#Not even my Tav

[matcha-x-matcha]

my friend: you can actually romance Minthara if you just knock her out, but you could also just kill her and take all her stuff-

Me: Good idea! GALE! FIREBALL!

My friend: well it's not-

Me: *kills Minthara* WOO! Stealing!

[little-red-fool]

Astarion you’re not the most dangerous thing in this two-man party.

Part 2 (CW: body horror)

[bara-izu]

First night of freedom.

[araneapeixes]

Uh Oh....the ladies have entered their 4th pint stage

[kelsh]

“You were a friend when we needed it, and we won’t forget that. Should you ever need it, you have family in Baldur’s Gate.” - Zevlor

[illithiddies]

revelations from the past few minutes in my game

halsin knows astarion is a vampire almost the moment he finally joins your party

girl WHAT

[chipchopclipclop]

one wizard and a weirdly clingy mosquito, what happens next will warm your heart

[lillotte17]

When your cat vampire decides that he's being neglected.

[voltaical-art]

whadya mean he didnt tell you he loves you??? his eyes literally went soft when he looked ur way...

[neckromantics]

It's literally so funny that I wasn't thinking and wrote about giving Astarion silver jewelry. It's something i could see Tav doing. Imagine buying it for him just because you think it's pretty? Coming back to camp all proud about it, and he's cautiously holding it in his palm like, "Love, is this real silver?"

And you're like :D "maybe?" And at first, he thinks it ISNT because he touches all over it, puts it on eventually, and it doesn't do anything to hurt him. The two of you nearly forget about it altogether. But then post-tadpole you chase after him on the docks to find him curled up in the shade, hiding away, with the necklace thrown off to the side and scorch marks on his skin that aren't due to the sun? The way you rip off your matching set like it burns you before sitting down a little ways off to wait with him.

You apologize to him a million times for this later, and he plasters on an all too amused smile. Insists it's fine before making some sort of joke about all the ways you could make it up to him. He truly isn't holding it against you– it simply slipped both of your minds until it was too late. There’s something there behind his eyes, though. Something so crestfallen. Sad. Don't look at me.

You'd be marching your ass to the nearest jeweler to get the stones from the last pair re-set into a new metal that isn't going to eat through his skin this time. You pay the guy triple in your haste to make things even a little bit right with your love. And the look on his face when you present it to him on your knees, full flourish, with apologies falling from your lips like he hadn't already forgiven you? As if he was ever upset with you to begin with? He pulls you into a kiss, nearly lifting you off the floor by the collar of your shirt in his haste to get you to shut up.

Oh, and he loves the new jewelry set just as much. You never make a silly mistake like that again, though, that's for sure.

[danikatze]

[ID in alt text]

Guys he's so pretty..

[gvalesdraws]

what hides beneath the snake's skin

[redundantz]

hands

love scene challenge

[kozh-lucium]

Your tentacles are looking wonderfully moist this evening

I’m so done with Gale. He’s ridiculous.

[bluebells-and-dragonflies]

Imagine Astarion with ears so sensitive that he's never willingly allowed anyone to touch them except for you. Imagine laying next to him in your bed, facing him, lifting your hand up slowly for that first touch. His eyes on yours, the rapidity of the breath he doesn't need to take, but still does reflexively. Seeing that he's nervous, but that he's trusting you, feeling his shaking hand come to rest on your waist. The audible sound he makes- half a moan, half a gasp- when you finally brush your thumb over the soft skin at the tip of his ear.

You trace the long shell of his ear and watch his pretty eyes, deep red like velvet in the moonlight, flutter shut. He says your name softly, as close as you've ever heard him to prayer. You pinch his earlobe gently, and his hips roll forward involuntarily, the jut of his hipbone pressing against your thigh as he makes himself still. Heat flares low in your belly, but you tamp it down as quickly as possible- likewise, Astarion makes himself still against you. This isn't sex and won't become sex, you'd promised each other (though that's not to say that you won't explore this thoroughly during one of your hours-long lovemaking sessions. He is all about experimentation these days, after all).

You lay there, touching him in his most vulnerable place, with reverence and grace and occasionally disbelief that you could be here at all with this beautiful, horrible, ridiculous and wonderful man, that you could be trusted so completely. You take in his every shuddering breath, the flexing of his fingers in your shirt, the softness of his mouth when he presses his lips to yours and tells you he loves you. If you have your way, if he has his, if somehow your utterly insane lives hold together for a year or a decade or ten, it will always be like this.

[galedekarios]

seeing a post that basically confirmed the obvious disparity in content made me think more about a scene i would have liked to see with gale and that i've been thinking about for a while now.

i always felt a bit sad that his condition is so often treated as a joke by the fandom and to a lesser extent by the game itself. i always thought that this is partially down to the fact that we don't truly get so see gale actively be in pain due to his condition, other than brief glimpses and hints:

we do hear the urgency in his voice when he explains when and why he needs an artefact and the relief in his voice when the protag chooses to help him.

we see it, too, when he is afflicted by the arcane hunger condition:

we get glimpses of it when he consumes an artefact:

he mentions it, too, in his dialogues, but it's very much downplayed by gale or phrased in such a way that is meant to overplay it with humour, or perhaps even to distance himself from it by using metaphors:

that is until we actually get to see it through his eyes, if only for the briefest of moments:

*Its teeth, its claws, it's unstoppable as it digs through and becomes part of you. And gods, it is ever-hungry...*

gale also has an idle animation where he--quite often--reaches up to touch the orb, perhaps because it flares with pain, like an old wound is wont to do:

(gif by @bladeofavernus)

from the last conversation we have with gale, and after catching all of these little moments of things he says or does with how the orb affects him, we learn that consuming the magic from artefacts no longer has any effect at all. the only solution that tara and he were able to find no longer works:

it would scare him and imbalance him, and it would finally destabilise the orb, make it more volatile.

but what happens in the game after that? the orb becoming volatile enough for the artefacts to no longer have an effect has no consequences at all: you are able to do the tiefling party, all quests in the underdark, the entirety of the grymforge, and, should you choose to do so, the entirety of the mountain pass and rosymorn monastery without an incident at all or any mention of the condition itself/any discomfort or fear it might cause.

there's no urgency here, no follow-up, to what the narrative set up... and then we meet deus ex elminster and the orb is stabilised, and the urgency that came before literally is handwaved out of existence.

what i would have liked instead to happen--or at least to bridge the gap between the artefacts no longer working and elminster stabilising it to be used on mystra's behalf--is the following:

i think it would have been nice to have a scene with gale where we do get to see--on a much smaller scale--him losing control over the orb, have the protag and the companions see what he is trying desperately to keep contained within himself, what gnaws at him, what continues to haunt him.

it could happen perhaps after a particular gruelling and intense fight--and there are enough of that in the underdark and at the mountain pass. it could have been a ! conversation, providing both friendship and romance content.

have the orb act up after expending so much energy to manipulate the weave to the fullest of his abilities, have gale manage to reign it in, but barely, show that it takes a lot of power and effort for him to do so.

that it hurts, with none of gale's metaphors to hide behind or jokes to play it off.

have the audience truly see the gravity of what he is going through.