Lae’zel’s romance arc is literally everything like it’s a one night stand. It’s a two night stand but she pretends she isn’t dying to be with you again. She’s a domme. She’s a bottom. She doesn’t believe in love and doesn’t like to cuddle. She thinks you’re weak for showing interest in her. She thinks she’s weak because she can’t stop thinking about you. She wakes you up in the middle of the night and makes you duel her because she doesn’t know what else to do about being obsessed with you. She cries and confesses her devotion to you if you win. She cries and confesses her devotion to you if you lose. She will tell everyone about your sexual exploits without shame. She’s embarrassed if you try to kiss her in public. She growls at you if you stop kissing her public. She is extremely possessive of you. She wants you to be as extremely possessive of her and is the most visibly heart broken if you cheat on her. She takes half the game building up the courage to ask you to cuddle. She changes her entire perception of the world because you showed her to was ok to approach things differently. She gives you multiple terms of endearment. She’s terrified that your relationship will end after all of this is over. The climax of her romance is holding her hand.
Gale Dekarios believes in you, too. Very, very much.
Fellow Galemancers, @miradelletarot had a wonderful idea last week and put out a request for a ‘Gale-Themed Rewards Chart’, which would serve as motivation for her to meet her weekly exercise goal for a month. (Several of us were inspired by the idea, so I’m just the first to create one and there may be more coming from some talented artists in the community! )
Given that Gale himself famously said “Generosity is always a noble virtue,” Miradelle and I wanted to share the chart with everyone here in case some Gale motivation will help you out in some way!
Use it for whatever goals you like—big or small, no limit—and to help motivate you, as you complete your weekly goals you’ll get a special audio reward from Gale himself 💕 (But please note! You are ONLY allowed to access each reward as you complete each weekly goal!!! Professor Dekarios does NOT approve of cheating 😂) Gale is certain to be more and more impressed with you as you progress through your goals, and who knows what that will lead to…? 👀
A high-res JPEG file can be downloaded here, or a PDF file can be downloaded here. Both are formatted to fit on an 8.5”x11” sheet so you can easily print them out. Hope you all enjoy!
Edit: this is a redo of a previous post for more clarity.
Gale is a good man with a lot of darkness inside him. On one level, literal darkness with the Karsite Weave rotting him from the inside. On the other, the darkness of ambition, and how it led to his current predicament.
On first meeting, Gale is kind and sweet and amiable. None of this is fake; he is genuinely all of these things, but he is also cunning enough to manipulate the feelings they elicit in others to his advantage. When he is in the stone, he's essentially helpless. He requires someone good to free him, and then he requires them again because without help his orb will overpower him. He makes himself useful immediately by volunteering as camp cook. Becoming indespensible is his means of survival.
Gale will approve of all the good things you do. It's difficult not to gain his approval to be honest, and then he confesses he needs your help. Fine, you think. He's a kind, sweet man who likes children and hates to see anyone innocent get hurt. This also serves a dual purpose in that while he has deemed you to be trustworthy, you've done the same for him and that makes his request for help, something that could potentially put you on the back foot, more palatable.
So you're helping each other. Gale has to be needed, because he doesn't feel worth anything otherwise. This arrangement is mutually beneficial! Then he tells you about the orb. Takes your hand, presses it to his heart, shows you the reality. Gale is hosting something monstrous, besides the tadpoles you share. It could level a city. He is scared and kind so you help. You like him. How could you not?
Gale is a good man who is deeply insecure at heart. And I think it's really interesting that he can be persuaded to stay if you massacre the grove. He hates himself for it but he will stay because ultimately, he needs the party. You persuade him by talking about how strong you are together, and he agrees that there is little stronger than survival instinct. Unlike Wyll and Karlach, he doesn't just leave. I think this is where the dark side of his ambitious nature comes in. Ambition is neutral, I think, because it can do good things, and terrible. He's travelling with someone powerful and who will do what they must to achieve their goals.
