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zoloteh-volossya · 3 months ago

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BG3 Fanfiction Statistics, Part 1

I’ve seen some discussions of BG3 fandom trends floating around tumblr that spoke from experience but lacked hard data to refer to. As a fan of Baldur’s Gate 3, fanfiction, and graphs, I therefore thought it would be neat and illustrative to go through AO3 and document some of the statistics this fandom.

I did a similar exercise back in January and posted the results here. However, I was a bit unhappy with this analysis – it was missing some data that I consider to be relevant, I didn’t end up discussing the results much, and I only posted it to reddit. Most discussions for the creative side of fandom seem to happen on tumblr, so I made this account to post it here.

I will try and be as transparent as possible when discussing how I obtained and processed this data. A copy of my spreadsheet can be found here and contains all of the data I will be discussing. Most of the data I feature in this essay will be presented as graphs. Below each graph I will discuss the patterns shown in the graph and provide what I believe to be some relevant and/or interesting number values. If you want to see all the numbers, please refer to my spreadsheet. If you don’t care about the numbers and/or my thoughts about them, feel free to skim through and just look at the charts!

A note before I start – I gathered this data between July 21, 2024 and July 24, 2024. It is out of date as of my writing this and will be even more out of date by the time you read it. However, I believe the general fandom trends will hold up over time – the same patterns that I observed in January are largely still present in July.

Due to the tumblr post image limit and my preponderance of graphs, I will be breaking this behemoth of an essay into two parts:

General Fandom Statistics, the Player Character, and the Women

The Men, a Character Comparison, and a Pairing Analysis

We are currently in part 1. Part 2 can be found at this link. The rest of part 1 is below the read more because this is very long.

GENERAL FANDOM STATS

This information was found by looking at the side bar when browsing Baldur’s Gate fics. Therefore, this data set includes fics from the previous two Baldur’s Gate games. However, given that the games were released in 1998 and 2000, respectively, most of the fanfiction for them was likely posted to FF.net and the error from including what little fic for them was posted to AO3 is likely small.

At the time of my data gathering, there were 31,043 Baldur’s Gate fics on AO3.

RATINGS

To the surprise of nobody in the BG3 fandom, Explicit fic is the largest category, at 38% of all fics produced. It’s followed by Mature (24%), Teen and Up (20%), General (12%) and Not Rated (6%). Not all of the Explicit and Mature fics are necessarily horny – those warnings also apply to extreme violence (hello, Dark Urge). But let’s be real, most of them are tagged that way for sex.

WARNINGS

Speaking of extreme violence, let’s take a look at the warnings used for fics in this fandom.

Just about half (50.2%) of BG fics have no warnings at all. About 17.6% have warnings for graphic depictions of violence – lower than I would have expected, honestly, for a video game that features as much murder as this one does (at least, how I play it...). About 5.4% of fics feature a warning for rape, 4.7% feature major character death, and 0.5% feature underage sex.

CATEGORIES

AO3 allows users to select any categories from a list of possible options (F/M, M/M, F/F, Gen, Other, and Multi). F/M, M/M, and F/F are pretty self explanatory, Gen fics don’t focus on a relationship, Multi fics focus on a relationship between three or more people, and Other is a catch all for fics that don’t fit into any of the previous categories very well. For shipping with nonbinary (NB) characters, I have seen a variety of approaches. Some people select the category closest to the NB character’s presentation, some select multiple categories, and some select Other.

One very useful tool that I will be introducing here is the use of “otp:true.” When “otp:true” is entered into the “Search within results” bar while filtering tags, AO3 will only return fics that have just one pairing tagged. This filters out all fics that have background pairings or multiple focus pairings. Results with “otp:true” are typically solely focused on that particular pairing.

With all that explanation out of the way, the results:

We can clearly see that the most common category for Baldur’s Gate fics is M/F, with 43.3% of all fics featuring a M/F pairing. 36.4% of all fics feature a M/M pairing, 10.6% feature a F/F pairing, 11.7% are more General, 8.0% feature Multiple people in a pairing, and 10.9% are Other. These percentages add up to more than 100% because a fic can be tagged with multiple categories.

Things change a bit when you filter for “otp:true” and only include fics that focus on just one pairing. In this case, M/M predominates, with a whopping 46.0% of fics. M/F follows with 31.2%, F/F with 11.1%, 7.7% are General, 9.7% are Other, and 3.0% are still tagged as Multi (presumably for fics where the only pairing is a threesome or such).

CHARACTERS

As a last look at more general content before I begin a deep dive into looking at the various characters, I took a look at the 30 most popular character tags.

This was a surprise to me the first time I looked at it in January. In the previous two video game fandoms I was in that had a player character (Mass Effect and Fire Emblem: Three Houses), the player character was the most popular character tag in that fandom. In this case, though, Astarion has the most fics that feature him, and by a pretty significant margin (~5,000 more fics than Tav). He appears in 63.0% of fics. Tav is next, at 46.7% of fics. Then we have the rest of the six Origin characters: Gale (34.5% of fics), Shadowheart (23.7%), Karlach (20.5%), Wyll (18.6%), and Lae’zel (15.9%), as well as Halsin (15.8%) and the Dark Urge (15.3%). That they all are next to each other makes sense, as fics that focus on one character or pairing will often tag the entire ensemble. Lae’zel only showing up 16% of the time seems low, though, for a member of the main cast. To me, this indicates that not many fics are true ensemble fics that include all of the main cast.

After this block of main characters, we drop a bit to Gortash, who shows up in 7.4% of fics. He’s the most popular villain by far, followed by Cazador (4.7%) and Raphael (4.6%). Orin only shows up in 2.9% of fics and Ketheric is featured in only 1.1% of fics.

Jaheira shows up in 4.4% of fics, but her values may include fics from the earlier Baldur’s Gate games. Poor Minthara is the 16th most tagged character and only shows up in 2.5% of fics. Rolan (a tiefling NPC) shows up in more fics than she does.

Despite being featured in previous Baldur’s Gate game fics as well as BG3, Minsc does not seem popular – he’s #25, being tagged in 1.3% of fics.

One thing I did note was the comparative lack of focus on the overarching plot of the game in BG3 fics. I’ll use the Emperor as a barometer for this, as it’s inextricably interwoven into everything having to do with the Absolute, the mysterious artifact, and our protagonists’ immunity to it. Yet, it only appears in 535 fics of over 31,000 – approximately 1.7% of all BG fics. This tells me that there isn’t much engagement with the actual illithid plot of the game in most fics – at least not to the extent where major plot relevant characters are being tagged.

CHARACTER PAIRING STATISTICS

Most of my time for this analysis was spent collecting data for the various pairing tags. I went through the top 300 pairing tags by order of popularity (ending with Mystra/Cazador, of all things) and recorded how many fics each rating had and how many fics each category had both with and without “otp:true” applied. Coincidentally, this included all the pairings with 5 or more fics in them at the time – by sheer luck the 301st pairing tag had only 4 fics. I judged that I could ignore pairing tags with fewer than 5 fics without affecting the results of my analyses too much (also it had taken 4 days to get this far and I was tired).

However, a lot of authors tag their fics with both, say, Astarion/Tav and Astarion/F!OC. But for this exercise I’m not really looking at how authors refer to the Tav/Dark Urge/self insert character in their tagging nomenclature. I’m more interested in how many fics exist for, say, the pairing of Astarion and the player character.

To this end, I combined the numbers for Tav, Dark Urge, OC, F!OC, M!OC, NB!OC, Reader, and You for each character ship. In order to avoid double counting fics, once I had added the numbers for a particular tag I excluded that tag from all future counts.

[X]/PC = [X]/Tav + ([X]/Dark Urge with the [X]/Tav tag excluded) + ([X]/Original Character with the [X]/Tav and [X]/Dark Urge excluded) + ([X]/Reader with [X]/Tav, [X]/Dark Urge, and [X]/Original Character excluded) and so on.

This process dropped the total number of pairings from 300 to 162. However, it also introduces an error. Some fics ship characters with an OC who is not a Tav/Dark Urge/self insert. In condensing all pairings with original characters to the “PC” supercategory, I am ignoring that and counting their original character as a Tav/Dark Urge equivalent. Unfortunately, this is just something I have to live with in order to be able to make the data more manageable, as there is no way to tell which fics are using the OC tag to represent a Tav/Dark Urge and which are not on a mass data scale. I don’t think it will skew the results too much, at least.

