#so hopefully you'll understand why your somewhat cavalier take on chemo has rubbed me the wrong way

[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.