#but miss karlach would have her heart bc she's just so ;;;; you know ;;;; so kind and loyal and it would catch chiyo off guard i think ;;;

[tvrningout]

btw the more i think about it, the more the idea of chiyo being one of the druids from the grove appeals to me. not just bc of the potential dynamics in that community, but also bc she's obviously gonna be so invested in those people -- the druids and the tieflings -- so the decision to move on with the companions to figure out the tadpole situation would be a hard one. and i love putting my oc's through hard things : )

[mumms-the-word]

your tags about wyll being another disabled person standing up for stelmane... yeah. like all the characters have amazing links to disability like gale's orb, karlach's heart, astarion's hunger all being chronic illnesses essentially, shadowheart dealing with chronic pain, lae'zel i think is the only one without disability coding like that? but wyll being like obviously physically disabled in a different way to everyone else feels important. and the whole thing of overt physical disability being treated completely differently to invisible disability bc there is no way to hide so you're an obvious target (ask me how i know...) so yeah wyll. ugh 💜

I have MANY thoughts about the various disabilities in the game and the way that BG3 is ultimately a Search for a Cure game that dares to suggest “but what if you don’t want the cure? We have a path for that”

But yes to catch others up:

Wyll is physically disabled because he is missing an eye, so he is half blind (though for gameplay purposes we don’t see him with a debuff in accuracy or a lower movement range like we see with completely-blind Zanner Toobin)

Karlach has a chronic heart condition, her heart is a literal machine and it causes her a great deal of pain and discomfort and it will eventually kill her

Gale has the orb, it causes heart-pain/chest-pain-like aches and if left unaddressed will literally disabled him in terms of gameplay because he will slow down and all his attack/defense dice rolls take a hit

Shadowheart has the mark on her hand, which flares up at random and comes with a sharp pain. She also has amnesia, which can be considered a disability

Astarion has vampirism, which, depending on how you read it, is itself a kind of disability (though the tadpole negates a lot of the disabling parts of vampirism for him). I don’t read his hunger as chronic illness mostly because regular hunger isn’t chronic illness and he does find ways to manage his hunger; he is however traumatized and likely has a host of mental illnesses that I won’t diagnose him with, though CPTSD seems like the obvious low hanging fruit

Lae’zel’s only known disability or illness is the tadpole. And she treats it like a disabiltiy or an illness rather than an asset. Unlike others, she’s seeking to cure it, point blank, no negotiations

So the game is full of unexpected and intentional disability representation, even when actual disability isn’t like….actually affecting your gameplay. Sometimes it does, like with Gale, but often it doesn’t mess with your dice rolls or attack range or accuracy. The game just isn’t built for that.

But anyway you point is not about the gameplay. It’s about Wyll.

Wyll I think is interesting because out of the Core Six, he’s the only one comfortable with his disability. I think this is partly because it doesn’t cause him pain. (Pain is after all the Great Complicator in disability discussion.) Even when he turns into a devil, which would do wild things to his psyche, he takes it in stride. This might be bad writing or it might be intentional—physical difference just doesn’t fluster him

But anyway he’s so comfortable in his disability that he jokes with you when you join the “One Eye Club.” He speaks of Stelmane post-stroke as a survivor and a person of value. I imagine he doesn’t have much experience with chronic pain or chronic illness but he’s probably dealt with tons of injuries (look at all his scars) even at his young age. He’s an idealist, but I think he also speaks from experience when he says that Stelmane is “no less worthy of life or success because she is disabled”

I think he thinks the same of his friends. Karlach, Gale, Shadowheart, Astarion, Lae’zel, even if they were able to cure their tadpoles or fix their conditions, he would find them no less valuable and worthy before or after their cures. I don’t think he always understands exactly the chronic pain/illness element but he would never ever say that a person is less worthy of simply living or succeeding or becoming a hero or becoming anything they want to be just because they have a disability or illness

Chalk it up to his idealism but I think that makes Wyll one of the more surprising and uplifting characters in the game, among his other surprising and uplifting characteristics. Like…he’s going to believe in you, no matter what. And he’s going to support you however he can. We see that with Karlach, and how much he would prefer his best friend live with her chronic illness in an environment that will lessen her pain than die. He’d probably give up his magic boots off his feet for Gale. He’d probably agree to fight Shar one on one to try and get her to stop plaguing Shadowheart with pain. He doesn’t want his friends to hurt, but he doesn’t think they’re less valuable or weak for hurting, you know?

