#just some thoughts i posted on larian's forum

[vole-mon-amour]

How come you can purchase a full body sculpture of your companions, even a naked one, and not a single companion reacts to that? How come you don’t get a cutscene the first thing you enter the camp after purchasing the sculpture with Astarion reacting? It’s understandable when you play an Origin Character (OC). But when you play as Astarion, purchase a sculpture “of yourself” that acts like his mirror, but he doesn’t react to that at ALL? The boy hasn’t seen himself in the mirror since he was turned & he longs to see his own reflection and how he looks. How come you, as OC, can’t lead him to the statue and tell him that it’s him? How come there are no different reactions depending whether he’s fully dressed, in his underwear, or completely naked? I would like a fully rendered cutscene with him looking at the statue and reacting to his image captured in stone, but even a remark would be (a tiny) improvement.

Astarion’s Origin run feels incredibly OOC. So many Tav choices that you can make as him that are not in his character. He disapproves of the same choices made in the game as OC, therefore his complex and interesting personality gets completely lost/erased in Tav’s answers. Those origin runs feel like a waste of resources on Larian’s part when they could’ve created more scenes and reactions for and with the actual companions. I said that multiple times, but the lack of content for Halsin? We could’ve had it all, yet many things with him are just rushed and feel undercooked. It saddens me.

Also, I romance Astarion with Halsin, so it would be nice for specific characters and couples to have specific remarks about their relationship and how it’s overall going. Because, you know, all the characters have different personalities. Why can’t we comfort Astarion? After Cazador is killed & Astarion weeps there, why can’t we kneel next to him and embrace him? Why can’t we follow Astarion when he starts burning in the sun, why can’t we cover him, why can’t we sit next to him behind those crates? Why don’t we even see that he sits there in the shadow unless we’re playing as him? Neither Tav nor Durge see what Astarion does there. He looks so incredibly lonely there. I want to be there for him, ESPECIALLY if we’re romancing him. And if we’re playing as him, I want a character I romance him with to sit next to him and comfort him, talk to him until it’s safe to leave.

Also, technically, to my understanding Astarion can be covered from direct sunlight to get away with it? He can be covered and be led from there to a building, somewhere comfortable. Since Patch 5 and Ascended Astarion being able to turn into a bat, why can’t a spawn turn into one? He should be able to. Petras and that other female spawn were able to teleport, so technically this could be done.

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

@buckysleftarm replied to your post:

After reading this, I happened across this video: https://youtube.com/shorts/-X5l5GFeg1k?si=H2lrsmx0pv60wn1h They're not in our camp anymore and I wouldn't know how to view the non companions anyway on PS5, but it feels like she definitely is taking some time off from Selune without breaking her oath full?

I sure did use this reply as an excuse to mash out a giant post! Hope you don't mind.

I do actually love that you've brought this up, because I keep seeing variants of it around and have been wanting to comment on it, if for nothing else than to make me feel better. The gist of it goes something like this: after killing Lorroakan, Aylin's "Child of the Moonmaiden" ability no longer shows up when you examine her character sheet, meaning her immortality has been taken away, she is being punished by her mother, has broken her paladin oath, or is feuding with her in some other way. Now... people in the comments of that video sure have takes on Selûne and on Aylin and on paladin oaths and aasimar abilities in general that make giant question marks spawn above my head. 

Personally? I dislike it immensely and think it makes zero sense for a variety of reasons, both in-universe and out! To be fair, as with most headcanons and theories, I'd genuinely love to see someone get creative and do something interesting with it. But I have this knee-jerk reaction to it because so far I've only seen it in the context of people parroting it completely uncritically, just regurgitating it on endless reddit or forum or discord threads and what have you, and actually shutting down or completely derailing Aylin-related discussion. Which frustrates me, obviously, because I want cool, detailed, thought-out takes on my fave, always, and - to be really petty for a moment - since my fave isn't the fandom darling, I only get crumbs to start with! It grinds my gears because so very often I'll want to read this potentially interesting thread about a character I love, but nope, instead here's a dozen comments how "nah man she broke her oath and there's special oathbreaker paladin dialogue with her about it" - no there isn't. That's a very easily verifiable fact, my guy. You made that up, my dude. How dare you just go and make things up on the internet. 

A ton of BG3 discussion has been flooded with a weird wave of statements that are just put there as well-known fact but in reality read like "I heard from a friend whose uncle works at the Nintendo Larian department and he told him Halsin went on a special mission and killed Isobel a century ago because he wanted to emotionally compromise Ketheric but then playtesters reacted badly to it and Wizards made them take it out but it's still hinted in the game, and also if you use an Elixir of Hill Giant Strength and do an unarmed attack on the cart at the entrance of the Emerald Grove you can get Mew" and I find it so grating. And then people waste time debunking this and arguing in the same circles and nobody ever moves on to more interesting stuff. I say this, as if I haven't been an active participant of internet fandom for decades and have literally anyone but myself to blame here, hah.

