Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Baldurs gate III is actually the most vile game ever created

Ah, I am way too old to play by those rules. 'They' is still just regular old plural to me, so I figured this was a common thing that was happening.

Not in this case. It's this OP specifically. You always have disagreeable people, sometimes it's me, but this one is just a troll.

Alright. Fire and Acid it is.

The thread title alone makes me laugh.

The Ops attitude sounds kind of like Vladimir Putin wanting the Good Old Days IMHO

In English 'they' can be used as either a singular or plural pronoun. It's always been the case - nothing to do with the language-mangling numpties.

Fair enough. Never heard it used in that manner pre-numpty. Thanks. Nice to have a thread where nobody minds if you go off-topic. Learn something new this way.

I'm having a huge piece of pork loin tomorrow. Got it all salted up and rubbed in the fridge. Can't wait to fire up the grill.

I'd wager you probably have, Rodeo ^.^ At least, if English is your primary language, you'll have used it yourself on countless occasions. It's a common baked in part of our language to the extent that it's more or less invisible unless you're watching for it, but in recent years a lot more people have been drawn to watching for it and seeing it specifically.

'They' as a terms of direct singular reference has been used as a pronoun for unknown, non-specific and/or undefined identity for a very long time; it has always served purpose in our terribly bitsa, cobbled together language for both that and pluralising reference. In more recent years, it's been much more visibly and aggressively used not just for the cases of unknown, undefined or unstated, and has been co-opted into being used as an expressly neuter definite term. We have a neuter definite term already, but, as with many things in English, it's been co-opted to serve multiple purposes, and so it carries with it overtones of non-entity and non-person as well, so naturally a lot of folks absolutely do not want to use it, and they landed on the already overworked 'they' instead.

As a thought experiment, how would you naturally construct a request to someone telling them to, say, get a specific object from a non-specific person matching certain criteria?
Most people would probably construct it something like: "Go find the first person you see wearing a red shirt, get their phone number, and come back." without even thinking about it...

I know this is 'off topic', but the topic is a troll post, so... this is just my chance to share a bit of language chat before the lock ^.^

It's not my first language, but you´re absolutely right. I wouldn´t phrase it differently. In fact, I cannot even phrase it differently. Well, aside from going out of my way and making it needlessly complicated.

I see your off-topic-language chat, and I raise you by two.

On the 'terribly bitsa cobbled together language'; my first language is Dutch, then English, then basic German and French. A bit of Spanish/Latin/Italian.

Which means, I can actually *read* all the European languages. I don't speak them, I don't know the words, don't know how to make a sentence. But in a written sentence, especially in context, I recognise them and can just read them no problem. And because Dutch and English are my primary languages - the Scandinavian languages [which are essentially the same] I read as if I'm fluent, as these have so much overlap.

Fair enough ^.^

My background is as a primary English speaker, but with a strong background in Latin (also passable French and school level Japanese, and my daily communication is via Auslan, which is Australian English hand sign), and between them I can partially understand and draw the core meaning and intent out of many european languages, even though I don't actually read or understand them directly. What I do know is that our common English is pulled together from so many different bits and pieces, and tries to use the various rules for structure and conjugation relative to the parts it took from... so what we end up with is something that uses some of one language family's rules for some things, and another for others, without any consistency overall. I'm glad English was my first language, because I'd hate to come at it as a second language.

Well, to be fair - nowadays with the Internet, there is *so* much English going around that you will pick it up just by exposure, making you learn it without trying.

I learned it mostly playing Sierra Adventure Games in the 80's, with physical dictionaries going back and forth. That meant, however, that I could read and write *waaaay* before I could speak it, because I had no idea how it sounded. So suddenly I really struggled with words like tough, through, trough, plough, dough and so forth.


But, hang on. Auslang - Does that mean that in sign language, there is a difference between 'service station/servo ' and 'petrol/gas station' and so forth? That would be *hilarious*. "Nah fakin warries, mate ey!"

Wow, I'm not sure if you are trolling, or if you need to get help, bro.

It wasn't so bad learning English as my second language in school ( I'm from Germany), French was far more harder.
It helped though, that we had friends in England, sending us the newest Star Trek episodes on video tapes ( yeah,I'm ancient), so that I was far more motivated to learn. Plus Shakespeare was so much cooler in English.
But the German language uses words from other languages too, so that was nothing new in this case.


I learned Latin, a bit of Spanish and later Italian. Italian is for me the most beautiful language, but English is the best language to be sarcastic in.

You haven't truly heard Shakespeare unless it was in the original Klingon!

I love this game a lot ... and played the new, wonderful epilogue, which came with Patch 5, two days later because I had to work, doing my chores and taking care of my mum, who can't use the left side of her body anymore.
Sooooo, what did you say about "this game is eating your life away"?

