The Early Blurb 10

Good morning!

I've been trying to think more critically about my favorite fictional characters recently. More specifically why I'm so drawn to the morally-grey-borderline-evil-but-secretly-misunderstood type of character. Who in the end, most of the time tries to do the right thing. Whether its by their nature or by a learned behavior later in the story. It's like I've always played the devils advocate for them, and I'm not sure if that would totally change if they where real, either. I think it's because I, too, had a villain arc of sorts. Not nearly as flashy as say Loki or even Astarion, but I understand in part why they are the way they are. I relate, in a way.

Specifically I've been thinking about why Astarion disapproves when you help others near the beginning of the game. [[GIANT RANT INCOMING]]

I was reading up about a couple of different areas you can get some extra points with him for fun, and I just saw a lot of hate. "Why would he be so awful? How could he not want you to help (insert person here)!"

And I took a second to sit with that. Because yeah, shit, after all that he had been through, wouldn't he want to be the person to help others out of that same situation?

And to that question, I ask you this. Can you really even fathom how long 200 years is?

People always respond to that with "Oh well he was a corrupt magistrate and the gur beat him to death." First of all, yeah, he could've been a bit of a dick, but holy shit the gur have always been temperamental pricks. We don't know what ruling led to that, so its purely up to interpretation. 

The worst part is, if he really was an out of touch magistrate, even then, he couldn't have been nearly as bad as everyone makes him out to be, but then being turned into a vampire sex slave for nearly the average of 3 human lifespans didn't fucking help!

As someone who has experienced trauma her whole life, especially the worst of it as a kid, closely thematically matching the type of things he went through, holy shit. Yeah. After that type of thing happens to you, and you have nothing you can do about it, after crying and screaming on the floor for days on end to whomever god might be listening and still not being released from something like that, you become fucking jaded. I'm still struggling through my trauma, and I've been in therapy for 3 years going on 4 for things that happened to me when I was a kid.

When the only way to escape from a bad situation is to get into another, almost equally bad situation, you do not want to help anyone. Its only with time to reflect, move past, and heal from the things you've experienced, that you can move past the more self-centered feelings trauma besets upon you and want to help others. It comes easier to some than others, and this switch flipped in me at about 12 years old. But then it got so bad that I didn't start helping myself until I was 18. Two sides of the same coin I suppose.

I don't know, maybe I play the devils advocate because I too, am a devil. Maybe I'm not a good person. I try to be, though, even if I wasn't a long time ago, and I think thats what counts.