#sorry pal you pulled my trap card and I just spent twenty entire minutes answering this

[operationslipperypuppet]

There’s something about Meemaw being almost universally liked. Like unless they were an active enemy of the boobs, I feel like every outsider had a positive opinion of Meemaw. The Frost Dwarfs, the Green Knights, even the majority of Gladeholm I think came around. She was clearly like a major player on the council at the end of C1.

Like the idea that Glen thought he could ever be wiser or more respected than Meemaw is insane.

no but exactly.

at any moment when the boobs met a potential ally who was apprehensive about them because let’s be honest, they were insane, and they saw moonshine was a crick elf, the response was “oh I know your meemaw. she helped me with (blank)” and it won the npc over to their side. and this was true wherever they went. it actually saved their asses in Frostwind.

plus! when alanis found the boobs for the first time in her numerous time traveling escapades to save bahumia, she had been looking to ask jolene the green for help.

jolene’s capabilities, power, and competence are a universal constant, and her hospitality makes all the people who aren’t evil like her about it. she’s trusted and allowed on the war council not just because she’s the leader of a major city (let’s not parse whether or not city is the right word, I am in fact apprehensive about it), but because she’s a strong and capable warrior who can be trusted to hold her own.

on the other hand, there’s glen. the slimy fuck. any time duck team mentions him to potential allies the answer is “he’s a problem” or “his machinations will cause him and others trouble”. the people who are on board with him are bad news.

and he was such a problem coming up at the crick that he was never made a ranger captain, even after everyone else at his outpost was killed (he as the sole survivor could have been promoted out of respect, if it were someone else. he was not).

the thing about some of his heroes (moonshine) is that they left the crick and learned about the world, helping those who needed it along the way. the world came to respect them because of that. (i imagine that, even now, if you were to mention knowing moonshine cybin in a major bahumian city, that person would accept that fact as support for moving toward trusting you)

glen left the crick, angry, and plotted. he doesn’t even really have the respect of his faction. galcard and others betraying their own orders still don’t trust him.

and yet he thought he could waltz back home after fifty fucking years, still impossibly young for an elf, and take over. for someone who was still solidly in the first half of her life. who still has the respect of every single person at the crick. and likely everyone else in bahumia.

based on fall out from past decisions, she could have stopped consulting the old folks’ circle on major decisions. but it’s their call on what happens to glen when he turns himself in. and she immediately moves to reform it when half of them are knocked out and the other half betrayed her.

the world got harsher in the time between campaigns one and three. jolene, in a way that feels both impossible and perfectly on brand, did not.

glen never understood the crick. he never understood how to be a leader. and because of that, combined with his delusions of grandeur, he thought he would be able to take over the crick from jolene, and that he would thrive in that role.

what a goddamn fool.