What if I told you that RoobrickMarine went and wrote an entire novella starring my 16th century dog couple? It's very canon-adjacent, well researched and thoughtfully put together, has inspired me a ton during these past months and it's now publicly available at AO3. I highly recommend it.
An update to this. I am the original creator of that interpretation, and to be fair I'm a little tired of not getting proper credit for it.
The entirety of this was done by comparing the 'alphabets' to our own, and assigning phonetic values from there. The logographs were interpreted similarly, but with Mandarin 'etymology' instead. I wrote...quite a bit! About it! You can read the individual interpretations for each symbol in the doc below:
The fact that Vaggie knew it was a HORRIBLE idea for her to go to Heaven because there were so many things that could go wrong and so many bad memories there, but her girlfriend needed her and she couldn't say no to her cute face; the fact that the headstrong, optimistic, determined, powerful Princess of Hell knew she couldn't handle taking this huge step alone and the only one person she could imagine being by her side in that critical moment was Vaggie.
The fact that even when she felt so hurt, heartbroken, and betrayed and tried for a second to deny it, Charlie never stopped loving Vaggie, still referred to her as her girlfriend, and had full faith that she was completely succeeding in her task (getting detailed sensitive information from a weapons-dealing Overlord) while Charlie herself was struggling and failing with her own.
The fact that even with Charlie so upset that she intentionally threw a painful commentbat her (a comment with a subtle double meaning, though Charlie herself was definitely NOT thinking clearly enough to realize that implication and only meant to make a jab at the secret-keeping), Vaggie still wanted so desperately to protect Charlie out of love that she regrew angelic wings despite having been in Hell for years.
The fact that one gesture from Charlie told Vaggie everything she wanted to say to her, and that mutual understanding was so complete that she didn't hesitate to run to her knowing she would be accepted because her girlfriend still loved her and forgave her.
The support, love, and intimate understanding these two share even when things are hard and painful is so beautiful. They've been together for years; they've been through so much; and it's wonderful to have that respected and portrayed canonically instead of dipping into that easy, fan-craved trope of dramatically heavy relationship angst. I'm glad they left that angst itch to be scratched by fanworks instead, because these ladies aren't that type.
They are powerful; they are determined; they balance and complete each other; and most importantly, they are so head-over-heels and experienced in their love for each other that it took one day for Charlie to deeply consider everything and fully reconcile with Vaggie, who never doubted her even for a second. Their relationship isn't just established; it's stable, and I love to see that for a wlw couple. <3
someone started a challenge of putting romantic music on top of star trek clips to see how gay it gets. couldn't find the op so in courtesy of all that is spirk, challenge accepted.
*cough* ahem
edit: y'know, if you listen to it with your eyes closed it just adds a WHOLE DIFFERENT feeling to the thing.
i think the thing that really gets me about pre-canon durge is their absolute sense of duty, and their utter isolation outside of the cult of bhaal.
most of the cultists seem eager to see durge upon their return, and one even says they were the first to feed him flesh. gortash tells them of an exhibition of a bhaalspawn's corpse and another bhaalspawn's creations and durge immediately plans to attack the hall of wonder to recover them. they then apparently entrust said bhaalspawn's corpse to sceleritas fel to "restore" through taxidermy. they deride orin for her artistry with corpses explicitly because "bhaal will never care" and because orin "[does] not understand lord bhaal".
even their infamous prayer for forgiveness is framed around their absolute submission to bhaal's plans, and the crime that requires forgiveness? admiring his rival's chosen. that's one line, and the next three paragraphs are swearing to carry out his plan exactly as they've been told to, all for his forgiveness.
hell, even their room reinforces this. orin has barely touched the place aside from installing her mother's corpse and her manifesto - and that is some of the only decoration. what was it before orin, an empty room with skulls, a bed, a desk, some chests and a wardrobe?
the durge didn't have any semblance of a life outside of bhaal, aside from gortash. and is it any surprise? the only other hint they ever had a life outside of the cult is the flashback of kid durge murdering their adopted family, all thanks to their father's urging.
bhaal even tries to force them back into isolation after they've been tadpoled by forcing them to kill alfira, and then trying to force a durge who resists him to kill their lover. if they continue resisting, bhaal kills them. bhaal will not allow them to have a life outside of him and, if it weren't for jergal, he would've succeeded.
i think one of my favourite gale/astarion dynamics I don't see people riff off of very often is the "horrible at coming up with a plan but it all works out/ always has a plan but it's usually fucking awful" vibe they have
like we're talking about Mr. "I'm not a details person, fuck it we ball we'll solve the Moonrise towers issue", and "plan for killing cazador? uhhuh. kill him. that's the plan." astarion here, and also fucking "i need to go to this specific bookstore and burgle this exact tome because this will allow like 20 puzzle pieces to fall into place that will let me speedrun becoming god" gale.
astarions "fuck it we ball" plan works out in his favour every time somehow. without direct support from a player, all of Gale's scheming just gets him obliterated the moment he gets his hands on the crown. somehow, some way- astarions complete and total lack of planning works.
and listen: in astarions good unromanced ending he continues adventuring automatically. if you have romanced gale, you can also get an ending where he agrees to keep adventuring with you. all I'm saying is: them together post-canon still travelling together. between gale as a highly corruptible voice of caution and astarions as someone who can easily poke holes into the most ridiculous of gales plans: highly functional adventure duo?