Hello all you happy people, and happy new year! My new year was happily busy, with a great many dogs and a great deal of drawing practice done. Alas, not as much writing, but still I am greatly pleased with how the last two weeks or so have turned out. I got a geometry kit and some stencils for Christmas and my drawing has improved dramatically. I’ll show off some samples later this week.
Speaking of writing, the rough draft for No Blood for Business is done. Now comes the fun part: editing and rewriting! And by fun, I mean tear my eyes out tedious. Ah well. There’s nothing to be done. I should have the first of the second draft preview chapters up for you by the end of this week/early next week. I’m also working hard on Legends of Infernia and I’m hoping to have a demo up soon-ish. My plans for Tales of Infernia have been complicated somewhat by the fact that I can’t sell the game on the Switch and have no desire to become a PC developer. That has accelerated my desire to learn how to code and use a real game engine (i.e. Game Maker) but of course that leads us to two problems: one, I don’t know how to code and two, I still don’t know how to draw.
I am getting better at both. But I’m a long way away from being proficient enough in either skill to make my own game.
Today, however, I want to talk about a different kind of coding. One that drives me up the wall because of how reliant it is on stereotypes and lazy ass thinking. If you’ve been on Tumblr any time in the last decade or so, you’re familiar with what I’m talking about. The idea that, if a character fits a random assortment of stereotypes associated with their gender/sexuality/ethnicity whatever while not conforming to another random assortment of stereotypes, then they are sub-textually ‘coded’ to be… whatever the poster wants them to be. It’s lazy, stereotypical thinking and we’re going to attack it today using the cast from Baldur’s Gate 3, along some other objectively wrong takes on gender in the game.
Before we jump under the cut, remember that you can support me on Patreon or buy me a hot chocolate.
Read more: Machine Guns Are Lesbian CodedGender Is Artificial, Dumbass.
Let’s start off right here: gender is an artificial construct created both by society and yourself. It changes greatly from society to society, person to person, and even year to year. You cannot code someone as ‘effeminate’ or ‘masculine’ or even as ‘queer’ or ‘straight’ because those are not objective values! Not all gay men are flamboyant, while a lot of straight men are. Similarly, a lot of straight men are fashion conscious whereas its not hard to find gay slobs. In fact, I live with one. Granted, she’s my sister, but she’s also living proof that gender essentialism is tre bullshit. She’s a bigger slob than me!
The same goes for ethnicity. Are we really going to say that just because someone, an alien or a monster, knows martial arts they’re Asian-coded? If you can’t see how racist that is, well I can’t help you and neither can anybody else.
So where does this bullshit come from? Well, originally it came from the idea of ‘queer-coding’ wherein authors would subtextually code a character as queer by relying heavily on anti-queer stereotypes and then letting the readers fill in the blanks for themselves. Joel Cairo from The Maltese Falcon is a famous example. This is a real thing that authors did and even in the hands of better intentioned authors (Chris Claremont), it’s still bullshit. Queer-coding relies heavily, heavily on stereotypes (usually negative ones) for its subtext. And then readers applying their own internalized negative stereotypes to the characters and insisting their reading is the only valid one.
It’s the same with ethnicity. Which is why you get people claiming that Redwall villains are based on black and brown people despite, you know, being based on Nazis, Golden Age pirates (famously European villains).
So how does this related to Baldur’s Gate 3? Let’s start with this utter nonsense of a tweet:
Or this one:
Jesus Christ Professor, did you even play the game?
Listen, I have a great deal of respect for Professor Devereaux. His blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry is a great source of historical research for those of us who are broke and can’t afford actual history books. But he’s living in a dream world if he thinks this is an accurate analysis of Baldur’s Gate 3‘s characters.
Of The Six Origin Companions, It’s The Males Who Are The Most Emotionally Closed Off
Granted, this was more true in Early Access when you had to work to get Gale’s request for magical artifacts or Astarion’s vampire reveal. Same with learning that Wyll was a Fiend Warlock. In release, the game straight up tells you that Wyll’s a Warlock after you recruit Karlach. The men have suffered greatly in release (after much bitching from their largely female fanbase during EA, I must point out) and that’s a shame.
But they’re still more emotionally driven and complex than the women are.
Let’s start with Gale, shall we. Gale hides his problems well with cheer, arrogance and confidence, but your first camp scene with shows just how thin that veneer is. Gale is afraid: afraid of becoming a mind flayer, afraid of the harm he’ll do when he eventually explodes, afraid of devils and demons and all the rest. Gale is also resigned: he knows he screwed up and will eventually have to die for his mistakes unless he can find a cure. Thirdly, Gale is emotionally manipulative. This shows up the best in his reveal scene, but also in the the Weave scene where he teaches you magic. He’s full of resentment, guilt, shame, but also good cheer and is quite brave, likes to help people and is the most supportive of all the companions. But in order to see all of that, you have to put in considerable effort to see all of his scenes.
Wyll is similar. Almost all of his scenes are full of regret and complicated feelings towards Mizora, his father and his Pact. He’s also the most emotionally driven of the companions: his personal arc is all about reconciling with his father.
