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tavyliasin · 2 months

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Fandom Essay - Body Positivity and Validation

Good timezone darlings~ Lia is back at it again with some examination of BG3 Fandom and some more of the wonderful things we can find within it. This time we are talking about representation of different physical features. If you feel this might be a little much for you, either in regards to your relationship to your body or any potential dysphoria, please feel free to skip it. Second disclaimer that I will be mentioning trans and nonbinary people here from the perspective of a Cis person - this is absolutely not my right to speak for or over anyone so I thoroughly welcome the voices of those with lived experiences to join in the comments with their input, but I also did not want to leave the topic out of the discussion and you may just see why as we get into it~ So on with today's long title:

How FanWorks Can Be Important To Self Acceptance And Body Positivity - The Next "Callout Essay" from TavyliaSin (Who is calling herself out with these too) ((there are reasons it feels targeted I know where to aim)) (((but honestly it's fine it's all positive I promise)))

Today we will be discussing: body types, disability representation (only a little though, this one may need a full post of its own), body size, gender (and gender euphoria), scars and "imperfections", visible ageing. This will be through the lens of both the canon inclusion and everything we see in mods, edits, and fan creations of all kinds. As usual I will use sub headers and encourage anyone to skip what makes them uncomfortable, as well as to join the discussion~ so let's begin, shall we?

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What Does Body Positivity Mean?

Let's start off with the simple one. Body positivity doesn't mean promoting any one body type as the ideal or as better than any others, it is about being positive about the mortal flesh vessels we inhabit and all of their features. A lot of people can find this difficult, to love oneself or even just accept oneself, especially in a highly critical society. But that is where representation and even fan creations can step in - by being vocal and loud about appreciating features that people may feel negative about in themselves, we can help build up confidence and self worth, as well as reminding all of us that we do not have to look a certain way to be desirable and desired~

How Does This Relate To Baldur's Gate 3?

On the surface, we do have a lot of characters with more conventionally accepted body types in the main cast and romance characters, though it is worth noting that the base models were updated to be less "Hollywood muscles" on a couple of characters, which made more sense to the character stats and backstories (unless Gale was working out every day in his tower, he's not that much like a bodybuilder physique).

But aside from this, when you look closer, there's also an awful lot to appreciate in the standard character designs. A lot of these are things which fans pick up on and adore, despite how they may be features that people are actively bullied for or that are seen as undesirable by beauty standards. Those "beauty standards" can get in the trash too, but I'll use it here to point out the things we are shining a positive light on in the face of those societal values~ Karlach - Our tall queen, strong and muscular and not particularly feminine with her tattoos, piercings, and hairstyle. But she is adored for all of those things, even her broken horn is an important feature, alongside the glowing heart and fire that have some in the game view her as monstrous until they look closer and know her. Astarion - His laugh lines. Gods don't we love those? The wrinkles in his face are experience, and of course he has those signs of exhaustion in his eyes that make him so much more relatable to many of us. Lae'zel - This might feel like cheating as she's not human, and is less human-like than most of the other characters, but in a way that is also an important one. She's still desirable and treated as such in the romances, as well as very much adored by the fans. Gale - The little signs of ageing and stress mark Gale's face, and even the hints of greying in his hair are picked up on and chewed on by those who love him most. Wyll - More on him later but honestly is he not the poster boy for physical acceptance? Not only do we have his initial appearance with the stone eye but with one choice his entire body is completely changed and part of his story is arguably learning to live with this and how his new look is likely going to be seen as everything he ever feared. Halsin - Are we cheating with BIG TALL MUSCLE MOUNTAIN because many people find this attractive to start with? Maybe, but again he has clear signs of ageing, as well as very obvious facial scarring. His look might easily be described as fearsome, and yet his personality couldn't be further from it. Raphael - Hello there lovers of older men, who look at each one of those wrinkles and his brow lines and start sweating a bit more. I'm with you, he's gorgeous because of those signs of aging, not despite them. Abdirak - Our real poster boy for scars and visible wounds. Features which have long been given only to villainous characters in fiction (particularly that aimed at younger audiences) and yes he is one of the most violent characters, but he is also immediately deeply sympathetic to the player. So we are no longer equating scars/visual difference with pure evil. In general we have a lot of features that are not overly smoothed out or homogenised to fit certain standards. We have different nose shapes, visible pores, scars, acne marks, wrinkles, greying hair, moles, freckles, body hair, and a lot of variety across face shapes and features. It makes the characters feel more real, more relatable, and seeing features closer to our own can be comforting and validating in a lot of ways. Of course there are more examples, and far more we could say about each one of these and all the things that make them unique that we love about them, but we would be here all day and there are other topics to cover!

