#i'd write that i don't care

[eleancrvances]

screaming crying throwing up over beatrice rappaccini. like. she’s named after dante’s beatrice. it’s said she’s intelligent and educated enough to be a professor. she has never been outside and lives alone with her dad. her mother is never mentioned, it’s implied she sprouted out of nothing like the plant she calls her sister and loves with all her heart. her father thought the only way to protect her was to make her deadly, while she only wanted to be loved. she’s the only one of her kind and not even the man she loves is willing to join her but would rather twist her nature, make her “ordinary”. she begs to be judged by her actions and words, nobody listens. her kindness is viewed as manipulation, her uniqueness and deadliness as monstrosity. she’s as terrible as she is beautiful and makes men feel weak. she’s a monster. she’s the furthest thing from it. she’s a science experiment and the most human character in the story. if anyone deserves a better ending, it’s her. "oh, was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?"

[baejax-the-great]

If I were a writer at a big game company working on a sequel to a beloved series and the higher ups kept telling me to make the game shittier and kept sending my work back to me to be dumbed down even further somehow, and then once most of the writing was done they laid me and my coworkers off illegally without severance, I'd probably gleefully watch as people trashed the shitty game that shipped.

[juney-blues]

if i write hard enough i'll finally come up with the post that expertly skewers some of the transmisogynistic shit i see on here so hard that everyone realises it's stupid and learns their lesson and i never have to see another post like it again. just one more post june just one more post come on. keep making yourself miserable i'm sure you'll get through to them with this one, #neverstopposting

[palmettoshenanigans]

Oh my GOD

You know what AFTG fic I haven't read???

Neil, post canon, growing out his real hair (mostly out of pure laziness) and Allison cutting off the dead dyed parts slowly but surely, and then-

Andrew. Watching with keen eyes as Neil's curls become even curlier from simply being untouched by chemicals. Wondering what they would look like if they were treated with a proper Curl Routine.

Andrew. Going on a bit of a Google spree. Talking to Dan. Talking to Bee. Engraving the full encyclopedic knowledge of Curly Hair Care into his mind.

Andrew. Smoking a cigarette. Staring into the distance. Facing this feeling of want that this auburn idiot keeps dredging up. Proposing the idea to Neil.

Neil. Who has never given a single solitary fuck nor wayward damn about the state of his hair in a positive light ever in his life.

Neil. Who reveles in Andrew's touch and attention always. Cherishes and hoards every offering of it. Who sees the haunting of want and is honored to bear witness.

Andrew. Yes or no.

Neil. Yes.

Followed by several thousand words of Fluff chronicling the progress of Andrew tending to Neil's hair (cus Mister 'bandana gets it out of my eyes' Josten certainly won't) and Neil's hair getting oh so soft and oh so shiny and oh so run-your-fingers-through-them-as-you-kiss-me-on-our-roof-able.

Bonus points for post graduation Andreil separation where Neil has to tend to his hair on his own (and fails) leading to Andrew chastising him for ruining all his hard work (and thus creating the perfect excuse for more visits - Andrew has to fix such blasphemous errors, obviously)

Bonus bonus points for a final scene post Separate Pro Teams, first day moved in together in their new apartment, Andrew telling Neil to get settled cus the idiot left him such a mess to clean up and what the fuck did he do all that hard work for if Neil was just gonna fuck it up anyway goddamnit and Neil does get settled, smile wide and fond and content and eyes closing to the feeling of Andrew running gentle fingers through his hair, assessing, reacquainted, reverent, and finally finally Andreil feels once more at home-

Yeah I haven't read that one yet

[scificrows]

Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.

Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):

In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.

It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]

The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]

Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]

In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]

In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]

Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.

[wikiangela]

tease tidbit tuesday

tagged by @bidisasterevankinard @tizniz 💖

more bucktommy the will talk (they're getting there, the conversation went a bit off track lol) - it might be done this week, and then I can focus on the smut, and the buddie fics, and I have a new bucktommy idea inspired by that video of lou barbecuing with his shirt off that I sooo wanna write🙈

prev snippet

___

“Well, yeah, of course.” Buck answers easily, his heartbeat speeding up. He’s a little anxious about putting too much pressure, too many expectations out there, but he also knows that even if he did, they’d get back on track, they’d be fine. And besides, Tommy’s smiling, he doesn’t seem freaked out at all. And that’s after Buck brought up children. But if they’re moving forward with their relationship, they need to know what they want out of life. It seems reasonable to have this conversation this early on.

