#*slowly

Heh... funny I got a message about this when I did, because I was quietly observing the drama when it happened. Well, sort of drama. Really, just the usual cliched "anti-AA person must save the igorant AA fans from their own selves via condescending and patronizing vagueposting" situation.

For context... An anti-AA person made posts to a few Astarion and BG3 subs, challenging the validity of the bride theory with zero context or reason, which unsurprisingly fostered negativity and arguments. They had other negative comments on semi-related posts which didn't make their case better. Then they argued with the OF mods about their arguing with other users and was banned after reporting others out of spite.

But looks like the person tried to run to the spawn sub to get validation for arguing with the mods, but I don't think it went very well lol

From what I could observe, they got a lot of downvotes and even comments directly calling them (and their aggression) out. People admitted they joined to gush over Spawn and their Tavs, not seethe over AA and his fans. It was quite refreshing to see. Even moreso, seeing the mods of the sub create a new rule to not dogpile on the mods of other BG3 subs. So perhaps the situation is getting better.

Still strange that "a place to talk about AA as an abuse narrative" is one of the main focus rules of that sub, buuut I'll take the small victories. Any time people are pointing out the AA fan witch-hunt nonsense as what it is (nonsense), it means there's a positive shift happening.

Unfortunately (especially in creative realms), there will always be argumentive people who just want to argue that their vision and perspective is the only one that matters/exists, and they believe it too. But maybe the direct heat on AA fans will die down or... Die out completely (one can wish 😩).

That said! That whole situation makes me wonder...

I... don't think I was trying to make anyone angry, but this ask made me get a little bit introspective. I think I was trying to be transgressive in terms of the premise of the book, and in terms of the "gags" (that is, the mashups of prison and kaiju tropes), but I quickly* realized that that unrelenting cruelty was not something that I liked making.

I appreciate that you feel like it made you feel something, and that was certainly my intention. I think the book made a barely-perceptible shift after the first book, when the prison-drama tropes were exhausted for the most part. It became, hopefully, a very slow story of personal triumph in the face of awful circumstances, and I was conscious of riding the line between dramatic and needlessly cruel with a bit more care.