#gur

WARNING: BG3 SPOILERS AHEAD!

New content from the ending scene of BG3. This is all from the perspective of a redeemed Dark Urge who romanced Shadowheart and Halsin, and recruited every "good" ally possible.

Here are more prints i got!!! I should’ve taken a picture of thrm all together before i put them all on my walls but i forgot :p

gur + pinkie is my fav

Real. I genuinely hate how many people let Astarion kill him for a sliver of approval they don't even need. Gandrel is a good man, simply looking for his daughters—the daughters Astarion kidnapped. The first time I played, I didn't have Astarion with me when I met him. I heard him out, but ultimately told him to stay away from my friend. Then, out of curiosity, I reloaded and brought Astarion with me. I didn't even get a chance to finish the conversation before he stabbed the man in the eye. Obviously, I reloaded again and let Gandrel live. I wasn't willing to let Astarion murder him over blatant racism.

And it was racism. In D&D, the Gur are a nomadic people of mostly dusk-skinned monster hunters and fortune tellers. They're private and honourable, their alignment usually good or neutral. They have a bad reputation only amongst settled people (living in cities or towns), who view them as shifty and untrustworthy solely because they don't live like the majority of the population. They're regarded as cut-throat and unclean, for no reason other than them being nomadic. You need only listen to Astarion's stereotypical description of them to know he hated them long before Cazador came along.

In Early Access there used to be a line of dialogue where, if you pushed Astarion for details about the night he turned, he admitted the Gur attacked him because they were dissatisfied with a ruling he passed regarding their people. This was because Astarion was initially written to be a corrupt magistrate. In the new release, however, that line and backstory are gone, likely because Larian was worried players would have a harder time sympathising with him—because he is outwardly racist. He even quips about eating Kobolds, because to him they're "animals". But they're not animals. They're a playable race in D&D. They're sentient. He simply sees them as lesser beings. And he feels the same way about gnomes, too. 😒

Now obviously he gets over that prejudice if you romance him as a gnome (or any small race), but some people tend to defend all of Astarion's worst traits, to an almost unhealthy degree. His racism is not excusable. It should be criticised, in the same way you can criticise his hatred of the Gur. Personally, when he told me about the attack, I told him he couldn't hold all Gur responsible. He didn't like that, of course, but I stuck to it, and by Act 3 he agreed to help save their children. In my opinion, that's the best way to help Astarion become a better person. He needs pushback and a friendly, morally good influence.

Plus, the Gur weren't wrong for hunting him. It wasn't his fault, but he did steal their children. Gandrel wasn't lying about that. If you pass a persuasion check when you meet him, he'll tell you he's looking for "the monster who stole our children", and the reason he refuses to tell you anything at first is because he doesn't want to put you in danger. He even warns you about Ethel and offers to trade supplies. He's a good man, as most of his people are. In fact, the whole tribe is extremely reasonable when interacting with you, even if you set 7000 hungry spawn loose on the Sword Coast. If you do so, Gandrel can later be found in the sewers, lamenting over his daughters.

公式の花冠アスタリオンを見て、これをずっと書きたかった🥺

🌼Dad! You're the COOLEST!

社会的マイノリティに対して辛辣な態度をしていたアスタリオンが、文字通り英雄になったと自負するエピローグ後、社会的マイノリティの権利の為に、その弁舌を生かすだろうと想像することは、そんなに非難されることでしょうか？

Which is why I have to say as an Astarion-enjoyer that it is deeply concerning to me how his racism is brushed to the side so easily both in-game and in fandom.

And yes, he is canonically racist. I'm not going to go into his gnome comments or what early drafts of the character indicated about his past, since those are slippery slopes. But trust me, his in-game attitude towards the Gur (who are stand-ins for Roma, a real-life minority ethnic group) is enough.

"But it makes sense that he would be prejudiced against the Gur because of his backstory." Yes, it does. It's understandable, even. But that does not mean it shouldn't be called out and condemned beyond one optional line about not holding a grudge against an entire ethnic group because of his tragic backstory.

Also, it's possible he may have had this mindset even before his death. Astarion has a line indicating that, when he was a magistrate he'd made some sort of ruling against the Gur that angered some of them enough to attack him in the street.

Now to be fair, Astarion's history before Cazador is deliberately kept vague, so at a certain point this becomes conjecture. I still think this is worth mentioning because if we take his words at face value, then that goes beyond benign ignorance into the active participation of subjugating a minority group.

I want to be clear that I'm not saying Larian and Astarion fans are condoning racism. Again, I am an Astarion fan. I totally understand that saying "my blorbo is a racist" is deeply uncomfortable. I know that the idea of an amoral character is more fun than actually addressing that amorality is, in fact, bad.

But maybe that's the point of Astarion. In a choose-your-adventure game, he illustrates how easy it is to do and excuse terrible things while brushing them off as not a big deal.

It's just very weird to me that the narrative goes all in on addressing actions which Astarion had little to no control over, but hardly even acknowledges the harm he's done of his own free will. Especially when a major part of his arc is about how to move forward when you are responsible for others' suffering.

TLDR;