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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.
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.
If you live in a world of magic and this can be done easily with a finger snap, why wouldn't you go for kink and fetishism?
It's not a finger-snap - it's serious magic.
As in, absolutely out of reach of normal people unless they manage to piss off the right archmage, be a dumb mage and read the wrong ancient scroll or find the (cursed) belt of gender-reversal.
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As I said, perhaps I lack imagination. I wouldn't go for kink and fetishism, but then I'm not particularly kinky and lacking in abnormal sexual predilections. Perhaps this would not be so if I lived in FR where there were no constraints? Maybe, but that's a setting I can't relate to and ultimately find silly. It could make for something interesting if a work really grappled with the implications of that kind of subject matter, but I assume it's unlikely to come from works that consciously choose to wear the trappings of Tolkien-esque fantasy but pile on the zany. It's a world where magical power could accomplish anything, and yet the setting is still stuck largely with medieval tech trees, politics, clothing, and whatnot due to genre conventions. Fine for a board game, but not something I feel like spending 80 hours in.
I guess my question would be - is there any purpose to the futa outside of kink and fetishism? Are lesbian couples ocassionally using a 'cock spell' just to mix it up in the bedroom to fend off boredom, or are they transforming themselves and performing daily mundane tasks with a permanent penis attached because that's what they truly identify with? And if that's the case, why the remaining attachment to keeping one's breasts? What the hell even are identities in a setting where you can be anything? What does the mental model and its motivations look like? How much of this, if any of it, should be considered a reflection back on the real world? And maybe the right answer is "None of it at all, it's fantasy", but I think that ship already sailed a while ago what with the increased prominence of trans characters in media being justified as a moral good in and of itself.
If it's just being done for kink and sexual exhibitionism, does this pattern-match to trans people IRL? I feel that many trans people would object to such a characterisation, because they feel their gender identity is more than just the organs they use for bumping uglies. I also suspect that many of them would take a magic pill that fully transforms them to their opposite sex if they had the opportunity, but currently have to settle for stopping somewhere on the their journey due to constraints of modern medicine and practical realities (fear of surgery, lack of funds, not impressed enough with available transition procedures, etc). So how does that work in FR?
And I don't really expect good answers to my incohesive series of rambling questions, because 1) This is a rule of cool, 'X is for everyone' setting that establishes norms and tabboos by author fiat, and 2) This topic is an unresolved mess of contradictions in the real world as it is. I actually feel slightly ridiculous writing this out.
I mean, I do think that ... like, if you can go futa, you can go anywhere; it's hard to see why such a world wouldn't collapse into a Slaaneshi fuckpile pretty much overnight. To have a sustainable futa population requires the populace to go: "Alright! Chicks with dicks... but no farther!" Which is indeed quite implausible.
I mean, I guess what I'm saying is just, don't underestimate the lengths people will go to for kink and fetishism. Having kink and fetishism drive a major component of your life like permanent or prevalent body type is not at all implausible to me.
As an AGP, I am the wrong person to ask about this. I guess I'd say, I don't know because the current cost of entry is so enormously high, and also because perversion is still stigmatized. I think "doing it because you find it hot" is a very underestimated motivation, even in trans circles, but it's not one you're allowed to admit to right now, in part because SRS and trans in general draws on limited societal resources. Idk, I'd say give it a year past the singularity and we'll have a lot better idea where people "naturally" land once scarcity of body is removed.
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