#long live evil meta

[dabblingreturns]

30 hours after finishing Long Live Evil and I'm still reeling over how the charecters deal with goodness.

Spoilers below

I was thinking about how Rae vs Marius, and lia vs Eric approach goodness

Marius goes through life miserable because he can't find anyone flawless enough to live up to his ideal of goodness. So he believes that no one should be saved because they arnt innocent enough to justify risking him loosing control.

Rae on the other hand smashes through the world and consistently finds admirable virtues in people that it wpuld be fair easier for her to abandon. But she can't. Became how could she abandon sisters who love each other, or such an interesting maid, or a guard with a great smile who.she knows has been doomed by the naritive. In the end sje is even able to give kindness to the women whose life she took over. Rae loves freely and frequently looses control, and changes the world in ways that marius inaction never can.

Speaking of snakes who lie in wait (complimentary) there is Lia and Eric. Lia has plans to make the country better. She has plans to rule. She is ready to to "put up with some guy" if it gets her the power she needs to start improving things. And she is kind towards men in a most calculating and cold manner. She isn't kind to the because they deserve her kindness, she is kind to them because her best defense is kindness. She weilds kindness like armor to cover her ambitious.

Then there is Eric, Who is above all else effective in his kindness. Something the other three haven't fully mastered. Eric is kind on a personal level. But more importantly Eric is helping people on a systematic level. Eric is laying infrastructure to get the most venerable people through an apocalypse. Eric is protecting the marginalized. Eric is a one man revolution. Eric is incandescent. Eric is gaudy, and camp, hedonistic, and judgy. But Eric believes that asshole people that he hasn't even met also deserve to be saved and has laid that groundwork. Eric blew into a story about retribution and said, "that's not the way I roll" Eric has died before and he's willing to die again.

Raes kindness could change a story. But Eric's kindness could change a world.

[incorrect-in-other-lands-quotes]

Luke: My kink is doing jock stuff and watching Elliot speed-run the five stages of grief as he realises that he still wants to date me.

[sarahreesbrennan]

The Before Picture

So… TIME OF IRON. The book within the book of LONG LIVE EVIL. Book 1 in the Once and Forever Emperor series. An epic popular fantasy series about gods and monsters, old sins and dark secrets. Starring the most beautiful and doomed lady in the world, the loyal white knight who can defeat anyone in battle, and the ruler whose coming has been prophesied for centuries. A little Game of Thrones, a little Wicked, a good bit of Arthuriana and the Lord of the Rings, and a little whatever you thought when you read ‘epic popular fantasy series.’ It’s not about the love triangle, but its readers discuss the love triangle frequently. You’ve got a vast and varied cast of characters, living on the edge of a dread ravine filled with flame. Wars from within and without. Many shocking deaths. Every reader has a different favourite character. Nobody is expecting a happy ending. And everything is about to change… @vkelleyart did amazing work with the green crystalline throne room as well as the characters, each fulfilling a traditional role yet each with their own energy. If you want to see this story overturned, you could preorder…

[bellshazes]

if I have any unpopular minecraft opinion at all its that I think it should stop updating at some point and probably not that far from now. for all people bitch and moan about insufficient updates minecraft is a miracle in that it’s mostly free of the issues of modern "live service" games - although bedrock particularly has its microtransaction marketplace. but over a decade of free updates is offset by the bald truth that the only reason it gets updates (all of which you can revert since past versions including snapshots are always available!) is to feed the obsession with the game and, circularly, the internet content vortex made by people who love the game/can profit off others' love of it which generates more people who discover and love the game, which is how sales can be made when by and large the player base makes one purchase that nets them years of new content.

I love the new updates, I look forward to them, I've spent money on EA games as an adult so I'm very grateful they come to me for free. but their purpose is to ensure mc stays relevant and selling - itself, merch, spin-off games, etc. I don't envy the devs who are crushed between player entitlement to always more and corporate interests whose large scale preoccupations with brand integrity are more poisonous than any irate yt commenter yelling about how not vanilla 1.56 is going to be. basically I hope it dies before it gets crushed under the weight of cultural and capitalistic sicknesses it already has and that the often intolerable, crass sentimentalism of its fan base allows people to see its ceasing to update as a gift and not taking away what they're owed.

[goodgrammaritan]

"What's a girl like you doing in a narrative dead end like this?" she asked Lia.

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

[thespoonisvictory]

still making excuses for oisin in my head btw just to keep you all updated

[izartn]

One of the most interest things as of Long Live Evil is that Rae is now in the book, has become a character.

For us the readers she always was one of course, but entering the conceit of the narrative, that characters aren't concious they're characters, Rae herself is real. Or was.

