#something gale the god of ambition loses

[wizardsimper]

There's something about how in Act 3 after Gale has visited the Stormshore Tabernacle, he tells the player (if romanced);

“I would much rather gaze into your eyes than hers. Yours are capable of tenderness, and feeling. No god could ever compare.”

It's worth noting that throughout the game one of Gale's most prominent characteristics is his very expressive eyes, we see it in almost all of his scenes when he looks at the player, in particular his Act 2 and Act 3 romance scene, as well other instances throughout.

But compare that to Gale after he becomes a god, his eyes are no longer the same soulful, emotional eyes as before, but glowing with ambition even if he's trying to express his emotions. He'll never truly look at the player like he once did, even if he still loves them.

#the discussion how gale loses himself to becoming a god has already been talked about #but on a physical level he also loses one of the things that has been a part of him for his whole mortal life #his eyes were once filled with tenderness and feeling too #something gale the god of ambition loses #you know what they say #eyes are the windows into ones soul #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 gale #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #god!gale #bg3 meta

[senualothbrok]

Absolution

Summary: The God of Ambition considers the last of his attachments. Sequel/counterpart to Prayer.

Word count: 3.3k

Non-18+. God!Gale. Gale x female Tav. Angst.

AO3 link

********************************************************

You watch Her sometimes.

You are not entirely sure why. You have prayers to answer. Followers to bless. Worshippers to mould to your purposes. 

Her prayers are worthless, Her supplications irrelevant. Her words are not worship. To listen is wasteful. And yet.

It is not longing. Not yearning, or desire. Those trappings faded long ago. You do not feel them as you used to, like a burning ache within you, a searing wound. Now, you are silver lightning, cracked ice. Now, there is only a shadow of a shadow, a cold smoothness where your heart once was.

And yet, you still hear Her prayers. You still watch as She walks along the seafront, enveloped by a sunset that is the mist of a memory.  Her face, pale and wan. Her hair, so dry and brittle. Her lips a scar where Her smile used to be.

“Come back to me.”

Something almost flickers inside you as She says it. The ghost of a feather. The faintest glow of an ember before it is snuffed out. Gone as quickly as it flares. Lost forever.

You watch Her as She weeps. Within you, there are distant echoes. An embrace that you once gave. A thumb on Her cheek, circling away Her tears. The tingle of Her breath on your ear.

A puzzle you cannot solve.

A plea you do not answer.

******

It is not quite dreaming, nor is it remembering. You are a god. You can bring realities to being from dust. You are pure reality in all its forms.

Your thoughts materialise before you as they come. No longer is there a gap between the imagining and the conjuring. You are not a mortal, scrambling towards power, scraping at spells. You are power, you are actuality. You have no weakness, no lack.

You need only to think of Tara, and she is there. Her wings are a cloak around her. Her green eyes blaze. Or perhaps they were grey, or blue, like the hue that transforms everything around you. Perhaps she was larger, softer, smaller. Sharper. The certainty of his tressym’s likeness eludes you. But it no longer bothers you. It is a trifle to even think of it.

Yet Her likeness comes to you without such hindrances. You would know Her in any universe, on any plane. You cannot cast Her off. And when She appears before you, you cannot cast off the vision of the mortal you once were. He withers beside Her, with his simpering smile, his faltering gait. When you look on him, there are vague vibrations of shame. Invisible lashes that you recognise as disgust. 

With arms you could snap with a blink, he caresses Her. He clasps Her head against his marred chest, a feeble frame that you could crush with a whisper. She laughs and presses Her lips to his. Their limbs twist and grasp at each other’s mortal bodies. 

You study them, as his tressym makes a rough sound beside you. A purr, you recall. It was pleasant once. 

You feel no heat, only a shadow.

******

As a god, you must understand mortals. You must understand the measure of their humanity, its limitations, its attachments. The follies that bind them. The frailties that are their cage. It helps you to recognise their hunger when they pray to you. It lets you separate the wheat from the chaff. 

You yourself were a mortal once. But it is slipping away from you, the knowledge of humanity. You are losing the memory of softness, light and warmth. What you recognise now is the sharp blade of ambition, the sword driving up into the dark. You can detect its traces across realms, no matter how obscure, how tiny its glint. You can sniff out the most gifted, the most ruthless, no matter how distant their screams. You have perfected your method, to coax the barest saplings of ambition’s greed to the ripest fruit.  

That is how you selected him. Bartholdi of Thay. Barely twenty two and already a formidable necromancer. Your Chosen.

At sixteen, your Chosen revived the corpse of his younger sister to slaughter his parents. That was only the beginning. He was the edge of a razor, always seeking the sharpening, no matter the cost. When you appeared to him, he was keen to explain that he had acted in self defence. His parents had beaten his sister to death, and intended to sell him to a slaver. You told him that his reasons did not impress you. You cared not for his anguish, his excuses, his revenge. What you cared about was the drive to dominate that had birthed his talents. When you told him your plans for him, his teeth flashed like tombstones.

When you summon him, She is there. She is curled on Her side beside his tressym, Her eyelids fluttering. You notice Bartholdi’s narrowed, smirking eyes. He makes no effort to conceal his disdain.

He forgets his place. Again. Sparks sizzle at your fingertips.

“Does something displease you, Bartholdi of Thay?” 

There is the slightest arch of his pruned eyebrow. He bows with exaggerated flourish.

“Of course not, my Lord. It is, as always, an honour to have an audience with you.”

You stare at him. His robe is plush silk and velvet. His fingernails are manicured, his dark hair carefully coifed. None of this finery masks the jagged edge of his voice, the spite in his gaze. 

You are under no illusions. Your Chosen would claim your power in an instant. He would form a ladder out of your corpse in order to ascend. He believes you are a stepping stone, but you will not be moved. You know his designs all too well.

“Speak your mind, young Bart.” You let your form expand, so you loom over him. “I will hear you.”

The spasm of his gaunt face pleases you. He loathes it when you call him that. He smiles. 

“My Lord.” 

He pauses, considering his options. It is amusing, the deliberation with which he hatches his schemes. 

“I bring news from your temples in Amn and Thay. The priests are preparing for the festival of your ascension. You will no doubt have felt the surge in your followers.”

“I have.” Even now, you pulse with their growing strength.

“Each day that passes brings more worshippers to your creed. I have been spreading your doctrines far and wide, Lord.”

His tone is self-congratulatory. He yearns for your praise, while simultaneously resenting it. It is a curious trait you have come to recognise in many of your followers. One that you use to your advantage.

“Very good, Bartholdi. You have done well.”  

He dips his head. But his jaw clenches as he glares at Her resting figure beside you. You harden, letting a swirl of power jolt through you. 

“Is there something else, Chosen?” 

“Lord.” You can hear his teeth chatter from the force you exude. “The City Watch has written to me again, demanding that the store in Baldur’s Gate be vacated. It is quite tiresome, this business of your-” He clears his throat. “Of the personal effects hoarded by your previous form.”

His grimace has the quality of a sneer.

“I am acutely aware of the many matters of supreme importance Your Lordship must attend to. And I cannot help but notice the vestige of your former…lover… is often here.”

He is teetering on another knife edge. He has always loved to test your boundaries. Today, he is clearly feeling brave. 

“Are these concerns of yours?”

He twitches. He is a master of interweaving truth and lies. 

“Your exaltation is my concern, Lord. For a god of your stature to retain such…mortal attachments… is, in my humble opinion, not fitting for the magnitude of your glory.”

He wrinkles his hooked nose.

“Neither is it becoming for a god of such unparalleled power and might to cling to…baubles from your mortal life.”

It is the last straw. You crackle and blaze, and the storm that gathers around you pushes him back with a flinch.

“Do you deign to pass judgment on my attachments, Bartholdi of Thay?” 

His derision is fading now. In its place, you see the tendrils of fear and desperation.

“Have you become the arbiter of my decisions? Do you question my wisdom?”

He collapses onto his knees. Whether this is of his own accord or from the whirlwind around you, it does not matter. It is submission, either way.

“Of course not, Your Holiness.” He raises his hands in supplication. “I would never dream of even the merest suggestion of-”

Your voice is thunder and tempest.

“You will return to the hovel in Thay which you call your abode, and you will not speak to me until you are spoken to.”

He trembles. “Your Worship-”

“Enough. Be gone, boy. I will summon you when you are worthy of my attention.”

Your command tosses him back into Faerun, shrieking as he falls. 

Something like anger and indignation rumbles through you at his presumption, his thinly veiled contempt. This foolish mortal, puffed up with delusions of grandeur. You could cast him aside in an instant, replace him with one of your promising priests from Amn. That would thwart his paltry threats once and for all.

But then you look at Her. She lifts Her head and gives you a heavy lidded smile. There is the thread of a scar on Her chin. Its fine bumps on your fingers are like a mirage. Her gaze is full and bright, Her lips a bitten blush. You do not reach out to touch Her, but you could. You almost do.

And in that moment, you know he is right.

It is not fitting. It is unbecoming of a god whose domain is transcendence, the soaring to ever greater heights. Such a god should not be shackled to the frailties of mortal flesh, the hungers of the heart.

Yet you cannot cast Her aside. She lingers, and you watch Her. Her cries find you across the planes, and you listen. You do not understand why.

******

“Come back to me.”

She asks this every time. Her meaning is plain. She seeks the reversal of your ascension. She prays for you to relinquish your godhood. She yearns for the meagre mortal form you discarded. 

It is absurd. Pitiful. But you are no longer capable of pity.

She was always strange, this human. She gave of Herself to exalt others, even when it diminished Her. She shunned godhood, preferring the weakness in him over his strength. She called it love.

Did you understand this once? Was this something you prized?

It only puzzles you now. 

******

They lie together, nestled into each other. There is a bed beneath their unclothed bodies, but it is an illusion. The night sky that glimmers, the trees that rustle in the breeze - they are also illusions, crafted by his weary hands. But it does not matter to them. They are wrapped in each other’s warmth and musk, their breaths in sync as their souls. 

He can feel the sheen of sweat on Her skin, Her heartbeat against his chest. Her taste lingers on his tongue. He savours it.

Was it salty? Sweet? Perhaps it was bitter. 

You remembered once.

She sighs, shifting closer to him. As She nuzzles Her nose into his neck, he chuckles.

“I could have shown you realities beyond your imagining, far beyond the stars. I could have given you sensations that no mortal could ever dream of.”  

He runs dancing fingers down the curve of Her shoulder, the side of Her arm. He shakes his head as he glances down at himself.

“Yet you opted for this humble display.” 

He gives Her a sideways smile, self-deprecating, almost bashful. She laughs.  

Was it a pleasant sound? Did its lilt grate on him? Or did it stir him? 

You cannot tell.

She tilts Her face upwards, Her dark eyes meeting his. 

“This is all I need, Gale. You and me, just like this. You’re all I’ll ever need.”

She cups his face with Her hand. They look at each other in silence. And then Her gaze mists, and She is frowning. Before the tears can spill from Her eyes, he is kissing them away. They are melting into each other again. For a moment, he cannot tell where he ends and She begins.

“You’re not doing it, do you understand?” She whispers. “You’re not dying.”

He says nothing. He cannot.

You remember this. He was still that shrew’s thrall, then. He was primed to sacrifice himself on her altar, to fetter himself once more under her yoke. Pathetic. 

“You don’t need her forgiveness, Gale.” She clasps him so tightly, as though She is terrified to let him go. “You don’t need to prove yourself. Not to her. Not to anyone.”

“My love,” he manages. “It’s not enough to-”

“It is, Gale,” She pleads. “Your life’s worth more than anything she could ever give you.”

Her gaze is so urgent, so desperate.

“You’re more than enough, just as you are.”

Ludicrous. Short sighted mortal prattle. Had he ever believed this? Had She?

He looks away, and he can tell that it hurts Her. So he holds Her close, resting into the rhythm of Her trembling breaths.

“Gale,” She breathes. “I don’t want to lose you.”

He runs his cheek over the waves of Her hair. He is memorising Her for when the time comes. Her softness, Her warm and cool places. Where She is firm and where She is light. He is drinking Her in.

“You won’t lose me.” His mouth finds Hers. “I’m yours forever.”

Was he lying? 

Had there been a silent promise there? A resolution to repay her? 

Did the flame of ambition flare? A pledge to be more, to prove himself worthy of her love?

You do not recall anymore.

******

They are lying in a boat, drifting through a sea of stars. A mirror of the astral plane cocoons them. He is staring up into the illusion, brows furrowed in focus. She is curled into him, weaving Her fingers through his hair.

“I could be a better god than she ever was.” His voice is low, tight. 

Wretched, how much time he spent thinking about that shrew. Contemptible, how he clawed after her.

“I could be better than any of the gods. I wouldn’t languish while mortals suffer and die, while we toil for them, all for nothing. I could right their wrongs.” 

He sits up abruptly. His hands grasp Hers.

“I could be better than them. You can see that, can’t you?”

Blind. Blinkered by the shackles of virtue, the fallacy of the collective good. A dog on a leash.

She rises, reaching for his chest. Sorrow quivers in Her eyes.

“You’re already better than them.” She presses Her hand to his heart. “You’re a good man. A great man. The best of us.”

He flinches, looking away. She shakes with something like a wince. 

“Why can't you see it? How can I show you?”

