They Let Me Be Polyamorous in the Video Game

Content warnings: Discussion of anti-polyamorous prejudice and discrimination, and video-game fantasy violence.

Spoiler warning: This whole post contains spoilers for Baldur's Gate III's romance narratives, particularly Halsin and Lae'zel's.

Not feeling like reading the whole post? Skip to the end for my Blog-postly Photo Roundup.

Earlier this week, I broke up with my long term partner^[1], Lae'zel, after learning that her extreme possessiveness was not in fact fun sexy kink and was instead 100% genuine - she was highly monogamous and did not want me to pursue sexual or romantic relationships with others.

We had been together for around a whopping 85 IRL hours of gameplay.

In some ways, it was a difficult choice. In others, not so much. Let me take you back to the start.

Lae'zel and I began our intimate relationship after we had valiantly slain the leaders of the Goblin Camp together, stopping them from massacring our Tiefling friends. She approached me and told me my prowess in battle had "drove her to madness" and she longed to "feast on [my] flesh". I, being oh so very excited to have sex in the video game, was like "fuck yeah, bring it on!!!!"

And thus we entered a very passionate and sexually charged relationship. No one else in the game propositioned me, and the game didn't give me any dialogue options to proposition anyone else.

I assumed the game was doing some sort of "well you're dating someone now and monogamy is a thing so obviously you can't date anyone else and no one else is going to mention that maybe they're interested in you!" Which was really very frustrating but also kind of expected. The bar is regretably very low when it comes to polyamorous representation.^[2]

Despite this frustration though, I must admit Lae'zel grew on me greatly. Her character arc throughout the game is really quite excellent, and at one point she challenged me to a one on one duel to prove I was worthy of her affections, which was uhhhhhhhhhhhhh hot. ahem. anyhow.

Whilst Lae'zel hadn't said anything explicitly about wanting to be monogamous, she would heavily imply it quite a bit. And I went along with it, turning down casual sexual or romantic encounters with minor characters, because I wanted to have a cool romance plotline in the video game and it seemed like none of the other major romance storylines were options. It was Lae'zel or bust.

And I liked Lae'zel. But I didn't like being monogamous!!

Enter: Halsin. 350 year old druid, the hunkiest elf you'll ever lay eyes on, and someone who until the final third of the game was so preoccupied with lifting an evil shadow curse that he evaded any and all attempts to flirt with him.

But now that I had removed the curse... at long last, I had another main character confess their affections to me and ask me if I wanted to smash/fall in love/etc! I was kind of in shock!!! The only other people who had propositioned me were literal demons from hell trying to cause mischief !!!

I, roleplaying as the good honest hero, of course told Halsin that I was partnered with Lae'zel. The devil I had turned down the night prior had responded to this by saying "teehee, I won't tell her if you won't!!!"^[7] , and so my hopes were not high.

but THEN:

I'M SORRY ?!?!??!?!?!??!?!? CONSENSUAL NON-MONOGAMY ???????? IN MY VIDEO GAME ?!?!??!?????????? I get the opportunity to ask Lae'zel if we're monogamous or not, rather than just assuming??!?!??!! Fwoahhhh !!!!!

In response to Halsin, you can say something along the lines of "Huh, so you're polyamorous?", to which he gives this gorgeous response:

🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

Following this, I brought up the topic with Lae'zel with no preamble:

And it was at this point she confirmed my 85 hours' worth of fears: girlie is NOT down for polyamory.

And so I went back to talk to Halsin, intending to turn him down. Lae'zel and I had been together for so long !!!! I had almost completed the entire game with her !!!! I did want to see how her romance storyline ended !!!!!!

But then I spoke with him, and the dialogue options were as follows^[8]:

AND I JUST. GIRLLLLLLLLLLLLL. that third option right there. "She made her choice, now I'm making my own - I want to be with you." PLEASEEEEEEEEEE. this is SOOOOOOO. REAL !!!!

This is what life is like when you're in relationships with people !!!!!!! Everyone has their own preferences, desires, ideals, ways of existing. People are so complicated and messy !!! Sometimes we align, sometimes we don't. You can try to find a middle ground, but sometimes you hit a wall. In cases like this, you can choose to compromise on your own desires to stay with someone, or you can decide that a situation just won't work and carve your own path.

And so - after a frantic pace around the kitchen where I regaled my housemates with news of the choice I had before me - I let go of the neat and tidy game narrative where I was in one single monogamous relationship for the entirety of the game, and chose Halsin.

I clicked that option, and it just felt so right. I was like. Holy shit ??? I'm polyamorous now?!!?!?

