Talk:Astarion/Tav

Larian Statistics

Several of these options boil down to many of the Astarion/Tav fans being non-players, mainly newcomers into the fandom from places like Tik Tok, and thus not counting in Larian's statistics (according to the way the romance is "counted" by Larian, it's also possible that more casual or latecomer fans who have not finished the romance arc, do not count as well). Others state that Astarion/Tav fans, like many other fans nowadays, exist in a curated, algorithm-fed echo chamber, where they only interact with likeminded fans and thus have no realistic concept of the fandom at large. With this, fans also point to the AO3 statistics, showcasing large numbers of Astarion/Tav tags, but also a large kudo ratio in much less populated Tags of different pairings, such as Astarion/Halsin, Astarion/Gale and Astarion/Wyll, all of which are Slash pairings. The player base is also formed by casual gamers (who do not interact with fandom) and video game fans that typically do not produce fanfiction (such is the case with mostly straight male fans). The small amount of fanart produced by these fans tends to be spread in different websites as well and have a different style to what is usually seen in spaces like Tumblr.

I am moving this paragraph here because I believe it presents several issues. It seems to equate romancing Astarion in-game with liking the Astarion/Tav ship. These two things do not necessarily always correlate with each other. It's possible to like the Astarion/Tav ship without choosing to romance Astarion in-game (at least not in one's first playthrough). Moreover, I find it reductive at best to attribute the disparity between AO3 tag stats vs. in-game romance stats to "non-players" and "newcomers" who inhabit "curated, algorithm-fed echo chamber[s]" like TikTok. That feels like it's unintentionally reifying a gate-keeping mentality that de-legitimizes queer and woman players as "real" gamers. The most likely explanation here is that the majority of gamers are still heterosexual cisgender men. The top three romance choices are all female characters, and they are ranked in order of conventional attractiveness, as one who might expect of a primarily cishet male player base. That's the only conclusion I feel comfortable being draw in-article without additional sourcing and qualification. Night Rain (talk) 22:32, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I think the main problem here is the interpretation of the paragraph: The text presented opinions of fans regarding certain occurrences (the "why" could fans possibly be surprised, for instance) and towards the pairing in question, particularly ones that either gained traction under the original Larian post, were reposted elsewhere or are the target of fannish discussion in several BG3 and BG discord servers.

They're the opinions voiced and not an in-depth study on the subject.

The disparity you have read in them is also not the focus point of the online discussion, but rather the fact that some fans, as hypothesised by others, due to social media algorithms and the social media circles they frequent (not necessarily Tik Tok), are being fed more queer friendly and/or Astarion-centric content and end up not seeing any other content/pairings/characters. And that this, according to them, might have resulted in some of the surprise to discover Astarion wasn't even top three in general terms of romance popularity. The fans who voiced these opinions are, as far as I am aware, women or queer players/fans, Astarion-centric and "regular fannish" fans (as opposed to the heterosexual cisgender men fans you mention). Personal conclusions or an in-depth analysis of the actual reasons weren't expressed on the page, simply what was seen in fan discussions. If we really want to try and see these opinions from a mean spirited POV, you'd have to see them as queer and woman player fans setting non-gamer fans aside, due to lack of interaction with the canon material in what could be deemed an "organic" way, but this is at the very worst reading of it, since the focus of the discussion is "the reason for the surprise of fans", not their supposed qualifications for being in a fandom. I have not seen any instances of the fandom setting them aside for not playing the game, although I have seen many posts created by player fans and DnD fans that were created after fan discussion in order to help non-players get their lore and canon needs met. I do not agree that general opinions, inflammatory, contrary to our own, critical or not, should be avoided when they're part of fan discourse for a given topic.

As for the "why" is this happening (as opposed to "why" are some fans surprised), that is also expressed separately (and I and more fans agree) it's likely to be as you've noted: "The player base is also formed by casual gamers (who do not interact with fandom) and video game fans that typically do not produce fanfiction (such is the case with mostly straight male fans). The small amount of fanart produced by these fans tends to be spread in different websites as well and have a different style to what is usually seen in spaces like Tumblr." Aliandry (talk) 23:53, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Some general observations that I began writing before your comment, which are not intended as a reply to the points you've raised:

