We often talk about “ludonarrative dissonance” in terms of morality and situations like “the story says violence is bad, but the gameplay enables and encourages you to kill things” but my actual fave version of it is “the story says you have a very serious plot-relevant time-sensitive thing to do, but the gameplay enables and encourages you to buzz off into the world and search for collectibles for five weeks”
In a fit of guilt, Astarion tries to confess his deception to you. At the last moment, he loses his nerve and ends your relationship with another lie. He’s resigned himself to having lost his chance with you forever when once again everything changes. With the two of you out on your own, will he be able to take a chance and tell you everything, and will you forgive him when he does?
༺Pairing༻ Astarion x Female Reader
༺Warnings༻ Sexual references
༺Word Count༻ 2348
༺A/N༻ Weeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllll it’s finally back! After an incredibly long hiatus. And to thank for that you have my new partner in this endeavor @icybluepenguin who co-wrote this chapter with me. I’m sorry for no tag list but it is just a pain to keep up with.
In writing, epithets (“the taller man”/“the blonde”/etc) are inherently dehumanizing, in that they remove a character’s name and identity, and instead focus on this other quality.
Which can be an extremely effective device within narration!
They can work very well for characters whose names the narrator doesn’t know yet (especially to differentiate between two or more). How specific the epithet is can signal to the reader how important the character is going to be later on, and whether they should dedicate bandwidth to remembering them for later (“the bearded man” is much less likely to show up again than “the man with the angel tattoo”)
They can indicate when characters stop being as an individual and instead embody their Role, like a detective choosing to think of their lover simply as The Thief when arresting them, or a royal character being referred to as The Queen when she’s acting on behalf of the state
They can reveal the narrator’s biases by repeatedly drawing attention to a particular quality that singles them out in the narrator’s mind
But these only work if the epithet used is how the narrator primarily identifies that character. Which is why it’s so jarring to see a lot of common epithets in intimate moments– because it conveys that the main character is primarily thinking of their lover/best friend/etc in terms of their height or age or hair color.
To elaborate a little, switching back and forth in a scene describing the “blond-haired man” instead of using the character’s name makes it increasingly hard to for the reader to connect to who you’re talking about. This is a fatally common trope in fanfiction that really, really under-serves the reader.
To you, the writer, it is so boring to repeat the character’s name over and over again. But to the reader, that fades into the background. When you need clarity in a paragraph and don’t want to endlessly repeat pronouns, just use the character’s name. It’s so much better for your reader.
Enough Goncharov. I want to see more discussion of revolutionary 1928 film The Dancing Cavalier starring Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont (and the uncredited voice of Katherine Selden)
I want more discussion of S. Morgenstern’s original unabridged version of The Princess Bride. It’s so irritating that it’s now literally impossible to find anything other than Goldman’s abridgement. And this is presented as a good thing! Some of us like complicated social satire, William! Yet all that brilliance has been thrown out so we’re left with only the parts that are comprehensible to a ten-year-old boy! Absolutely maddening!
Wait wait wait Katherine Selden was in that movie?! How did I not recognize her voice, I tracked down so much grainy footage of her role as Wilma in A Night of Music when I was a kid just to hear her high notes in the bridge of Winter Song! *sigh* I guess I need to go watch The Dancing Cavalier again, it’s been ages since I’ve seen it. I just remember that green dress Lina Lamont wears in the second half, I want it so bad.
No yeah the crediting situation around The Dancing Cavalier is SO weird.
Apparently at the time it came out you could barely AVOID knowing she was in it? It was a massive scandal on opening night because apparently everyone was REALLY invested in Lina Lamont (who I’ll admit I’m not really a fan of in other things, but then I don’t watch a lot of silent film and that was her niche), and the revelation that she wasn’t the one talking OR singing absolutely torpedoed her career. Wild that lipsync controversies are as old as film with sound.
BUT, on the other hand, Katherine Selden wasn’t formally credited anywhere in the film itself. I have a vague impression there were contract complications with her or Lina Lamont or both? But the upshot was, even though it literally launched her career, she’s not “officially” in it. And so, nowadays, it’s really easy even for people who love Katherine’s voice and old films to assume it’s actually Lina Lamont singing!
Look, I’m not going to defend Lina Lamont’s actions, because she really did try to screw Selden out of getting any recognition for her work. However, she was trying to survive in a rapidly changing film landscape that seemingly had no use for actresses with unconventional voices. If you’re only familiar with her from The Dancing Cavalier and the few comedies she did in the 30s, it’s worth going back and watching a few of her silent movies to see what she was like as a leading lady. Most of them are lost media now but The Royal Rascal is really good and actually has a very sweet love story. Plus Don Lockwood got to swordfight and we all like that lol
Okay but who would win in a swordfight? Don Lockwood or Manny Patinkin?
I don’t know how much of a swordfight that would be seeing as Don Lockwood would LITERALLY dance around Mr. Patinkin. Manny definitely knows his footwork and timing though, I’d love to see him in a musical- Hell, why not adapt all the nonsense behind The Dancing Cavalier as a sort of Musical Mockumentary?
Sometimes when doing writing research you find a little factoid that isn’t right for tormenting YOUR blorbos, but it is PERFECT for tormenting a friend’s blorbos so you just drop the fact on their doorstep like a demented little present.
“I found something to hurt the little guys in your head <3” is SUCH a wonderful expression of friendship.