I pulled out the top 20 ships for each major character in BG3 (Tav, Dark Urge, the PC, Shadowheart, Karlach, Lae’zel, Minthara, Astarion, Gale, Wyll, and Halsin) before and after I combined the player character tags into the PC supercategory. For each character, I then determined how much of each fic category (M/F, M/M, F/F, Other, Multi) they had, both for all of their pairings and for their pairing with the PC specifically.

Let's start by looking at the player character and its two representatives.

TAV

Tav is in 71 of the top 300 ship tags in the BG3 fandom.

Astarion completely dominates Tav’s ships, with a whopping 9,235 fics (1,839 otp:true fics). In fact, in order to be able to see the tiny little boxes that represent everyone else, here’s another version of this chart, this time with Astarion excluded.

There, that’s a bit more legible. The next highest is Gale, with 2,909 fics (652 otp:true) – less than a third as many fics as Astarion. Halsin comes third with 1,304 fics (207 otp:true) and Shadowheart is the first canon woman to show up, with 806 fics (132 otp:true). Astarion has more than 11 times as many fics with Tav as Shadowheart does. Karlach comes next, with 724 fics (186 otp:true). Raphael comes sixth, with 176 more fics than #7 Wyll who has 442 fics (100 otp:true). Lae’zel is #11 with 300 fics, under Gortash, Rolan, and a threesome with Halsin and Astarion. Minthara is the least popular main character to ship with Tav. She’s #15 with 146 fics (33 otp:true), and has fewer fics with Tav than Zevlor, the Emperor or Haarlep. In a marked improvement from the state of affairs in January, however, she no longer has fewer fics than Kar’niss.

Taking a look at the fic category breakdown, we can see that M/F and M/M predominate for Tav, while there is very little F/F. Dividing the values by the total number of fics, 59.8% of all fics and 50.2% of otp:true fics are tagged M/F, 35.6% of all fics and 34.9% of otp:true fics are tagged M/M, 7.6% of all fics and 4.4% of otp:true fics are tagged F/F, and 13.2% of all fics and 14.2% of otp:true fics are tagged Other. As the proportions of M/F and F/F fics drop when otp:true is applied, I assume that it is more common for M/F and F/F pairings to have background ships or be a background ship (remember that if it is not otp:true, we have no idea if the pairing with Tav is the pairing category being counted.)

THE DARK URGE

The Dark Urge is in 38 of the top 300 ship tags of the BG3 fandom, a bit over half as many as Tav.

While Astarion once again is the most popular character to ship with the Dark Urge (2,165 fics), this time he actually has competition! Gortash/Dark Urge comes in at a very respectable second place with 1,594 fics (about three quarters of Astarion/Dark Urge’s total fic count) and actually beat Astarion by over 100 fics once you apply otp:true (562 fics for Astarion vs 691 fics for Gortash). But after Gortash we once again drop down to numbers we struggle to even see on the chart. Gale is the most visible with 402 fics total (Gale has fewer fics total with the Dark Urge than Astarion or Gortash have with otp:true applied). After that we have a group of Halsin, Shadowheart, and Karlach, all with between 120-150 fics. No other pairing has over 100 fics.

Dark Urge/Tav (99 fics) and Dark Urge/Orin (87 fics) have more fics than Dark Urge/Wyll (83 fics) or Dark Urge/Minthara (80 fics). For Wyll, this is a sign that his pairing with the Dark Urge is not very popular (he drops from #7 with Tav to #9 with the Dark Urge). For Minthara, however, this is a significant climb in the rankings – she was #15 with Tav and #10 with the Dark Urge.

But what’s really interesting to me is the fic category breakdown for the Dark Urge.

The Dark Urge has noticeably more M/M content than Tav does (47.0% vs 35.6% for all fics, 56.9% vs 34.9% for opt:true) and slightly more F/F content than Tav does (10.2% vs 7.6% for all fics, 5.2% vs 4.4% for otp:true), and correspondingly less F/M content. At 13.4% for all fics and 12.8% of otp:true fics, the proportion of Other fic stays just about the same as for Tav.

THE PLAYER CHARACTER

The PC is a combination of Tav, Dark Urge, Original Character, Reader, and You. The PC is in 64 of the top 162 pairings of the BG3 fandom (losing 5 pairings from Tav as I combined Tav/Tav, Tav/Dark Urge, Tav/Reader and so on into one PC/OC category).

The player character was involved in 76.0% of all pairings and 62.1% of otp:true pairings (that is, if you add up every fic for every pairing which the PC is in and divide it by sum of all fics for all BG3 pairings I tracked). This means that over three quarters of shipping in the BG3 fandom is with the player character. It’s not surprising, but it is notable – that’s a very large proportion.

Holy smokes, Astarion! He dominates the rankings even more than before. This time, I was curious to see how much. See below for a proportional representation of all of the PC pairings (note: because many fics have multiple pairings, this circle does not represent the total number of fics but rather the total number of times any pairing with the PC has been tagged).

Astarion composes a full 45% of all pairings with the PC, Gale is bit over 13%, Gortash is 7.3% for all fics and 11.3% of otp:true fics, while Halsin has the opposite trend with 6.3% of all fics and 4.9% of otp:true fics. Shadowheart, Karlach, Raphael, and Wyll all are between 2% and 4% (with Raphael once again beating Wyll). Lae’zel is down at #11 with 1.4% and Minthara is all the way at #16 with 0.9%.

Out of curiosity, I went through all of the PC’s pairings and sorted them by the gender of the person being shipped with the PC.

Oof.

85.7% of all PC ships are with men, 10.4% are with women, and 1.9% are nonbinary beings (Haarlep, the Emperor, and Omeluum). When you apply otp:true, 87.1% of the player character’s ships are with men, 9.9% are with women, and 1.3% are with nonbinary beings.

SHADOWHEART

Welp! Let’s take a look at that 10%, starting with Shadowheart.

If you add up all the fics for all the pairings that include Shadowheart and divide that by the sum of all fics for all 162 pairings I collected, you can see that she is present in 7.0% of pairings. Interestingly, this is true both for all fics and for otp:true fics. She is in 30 of the top 300 ship tags and 24 of the 162 pairings that remain once the player character tags are consolidated.

(I have shortened Shadowheart's name to SH and Shart in various charts to keep the labels from taking up too much room in the graph.)

Lae’zel/Shadowheart is in close competition with Shadowheart/Tav. When all the player characters are condensed into the PC, though, that gap widens.

Shadowheart has 980 fics with the PC, 694 with Lae’zel, 226 with Karlach, 111 with Gale, 61 with Astarion, 51 with Nocturne, 36 with Halsin, 26 with Minthara, and 21 with Wyll (her least popular ship with a main character, at #12). 7 of her top 20 pairings are threesomes – Aylin/Isobel/SH at #8 with 35 fics, Karlach/PC/SH at #9, Karlach/Lae’zel/SH at #10, Astarion/PC/SH at #13, Halsin/PC/SH at #14, Karlach/Wyll/SH at #17, and Gale/Lae’zel/SH at #18.

Lae’zel/Shadowheart has an unusually high number of otp:true fics – almost half of its total fic count. It seems more popular to ship Shadowheart with women than men – both her ships with Lae’zel and Karlach are more popular than Astarion, Gale, or Wyll and her threesomes with women have more fics than her threesomes with men.

The fic category breakdown for Shadowheart matches this expectation.

Boy howdy is Shadowheart fic gay! She has over twice as much F/F fic than M/F fic, just looking at raw numbers of fics. Looking at the proportions of her total fic count, F/F fic represents 71.4% of all of her fics, M/F fic is 35.2%, Other is 10.0%, and Multi is 18.8%. (These percentages add up to more than 100% because many fics tag multiple categories.) This also means that we can’t know that these numbers necessarily include Shadowheart – witness the numbers of M/M fics. All it means is that these categories were on fics in which a Shadowheart pairing was also tagged.

Looking at the otp:true numbers gives us a better picture of what fics where only Shadowheart is in a relationship are like (though this not necessarily an accurate idea of patterns for her overall, as less than a third of her total fics are otp:true). 76.4% of otp:true fics are F/F, 19.8% are M/F, 3.8% are Other, and for some reason 1.2% (9 fics) are M/M. Over three quarters of Shadowheart’s otp:true pairings are femmeslash.

