#maybe cement me and karlach as lovers first

[dollfat]

all ive thought about for days is respecing ranger wyll, he doesn't need a familiar

[annakie]

Very mild spoilers up to early/mid act 2 and Gale romance.

I didn't really want to believe it, but the ninjamance IS really strong in this game. There are definitely bugs to work out behind the scenes.

Despite a dance with Wyll, that ended in a head-turn and no kiss, I have single-mindedly perused Gale this entire time. I have gotten propositioned by literally everyone at camp, save maybe Astarion, including Halsin, though I have definitely done my best to avoid romantic dialog choices with any of them. And everyone else backed off after a polite turn down.

I am loving the Gale romance, btw. Just spot-on perfect romance for my bard. I know this character so well from years of playing her in D&D and she's never had a romance in any D&D game I tried to bring her into, which was always fine, she's got a lot going on. But Gale feels tailor made for her in almost every way, and except for that one dance with Wyll, I never doubted that for this character, this was the right romance.

Not only did I feel confident I was well into relationship status with Gale and nobody else based on my dialog choices, but also some things that happened in-game. The most recent being someone trying to probe my mind and I shoved them off with thoughts of Gale. No one else was dialog choice to think about at that time.

I was starting to feel like people were overreacting about the ninjamance. Like, Gale's "Hey come feel the magic with me!" scene early on gave you several clear outs including the narrator LITERALLY telling you "this is an intimate moment" and the dialog choices clearly giving you polite backout choices in that moment. I thought people complaining about a Gale Ninjamance probably kept going at that point, which I believe IS a romance lock unless you choose one of the ruder choices to push him away?

But hey me? I've got one focus (Gale) and everyone else I'm just friends with! Won't happen to me!

So after a lovely evening with Gale that I was very happy with (after trying both directions I went with the "tamer" choice, because it just felt more real, but the other one was amazing too) the next morning we had a lovely chat, affirmed our relationship and also saw he'd moved on for sure past the ex, it was great. I was hoping to go get cute dialog with my other companions, happy that Gale and I had cemented things at last.

The first person I went to talk to was my buddy Karlach, sure that she'd be thrilled for me since from very early on I made it clear we were just friends and we'd had like two conversations since then where we affirmed our friendship and how glad we are to be good friends! And then....

Wait... wait wait wait... what the fuck?!? What do you mean I'm sorry but I want to be with Gale? Karlach and I most definitely were not in a relationship? I gave her a friendly hug when we got her heat problem fixed. I'm looking out for her, and again, a couple of clear "I'm so glad we're good friends!" dialogs have happened recently. Why the fuck would she think we were in a romance!?!

I went through the dialog choices, trying to see if there was a mistake or a joke, but nope, it's clear it's the entire breakup scene as if she and I had been lovers for months. Karlach no, I never meant to hurt you this way because we were never in a relationship.

I hate this so much! I adore Karlach! I never would hurt her this way and took great pains to make sure I never would! What the hell, Larian?

I backed out, reloaded my last save, and went around to the rest of the camp and luckily I didn't have to "break up" with anyone else. And for now I'm just avoiding the conversation and hoping it will go away.

I just really hate that most of the time when I've seen people complaining about it, juuuuust like in Mass Effect, they blame the character for being "clingy" instead of the game for having obvious bugs, clunky mechanics, or unclear dialog choices that make "I'm being nice to my friend here!" into "We'll bang, okay?" This has nothing to do with Karlach, or ANY other character that has happened to others with, and everything to do with the game itself.

Hopefully the next patch or two will make this stop happening so we can all be friends with the people we want to be friends with and not feel like we've gotta hurt the characters we like. Ugh.