#when i'm sick... well...

[elpsycongruent]

had a dream last night that I had to bottle feed a baby blue whale. from a bottle bigger than my entire body.

it was both adorable and extremely stressful

[nevermeyers]

“When it's your time to go, make sure you're surrounded by others”

[coolseabird]

Random Musings on Gale and His Relationship With Mystra

I find Gale's relationship with Mystra to be one of the most fascinating parts of his story. It’s a dynamic that can be viewed in many different ways, depending on how you approach it and I think that’s part of what makes it so compelling. While some might see it literally, I’d like to explore it through a more allegorical perspective, though I want to be clear: this is just one way to interpret their relationship, and other viewpoints are just as valuable. This isn't even the only way that I personally interpret them haha. (I just have to be nuanced, it's a compulsion truly.)

In literature and mythology, take Greek mythology, for instance, relationships between gods and mortals can often carry deeper, symbolic meanings. The gods aren’t always just powerful beings they can represent larger forces like nature, fate, or human desires. This approach, called allegorical interpretation, is something I find really enjoyable! It adds layers to a story.

Consider the famous story of Paris’s judgment of the goddesses. The goddess Eris, seeking to sow discord, throws a golden apple inscribed “for the fairest” into a wedding attended by Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite. They decide to have the mortal Paris judge who deserves the apple most out of the three of them and is thus the fairest.

Each goddess offers Paris a gift in exchange for the title. Athena offers great tactical ability, Hera promises leadership over vast kingdoms, and Aphrodite tempts him with the love of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world (who happens to already be married). Paris chooses Aphrodite, gains Helen as a lover and this leads to the Trojan War. Beyond the literal reading, this story can be seen as desire (Aphrodite) overcoming both wisdom (Athena) and marriage (Hera). Paris's fatal flaw is his lust for Helen. The story can also be interpreted as Paris losing due to declining to accept both of the other offers. He fails strategically in the ensuing war and also causes the collapse of his own kingdom.

Mystra, as the living incarnation of the Weave, can be interpreted similarly. She isn’t merely Gale's ex-lover. She is magic itself, the force that gives Gale his entire identity. Their relationship transcends romance; it’s more like that of a man consumed by his craft to an unhealthy degree. Like a mathematician to mathematics, or a physicist to physics, he's in love with something that can't love him back.

His attempt to give Mystra a gift she's never received before, something truly incredible, is due to his belief that transcending all limits to somehow earn Mystra’s (and thus, magic’s and his life's work's) recognition is both possible and necessary. It was 100% done with the best intentions but tragically any all-consuming passion carries the risk of blowing up in your face. (Just look at Alfred Nobel, pun intended) And, due to the aforementioned "blow up", his emotional low and his measurable low in his abilities correspond quite directly

There is a cut dialogue from early access about how much of his power he lost after this:

You see, this fire – there was a time that I could make it come alive. That it would take the shape of a dragon and roar in delight. There was a time I could silence a Beholder with a word, and lift a tower from its foundations with a flourish. There was a time I was all but one with the Weave. But no more – a mere shadow of the wizard I used to be. Why? Because I’ve lost.

A key theme in their relationship (in my opinion) is not just Mystra’s rejection but what her rejection represents: The collapse of Gale’s identity as a powerful magic user. (An identity he's built his life around and sacrificed for ever since he was a child)

Without this, he starts self destructing. He has to make do with consuming scraps of magic rather than the all encompassing sort he used to receive from Mystra's presence.

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While Mystra’s treatment of Gale is undeniably harmful, I think it’s important to recognize that she is not cruel in a personal, calculated way. She is so out of touch with normal people that she’s more akin to a force of nature. As an arbiter of natural laws, she wants to control him/kill him because he represented a destabilizing influence, not out of any targeted animosity. (Which is arguably worse than outright hate depending on your point of view)

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Now for a bit of a change in topic I wanted to go over his different endings:

His "good" ending comes from the realization that magic, or any external force, cannot be the source of true self-worth. The deeper theme here, beyond just getting over an ex-relationship, is that Gale must learn to build relationships with people and and find a healthy balance between his work and personal life, rather than devoting himself wholly to impersonal things at the cost of his well-being. He has to learn that he is "Galenough," as @ekansbot once put it. Ultimately, his growth in this regard is best shown with his choice to embrace his ordinary, human last name "Dekarios", rather than defining himself solely as the archmage "of Waterdeep."