Shadowheart’s fics with the PC character follow pretty much the same pattern as her ships more generally, albeit with slightly less F/F (likely from the loss of the relative behemoth that is Shadowheart/Lae’zel).

32.9% of her pairings with the PC have the M/F tag, 68.1% are tagged F/F, 11.3% are tagged Other, and 18.5% are tagged Multi. Applying otp:true, 25.7% are M/F, 62.6% are F/F, and 12.3% are Other (this likely includes a substantial portion of nonbinary PCs).

KARLACH

Karlach is present in 6.0% of all fic pairings and 5.4% of otp:true fic pairings. She has 31 ship tags in the top 300 ship tags, which condense down to 26 pairings when all player character stand ins are combined.

Her second most popular ship after Tav is with Wyll, though unlike with Shadowheart the pairing is not popular enough to give Tav a run for his/her/their money. Condensing all the player characters widens this gap significantly.

The PC is overwhelmingly Karlach’s most popular ship, with 890 fics. Wyll is second, with 327 fics – less than half as many. Shadowheart and Astarion follow with 226 and 157, respectively. Dammon is next, with 91 fics, and then Lae’zel has 65. She then has a number of threesomes, Minthara (#9 with 32 fics), and Gale (#11 with 18 fics). Halsin is her least popular pairing with a main character, coming in at #15 with 11 fics.

Surprisingly, for all that Karlach is fairly butch, her pairings with men are relatively more popular than we see with the more femme Shadowheart. The category statistics illustrate this clearly.

Compared to Shadowheart, Karlach has a lower proportion of F/F and higher proportions of M/F and Multi fics. F/F is tagged on 51.8% of her fics, M/F on 42.5%, Other on 12.3% and Multi on 27.7%. (Remember that fics can be tagged with multiple categories and that just because a category is tagged doesn’t mean that Karlach is involved in that category.) Looking at otp:true gives us a look at fics where she is the sole focus. F/F is 55.0% of her otp:true fics, M/F drops to 34.4%, Multi drops to 6.1%, and Other stays fairly high at 10.4%.

In Karlach’s pairings with the player character, things change significantly.

It immediately becomes clear that the large number of M/F fics in her general pairings were largely due to her relatively popular ships with Wyll, Astarion, and Dammon. F/F dominates Karlach’s pairings with the PC with 64.0% (67.8% with otp:true applied) of fics, which puts her at just slightly less than Shadowheart. M/F is tagged in 28.5% of her fics with the PC (14.0% with otp:true applied), Multi is tagged 19.4% but drops to 1.2% for otp:true, and Other remains high with 18.0% of fics and 20.2% of otp:true fics with the PC.

Back in January, I noted that of the main cast, Karlach had the highest proportion of ships with nonbinary OCs. I didn’t track the breakdown of OC subcategories this time, but the high numbers in the Other category bear it out.

LAE'ZEL

Counting all fics for all pairings in which Lae’zel is tagged, she is in a mere 3.8% of BG3 pairings, though it rises to 4.5% when otp:true is applied. She is in 23 of the top 300 ship tags, a number that drops down to 18 when I consolidate the player character tags together.

Shadowheart/Lae’zel has twice as many fics as Lae’zel/Tav. Looking at the situation with the PC does not change this much.

Unlike any other main character, Lae’zel’s most popular ship is not with the PC but with Shadowheart. She has 694 fics with Shadowheart, 355 with the PC, 65 with Karlach, 26 with Gale, 26 with Wyll, 25 with Astarion, 16 with Minthara, and 12 with Halsin. She is in an unusually low number of threesomes – only 4. It’s notable though how skewed her numbers are towards women – a threesome with Karlach and Shadowheart has more fics than any of her pairings with a canon man. The various whole team multiship pairings, none of which have more than 11 fics, comprise most of the tail end of her ship list.

Speaking of the tail end of her ship list, what happens when we condense the player character tags is that Lae’zel does not reach a full 20 ships – she drops to 18 pairings. She has more than this, of course, but my methodology ignores all pairings with fewer than 5 fics (which means that my friend’s Lae’zel/Astarion/Tav fic is not counted). Therefore, Lae’zel’s 19th and 20th most popular pairings have 4 fics or fewer. I have represented these missing pairings with little :( emojis, because this is a sad state of affairs.

This is a symptom of a state of affairs in which Lae’zel is just not very popular in the AO3 side of BG3 fandom. Her most popular ship is Shadowheart’s second most popular ship, and the numbers crater after that. No Lae’zel ship other than Shadowheart and the PC has more than 100 fics.

Lae’zel’s most popular ships being women is demonstrated clearly by the fic category breakdown.

Wow! At a whopping 76.3% of all of Lae’zel’s fics and 88.9% of Lae’zel’s otp:true fics, Lae’zel has a higher proportion of F/F fic than Shadowheart. Granted, they’re both sizable portions of each other’s total F/F count. 26.1% of Lae’zel’s fics have the M/F tag, though this drops to a mere 7.1% when otp:true is applied. Other is tagged in 11.6% of fics but drops to 2.0% with otp:true. 18.1% of her fics are tagged Multi but this likewise drops to 4.4% with otp:true.

The pertinent question for Lae’zel is how much of her F/F count is due to her pairing with Shadowheart? How gay are her pairings with the PC?

The answer is... still pretty gay! F/F is not quite as dominant, with 67.3% of all her fics with the PC and 80.0% of her fics where only Lae’zel/PC is tagged – but 80% is a still a really high proportion! This indicates to me that a lot of the M/F in the “All Fics” chart likely does not involve Lae’zel. M/F is tagged in 33.5% of her fics with the PC, a number which is more than halved to 12.7% when otp:true is applied. 13.2% of her fics are tagged Other, which drops to 5.5% with otp:true – much less than for Shadowheart and Karlach. It seems either Lae’zel is not as popular for nonbinary OCs or that a large proportion of the Other tag is from mind flayer Tavs/Durges and people don’t write Lae’zel with a mind flayer love interest.

One other notable fact is that Lae’zel is the only female companion without any otp:true M/M PC fic. It could be due to her low fic numbers in the first place, but I prefer to think that Lae’zel fans are simply more fastidious about correctly tagging fic. It certainly fits her character.

MINTHARA

Ah, Minthara. Unquestionably the least popular of the main romanceable characters in BG3, her pairings only comprise 1.1% of all BG3 fanfic pairings, a number that rises to a whopping(/sarcastic) 1.4% of otp:true pairings. She has only 14 ship tags in the 300 most popular ship tags for BG3, a number that drops further to a mere 9 pairings once I’ve combined all the player character tags.

What’s notable about Minthara’s ship tags is the popularity of the Dark Urge relative to Tav. Minthara has 146 fics with Tav and 80 with the Dark Urge. This is a higher proportion than other main characters have. It may be because more people write her on evil routes (which likely disproportionately feature the Dark Urge) or because she has some very good lines for the Dark Urge and their Slayer form.

Another observation is the lack of primary non-PC ships. The other characters that I look at all have a major non-PC ship – Shadowheart/Lae’zel, Karlach/Wyll, Gale/Astarion, Wyll/Astarion, Halsin/Astarion. Minthara doesn’t really have that. Her most popular non-PC ship is Orin, at #5 and with a mere 45 fics. This is illustrated clearly once all the player character tags are combined.

The PC dominates Minthara’s pairings to an extent not seen with any other character, not even Astarion. She drops from 234 fics with the PC (65 otp:true) to 45 fics with Orin (26 otp:true), 32 with Karlach (16 otp:true) and 26 with Shadowheart (11 otp:true). Every other pairing has 16 or less fics. Tying into that, Minthara has very few pairings with 5 or more fics. She does not even have enough for a top 10! I have replaced her missing pairings with the :( emoji because this is sad.

Another notable thing about this chart, though, is how few fics Minthara has just in general. Lae’zel and Wyll, the other neglected companions, both have at least 500 fics with their most popular partner. Minthara does not even break 250. In fact, none of her pairings with someone other than the PC have over 50 fics.

Another interesting fact is that Minthara is the only character in this analysis to not have any threesomes or moresomes in her pairings with over 5 fics. She doesn’t share, it seems.

