#also the sheer entitlement of some fans is gd embarrassing

[spectator-eyes]

The sheer vitriol he gets absolutely astounds me. I've been in a lot of fandoms throughout the years, and I've never seen people being as hateful and venomous toward a character.

Why is it that every other character gets a sweeping pass for what Halsin is (wrongly) accused of?

In my first playthrough, literally every companion was hitting on my character within Act 1. I keep seeing people complaining that he comes onto them too hard - when Lae'zel literally tells your character the smell of your sweat makes her horny. When Karlach straight up comes to you in the middle of the night saying she wants to ride Tav until they see stars. Despite turning Gale down in act 1, he told my Tav how hot she looked in a fight.

But no, Halsin playfully flirting with you in all of 2 or 3 dialogue options is the problem. And how DARE he ask you if you have feelings for him in Act 3. After flirting with him.

Also, people complain about him throwing out the line "but you treated me like a lover," if you reject him (which I've never encountered) but, as far as I know, he only does that if you've asked him about his past lovers. Which, in context, is clearly flirtatious. (It was to me, at any rate.)

I've seen people get so bent out of shape for specific scenes that every other companion has written/coded to react to - but somehow Halsin is the problem, every time. Take the scene with the drow twins. "He just inserted himself into my relationship wanting to bang!" or "Shouldn't he know that I and (usually SH) are in a relationship?? What a creep!"

Like. For one, absolutely no one is forcing you, the player, to go to the drow twins in the first place, let alone proposition them. Second, if you don't want him to participate, you have the option of telling him no. At no point does Halsin force himself into the scene like I've seen people say. Also....you know you can just reload, right? That this is a video game?? And because it's a video game, EVERY companion has dialogue during that scene, not JUST Halsin? Right??? Right??? Why do you even have him in your party if you hate him so much?

In a game where you can literally control your companions, you don't get to bitch about what you make them do. Or the choices you make for them as the player. Because it's a video game. Reload a save, start over, or stop playing the game if something happens that you don't like!

This isn't even TOUCHING the disgusting amount of homophobia, misogyny, and other queer-phobic things that people have blatantly stated about Halsin and his fans.

I've seen people want an option to flag your Tav with sexualities to disable romance options from triggering at all - when the romance system, as it is, is already bugged to hell. Larian would have to implement an entirely new framework just to appease these players. They want him to be re-written for this or that, because it makes them feel Icky, and Larian should cater to them because of it. Because god forbid other players have options that they don't like. How dare other players play their game in a way they don't approve of.

Every discussion I've seen on reddit and the Larian forums always turn into a Halsin hate-fest. I swear, I see the same usernames, over and over again, rehashing the same shitty opinion in every thread. It doesn't even matter if you refute their points with actual evidence - they ALWAYS insist that no, their interpretation is correct, and no, that really is how Halsin was written. What do the devs know, anyway? People are also accusing Halsin and SH's writer of having a cuckhold fetish. Unsurprisingly, most of these people are rabid SH simps. Gee. What a coincidence.

I could go on about this for multiple pages, no lie.

Being a Halsin fan is....a unique experience in that you're frequently prone towards running into all sorts of taunts and insults from being called "mentally ill" for liking him because people assume you're into his "deviant behavior" to hearing that there's only "7 romances" because he doesn't count, to hearing that he's a sex pest, constant reminders of how players kill him in a feedback or fan thread about him, him being seen as fit for only being left as "Orin bait" by a few Astarion fans when I'm meanwhile turning Astarion down only to run into Astarion canonically admitting that he sees Tav's denial of consent as a "dire mistake to be corrected":

Or, frequently running into complaints as to why he's there when Jaheira is around for the Druid role (he was around first so it's clear why they're not acknowledging that).

"He's just fanservice that didn't need to be there! Why can't we have Alfira?!"

"We could have had a werewolf instead of him?! Wasted opportunity!" (Fans datamined that and discovered that Helia was dropped long before they added Halsin so it wasn't a toss up between them that fans think)

"He's a cheater trying to get you to cheat!"

Ironically, another fan found a post that not only was this wrong, Shadowheart and Astarion approve of the player sexually harassing a married NPC:

His point and click lines have still not been fixed despite requests to address them for months now.

Requests for more depth from his days in Early Access has not happened.

Pleas to Larian to please fix the writing that has him making fans uncomfortable has only just now been addressed but the damage has been done.

I see all these moments that get other characters amusement and affection while seeing Halsin vilified for stuff that doesn't even happen. I see acknowledgement that Gale's Weave scene was a bug, Wyll's dance scene where you couldn't avoid him trying to kiss you as "not a big deal" (until they were corrected) and I agree, that's exactly what they were: unintended side effects of poorly thought out writing/coding/scripting.

And yet, Halsin's presence has to be justified every step of the way.

There is so little sympathy for this character. So little sympathy for fans of this character. It even feels like Larian wrote him off when their attempt to make him a companion backfired.

I'm not even sure why fans want more romances added when this one ended with such hostility. I'd rather they fix and expand on the current romances like Wyll's, Minthara's and, yes, Halsin's (he does count as a romance).