#do i dare put fandom meta or analysis into the world? what if i'm scared.

[wetcatspellcaster]

I debated reblogging this (mostly bc I hate putting my thoughts out and being perceived) but I have been thinking about it since I saw it yesterday. so tbh wanted to give OP credit where credit was due for being genuinely Thought Provoking, and give their hard work more reach.

I think some equivalences in this table work better than others and there's nuances a graphic by necessity can't capture: many people headcanon Orin as related to Durge vs. Gortash, and gaining Minthara required killing refugees before the patch - I think maybe Larian realised they were doing her character and Emma Gregory's work a disservice, and that's why they patched it out. "Is it ok to commit murder in the name of best feminist praxis? Discuss." (This is a joke, as murder in a videogame is not a moral reflection of the player it just sounded funny in my head.)

... but BG3 does have racism/misogyny problems and it's silly to pretend otherwise - and I think that's why the 'minor' character equivalences work better than others. It also made me think about the number of 'single' male NPCs encountered in the game, versus the number of female NPCs that are then placed in relationships (Aylin, Isobel, Alfira, Lakrissa), not to mention a number of the female NPCs with detailed interactions with Tav (like Arabella and Mol) who are literally, children.

The reason I wanted to reblog however (and I'm not disagreeing with OP, merely externalising some thoughts) is bc I think many of these character focuses are so influenced by Tav and people's choice around the writing of their Tav. all the examples I give above link to that (is the charater related to Tav/Durge, is the character a reflection of the Tav's moral choices, is the NPC free for a Tav/NPC pairing).

BG3 is a very OC and OC/canon character heavy fandom, and I think a lot of those OCs are women rather than men. In other news, water is wet.

OP's work doesn't necessarily have to cover this, but I was thinking about it, and the more I thought about it, the weirder I felt. Bc discussing misogyny in this fandom is hard, when you ignore one of the most major ways that women are written into the game, which is via Tav/Durge. I think a lot of the time, when fic authors write incredibly detailed, interesting female OCs, that work isn't seen as feminist, it's seen as ... self-insert, wish-fulfilment, author avatar, blah blah blah, and rarely, if ever, acknowledged as creating a nuanced and multifaceted female character... which feeds into the misogyny OP is talking about, right? Rather than having written a woman, or even a queer woman in the case of bi/pan female characters, an author is dismissed as 'writing a 2D insert/nameless body to get railed by Halsin/Astarion/Gortash/Raphael' etc... even if that's not the work that's happening? And even if that person has put a lot of thought into that woman, AO3 tagging will not reflect that.

I realise I just sound like I'm covering my own ass, as someone who writes 'female char/Astarion'. Maybe I am. But I've literally done this to myself - I remember receiving an ask saying 'did you write a deliberately feminist fic by giving your Tav agency?' and my reply was 'lol i'm queer, woman stepping on evil man hot'. I dismissed myself??? But the truth is I write OC fanfiction bc my OC is one of my favourite and most interesting parts of the story I am writing. and particularly in BG3 fandom and it's overlap with D&D, where character creation/insertion is an integral part of the experience, I feel like dismissing all female Tavs/Durges as only giving more attention to male characters or not participating in the writing of women is also frustrating... just bc it's another layer of misogyny/comphet wildness, to assume authors of female main characters aren't using that woman as a vehicle for anything other than lust for a pixelated man.

Anyway, that's not what i think OP is doing, and I think their points are totally fair, this is more just a post that provoked a lot of my own thinking that I then wanted to share. TL;DR I think a lot of the attention and nuanced writing female characters get in this fandom is actually centred on Tav/Durge, for a multitude of reasons, and yes that can still be frustrating but it's not actually something that should be dismissed. A lot of people are writing some really interesting women with a multitude of different strengths/flaws, moral compasses, backgrounds, sexual orientations, etc... they just also happen to be a romance with Astarion or Gale, for instance.

And yes, there is still a bias there towards NPCs, and that's not even touching on the racism behind the canon and in-game writing of the companion romances. But reducing this veritable plethora of female main characters down to 'just another annoying Astarion/Gale-mancing Tav' is itself sexist and misogynistic, if that makes sense.

(Again, this is nothing that OP has done or is perpetuating, more just a frustration I have inside my own brain that reading this post helped me to articulate. I'll shut up now lol.)

A common issue in fandom spaces is female characters ignored in favor of their male counterparts, and one of the biggest reasons I see given is that the women just aren't as interesting as the men. They're placed in lesser roles with less story impact, less personality, less character development, so of course the men get more fan interest.

With that in mind, here's 9 sets of characters who DO have comparable characterization, plot relevance/presence, and personal development -- and how many tagged works each character has on Archive of Our Own. Spoilers: it's pretty bad.