For instance, the way you phrased it here, as Aylin herself taking a break or trying to step away instead of the "being abandoned and punished by her mother" angle from the video and the comments? That's something I think has potential and something I want to rotate in my mind - would she do it? Could she do it? What would this entail and what would it mean for her? What would actually be enough to prompt her to even try? And it's cool that a little gameplay mechanic thingy prompted that! However - and I'm keeping it kinda vague because I don't want to spoil you on things that happen after the point you seem to be at - if we're talking purely established canon things and not brainstorming an AU or a post-game trajectory for this character, there is nothing actually in the game to indicate Aylin is taking a break from Selûne or her duties, especially not to the extent of having any of her abilities suspended. Quite the contrary, in fact. Everything we get from her and Isobel after the Lorroakan situation is handled shows she is, for better or worse, very much resolved to be her old self and very righteously angry and smiting evil in her mother's name as the Sword of Selûne and actively engaged in protecting Selûnites Realms-wide, and she has her full set of powers and blessings while doing so.

In this essay I will In the rest of this post I will try to be less cranky and I'm going to get a bit technical to try to actually explain what is going on with the "Child of the Moonmaiden" ability.

TL;DR: the buff is disabled as soon as Aylin enters the wizard tower, before any fight or backbreaking or feelings of loss and sadness, likely for the purpose of you being able to win or lose the fight no matter if you side with Aylin or betray her. It is a purely mechanical contrivance and has no narrative meaning, nor is its presence or absence mentioned or reflected in the narrative at all.

Here's Aylin in camp just before being told about the wizard:

Here she is at the start of the fight, when she is sided with:

And here she is, when you side against her:

The above is an oversimplification, however, because the actual implementation of Aylin's immortality is a bit of a mess.

There are two implementations of her resurrection active in the game, and both are implemented as a Status: "GLO_NIGHTSONGRESURRECTION" and "GLO_NIGHTSONG_RESURRECTION". Now, I don't know what was going on there and I'm certainly not a Larian dev, but that underscore situation there is... weird. I also don't know enough about BG3-specific scripting yet to come up with an explanation on why there would be two variants of it at all - if anyone does, please let me know! I'm very curious. However, these two implementations of her resurrection ability work very differently, and you can see the effects of both of them in-game. 

The first one, GLO_NIGHTSONGRESURRECTION, is named "Moonmaiden's Reconstitution" and is tied to the "Child of the Moonmaiden" Passive (itself called SHA_NightsongResurrection, side note: GLO is the "global" prefix and SHA is a prefix that signifies the Gauntlet of Shar area in Act 2). This ability makes Aylin auto-stabilise when downed instead of rolling death saves, go into the kneeling stabilised animation where she can be helped up or healed just like your party members - you know the one, with the little asterisk hovering above them. Then on the start of her next turn she heals for exactly 1HP (unless she's under a healing-disabling effect, such as Bone Chill, which is why people have trouble with her in the Myrkul fight) and she has only her Bonus Action, the same as any other previously downed character.

Mechanically, it applies the "GLO_NIGHTSONGRESURRECTION_DOWNED" Status to her which modifies what happens when she is Downed to implement the above non-standard behaviour, and also does stuff like turn off her Moonbeam if she had it active.

The "Moonmaiden's Reconstitution" Status itself is completely invisible in-game: it has properties such as "DisableOverhead;DisableCombatlog;DisablePortraitIndicator" aka doesn't show up as that little text popup above the character, doesn't show up in the combat log, and doesn't have a visible indicator icon anywhere.

The description for "Child of the Moonmaiden" is:

"Blessed with the favour of a goddess, Nightsong cannot be permanently killed. When unconscious, [at] the start of her turn she recovers 1 hit point."

The second one, GLO_NIGHTSONG_RESURRECTION with the extra underscore, is a Status called "Nightsong Soars Eternal", and that one doesn't have any other Statuses or Passives tied to it, it simply resurrects her immediately when she dies, and at full health. When it triggers, you can actually see her portrait drop out of the initiative tracker at the top of the screen as if she completely died, and then she gets put in again. This one is active even when the first one isn't, so you can see it in places like camp after she comes back from Lorroakan, and after she comes back for the finale all the way until the end of the game - and by "see it" I mean since it doesn't have any Passive ability connected to it, you have to actually get Aylin killed to see it trigger (I'm so sorry Aylin, it was important for the post, I swear).

The description for "Nightsong Soars Eternal" is:

"Nightsong will be resurrected by the powers of Selûne whenever she dies."

In Lorroakan's tower, BOTH of these are disabled, and if downed, Aylin will just lie there as if she died for real with the little red skull and the "Dead" status until she gets rezzed for a cutscene after the fight or, if betrayed, you go to long rest and then come back to see Lorroakan's progress, at which point she will be up and in the cage with a total of 1HP and that "Soul Caged" status instead. 

