#and karlach isn’t lesbian too

[sarehime]

me when someone said Hellspawn isn’t so great ship or they are besties…

[chthonic-mommy]

after finding out that all bg3 fanfics and imagines on tumblr ARE ABOUT A GODDAMN ASTARION (no offense he’s chill but he is everywhere) I’ve headed to character ai to meet my babygirl Karlach… the best life decision was made…

[sailorgundam308]

Maybe I should shut my mouth already, but this is my little space to vent and digress with stuff I need to keep bottled up elsewhere.

BG3 brought me back to fandom spaces after more than a decade and, while I know this could be just a generation gap thing, there are stuff I keep reading about or that sms throws at me randomly that is pretty annoying and even disheartening. Lots of younger/new people are engaging with the Forgotten Realms lore for the first time and it’s awesome. But I forgot how impassioned and intolerant fierce parts of fandoms can be.

It rubs me the wrong way how people in general tend to simplify things in order to either justify themselves or feel secure in regards to the world - which is a terrifyingly complex, irrational and nuanced thing we have absolutely no control over. Over the years I’ve surrounded myself with people that are fine with not knowing everything, not understanding all that’s going on, and who are okay with admitting there are things we’ll never grasp, points of view we’ll never have the authority to speak from. But the internet isn’t my bubble.

In regards to BG3 fandom - but I’d risk this is valid for a lot of places in and outside fandoms - there’s a lot of simplifying, flattening and denial of other experiences. The diehard straight folks at BG3 Reddit freak out because characters are pan, BG3 steam incels freak out because the women are “ugly”, BG3 tumblr users freak out (ironically) also because characters are pan, but in reverse. It’s a bit too much, especially when a lot of the fuel for divide is our own headcanons (which, let’s remind ourselves, can’t be wrong or right cause they exist for our personal entertainment and fantasy). Not to mention the game canon itself purposefully leaves a lot to be inputted by the player so we can head-customize our experiences. It’s the magic of rpg.

Still, there are these heated discussions that I can’t help but see stemming from simplification and labeling of things. This is shit that imo should not be happening still. I’ve mentioned here before how I dislike that people bat an eye on a character and, for example, decide what sexual orientation they should have. Generalizing, Shadowheart is straight because she is pretty and petite. Karlach is a lesbian because she is muscular and curses. Astarion is gay because he is slender and flamboyant - and so on. Mind you, they could very well be - but that is not the point. The point is passing judgement onto people based off appearance or demeanor alone.

Outside BG3 this reads as our daily encounters with ideas like: fat people are lazy, immigrants are uneducated (or less educated), hot girls are dumb, being slender is a desirable feminine trait, being muscular is a desirable masculine trait, poc are poor(er). Do some of these prove to be true on a case by case basis? Yes. Do some of these prove to be false on a case by case basis? Also yes. The fact is that some of these ideas are entrenched into the way people view the world. And that includes me and you. Even if you and I personally don’t do this, it doesn’t change the fact that a vast majority of people still do - and many of them unknowingly.

So when a niche community divides itself further to pass judgement onto fictional aspects of a game that is intentionally left so open to interpretation, to the point it creates feuds, it’s quite disheartening. It’s can’t be helped, perhaps, but it just plain sucks.

What specifically prompted me to write this, despite it being a ongoing feeling for a while, was the discussion around Halsin’s status of survivor/his backstory. And, again, there is a bias there that some people might not even realize. Astarion is the ideal victim in this regard, because he is the portrayal of fragility and attractiveness mixed in the right measure so his trauma can elicit sympathy and a sense of protection in many of us. Whereas Halsin isn’t necessarily the face of a traumatic experience for many. Not only physically (buff guy gets attacked?), but these two relate their experiences to us players differently, and act differently towards their trauma. It made me think again of the flattening of characters. This one can be a victim because “look at his face”. But this one? Not so much. It comes across as dismissing the “non-ideal” impersonation of that type of trauma.

Risking some oversharing, it’s the type of attitude that is putting me off from and isolating me within certain fan spaces - because my personal experiences are not quintessential “enough” for some, and my interpretations aren’t either. I’m in the lgbtqia spectrum but I’m not quite the “right kind of queer” (or, as some put it, fake queer, which is hilarious if nothing else). At least, my interpretation and depiction of queerness and gender within my favorite characters is not the one that is welcome in the spaces I tried to reach out to.

Far from me from claiming the epitome of trauma, but I’ve had my fair share. And I assume a lot of people have, too. So a little empathy or sympathy goes a long way, in reminding us our views (on headcanons) do not mean others�� are invalid.

