#and i can't stress enough how much

[halfagone]

The Power of DPxDC

There has been a lot of anti-DPxDC sentiment going around lately; if you haven't heard about it, then don't worry about it. This isn't a post about the negativity, this is a post celebrating how much we've done as a crossover fandom!

Just as a bit of perspective, I've been reading fics from DPxDC since 2020. Now that might not seem like a long time ago, but back then we didn't even have 100 fics for the crossover as a whole, and look at us now! This is a screenshot from Ao3 just today:

Incredible, isn't it? Look how much we've grown and contributed and shared! And that's not even mentioning all the wonderful Tumblr prompts and posts and incredible fanart. DPxDC has us in a chokehold and it isn't about to let go any time soon.

I know it can be a little disheartening to see all the people trying to drag us down. I know I've been left disappointed in some cases, but I also know that my love for the crossover hasn't abated at all, and I hope it stays that way with you all too!

There is so much engagement in this crossover, I cannot tell you enough how much you all have spoiled me with comments and kudos and fanart. A lot of my fandom friends like to tease me for writing so much, but I don't think I could have written half of those fics had it not been for people like you loving them as much as you do.

Passion is the lifeblood of this fandom, of every fandom! And I don't see that going away any time soon for DPxDC.

I know I want to comment and kudos more. I read a lot of fics, but I don't sign in often so that you can see me leaving that kudos, and it's been more and more apparent to me how many people don't realize how much I adore their writing. I'm hoping to fix that!

Some might say that we don't tag our work appropriately, and while that might be true in some cases, I cannot stress enough just how good of a job we're doing. @tourettesdog made a wonderful post not too long ago about tagging, and we do clean work! Not even a full 3% of all the tags they'd seen included a "main" tag, which has been the frustration for most. 3%? That's incredible!

You all deserve some appreciation for the hard work y'all do, and this is it! I hope you all know how well you've fed creators, readers, and fans like me! Don't let up, because we do amazing work. And that deserves to be celebrated.

[mystery-pixels]

I've decided to go for move in ready houses for homes in Ender Falls. If not, then it would never get finished because I could not furnish that many houses. I've put down some of my older houses and am going to building up some new ones, this is one of the new ones!

[artofalassa]

The Earring

the missing piece from my Zack Lives AU set in post AC

[gingermintpepper]

There are many things people expect from one called 'God of Blood'. Always, the first thought is the blood of war, the blood of violence, the blood of the weak shed for the goals of the strong. Ares doesn't think of the blood of battle at all. When he thinks of blood, he envisions the many tied knots of blood bonds and bonds forged in the blood of battle. Blood sons and blood daughters, blood brothers and battle sisters, blood oaths and blood vengeance - he watches over them all and keeps close each one of these bonds.

One cannot begrudge his displeasure then when he realises he cannot tell Leto's offspring apart just by looking at them.

It was easier when it was just Artemis. Dark hair curled about her shoulders, a fierce mien whenever Father summons her to the mountain, a scattering of bones and blood shed whenever she was disturbed; the eldest child of Leto was a wild thing, sharp toothed with sharper claws always at the ready. There's whispers of her being a twin, of her other half being made to crawl on their belly as penance for their sin of god-slaying but Ares pays it little mind. What twins look alike among their number? Even dog litters are born distinct with all their unique markings inlaid in their fur. Artemis' twin too would be much more than their sister's mirror image.

Pouring over his list now, he wishes anything about Phoebus Apollo was that simple.

Mirror image did not begin to describe it. The twins were the same height, the same build, had the same colour and texture hair, ate the same raw food and drank the same amount of nectar. There was no difference in how they dressed, no difference in the company they kept, no variance in the weapons they used. There are some days Ares still cannot believe Phoebus will grow into a man and not some nymph with the way his ears have that slender point. He watches them now, sitting together beneath a shady palm and stringing their bows in an uncanny unison and curses because he still cannot tell them apart. What use is his skill in knowing blood when they both have the same damn blood running through their veins? What bond is there to sense when they are tied so tightly together, Ares can scarcely tell brother from sister?

He sighs. Unadorned and completely alone, the only way to know who is who is to speak to them. He'll have to find more ways to tell them apart from a distance. Surely they cannot stay this similar all the rest of their immortal lives.

