Read some Gale meta/character analysis and had a thought:

Gale’s orb makes him need magic to absorb to stabilize it.

The orb literally reinforces Mystra’s hold on him and gives a physical representation of his dependency on magic (and by extension Mystra) for his health, his sense of identity, his sense of self worth.

Mystra didn’t subject him to the orb but she DID let him suffer it needlessly and I would easily believe she found it fitting punishment for someone who had tried to be an equal. How dare Gale think he was worth anything without her?

I feel like I'm going insane.

Why does Gale's "good ending" if you don't date him imply that he gets back with Mystra.

Why does the grown ass woman who intentionally isolated 17-year-old Wyll and trapped him in a relationship get to hang out in your camp (and potentially sleep with you).

Why do the writers (head writer and literally Wyll's personal character writer included!) have so little respect and tact when talking about their characters' traumas only when they are male and their abuser is female.

Nobody would find it funny if the Christmas animatic had Astarion blush at a picture of Cazador. Nobody would think it was "a good resolution" if Karlach saved and then dated Gortash at the end of the game.

And the characters aren't treated well outside of their relationships either, the writers love to laugh when people call Wyll boring or Gale annoying. I dunno what's worse: all the extra in-game dialogue calling Gale pathetic, or the fact that Wyll barely has any additional dialogue at all. With the additional factors of Wyll being the only Black companion and Gale being the only one with a disability that is somewhat "inconvenient" to the player (because God forbid a person need help), it just comes across as implicit bias from the writers themselves. To create these representations and then shit on them for traits that not only may be relatable to your audience, but traits that you gave them.

When Neil accepted the award for best performance he told people who relate to Astarion that "you are not alone." It's a beautiful sentiment, but paired with writers fetishising Wyll's abuse and saying Gale's best ending is the one where he kills himself, it comes across as though for POC, the chronically ill/disabled, or male victims of women, the statement does not apply.

A homemade meme to express my feelings:

There is still a lot I love about the game but some stuff makes me really sad and disappointed

I'm so tired of people playing Sorcerers and getting upset when Gale clarifies they needed someone studied in magic and being like "But I am sooo much better than a wizard, I was born with it!"

Girl, you might be *check notes* magic incarnate but that means absolutely nothing when he is looking for an academic

"But I was born good at magic!"

Okay, and I was born a native Italian speaker, however if an academic asked me if I have studied Italian I would have to say no, because academically I have not. I don't know a single italian linguist. I don't know how we went from indio european to latin to Italian. I don't even know why sardo is a language and bergamasco is a dialect. I forgot all the grammar I had to learn. Sometimes I talk to Tuscans and I do not understand them. it's almost like those are two entirely different things

I am just going to say it.

A woman CAN, abuse, groom, and have power over a man. Especially when the woman is a literal Goddess and the man is a mortal worshipper of her. And adults CAN fall victim to grooming.

See grooming in sports:

https://www.anncrafttrust.org/adult-grooming-in-sport-if-it-feels-wrong-it-is-wrong/

Also, Elminster had a massive part to play in it as he reached out to Gale when he was 8 years old.

I get that we can not comprehend the complexities in the power dynamics between a God or Goddess and a mortal. But it doesn't take much to understand that the power imbalance is insane. Or that the gods, even the good ones, only serve themselves.

Also, Gale was a child prodigy. She absolutely wanted to be able to control him and control the power he had because he would be useful to her.

This has already been said multiple times before by people who are at explaining things than me.

mystra, among many other things: body snatches a woman (totally consensually dw!!!!!!!!) so she can make her more open to the idea of getting courted and adept at seducing with the ultimate goal of getting impregnated so she can pop out the seven sisters, while also never telling the man who is courting said woman and thinks the woman truly favours and loves him and never is told otherwise

mystra: leaves the woman a husk of herself, so deteriorated that she's more dead than alive, to the point of where the man feels forced to help her die and then proceeds to manipulate the man emotionally and physically until he is finally allowed to die, only not really bc she uses him to serve her even in death

a clown: uwu mystra is true neutral and would never do abuse ))): gale doesnt have a direct abuser and is the outlier among the companions, also here's how everything is actually all gale's fault in the first place )))))):

The Dead Three, Mystra, Zariel, Shar- all got done so dirty by Larian. Selûne is fine- but we don't really get to interact with her at all like we do with all of the others.