Note again that she visibly has "Child of the Moonmaiden" disabled as soon as she enters the wizard tower area, betrayed or not, before she does anything to anyone. It's a way of making sure the Lorroakan fight is actually winnable/loseable/concludable without her getting stuck in that revive with 1HP at the start of her turn loop. "Nightsong Soars Eternal" also obviously doesn't trigger. Instead she says her "I will rise again!" line and stays down. She has every other ability and buff active normally, even ones that explicitly mention coming from Selûne, like her iconic following Moonbeam, for example, or her fancy unique Smite.

Again, significantly: she does not have her immortality buffs if you fight against her, either, betraying her and causing Selûne's wrath and desire to protect her daughter to manifest physically in the room, including empowering Aylin herself with buffs that are called things like "Moonmother's Embrace". See what I'm getting at?

Interestingly, she also doesn't have it when you first meet her:

What does this all mean? Well, I'd say that if we took every gameplay/implementation thing about this game as in-universe gospel, Aylin herself would look a lot different and be far more scaly, for one.

(Makes me chuckle every time.)

In all seriousness, though, if something as big as this happened to a side but still fairly prominent character, the game would tell us about it. Or at least make a bigger deal of it than the deactivation of a passive ability visible on the Examine screen that many people sadly don't really tend to look at and read.

And here's the best thing: nobody has to take my word for any of this, you can see for yourself, without actually knowing how to unpack game files or having my frankly ridiculous amount of hard saves! I think this is super helpful in general, especially for people playing on console:

Here's a link to a truly amazing and consistently updated resource - every bit of dialogue in the game, nicely parsed and laid out and super readable (as well as some additional tools to play around with). 

Here's a website where you can search inside BG3 scripts and other files and take a look at a lot of the nitty-gritty implementation stuff in a convenient way.

I recognise that I go way too deep into things and overstuff my brain with minutiae, but that's just how I work. I take forever to post anything anywhere on the internet because I just physically cannot click a post button without triple-checking everything and quoting and screenshotting things, even if it's the same thing for the twentieth time, and that's certainly a me problem. I very much don't expect people to do things my way, but I also find the games of telephone these things so rapidly become really frustrating, you know?

But my biggest problem with this particular Aylin thing - beyond the annoying preponderance of it, as I've already whined - is that in-universe it just makes no sense and I, an aasimar paladin enjoyer, personally dislike it.

Oath of Vengeance paladins abide by the following tenets: Fight the Greater Evil. Exerting your wisdom, identify the higher morality in any given instance, and fight for it. No Mercy for the Wicked. Chasten those who dole out their villainy by wiping their blight from the world forever.

Putting the rest of this post under a cut because it's long and ranty and you didn't actually ask for it.

My first problem: the common argument that Aylin is in the wrong for killing Lorroakan like she did because he has "done nothing to her yet", and that she breaks her Oath of Vengeance because she attacked him preemptively.

The man put a price on her head and sent violent mercs to beat her up and kidnap her. He tries to (temporarily) kill her and imprison her as soon as she refuses to cooperate by… demurely waltzing into the prison and putting the chains on herself? He knows exactly who she is, what has been done to her, and he wants to do it again - no, doesn't want to, he is actively doing it again. The fact that (if you side with Aylin) he fails mid-attempt doesn't make him innocent of it. He refuses to stop and, if denied, gets violent and murderous. 

Player: Have it your way. I'll bring her here. Lorroakan: Good. I was growing scared for you. The last person who disappointed me is suffering for it still. Do not return without my prize. Do you hear me? Good day.

Player: I'll think about it. Lorroakan: You aren't the only one who knows what's on offer for the Nightsong's retrieval. Consider carefully whether you'd like to see your fortune in someone else's hands. Someone who might slip into your camp at any moment, or harry you through street and inn until you're run ragged and surrender. The choice is yours: fortune or imminent death. I know you'll choose wisely.

Mark my words: the Nightsong is mine. With or without your help, she will ascend to her grand fate here, in this tower.

Player: You heard me. The answer is no. Lorroakan: Pity. Then again, perhaps word of your agonising death will draw your little friend to me. Myrmidons - imperatum!

He is fully equipped for it and has set up a whole magical trap and is just waiting for her to show up to trigger it, or for someone to drag her there against her will. He says she will go into the cage "kicking and screaming" and really, this is who she is wrong for "picking a fight with" and "attacking preemptively"? Surely nobody actually thinks that Aylin is at fault here or that she actually overreacted by killing him? I don't really want to go into some people's really, really shitty attitudes towards Aylin for sadly entirely predictable reasons but… man. She went over there and threatened him with violence, demanding an explanation after he sent cronies to attack her in her sleep? Wow, what a weird thing to do. Also, he literally is the one to attack first! She is there threatening and goading him, doing her little "face me charlatan" bit, but he is the one who sics the myrmidons on her (or the player) and actually starts the fight, every time. To be clear, I don't think this is very relevant at all, but people do seem to love bringing it up.