[plutonious]

experimentation is forever and ever and emmet is guinea pig

[ghastlyaffairs]

for something as trivial and simple those feelings sure are hard to get rid of

also made a gif a version for fun + alt version with no tears under the cut

the gif is in very low resolution...this is a feature (i could make it bigger but that would require saving each frame individually and than glueing it all together. also i feel like low resolution suits it better. aesthetically and fits the mood)

[luckystarchild]

Today I was the Ambassador

I had a migraine and sat in my workplace's storage warehouse for a bit to rest, away from noise and in the dark. Glasses off, phone away, just sitting in a chair with my eyes closed in the quiet. I had taken medication that makes me quite loopy, and it had kicked in a little while prior.

Soon a dude I didn't recognize wandered into the warehouse to take a phone call. Loudly. And when he was done, he called out to me from like 50 feet away, "Sorry, I didn't see you there! Hope I'm not disturbing you!"

And I, politely, because I wasn't sure which of my colleagues this might be, and because I'm generally a friendly person who doesn't shy away from social interaction, replied, "It's all good. I have a migraine and am just resting in a quiet place."

To which he replied, "A migraine? What's that like?"

[Long post below the cut, sorry]

For the next ten minutes he stood over me asking questions. What's it feel like? How do you treat it? What causes it? Why do you get them? How bad does it hurt on a scale of 1-10? I reiterated several times I needed quiet, but the hint went untaken, and he kept asking questions. I still didn't recognize him, but I had my glasses off, so I thought perhaps this was someone new, and I felt I needed to be polite just in case.

Eventually, curiosity assuaged, he said, "You never know what a person's going through. For instance, you told me you had a migraine, and I could've walked away. But I didn't, and I came over here, and now I know all about migraines and how bad they are!"

Me: "Yep, that you do. That's empathy for you."

Him: "Yeah! I could've just told you to shake it off. Like I could've told you it's just a headache. But I didn't!"

I was pretty doped up on my migraine meds and therefore not feeling belligerent, nor particularly sharp, but even through that haze I recognized the multiple points of irony studding the conversation. Alas, I was too doped up to think clearly about how to end the interaction, and I just said something like, "People say that a lot to me, to be honest, and I'm glad you didn't."

Him: "People say that a lot? What do you mean?"

Me: "Well, pain is invisible. Some people don't believe me when I say I have a migraine and need to sit somewhere quiet and dark." (No reaction; nuts.) "Some people don't take a minute to empathize. They just tell me it can't be that bad."

Him: "That's terrible. People really say that to you?"

Me: "Yeah. My mother does every time I tell her I have one."

Him: "Oh wow. Do you have a good relationship with your mother?"

Me: "Oh. Uh. No."

Him: "Wow, really?"

Me: "Really. But I came out as queer a few years back though, so the migraines aren't the reason why."

Him: "What's that mean?"

Me: "Which part?"

Him: "That you came out as queer. What does 'queer' mean? How are you queer? Can you explain it?"

This is where I kind of came back to myself through the medication fog. That was a deeply personal question. Many of the questions had been. I only belatedly realized the level of prying happening (see again: medication) and it occurred to me I still wasn't sure who this person actually was. Did I even want to share this with this person? Blearily I put my glasses back on and looked at him. Really looked.

He was wearing a Trump hat. Blue. "Take America Back," it said. Not being the instantly recognizable red to which I am accustomed, and without the aid of my glasses, I hadn't recognized it for what it was.

I also realized I didn't know this guy. He was not a coworker. But my addlepated brain slowly pieced together that there were contractors in the building working on [some maintenance project or another], and this must be one of them.

Normally I would not reveal anything about my queer identity to a stranger in a Trump hat. People wearing them have chased me shouting threats and obscenities based on presumptions they made based on the cut of my hair and my style of clothing alone. Normally I wouldn't be caught dead revealing anything about my gender or sexuality to a stranger in a Trump hat. But here I was, already deep in it, and in an isolated place, and suffering from pain, and being stared at expectantly by someone whose nature and temperament were yet a mystery to me.

But.

Generally speaking, I can tell when someone is asking a genuinely curious question. It feels markedly different from someone asking a shit-heel question that will lead to eventual antagonism. And this guy was not acting like the latter. He looked at me frankly, and his body language was neutral, and while his questions were blunt, he hadn't raised his voice. So far, he hadn't actually been antagonistic. Just blunt, and insistent, and maybe a little tone-deaf.

So, perhaps against my better judgement, I said: "Well, in my case, both my gender and my sexuality inform my choice of the word 'queer' as a personal label. I'm bisexual and nonbinary. 'Queer' covers both gender and sexuality, and for me it feels comfortable to use as an umbrella term." Realizing I did not want to arm this person with a word he shouldn't have carte blanche to use, I added: "But some people in the LGBTQIA community don't like the word 'queer,' so I wouldn't use it to describe a person unless you know that's the term they prefer. The word was once used as a slur, but some of us have reclaimed it, and I'm one of those people."