What About The Player Characters?

So we do have a range of fantasy races, many of which arguably don't represent real humans at all, and we do also lack variation in body types in the standard game. But we also have player characters with shorter statures with the dwarves, halflings and gnomes. Beyond just being part of the lore and story, there is some representation here for similar body types in real life. I can't say a lot on this as I neither have personal experience nor do I personally know anyone who could speak on how they feel about these races in comparison to lived experiences, but it would be equally unfair to leave the point out of the conversation - please do add something in the comments if you have the knowledge and emotional bandwidth to spare, I would love to hear about your experiences and opinions! Aside from this we have a wide range of skin tones (though my own is too close to plain paper to be able to tell you if this is anywhere near adequate so please feel free to weigh in with lived experience here) as well as scars and other features in the character creation. There's also vitiligo pigmentation, which is not only representing the condition but also normalising it to those who aren't familiar and making some rather beautiful options for our characters in my opinion. Even in the hair styles there are a couple of options featuring thinner hair or baldness patterns. There are less options for textured hairstyles and the facial features are equally limited, but there are some truly gorgeous mods out there which I'll mention later.

Player Characters And Gender

Another caveat to please weigh in with your lived experiences, but this one is one that I've seen friends enjoy and it was really wonderful to see that delight. Being able to select pronouns, genitals, body type, and voice all independently of each other is something which is so vastly meaningful to a lot of players. To some it might just be "oh cool I get to choose what my character looks like naked", but to a nonbinary friend of mine... Well, they were sending me happy, joyful, and what can only be described as "delightfully shouty" messages when they were in character creation. To paraphrase, and to tone it down just a little, it went something like this:

"Wait you mean I can have a character look and exist the way I want to be? I can actually have myself represented on screen, and nobody will misgender me, and nobody will decline a romance based on any of this?!"

Maybe it seems silly but I got tearful to see them just absolutely losing it over having these options. They've been stuck with binary options in most fantasy RPGs for so long... Of course there's still things that could be improved, there always will be, but that joy? Priceless. It meant something in that moment and I hope it will continue to mean something to a lot more people in many moments to come. Of course there are still flaws - the faces and bodies are still gender matched, and it isn't possible for people to refine the size and shape of player character chests. In some ways really what we have is the bare minimum, a start that needs to go further, but seeing as there have been precious few games in the genre to even reach this low bar it is good to recognise it, to say "this brought people joy and is worth the effort to make it happen", and to say "please go further because there is genuine interest."

What About Mods?

This is where we can see a lot more of that positivity flourishing. There are countless options, from having more hairstyles and hair types, to face shapes and features, all the way to body types and adding in top surgery scars. Giving the game the ability to be modded, and potentially even encouraging and supporting it, means we can see so much more of that body positivity and representation. Having a hero who shares your features, seeing romances play out where the characters are valued in every way just as they are. Being able to mod softer and wider body types to the Origin characters too, taking the form away from the bodybuilder/model physique and far closer to more average - and undeniably still devastatingly attractive - body types. Seeing the trans-Origin character headcanons portrayed too, that's just so utterly divine~ (There is a lot to be said about parallels to LGBTQIA+ experiences in the Origin storylines, too, so feel free to comment on those at the end if you would like to) To all of you out there making mods, and sharing the characters you've created using other peoples' mods - thank you! I adore seeing all of these, as well as people's happiness in sharing and using them too~

I don't even use mods, honestly darlings I'm not the best with tech at times and as I'm spending vastly more hours writing than playing it's likely not as worth it for me - especially when people share the modded content for us all to enjoy in videos and screenshots. But I love how many there are, that they exist, and all the ways they give people joy and euphoria to see their own body types and/or body types they find to be desirable~

But Wasn't This Post About Fandom and Fan Creations?

It was - and is! Because after all of the content you can get in the base game and in the modded version, what comes after is where the fans go with it from there.

That's truly where we get the most body positivity and joy. Headcanons leave the head and pour onto the page. We see characters reimagined a hundred times, each with their own twist, their own enthusiasm both from the creator and from fans just eating up every piece that comes out. There's so much variety there seems to be almost anything you could wish for with almost any character, and I can guarantee you that if there's something you'd like to see and aren't seeing out there, there will be an artist willing to work on the idea (most likely on commission basis, we do prefer to ensure our artists can eat after all, but there may be some willing to just adopt ideas to draw as their own too). This even extends to cosplay, with gender-swapped characters, as well as the one thing I will always be vocal about in cosplay - everyone should be allowed to wear the character costumes they love regardless of body types or how well their body/face matches the original character. Though this does come with the caveat that skin should never be darkened to match a character's look (if that character has a natural type skin tone, obviously green etc is not an issue) - just be your own version of the character if you adore them enough to put the costume together.