He caves at the pain twisting on Her face. He takes Her into his embrace, where She belongs. He cannot imagine living without Her. He does not know how he survived without Her love. 

“You don’t need to be anything else, Gale.” 

He nods, because it is what She needs. But Her pleas come and go like dust. They cannot quench the thirst that is sharpening like a blade inside him. He tilts Her chin up to him, caressing Her lips with his.

“I love you,” he says. 

It was a deceit. A misdirection. He had concealed the truth, knowing She might believe him. 

It had been the beginning of his awakening. The spark that fuelled his path to greatness. The first step in casting off his mortal cage. 

She had thought what they had was enough. But it was not. It would never be enough.

******

There had been a letter. Written by him in a trembling hand, the Netherbrain looming in the distance. It had been a threat, once, monstrous and all consuming. He had been ready to give that letter to Her, to give everything up for his delusions of self-sacrifice. They had stood there, on the precipice of battle, and She had refused to let him go. She had saved his sorry little life.

Ascension had come later. You had offered Her a place beside you, but She had refused it. A curious choice. A marvel, for a mortal to decline the offer of godhood. But She had always been an exception. 

She had always wanted the man. She had never wanted the god.

It had stung. You recall that there was pain. But you cannot remember the feeling of it. Only the way She had looked up at you through a waterfall of tears as you returned to Elysium without Her.

And then, Her prayers had begun.

“Come back to me.”

You had never considered answering. Each prayer was more futile than the last. For never again would you be a mortal. Never again would you debase yourself with the trappings of that man. All that wasted potential, blinkered by regrets and apologies, the endless quest for another’s approval. A woeful, feeble life.

But you kept the letter. It still languishes in the store in Baldur’s Gate unsent, unopened. You know its contents. You remember.

You know it would be an answer to Her prayers. You have always known, though you would not admit it. It would be the end of Her pointless supplications. No longer would She call out to you again and again, weeping and begging for the return of a man lost forever. 

It would be the key to Her freedom.

It was weakness to hold it back. Folly. You do not need your Chosen to point this out to you.

You think of your followers and the temples in which they toil, thundering your name. You think of your domain, roiling and growing like a gathering storm, surging against the boundaries of the other gods who will soon be dust beneath your feet.

You watch Her sobbing, keening. She reaches out to nothingness, grasping for a dead thing She calls love. There is the ghost of a stirring inside you.

And you know what you must do. You have known all along.

******

Things do not unfold as you intend.

It was not your plan for your lightning to trail across the sunset of Waterdeep. Nor had it been your design to send his simulacrum to Her on the docks, to hail Her departure.

If you were capable of surprise, you would feel it. But all you feel is puzzled at these thoughts of yours that materialise in Faerun without your willing them. Your lack of control. Your unknown desire. So unbecoming, so unfitting, for a god.

And then you see Her through his simulacrum’s eyes. 

She is smiling, tears cascading down Her face. Her small, calloused hands. Her slight frame that nestled so perfectly into the circle of his arms. The gossamer scar on Her chin, the haze of the birthmark on Her cheek. The places that were faded and broken now glow with a light and tenderness that have no equal. You will never see the likes of them again, in any realm or plane.

She is as beautiful as She ever was, as She ever will be.

“I’ll always love you,” She whispers. “Goodbye, my love.”

It starts as a ripple of heat through your deepest recesses. It is like an invasion of your form, so alien that you are momentarily afraid. And then, there is a tear. A rending, sharp and hot, burning through your being like a fire. The last sliver of his soul, ripped out of you like rot from a wound. You whirl from the agony of it. 

And then, there is only ice and silver. A shadow of a shadow, an empty space.

You watch as She boards the ship to Baldur's Gate. You watch as it pulls away and disappears into a horizon, carried away by a sea that is already forgettable, already dull.

You have set Her free. 

And now, you lack nothing. 

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A third of the way through writing this, I realised that I was channelling Dr Manhattan from Watchmen. So I should probably give credit to that work too!

Liked this fic? You can find more of my work here.

#gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #god gale #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 #baldurs gate gale #bg3 gale #bg3 fanfiction #baldurs gate 3 fanfiction #gale fanfic #gale fic #bg3 gale fic #gale x tav #gale romance #bg3 gale fanfic #god gale fic

[nrvcntr]

Losing Everything

sooooo i haven't written fanfiction since i was a preteen but i got hit with a case of gale dekarios and could not rest until i wrote a really angsty thing about tav trying to move on from god!gale ......... that is all

“You may not wish to enter the heavens, but you do a fine job conjuring them here,” He said. Then he was gone, again. The God of Ambition, formerly Gale of Waterdeep, formerly Gale Dekarios. Somewhere in there had been a man that you loved dearly, but there was no trace of him now. Only a faint scent remained. The same one that stuck to your pillow and sheets and the bed that you shared, the scent that hung around you like smoke. When you were falling asleep and in that space between dream and wake, it was almost like he was still there. But when you reached out, you were met with the realization that you were alone yet again. 

So you moved on. The best you could, at least. You dove into your old work as a historian of ancient poetry. You translated what you could, but primarily focused on seeking out old texts to verify their authenticity. One of your recent interests was the poet Copperbloom, whose complete works were rumored to be hidden at one of the libraries in Amn.

On your first afternoon there,  you saw the temple dedicated to the God of Ambition. Like a magnetic force pushing you through, you walked in, taking in the sights of brilliant marble pillars and rich purple fabric adorning the walls. A testament to the power of ambition. It looked so clean that you were afraid your mere presence was a mark on its face. You looked at the altar of Gale, a looming, giant sculpture that looked like him and unlike him. Like a sculpture of a picture someone painted of a picture of Gale. The features were generally right, but it was missing his warmth. Something about the eyes and the smile were inconsistent to you, as though he was smiling at something painful. That wasn’t like the man you remembered. 

Your eyes closed, and that familiar scent drew you in. Here in this temple, it made sense that he felt so close. It was enough to break your heart again, but months of waking up alone had shattered it beyond repair. What else could you lose at this point? There was nothing left. You held a coin in your hand, ready to make an offering to the embodiment of ambition, when you heard a voice from behind you.

“Excuse me,” it said.

You turned, meeting the eyes of a handsome young elf.

“Is that a book of Copperbloom’s poetry you’re holding?” He asked. 

“Yes, it is,” You replied.

He told you that his name was Adlar, and that he was a fan of Copperbloom’s poetry. Excitement radiated from him, his eyes bright and alert when he told you that he was raised among the trees, and that Copperbloom eloquently captured the beauty of nature in a way that so few could. You slid the coin back into your pocket, enamored by the creature in front of you. He was awkward, sure, but a welcome distraction from your self-imposed isolation. 

“Would you like to talk about this more, somewhere more private?” You asked.

“I--Yes, I would like that very much. There’s a tavern around the corner, if you’d like to go,” He replied.

So you walked out of the Temple of Ambition with the handsome young elf on your arm, who chattered your ear off the entire way. After exchanging pleasantries about poetry, the basics of who you are and where you’re from, he asked if you were a devotee of Gale.

“No, I’m not. Are you?” You asked.

“Oh, yes, absolutely,” He replied, “He has given me everything. Before I learned of his doctrine, I was lost. Wandering around, wasting my potential. But now I have a purpose. I helped to build the temple, you know. And I’m leading the expansion.”

“An expansion? It’s one of the largest buildings in the city,” You remarked. 

“Yes, it is going to be the largest building in Faerun if I have anything to say about it. That’s the beautiful thing about ambition. It led me out of the forest and into places I had never even heard of or dreamt I could be. Like here,” He said, tentatively reaching for your hand. You allowed it. Adlar was the first person you touched since your electric goodbye kiss with a deity. Well, other than crying into Shadowheart’s arms for as long as she would let you. 

And so you began a love affair with the handsome young elf, slipping into a summer routine of balmy nights cooled by morning tea on the terrace, then separating to do a day’s work. You, toiling around libraries and bookshops in search of poems, and he leading the expansion in the temple. For the first time in a long while, you felt the comfort of a routine and a home.

You could still feel your former lover, his scent lingering on you no matter how hard you try to wash it away. At some point, it stopped feeling comforting and started to suffocate. You threw out your old clothes, ready to start something new. If you could change your hair and clothes and look like someone new, you thought, maybe you could start a new life. It may not be perfect, it may not have the magic of the Weave, but it could be yours. 

Well, until your dreams were dashed again. That God you had loved had once remarked about how easy it is to lose things, no matter how hard they are to gain. 

Adlar would meet you every night outside the temple. You never went back inside after your first visit. Until that night, that is, when thick black smoke blanketed the air and other devotees ran out, screaming about a collapse in the expansion wing. Instinctively, you ran toward the danger, passing the sculpture of Gale, whose smile looked menacing behind the haze of smoke. You approached the rubble where your elven lover would lay forever and begin feverishly clearing it again. Even after your fingers begin to bleed. Even when your hands ached. When someone picked you up to move you from the carnage, you kicked and screamed. But you knew. No one could survive under there. Especially not your gentle love, whose hands trembled that first night you held them. His bright eyes would never stare into yours again when you revealed your fears to him. You would never again wash the dirt from his hands after he delivered you a flower that Copperbloom compared her lover to in one of her famous poems. He was gone. A casualty of ambition. 

You broke from the grasp of the person holding you and ran toward Gale’s altar. You slammed a coin down. 

“Please, let me talk to you.” 

It was a plea, not a prayer. But he answered nonetheless. You found yourself in a strange state that seems real and unreal, beyond mortal comprehension. Gale stood in front of you, a bemused expression on his silver face. 

“You called?” He asked.

“What happened?” You ask in return.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Do not fuck with me, Gale. I know that you know what happens in your own temple.”

“Oh, right, the collapse. Hm. Such a shame. They were making great progress. You know how foolish mortals can be at times,” He replied flippantly. This set your teeth on edge. 

“Did you cause the collapse?” You asked.

“I could never, and I would never. You have my word. They knew the risks of what they were doing, and it was a dangerous endeavor.”

“But was the God of Ambition in their ears, telling them that the reward would be worth any risk?”

“Some risks are worth taking, you know,” Gale said.

“I do not need advice from you,” You replied.  

“Well perhaps you should heed some advice. You’ve been toiling your summer away laying about with some elf who is far beneath your station. What are you doing? Your mortal life is so short. You could be brilliant. You could do anything that you want. You could be anything you want to be. You could be -”

“A goddess?”

“Perhaps. If you wanted to be.”

“I don’t. I already turned down that offer.” 

Silence. 

“Why?” Gale asked.

“Because I loved the man you were, not the God you pretend to be,” You reply.

“I do not pretend. I am a God. And I did it for you. I did everything for you. And you repay me this way? You must know that I care for you because I would never let a mortal speak to me the way that you do.”

“Did you cause the collapse because you were jealous?” You asked. 

Silence. Whatever love you still had in your heart for the man was replaced by animosity for the God. 

“Answer me, damn you,” You demanded, reaching out to shove Gale’s chest. Lightning crackled when you made contact with him and you pulled your hand back in agony, cradling it with the other. 

“It is not wise to pick a fight with a God,” Gale warned.

“Why? If that is how you treat your most devoted followers then I would like to see how you treat a heretic,” You hissed. “Smite me, then, if what I say so offends you. Ambition is a curse. It has stolen everything from me. I will never bow to it. I will never honor it. I will never love it.” 

In that moment, you hoped he would strike you down. If only to take away his favorite toy. But he doesn’t. 

“I would never harm you,” He said.

“You have destroyed me,” You replied, “I want nothing to do with the God in front of me. I loved the man I knew. I will miss him for the rest of my days. And one day, I will be gone and I do not know what will happen or where I will go. But you will be here, alone. I hope it was worth it. Was it?” 

You stare at each other. No words could come out that would give either of you solace, and some wounds can never heal. Instead of a reply, you found yourself back at the smoky temple, surrounded by carnage. You walked out, never turning back even once to look behind. That night you crawled into your bed and stared at the wall, trying to will comfort out of the isolation. Finally, you were free from that scent. You were truly alone. At least when you’ve lost everything, nothing else can be taken from you.

Somewhere on some plane that mortals can’t comprehend, in a place that exists and doesn’t, the God of Ambition looked out at eternal nothingness. He had the powers of a God, powers that he had always dreamed of. 

But, the thought flickered in his mind. Perhaps he could have lived without them. After all, without you, what did he really have? Nothing, as far as anyone or anything could ever hope to see. 

#gale dekarios #gale x tav #gale x reader #gale of waterdeep #bg3 #bg3 gale #bg3 brainrot #gale brainrot #angst

[underprivilegedcactus]

It's totally fine if you don't think God!Gale and Ascended!Astarion endings are necessarily bad endings. I agree there's definitely some ambiguity when it comes to these outcomes, but there's something that people should consider: When writing a character, one of the things a writer can choose to focus on to build them out is to consider What They Want vs. What They Need.

Gale WANTS to become a god (eventually) to both show up Mystra and to help mortals the way he feels that gods should. What Gale NEEDS is to realise that he is enough as is, that he is more than just his power and any more strength he could aqcuire. Gale needs to have more confidence in his own self worth.

