So saw a post about Shadowheart's racism towards Githyanki and hating her for that. Saying it's gross etc. I thought it was pretty mild? Considering what the Githyanki are and what they do, I was expecting a lot more racism when you play as one or towards Lae'zel. They aren't nice.

Ah. Yes. This topic. I was wondering when it would come up lol.

I had a long, long, long diatribe about this, but I wound up editing it to hell and back. I agree with you anon. I think it goes to show you how desperate the camp crew was when they put up with Lae'zel after the mountain pass crèche turns out to be a dud.

Anyways.

If people are singling out Shadowheart for being aggressive towards the literal imperialist slaver race of turbo space fascists and calling that racism, I don't know nor do I care to know about it. Not showing the githzerai has, I think, kinda rotted some BG3-only people's brains since they don't see that it's not about the gith as a species but it's about their imperial culture. It's especially annoying when there are much more direct parallels to racism in-game, structural and otherwise (Astarion with the Gur, Lae'zel with the tieflings, Rivington/Emerald Grove with the refugees).

I get the folks that feel the Shadowheart v. githyanki thing as racism, so I won't speak to their feelings. I will say that it's very definitely more a specific case of "girl stole shit from an empire known for murdering wantonly and is trying to avoid interacting with them at all costs" at the very beginning of the game.

Personally, I'm much more interested in talking about the fandom's general treatment of the slightly corrupted prince charming character (normally a fandom favorite in RPGs) as a second-class citizen. He's "useless" and "not that interesting" this time, for some reason?

Not sure why that could be happening.