Baldur's Gate #BaldurGate: Siege of Dragonspear

[Atlantico]

P. Jackson is right wing? Really?

Don't know, but J.R.R. Tolkien was.

 

[Lacrymas]

Well, not a lot of contemporary speculative fiction has a major cultural impact. The strongest impact comes from older stuff where there is a considerable right-leaning presence (Lovecraft, Howard, C.A. Smith, arguably C.S. Lewis*). Nevertheless, Sword of Truth sold >25M copies as of 2008 and spawned a TV show. Other examples would be Orson Scott Card's stuff*, Niven and Pournelle's writing. Atlas Shrugged, but even though it's science fiction it probably belongs more to the Serious Allegorical Science Fiction category with We, 1984, Brave New World, etc.

Literally everything that came out of Ayn Rand's hand is bullshit and psychopathic ramblings. Nobody who matters takes her seriously. About the fact that not a lot of contemporary speculative fiction having an impact - there has never been a point in time where a LOT of art (of any kind) has had a huge cultural impact. Only good art does it. Tolkien and co actually created a new literary technique (Mythopoeia) and that is taken for granted now. It depends on what you mean by "contemporary" though. Post-apocalyptic settings are also a somewhat modern invention. It also depends on your definition of "speculative fiction" I suppose.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

On this note, you really can tell where Amber Scott wanted to make a point about race equality in a universe that, by all accounts, is built around every race being different in some capacity. One glaring offender is at the start of Chapter 9, where you find a small group of Half-Orcs that wanna buddy buddy with your siege crew, but one of your lieutenants isn't a fan of em. And of course one of the responses you can give is "anyone can join us, regardless of their race".

Bitch half orcs are short-tempered by nature, no shit someone would be worried about them so why the fuck is CHARNAME a SJW now? The game has some good moments here and there but good god have they butchered some companions and ham fisted in SJW shit where it doesn't need to be. This whole thing better end well or I'm gonna cry myself to sleep over this trainwreck.

Looks like we've reached the point where merely being given the option to not be racist is offensive in itself. This is reminding me of the post a few pages back where somebody complaints about Viconia's characterization in SoD:

Spoiler

Dynaheir is consoling Viconia because she is a black elf (a Drow) and suppressed by white supremists.

Amber Scott fails to realize that this is because the Drow are an evil race (except for Drizzt of course, who is regarded as a hero despite being a 'nigger' elf). Even Viconia is evil FFS.

Anyway, her SJW bullshit is getting quite entertaining. I can almost hardly wait to find the next gem.

This post blissfully ignores that Viconia was always portrayed as a tortured soul who's evil as a byproduct of being indoctrinated in Drow culture and having to endure the racial hatred of everyone on the surface.

Here's her story as told in the celebrated SJW classic, BG 2:

Viconia left her house and trappings as a priestess of Lolth after she failed to slay a baby in Lolth's name. A rival killed the child in her stead and House DeVir fell out of favour with the Drow's fell deity. Sacrifices of wealth and servants were no use, it seemed Lolth only wanted one thing from them: Viconia herself. Matron DeVir was desperate for Viconia to prostrate herself in front of Lolth, especially after a lesser house failed to destroy them after learning of their newfound weakness, but Viconia refused, sick of Lolth's ways, somehow believing that she would still survive with her station intact. Her mother had her taken away to be sacrificed to the Spider Queen but her brother Valas, a powerful wizard, saved her and killed their enraged mother. For his actions, he was turned into a Drider by Lolth. Viconia was stripped of her clerical powers and fled to the surface while finding renewed faith in Shar. She was saved from a goblin attack by a Calishite caravan only to be used as a pleasure slave by its rotund owner. She quickly bent him to her will and bade the caravan go wherever she wished. However, one night, his heart gave out and the guards assumed Viconia had murdered him.

