#put it all in the pot dsflakfjas that's what i love | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

not-poignant · 7 months

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1 & 13 for palmarosa! I'm so hooked on it and it's lovely to immerse myself in such a crunchy, well-written dynamic :3

Oooo less go, Palmarosa time :D (I'm so glad you're enjoying it!!)

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

So, I looked for Astarion fics early on and saw a lot of Astarion/Halsin, Astarion/player and general pairings I wasn't super interested in, or scenarios I wasn't very interested in. I tried a few, didn't bookmark any, and was like 'hmmm, I expected some more angsty fics for Astarion.' At the time - which to be fair was quite some time ago and the fandom has grown since - everything biased towards very fluffy, or very dark, but where Astarion had the power and was the top, and it was just not quite what I was looking for.

I knew I wanted to do something with Astarion, but I didn't ship him with anyone. I don't ship him with Gale, I didn't want to write an Astarion/player fic, I don't ship him with Halsin, etc. (I am playing an Astarion/Gale run now, but mostly because I enjoy their bitchiness and not because I truly ship them). But when we started spending more time with Raphael I started thinking 'hmmMMMM WHAT IF....'

I looked for fics, there was like 3 at the time (literally, mine is the fourth in the rarepair on AO3), and it was like 'well.... ehhh.... we'll see.' At this point I knew what Astarion's endings were - good and bad, according to Larian - and I didn't like either of them. I was kind of salty in advance that some companions get very clear cut happy endings, and others get sort of...shafted either way. And around that time I was like well... if we take Astarion's 'good' ending (according to Larian) and then actually give him the things I wanted him to have at the end (sans my player character, because I don't like player/X fics), then I could do something with that.

I knew I was shipping him with Raphael, but I actually spent a fairly long time thinking about how to solve the sunlight issue, and what Raphael would want in exchange for that, and how much that would actually matter to him, and why he would offer something like that, and what that would mean for a run where he was killed. I made a lot of thorny choices early on, like killing off Hope (she survives in my run) so Raphael could return to the House of Hope, etc.

But yeah! Basically a very classic 'once more fandom wasn't delivering a weird specific niche thing I wanted in any pairing, so I found a weird rarepair that almost no one was writing, and decided to do what I wanted in that little corner' scenario + 'I love BG3 as a game but fuck what they did with Astarion's character right at the end, I'm going to make a third ending just for me.'

...I'm both really stubborn and pretty weird actually when it comes to writing fanfiction *hangs head*

I'm just kind of obsessed with Astarion, he's a very specific kind of character 'type' for me (he gives me Felix Harrowgate from Doctrine of Labyrinths vibes and frankly I wrote a similar-ish fic about him too at least in spirit). Raphael I find fascinating. Because we get so much less information about him, I can put more of my own needs for the fanfiction into him, and develop his back story in a more robust manner in a way that suits the pairing. Him being a cambion, being able to add monster fucker elements, being really certain mentally that he's like... that he doesn't have a very 'classically' human way of thinking, makes him extremely interesting to me as a love interest to write!

(Not gonna lie, part of me actively resents how fluffy fandom is getting, and I wanted to put more rape and dubcon into AO3 overall for Astarion in particular. Like, I want more angst and hurt/comfort etc. I get that his back story is tragic, but I also wanted to push that in a different direction, and I really love writing a character that's been through so much awfulness they become almost expectant of it? That's also a Felix Harrowgate vibe. It's fun kind of...guiding those characters specifically to a better place internally, and not just externally).

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

The Palmarosa playlist! I put it on every time I write for this story. Some songs I listen to more than others, Trench and Menace generally accompany me during the more sexual scenes for example. And I have put on the instrumentals for I Want To Live from the official BG3 soundtrack (by Borislav Slavov) on repeat for sections as well. I still am expanding the Palmarosa soundtrack but I have enough kind of music to also be comfortable writing the story as well. :D

From this fanfiction meme!

#asks and answers #memey goodness #palmarosa #thespectaclesofthor #raphael x astarion #bg3 astarion #bg3 raphael #i have zero belief that astarion will genuinely heal in either one of his endings in the game #and i'm like #'i can fix him / i can make him worse / i can hurt him / i can help him'#put it all in the pot dsflakfjas that's what i love #i'm doing the same for raphael too but he doesn't know it yet

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