Thread by @daunt_lys

The racism in Baldur’s Gate is genuinely so fucking hard on me. Playing a Tiefling as a Black person is brutal. Your party members antagonize you, the game antagonizes you, and the plot positions you as the bad guy if you don’t help the druids calling you slurs. 🥲🫠 1/3

Like if I don’t help the Druid who was going to ✨execute a child of my race for being of my race✨ I lose access to Karlach. I save the druids and they insinuate I’m a disease. If I fail the Druid quest, a massacre of my people is on my hands. What the fuck? 2/3

I come home from a long day of microaggressions and masking and then my guard is immediately back up. I should be stressed that I’m making bad decisions, not bc Lae’zel keeps threatening to kill me in my sleep for having horns. And for white players this is just fantasy 🫠 3/3

@MadamAvaCouture A tiefling kid steals a ritualistic idol in the grove and the new leader takes her from her family and wants to imprison her with her pet venomous hungry snake and leave her there while her parents are exiled from the grove 🫠 the game does paint her as the bad guy, but (⬇️)

I didn’t expect this much traction off of this. I like this game. It’s a good game. Everyone’s gonna feel different. If you’re white and taking a moral stance over the game that’s louder than BIPOC then consider if you’re doing that to feel good about yourself. Y’all be easy ✌🏾

Y’all really don’t need to tell me more about Karlach I promise 💖 even if I’m wrong (which still seems unclear) and she can’t be locked out, it does affect your relationship with her and Wyll AND the racism is the point. It’s super fucking unnecessary.

ALRIGHT the QTs are a goddamn cesspool: i never said don't play the game, i said repeatedly i LOVE IT. it's good to deal with racism in fiction BUT doing so disproportionately affects BIPOC. Do y'all think we prance around every day not experiencing a lick of discrimination?

Tieflings, orcs, goblins, and drow are heavily steeped in racist, bioessentialist lore. Attaching intrinsic morality to race is not creative. I don't blame Larian for that, it's not their lore. But there are far more interesting conflicts that have nothing to do with race.

like y'all really don't see the problem with "a devil did something evil and so all its descendants for the rest of time are evil"? You don't see the problem with categorizing a large swath of people as evil and calling them pejoratives based on their appearance/heritage...?

if the tiefling/druid conflict in the grove was really about the tieflings being refugees and not their race, the druids at the gate wouldn't have yelled slurs, the druid missing a locket inside wouldn't have threatened to beat a tiefling child for stealing from him, etc.

and it's funny to watch y'all go "not all druids". really? so you can do that but i can't point out that even my traveling companions, whose favor i've earned, implying that i'm "good for a devil" is really gross? y'all are over here going "all fictional lives matter". c'mon.

and "don't play a tiefling/drow" isnt a solution. I challenge y'all to be brave enough to critique the media you consume. Critiquing something isn't the same as condemning it. I know I've pointed out something specific and right here, because overwhelmingly BIPOC are speaking up.

It's not bad faith to ask why BIPOC don't get the same level playing field in media. From character creators to stereotypes to in-game parallels to our real trauma, we are constantly misrepresented. meaningful depictions of race =/= forcing BIPOC to relive trauma w/o consent.

and again like...i like the game. i really do!! come to your own conclusions about whether or not you want to play based on your comfort! i'm not telling anyone to boycott or anything. but the fantasy racism is ingrained into the story and it does get tiring. that's all i said.