The Protagonist first found her on the run from a Flaming Fist mercenary and had to be saved. Later, she bought some land on the outskirts of Beregost, not with the intention of farming it, but simply as a place to stay. She remained hooded at all times, even when conversing with her neighbour and awkward friend Roran Midfallow. When she finally decided to remove her hood, it was too late, Roran had already worked out what she was and had concocted a plan. He and his sons tortured her before burying her alive. She escaped and killed Roran and his sons then burned down his farmhouse before fleeing south to Amn. She'd had a few nasty run-ins before getting to Athkatla where again, she was recognized, this time by followers of Beshaba. Luckily, she recognized the Protagonist again in the Government District of the city and was once again saved.

In Throne of Bhaal, a SJW masterpiece, the point that the dark skinned elves aren't inherently evil is hammered home by allowing you to redeem Viconia, changing her alignment to neutral. But also what about the fact that in order to pick her up as a companion in BG 2 you have to literally save the evil drow from the stake? Letting you do that is some real SJW racial equality indoctrination bullshit too, eh? And what about all that covert man-hating what with all the people who abuse her being men, including a rapist, to boot? How about the parallels between Viconia as a fugitive Drow on the surface just trying to get by and middle eastern refugees?

I'm just sitting here trying to imagine how much of a tantrum some of you would have thrown if they had included BG 1 original character Shar-Teel in SoD (http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Shar-Teel_Dosan). Here's some quotes to give you an idea of how much Bioware and Black Isle were a bunch o' old self-hating feminist cucks:

• "Men are pathetic."
• "This is the kind of stupidity we get with male leadership."
• "I can't take much more of this male imbecility."
• "This is such a waste of time, or should I say that men are such a waste of time."
• "Well, that was pathetic, but then, men are the weaker sex. Thanks for the easy cash."

This is about half of all her lines in the game, by the way. I mean, who wrote this shit, Bernie Sanders or Louie CK? lel

You know what, I think we need to go deeper. Let's replay BG 1 and 2 together as if both games had been written by a known and confessed SJW, then let's post impressions about how those games had been trying to poison our minds since the late 90s. Don't you guys feel silly being so selective with your memory? It's ok for you to say all of this is shit, but at least be consistent and say that the entire series has always been propaganda garbage.

 

[Immortal]

Well, not a lot of contemporary speculative fiction has a major cultural impact. The strongest impact comes from older stuff where there is a considerable right-leaning presence (Lovecraft, Howard, C.A. Smith, arguably C.S. Lewis*). Nevertheless, Sword of Truth sold >25M copies as of 2008 and spawned a TV show. Other examples would be Orson Scott Card's stuff*, Niven and Pournelle's writing. Atlas Shrugged, but even though it's science fiction it probably belongs more to the Serious Allegorical Science Fiction category with We, 1984, Brave New World, etc.

Literally everything that came out of Ayn Rand's hand is bullshit and psychopathic ramblings. Nobody who matters takes her seriously. About the fact that not a lot of contemporary speculative fiction having an impact - there has never been a point in time where a LOT of art (of any kind) has had a huge cultural impact. Only good art does it. Tolkien and co actually created a new literary technique (Mythopoeia) and that is taken for granted now. It depends on what you mean by "contemporary" though. Post-apocalyptic settings are also a somewhat modern invention. It also depends on your definition of "speculative fiction" I suppose.

Ayn Rand and Orwell are two sides of the same Libertarian coin.. except one side of the coin is smeared with shit.

 

[MRY]

Nobody who matters takes her seriously. . . . there has never been a point in time where a LOT of art (of any kind) has had a huge cultural impact. Only good art does it.

While I don't have the heart anymore for these kinds of debates, I think you're confusing what ought to be with what is. But then, maybe "matters," "huge," "cultur[e]," and "good" are carrying the weight of the statement.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

AwesomeButton From what little I've played, I don't see how it holds true that all women in the game are the same character. How is little sister Imoen the same as pussy in heat Safana or hard-line captain Corwyn? I guess you mean they're all written as empowered self-sufficient women, because Amber Scott wouldn't bear to portray women in any other light. While that's probably mostly accurate, I'd wager you've only noticed these common traits because you were actively looking for them.