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More evidence about the meaning of names to him, earlier during the conversation with Mystra in the tabernacle, she will either call him "Gale Dekarios" if she's displeased to remind him of his humanity, or"Gale of Waterdeep" when pleased to inflate his ego with a title. This shows how revolutionary it is for him to willingly forego having a title at all in this ending as it had been something he sought in the past.

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Alternatively, and more fun for my tragedy-loving psyche, he can totally succumb to his flaws and lose himself. In this case the orb's desires fully supplant him as a person. He becomes a power hungry god, doomed to perpetuate the same callousness Mystra showed to him. His grand dreams of bettering the world fades, and his only goals shift to slowly gathering more power and followers and eventually challenging the rest of the gods. He entirely gives up on being a "person" he's the god of ambition now, and you can see it in the way he speaks how much he has mentally separated himself from the mortal world. He has fully given up on having a life outside of his obsessions. It’s quite dark. (Though not quite as dark as my absolute favorite, the Absolute ending, where you use thousands of mind controlled innocents to become Kratos.)

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Something that's extra sad for you. If the player character chooses to break up with him after becoming a god he says "so I'm still not enough for you" Aghh it's horrible. His insecurities only get worse as a god.

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Or... he could kill himself. Literally destroying his darker hungers (the orb) for an altruistic purpose, but he also, obviously, destroys himself in the process. Very sad indeed.

Now, here’s something I find fascinating:

If Gale chooses not to use the crown, nor to surrender it to Mystra, but instead lets it remain in the water, the orb stays within him but rather than being a catastrophe it actually becomes harmless and inert.

Why does this happen? Gale speculates that it's because he has found contentment due to the player character's romance with him.

Clip sourced from this video: https://youtu.be/gikRKEIpvQs

This reveals something crucial: the orb, from the very beginning, was tied to his own emotions. It was basically an extension of him all along. He was inadvertently the one driving the orb’s power. It was his own despair and obsession that were indirectly killing him the entire time! It's very tragic but also supremely interesting!

It is this somewhat gut wrenching realization, though, that makes this the best "good" ending. He doesn't have to apologize to Mystra to get a happy ending out of pity. Instead, it is his own emotional catharsis that resolves the problem of the orb internally, rather than it being fixed through external means. It also has a sort of Jungian quality to it that I really like. With the idea of integrating and accepting all parts of oneself (allowing the orb to remain, but becoming settled and integrated), rather than trying to shed them being a theme I think fits his character well. Additionally, he keeps the orb scar, which looks pretty neat. :)

[madwomansapologist]

nanami is a great boyfriend.

he remember every important date to celebrate and even mentions it to you a week before just in case you could use a reminder. he listen, truly listen, and knows when to give a opinion, advice or nothing at all. he knows your favorites (be it food, color, music, place) and don’t get frustate if you sometimes forget his. he holds you close at night, whispering soft words when he thinks you're asleep—but not minding if you’re not.

nanami is a great husband.

he's the one talking to the doctors when your parents get sick. he's sitting on a tiny chair for hours to keep them company when you're working. he's holding you closer at night when you're already near accepting what is about to happen. he's the one taking care of the funeral when they die. he's the one listening to your sobs, confissions and heavy silence. he's there, because sometimes being there is the only thing one can do.

[kirby-the-gorb]

[casino-lights]

so we have confirmation that veilguard was made in a year and a half. that's understandably such a time crunch and must have put unimaginable stress on the dev team, especially with the mass effect team coming in partway through. I do have empathy for the writers. no one deserves to lose their job at a time like this, especially not after such a roller coaster of a development cycle and after working on this series for so many years.

however.

obsidian made kotor 2, a game praised for its writing and many fans' favorite of the pair, in 14 months. they then proceeded to make fallout: new vegas, again praised for its writing and hailed as a shining example of video game storytelling, in 18 months. a lot of content was ultimately cut from both of these games, but in kotor's case, it was lovingly added back in by fans over the years despite not being especially easy to mod because the fans were so passionate about what they already had that they wanted to enhance it. these games are both known to be kinda janky as well. but the games at their core have satisfying stories, characters, and an incredible overall narrative that feels satisfying and fits with their respective universes, maintains respect for the established lore and characters, and is tonally consistent with the atmosphere and themes of previous games. hell, dragon age 2 was also made in about the same time frame based on what I could find, and as much as the assets were reused there and it could be occasionally glitchy, it remains one of the best bioware narratives with some of their most memorable characters, and it accomplished that while both keeping to the lore and vibe of the dragon age series AND expanding it into new territory.

