i know there are already posts about it but it's so cute how most of the companions are kind of apathetic about each other in act 1 but when elminster shows up and gives gale his ultimatum everyone is like. hold the FUCK up. his goddess sounds like shit and gale can do better. shadowheart and lae'zel have their first agreement over it and it's "wow i can't imagine what it must be like to serve a goddess who sucks so bad :/ he should leave her before he wastes himself trying to earn her favor" CAN YOU HEAR YOURSELVES. mystra's real magic was getting this crew of merry assholes (and wyll and karlach) to unite as a Save Gale Dekarios committee
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I hate when people dismiss the Phoebe thing as Scully simply having been jealous. She was his best friend first, and she did what any good friend would have
yeah it's pretty reductive, honestly. scully has been very protective of mulder since the pilot; the first 3 episodes of the show are literally her committing to him, holding a man hostage at gunpoint to find him, and cutting ties with her friends who make fun of him.
this was largely her arc in squeeze, after only having known him for a couple of weeks, as she defends him to colton multiple times
and, in the end, concludes that she would rather be “on the side of the victim” with mulder than climb the ladder with her classmates, and tells colton to fuck off the next time he’s rude about her partner
in ghost in the machine, she's disapproving of jerry from the moment they meet, knowing literally nothing about him except that he used to work with mulder
and she instantly recognizes the profile that jerry presents as mulder's work, whispering to him to ask if that's his, to which he replies "forget it, no" and then later fibs and says that jerry apologized for stealing it (once you tell your best friend you can't go back lol)
all of these examples pre-date her behavior in fire, and are episodes where she's put in situations navigating mulder around other men
y'all remember the first time she met krycek and just flat out refused to shake his hand lmao
i touched on this a little bit in my post on fire, but scully really was just so enthralled by him from the very beginning. she grew up on a military base with her navy captain father and two brothers, and her only relationships have been with older men in power.
she instantly is so aligned with mulder and that there's something different in him than she's used to, but she's aware that the openness and softness that she's so drawn to in him makes him more vulnerable, and she's desperate to protect it
in beyond the sea, the very next episode after fire, she screams at boggs that if mulder dies she'll gas him into hell herself, and boggs tells her that he's tasted the afterlife.
that it's a cold and dark place, and mulder's looking in on it now. she replies, "it might be a cold dark place for you, but it's not for mulder"
she knows him, and she's so moved by him and what he wants to do in the world. these are the values that she left medicine to follow.
"jealousy" honestly doesn't even compare to the kind of ferocious protectiveness that she feels towards him from the very start, she really doesn't trust anyone around him for anything. they can't possibly get it like she does, if they treat him that way.
he may not care if people call him names or steal from him or try to make him walk through fire, but he really is just her best friend. and she can't stand it.
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Zuko is gruff and imperfect in his attempts to show kindness, and yet fighting comes as easy as breathing. I love fics that tackle that awkwardness, that stumbling kindness, but don’t portray it in that way that makes Zuko just seem hopeless, and actually explore it. He wants to be kind. He wants to care, but he’s lived a life where that is few and far between.
We’ve seen zuko fight in all different ways, with bending, with swords, with knives, hell, even hand to hand. And yet, he stumbles over his words when Jin flirts with him, offers Li only a knife - a tool of violence - to show he’s thankful, pushes Jet away the second he reaches out when they meet on the boat. He steels that man’s swords from him out of revenge and selfishness and steals Song’s ostrich horse rather than face her and the truth. He robs the rich man on the highway, and lures a secret police officer into an ally to frighten him into spilling information.
Yet, he blanched at Song’s easy compassion and at Li’s parents offer to let him stay. It’s the easiest thing in the world to leave Jin behind, to leave Li behind, to fight Jet in the streats in Ba Sing Se. It’s easier to steal and fight and scream. It’s easier to fight for survival than ask for someone’s kindness. After all, he wouldn’t know what to do with that.
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