I assume you didn't jump into the game thinking "well, let's see what this is about", you went in "well, let's see how much of a SJW shitfest that tumblrina Amber Scott made". Had you played the game with no knowledge that it was written by a self-proclaimed politicized SJW, a lot of the things that bothered you most likely would not have even registered in your mind.

I guess it's on her, for her post-release statements, for having ruined the game for a lot of people. I couldn't care less either way. While I protested the addition of a token tranny myself on the Baldur's Gate subreddit, I honestly don't care enough about covert SJWerism in the writing that it affects my enjoyment of the game or that I'll boycott it to make a political statement.

 

[Lacrymas]

While I don't have the heart anymore for these kinds of debates, I think you're confusing what ought to be with what is. But then, maybe "matters," "huge," "cultur[e]," and "good" are carrying the weight of the statement.

I don't know where you see a debate here :p Are you trying to quote Hume with the second sentence? I don't know what you mean if that's the case. The third sentence is also weird. I.e. I don't know what you are trying to say :p

 

[Bubbles]

Didn't you know the industrial orc imperialists are a stage in for Africa?

Baldur's Gate 1 can also be understood as an analogy to the hunt for Bin Laden, from the tragedy of 9/11 (death of Gorion) and the infiltration of Western society by corrosive ideologies (iron crisis) to the final assassination of the evil mastermind by a small squad of professionals. Then the hunt continues against other terrorist leaders (other Bhaalspawn), as well as their supporters in Iraq (the place you go at the end of SoD) with the ultimate goal of eradicating them before they can acquire WMDs (tree of life/throne of bhaal).

You could also extend this analogy to social issues and argue that SoD should follow the principles of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Bioware did 9/11 confirmed

 

[Gauldur's Bait]

Gauldur's Bait should be hang for Planarphobia. How dare he call devils demons?

Inside they are the same.

It's because it's too obvious, ham-fisted and the style of writing is out-of-place (in addition to just being awful in general). Even some classical literature has some sort of "message", although art doesn't need crutches like that. Like Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet "the role of drama is to put a mirror up to nature", although I have a feeling he was talking from the perspective of the mimesis rather than the Hegelian/Heideggerian concept of art-as-revealed-truth. Art is the mirror put in front of humanity in which we see ourselves are we truly are (it's not only that), but it should be done with grace, technique, subtlety and artistic insight, not by simply stating your desired outcome. This is gigantically complicated and can't be explained in a thread post, but that is the gist of it. SoD isn't a carefully constructed whole that arguments its position and shows injustices like in (for example) The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It has nothing to do with whether it's a "beloved classic" or some idealized crap like that, it's way more fundamental. Everything else has been explained to death and in-depth so you can check out the details in the thread.

No, this is not what we are saying at all (well, at least what I am saying). There is no mold for a high fantasy adventure tale in which every writer should fit. The war connection would be fine if it was done well (War and Peace, duh), but SoD is not War and Peace. Literally every topic can fit if it's done well, but that's extremely hard to do. Whether it is something people would believe in or do believe in is not an issue and it never has been. You might want to check out Heidegger's The Origin of the Work of Art, if you are interested in more details.

Agree and agree!

What riled so many people it's that they used just this tactic in writing for BG: SOD. Forgotten Realms is pretty mild and generic fantasy setting, it's not very realistic concerning peasants, workers, feudals and other classes sets of rights and duties. I'm not surprised by its popularity in USA, honestly, because it's an ideal american everyman setting, where almost everybody can be basically a superhero. Many RPGs are power-fantasies, true, but in Forgotten Realms themes of racial and class oppression, gender discrimination and so on was consciously made almost nonexistent by setting's writers. They wanted to give DM and players fun and colorful world were you kill shit and get epic loot. In Forgotten Realms there's less moralizing than in Dragonlance with its archaic Epic battles of Good and Evil. It's not as deep, philosophical and fantastically diverse as Planescape (or even Spelljammer), it's not a leftist-survivalist dream as Dark Sun is, it doesn't explore (at least not as a main theme) the darkest corners of humanoid mind as Ravenloft does, it's not an exotic setting where you can explore middle eastern themes like you can in Al-Quadim, etc. It one of the most theme-parky settings second edition era, IMO. It just isn't suited for head-on exploration of contemporary oppression themes.