“Good.” he responds, grinning widely. “Now I won't have to stress about your answer when I ask.” he adds, and Buck feels himself blush, butterflies in his stomach going wild. Oh. Oh. This is- this is real. They’re talking about it, and maybe someday soon- he might marry this man. He will marry this man. Tommy wants him forever. Tommy wants him. Tommy wants to marry him and have children with him, and just be with him. Sometimes it’s still so shocking to Buck that someone as great and amazing as Tommy wants him, but he does. Buck’s not sure he remembers the last time he felt this wanted.

“How- how do you know I won’t ask first?” Buck asks, moving his head slightly closer to Tommy, just enough to look into his beautiful blue eyes. It feels surreal, talking about this, when they only dated for a few months, but it also feels… right. It feels like they’re on the right track to get there one day.

___

no pressure tags: @elvensorceress @thebravebitch @shortsighted-owl @eddiebabygirldiaz @watchyourbuck @eowon @loserdiaz @evanbegins @ladydorian05 @wildlife4life @diazpatcher @lover-of-mine @monsterrae1 @thewolvesof1998 @weewootruck @loveyouanyway @spagheddiediaz @rainbow-nerdss @epicbuddieficrecs @pirrusstuff @spotsandsocks @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove @nmcggg @rogerzsteven @hippolotamus @giddyupbuck @sunshinediaz @honestlydarkprincess @underwaterninja13 @exhuastedpigeon @911-on-abc @jesuisici33 @steadfastsaturnsrings @buddieswhvre @fortheloveofbuddie @your-catfish-friend @theotherbuckley @daffi-990 @dangerpronebuddie @hoodie-buck @aroeddiediaz @diazsdimples

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the reason that MTMTE remains the most defining, influential, and loved series in the IDW1 run is fundamentally because, despite its many flaws, MTMTE has the power to make you think and wonder about the world beyond what's shown on the page. The character relationships are so strongly developed that it's easy to care about the characters and easy to imagine further adventures they could go on. While the myriad dropped plotlines, underwritten/underutilized characters, and worldbuilding with weird implications are all fucking maddening at times... even if it makes you mad, MTMTE makes you mad because you care and it makes you want to immerse yourself into a world that feels like it's real beyond what's explicitly shown to you on the page. It's a sandbox of a story where there's so much fertile ground for pretty much anyone with any preferred character archetype, storyline, etc to dig in.

It's just... immersive. That's the best way I can put it. It feels like it could be real and it makes you want to spend more time in it than the constraints JRO had. It makes you want to know more about it and come up with theories on how/why things function or happen the way they do. That's why it's loved and that's why it's the best series in IDW1.

[crimeronan]

ultimately i think the appeal of daniel and armand to me is that it's very much a typical dark romance storyline where the heroine is kidnapped and tortured by an evil monster but using her wits she manages to seduce him and make him emotionally vulnerable to her, because she is More Special and More Clever than all of his other victims, and because of this she enjoys a level of dangerous favor and protection from him, except in This version of the dark romance it's two toxic old men who both have the worst fucking personalities imaginable. who truly just fucking suck beyond measure. like no pun intended, they are Garbage, one is the actual literal immortal devil and the other is just kind of a deadbeat with no moral compass, neither of them is willing to work on himself and neither of them has ANY reason to want to rail the other as bad as they do.

and yet. There They Are,

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

To elaborate more on the Pesterquest stuff -

Alternia is a hell world. It's shitty to live in, even if you're a highblood, unless you fit a very specific mold of person AND are lucky enough to be born of a high caste. Every troll character we care about is, in some way, fucked over by their relationship to their society; Eridan and Vriska get it the worst, having been forced to participate in the murdering side of things since they were young, but every lowblood is screwed and every highblood is made worse even just by their passive participation. Kanaya becomes less sympathetic because she seems completely at peace with the society she grew up in, and Feferi wants to enforce casteism, even if it's of a different flavor. Gamzee and Equius both hold genuinely casteist beliefs and attitudes, which slip out and alienate them from the people they care about.

