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Some Gortash headcanons for the fics I'm writing...
Gortash is older than much of the fandom that ship him like to think. I've given him a birthdate since Larian failed to do so: the 6th of Alturiak, 1447 DR, making him 45 years old during the events of Baldur's Gate 3.
Gortash wasn't a 'hateful child.'
Highly intelligent children have special needs, even when they aren't neurodivergent with insecure emotional attachment, which he was/is. I see him as on the spectrum and extremely high masking. I think he was told to shut up enough times shortly after he learned to talk that he went almost completely non-verbal for a while, and his parents didn't notice or care. When he stopped talking as much, he got into more trouble because he went looking for answers to the questions he wasn't allowed to ask. He started talking more after years of watching Raphael make people magically do what he wanted, sonetimes using nothing more than words.
Gortash can NOT handle rejection.
There are no instances in-game of Gortash being needlessly cruel, of his actions having NO purpose other than the suffering they cause. There are two in which he is excessively cruel, however, and based on the first one I mention, I suspect the second had a similar motivation. His parents rejected him completely, sent him away, and he sentenced them to a fate worse than death. They were probably not happy when he returned, deepening the rejection. They still have a use, promoting him, but Sally is trapped inside her own mind, while Dravo is just a shell.
The other instance of him doing something 'with extreme prejudice' is the Gondians. He's horrible to them, wants them unhappy about everything he has them doing. For this reason, I think that brilliant little boy with a penchant for tinkering dreamed of being a Gondian one day. I think he kept that dream all the way through his enslavement at the House of Hope, and when he was finally free, he tried to join them. And they refused. They rejected him, so he doesn't just use them for his purposes, he ensures that they suffer, too.
Leans back in my chair. Dandelion was only in his late teens or maybe early 20's when he first started travelling with Geralt. How many ~ interesting things ~ did he discover about himself during their travels. Can you imagine them getting thrown into a prison cell together and Dandelion is super quiet and kinda just shuffling his feet, avoiding eye contact, and Geralt takes one look at his shackled hands and feet, at the bruise on his jaw and his rumpled clothes, and tonelessly goes "Really? Right now?" and Dandelion's like "I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS A THING UNTIL JUST NOW GIVE ME SOME SLACK PLEASE"
rip mabel pines you would’ve loved neopronouns
i just love sketching xie lian as a beautiful beacon of light and hua cheng as the most pathetic loser alive
God of Stories this, God of Mischief that. Yeah, to you - to my good pal Mobius M. Mobius he is actually his very clingy girlfriend. Hope that helps
this guy was my emo awakening if I never read the darkest hour I would have never been here
the Scourge fan to gay emo who likes MCR pipeline is real
Am I late to the hugfest? Ah well, not like it would matter much to Smitten
2012 Leonardo: You know maybe violence isn't the answer
Also 2012 Leonardo: We ride at dusk and we don't finish until he's decapitated. Be there or be square.
headcannon charles gets stabbed in the lung with like a ghost knife or whatever and instead of blood just water comes out
charles wears a necklace and an earring. monty wears a necklace and an earring. the cat king? literally fucking covered in bling.
edwin payne is 1000% turned on by men in jewelry and i will DIE on that hill
crying over David Rossi meeting his daughter and finding out he has a grandson and just family he never knew he had
i just want gale to have emotional safety to process all that’s happened to him and to grow and prosper. i love him so much 🥹
Dearest beloved anon, I want this so much for him too.
We can already see how much happier a human Gale is in the epilogue (whether or not he's partnered), how he's discovered he doesn't need to be More, Always More, or the great and respected Archmage-Chosen, or the elaborate, immaculate facade of Gale of Waterdeep (so immaculate an illusion he'd believed in it).
