Talk:Cazador Szarr

Cazador & Race

Taking a look at the linked references in the asian mom trope bullet, it seems that there is substantial fannish discussion on this matter. We see fans relating their own experiences with their own parents and writing meta about it, as well as criticizing Larian's handling of race in BG3 and with Cazador in particular. In addition to the reddit posts, it looks like people on Twitter are relating Cazador's characterization in a similar way (link). So there's definitely something going on there in the fannish realm which we should document. I think there's also some underexplored controversy about this character and race, ex with the changes to his design between initial stages and what happened in release, ex (link) and (link) these tumblr posts about Cazador. In the interests of documenting these fannish happenings, I think it would be good to make a section on Cazador & Race as has been suggested once we have time to do more research. -- FBV (talk) 21:19, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Re: the "asian mom coded" trope, I also think it would be prudent to approach this sensitively. Since many east asian fans and east asian diaspora fans are referring to Cazador this way, we should try to provide this info in their own fannish words using quotes, and link out to some fanworks that feature it as well (ex, that one comic, and some other ones). This is an element of the fannish history & culture of the character, so we should document it and make sure to add the POVs of fans. If we have concerns that this may be racially controversial, it may be prudent to also include fannish pushback on this trope as well, like this tumblr post (link), in accordance with PPOV. Hopefully this approach leaves everyone satisfied. -- FBV (talk) 11:36, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

(Editing Conflict just as I was about to save, so here's what I was gonna post before FBV's second comment) For the sake of clarity I'm white, so keep that in mind in regards to my thoughts.

• Does it need to be called 'Asian mom coded'? Is that what East and Southeast Asian fans are calling it? Folks in the citations seem to also mention their Mums and/or Dads too?
• I think the citations back up the first sentence of "East Asian and Southeast Asian fans have expressed that Cazador's treatment of Astarion and general attitude evoke similarities to their own strict "tiger parent" upbringing", although I think adding 'Some' at the start could go a long way, especially if we manage to find criticisms from other East and Southeast Asian fans. Not sure whether we should avoid linking to the 'tiger parent' wikipedia page, or at the very least add FBV's example of the tweet to back up that folks are directly referring to 'tiger parenting'.
• I'm not in the fandom myself, so I don't know how prominant the 'MILF', 'mother' etc thing is, but if it's become fairly common, I would be very surprised if there wasn't criticism of the way white fans often co-opt or exaggerate certain fannish points by POC (ie POC and non-Anglospheric folk point out the similarities with something within their own cultures, and then White Westerners come in and run with it without actually understanding or respecting said cultures), if indeed that's what's happened here.
• There's definitely a need for a section here on Race and fannish responses to both his character (such as the second link), and the racism of fans and the fandom itself.
• (Edit) - Yes, I also agree with FBV's second comment.

-- OfMonstersAndWerewolves (talk) 12:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)