#its their weird approaches to romance that make gale and astarion so delicious and scrumptious as a couple to meeee

[old-stoneface]

ive been seeing people claim that different characters are astarion's foil and i dont know why some people have yet to realize that all of the main six companions in bg3 are similar in so many very meaningful ways . you can ostensibly argue (albeit with varying strength and success) that any one of the characters in that party can act as a foil to another. also, im not really sure if most people know what a character foil is......maybe we need to reintroduce the phrase "character parallel" to the online character analysis layman's vocabulary. a "foil" is a character that has traits that contrast the protagonist or simply another character in the story, but it does not stop there. they dont have to be strict opposites. sometimes its just a matter of two characters having traits that accentuate or bring attention to each other's aforementioned traits.

a really good example of this is horatio and hamlet from hamlet, where hamlet is ruled by his emotions and horatio is ruled by rational thinking, a theme repeatedly mentioned throughout the play in the sense that horatio will ask hamlet to be more calculating, and hamlet will implore horatio to be more emotional. an example of a parallel in the same play would be hamlet and laertes (ophelia's brother), where in the end, due to their combined familial losses and the tragedy that befalls them, they are both corrupted by their volatile emotions/madness turning inward and then coming under the influence of other figures in their lives. theres a lot more going on in that play obviously but these are basic good examples of the ideas of foils and parallels.

in the case of astarion and wyll, their motivations and personalities are very good foil material, seeing as right away there is a distinct difference in their opinions on heroism, something that very much defines both of them. astarion is, when glanced over as a whole, a villain, while wyll is clearly a hero, immediately creating a dichotomy tantalizing to both the audience and the characters themselves as seen in their party interactions. with astarion and gale, we see more a foil-ness of their experience with relationships and personalities. gale is not a hero, and astarion's general villainity means nothing to him. they do not clash. its more about how they act in relationship to the player that causes interest between the two of them, how astarion is clearly uninterested in genuine emotions and wants to be manipulative, whereas gale is overly sincere and begs for attention rather desperately. however, when it comes to pointing out parallels that further promote and intrigue the dynamic of foils...we have the constant theme of being under someone else's control in this game and being forced by obligation to follow these rules imposed by someone else. astarion and cazador, wyll and mizora (and his father, in some ways), gale and mystra, shadowheart and shar, lae'zel and vlakiith (and githyanki tradition as a whole), karlach and literally every authority figure that wormed their way into her life but in particular - zariel. as i play more of the game and learn more about each character, im sure ill discover even more stuff that makes various characters into parallels or foils. i know theres stuff w halsin that will be interesting to me.

thats what i mean by there are traits in every character in the main party that both compliment and clash. and this is also a reminder that foils and parallels do not have to be romantic, but they can be. so like..idk. i dont really have a conclusion here. i just wanted to talk about this lmao