For some reason, Minthara has 8 ships with Councillor Florrick of all people. And it’s not all by the same author, which is what I would expect for a somewhat out there pairing. Presumably someone out there wrote a really good fic which then inspired others to play with the idea. In a small fandom like Minthara’s, one fic like that can make quite a difference.

As can be expected, Minthara’s fic categories are pretty damn gay.

F/F is tagged in 79.0% of her fics (77.6% of otp:true fics). M/M is tagged in 21.3% of her fics (17.1% of otp:true fics), Other in 6.1% (4.6% otp:true), and Multi in 8.9% though it drops to 1.3% of her otp:true fics. With these numbers, Minthara is arguably the gayest major character in the BG3 fandom by fic count, though Lae’zel beats her when you take otp:true into effect.

This pattern holds true when looking at her ship with the player character. 77.8% of her fics with the PC are tagged F/F (73.8% of otp:true fics), 23.5% are tagged M/F (15.4% otp:true), 8.5% are tagged Other (10.8% otp:true), and 9.4% are tagged Multi (3.1% otp:true). The latter is a bit confusing given that she has no multiship pairings. It may include collections of Reader/[X] fics that include Minthara.

PART 2

Welp. I’ve run into the tumblr post image limit. For part 2 of this essay, which discusses Astarion, Gale, Wyll, and Halsin and then compares all 8 of the main characters against each other on a variety of metrics, see this link.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #fanfic #ao3 #statistics #data visualization #tav #dark urge #shadowheart #karlach #lae'zel #minthara #fandom #mine #shipping

187 notes · View notes

bonus-links · 9 months ago

Note

Hey random question for you, but how do you decide when to draw the actual literal background in panels vs putting in a screen time or a design or a super simplified version? I've been doing a comic for a little while now, and I'm just realizing that I draw the literal actual background every single time lol

that's a good question! it's not necessarily 'wrong' to draw the bg in every panel, but it is a lot of extra work! it's not any one thing that decides it but mostly it comes down to: do I need the background in this shot to understand what's happening?

are we introducing a new place or area? are we establishing a new angle? does this pose make zero sense without context? probably need a full background

beyond that, it's a matter of visual balance. I think of those color/pattern/texture bgs as a kind of '"free space" or an opportunity to tie the color palette together. if the page feels like it's getting too dark or one color is too dominant, I'll use one of those free spaces to try and balance it. it helps maintain the reading flow. if the background is unimportant or i've simplified the characters a lot, I'll blur out the bg for just the impression of it, or I'll simplify it down as well to match.

you could also take out the bg when you want to emphasize an emotion a character is feeling. action lines, patterns and even your color choices can make the same drawing read differently!

#ask #hope that's helpful!#directors commentary #bonus content #and also. sometimes i just really dont want to draw a bg even when i should. so i don't lol #also also #this is a stylistic preference #do what works best for your comic!

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folkbreeze · 9 months ago

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CLIMBING SQUAD: JOIN TODAY, CLIMB TOMORROW!

simself and a vip climber of the KomoGym (KG) are looking for members to join their climbing squad to go on a mountain excursion the 10th of summer- join now, and get a free KG membership!

if you want to send a sim, read under the cut (please)

Last time i asked for people to make sims it didn't go that well (it didn't go at all), but this time i feel like if no one sends any i could just... move on and keep going, so here we go.

warning: i play this save really slowly and just from time to time so it might take a while to get to the mountain (basically i could play this in june next time)

For sims:

cc is fine (keep in mind I'll be using my defaults + only bg traits + keep it maxis match)

young adults / adults

feel free to tell me about the sim (or not)

simself has been training already, so tell me what level of climbing your sim has!

I intend to take this squad to the mountain excursion and see what happens, after that, the game will decide i guess

#ts4 #simblr #simblr community #the sims 4 #*globetrotter simself

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foxglovegames · 3 months ago

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Trouble Comes Twice - the Postmortem

We celebrated Trouble Comes Twice's anniversary around a month ago! We'd hoped to post this postmortem back then as well, but it's taken us a moment to find the right words haha.

Anyway, we hope that this postmortem can give our players and other visual novel devs some insight into what the development process looked like for us. It's also a great way for us to look back at what went well and what went less well.

We'll be taking about the ideation phase, our (lack of) marketing for the Kickstarter, and also sharing (what we can) on our earnings from the game!

Coming up with Trouble Comes Twice

The original tone of Trouble Comes Twice was a lot more comedic and packed to the brim with anime tropes we enjoy. Most didn't make it into the final game, but some stayed and evolved e.g. all of the love interests are based on popular visual novel archetypes - the childhood friend, the tomboy, the shy girl, and the bad boy.

Some, like Cameron and Zoe, changed a lot from their concept while Adrian and Stephanie stayed quite loyal to our original ideas of them. Cameron's character actually underwent the most changes after the initial reception to the demo, where a lot of people felt like he was too much of an ass haha. (Fortunately, he became a fan favorite when we dropped the new demo!)

The premise with the bet was something we invented to create some drama and establish a common plot thread throughout each route. Honestly, looking back, we would probably have approached the bet differently if we wrote it today and a lot of our pre-planning was... clumsy, at best. Still, it was a labor of love and I'll never forget the fun and excitement we had everyday balling ideas for the characters and coming up with their designs.

As Melli and I are just writers with limited coding experience, we worked with a past game jam friend to code the GUI and set up the base for the game (though the actual scripting was done by us and Melli put everything together in the end). Our biggest expenses pre- and post-demo was the character art and CGs, meanwhile we relied on free music and BG packs to save money.

Why a bisexual romcom?

So, this was sort of a no-brainer to us. We had decided right from the start that both twins could date both the male and female love interests, and (at the time) we feel that a lot of similar games had playersexual MCs rather than established bisexual/pansexual MCs. While playersexual charas are also awesome, we wanted to write a romcom where the main cast are always queer regardless of who you end up romancing.

At the same time, bi/pan people don't all approach romantic relationships the same way e.g. Cameron is confident and has experience dating people of all genders, while Adrian's demi and Jace still struggles a bit with his attraction towards men. We know that some of our players felt like that made certain routes less romantic than others and we hear you on that feedback and have 100% taken it into consideration for our future romance games. But anyway, that was our thought process behind Trouble Comes Twice's romance dynamics!

Preparing for Kickstarter & the actual Campaign

Our Kickstarter launched at the start of August and let me tell you, we were nowhere near as prepared as we should have been. 😭 We hadn't set up a Steam page yet, we were trailer-less, and we only had a couple of hundred followers across our socials at best. I feel that there's a lot more successful Kickstarter projects to refer to and even a lot of marketing guides and advice now, but mostly it's on us for not researching more.

The Kickstarter campaign did surprisingly well despite the lack of promotion and only having a rough alpha demo - we were even able to double our goal! - but we wouldn't recommend what we did for other devs.

You should invest time into making a good demo, spend time building an interested audience before launching your campaign, and research so you've got some kind of marketing plan. We were lucky with word-of-mouth and that other visual novel devs with larger followings helped share our game, but we should have made more effort reaching out to bloggers, streamers, and game sites. Some crowdfunding successes may seem like they came out of nowhere and were just pure luck, but there's usually a lot of grinding behind-the-scenes that you don't notice.

The post-Kickstarter era, at least for us, was the harder bit. We now had 353 loyal backers who had expectations based on promises we had made and we had to make sure we met those expectations while also staying true to our wants as the devs. It was a learning process for sure, but we're fairly proud that we always did our best to keep our backers in the loop. It's frustrating to write an update explaining that the game has been delayed again, but backers are more open to being understanding than you think as long as you communicate!

A tip we'd give to new devs considering Kickstarter: Don't overestimate what you can do, but overestimate what you need. There's always hidden costs, unexpected taxes/fees, and other unknown obstacles that might eat up your budget. In our case, we made enough to make the game as planned, but had to change CG artists around halfway through development which meant our original budget didn't cut it anymore. Fortunately, we had earned a decent amount from our Patreon and pre-orders that we were able to use to complete the CGs, but that isn't always going to be an option for everyone and that also meant we were unable to use that money ourselves. (We didn't take any money from the original Kickstarter campaign, so whatever was earned through patreon and pre-sales was our only "salary" at the time.)