• Some gamers treat customizable player characters as an avatar of themselves rather than an independent character they are role-playing. Thus, some fans may enjoy consuming Astarion/Tav fanworks that treat Tav as a distinct character, but aren't interested in (or comfortable with) dating Astarion in-game as a version of themselves. It's like someone enjoying Reylo fic when they personally wouldn't touch Kylo Ren with a bargepole. I'd say there's at least some evidence supporting the hypothesis that many BG3 players treat Tav as an extension of themselves.
• Some players select in-game romances for a sense of personal satisfaction or wish fulfilment. Astarion is jerkish in the early game, and his romance arc is a slow burn. Some interested in romancing him might hold off or jump ship early due to these factors. There's a point at which the game requires players to choose a single origin romance if they've been pursuing more than one. Of the male love interests, some may view Gale and Wyll as safer bets, especially if they don't know Astarion can change. It's possible to appreciate Astarion/Tav as a well-written story arc while personally opting for a different in-game experience. Some players may intend to play the game only once, and thus seek the most "satisfying" experience possible. I feel that Astarion's arc is extremely satisfying on a narrative level. But it might not be everyone's cup of tea on a more subjective level. Some players prefer LIs that offer a more simple or straightforward romance experience. Which is all a complicated way of saying that Larian's stats count only completed in-game romances, and thus do not reflect aborted Astarion romances or general interest in romancing him.
• Gale seems to be more popular than Astarion in some regions. I've found very little fanart of him on DeviantArt and Newgrounds. Most of what I've found elsewhere appears to be reposts from Weibo, Lofter, and Pixiv. What I've concluded – and, again, this is personal speculation, not something supported by hard evidence – is that Gale is more popular in East Asian fandom than in the "West." To speculate further this might come down to regional differences in the popularity of vampires and other similar archetypes. This may seem off-topic but it might be an interesting thread to follow. It could help shed light into how BG fandom varies by region and thus help us provide a more global perspective.

Night Rain (talk) 00:33, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Now to address some of the points in your reply. I'm not active on Twitter or Discord. My main engagement with fandom is though AO3, Tumblr, and (it counts!) Fanlore. I'd argue that everyone is in a filter bubble that shapes their perception of the world to some degree. It's certainly true of the cishet gamer dudes who balk at games including queer romance options because they have difficulty accepting other players want different experiences than them. In any case, fannish discourse is of course germane to the article, but might be optimally presented in quotes to remove ambiguity.

Because this text reads more as an authoritative statement of fact to me rather than a summary of opinions that some fans have expressed:

• "Several of these options boil down to many of the Astarion/Tav fans being non-players, mainly newcomers into the fandom from places like Tik Tok,"
• "Others state that Astarion/Tav fans, like many other fans nowadays, exist in a curated, algorithm-fed echo chamber, where they only interact with likeminded fans and thus have no realistic concept of the fandom at large."

Night Rain (talk) 01:05, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Fannish filter bubbles also don't strike me as new or remarkable. I imagine one would've encountered them in early Star Trek fandom. "Casual" fans were generally unaware of the existence of K/S zines. K/S fans generally kept to their own circles and may not have observed wider fandom opinions or trends. Harry Potter fandom on LiveJournal in the 2000s certainly leant itself to the formation of filter bubbles. It was possible to become ensconced in Drarry/Snarry/Snupin/etc. LJ communities, and thus remain largely unaware of the H/Hr vs. Romione ship war in wider fandom. Or conversely to become so invested in said ship war as to lose sight of areas of relative harmony within the fandom. Which is basically say this phenomenon isn't particular to TikTok, or BG3 fandom, or Astarion/Tav fandom specifically. Night Rain (talk) 01:54, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I’m aware that there are fans who treat their Tav/Turge as an RP OC and some that treat them as an avatar of themselves. Even fans who express their sexual satisfaction online in relation to imagined encounters with Astarion might simply just be joking. The fan specificity of referring to the group of fans in question as Astarion/Tav or Astarion fans is likely generic, and different accounts might not even specify who they’re really talking about (do they even know?). Again, I did not look into this, but rather gathered the general mood and main statements by fans while discussing the event in what had relation to Astarion as part of a pairing with the Player.

I interact with fandom on many fronts, and from the patterns I can see, Twitter is the forefront of public BG3 discussion, with many of the same fans re-posting some of their meta/opinions/art on Tumblr at a later date (sometimes vice-versa, but Twitter has a broader reach in the end, and generates more discussion). At the inception of fandom, Twitter was especially important for fannish development. Twitter also allows for NSFW work to be posted, so basically all of easily found visual BG3 NSFW content comes from there. A large amount of fanfic authors and even BNFs are usually easily reachable on Discord servers but not on their Tumblr, Twitter or AO3 (via comment), which leads to a lot of unpublished meta that later materialises into art and fic in public. I haven’t delved into Gale as a matter of fannish attention by East Asian/Western fans. OGWeibo is notoriously hard to navigate outside China (and the international version blocks a lot of functionality). Same with Lofter. But he, Astarion and the canon version of The Dark Urge seem favoured by the EA/chinese communities I’m part of. Gale has a lot of fanart on twitter. I don’t look into DeviantArt as a form of fannish hosting since it became riddled with AI and most fans from my active fandoms also left or post primarily in other websites, only reposting to DA.