Astarion WANTS ultimate power so that no can ever hurt him or those he loves ever again. He wants to be so strong that no one would even try to harm him, and if they do he can effortlessly squash them. For him, it's only through power that he can ever be truly and forever free. What Astarion NEEDS is healing from centuries of cruelty through true friendship or even romantic love and to be seen as an equal, to take back control of his bodily autonomy and choices, and to become actually free from not only Cazador, but from becoming a slave to his darkest impulses that his rough life has exacerbated.

Sure, both Gale and Astarion are happy when they get what they want, but there's lots of hints that it's not what they really needed.

Gale becomes the god of ambition, which is never satisfied with its lot and will likely cause trouble for the pantheon down the line. It's also very clear that he lost a vital part of himself, and I don't think it's his connection with his mother or Tara, which are still important facets but are ultimately not the core of what he lost. It's the fact that he no longer cares about doing actual good for people, a key component of his former personality. One of the things I love about his character is that no matter how high he rose, mortal Gale still cared about helping people in positive ways. Ambition doesn't give a damn where its drive takes people, for better or for worse. Mortal Gale would be horrified if he knew that he influenced evil people to do worse things in the name of ambition. Mortal Gale would also be horrified that his god version openly admits to not offering ANYTHING to his followers, which is anathema to what Gale originally wanted godhood for. But hey, he got what he wants and he's happy, so that MUST be good, right?

Ascended Astarion has entirely lost any shred of his humanity, and is now a complete slave to his darkest desires. He no longer views his romantic partner as a person. They're just his most prized object, whether they want to be or not. He enslaves other people, inflicting on them the exact kind of bondage he had to deal with for two centuries, including the person he used to love. On top of all that, he loses his capacity to even recognize the wrongness of his actions. For all intents and purposes, Ascended Astarion becomes a megalomaniacal homicidal psychopath who's hunger knows no bounds. Worse, he has no way to ever recognise if this is a problem anymore or something he doesn't like. But again, he got what he wants and he's happy, so it MUST be a good thing, right?

There's nothing wrong if you still see these outcomes as good endings, or even just better endings than an outright "bad" ending. I see what you mean, and also, it's a video game and these are fictional characters, not people who can actually get hurt. Like so much media and art, it's really more of a thought experiment than any kind of moral indicator.

I do however implore you to consider why so many people, Larian included, don't see these outcomes as good, and in some ways perhaps even worse than other "bad" endings. A very common but very relevant trope in storytelling is "be careful what you wish for because you might just get it", and it's usually to remind us that getting what we want isn't always what's best for us in the long run.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 gale #bg3 spoilers #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #astarion #bg3 astarion #storytelling

[ryttu3k]

Posting a list of Astarion-related plotbunnies I'll probably never get to so I'm setting them loose upon the internet.

If you decide to write any of these please let me know, I'd love to read them <3

1) Cazador gets sick of waiting for Astarion, and also what fun is being the Vampire Ascendant if you don't have anyone to subjugate? As Dufay feared, he gets scarred and used in Astarion's place for the ritual, and Ascended Cazador shows up in the middle of a bright sunny day at the Elfsong to try and reclaim his errant spawn, easily overpowering basically everyone. Gale, who's in the midst of a sweet slowburn romance with Astarion, basically goes, okay, look, we're currently the only ones who have a hope to defeat the Netherbrain, and you won't be Vampire Ascendant for much longer if mind flayers take over Toril. Side with us against it, and we'll give you Astarion after.

He's lying through his teeth and is very quick to tell Astarion that as soon as Cazador leaves, because once he has the Crown of Karsus :) he'll be able to take Cazador out :) no problem :)

The real struggle isn't just fighting a desire for power, it's fighting against something that will permanently change him but also give him the best possible chance to save his lover, versus giving up that power and staying Gale Dekarios, not losing his identity, but also now having to fight the Vampire Ascendant without all that power...

2) Astarion stays in the Underdark to assist with the spawn, and ends up striking up a friendship with Gandrel, who wants Astarion's advice on how to raise his spawn daughters. Fluffy slow-burn romance with his former enemy ensues. Could tie in with this delightful epilogue detail.

3) Short version: Astarion tries to do A Scheme only it backfires due to the fact that he's starting to experience Emotions like 'self-worth'.

Longer version: Astarion sets out to deal with (read: seduce) Gortash - gives him Ketheric's stone, says the others have gone off to fight Orin and get [x] back, and it'll be easy enough to get Orin's stone from them once they've done the hard work, telling Gortash that the others lack ambition or have other plans. Lae'zel wants to give the Crown to Raphael to free Orpheus, Gale wants it for himself, etc. Only Astarion can see Gortash's point - that they can run the Absolute cult, they can use the stones. Gortash, Astarion, and a certain Bhaalspawn who Astarion is fairly certain would be amenable…

His actual plan is to seduce Gortash, kill him when he's not expecting it, and take the stone and return to the others, because he's good at seducing people for a purpose, so why not just do what he's best at? Except he's suddenly realising that, huh, he actually doesn't want to just… be used any more, he likes the person he's becoming with resist!Durge, and it all feels a bit… icky, now…

4) Astarion + trust issues + being touch-starved for non-intimate touch. Astarion gets some kind of back injury (thorns or little shards of glass or splinters or something, not something terribly lethal but just painful to deal with) and has to confide in someone (Halsin would be good here) and let them see and touch his scars to help get himself fixed up. Bit of whump, bit of hurt/comfort.

5) "Oh, I tried them all. None of them answered." Astarion has Issues with the gods. Gale catches him vandalising the Open Hand Temple / Stormshore Tabernacle, and they talk about gods and their fickle attentions.

6) Astarion can't swim. Karlach offers him and Shadowheart swimming lessons (and promptly goes heart-eyes a bit over her white-haired elven boyfriend and girlfriend).

7) AU where Ulder isn't a Complete Garbage Person who disowns his teenage son, and instead accepts and helps Wyll as much as he can. The Blade of Baldur's Gate instead focuses on helping his city, and it's time to do something about that creepy gothic monstrosity known as the Szarr Palace…

#be free little plotbunnies be free! #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 spoilers #bg3 #astarion #astarion ancunin #the pale elf #ry writes stuff #or doesn't #that's the point

[lanaevyssmoved]

FRAY.... im sorry if youve thought of this b4 (i havent read candor's oc page yet sorry if im wrong.....) but isnt he a deva ?!?!? WITH GOD GALE NOW IN PLAY.... what if he was. deva serving under god of ambition!gale 👀

ok so candor is a solar. which is, going by the highest deva rank, 2 ranks above deva. devas can become solars if they achieve great things and Want to, as angels ascending to higher forms is a choice. the one before solar is planetar. the full Tier List of angels is

agathinon

light

deva

planetar

solar

i will tell you now picking what candor was took me weeks. i even had different ones on it's oc page. you read through my dms with aisling and null and it's me changing my mind every damn DAY. this also means that's retaining candor lore from when candor was a deva (monadic deva - to be exact). however there is a very key difference between all the angels and solar. solar choose who they serve, and are free to change their mind whenever they want. they are angels with free will.

so in terms of gold!gale, candor would have to deem gale worthy enough to serve. candor currently serves lathander, and has done for thousands of years, because it found lathander to be a god worthy of it. now - would candor leave lathander for gale? absolutely not. would candor without a god choose to server gale? absolutely not.

candor fucking despises gale. candor told afhiri that they should kill gale because he's a danger to them, and to everyone. to the balance of the universe, to the upper planes and everything that exists in this moment. candor has always found gale to be bad ^_^

so.. oh my god. gale is the god of ambition now? an extremely dangerous thing for a god to hold domain over? gale, there was a reason there was no god of ambition.

there's some hints in raphael's new ending (requires him to have been promised the crown, left alone and god gale to happen) which tell us that gale does exactly what i had already had candor assuming - that gale will bring ruin to the heavens.

candor would probably be a leader of an army charging onto gale's doorstep to behead him. ^_^ i love making ocs who oppose everything my favourite character stands for

if we were to consider an au where candor did serve god!gale..... it would not last long, and would end in candor trying to kill gale again.

would candor beat gale on a 1:1 fight? well - a god can only die in it's home plane. and a solar can only die on it's home plane. so already we're at a standstill. if candor invades gale's new plane of ambition, gale can be killed there, but gale also controls everything there so it would be extremely hard. but candor also can't die, but candor's form can be destroyed and candor will have to be reborn - and sometimes when solar's are reborn they do not come back as solars, but as aasimar and lose a great deal of their power - so candor would not want to lose. so fighting gale like this is foolish. so gale needs to be weakened. that would require a loss of followers, most likely all of them unfortunately - which could be doable if you find a way to cut off their ability to pray - but it would also take a lot of time for a god to become weak enough for what we want. so.. we have a new idea. god!gale tells us the crown of karsus is protected with all his power in his plane. if one were to get the crown and destroy it, gale would lose his godhood.. immediately. the karsus weave would be destroyed. yadada. so the real plan here would be to keep the lad distracted while other people go for the crown. so can candor beat gale in a 1:1? no, candor would need friends. but candor would also not die. ^_^

so unfortunately it would not happen. gale would need to manipulate and control candor to keep it, which is something i don't want god!gale to become. despite how clearly terrible god!gale is for everything...... but i do have a way we can make this work

afhiri ^_^ in my 3 years later fic afhiri and gale ascend together. they do it a completely different way without the crown. we're not getting into that rn. anyway

afhiri and gale would obviously serve together in the same way god!gale ends, separate gods with their own domains but they are very clearly still together, and gale would help you settle into becoming a god.

while candor would absolutely still be incredibly murderous over god!gale even if afhiri has ascended, it does put a spanner in the works. and actually becomes incredibly painful. so i've never thought past the ascension in my fic, it ends dead there and what happens next is anyones guess. ascending is the end of their story. but if we are thinking of the actual new epilogue, 6 months later not my 3 years later - what would candor do once this happens? i would assume the entire time gale has been a god candor has been campaigning to get people to side with it to go kill gale. but now afhiri has ascended?

see i can see candor serving afhiri. very easily in fact. afhiri would not send ripples across the heavens and bring ruin with something like Ambition, gods no. but can i see candor being essentially neutralised by afhiri to not kill gale? it was already neutralised once before the ascension, and candor is probably feeling a large amount of regret for not killing gale while he was mortal. i honestly don't know.

see raphael's ending does not change if you ascend too. it still talks like you haven't ascended. raph talks about after you have died all this shit will happen - so talking like you're a mortal who will die of old age. raph's ending doesn't take you into account! so completely ignoring it/adding a romance portion - could you stop gale from bringing ruin?

if you could stop gale from bringing ruin.. candor could be passified. if you couldn't? well. candor is leading the army to gale's doorstep and it will be one hell of a war ^_^

#fray.txt #ask #estevnys #oc candor #oc afhiri #uhhh #afhiri/candor #afhiri/gale #yeah u go in these tags too #THANK U FOR THE QUESTION SORRY I WENT A LIL INSANE #EDIT i just realised the ordering i did for the bulletpoints makes solar look the least but i meant it as orders u go thru. #with solar being the Last One u reach...... #SORRY CONFUSING. SOLAR ARE 1 ANGEL

[whatacaitastrophe]

Is It Over Now - Chapter 10

Previous Chapter

Chapter Song Inspiration: "Right Where You Left Me" - Taylor Swift

Chapter Warnings: mentions of a past suicide attempt

Spotify Playlist: Here

Chapter Notes: if you have read this fic, liked it, reblogged it, or left comments THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. keep the comments coming bc i love hearing your feedback (and like tinkerbell, i need applause to live). also, if you feel so called to support me in other ways, here is a link to all my other socials, including my twitch channel, "all my homies hate mystra" merch i created (lol), and a donation link <3

also!! i have a discord server!! it was made to coincide with the twitch channel, but i need more friends to talk about bg3 with so pls come hang. link is above!

Chapter 10: Right Where You Left Me

As far as explanations go, the one Gale gave Fallon is pretty solid. Gale is incredibly smart, but he isn’t clairvoyant; as he told Fallon, there is no real way Gale could have predicted that Mystra would offer him an almost impossible ultimatum. Fallon believed Gale when he promised he loved her more than Mystra– a conversation that honestly feels like another lifetime at this point– but more than magic itself? There was no competing with that. Fallon completely understands why Gale made the choice he did, knowing he was at risk to lose his connection to magic. Moreover, Fallon hates the goddess of magic even more than she did previously. 

Still, Fallon finds herself noticing little moments throughout Gale’s story that could have been entirely avoided. Specifically, he wanted to re-forge the crown until after he reached Elysium. “Could the crown have been re-forged before reaching The Outer Plane?” Fallon asks curiously. Granted, her knowledge of The Weave and how magic intrinsically works is not exactly something Fallon could give a lecture on, but Gale could. Despite that, Fallon has a feeling Gale probably could have re-forged The Crown of Karsus before ever setting foot in Elysium; especially since he had no intention of returning the crown to Mystra. All his goddess had asked of Gale was to return the pieces to her. She said nothing about Gale needing to put it back together to receive her favor once more. Fallon would know, she saw Gale’s conversation with the goddess the day she tasked him with returning the crown, through their tadpole connection.

Which means, if Fallon is correct, Gale could have completely avoided Mystra’s ultimatum entirely; and therefore all of the pain and hurt Fallon has been through in the last year could have also been completely avoided. 