Even in Moonrise Towers on a good run, he considers creating a shadow lantern. He ascertains he can use it for the good of the party even if it is an objectively bad thing to do, so he has no qualms about it.
He's angry at Mystra for ordering him to kill himself, quite rightly. I'd be angry too. His motivations are not 100% pure, in that if you say essentially the 'fuck morality become a god' option in the act 3 scene he is SO HAPPY someone understands him! And it's the ambition talking. He is as blinded by it as Astarion is for power and both must be talked down and grounded and made to see sense.
This is what I mean when I say Gale is dark. I don't mean 'bad' even though he will do terrible things if he believes the ends justify the means. He is human and complex and even with the darkness in his own head and heart (the 'dread altar' as he so poetically put it) he is a wonderful, worthy, deserving man who only needs someone to love him and show him that more power is not the answer. Love is.
i think 'groomed' in the mystra context is a little bit like 'groomed to become a leader' in the sense of being prepared for a role. the elements of a huge power imbalance and manipulation make that negative where it could've been a positive thing. so instead, 'gale was groomed to become mystra's chosen' becomes 'gale is groomed to die due to his folly'. not getting into the pitfalls of being a chosen, but that's how i see it mostly. i suppose he was also a child at one point there and that then brings in the other definition. but mostly the former. i think.
That's another good and complicated facet in this complex issue! The difficult thing is everyone disagrees on the exact definition and parameters of Gale as a victim of grooming, if they believe that at all.
If you believe BG3 ignores 5e canon and Mystra revealed herself to him as a child, then it’s Child Grooming. If you believe she revealed herself when he was a late teen or young adult and was his mentor first, then it’s Teacher-Student Grooming. If you believe he was a consenting adult for most of their relationship, then you get a thorny kind of Adult Sexual/Emotional Grooming thing, which is extremely hard to pin down because we weren’t there to see all the details, and Gale isn’t being open about how much he consented at certain steps of his relationship with her. He may not even personally know how much he did or didn't consent himself, if he hasn't processed the trauma yet.
We can’t even agree on a timeline as a fandom. Of course we're not going to agree on a particular "brand" of grooming.
So it gets fuzzy, especially because no two “Gale was groomed” interpretations are the same, and that’s just among people who aren’t fighting over whether he was groomed.
The other difficult thing is that for most of the word's history (assuming "groom" was coined around the late 1700s), the use of “groom” as a verb meant either the care of an animal, plant, or location (grooming a horse, a cat grooming itself, grooming a lawn), or it meant personal hygiene (grooming your nails, your hair, etc), or it meant “to prepare a person for a role" without as many of the negative connotations (i.e., a politician grooming his successor, a situation where the person being groomed likely is consenting and finds no issue with the arrangement).
So, hate to say it, but there's a scenario where Gale could admit he was groomed--he was groomed to be Mystra's Chosen, a role he may have willingly walked into (kind of related to your point as well). That complicates the "Gale was groomed" narrative, doesn't it? Where does victimhood lie?
Apparently the term "grooming" didn’t have sexual connotations until around the 1980s.
Like not to be all Academic on Main but the Oxford English Dictionary, which tracks the (relative) earliest known uses for definitions, says the definition to prepare or coach a person for a career or role (paraphrased) has been around since the 1830s, while to gain the trust of and influence over a person for sexual abuse, exploitation, trafficking, drug-dealing, terrorism, etc (paraphrased) first came around 1984.
Granted the OED doesn't always find the exact first usage but the gap between 1830 and 1980 is pretty telling.
So this could not only be a language divide, but a generational divide. The concept of grooming as a sexually/emotionally predatory thing is pretty new by language standards. Most people playing BG3 would know the concept of grooming-as-predatory if they grew up in an English-speaking country, but at what point did they learn that definition? It will obviously vary.
