#if you see an influx of disjointed and strange posts that are all over the place thematically

[invinciblerodent]

as i was making my way through the Shar temple as Petyr in increments, I kind of couldn't stop thinking about how this whole thing is a real eye-opener of a formative experience for him.

he's got... very little experience with any organized religion. He grew up among druids (I feel like it's rather natural a fit for a rather neutral/neutral good-aligned ranger), so he wouldn't say that he's a believer of any one specific faith, he's more in the "well of course the ancient powers are in perfect balance as they should be. gods are real, yeah, but they too are just pieces in this game- larger pieces, but pieces nonetheless, just like you and me" school of thought. His "faith" is less one with tenets, and rules, and a deity, and more of a general, handwave-y type of... mystic spirituality, where it's okay for him to just be as decent as he can be (which, the bar is at roughly his ankles there), do what he strikes him as right, and the rest will sort itself out. (If he had any magical aptitude, he would be a druid, but he doesn't, so he isn't, basically.)

so I imagine his utter bewilderment reading Sharran texts for the first time, which is a bit after he's accepted that he has feelings that go beyond just simple attraction for Shadowheart. This guy, whose entire Thing is being adaptable, going with one's fancies as they strike, and a "live and let live/why exactly should I care, quickly" type of philosophy, is now forced to be confronted with the objective reality of a religion that (while he knew some about in a very general, abstract sense) not only is preaching things that are sort of the partial antithesis of what he believes in, but it is also... making Shadowheart act completely different from the way she is when they're alone together.

She's normally so fun. She trades those silly, flirty quips willingly with him, and despite the mischief, she really isn't as secretive as she likes to pretend she is. She's kind to animals, and likes pretty flowers. Her touch, while she is prone to prodding a bruise just because it's funny to watch him jump, it's -frankly- the warmest he's known in a very long time as well as... one of the first that isn't just a quick fuck/fwb/hmu-when-you're-in-town type of arrangement. She may tease, but she also fusses, and eases aches and pains that he's used to taking days in a mere instant, and, well, when her finger brushes the inside of his wrist as they sit by the fire, that's really nice.

The person he knows her as, they're a sweet, warm person with a lovely teasing edge, a "friend-but-something-else-too" who teasingly says things like how his presence makes her smile, and though the Shadow-Curse is weighing heavily on all of them, making them act strange (my hc is that all of act 2, they're all snappier, quicker to anger, more anxious and more prone to putting their respective feet in their mouths) this... ardent, reverential worship, especially of a goddess who sounds objectively pretty damn terrible, is kind of scaring him.

When he's thumbing through the books in the Silent Library, each sounding worse than the last (and the darkness and destruction of Reithwin heavy in his mind), he just... steals glances at her doing the same with that serene expression (as if languishing in grief and darkness is somehow a good thing), and he feels like he's seeing... almost a stranger, wearing her face.

He's more or less accepted that his casual interest has turned into him full-on falling for her the moment he handed her that night orchid, and laughed with her at her (kinda terrible) joke, and now there are these texts all about how... love is a disease, arson, and an insult to Shar's infinite darkness. No matter how he bristles at the word "love", that... must be a really strange feeling.

It'll be really thematically appropriate for the commitment dialogue to come at the heels of her casting Shar aside. And despite how dense he normally is (with his 8 INT/8 CHA combo), it really feels a little like he knew that this was going to happen at a point much sooner than she did.

Maybe it's a type of intuition. Maybe it's just wisdom. But learning about Shar after getting to know Shadowheart, yeah, it would be hard to see that Sharran ideal in her.

(They really went all the way in showing us early on that this is not right for her, huh.)