#but her insurance wouldn't pay for the treatments she did want/need unless she went through a round of chemo

[tearlessrain]

the thing about karlach's ending that pisses me off is that it doesn't make sense if you do everything you can for her though. the gondians are master workers of infernal iron, and if you liberate the house of hope, and make sure dammon lives, you have all the ingredients needed to help karlach's condition improve. it simply doesn't make sense for her to say that she will NEVER EVER go back to avernus even when you have a safe place to set up an independent hellforge and work on a new non-explosive heart replacement. it frustrated me immensely that in my playthrough because i didn't choose to romance her and i had wyll become a baldur's gate bigwig, she chose actively to explode and die... when i had everything i needed to save her life. to go on the terminal illness theme, it felt to me like she had cancer and i had chemo and she was rejecting it and choosing to die horribly instead of get it treated... which totally does happen IRL, but isn't exactly FAIR to her as a character. it's good writing because it makes me engage emotionally with it to this level but it's frustrating because i felt like i should have been able to save her with the pieces available in the game.

this is all also leaving aside that gale has a scroll of true resurrection in his fuckening satchel. WHY can't i immediately use it on Karlach after she 'plodes lol is Gale really that selfish?

okay fuck it, I'll bite. yeah, it IS unfair and frustrating and she doesn't deserve any of it, and that was kinda the whole point and it's why I think they did such a good job with Karlach's arc. because, again, it was a pretty clear metaphor for terminal illness and the associated grief/helplessness/denial/scrambling for solutions that comes with dealing with it. your chemo metaphor is interesting because as you've mentioned people DO often choose not to go through chemo, because chemo itself is miserable and draining and wrecks your body and is not guaranteed to work, and some people would prefer to just remain as active and present as possible for as long as possible and then go out when it's time, especially if the cancer is aggressive and terminal and chemo may not do much. kind of like going to Avernus would be miserable and draining and dangerous, and Karlach stated many times how much she hates Avernus and would rather die than go back. how on earth does it not make sense that she wouldn't choose that, especially believing as she did that she would immediately be shanghaied back into Zariel's service indefinitely after so many years of being desperate for freedom.

though ironically, people in real life sometimes react to cancer patients choosing not to do chemo or other procedures that suck/are invasive and awful the same way you're reacting to Karlach not wanting to go to Avernus. sometimes, and for some people, it's not about just extending your life as far as possible at any cost. there's a point at which it isn't worth it, and that point is different for everyone. and BOY does that make some folks upset when a loved one's "it's not worth it" point is different from theirs. It's why DNR is a thing, and it's also why you should think very carefully about who you want making medical decisions for you if you're incapacitated and have a talk with that person/clear instructions written up.

I already mentioned in the post that they sort of dropped the ball on not explaining why all those potential avenues don't work so I don't know what you expect me to say about that, but I stand by my previous statement of "all I really need them to say is 'yeah the gondians agree, this thing is fucked' and I'll accept that." I would love for them to add that in. but I don't think it should be fixable.

finally, considering that the scroll of true resurrection was intended to be used on Gale during that quest, yes it's on Larian for letting you revive him in other ways and keep the thing, but it's still metagame-y and I don't think it qualifies as a plot hole so much as a game design flaw. it annoys me when people bring up "why didn't they account for my cheesing in the story" arguments as writing critiques.

[crowskyler]

About a month ago, my grandmother — my last living grandparent, on my dad's side — died. I've been wanting to sit down and write about it, but I haven't been able to actually do it before now.

It wasn't a shock. Her health had been declining for several months, and she'd been moved into hospice care roughly a month or so before. Two types of cancer and various other kinds of organ problems were the culprit. At 95, treatment options were limited, and she'd refused to do anything about it for months. I know this seemed to frustrate my dad, who went right into fight mode the second she needed to go to the hospital. He was carving out a plan with a specialist while my grandmother was sent to a physical therapy and care facility, where he had to fight her insurance tooth and nail — despite her not having able to walk more than a few feet.

Then a doctor from her plan got in touch with him and asked him why he was putting her through this. She was in so much pain from everything. He wanted to fight, but she didn't; she was over it. The doctor managed to convince my dad that she needed hospice care, to put together a plan to make her comfortable. And it worked. My grandmother was in much less pain when she passed, thanks to painkillers. When my dad told me she'd stopped eating, I knew what was about to happen. But my mind didn't really know what to do with the information.

I was at work when he called me, cleaning rooms at the hotel. Luckily it was a slow day and I only had to work a little bit more before I could go home, but I had to come in the next day. I was fine — unless someone talked to me about it, and then I was an instant crying wreck. I couldn't talk about it at all. My coworkers gave me a few hugs — the only people who did, and I'm grateful to them — and I managed to mostly get through the day, blessedly having two days off after that to attempt to process everything.

