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I’m trying to figure out what the hell the deal is with Bg3 and kink, and I think that, while it is much less precious about sex and sexuality than a lot of things are, it does fall into some of the same traps in a way that… well, it irks me. Disclaimer that while I did do some poking around, there are some romance scenes I have not seen. I’ll run through the ones I know about for those of you who haven’t picked up a brain bug about this.

Wyll gets nothing. This is a separate post that other people have made better than I have.

Shadowheart’s romance scene in Act 3 runs one of two ways— either you go for a swim with her, she gets poked by a rock, and you pause while she gets rid of the offending object, or you do the Nightfall Feast, where you get pushed to the ground, she tells you to stop being so gentle, and the whole thing is framed as an “act of wickedness” in parallel to you having just dumped the Nightsong’s blood on a statue of Selune. You have literal blood on your hands during this scene.

Karlach pegs you in Act 3. I, personally, do not count this as being particularly kinky. The whole concept of measuring kink is a little silly, in my humble opinion, but it seems strange to say penetration gets kinkier when it’s not a flesh-and-blood penis. (If you have sex with her in Act 2, it is kinkless.)

Gale’s got his whole astral projection thing going, which brings us solidly into kink territory. Tav mostly hangs out. We’ll circle back to this. There is also a non-illusory version, but it is exclusively fade-to-black.

Astarion does a whole seduction act in Act 1, which leads to a short and honestly quite tame (although fun!) scene. Act 3, you either get the spawn ending where you have sex on his grave (he pushes you down, and it is later flagged as ‘had sex as equals’), or you get the ascension and the whole “on your knees” bit.

Lae’zel very explicitly talks in terms of obedience and dominance and submission, and you can tell her to submit to you. We will also circle back to this scene. In act 2, you beat the crap out of each other, and either you get the option to say, “you are mine,” or you lose, and you get, “I am yours” after she also says she doesn’t want to hurt you.

Halsin has the bear scene. Or he tries very hard not to turn into a bear. Tav is once again mostly hanging out. There was a dev note at one point saying Tav was meant to hold onto his head while he went down on them, but that does not happen in this scene.

Minthara shows Tav exactly where to put their hands and mouth. Repeatedly. At length. There is no option to take control of the scene.

A pattern emerges from these scenes fairly quickly: if Tav is active, they are either actively submitting (i.e., the Minthara scene) or engaging without power exchange (Shadowheart, Karlach, Astarion’s act 1 and spawn scenes). Gale’s scene is a special case since he’s controlling the illusion, but Larian could have decided Tav was allowed to imagine themself with a few extra limbs. They probably chose not to do this to spare the poor animators. However, with the rest of the pattern, it still makes me raise an eyebrow. The Halsin scene, to me, is especially egregious as you do precisely fuck-all. At multiple times, you get very clear camera angles of Tav’s completely relaxed hands that give the distinct impression that Tav is in full pillow princess mode.

You will also note kink and morality seem to have an… interesting relationship. Explicit powerplay occurs with Lae’zel in Act 1 (she is still solidly in the mindset inspired by Vlaakith and is arguably evil-aligned at this point), Minthara (you get this scene by slaughtering the grove), and Ascended Astarion (you just killed 7,000 people and he thinks you’re, and I quote, “degrading yourself”). You also get a hint of this in the contrast between Shadowheart’s Selunite Swim and the Nightfall Feast. This feels related to why when you try to flip the script on Lae’zel, you use an intimidation check rather than persuasion or performance. This could be explained by saying that Larian has decided that orders are best represented by intimidation, even in a romantic context, but most of the intimidation checks we get are open threats, often of physical violence. I’m not entirely sure how much Lae’zel drops her powerplay as she becomes a kinder person. I’d love to hear from people who have done more of her romance than I have.

