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thepanicsquid · 2 months

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What an absolutely beautiful analysis of Gale and the themes that run throughout the game. This is why I love Gale with all my heart and wish everyone saw him like this.

I wanted the full analysis!!! 🙏 Also I can't become a goddess </3 sadness

You wouldn't want to, babe. Sounds like fun, but Godhood is-- well, it's not great in DnD. It attracts exactly who you think it would: The naive, or the power-hungry and unworthy.

Well, let's look at Gale and his ultimate motivations:

When you meet him, he's straight-forward although fully polite, charismatic, and very much a 'wizard' archetype, as in noticeably and actively intelligent but in a strangely awkward way. Charming, talkative, but earnest. As you get to know him, you learn more about his plight and his struggles, his prodigal upbringing, his dalliances with Mystra, his fall from grace, and his inevitable charge with 'ending' this little uprising by the upstart Dead Three-- and ending his own life in the process.

Most people, you would think, would have an ounce of self-preservation upon being told "Hey, you need to kill yourself to end this." Even the rest of the group, up against ridiculous odds, are holding on to the glimmer of hope that they can survive.

Not Gale. Gale just basically goes "Okay. So be it." While he does mourn in a way, he mourns more over his initial mistake than he does the loss of his own life. He thinks of all he did wrong, all the 'pain' he caused. the loss he caused himself, and his rejection at Mystra's hands for which he entirely blames himself.

Gale is a victim of grooming. It is framed in a strange way, since the one doing the grooming is a Goddess, but he is absolutely a victim. He tells you that Mystra has been with him since he was a boy, which yes, you can frame as he is a wizard and she is essentially magic incarnate, but it doesn't stop there. She doesn't encourage him as a pupil-- she takes him as a lover. As a conduit of her own power. Carnally.

She takes him into her bed, and as a lover.

Had Mystra been just an elderly powerful witch, this would have been way more fucking obvious to people. But because she is a God and her whims are unknowable, it's essentially shrugged off-- which I feel like is part of his arc.

Gale did what he did because he was on completely fucking uneven tier with his own lover. The power dynamic was abusive. He could not be on her level and she expected him to be fine with that. She demanded excellence but when he delivered, she spurned him. He was expected to be brilliant and perfect-- but not too much. And when he was perfect? He still could never be enough. She is a goddess and he is expected to bow and scrape. She groomed him to admire and revere and worship her, and then told him to sit down and be happy with what little he was given.

He needed to prove himself her equal. He needed her approval. He needed it because it was a relationship to him, and one he physically could not win at.

Gale is a human. He needs love and connection and fairness. Mystra, by her own nature, cannot give this-- and she doesn't want to.

Gale knows well the callousness of the Gods. Not just with Mystra, but from his tower, he can see injustice and pain and misery. He is extremely empathetic and cares so deeply. His eldest companion, the Tressym Tara, was an accidental summon that stayed with him for life and became intrinsically involved with his family. He knows love. He knows pain. He is a good man.

Gale seeks knowledge, though he does not seek it for power. He seeks it out of genuine and earnest desire to help. To make people's lives better. Yes, he seeks to be seen as intelligent and brilliant because he is, but he is not a selfish being.

For 'good' players, he is one of the easiest approvals to get, because he very much approves of just being a good person. Helping. Being kind and lending a hand. Saving lives. Using your strength and power for good.

But again, Gale is human. And the folly of the clever man is to believe everyone around him is a fool. He, in all his brilliance, found a way he thought he could help. A path that has been tread time and time again with naught but the misery and bewailings of those who came before to show for it as a warning. But he thought he was different. He thought he could pull it off.

He could become a God.

Secretly, he found a way to put himself on even tier with Mystra-- and do what she did not have the compassion, kindness, or even desire to do. To use Godhood for good. To use all that magnificent power to achieve goodness rather than greatness. To be an active God in the lives of mortal men. To make the world better.

He thought that he could maintain his connection with humanity through his apotheosis and ultimately exist with one foot in each world; To straddle mortality and immortality and put reins on them both.