“Of course,” Gale confirms. “Combined with the magic I still possessed and the piece of the Karsite Weave within me, desperate to reunite with the crown itself, re-forging it outside of the Outer Plane most certainly would not have killed me.” 

Fallon chews on her bottom lip, considering the information he’d just shared. “So why did you wait? Why give Mystra the opportunity to best you at all?” 

“Fallon, you can’t sit there and tell me if you were given the opportunity to prove your naysayers wrong, directly to their face, that you wouldn’t take the opportunity?” His tone is a little condescending, and his hackles are raised. Fallon questioning his choice after telling her his sob story is clearly not what he expected.

Fallon stares at him in slight disbelief. “So let me make sure I understand this correctly: You found the pieces of The Crown of Karsus, you could have re-forged the crown and become a god without going to the Outer Plane to do so, but you decided to wait until Mystra was watching…just so you could win? And not doing so to her face would have made finding and reforging the crown a loss, despite ultimately getting what you wanted?” Pride. Ambition. All of the things that caused Gale’s original downfall; they were still his greatest motivating factors after all this time. Gale Dekarios had truly learned nothing.

Gale frowns. “You don’t understand–”

“No, I think I understand perfectly. Instead of making this easy for yourself and taking the win and walking away, you put yourself in the position to potentially give Mystra, a goddess who has spurned you multiple times over, the chance at having the upper hand,” She shakes her head. “You could have come home to me…you could have come home and none of this would have happened.” Fallon stands up and walks over to the window of the suite, staring out at the busy streets below.

Gale follows her over to the window, and he takes his hand in hers. “Fallon, please, you must listen to me. When Astarion came to see me– when he told me what happened to you…what you tried to do to yourself…it shattered me. Not only were you in such a state that you felt like your only way out was through death, but that I was the cause…you must know how sorry I am for the role I played in that, and how deeply, deeply sorry I am for causing you such immense pain. If I’d ever thought it was possible to hurt you so thoroughly, I never would have left you behind.” 

Fallon stopped listening the moment Gale confessed that Astarion told him Fallon tried to kill herself. The pieces all begin to fall into place in her mind. Astarion found Gale right before he went to Elysium. By the time Astarion returned to Baldur’s Gate, Gale had already ascended to godhood, bound to Mystra once more. “Is that why Astarion sought you out? To–to tell you what was happening to me? Did he ask you to come home? Don’t fucking lie to me, Gale Dekarios.” 

Gale must realize his mistake the moment the question leaves Fallon’s mouth, and he doesn’t need to answer her because his face says it all. Not only had he just told her Astarion came to see him, but that during that brief visit, the vampire informed him of Fallon’s mental and physical condition, and Gale did nothing.

“Fallon…I was right there.” He tries to explain, tries to justify his actions and choices; to her, of all people.

“And I was right here, and so gods-damned miserable that being dead was more appealing to me than living a life without you in it…and you knew and still, you chose yourself. You chose your pride and your ambition and your goddess, and left me here to fucking rot.” She needs to find Astarion, immediately, and she’s pretty sure he left his sending stone behind before they departed for the ball. Shit, she fucked up. 

“I– I have to go,” She pushes past Gale to find her shoes. “And you need to leave.”

“Fallon–”

“I mean it, Gale– you better not be here when I get back, because if I can convince Astarion to come back with me, I will not be held responsible if he snaps your fucking neck.” She sits down on the couch, hastily trying to buckle her sandals and cursing under her breath.

“So that’s it then…after all we’ve been through…you’re choosing him.”

Fallon stares at Gale in disbelief. “After all we’ve–” Fallon’s laughter is loud and harsh. “You left me Gale! If Astarion had come home even minutes later that day I tried to poison myself, I would have succeeded. Regardless of any feelings I have for Astarion, there’s no coming back from that for you. Even before I found out you fucking knew and chose not to act, there never was. Not as my lover, and until you fucking realize the absolute selfishness of your actions, not as my friend either.”

Fallon doesn’t even look at him as she turns to leave, rushing from the suite as fast as she could manage in a floor length gown. 

Chapter List

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #gale #astarion #bg3 fanfic #astarion x tav #female tav #astarion fanfic #bg3 gale #bg3 astarion #baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate astarion #baldur's gate 3 fanfic

[vitanithepure]

The question about god!Gale has compelled me to ask --

What is Vitani's approach to faith? And how would they react if Gale became a deity?

Oof, what a combo of questions. There is no easy or short way to answer this, not with what’s going on in my head about it, so… grab onto something - we are diving deep into Vitani’s psyche :)

Vitani is a very devoted Lathanderite. If they thought more of themselves, they would certainly join the Morninglord’s priesthood a long time ago. They are as close as people in this setting can be to being henotheistic, they may invoke other gods from time to time, but at the end of the day (or, rather, at the beginning of each) they only hold Lathander in their heart and prayers. Faith is something they consider being an integral part of themselves, who are they without a deity guiding them?

Now, armed with the knowledge of how Vitani feels about faith…

Vitani went into the relationship with Gale very... well, not intimidated, but certainly unsure. They would never dream of Lathander even bothering to show himself to them, and this guy was intimate with Mystra? Vitani recognizes Gale as a man of deep faith, very much as they are, but this is another level of devotion altogether for them - making him so much more than a simple mortal or even more than a Chosen of a deity. They do a lot of comparing themselves to others, so this relationship all kind of rides on him becoming more human in their eyes over the time they are together.

So if he did decide to claim godhood at the end (and we assume he survives, of course)? Well, Vitani’s love for him at this point would certainly not just disappear, but become a lot more complicated. There is already a god they devoted their heart to, and Vitani doesn’t do things halfway, so one has to go.

I see it going two ways:

In both of them, Lathander is gone from Vitani’s life. That alone makes them miserable even if they don’t recognize it. In this path Vitani devotes themselves to Gale completely, but they lose themselves in the process. You can’t be the sunshine in everyone’s life if you are a Chosen of the god of ambition. Their love becomes more of a fanatical worship than anything else.

The other way I see this going is, tragically, Gale’s history repeating itself. Vitani does something really stupid and destructive to prove they are capable and worthy of the trust Gale puts in them. Because Vitani will never be sure if they are enough with a partner that is this much out of their league.

They want Gale Dekarios, they could handle Gale of Waterdeep, but Gale the God is just too much.

So…I guess this is a long way to say I don’t see it working out for them this way, not in a happy way 😭

#thank you so much for the ask 💜 #the different kinds of ascensions presented in the game are so fascinating for me #the dynamics of how things could go are so fascinating #OC:Vitani #gale dekarios #bg3 spoilers #baldur's gate 3

[ex-textura]

god!Gale on my mind today and it got me thinking!

If he managed to succeed and really did become a deity, would Auric, Ciaran or Jinx (did I miss any of your lovely Galemancers? I hope I didn't? 👀) approve of it? What would their thoughts be on the matter and would the relationship survive in any kind of way, you think?

oh man! This is a difficult question xD

So, I'm of the mind that the gods can't really love mortals in any real meaningful way. While I don't think they're incapable of love necessarily, I think that much power and responsibility would change anybody and even the most well-meaning gods (Gale, for example) will lose their humanity (as it were) in time. So at the end of the day...though they might try I don't think it would really last long term for any of them.

Auric would absolutely not approve. A paladin though he may be, he's not religious. At all. No god ever came to help him or his when they needed them the most. He did that. That was his responsibility. His devotion to his people is where his power comes from (and if there is a god back there behind the scenes pulling the strings on his power he hasn't heard anything from them and that's just as bad). The gods only ever caused trouble, and he knows better than some how ambition can corrupt. He rallied hard to keep Gale away from that sort of power, and if he were to take it anyway Auric would make the hard decision to leave then and there. He's too old, too tired, too responsible for too much to be with someone who's goals don't align with his own no matter how much he loves them.

Ciaran would try. Ciaran, though older than Gale, is too new to this world and to himself and Gale is really all his has (he has his friends but by the end of the game there's a lot of splitting up). He wouldn't be able to get by on his own, or at least he doesn't think so, and so he would cling to Gale and try to make it work. But what Ciaran needs is someone to experience life with. To teach him to cook and to listen to his music and to lay in the sun with. He needs someone who can give him gentle, mortal love and Gale will definitely try because he's so full of love, but the separation there would be too much and eventually it would ruin Ciaran. He already turned down the power of a god once. He doesn't want power, after all. he wants peace.

Naught would stay with him. He wouldn't care. They're the antithesis to ambition though, and would have their own life with Dahlia and Astarion. He would take them back to his life, hunting criminals and sleeping in the dirt (they'd probably find real beds but the boy likes dirt), and would eventually join their relationship regardless of Gale's feelings on the matter. They'd grow distant and one day Naught would probably just stop thinking of the hot nerdy teacher who became a god. Who needs gods anyway? Nosy bastards.

Jinx would try too, if nothing else to say he did. I mean how many people can say they dated a god? What a story that would be! But eventually he'd grow bored of it. He loves the chaos of magic and the spontaneity of life. God!Gale would likely be busy and if not that at the very least too focused on his task. He'd move on bit by bit, before finally telling Gale he just wasn't feeling it anymore. And if a god smote him for breaking up with him? Just another story (if he survives it. If not..he'll at least hope they wrote a play about him or something)

#one of these days i'll build a character with ambition #all my boys are just vibing #just coasting by #just living their small little lives #goals tbh #asks #vitanithepure #my ocs #oc: auric #ciaran finch #oc: naught #oc: jinx #glitter and gold #naught but ruin #bg3 #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #baldur's gate 3 #i ramble! i talk too much! #i sorry

[alexa-crowe]

and i don’t think gale was lying to himself about why he got the orb. he was trying to obtain it as a gift to mystra. he tells you exactly why he was doing that lol. gale tells you that he convinced himself that if he could somehow prove to mystra that he was worthy of wielding more magic that she would give it to him. like, he was groomed, of course his ambition then is going to be confined to chasing mystra’s coattails and begging for her approval. especially then because she was bored of their relationship, so he had the extra incentive of convincing her to keep him as a lover instead of discarding him and keeping him around as a trophy, as a loyal little servant like azuth and elminster. he was trying to change the ending of the most significant relationship in his life, the person who defined his entire life. he was at risk of losing what he felt he’d worked his whole life towards. he was groomed into believing that his only worth was his magic, so what does it say about him if he’s not good enough to please the very goddess of magic? that there must be something wrong with him.

that’s not to say that he’s perfect and can do no wrong and holds no blame, but i do think it’s a case of gale being in a toxic environment, being encouraged to indulge in his ambition and ego by mystra to serve her purposes. he has his vices, but we can see in the game that when he is given positive feedback and appreciated for who he is that he finds he doesn’t need to be whoever mystra wanted him to be. versus if you encourage him to take the crown, he obviously becomes utterly consumed by those vices.

mystra has reason to do that because we can see with elminster (particularly in gale’s origin) that he realizes that he was party to gale’s abuse and feels terrible about it. you get a letter from him in act 2 where elminster’s trying to right his wrong by encouraging gale to find another way to deal with the netherbrain, and in the letter he expresses that doing so should’ve been gale’s task all along. azuth is bound to mystra by his portfolio as a god and can never stray from it. gale was bound to mystra by being groomed into it and molding his vices to her confines. but elminster is not bound to mystra exactly like that, at least not anymore since their relationship ended a long time ago, so he sees things with more clarity than gale. he knows he’s going against mystra, challenging her; he has to sneak around to offer gale his real advice. mystra knows she has elminster under her thumb, though, regardless of his opinions—but she didn’t yet have gale completely wrapped around her finger, he was still rough around the edges to her.

#once again wondering if i’m making any sense #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 meta

[trashcatsnark]

Just rambling because I really wanna be feral about my bg3 tav and dont have a place to really do so lmao but my little rotted brain wanted to play with the whole- tadpole fucks with previous conditions/characters shit. Ala making Astarion able to walk in sunlight and and seemingly making Gale's orb hungrier/less stable (judging off the first artefact helping him as usual but then the second one doesnt)

And I don't do fantasy often but since arcana Ive always wanted to play with a character with a enchantment/spell on them that makes people forget them shortly after meeting them. Unable to form lasting connections and living a life thats almost entirely in isolation (i love lonely transient bitches)

So, my tav, Petra (half wood elf, rogue/ranger) ran away from a shitass abusive life with her now dead partner who casted the enchantment on them both, so only they could remember one another. Being each other's entire world. Shit happens, her lover dies, but the enchantment is binded to their instrument (lover was a bard)

Which is all build up to say, she had and only wanted a cozy insignificant existence, because significance just means giving people the power to hurt her/being known means vulnerability and yet now thanks to the tadpole, she is being perceived and thats horrifying enough- i also really love the extent that Petra contradicts with many of the companions in terms of the idea of ambition and desire.