Him: "OK." A beat. "What's 'nonbinary' mean?"

So I explained. And it took a long time, because (as I soon learned, and expected from the outset) he did not know the difference between sex and gender, nor that male/female are used to describe sex, and that man/woman and male/female are not actually interchangeable terms when discussing gender and sex. He didn't not know there was something called a gender binary, nor that anyone could exist outside it. He didn't know what 'cisgender' meant (he had never heard the term). He didn't know that your sexuality and you gender exist independently of each other. He didn't know the words he could use to describe himself, if he were so inclined.

There was... a lot to cover.

Me: "So, I'm to assume you are a cisgender man."

Him: "I don't know what that means."

Me: "It means you were assigned male at birth and told you were a boy by a doctor/your family, and as an adult, you identity as a man. The identity you were assigned and the one you feel fits you best is the same. It's never changed."

Him: "Yeah! That's right!"

Me: "May I assume you're heterosexual?"

Him: "What does that mean?"

Like I said: There was a lot to cover.

And cover it I did. I was patient. He had some trouble with the lingo, of course, since it was all so new. He got words mixed up, and I fear there were parts I didn't explain properly. I wasn't exactly prepared to have the discussion that day, and I was in pain besides. I spent the entire time on tenterhooks, carefully waiting for any hints of antagonism or mockery in case I needed to fish or cut bait.

No mockery came. He got a little frustrated, I think, when he messed up some words, but he never snapped, or argued, or tried to tell me I was wrong about any of it. He just seemed curious.

"But what does nonbinary feel like?" he wanted to know. "Does it feel weird? Do you walk around feeling weird all the time?"

Me: "Kind of, yeah! Ever since I was a little kid, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. I didn't feel comfortable around girls, or around boys. Neither label fit me."

And he listened as I relayed a few anecdotes illustrating how that felt. And when I mentioned that my parents never really understood me as a kid, his brow furrowed.

Him: "They didn't get it?"

Me: "No. My parents were cattle ranchers."

Wide eyes. WIDE eyes. And that reaction cemented a hunch that had been growing in me since we started talking.

I live in Texas. I grew up here. I know how people think, even the ones I disagree with. To me, this guy seemed the type who might vote a certain way due to the influence of those around him, but one who doesn't know much about politics or anything outside his family or in-group. The one whose family "always votes Republican" but has never actually bothered to look up how a tariff works—and I know the type. I know how to work with someone like that. You have to find in-roads to empathy with these folks. Speak their language. If no one has actually fed them damaging misinformation (and it did not appear that anyone had!), there's an opportunity there to do some good.

Thus, sensing we were at the point of terminology overload anyway, I changed tactics. It was time for emotion, and personal experience, and giving him a touch-point for empathy. He was from this state, and the reaction to my folks being cattle ranchers was telling. So I leaned into that, hard.

Me: "We lived in the middle of nowhere, and my folks don't get it at all. There was nothing in my upbringing to really influence this. We were Baptists, on a ranch, in Texas. I didn't know a single gay or transgender person, but here I am."

Him: "So your parents didn't know anything about it at all."

Me: "Nope."

Him: "It was all you, and from when you were a kid!"

Me: "Yeah! They were absolutely baffled when I started telling them I didn't feel like a boy or a girl. It was just how I felt, and they didn't understand for a second."

Him: "Wow. WOW. It really was just a part of you, huh?"

Me: "Yup."

Him: "It's just how you felt inside. Wow!"

I realize these transcriptions, if read looking for sarcasm, could seem disingenuous. But he sounded sincere. He sounded utterly, painfully sincere. He looked surprised, and baffled, but also rather excited. Like he'd learned something new and was happy about that.

We chatted about a few more subjects after that: he wanted to know what transgender means, and why transgender people feel the way they do, sometimes without having the language to accurately convey his questions. But I listened, and I tried my best to educate. I stressed that gender is something people feel, and it can be hard to understand, but that it's up to an individual to know who they are best. And he nodded along, and never once argued, and asked questions frequently along the way.

We get tired, though, all of us. I was tired, and even though he was still asking questions, I think he was reaching information fatigue as well. So eventually I walked back to something we'd discussed before that I thought he could feel good about. End on a happy note. That feeling would hopefully stick once we parted ways, and color the memory thereafter.

