#they ARE romancing gale btw B)

[sproutbell]

twitter is straight up unusable at this point so i'll be making a lot of personal posts of here now... probably. if there's one thing about me it's that i've got shit to say. today's thing i have to say is that i am in love with gale from baldurs gate 3. yes i am married yes my wife knows about my feelings for gale the wizard man and they said it's ok. love wins <3.

[weaselshaped]

I never actually posted Jeshya, did I

I have only been playing her very intermittently because I am ALLEGEDLY trying to take a break from this game, so I do not...quite have her deal pinned down yet; the favored enemy selection for rangers required me to slap together an extremely basic backstory for Swift before I started (which then quite unexpectedly had a huge impact on all of my decisions in Act 1 in a twist that is extremely funny to me only) but monks don't really have anything like that so I just have the guild artisan background and like, basic dragonborn lore to go on. Generally the idea is to play a character with a totally different (though not necessarily opposing) set of values than Swift because what is the point of replaying if you're just going to make all the same choices. It has been two long rests and she and Lae'zel have already fucked so I guess I am succeeding.

[malicedafirenze]

I unintentionally skipped a lot of the romance content in Baldur's Gate 3 and I want others to learn from my mistakes:

So: I managed to lock myself out of romance entirely and ended up alone, which was a huge bummer and a serious crack in my motivation to play the game. I finished my playthrough (because I was already close to the end of Act 3 when I realized it), and plan to do another one eventually. I'm making this post in hopes of a) keeping others from making the same mistakes and b) to possibly get some additional insight re. what to watch out for in my next playthrough.

PSA: Pick a Partner before Act 3

The key learning here for me was this explanation from the poly mod

In BG3, romance is divided into 2 steps: dating and relationship(also called partner). Dating is basically where you are at after the 1st romance scene. Relationship is where you are at after the 2nd romance scene (relationship also unlocks the kissing menu). BTW, If you enter A3, all dates will break up with you (partners won't, ofc).

I hadn't realized this until well into Act 3, at a point where going back to a save to properly fix it would have meant replaying large parts of Act 2 as well - I decided to finish my run instead and then start a completely new one later.

Note: lots of spoilers below. (click here to read this post on reddit instead)

My Romance Woes

I read in advance that you couldn't romance multiple people (except for the specific Halsin combos with Shadowheart and Astarion) and therefore turned down Gale and Lae'Zel early in the game (not realizing you could just date/bonk them without fully committing or getting anyone upset)

I didn't take approval all that seriously, thought I'd have more opportunity to fix things later. I was playing pretty good guy, and ended up with high approval for Karlach and Shadowheart, but low for Astarion. Weirdly, I don't recall an option to romance Shadowheart (no clue what I missed?) and the only option I had for Karlach was at the Tiefling party, where I went with Astarion instead. I had a scene or two with him, but then didn't progress further in the relationship, without really realizing what I was missing.

I wanted to romance everyone, sat on the fence for too long, and ended up not romancing anyone at all, by missing a thing or two in act 1 and 2 and being too late to fix it in act 3. Don't be like me, it feels bad man.

Early Act 3, I got Astarion's breakup dialogue ("we haven't spent a night together in some time" --> him explaining it was just transactional and he doesn't see the value in it anymore) and got super worried, but when trying to look up if I'd messed up, I didn't find a clear answer for without more spoilers, so I just continued playing Act 3, including all of the companion quests.

I later learned that I missed out on at least one important Astarion romance interaction by not going to Moonrise Towers until after freeing Nightsong. (when the Towers are already on high alert, i.e. I could only fight and not have a lot of conversations)

After realizing I had messed up companions romance, I instead fucked everyone it was unwise to fuck (Emperor, Mizora, Harleep...) for fun and to see what would happen... but chickened out and reloaded after Emperor and Mizora. Still, got to enjoy some fun content that way!

The ending I got (going to Avernus with Karlach) was really cool and made me cry a lot. I then did try to reload my last save though, to see if I'd get any other epilogue content if I didn't go to the Hells, but... apparently that scene on the docks (Astarion goofily running off, everyone kinda agreeing to go party after this, no other conversations with anyone again.... is just... it?

Idk how much of this is the lack of romance, but I really felt like something was missing there. I at least wanted to talk to everyone again one last time.

This is a post about my romance failures and regrets so I'm not gonna talk about everything else that I loved about the game, but just in case this is getting a bit too negative: I had an absolute blast with the whole game regardless, I'm stoked to give it another go the "proper" way (i.e. with romance). I also generally think it's really fucking cool that this game's romance options depend on how you behave, and that you can't just e.g. give someone the right kind of gift 20 times in a row to make them love you, like it works in games like Stardew Valley.

Next Playthrough Plans

I'll probably wait for another patch or two - considering how much got fixed and tweaked with the first three patches, I suppose it's worth to wait a bit and see what's coming

I'll play with the Poly mod next time and try to romance all of the Origin characters.

I plan to play with the camp notifications mod, as well as the approval ratings in dialogue mod. Both in hopes of being able to game the romance a bit better and get much of the romance in one playthrough

I'll play Dark Urge (haven't seen any of that so far!), but probably still go for a "good" playthrough mostly

I plan on equipping & levelling all Origin companions and switch them out more freely, in order to get approval from everyone and edit my party as makes sense depending on story events (e.g. take Lae'Zel to the Creche, take Gale to the Ketheric fight...)

I want to romance everyone. I already saw some tips for early game Astarion approval and assume the aforementioned mods will help in optimizing this

Am probably not gonna do anything all that differently otherwise because my heart can't take an actually evil playthrough

Aand that's about it. As mentioned, I'm mostly posting in case this helps anyone else.