Uh, offtopic discussions about languages! I like that more than the first posting.

Learning english wasn't easy at school. I began to learn when I was in the fifth grade and it often depends on the teacher if I like to learn or not. I began to learn english thanks to Star Wars - I read the comics, magazines and sometimes a book from the USA. I know I'm not good at english but as long as most people understand me it is okay, I guess.
My second language was spanish but I've forgotten most of it. But it is a really nice language, which sounds wonderful.
I'm also learning japanese since february.

I know, I'm working on my Klingon skills - let'sstart with the blood wine to loosen up the tongue

Trolling or not, there still are some valid points in the post. Not only for BG3, but overall, people getting way to obsessive and addicted nowadays. The potential of becoming an addict to games (or social media) is the same as for people who bet in casinos and such - but it's easier to point the finger on loot boxes, sport bets and such. There are so many people with 1000+ hours in this game, still you can't compare it to an MMO.

In case of BG3, I have seen people having their own altar for their favorite character, getting huge tattoos, paying lot of money for comissions etc. Not to mention adding really weird fetishes (at least weird to me) on the characters, changing them just to fit their preference.

I mean, you don't need to search for more like a few seconds to find lot of people that admit they would love if a fictional character would become real because they will never find someone like them IRL (or as I read on X yesterday, Halsin set the bar for a male partner pretty high for someone).
Social media and likes is way more important for people nowadays than family, friends, neighbors etc.

As for LGBTQ, I don't mind if there is representation, but to me it feels like it's become too much, they always try too hard because it is "in" these days. Well, thats how todays media have to work. If they don't add enough LGBTQ, people of color and such, they have an aggressive mob right at their doorstep.

I personally, prefer the classical Father-Mother-Child family and if I look at two examples in the game, I feel like they are BS. Either parents with a daughter where either the parents of the daughter have to die or a dumb dwarf who beats his wife. Meanwhile, Isobel and Aylin seem to be presented as a way "better" couple - I know, might just be for the story, but still, it feels a little off.
Representation should be either BS or good for all kind of people.

Chances are, if you say something like this, people will call you homophob, racist and whatever, so thats why I usually hesitate to even comment on this. People have lost their patience today, they are way more sensitive and feel attacked by so many words, even if they were never directed at them.

Hah, yeah, and I'm all out of popcorn!

Speaking of the entire offtopic language conversation... imagine me being fluent in 5 goddamn languages (and sometimes having the epic brain lag moments where I just don't know what to say and get it all mixed up, resulting in mumbo jumbo).

So I am originally from Poland (so tick off Polish as my mother tongue), then my mother was teaching me Russian in her spare time (and was calling me a moron very often, cause I was 'slow' according to her), then I started playing MMOs and picked up English along the way (which was mostly self-taught until high school), in school we had German which I was pretty damn good at. Then high school time comes and I chose class profiled for languages (so I had expanded English and German), and I can speak all of these languages fluently (altho, German I am somewhat forgetting over time) and then I married a Dutch guy, and living in the Netherlands with him, adding another goddamn language to my repertoire.

Speaking of, I always wanted to learn Spanish and French.

Oh and speaking of Russian, it's pretty easy to learn if you are from Eastern Europe, since all our languages share similarities, the only actual bitch was learning the cyrillic alphabet. Also, I might not speak, but I understand Ukrainian, Czech and Slovakian (mostly cause the said similarities).

I don't call you homophob, but as a lesbian myself, I'm glad and reliefed, that it becomes more normal in media, in hopes, that it is seen as more normal in real life. And as long as you don't say, I have no right to exist (which I don't believe you would say), I have no problem, if you say, you prefer traditional family values.
But Bek and her husband exist and they are really cute, I always make sure, they reach BG, because they are so wholesome.

As for people getting addicted or overly attached to videogames/media or characters: That was always the case. Back in the days, when Harry Potter was that big phenomena, there were the Snape wives - google it, if you like, but basically, it was women, thinking Snape was a higher being and they were all married to him. And yes, they really believed that.
Or the Supernatural fans, that had to be removed from a con, because different shippers were getting into a physical fight about whos ship is more valid.

People are crazy like that. To take the most popular character from BG3: Astarion. If people gush online about him and draw fanart or write fanfiction and know, he is not real, things are ok imo. So you obsess a bit about a character. That's fine. It gets unhealthy, if the fans would start to go after the real actors. I'm sometimes a bit worried about Neil Newborn, but so far, nothing in that regard seems to happen and I hope, it stays that way. Or if they can't function normally in the real world anymore and drift into their fantasy world (as with those Snape wives above). I had experenced that with a fellow guild member from a SWTOR guild, I was in. He was very young and lived in teh game. Luckily, the guild master lived nearby and decided to help him get grounded in reality again. SHe helped him find work and get his stuff together again.