It's one of the problems she has from the start with her "other people aren't real" but by the end of LLE she's accepted the world of Eyam as also real, decided to stay and deal with the consequences of her actions with the people she cares about in Eyam.

Paradoxically this marks her acceptance that she's now another character in her favourite book even if Rae doesn't put it in those terms.

Given how the start of Long Live Evil opens with her and Alice discussing the impossibility of the apocalyptic love of the Emperor in real life, and the impossible highs and lows of the fantasy in a story I wonder what this means for Rae herself as a person in the future books.

We've already started with LLE showing us the characters of Time of Iron as people Rae has her own relationship with, now I wonder if Rae will embrace actively what she was starting to do acting as stereotypical evil lady, create her own story/legend. What the Cobra has been doing all along; he did arrive at least like 6 years before Rae so he had time to perfect that balance in making himself a character in a play.

And how will that come into conflict with the fact of the very real human heart she has.

We saw that kind of division a bit already but I bet whatever happens in book 2 will pull even more harshly on this, especially because now Key will be acting as Emperor actively, not as a minor secondary (as far as Rae was willing to acknowledge we all knew he was there to stay) and with Rae as his queen.

Really that last scene was very, "and now we truly start the show!" in vibes. Long live evil indeed.

[spacetravels]

I am insane abt noah too… I’d love to know some of your hcs or thoughts or anything you have in that doc you’ve written, if you don’t mind sharing 💓

[insert sickos meme]

YEAH i think in my meta i just wrote too much about how the it lives series is like. the heart of it is mc & the marshall twins. i'll die on that hill. and also ofc the entirety of it lives being about breaking cycles. & like ofc bias here as a noah apologist but here have some paraphrased bullets frm my essay LOL I COULD TALK ABOUT THIS ALL DAY:

Essentially my thesis is like. The Marshall twins: Noah was Jane's whole world and he’ll always feel guilty that he couldn’t save her. MC’s her best friend and the love they had for each other was strong and real and MC will always feel guilt and blame for her her death.It’s a fucked up little circle of grief and blame because they’re both like: Why didn’t I stop this/Why didn’t I save her/Why was it not me/This is my fault

the way the horror genre is often about loss… like the horror of It Lives lies in how painful grief is, and exploring how grief can manifest itself and pain breeding pain and stuff. and it's so different across the book 1 cast but i think noah and mc are so similar in just. they blame themselves and carry jane's death the hardest... and uhhh

the fact they’re in their senior year. And how after this they’re “grown ups” and they have to go to college or get jobs or both. And how redfield/jane represents the youth they lost and will never have again. And red/jane bringing the gang all back for one last game because there’d be no games after that--all of jane’s friends will have to grow up. All of jane’s friends will become adults and she’ll be left behind in this terrible limbo state where she’ll never get to move on the way everyone else could. Like they have to grow up, they can’t stop and stay and play games in the woods like they used to anymore because then they'd never let go of what happened to them. And the end scene where everyone, if they're strong, can declare they're not scared--that's it. They've learned they can let go.

And it aches and it aches so much in the finale when you realize that this happens for everyone EXCEPT MC and Noah. everyone grows up. They played together. They finish the game. They can move on. Their arcs are wonderfully done. But these two people literally don't have the option of that!

so sacrifice MC and Noah have that choice to make that like. They both can’t make it out alive by this point, and they have to choose (assuming like. you get the choice lol the tragedy of noah flying off the handle and killing mc is another thing entirely re: nerve mechanic and whatnot)

And like definitely up to player perception and completely fair at this point if ppl make their choice becuz Fuck Noah Marshall or other reasons to save MC lol no judgement but my thoughts on like. the choice is like.

MC dies, because MC thinks Noah has to live. Despite it all and no matter what consequences he has to face, Noah Marshall has to keep being alive because he’s spent his entire youth stuck in a limbo state of wanting to disappear and be gone and he can’t even have the grace of dying now. He has to live.

