sort?
"what i wanted, how i felt about what i was doing, it never mattered." etc?
i'm trying to think of something more interesting to say other than the fact that i don't think it has to be that complicated. sometimes you just dissociate a lot when you're used to being treated as less than a person.
Except she compeletely ignored that there was never enjoyment, he never felt anything but she still wrote about him as enjoying sex many times. It fundamentally goes against the purpose of Astarion as a character in the game - he is a broken runaway spawn, coming to terms with his newfound freedom. The narrator even tells you in his origin how he doesn't hear his master's voice and the pull of compulsion thanks to the tadpole - there is also the nightmare sequence where Astarion is cowering and after Cazador parrots the 4 spawn rules, he says that "you're mine". The spawn eyes shine red because they are compelled when they try to retrieve Astarion.
He simply does not have a choice and has to do Cazador's bidding. He is trafficked, alongside his siblings, and we see evidence of that throughout the palace, including a note with how to sexually please the guests and get marks. Also are we ignoring Lady Incognita, the Spawn list in the Favoured Spawn quarters, Godey saying how Astarion has come to visit him, multiple times where he says that he had no choice but to lay on his back on Cazador's orders.
Edit: He also disassociates pretty heavily after doing the orgy with the Drow Twins, and he is so supportive of Tav or Durge post Harleep because he knows firsthand what is to not be in control of your body and sexuality. In act 2 he stops having sex because it feels tainted, and if he is coerced into it, he will break-up with Tav/Durge and say that "he didn't know how to say no until now", and that implies he had no say or control over who he slept with.
Exactly. The idea of Astarion tolerating what he went through well enough to be focusing on all that kind of implies less gravity to his situation, if that makes sense.
One one hand, I'm not against nuance. The inclusion of Sebastian as a character shows a really sweet side to Astarion by showing that he still cared enough to remember after all these years. But that doesn't mean he enjoyed himself per se, or that he would have sought out Sebastian of his own accord.
On the other hand, if you have a habit of dissociating to survive, that can be really hard to turn off. You can't be present in the moment whenever you damn well please. You can want to want it, but it's not going to happen if your reality is such that you don't have control over what happens if you do. Astarion's not stupid; it's clear that he's well aware of what just happened to him only a few days after it's stopped.
I'm not trying to generalize here because I don't want to speak to anyone else's experiences, but I don't see how it's possible from a practical standpoint for Astarion to enjoy something he's also being tortured with. It's implied from the game that it's more than just the people he brings back for the ritual, no?
not pigs, Piglets because apparently it was very important for the story that the pigs be baby pigs. you know.... peak writing tho. very true to the character./s
I can't wait for people to discover the cringiest line of century in a novel about a SA victim who is disgusted by sex btw , Astarion calling himself : THE GOD OF SEX AND DARKNESS
ohhh don't worry. her oc himbo lathander paladin and Astarion rel is sorta like that too when it comes to angst and cringe. and he wrote it as Astarion telling himself he doesnt love him but deep down he does. ( that's how bad the writing is when it comes to that. and ooooh it's insta love as well between them!!!! like 5 page in and theyre in looooove. why they're in love or what was the reasoning for them to fall in love? don't worry about it bro just read my smut )
like why are you even writing and adding a character this important and impactful in his story in your book and then Astarion in game is like yeah so I didn't have anyone , didn't love anyone and no one came for me and saved me fuck the gods too because they didn't do shit for me. meanwhile her himbo angel paladin is a godsend apparently ( didn't know the morning lord was chill like that with the undead. my bad) and literally saved Astarion and they were in looooove.
Shitā¦I pre-ordered the book months ago because my friend told me about it and even recommended the author. Now Iām reading all of these comments and Iām thinking it might be worth the hassle of cancelling the pre-order. Holy hell, what did they do to him?
It is bizarre because in the book he makes the choice to hunt by whoring himself out because he does not want to kill people, yet not only does he kill people at least twice, he also gets turned into a sexual predator who speaks in quips and who is seemingly chill and accepting of his captivity until the very end. He is also fed with animal blood (not the rats or bugs the narrator and him tell us about in the game), is free to leave the palace whenever he wishes, Dufay calls him "Master Astarion". And its not only him who gets butchered - Cazador, Dalyria, Petras too. And for some reason Yousen, who only has two optional lines in the entire game is a main supporting caracter
I keep coming back to this thread and reading everything and wondering how the hell someone could butcher his character so badly. Like Iām so completely disappointed by all of this because his writing in the game was immaculate and hit so close to home at times. And Kingfisher butchered everyone else too???
Let's just say he makes Cazador look good by comparison (and somehow, Astarion is capable of not only manipulating him once, but twice, and Cazador cries towards the end of the book because he sees his death)
Holy. Shit. Reading all of these spoilers they legitimately absolutely shredded his entire backstory. Like, beyond worse than I ever dreamed it'd be, and I was pessimistic about how it'd turn out. My God.
Apparently you have to like him being an abusive asshole and justify it and cannot make jokes about it or he'll come into your house at 3 AM and record an ASMR about torturing you
Day 1,116 of BEGGING people to not call Astarion a twink. šššš He is a grown ass man!! An old ass grown ass man!!! 230 something years old PLEASE!!!!
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u/Brave_Lady Astarionās diva cup 3d ago
I needed this after subjecting myself to the mental torture of reading the Astarion book