Like, I wasn't even dating multiple people, or having sex with multiple people. I had broken up with Lae'zel, so I was only dating one person: Halsin. But for me, this wasn't about being actively polyamorous in the literal sense - it was about playing a character that had a polyamorous identity. One that was acknowledged, celebrated, and not grounded in stereotypes of infidelity and chastised sexual promiscuity - as the little representation of polyamory in video games (and broader media) so often is.

The subsequent sex scene with Halsin ended with me crying a lot.

In real life, I identify really strongly as someone who is polyamorous as an orientation as opposed to as a choice. This is a big topic of discussion within polyamorous circles - some people feel like their being polyamorous is a sexual/romantic orientation in the same way that being gay, ace, bi, etc. is; it's just how they are. Others see polyamory just as a decision they make about their life - either as a lifelong choice, or just for the particular stage or relationship that they're currently in.

I'm strongly in the former category. Monogamy is one of the social norms I understand the least on an emotional level. I genuinely really struggle to understand why people are monogamous because I cannot see any benefits it would have to me, personally, beyond reduced social stigma and an easier ability to navigate a society built for the nuclear family.

As someone who can experience romantic and sexual attraction to multiple people at once - as well as having a general desire to have touch-based and other types of relationships outside of the standard range of "platonic" even without being attracted to people - I cannot imagine intentionally entering into a relationship that would limit my ability to choose how my relationships with other people progress.

I can intellectually understand how someone who doesn't experience any desire to have those relationships with multiple people might identify as monogamous for that reason, but that is so foreign to me that I struggle understanding it on an emotional level. And monogamous people who do experience desire to have those relationships with multiple people and then still pursue monogamy confuse me even more.

Anyway. All this to say: I being polyamorous is an intrinsic part of my identity. Even if I'm only dating one person or not dating anyone at all, the freedom that being polyamorous gives me to custom-create relationships with others is incredibly important to me.

So having the ability to do this suddenly appear in this game that I am so in love with, in a way that felt so true-to-life in its toughness and the way it alters your relationships with the other characters..... this was kind of incredible.

I was a bit in awe. Realistic, affirming polyamorous representation is so rare !!!!! I've never experienced anything like this before in art !!! I love this game so much !!!!!!!

After we had sex, I had a conversation with Halsin about our relationship. He told me: "You should feel free to roam as your heart desires. Let others know the happiness of being with you."

And that is the story of how I became polyamorous in the video game :)

PS: I dug back through my bluesky and found this post from the very start of the game, where out of nowhere I had dialogue options to flirt with Halsin (who I'd only just met). Very amusing in hindsight 😭

The Blog-Postly Photo Roundup

Glimpses into my life since the last blog post

New Raincoat

After over a decade of use of my old kathmandu raincoat which has deteriorated to the point of no longer being water resistant, let alone water proof, I bought myself this wonderful new raincoat from aussie company Mama Movement! Look how colourful it is !!!!!!

Flyscreen

After a year of constantly monitoring whether or not my window was open wide enough for the cats to escape out of, I finally executed my master plan to flyscreen my metal windowframe using t-rex tape^[10]. I can now open my window without a second thought, and the cats love it!!

Easter

For Easter, I had a lovely day with Dannie's family - I hadn't been over to have a meal with them since getting COVID in August 2023, so this was really lovely for us all! Going to their place meant I was also blessed to see BELOVED SAM !!!!!!!!!!

Back at home, we had our own Easter hijinks, with Geo hiding 12 of the small rabbits (seen below sliding down the back of their parent easter chicken) around the house. Much frantic searching ensued^[9] !!!

Fruit Ripening Knowledge!!

I had a lovely time visiting my friends Corbin and Sam a few weeks ago, and found this handy little MinuteEarth magnet on their fridge that tells you whether your fruit will ripen further or not!! I now have this image favourited on my phone and have consulted it multiple times. So good !!

Hair Update

My hair continues to get longer!!! I have been so so in love with it at every stage in this journey of growing it out. I'll actually be talking more about this in a future blog post about my relationship to femininity - hopefully the next post? We shall see

Our Cats Remain in Love

My housemates made a reaction image

Shoot us your best captions in the comments

here's one from us:

Finally...

In one of my few ventures onto instagram, I saw this poetic set of anti-fascist provocations - words by Aleah Black and art by Cedric Michael Cox. There's more than I shared here, but these are some of the ones that I have been actively working on in recent times, connecting strongly with, or hadn't thought about in depth before now.

I'd recommend having a look at the other slides on the original post too! Which ones resonate with you?

Until next time, friends! Leave a comment telling me what your relationship is to monogamy/polyamory/ambiamory/relationship structures!❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

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