#gortash thoughts

Now, I've always been fond of Gale, in spite of how the early game felt like it was trying to get me to be mean or not trust him. He's a nerdy know-it-all (my junior high school self manifested as a very handsome man instead of a pudgy, mediocre-looking girl), so of course I liked him. Because I recovered from my years of self-hatred and accept myself now. Mostly.

That being said, I didn't trust him right away, but I didn't trust anyone right away (except Lae'zel and Karlach) on my first playthrough. Wyll got me to trust him pretty quick by backing down and showing a core of goodness that his warlock pact couldn't erase, and my only hang-up with Halsin was one I blame on a very important missed opportunity regarding goblin kids. No one says shit about it and it infuriates me, but that is Larian's fault, not Halsin's. Shadowheart took longer, and still got dumped back at camp every time she said, "Lady of Sorrows guide us, did you want something?" Regardless of what I might have wanted to talk about at the time...

[If your rude isn't funny, stop fucking saying it.]

Even though I am a serial Astarionmancer, I honestly never trusted Astarion not to fuck me over in some way (and he absolutely did with how deeply traumatized he is--because I can't not care about hurt people, fictional or otherwise.) He always made me laugh, though, and that was enough to see his romance through. Once I did, I was hooked, and did it over and over and over again.

Gale comes off as pretty arrogant when we're first getting to know him. I don't find arrogant men particularly attractive (arrogant women are super hot--I don't make the rules; my hormones do), but I find arrogant men amusing, and as we have established, making me laugh can actually be better than being the one everyone thirsts over. I could care less about looks in truth. Personality and voice make a character physically attractive to me. The words they choose and how they say them is like... gently caressing the tumblers that unlock my heart.

Then they become exponentially more attractive to me.

My favorite romances before BG3 were a dorky virgin who talked about lampposts and said taint sooo many times, a raptor with half a face, an alien nerd whose face we never really got to see (I refuse to accept caucasian-ish Tali), a quirky elven blood mage, a self-important bald apostate who turned out to be a damn god, and a big bearded liar-liar with his pants on fire.

The core of all these romances was, with the exception of Solas, that even if they hid something from my character, they eventually came clean and still loved them and wanted a life with them more than any other motivation.

When I first encountered Gortash, I thought, "A villain voiced by Jason Isaacs? Perfect! He makes an amazing villain. I love to hate the villains he plays. Oh... what a dumb haircut! Air-lats, too?! This man should be wearing lifts to further accentuate his severe case of small man syndrome. What a sleazy little brat... I LOVE him! But in a let's see if I can make him cry before I kill him sort of way."

Then I met him without Karlach or Wyll in my party.

And he spent half of his coronation making moon-eyes at my Durge. I learned more of his backstory, and he started creeping into that place where Astarion lived. The only thing is... Astarion and Gortash are only very alike if you generalize them into: man abused by others who became power-hungry and cruel because of it.

That's about where the similarities end. Astarion is experiencing freedom for the first time in over two centuries. Gortash has been out of the Hells for a long time. He's repeatedly revisited the cruelties inflicted on him onto others. Astarion's psyche is more malleable; he now has the opportunity to reinvent himself. He can choose to allow his past to dictate his future, or he can defy it. Gortash has already made hundreds, if not thousands, of choices repeating the cycle of abuse and sacrificing any individual identity he may have possessed to a garbage loser god (sorry, Bane-lovers) so he can stop being scared all the time. (My own personal take: canon Gortash is 100% fear-driven. You don't have to agree with me.)

Mods that change Astarion into Gortash are jarring and incredibly off-putting to me. Audio notwithstanding, the way Astarion is animated simply does not fit Gortash. Neil Newbon did the mo-cap for both characters, but is clearly portraying a much different person with Gortash than with Astarion.

However, mods that replace Gale with Gortash's model actually seem to fit (even though I can't use them because only the Astarion one is on PS5. 😭) I've seen videos & screenshots.

We don't get to talk to Gortash very much in-game, but when we do, he talks for a long time, animating with his hands frequently, just like Gale. Although Gale maintains slightly better posture than Gortash. And is less of a bird (head bobbing).

One of Gortash's most omnipresent traits is his confidence--something Gale has in spades (abject and incorrigible self-delusion to one of his assessors at university). Confidence is something Astarion severely lacks. He has false confidence, which is very much not the real thing. Gortash and Gale have the real thing. And it's pretty damn hard to shake in either of them.

Because of the way he looks at Durge, we want Gortash to act like Gale does with his partner, but in a darker, more twisted way. With Durge stuff involved.

Also... he talks smart, and has puppy eyes and chest hair. Mmm... chest hair.

Astarion's only physical flaw is his lack of body hair.

When I decided to romance Gale, I began to realize that Gale is Gortash---if Gortash wasn't an unreasonable piece of shit who only cares about power. If we had more time with Gortash, if he was allowed nuance, I think he would remind more people of Gale. They're both very intelligent and confident, even obstinate at times. Their egos are huge. There's this sense of entitlement about both of them that only Gale actually manages to earn.

Gale is as capable of selfish, evil choices as any of our companions, and unlike Karlach and Wyll, you don't have to play as him to explore them. He can be convinced to accept them as a companion. But he experiences a severe crisis of conscience and only goes along with an evil PC because he knows he can't save himself alone. He becomes fairly awful if you pursue the god path with him, too.

Most Gortash fans want an ending in which he survives. If he had a more reasonable side to him, like Gale does, he probably could. That Gortash is ready to re-sign up with his severely brain-damaged, amnesiac ex-cohort could be viewed a few ways. Two of those ways are Gale-coded. The first is how others see Gale as desperate, which despite Gortash's seeming position of power, the newly appointed Archduke absolutely is desperate. The other is Gale's almost unconditional acceptance of his partner, so long as they choose him. He loves you as a worm. He's excited about loving you as a worm.

Gale fulfills the headcanons people have of Gortash better than Gortash canonically does himself. Gortash doesn't even want to know what murder means to Durge. As strongly anti-murder as Gale is, he also essentially says, "Just kill the ones who are trying to kill us, and it's all good." Also, after tying Durge up so they don't kill him in their sleep, Gale says: "This is surmountable. I'm sure of it. I will protect you until you prevail."

Gale is truly so many of the things Gortash fans wish that Gortash was.