Like yes some of the gods are evil, in alignment, (Zariel is an archdevil but I'm including her too). But that isn't an excuse for bad writing. Like I can't imagine anyone at Larian stopped and thought "why is this god this way and why do people worship these gods?" like no exercising of empathy (not a dig at low empathy people out there), or character building.

It's just depressing. BG3 is going to be the first time a lot of people interact with these characters at all. This is going to be their impression of them.

The gods of the forgotten realms are not uncaring beings who just use others for their own purposes. I just hate seeing it. It gives me anti-thesis vibes that is very off putting.

I am probably going to be stuck on this for days. The more I dig into it the more I am disappointed.

Gale: I went to get what I thought was a missing piece of the weave so I could return it to Mystra.

Mystra: The orb you went to get for Me was actually super evil shadow weave!

BG3 FANDOM: GALE IS SUPER POWER HUNGRY AND WANTED THE ORB FOR HIMSELF!!!!! 🤪

Me: ...I'm absolutely going to need y'all to pay attention to something that isn't your fav for 5 gd minutes and then Maybe you wouldn't have one of the most absolute batshit interpretations of a character that I've seen in my lifetime.

It's suspicious that the only black man and the depressed neurodivergent coded man are the ones who receive the most hate in the fandom.

And out of the three male abuse victims, they are the only two whose perpetrators are female. They are also the only two who have jokes made about having a crush on their abuser or flat-out denial that they have been abused at all.

They're both friendly, romantic, and emotional. One of them is depressed and believes he is better off dead. We get two nice men with all the green flags, and they're then they are subsequently the most hated.

I could write an essay on why I think people dislike Gale and Wyll.

Gale is not annoying because he speaks a lot, and Wyll is not boring because he is lawful good. People like Captain America for those same values. And with Gale, I just know people wouldn't find his friendliness and info dumping off, putting if he was female. Both their personalities are tied in with their backgrounds.

Let Wyll be good and just because he needs to prove that, despite being a warlock, he is a good man.

Also, as a she/her and a feminist I like to see female villains. Let Mystra be narcissistic and manipulative. Let her methods for choosing a chosen be unethical. And let Gale be a victim.

When people remain so hard on Gale for 'still talking' about Mystra, it's just.....ohhh boy. Of all the main cast, Gale's definitely one (alongside Wyll) whose relationship with their authority figure, abuser, manipulator, keeper, however you want to call them, is routinely discredited. Their abuses aren't digestible enough. Isn't 'sympathetic' enough. Shadowheart and Astarion have clear overbearing abusers with exceedingly evil personalities. It's apparently 'easier' for some people to show compassion to a victim's hurts if they've the physical scars to prove it, if their abuser fits every bill of a sadist without any effort to hide said sadism. But show Gale, a man who looks older than essentially the whole party, who was with Mystra who appears younger, speaks in a polite/levelled tone, who was 'simply upset' with Gale for 'disrespecting her boundaries', and Gale just becomes...the hung up ex who fumbled a baddie. Y'know, barring the fact that she knew of him and very likely kept eyes on him as a boy, had never actually told Gale the book he was looking for was Karsite in nature, left him to die alone, then came back and said, 'hey, I'll forgive you if you literally blow yourself up by SINKING A DAGGER STRAIGHT INTO YOUR CHEST when I have every ability to remove the orb myself.' Barring, too, that beyond his lover, she was his GODDESS, a goddess who controlled his fealty and commanded his utmost devotion, he being Gale Dekarios, a mortal, human man who was undoubtedly manipulated. Being with someone like that will destroy anyone's reality. He scrabbled for any sort of approval from a far more powerful figure. Many victims of abuse do.

