When I think about Gale and Mystra, I'm reminded of the Greek myth of the moon goddess who fell in love with a shepherd and asked Zeus to place him in an enchanted sleep, so that he would never change. So he would be beautiful and hers forever.
There are different versions of the myth, but this is the one I knew as a kid - and it always made me so fucking sad. And now I see why, because Selene loves Endymion - and her love takes his life from him. A god could not love Endymion as a mortal loves a mortal; she wants his presence to gaze on, to soak in, his body to hold. Perhaps he's a balm to her immortal existence; perhaps his beauty is an inspiration to her - but she does not want him, not all of him, not really. She doesn't want his sheep flock, the evenings where his fingers burn from the cold. She doesn't want his voice, or the lines and experience he'll gather as he ages. She doesn't want to live a life alongisde his.
Selene would say she loves Endymion, and perhaps, yes, Mystra would say she loved Gale. But how can a god love a mortal in a way that a mortal can recognise as love? You soak up his company, you laugh with him, you value his mind and his talent and his deftness with words. His presence is a spot of bright difference in your endless existence. But will you change with him? Will you be vulnerable with him? Will you look him in the eye, as an equal? Will you stroke his cat and put a blanket over his shoulder when he falls asleep reading, make soup for him when he's sick? Would you love him as a person, not a treasure? You can't.
Gale wanted to be loved with a devotion to match his own. Mystra wanted him to live in the enchanted sleep of being hers, something to smile at and hold but never, never to live beside. And she knew - she must have known - how unequal their desires were. She kept him anyway, until she didn't. Until he woke up.
A god's love ruins mortals.
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is narinder the new leader of the cult once the lamb has ascended? given that they're a force of nature now and no longer really a person, they're not in the right shape to be giving sermons in their own honor.
A thousand years of loneliness, what's a thousand more...?
Narinder insisted on taking over, given that he believes it's the proper way to honor the lamb for giving his freedom, and keeping true to their promise of handing their village once sacrificed... however, sometimes he is just not in his right state of mind to take care of his people.
His siblings help whenever he is in one of his solemn moods...
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imagining the story from pei ming's perspective is rlly funny i think. this god from all that time ago ascends again (you were there for the first two times) and immediately waltzes into a situation that fucks something up for your descendant (putting both of your reputations on the line, messing up how hard your descendant worked to become a god and how hard you worked to ensure that he would have that chance) and then refuses to let you smooth the situation out and on TOP of that your friend's little sister (who hates you and who you are trying to look out for by request of your friend) is on your case about it too. so you've gotta work all that out and then like. you chill for a little bit (still kind of upset about your descendant) until your friend undergoes a heavenly calamity. and then in the space of like A Day the god from earlier shows up again with a fucking ghost king, your friend dies, the little sister you're supposed to be looking out for disappears, and everything just kinda goes to shit. so you're like. grieving. trying to process everything. until your OTHER close friend goes off the fucking rails with the spirit of that guy she murdered, and then you get called out to the spooky ghost mountain where you're confronted with the girl whose death YOU were essentially responsible for and have never really come to terms with, and then like. you just kind of hang out with these gay people until everything resolves itself. fight some ghosts. fight the heavenly emperor. get your friend to stop being evil for a little while so she can fix the filing systems. and then you just have to keep being the god of love i guess
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One thing about me is I’m always gonna defend the Careers. What do you mean you don’t see the tragedy in kids so heavily brainwashed they think being forced to murder other kids is an honor? What do you mean you don’t think about how terrifying it must be for Career victors when the illusion breaks but they survive? What do you mean you don’t see the parallels between the 74th and 75th Careers and lose your mind?
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Hi sorry, I'm ill about the soul vulture arc again. Because q!Bad made choices in his grief, in his rage, thinking he will never feel an ounce of happiness again because he thought his kids were dead. Q!Bad's Acceptance was never of accepting that grief and learning to live after it, but rather, it was the silent admission that his children were dead and there was nothing he could do. No rage, no monster, no demon, no power in heaven or hell could bring them back. It was Acceptance. But the cruel twist of fate was the fact that he was wrong. Pomme, Dapper, and the other eggs were alive, actually. By the time he found out, however, it was already too late. He was long gone, and every choice has a consequence, and he suffered the consequences of his choices like hell.
Q!Bad was dead long before he fell in the lavender field one hundred feet away from the house his children built. One hundred steps away from his sleeping children he fought so hard to keep safe, under all costs. He died the night they were taken away, because they were his soul, his happiness. Everything that mattered in the millenia he's existed, nothing could compare to his children. He died that night; and all those months where it seemed like he was alive, where he was "healing" was the grim reaper bargaining with himself to hold on a little longer for his children.
Q!Bad loved Dapper and Pomme, and Richas, and all the eggs- he loved them so much it hurt. He loved them so much that love became his hell- his purgatory. Q!Bad loved them until the moment he finally stepped in his grave and couldn't bargain any more.
He deteriorated for months. He was literally melting from the inside. The vultures pecked at his body and fractured his soul. The radiation melted the skin off his limbs, and the brain inside his skull. It hurt like no other death, but if it meant seeing his kids for one more day, then that hell was more than worth it. And the physical pain wasn't the worst of it- no, eventually, he forgot his children's names, their faces, he forgot his own name, and he forgot himself. Memories slipping away like lost fragments of time. Until his death, when he was barely himself anymore.
People noticed, but never really did anything to stop it did they? I mean, who are we kidding, even if anyone spoke up, nothing they could have done would have prevented the inevitable. Dapper knew the fate his father subjected himself to. She knew what scars from soul vultures looked like, and she tried to find a cure. He tried, when he still had his lab, but there was never enough time. No science or magic could ever remedy what was already destined to happen.
And Pomme, sweet Pomme, stayed with her father until the end. She gave him health potions- "medicine"- to help his ailments. And she had so much hope she lived in denial- she thought he was getting better. But the truth is that the memory lapses and the illness never ceased because no medicine could ever resurrect a fractured soul clinging on to his deceased body.
Then Q!Bad finally relinquished himself to the sweet mercy of death. And when he arrived, he found the promise of paradise- the promise of Home, where he would never have had to suffer a painful hell again. But he chose to come back to live and to suffer once more because this time, his children were waiting on the other side. For the first time, the scales were balanced, and his happiness was halved because he had a home that was worth living in, and a life that was worth living. For the first time in the millennia q!bad had been alone, he had love. And that was enough.
The story has always been about love and loss, and the beauty of love and life, despite that loss. That's why the soul vultures arc is my favorite, and also why I nearly cried halfway through writing this. Because love thrives in spite of the loss, and the grief, and the personal hell. When death comes, and it always does, and time has eroded every portrait, or photograph, or memory- all that is left is love. And that love is hope, as well as grief. It is joy and sadness. It is heaven and hell. It is simply love.
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