Any Baldurs Gate 3 Fans Out There?

My latest obsession, aside from the Witcher, is BG3. Particularly Astarion (which I'm sure comes as a shock to absolutely nobody).

If any of you lovely lot are also fans I've made a fan blog where we can talk about the weave and try and pretend like it hasn't reformed our entire personalities!

Come join me @youlickedadeadspider

(I'll still be posting and sharing witchery goodness)

On how a video game about fucking a bear interrupted furry discourse

People don’t realize the absolute comedy that just went through Furry social media.

See, feral smut (i.e. smut of four-legged characters who otherwise satisfy the Harkness test) has always been a contentious subject in the furry fandom, due to how easily it leads to unwarranted real-life accusations of zoophilia. It’s an annoying bit of discourse that has been rearing its head every other year since the modern fandom began four decades ago.

Which, you know, pretty rich, coming from the fandom where a pretty large percentage readily admit to having had some form of sexual awakening over the Lion King and My Little Pony franchises.

And anyway, that discourse was exactly what was going on last week. People getting harassed on Twitter, as an extension of the whole “groomer” moral panic. A lot of fandom relative newcomers parroting arguments right out of the Burned Furs movement (a late 1990s/early 2000s movement dedicated to “purifying” the furry fandom of “perversion” and “degeneracy”).

And then, just as the discourse was at its most heated, Baldur’s Gate 3 entered the chat.

Suddenly, everyone was talking about the game that will let you fuck a bear. Yes, a bear, as in Ursus arctos. A Druid shapeshifted into a bear, to be fair (again: the Harkness test), but a bear nonetheless.

And mainstream media erupted with reports that the game’s sales skyrocketed based on that scene alone.

And the discourse suddenly screeched to a hilariously embarrassed halt.

10/10 comedic timing, no notes.

it is, i think, symptomatic of the way larian has built this brand: bg3 was always marketed as being mature (read: sexual), and that was one of the big draws for players - myself included! especially as media pulls more towards extremes, with mainstream video games starting to get increasingly graphically sexual, graphically violent, and the vogue for 'grey morality' becomes the norm, those boundaries get pushed, and it becomes more and more of a selling point.

larian obviously focused on this, along with the How Do You Do, Fellow Kids brand, the increased accessibility of game devs on twitter, and adopted it heavily into their marketing strategy, and are now pretty reliant on the horny gamer crowd for a lot of their audience, and more importantly, they're doing this on purpose.

which is how you end up in situations like this.

characters (white men) the players want to fuck get centred: they get updates, they get more content, they get favoured. halsin's gone from a side character in EA to a half-fledged romance option, to a full romance option: he shows up in the promotional material, is larian's poster boy for the sex scenes, he gets more content with every update.

now gortash gets more heavily implied situationship lines with the dark urge, because players are horny for him. nevermind that some people aren't playing that way, or that he was originally set up to be a lower-level antagonist; nevermind that if the durge's storyline needed expansion, it should've been with orin and sarevok and bhaal, or that it muddies the writing for the rest of gortash's arc + characterisation: people want to fuck him, so it gets put in the game. it's not even to do with karlach, whose quest so desperately needs expansion! it's specifically catering to the people who want their character to have a Relationship with the slaver, because they're either not interested in or not able to focus on strengthening the weak spots in the narrative: they're just doing things that will net the 'my favourite dating sim' people lmfao.

meanwhile, literal main character wyll gets his quest demoted to a subquest, doesn't get bugfixes, doesn't get a single unique romance greeting after 6 patches and months of requests. he's not a Horny character, so he doesn't get the focus: he's not a player favourite, so he gets nothing. it's just... so unbelievably, indisputably racist, and it's incredibly grim and disappointing to watch it happen in real-time.

they're kinda my favorite

not to be That Person but y’all have got to learn to be more normal about bisexual and pansexual characters. this isn’t 2012. women romancing astarion is not the problem, nor is karlach “lesbian coded”. the real problem is y’all’s bi/panphobia stemming largely from homophobic stereotypes

just some gale of waterdeep face practice. i have the brainrot

Riding on @shahs1221 's amazing idea of Italian holiday vaugely 60's but very much still a devil Raphael

You guys know that voice actors are actual people right? Like you understand that they’re human beings right? You understand these are strangers that you do not know right?

