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In fact, what looks like a repeated insistence on any poly content (or at least content that isn't straightforwardly monogamous) being "healthy" from people who would seem to prefer there not to be poly content at all feels possibly disingenuous, or at least unreasonable given that doesn't seem to be a standard applied to other relationships. And in my view, it's probably also undesirable given problematic relationships can make for interesting stories, at least if it's not done too clumsily.

Thank you for this. I have noticed so much how there's people asking for Halsin to be "healthier" about how he engages with poly, but no requests for, say, Minthara to be healthier in her mono romance. There is a lot of anger at Halsin for being poly, but none at Lae'zel for being monogamous when the rest of her culture are poly by default. It starts to feel very disheartening, and as you said, disingenuous, because these comments being only applied to poly characters starts to feel like the issue IS with poly. Monogamous characters are given a pass, poly characters have their every word and every action put under a microscope.

I don't want Halsin, a wood elf, to discard his cultural beliefs for me. If I were uncomfortable with polyamory to the extent that I was bothered by a video game character practicing it, I would simply not romance the polyamorous character. And I know monogamous people will then protest that it's not fair, why can't they then have this character as a romance option? I would like to gently tell such people that this is how poly people have to approach all romances, fictional and otherwise- they have to forgo real life romances all the time when people don't have the same values, or in video games, they have to enter into exclusively monogamous relationships when these don't necessarily represent their own lived experiences. If one character being exclusively poly makes monogamous people feel unseen and unvalued, I would like to gently request they use it as an opportunity for perspective-taking to see how the entire media landscape feels for poly people.

Whenever a marginalized character is portrayed, by the nature of marginalization, the largest part of the audience will be people who don't have that experience. That's fine, that's just numbers. But it leads to a lot of being spoken over, being told what representation I should and should not enjoy. It happens to me as a queer person, as a not-strictly-poly-but-not-strictly-mono person, as a person on the autism spectrum, etc, all the time. Is Halsin a perfectly written character? Of course not, and that includes his poly. Is he better than much of what I've experienced up to this point? Yes. Would I be absolutely devastated if Larian made him monogamous (or wrote him to compromise on this core part of who he is for the player) in a game where monogamous players have seven other characters they can pursue it with? Yes.

I hope this isn't too long or too personal but I have been getting really uncomfortable with some ways poly is treated by the fandom (including the fandom off of this forum, and I realize not all of them will read this, regardless), and I wanted to share my thoughts/experiences. Thank you again, RedQueen smile