Now, a good DM, or CRPG writer can explore this themes, but making them a) subtle and b) relevant to both setting, and the theme and the mood of the campaign. But both theme and the mood of original BG (especially the first one) wasn't about exploration of class oppression, gender equality and gender politics, LGBTQABBQ rights and complexes, money distribution among downtrodden and so on. So SOD rubs most players in wrong way not because of "leftism", but because the authors' approach was something like this: imagine you plaing an epic campaign in a span of a few years. You have your favourite NPCs, DM provides kick-ass dungeons, sweet loot, great combat, somewhat retarded, but enjoyable NPC drama and nice overreaching story. And then, out of the blue, this campaign goes to another DM, who proceeds with imposing on a bewildered party his view on women rights, importance of pronouns and battling transmisogyny, insists that your sweet loot should be distributed among underprivileged classes, etc, etc. Most tabletop players would quit in such circumstances, only minority, which shares the new DM views, will remain. And that's basically what we're seing here.

Hear, hear. I was about to post the similar sentiment using the allegory of the Trojan horse. Beamdog mentioned vocally before release how they would really try to create the game that the Baldur's Gate fans wanted. This implicitly states that they have as closely as possible formed a conception of the target audience's expectations based on these previous releases (the setting, the lore, the characters etc.) and will do their utmost to cater to them, out of respect of the series and the fans. Then when the game, and shortly after the excrement, hits, they proceed to declare how BG1 had flaws in some sentiments it communicated (sexism in particular), which at least to me reads completely differently to what they stated prior to release. Hence the Trojan horse - I thought I was buying a Baldur's Gate game, what I got was Beamdog's propaganda in the infinity engine in a visual aesthetic that copies and mimics Baldur's Gate. Games have been driving agendas and I myself enjoyed Ultima IV & V (the latter is especially sacred to me), but not in this scamming fashion that Beamdog has opted for.

If the author wants to highlight an agenda or political issues, I feel that the best way to do that is almost always by presenting it as a situation in the game that requires deliberation, action, and choice on the player's part. It becomes even better if it is done in the form of emergent gameplay. That of course makes railroading the plot through the propaganda checkpoints impossible as then it would not be emergent. Doing it in the form of restricted dialog choices or "ambient text" (for lack of a better term) constituted by explicit normative statements is the easiest and simplest, yet simultaneously the most shallow way to do it. Baldur's Gate 1 was never War and Peace, but even so I find also this shallowness of SoD insulting both to the franchise and me as a player.

If you want to challenge a persons opinions, there must be room for argument and debate. Also in CRPGS. I came to think of Popper's theory of rationality (explained lucidly for example by Lagueux, here.). Rationality is not holding on to beliefs /opinions that a person finds true, consistent, coherent etc. - rationality is the preparedness to continuously re-evaluate these beliefs /opinions when new information or situations are presented and revise them if necessary - without this preparedness, a person cannot be rational. It is these kinds of new situations that should be created in RPGs in a well written and engaging manner if you want to influence the player in order to make him/her reflect on his/her opinions and beliefs. Scamming and (ham-)fisting your customers with propaganda is an option rather less smooth and, as we have seen, also angers and insults those whose interests you intended to promote.


P.S. Rewriting video game characters from 15 years ago to fit today's agenda? Well, I suppose Oceania was always at war with Eurasia. Which reminds me, are there any modern incarnations of the Two Minute Hate?

 

[Turjan]

One thing I find obvious from this thread is how many people seem to have forgotten about what was already in the original BG titles. It's kind of amusing actually .