For so many of the companions (except Karlach really) insignificance is their like nightmare. Gale has both an innate hunger f for power because he derives his sense of self-worth from being a powerful, significant, and impressive wizard. Gale of Waterdeep, chosen of Mystra, deep down he does want a more simple life of relaxing in his tower and idly reading, and cooking for someone he loves but he can't ever seem to fully shake this feeling that when he sees power or opportunity he must grasp it because without talent, power, significance, magic, utility- he thinks he has no worth at all. Astarion craves power, once you start to enter act 2, he starts to talk about how he thinks the player has ambition and that maybe heyyy you can use that ambition for me? Because to him ambition and power, his own or using someone elses is how he'll find a way to permanently escape his abuse. He says he's not content to sculk in the shadows, what good is freedom if he doesn't have the power to make sure he'll never lose it. Wyll, the blade of frontiers, wanting desperately to help everyone- be a hero, make the sword coast proud in a way he never could make his father. He wants to matter, he wants to be important, he is forever burdened by the weight of his mistakes- the pact that binds him, never able to feel free of it and just wants the world to look at him and see something good.

Lae'zel fears insignificance, this is stated plain as day in the scene where she threatens the player, if you choose to probe her thoughts. She's doesn't care if she dies, if her skull splits, and tentacles writhe through her flesh- she's terrified it will happen before her queen ever knows her name, that she'll never be more than a failed soldier, that she'll never wield the silver sword or ride a red dragon. That she'll die before she feels she ever mattered.

Shadowheart wants to be a dark justiciar, she wants to be of value to her god, she wants to matter- similarly to Lae'zel, ironic given their hostility, but it is the same ultimate goal. She doesn't want to be no one, she doesn't just want to be another follower who's struck with pain, mind wiped tirelessly, and nothing to show for it- she wants her pain to have purpose, meaning, even if it's just serving the god causing it. Karlach is already a bit of an oddity in terms of, she never really seems to be scrounging for power and signficance and in fact- her power, her strength, her ability is what led to Zariel choosing her as her attack dog. So, while she's a bit more similar in not having a heavy desire for power, ambition, and a goal beyond- not wanting to be hurt, the desire for freedom and life on her terms. They still differ so greatly in terms of- Karlach lost out on getting to be a part of life for so long, she misses people, connection, and she doesn't want to avoid life because it hurt her, she wants to take back the parts stolen from her- she wants to live and be apart of the world finally again on her terms. Even if it kills her.

And my brain just kind of buzzing and feral for this idea of how she somehow finds herself thrusted into not only being perceived, being surrounded by people who are learning who she is, knowing parts of her she hasn't shared, and also being asked to... lead. When it's never truly been something she craves and even overwhelms her, but it finds her regardless and how she helps ground for many of them their grappling for power/ambition while for her they help her find that... she deserves to be a part of the world around her, that she can touch the world around her and make a difference. And she's no less guilty of wanting something that's bad for her, that she's been alive but not truly living and returning to that loneliness once the tadpole is plucked out won't be peace, won't be contentment, isn't freedom, because it was never that to begin with- she was just languishing in isolation and grief as a living ghost.

#baldurs gate 3 #bg3 #bg3 spoilers #astarion #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #wyll ravengard #shadowheart #laezel #karlach cliffgate #karlach #bg3 tav #petra of nowhere in particular #something something the balance between being desperate to prove you matter and resigning yourself to the idea you never can #something something the fight of needing to be seen to feel like you matter but the horrifying ordeal of being known #will you forever languish for more knowing you'll never be sated or do you starve yourself so you may learn to live with hunger

[galefcrce]

"You spoke before of the potential the Crown of Karsus. Perhaps you would indulge me in more of the details - wizard to wizard? I am familiar with the story of Karsus' fall, but the specifics escape me."

@highpricst

Tore knew exactly how to entice the other wizard. Gale's face lit up with excitement—finally, someone to listen to his retelling of the tale of Karsus.

"Ah, Karsus, a man of so many names," Gale began, his voice carrying a tone of reverence. "The Momentary God, Child-Who-Would-Be-A-God, The Unmaker of the Weave, and so on. The man was bestowed with a plethora of titles, and I would be inclined to agree that he most likely earned near all of them. To say the 'potential power' would do Karsus' work an injustice, I'm afraid. I may not agree with his methods, but by the gods, he was a formidable wizard. Word was he could cast spells from the age of two."

There was a hint of envy in Gale's voice as he spoke. He admired Karsus' abilities; the power the man possessed was something Gale would have desired more than anything at one stage. Yet, he considered himself to be a fraction of the worth of Karsus; he struggled to maintain a mere fragment of the Weave within him. Karsus was capable of nearly usurping Mystra and rising to godhood to channel the Weave himself.

"In truth, he fell for the same folly all us wizards are prone to: greed. We push our ambitions too far without contemplating the cost, and by the time we look down, we have lost our way completely. Karsus made a mistake, only one, but by the gods, it was a tremendous one. The claim was that Karsus wanted to preserve his civilization, the greatness of humanity. He devised a spell, Karsus' Avatar. This spell would steal the power of a deity and transfer it to the wizard who cast it. There, he cast his gaze onto Mystra or Mystryl as she was known at the time; he wanted her powers, and the desire for more blinded him. He failed to see that even with the crown, the stones, and all his magical might, Mystryl was still too powerful for him."

Gale paused, his thoughts drifting over to the Karsic Weave within him, the crown and stones within reach. A part of him wanted vengeance for how Mystra had treated him— all he did was wrapped in his boundless ambitions, but at the core of it, he only wanted to be by her side, to be loved. She discarded that love and asked him to give up what was most precious to a mortal: his life. He was furious, but the reminder of Karsus' folly heeded a warning to Gale. Fighting Mystra would be a losing battle. He glanced at the ground, metaphorically searching for the right path to find himself upon.

To fight Mystra would be far worse than a death sentence, but he could still become a god in other ways. The power of Karsus was within his reach, and unlike The Momentary God, Gale had gained enough wisdom not to repeat the same mistakes.

"He failed to take her place," Gale continued, his voice carrying a somber tone, "as the duty of the goddess of magic is not only to maintain the Weave but to ensure its flow to and from all beings, spells, and magic items across the realms—something Karsus would fail to do. Magic would spiral chaotically and wreak havoc and destruction across the world. And so Mystryl made a great sacrifice; she used the last remnants of her life to block Karsus's access to the Weave, causing all magic to fail. Netheril plummeted to the ground; all those around had perished, but the world survived. The severing of the link also killed Karsus; he turned into stone, and as he turned, I am sure the last thing he could see was the very civilization that he claimed to preserve perish."

Gale felt relieved in a way; he didn't have to shoulder the responsibility of human civilization on his shoulders. He could learn from the mistakes of the ancient arch mage. He could become a different god, a better god. His heart, his will, his ambitions would be enough to persevere.

"And that is Karsus' Folly."

#͙͘͡★ rel. tore #͙͘͡★ chapter. path to something greater #highpricst #answered. #q.

[astarionspocketpussy]

Been chewing on some ideas today and I have Thoughts(tm) to share.

[Now with a readmore because I hadn't noticed how long this was. Oops!]

There's a lot of discussion around the different endings for main characters, especially in specific areas of the fandom, and especially pertaining to what counts as a 'good' ending for a character. And that argument gets especially heated when it pertains to Gale and Astarion's endings because the camps there are super divided. Note, I'm talking about Tumblr (and to a lesser extent, Tiktok) because that's where I engage with the fandom. I do not know the horrors of Twitter, nor do I want to.

But something came up about this while I was obsessively scrolling through @/karz_2's page on Tiktok. (You should check out her stuff she's really funny.) She had a video talking about the endings and she specifically pointed out how Astarion and Gale's endings get that, like, debate about whether it's a good ending, but Shadowheart and Lae'zel's comparable endings (Dark Justiciar Shads route and Vlaakith's chosen route) generally get acknowledged as being clearly bad. Karz makes a point that all these routes parallel each other by being closely aligned with what these characters wanted at the start of the game (with Shads and Lae'zel's endings being more stated in the text and Gale and Astarion's requiring a little more thought in that regard, but not by too much).

And I was thinking about it after, and I think the main difference in the ways the fandom talks about these endings is that in Shadowheart and Lae'zel's endings, there is a more clear presence of their respective abusers and a more clear connection to the shitty circumstances they were in before the game. Shadowheart remains under Shar's control and authority, the same with Lae'zel and Vlaakith. Even if they're given ostensibly more power, its more visible to the player that they are being manipulated still. The effects of the cycle of abuse are there, but because the abusers are still present, players are more readily able to point out that those endings are fucked up.

With Astarion and Gale, however, their endings place them in a different situation. For one thing, in both endings they appear to have risen above the control of their past abusers. Cazador is very much dead, and as a god, Gale is no longer directly under the control of Mystra. This is already placing them in a position where the player is primed to be happy for them-- they're no longer trapped in the shitty circumstances they were in the start of the game, and the abuser can no longer hurt them. Not only that, but the increase in power gives both characters a sense of control, a sense that they can protect themselves now. For many players, that alone makes it a good ending because they perceive the characters as having escaped their abuse.

The thing is, neither of them really have escaped the cycle yet.

Gale's ending places him in a position of authority and power, yes. But it is also an expression of a self-fulfilling prophecy that his abuse taught him to accept: the idea that he would never be good enough as he is. By claiming godhood, Gale has just trapped himself in that same cycle. He's the God of Ambition, but that ambition is in part fueled by the abuse he suffered. He will always try to aim higher and higher because he was made to feel insignificant before. Removing himself from his humanity does not address the underlying problem, it only serves to allow him to ignore what happened to him, and puts him in a position where he'll never truly be able to heal. Becoming a God changes people in this universe in ways they can never truly come back from. Mystra is the way she is because she is a Goddess- every person who becomes Mystra corrupts in some way, because Gods fundamentally cannot understand human beings. In fulfilling his wishes when he first started out, his desire his own worth, Gale loses himself, and that is a tragedy that only further prolongs the cycle of abuse he is trapped in.

And Astarion, by ascending, gains power, which he believes will finally be enough for him to be safe. But by taking Cazador's place, he only restarts the cycle of abuse. His abuser is dead, but he has assumed his place. Becoming a vampire ascendant necessitates the loss of one's soul and one's humanity. The text in the game itself shows how he begins to devalue the people around him, and the changes to his personality after he ascends are exacttly the same as Cazador- he's manipulative, selfish, and cares only for his own desires. By ascending he does not escape the cycle of abuse, he simply becomes the abuser, and he no longer has a chance to properly heal, nor atone for the genuinely bad things he has done. This ending robs Astarion of a chance to live as an equal among people around him.

Like with Lae'zel and Shadowheart, the power they gain is superficially good, but it only serves to bury the core of the issue and does nothing to help them heal from the abuse they received. But I think it's because their endings are a step removed from the people who began the cycle we see play out in the game that influences how the fandom perceives these endings as opposed to their counterparts. But all this is just my own interpretation of the game.

I think Wyll provides a really interesting foil to this conversation with his endings and how they explore the cycle of abuse, but he deserves his own post because I have a lot more opinions on his endings and how Larian handled him in general. So for now, just take this.

And just as an quick thought to finish this off: You, personally, are allowed to enjoy whatever endings you want, whether they're in game or stuff you make up yourself. These are fictional pixels on the screen and there is nothing wrong with enjoying 'bad' endings. I am not making a statement about your personal morality or intelligence.

Now that I've said that, I really hope no one starts beefing on this post because my notifications cannot handle that. (I would like to hear your thoughts, though!)

#baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate 3 spoilers #bg3 #bg3 spoilers #baldur's gate 3 meta #trauma is a complicated beast #abuse #tw abuse

[quenthel]

Comprehensive info post abt my bg3 characters

Oxoth

Dragonborn Oathbreaker paladin, durge origin

Personality: Very reckless and stubborn. She's an intimidating presence because she is physically large and there is something intense about her, but she can be rather naive. A few people can really sway her, but they do so easily. She struggles for those people's approval after they earned her trust. She loves power and encourages those close to her to take what they deserve.

"Dark" path (canon): She gets seduced by the power her dad offers, so she turns into a mindflayer and dominates the world.

"Hero" path (non-canon): She leans into her own stubbornness and defies Bhaal, embraces her friends. Becomes a mindflayer anyway to achieve her love's (Lae'zel's) dreams. Lives out her life as Shadowheart's squid sweetheart.

Romance: Lae'zel seduces her very quickly bc shes a dragon. Then she falls for Shadowheart hard (she is her goth princess...) while fooling around with Lae'zel. Karlach gets her heart fixed and she helps her out w her intimacy issues a bit but they remain friends. Lae'zel slowly falls for her but they all decide to keep things as is while they are fighting the brain, and they will decide what to do about the situation later. (Canonically they all become her thralls, non-canonically Lae'zel leaves her bc she becomes a squid).

Her past: She used to be Bhaal's executioner. But she was always full of herself, believing herself to be Bhaal's favorite, so she never truly lost her individuality while in the cult. Gortash appealed to her sense of personal pride to get her on his side. Her relationship with Orin was very bad, because of said pride, and she was always outright dismissive of her and her talents. She got along pretty well with Ketheric tho, not enough for him to give a shit ofc. She treats Sceleritas like a beloved toy.

August

Half-elf (?) Wild Magic Sorcerer, durge origin

Personality: Deeply empathetic and sensitive to other people's pain. Knows something is wrong with him, and believes himself to be truly worthless. He is smart, calculating, and charming. Pays attention to people very closely, so most people like him. Prime example of a charismatic leader, since he is hiding his own pain and low self-esteem behind being overconfident about his magical abilities. Views himself not as a person, but as a tool for other people to use.