Writing the game

Writing is, for obvious reasons, one of the most important parts of a visual novel. Melli wrote Jace's routes and I wrote Hazel's routes, which removed some pressure off our shoulders compared to trying to write over 300,000 words all on our own.

It's fun working with another writer, but there are also some unique issues and considerations that come up when you're writing a game with two protagonists split between two writers. Especially because at the time, there weren't many visual novels with a similar set up to refer to.

The main things we learned, were:

Consistency. We wanted each couple to have their own dynamic, but the characterization needs to remain consistent between routes. You don't want Adrian in Jace's route to feel like a totally different character in Hazel's route. Additionally, we had to be careful that the tone and writing style of the protagonists' POVs still felt like you were playing the same game. Some routes can be more comedic than others, but we've got a problem if Hazel's routes are all (unintentionally) more serious/angsty in tone than Jace's or vice versa.

Watch out for your word count! Longer does not always equal better and writing eight routes, we had to put some restrictions in place. Even when writing on your own, it can be tough to guess how long your story should be, and it was important to us that the routes were roughly the same length so that none felt more "canon" than the other. However, with two writers who have different writing styles and ways of planning, it was tricky to compare our outlines and we struggled at times when it came to matching each other's word counts. Moving forward, we're probably going to be more lenient when it comes to word counts - some routes have to be longer than others, it doesn't mean that route is automatically more "important". We're also doing more regular meetings and frequent check-ins to make sure we're on the same page. In the future, we hope that should save us a lot of trouble when it comes to pacing! 🙈

Balancing your own wants with the wants of your players. In theory, these overlap most of the time. But making a commercial game (that people had already "bought" through the Kickstarter), there is some pressure when it comes to meeting certain expectations. We can't always just write what we want and assume everyone else is going to love it, but we also don't want to neglect what we personally like. We had a survey for the beta where we were able to get regular feedback and a lot of helpful advice. We definitely want to continue with surveys in the future - they are a great way to gather opinions from different players and figure out what works versus what doesn't!

We took on too many tasks outside writing that distracted us. This bit is sort of inevitable for indie devs like us. 😅 Working with a limited budget and limited resources, you just end up having to wear a lot of hats! We think we did quite well sharing these duties though, and moving forward (thanks to you guys) we can afford more hands on deck to help us out.

Marketing

The bane of every indie game dev's existence... although secretly, I kind of enjoy marketing but don't tell anyone that!

Having learned a thing or two from promoting the Kickstarter, we spent more time researching games marketing but in the end, trial and error was the best teacher.

As we got closer to the release date, we were posting almost daily on social media and grew our Twitter to over eight thousand followers. We didn't have any viral posts, but we saw a consistent growing interest in our game and it was such a motivation boost to see comments from potential players being excited for the game. We know a lot of devs have said that Twitter didn't help their game much but according to our stats, a decent number of our players found us through the platform.

We saw less success here on Tumblr. Perhaps we haven't cracked the code here yet or maybe we're just comparing our numbers from Twitter unfairly! We're not hung up about it though, we love it here because it feels easier to connect with our followers and other devs there, and it's nice because we're able to write longer posts like this one! 💓

Aside from posting on social media, we reached out to several streamers and some bloggers prior to release to send them free game keys.

We also commissioned some art from other artists to share, as we obviously couldn't reveal ALL our CGs before the release lol and visual posts tend to do a lot better in our experience. It was so much fun to see the characters in other art styles and we hope we can afford to commission guest art pieces a lot more frequently in the future!

In hindsight, we definitely regret not releasing a trailer sooner! We underestimated how much interest a good trailer could garner and delayed setting up our Steam page because of it. Steam was the platform where we sold the most copies and most of our buyers found the game through Steam itself.

Also, posting your trailer on youtube adds another site where you're promoting your game so there's really no reason not to get that trailer done as soon as you can.

Final Notes

After the initial stress, we were pretty happy with our release! Although there were some things we would go back and change if we could, that's just the nature of these kind of things. For the most part, we're proud of what we achieved and happy that we have learnt so much from Trouble Comes Twice that we can take into consideration for future projects.

We can't share exact numbers, but we wanted to open up a bit about our earnings for the game to help other aspiring devs: As of writing this, Trouble Comes Twice has earned close to 85,000 euros. This counts our profits from 2020 to now (the Kickstarter, Patreon, pre-sales, and actual sales). Removing fees, taxes, the salaries of our talented artists and other freelancers, as well as the money invested into our next game, our personal pockets did not see anything close to those numbers. But we're super proud of how much our little game has made and so grateful that it's allowed us more creative freedom with our next title!

So, what's next?

You might have heard but for the past year, we've slowly been working on the demo and upcoming announcement for our next visual novel:

A 17+ supernatural neon-noir romance game about monsters, love, and other horrors.

Play as vampire detective Circe (female protagonist) or hellhound cop Dante (male protagonist) and delve into the mysteries of North Haven, where demons, vampires, and supernaturals hide in plain sight among humans.

The game features six routes, with three romance options available to each protagonist. Dante only has male romances and Circe has both male and female romances.

The game tackles a darker, more angsty tone compared to Trouble Comes Twice. Still, we hope that those who decide to check it out will enjoy it! We plan to announce the game this coming Autumn. Follow our Twitter (we're still not calling it X sorry) or Tumblr to stay up to date.

#trouble comes twice #visual novel #interactive fiction #indie games #gamedev #indiedev #post mortem

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salsflore · 1 year ago

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80+ selfship questions to answer, whether in a post* or a reblog! feel free to pick the ones you want to answer or just answer for all – this is not an ask game :3

a few of these are romantic, but ofc, there are ones you can answer for your platonics!

* if you do it as a post i’d loveeeee if you tagged me so i could see your answers!

what’s something you do to feel closer to them? fanfics, listen to songs, etc.

how did you get introduced to your f/o and/or their media? do you like their source?

what’s one or two things you especially like about your f/o? can be a headcanon!

what’s one or two things your f/os love about you? ( self positivity time babey )

how do you express your love to them? how do they express their love to you?

a gift you’d like to give them if you could, and something they’d give to you!

what do you celebrate together? like halloween, christmas time, easter, etc.

do you sleep together? is it peaceful or filled with snoring? do you both stay up? tell us more! ( how you sleep, when you sleep, do you wake up at the same time? )

what’s one thing you can’t do well that the other can, vice versa ( e.g cooking, playing video games, so on and so forth )

do you have similar tastes in fashion? aesthetic? food? tell us about their taste!

how do they tend to comfort you? how do you tend to comfort them?

if you have a rival or nemesis f/o, why? are there any lore reasons or is it just because?

what are some uncommon headcanons you have for them?

what is your favorite fan theory/headcanon about them?

if you live together, how’s domestic life like for you both?

do you have any scent hcs for them? ( sweet, something like coffee, etc )

is there anything commonly misunderstood about your f/o?

one thing you don’t have in common, and one thing you do

how do you resolve conflicts? how do you both typically react when faced with conflict or whilst dealing with an argument?

have you met their friends/family? how did that go? do they even keep in contact with their friends/family?

tell us as much (or as little) as you'd like about any of your self ship lore/bg! the timeline!

if they have variations (timelines, skills, voiced languages, etc) which one is your favorite?

your favorite outfit/costume of theirs! if they don’t have any official skins or anything, show us something you think they’d look good in!

who confessed first and how did it go?

did anyone know about your f/o’s feelings before they confessed? how did they find out?

if you have multiple f/os, do they fit into any “type?” ( e.g coincidentally they’re all smartasses, blonde, villains, etc. lol )

do you have any favorite scenarios you like to imagine your f/os in? ( domestic fluff, angsty, etc. )

have you ever thought about ( platonic or not ) marriage? would you consider it a good idea? why or why not?