Noah dies, because Noah thinks MC has to live, because MC saved him. He’s made peace with his death a long time ago, and this was his fault. MC has been nothing but grounded and carries in them the optimism and belief that grief does not end in pain, but you carry it with you, and you live. MC has to live for the person who can’t

anywyays i'm like. i'm TOTALLY fine and having a NORMAL one

[laozubun]

i think wei wuxian had initially come to nightless city with genuine desire to settle things in a non violent manner. granted with his attitude, they would have likely took offense. but this-- the fact jgs had lied about his promise. this made him change his mind. i think even on hhis way there it was pretty hopeless, but he sat there quietly up until it was clear the sects sought to kill the wens anyway.

like yeah wei wuxian is so abrasive in his approach. but he's just lost two of his friends. he, them, the other wens were lied to. the wens he saved were elderly, women, and children. they were innocent people. plus, even though he did lose control...jinzixun was the one who ambushed wei wuxian.

and of course to make matters worse-- they shot him. again...wei wuxian did act quite rashly, and killed the boy by throwing the arrow back. but with all the arguments here about self defense and justification. it really isn't so unfair for him to respond in kind. was it cruel to kill him? sure, but the sects have spit this "tooth for a tooth" nonsense. and they've made it clear now that-- no matter what wei wuxian does, it'll never be allowed. anyone can attack him, and even kill him, but the moment he defends himself he's the demon.

[sarahreesbrennan]

As I was already talking about inspirations I’m about to be so annoying and jump off this post to talk about Labyrinth. 

Labyrinth is another one of the portal fantasies (like Howl’s Moving Castle, but for different reasons) that aren’t discussed as portal fantasies. Early on our protagonist Sarah is playing dress up/doing cosplay with a book she’s reading out of. Who wrote that book? It’s her imagination but that could be true of so many portal fantasies… 

It’s our imagination that has asked what if Sarah chose villainy. I mean, she shouldn’t! But so many have wondered what if she did. (Would that make her an evil queen?)

Loving a fictional character is an act of radical empathy, feeling for the fictional in their necessarily fictional plight. How would it be to be a fictional character or to really love one? What would it mean to be actually doomed by the narrative? How difficult would it be to be a dream lover, when dreams are contradictory and tip into nightmare?

Labyrinth IS a labyrinth - by casting a celebrity it was talking about parasocial relationships before we used the term, inside and outside the story. Labyrinth does fairytale and folklore and wish fulfilment, and the goblin prom/big fantasy fairytale dance with royalty number (but what did the prince do to Rapunzel alone in her tower, and how dead was Snow White?). This isn’t real, but if it were what would that look like - and what would that feel like?

This movie is silly and campy and the story uses that tone for effective telling. Labyrinth still asks us so many questions, and takes its characters’ plights and emotions seriously. It allows Jareth the Goblin King to be tired.

And Labyrinth was the first story I saw, I think, to do something I love and have done frequently and did in Long Live Evil, as Suzanne Collins did in the Hunger Games and Margaret Mahy in the Changeover: sibling as quest object: sibling as grail. 

And yes. I was thinking about Jareth’s speech a little bit. IYKYK.

This post also reminded me of why I had to thank writers of fandom meta particularly in the acknowledgements of Long Live Evil. Seeing people pour such thought and passion into the imaginary told me to write the book without quite believing I could. How much and how deep and how long can we love a story?

Only forever. Not long at all. 

Here's the thing about Jareth from Labyrinth right?

He's made up.

That's not necessarily the same thing as not REAL. But he, just like all her friends who show up in her room before her adventure as toys and figurines, exist in relation to her, in response to what she wanted and needed. She told the story and there he was, there he always had been. But she's a teenage girl who doesn't know what she wants yet, and Jareth kind of pays the price.

"but the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and had given her certain powers." He's an archetypal oxymoron. He's both the dastardly baby stealing villain and the royal love interest trying to relieve the heroine's suffering, Cinderella style. He's fucked either way by being both. She doesn't know if SHE wants to be the villain or the heroine until he shows up and then she decides on the heroine, so he has to sneer and menace and challenge but it's too late for him!! it's too late, The King Of The Goblins Had Fallen In Love With the Girl, he's Cinderella's prince too and he has to try, he gives her a poofy dress and takes her to fucking goblin prom, sweeps her around the room like a music box with perfect posture and room for Jesus.

But it doesn't work buddy, it can't work. You're just a story for a teen girl to grow up in, and as the villain you have to be defeated. He's so complex because his tropes contradict themselves, and he doesn't understand why he has to lose when he was only doing the job he was given. In his last scene he is pale as death with shadows under his eyes, backing away and begging for his happy ending with nonsense mishmash promises that belong to both halves of him.

"I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me." I'm sure you are, Jareth. No wonder.

[veganineden]

On the Evolution of “Happily Ever After” and Why “Nothing Lasts Forever”

A reflection inspired by Good Omens 2

One of my favorite Tumblr posts on the second season of Good Omens 2 was actually not about the series at all, but our reaction to it, primarily the ending. @zehwulf wrote, “I think a lot of us—myself included—got a little too comfortable with assuming [Aziraphale and Crowley would] work on their issues right away post-Armageddon.” We did the work for them through meta, fanfiction, fanart, and building a plethora of headcanons. Who among us AO3-surfing fans didn’t read and love Demonology and the Tri-Phasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach by Nnm?