 

[mastroego]

mastroego -- There are lots of them from days of yore. Looking at more recent stuff, there's Goodkind's Sword of Truth series and John C. Wright's Golden Age, both of which were mass-market releases from major publishers.

Hhmm, ok, still things with very minor cultural impact.

Well, not a lot of contemporary speculative fiction has a major cultural impact. The strongest impact comes from older stuff where there is a considerable right-leaning presence (Lovecraft, Howard, C.A. Smith, arguably C.S. Lewis*). Nevertheless, Sword of Truth sold >25M copies as of 2008 and spawned a TV show. Other examples would be Orson Scott Card's stuff*, Niven and Pournelle's writing. Atlas Shrugged, but even though it's science fiction it probably belongs more to the Serious Allegorical Science Fiction category with We, 1984, Brave New World, etc.

(* With Lewis and Card, it's a bit complicated because their Christian/LDS proselytizing converges with left-wing stuff, at times, when it comes to issues like pacifism.)

Well, I concede there are workable examples, still I don't know about those being "preaching" or "in your face" about political issues.
Whereas, consider a movie like V for Vendetta, or Children of Men (worst movie of all time, literally).
Movies that also got praise and praise everywhere for the "great values".... conversely Scott Card gets often to be the target of boycott campaigns.

 

[Angthoron]

One thing I find obvious from this thread is how many people seem to have forgotten about what was already in the original BG titles. It's kind of amusing actually .

BG titles were not great works of fiction, but they had a consistent style and tone and whatever banners they carried, the writers were at least competent enough to mask them at an explicit level.

 

[Turjan]

One thing I find obvious from this thread is how many people seem to have forgotten about what was already in the original BG titles. It's kind of amusing actually .

BG titles were not great works of fiction, but they had a consistent style and tone and whatever banners they carried, the writers were at least competent enough to mask them at an explicit level.

Sure. The main point being that you could actually give evil answers, no matter how little that changed. That wasn't a defense of Beamdog.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Other than the tranny situation (which would be akin to Bioware letting you split Valygar in half for being a black human, instead of some sort of allegory like doing the same to the Drow), where else is the PC deprived of giving evil answers in SoD? Genuine question.

 

[Lhynn]

Maybe the shot isn't very representative of how massive the battles get, but I'm replaying IWD2 right now, and there's plenty of this and more, combined with encounters designed to break your formation etc.

He probably was talking about the IE games worth playing.

What a bunch of nonsense here.

2) Trans character is like one line, not a party member, and not even conclusively trans. Yes, the "revelation" is a little forced

A little?
Tranny:"Hi im transexual, see i was born with a dick but i wanted so bad a vagina that you have to treat me like a woman"
Charname: -3 options of complete acceptance, fuck you if you think otherwise-

but she could be a) a hermaphrodite, it was common for them to be assigned whatever gender the parents were comfortable with, unless puberty made their efforts null and void.

Im sure she could be, but we both know this wasnt the case.

b) simply born to parents who preferred a boy...I had an ex whose family gave her a boy name and treated her as such up until she was 7...it's also not that uncommon.

Sure it could be, but again, we both know this wasnt the case.

c) fucking get over it.

Fuck you, if you dont want to partake in the discussion then dont. You dont get to demand people to stop discussing you little shit.

the Forgotten Realms is not an alt-medieval setting, sex and gender identity has always been more permissive in dnd than in life,

Sure it has, so permisive in fact that it should have never even been brought up in the first place. Who honestly gives a shit about what gender some random npc you find is? Why is it there? its obviously them trying to push their own political agenda, it annoys me, it annoys the rest of their customers, enough to complain, and more important, to skip the game.

and if the "forced and ham-handed writing" was really that big of a deal than you wouldnt be a fan of the original baldurs gate game at all. chosen one-orphan-dad-slain-sexy childhood friend...fucking edwin and minsc...it's all pretty daytime tv, and picking on this one point just shows peoples biases and insexurities when they dont treat everything else in the game with the same microscope.