Putting a friendship simulator into the middle of all this is... a choice, I guess. I'm not going to begrudge anyone for wanting that or liking that, but it's going to be inherently at odds with what Alternia is and is meant to represent, and thus, fundamentally at odds with many of the characters' arcs and even basic personality traits, so heavily are they influenced by the shit society they grew up in.

For a non-Eridan example, Karkat loathes himself in massive part because his society loathes him. He's kill-on-sight and lives in daily terror of death. He wears a symbol at all because not having one marks him as even more of a freak, even though he knows that that symbol is connected to the empire's biggest rebel, whose footsteps he is expected to follow. The reason he's so obsessed with being leader-y and earning his teammates' reapect, or the respect of anybody, is because he's so deeply insecure about whether or not he even deserves to exist.

If you soften Alternia to the point you can write a lighthearted friendship simulator in it, then that characterization... goes away. Karkat is no longer motivated by deep, overwhelming insecurities, which drive him to idolize the society that deems him unworthy, mistakenly believing that if he can find validation in that society, he'll feel less bad about himself. Instead, Karkat is just kind of an asshole!

It's the same way with Eridan. He and Karkat are equal and opposite in this way - while Karkat is marked for death by his society, Eridan belongs to the extremely privileged caste of sea dweller royalty - even moreso than Feferi, as Feferi is slated to be murdered by the Condesce as soon as she comes of age (and her ridiculous optimism is likely something she cultivated in outright defiance of this fate). But it turns out that being a sea dweller sucks shit, too, if you aren't the extremely niche type of person that society deems "correct."

Eridan is not actually casteist and genuinely likes his land dweller friends - and this is unacceptible. Not only that, but smaller "unacceptible" offenses are wrapped up in big ones - despite not liking murder and feeling guilty about it, murder is objectively the correct thing for Eridan to be doing, constantly, to the point of it being "all [he's] ever done practically," because if he doesn't fulfil the duty of his bloodline to be murdering lusii (and by extension, their charges, who are culled when their lusii die), EVERYBODY dies. The constant push-pull of trauma, societal expectations and obligations, the fate of the species, and the fact that he is inherently not the "right" kind of person for his society, are pretty much his entire character. He's basically a walking ball of anxiety and emotional turmoil.

So, again, if you soften Alternia to the point where you can write a story about Eridan wanting to see Shrek in a public theater (something he would not actually be able to peacefully do in canon Alternia - at least not without taking off his cape, hiding his fins, and going anonblood - as sea dwellers are considered ridiculously hostile to the point even Gamzee's nervous about being on the beach for too long), Eridan ends up being just kind of an asshole!

Pesterquest!Eridan is, and I cannot stress this enough, fundamentally not the same guy as canon Eridan. They have practically nothing in common, from the fact that PQ!Eridan is willing to do something for leisure, to the fact that he isn't widely feared and the movie theater doesn't empty out in a panic when he turns up, even down to the fact that he likes femme fashion (canon Eridan goes to Lengths to lean into masc fashion) and Shrek (canon Eridan is a hipster). Hell, even the fact that PQ!Eridan SMILES is a massive deviation from canon!Eridan, who has never once been depicted smiling, and probably hasn't for many sweeps.

Also that he has that much beef with Sollux when, canonically, the two had a lukewarm mutual dislike and didn't even bother interacting until Feferi was added to the mix and Eridan became mad that Sollux was dating her. He wasn't even casteist about him until then, and after, even Sollux and Feferi don't think he's casteist, they just think he's ashenflirting so he can get into a quad with Feferi. Like come on, if you're going to feature another troll in Eridan's route, 1) make it be Karkat, and 2) have Eridan cheat on you the whole time with Karkat like he does to Feferi.