While I agree any informative text can and should be made clearer, I’m unsure of how it might sound authoritative when the text is stating fan opinions/statements using those same words to convey the information:

• “Several of these opinions boil down to (…)
• “Others (as in “other fans”) state that (…).

None of it is statement of fact, unless the fact is that fans had opinions, which, in that case, then it very much is. Perhaps the authoritativeness you read in it might come from the assertiveness with which “yes, this has been said by fans”, and not “yes, this is the fact of the matter”, was expressed? Even disconnected from the rest of the text, I seems the phrases don't become disconnected from being opinions/statements.

I feel the need to reiterate that I have never tried to pass fan statements as unbendable truth, nor presented fan opinions as an in-depth analysis of facts. This because the points of your arguments were not initiated either by me, nor by the opinions shared in the page: whether echo chambers exist, due or not to algorithms, isn’t the point of the fannish discussion I shared in the paragraph, rather is it the surprise shown by certain fans who showed to have no such awareness or concept. If that is due to being new to fandom, AO3, their social media of choice etc. it isn’t called into question here (just subject to fan speculation during the discussion). Fandom Bubbles being remarkable or unique isn’t the focus, rather the fan reaction to such a reality is (together with the other fans reaction to that as well). And that reaction, I believe, is worth keeping for posteriority, considering the large fannish discussion that occurred around it. Keeping track of these things, big or small, is what Fanlore is for, after all. Not all media allows us to face general data against fandata and then see the fan reaction to that, nor the “putting out of the the fires” so to speak. Aliandry (talk) 04:08, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

"Several of these options boil down to many of the Astarion/Tav fans being non-players [...]."

It reads "options." Not "opinions." This typo is in your original edit. It wasn't introduced by autocorrect misfiring when I reposted the paragraph here. "Options" dramatically alters how the preceding and following text reads. It makes it seem like an authoritative statement is being made. In any case I still feel providing quotes would be more illustrative than trying to summarize the "general mood" of this particular discourse. I could search Tumblr or Reddit for some relevant commentary, or perhaps you could skim a few choice quotes off Twitter? (Nitter.net is my only means for viewing full Twitter threads these days and it doesn't always work.) Night Rain (talk) 07:30, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Aliandry that the information in the paragraph is relevant discussion of things Some Fans Have Said (always good to have in light of PPOV), but I also really see some of the perhaps-unintended implications Night Rain is pointing out. (A light-hearted example: as a long-time gamer who has seen and occasionally participated in so, so much wank about "casuals" vs "real gamers," calling people who play the game but don't participate in transformative fandom the casuals is just... very funny to me. I like this definition! Next gamerbro who scoffs at one of my friends for playing RPGs for the romance arcs is getting asked, "Dude, do you even write fic? Name the last three video game cosplays you did to prove to me you're a real video game fan :) ") Let me propose a new draft (including the second currently-existing paragraph because I also edited it lightly to make it all flow/work better together):

Larian released statistics in December 2023 showing that the most popular in-game romances in BG3 are (in order) Shadowheart, Karlach, and Lae'zel. It is uncertain whether Astarion took fourth place. This revelation provoked surprise and discourse among fans who regard him as the fandom's breakout character. Many have pointed out that the statistics likely reflect a global player base composed primarily of heterosexual cis men, in contrast to the queer-friendly, woman-centered fannish communities that generally produce, share, and consume fanfiction. Larian also counted only players who completed a romance arc. Thus, the statistics did not include players still progressing through the game at the time, nor instances of players initiating an Astarion romance but not finishing it (typically due to an in-game break up).
Some fans have also suggested that Astarion/Tav transformative fandom has drawn in newcomers from places like Tik Tok, who may not have personally played the game, and therefore also would not have been counted in Larian's statistics. Others have discussed the filter bubble effect of both algorithmically- and socially-curated fandom content, which tends to isolate pockets of fandom from one another and result in most individual fans having an incomplete view of the fandom and/or playerbase as a whole. (And even within transformative fandom, culture differences between hosting platforms can produce wildly different popularity statistics for characters and ships.)

• I am not at all wedded to the wording of this, but I tried to keep the information generally intact while making it a bit more neutral in tone.
• I left out the bit about the other Astarion slash ships not because I had a problem with it, but because I was having trouble seeing the link to this topic.
• Unfortunately, like 90% of my own BG3 fandom engagement has been in private spaces that shouldn't be quoted (and can't be linked) on Fanlore, so while I completely agree that it would be a very good thing to have some quotes in this discussion of the popularity discourse, I'm not readily able to provide them, myself.