^ if you're planning to get married, then tell us all about your wedding! the honeymoon! the planning!

if you live together, how does your home look like? who decided on the decor?

do you, or plan to, have f/o kids? ( pets and plants count! ) bonus: if you have pets, do they show any favoritism?

what was it like when they first said ‘i love you’? how did you reply? where was it?

if you could make one thing 100% canon about them, what would it be?

how do you kill time with them when bored?

your favorite thing about your f/o, appearance wise

your favorite thing about your f/o, non-appearance wise

what’s your dynamic like? any tropes you fit?

the most iconic/memed on/quoted line or event associated with your f/o

who’s more likely to be the sappy, cheesy romantic in the relationship?

who gets flustered the easiest?

if you were in an emergency or stressful situation, which one of you’s the best at staying level headed keeping the other calm? who is the one absolutely freaking out?

what nicknames do you call each other?

with phones or modern au : what would your contact names be?

with phones or modern au : how do they use their phone? do they have a billion screenshots in their gallery? whats their wallpaper?

favorite memory involving them ( whether in your lore as a scenario, a scene from their media, or another physical experience like when you received merch etc )

are they physically affectionate? if so, how do they express it? vice versa!

any funny or awkward moments you've experienced with them?

who’s more likely to get into, or start fights? whether with each other or with others.

what were your first impressions of each other?

do you have an anniversary date? how was it decided & how do you (plan to) celebrate it?

.... would you still love them if they turned into a worm

how did their personality or lifestyle change after befriending/getting with you?

something you know about them, that many others don’t?

how do they reassure or affirm their love for you?

what’s your funniest or most embarrassing memory together?

what’s their sense of humor like? how easy is it to make them laugh?

what inside jokes do you share?

if necessary, how do you wake them up? how do they wake you up?

any daily routines or habits you two follow?

what do others in source say about your relationship? do you keep it a secret?

if you have more than one f/o from the same media, which one were you drawn to first? any lore connection like did they introduce you to the others? did one make you fall for the other?

dream piece of merchandise or f/o-related experience you’d like to have

how are they like when vulnerable?

describe your f/o in 6 words or less

describe your f/o using only emojis

would you rather go to their world, or have them come to yours?

do you care about ship lore? feel free to tell us about it if you’d like!

if you have a s/i, how’d you go about creating their design? what went into their lore? how do the others in the source feel about your s/i?

does your s/i hold similarities to you, is completely like you or completely different from you? do you even have a s/i?

thoughts on AUs/canon divergent things? do you prefer to stick as closely to canon as possible or no?

quick! your f/o’s just spawned in front of you, now what do you do?!

do they have any superstitions they believe in?

would you or your f/o ever get matching things? ( keychains, tattoos, shirts, etc ) do they find it cringy or cute?

who’s more the scaredy cat out of you two?

what kind of things is your f/o into? games, music, decor, whatever!

the most random thing you associate with your f/o (foods, shapes, even textures! anything that’s not an obvious)

anything your f/o absolutely hates, but you absolutely love?

any aesthetic or -core you associate with your f/o, whether it be due to their design or personality?

who's more likely to die first in a zombie apocalypse lol

do your f/os have any long term wishes or goals? what about your s/i?

your favorite f/o fun fact or bit of lore

which animal represents your f/o the best?

does your f/o run hot or cold?

free space to gush about whatever you want ♡

#i know some people are too shy or don’t receive asks/questions so here you go !!#your f/os can be the ones answering if you’d like <3 #self ship #self shipping community #self ship positivity #fictoromantic #fictosexual #f/o #imagine your f/o #self ship community #✦

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doodlemcjazzhands · 7 months ago

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do you have any tips on drawing backgrounds. I struggle with them so much and can’t always make them cohesive with the drawing yk

Oh man, yeah. I do indeed know, all too well U_U Backgrounds are a STRUGGLE

Here are some things I’ve picked up, that have helped make them a little less difficult (feel free to take what you think might be helpful and then scrap the rest!):

1. Map out your Composition, Tones and Colors in a Rough Thumbnail

-I think the main thing that helps me, is planning. If you’re gonna do a background, don’t think of it as an after thought. I find it’s helpful to plan out the background at the same time you’re planning the character pose, rather that just slapping in a background, once the character is already finished. It’s like a little dance, making the environment work to accommodate the character while simultaneously making the character work to accommodate the BG.

-I usually do a small thumbnail and color key before I actually go into the drawing itself

-I like to think of the thumbnail like a little roadmap that I can always refer back to when I’m stuck. It's something that is easy to experiment with and will help me keep the big picture in mind, while working, rather than fussing over all of the small details.

-you can plan how you might want to use light and other elements of the bg to frame important things, or point and lead your eye to the focal point, or divide up the frame.

When I’m working on the actual drawing, I’ll always keep my thumbnail visible off in the corner of my workspace, just as a reminder of where I want to go with the piece, and to keep it available to color pick from, when I want to.

2. Try Sticking to 1 or 2 Dominant Colors and try not to stray too far, unless it’s an intentional accent

I usually choose 1-2 main colors and then paint bucket fill the canvas with those colors as a base, before I even start on the "cleaned up" linework. Then when I start painting, for real, I choose my colors based off how warm or cold they are, compared to the main color(s).

So say, for example, I want the dominating color of the illustration to be red, if I’m coloring an apple (that is naturally red) I would keep it the same hue, but might change the tone or saturation. However, if I’m painting a carrot (that would naturally be orange) I might just shift the hue to be a warmer red, rather than a full blown orange. Conversely, if I wanted to paint a naturally blue sky, I would shift the hue from red to be a bit colder, maybe more of a purple, but not necessarily a true blue.

*sometimes the saturation can mess around with a perceived color as well, (like how a desaturated yellow, will often look green), so I find there’s a lot of trial and error and messing around to be done with color, which I guess is half of the fun :P

(obviously this isn’t the only way to approach color, but I find it helpful for reigning myself in and keeping things a little more cohesive)

3. Add Depth

-Think of your environment as a 3D space with overlapping elements. Consider what your foreground, midground and background elements might be, to give depth to the drawing.

The further away something is, the less details the human eye can make out, and atmosphere will create a sort of hazy look to things that are set far away. So to mimic this effect for things that you want to recede into the distance, you can use less saturated colors, less contrast, do less detail, less line work (maybe even go lineless) and use slightly cooler colors. Maybe even add a little gaussian blur if it looks good. Conversely, for things you want push forward, just do the opposite (higher contrast, higher saturation, heavier line, more detail ect.)

4a. Study and Play with Lighting

I think lighting can be a big factor in helping make a character feel like they fit and belong in their environment. Study how light works and interacts with the world and think about how it might effect every element of your environment. How does it break apart when it’s going through something translucent? Is it going to cast harsh or soft shadows? Are there multiple light sources? Are they different colors? different intensities? Is the light source visible or not? Is it a controlled beam of light, like a laser, or more open, like the sun?

4b. Make use of Reflected Light and Color

So, when light hits an object, that is near another object, some of it’s color can be reflected onto the nearby object, if the angle is right. So for reflected light, I usually add a clipping mask layer to the affected object and add a gradient coming from the first object, using a color that has be color picked from the first object. Then I’ll turn down the opacity to my liking.

^(Ok, this first example of reflected light is super subtle on Sirius’s jacket, but it’s a little clearer to see the reflected light from the tub reflecting onto Sirius’s face and Remus’s arms, in the second example)

5. Add a Little Bit of *Spice*

If by the end of my coloring, I still want to do some tweaking, these are my general go to’s:

-Edit with filters and/or gradients. If you’re working digitally, play around with blending modes. You can make a new layer, fill it with a color or a gradient, then see what different blending modes and levels of opacities will do to it.

-Color your lines so that the black isn’t so harsh against the other colors in the scene. Sometimes I like to go completely lineless in some areas, if it's an area blown out by light, or is maybe pulling your attention away from the focal point

-You could add a little bit of grain and noise (to do this in photoshop, make a new layer, fill it with a grey colour (or experiment with other colours) then go to filter>noise>add noise>ok and turndown the fill and maybe change the blending mode)

-Adjust the levels, if you’re still not fully satisfied with the contrast, you can adjust the levels (ctrl +L in photoshop)

-Adjust the Color balance if you're not fully satisfied with the saturation and colors (ctrl+ B in photoshop)

Ok, gosh, there’s so much, but I think I’ve rambled on long enough… hope this helps and wasn't too obvious or convoluted!

Good luck!!

#thanks for coming to my ted talk #backgrounds #replies #art talk #asks

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poughkeepsies · 2 years ago

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Buddie Secret Relationship Conspiracy Manifesto

Hello. Welcome to possibly the most delusional buddie theory yet. This is a collaboration with @swiftiebuckleys, and as such I would like to cite our sources accordingly: dude, trust us.