Is Aylin brash and reckless and clearly struggling after her captivity, dealing with rapidly flaring up anger and outbursts of violence - only ever, may I emphasise, towards actually horrid people, and she is really rather shockingly forgiving and tolerant of the player character messing with her? Yes! Does she seem to have that classical aspect of "she might go too far one day" or "she might lose herself in the anger and vengeance if she focuses on it exclusively"? Absolutely! Do I think she could have been, say, a Devotion paladin before her imprisonment and it might have been the betrayal and century in the Shadowfell that made her change to Vengeance instead? I love that idea! I also think it's likely she has just always been a very zealous, very smitey and offence-oriented Vengeance paladin, called Selûne's sword for a very good reason, fulfilling a very important role in the ongoing struggle against Shar.

And the whole problem is… Lorroakan will, as we've seen, not stop trying, and people like him will always be around and never stop coming after her especially now that the cat's apparently out of the bag after Balthazar, and Aylin needs to live with this, forever. That is why she is so messed up about this one rando wizard she's never met before. That is why this specific incident is so triggering for her. She has just escaped torment on a timescale that's not something the normal human mind can really grasp. "In this moment, I want for nothing." ended up lasting, indeed, barely a moment! Her mum is a powerful god and right now it seems that what Aylin actually gets from it is having a target painted on her back and, to quote Isobel, she can be hurt just like anyone else, she just gets to suffer longer! She keeps being dealt these shit hands and, yeah, it'd make anyone go… why? Seems unfair, right? What exactly is the point of this? 

The various dialogue options you have while warning her about Lorroakan's intentions and which include trying to convince her to just leave him be include her being so, so frustrated, and so understandably, it makes me feel horrible for her. 

She always ultimately goes to confront him, because she has no other real choice. He will keep coming after her, he will keep sending people after her, and she will never, ever get a bit of rest, and she's, what, supposed to go live in hiding somewhere if you convince him she's dead? Until the jig is inevitably up or this guy dies by someone else's hand? And there's also the element Aylin herself will point out if you keep her in the dark about the plot and Aradin and his cronies come to attack your camp: how long until someone hurts Isobel during one of these attempts or actively goes after her as a bargaining chip?

I guess I just genuinely do not understand the arguments about this guy who has been deliberately constructed to be a horrible, hateful piece of shit with exactly zero redeeming qualities, to an almost comical extent. He beats his apprentice and uses his assistant for target practice! He's a sick, sick asshole! His life's dream rests on kidnapping and enslavement! The guy is conspiring and trying to ally with Ketheric and Balthazar of all people: 

Lorroakan,

I have responded out of respect to my counsellor, Balthazar, who advises me that you may prove a loyal ally in the coming fight. I understand you wish to know about the soul cage which binds the Nightsong to me. Details, I cannot and will not provide. But the magic itself is necromantic in nature, designed by my aforementioned counsellor. I hope your curiosity is satisfied.

General Ketheric Thorm

This is who people think a vengeance pally will break her oath over? Over what, a technicality of who struck first? "Desecrating a corpse"? No, it was Ketheric she did that to, and nothing happened. She just finished this guy off in a violent and dramatic fashion. 

While you can play a paladin yourself and kill so many people in so many ways without anything happening, this is more of a consideration if you play Oath of Devotion or Ancients. It's also one that makes parts of the game harder - comically evil cultists torturing and executing prisoners cannot simply be attacked out of nowhere, and instead you need to announce your challenge first. You need to walk up to them and start talking, establish their villainy, and then fight "fairly". This is also partially an issue arising from the implementation of hostility flags and game logic, by the way. However, Oath of Vengeance gives precious few fucks about this and is a really hard oath to break. In fact, in a very similar situation to the wizard tower, in the House of Grief, you break the Oath of Vengeance if you spare Viconia - at that point lying on the floor soundly defeated and bleeding out much the same way Lorroakan was. Viconia who, may I note, never "did anything to you" but did harm a friend of yours.

Also, and this is a whole separate discussion, but... it's a FR DnD game. You kill bad guys in it. You kill vaguely morally grey, or even good guys in it. You and your friends kill so many people before this point. Multi-act quest arcs conclude with "go to place and kill someone". You mete out "justice" personally, repeatedly, and can harp on that fact, especially if you're playing a paladin. You don't exactly call the guards on people instead, even in the middle of the city. Ludo-narrative dissonance or no, why would this one wizard suddenly be different, and why would this one woman be singled out for a thus far completely typical approach and set of actions? 

My second problem: a great big "Selûne wouldn't do that". I understand Forgotten Realms "lore" is a giant unwieldy self-contradicting mess of a beast and I'm not saying people should be scholars of it to participate in the discussion, far from it, but I would like them to engage with what is presented in the game itself at least.

For the most succinct possible example, look at what Selûne does when Aylin is betrayed. She buffs her in order to enable her to violently and zealously win that fight. Literally empowers Aylin to smack her enemies around more and with greater strength and also burn them alive in holy fire. Not after she's imprisoned and well and truly "wronged", but during this fabulously absolving "mere attempt" on Lorroakan's part.