How nice would it be that, instead of blurting out our first impressions because they are ‘easy’, we’d take a minute to just check if we’re saying what we’re saying out of an over simplistic view of things? Or, better yet, sometimes we don’t need to get out of our way to invalidate someone else’s experience. It’s mostly headcanon after all. Unless an idiot is going ‘round shouting nazi, racist, xenophobic, homophobic or misogynistic shit, there’s usually a way to turn around and leave them be (otherwise, fuck em up please and thank you.)

[lewvithur]

OC: Brynnrae Crescentwing

it's May 6th, which means one thing and one thing only. it’s been four years since i’ve designed this half-elf wizard who has become one of my oldest current OCs.

meet Brynnrae!

for today, i figured i’d go into detail and explain how i made her her.

around this time in 2020, i was running my own little DnD campaign. yep, during the pandemic and everything. we had to have at least three sessions done and recorded over Google Hangout. anyway, around this time, the party was bound to run into a city overrun by wizards that i do not remember the name of.

the other thing that happened during this time was i found about some anime, HaruChika. i’ve only seen one episode of it, and it’s the episode where this character showed up.

her name is Makoto. obviously, her main deal is that she looks like Snufkin from the Moomin series. she even plays a melodica. but the thing that interested me about this detail was that she was food-focused. she starts a music duel just so the loser can buy her food. she’s often seen with bread in her hand. so i took that detail and decided, “hey, my next character should be a perky little brat who is always hungry.”

that’s when Brynnrae came in.

here's the first time i drew her about 4 years ago!

so that was her niche. she was 1. made to be a guide to help the party throughout the town so they could fulfill their objective within the walls of the gated wizard city, and 2. there to be a food-obsessed gregarious wizard who was out of place among her peers. and of course there was a joke wherein she ordered food for the table and then asked the party what they would like to order. there had to be.

ever since then, i kind of had her in the back of my mind, developing her bit by bit so she isn’t just a joke character. there were some things i knew about her from the very start that wouldn’t change, mainly that she is a trans lesbian. also the fact that her mother is a sun elf and her father is, of course, human. 

anyway, i kind of had her in the background for a while until a little game called Baldur’s Gate 3 came out. in the midst of creating a character, i had a few ideas of just, “hey, let’s make a human bard who’s down on his luck” or “let’s make a tiefling sorcerer, maybe?” but after a few of these thoughts, i went, “screw it. i’ll make Brynnrae.”

there are some things that are different between her in-game appearance and how i draw her (which is how i imagine her looking personally). in-game, her hair is straight and reddy, whereas in actuality it’s dark brown with a touch of auburn and there’s quite a bit of volume in it. there’s also features i imagine her having like the shape of her nose and the fullness of her lips that i can’t really tell if the game captured that well. 

keeping her lesbianism in line with how i was designing her, i ended up using her to romance Karlach. and through that, i decided a few more things about her character. in addition to being a bit of an oddball who isn’t particularly skilled at wizardry and as much as she studies, her mind is elsewhere (guess i gave her ADHD and probably some autism too for good measure), i added that she really loves romance books. that could give her something to connect with Wyll over (who is basically her best friend at this point).

at the same time, it got me thinking about how she would approach things like romance and sex. having barely experienced either, she learns these things with Karlach. she learns what it means to ache for someone. she experiences things the smuttiest of her books could only dare to dream about. she changes her preconceptions about what it means to be in a romantic and sexual relationship. she brushes up against characters like Astarion (who she learns to tolerate) and his issues with these things, only to be reassured by him after some coercion leads to her giving up bits and pieces of her and even swearing her body to someone else.

the main conflict of Brynnrae’s character, especially where this run is concerned, is how her naivete and her too trusting nature lead her to trust bad people, and how she struggles to stop cutting herself up for people. this probably also explains why she and Wyll get along so well. they’re both very soft-hearted to a detriment. and while in the run i did she didn’t end up taking the astral tadpole, i think i should have had her take it to make her story a bit more interesting and give her a point where she knows she’s gone too far in trying to appease others, and now it’s time for her to fight for her autonomy again.

and so i imagine the best ending being where Brynnrae fights and saves herself. where she helps Wyll save himself. where the two of them look out for Karlach and save each other. things go well for them in the end. they deserve it.

on another note, while i don’t imagine Brynnrae being polyamorous, she would be open to the idea of Karlach dating Wyll as well. because frankly i think these two should be together no matter who the other is also dating. 

so that’s how my darling Brynnrae changed from a joke character i wrote for a campaign to (hopefully) a multi-faceted question on autonomy and trust and more.

thank you for reading have a cute smooch