God I want Astarion to talk about Evereska and High Elf shit more. He references House Nightstar (a moon elf house) and has the line about not returning to being a slave even for all the jewels in Evereska.

If you talk to the scared elf in Ethel's dungeon as him, you can try speaking elven to him.

It's given me a belief that he does remember small things but is not aware of it. You don't casually just know the name of a moon elf house. (But iirc the house was founded after he was turned. Did he find out about it by trying to research his family?)

There is also evidence that some of his family is from Waterdeep (shenanigans regarding how the date is written on his grave. could be a dev oversight though).

Tldr I just think elves are neat

dont mind me! just plugging my fic about this

There’s something about so many people’s need to “cure” Astarion that just doesn’t sit right with me. Like he can’t truly have a happy ending unless they “fix” his vampirism. Like they’re Tav couldn’t just adjust their schedule for him and be there to comfort him if he ever feel down about missing the sun, they have to “cure” him.

This! These tags are exactly what I was getting at thank you @bhaalsdeepbat

That’s what feels off to me, that people just don’t want to engage with it and what it means to love someone with a life altering condition. They just want to magically make it all better.

I think in the case of Astarion, it's mostly people just wanting to give him the world if he asked for it, and not really engaging further than that. Like he does vocalize that he would like a cure for his condition and I know the lore is complicated for elves and vampirism like. really fucks that up. so I understand where people can want to go the cure route.

that being said, the "loving someone with a life altering condition" is one of the things that really draws me to astarion's romance and i would love to see other disabled folks weigh on that with their astarion romances bc it's such an interesting thing to explore with a disability lens

this is such an interesting perspective that i really hadn't considered before as an able-bodied person. but yeah. like.

i guess the angle i can relate to is neurodivergence -- imagine getting the tadpole that makes you neurotypical for a bit and then that just. goes away. at think, for myself at least, that would probably be a reaaaaally difficult thing to comes to terms with!