Gale: only attacted to female characters; only attracted to human, elf, half-elf; only attracted to characters with at least 1 level in arcane casting class. Gale is essentially still in love with Mystra, and therefore pulling him away from that love is a massive undertaking if the player wants to accomplish it. The only characters who have a chance are females with some near resemblance to the goddess and can use magic themselves. The teaching of magic that is really just sex is replaced with actual teaching of magic with no sex. Gale will offer to, and teach your character unique spells that can only be gained from Gale. Every time your character unlocks the ability to cast the next level of arcane spells, it will unlock another offer from Gale to teach you the unique spell for that level. Eventually, if you build enough friendship with Gale, and learn enough spells from him, you can enter a romantic relationship with the mage.
Astarion: attracted to both make and female characters; attracted to any race; attracted to all classes except those with divinity channels (he doesn't trust those that can turn). Astarion is your typical long-lived hedonist. He has seen far too much pain and suffering in his life and is willing to accept any break to that pain, to include breaks via sexual encounters. However, he has learned about the power that divine classes have over the undead and refuses to risk making himself vulnerable to anyone with that power. Astarion is one of the easiest and earliest characters to romance, however he will never become a character you can form a permanent bond with. Only temporary trists in the sack.
Why though? Why is the straight guy able to be in a long-term thing, but the bisexual guy written to be unable to get past his trauma? In the end, sleeping with the character is not the goal. Romancing the character is. A conquest is not romance, and calling Astarion a romance option and then only allowing the player to sleep with him is convoluted, not to mention playing into bad stereotypes about bisexual people.
People seem to think that the reason people argue for player-sexuality is so they can just sleep with everyone, so I'm just going to say it. I'm asexual. Intimacy is not what I'm looking for in a relationship. It's not why I do romance. And while im not repulsed as some people may be, it's kind of shocking to me that I am handling the supposed 'overt-horniness' of the characters so well, when it seems to be such a problem for a lot of people. which definitely makes me wonder about what peoples' motivations are.
As far as I'm concerned, the way people treat Astarion is indicative. The ideas people who clearly haven't paid attention to his questline get about him is indicative. Astarion's character would have to be completely rewritten for your idea to make sense. In the game as is, you can form a permanent bond with him, only then you start to get into the problem of the game having no really clear defined conclusions with its endings which isn't what this conversation is about.
Also, I only ever hear about why Wyll and Gale are totally straight, and Astarion is definitely not. No one arguing for player-sexuality to end ever discusses what they imagine the sexuality of the women would be, or any of the other men. Why? I've known queer people like Wyll and Gale. Bisexual doesn't mean you've definitely dated both women and men, or even an equal number of each. So Wyll and Gale having dated/mostly talking about women doesn't strike me as odd.
If you feel I'm misconstruing you in any way, let me know. *Have* you romanced Astarion? Did you keep him in your party?