[CW: the following gets a little heavy. Suicidal ideation, lots of self-hatred, spiraling, that sort of thing]
I imagine, though, that processing--once it begins--is painful and harrowing. For a time he doesn't recognize the angry, bitter, fearful man who rears his head to snap at Tara, Morena, Tav, whenever they try to comfort him. He shouldn't need and doesn't want help, he wants to be furious, he wants to get the crown back somehow and ascend so he can be safe, so he can show everyone his power is his own, he wants to turn back time and be a Chosen again, sheltered under the patronage of his goddess, he wants to burn everything down like Karlach. His magic feels like it's rusting, withering, eaten away by the acid he thinks the Orb must surely have left inside him. Or, even worse, he realizes that Mystra lied to him: the Orb is inside him still, and in those harrowing moments he feels that hideous thing clawing at his heart and his throat, swelling inside him, and there's no time to get away, no time, he's going to die and so many innocents will pay the price for his hubris after all--
It's a cave he's dragged back to time and time again, just when he'd thought he'd escaped from it. He wonders, when he's trapped in that darkness, why the hell he'd listened to Tav, why the cruelty to convince him to keep living, why his own stupidity and selfishness for fighting to live when he was unworthy of it--or, in a heartbeat, why he'd so foolishly limited himself to Tav's mortality when he was worthy of so much more, when he could have struck down Mystra and Elminster, felled the Blackstaff Tower and Toril itself to show the planes themselves a fraction of what he's capable of. Here is your reward for your service to a god, he would have said, and presented Tav with the realms themselves like war trophies.
Other times he remembers himself as that little boy, heartbroken over the ruin of his neighbor's rosebush. He wants to tell that boy--and the headstrong teenager and the prideful young man that boy would grow into--to run fast and far. He pities that boy as he demonstrates such easy mastery of his art and basks in the praise and favor of his goddess. Don't you know what's happening to you? he asks his past self, watching the threads of Weave and fate and failure twine around him, and thinks with bitter despair that even if he had known, he wouldn't have listened. How much of that obstinancy had Mystra seen in him? Had she seen his future and guided him towards it with praise and gentle touches and promises of greatness, a sacrifice who had conveniently and naively presented itself to her? Had he condemned himself? Both?
He feels the world falling apart around him, tells himself maybe he helped save the world for other people after all, that his being here is some cosmic error, or worse, a cosmic joke. Do you want to live so badly, Gale Dekarios? Let's see how you like it. The disbelieving, condescending faces of his apprentices when he tells them not to follow his path--disbelieving, because he did it, didn't he? he's one of the Saviors of the Gate, in the full flourish of his power once more, famous (however much he tries not to be)--make him sick with a helpless fury and he leaves the classroom before he does something that will get him fired.
He takes leave from the Academy and locks himself in his tower. Tav, with a resigned sigh and threats to check up on him, goes to stay with Morena after Gale makes it explicitly clear he wants to be left alone. Sometimes Tav comes over and holds Gale while he weeps, or watches while he rages. If there's any comment on the empty pedestal where Mystra's statue stood, or the stone dust on the floor of the study, it's kept back behind worried lips. When all Gale can do is sit on his balcony and stare at the sea, Tav watches the tides with him. Tav brings him food Gale can only choke down because Tav orders him to, and only sleeps--or lies in bed--because Tav guides him there with gentle, inexorable hands, and lays him down and sits with him in the dark.
Slowly, slowly, the distance between those dark days stretches out until the darkness retreats to nightmares that leave Gale breathless or to odd moments when he has to pause and steady himself as if against a blow before continuing on. Tav moves back in and graciously accepts apologies Gale knows are pathetically insufficient to the debt. He tries to show Tav his gratitude every day, in home-cooked meals (Gale hadn't cooked properly in months), in gifts he knows Tav would love, in reading in bed every night, in meeting Tav for lunch once Gale starts teaching again. At last Tav wraps strong, beloved arms around him and tells him just being here, just being Gale, is enough, has always been.
"I hurt you so much," Gale whispers. "So many times over, for no better reason than that you were there to hurt."
"And if I'd been in your place?" Tav asks, gathering his tearstreaked face close, heedless of the warm wetness on skin and clothes. "If I'd been the one who hurt you?"
"You never would have done that," Gale protests.