"Normal" path (canon): He wins over his own fear and defies Bhaal, tries very very hard to resist as much as he can, but he cant deny to enjoy indulging. He is like a recovering addict in that sense. He urges all his friends to abandon their gods or higher powers they would chain themselves to. Kills the brain!

"Bad" path (non-canon): As time goes on, his fear wins over, and he accepts his father's boon to become the slayer. He urges Gale to turn into a god, so he may save him from the fate that awaits him, and then imprisons himself after destroying the brain, where he slowly loses his mind. His lover becomes the God of Ambition and he becomes a feral thing, entirely consumed by the urge.

Romance: He falls for Gale fast, but takes it as a denial when he tells him to slow down because of his orb. Sleeps around with Astarion, but they agree to become friends when he realizes that this relationship is not something either of them want. He falls in love with Gale. When it becomes clear that he is to blame for everything that happened and Gale gets mad at him he thinks they are going to break up, so he sleeps with the Emperor, then he feels bad about it. Thankfully the Emperor is okay with it and they keep it as a secret. He marries Gale after the game.

His past: He struggled against his urges always, and Bhaal punished him always very heavily. Used to starve and hurt himself so he doesn't hurt and consume others, but eventually he gave in. He had a thing for Gortash because he appreciated his intellect, and he seemed like somebody who could keep himself safe from him. His relationship with Orin is complicated, because he wanted to save her always, but never truly understood her. Ketheric really hated him because he correctly identified him as the most capable of them all and as a threat. Sceleritas is like a mother and father to him, and he finds comfort in his presence, but he hates him for being the overbearing "eye" of his actual father.

#quenthel special #bg3 #mostly of this i talked abt on discord but i wanted to save it somewhere lol

[araitsume]

The Desire of Ages, pp. 377-382: Chapter (40) A Night on the Lake

This chapter is based on Matthew 14:22-33; Mark 6:45-52; John 6:14-21.

Seated upon the grassy plain, in the twilight of the spring evening, the people ate of the food that Christ had provided. The words they had heard that day had come to them as the voice of God. The works of healing they had witnessed were such as only divine power could perform. But the miracle of the loaves appealed to everyone in that vast multitude. All were sharers in its benefit. In the days of Moses, God had fed Israel with manna in the desert; and who was this that had fed them that day but He whom Moses had foretold? No human power could create from five barley loaves and two small fishes food sufficient to feed thousands of hungry people. And they said one to another, “This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world.”

All day the conviction has strengthened. That crowning act is assurance that the long-looked-for Deliverer is among them. The hopes of the people rise higher and higher. This is He who will make Judea an earthly paradise, a land flowing with milk and honey. He can satisfy every desire. He can break the power of the hated Romans. He can deliver Judah and Jerusalem. He can heal the soldiers who are wounded in battle. He can supply whole armies with food. He can conquer the nations, and give to Israel the long-sought dominion.

In their enthusiasm the people are ready at once to crown Him king. They see that He makes no effort to attract attention or secure honor to Himself. In this He is essentially different from the priests and rulers, and they fear that He will never urge His claim to David's throne. Consulting together, they agree to take Him by force, and proclaim Him the king of Israel. The disciples unite with the multitude in declaring the throne of David the rightful inheritance of their Master. It is the modesty of Christ, they say, that causes Him to refuse such honor. Let the people exalt their Deliverer. Let the arrogant priests and rulers be forced to honor Him who comes clothed with the authority of God.

They eagerly arrange to carry out their purpose; but Jesus sees what is on foot, and understands, as they cannot, what would be the result of such a movement. Even now the priests and rulers are hunting His life. They accuse Him of drawing the people away from them. Violence and insurrection would follow an effort to place Him on the throne, and the work of the spiritual kingdom would be hindered. Without delay the movement must be checked. Calling His disciples, Jesus bids them take the boat and return at once to Capernaum, leaving Him to dismiss the people.

Never before had a command from Christ seemed so impossible of fulfillment. The disciples had long hoped for a popular movement to place Jesus on the throne; they could not endure the thought that all this enthusiasm should come to nothing. The multitudes that were assembling to keep the Passover were anxious to see the new prophet. To His followers this seemed the golden opportunity to establish their beloved Master on the throne of Israel. In the glow of this new ambition it was hard for them to go away by themselves, and leave Jesus alone upon that desolate shore. They protested against the arrangement; but Jesus now spoke with an authority He had never before assumed toward them. They knew that further opposition on their part would be useless, and in silence they turned toward the sea.

Jesus now commands the multitude to disperse; and His manner is so decisive that they dare not disobey. The words of praise and exaltation die on their lips. In the very act of advancing to seize Him their steps are stayed, and the glad, eager look fades from their countenances. In that throng are men of strong mind and firm determination; but the kingly bearing of Jesus, and His few quiet words of command, quell the tumult, and frustrate their designs. They recognize in Him a power above all earthly authority, and without a question they submit.

When left alone, Jesus “went up into a mountain apart to pray.” For hours He continued pleading with God. Not for Himself but for men were those prayers. He prayed for power to reveal to men the divine character of His mission, that Satan might not blind their understanding and pervert their judgment. The Saviour knew that His days of personal ministry on earth were nearly ended, and that few would receive Him as their Redeemer. In travail and conflict of soul He prayed for His disciples. They were to be grievously tried. Their long-cherished hopes, based on a popular delusion, were to be disappointed in a most painful and humiliating manner. In the place of His exaltation to the throne of David they were to witness His crucifixion. This was to be indeed His true coronation. But they did not discern this, and in consequence strong temptations would come to them, which it would be difficult for them to recognize as temptations. Without the Holy Spirit to enlighten the mind and enlarge the comprehension the faith of the disciples would fail. It was painful to Jesus that their conceptions of His kingdom were, to so great a degree, limited to worldly aggrandizement and honor. For them the burden was heavy upon His heart, and He poured out His supplications with bitter agony and tears.

The disciples had not put off immediately from the land, as Jesus directed them. They waited for a time, hoping that He would come to them. But as they saw that darkness was fast gathering, they “entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum.” They had left Jesus with dissatisfied hearts, more impatient with Him than ever before since acknowledging Him as their Lord. They murmured because they had not been permitted to proclaim Him king. They blamed themselves for yielding so readily to His command. They reasoned that if they had been more persistent they might have accomplished their purpose.

Unbelief was taking possession of their minds and hearts. Love of honor had blinded them. They knew that Jesus was hated by the Pharisees, and they were eager to see Him exalted as they thought He should be. To be united with a teacher who could work mighty miracles, and yet to be reviled as deceivers, was a trial they could ill endure. Were they always to be accounted followers of a false prophet? Would Christ never assert His authority as king? Why did not He who possessed such power reveal Himself in His true character, and make their way less painful? Why had He not saved John the Baptist from a violent death? Thus the disciples reasoned until they brought upon themselves great spiritual darkness. They questioned, Could Jesus be an impostor, as the Pharisees asserted?

The disciples had that day witnessed the wonderful works of Christ. It had seemed that heaven had come down to the earth. The memory of that precious, glorious day should have filled them with faith and hope. Had they, out of the abundance of their hearts, been conversing together in regard to these things, they would not have entered into temptation. But their disappointment had absorbed their thoughts. The words of Christ, “Gather up the fragments, ... that nothing be lost,” were unheeded. Those were hours of large blessing to the disciples, but they had forgotten it all. They were in the midst of troubled waters. Their thoughts were stormy and unreasonable, and the Lord gave them something else to afflict their souls and occupy their minds. God often does this when men create burdens and troubles for themselves. The disciples had no need to make trouble. Already danger was fast approaching.

A violent tempest had been stealing upon them, and they were unprepared for it. It was a sudden contrast, for the day had been perfect; and when the gale struck them, they were afraid. They forgot their disaffection, their unbelief, their impatience. Everyone worked to keep the boat from sinking. It was but a short distance by sea from Bethsaida to the point where they expected to meet Jesus, and in ordinary weather the journey required but a few hours; but now they were driven farther and farther from the point they sought. Until the fourth watch of the night they toiled at the oars. Then the weary men gave themselves up for lost. In storm and darkness the sea had taught them their own helplessness, and they longed for the presence of their Master.

Jesus had not forgotten them. The Watcher on the shore saw those fear-stricken men battling with the tempest. Not for a moment did He lose sight of His disciples. With deepest solicitude His eyes followed the storm-tossed boat with its precious burden; for these men were to be the light of the world. As a mother in tender love watches her child, so the compassionate Master watched His disciples. When their hearts were subdued, their unholy ambition quelled, and in humility they prayed for help, it was given them.

At the moment when they believe themselves lost, a gleam of light reveals a mysterious figure approaching them upon the water. But they know not that it is Jesus. The One who has come for their help they count as an enemy. Terror overpowers them. The hands that have grasped the oars with muscles like iron let go their hold. The boat rocks at the will of the waves; all eyes are riveted on this vision of a man walking upon the white-capped billows of the foaming sea.

They think it a phantom that omens their destruction, and they cry out for fear. Jesus advances as if He would pass them; but they recognize Him, and cry out, entreating His help. Their beloved Master turns, His voice silences their fear, “Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.”

As soon as they could credit the wondrous fact, Peter was almost beside himself with joy. As if he could scarcely yet believe, he cried out, “Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water. And He said, Come.”

Looking unto Jesus, Peter walks securely; but as in self-satisfaction he glances back toward his companions in the boat, his eyes are turned from the Saviour. The wind is boisterous. The waves roll high, and come directly between him and the Master; and he is afraid. For a moment Christ is hidden from his view, and his faith gives way. He begins to sink. But while the billows talk with death, Peter lifts his eyes from the angry waters, and fixing them upon Jesus, cries, “Lord, save me.” Immediately Jesus grasps the outstretched hand, saying, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”

Walking side by side, Peter's hand in that of his Master, they stepped into the boat together. But Peter was now subdued and silent. He had no reason to boast over his fellows, for through unbelief and self-exaltation he had very nearly lost his life. When he turned his eyes from Jesus, his footing was lost, and he sank amid the waves.

When trouble comes upon us, how often we are like Peter! We look upon the waves, instead of keeping our eyes fixed upon the Saviour. Our footsteps slide, and the proud waters go over our souls. Jesus did not bid Peter come to Him that he should perish; He does not call us to follow Him, and then forsake us. “Fear not,” He says; “for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art Mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.” Isaiah 43:1-3.

Jesus read the character of His disciples. He knew how sorely their faith was to be tried. In this incident on the sea He desired to reveal to Peter his own weakness,—to show that his safety was in constant dependence upon divine power. Amid the storms of temptation he could walk safely only as in utter self-distrust he should rely upon the Saviour. It was on the point where he thought himself strong that Peter was weak; and not until he discerned his weakness could he realize his need of dependence upon Christ. Had he learned the lesson that Jesus sought to teach him in that experience on the sea, he would not have failed when the great test came upon him.

Day by day God instructs His children. By the circumstances of the daily life He is preparing them to act their part upon that wider stage to which His providence has appointed them. It is the issue of the daily test that determines their victory or defeat in life's great crisis.

Those who fail to realize their constant dependence upon God will be overcome by temptation. We may now suppose that our feet stand secure, and that we shall never be moved. We may say with confidence, “I know in whom I have believed; nothing can shake my faith in God and in His word.” But Satan is planning to take advantage of our hereditary and cultivated traits of character, and to blind our eyes to our own necessities and defects. Only through realizing our own weakness and looking steadfastly unto Jesus can we walk securely.

No sooner had Jesus taken His place in the boat than the wind ceased, “and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.” The night of horror was succeeded by the light of dawn. The disciples, and others who also were on board, bowed at the feet of Jesus with thankful hearts, saying, “Of a truth Thou art the Son of God!”

#egw #Ellen G. White #Christianity #God #Jesus Christ #Bible #conflict of the ages #the desire of ages #miracles of jesus #Jesus's ministry #misinterpretation of prophecy #prophecy #faith #doubt #pride #humility #disciples of christ #depend on God #temptation #gratitude

[enchantingtigerbarbarian-blog]

Chapter 5 - JARVANKA

JARVANKA

On the Sunday after the immigration order was issued, Joe Scarborough and his cohost on the MSNBC show Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski, came for lunch at the White House.

Scarborough is a former Republican congressman from Pensacola, Florida, and Brzezinski is the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, a high-ranking aide in the Johnson White House and Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor. Morning Joe had gone on the air in 2007 and developed a following among New York political and media types. Trump was a longtime devotee.

Early in the 2016 campaign, with a change of leadership at NBC News, it seemed likely that the show, its ratings falling, would be canceled. But Scarborough and Brzezinski embraced their relationship with Trump and became one of the few media outlets not only with a positive outlook on him, but that seemed to know his thinking. Trump became a frequent call-in guest and the show a way to speak more or less directly to him.

It was the kind of relationship Trump dreamed of: media people who took him seriously, talked about him often, solicited his views, provided him with gossip, and retailed the gossip he offered them. The effect was to make them all insiders together, which was exactly where Trump wanted to be. Though he branded himself as a political outsider, actually finding himself on the outside wounded him.

Trump believed that the media, which he propelled (in the case of Scarborough and Brzezinski, helping them keep their jobs), owed him something, and the media, giving him vast amounts of free coverage, believed he owed them, with Scarborough and Brzezinski seeing themselves as something like semiofficial advisers, if not the political fixers who had put him in his job.

