#my deathwish deviant daredevil boy

[ohwolfling]

I think a lot about your "my deathwish deviant daredevil boy" tag on my hc post about terrible student Gale because auuuuugh that is precisely what he is.

I've talked a little bit about my personal hc that Gale Dekarios has been risk seeking & familiar with some form of harm/ideation loooong before the Orb conundrum (a little ask I answered here)

and YES, your discussion of Gale as gifted/talented but hopelessly bored so messy was CHEF'S KISS (here is @theletteraesc's post for anyone who didn't see). It's a HUGE piece of that puzzle for me.

If we look at BG3 and how our Origin party foil & reflect their lesser antagonist, there's a lot to explore in regards to Gale as a foil and reflection of Mystra. Mystra is unstable herself. She fears unstable or reckless use of the Weave because this isn't the first (or second or third etc if you dig into DnD lore over time) iteration of herself. Mystra isn't just grooming young boys. She is doing so with religious power and magical purpose. She is grooming her Chosens.

(3 additional small paragraphs below the cut)

I said this a bit in the tags on your post, but I don't think it's just Gale's natural inclination towards the Weave that drew Mystra (and so Elminster) to him. Mystra could feel not just Gale's proficiency but his instability, his wildness, his big emotions (because for Gale that's what ambition is - it's a trait he arms himself with instead of feeling).

If you- however justly or unjustly, however reasonably or irrationally- fear someone holding equal or greater power to you in the Weave and you're a goddess who has already experienced this Weave-death, this unmaking... and you can FEEL IT when a big energy enters the scene, starts shaping and changing the Weave (composing, as Gale says)... well, then it's easy to justify robbing that person of their childhood or teenagedom or youth or, you know, their entire life.

This includes funneling them into an academic/religious program that maybe they're not suited for or interested in outside of the IDEA of pleasing someone, of being special, of receiving acclaim, or armoring themselves in wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge. And as we know, it includes much worse.

In the first post of mine I linked, I ALSO discuss that I think about Gale not as an only child, but an eldest son with a dead sibling. And for me that makes a lot of sense at how/why Gale starts making very big movements with the Weave at a young age (among other things about Gale). Anyway, let me know if anyone is interested in that theory, since it's based on contextual stuff but ultimately just me like, Stanislavski Method shitposting.