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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31048 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Is Baldur's Gate 3 woke or parody of woke?

I am character creation screen - you can choose between body type 1,2,3,4 . After that you can choose between voice 1 and 2 , Your Identity can be Male / Female or Non Binary, then you can hide your clothes (at this point I decided that developers were actually trolling because nudity in D&D BG series was rare to nonexistent) and you can choose your genitals if the default doesn't suit you to Vulva A, Vulva B or Penis A-D ,

So you can make a decent futanari I guess.

Have you noticed that Man and Woman were nowhere to be mentioned and you can't choose your gender? That everything is deconstructed and presented in the most cold, indifferent, clinical way? I don't think that it shows welcoming or acceptance. More like indifference and very subtle contempt while not giving reasons for complaining - the video game equivalent of sliding benches that make impossible for homeless people to sleep on them.

I think this is the best way to keep politics out of gaming - just don't reference anything remotely political and let people do whatever they want.

Also, the game is based on 5th edition DnD, which is a fantasy setting where basically anything is possible. A high level wizard can easily change their gender or species if they so choose simply by casting a spell. A 20th level wizard can cast True Polymorph on himself and become a dragon (permanently if he so chooses). Or he can cast Magic Jar and inhabit someone else's body (permanently if he so chooses). Real-world concepts of gender identity barely even make sense in this sort of setting.

Also, the game is based on 5th edition DnD, which is a fantasy setting where basically anything is possible.

POSSIBLE SPOILER: I'm still very early on in the game and I've run into what I think is a high elf who turned themselves into a spider because of devotion to Lolth. If you can become a dimensional spider, changing your man bits to lady bits is very low down on the list of "the weirdest body-swap ever".

There's something so comically simple and innocent about full-on transformations, for me. Like a 6 year old that really wants to be a T-Rex or a sentient tank, and would go full hog if given the opportunity, physical consequences be damned. Wholeheartedly rejecting your human vessel to be something else entirely because 'fuck yeah'.

But being a big-breasted female-presenting tiefling with a futa cock and dude voice? Feels like a strange midpoint. If you live in a world of magic and this can be done easily with a finger snap or a procured service, why wouldn't you go all in one way or the other? I'll admit to a possible failure of imagination on my end, but it just comes off as kink and fetishism. I'm sure there's some fucking official lore about how everybody in FR is pansexual and sexually super liberal (because the author just said so!) and so none of this is strange in-universe, but I think it just renders the whole thing silly and alien.

Any way, I know nothing of the DnD universe other than Planescape Torment and less than a handful of fun birthday party sessions that were never intended to be continued past that single night. But Spider Guy is intelligible to me in a way Ms Potato Parts isn't.

I'm sure there's some fucking official lore about how everybody in FR is pansexual and sexually super liberal (because the author just said so!) and so none of this is strange in-universe

My understanding of Ed Greenwood's notes (which are, by contract, canon even if unpublished) is that you're not even remotely wrong.

My understanding of Ed Greenwood's notes (which are, by contract, canon even if unpublished) is that you're not even remotely wrong.

To put it mildly.

It’s important to remember that many of the Realms deities encourage “sex for fun” (or even “sex for religious rapture”) and their priests have magical and pharmaceutical meals of preventing contraception, so “it’s only incest if the female partner gets pregnant.” This, by the way, usually means family members satisfy their curiosity and indulge feelings of mutual affection, and then go looking for less “safe and familiar” but far more exciting partners, elsewhere.

...

This is due to the fact that many folk in Faerûn can readily couple with someone (on a rooftop or behind a midden in crowded cities, and ‘out in the woods’ or in a nearby thicket or hollow in a distant pasture, in a rural setting) if mere sexual gratification is all they want. What they go to the brothels for (and yes, some of these establishments are private clubs, particularly those specializing in S&M, mate-swapping, or inter-species congress) is for ‘added fun.’

Not exactly "liberal" - incest as harmless "family fun time" and regular wild orgies on the rooftops is not (yet) something to seen as progressive in the current year.

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