Tav huffs. "Call it a thought experiment. What if?"
"You know I would never leave you." Gale thinks his heart might rip apart at the very thought. "You must know if you ever have need for me, for any reason, I would do anything in my power to help you. And more besides."
"Then that's your answer," Tav says. "Everything in my power. For you. And more besides."
And Gale, for the first time, believes it.
Kinda funny how people in the PJO universe and in the fandom get it wrong. Nico and Will are like what people expect from the other.
Like Will Solace is the more intimidating one. Like he has a "doesn't take shit" vibe to him. Not to mention he is more of a modern teenage boy than Nico. And like most teens. He has teenage boy energy meaning he is sassy and probably had a sharp tongue to him. He can also be an asshole not in like a bad way just in the regular teenage boy way. Like how he was in sun and star about like Tartarus and the underworld all that shit.
Nico is the gentleman. He is powerful yes. But he wouldn't hurt a fly. Like he is one of the nicest characters in Percy jackson. Even if he doesn't show it. He is Hella soft let's be so deadass. Like he is the most forgiving and most sensitive. He just learnt to hide his enthusiasm and gentleness and sensitivity to survive. He is also a lover. He has such a caring heart. Great with people. Great with understanding people and stuff. That's why Hestia liked him. He sees the "plutos (the planet). The left out.
And at the end of the day they are truly two sides of the same coin. Two people who started off one way, but their life experiences and perceptions of who they actually are based on their roles and parentage shaped them to who they had to be. How they had to act. Because Will Solace was an introverted sassy bitch at heart and Nico di Angelo was an extroverted gentle yapper. But they had to adjust to fit their roles accordingly.
i KNOW the obvious route is to compare mabel-stan and dipper-ford but i need you guys to see my vision of mabel-ford dipper-stan. it's mabel and ford's stead fast dedication to the thing they love, all too easily caught up in it. it's the selflessness that both stan and dipper have. it's being willing to give everything up to make their twin happy. to keep their twin safe. it's "who would sacrifice everything they've worked for just for their dumb sibling?" "dipper would." and stan would too. stan DID too.
Y'know what, I'll say it... George Russell isn't a 'PR robot', and the only reason people believe this is because he's actually got a relatively weak and amateur PR presence around him...
Let's not forget, a lot of these drivers, especially some of the more beloved ones, genuinely do have very large PR and branding teams around them, whose entire job is to manicure their image so precisely and carefully that you as the public believe it's natural and effortless. Some of them have huge PR agencies handling their image. Lewis, Lando, Daniel, Charles, Alex... all fan favourites and whaddya know... all have huge agencies handling their public image.
George wants to be liked... they all want to be liked, but actually he's one of the few drivers in top teams who doesn't have someone specifically dedicated to driving his PR presence. His sister seems to handle his diary and act as his assistant.
The reason George looks like he's trying so hard to adhere to a specific image all the time isn't because of an overabundance of PR influence, it's actually because of the opposite.
He's polite and he's well spoken and also a pretty intelligent guy. He has a very methodical and professional way of speaking which can read as rehearsed, but the reason you can clock when he's trying is because his PR 'machine' is a bit of a slapdash homemade affair with all it's inner cogs exposed, unlike the slick, well oiled and smartly packaged ones some of his peers have working for them.
He's not 'unlikeable' because he's a horrible person, and when you ask people why they don't like George, the 'PR Robot' excuse often gets wheeled out, but I think the main crux of the issue is that people have become so conditioned to accept the PR generated ideal of what 'humble and down to earth' should look like, that they find it hard to comprehend when someone doesn't quite fit into it in the way they think they should. He's not painfully unnatural, he's humanly awkward...
"nico doesn't want lando and oscar to go what he and lewis went through" nico got on live tv and asked lando what he thought of oscar taking points off him. if anything i think nico wants a televised landoscar brawl a la 2018 youtuber fight
cecil palmer and simon fairchild would be the girlies of all time
I just think they deserve a magical girl (gender-neutral) transformation.
Pose and background courtesy of She-Ra