Anyway we don’t deserve Wyll Ravengard

[holydivers]

talking about my tavs bc i can

ok so soleil is kinda boring bc my first character in an rpg always is <3 it's fine he's a circle of spores druid mephistopheles tiefling which was entirely a coincidence bc i had no clue what the plot was going in. he was very gung-ho about uniting everyone in the grove but mostly everyone hated him. oh well

soleil's a rather city-faring druid, he enjoys nature even amidst the bustle of the city and appreciates weird shit like random mold in alleyways and decay. he also likes hanging out in nature as well, and is a guild artisan cartographer. also brews a mean potion. his parents were probably merchants or something

he's the kind of guy who was sure that gale was scamming him by wanting magic items but gave him the items without any hesitation with the hope that gale would be moved by the goodness of his heart and reform his ways. he keeps letting villains go because he believes in their inherent capacity for goodness and it backfires most of the time. he KNOWS they're gonna betray him but he's ok with it. he's good but kinda chill in a weird way. like he's a little too comfortable with the whole shar-worshipping thing and his reaction to "hey let's take over this evil cult" is "dude...the logistics". it's probably fine. don't worry about it.

he tried to romance wyll but i failed the dice roll and didn't save scum. in-universe i justify this with the fact that wyll just wasn't in the party much so they didn't get super close. i also avoided romancing karlach bc i was waiting for the then-rumored new better ending for her which has since appeared. and then lae'zel completely unprompted was like "btw i will NOT fuck you" so i did not have the typical Horny Party experience with my first playthrough lmao

eventually he ended up romancing astarion. they are both incredibly annoying to everyone both together and apart.

the biggest tragedy is that i somehow completely missed the owlbear and her cub in his playthrough. rip he would've loved having an owlbear friend

xun'e, should've been seldarine drow but i fucked up and made her lolthsworn but w/e, archfey warlock

xun'e was a capable but unremarkable soldier from a lesser drow family. with little ambition, she made no moves to advance her station, only trying to keep her head down and survive. after a surface raid gone wrong, she ended as the only survivor...once she'd finished off the remainder of her wounded sisters-in-arms to prevent them from reporting her as she finally fled the underdark. she caught the attention of hyrsam, who became her patron, granting her abilities allowing her to live on the surface. mostly, she's gotten work doing odd jobs or working as a bodyguard.

xun'e is disciplined, straight-laced, and self-sufficient. she's kind but not particularly nice, with a sense of realism that keeps her from reckless feats of derring-do, and the willingness to make the hard decisions. people tend to find her intimidating, which she uses to her advantage, and most people don't realize just how much she's bluffing. has a bad tendency to overuse detect thoughts on others out of an overabundance of caution, though she's been making a point not to use the tadpole's abilities on her own party

unfortunately drow are so cartoonishly evil her backstory doesn't really have the emotional impact i want it to since drow backstabbing each other is just A Tuesday. it weighs on her though

though they helped with the goblin attack on the grove xun'e decided it was wise to avoid the grove, so the party ended up skirting around it and found karlach before wyll

before she ever came to the surface xun'e knew that people described the underdark as dark and quiet, and thought it was absurd - there was so much color, noise, light! but on the surface for the first time, she realized what a breadth of experience there was that she had no reference for, that she never could've imagined, beautiful even as it's painful and blinding. this is kind of how karlach makes her feel - like she couldn't have realized how emotionally repressed she was until she saw how utterly alive and exuberant karlach was. as soon as karlach exulted over her freedom after they defeated the false paladins, it was basically over for xun'e

wyll eventually showed up at camp hunting for karlach and nearly got his shit wrecked but things de-escalated and he ended up joining the party. between coming after karlach and the fact that he's so into the Daring Hero shtick xun'e was quite irritated with him at first, but eventually his competence spoke for itself and she grew to respect him more.