"Y'know, you mentioned empathy earlier," I said. "Walking in another person's shoes."

Him: "Yeah!"

Me: "I think it's OK to admit we don't always understand exactly what a person feels, or why they feel it. It's OK to say you don't really get it. But if someone is living their best life, and they're not hurting anyone, it seems like we should just let them live it. That's what we'd want for ourselves, right?

Him: "Yeah, I agree with that!"

Me: "Transgender people are less than 1% of the world's population, too. So when you see people getting really mad over transgender people, it's like...why are they so mad? We're just living our lives. Don't they have bigger issues to worry about?"

Him: "Oh yeah. Much bigger. You're right!"

The conversation ended after that; maybe a few more light remarks, but nothing worth noting. I invited him to ask more questions if he had them and if he saw me in the building again. He said he would, and he thanked me, and we parted ways.

I relayed the conversation to a friend not long later. They stared at me for a second before asking, "Why in the world didn't you just walk away?"

And the honest answer, at first, was that my migraine made thinking clearly too difficult! But once I focused up, I made the decision to continue the conversation.

My reason for staying will probably resonate with folks from various groups: I stayed because in that moment, I had become the Ambassador.

When encountering a person who seems to have never met anyone from your group, and they realize you are a part of that fabled minority, you are placed (whether consciously or unconsciously ) atop a pedestal. In that moment, you are not an individual. Like it or not, you have become the spokesperson, the mouthpiece, the Ambassador of your entire social group. Anything you say can and will be used against your entire social group by whoever has elected you the Ambassador. If you react poorly, or yell, or scream, that person may leave the interaction thinking everyone in your group will yell, or scream, or react poorly to them. If they deem you, the Ambassador, unreasonable or rude, they may think everyone in your group is unreasonable and rude. And they may carry that opinion with them into the world, and they may inflict that opinion onto someone else.

This is unfair, of course. It's awful. Because these questions are invasive, and personal, and uncomfortable. Reacting poorly would be totally reasonable when asked something so deeply personal. Boundaries are healthy, and if you don't feel safe enough to discuss your gender/sexuality with a stranger in a Trump hat, you should absolutely walk away. Your feelings come first.

I'm lucky, though. I have an accepting workplace, and people who love me exactly as I am, and a support system. My state is a terrible place for queer folks, but given the above, I have some insulation from the worst of it. I'm also gregarious, and I've had some training talking to people off the cuff. If there's anyone who can manage playing the role of Ambassador for the afternoon, it's me. I have the spoons, so to speak. I can be the Lorax for half an hour, and I can try (try!) to give the random dude in the warehouse a quick education on my community.

He's just one guy. But he may know others. And if you can get through to even one unlikely person, why not make the time to take that chance?

So that's what I did today. He might not remember the terms we discussed, or the finer details on gender expression, nor the difference between sex and gender. But I hope the man in the Trump hat remembers the queer person who spoke calmly, and treated him kindly, and didn't get upset when asked invasive personal questions. And maybe (just maybe), I hope in my optimistic little heart that if someone else in a Trump hat tells him transgender people are a scourge, he might remember me, the queer kid who wasn't indoctrinated and came from the same Texas roots he did, and say, "I dunno. They're just out there living their best lives. That's what we want for ourselves, right?"

I can only hope I read him right. I can only hope he was truly listening. But even if I was wrong in that, I'm still glad I took that chance. Big things have small beginnings, as they say, and it never hurts to be kind.

(The only lesson I didn't teach him was to be careful asking such invasive questions, but given this all started over a migraine, I don't think I would've had much luck on that front, anyway. Haha!)

[mellosdrawings]

How do you do hands so well!?💀

I cheat lol

Ok, so that's a half truth half lie. Here's a few tuto, one about hand composition, one to teach you how to make a hand from scratch, and one to tell you that sometimes, in art, you gotta simplify your life.

First, hand composition:

Red: palm shape and fingers size

From above, the palm will look like a pentagon, a bit wider towards the fingers, with the middle finger being the peak higher than the others. You can replicate that little knuckles hill at the end of the fingers. Fingers' size depends wildly on the person, some have palms longer than their fingers, others have fingers longer than their palms. For a base ref, make palm and fingers as long as each other and move the fingers' length from there.

From the side, the palm will look like a trapeze, base wider than the top.

From the front, the palm will never be completely flat! At rest, it will curve inward slightly. Draw a lump for the general shape.

Orange: fingers

From above, fingers tend to fan out at rest.