You’re not going around asking them incredibly invasive/inappropriate questions right??? Right?????

What if Gith had tail

I was voluntold for torture.

AND ANOTHER THING

Favoritism for Astarion aside, I think no one sees the tragedy in Wyll because he never really strays from "being good". We're never really given a moment where his actions had costs larger than himself. If he'd refused Mizora's pact, he'd obviously have the guilt of any lives lost on his shoulders. He accepted it though. If you're unshakable in your goodness there's no way you can be unhappy, clearly you're content with all your choices. WHICH IS THE POINT OF WYLL! HE DOESN'T REGRET HIS CHOICES BUT HE ISN'T HAPPY EITHER!

Astarion's whole thing is how fucking hard it is to be good, how easy it is to be a bad person. That's where Wyll comes into play! He showcases how often doing the right thing comes at a personal cost! That's the actual struggle with Wyll. In his efforts for justice he's losing himself. People aren't infinite resources, yet Wyll gives and sacrifices and takes the hits like he'll never run dry.

*rattling the bars of my cage* Don't you see it? The parallel themes of identity loss, the balance one most walk between altruism and selfishness, when does doing good at the detriment of yourself become detrimental to others as well, how can someone justify their selfishness, their sacrifices, when does someone need to tell you to stop giving, to stop taking? Hello? Do you hear me?? Is anyone there??? Look at it, LOOK AT ALL OF IT *starts gnawing at the bars*

edit: *BUSTS THROUGH THE BARS OF MY CAGE* ASTARION'S FIRST MAJOR SACRIFICE INVOLVES LOSING THE SUN. HE CHOOSES TO DO THE RIGHT THING AND LITERALLY LOSES THE LIGHT. WYLL SAYS YOU CAN ALWAYS LOOK TO ME WHEN YOU'RE IN SEARCH OF LIGHT. THE MARTYR HELPS THE SELFISH AND THE SELFISH KEEPS THE MARTYR FROM DESTROYING HIMSELF. *self-implodes*

friendly reminder that creators within fandom (whether it be gifs, edits, meta, fanfiction or fanart) choose to take time out of their day to provide you with new content for free.

it’s easy to take it for granted since it only requires a few seconds/minutes to scroll through your dash, but it’s important to remember that behind that there are often hours, if not even days, of work and dedication.

inktober and drawtober 8: toad and orange

How about some more Werewolf Shady shenanigans for the soul

(Yeah ik druids or drow don't canonically have sharp teeth but I like to hc them like that and thought it aligns pretty funny in the wolfy Shart AU)

Did not expect those posts about Theo's snubbing at MCM London (this has sense been clarified and is no longer entirely relevant but the rest still is) and BG3 fandom racism to breach containment so hard and I'm kind of regretting not including something more actionable in the posts, so I'll do that here. You are encouraged to reblog this, repost these links on your own, or add your own suggestions.

If you are bothered by Wyll's lack of content in the game compared to other characters you can submit feedback to Larian. While this carries no guarantee, our odds of them revisiting him and doing him justice are a lot better if we show them that there's interest.

This is the link to their feedback page. Select "feedback" in the drop down menu that says "report type". For your convenience, this is the current version number of the game as of October 30th (patch #3):

v4.1.1.3767641

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There is also a Wyllvember event taking place on twitter and tumblr during November 1 - November 7th to show some love for him via fanworks. You can find the prompt lists here:

Twitter

Tumblr

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Here is Theo's Cameo if you'd like a personal message from him, would like him to read or respond to something as Wyll, etc.

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For writers and/or people wanting to examine their biases in general in relation to black characters, I would also recommend perusing some of the black focused tags on this blog (Writing With Color) as they have a lot of great resources when it comes to tropes, stereotypes, and biases in media.

This is also a great resource in general and I recommend all writers bookmark it!