What it is about kind male video game companions that male gamers absolutely HATE?

I've seen it happen with Dragon Age's Alistair, Mass Effect's Kaidan, and even lowkey KOTOR's Carth Onasi (emphasis on kind, not necessarily nice, cause dude had a bit of an attitude in the beginnning). Now I'm seeing it with Gale of Waterdeep from Baldur's Gate 3.

Men hate him! Admittedly, many women seem to also hate Gale (Though from what I'm observing, it seems to be because his romance is bugged in a way that doesn't recognize when you've rejected him, so to many it comes off as not taking no for an answer -- but that's the fault of the game, not the character). The other reason I'm seeing from women is that he supposedly doesn't respect boundaries, citing his relationship with Mystra, but... were yall listening to him at all?

1. This goddess took interest in him as a *child* prodigy, became his mentor, and then his lover??? That's sus as hell.

2. It's not like he and Mystra had personal boundaries set specifically for their relationship, and he decided to cross them, it was that Mystra has general magical limitations for magic users in general, and Gale thought he would be an exception because she treated him as special, and because his reasons for pushing his magical limitations were to restore a part of her she'd lost. I've also seen people say he downplays that as a simple mistake made in his youth, but from the actual conversation with him, it's very clear he regrets that so?? I don't get it. (maybe I'm misremembering or missing more of the story, I'm only at the beginning of Act 2)

But this post is a reaction-rant to seeing too many male creators on tiktok hate on Gale so badly it's becoming obnoxious. And their reasons are so weak, yet fuel hatred so strong. They just find him so annoying, and I guess to each their own, but I don't get why, and I don't get why men always seem to find those kinds of emotionally available, kind for the sake of being kind, male characters annoying.

Crowley Of The Day: gorgeous 😍

(I used up all my hashtags that I couldn’t do my usual GO tags that I always do lol I don’t care)

I saw that post going around about what people have on their nightstands and it made me wonder what Din would keep by his bed in the cabin on Nevarro...

I think:

Pictures of Grogu (apparently picture frames are called holocubes in Star Wars!)

A weapon! Probably a blaster of some sort. I imagine it would take him a while to even place it there (he probably slept with it tucked into his waistband/under his pillow for a few months...)

Various empty bottles which he really needs to throw away but keeps forgetting because he's a Tired, Stressed Dad™

Maybe his helmet, just in case he quickly needs to grab it and put it on (he probably feels so naked without it)

A Mythosaur necklace. I know we never saw it in canon, but I feel like he acquired another one so him and Grogu match. He takes it off every night before he goes to sleep but it's always there, close by.

I love fantasising about the little details of his cabin... I really hope we get to see some of them in the movie!

okay... idk at all if this has been discussed or that I'm just stating the obvious. I'm posting any way to get more feedback.

so. can we be sure that the last boat scene even happened (in the way we saw it at least)

yeah the letter was delivered to the intended recipients. the letter also did say 李相夷绝笔 lit. the final writing by li xiangyi. there's a brief exchange between him and the assumed "boatman" asking him where he was going. and we see he spat blood while writing yeah but:

llh/lxy's eyesight had been failing for some time.

Professional Letter Writers are a thing in the past in service to people who can't write their own letters (idk enough to verify the historical accuracy in this specific context though)

what has been bugging me since forever is the manner of speech of the letter. yeah it's different from their everyday speech, but that's actually perfectly fine since this is A Letter so I'm good with it being more formal. but... there's something I just can't quite pinpoint. especially with the use of the 君 jun pronoun by llh/lxy to refer to dfs when there could be other pronouns with less connotations of intimacy (and scholarly/imperial court system) implied and still conveyed cordiality, marking a shift in their relationship. (I'm not well versed with wuxia as a genre enough to know what are the conventions. someone else who does can say something though.)

whatever these put together means (eg. he may not have written the letter personally, or he wrote it in a different situation from what we saw, etc etc.) alongside:

this scene existed only as part of a visualisation as the letter content is revealed to the audience (or assumed to be fdb reading the letter to dfs & guests of the wedding spectators of the duel)

the boat lxy/llh jumped on is not the same as the one he was writing the letter on - the boatman is also not on it despite the conversation at the beginning, but lxy/llh's dressing and hairpin are the same as the ones before he jumped. (the boatman delivered the letter so he's real though.)

also as @wonderfulnonsense happened to have just pointed out in the tags left in my other post: it's in fact the same boat he took to go fight dfs at donghai 10 years ago. (edit: or maybe it isn't? as pointed out by anon.)

if we viewed whatever we perceived in this scene as imaginary (not what actually happened), then the reading of it being a metaphor for lxy/llh being on his way to enlightenment just makes sense. (the boat being a carrier on his spiritual transformations.) especially when you consider that 彼岸 the other shore is another concept in buddhism to represent enlightenment, alongside the motif of lotuses. (credits to @markiafc for the buddhism reading - edit: mark's meta here) and then, consider the beach ending... yeah.

The Doctor: Lands in or mentions Scotland

Me: Jamie reference??? 🥺

got carried away with a warm-up doodle because I was thinking too hard about minekata, as one does

izuna would be the cool uncle that hangs out with sin and the valentines if daisuke remembered he existed

what if i went back to thorin oakenshield posting............