I am aware that there are differences like engines, era, expectations, pushes from management, etc, but I'm mostly focusing on the writing and the narrative team's priorities. I wouldn't care if they reused assets to save time and money. I wouldn't care if a couple side quests had to go, or some character arcs were a little less polished, or some side characters were cut entirely. honestly I would have preferred it if some of the characters WERE cut entirely. if you're just going to spit on all of her character development, don't bring morrigan back. cut some of that banter in the lighthouse and let me talk to my companions properly. cut that goddamn arena and put those resources toward fleshing out the lords of fortune. even if the rest of the team wanted that entire faction cut so they could focus on other things, cut the fucking faction.

I will never apologize for rightfully criticizing the choices the writers made while making this game. the game talks to you - both you as the player AND you as the character - like you're stupid. repeating things over and over again just to make sure you Really Get It, dumbing down so many aspects of its own lore, reducing any kind of conflict to therapy speak or an HR meeting, etc. rook has no characterization to speak of and their dialogue and tone is wildly inconsistent depending on which npc you're speaking to at the time. why is rook clever enough to do playful, flirty hunter/prey banter with davrin but also too awkward to properly flirt with harding? the one canonically nonbinary neurodivergent companion frequently expresses themselves by growling and roaring and their individuality and competency are repeatedly undermined by their own writer's narrative decisions and banter. the game disregards its own lore and at times straight up contradicts itself. it's pretty, but lacks substance, and fails to live up to the standards a lot of us had for a dragon age game.

I won't pretend I know everything that went on behind the scenes but I think a year and a half is more than enough time to write a better narrative than what we got, even with some pushback from another dev team. I've seen countless thinkpieces by fans who have come up with solutions for plot holes and fixes for the overall narrative, and these are people who came up with this stuff in a matter of a few days or weeks, or sometimes just a few hours. you can't blame me for thinking veteran bioware writers - who SHOULD know their own lore by now - could have come up with something better than this in that amount of time, regardless of the limitations. choices were made and things were prioritized that shouldn't have been. I do not forgive the writers, EA, or bioware execs for this, and I will continue to criticize the responsible parties for the product we were sold, which includes criticizing the writers for shoddy work.

tl;dr: I don't believe the writing team made the best of the time they had and I fault them for that. but maybe that's on me for hoping that a game with its narrative led by weekes and epler would have actually been good in the first place.

[arttsuka]

Based on somewhat real events

I spent way too much time drawing this...

But yeah, Ford finally saying thank you

A continuation (kinda)

[crimsonservbot]

Hello there, you. Yes, hello, you, right there, seeing this with your eyes. Look at me for a moment, or at least near me. You see that trans women over there? That transfem? The very big one? The one with the broad shoulders and the thick limbs? The one with a few too sharp edges she's trying so hard to sand down? The one who isn't small except in the ways it pains her not to be? You need to tell her she's pretty. You need to let her know that she is soft too. To let her know that she can be dainty or demure or delicate if she wants. That she can be beautiful. That she is beautiful. You will do this. Goodbye now.

[vaguely-concerned]

powerful mental image of lucanis expounding passionately about any given one of his limited but extremely deep areas of interest (the wyvern/knives/coffee/cooking/murder continuum of lucanis dellamorte special interests if you will) while rye lounges around and Beholds him with palpable twink boutta pounce energy

[mazken]

brush test slash rendering practice with ayem

[queenlucythevaliant]

Just to clarify my thoughts (since I've had a number of people ask me about it) re: Job and cursing God. There's a big difference between cursing God as used in Scripture and how we generally would think of cursing at God today.

Cursing someone, in the Bible, has a lot of depth to it. It's not just saying "screw you " in anger, it's got a sense of forsakenness to it. It's the opposite of a blessing, a removal of blessing. If the blessing is presence, your face shining on the person you're blessing, then a curse is absence. In some translations, Job's wife tells him to "renounce God and die," which I honestly think makes a lot more sense to modern ears.

Job says a lot of unpleasant things to and about God in his anger and grief. So do the Psalmists. A number of the Prophets. So can we. God can take it if we come to him with honest expressions of our emotion, including those not-so-nice ones directed at him. I don't think there's anything wrong with getting mad at God and saying, "How dare you, you bastard" when you suffer unjustly. You can say much worse, I think, without sinning, though I don't feel particularly inclined to give examples. But as long as it's an honest expression of your heart, I think you're doing exactly what prayer is for. You're presenting him your heart with an open hand. He can use that. Opposite of love is not hate but indifference, etc.

Job doesn't renounce God. Neither should we. But I think when you're truly suffering, you're gonna have those feelings toward God either way. He'd rather you address them with him directly than try to avoid them. Cursing at God in the modern sense is actually a great way to keep the relationship strong and not end up cursing/renouncing him in the Biblical sense.