Abdirak is a torturer serving an evil goddess. He gets the player’s consent and is reasonably sweet to them if they obtain his goddess’s blessing. There are even two seconds of aftercare! His actual purpose, however, is to torture the man next door, and the two companions who cheer him on are Astarion and Shadowheart, both of whom are having some struggles with morality at this point in the game.

And then there’s the Drow twins— and specifically Sorn. If someone other than Tav approaches him, he says you need a “rear of cast-iron” to take what he dishes out. His ambient dialogue talks about scaring off clients who were paying him to apply a clamping device to something delicate. But if you see him alone, your options are roleplay, sensation play, or size kink. I did say I wouldn’t try to measure kink, but it feels like false advertising. (You can wrestle him in the Drizzt Do’urden roleplay scenario. It is an ability check. This raises questions for me about how this was negotiated, but it’s not a deal breaker.) Where’s the sadism promised in his ambient dialogue? Some characters just aren’t subs, that’s fine, but this is about patterns, not individual characters.

I should pause here to say that the only thing in the above with which I have an actual issue on an individual level is Tav being so limp in the Halsin scene. It would be nice if Tav touched back in a way more significant than holding onto his arms a bit and laying a limp hand on his thigh if he stays elf shaped. This is not a moral complaint— it’s aesthetic. Frankly, none of this is saying Larian has done anything immoral.

However. I’m a little frustrated, as someone who does not have a submissive bone in my body, that all but one romance scene in this game is designed for a submissive Tav or a Tav who does not want powerplay. It’s not uncommon to find people who are okay with impact play if you don’t want to hit, CNC if you don’t want to be the faux-aggressor, ageplay or petplay if you don’t want to be the adult/owner. This is not a kink-positive stance or even kink-neutral. I should also note here that I do not judge any of the characters mentioned, not even Abdirak, for their interest in consensual kink. If I judge them, it’s for unrelated reasons. Or reasons that should be unrelated but often don’t feel like it, as it seems like Larian has set them up to be interested in powerplay and sadism because of their less-than-decent moral leanings. Abdirak wants to whip Tav because he’s a follower of the Lady of Pain. Ascended Astarion isn’t playing when he tells Tav he wants to own them, body, mind, and soul, and there’s no safewording out of every other interaction after that. Shadowheart tells you to stop being gentle because she has become a Dark Justiciar. Lae’zel stops wanting to hurt Tav— and you consent to the fight— because she’s learning about care and softness. I don’t think she stops being kinky, but there are patterns, and patterns that extend beyond the boundaries of the game.

Frankly, I’m not sure what sort of conclusion I’m aiming for here. There are patterns in Larian’s approach to sex, power, and pain that indicate some very familiar hangups. It would be nice if there were more room for a dominant Tav, not even with every character, but with a few of them. Some people don’t sub. Some characters don’t sub. It makes sense. But I’ll be rotating this further. And writing fic. To anyone else who likes writing a dominant Tav: hi! Keep doing what you’re doing!

I wouldn’t be posting this if I didn’t want to hear other people’s thoughts, but quick disclaimer: I will block anyone who comes onto this post to talk about how great the vampire ascendant is. It’s not personal. I simply would blacklist anything to do with that if I could, and the way the tag’s been going, I can’t. You saw the tags on this, and you clicked anyway. Similarly, if you’re going to throw a shitfit about how no one should like whipping a consenting partner, don’t waste your breath. You get the picture.

#text #bg3 #meta #ascended astarion negative #it's NOT ABOUT THAT #but i don't want anyone getting surprised #and i want people able to blacklist if necessary #anyway i wrote this while i was meant to be getting ready for work #looked up #and had two and a half pages in a google doc

The funniest way to remember it’s thursday is to open tumblr and get out of context spoilers for the new episode. Especially since tumblr has a tendency to make comments that, having listened to the episode, are funny as fuck, and not having listened are average tumblr chaos with a tmagp flavouring

#tmagp #the magnus protocol #no but actually #multiple times ive been browsing tumblr #looked up #‘oh it’s thursday’#and then continued