I’m Going To Say This One Time, And One Time Only: I Think Mizu And Taigen Would Be Cute Together.

they are so cute 😔❤️ cr FLampsy

notes and thoughts on the Nine-Fingers Keene tag dive

First, the unpretty Sheets chart:

For a deeper explanation of how I break down the roles, you can see this post here; and here is a comparison of NF's tag accuracy (percentage of main + side works) vs the rest I've done:

Raphael: 75% | Nocturne: 71% | Nine-Fingers Keene: 62% | Aylin/Isobel: 56% | Minthara: 54% | Alfira: 44% | Jaheira: 36% | Araj: ~27%

Please note that at this point, Minthara's is ~9 months out of date, the rest between then and now. Take these as a general baseline versus a hard truth.

Similarly to Nocturne, Act 3 easy-ish-to-miss Nine-Fingers Keene steps neatly out of the broader fandom spotlight and into the hands of people who actually like her.

Actually - I believe a lot of people genuinely like the women of BG3. But I also believe people do not care about them, which becomes really obvious with the amount of reverse-thought-criming in some characters' tags (Jaheiraaaa). AO3 users writing about Astele Keene, especially in her more recent works, like her and they care about her.

The minor role tags were in large part due to: a character, usually Tav, has a connection to the seedy underbelly of the city, and they need to call in a favor from NF. They will meet with her and/or discuss her and/or think about her for a few paragraphs.

Nine-Fingers' main ship was, predictably, with Jaheira. Her second largest fic-status was no tagged ship at all. The other ship-fics were individual one-shots with various characters (no repeat ships).

Regardless of relationship status, she's a girl's girl for sure:

This is subdivided, so works tagged both 'gen' and 'f/f' for example are counted as one of each; 76% of her works are not only ff, 76% of her works include the ff category.

And if we change this to only include works that actively ship Nine-Fingers:

Something else interesting is that Nine-Finger's tag is small enough that I could screenshot the entirety of my Roles column:

(rotated so it's oldest -> newest by post date. main, side, minor, mistag)

We can see her early tags were all side, background, a few mistags; the most recent works being on the other end of the spectrum, almost entirely fics truly about Nine-Fingers; and a pretty smooth gradient in the middle.

I am not going to lie, at first I was like yay looks like people are finally learning to tag :-) but, what this more likely indicates is just the fading popularity of a two-year-old game -- especially with newer shinier fandoms pulling audience from the bg3 pool. Users posting more recent BG3 fanfic are primarily those still standing in the now-settled dust, writing about favorite characters/settings/lore, with a drop in the general kind of 'this is my Tav's epic love story from beginning to end (with every NPC mentioned tagged as well)!' written and posted on a new-fandom high. I imagine that brand of enthusiastic-cum-careless writers are probably posting the same but with Rook now? Sympathy to my Veilguard mutuals.

Like I mentioned above, it's been almost a year since I posted my first Minthara infographic. It will be interesting to go back this summer and see what's changed for her as well, and if the above holds up for an unavoidable Act 1 character like her versus a more missable, late-game char like Nine-Fingers.

romancing minthara as karlach is so Fucking Cute

it's the black cat/golden retriever dynamic everyone loves

but also karlach my beloved you gotta get you a wife who's ready to swan dive into hell with or without you

Stop 🛑 ✋

I need to know who in your ship only sleeps with one pillow and who needs a minimum of 4 carefully placed pillows or their body snaps in half/shatters

Beach day!

tumblrinas are frequently secretly fond of each other

RIP Minthara, you would have loved spreading misinformation on twitter

Have you ever been in love?

Yes.

How did it end?

It hasn't.

‘playing a bard in bg3 is so cool and fun like you’-

*a bard in combat*

The European stereotype of American ice cube consumption is sadly accurate as I’ve just realized I have at least 28 ice cubes in my water cup. The Europeans would kick me out if I ever tried to cross the pond, I fear.