And your work?...

Thank you for asking Lia, let me answer that one for you. Of course, take it away, Lia! Ahem silliness aside, there is something you might or might not have noticed in my writing. I don't do a lot of body-type description. You can imagine whatever you like as you read - Gale with a soft tummy to snuggle? Yes please! Or you can imagine him with sculped abs, or a more slender frame - whatever brings you the most joy to read. This is especially true for anything I do with gender neutral character fics (usually "character x Reader"/2nd person pieces) - I try to stay away from any specific gendered features and focus on actions and sensations which can be common to any body.

How Does This All Add Up To Body Positivity?

Simple, love - by sharing and making all of these works we are saying "these features are beautiful, we love them, we want to see more of them as we fall head over heels time and time again". It might not seem like a lot, but the mind is both powerful and very easily open to suggestion. If a person keeps seeing negative things about a feature they have (eg, as a mild example body hair on women/feminine people) they will internalise that and wish to change themselves (eg, waxing/shaving/etc). In the case of a bit of body hair that might not seem drastic, but it still changes how someone feels about themselves. At the end of the day, the more we love ourselves the easier it is to look after ourselves and be happy in the mortal flesh vessels we pilot around this terribly strange universe~ For my part, I have seen my body shape which I had struggled with shown time and time again as "wow look at this character who looks this way, they are amazing! I love this feature, and that feature, and the way the artist made sure to include this particular thing-" Every time I see that, every time I see parts of myself I struggle with being applauded and appreciated, I feel a little brighter. A little more comfortable. A little more like I am allowed to dress it up nicely and spend time and care to feel good about it. I also feel less shame for old scars, for every part of myself that has made me look at the mirror with unkind eyes. Confidence is not a single brick, it's many that need to be built carefully with the right cement. If it is chipped away at too many times, even by little self-deprecating "jokes", it will erode. It will crack. It will wear away piece by piece instead of building up. And before anyone decides to try equating weight and health, darling this is not the place. If you truly care about someone's wellbeing, leave their health to the private discussions they have with their doctors, and remember that looking after oneself is far easier from a place of loving oneself. If you care about a thing, you want to look after it. If you see a thing as already broken, you're less likely to be cautious in how you handle it.

Where does this essay end?

Well, I believe that would be here. With the endless gratitude for every creator out there bringing us mods, images, fiction, art, cosplay, content of all of these wonderful characters in every incredible variation that we can think of. I encourage those of you who are feeling lower in confidence about yourselves to really look at the fan responses to these creations - the excitement and desire for every body type, every feature, everything that we might see of ourselves and dislike there are so many people out there seeing those exact same features we have and feeling nothing but attraction, desire, love, adoration, and praise~ We are often our own worst critics, but not one of those characters would ever reject us, neither are we rejecting any of our favourites when we see them on the screen. I certainly hope to see more games bringing us this variety, and going further too. There is power in fiction and fan-works, and it is helpful to recognise it too.

Apologies if this one felt too long, rambling, or like I lost my point - it was done over 3 days and I'm rather tired~ I have other essays coming in the next few weeks too, and I really would love to hear your opinions on any of them~

As a final note - please do add your own views and experiences on the topic! I can only offer my own as a disabled white cisgender asexual/bisexual/panromantic woman with too much time on her hands~ I neither wish to ignore experiences outside of my own nor speak over them. All I can offer is what I see, what I hear, and of course my endless love to all of you~ That, my very dear darlings, is never in doubt. I love you just the way you are, because of who you are, and will see the beauty in everything that makes up the sum of your wonderful selves~

#baldurs gate 3 #fandom essay #body positvity #body positive #bg3 #opinions welcome #please add in the comments

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gobs-o-cs · 2 months

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Also, yes, I know it's been a hot minute since posting here (not that anyone really follows me)

But my creative surges (and there has been a pretty big surge lately) have been tied up in a lot of writing - New world-building and consolidating my previous world-building.

The thing is - I write a lot of stuff into character backstories and that becomes the basis for the lore, right?

There's been a few times that I've pulled lore together into reference documents, or written large lore sections that don't really directly affect individual characters enough to be express parts of their backstories. Or maybe it's a lot of footnotes in a backstory because it, again, doesn't actually affect the individual narratives that much.