But hey. And don't get me started on Wyll. Man literally made a pact to save others, sacrificed his freedom for the benefit of all, and ended up hard leashed by a literal devil. A devil! Goddddd. Also iffy that Wyll had no agency to make his decision with his pact in act 3 while barely having any lines to speak of, and how Gale is encouraged to apologize and make amends with Mystra for his character arc. Hmm.

astarion stans who refuse to try befriending or even romancing anyone else are the most annoying mfs. "I only romance astarion I just can't relate to the other stories" really? you can't relate to gales deep self loathing? his deep love and loyalty for those he cares about? you can't relate to wylls kind heart and desire to always do good, even if it means he's miserable? can't relate to shadowheart blindly following a god, only to learn the truth and reinvent herself? you can't relate to lae'zel or karlach who were lied to and used as weapons their whole lives, but continue to push on even when they're scared? you can't relate to the overarching theme of authority vs autonomy???

it's not difficult, it's just people refusing to appreciate and explore the game to its fullest bc their manipulative sexy vampire is all they need(something astarion actually loathes being seen as btw). but ok, you can be boring and do whatever you want, but don't lie and say the other stories are bad, because they're not. it's simply a lack of media literacy and critical thinking. because to you, if a character doesn't tell you point blank that they're aware of their situation, it's bad writing. missing the entire point that victims don't always realize the situation they're in. keep in mind astarion and karlach are the only ones who got away from their abusers, which is why they tell you clearly and confidently about what happened to them, fully aware that it was abuse. whereas the others give only their tunnel visioned perspective and speak highly of their deity(not caring about themselves, wish to appease them for something in return).

don't get me wrong (seriously, if I see one person misunderstand me I'm going to lose it) astarion is a good character, but people who only like him need to stop acting like he's the only complex and well written one. stop crying when people with brains call you out for being weird about his ascended ending. the game isn't about him. at least try and show some respect to those who worked hard on the game. make an oc and try new things, i promise the fictional vampire won't care if you don't romance him one run. have a drink with shadowheart, dance with wyll, go to a restaurant w karlach, maybe then you'll calm down.

The way people shit their pants over even a single mention of Cazador being a victim too and yet shipping Minthara with Orin her fucking SAer is fine and funny, and weird shit with Wyll and Mizora and the player fucking Mizora is fine and dandy Wyll should get over it… it tells me everything I need to know sometimes lmfao.

Edit: The point of my post here wasn't that anyone who makes jokes about Mystra telling Gale "KYS" or whatever is being bad, rather my point is that Astarion is not special. Other companions have gone through stuff just as horrible and people joke about it and no one cares, or crazy Astie fans even act like their trauma responses are unreasonable. Meanwhile, jokes about Ast are off limits, his trauma responses are always valid, and you can't even talk about Caz's backstory without it being offensive because it acknowledges Caz started out like Ast. That is specifically what I'm complaining about, the weird double standard.

"what's the secret to befriending lae'zel" when she tells me that we need to find her people because they have been fighting mindflayers for centuries and she asks me to trust her about her own people and her own culture, I do.

I hate this ending.

https://youtu.be/cux6VPvz8Z0?si=giKt7ZQleE0-5MTL

if you are trying to whiteknight mystra, maybe, just maybe, don't blame the child she groomed or try to argue that grooming actually exists on a spectrum

or say that gale already had a bit of an ego before he was found by elminster and chosen by mystra, i just

like idk what to tell you, but... he was around eight years old when that happened...... that'd translate to second/third grade,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

and that might have to do something with the consequent actions he took over the years and growing up into an actual adult.............

just a thought..........................................................

I know there are many bad takes about Gale on this site, but the worst takes I’ve seen on another social media site in another language are much more abhorrent than anything here tbh, the recent one I’ve seen even gets some popularity among his “fans”... They were basically saying it’s Mystra who make him the humble man he is now, without her influence on him he would be as egotistical as in his god ending, and more than a hundred of reblogs are all thanking Mystra for “training her lapdog so well” for them🤢

Did we even play the same game? Isn’t his god ending a direct result of Mystra making him think he will never be enough as he is, and he can only find his self-worth through gaining more power? Didn’t Tara say he’s not himself anymore and she would no longer be his companion in his god ending, she knew him long before Mystra made him her chosen, he was powerful enough before his relationship with Mystra, if he’s anything like god!Gale at the time wouldn’t Tara just leave him? I’d imagine he would have been more confident and had a more stable self-image if Mystra had never contacted him, therefore he didn’t even need the Gale of Waterdeep persona. He would always have been Gale Dekarios in that timeline. And people glorifying Mystra’s grooming and abuse towards him and unironically calling him “her lapdog” is just... I have no words. But what do you expect from an online space that’s infested with terfs and radfems? They just won’t recognize or acknowledge any abuse from women towards men...