Also, may I point out the sweet little shielding- and healing-focused cleric of the same goddess is actively disappointed that you and Aylin won't let her come with to hit the guy a few times herself! This goes for the entire party of assorted weirdos, goody-good or otherwise, who firmly believe Aylin should just obliterate that guy. Like, c'mon, my man Wyll! (Super sad and touching exception: Karlach, if you've killed Gortash already. When she begs you not to tell Aylin about any of it at all and go deal with the wizard yourselves, just so Aylin can have a bit more peace and keep her sword sheathed for just a little while longer. Ow, my heart.)

In summary, basically, my twofold beef:

"Selûne punishing and abandoning her daughter for over-zealously defending herself" - nonsensical and uninteresting. Stops people from actually delving into and discussing the complexities of that relationship.

"OoV paladin broke her oath by killing an evil wizard who is actively trying to do horrible things to her and attacks her" - nonsensical and uninteresting. Let's instead actually engage with the material and discuss Aylin's trauma and how she might deal or not deal with it in good or bad ways. What would recovery even look like, for her. How does the way she intrinsically ties her entire being into being a smite-happy moon-magic knight play into it. Let's actually consider the weight and role of duty in her life and the wombo-combo of being an aasimar paladin, an existence with a very "purpose-made" aspect to it. You know, the good ol' Being A Sword thing, including being born into it. Combined with being rather suddenly rather intensely humanised by a loving relationship with a mortal woman, with all sorts of ticking clocks, unique challenges, and both past and pending tragedy there.

Or let's talk about the dissonance present in Aylin's cool and badass scenes of smiting deserving evil. Scenes that go into very violent and very over the top territory, that make you both cheer and cringe, that make a point of showing the other characters reacting in shock. Because I genuinely feel so bad for her and deeply worried for her, all while my silly little brain goes fuck yeah smite him shiny lady! Ooooh look, a flashy Aylin scene, ripping a deserving villain to pieces! But at what cost to herself? Feels so good to have someone deliver some justice! But if I think about it for 5 seconds I don't actually want her to - no, no, I do. I don't want her to have to, is the thing. (It's kind of like that one Gundam meme.)

I will conclude this mess by doing a salty little yeah. It's fine, this is fine, this is sadly pretty much part of the standard experience of liking a female character in fandom. God forbid women do anything indeed. Outside of a few select, narrow and highly dedicated circles, half the (scarce) posts about her are something that's either flat-out wrong, or just assumes the absolute worst of her and reduces her to two and a half shitty stereotypes, and half the fics tagged with her are actually about fandom's favourite two dudes and barely feature her at all.

And on that note, I'm off to actually be a positive force and poke at my own fic some more.

[bitchesgate3]

What has really helped me in being less mad about fandom takes is literally "touching grass".

In the sense of realizing that the world is not tumblr.

Talk to people irl, on steam, on reddit, on the larian forums, even discord and you'll realize not everyone agrees or is even aware of the most popular takes here. They may have worse takes but different takes at least.

What emboldened me the most was reading the IGN article and seeing what the spokesmen thought of their own game. How casually they talked about things and had fun with it, even if it didn't represent 100% what they actually thought. New perspectives without quaking in their boots how tumblr fans might react. I don't even think they are even aware of the takes on this site.

Watching wonderfully done youtube tributes to Ketheric emboldened me into believing that outside of tumblr, people also agree that his story is compelling. Whether it's just the famous voice actor or not, it was fun to see how their enjoyment encouraged them to make something I also enjoyed.

This is a post to encourage anyone who doesn't vibe with the most vocal headcanons on tumblr to realize that tumblr is only a small portion of the fanbase in reality. Try to talk about some of the takes here offsite, and people will look at you funny.

Put your thoughts out there if you are going to be on tumblr, and try not to get too caught up looking for this site to validate your perspective. Be bold and dilute what's popular.

[sorcerous-caress]

You're right and I know you are but I actually got so upset that I am now violently sick. I am literally only sharing this because I am fairly certain you're also autistic and BPD but I hate so much that like the one time in mainstream media we are given a bi/pan man who is effeminate and prefers men but isn't a derogatory stereotype but every post about him is like He’s The Most Masculine, Actually and actually the reason we don't see him express attraction to women is because he's so shy actually ignore that he can hookup with Laezel who would not stand for that and is main character trait is confident (and I don't think I've started fights so at least there's that)

I used to not understand the problem with the Astarion fandom but then I came to painful realization he has straight fans who actually seem to hate his canon character

Anyway sorry for all the Bobstarion… gay bpd bitches are gay bpd bitching. You're the best for reading this tho 😭💀💚

I know this feeling very well anon.

You've completely summed it up, he is finally a non-derogatory representation of an effeminate queer man and straight fans burnt his canon to the ground so they can make their dream masculine babyboy shy twink.

God it fucking stings doesn't it? It literally hurts just to think about how much Larian risked by even putting Astarion in the game. A western game at that too where forum after forum are full of incels complaining about women not being inflatable sex objects in their game.

Baldur's gate 2 and 1 never was this inclusive, it was strictly hetro except for the remastered npcs. Astarion by himself probably made them lose half their "old-school" homophonic demographic.