Okay so I know a lot of people have talked about the theory of buddie possibly being in a secret relationship that is even a secret from the audience during season 6. For me, this started during 6A. It started because I was thinking about how 601 started with such a poignant and domestic Buckley-Diaz family scene that, as a part of a premier that was meant to establish where the characters are after four months of hiatus, told us Buck, Eddie and Christopher are living in each other's pockets as their own little family at the start of the season (I even wrote about this in this meta I posted while 6a was airing lmao).

But then for the rest of 6A there really wasn't any significant on-screen buddie or Buckley-Diaz moments, even though there was plenty that was implied at, including: Buck and Eddie planning to go to Marisol's house to help with repairs without the rest of the firefam, Buck and Chris hanging out so Chris potentially telling Buck the secret about skipping school even though he didn't tell Eddie, Buck and Eddie sitting in the back of the waiting room together separate from the rest of the firefam while they waited for news about Karen, and Eddie giving Hoover to Buck and convincing him to keep him even though his building doesn't allow dogs. What do all but one of these moments have in common? They're moments where Buck and Eddie were either alone or away from anyone who would know them from the rest of the gang and wouldn't feel the need to hide their relationship. When at work, Buck and Eddie had a reasonably normal amount of on-screen interactions, but it was only their moments happening outside of work that was pushed to the off-screen. (Bonus: one on-screen 6A moment that lives in my head rent-free and screams of secret relationship is that shot of them stepping into frame together and holding eye contact while the song lyrics in the bg go "I want your sex and your affection when I'm holding you close" in 609.)

However, while this^ is all well and good, it's 6B that really gives the secret relationship theory its wings.

Episode 10 gave us the lightning strike with a sequence that was shot almost entirely from the perspective of Eddie. While in the initial aftermath of the strike we see the shock on Hen, Chimney, and Bobby's faces, the scene is in slow-motion and muted until Eddie realizes what's going on and we watch every minute facial expression on his face as the horror dawns and he snaps into action. Eddie's reaction is what sparks everyone else's movement and then we see him completely forgo his own injuries and his own safety to save Buck. In the secret relationship trope, the near-death experience is a lot of the time what forces the couple to blow their cover and reveal their relationship. That didn't happen here as buddie were already close enough to warrant the strength of Eddie's reaction and Buck was unresponsive and there wasn't any time to lose. HOWEVER, episode 11 and the absence of a scene with Eddie alone at Buck's bedside can be explained by the fact that he couldn't be shone there or his bedside confessions would have given them away to the audience. As it is, other than Margaret and Maddie, Buck's mother and sister, he's the only one dressed in all black, his composure crumbling and unable to make eye contact with Buck's body in the hospital bed, the perfect picture of a grieving widow.

Episode 12 has the infamous couch scene which is meant to signal to the audience that Eddie is the couch Buck has been searching for, even if Buck himself doesn't know it. However, in the context of the secret relationship theory, what if the total lack of reaction from Eddie about Buck falling asleep on his couch is because they already know this?

Episode 13 has the infamous poker scene and this is where the theory actually diverges for a lot of people. Going with the original theory that buddie have been together since before 6A, this would explain Buck's lack of reaction to Eddie telling him to get dressed up and taking him out on what is essentially a date - he wasn't surprised or suspicious because it wasn't unusual. If you go back and watch the scene, you'll notice that it opens right when Buck and Eddie are approaching the door and about to be in the presence of other firefighters, but initially they're walking away from a dark alley while fixing their clothes - why would they need to fix their clothes unless they got messed up in the first place? Why wouldn't they show us the before or after of the poker scene, why only the parts where they're in the presence of other people from the department? Plus, Eddie really was looking TOO blatantly hungry in that entire scene, and he wasn't really hiding it from Buck - maybe because he's allowed, and expected, to look. This isn't even to mention the scenes of Buck, Eddie, and Christopher being a family, but I will go back to those later.

Where this episode splits this theory is the alternate potential for them to have gotten together after the poker game (my initial post after the episode first came out.) This would have been the perfect opportunity because there's really no way that if they weren't already together, the thought that this might be a date hadn't crossed Buck's mind (and, again, Eddie really did look too fucking horny in that scene it wasn't something you could ignore.) The next outside of work scene we see the Buckley-Diaz' in is the baking scene with Buck and Christopher. Eddie's location is completely unknown - he could be on shift, he could be running errands, he could be with Pepa - but the fact that Buck and Chris are together and baking for his class and planning dinner really drives home the fact that they are a family once again. However, the easy confidence of Buck parenting Christopher and the way he glowed with happiness in that moment would make even more sense if he had had his place in the Diaz family as Eddie's partner and Christopher's other parent confirmed to him.

One way to possibly combine the two theories is if we assume that Buck and Eddie were actually fwb throughout 6A (an idea given to me by @captainragtag) but actually got together after the poker scene. ANOTHER way is if we assume they've only been fwb, even after the poker scene. Them being fwb would potentially explain some holes in the theory, moments where they should have had a bigger reaction to something or known something beforehand if they were in a relationship (kind of the sperm donor arc and Eddie's reaction, but that could also be explained by Eddie's lack of reaction being because he already knew and was just pretending to be finding out for the first time with everyone else.)

Going into episode 14, all of these theories could explain the *gestures vaguely* everything about Eddie's storyline in the episode. If they're hiding a relationship, the absence of any mentions of Buck when talking about Eddie (and Christopher) being alone would make sense, especially after how pointedly the previous episode showed that Eddie is always spending his free time with Buck, with or without Christopher. It would also explain Buck's extremely unsubtle date-ruining advice - either they're together and Buck just doesn't want Eddie to go on the date because he doesn't want to share even to keep up pretenses, or they're fwb and Buck is jealous and afraid to lose Eddie and their relationship if Eddie starts actually dating. Also, considering how many pure fanfic tropes the writers have used before, it's safe to assume they have at least a baseline knowledge of how buddie are written by fans and what's the first trope every fanfic reader in this fandom learns about? Christopher's first and foremost wingman duty is to pack his stuff and go to a sleepover so his dads can do unholy things to each other. Christopher being at a sleepover when Pepa told Eddie to come over and him insisting that he was alone at home when just last episode we saw buddie spending all their time off shift together is just a little too sus if you ask me. Another secret relationship moment in the episode is Eddie going for the wrong gear shift in his own car. He initially reached for the gear shift on the center console when that's not where it is in his truck. But do you know where the gear shift is in a jeep? I'll give you one guess. Do we know anyone who owns a jeep? I'll give you another guess. This would make total sense since we know Eddie is a passenger princess and Buck would be driving them everywhere if they were in a relationship. Even when Buck isn't the one driving, Eddie would be much more likely to borrow his car more often if they were in a relationship and basically living together.

If this all doesn't convince you, I would like to leave you with the reminder of a moment that I'm sure has haunted all of us since 614 came out:

Actors are always aware when they're on camera and even if they aren't, the dozens of production people, including the director, would be. Do with that what you will.

(If anyone has anything they'd like to add to this feel free to message me or send me an ask and I'll make edits! And, I mean, this is all just for fun not to be taken seriously, but if there is a point that you think really brings the theory down also feel free to send me an ask about that lets see if I can provide a suitable explanation.)

edit: another thing to keep in mind as pointed out by the brilliant @swiftiebuckleys is the precedent set by 606 "Tomorrow" for flashbacks showing the start of a relationship.

#I said dont raise your expectations too high and I stand by that but here it is #my web of conspiracy with the help support and delusions of friends #did i promise this yesterday? yes. did I also keep getting distracted and procrastinating it? you betcha.#911 fox #911 spoilers #buddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #weewoo brainrot #that last tag really fits this one i cant defend myself here

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pouralaura · 4 days ago

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This is like THE question of the ages but here goes. Is your Raphael capable of love? It is my understanding that devils are capable of an obsessive, manipulative, perverted version of it; but the Raphael in your fics has a particular human fallibility that is endearing, and a willingness to entertain those follies (for the sake of his favorite mouse) that I’m wondering if it’s possible that he would (accidentally) fall in love in a mortal sense, going against his fiendish nature (it would have to be a very special mouse). I’d love to hear your take on his fiend/human dichotomy. 🫶

what a fabulous question. thank you for asking! I've thought a lot about this and I always come to the same conclusion: yes, my Raphael is in fact capable of love. there is a "however" which I will get to shortly.

let me first say that I really simply do not care about canon. bro lives in my head rent-free as his own entity and does not necessarily fit DnD/BG lore in that space. that's just a disclaimer, take it as you will.

