i have alhaitham on my mind the way he has kaveh on his mind. rotating him in our heads
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I feel like we, as a society, are sleeping on how funny Sklonda Gukgak is as a character. yes, yes, she's amazing and heartbreaking and I would die for her. we all know it. let's talk about how she is objectively fucking hilarious.
she's a single mom. she instituted a minimum four hour nightly sleep for her son, completely ignoring the fact that her son got his sleep and coffee habits from her. she took a hard left from police work into public defense, but kept her gun and goes to active crime scenes with her son and his friend. they mentioned one (1) time that she was dating a devil who is easily ten times the size of her entire body. this fact is never brought up again. she loves her son's friends, but does not like or trust any of them. despite this, she 100% went on vacation with them and all their parents. she laments her son's relentless and self-destructive work ethic right before conking out on the kitchen table at 3am. she helped her kid eat a dragon.
this woman is as feral as they come. she's hilarious. I adore her. 11/10, Brennan. no notes.
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For real do you know how much of a direct parallel it would've been with the original cut, having him bitterly smile/laugh while contemplating his death in a lake
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I need to talk about Gale’s insecurities. For all his noted overconfidence, this is a man whose entire self-worth is based on his prowess with magic.
He was a “gifted” kid whose abilities started out well advanced for his age, just to begin with. He very much thinks of himself as annoying, which you learn in the Durge playthrough after the dead bard incident, when he says that if being annoying we’re reason enough to kill someone, he’d “be dead 1000 times over!”.
If you romance him and convince him not to take the Crown after the second romance scene in Act 3, he mentions how he’s used to being seen as over-confident and even self-deluded regarding his abilities, which I think would only make him posture even harder as a defence mechanism.
I think for a long time, his relationship with Mystra was likely something he used as a flex on other wizards who had been cruel or mean to him, based on how he brings it up, when he does.
But what gets me is his utter relief whenever he isn’t rejected by Tav. When he first opens up to you, he has pretty much already prepared himself to be kicked out of the party. He’s even got a plan for when his bomb goes off, to do the least amount of harm he can, and when he says “Even I’ve grown tired of the sound of my own voice” I swear his voice cracks and he sounds like he could cry.
If you romance him, when he tells you he’s in love with you, if you say “I love you too” instead of going straight for a kiss, he’s once again relieved. Despite the fact that you’re there with him and have been romancing him, he still has a doubts that you would return his feelings.
It’s no wonder he made the mistakes he did. This is a man who’s been told his entire life that he’s annoying. Though he’s had other mortal lovers (and we don’t know how those relationship were, only that they clearly ended), he is clearly primed for rejection. And then his ex-girlfriend, the goddess of magic herself, tells him she’ll only forgive his transgression if he kills himself.
Like I said at the top, his precocious talent for the weave is the entire basis of his self-worth, unless and until Tav assured him that he has value beyond his mastery of the Weave. It’s no wonder he felt like he had to “prove” to Mystra that he loved her enough. As long as his self-esteem was based on his magical abilities, he was never going to feel like he was good enough, especially for the goddess who is all magic. He was never going to be able to feel as though he was loving her well enough.
I guess what I’m saying is that his “ambition” and his hubris make so much sense when you consider the hinted-at reasons for his insecurities, his clear desire for friendship and affection (he summoned a Tressym who became a lifelong companion and a lava mephit or something with whom he is still in touch; he even says he didn’t have friends growing up), and his main talent/special interest.
I think he’s a superbly-written character, and I definitely feel like he deserves neither death nor godhood, but a good and comfortable life surrounded by a loving family who encourage him to be his best self.
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