Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Astarion romance improvements

First, if I go Off-topic, sorry, but it's not okay that people are bullied by others, so I want to answer on that subject.

This! The Poster Smirk tells it all. I am happy about the smirk. I love it. (Larian, please don't remove it.) I think, Larian wants to please all players and not bully them. (If someone on the team wanted to intentionally injure players there, they should be withdrawn immediately.)
Larian has implemented a lot of things, that players wanted. They respond to the wishes, they improve (or try to) improve the romances (e.g. Epilogue)! And we are very grateful for this. I want to mention, that we are happy about improvements.


No, don't feel sorry...(!) It's sad that a lot of AA fans now can't express themselves without being attacked and bullied from all sides.
Sorry (haha!), but a lot of straight men seem to be very insensitive toward this subject, because it doesn�t affect themselves. There are more than enough examples in history of what indifference can lead to, we also see it in the present, but I won't go into detail now. If people are not interested in reading such stuff, they shouldn�t feel the need to come to Threads dedicated to Astarion. Point. But telling people in Astarion Threads, they should be quiet about the new kisses or they don�t want to hear another word about this subject, otherwise they would explode, just LOL, I laughed about it so hard, it doesn�t show much empathy. (Not to mention, how odd but the OP�s post itself was, but that�s another thing)


Yes, those people are mostly abusive by themselves. They want to hurt others and get pleasure from seeing other people suffering. Me, too, I was asking myself, why People can�t just let other people play and enjoy their game, how they want to. Why do they jump in and spread toxic comments and bully others..
I was thinking about it. It�s just my own opinion, why AA Fans are extremely bullied by "Spawnfans" (and not the other way around)
People who bully other people are toxic people with dark triad traits. These trolls are often narcissistic and show no empathy.

I'll give you a good example of how a toxic person / troll behaves, it just happened to me:
One person spammed under every comment, summarized something like: "AA is an abuser, he's bad, he can't feel love, It's your own fault.�
I asked this person (summarized):� It doesn't matter whether you believe Astarion can feel love or not, it's about the players feeling bad and sick when they suddenly face sexual abuse in their romance implemented in a Valentine's patch. Can�t you feel some empathy for other women?�
Their answer: �Astarion is an abuser.. blabla.. abuser..blabla.. abuser.. you get what you deserve. No, I don't sympathize. �
My answer: � >No, I don't sympathize. <-Okay. That's a statement.�
Their answer (I just summarize their long spam texts): �Because Astarion is an abuser.. you get what you deserve. You are not hurt, you are just mad, your sex fantasy wasn't what the character actually was.�
(You can imagine I laughed out so hard about this. Those people only spam comments with the intention of upsetting or harming other people)

Why are almost exclusively AA fans bullied by toxic people? People who want to bully other people, who exhibit everyday sadism or narcissism, tend to choose weak partners who they can control, bully and/or hurt. They would probably never choose a dominant AA because they would have to submit to him. That mostly goes against their nature. I think 99,9 % (just my own opinion!) people with everyday sadism choose Spawn Astarion (ca. 80 % people in general -a youtube poll- choose Spawn) that's why there are so many trolls among these fans. You could almost say that the AA community is the least toxic community and a very empathetic and respectful one (Of course, there are also black sheep among us, I don't rule that out, and there is no black and white as always.)
So, there are many trolls and abusive people among the Spawn fans. These trolls start provoking and they try to dominate all the discussions, normal Spawn fans (without dark traits) unfortunately very often join in (group dynamics, we know it from history). Sad but true. Minorities often have to struggle with discrimination.


It�s sad. These are comments from these toxic people mentioned above.. They LIKE to hurt other people and to see others being hurt, because of their everyday sadism or narcissism. Also they may envy the AA fans, for being happy. So they want only bad things for the AA Route and the Romance to be destroyed (which they don�t even play, nor they could understand, because of their lack of empathy). Not one single sane AA Fan (in my opinion) would truly say, they like to see their Tav�s being sad and abused. No, those comments stating stuffs like �nothing should be changed in Tav� or �AA is an abuser, you get what you choose�, are mostly from abusive, sadistic, narcissistic or toxic people�

If Larian truly believe in those toxic people, who don�t even play the AA Route, then it would be a real shame.

Sad, but This! (Neil himself is an empathetic man, if he would know now what's happening...)

So my (Astarion Romance) suggestion to Larian is and it is very important: Don't listen to toxic people, who wants to destroy the AA route/Romance and/or who just wants to harm the community