It does seem like the game itself punishes the player for romancing Gale--or at least second-guesses their choice and shames them for it. Between the "mock me if you will but I have a thing for Gale" being a player choice when romancing him to also telling Sorn that if the player wants boring sex they can ask Gale (when in a romance with him), when there's none of these kind of dialogue options when romancing other characters.
(...)
There's just a lot of things like this where it seems like Larian did not care much for Gale at all. Dark Urge has a special, unique interaction to murder him (and only him). He gets mocked so much by NPCs (and apparently the player as well).
Wow, that's just so bad. I knew there were scenes where we could tease Gale a bit ourselves, which just looked like funny rival banter, but this is just tasteless and mean.
My current pet peeve is Karlach's dialogue after the Elminster visit. It is unproportionally long compared to that of the other companions, centers on her, breaks the mood of the scene with funny lines and worst of all, while all the other companions question Mystra's or Gale's motivations, Karlach tells the player what to think, that wizards are stupid and finishes with a joke at his expense. In his scene, of which he has not many.
By contrast during Karlach's big scene everybody is very moved, Jaheira's dialogue is long but focuses on Karlach's feelings and while Minsc also has a humorous line, it is one that reflects sincere concern. Double standards. And a double shame because the writing and performances of the Elminster scene are beautiful.
I also found her response to the whole thing cringeworthy, she was making the situation look trivial, while she herself was a ticking time bomb. It was the final nail in the coffin that made me not want to put her in my party anymore. She didn't say anything about wizards being stupid though. When does that happen?