In August, they had had a public spat, resulting in Trump’s tweet: “Some day, when things calm down, I’ll tell the real story of @JoeNBC and his very insecure long-time girlfriend, @morningmika. Two clowns!” But Trump’s spats often ended in a tacit admission, however grudging, of mutual advantage, and in short order they were back on cordial terms again.

On their arrival at the White House, the ninth day of his presidency, Trump proudly showed them into the Oval Office and was momentarily deflated when Brzezinski said she had been there many times before with her father, beginning at age nine. Trump showed them some of the memorabilia and, eagerly, his new portrait of Andrew Jackson—the president whom Steve Bannon had made the totem figure of the new administration.

“So how do you think the first week has gone?” Trump asked the couple, in a buoyant mood, seeking flattery.

Scarborough, puzzled by Trump’s jauntiness in the face of the protests spreading across the nation, demurred and then said, “Well, I love what you did with U.S. Steel and that you had the union guys come into the Oval Office.” Trump had pledged to use U.S.-made steel in U.S. pipelines and, in a Trump touch, met at the White House with union representatives from building and sheet metal unions and then invited them back to the Oval Office—something Trump insisted Obama never did.

But Trump pressed his question, leaving Scarborough with the feeling that nobody had actually told Trump that he had had a very bad week. Bannon and Priebus, wandering in and out of the office, might actually have convinced him that the week had been a success, Scarborough thought.

Scarborough then ventured his opinion that the immigration order might have been handled better and that, all in all, it seemed like a rough period.

Trump, surprised, plunged into a long monologue about how well things had gone, telling Bannon and Priebus, with a gale of laughter, “Joe doesn’t think we had a good week.” And turning to Scarborough: “I could have invited Hannity!”

At lunch—fish, which Brzezinski doesn’t eat—Jared and Ivanka joined the president and Scarborough and Brzezinski. Jared had become quite a Scarborough confidant and would continue to supply Scarborough with an inside view of the White House—that is, leaking to him. Scarborough subsequently became a defender of Kushner’s White House position and view. But, for now, both son-in-law and daughter were subdued and deferential as Scarborough and Brzezinski chatted with the president, and the president—taking more of the air time as usual—held forth.

Trump continued to cast for positive impressions of his first week and Scarborough again reverted to his praise of Trump’s handling of the steel union leadership. At which point, Jared interjected that reaching out to unions, a traditional Democratic constituency, was Bannon’s doing, that this was “the Bannon way.”

“Bannon?” said the president, jumping on his son-in-law. “That wasn’t Bannon’s idea. That was my idea. It’s the Trump way, not the Bannon way.”

Kushner, going concave, retreated from the discussion.

Trump, changing the topic, said to Scarborough and Brzezinski, “So what about you guys? What’s going on?” He was referencing their not-so-secret secret relationship.

Scarborough and Brzezinski said it was all still complicated, and not public, officially, but it was good and everything was getting resolved.

“You guys should just get married,” prodded Trump.

“I can marry you! I’m an Internet Unitarian minister,” Kushner, otherwise an Orthodox Jew, said suddenly.

“What?” said the president. “What are you talking about? Why would they want you to marry them when I could marry them? When they could be married by the president! At Mar-a-Lago!”

* * *

Almost everybody advised Jared not to take the inside job. As a family member, he would command extraordinary influence from a position that no one could challenge. As an insider, a staffer, not only could his experience be challenged, but while the president himself might not yet be exposed, a family member on staff would be where enemies and critics might quite effectively start chipping from. Besides, inside Trump’s West Wing, if you had a title—that is, other than son-in-law—people would surely want to take it from you.

Both Jared and Ivanka listened to this advice—from among others it came from Jared’s brother, Josh, doubly making this case not only to protect his brother but also because of his antipathy to Trump—but both, balancing risk against reward, ignored it. Trump himself variously encouraged his son-in-law and his daughter in their new ambitions and, as their excitement mounted, tried to express his skepticism—while at the same time telling others that he was helpless to stop them.

For Jared and Ivanka, as really for everybody else in the new administration, quite including the president, this was a random and crazy turn of history such that how could you not seize it? It was a joint decision by the couple, and, in some sense, a joint job. Jared and Ivanka had made an earnest deal between themselves: if sometime in the future the time came, she’d be the one to run for president (or the first one of them to take the shot). The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton, it would be Ivanka Trump.

Bannon, who had coined the Jarvanka conflation now in ever greater use, was horrified when the couple’s deal was reported to him. “They didn’t say that? Stop. Oh come on. They didn’t actually say that? Please don’t tell me that. Oh my god.”

And the truth was that at least by then Ivanka would have more experience than almost anybody else now serving in the White House. She and Jared, or Jared, but by inference she, too, were in effect the real chief of staff—or certainly as much a chief of staff as Priebus or Bannon, all of them reporting directly to the president. Or, even more to the organizational point, Jared and Ivanka had a wholly independent standing inside the West Wing. A super status. Even as Priebus and Bannon tried, however diplomatically, to remind the couple of staff procedures and propriety, they would in turn remind the West Wing leadership of their overriding First Family prerogatives. In addition, the president had immediately handed Jared the Middle East portfolio, making him one of the significant international players in the administration—indeed, in the world. In the first weeks, this brief extended out to virtually every other international issue, about which nothing in Kushner’s previous background would have prepared him for.

Kushner’s most cogent reason for entering the White House was “leverage,” by which he meant proximity. Quite beyond the status of being inside the family circle, anyone who had proximity to the president had leverage, the more proximity the more leverage. Trump himself you could see as a sort of Delphic oracle, sitting in place and throwing out pronouncements which had to be interpreted. Or as an energetic child, and whomever could placate or distract him became his favorite. Or as the Sun God (which is effectively how he saw himself), the absolute center of attention, dispensing favor and delegating power, which could, at any moment, be withdrawn. The added dimension was that this Sun God had little calculation. His inspiration existed in the moment, hence all the more reason to be there with him in the moment. Bannon, for one, joined Trump for dinner every night, or at least made himself available—one bachelor there for the effective other bachelor. (Priebus would observe that in the beginning everyone would try to be part of these dinners, but within a few months, they had become a torturous duty to be avoided.)

Part of Jared and Ivanka’s calculation about the relative power and influence of a formal job in the West Wing versus an outside advisory role was the knowledge that influencing Trump required you to be all in. From phone call to phone call—and his day, beyond organized meetings, was almost entirely phone calls—you could lose him. The subtleties here were immense, because while he was often most influenced by the last person he spoke to, he did not actually listen to anyone. So it was not so much the force of an individual argument or petition that moved him, but rather more just someone’s presence, the connection of what was going through his mind—and although he was a person of many obsessions, much of what was on his mind had no fixed view—to whomever he was with and their views.

Ultimately Trump may not be that different in his fundamental solipsism from anyone of great wealth who has lived most of his life in a highly controlled environment. But one clear difference was that he had acquired almost no formal sort of social discipline—he could not even attempt to imitate decorum. He could not really converse, for instance, not in the sense of sharing information, or of a balanced back-and-forth conversation. He neither particularly listened to what was said to him, nor particularly considered what he said in response (one reason he was so repetitive). Nor did he treat anyone with any sort of basic or reliable courtesy. If he wanted something, his focus might be sharp and attention lavish, but if someone wanted something from him, he tended to become irritable and quickly lost interest. He demanded you pay him attention, then decided you were weak for groveling. In a sense, he was like an instinctive, pampered, and hugely successful actor. Everybody was either a lackey who did his bidding or a high-ranking film functionary trying to coax out his attention and performance—and to do this without making him angry or petulant.

The payoff was his enthusiasm, quickness, spontaneity, and—if he departed for a moment from the nonstop focus on himself—an often incisive sense of the weaknesses of his opponents and a sense of their deepest desires. Politics was handicapped by incrementalism, of people knowing too much who were defeated by all the complexities and conflicting interests before they began. Trump, knowing little, might, Trumpers tried to believe, give a kooky new hope to the system.

Jared Kushner in quite a short period of time—rather less than a year—had crossed over from the standard Democratic view in which he was raised, to an acolyte of Trumpism, bewildering many friends and, as well, his own brother, whose insurance company, Oscar, funded with Kushner-family money, was destined to be dealt a blow by a repeal of Obamacare.

This seeming conversion was partly the result of Bannon’s insistent and charismatic tutoring—a kind of real-life engagement with world-bending ideas that had escaped Kushner even at Harvard. And it was helped by his own resentments toward the liberal elites whom he had tried to court with his purchase of the New York Observer, an effort that had backfired terribly. And it was, once he ventured onto the campaign trail, about having to convince himself that close up to the absurd everything made sense—that Trumpism was a kind of unsentimental realpolitik that would show everybody in the end. But most of all, it was that they had won. And he was determined not to look a gift horse in the mouth. And, everything that was bad about Trumpism, he had convinced himself, he could help fix.

* * *

As much as it might have surprised him—for many years, he had humored Trump more than embraced him—Kushner was in fact rather like his father-in-law. Jared’s father, Charlie, bore an eerie resemblance to Donald’s father, Fred. Both men dominated their children, and they did this so completely that their children, despite their demands, became devoted to them. In both instances, this was extreme stuff: belligerent, uncompromising, ruthless men creating long-suffering offspring who were driven to achieve their father’s approval. (Trump’s older brother, Freddy, failing in this effort, and, by many reports, gay, drank himself to death; he died in 1981 at age forty-three.) In business meetings, observers would be nonplussed that Charlie and Jared Kushner invariably greeted each other with a kiss and that the adult Jared called his father Daddy.

Neither Donald nor Jared, no matter their domineering fathers, went into the world with humility. Insecurity was soothed by entitlement. Both out-of-towners who were eager to prove themselves or lay rightful claim in Manhattan (Kushner from New Jersey, Trump from Queens), they were largely seen as overweening, smug, and arrogant. Each cultivated a smooth affect, which could appear more comical than graceful. Neither, by choice nor awareness, could seem to escape his privilege. “Some people who are very privileged are aware of it and put it away; Kushner not only seemed in every gesture and word to emphasize his privilege, but also not to be aware of it,” said one New York media executive who dealt with Kushner. Both men were never out of their circle of privilege. The main challenge they set for themselves was to enter further into the privileged circle. Social climbing was their work.

Jared’s focus was often on older men. Rupert Murdoch spent a surprising amount of time with Jared, who sought advice from the older media mogul about the media business—which the young man was determined to break into. Kushner paid long court to Ronald Perelman, the billionaire financier and takeover artist, who later would host Jared and Ivanka in his private shul on Jewish high holy days. And, of course, Kushner wooed Trump himself, who became a fan of the young man and was uncharacteristically tolerant about his daughter’s conversion to Orthodox Judaism when that became a necessary next step toward marriage. Likewise, Trump as a young man had carefully cultivated a set of older mentors, including Roy Cohn, the flamboyant lawyer and fixer who had served as right-hand man to the red-baiting Senator Joe McCarthy.

And then there was the harsh fact that the world of Manhattan and particular its living voice, the media, seemed to cruelly reject them. The media long ago turned on Donald Trump as a wannabe and lightweight, and wrote him off for that ultimate sin—anyway, the ultimate sin in media terms—of trying to curry favor with the media too much. His fame, such as it was, was actually reverse fame—he was famous for being infamous. It was joke fame.

To understand the media snub, and its many levels of irony, there is no better place to look than the New York Observer, the Manhattan media and society weekly that Kushner bought in 2006 for $10 million—by almost every estimate $10 million more than it was worth.

* * *

The New York Observer was, when it launched in 1987, a rich man’s fancy, as much failed media often is. It was a bland weekly chronicle of the Upper East Side, New York’s wealthiest neighborhood. Its conceit was to treat this neighborhood like a small town. But nobody took any notice. Its frustrated patron, Arthur Carter, who made his money in the first generation of Wall Street consolidations, was introduced to Graydon Carter (no relation), who had started Spy magazine, a New York imitation of the British satirical publication Private Eye. Spy was part of a set of 1980s publications—Manhattan, Inc., a relaunched Vanity Fair, and New York— obsessed with the new rich and what seemed to be a transformational moment in New York. Trump was both symbol of and punch line for this new era of excess and celebrity and the media’s celebration of those things. Graydon Carter became the editor of the New York Observer in 1991 and not only refocused the weekly on big-money culture, but essentially made it a tip-sheet for the media writing about media culture, and for members of the big-money culture who wanted to be in the media. There may never have been such a self-conscious and self-referential publication as the New York Observer.

As Donald Trump, along with many others of this new-rich ilk, sought to be covered by the media—Murdoch’s New York Post was the effective court recorder of this new publicity-hungry aristocracy—the New York Observer covered the process of him being covered. The story of Trump was the story of how he tried to make himself a story. He was shameless, campy, and instructive: if you were willing to risk humiliation, the world could be yours. Trump became the objective correlative for the rising appetite for fame and notoriety. Trump came to believe he understood everything about the media—who you need to know, what pretense you need to maintain, what information you could profitably trade, what lies you might tell, what lies the media expected you to tell. And the media came to believe it knew everything about Trump—his vanities, delusions, and lies, and the levels, uncharted, to which he would stoop for ever more media attention.