In the 4 long years since season one was released, we did more than seek to understand and repair rifts between two fictional beings: we were forced to reckon with ourselves too. We faced a global pandemic, suffered traumatizing losses and isolation, and were forced to really and truly look into the face of our atrocities-ridden and capitalistic world. The mainstream rise of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice work, and our participation in this work, showed us that the systems in place were built to oppress and harm most of us, and they are. 

So, what does this have to do with the evolution of “happily ever after”? 

My friend put it best in a conversation we had following the season finale, when she pointed out a shift in media focus. The “happy end” in old stories about wars and kingdoms used to be “we killed the evil old king and put a noble young king in his place and now citizens can live in peace” and we’re transitioning into a period of “we tore down the whole fucking monarchy.” 

If we look at season one, written to follow the beats of a love story, it comforted us by offering a pretty traditional happy ending pattern: you get your fancy dinner with your special someone, the romantic music plays, and you have a place to call your own. Season one’s finale provided a temporary freedom for Aziraphale and Crowley, the “breathing room,” but it didn't solve the problem that was Heaven and Hell, or the agendas belonging to those systems of oppression. 

Is it good enough to keep our heads down, pretend the bad stuff isn’t happening, and live our own personal happy endings until we die? Moral quandaries aside, if you don't die (or if you care about the generations after you), then, like Aziraphale said, it “can’t last forever.” There’s a clear unpleasant end to the “happily ever after” that’s based on ignoring our problems– it’s the destruction of our relationships, and humanity. 

Ineffable Bureaucracy can go off into the stars because they do not care about humanity. 

You know who does?

Aziraphale. 

And Aziraphale knows that Crowley cares about humanity too. (He knows because Crowley was the one who proposed sabotaging Armageddon in the first place, who only invited him to the stars when he thought all was lost, because Crowley would save humanity if he thought it was possible, and Aziraphale knows Crowley has survived losing Everything before, and he will do all in his power so that Crowley does not need to experience that again.) 

In season one and two, we see how much they care about humanity, beyond their orders, to the point The Systems begin to frown at them. Aziraphale hears Crowley’s offer to run away together in the final episode of season two, to leave Earth behind, and just like the first time that offer was made in season one, he declines. He knows choosing only “us” is not a choice either of them can live with for the rest of eternity.

I believe season 3 will provide an opportunity to “dismantle the system,” but I don’t know how it will play out. I worry that Aziraphale has put himself in the now-dead trope of the “young noble king.” (I wish Crowley had told him why Gabriel was dismissed from his duties.) I worry that he would martyr himself as a sole agent for change. I worry that he doesn’t actually know how to dismantle anything by himself: because you can’t. He needs Crowley. He DOES. He needs Crowley, and Muriel, and other angels and demons and humans without fixed mindsets to help him. Only by learning to listen and making room at the table for all can they (and we) move past personal satisfaction to collective liberation. 

Crowley was right when he said that Aziraphale had discovered his “civic obligations.”

So, I think we will get our modern-day happy ending– and it’s going to involve a lot of pain and discomfort, communication, healing and teamwork– and in the end, it’ll all be okay. There will be a time for rest and a time for “us.” 

And most likely a cottage. 

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

 - Maya Angelou

Support the SAG-AFTRA strike and other unions. Trust @neil-gaiman. Register to vote if you haven’t yet. Hold yourself and others accountable with compassion. Read books. Keep doing the work. Rest. Then watch Good Omens 2 again.  

[sarahreesbrennan]

Publishers Weekly Review LONG LIVE EVIL

Today the print edition of Publishers’ Weekly is out and with it their kind review of LONG LIVE EVIL. Delighted to hear I hook readers from the first page and that my adult debut is spellbinding. Long Live Evil INDEED. 😈 More detail below… ‘Brennan (In Other Lands) hooks readers from page one of her spellbinding adult debut. Rae, who has cancer, delights in having her sister Alice read from their favorite fantasy series, Time of Iron, in her hospital bed. One night, she meets a mysterious woman who offers her a cure. All Rae has to do to be cancer-free is enter the books and pluck the Flower of Life and Death. But if she fails, she’ll die in her earthly body and wind up trapped in the story forever. Rae takes the deal and is transported into Time of Iron—in the role of villainess Rahela Domitia. Arriving in medias res, she must evade execution or risk dying in both worlds. Brennan has a lot of infectious fun with her meta conceit, and as Rae interferes with the plot she knows so well, the stakes ratchet up and the story takes some unexpected turns. Readers won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough.’