Everybody moved on to Penacony and I’m still in agony over the High Cloud Quintet lore… I’ll never move on from these tragic gay mfs

I do need,, HCQ revisited at some point. Doesn’t even have to be in any main story, I honestly just need more HCQ readables because those are some of the most enjoyment I’ve gotten out of Honkai Star Rail. Baiheng’s Travelogue to the Zhuming chANGED MY LIFE and sewed the seeds for an obsession that is far too unhealthy to the point I am in the process of wasting my money to make a Blade ita bag. And it was a single readable that started me spiralling into this obsession and made me motivated to read more readables and character stories and etc.

I need another Baiheng travelogue… here’s to praying we get another if we end up on the Yaoqing soon, in general heres to hoping for more BH lore on the Yaoqing since apparently she’s from a very prominent family on that ship.

I just really need more HCQ crumbs because as much as I love them, their in game dynamics are so underdeveloped. Yes, we have a lot of Dan Feng and Yingxing, but a lot is very vague, and we have to mostly make assumptions with the little crumbs we have. Baiheng and Jingliu also have a lot set up, but I really need more content of them because my god, we barely know anything bout their dynamic too. We mostly have the aftermath and Jingliu’s grief, but I want to know about their happiness so her prolonged mourning hits even harder by knowing exactly what she lost. Jing Yuan and Jingliu probably have the most show upfront dynamic mostly due to the animated short, but the knowledge of Jing Yuan’s dynamics with the rest of them are practically nonexistent outside of that one line about Yingxing and Jing Yuan bickering and sad looks he has that really don’t hit as hard in my opinion because we don’t have the context.

And personally out of all the dynamics I want more content more, I think I want Jing Yuan and Baiheng content the most. The lines he has when he visits the Express that are about her are my saving grace, I am the biggest advocate for these to have a very sweet familial kind of bond and messing around together causing all kinds of trouble. Bonus points if they get Yingxing along for the ride with them. But we have crumbs only 😭 we only have itty bitty crumbs and I am starving

I have a lot of my own views about what I hc their dynamics as due to what we know, but god I want to see what their dynamics in canon are supposed to be. I ranted so much about how I see Dan Feng and Yingxing’s potential dynamic, but even with that, I wanna know. I wanna know about Jingliu and Yingxing, to add even more pain to how their dynamic is now (which hehehe… I have some ideas for this specific topic, but I want canon stuff too not just my own hcs). I wanna see just exactly what Jingliu lost when Baiheng died, what in Baiheng and the way she treated her made her so devastated as to promise to cut down the stars from the sky (which? Is that? Potentially a code for something else like the current plan she has regarding a certain aeon?), like Jingliu was so clearly devastated and tormented by Baiheng’s death, still is 700 years later and we don’t know what about her made it so painful. Yes Baiheng was clearly kind as she’s been established, but just how was she kind to Jingliu? I have my own assumptions and conclusions given what we know about both, but even then it’s still something pretty completely fabricated in my head because we don’t have enough!! GIVE ME THE LIUBAI CONTENT HOYOVERSE I have you’re keeping it somewhere, tell me where

Ugh, too many HCQ thoughts in my head. I need to keep writing and finally finish that first chapter so I can reveal my insanity about them esp the Zhuming family to world. I love them

Hey guys what if I told you I completely retconned the lab au prologue.

W. Would you be mad at me-

OK OK ACT COOL FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GUYS APPARENTLY MISSA IS BACK AND I THINK OUR STRATEGY SHOULD BE "HIDE IN THE CORNER GIGGLING" do NOT under any circumstances tip our collective hand!!!!!! sinister giggling only i SWEAR to god if y'all scare him away by spoiling shit or backseating when i have been waiting for SO LONG to catch him on qsmp live i will eat all of your collective livers

nobody asked but these are probably my favourite live looks hayama-san gave us lol

the moral dilemma of marrying off owain and inigo in awakening knowing they fuck off to fateslandia and have kids right after vs not marrying them off and constantly having the support tab glowing orange with an exclamation point for all of eternity

hate how im now at a point where im legit like kicking my legs and grinning like an idiot over fictional characters SEND HELP

im still in midst of deadline (will reply to inbox soon! thank you for sending me kind n nice stuffs!!) but as a break let me have this i think i like isagi a lot because he is passionate. but there is something really interesting in how many actions could be categorized as "in character" for him. like he is being friendly—oh yeah, isagi is very capable of that. oh he is an asshole who insults you in the way that would make your ancestor spit—yeah. it's funny. like truly the embodiment of "it depends". in some way also "polite but not truly nice" also it's funny how the one he knows the most about regarding their past is probably chigiri. even bachira didn't spill the heavy stuff on him directly. chigiri and reo are the ones who got isagi pep talk other than igaguri. funny man funny. i probably need to reread to check again but hey let me have this. i can't believe he is still my comfort blorbo this soccerfucker who is a good son and a friend who wouldn't mind to hear you out even if you are not close and you just have to ask. okay yeah let's continue in the tags (and some other time I MISS HIM)

In rereading ladue I'm remembering my love for Akechi

Yes writing Vash is so much fun and I love him So much. But I missed my fucked up son SOOOOOOOO much

Akechi......❤️