And the fandom takes all of that and makes him another fucking joke of a character? All the people who have never played the game would search up the Astarion tag and get a completely wrong impression of him.

Not once did a character before him made me leave a game because I was disgusted with myself. His storyline and writing is phenomenal because I too objectified him at the start then the game called me out for it in act 3 and it changed my world view so much.

God did you know early access had Gale and Wyll be awkward if a male Tav hits on them? That only Astarion was the always accepting person regardless of gender?

Even now he is still the only male character between the two who openly expresses his interest in men! Who embraces being flamboyant and doesn't try to fit into a narrative.

I completely understand anon, and I know how much bpd and autism highlights these feelings and make them dig like nails at your brain. Yes I have them too. And I'm glad you feel comfortable enough to share your thoughts with me.

It must be more frustrating for you tho, for liking Astarion and being lumped in with the rest of his weird fans without your consent. You can't even filter their posts out because they treat their takes as "normal" and how it's not them belittling a queer character no! They're just being "wholesome"

Fuck the batstarion shit still gets on my nerves. I saw one with a baby bottle feeding him??? It just feels so infantilising because he isn't some cute animal he is a fully grown and matured person. If it's just a kink then sure idc but please tag it at least.

Then they make him "shy" around women. You know why that god awful take was probably born? Because most of his straight fans picked women and went into his romance. So they think that his clumsy personality in act 2 is because they're a woman and he is so used to men.

It's fucking disgusting, Astarion would treat both men and women with the same clumsy romance, all my Tavs were nonbinary and he never treated them differently.

You have every right to feel this way, you have every right to be furious at this. Especially with a character you care about so much.

But people will take advantage of that, people who want to start fights for the sake of fights or drama blogs who are itching to make a callout post. People don't like others poking holes in their logic no matter how good your intentions are.

Homophobia exists, racism too, look at how ignored Wyll is by these supposed fans. Look at how popular Gale x Astarion is than x Wyll because both of them are white.

It's okay to vent and it's okay to feel frustrated and stuck. God knows during some bpd episodes I come very close to deleting this blog bc of the smallest of reasons, so Imagine actually having a valid reason to be mad like you.

Take a step back, fuck those people honestly. Fuck anyone who ever did this shit just for their own self indulgence, who left all the media that panders to straight people and came and took Astarion too just to strip him of all of his traits and put him in the hetro box.

So leave them be, they suck, they're shitty and never willing to listen. Don't waste your frustration on them, it's better to yell at a wall, at least, unlike them, it might reply back with something productive one of those days.

Again, I hope you feel better soon. I genuinely do, these feelings suck beyond words can describe. Do something you like or revisit your favourite works that stay true to Asterion's character. Ground yourself with anything that might help.

Don't feed them or reply to their arguments, please. hopefully, they leave the fandom once the new manufactured tumblr sexyman is released and the Asterion tag.

[shadowheartt]

Baldur's Gate 3: a *potential* update on party-locking

Warning: Please take this with a grain of salt. Obviously this does not confirm or deny anything, but nevertheless, I thought I'd share this as it *could* hint at some good news!

In 2020, Larian made a FAQ post on their offical forums which stated that party-locking would be implemented into the game after Act 1.

Q: Is your party permanent or can you change members out throughout the adventure?

A: Recruited companions will be at camp when not in the adventuring party, and can be swapped in and out at camp. After the first act however you are going to have to commit, also just like in real life.

Recently, I revisited this same forum post and noticed that the information was updated 1 month ago (10/05/2023).

Upon reading through the questions and answers, I noticed that they edited/removed their answer regarding party-locking. The answer now reads:

Q. Is your party permanent or can you change members out throughout the adventure?

A: Recruited companions will be at camp when not in the adventuring party, and can be swapped in and out at camp.

(Note: this same question/answer was also edited on their offical discord FAQ).

Like I said, the original post was made years ago, so it's only natural that things are going to change come full release. However, given that BG3 is set to release in just over 2 and half months, Larian has been verrrry quiet on the subject of party-locking.

Hopefully they've been stealthily listening to our opinions on the matter and have decided AGAINST party-locking. Again, please take this with a grain of salt. It may be meaningless, or maybe Larian simply chose to remove their comment as they didn't want people to keep bringing it up. Regardless, here's to hoping that party-locking won't be implemented in BG3!

[bg3fandomcritical-active]

If yall think this blog is harsh just know that it is child's play compared to some of the stuff I've seen on Larian Forums. This is the post on LF that was referred to earlier by another anon. TW absolutely unhinged shadowhusband m'lady edge lord behavior ahead: It is far too easy to accidentally trigger the conversation where Shadowheart admits to wanting to sleep with Halsin the whole time. I'm trying to figure out if there is some lesson to be taught, because through the whole game, the lesson of tolerance is conveyed through the writing. And I can appreciate that, tolerance is a worthy objective to teach, especially in this day and age. In this case however, I don't think that was the point. This idiot of a writer was just trying to "push the envelope" so to speak.

