Astarion, everyone’s favorite half-elf vampire, has become so popular that over 46 percent of Baldur’s Gate 3 fan fiction stories on titanic fan-fic website Archive of Our Own (AO3) already involve the Rogue companion.
Fanfiction has always been incredibly popular in pop-culture fandoms because it lets people create stories with characters they know. While Larian Studios does cater to specific preferences in many of the BG3 quests, fans are taking things one step further on AO3, and it’s no surprise that Astarion holds the key to many… hearts.
Astarion currently appears in 46 percent of all BG3 fan-fic stories on AO3; Larian knew exactly what they were doing when they created this thirst trap of a man.
Now, Astarion may be sinful, sexy, and a little bit naughty, but he’s also become very popular because of his voice, which was brought to life by Neil Newbon. Newbon has done such a good job bringing Astarion to life that players are willing to kill him off at the Githyanki Creche just to hear a specific post-revival dialogue and love how Neil brings Astarion to life in his streams as he plays BG3. And if you haven’t caught his streams and are an Astarion enthusiast, you need to watch them because they’re brilliant.
While Astarion may be popular in the fanfiction community, he’s not actually the most popular romance option for players. In fact, according to Larian, Shadowheart was the most popular romance choice, with Gale following close behind. Players jokingly agree these two appeal to more softcore BG3 players, and that’s why Astarion isn’t on the mainstream lists.
That said, that’s more likely due to the bug that made romancing Gale easier than shooting fish in a barrel. You could literally breathe next to him, and he’d swoon for you. Thankfully, that BG3 glitch has now been fixed and Gale’s been toned down a little.
That doesn’t mean players don’t want to see some Gale fan fics (there are plenty); it would just be a different kind of story, like night and day.
While every character does appear on the massive fan-fic website, it’s safe to say Astarion has become the poster boy for BG3‘s fan-written stories right now.