Eridan is just overall a wild choice in a friendship sim - I can't even blame them for just writing an OC and putting an Eridan skin on top - because societally, Eridan isn't even supposed to have non-sea dweller friends. The sea dweller/land dweller race war is something the Condesce deliberately put into place in order to keep land dwelling nobility in line, and Equius cites it as one of the reasons he never got along with Eridan. Like, the very fact that Eridan talks to two land dwellers on friendly terms (Kanaya and Karkat) is a MASSIVE deviation from what he's "supposed" to be like, and a huge hint that he's not as casteist as he'd like to appear. You are genuinely hundreds, if not thousands, of times likelier to end an encounter with Eridan either orphaned or dead than as his friend. He's an unstable maniac, and there's a reason so many members of his team don't like him even though he's legitimately not casteist and they mostly seem aware of it (nobody really complains about or even notices Eridan's casteism by the time they're on the meteor - his contradictions are really obvious, and it's likely that they've more or less realized that he's full of shit).

Again, I don't begrudge anybody for wanting or liking PQ. Who cares, really. I'm just saying that as a canon discussion blog, there's not really any place for PQ because it's so far removed from canon that, like, there's not really anything meaningful to discuss about it. The setting and characters in PQ are fundamentally divested from canon, and not even in an AU way. And it's totally fine if that's what you like, but, yeah, like.

Was Eridan written well (where "well" = accurate to canon): no. Maybe he's fine as an OC with an Eridan Minecraft skin slapped on, but that's not my beautiful son, that's not my baby boy.

What did they get wrong about Eridan (where "wrong" = inaccurate to canon): all.

What route would I have written for Eridan: he shoots you with a gun and you die. And then maybe cheats on you with Karkat

[necrotic-nephilim]

I’m gonna be honest I didn’t realize the new 52 messed with Kon that much till I read your post and now I can’t get over the potential. I’m a Tim/Kon girly at heart so I would devour anything you write exploring the 52 vs typical Kon. Also Time being in a clone sandwich is 👌.

the new-52 messed Kon up SO bad it's ridiculous. like, to the point i would personally argue he's a completely unrelated character to pre-Flashpoint/Rebirth Kon. his personality, his suit, his origin, all different. the only real similarities are the name and powerset. and even New-52!Kon's powers are slightly different from pre-Flashpoint!Kon. New-52!Kon is a clone of a future version of Jon Lane Kent, cloned by N.O.W.H.E.R.E. to provide genetic material to Jon Lane Kent, whose body was not handling being half human/half Kryptonian well, it was a whole thing. New-52!Kon is also where we get the infamous "Kon-El means 'abomination of the house of El' and Kara basically named him a slur in Kryptonian culture" tidbit, because that is the only time that's canon. (originally Kon-El was a name gifted by Clark to accept Kon as his family way back in the 90s) he also never went by Conner Kent. New-52!Kon just straight up didn't have any real human identity or connections, outside of being very close to Tim and some Titans.

the very TLDR of Kon's history is: during post-Crisis/pre-Flashpoint, a clone called Superboy is created by CADMUS. at first, he's considered to be a clone of a dude named Paul Westfield and is not Kryptonian whatsoever, he was simply made to look like Superman and only has Tactile Telekinesis as a power. then, it was made canon that actually he was a clone of Lex Luthor and Clark Kent, but Lex hid this fact and slowly, Kon developed more Kryptonian powers. he's given the name Kon-El by Clark, and is taken in by the Kents, getting the name Conner Kent. then Flashpoint happens, we get the New-52, and we're given the above version of Kon-El, who is a clone of Jon Lane Kent, created by N.O.W.H.E.R.E. who has mostly very strong telekinesis powers and some Kryptonian powers. he's with the Titans for a bit, then at the end of the New-52, he kills some aliens and feels bad about it so he decides to fuck off and is never seen again, it's presumed he's dead but never confirmed. then Rebirth happens and DC makes Jon Kent the current Superboy, we get Supersons and all that, and it's assumed that no version of Kon-El exists. just at all. he's not around whatsoever, Jon is our only Superboy. *but* in 2019, we get a new Young Justice run and the pre-Flashpoint Kon-El is back, and we're given the explanation of: Kon got accidentally teleported to this alternate realm called Gemworld and then Flashpoint happened, and since that was a Crisis Event that changed the timeline, the poor lad got *erased* from the timeline, causing most people to *not fucking remember him* and for him to remember a timeline that no longer exists. some of the Young Justice team vaguely remember him, Ma and Pa Kent remember him, but notably, Clark *does not remember him*. it's not an issue of "Clark ignored Kon in favor of Jon" it's an issue of "Kon was erased from the timeline and didn't exist for years bc he was stuck in Gemworld and Clark just doesn't remember Kon or Kon's timeline" which to me, is far more tragic but i digress. since then, Kon has been back and is present in most significant Superfamily runs, with his own recent mini-series, Superboy: Man of Tomorrow. (which was very good btw)