I was really damn sad when I realized I had locked myself out of all romance, because the romance was a significant part of my motivation to start playing this in the first place. At the same time, I loved so much about the game that I still got a lot out of it in 110+ hours even with minimal romance content.

If you see any red flags about my plans for the next playthrough (or if you have experience with the mentioned mods!), I'd appreciate comments and insights. Other than that, here's hoping others can learn from my mistakes. Thank you for reading <3

[thetooclevermartian]

need to get on my a-spec soapbox for a bit

something that's been on my mind and bothering me is the fact that people are, in a way, gatekeeping characters from being headcanoned as aro/ace. most often i see it manifesting as "this character can't be aro/ace/aroace because they did x!" and it really really bothers me because we a-spec people have such little representation, and when we try to find some for ourselves, even through headcanons, that's taken away from us too.

for example, i saw a post about how katniss everdeen can't be aroace because she married peeta and had kids. (no hate to op btw, i'm just explaining why i disagree strongly). but that statement negates several things. 1) sexual and romantic attraction are spectrums. meaning that some people are going to be on them and still experience sexual and romantic attraction to a degree. they're still a-spec. personally, i headcanon katniss as demiromantic demisexual, meaning she'd need a close emotional bond with someone before she could be attracted to someone in either way. which fits with canon that she is attracted to peeta and also doesn't acknowledge experiencing attraction to anyone else (except maybe platonic attraction with gale but that's another thing). anyway. 2) ATTRACTION IS NOT REQUIRED FOR A RELATIONSHIP. or marriage. or kids. or sex. or kissing. or anything, really. to say katniss can't be a-spec because she does these things erases the experiences of aroaces that do do these things. plus, for younger me, an aroace kid who didn't know he was aroace, seeing a character that wasn't focused on romance at all was important to me. even now, it's still important to me! i'll stand by a-spec katniss because of that!

one that also bothers me, though i see where people are coming from, is kaz brekker and inej ghafa. and though i completely understand not headcanoning them as a-spec, i have seen people shaming the fact that others would interpret them as such. (not to mention i have a-spec headcanons for them both that are supported by canon, but that's a post for another time). in a world where a-spec people have such little representation, why would you try and make us feel bad for looking for it? who does it harm if we headcanon characters as such? i've also seen other people say, "you have tolya and harshaw [other grishaverse characters if you don't know], who are either confirmed or heavily implied, why would you headcanon kaz and inej?" and again, no hate to these people, but have you ever considered that a) i want a wide variety of aro/ace spectrum characters. this includes characters that experience sexual/romantic attraction to some degree, or not at all but still engage in sexual or romantic actions. b) aro and ace people are never the main characters. (and in the case of tolya and harshaw, i'd like there to be more than just two minor characters who are in only 4/9 books combined). because in typical literature and media, main characters have to have romance. they have to have sex, or sexiness, at least. and behind that, they have to have attraction. if they have these things without attraction, they're a slut or a whore or an emotionless robot. c) so often, i am looking for myself in characters, because i know if i don't search, i will almost never explicitly find them.

all this big long stuff to say that i cannot put into words the exact, deep, acute ache i feel when i think about aroace representation and about how little we have. who does it benefit to keep us from finding ourselves and our unique experiences in characters we like? i'm just so exhausted of having my identities' representations stolen from me just because people don't understand what it means to be aromantic or asexual. so for the love of all things, please just let me find happiness in my favorite characters, cause god knows we aren't getting good, varied, common representation anytime soon.

[eatthemaker]

Just went through one of the most ridiculous things I’ve done in a video game.

On my durge play through, I’m romancing Astarion but accidentally got the romance tag for Gale too. I just love Gale so much too! My Tav marries him! Why can’t I platonically do his magic show?

Didn’t realise this would become an issue when the butler tries to get you to murder your beloved. So that scene triggers and it’s Gale there. At this point, my guilt for leading him on weighs especially heavy.

I pondered whether to reload and try again but with Astarion in place and decided that a. it was unsatisfying for it not to have been Astarion and b. It actually would have felt terrible to “break up” with Gale after he was so supportive and kind after I tried to murder him. Like ‘hey you showed me the greatest kindness and empathy but like I’m not actually interested soz’. Which of course he would have taken in stride. Can’t bear this, so I had to reload.

So I painfully and slowly realised due to several reloads and attempts quickly realised that the scene was stuck with Gale. I hadn’t had an exclusivity dialogue with anyone yet and both him and Astarion were at 100 approval so there was no way for it to prioritise one above the other.

In the process, I also learned that even if you leave a companion elsewhere in the world, if you long rest they will return to camp. How clever of them! So I concluded the only way to make this work was to kill Gale and revive him after the scene with the butler. As follows, I made Gale jump off Last Light Inn (twice—he jumped off, wailed in pain, then went back upstairs to finish the job. He nearly succeeded his death saving throws too but thankfully he perished). It’s ok sweetie I’m doing this to protect your feelings. Don’t look at me like that.

I then returned to camp for a long rest and instead of the butler scene, the Astarion dialogue triggered where he thanks you for the drow incident at Moonrise. Lovely, beautiful moment. My heart was a’flutter.

Then morning came and I revived Gale, since I assumed this meant I was finally locked in the Astarion romance, and what’s the first thing that happens after he’s brought back to life after inexplicably suiciding from the inn roof?

“Hello dear it’s good to see you again hope that wasn’t too painful. btw things have changed while you’ve been gone…”

I dumped him, immediately. Right in front of Withers and Arabella. Did not enjoy. The man was clearly in a bad way and my durge apparently has no tact at all.

But it’s all okay because now I get to resist trying to murder Astarion… what