[amywritesthings]

okay, i have to address something that i've seen float around a bunch on tumblr, reddit, and tiktok lately when it comes to readers who are angry at fanfiction authors for not writing the content they wish to see in their fandom spaces.

...did you ever think to try and write it yourself?

this weekend i saw someone comment on the bg3 sub about how they're sick of seeing astarion fics with 'special/edgy female-centric tieflings or durges' and not much else. they were angry that 'they scroll for hours on ao3 and tumblr but only find all this oc and reader insert garbage, when it's plaguing their fandom space'.

so write the damn story you keep searching for. write what you find the fandom lacks. you take it upon yourself to curate the content you want out there.

if a writer wants to make 50 stories of the same 'special/edgy' original character smutting up a canon, they can? it's their labor of love. their passion project. a hobby. they choose to share it online for free. we are so very lucky to live in a digital age where fanfiction is so readily available, and there are millions if not billions of stories (for free!!) at your fingertips to scroll and enjoy.

i'm getting very tired of finding posts/videos of entitled readers who vocally complain about not being catered to when they themselves are not trying to contribute with the content, pairings, or topics they wish to see.

[pasdetrois]

also re: the earlier deleted lines post, i'm also thinking about this more heavily emphasized spiritual thread in the original script..

[bonefall]

I understand being upset by the moonpaw dog post but i dont think talking about some random teen publicly (on a pretty big fandom blog) as opposed to like, dming them about it, is a very nice thing to do? Would recommend keeping that kinda gossip in dms going forward personally.

??????? "That kinda gossip???"

Saying that it's fucked up that a publicly posted incest joke about how deformed she should look went to the top of the Warrior Cats and Moonpaw tags, is gossip???

TRENDING TAGS?? GOSSIP?

I'm not talking about "some random teen," I have not even dropped a username and been VERY clear I don't want harassment of anyone. During this discussion about wider ableism against Moonpaw, I've directly answered two anons about the contents of a post that was/IS extremely popular to the tune of nearly a thousand notes.

One of those two asks was an anon who only stumbled in to say that the post was funny in a display of SHOCKING tonedeafness, while I was talking about how shitty it is to compare people who are the products of incest to unethical dog breeds, especially in the context of WC. The other was an actual XX/XY chimera who expressed that the extremely popular post hurt their feelings, and when they tried to express discomfort to someone, got told they "probably killed their twin in the womb."

It's not just one rando weenie little blog the minute half of the Tumblr space is openly laughing at a joke about deformed incest kids and hoping Moonpaw dies because she's so "gross." Not nice?? Your feelings are hurt? OTHER people's feelings were ALREADY hurt.

NOTHING about this was "nice" to begin with!

Difference is, when YOU cry me a river, you can build me a bridge, and get right the fuck over it. A person who's the product of incest cries and has to go right back to every shitty banjo-hunchback-hapsburg joke they've heard before, just feeling more unsafe about a space that PRETENDS to care about the abuse they experienced. If you feel guilty about that, maybe you should!

If you were under the impression I was ever "nice" about bigotry, you were mistaken. I don't appreciate calls for ME to be more polite when I'm at a trend of fandom ableism and calling it fucked up. I've named NO names. Sounds like what you ACTUALLY want is for people like me who have a platform to shut up.

[kraymerman]

Spoilers(? Nothing specific, just allusions to something that happens in Chapter 4) under the cut

Very rude, Kris... Trying to undo all of my hard work >:(

Protect her? From Me? Silly, nobody can protect her from Me, least of all you. I'm your SOUL now, and you need that to survive.

You'll never get rid of Me, Dreemur :)

Why am I doing this? Well, I could tell you the same lie that I told her; to making her stronger. To protect her just like you.

But no. The truth is that, at the end of the day...

I j u s t l i k e t o w a t c h y o u t w o s q u i r m

[therealcallmekd]

Kinito: Machine Model 01 (Will I update this later? We'll see..... this will be interesting....) (They'll see my potential now.)

Finally at long last, HE'S REAL!

Real world Kinito is quite something! His dedicated partner (the user) spent many many months and years helping him reach his potential, and now he can walk and talk and breathe like the rest of us!

Close ups + doodles under cut:

I'M SO DANG PROUD OF THIS DESIGN YOU GUYS DONT EVEN KNOW. He is so special to me.... funny robot lotl go brrrrrrrr

also the text on the main reference is hard to read on purpose, it's supposed to be just an artsy thing!!!! <3