MANIC PIXIE GIRLBOSS WARLORD
Can videogames teach us self-confidence?
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I’m learning to be more assertive. I have an app for it. It’s called Baldur’s Gate 3 and it’s a Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game (RPG).
Much of RPG gameplay is about selecting the correct dialogue options to gain the approval of your companions, just like in real life. But, as the name suggests, role-playing games are also about building and playing as a character, who may make completely different choices to you, because they are a completely different person. They may be an orc, a powerful warlock, or capable of doing winged eyeliner.
Usually, I play these games as a moralizing nerd with a high intelligence but low physical strength and no charm. And my RPG character has those traits too.
In the course of a normal game, I rescue helpless children. I disarm booby traps using logic. I listen politely to the needlessly expositional dialogue of NPCs. But my current run of Baldur’s Gate 3 is different. I am playing as an absolute bastard. And my god, it’s liberating.
In my real life as a woman-style character, I find I usually need to express myself in a way which doesn’t come across as too aggressive or too soft or too clever or too dumb or too flirty or too cold, in case it makes people annoyed/jealous/horny/a homicidal combination of the three. But now I am discovering I can directly ask people for what I want? I can manipulate them with lies and deceit? I can bludgeon them with a mace?
Suddenly everything is so easy. Characters meet my charismatic wickedness with respect and comradeship. People do whatever my avatar — Blue — wants.
NPCs praise my ruthlessness. Trembling, they gift me their rucksacks full of sausages. Perhaps all these years I’ve been holding myself back by trying too hard to be “nice”.
If this sounds like a story of feminist empowerment, let me be clear: I am only playing as this character because I am trying to impress a man. A fictional man, but a man nonetheless: romancable vampire companion Astarion. The problem is, Astarion likes it when you’re rude, mean, or doing a massacre. I find it hard to do two of these things. I sometimes do the other by accident because I misread social cues.
But I really do want to flirt with Astarion and so, I set about doing crimes. Satisfyingly, every time you do something in the game which a character likes, a little icon appears in the corner of the screen saying “SO-AND-SO APPROVES.” I am mean to a bard about her bad lyrics. ASTARION APPROVES. I throw a lump of shit at a goblin’s face. ASTARION APPROVES. I explain what I’ve been doing all day on the phone to my parents. MUM DISAPPROVES. That kind of thing.
Since the main aim of my evil playthrough is to make out with Astarion, I have downloaded an extensive “Astarion Romancing Guide”: a 10,000 word Google Doc compiled by thirsty Tumblr users which meticulously lists all the actions you must perform to gain Astarion’s approval. It advises me to do a variety of evils:
“Choose to torture Liam”
“When Asharak asks you to say a word to the Tiefling Children, say ‘Bad news children, you are all going to die’"
“Poke Nettie’s bird to death”
This is pickup artist manual The Game for repressed Buffy fans.
The more I follow the guide, the stronger I become. I am empowered. I am succeeding. I am totally evilpilled and ready to start deceitmaxxing in my real life. That is until my partner, Jon, walks in on me killing healer Nettie’s bird.
“This is the worst thing I’ve ever done in a game,” I say.
Jon is a little hurt to see me playing alone as we are in the middle of our own playthrough together. Our character is an orc bard called Tony who is extremely strong, kind, charismatic and stupid as a sofa.
“I thought you said it was fun learning to be assertive,” says Jon, with a combination of condescension and malice which would make Blue proud. “Besides, Astarion is going to make you do much worse things than this.”
Within two hours, I am killing an unarmed family who are trying to hide from me in a cave. Jon stands looking over my shoulder, shaking his head.
“Tony wouldn’t do this.”
“You don’t understand. I have to do this. The Astarion girlies told me to.” I say, actual tears in my eyes. I am troubled by a suspicion that the new ‘confident’ me is just a puppet controlled by a hivemind of a thousand horny maniacs.
Reluctantly, I finish killing the demon people. JON DISAPPROVES. I decide to sack off my newfound assertiveness and play as low-status Zoë again.
Thanks for reading HIGH RESOLUTION GORE & GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, a newsletter by UK-based writer Zoë Tomalin. If you enjoyed this edition, please share it on social media, ask a friend to subscribe, or drop a tip here.
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