These days it's a buzzword, thanks to all the shit coming out about Nickelodeon and child actors and celebrities and so on, so younger millennials and Gen-Z and beyond might be a bit more "trigger happy" about using the term than older millennials and others for whom the term is still relatively new and hard to grasp. Also, as completely different aside, I think people are quick to diagnose/label based on vibes, and that's part of the problem with all the fighting too, because how do you compare vibes?
Language is and always will be slippery. I guess in the end I just wish people would be more open about explaining why they go with a specific term, or why they disagree, without attacking people or completely dismissing whole narratives/arcs/experiences simply because it “doesn’t fit the definition.”
As a final related but side note, I think the biggest thing that bothers me about people erasing the Gale-as-grooming-victim is that it inevitably harms actual victims of grooming by insinuating that it's a scenario that could never possibly happen. But that has less to do with the weirdness of language and more about how people view trauma, abuse, and victimhood.
I genuinely think it could encompass all those things, and does at different points. Idk maybe it's because I can see myself in its different facets. I think re: where does victimhood lie it's very similar to like, Greek mythology and how people go into something but are tricked because that's the nature of gods. I think there's also an element of feeling unable to refuse advances, especially with Gale because if he does does he lose his power? I like your response and I am offering my own perspective only, not trying to sway anyone else. I think it's kind of amazing that it can be interpreted so differently because it shows how, in my opinion, well written Gale is as a character.
Yeah in all honesty the fact that we’re all so passionate about him and can find evidence for various interpretations and can have complicated discussions is a sign of Gale being a complex, nuanced, rich sort of character. Like, you don’t see people arguing this much about a flat, one dimensional character. So in a way, it’s a terrible sort of compliment to Gale and his writer(s). Congratulations, you wrote a character that is so very close to being like a real actual living and breathing human that no one can unanimously agree about a single thing about him 😂
When companions reject to do the love test with you...
... they are not pulling back any punches xD Here are the burns you can bestow upon Tav by asking someone with low approval to join you for the love test.
Shadowheart
Partnered - It can't hurt, I suppose - unless you embarrass me. Then you might find yourself hurting in a whole manner of ways. (half-joking warning to a lover.)
High Approval - Love, is it? I hadn't realised I'd bowled you over that much. Give it a try, then - impress me. (playful)
Positive Approval - I say you'd better start looking for your true love, because it's not me.
Negative Approval - What do I say? Melon... donkey... sunrise? Whichever words will get you to leave me out of this.
Lae'zel
Partnered - Yes. But be warned - I play to win.
High Approval - Chk. I don't see the harm.
Positive Approval - Not today. Or any other time, come to think of it.
Negative Approval - I'd sooner slice off both my hands and feed them to a rabid boar.
Karlach
Partnered - Yes, yes, yes! Let's do it!
High Approval - Hah! Absolutely. This is gonna be great fun.
Positive Approval - Mmm, I don't think so. Seems a little... I don't know. Just no.
Negative Approval - With you? Please. That story's written in stone, and it ends with you on one side of the world and me on the other.
Astarion
Partnered - Oh my love, how could I say no?
High Approval - Oh I'm the one you love? Well my dear, how could I say no?
Positive Approval - A sweet gesture, but all... this? It's not really for me. (refusing to take a 'love test' from a dryad.)
Negative Approval - Wait, I'm the one you love? Oh no - oh that's so sad. (shocked, laughing - someone he didn't like just asked Astarion to take a love test with them) But no, there's absolutely no way this is happening. (amused, but emphatically refusing to take a 'love test' from a dryad)
Wyll
Partnered - I'm more than game. Let's do it.
High Approval - Why not? Could be good for a laugh.
Positive Approval - I don't think so. But I appreciate the offer.
Negative Approval - No. Just no.
