#he makes me feel grimy and reminds me of a car salesmen

[bananasfosterparent]

People not get that barely fleshed out characters are less liked? Do we really need to discuss why some like evil vampire companion who you have full three story arc together and most players find him beautiful, but don’t like the evil antagonist you hardly get know but one companion definitely hates him and most players don’t find him good-looking?

I really will never understand the "Gortash is RIGHT THERE! Forget AA!" takes. Like, YES go ahead and mention him as a potential roleplay element for people's characters. But he isn't a "replacement" for Ascended Astarion and I don't enjoy AA because he's got trauma and just because he's a villain. I don't get why people would see them as interchangeable characters. They aren't the same person in any capacity.

But more importantly, as you were getting at.. you can spend 3 entire acts getting to know Astarion, interacting with him, traveling with him, hearing his thoughts on various subjects, and learning about his background.

If you play a regular Tav (like I always do), you learn some surface stuff about Gortash as a villain and that's about it. You learn much more about him as Durge, but regardless, you can't actually romance him the way you do Astarion... so how in the world does that measure up?

If I, as the player, literally abandoned Ascended Astarion and poured all my blorbo love onto Gortash in his stead, my game would be SO BORING.