Thoughts? MomeRath (talk) 00:56, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you MomeRath. I have all the refs I originally gathered for the development of this article on the Project Discord thread. I can pass the public ones here, give the word to other members of the project who have access to them or you yourself can have a look. As for the true gamers/not true gamers discussion, I might have some TikToks and Reddit refs for opinions on that specific thing (although in the majority of contexts, "casuals" might not refer to "real gamers" either. We'd have to be careful to separate the different definitions).

• Thank you so much! It's late so I'd rather had a look at this tomorrow when my eyes aren't burning.
• I believe the Astarion slash ship discussions were because of the visibility in numbers, where the pairing tags have a juggernaut ship, Astarion/Tav (and its many variations), but when observing kudos numbers, other less popular pairings also have a strong presence, with the difference being the amount of creators/creations. The theme was mainly about how many fans were unable to find the existence of some pairings due to tag clog (Astarion/Tav has around 6 different tags). It isn't directly related to the Larian statistics, but rather spawned within the discussions due to the difficulty in seeing beyond a kind of fandom veil that places Astarion (and Astarion/Tav pairings) as a wall for new fans. The slash ships happen to be the ones to poke through due to kudos.
• I have the same problem. I am asking the private Discord servers where discussions were had if I can get screenshots. The Project Discord ref Threads should help out, anyway. Aliandry (talk) 02:57, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Just wanted to clarify that I do think the implications I read in Aliandry's version were totally unintentional. We're all approaching fandom from different vantage points. Not everyone is aware of the problematic connotations of "casual." Nor has everyone personally encountered gate-keeping in a gaming/hobby context. Ironically, I experienced it the other day, while, of all things, hunting for MTG cards (including one of a certain vampire elf rogue). Multiple TCG bros in multiple stores either treating me (a femme cis woman, TBC) with open contempt or being friendly and helpful in way that suggested they believed I don't understand the game. Anyway!

I like MomeRath's reworking. My only suggestion, right now, would be to change "skewed view" to "limited viewed," "incomplete view," or something similar. "Skewed" feels like a value judgment. There are plenty of reasons fans may wish to limit their engagement to specific corners of a larger fandom. Like, if the fandom in question is riddled with drama and ship wars, and they just want to appreciate a character or ship in peace with friends. Night Rain (talk) 06:58, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I also went through some of the replies to Larian's end-of-year statistics post on Twitter. Multiple comments attributing Astarion's non-placement in the top 3 to a predominantly male player base. One comment remarking "Plus a [I] heard a good chunk of Astarion fans don’t even play the games" from someone named Todd with a feed that's 100% sports.[1][2][3] Night Rain (talk) 07:27, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

• I think the "true gamers" discourse probably belongs somewhere else - not sure where! But not on a specific ship page, since it's its own very wanky kettle of fish across so many fandoms. I just pointed that one out because it was funny to me. xD (Also, I have had that exact experience in game stores looking for MTG cards :P)
• Thank you for the note re: skewed - I went ahead and just changed it to "incomplete" in the draft so that it'll be easy to copy-paste when someone puts the final version on the live page.
• Good references and bless you for braving Twitter/nitter so someone else didn't have to. I think the more the merrier on any of those we might come across, but this is a good start.
• Aliandry thanks for the clarification about the other slash ships and visibility! I think this is interesting, maybe worth a sub-section about ship visibility on AO3 and how that played into the surprise re: Larian's statistics? Or just another paragraph, works either way. MomeRath (talk) 19:43, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

The current text is fine by me, and has space to be developed with more information as we update it with the refs. I tagged you on the reference thread MomeRath and I've updated it recently. But again, I can just transpose it here.

I think the slash ships visibility is important as it also shows that other ships, such as non slash ships (besides the juggernaut one) are very hard to find. Players who are unused to/unaware of AO3 tagging/more advanced search methods are struggling the most, since instead of having a clear list of 10 pairings, they only see about 4. I, myself, tried to find a pairing and had to exclude relationship tag after relationship tag, in order to find it, as I could not locate any variation of it using search dropdown - but this also ties to how bg3 fics are tagged on AO3 in general, as I've seen many complain about excessive tags, leading to the distortion of charname, for example, and lack of tagging in order to reach a broader audience/because of fear of doing something wrong (not necessarily unique to bg3, but still something that is discussed). And it's all surrounding the Tav/Astarion pairing. Perhaps a section would be better? Or we could keep it as a paragraph until we develop it enough to be its own thing. Aliandry (talk) 23:43, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

That's a good/interesting point Aliandry; I... have a bit of a blind spot sometimes in terms of how non-obvious some of the AO3 filtering/search features can be to newer users. I think I'm leaning toward an actual section, so that it has a heading that will show up in the infobox? But I'm fine either way. MomeRath (talk) 20:00, 13 January 2024 (UTC)