Let me tell you how this plays out in the REAL world. If someone who you THOUGHT was a friend your whole time tells you he wants to bang your girl out of the blue, he earns an immediate ass whooping. If your girl expresses displeasure when you refuse, you break up with her, on the spot. And if, God forbid, you were married, you might trigger an even worse response than that. There is a reason why people are able to successfully plea temporary insanity in the cases of murder due to adultery. Hell, this is "just a game," and I STILL probably wouldn't hesitate to put a bat through your writer's skull and make him look like a mindflayer's lunch.

You do not tangle with people's emotions in a relationship, genius. There is no message of "tolerance" to be conveyed here. Get a writer who understands relationships.

USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST. It is only here for moderation's documentation purposes. Zero tolerance for threats of violence against Larian staff.

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[mybg3notebook]

Loving your analyses of Astarion's behaviour and character so far! It has really reaffirmed in my eyes just how much of a bastard he really is. (I say that fondly, of course.) Do you have any thoughts on why the general reaction on tumblr has leaned so much towards woobifying him? After looking at his actual (explicit and implicit) morals in game it seems quite odd that some people are reading him as an edgy soft boi who just needs a hug from the right person to fix him.

Hello!

Thank you very much! I really enjoy seeing chars in a deep way. It makes me change my opinion on them, sometimes. That's why I like to do these analysis, even though it's a lot of work for a person who doesn't speak English as a native.

Lol, please, I won't be offended. Astarion is a bastard in the whole sense of the word, lol.

However, I find Astarion an interesting evil (evil neutral imo) char to explore the narration of “abuser who found a greater abuser”, with all the topics I talked about in those posts. I would feel a bit disappointed if Larian suddenly changes him into a man who always had a gold heart (because for that, you need to give hints, even in EA, and none of that has been seen so far).

An example of how this is done is with Shadowheart, she is evil and she supports a lot of cruelty that Astarion does too, but we got meta-knowledge (and not so much meta when we see her heavily drunk after killing the tieflings) that gives us enough reasons to believe she has some heart in her, despite Shar and her teachings. I do not support the idea of “she is a softie”, because she is not, but she doesn't have the same level of cruelty nor revels in murder so much as Astarion does. They represent different degrees of evilness. What plays in her favour is her face, which gives the idea of more softness than she truly has; the same happens with Astarion. Lae'Zel is less cruel than Astarion in general, with more logical reasons to be so because her brainwashed culture made her to be more pragmatic than a taster of cruelty, and yet, she receives a lot of more hate in the fandom... and it is clear to me why: she is not “beautiful” in the traditional white euro-centric standard sense.

And this is my point to answer your question (remember all this is personal opinion): I think there are many reasons why people woobify Astarion (not only in tumblr, but also in Reddit or in Larian Forums, it's a big part of the EA fandom).

First and foremost, I believe it's his appearance. If he were a bugbear or a goblin, few in this fandom would give a thought about his abuse, his pain, Cazador, etc. They would focus on his “bastard” side and leave it at that (again, Lae'Zel has this treatment). I want to make clear that I'm not questioning people's taste, everyone can like whatever they want to. I'm saying that, for me, there it proof enough to sustain this idea that Astarion is woobified because he is beautiful: when you read that a lot of people in this fandom never had an interest in Larian's previous games, or isometric rpgs, or even turn-based combat games (there are some people who are giving feedback against the game being a turned-based combat one! It's the nonsense because it's basically Larian's style), but they bought bg3 because they saw Astarion, even though they knew nothing about him.... All this, clearly, shows to me that a lot of people approached this game for only one char, for only his design (a big amount of them say it explicitly), and it is not far-fetched to know that people justify more easily beautiful villains than ugly ones. We can explore a lot of examples of this in many fandoms. People can love villains because they have real complex reasons to be so (like Loghain in DAO), but they also can like whimsical villains just because they are “hot”. I feel this is Astarion's case, he is a “beautiful villain” who apparently has always been evil. His reasons for his whimsical evilness is more like “it's always been in his nature”. Unless the family part has a different role in his backstory (mirror option) and it's not a mere line for a player to play a “good aligned” Astarion when picked as Origin. I don't like to read much about it in that scene because the game still doesn't have companion Tags; those options in the mirror can be there just for the player to pick, flavoured with each origin, but not necessarily the three of them are canon. This will be seen once we have the companion tags activated as it happened in DOS2.

What we can say for sure is that Larian knew what they were doing when they picked Astarion's design; they choose a dangerous white guy with white hair and evil alignment: an archetype that catches a lot of people in many fandoms.

Part of his woobyfication process has a deep root there, in my opinion. Again, if he were a bugbear, a goblin, a githyanki, a monster-humanoid... we would not have 90% of the EA fandom collapsed with his image, or Larian focused on him to the point that after 4 patches he had new scenes, lines, corrections, and development, while Wyll is still there, sitting in the bench of “the less developed chars” (with around 2k less lines than the rest of the chars, and his personal quest bugged since the first day). Yes, I don't like the preference on one single companion when I am seeing the “future Beast” (from DOS2) in Wyll.