so basically: the New-52 fucked Kon up so bad they wrote him out of comics for years and then brought back the pre-Flashpoint version, but never *explicitly* killed the New-52 version off. so hypothetically, it's possible that there are currently two characters existing in the DC universe named Kon-El who have been Superboy. and like i said above, one of New-52!Kon's only real significant relationships was with Tim, it was the only thing the New-52 managed to get right about Superboy, his closeness to Tim. they have a *lot* of moments that read incredibly queer. and ofc, it's just outright confirmed in Dark Crisis: Young Justice that Tim had a crush on pre-Flashpoint!Kon at some point. so while comics are intent on pretending New-52!Kon doesn't exist, i am intent on putting Tim in a clone sandwich.

because i do think it's fun to play with Tim having genuine feelings and potentially a relationship with both of them. and the fucked up nature of him not fully *remembering* his relationship with pre-Flashpoint!Kon (which is a canon thing, in YJ(2019) Tim has vague memories of Kon he's struggling to piece together and understand why he cares about this guy he doesn't recognize so much) and how frustrating that is for Tim. he knows he loves Kon, but it's all foggy besides that. and so it's even *more* fucked up if Tim dated New-52!Kon before he got emo and ran off into the unknown. obviously in canon no one has told current Kon about New-52!Kon bc comics are doing the good ol' tried and true of "sweep that shit under the rug" but for fanfic, i think it's fun to ask the question of: would anyone *tell* Kon? especially Tim? who now remembers dating both versions of them? would he admit to Kon that briefly, he had another Kon? how would Tim cope with that and move on? personality wise, they could not be more different. they dress and act and look different. they're not the same person, but there's certainly a questionable factor of Tim's dating history including two Kon-Els.

the idea i've had for a while is Tim slowly starting to date pre-Flashpoint!Kon again. it feels familiar and like home. and Tim has grieved and accepted that wherever New-52!Kon is, he doesn't want to come home, he didn't love TIm enough to stay and try. so Tim takes the Kon he has, and genuinely has a happy relationship. like for once, life is good and things almost make sense for Tim. but then, of course, New-52!Kon comes back. he decides he wants to try again and he finds Tim. only to find well. he's been replaced. and technically, he's been replaced with the *original* that he didn't even know *existed*. and if being a clone is bad enough, that just makes it a hundred times worse. because imagine knowing you're actually the second Kon-El your boyfriend who you never *technically* broke up with fell in love with. that's gotta give you some kind of complex.

so i think it's fun if both Kons try to step back and let the other Kon date Tim. both of them have reasons to feel like the "replacement" or "fake" Kon, and it makes them incredibly awkward with each other. do they count as the same person? bc they definitely don't *feel* like the same person to each other, but with weird timeline stuff, who can really say. them settling on an awkward throuple that's really meant to be Tim just dating them both but somehow they end up dating each other too is so fun for me. they both feel like imposters to the Superboy name but are so deeply in love with Tim Drake, it's the one thing truly connecting them. and then of course, Tim feels bad in that somehow, he's betraying both of them for having feelings for the other. but they make it work, with a lot of awkward angst and miscommunication. i just think it'd be fun. very difficult to write to get all the weird timeline nuances down in a way that's understandable in a fanfic (bc you can't just. infodump like i did on this post) but doable. also difficult to tag, because even though i argue these are two different characters, i'm pretty sure Ao3 groups them under the same character tag. so it'd be difficult to convey it's not *really* as selfcest-y as it would imply. comics, man. DC will never acknowledge New-52!Kon again, and he's admittedly a terrible adaptation of Kon-El, but. i think he was sort of neat in his own right and i'd *love* for DC to just inexplicably bring him back and make the current Kon deal with the consequences of all that. and them make Tim kiss them both. obviously.

[bookshelf-in-progress]

If I could write stories as quickly and vividly as I can envision them, I would have written at least three lovely novellas in the last week. Two of them this morning.