From the side, keep following the line of the top part of your hand. The inner side of the fingers will be straighter though. Fingers are composed of three mostly equal parts (the last one might be shorter depending on the person).

Blue: thumb

People tend to forget the thumb is surprisingly mobile! Unlike fingers that can only close and spread, thumbs can move forward and backward, up and down, and make actual rotations!

The base of the thumb will take at least half of the palm's side, but extra skin to allow movement will make it look like it take more space. Just like other fingers, it's actually composed of three parts. The thumb will usually be just a tad longer than the base knuckles of the other fingers (but as said before, fingers size change depending on the person).

Brown: knuckles and wrist

For the knuckles, you can make little elongated pyramids at the top of your palm shape. They will always follow the line of the fingers.

The inner part of the wrist will be mostly straight or curved inward, but the outer side should have a bump due to the ulna bone. Sometimes I place it as a hill, sometimes as a circle.

Second, the messy tuto:

1. Movement

First you should always draw a shitty shape indicating the general position and movements of your hand. Don't bother with proportions or details, you just wanna be able to tell what you want your hand to be doing.

2. Palm shape

Start by detailing your palm. Try to highlight where the fingers and the wrist will be. Refer to the hand composition above for the general shape.

3. Fingers implantation

Separate the top of your hand in four mostly equal circles for the base of your fingers, and the side of your palm in a roughly rounded triangle for your thumb. Once more, refer to the hand composition above.

4. Fingers

Place the three parts of all your fingers more or less following the initial shape/movement you wanted to go for. Fingers should be roughly the same size as your palm, but you can vary the length as no two people have the same hands.

5. General shape

Once you have placed all your finger parts, you will be able to draw them and connect them to your palm. Don't hesitate to start making adjustments starting from this step.

6. Details

Nails are, just like fingers, very different depending on the person. Globally you can put either an oval or a rounded rectangle on top of your fingers. You can make them longer after the finger for effeminate or well kept nails.

Add pyramids at the base of your fingers to place your knuckles and a circle or a pyramid on the outer side of your wrist to place your ulna bone.

7. Finish

Add details, adjust sizes, remove extra lines, and you have a hand.

Ok. Now, that technique I just showed you? Don't use it. No, I'm serious. Don't use it for hands that are part of the main focus. Do it for background characters or doodles or training or comics panels where hands aren't that important.

For illustration and panels with a focus on your character's hands, use the following technique instead.

Third, how to make your life easier as an illustrator:

1. Reference

Yes. That's how you make good hands. You take a pic of your own hand doing the pose you want to use as reference.

2. Palm

Just as the tuto explained before, you start by finding the shape of your palm on the pic and try to replicate it. It might be a bit difficult at first to copy proportions properly, but doing it again and again will make it easier in time. (Also refer to the last part of this post*)

3. Thumb

Usually I'd go for the fingers first, but since the thumb is on the foreground I started with it here. First the implantation with the palm, then the two last parts. (As you can see I have tiny potato hands so I tend to artificially elongate the fingers compared to my reference to have prettier hands).

4. Fingers

Find the general movement of your fingers. Straight lines for fingers in tension and connected cylinders for fingers flexing.

5. Once you are able to place the general shapes, you will have an easier time copying your own hand. Doing it without the previous steps is feasible when you are used to copying, but if you are new to this I would suggest deconstructing your hand to train your brain into remembering every detail.

6. Corrections, details, add a little movement if you are into dynamic-art, keep it realistic if you are into realism.

You now have a pretty hand.

Remember : You can (and you should) use references! Normal humans aren't made to remember every single details about everything, especially when those things are as complex as hands (or Gods forbid it buildings and cars and whatever else).

If you struggle with drawing hands, take a pic of your own hand to help. Try to find the big shapes composing your own hand so it'll be easier to yolo another time.

References are your friends! Don't think you're any less of an artist because you need to have your own shoe on your drawing table so you can draw your character's feet!

(*For new artists : TRACE! I'm sure you've heard everywhere that tracing is diabolical and you should never do it. It's FALSE. Tracing helps with your hand-eye coordination. 80% of art is reflex! I no longer need to think about all these steps because I have been drawing for more than 15 years. I started by tracing Winx Club stickers I had one my windows! It helped me have a sense of movements, proportions, and fluid lines.

What you shouldn't do with tracing is post it as your own art! You are free to trace as training, but you should never claim it is your own art.

Other than that, please, trace. Trace your own hands pic to get used to the shape. Trace your favorite artists to understand what you like in their lines or proportions. Trace that damn building because you don't have time to create a whole background from scratch for your webcomic.)

