Shipping a villain with someone who goes “I can fix them” is all fine and good. So is shipping a villain with someone who goes “I can make them worse.”

But what about a ship where Character A thinks they can fix Character B, Character B thinks they can make Character A worse, and both of them are correct?

Thinking about my Elder Scrolls OC Ghaurug gro-Khazgur. He is my poor little meow meow, my sad little man who commits atrocities against the very people he’s fought so hard, time and time again, to save from even greater threats than he.

Thinking about the AU version of him I came up with who was chosen by Malacath instead of believing himself to be spurned by the very Prince of the Spurned. Ghaurug the Curse-Eater. Still fundamentally the same man, but one change in his backstory relative to canon Ghaurug has spiraled into a completely different life and a much healthier mentality for him. Even though he’s still a vampire. Even though he still embraces being a vampire. This AU is unironically his Good Timeline because he’s not in an abusive relationship with his god like he is in his canon timeline.

Also thinking about the AU version of him I ported into Baldur’s Gate 3 as The Dark Urge. He is, again, still fundamentally the same man. But the addition of amnesia and, well, the nature of the Dark Urge, have both had fascinating butterfly effects on his character. He doesn’t remember anything about his past, whereas other versions of Ghaurug are defined by their pasts and don’t know how to let go of them. He craves killing and bloodshed and even the taste of mortal flesh, and he has no idea why. At the same time, he still finds opportunities to be kind. He would love to watch a venomous snake kill a little girl, but he saves the girl anyway. And yet he revels in the senseless butchering of an innocent who looked up to him. He hides the fact that he revels in it, but he revels nonetheless.

You can’t play as one in BG3, but I headcanon my Durge!Ghaurug as a dhampir, and have started writing a fanfic about him which starts with the scene where the player wakes up to Astarion about to chow down on their neck. Originally I was gonna stop once the fic version of that scene was done playing out, but oops I kept writing and now there’s shipteasing with Astarion (and planned shipteasing with the Dream Guardian, because in-game I based Durge!Ghaurug’s dream guardian’s appearance on that of his love interest Anushipal), and the scope has no end in sight. I don’t even know what I’m gonna do about the shipteasing because both Ghaurug and Astarion are allosexual and I am Absolutely Not Allosexual or even comfortable writing about sex shit. I don’t know why I do this to myself lol.

I also want to write a fanfic about Ghaurug the Curse-Eater, but I haven’t finished my fanfic about canon Ghaurug yet! And it’s so close to the finish line, too!

I am obsessed with this fucking orc vampire murder gay I made up. Send help.

I’m normal about Astarion BG3 but not in the way most people are normal about Astarion BG3 because I’m too asexual for that. No, I’m normal about Astarion BG3 because every word out of his gay ass mouth is fucking hilarious to me. Every foppish body language gesture. Every change in the tone of his voice intended to sound suggestive. It’s just fucking funny. Also I haven’t gotten very far in the game yet but I can TELL this man is not okay and that’s just chef’s kiss. Please continue to pretend like you’re on top of the world when you’re tortured inside or whatever. Please continue being the fruitiest fruit to ever fruit. You amuse me, video game vampire man.

Got to a point (the tiefling party after saving the grove) where LITERALLY EVERY PARTY MEMBER propositioned me, and I was so torn because on the one hand the OC of mine I’m playing as Durge would totally romance Astarion, but on the other hand, I am super uncomfortable romancing NPCs in video games especially when there’s sex involved, and even though I have the nudity and shit in this game turned off, I still wasn’t comfortable having my character bang Astarion despite how in character it would have been. I ended up not doing it, but I made a separate save at the point where I could have just in case I ever change my mind.

But god damn if it wasn’t for my personal discomfort it would be so funny to have my Durge romance Astarion, because he’s based on my (non-D&D) OC Ghaurug who is also a gay ass vampire who puts on a confident front but is really tortured inside. They’re perfect for each other.

Maybe the resemblance to Ghaurug is another reason Astarion is so entertaining to me…

Tomorrow my friend is going to help install my new PC parts. I will finally have a real GPU in my PC! And another friend bought me Baldur's Gate 3! I'm going to be so normal about this game lmao, I'm already theorycrafting builds for existing OCs of mine... (cough cough Ghaurug as a (half)-Orc Blade Pact GoO Warlock/Oathbreaker Paladin multiclass cough cough)