sorry I'm gonna cringepost again.

there's something I need to expel from my brain in terms of how astarion grapples and feels resentment/disgust/derision toward the concepts of heroics and ""good"" people and the way that emrys craves deeply to be good but will ultimately always fall short of the mark (in her own mind, at least) because she's too angry + too violent + too impulsive + too outraged (toward injustice, cruelty, in the world), the paladin ideal will never be met. and how when they're put together in the same room they line up to smack each other RIGHT in the thing theyre sensitive about. astarion lays out clearly the failures of the very foundations of her belief systems, makes her grapple with the things that are too extreme, whats long since become burdens to her, and she forces him to endure the fact that there are at least a few people in the world that are willing to fight with him and for others. and they're both? scrappy people, really. and go hard in the opposite directions but on the same wavelength of... interaction; both snarky, stubborn, toe to toe on everything, admirable of resilience. sort of forced together by circumstance, but completely filling in the gaps the other's got going on. it's just where he's got the lying and the charades and the bullshit and she is so Brusque and bludgeoning through at all times that the charade is moot. completely antithetical to everything he's been doing for the last 200 yrs, which is as irritating as it can maybe be refreshing. and he makes her laugh. WHICH IS NICE.