Well, I realized it's probably time to do another pass at pulling details out and putting them into a big reference document, as well as reconciling things like certain major events in the history of the world and how they line up with individual characters' ages and whatnot - Stuff that's kind of important to make sure matches up - Warforged were all initially found in ancient ruins and reactivated, before new ones started being created some time later - Need to get those specific years pinned down in lore. Plus, the people doing all this work on Warforged were conquered and their city destroyed a certain number of years ago, so the production/reactivating of Warforged would have (mostly?) stopped that long ago. [Also, establishing things like, the two different groups of Warforged essentially are different subraces lore-wise, not-so-much mechanically, but their personalities are very different]

Speaking of ruins - The Aasimar in my setting are nearly all beings preserved from the ancient times and only recently started emerging from their, for lack of a better word, time capsules. When specifically did this start, is there a distinct order to it, etc.

Then there's stuff like, established dynasties and plagues, and rise and fall of empires/factions to try to have at least a sense of relative timeframes for.

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Anyway, yes, lots of lore there.

More specifically, though - The most recent character I actually posted - Silas - The arc I'd always imagined for him was, basically two big aspects:

First, as a charlatan, he does fake exorcisms, but accidentally replicates a binding ritual that essentially makes a Warlock Pact with something. That part's done in the stuff I've already posted about him, and I have a more story-story written, but I don't post that stuff yet, because while I'm doing this initial revisiting of my old characters, I want to make sure things are all matched up and such.

The second part of his story is: The Charlatan comes up against an actual cult and has to step up to save people, because he's a mostly-decent guy/at least not cool with whatever the cult's getting up to.

So, while stuff relating to him and this conflict were fresh in my mind, I figured I should focus on the characters involved and get them done.

While I had the ideas floating around for 2 of cult's leadership group - The Human Cleric that actually leads them, and his right-hand/bodyguard White Dragonborn Paladin (her concept pre-dates me knowing of BG3's Dark Urge, not that it really matters because, y'know you can just make White Dragonborn characters). But I knew that I wanted a 3 member of the leadership group (Maybe a little petty of me, but all three correspond to the three sets I have that are identifiably from a certain squid-themed dice company whose profoundly shitty actions I only found out about sometime after dealing with them - So I wanted them all to be from the same group and having them be "villainous" was a bonus.

Anyway, given all the politics/world-building stuff I'd been working on, I had some ideas about what kind of character I should lean towards - And because I was making the character concept for her, I just dove right in and mostly have made her - The minis are all ready to go. I just haven't written the backstory for her yet, because I wanted to make sure I had all the details pulled together from the other cultists' backstories, and she's not the foundational one, there, y'know?

So, I'll give her a proper introduction post in due time, but for now, here's Fia Wilbur, Were-Boar-ancestor Shifter Bard (College of Spirits):

Prior to joining the cult, she was a humble fisher-woman. As a Shifter, her "monstrous" heritage leads to a lot of discrimination in the very Human-centric Empire that expanded out and claimed authority over her small town in the past [time frame, but, like, at most, not quite a century ago].

I also went with the fisher background because I was playing around with the idea of "Race does a job that they're not stereo-typically associated with." Centaur was very high in the running, if I'm being honest, but in the end Shifter of a species that's not like, notably sea-faring or inclined towards fishing/seafood felt right.

Anyway, once charmed into the cult, there wasn't any need to worry about making herself a visible target for hate, and she let her hair down, so-to-speak.

And is now a Bard - College of Spirits given the cult's veneration of ancient artifacts, history, and long (questionably?)-dead beings made a lot of sense, and it was a subclass I hadn't built a character of yet.

And while she doesn't fully become a were-boar, the "Shifter" heritage does allow her to shift into a more-bestial form.

So, cool, I have Fia basically figured out. She's now kind of the equivalent of a Christian Rocker drawing crowds into the megachurch, to try to make a comparison as to her role.

And while I was just about to start work on the other two members of the Cult's leadership group, I had a burst of insight into the actual nature of what their cult is and who the false gods they're worshiping are - And that led to a burst of insight into the nature of religion and belief in the world I'm building, in-general.

And then, once I got that bit sorted out - I realized, I'd like to have this conflict be bigger than 3 cultists versus Silas, his patron, and the Aasimar he finds awakening near the vault that was imprisoning the false gods.

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So, that led to the creation of more cultists and more opponents - The bulk of the named/to-be-named cultists that I started writing were now going to have been recruited from an imperial research expedition and the prisoners they'd brought along for manual labour, and the guards that were escorting/controlling that group. I should probably throw in at least one notable local villager that converted too or something.

