The vote is not for the "gayest" character. It's actually not about the character at all. As I've criticized prior to this, that type of vote ALWAYS favours the most popular character in a given community, usually resulting in the most objectively deserving choices being passed right over.
However, even if someone does not agree with that criticism, it remains a vote for the most cherished character by the LGBT community around the game. It is not a vote for the "gayest" character. Whether SH is gay, straight, bisexual or playersexual, it doesn't matter. Being theoretically playersexual is enough to qualify for voting, even if you see her as some sort of specific sexuality personally. Though, let me tell you, even if she wasn't playersexual, she'd likely have been a voting option if there's enough fan content in demand. This is a sort of community reward, not an intellectually rigorous one.
Headcanons is all people have had for a long time with LGBT characters being a taboo. This gave rise to this sort of treatment: anyone is bisexual in shipping culture until proven otherwise. I'm aware some people do not like this, but it is what it is. Compared to this, her being mechanically playersexual transcends the bare minimum to qualify by leaps and bounds. The people behind this award are not interested whether she "appears" gay, straight or bisexual.
I too wish a more intellectually focused award existed alongside this, but the existence of a fandom award in itself is not necessarily bad. You have to accept it for what it is: SH is the most popular character in fandom, as voted by people of whom many are LGBT. She's neither the best "portrayal" nor necessarily the best written. She's just meant the most to the highest amount of people in the community.
Very much agree with this. It is an award for a character that has been embraced by the LGBTQ community.
I've seen a compilation of data someone put together with fanfiction shippings and it shows an overwhelming popularity for Shadowheart as lesbian or bi. Shadowheart and Lae'zel is the most popular by far with more than twice as many shippings as Shadowheart and Karlach that comes in at second, with Shadowheart and Female Tav being the third most popular. Even though Astarion is the golden boy of fanfiction with exponentially more fanfiction than any other character and ranks as the number one shipping with almost every other character, Astarion only comes in as the fourth most popular shipping with Shadowheart.
So as far as the LGBTQ community goes, they clearly view her as one of theirs.