[literarybutconditional]

Okay but seriously. This is why I sometimes get lost in the fanfiction black hole because why on Earth not read a new flavor of my favorite ship?

This book is so meta and brilliant.

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

[amarriageoftrueminds]

*taken out of the tags cuz it got too big

It's useful to bear in mind:��A thing is not a true/accurate proof of a character's beliefs just because they're the one who said it, unless their actions demonstrate that thinking/belief as well. (You could call it... word/deed harmony? 🤔). 

Example: Steve saying this ^ and acting in accordance with it, in this and other Cap movies. 

Example of word/deed dissonance: Tony claiming/telling himself he has got out of the arms dealing business... while continuing to design weapons (Iron Man suits) and selling them to America instead (SHIELD) under his own control. 

That is not getting out of arms dealing. That is merely building a new personal arms-dealing monopoly and altering your customer base to US-centric alone. Proving that Tony doesn't truly believe it was wrong; only that it negatively impacting Americans was wrong. Which is contrary to what he says and what he thinks he believes. 

Never mind what X character says / thinks / genuinely thinks he believes / wishes other people to think he believes... 

What do their actions show?

If Ultron hadn't rebelled... who do you think would have been in charge of pulling his strings, alone? The Avengers? the UN? or just Tony? 

If Tony hadn't died, who alone would've been in charge of EDITH (aka Insight 2.0) instead of Spidey? The Avengers? the UN? or just Tony again?

Tony's actions prove that, when he speaks of oversight, he means: controlled by him (an American) alone... and that rules are for everyone else but him. 

Tony says he believes in the Accords... but his actions don’t support that, not before or since.

a) He’s a non-enhanced billionaire who experiences zero consequences for rule breaking, even within this one movie, so even if the Accords did apply to him (which they don’t) they still wouldn’t affect him in the way they do affect everyone else (even within this movie). So all of his advocating for them that claims to include himself is hollow and hypocritical. As demonstrated by the fact that he:

b) acts completely contrary to the Accords ('I'd have to arrest myself'). 

When push comes to shove, Tony doesn’t put his money where his mouth is. 

He puts his money where his mouth isn’t.

While Steve relies on 'the people' (small group) to protect the planet (vindicated by the fact that in his own/most Avengers movies that usually works), Tony thinks it should be just him in charge (which is not vindicated, because that always goes wrong).

And his actions show that he only appreciates human loss if it’s Americans and especially he himself, as an American.

(What is his PTSD about? the people who died in the battle of Manhattan? the other people the Avengers couldn’t save from Loki? No. Him personally going through a wormhole. Whose death does he care about in Sokovia? Pietro's? all the Sokovians he wanted to blow out of the sky? No. One American, and even then only because he personally was confronted about them. He refuses to help undo The Snap... until he remembers that, of all the trillions of children who died, one mattered to him personally... and because he wants to be able to control how the Avengers undo The Snap, so that it doesn't adversely affect (you guessed it!) ...him personally. etc etc.)

Which is why (and this is wild to consider) none of CACW would have happened if Pepper Potts had been around. 

Because Tony does NOT actually, genuinely believe in the Accords. He just thinks signing them will make him look responsible and will ergo fix his relationship problems. 🤷‍♀️

Steve dealing with casualties vs. Tony dealing with casualties

[powdermelonkeg]

just saw ur gale/mystra analysis post. im new to the game and dnd lore and honestly… ur take on their relationship feels like the most natural/compelling one??? esp since its all too easy to simplify topics that have many facets and nuance….

thanks for sharing i love analysis and reading people’s takes on narratives : D

My pleasure! (Bee from the future here: congrats, you spawned another meta!)

I love complicated characters, WAY more than I like a clear cut-and-dry case. Flaws, to me, are what make a character compelling and lead to interesting stories about them with choices that can get them into situations. I'm both writing a fanfic and running a campaign where I'm playing as Gale, and in the interest of portraying him properly and in-character, I've gone into SUCH a deep dive into all the decisions and facts that make him him.

It helps to, y'know, also be in love with the fictional wizard, but I digress

The thing about Baldur's Gate 3 is that no character in there is perfect. I've seen a couple analyses about the theme of continuing cycles of abuse vs breaking out of them, but in my mind, in terms of the characters themselves, it goes like this:

The origin characters have just come out of the lowest situation of their lives (Lae'zel being the exception; being tadpoled is a gith's worst nightmare. You're seeing that lowest situation in real time).

Not the lowest point, mind. Gale's lowest was probably the day after he got the Orb. Wyll's was probably the day his father cast him out. Karlach's was the day she lost her heart. But the lowest, accepted normal for them is what they've just left.