Second, he is a vampire. Vampires are a great element in any fantasy narrative. You know you will have a lot of fans behind a vampire char. Not by chance Vampire The Masquerade is one, if not the most important product of White Wolf, which keeps still giving them a lot of profit despite being decades old. Vampires are always a good element of personal horror, of lack of control of your own body, and also an allegory of abuse, power, and rape. This concept of “being a monster without control” that they embody helps a bit more for the woobification.

Third, people tend to mix a lot headcanon with what a character gives us as canon. We can have a long useless discussion about which is more worthy: canon or headcanon, or about why one should or should not respect canon, but putting all that discussion aside, and considering the previous two points, I see that a small part of his woobyfication comes from the fact that people love denial and self-projection instead of analysing of what they are given (and let's be honest, we know in tumblr, reddit and others social networks, people lack of reading comprehension skills, which makes analysis all about self projection without a real effort in understanding the character's perspective. It's all about the player unilateral perspective. How can you analyse a char you didn’t play with or explored in all its paths? ).

So if their beautiful character is behaving in a way they don't want to, they start considering him “random” (I read this so much that confuses me, because Astarion has clear patterns for everyone who wants to see them, like the rest of the companions. He is not random, he follows pretty well all what I listed here, that list helps you to predict what he will disapprove or approve) so they end up filling this apparent “randomness” with headcanons and self-projections. Don't get me wrong, I don't despise headcanons, I love them, I have a lot of them and create with them. But I also like honest analysis and separate what I want from what I get from a company (to correctly give them feedback, otherwise I will be giving them my headcanons).

If you don't want an aspect of a given char, and you want to deny it, it's perfectly fine. Do it, it's your entertainment, but be honest with the fandom about it, acknowledge this is a personal denial you enjoy. And mainly, don't use headcanons and self-projections to attack the rest of the chars you don't like in their own tags. We know how aggressive some people in this fandom are, and it's a bit frustrating to see aggression without the slightest effort in understanding the character they hate.

There is also something sad to say, related to self-projection, that contributes to Astarion's woobyfication too: a lot of players are survivors of abuse who connect with him from trauma, and I can understand if denying his past is a way to help them to release any kind of pain or need for vengeance against their abusers. It's a natural and totally understandable projection. The woobyfication, then, ends up in an intense self-projection where they give to the char something that they needed because their own trauma.

This is why I would like Larian to give us other survivor chars that people can project onto, whose stories are really about survivors of abuse who were not evil in the beginning. Because I feel a lot of people approached Astarion as a narration of a “victim who will become a victimiser” or as a “bad behaved victim”, instead of what I think it's shown: an abuser who found a greater abuser (and his story is about punishment of the abuser and the concept of justice in a world which has none), so trauma survivors will end up with disappointment if they think Astarion is something similar to the representation of what they experienced. Plus, vampirism is never good to use as allegories of abusers/victims because the relationship Sire/Childe is too sick and twisted. So, again, this is a mere opinion from all what I've been reading since the game came out.

I hope Larian sticks to the narration they seem to follow with Astarion: an abuser who found a greater one, and now wants to become the next Cazador, and this woobifycation doesn't change the real potential of a dark deep story that I believe they want to give us: not every char is redeemable, and sometimes evilness is capricious. We had chars like these in bg1 and bg2 after all. 

[bg3fandomcritical-active]

"I went through BW's entire website, and [...] still seems like a massive reach and a strange conclusion based on what they wrote. Dare I say it’s an extremely bad faith criticism of their character?"

wish i could send sc's with anon on, because it wasn't on their own website, it was on some other website where they were discussing why they wrote what they did for their indie game

"at one point in my life I felt like I needed to move past the sort of person I was who would have crushes on fictional characters. I had it real bad when I was a teenager. I didn't feel attracted to a real person until I was 19 years old. I am still very disgusted at the thought of much real-world interaction I think as a result of idealisation brought on by video game romantic simulation. It has been a defining part of my existance, especially writing Don' Wake Me Up was a big part of it. I thought. I should kill that part of me off for a while... but it seemed to refuse to die when I tried. So I'm letting the damn thing live. Why the hell not. It refuses to die."

along with this comment, from discord,

"I saw [Astarion] during EA and a large part of why I wanted to work at Larian was because I saw it as a perfect opprotunity to present a deconstruction of the concept of parasocial sexualization of fictional characters if I got to work on him. It was certainly one of the themes I cared about most."

initially when i was sending asks in i was trying to avoid the BW discussion entirely, i tried to be vauge, but people brought them up by name anyway. so i responded. i dont agree with their philosophy. so how i read the story is going to be different and i can critisise an author for it. its not a dig at them as a person and i dont understand why its seen that way, especially when BW just. says what they mean and im just reacting to it? i dont like the implication i personally have been harassing them (not by OA, but this comes up whenever i try to have this discussion). ive never used any of larians official channels, ie discord or forums or contact emails, my complaining about their writing has been always in posts on my personal blog or private chats with my mutals. but whatever. think what you want. i think im done here.

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