So, of those new cultists, it's: the former lead-archaeologist, the former religious officer/overseer (~roughly equivalent to say, a commissar in the soviet military, but for the religious/ideological equivalent of this setting); the world-weary practical Dwarf captain that was stuck leading the prisoner details, and one of the most prominent prisoners from the group - The captured leader of a guerilla cell - A Tiefling from the city-state that was conquered and wiped out ~20 years ago.

And the new people on team not-cult were: The Half-Elf lieutenant of the guard unit; the junior researcher who was doing all the actual work and actually cared about the truth instead of just what the Empire wanted to hear; and a prisoner former compatriot of the "Firebrand" prisoner - A Warforged former manual-labourer.

Okay, so then what should I make this character? - Because this isn't just a written work - My whole shtick is making these D&D characters, after all.

I looked at the list of classes I hadn't used for Warforged yet, and Paladin's on there - Great! Need someone tankier since my "not-cult" party right now is two Wizards and a Warlock, with a damage-focused Paladin. I get an idea for a Redeemer Paladin - Emphasized non-lethal methods because she's a tax collector and it's harder to get back taxes from dead people. I love this concept and will use her somewhere later, but I wanted a non-military/enforcement background for this prisoner character.

I was going to disregard Bard entirely - Even though you could probably build a reasonably tanky Warforged Valor Bard. But then an idea jumped into my head - Again, not who I wanted this prisoner to be, but one I wanted to follow-up on: A Skill-Monkey Lore Bard - Essentially a walking encyclopedia/multi-tool built by the ancient Precursor people to help with all kinds of menial tasks in a library.

And honestly, given the nature of the whole "cult that uncovered something that the ancient empire sealed away"-thing, I realized this character has a lot of potential use here - So they were added to the the not-cult group too, as another former prisoner on labour detail, because the current empire doesn't really care to look to their prisoners for skills or knowledge - But our hero group absolutely can.

Okay, so circling back to the first Warforged Prisoner - Ranger offers some intriguing options.

Swarmkeeper sounds fun, but I'm not sure what angle to take for a manual labourer - Beekeeper is obvious, but I want to make a Dwarven Beekeeper Swarmkeeper that gets the honey for a meadery. And while I could double-up character backgrounds, I'd prefer not to if I don't have to.

I eventually hit on the idea of a guano collector/miner (A perfect unpleasant sort of job you'd put a mechanical underclass/slave to work in) who got sealed in a cave with bats and because [magic], their spirits bonded to the Warforged. Again, love this character concept - But not really the sort of role I'm looking for in this Prisoner-character - This one goes to the pile for later.

Finally, the obvious hits me - A Beastmaster Ranger who was a shepherd. They're not one who favours combat, but the urge to protect is strong.

There we go! Got it!

Time to start actually building and writing these characters and story!

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And then, out of nowhere, a wild totally-unrelated character idea hits!

Blood Hunters should work with guns/firearms, right?

Ooh! Blood Hunter Cowboy, like Quincey Morris from Dracula. That could be fun.

And hey, since we're using guns, why not a Giff?

So, yes, Monster-Hunting Cowboy Hippo-Man from space!

So, yes, I was possessed by the urge to make Mr. Mauricio "Moe" Quinto

The problem, in addition to pivoting to a new story, came with trying to build his mini in Hero Forge.

There's no Giff/Hippo heads in Hero Forge.

That required some work on my part - Starting from the Bovine/Minotaur head, I've managed to get him looking pretty decent as far as hippo-heads can be made, I think.

So, yes, this has taken some time.

And then, in writing his backstory an opportunity arose for another character hook, perfect for an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer

And hey, since we're doing a Spelljammer-flavoured character and backstory, why not make our new Sorcerer a Hadozee?

Guess what sort of characters Hero Forge is also not remotely set up to make?

But I try nevertheless - She's still a work in progress and there's definitely gonna need to be a lot of posing tricks for whatever angle I take images of her from when I get to that point but:

So, yeah, she's coming along anyway. I think the face has definitely turned out pretty good, all things considered.

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So, yeah, that's where my ADHD-ass has been with regards to writing/creating.

Once I finish up with these two, I think I can get back to the cult plot and get those characters done.

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Or not quite! Almost forgot about the quick pass on previous minis that I want to do to update their hands!

Someday, I'll move the list forward again

#rambling #writing about writing #my ocs #the world I'm building that I'm still not set on the name of #DnD #D&D #Fia Wilbur #Moe Quinto #Anthi Ungraced #long post

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