They're then thrown out of their depth and forced to rely on you to live. That's #1 priority: living. We get the extremes of these characters before we get their nuances, because they're quite literally at their breaking points.

Then once we get to know them, we see their wants, their hopes, their fears, as they open up to us. Every companion's story is at their own pace, but they all have a moment where they ping-pong between despondency and desire. Sometimes that desire is what we know isn't good for them, like Shadowheart wanting to be a Dark Justiciar. Sometimes that despondency is only for a flicker, like Astarion's realization that he's condemned 7000 people to a half-life of tortured spawnhood for as long as he's been a vampire.

Romance lets us crack all that open more, because if you pursue a romantic partner, they see you as their closest confidant. They WANT to trust you, so they're more willing to explain how they see the world and what decisions they want to chase.

And then their endings. Those often get simplified as good/bad, continuing the cycle vs breaking away from it. But how is Duke Wyll on the same platform as Ascended Astarion? He's not evil, he's not even entirely unhappy. He might even have broken out of his abusive cycle with Mizora, if you played your cards right. And Ascended Astarion is overjoyed, even if he is remarkably more cold.

I think that the endings are less a dichotomy of "this is good for them" vs "this is bad for them," and more one of "bringing out their best traits" vs "bringing out their worst."

Wyll's worst trait is being willing to sacrifice his own wants for whatever people desire of him. His best is standing for what he believes in and ensuring people are safe. Duke Wyll leans into that necessity to turn the other cheek in the name of people who count on him, while the Blade of Avernus has seized that moral compass of his and forged it out of mithral.

Shadowheart's worst trait is blind obedience at the cost of her individuality, while her best is her desire to be kind to things that don't deserve to be hurt. Mother Superior Shadowheart's whole life is defined by Shar. Selûnite Shadowheart's life is defined by her hospitality, especially towards animals.

Karlach's worst trait is how willing she is to accept that things are (to quote her) fucked, letting despair override hope. Her best is her durability in the face of horror. Exploded Karlach would rather die than try to work out a solution in the Hells, because she's terrified of facing Zariel alone. Mindflayer Karlach has accepted her fate and decides to give up her heart and soul to go out a hero, losing who she is. Fury of Avernus Karlach is willing to keep fighting for a solution, and by the time the epilogue happens, she's got her sights set on one.

Astarion's worst trait is his desire for power over people. His best trait is using the tools he has to his advantage. Ascended Astarion has let his powerhungry nature and paranoia lead all of his decisions, with his sights set on dominating mankind. Spawn Astarion has embraced what he is, and carved out a life for himself where he can do as he pleases.

Lae'zel's worst trait is her blind fanaticism, while her best trait is her individual dedication, making her loyalty a marriage of the two. Ascended Lae'zel is a meal for the lich queen, turning a blind eye to all Vlaakith's tried to do to her and literally being consumed by her fervor. Champion of Orpheus Lae'zel has turned her loyalty into something productive for diplomacy. Faerûnian Lae'zel has seized her individuality by the throat and decided her own future.

And then Gale. Gale's worst traits are his hubris and, paradoxically, his low self worth. His best traits are his creativity and wonder for the world. God Gale is the embodiment of ambition, having burned away all but that in pursuit of perfection. Exploded Gale has let his remorse blot out all hope for a redemption in which he does not die, because he thinks he's earned it. Professor Gale leads his life by embracing the school of Illusion and letting his creativity thrive, teaching others to do the same. House Husband Gale has multiple creative projects he's working on, and Adventurer Gale is always finding new sights to see and wanting to share them with you.

There are arguments to be made on which ending the origins are happiest in, certainly, or which one benefits them the most, but each ending represents the extreme of a facet they possess.

So with all that, there's a sort of malleable method to figuring out the ins and outs of a character.

You take their endings—all of them, all variables they can have—and reverse-engineer the flaws and details they carry. Then you start to notice how those work into their approvals for minor things: Astarion approving of your taking of the Blood of Lathander, or Shadowheart approving of standing up for Arabella. Getting a list of approvals and disapprovals is helpful, but having those endings on hand tells you why they react like that to a majority of their decisions.

You take their romance-route explanations of how they act, and apply those to earlier decisions. Astarion's confession to manipulating you and Araj-prompted admittance to using himself as a tool brings to light how he reacts to your decisions, regardless of his actual opinions on them. Wyll's fairytale romance and love of poetic adages speaks to his idealistic nature, and why he takes a sometimes-blinded approach to decisions in which the "right" answer isn't always the smart one.

