Hello folks,
So, this is a personal project that I've been putting together for a little while now. I'm posting it here on the forums, but the main direction of the writing is as a submission to Larian's own feedback reporting directly. Comments are welcome, but the feedback itself will likely be sent off before it's posted here, and to be frank... this is a lot of reading, so I'm not expecting a lot of engagement back here ^.^ It's okay.
As some of you know, I made a thread focused on breaking down the choreography, scene direction, tone, atmosphere and pacing of one of the intimate cutscenes that we've had the ability to preview in BG3 – Minthara's intimate scene. This thread is in a similar, but more general vein, and it focuses on an issue that is often neglected in any media that deals with it. Since Larian are going all in on giving us intimate erotic sequences, I wanted to put together this thread to discuss the difficulties and necessary considerations that come into play when designing, choreographing and shooting intimate scenes where one of the participants is much smaller than the other; the things you need to think about, the things that simply do not work, or must be worked differently, and all of the other various important elements that often fall by the wayside whenever this comes up.
This discussion is preemptive in nature, or it aims to be. Larian have shown us that they intend to place fully visualised erotic sequences into the game, but aside from the one sequence with Minthara, we haven't seen anything else of their work as of yet (Or, at least, I haven't – there was a brief time when some more bits and pieces were in, but I didn't manage to catch them, so I can only work off the assumption that we can expect scenes of at least as overt and explicit nature as we have for Minthara, for our other companions), so there won't be any real connections directly to the game itself here, or anything to be comparing it 'against'.
So, as in the other thread, viewers are forewarned: this discussion will contain NSFW elements. It will contain adult language, discussion of sexual practice and sexual positions, as well as modelled imagery relating to these topics. If you do not want to see that, this thread is not for you. This is a thread about small-sized characters engaging in intimate behaviour; these characters are depicted as fully mature, consenting adults able to make their own decisions... I may not be a halfling myself but I am very small, slightly built, with practically no breasts to speak of, and I don't appreciate folks trying to tell me that I can't or shouldn't pursue normal healthy sex life because it's 'problematic'... So I can only imagine that the small-sized characters referenced herein would feel the same way if they were told similar by some big-job of some other race that got their sensibilities ruffled. So, if you find yourself thinking about writing a comment to the tune of 'this is problematic', 'they're child-like', or anything of that sort, please, just save us all a little time, and don't.
As before, I am not a fully qualified cinematographer, or a trained film studies student; I know a good deal about many elements of it, but I know there are a few other people on these forums with more training in this field than me. What I do know a good deal about is, er, well... the mechanics of the topic at hand, let's say.
With that out of the way... I'll be focusing mostly on two-person, giver-receiver pairings for the majority of this discussion. I'm using deliberately masculine and feminine models for this, but this is primarily to make the distinction between giver and receiver immediately apparent.
I've taken some time to talk to a couple of men-who-sleep-with-men, and I don't wish to downplay the ways in which these relationships can and often do differ, or the extra considerations involved there, however, to begin with, the
purely physical considerations have a
majority of overlap with hetero pairings, and I'm not personally equipped or experienced enough to speak about the extra considerations that come into play for them, or where they differ, except to note that those considerations exist and deserve attention in those circumstances. I will have one piece of specific commentary to add on this score, but I'll wait until after everything else has been discussed. At the opposite end, purely physical dynamic considerations for F/F pairings are much easier for me to talk about, but just can't be couched in a giver-receiver analysis like this; those will have to wait as well, if I still have the stamina to continue the discussion once I'm done with the main body of it.
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Where to start? To accompany the discussion, I'll be using some visual aids in the form of modelling shots that will help to illustrate what I'm talking about. For these I'll be using a simple set of models that use more or less proper medium and small humanoid proportions – not the small character proportions reflected in the game right now, but ones that better illustrate how they ought to be (I'd encourage any who haven't before to take a read through my thread on halfling models
Here)
Here they are:
My skills aren't great, I know; these are basic shapes made to illustrate the discussion, that's all. No I didn't give the boys any equipment. It didn't seem strictly necessary...
In the following posts, I'll try to break things up into manageable sections.