Graydon Carter soon used the New York Observer as his stepping-stone to Vanity Fair—where, he believed, he might have access to a higher level of celebrity than Donald Trump. Carter was followed at the Observer in 1994 by Peter Kaplan, an editor with a heightened sense of postmodern irony and ennui.

Trump, in Kaplan’s telling, suddenly took on a new persona. Whereas he had before been the symbol of success and mocked for it, now he became, in a shift of zeitgeist (and of having to refinance a great deal of debt), a symbol of failure and mocked for it. This was a complicated reversal, not just having to do with Trump, but of how the media was now seeing itself. Donald Trump became a symbol of the media’s own self-loathing: the interest in and promotion of Donald Trump was a morality tale about the media. Its ultimate end was Kaplan’s pronouncement that Trump should not be covered anymore because every story about Donald Trump had become a cliché.

An important aspect of Kaplan’s New York Observer and its self-conscious inside media baseball was that the paper became the prime school for a new generation of media reporters flooding every other publication in New York as journalism itself became ever more self-conscious and self-referential. To everyone working in media in New York, Donald Trump represented the ultimate shame of working in media in New York: you might have to write about Donald Trump. Not writing about him, or certainly not taking him at face value, became a moral stand.

In 2006, after Kaplan had edited the paper for fifteen years, Arthur Carter sold the Observer—which had never made a profit—to the then twenty-five-year-old Kushner, an unknown real estate heir interested in gaining stature and notoriety in the city. Kaplan was now working for someone twenty-five years his junior, a man who, ironically, was just the kind of arriviste he would otherwise have covered.

For Kushner, owning the paper soon paid off, because, with infinite ironies not necessarily apparent to him, it allowed him into the social circle where he met Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, whom he married in 2009. But the paper did not, irksomely for Kushner, pay off financially, which put him into increasing tension with Kaplan. Kaplan, in turn, began telling witty and devastating tales about the pretensions and callowness of his new boss, which spread, in constant retelling, among his many media protégés and hence throughout the media itself.

In 2009, Kaplan left the paper, and Kushner—making a mistake that many rich men who have bought vanity media properties are prone to making—tried to find a profit by cutting costs. In short order, the media world came to regard Kushner as the man who not only took Peter Kaplan’s paper from him, but also ruined it, brutally and incompetently. And worse: in 2013, Kaplan, at fifty-nine, died of cancer. So, effectively, in the telling, Kushner had killed him, too.

Media is personal. It is a series of blood scores. The media in its often collective mind decides who is going to rise and who is going to fall, who lives and who dies. If you stay around long enough in the media eye, your fate, like that of a banana republic despot, is often an unkind one—a law Hillary Clinton was not able to circumvent. The media has the last word.

Long before he ran for president, Trump and his sidekick son-in-law Kushner had been marked not just for ignominy, but for slow torture by ridicule, contempt, and ever-more amusing persiflage. These people are nothing. They are media debris. For goodness’ sake!

Trump, in a smart move, picked up his media reputation and relocated it from a hypercritical New York to a more value-free Hollywood, becoming the star of his own reality show, The Apprentice, and embracing a theory that would serve him well during his presidential campaign: in flyover country, there is no greater asset than celebrity. To be famous is to be loved—or at least fawned over.

The fabulous, incomprehensible irony that the Trump family had, despite the media’s distaste, despite everything the media knows and understands and has said about them, risen to a level not only of ultimate consequence but even of immortality is beyond worst-case nightmare and into cosmic-joke territory. In this infuriating circumstance, Trump and his son-in-law were united, always aware and yet never quite understanding why they should be the butt of a media joke, and now the target of its stunned outrage.

* * *

The fact that Trump and his son-in-law had many things in common did not mean they operated on a common playing field. Kushner, no matter how close to Trump, was yet a member of the Trump entourage, with no more ultimate control of his father-in-law than anybody else now in the business of trying to control Trump.

Still, the difficulty of controlling him had been part of Kushner’s self-justification or rationalization for stepping beyond his family role and taking a senior White House job: to exercise restraint on his father-in-law and even—a considerable stretch for the inexperienced young man—to help lend him some gravitas.

If Bannon was going to pursue as his first signature White House statement the travel ban, then Kushner was going to pursue as his first leadership mark a meeting with the Mexican president, whom his father-in-law had threatened and insulted throughout the campaign.

Kushner called up the ninety-three-year-old Kissinger for advice. This was both to flatter the old man and to be able to drop his name, but it was also actually for real advice. Trump had done nothing but cause problems for the Mexican president. To bring the Mexican president to the White House would be, despite Bannon’s no-pivot policy from the campaign’s harshness, a truly meaningful pivot for which Kushner would be able to claim credit (although don’t call it a pivot). It was what Kushner believed he should be doing: quietly following behind the president and with added nuance and subtlety clarifying the president’s real intentions, if not recasting them entirely.

The negotiation to bring Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto to the White House had begun during the transition period. Kushner saw the chance to convert the issue of the wall into a bilateral agreement addressing immigration—hence a tour de force of Trumpian politics. The negotiations surrounding the visit reached their apogee on the Wednesday after the inaugural, with a high-level Mexican delegation—the first visit by any foreign leader to the Trump White House—meeting with Kushner and Reince Priebus. Kushner’s message to his father-in-law that afternoon was that Peña Nieto had signed on to a White House meeting and planning for the visit could go forward.

The next day Trump tweeted: “The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers . . .” And he continued in the next tweet . . . “of jobs and companies lost. If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting . . .”

At which point Peña Nieto did just that, leaving Kushner’s negotiation and statecraft as so much scrap on the floor.

* * *

On Friday, February 3, at breakfast at the Four Seasons hotel in Georgetown, an epicenter of the swamp, Ivanka Trump, flustered, came down the stairs and entered the dining room, talking loudly on her cell phone: “Things are so messed up and I don’t know how to fix it. . . .”

The week had been overwhelmed by continuing fallout from the immigration order—the administration was in court and headed to a brutal ruling against it—and more embarrassing leaks of two theoretically make-nice phone calls, one with the Mexican president (“bad hombres”) and the other with the Australian prime minister (“my worst call by far”). What’s more, the day before, Nordstrom had announced that it was dropping Ivanka Trump’s clothing line.

The thirty-five-year-old was a harried figure, a businesswoman who had had to abruptly shift control of her business. She was also quite overwhelmed by the effort of having just moved her three children into a new house in a new city—and having to do this largely on her own. Asked how his children were adjusting to their new school several weeks after the move, Jared said that yes, they were indeed in school—but he could not immediately identify where.

Still, in another sense, Ivanka was landing on her feet. Breakfast at the Four Seasons was a natural place for her. She was among everyone who was anyone. In the restaurant that morning: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi; Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman; Washington fixture, lobbyist, and Clinton confidant Vernon Jordan; labor secretary nominee Wilbur Ross; Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith; Washington Post national reporter Mark Berman; and a table full of women lobbyists and fixers, including the music industry’s longtime representative in Washington, Hillary Rosen; Elon Musk’s D.C. adviser, Juleanna Glover; Uber’s political and policy executive, Niki Christoff; and Time Warner’s political affairs executive, Carol Melton.

In some sense—putting aside both her father’s presence in the White House and his tirades against draining the swamp, which might otherwise include most everyone here, this was the type of room Ivanka had worked hard to be in. Following the route of her father, she was crafting her name and herself into a multifaceted, multiproduct brand; she was also transitioning from her father’s aspirational male golf and business types to aspirational female mom and business types. She had, well before her father’s presidency could have remotely been predicted, sold a book, Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, for $1 million.

In many ways, it had been an unexpected journey, requiring more discipline than you might expect from a contented, distracted, run-of-the-mill socialite. As a twenty-one-year-old, she appeared in a film made by her then boyfriend, Jamie Johnson, a Johnson & Johnson heir. It’s a curious, even somewhat unsettling film, in which Johnson corrals his set of rich-kid friends into openly sharing their dissatisfactions, general lack of ambition, and contempt for their families. (One of his friends would engage in long litigation with him over the portrayal.) Ivanka, speaking with something like a Valley Girl accent—which would transform in the years ahead into something like a Disney princess voice—seems no more ambitious or even employed than anyone else, but she is notably less angry with her parents.

She treated her father with some lightness, even irony, and in at least one television interview she made fun of his comb-over. She often described the mechanics behind it to friends: an absolutely clean pate—a contained island after scalp reduction surgery—surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the center and then swept back and secured by a stiffening spray. The color, she would point out to comical effect, was from a product called Just for Men—the longer it was left on, the darker it got. Impatience resulted in Trump’s orange-blond hair color.

Father and daughter got along almost peculiarly well. She was the real mini-Trump (a title that many people now seemed to aspire to). She accepted him. She was a helper not just in his business dealings, but in his marital realignments. She facilitated entrances and exits. If you have a douchebag dad, and if everyone is open about it, then maybe it becomes fun and life a romantic comedy—sort of.

Reasonably, she ought to be much angrier. She grew up not just in the middle of a troubled family but in one that was at all times immersed in bad press. But she was able to bifurcate reality and live only in the uppermost part of it, where the Trump name, no matter how often tarnished, nevertheless had come to be an affectionately tolerated presence. She resided in a bubble of other wealthy people who thrived on their relationship with one another—at first among private school and Upper East Side of Manhattan friends, then among social, fashion, and media contacts. What’s more, she tended to find protection as well as status in her boyfriends’ families, aggressively bonding with a series of wealthy suitors’ families—including Jamie Johnson’s before the Kushners—over her own.

The Ivanka-Jared relationship was shepherded by Wendi Murdoch, herself a curious social example (to nobody so much as to her then husband, Rupert). The effort among a new generation of wealthy women was to recast life as a socialite, turning a certain model of whimsy and noblesse oblige into a new status as a power woman, a kind of postfeminist socialite. In this, you worked at knowing other rich people, the best rich people, and of being an integral and valuable part of a network of the rich, and of having your name itself evoke, well . . . riches. You weren’t satisfied with what you had, you wanted more. This required quite a level of indefatigability. You were marketing a product—yourself. You were your own start-up.

This was what her father had always done. This, more than real estate, was the family business.

She and Kushner then united as a power couple, consciously recasting themselves as figures of ultimate attainment, ambition, and satisfaction in the new global world and as representatives of a new eco-philanthropic-art sensibility. For Ivanka, this included her friendship with Wendi Murdoch and with Dasha Zhukova, the then wife of the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, a fixture in the international art world, and, just a few months before the election, attending a Deepak Chopra seminar on mediation with Kushner. She was searching for meaning—and finding it. This transformation was further expressed not just in ancillary clothing, jewelry, and footwear lines, as well as reality TV projects, but in a careful social media presence. She became a superbly coordinated everymom, who would, with her father’s election, recast herself again, this time as royal family.

And yet, the larger truth was that Ivanka’s relationship with her father was in no way a conventional family relationship. If it wasn’t pure opportunism, it was certainly transactional. It was business. Building the brand, the presidential campaign, and now the White House—it was all business.

But what did Ivanka and Jared really think of their father and father-in-law? “There’s great, great, great affection—you see it, you really do,” replied Kellyanne Conway, somewhat avoiding the question.

“They’re not fools,” said Rupert Murdoch when asked the question.

“They understand him, I think truly,” reflected Joe Scarborough. “And they appreciate his energy. But there’s detachment.” That is, Scarborough went on, they have tolerance but few illusions.

* * *

Ivanka’s breakfast that Friday at the Four Seasons was with Dina Powell, the latest Goldman Sachs executive to join the White House.

In the days after the election, Ivanka and Jared had both met with a revolving door of lawyers and PR people, most of them, the couple found, leery of involvement, not least because the couple seemed less interested in bending to advice and more interested in shopping for the advice they wanted. In fact, much of the advice they were getting had the same message: surround yourself—acquaint yourselves—with figures of the greatest establishment credibility. In effect: you are amateurs, you need professionals.

One name that kept coming up was Powell’s. A Republican operative who had gone on to high influence and compensation at Goldman Sachs, she was quite the opposite of anyone’s notion of a Trump Republican. Her family emigrated from Egypt when she was a girl, and she is fluent in Arabic. She worked her way up through a series of stalwart Republicans, including Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and House Speaker Dick Armey. In the Bush White House she served as chief of the personnel office and an assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs. She went to Goldman in 2007 and became a partner in 2010, running its philanthropic outreach, the Goldman Sachs Foundation. Following a trend in the careers of many poiitical operatives, she had become, as well as an über networker, a corporate public affairs and PR-type adviser—someone who knew the right people in power and had a keen sensitivity to how other people’s power can be used.

The table of women lobbyists and communications professionals in the Four Seasons that morning was certainly as interested in Powell, and her presence in the new administration, as they were in the president’s daughter. If Ivanka Trump was a figure more of novelty than of seriousness, the fact that she had helped bring Powell into the White House and was now publicly conferring with her added a further dimension to the president’s daughter. In a White House seeming to pursue a dead-set Trumpian way, this was a hint of an alternative course. In the assessment of the other fixers and PR women at the Four Seasons, this was a potential shadow White House—Trump’s own family not assaulting the power structure but expressing an obvious enthusiasm for it.

Ivanka, after a long breakfast, made her way through the room. Between issuing snappish instructions on her phone, she bestowed warm greetings and accepted business cards.