You take their beginning reactions to stress and use that to measure how future decisions impact them. Lae'zel locks down and gets snappy when she's scared, while Gale immediately turns to diplomacy. Shadowheart has gallows humor, while Wyll turns to quiet acceptance. If they break from these and seem even worse, you know the situation is more dire in their minds than having seven days to live.

And then you factor in all their fun facts and dialogue choices and backstories.

A wizard falls in love with a goddess and her magic, attempts to retrieve a piece of her power for her, is scorned for his attempt and is cursed to die.

Give that backstory to a Tav. Look at how it changes.

A chaotic good wizard fell in love with a goddess, thought retrieving a piece of power for her would be a showy bouquet of love, and was punished for not thinking things through.

A lawful evil wizard fell in love with a goddess's power, snatched the most precious thing she owned, tried to use it to barter his way through to the secrets she kept, and was given a swift retribution.

Same backstory. Same class, same act, same goddess. Wildly different connotations. Wildly different conclusions as to who is in the wrong.

If you take all there is to Gale, all that the game shows us makes up his character, and apply it to this backstory, you get what really happened:

A wizard, enamored with magic, fell in love with a goddess. His desires led him to want more than she was willing to give. In his well-buried fear of inadequacy, he concluded that the reason she wouldn't indulge his ambitions was because he just hadn't proven himself worthy enough. So he tried to prove himself, but he lacked the context for what he was proving himself with. And the goddess, seeing a weapon that had killed her predecessor, saw this ambitious wizard as losing his way and coming for her just like the weapon's creator had. She was angry, she withdrew his link to her, and he didn't know why. So he drew the conclusion that she took his powers to punish him, and let that encompass his fall from grace.

Was he wrong to reach for what was out there?

If you knew that the answers to everything you cared about were not only known, but kept by someone you loved—someone who adored you—what would you do to ask to see them? What if your curiosities were if there were other planets with life out there, or how dark matter worked, or whether or not we could one day travel in the stars? What if it was the potential cure to an illness that's little-understood, or the way to make a program you dreamt up, or the scope of the true limits of your artistic talents? Would your answer change?

Was she wrong to cut him off?

If you were once hurt, and the person you loved—the person who adored you—brought the thing that caused it to your door, believing you'd want it, how would you react to seeing it? What if that thing was someone you thought you'd broken contact with, like a friend or family member you'd been trying to avoid? Would your answer change?

That's the sort of scope that needs to be applied to this, on both sides. You have to take the perspectives of each party, and apply two analogies instead of one.

Gale saw the vastness of the universe, untold wonders, the solution to every question he could ever dream up, and saw Mystra as withholding this from him because she thought he just wasn't worthy enough. To claim Mystra knew his perspective does her a disservice.

Mystra saw a cruel weapon she thought long gone, in the hands of someone who could use it, brought right to her, and thought Gale was willingly following the path of Karsus. To claim Gale knew her perspective does him a disservice.

Should Gale have researched his prize more, so he knew just what he was obtaining? Should he have kept his hands off a cursed book that would devour him? Of course he should have.

Should he have given up on chasing his dreams?

Should Mystra have understood that Gale's pursuit of power was nothing like Karsus'? Should she have communicated when she was angry instead of giving the cold shoulder? Of course she should have.

Should she have given him the benefit of the doubt?

That's the root of their falling out. That's what leads to hurt being inflicted. Understandable, human reactions to the situations they perceive. Unhealthy, unwise choices made afterwards.

You work backwards from this to figure out their dynamic as Chosen and goddess. You work forward from this to understand more of where Gale and Mystra are during the events of Baldur's Gate 3. Gale reached too high, and understands this. His goddess hates him, and he regrets this. Mystra isolated Gale, and understands this. Her Chosen wants redemption, and she wants to make it happen.

Just like we took Gale's character into account, we also have to take Mystra's.

A goddess is faced with a problem. She uses someone who's desperate for approval to solve it, by telling him to kill himself.

An evil goddess is faced with a threat to her reign. She sees someone who's unfailingly loyal and hates himself, and elects to have him tear himself apart rather than do anything about it.

A good goddess is terrified of the future. She sees someone who tried to hurt her, who's going to die anyways, and tells him to use it to save the world.

Same story. Same act, same power, same pawn. Different character. Different perspective. Different outlook on whether or not this is the right thing to do.

Mystra has died, multiple times, to people trying to stake claim to her domain. Someone appears with the very thing that could do it again, right as she's regained her stability.

She does not see mortals the way mortals do. She is timeless. She is eternal. She has a duty to protect billions of people, and one person lost to protect that number is more than worth the sacrifice.

