#her arc is SO GOOD she is the real main character of bg3

[albaharu]

everyday of my life i think about this moment

[crossdressingdeath]

Thinking about it having taken some time away, a revenge plot like Karlach's was I think one of the worst possible choices for a BG3 companion quest even before we get into what a half-assed fake drama story it is (why isn't her quest finding a damn Wish scroll, Larian, that would actually be fun and wouldn't cut into Wyll's quest or demand the player choose her ending if they want her to live, there are multiple spells that could fix this and we're given exactly zero explanation for why we aren't even trying to get one, you even brought Wish into the plot as a non-standard game over and then didn't bring it up here when it would be an ideal solution), because it really brings the massive double standard the game's got going on into stark relief. It's most obvious in contrast with Astarion. Like, think about it: the Gur's desire for revenge against Astarion is every bit as justified as Karlach's desire for revenge against Gortash; actually it's more so, given they have a real (though faint) reason to hope that they can actually accomplish something outside of his death, namely getting their kids back. But giving him to the Gur kills him and costs you a companion; it's a failure as far as his character arc goes, and in fact happens so early on he doesn't really get a character arc. All of that potential development is cut short and you have to see his corpse in the ritual and it is in general treated as a bad thing. The much better way of handling the Gur situation is to talk to them in act 3 and drag Astarion into atoning for what he did by trying to deal with Cazador and rescue the kids. This is good! Blind revenge solves nothing, having people pay for what they did by atoning and having to help the people they hurt as best they can is a much better solution! We love to see it!

Now you'd think the equivalent to that would be to dissuade Karlach from her revenge and instead get Gortash to fix the heart (either with his knowledge of the tech involved or—my personal favourite—his power and influence being used to acquire the use of one of the spells that could repair it or replace it with a normal heart because again there's more than one of those and it's stupid that none of them are even brought up as potential solutions), but... nope! Revenge is only bad when those outsiders do it, when it's a companion it's the only real solution! Like, yeah, she's got that thing where she complains that it didn't help at all but... we knew killing Gortash wouldn't help from the start. I don't remember if Karlach herself ever brings it up, but it's hard to miss that killing Gortash will not solve anything Karlach's got going on. And if you don't kill him you don't even get that much acknowledgement that revenge isn't a great solution. And also that's the most basic revenge plot outline, "revenge feels empty" is so fucking common as an ending. But it's just a moment that makes it so clear that Larian wasn't really interested in exploring the themes of the cycle of abuse and how aggressors can also be victims and all that with... anyone except the companions (and even then not always; see their complete unwillingness to ever engage with pre-amnesia Durge as anything but a heartless, crazy murderer despite the game itself including plenty of implications that that wasn't the case). It makes it seem less like a discussion on the cycle of abuse and more like good old-fashioned protagonist-centric morality, where the bad things the heroes do are forgivable because they had a hard life but anyone who hurts them is irredeemable no matter how hard their lives were. And it could've been avoided so easily (in a way that also gave Karlach's quest a more satisfying ending) by having a better ending to her quest that focused less on revenge and more on restitution. But no, heaven forbid we be allowed to engage with the act 3 antagonists in any meaningful way outside of killing them or acknowledge that the main thing separating them from the less moral companions is that no one helped them...

[wetcatspellcaster]

🌿 🌞 🌻 🍸

Thank you for asking anon! :)

🌿 who is your favourite character you've ever written?

not really catering to my audience here, but my favourite character I've written is Star!Alina in my shadow and bone stardust au. the conceit behind her was that I was getting sick of immortality being portrayed as depressing, leaving people jaded and disconnected from the world. so I wrote an immortal character who delighted in living, and I don't know, it was just a really fun exercise in imagining ways to rework one of my favourite supernatural tropes!

🌞 favourite character from current wip

I genuinely find Astarion's voice very fun to write from, the good thing about An Honest Lie is it's dual perspective so I still get to dip into his POV after the focalisation of Pieces being solely on Rosalie!

🌻 least favourite character / hardest to write

She's not my least favourite AT ALL, but I find Karlach very hard to write. I've talked about it with a friend, and I think it's because in fic she's often treated as this mixture of emotional support and comic relief, which isn't wrong, but it often feels like there's something more to her character that is occasionally hard to pin down or communicate effectively? As she's a side character in most of my projects, I want to make sure I do her arc and her voice justice, but it's difficult to avoid putting her in this role. Idk, I just worry that she's the voice of the main cast I've really not managed to land!!