Minsc
Approval over 50 - Minsc is flattered, but surely you must know that his heart is already of the hamster shape. And twice as fuzzy. (player has just propositioned Minsc to have their prospects as lovers be estimated by a dryad - tone is affectionate)
Approval under 50 - ...Boo? Does our friend know another Minsc? One that they might be courting, perhaps? (player has just propositioned Minsc to have their prospects as lovers be estimated by a dryad - tone is dumbfounded, a stage whisper to Boo)
Jaheira
Approval over 50 - I'm flattered, but pick another. Watching the dryad make you cry will be entertainment enough.
Approval under 50 - Hm? Oh, the dryad is comely enough - but you? Don't poke at questions you don't want the answer to, cub.
Gale
Partnered - Thoroughly magical. Let's have at it. (enthusiastic)
High Approval - Well, if you insist... (slight hesitation)
Positive Approval - Perhaps you're overestimating my affection towards you a tad? You'd better seek a partner-in-embarrassment elsewhere. (unconvinced)
Negative Approval - No thank you. Sounds as appealing as milking cottage cheese directly from a geriatric cow. (ruthlessly disinterested)
Minthara
Partnered - I know my heart - and yours - better than this creature ever will. But we can indulge it if you wish.
High Approval - Fine. But if this creature can truly look into my heart, it best be careful what it reveals.
Positive Approval - The creature need not look into our hearts to see that I barely tolerate your existence.
Negative Approval - No. And if you refer to me as 'my dear' again, I will cut out your tongue.
Halsin
Partnered - Gladly. We each know the other's heart to the fullest - there is little to fear here.
Partnered (secondary) - I thought you may have bestowed the honour on someone else. But if this is what you wish, so be it.
High Approval - I suppose we've braved greater dangers together than public embarrassment. Do as you wish.
Positive Approval - You flatter me... but also overestimate our bond, I think. Perhaps there is another you can turn to.
Negative Approval - Nature is my true love. You, I merely tolerate. (scornful)
quickly and messily put together Elias' outfits, god drawing clothes is so annoying and not my forte RAAAAAH!! plus a little doodle about Eli and his hair and how Gale likes it <it's very fluffy and soft and curly, but Eli finds it annoying and used to straighten it with oils and what-not and pushing it back>
Oo, okay. I’m looking at God Gale again. Anyone know why his colors were chosen as blue and silver? There had to be a reason for the color choice right? Not purple, because that’s Mystra’s color, I assume, but why blue?
Mystra's colour isn't purple, it's blue and silver/white. She also favours crimson and gold.
Why do so many people assume it's purple? Is it because of the purplish hue that her magic aura sometimes has? Because it's actually iridescent like an aurora borealis and purple is just one of its many colours.
Once the magical effects are removed she isn't even wearing a single bit of purple, they gave her a black and gold dress reminiscent of the 2nd Mystra. This is very interesting considering the Mystra of BG3 is her 4th incarnation and she is an amalgamation of the previous Mystras and Mystril, but there have been hints that the 2nd Mystra is the dominant side and the way that Larian dressed and wrote her is more proof of this.
The 3rd Mystra (Midnight) wore blue and silver/white. Her followers (if they want to dress in her honour) and her clergy also dress in blue and silver/white.
Her symbols are a single four point blue star (Mystril's), seven blue-silver stars with eight points (one for each school of magic) encircling a flowing red mist, or a single eight point blue star.
Among her favoured animals there are blue jays and white cats, dogs, horses, donkeys, mules, with mismatched or blue eyes. One of the special abilities that she gives to her Chosen is the silver fire... There are more examples, but this has gotten too long already.
In conclusion: Gale doesn't wear purple because of Mystra, it's just his favoured colour / the colour associated with him as a mortal. God Gale is a different story. Maybe the change in colour palette to that of Mystra's is a way of showing that he is no longer the Gale we know and that his greatest ambition now is to steal Mystra's domain and become the new god of magic, maybe it's only an aesthetic choice to accompany the storms/lightning theme, maybe it's both, maybe is something else entirely... Only Larian knows.
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