People like to bring up the Seven Sisters as proof of Mystra's cruelty. For those unaware, Mystra asked permission to, then possessed, a woman, used her to court a man (with dubious consent from the woman), and bore seven children, all of whom were capable of bearing Mystra's power as Chosen without dying. The woman she possessed was killed in the process (reduced to no more than a husk, then slain by her now-husband, hoping to end her suffering), and the husband was horrified by the whole story.

Mystra needed Chosen in order to restore herself in the event that she was killed again, to prevent magic as a whole from collapsing and wreaking havoc on the mortal realm, like it had in the few seconds Mystryl had been dead. Elminster, Khelben Blackstaff, and the Seven Sisters contributed to this. The more Chosen she has, the better; what happens if Elminster dies? She can't afford to have all her eggs in one basket.

Mystra has Volo (yeah, that Volo) as a Weave Anchor, imparted with a portion of her power to prevent the Weave from shredding itself to pieces in her absence. All Chosen of Mystra are Weave Anchors by nature. The creation of Weave Anchors was mandated by Ao, the Overgod, and Chosen are the best way to make sure those anchors aren't drained by ambitious people hoping for godlike power. Chosen can, and will, defend themselves, unlike static locations (which Mystra also has). The anchors are why the Weave wasn't completely obliterated during Mystra's last death, when the Spellplague rose up, because they stabilized the Weave around them.

Everything Mystra does is in the name of the big picture, to prevent a catastrophe like the fall of Netheril from happening again. Her restriction of magic, her numerous Chosen, her creation of Weave Anchors, her destruction of those who would claim her power, it's all in the name of the stability she's been charged with. Dornal Silverhand's grief and Elué Silverhand's death, while regrettable, were worth it to bring seven more anchors into existence to save all of the Material.

So someone appears with the Crown of Karsus, potentially powerful enough to try to kill the other gods in the name of the Dead Three. She can't risk being a target of them. She can't risk the destruction of magic again.

Gale is going to die. He lives in fear. He begs for forgiveness.

In Mystra's eyes, she's offering him the best outcome. She'll let him die in service to her, to save Faerûn, and she'll forgive him. He's going to die anyways, and if he does this, she'll give him everything (she thinks) he could ever want in her realm. She's asking him to do what (she thinks) is the right thing.

"She would consider what she considers to be forgiveness."

Notably, she leaves the decision in his hands. She doesn't have Elminster lead him to the Nether Brain. She doesn't activate him as soon as he's there. When he lives yet, she doesn't revoke the charm that keeps him stable. And when he declines, when he lets it go and starts pursuing Karsus' path, she doesn't smite him on the spot.

She is (she thinks) being incredibly patient. If Gale is going to try to be Karsus II, she's ready for him. If he decides to walk off and keep the Orb, he's dug his own grave in the Fugue Plane (those who don't have a god to claim them roam endlessly as husks and form a wall of bodies around the City of Judgement).

From her perspective, she's not being unreasonable. But from the perspective of a mortal, she absolutely is.

"Now, I have a question for thee: what is the worth of a single mortal's life?"

This is a question she cannot answer properly.

I think a lot of characterization is lost whenever someone paints one of them as being totally in the right. But I also think you have to be invested in them as characters to want to see that characterization. If you want to write about Mystra, you have to try to get into her head, analyze the decisions she made, figure out why she thinks she was right, and follow the pattern.

Gale's sacrifice is a very predictable thing for her to ask for.

[izartn]

LONG LIVE EVIL SPOILERS!

One of the things I most loved after finishing reading this book, was the sheer agency Rae wields.

The way Brennan treats her female charas in general in LLE is sooo good (and I will do a post about Lia and Emer too promise, their deal is also super fun) but I'm talking Rea as protagonist.

She's allowed to be messy, to not have a perfect knowledge of this book series she loves bc her favourite bits are on the sequels, to make imperfect choices and be wrong and be right, to fuck it all spectacularly because how else would have she saved her own life?*

I love how it's her involvement what causes the ripples that change completely the original path of the story for good and bad. Which is to be expected from this kind of story, but something about the unapologetic nature of Rae

She's flippant at the start of LLE and still can't help but try earnestly to help her vipers and Lia while saying to herself than any failure she makes doesn't matter bc these people aren't real and failing miserably at the end.

She could have doomed the city by choosing to disappear with the flower to her old life and her sister Alice and instead stays for Lia and this disaster of a kingdom she helped involuntary drop into chaos. I love her. She happens to the story, and isn't just letting the story happen to her.

*she made a mess as she didn't know Key was her Emperor and not King Octavian, but really how could she have saved her own life if not by convincing Octavian he needed her and her prophecy/schemes to stay in power? That initial part was necessary. Now what happened after, yeah could have changed. But I'm still betting on disaster.