#aka i beat bg3 for the first time

[chronal-anomaly]

Looks at my hands. It is done

[linka-from-captain-planet]

I wanted to do something for Femslash February but don't have enough brain cells to commit to much, so I will now be day drinking and explaining The L Word: Faerûn as well as The Chart.

Part 1: What Even Is This

the tl;dr I created an elaborate mental AU to write my own ideal BG3 storyline and also shoehorned in a bunch of women kissing bc that's what I'm into

Mandatory disclaimer: I obviously love BG3 as I wouldn't spend 500 hours playing a game and countless more drawing/writing/thinking about it if I didn't

Overall, I conceptualized The L Word: Faerun as a hodge podge mad libs "if you could REALLY do whatever you want" fantasy playthrough that combines my own headcanons/preferences for how the story should go with F/F rareships and my beloved female background characters, and ignores and/or antagonizes almost every male, except Wyll because he's my son.

At the time I started this mental story, I was already hundreds of hours into the game and the veneer of "you have so many choices!" was starting to wear really thin. You don't really have that many options if you're roleplaying as any sort of reasonable character, and you're further limited because you can't even do things in the order you like because you might shut down other quests.

For example, the Tav main character of TLW:F is a drow named Alekto and Lae'zel is the only bitch in this house she respects early on, and is thus the only one whose opinion on what to do about the tadpole matters. If I could really play however I wanted, we'd make a beeline directly to the creche... but we can't. Going to the Mountain Pass shuts down the grove/goblins conflict, and it's too difficult an area, so you don't really have a choice but to play basically all 10+ hours of Act 1 first, even if it's definitely not what your character would do. (This is especially grating in a Lae'zel origin run btw, nothing shatters my immersion like having to fart around for hours when the creche is RIGHT THERE).

Act 1 also presents the most annoying story beat in the entire game, which is that the goblin-tiefling-grove conflict (in my opinion) makes no sense and has no satisfying resolutions. Being essentially forced to side with the asshat druids or lose literally half the game (pretending it's as "consequence" for being "evil" when really it's transparent that they just decided to prioritize other things) sucks, losing Minthara sucks (I do not acknowledge the knockout option, it's like the game dev equivalent of a "shut up ring"), being strong-armed into a decision based on what content I'm willing to miss and not the story I want to tell sucks.

So, when I'm playing, I fire up my imagination and mentally write my own ideal storyline, psychically rearranging the order of events, ignoring what I don't like, and inserting content I wish existed or that the game forces me to miss based on choices.

Of course I have my own plot holes and weak spots, but again like 50% of the point is making women kiss so it's not actually that serious.

Next Part: Tav Lore (aka why Counsellor Florrick is actually the main character)