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Some of my screenshots / lockscreens of Gale from my playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3. ✨️🌌📚

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Gale is a victim of grooming, no matter how you put it.

Immediately calling out the big guns here on proof that Mystra is, without a doubt, a predator:

1. Anyone who uses the Weave, Mystra is aware of them, how they used it, and who they are. That’s how she keeps anyone who uses The Weave in check.

2. Gale mentions being a child prodigy and catching the eye of Mystra at a young age, most likely at around 8.

(Elminster letter for reference: this can only be unlocked of Gale dies trying to achieve godhood.)

‘You could have been no more than eight summers' old, clutching your mother's apron, eyebrows singed off by the fireball you'd unleashed into your neighbour's rose bush. You were crying because the flowers were so beautiful, and you did not mean to destroy them.

How kind, how eager, how brilliant you were. And yet so naive. You could not yet see that power so carelessly begets destruction, but so too might your good nature be the guiding light by which your abilities might shape our world for the better.

Where is that child now, I wonder? Did he remain at Blackstaff, nose buried in his books? Does he live within his mother's ageing heart, weeping for those roses? Or is he within you still, lost amongst the trappings of godhood you so casually adorn yourself with?

Wherever he is, I hope he can forgive me. To him I promise - I will not make the same mistakes again.

Elminster’

3. Minscs dialogue after Gale is granted an audience with Mystra goes as follows:

Minsc: Gale reminds me of the vremyonni of my homeland. The man-mages of Rashemen.

Minsc: While the girl-folk go on to rule as wychlaran, Weave-touched boys were hidden away. Trained to work their craft in silence and secrecy.

Minsc: It is an old custom, not well-observed. In truth I thought it born of caution, after some catastrophe wrought by wizardly men-folk of old.

Minsc: Now I wonder if it was not done to hide them from Mystra, and the snares she sets for young and prideful boys, hm?

If that doesn’t not SCREAM ‘predator’, I don’t know what does. Even if Mystra only started to date Gale when he was 18 and had somehow had no prior relationship/knowing/WHATEVER with Gale: it’s still a relationship with some insanely unbalanced power dynamics.

Gale is a wizard. Wizards when doing any type of spell, have to beckon to Mystra to allow use of The Weave. And also the fact that, well, I don’t know- Mystra is a god. What more can I say? She made him feel special. He was one of the ‘lucky’ boys, being gifted and chosen by her. He was ‘lucky’ to be graced with the overwhelming force of celestial euphoria. He was ‘lucky’ to be a plaything.

UGHHH MY BABY BOY WHO I LOVE SO MUCH!! Mystra ain’t magic you don’t need her💔

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Gale from @vannral's the wizard fashion, which I emphatically recommend if you think you'll enjoy some sweet married bloodweave smut and Astarion losing his mind over Gale wearing pretty lingerie (as he SHOULD)💜💜💜 I've been having a time these past several weeks and vannral's bloodweaves have been such a comfort, so I figured another fanart was in order as a show of thanks LOL

I've done fanart for the halcyon days ahead of us (post canon, only one bed RAAAA) and on these calm waters (act 3 falling in love 🥺), and I also really love in the middle of a maze (Gale peril!!!) and the price of loving someone (really sweet Gale & Shadowheart friendship plus some misunderstandings). The ongoing an act of bargaining also has me in a chokehold rn but honestly, I wholeheartedly recommend every one of vannral's bloodweaves as they are wonderfully written and sweet and ogugghgughg I love them so much 😭

Closeups and details under the cut because I love how this turned out and the clothing was a labor of love-

I feel like the shading obscures a lot of the iridescent effect on the corset & dressing gown so here's it without, and also what's under the gown because I think his underwear turned out really cute and you can barely see it (by design hehehe) -

Pookie 🥺

Getting the sheer robe to look right was a TRIAL but it was so worth it imo 😊 Multiple translucent layers stacked on top of one another to get the right amounts of opacity., and then a gradient map to get the pearly effect wehehehe

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Wyllstarionnnn

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trying to kiss wyll in my astarion origin playthrough but his dad is right fucking there

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poor, neglected wizard

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my disaster gay paladin and his yapper autistic wizard boyfriend. i love them so much i cant stop thinking about them, they've consumed my every thought pls send help.

idk how well video posts do on this site so im not even gonna bother trying lol (if u wanna see the video version, its on my tt)

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yes it may be the year of our lord 2024 but that won't stop me from making vine references

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Yep,,, yep

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I love the wizard and his cat

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BUNDIIRN…..

I might be a week late but I took the excuse anywho to throw Aldiirn into a bunny suit. Anything for those extra points. 👍👍👍👍👍

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Gale as an onion 🧅

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job accepted

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i don’t wanna fill this blog with drama but I think it’s important to say this

tracing is okay. if the reference is credited, no problem. but the references used here are clearly stock images and royalty free so who cares?

this seems like an excuse to attack a popular/growing artist and I won’t stand for that

I'm not usually one to make a callout blog, but I don't think it's right to be silent any longer. I'd also like to say that I have no problem with tracing so long as it's transformative enough that no one can tell it's traced.

However, this artist is steadily gaining popularity in the Bloodweave fandom and the more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I get with the fact that this artist is popular. Why? Because they're tracing stock images and still frames from films, and instead of acknowledging this, they're passing off this work as their own original ideas. I know the correct thing to do would be to notify this artist before I go public with this information, but based on my interactions with this artist, along seeing other people's interactions with this artist, I do not think this is appropriate. This artist has a lot of friends who are also quite popular in the Bloodweave community, which is why I'm doing this on a burner account and not my actual account.