Except that neither the charname origins nor edwin or minsc where there to force your character to think in a way that completely disociated him with their own idea of the character. If we were able to call safana a complete bitch to her face for being just that, then it wouldnt be a problem. If you are going to put your ideas into the game, allow the player to challenge them, dont fucking force them to go along with them.

3) Story is kinda shit so far, like NWN2...but individual quest writing ranges from retarded to brilliant. It's a game in which the writing team doesnt blend into one cohesive author, but are very distinct. Like a book where different characters are written by different people. It works, it's on par with the original, but the seams between the teams show.

Except the originals where thematically consistent, this is a fucking mess that has nothing to do with the BG saga. So fuck you very much for trying to pass it off as acceptable. If this were a different, original game, with an unrelated story, ABSOLUTELY NO ONE WOULD GIVE A FLYING FUCK. But it isnt, it was marketed as what happens between BG1 and BG2, so we were expecting it to be thematically consistent with BG1 and BG2, people bought it under that very fucking premise, people got cheated, maybe not out of their money, god knows anyone with a brain refunded this piece of shit, but their investment on the game and the disapointment it came from it practically ensures people will fucking get up in arms over it.

4) Politics still isnt left enough for my tastes...but then nothing is likely to be. gotta let the grognards swallow the pill and it can only be so bitter.

No one gives a shit

5) Nobody cares about this controversy when it doesn't offend their own sensibilities -- codex is like brofags who complain that gay dudes kissing in public or being on TV outside of a comedic role is "forcing the liberal agenda" --it's not, it's just what a good chunk of the world think of as unremarkable and not an "issue". If it inflames you so much then maybe it's an issue of your own, and not the game's. closet fags like to demonize.

No retarded cunt, nobody would care if beamdog had released "progressive quest: a tale of a man-hater". What bothers people is that they are raping a beloved franchise to push an agenda, and its not even tasteful rape.

end result -- if you liked baldur's gate 1 and 2 then this game is good.

Except it isnt. Characters voice has changed, now they are different characters due to poor writing, and again, blatant agenda pushing.

not perfect

No perfect game has ever been released, and BG 1 and 2 were very flawed.

if you only liked 1 for the freedom or only liked 2 for the story then it might fail...

"might" as in "you will hate this piece of shit"?

but for fans of both games who aren't going to let minuscule ideological differences set them on a flame war, it's good content.

Theres a difference between minuscule ideological differences and playing a progressive propaganda piece because it happens to have some nostalgia value?

Anyway, gotta wonder, are you trolling or are you just that stupid?

 

[Delterius]

If we were able to call safana a complete bitch to her face for being just that, then it wouldnt be a problem.

I did just that.

 

[Lhynn]

If we were able to call safana a complete bitch to her face for being just that, then it wouldnt be a problem.

I did just that.

Oh, then that makes it all better.
why didnt they go this route with the tranny and the other shit?

 

[Turjan]

Other than the tranny situation (which would be akin to Bioware letting you split Valygar in half for being a black human, instead of some sort of allegory like doing the same to the Drow), where else is the PC deprived of giving evil answers in SoD? Genuine question.

I don't know, as I have not played SoD. Isn't this what this 105 page outrage is about?

 

[Sacibengala]

More phd goodness
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/270060/Opinion_So_you_want_to_write_a_trans_character.php

 

[Dwarvophile]

Most SJWs are from at least middle class, those kids are both privileged themselves, very insular, and not very bright. So instead of tackling many problematic aspects of their respective countries (and there are many, both social and economic) they participate in this retarded Oppression Olympics, where they invent laughable things to be offended about just to feel themselves a part of subjugated class. It's both funny and pathetic.

