Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Criticism for Halsin's Drow Backstory

From what I saw, your feedback and the feedback on Discord from people you seem to be connected with has been deleted (either by you or Larian) and at the time of it being deleted, it had only a few upvotes compared to other Halsin feedback. So I guess you have to face the truth: People have another opinion that you. I saw several posts of you and while I am always glad if people write feedback, I feel like you need to accept that most players don't want Halsin to have that.

At the time of being deleted, my post had only been up for a few hours. And likes on a post really isn't the best way to gauge dis/popularity of a concept either; I've seen other posts expressing the same idea as me get 60 likes while posts expressing your opinion get maybe 10. And each person also has their own motivations for clicking like; it might be the idea expressed in the post, or it might be how the post is written. A post saying the game shouldn't include therapy concepts got 30 likes, which by your reasoning would mean that more people don't want Astarion's sexual assault storyline to be part of the game either since that also falls under the heading of a therapy issue. And since i've never seen a post about Astarion's sexual assault, by default that would mean more people don't like Astarion's sexual assault than do, using that metric of "liking". We both know that isn't true- so "likes on a few posts on one Discord" is clearly not the metric to decide how liked or not a storyline is, let alone what the fix for that story should be.

Speaking only for myself, as someone who has kind of a personal stake in these narratives, I'd like Halsin to keep the backstory. Dialogue added to give it more depth beyond the off-hand joke it currently is is all it really needs, in my opinion. And that's what Larian seem to be doing going off datamined content. I like seeing more representation of trauma survivors, especially when they're not typically what's presented in media (like a very strong, powerful male character like Halsin who is otherwise comfortable with his sexuality), and I know that the writing team is capable of doing these kinds of trauma narratives justice based on other characters with sexual trauma in their backstories in the game. I'm hopeful to see how things change for his backstory when datamined content is finalized and ultimately added to the live version of the game.

I wholehearted agree with the OP, and as many times as this has come up, I think many do.

To have it make sense to me, I have to view it as a coping mechanism, if one that shows his healing is unresolved.

I doubt that the few votes on Discord are not decisive in changing/removing something.
Maybe the thousands of pictures and comments on social media, but it's up to Larian and the world of BG.
I don't think much of this thing, but there were people who wanted more content.

Well, there are many topict about Halsin on Reddit (probaly not the best place in the Internet but the audience there is massive and I hope Larian team read threads there) and hundreds comments inside of them. I checked a topic "Least Liked Companions Voting", for example, with a poll and Halsin is #1 mostly because: people don't know what to do with him, he is boring and needs to be polished and for some he is no more that a sex pest. So, he, for sure, needs more content, especially in Act 3.

Astarion's story of abuse goes through the whole game. Halsin has only one dialogue which appears out of nowhere and under very unexpected circumstanses. Again, I am pretty sure John wrote this dialogue only as a joke to give Halsin more points for being "sex machine" and not because he wanted to make him a survivor, but it seems the guy just used a very wrong tool. Otherwise we would not have such topics and reactions at all. But yes, only John knows the right answer.

The reasoning against expanding Halsin's storyline, that some people gave, was "the game isn't therapy." So if that is the reason, and it isn't just another way of saying "I just don't want Halsin to have a sympathetic story" (which is the actual reason for many saying this) then they would hate Astarion's story even more, because it is therapy throughout his entire story instead of just one scene. That's what I was referring to. If people don't like it because they think it's offensive, that's a different argument, and I still don't think removing it is right. If someone writes a gay character who is a stereotype, the answer to any hurt feelings is to fix the character's portrayal, not to make them straight instead. If nothing else, the latter would be rugsweeping; instead of acknowledging the hurt feelings, they would pretend it never happened, and that isn't how you repair hurt feelings.

If someone writes something thoughtlessly as a joke that is offensive, I would prefer they issue an apology and remove the joke rather than double down and attempt to justify their mistake. Trying to salvage something sincere out of a rape joke really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The fact that so many people need to headcanon that he's using sex as a coping mechanism to 'fix' the narrative to be something less offensive is awful. Similarly, I find 'it happened 200 years ago' to be a lazy excuse for writing something offensive. It's so easy to say that elves live a long time and wash their hands of any narrative issues because it's a fantasy world. That smacks of wanting to have your cake (throw in a little sexual slavery for background spice) and eat it too (not have to deal with any repercussions for doing so.) A rape joke spinning it's wheels to try and become something legitimate is not good representation. It feels more like an attempt to save face.

I understand your desire for representation. If it helps any and you're looking for male representation of victims who are not sex repulsed, here's a list. Please note that these portrayals are of varying quality and listen in no particular order. [Spoilers for the respective stories.] Again, that's all male victims and published work of various media. I could expand to female victims and fanfiction if necessary.

