#could be Gale

[miradelletarot]

Listen... It's not MYYYY fault I'm attracted to men in their early to mid 40s who have tattoos, long hair, facial hair, treat their partner with respect, are financially stable, and are in touch with their feelings, ok?

[theoldkyokodied]

Really quick doodles of a few scenes from the stream yesterday. Including combat flirting taunting, gale’s magnificently distracting shoes and.. whatever you wanna call gale agreeing to give 15 gold to astarion 😐😑😐😑😐 (that’s me blinking)

[kawareo]

Lae'zel is pretty fluent in Common but since she still sometimes messes up some words, I don't believe she understands a third of all the big words Gale uses casually. My headcanon is that she memorizes them during the day and then goes to demand elaborations in the evening, and Gale is very happy to have someone to teach linguistics to.

By the end of the game she can call Vlaakith an pernicious, diminutive old fuck, cut to Gale in her corner wiping away a tear of pride

[bearsandswears]

Revisiting the conversation you can have with Gale about Halsin’s proposition. I think it should be worse.

[liorlen]

gale origin playthru from astarion’s pov or smth like that

[lazylittledragon]

merry chrysler!! i almost forgot this was happening until like a week ago

[my-maehem]

*Slides these across the table*

Have some Gale sketches

[sweetmapple]

New ick unlocked

[lassieposting]

Tav, using their Pet Owner Voice: What have you got in your mouth? What are you eating? Drop it! Drop it right now!

Scratch: [whines and drops Wyll's boot]

Owlbear Cub: [guiltily spits out Boo, alive and unharmed]

Halsin, currently a bear: [drops a half-eaten salmon and makes an indignant noise]

Astarion: [startles at the raised voice, lets go of Tav's wrist, reclaims it and goes back to his breakfast once he realises they're not talking to him]

Gale: [chewing faster]

Tav, sternly: Gale...

Gale: [reluctantly spits out a powerful magical artefact into Tav's outstretched hand]

Tav, muttering under their breath: Can't have shit in the Gate.

Gale, ruefully rubbing the back of his neck, also under his breath: Gods forbid a wizard do anything

[okthisway]

Gale's intimidation check

[hanalghilan]

Baldur's Gate 3 (2023) dev. Larian Studios

[wild-magic-oops]

take notes, Gale bby

[theoldkyokodied]

The Allegiance of the Ascended Vampire and the New God of Magic

[riddlerosehearts]

i really need everyone but especially anyone who romanced gale with a bard tav to know about this interaction from early access that larian took from us

[emmavakarian-theirin]

Gale of Sad Puppy Eyes

[delta-lethonomia]

There's a reddit thread on the BG3 sub where the user u/InklingRain posted a spreadsheet they made with all the companion approvals. Super useful in general both for playing the game and for fic, so I thought I'd post it on tumblr and play around a little!

There's a top row with the average approval by companion, but I didn't find that very useful, so I changed it to the count of approvals (i.e. count of approvals & disapproval total, how often a companion had a reaction to something). We all know Astarion gives a lot of disapprovals here and there, but they're only -1 at a time, so no big deal, right?

No. Minsc has the least at only 45 reactions, Halsin at 95, Minthara at 145, and of the main companions, Gale is pretty average at 198, Lae'zel at 224, and Shadowheart, rather opinionated at 258...

but that's nothing compared to Astarion's 406. That's almost 150 more than the next person!!! That's more than Minthara and Shadowheart combined! Babygirl really woke up one day and decided to get in a snit over everything that happens 😂

(Longer post about count of positive and negative opinions, sum of approvals and disapprovals, and some major outliers below. Picture with values at the very end.)

But that's a bit disingenuous. If we look at the ratio of positive to negative opinions (not taking value into account), Astarion's pretty average at 30% (negative count over sum count, so let's call that negativity). This is similar to Gale (31%), Karlach (30%), and Lae'zel (32%). In theory, getting Astarion's approval or disapproval is just as easy as any of theirs, with a 20% bias towards positive approvals. Later companions are weighted heavily towards the lower end of the spectrum, with Jaheira at 13% negativity and Minsc at 9%. As you only get them very late, it's pretty clear that the game gives you a lot of opportunities to get their approvals and thus open up more of their quests and dialogue.

However. We have an outlier. Wyll Ravenguard, clocking in at an indecent 38% negativity! Which really just goes to show, while Astarion is the most opinionated, Wyll has the most disapprovals, making him the judgiest companion of all 🤣

However, this really wouldn't be a good post if we didn't look at the value of approvals. Karlach, for instance, has the strongest disapproval value of -100 (given if you sleep with her and then call it a mistake). Ouch. This is clearly at outlier and doesn't say much about Karlach's changeability of opinion in general. If we look at the sum of positive and negative opinions, this is a very heavy swing, making up 100 points of her total 191 disapproval points possible to her 281 approvals total. Another outlier is Minsc, who currently possesses a 43% disapproval percentage (a heavy -50 disapproval given if you sacrifice him to Sarevok. Jaheira, by contrast, apparently doesn't give a damn, or her value might simply not be included in the dateset.)

Removing outliers is really a matter of opinion here, so I'll only remove the most extreme swings, such as the above mentioned disapprovals.

The otherwise strongest swings are Astarion (-15 for telling him it was a mistake preventing him from drinking Araj's blood, or saying you only wanted to sleep with him, not deal with his trauma) and Wyll (+20 for siding with Karlach during his confrontation with her, which really shows he didn't really want to kill her and is very grateful you stopped him). Halsin gives +40 for reuniting Oliver with Thaniel, which...lifting the shadow curse is sort of his life's mission, and a bit of a unique case, so while it makes sense, I think it's such a unique event that can't be topped by anything else and will remove it. Jaheira give +20 for extending the Emperor's protection to Minsc, and, for funsies, Minthara's heaviest disapproval is -5 for donating to Lolth at the Stormshore Tabernacle. (lol)

I only chose to remove the aforementioned Karlach, Minsc, and Halsin values, as they're all very large swings and rather character-defining or personal to the individuals mentioned, so I don't think it says much about them in a more general day-to-day sense.

Now, using the sums of our negative and positive values, Gale is our most Negative Nancy, clocking in at 37%, which goes to show that while he's pretty average for the amount of things he cares about, when he disapproves, it's a strong one. Next up is Astarion at 35%, and Wyll at 34%. Lowest are Jaheira and Minsc at 7% and 4% respectively, which makes an intuitive sort of sense: Jaheira is old and just over being upset by the players poor choices, and Minsc is an insanely positive person overall. The next most positive companion is Halsin at 13%, which also matches with his vibe pretty well, followed by Minthara at 17%, Karlach at 24%, Lae'zel at 26%, and Shadowheart at 28%.

Tl;dr: Astarion has many, many opinions, but Wyll is the most judgemental (most disapprovals compared to approvals possible). However, when it comes to the strength of those disapprovals, Gale reigns supreme, followed by Astarion.

If don't break Karlach's heart, help Halsin achieve his life's ambition, or sacrifice Minsc, then they're pretty positive overall. Later companions are heavily weighted to approve of your actions, and Minthara is comparatively judgemental, but overall far more easy to gain approval than disapproval from.

If you take the average of all these values and include the later companions to look at as a personality "baseline" of how judgy and how strong those disapprovals may be, then...the Act 1 companions are all dramatic af, which really should come to no ones' surprise, while Karlach is the most willing to give the benefit of the doubt imo.