[radley-writes]

I don't understand people who say things like 'but it doesn't matter if we don't pay artists/writers for their labour, or use free AI programs to replace artists/writers to improve our profits, because in a perfect world everyone would have UBI so it wouldn't matter xxx'

like. yes. but until we reach that perfect world, artists and writers need to eat?

why are you promoting AI replacement of creative people instead of working towards UBI? Until we have UBI, supporting generative AI in the creative field is no different to supporting supermarkets laying off all their till staff to turn to self-check out, or supporting factories who shut down and move overseas to exploit workers in countries with fewer human rights legislations?

Yes, in a perfect world, everyone would receive UBI. Therefore, people across the globe couldn't be exploited by corporations, and artists could create for the joy of it, in whatever way we desire - including with AI!

But we do not live in that perfect world.

Do you seriously expect this move towards generative AI to encourage people to support UBI, as opposed to people being forced into jobs they hate to make ends meet or no longer being able to support themselves financially?

Especially all the disabled people who make a living creating art and writing/editing, because that is, in fact, a career that is often far more available to disabled folks than a regular 9-5 or a retail job where you're expected to be on your feet all day (miss my disabled ass with the 'anti-AI = ableism' stance lmao).

This is not going to create your army of revolutionaries. This is just going to result in more independent creators being crushed under the boot heel of capitalism, as anyone who would've hired them flocks instead to the free alternative, and they're forced back into an incredibly exploitative labour market.

I agree that generative AI by itself is just a tool and is not inherently a problem.

But it is being abused, in ways that hurt creators.

If you support generative AI... what are you doing about that?

[oofouchstovehot]

Doodled some goobers in between the Kirby gijinkas

[menzoberranzanprincess]

Headcanon// if this displeases you move on

I heavily think, and this will be true to my portrayal of her if it comes up, the real reason Minthara dislikes and gives Gale so much ridicule is because his goddess 'loved' him while hers abandoned her. He's a former chosen of Mystra, he had a intimate relationship with the goddess, and at least had the honor of being turned away directly rather than broken and left as a husk. Even after him wronging her Mystra reached out, though to tell him to kill himself, eventually. Lolth never, even after she seemingly broke herself free, reached out to Minthara. To her she was more devoted than Gale ever was to Mystra and yet he got so much more than she ever did. There is also the fact that Minthara is probably projecting her own self hate and insecurity onto an easy target aka Gale. He's a man, he's a wizard, and even at his lowest is still confident in his abilities. Even when he was struck down and fell to his own folly there was still that want to live as well as ability to keep going on his own. Gale growing into who he is now, the independent wizard who doesn't need a goddess to control his fate and that's bolstered by his companions in rejecting her, makes her feel even more lesser. Why couldn't she do that?? She was neglected by her goddess in her time of need and has never known her warmth, only her cruelty, but why couldn't she had broken her own chains when she was taken?? Why did she fall victim to someone elses power and control when it seemed so easy for Gale to fight it?? One thing Minthara hates is not feeling like she was enough, like she failed in some way, and Gale kind of reminds her of that. To put it simply she is kinda jealous of him and hates that so shes a dick.

As events goes on I feel she never actually 'hated' Gale and did learn to care for him similarly to the others. She moved past her petty jealously and projection and now just views being a bit mean to him as how their 'friendship' works but is still notably nicer than she was at the start of their adventure. Her way of loving him is through tough love like an older sister trying to prepare you for the world would, giving you shit and being mean but being the only one able to treat you that way. One day she would find herself willing to take up arms for the wizard as she would anyone else close to her, entirely forgetting the days where she would have gladly watched him die before calling over Shadowheart.

TLDR: I think Minthara sees herself in Gale and hates it so shes an ass more than usual to him.

[deiaiko]

#13 - Reunion

Masterlist

Previous

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Let me know your thoughts in the reblogs <3

[sebille]

The more I think about it the more unfair it feels that Zenos dies at the end of this. I'm like.....7-10? Quests away from "endwalker" and there is so much we don't know. Why did he dream of the end of Amaurot? Emet-selch experimented on him - why was that never touched upon again once it had been mentioned? What did he do? Why? Zenos can teleport???? Switch bodies? What was all that even for? Zenos yae galvus youre making me insane and I'm tearing my hair out of my head