Hello, I woke up this fine morning to discover that it’s apparently eleventh hour essay time on this old battleground. Now, I am not very good at writing propaganda. What we like in romance is probably as much a pattern as why we so often end up in the same kind of relationships. It’s quite personal. So instead, let me drop some pre-caffeinated thoughts from my ongoing quest to figure out why I don’t like romance as a genre.
A huge chunk of it, I think, boils down to that romance is so often one-sided. It is one character winning over the other, love is a prize to be won, a favor to be bestowed. It is considered romantic for one character to risk it all for the sake of another, to put all their needs last and their loved one’s front, back and center to be in the end rewarded with the ultimate prize of affection - and I can understand the appeal in wanting to be the recipient of such devotion or how receiving the „I love you“ after such labour can feel rewarding. However, I don’t enjoy love being framed like this. Of course you sometimes have to put your life on the back burner for the sake of someone you care for, but framing this as the grand gesture that wins someone over instead of something that comes after, leaves me with a bad feeling.
BG3 is of course full with stories like this, Astarion is perhaps the poster boy for putting yourself last in romance - but Wyll and Karlach as your companions have this theme going on as well. Wyll does always put Karlach first. He defies Mizora for her sake and gives her faith to accompany him back to the Hells, while she, on the other hand, complains the first chance she gets to help him. You can call her out for it of course, but her reply to this feels a little like lip service as a result. And it’s not just Karlach herself, it’s the whole way their stories are interwoven with each other. If you leave Karlach „by the river“ Wyll has a banger dialogue during the tiefling party about how he has come to realize that he cannot be the hero he wants to be as long as he is tied to Mizora. By comparison if his whole body gets changed against his will, this is given not much more consideration than Shadowheart’s new look. If he is alone in Avernus or remains the Blade of Frontiers, he will entertain you with stories about his exploits during the Epilogue part - if Karlach is around, he redirects you to her. These two could have been a power-couple, equals, two heroes supporting each other through thick and thin, and I would have been here for that … unfortunately they are not. Wyll instead becomes a supporting character in Karlach’s story and this irks me to no end. I don’t want to tell you they are a bad couple (romantic or otherwise) or what to like, but they make an excellent example for what I dislike in romance writing.
So, it probably comes as no surprise that Gale’s romance is the only one that works for me because it is also opposed to this concept of love as reward. Instead you are shown to fall for each other mutually (of course you as the player can always treat this a manipulation or whatnot) and the rest of the romance shows the two of you act as a couple who are concerned for each other, who can be each other’s greatest fans, who can disagree and actually grow closer through conflict. Here love is not a prize to be won or granted, it is the initial spark that motivates the labour a relationship takes - to put your faith in someone else and hope that you will find a better way together.
I think Gale’s romance arc is a great choice for all the other origins, but since he has been voted out for all the others (You could have had Frogweave, my fellow tadpolees! You could have had the Bombsquad, the Shadoweave and even a Bladeweave / Bloodpact showdown.) this is the final hill I can make my stand on. So because that coffee calls, let me make a pitch that hasn’t been made before. If you romance Astarion on his spawn-path, he expresses delight about having you as a partner and equal. This is nice and all, but it is somewhat tagged on, it is not shown as something that grows or is backed up with much. How nice, for a change, to give him the romance that centers partnership and equality, the acceptance of the self and the other, and makes it part of his journey. (Works the other way round too, but that’s a rant for another time.)
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