#also hot take but i dont hate mystra

[forgotten-rain]

more people need to talk about how

1. Gale thinks the world is better off without him in it.

He thinks the mistake he made was so monumental that it's not even worth him being alive anymore. He thinks that if he does as Mystra asks and blows himself up to kill the elder brain, then at least his folly would amount to something. He's lived for a year in darkness and isolation and convinced himself that the only way to move forward is by somehow regaining his goddess's favour, and if he can't do that then he's not worth the air he breathes. He wants so desperately to matter, to mean something, that he's willing to throw his whole life away to garner even a fraction of the love Mystra used to bestow upon him. He's a brilliant man, an incredible wizard, kind-hearted, and trying so damn hard to do the right thing, but somehow he fails to see all those qualities and puts his worth solely on a single mistake he made that he made out of love. Out of ambition and out of desire, but ultimately out of love. And now, after spending months in self-imposed isolation, the only future he sees for this world is one where he's not in it. And,

2. That he doesn't think he's worthy of Tav. He doesn't believe that anyone can love him as he is, no matter how often Tav tries to convince him otherwise. If a literal god deemed him unworthy, then who is he to claim he isn't? He finds the ability to love again with Tav, starts the slow and excruciating journey of healing together with them, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he still believes he's not good enough. He wants to be more. He wants to be everything that Tav wants him to be. He wants to be everything Tav needs him to be. He wants to prove to them that he can be a good fighter, a good lover, a good friend. That's why he asks again and again if they wouldn't love him better if he were a god. If he was perfect - truly perfect. If he could command armies and fell kingdoms, if he could give them everything they could ever dream of. Wouldn't Tav want that? Why would they want his battered, broken, mortal self when they could have a perfected version of him? What beauty is there in failure, in making mistakes, in being flawed? Even when Tav insists that they love him for who he is, not for the power he would wield, he struggles to accept it. He trusts that they're telling the truth, but he's been a wizard of renown for so long that he doesn't quite know how to be a regular man any more. His whole notion of worth has been tied so tightly with power and control for so long that he's forgotten what it is like to be loved simply for being who he is. Not the Wizard of Waterdeep. Not Mystra's Chosen. But a man, wandering in the dark like everyone else, afraid, but so full of hope.

#i have Thoughts #and a lot of them are about my husband #gale dekarios #and his issues of self worth #larian wheres the option to give him a big squeezy hug #he offers so much #and asks for so little in return #baby i love you #you deserve all the planes #also hot take but i dont hate mystra #im putting this in the tags because im a coward #she sucks but shes a god #like #theyre all fickle #its kind of a god thing #and at least she had reason to be angry #not reason enough to give my man depression #she could have handled it better #but she was threatened #and i guess felt betrayed by the man she loved #like opening up an old wound #anyway gale is baby girl and i unironically want to have his children #ive never felt the mother instinct before #but gods damn it i will mother his children #and give him a happy blissful domestic life #where he can malewife to his hearts content #bg3 #bg3 gale #gale bg3 #gale of waterdeep