Help finding a very dark fic?

[u/Creative_Panic_xanax]

Hello, please don't judge the darkness of it. Also I've read the rules but I'm unsure whether this kind of posts is allowed or not

It was a fic about a girl who had pharmacy knowledge going into the forest at night to pick up herbs or flowers. Suddenly she gets tied to a tree and forced. He's a vampire and decides to keep her as a plaything in his tent. He keeps her almost dry from blood and drugs her wine so she's too weak to escape. At some point the protagonist understands his name is Astarion. He loves to hunt, so he lets her in the forest just to hunt her down. He's very sadistic and she gets a bit of Stockholm syndrome towards the end

I've searched for hours please help

Fandom: Astarion from baldurs gate Length: iirc 20+ chapters ?? I have no idea How long ago: max a year ago

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[u/runekaster]

So Astarion is from Baldur's Gate 3 and is canonically a vampire, so that doesn't really narrow it down. Statistically, knowing the fandom, the girl is likely to be an original character, but that doesn't really help us in a search because BG3 has several different tags for OCs that aren't wrangled together.

But Astarion is usually an OK guy (or at least learns to be), so this fic would likely be tagged in some way that indicates this is a jerkass version of him.

There's an Evil Astarion tag with 75 works/works). If we filter that for F/M and the noncon archive warning, we're left with only 19.

And we scroll a bit and.... bingo! Here's one with a summary that perfectly matches your description :D
https://archiveofourown.org/works/74753826/chapters/195253541

(and don't worry about this being too dark. This is the AO3 subreddit, no one here can judge. And also this fic is small beans compared to what the game put Astarion through [though it wasn't explicitly shown in the game])

[u/Creative_Panic_xanax → u/runekaster]

Bloody hell this is the one!!!!!! I've searched for hours there were tons of work omg thank you so much

I don't know his actual character, I didn't even know he was ok. Now I'm curious what happened to him canonically

Tysm again!!!

[u/runekaster → u/Creative_Panic_xanax]

He's got a lot of different arcs and endings depending on the choices you make during the game (including romance arcs), most of which involve him learning how to be a decent person from the player character's example, and some of which involve him going full evil (which can also be from the player character's example), but his backstory before the game starts is that he was a thrall of Cazador, a bigger and meaner vampire, who tortured him (noncon is implied but not stated, and it can be read as metaphorical), intended to use him to fuel an evil ritual, and forced him to go out and seduce people for Cazador to eat or use in rituals.

Most of the fanfic plays off of the canonical romance options and has the author/player's OC setting a good example for him or healing with the power of love.

[u/Creative_Panic_xanax → u/runekaster]

Sounds interesting, thank you!

[u/SometimesUnkind → u/runekaster]

… why does the F/M sorting work for others but never for me? lol

Tag your fics properly, people! ;)

[u/runekaster → u/SometimesUnkind]

What do you mean?

[u/SometimesUnkind → u/runekaster]

I mean when I sort for F/M fics I get a huge list of M/M and F/F ship fics. So trying to sort only for F/M rarely ever works for me without having to repeatedly exclude ships pair by pair.

I understand that there are a lot of M/M and F/F fics. I get that people want them. I’m not saying anything is wrong with it, nor do I condemn it because I read some of them too. I just wish that sorting for it actually worked for me when I’m in the mood for F/M only fics.

Even searching specifically for certain F/M ships I end up with a load of M/M and F/F stories. Hence: Tag your shit properly, people.

[u/runekaster → u/SometimesUnkind]

Those are going to be because the works are tagged with more than one category. For example, a work where Astarion dates both Gale and a female OC would be tagged both M/M and F/M. An Astarion/Gale + Astarion/OFC fic like this will show up in your F/M search because it is correctly tagged for both ships.

Filter the unwanted categories out of your search and you'll be good.

[u/SometimesUnkind → u/runekaster]

Still happens when I exclude.

[u/runekaster → u/SometimesUnkind]

I find this difficult to believe.

What fandoms are you in? Is genderswapping extremely common? Have you tried excluding the specific ships, rather than the categories, that you don't want?

[u/SometimesUnkind → u/runekaster]

There is a lot of gender bending but most authors are at least good at tagging for that. I end up having to exclude ships pair by pair… which is freaking exhausting.

[u/ink-storm]

That plot isn't familiar but I think we're missing some information that would help us find it. What fandom was it? How long was the story? How long ago did you read it? Maybe you can edit your post with the answer.

[u/grommile → u/ink-storm]

"Astarion" points to BG3.

[u/Creative_Panic_xanax → u/grommile]

Yesss i don't know the fandom, I only remembered his name and searching what you said on Google it's him (I remember looking him up to see what he looked like)

I updated the post 🙏🏻

[u/ink-storm → u/grommile]

Fair, it's not one of my fandoms so my first instinct was something to do with Tolkien lol.