Raphael's love with my Tav (both generic and my Eris specifically) is definitely just magnetic obsession at first until they realize how hard they match each other's freak. he power plays and power plays and power plays, letting his mouse in ON HIS TERMS ALONE until it's too late and she's as much a part of him as he is of her. fwiw, Tav/Eris's love is the same as his - but his makes him more human and hers makes her less, all for better or for worse. and I think his capacity for love has so much to do with the other person in the equation, which is extremely human of him - Tav pushes him back and needles him but also worships him in her own way, taking on some of his traits the more time she spends with him. some of that is unconscious and some is fully intentional. it's all a part of the Game, which, for her, is Understanding (literally figuring out what makes him tick), while for him it's Winning (taking what he knows of her and using/manipulating it however he wants). Raphael is a narcissist and naturally loves himself most of all, but once he sees himself reflected in another person I think that unlocks a new layer of longing and deep connection within him.

I've used the lyric I won't speak of love since the beginning of writing about the two of them and it's always gonna fit. Tav/Eris knows what the feeling is on both sides, because she is 100% human and overly perceptive, intuitive, and insightful. but she is smart enough not to push that understanding onto Raphael because attempting to force him to admit what he perceives as a weakness would destroy their dynamic.

which brings me to my main point: again, yes, he is capable of love. he is even capable of unconditional love.

BUT

he will not accept that about himself, even for a moment. his love is obsessive and manipulative and perverted OF COURSE but it's also his purest emotion, which is an embarrassment. he will ignore the truth of what it is fully out of pride. if Eris pushed him to acknowledge it he would drop her in an instant and shed all remaining traces of his humanity. it's simultaneously the strongest connection he has with anyone and the thinnest tightrope of a line they could possibly walk - but they complement each other so well that they've somehow found that perfect unacknowledged balance. Eris is prideful too but understands that to maintain the status quo she MUST swallow some of her pride and allow Raphael to keep up appearances for his own sake - which is one of her major ways of showing love from her side.

he loves her purely and earnestly and deeply but he will ALWAYS love himself and his image more. some might say that means he is not capable of real love but I think the two can coexist! people are complicated!

this is fun to think about and I really hope it makes any kind of coherent sense all written out.

#thank you for the ask!#marimosalad #i've literally been thinking about this for like two days straight so I hope it's even remotely understandable lmao

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crescencestudio · 9 months ago

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๋࣭⭑ Devlog #38 | 2.27.24 ๋࣭⭑

How is it already almost March omfg.

Anyways Happy Valentine's Day month!!! This year, I was swamped with work, so I didn't get a chance to make Valentine's Day art. I did make a Valentine's piece last year though.

BUT we did have beloved @magunalafay make these Valentine's Day cards this year for the community!!! <3 If you missed it, well Happy Valentine's Day!!!!!

She made these as a gift, and I love her very much. Maguna u r so talented

This month was pretty busy for me, but I'm super happy with the progress made this month ^^ I feel like I've started the year off in a pretty good groove after it being all over the place for a hot second, yay!!!

This past month, Etza and Druk's routes. With the revamped demo finishing its revisions, it left a lot more time for me to focus writing on full route development.

If you missed the announcement, I FINISHED Etza's first draft!!! YAAAYYY!!!! FINALLY!!!!!!

That means 4/6 routes are finished in terms of the base writing, which is so exciting to MEEEEE. I've always seen Etza's draft as The Milestone because with their route finished, it would mean the four Central routes are done writing. And to me, while there's a good chuck of writing left, we are nearing the end of it.

There's only two routes left and that means it's about ~100k words which is CRAZY compared to when I had ~300k to write (:cries:). Even if that sounds like a lot, once I start chipping away at those routes, that 100k goes into the "double digits" aka 90k...80k... etc. and that makes me want to pee my pants

We also finished editing Druk's route, yay!!! So we reached a lot of milestones this month ^^

We are nearing the end of the Vui background commissions. It's very bittersweet; I'm so used to mentioning him in my devlogs now </3 There's only like 3(?) more BGs left for him to make, and then all of the BGs for the game will be finished. Very Wild! I think Alaris will have 25ish BGs, and they are all Stunning.

It's been a while since I showed you all a BG, so I'll give you all a preview of one I just got in!

Isn't it cozy? Guess whose house hehe

I personally have been doing a lot of sprite work this month to finish the final art assets for the demo. I added some expressions to Druk and Aisa that I'd been procrastinating (I don't even know why I was procrastinating them). And I finally finished Mom and Kimura's updated sprites! Patreon already saw them, but I'll show the new versions here too ^^

Preview of Mom (left) and Kimura (right) updated sprites. Now everyone's sprite styles are cohesive YAY!!

Aside from sprite work, much of my "art" time has been on finishing up/putting together the last of the screens for the GUI. Specifically, I got THIS BABY up and running. She is my crowning glory.

Memory Screen to Replay Unlocked Free Time Dates

Oh my god.... You all have NO IDEA how much of a pain this was to code. There is a transparency gradient going on in the left and right B&W previews (courtesy of community programming angel feniks/shawna).

And then the effort to have the Titles and Descriptions of the Previewed Date change tilted me on Multiple Occasions. But we finally got it to work thanks to bestie @siyo-koy pointing out I just coded one stupid "if" statement wrong LJAFSLIEFJIEJ. But the effort was WORTH IT because I'm so proud of her!!! I hope you all like it too as a way to relive Free Time Dates. I had a lot of fun with the Titles and descriptions.

I also put together the Stats and Affection Screens

Preview of Personality Stats & Affection Screens

So I coded both of them a bit differently from each other. The Personality Screen shows you a breakdown of your traits so far. Think of it like a pie graph! So in the preview picture, your choices indicate you are 33% Brave, 16% Charismatic, etc. I felt like this was a more natural way to portray personality rather than how many bravery points you've collected so far!

And then for Affection, it works in a more traditional way, where it counts it based on how many you've gotten out of the total amount you can get. This way, as the story progresses, how close you are to the person reflects how much your relationship as developed!

I've also added little descriptions underneath each that change depending on the percentage. So for example, if you have gotten 82% of the affection points for Kuna'a, the description of your relationship might change as well hehe

Other than that, I've mainly focused on getting the demo together. We released the beta demo earlier this month (? LOL). And the feedback has been so kind!!

A lot of this month was spent polishing so that the demo can be ready for early access and eventually public release. I updated sprites, made sure music crossfades with each other so that transitions between soundtracks feel smoother, I added/polished all of the screens I needed to (e.g., Memory Room, Full Credits, Cleaning Music Room, Adding Stats Screens), and I FINALLY as of yesterday added the Voiced Lines!!

One thing I added in the Extended Demo that I'm really happy with is the use of Extended Pronouns (courtesy of Angel Feniks). Below is a preview of how it works now!

Preview of Extended Pronouns Function. Credit to Feniks

Basically, you can choose multiple pronouns for yourself, including custom pronouns (e.g., xe/xem, fae/faer, etc.). On top of that, you can choose how often you'd like the pronouns to alternate (e.g., every line versus every scene) and what kind of terms you'd like to be used for you (e.g., neutral vs. masculine vs. feminine)!

Overall, the demo is getting closer and closer to release!!! Early Access will hopefully be ready by the end of this week or next, so if you all would like access to it, please feel free to subscribe to my Patreon for this upcoming month! Available to Wyvern tier ($5) and up.

I didn't have any time to really play any games this month because I was drowning in work LMFAOSLJIEF. I did play the Threads of Bay demo by @lavendeerstudios and it was GORGEOUS! Very cute game with lovable characters and charming visuals. Andrew, I will have your number

Every other section was really long, so I'm going to throw it here even though it's not market research. But Intertwine recently hit 600 ratings, which is crazy. Thank you for still enjoying that game even if it's not one that is my main focus anymore. I'm really happy people still like it :on the verge of tears:

Anyways, this has been a long devlog. Here's to continuing to Ball in March. Hope you all have a great rest of your month, and I'll talk to you soon! <3

#alaris #devlog

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