🍸 character who inspired your mc

ohhh interesting, Rosalie wasn't really inspired by characters so much as real people in my life! I met two people with agoraphobia during the pandemic and as I was also struggling with being inside during lockdown it became a preoccupation for me.

I guess, if I was to claim character inspiration, I have to be really salty: I'd just played in a D&D game with a bunch of people whose goals weren't aligned and who weren't really interested in playing a good storyline. there is nothing wrong with either of these things, if you've had a good enough session 0 to dissect them in, but we hadn't and i'd only bought good-aligned characters to the table, and it was 2021 and I was feeling drained and in desperate need of optimism! I really wanted to fix the world, even if it was only in my imagination! so when I then played BG3 and everyone was an edgelord (affectionate), I felt trapped again. out of a mixture of spite and wish fulfilment, I tried to create someone Lawful Good. I wanted to prove that Lawful Good was just as interesting, nuanced, and potentially flawed as Morally Grey.

So Rosalie wasn't really inspired by any other characters, she was made in reaction/as a kind of immune response to other characters.

☀️ summertime writers' asks! ☀️

[sequesteredbhaalspawn]

I get what they're trying to do. How people with power for good or ill abuse that power, and the people on the other end choosing the perpetuate that cycle or end it. I like stories like this. I just think it needed to be done better. Found families breaking the cycle of abuse, etc.

Larian didn't need to butcher established characterizations of the gods to tell the story they wanted to tell. That's where my issue lies. In D&D the gods are very very real. They are not concepts or abstracts. They exists and govern over aspects of reality. And people can become gods themselves. Like Gale, if you take the route with him.

Like what's the deal with Bhaal? They treat him like his chaotic evil, when he is currently natural evil lore-wise, and before that had been lawful evil from his creation. None of the actions carried out in his name make sense, none of his deserve for those actions make sense. His whole deal is kill people and make money doing it, make money from the fear of it.

The Forgotten Realms is a long established setting, with established lore, and characterization for the gods. And I just need Larian to actually care about that. But I doubt they do. And I doubt they even care about the Baldur's Gate games, with the way Viconia and Sarvok where written, and the way they where written undercuts the main themes of the story they're trying to tell, "look at this characters from the past games where their arcs revolve around breaking the cycle of abuse! Guess what! They tried and fail! Oh well! Kill them!"

I like having characters have relationships with gods, and other powers, but those brings- if they are not original to the established setting, need to be kept in character. it's just a massive pet peeve of mine. My own Tav, Telanziiri is a drow who is extremely devoted to Lolth (she really super evil, but plans on drowning the surface world in the blood of the armies of the Absolute as an offering to her). Twi'thi is a githyanki cleric of Selûne who still struggles with how she was raised under Vlaakkith's rule. It makes things very fun and interesting to have characters have these relationships. These things greatly inform how they behave. Telanzziri doesn't side with the goblins because Minthara is a traitor to Lolth. So she ends up going the "good guy" thing. Etc. I love how gods can affect character motivation and choice.

I'm sorry, I just could plain about these points forever. I hope I'm not coming across as confrontational! 😅

I'm very into lore, characterization of other characters, and setting. And those these things can inform out player created characters interact with the world around them.

"But in bg3 they are really just meddling tyrants." is such a good point. And I agree completely. They don't act like, or feel like gods. Especially not compared to their previously established selves.

The Dead Three, Mystra, Zariel, Shar- all got done so dirty by Larian. Selûne is fine- but we don't really get to interact with her at all like we do with all of the others.

Like yes some of the gods are evil, in alignment, (Zariel is an archdevil but I'm including her too). But that isn't an excuse for bad writing. Like I can't imagine anyone at Larian stopped and thought "why is this god this way and why do people worship these gods?" like no exercising of empathy (not a dig at low empathy people out there), or character building.

It's just depressing. BG3 is going to be the first time a lot of people interact with these characters at all. This is going to be their impression of them.

The gods of the forgotten realms are not uncaring beings who just use others for their own purposes. I just hate seeing it. It gives me anti-thesis vibes that is very off putting.

I am probably going to be stuck on this for days. The more I dig into it the more I am disappointed.