The Baldur's Gate 3 fandom's treatment of Wyll is fascinating in how much people want to invent reasons out of the ether to ignore, dismiss, and demonize him.
They say that he's boring and has no real interesting story, and I have to point out that 1. that's wrong, just inherently so, and 2. okay, so why is it not suspicious to you that the one Black companion in the game is painfully underwritten? Also, Wyll not having as much of a storyline as the rest of the companions isn't an excuse when I've seen white fandom make mountains out of lesser molehills! I've seen, time and time again, white fandom create whole rich worlds and stories for background characters with one line, or side characters with even less to work with than Wyll! They can invent story threads and motivations for a pocket of lint, but not this one Black character?
When they say that his whole hero thing and general kind and romantic nature makes him less interesting or annoying, I can't help but think that that would not be a problem if he were white, or if his personality and questline were transferred to a white character. For God's sake, there's a mod that takes Wyll's dance scene and replaces him with Astarion (which is an issue in and of itself but that's another post for another time)! That's all I need to know about where people's heads are at!
I've even seen people writing angry screeds demonizing Wyll for making the deal with Mizora. I'm sorry, was 17 year old Wyll just supposed to sit back and watch everyone die? Would a white hero faced with this kind of dilemma be received so poorly by fandom? I think not!
It all comes back around to antiblackness, and I always feel like I'm the crazy one for noticing it!
The problem here is that people love heroism, but only when it's a white character. When heroism wears the face of a Black person, then suddenly it's cheesy and boring and evil and all the bad things in the world.
Think about that.