Yep, and all those litle fights around the question of identity are perfect diversion : people will tend to focalise on horizontal social antagonism instead of continue the fight againt the vertical balance of power which is still there, just slightly disguised. THis is actually a perfect diversion that benefits to the real right wing.
Besides, transgender individual are not trans-gressive in a post-industrial society based on consumation they actually fit perfectly the big pîcture : like most homosexuals they are rarely unemployed and most have good position and are great consumers. Well, there's also a minority of sex workers among them but buying little greeck ceramic adonis to decorate a living room and paying for plastic surgery is also consuming

 

[Gauldur's Bait]

Maybe the shot isn't very representative of how massive the battles get, but I'm replaying IWD2 right now, and there's plenty of this and more, combined with encounters designed to break your formation etc.

True, there were big fights in IWD2 but I have the impression that this particular one in SoD (during the siege towards the end) was the largest one I remember seeing (there are/were some more enemies off screen) - It's not like I counted enemies so I might be wrong. There are also many allies on screen at times, in contrast to IWD. By the way, I didn't notice any performance drop during this fight, or any other part of the game. I have read complaints about performance drops to 10-15 FPS also on more modern systems, even on I7 processors, and I have a reasonably modern system with an I7 as well.

 

[Lacrymas]

More phd goodness
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/270060/Opinion_So_you_want_to_write_a_trans_character.php

...the fuck? How can someone be so disconnected from reality.

 

[Gauldur's Bait]

More phd goodness
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/270060/Opinion_So_you_want_to_write_a_trans_character.php

Beware the Furious Hate Mob (TM) !



EDIT: And Minsc's GG joke is now also attributed to Mizhena! :D
EDIT 2: Well, I guess you can read that comma in the correct way as well, the P.S. below stands however.

P.S. This stuff actually made mainstream media news in my country today - obviously getting most of the stuff completely wrong including the above mentioned Minsc / Mizhena mixup and without a shadow of source criticism.

 

[Bubbles]

The core of her argument:

Here is my response to some of the more sensible-sounding objections to Mizhena’s revelation of her trans history:

Real trans people don’t talk about their histories at the drop of a hat: Yes, why, though? Because, frankly, we fear mockery at best and violence and discrimination at worst. As people have been at pains to point out, Forgotten Realms’ Faerun is not Earth, and there’s little evidence of there being a similar culture of trans-hate that would cause Mizhena to be fearful. Mutatis mutandis, people who transition in Faerun would have a different relationship to how it’s publicly discussed.

But the dialogue is still forced. Who’d talk about that right away? The dialogue tree that leads to the trans revelation is entirely optional and occurs only when you ask Mizhena about her name. As I observed in my last column, the explanation for her name is inextricably bound up with her transition, and that’s actually quite reflective of genuine trans experience. Most of us have interesting stories about how we chose our names; funnily enough, my own involves RPGs. Also, it’s a bog-standard RPG convention for NPCs to be more forthcoming about their histories than most real people might be. Or are you saying trans people should be treated differently from everyone else?

It breaks the lore to go “I’m trans!” Well, A) see what Mr. Greenwood has to say about the implications of that and B) Mizhena never once uses the word “trans.” When I advise developers about how to write trans characters for the fantasy setting, I tell them you can and should avoid using our 21st Century medical and activist language to connote their existence. You’re far better served by coming up with lore-driven names and backgrounds for trans people. Mizhena’s history was precisely that; it carries intimations of her culture, her tribal background, and a personal journey that never once dips into contemporary language. It’s so embedded you almost have to squint to realise she’s talking about being trans.

Interestingly, this last objection actually gets at one of the ways Amber Scott has grown as a writer.

...To say [that a trans character] was “born a man” is awkward language that serves only to make trans women’s experience inaccurately intelligible in our particular social context; it’s both misleading and too ground in our real world. That’s what Scott improved on in Dragonspear, giving more verisimilitude to Mizhena’s revelation. Instead of saying “I was born a man” she says “When I was born, my parents thought me a boy and raised me as such. In time, we all came to understand I was truly a woman;” it hints at a variety of cultural norms and possibilities, and lacks the blunt intrusiveness of our own real world argot.