#bg3 lb

[dorindameddler]

just absolutely annihilated

[stonesense]

help

[ganondorf]

imagine being gale and fumbling a goddess and then she sends gandalf the gay to tell you to kill yourself

[emtmercy]

This is such a funny L for Astarion like please help me lesbian lute player you’re my only hope

[xinakwans]

i breathed in gale’s direction and he approved of it

[feluka]

btw since i had my reservations at the beginning: my verdict on astarion is that he's a well written (and delightfully performed) character and that people are just weird about him. like, based on the portrayals i saw of him on the internet i expected him to be an insufferably over the top character who makes sexual references every other sentence hazbin hotel style but turns out he's a reasonable and believable character with natural-flowing dialogue and people are just weird lol. ('reasonable' here refers to the way he's written - i'm aware he's unhinged as a person)

it's a shame because i feel like whenever there's an honest portrayal of victims of sexual violence, fandom tends to make such an... uncomfortable spectacle out of it?

like for example, when people talk about how his eagerness to initiate something with your character is born from his trauma, that's definitely true, but fandom's portrayal of it makes it sound like he's throwing himself at everyone left and right every second of the day every day and then they're like 'omg it's so sad how he's doing that.. his trauma..' like are you sure that isn't mostly you being weird about him 😭 because he literally never propositioned my character until the game throws you the 'hey if you missed the chance to romance a character earlier or if you weren't aware of your options, here's your chance' campfire scene where literally every single character propositions you. and when i declined he never did again 🤷‍♂️

and some of his unpleasant behavior literally can't be excused by his past at all and is just him being a little shit which is also a fun aspect of his character that's worth considering. idk it doesn't sit well with me that people are turning his whole deal into an 'omg my dark broody vampire prince' instead of. engaging with the character seriously.

[cityandking]

so I started this new game…..

[oflights]

thinking about this excellent post again from @messiahzzz with great tags added by @beautifulcrownobserves and i remembered that, in my last playthrough, when we talked to the emperor right before confronting the brain for the final time and he was like "we need another plan", a crown-neutral gale reminded everyone that he can just use the orb and end it.

and the emperor's like (i just looked it up to get it right): "Your hubris drives you even now. You failed before, I cannot trust that you will not fail again."

he's straight up like "nah you didn't kill yourself last time so i don't trust you, pussy" which is fucking rude first of all lmao. but it also sets up "hubris" (which again, in this very instance, is really only a problem because mystra's mad about it) as juxtaposed to suicide. i feel like this response is probably dependent on other factors (i feel like the emperor was all for it for origin gale, and may have suggested it?? but i can't remember) and it's obviously not true, gale can go the fully neutral route, leave the crown, and still survive and be okay.

but it's still weird how the game pits these motivations against each other. and in the scene the emperor's talking about, gale doesn't "fail" to kill himself because of the crown; he sees the crown and then he's like "all right, time for me to do this" and then ultimately decides not to because it will kill his companions. that's significant to me! he's not like "wait i can't do this, i need to see what that crown's about" and he's not even like "wait i can't kill myself that would be crazy", it's really about the people around him.

when he starts on the road to the crown, you can talk him out of it purely by helping him with his self-worth. the crown or obtaining godhood isn't what keeps him from being willing to detonate the orb, either, because he'll still do that if it's needed. gale lives, as himself, once he's convinced that he's worth that. his good ending isn't really about overcoming hubris in the sense that he learns his place, which is the lesson the gods want you to learn about it. instead, he learns that his existence as a mortal is pretty great, and he can still do amazing things, and he doesn't have to die or ascend to make the world a better place.