shadowheart's religious devotion reminds her of lolth worship and annoys her, as does lae'zel's, though she respects the latter more for her straightforwardness. she sees gale as pathetic and overly-emotional, but in a "well he's a man what do you expect" way. she views astarion as something like an annoying but sometimes amusing dog. honestly she respects barcus wroot more than most of her own actual party but they're growing on her. ("it's awful work. especially to me. especially if it's you. i'll fucking do it but christ alive")

karlach's fondness for everyone helps, and karlach makes her want to be a better person

sway by the heartless bastards is a song i associate with her (and witchy poo by the same band w/ karlach)

by contrast i think she's kind of an anchor for karlach - solid, patient, supportive, and adoring even if it's in a quieter way than karlach. also karlach calls her sunny :)

juniper. they/them. half-wood elf, hunter ranger, folk hero background

as a young adult, the small village where juniper lived was caught in the crossfires of a war between local lords. an upstart wizard was sent, ostensibly to enforce the extraction of taxes for the war effort, but more realistically just to get him out of the way. the wizard flexed his burgeoning enchanter abilities by terrorizing the locals, harassing people and seizing resources at his whims. juniper used their hunting skills to help provide game to feed the village, organizing the sharing of resources while avoiding the eyes of the intruding wizard. eventually they helped end the menace by being strategically "caught" smuggling torpor-poisoned wine which was seized.

juniper is reserved and analytical, but soft-hearted. they try to prepare for any contingency and hate being unprepared. they're incredibly wary of magic, especially anything that influences the mind or emotions. they enjoy helping others, but are used to their own small community and can have difficulty with crowds and strangers. they dislike the ambitious, the power-hungry, and the rich.

they were raised by their human father in a human village, with their elf mother having left when they were too young to remember, and still haven't really come to terms with their lifespan or elfiness

they immediately dislike gale and astarion, which gets worse once they find out their Big Secrets. gale eventually grows on them as they realize that he's generally good-natured, though they're quick to shut down his more grandiose wizard-talk. juniper is very wary of astarion, though he has a degree of sympathy after learning about his past.

juniper likes wyll at first, especially compared to the attitudes of the rest of his companions, as he isn't just talk and is clearly committed to helping people. they balk a bit learning that he's a warlock, and again when learning that he's the son of the duke, but see his goodness and is quickly determined to do what they can to thwart mizora.

they respect lae'zel's practicality, and hope to encourage her towards nurturing weakness rather than crushing it, but acknowledges that she's surprisingly tolerant despite all her talk. they enjoy telling her about life on faerun, and hearing about the astral plane

juniper failed their attempt to save shadowheart on the nautiloid, and it set them off on the wrong foot. juniper is really not a fan of the whole shar thing, and gives shadowheart a wide berth, though eventually they gain a camaraderie as it becomes apparent that her actions and feelings don't match her purported beliefs.

they like karlach, though she's a bit too high-energy for them.

they proooooooooobably will romance wyll. probably. we'll see!

[mugenloopdalove]

Ok uh. The Jaheira one is kind of a mess bc I was rlly out of it when I wrote it so I'm gonna clean it up before I share what I have so far

But here's the start of one that's supposed to be Wyll comforting Theil regarding Karlach. If anyone can give me help it'd be appreciated

The edge of camp was a welcoming solace. A bit of peace from all the noise of the party. The music and bustle of their friends' voices could still be heard, but Theil's mind was miles away, hardly able to enjoy the festivities, hardly able to be happy when something-or rather, someone-was so clearly missing.

Karlach would have reveled in the join of the team’s big reunion party. Dancing, drinking, catching up... they could almost hear her laughter, feel her arms around them, feel her drag them away to sneak kisses. But none of that would happen. It would never happen again. She was gone.

All she wanted was to live and the world couldn’t even give her that much.

I couldn’t even give her that much.

They recalled in their heart the first time they were at the camp where they decided to throw this party, how confident and naive they were. How little they knew about what was to come. It stung to remember just how misplaced their bravado was. Sure, they had won the battle and gotten rid of their uninvited guests, but at what cost?

“You know, I think I remember some months ago, a certain someone trying to pull me from this very spot, insisting I ‘join in on the festivities.” A familiar voice pulled Theil from their thoughts, and they turned slowly towards its source.

“Oh. Hey Wyll,” they said, voice soft and weak. “Yeah... Sorry. I just needed a break from the noise. I can only handle so much of Astarion's whining before I need a break.”

“If I recall correctly, you're the one who chose a life with someone with such a knack for complaining,” Wyll quipped with a soft laugh.

The teasing made Theil smile a bit, at least, and they rolled their eyes. “Yes. And I think I'm allowed to want a break from it during a celebration.”