Art is cheating. Always. Don't feel bad for making your life easier.

[ptheviking]

Ragnar Sigurdsson - S1E7 (4/8)

[vanmarkus]

"what happened to the bees?" is such a non-issue just like "what happened to the hackers in season 5?" or "what happened to the pier after the tsunami?" like dude, these are stuff of entertainment, stop looking for realism lmao

[nitewrighter]

[drawotion]

YES HI, I know it's unusual for me to do game promo, BUT LISTEN.

If you enjoy city builders & resource management games, and like post-apocalyptic themes, then I highly recommend checking out Frostpunk! And now is the perfect time to grab it with this sale!

I immensely love this game. 💗

[mystery-pixels]

i'm a dumb bitch who can't stop remaking the lots for my small town

[suzieloveships]

Me for next 2 months (about to become the most annoying person on the planet)

[sanderssideswriting]

Yeah the ts crit community really is mostly on tumblr. If any crit on twitter is brave enough to call out thomas or even just ask a SIMPLE INNOCUOUS question like ‘hey whens the next sanders sides coming out’ they get dog-piled by his followers. Just now my twitter tl algorithm made some posts pop up from ppl I don’t even follow and they’re just defending thomas + his patreon and saying that we’re just angry jealous ppl who don’t understand what goes on behind the scenes for him (as if THEY do?).

I swear, the die-hard fans that are still left, I’m sorry, they’re not a fandom. They’re a cult. A cult of personality centered around one man, purely there to keep stroking and defending his fragile ego. They’re no better than the sw*fties or any other group of ppl driven by blind devotion, obsession and white knighthood.

Oh 100%, there's next to no ts crit community on twitter, I got curious and checked a few days ago, searching stuff like Thomas Sanders Critisism, TSS Criticism, TSS critical, stuff that's used over here and the only thing that got anything was the first, but then it was just showing stuff with "Thomas Sanders" or even just "Sanders" in the post. So it's hard to organize that kind of community, plus the die hards and Thomas being on there.

I'd say the only place the fandom is pretty active is on Twitter, and that's soley because of Thomas, because he interacts with the fans and makes it so that there's motivation to make tss stuff. You know there's a community on there for it and if you're lucky Thomas will see it and retweet it. Otherwise it's kind of a joke that the fandom is dead until it's breifly revived whenever a new episode comes out. Which then leads to parasocial relationships and the idea that somehow continues to persist that Thomas is a poor boy who can do no wrong and if he did do wrong he didn't actually know any better. Never mind he's thirty-fucking-4. And his fans are half his age.

One this I do kinda disagree with is the idea that all his die hards and current fans are like 14, which I just don't think is true, I think they were like 14 when the last proper episode came out, and are now more along the lines of like 18 or around there. He's got a lot of patrons, including 17 people who paying $125 a month, that money has to come from somewhere and I doubt it's all from allowances.

[wizardsix]

i guess i have to say it a million times since people insist on being dense: gale is just as much of a victim as the other companions. this isn't the trauma olympics. everyone has been through shit and deserves healing and redemption.

gale is not the self entitled, manipulative abuser people are painting him as. he's a lot of things, but nothing so heinous. he was groomed by a goddess who has a history of preying on wizards that threaten her power, and as a result, gale's ambition and faith was what drove him to discover the netherese orb. what he did was for mystra - in his mind, it was to prove his love by restoring her missing power - and by extension for the betterment of mortals. his actions were never malicious or selfish, in fact he puts himself so low on the priority list it's pretty much non existent. he was never going to use that power to usurp her, but mystra definitely saw it like that, which is why she didn't hesitate to present suicide as his only solution. he never crossed her personal boundaries in the way people are twisting it, he only wanted to cross the boundaries she put on wizards and their power.

people who insist he's all of these things and more clearly only spoke to him once or lack the reading comprehension to see past how much of an unreliable narrator he is. i can understand first impressions might put some people off, but you can say the same about the other companion introductions. i don't like comparing but since people insist on doing it; gale is one of the easiest companions to get along with just by being a good person, yet his honesty and selflessness makes people think he's secretly evil? while the companions with the capacity to be evil don't even try to hide it? how are people being so backwards about this? it's genuinely baffling and tiring to see people continuously spit out incorrect takes all too confidently.

no one is forcing anyone to like him, but it's unfair to completely mischaracterize him because you refuse to learn critical thinking. i promise using your brain is not as scary as it seems, or you can just. not talk about things you don't understand.