Astarion is all about his hatred of Cazador and the joy in his newfound freedom, making almost as emotionally driven as Wyll. He’s also one of the more manipulative companions: his intro scene with the boar has him literally tricking you so he can attack you from behind. That first bite scene? Yeah, he’s playing the puppy dog to get some food. And man is it a pain in the ass to get straight answers from him. Easier than in EA, sure. At least he kind of talks about Cazador before the end of Act 1 now.
Compare with the female characters. Karlach is by far and away the most emotionally open of the companions: either she likes you or she doesn’t. And if she doesn’t, she hits you with that big axe of hers. She reminds a lot of JLU’s Hawkgirl, only less angry. She’s also one of the most goal driven characters: her entire arc is about finding some way out hell permanently, consequences be damned. She doesn’t show the slightest bit of regret or sadness or anything about the idea of dying as long as it means she stays out of hell. Karlach is a great character (though her personal quest is a bit lacking in the end) but she’s not a particularly complex one.
What about Lae’zel? Lae’zel is hilarious to me because everybody wants to give her traits that just aren’t there. Lae’zel is an arrogant bully with a bad case of main character syndrome (in fact, I think she was intended to be the main character at one point in development. That’s just a feeling though, so take it with a table full of salt). She gets better, sort of, over the course of the game but Lae’zel doesn’t get the slightest hint of emotional conflict until the end of Act 1, some twenty hours into the game. And she is extremely direct with you, emotionally. Lae’zel is the easiest to sleep with, the most… outspoken (read: critical) about your decisions, the most aggressive, etc. Granted her emotions tend to be simple, either hate or lust. But again, she’s extremely straightforward about it.
That leaves us with Shadowheart. And, to be fair, Shadowheart loves playing coy and is the most haughty (as opposed to outright arrogant and aggressive) and standoff-ish of the female origin companions. But that’s one of the three, which still means that the female companions are more open and straightforward emotionally than the guys are. And Shadowheart doesn’t get any emotional conflict until the end of Act 2. Prior to this, she is extremely goal oriented (return to Baldur’s Gate, deliver artifact) in her personal quest.
The guys, by contrast, are emotionally conflicted right from the beginning.
Why Didn’t You Talk About Minthara/Halsin/Jaheira/Minsc?
Because they’re optional companions you have to go out of your way to get, so most people won’t interact with them. Minthara, in particular, is such a pain in the ass to recruit that I never have in my seven hundred hours of playing.
Besides, they don’t change the dynamic that much. Halsin, Minsc and Jaheira are all emotionally open and available, albeit in different ways. Halsin is the wise man with old regrets (think Obi-Wan), Minsc… would get along great with Elan, and Jaheira is the Slappy Squirrel of BG3. Her emotions are pretty much limited to ‘Grump’. As a fellow ‘Grump’, I naturally find her the BEST CHARACTER EVER and I am greatly disappointed we can’t romance her and produce legions of grumpy kids.
But that brings us to a grand total of three emotionally closed off men, three emotionally open women, two emotionally open men and two (depending on how you count Minthara) emotionally closed off women.
Seems pretty damned even to me, yeah?
Lauren Faust, We Need You!
I cannot believe, in a post-My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic world that we are still having this conversation, but here we are.
Let’s be clear here: there are as many different ways to be masculine (or feminine or non-binary or whatever) as there are atomic particles in the universe and all of them are (I hate this word) valid. You assume a character who acts in a certain way is coded effeminate/queer/ultramasculine/whatever, but that only shows your limitations and preconceptions, not that of the character or the author.
Baldur’s Gate 3 illustrates this beautifully. For the guys, you have Manipulative Bastard/Guile Hero/Gentleman and a Scholar Gale, Agent Peacock/Lovable Rogue/Romantic Vampire Boy Astarion, Well-Done Son Guy/Folk Hero/Glory Hound Wyll. And that’s just the main three. If we throw in Halsin or Minsc, never mind Barcus Wroot (the second best NPC in the game after Jaheira) or Gortash or whoever, the different kinds of masculinity expand exponentially! Also I only reduced the main three male companions to a handful of core tropes. They are obviously more complex than that. I just wanted to show, in quick fashion, the ways those three men display different kinds of masculinity.
The women are similarly varied. Karlach is different from Lae’zel who is different from Shadowheart who is… well, you get the idea.
All these characters show off different conceptions of masculinity and femininity. They are not coded as queer or gender non-conforming or whatever, though they can also be those things. Gender is relative. In modern US or Canada, Lae’zel comes across as a ball-busting bitch. In Githyanki society, she’s… normal, naive even. Because everybody in Githyanki society is an arrogant bully with main character syndrome (thanks Vlaakith. You’re a real peach).
But that doesn’t make Lae’zel any less feminine, because feminine is relative. It’s relative to culture (if everybody’s an asshole in your culture then being an asshole is a gender neutral trait) and to you personally. How you choose to present yourself and your masculinity/femininity/non-binarinity/whatever.
I’ll see you folks next week.