Or, I thought I was processing. But as I've come to realize, it was much slower than that.

My grandmother was the last of her friends to go, something that I'm sure made her feel pained and lonely; her best friend had died roughly a year ago, a lovely lady named Dorothy whom she'd talked to multiple times a day, for decades. Losing Dorothy took something out of her. Maybe that was the start of all of this. When my grandmother had been admitted to the hospital nearly 4 months ago, I'd started to see the writing on the wall. I'd already done some grieving and worrying. When she passed, I was able to feel a little glad that at least she wouldn't suffer anymore, laying in that bed and wanting to go back home.

As it turned out, my dad and the rest of my family very quickly went into practicality mode. My coworkers had put together a little lump sum for us, very kindly, and I offered to pay for a meal for all of us. A wake situation, or celebration of life — whatever you want to call it. My dad seemed bemused by the offer. Nothing's been organized. Instead, the project has been my grandmother's home. He offered for my sister and brother-in-law to buy it, and that's what they've decided to do, and now that's consumed everything. Sorting belongings, contracts, and finding an estate sale service to clear out everything we don't want. We're still in the middle of that. My sister sold her house and has about two more weeks until they have to move out. The estate sale will be this weekend, I think.

It's not my place to organize a celebration of life, or anything like that, but I've felt the absence. We had a wake for my mom a week after she died. Now, nothing. Just divvying up her belongings. Maybe we're waiting until my uncle can come down from where he lives, in about a month or so, I don't know. But my grief has sat nearly raw within me for weeks. When I go over to my grandmother's house to help out, it threatens to overwhelm me at least once. But with the exception of my brother coming over and breaking down a few times, my family's shown almost no emotion except on the actual day — when I heard it in my dad's voice. It's weird. Aren't we supposed to be commiserating and celebrating her in this time? But instead they're just gutting her house and acting like all of this is such a nuisance.

It's strange to get a hug from my coworkers and not my actual family. The silence has been deafening, from them and from the friends I've told. It's fine. I keep myself operating — mostly. And the lack of anything gave me a revelation, of sorts. When I was fifteen, I decided that I wanted to write. That's what I wanted to do more than anything. When I cleaned out a folder at her house, I found a story I wrote when I was a kid. Just some nonsense, but my grandmother had kept it for all of these years. She'd been an avid reader and had always wanted to read my writing, but after my mother had done so — and criticized it horribly — I became cagey about letting my family read anything. I'd wanted to become a published author, to present my grandma with a book she could read; to make her proud. But that hasn't happened. Depression and full time work have been a huge setback for years. And now she's gone, and I never had anything to show her.

I have many fond memories of waking up in the sun on her couch, while hearing the strum of my grandfather's guitar or the gentle brush on his drums, and smelling their coffee while my grandmother made us pancakes. My grandmother loved pizza, and she would often get it for dinner while I was there — and then we would have a cold slice of pizza for breakfast the next morning, another of her favorite things. She would give me a mini art lesson in the afternoon, or take me out for a walk, or let me play with all of her bead-making materials. In the late afternoon, she'd give me gardening tips while we weeded her yard and checked her tomatoes. In the evening we'd watch television. I'd sometimes beg to watch a nature documentary, which she was also happy to watch, or I'd content myself with whatever she found. On Saturday mornings we'd all watch cartoons together.

My grandmother was the most supportive person I knew as a kid, she would always listen to what I had to say. Even if she found it silly or weird, she would answer with words that made it clear that I was heard. As a teen who struggled with self esteem, it was everything to me. It's hard to accept that we can never talk about animals again (a mutual love of ours), or art; it's even harder to know that I'll never be able to listen to another of her lovely and funny stories. She had so many funny stories about the shenanigans of past pets and friends, and interesting stories about growing up in a rural and much less developed California. She taught me everything that I know about gardening.

And now I have to accept that I disappointed her, just like I've disappointed everyone else.

She would never say so, to be clear; she would hug me and tell me that she loves me no matter what, because that's the kind of person she was. If I said anything like this to her, she would tell me that I'm enough, I'm sure. But I've never managed anything impressive, or even average, and I know people in this family view me as a failure. I wish, desperately, that I had been able to do something to show her otherwise. Instead, I'll just have this emptiness for the rest of my life. No wonder so many people think of the afterlife as a shining place above, where you can watch your family below; future triumphs could be viewed by the dead, giving you comfort in life.

I hope writing down some of this has calmed the churning parts of me that haven't found any rest, these past few weeks. I'd like to start healing from this profound misery.