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Gale is a man of ego. He is arrogant. He is even more arrogant because he is insecure. He has not found an anchor to ground his ego, and that’s why his loss of being Mystra’s chosen humbles him so bad. It’s an ego-wound not heartache. "Take me back because you are everything." Everything he stands on to keep his ego up. He brags about having fucked Mystra and being the only one to truly understand her and by proxy, magic. Ego is the crux of his tale. He just uses pretty language to describe it.

I don’t see Gale as a softie whose emotions make him easy prey for manipulative women. I see him as a man who is unassuming, and who wrestles with that very fact. He is a nerd and is seen as a nerd. The game makes fun of him because it sees the real version of himself that he is running from. Gale is smart, but he is a slacker.

People see him as unassuming, so he uses that as part of his charm. But to be unassuming is to be unworthy of note. He is desperate to be seen as something. Someone. Greater than he is. That’s his entire story arc.

Let me illustrate the real Gale and his real grift.

Gale tells the story of diffusing the bar fight. On the surface, he is admiring your courage to protect the weak. The reality is, he is admiring your entitlement to deviate. You saw it as a situation you could change and you did it because you felt entitled to do so.

But imagine if you deviated further and didn’t buy what Gale was selling afterward. He tells the story and your response is:

“Yeah, you stepped in, parted the seas like Jesus, and saved the day. Gale, get out of my face.”

If you think Gale would get his feelings hurt and shut down, you’ve got a totally different read on the situation than I do.

If instead, you understand that Gale would be surprised, grin, and try to keep steering the conversation, then you get it. The banter is playing in that tension. Gale wants a challenge. He wants boundaries to test. He wants limits to play with. He wants to see what lies beyond and be the only man to find it. If he can be a stern woman’s exception, he’s won something that tells people he’s someone worth speaking about.

Where do I, I mean, Minthara come in? I’m not going to make it sound more complex than it is. A nerd who can go a little crazy is excessively sexy. It’s like seeing a gentle giant transform into the Slayer.

caption: You know, it's embarrassing for a man to sit on the back of a girl's motorcycle.