I feel like using Archer as an example of a non-offensive portrayal of male sexual assault survivors misses the mark, considering it is absolutely played as a joke several times throughout that show, even with other characters. Archer's an adult comedy, after all, it is full of tasteless jokes ranging from making fun of sexual assault to making fun of people of color and LGBT people (the 'trans panic' joke episode, as an example.) The Wheel of Time series of books eroticizes sexual assault experienced by female characters, while using sexual assault against men as a moment of horror due to how it is treated as "emasculating" for a man to be forced into sex. As a male survivor of sexual assault, I would not point to either of these series as good "representation" of sexual assault against men, or anyone, at all, in any way. While I like Mysterious Skin, I also would not think to ever compare the character in it to a character like Halsin- Mysterious Skin has its own mountains of criticisms leveled at it by gay survivors and sex workers over the decades.

And survivors all have different opinions so if someone disagrees with me that's fine. It means we have come to very different places of viewing things after our experiences.

But speaking as a male sexual assault survivor, I'd personally much rather Larian not erase the backstory they ended up giving Halsin with the one-off dialogue we are discussing, and actually buckle down and take it seriously, because I'd rather have this example of a male sexual assault survivor we rarely get to otherwise see in media. Halsin is strong, powerful, good-hearted, well-respected, physically intimidating, and it still happened to him. It's meaningful to have those kinds of narratives in mainstream media. Larian is attempting to rewrite it to give it due weight and I greatly appreciate their efforts, and look forward to seeing the changes made.

Oh, I wholeheartedly agree. I should have been more clear about the 'varying quality' line. Some of these are awful examples, but if the idea is purely to have a male victim who is not sex repulsed then ehhh. Most of the healthier examples aren't so simplistic. Which brings me to my point that Halsin's is simplistic and the same kind of eroticized sexual assault from the Wheel of Time. The fact is that a lot of sexual violence towards men in media is eroticized just like Halsin's was. Unless there is some serious re-writing, sprucing up a 'sexy' rape joke isn't going to make it okay.

Turning the analysis back to Archer, I would also argue that it would be better if the assault had never been written either. Or the entire thing from the Wheel of Time. This is also coming from a male victim who is desperate to see some representation that I scan through media to try and feel related to. We can aspire to have something better than someone backtracking on an "off-color" joke.

Absolutely agree with what was said here. Having THESE pointed out as "better" alternatives for representation for male victims of sexual assault feels disingenuous at best, and outright insulting at worst. These are not in any way better representation than Halsin. Those were written with active ill intent, while this was simply poor writing they are trying to fix.

As I said, these depictions are of varying quality, which means that some are not good and some are decent.

A Cruel God Reigns is often considered to be a sensitive portrayal of domestic abuse and assault, though it is not without fault and I personally have some big issues with it. The Kite Runner is typically well-regarded. Mysterious Skin falls into the obnoxious "gay predator" stereotype but depicts trauma decently. From what I've seen, the Criminal Minds CSA plot was sensitively handled. It's not like I had no good examples to provide. The problem is that the examples that are most like Halsin's abuse, namely the Wheel of Time and I would argue Spartacus, are offensive and flippant.

Additionally, we have no data to corroborate if Halsin ever experienced a phase of being sex averse following his imprisonment. Were I to expand my criteria from "purely non-sex-averse characters" to "characters who experience a period of sex aversion and move past it," there are plenty of good examples. But I have no confirmation one way or the other that Halsin had this because most of the speculation of Halsin's response to trauma is without any textual basis.

If those portrayals can be of varying quality, why can't this one be one of the varying quality bits of representation too?

I think this is an interesting point. There are two schools of thought at play here. 1) ANY representation is good and should be shown regardless of sensitivity and quality. 2) Some things are 'representation' in name only, and have the possibility of being otherwise offensive, thoughtless, or perpetuating harmful stereotypes.

If all we want is representation, this could be an example of a negative portrayal, sure. I just really wish we didn't live in a world where the best we as survivors can hope for is negative stereotypes and jokes at our expense.

And listen, I know this is important to you and a pretty emotional topic. At least it's emotional for me, anyway. Part of me honestly hoped that listing (some) half-decent examples of representation could be a sort of olive branch. I was probably projecting because I sort of hyperfixate on finding examples of representation and thought it could be helpful to share. Of course, there were also negative examples in that list, but if the binary of "does this piece of media have a male victim of SA regardless of quality, Yes or No" was something of use to you in whatever way... Even if it was just an example of "okay, this sucks and is a baseline of awful to compare other media against." Well, I figured I'd add it. In any case, it seems to have done more harm than good and for that, I apologize.

The way it is written in the game right now, it is clearly just a bad joke. Maybe it was very late and the writer was in the mood for a dirty joke to emphasize Halsin's image of a big man that everyone wants to have sex with.
If it was meant to be something important for the character, they wouldn't have added it in an optional scene.

From what I read, there were people who had to refrain from playing because of this joke. I really understand that it can be helpful to have representation, but do you really think this will work based on a dirty joke that the writer clearly didn't give a second thought?
I am afraid I might come off as being offensive, but in asking for Halsin's background to be expanded, you also ask for expanding what made some people (also victims) stop playing BG3. In this case, maybe you could ask yourself: If they remove his background, will you stop playing the game? If not, then maybe its fair to remove it and give other victims a chance to come back. No matter if they are male or female victims, if it hurts people enough to stop playing a game they paid for(!), I feel like it's a bad idea to expand on that.


@Lyricus: I really like how thoughtful you write, how you are explaining your opinion and I want to thank you for that.