A few words of advice: to the artist's friends, if you dismiss this as drama, I will assume that you have not read this piece in full. I would like to restate I do not take this post lightly. If this was a one time thing, I would ignore it. However, this is not a one time thing, and you are tarnishing your own work by hanging around this artist. To the artist: you cannot delete your work to hide, as I have already saved the pieces to the Internet Archive. The internet is forever, my love. To both the artist and their friends: my understanding is that there are tensions between you and some other members of the Bloodweave community. I am not associated or affiliated with those members. I am a third party who became concerned once I saw this first picture, and things escalated from there. Similar to the drama comment above, if you associate this with the people you have friction with, I'll assume you haven't read the post.

Without further ado, here we go.

The artist I'm referring to is calolily. I hate that I have to make this post, because I was a fan of their work for a long time. However, in March, calolily posted this image:

As a certified horse girl, this image threw me off. For those of you who don't get what I'm saying, the issue is with the bit: the metal thing that goes in a horse's mouth. On a horse, it goes in towards the middle of their mouth, behind their incisors (which are the teeth you can see when a horse opens their mouth) into their interdental space, which is basically a long stretch of gum that's in front of the horse's molars. A good fitting bit should not be uncomfortable for a horse. However, this is where calolily has it positioned:

Right in front of the horse's incisors. Ignoring that there's no way the bit would stay in the horse's mouth at that point, if the bit was there, that would be a very unhappy horse. That bottom part is where some (not all, as most reins should sit at the bit) reins would sit.

Despite that, I didn't think the image was traced at first. I know bridles can be hard to draw, so I ignored it. That is, until I was looking for references images for my own piece of cowboy artwork, and found this:

You don't see the similarities? That's all right, I'll help you:

Now I'll admit, at first I didn't get too freaked out by this. Horses are a bitch to draw, so I'm not going to blame someone if they need help getting them done. Was I a little annoyed that calolily didn't say that they traced? Sure, but I thought it was a one-off.

That is, until I saw this:

The left image is calolily's drawing of Gale from their professor AU. The right image is a still from the movie "We Don't Live Here Anymore." Once again, I'm providing a side by side alongside an overlay.

(I am so bad at overlays, but I hope you see the point I'm trying to make.)

It's one thing to copy a picture from a stock artist. It's a little scummy, yes. It's definitely copyright infringement, but people turn a blind eye to it if you're a hobbyist. Copying a still from a movie without crediting it? Only making light changes, like swapping out the watch for a wedding ring and adding a periodic table to the background? Not okay. That's someone else's art you're taking away from them.

But it's whatever, right? It's not like calolily's making money off this, right?

Right???

The left image is a print from calolily's Inprnt page. There's a sale on right now, so you can purchase prints range from $6 (regular $8) to $78.75 (regular $105). The right image is a bondage ad.

I'm not going to point out the similarities on this one. I'm sure you can see how the arms and hands are positioned in the same way, how the only change is making the picture more "Gale" like. I've never purchased calolily's work, but if I was interested in purchasing a commission from them, I'd be worried. Would I get an original piece or would I get a traced bondage ad? Who knows.

Maybe this is a recent development though. Maybe calolily got inundated with requests and, not wanting to let their fans down, decided to take some shortcuts to keep their fans happy.

Ha.

On April 19th, calolily posted an "art improvement" post. Perhaps the improved post was traced, but surely the before was--oh, it was traced too? Alright then. The worst part is that this tracing was not from a movie or one of those giant stock image sites or even an ad. This one was from an independent stock photographer named Rob Lang, and as far as I can tell, he hasn't been licensed out to another stock site. He's freelance.

Unless this drawing was made in the past week, I'm going to assume that tracing has been a long time thing with calolily.

I don't get it. If they'd hidden some of the minor details like the shirt folds and the finger positions, I don't think anyone would've noticed. Hell, I didn't notice until I realized there was something wrong with that horse drawing. And I have zero doubt there's more. What's the old saying? Once is a mistake, twice is a habit? Seems like calolily's been on this habit for a while then.

I know some of you are going to brush this off as this not mattering because it's just stock images or that everyone traces, but the thing is, do you trace as noticeably as this? I don't think you do. And these are all someone's hard work they're passing off as their own, even the bondage ad, even the stock images, and I don't think that's right.

Where do we go from here? I have answers for two different groups of people.

For calolily's friends: Don't defend them. All of you are artists yourselves and surely none of you would do anything this blatant. If you still want to associate with calolily, then hold them accountable. Make sure they don't do this again. If you want to stop associating with them, then explain why. Don't be unnecessarily cruel, but be honest. If you were duped alongside the rest of us, post screenshots and get captures of any images you suspect are traced (because I know there are more) before calolily deletes them.

For calolily: Don't delete. Like I said, the internet is forever. Don't lie either. I know your favorite excuse is that you were an animator so you can draw from reference really fast, but does that explain the same shirt folds? The same finger positions? It doesn't. Instead, I recommend you come clean about all the pictures you traced and provide either links or pictures of them. Apologize to your fans. Apologize to the people you've hurt, because you've hurt a lot of them. Strive to do better.

Don't be a James Somerton.

And know this: if you try and hide this, know that it'll keep coming back. I think it'd be better to come clean now, don't you?

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lil sketch ref of my oc sorren in a modern universe

hes an incubus who can shapeshift but normally he just dicks around and plays video games