Femstarion would be popular because she would introduce herself as promiscuous. There would be no misrepresentation or misleading. People who like experienced women would sign up from the start.

The problem with Shart is that she explicitly says she's not the third wheel type in act 2, and then later if you ask she reveals she's actually been daydreaming of having sex with Halsin for an extended period of time, and disapproves if you don't have sex with him. So it feels like she was misleading you earlier in the game, and most players who signed up for a usual waifu are surprised by her behavior that contradicts her prior words.

I think ultimately Shart would still be the most popular waifu even if Astarion were female, because more men want a traditional waifu over an experienced waifu, though it would be relatively close. Most normies are not far enough in the game to learn that Shart is actually a poly queen, so the same situation that exists right now would still exist.

Female Gale and female Wyll are both interesting too. Female Wyll would be insanely popular. The traditional virgin princess who wants to marry you and dances with you would be a smash hit.

>>529851157
It's one of my gripes with the game. Even in act 1 before you know about the curse people are still like "Blimey!....anyway..." when they discover her religion.

The excuse is that you're facing illithids so you need all the help you can get, but that's actually not true. There are things that are worse or just as bad, and a few examples off the top of my head would be sharrans and cryic worshipers. If I was in a life or death situation and I was recruiting allies, I would still skip sharrans, cryic worshipers, and a few others.

Then when she speaks positively of the shadow cruse, tries to murder party members and lie about it to you, goes on and on about how much she wants to murder Aylin and by extension LL inn, how her main goal in life is to become a Justiciar, there are so many red flags that scream "stop this person", but people ignore the sensible realistic thing to do since it's a game and if they don't like the outcome they can just reload, and we know she's a companion that probably has a redemption story so we do things that are nonsensical and in fact outright stupid for the sake of seeing the companion content in a videogame.