You are warned repeatedly throughout the game that this is bad. That many have tried and all have failed. Humans are not meant to be gods, and you cannot exist as a hybrid. If you are a God, you are a god. If you are a man, you are mortal. The mortal mind cannot tether Godhood. It is not possible. Best case scenario, you lose yourself. Worst case? You are punished eternally for your hubris.

To be a God is to be unknowable. To see the threads of time and the futility of it all. You are ripped from your conscious mind as a man and you can no longer relate. Lives and suffering, they are all fleeting, miniscule things from your mountain on high. All men must die; why is tonight different from any other night? Why is your suffering so great that a god should take interest? What are you to me, little mortal? Your kingdoms shall fall and burn and crumble and be rebuilt and crumble again but my temple shall remain, and when you are but dust in the fickle wind, you too shall know my eternal glory.

The way Mystra looked at Gale.

An instrument. A tool. A temporary amusement and benefactor. He is a mere man and she is a Goddess and when his bones bleach in Selune's unforgiving sun, she shall choose a new apprentice to take unto her bed. And so the wheel of time spins endlessly on.

A large theme of the game is the malevolence of some Gods and the utter indifference of others.

Selune's perceived abandonment of Ketheric that led to his downfall and madness. He lost his wife and daughter after an entire life of servitude, and he did not even receive comfort in return. She is considered a good natured Goddess, and even she is cruel in her neglect and indifference when it does not suit her.

Shar and her utter disregard and even active disdain for her most devout-- and everything else. Viconia, who committed her life to Shar, cast aside for a Selunite orphan on a whim. Her hatred of living creatures and her manipulations. Her outright malevolence and reverence for their suffering. You see her cruelty both from an outside and inside perspective, and her circular doctrine that makes no sense, her faith that demands all and gives nothing in return.

The Gods that are active are only so malevolently. Bane devouring Gortash after his defeat despite how far he'd gotten in his name. Myrkul abandoning Ketheric as well in the end. Bhaal discarding his own children when the do not suit his whims.

"We are but bronze pieces in their pocket to be traded on a whim. You may have beaten me, but the truth is, the Gods beat me first."

It is literally a thematic constant.

Sure, they can do good. They have devout worshipers and can be seen doing some level of good-- Isabelle and her protection of the Last Light, for example. But it's never quite them, is it? It is the humans that utilize their power. The humans who care. Selune did not protect them of her own volition. Her magic was invoked.

Gale's goal was to become both. To have the power and will of a God but the consciousness and mind of a man.

Mark my words, you would go mad.

Gods see eons. The endless tide of eternity drifting endlessly on. Imagine the incessant screams. The pleading. The misery. The death. The horror at the hands of man and your fellow Gods. Even all of your power, all of your prestige could not save them all.

And even if you could-- even if you could-- Ao demands a level of indifference. It is one of the fundamental rules.

Gale must accept this, or he will become that which he sought to rectify. He must learn that to love and care so deeply is to be mortal. That to retain all that made him beautiful and wonderful, he must be humbled and rather do as he can rather than all he feels capable of. He must seek Mystra's forgiveness (disgusting) on a symbolic level and accept that he is a mortal and his hubris would be his downfall. Gods and mortals should not mix.

But if he does not? If he utilizes the Crown of Karsis?

He becomes a god. He gets his wish. And in true Faustian fashion, the price he pays makes the prize worthless.

He becomes an arrogant, disconnected, detached, miserable pile of sectorless divinity.

He becomes callous. Cruel. When asked about all those people he longed to save, he shrugs. He no longer speaks of the mortal realm, he speaks of the beauty and frivolity of Elysium. Of the wonders of Godhood and all he understands-- or has forgotten. He has completely detatched from mortality and only deigns to come down from his fucking halcyon world to bless you-- his former friends-- with his magnanimous presence. To let you know how lucky you are. How blessed.

All that power he has? Useless. Used to prop himself on a pedestal same as every other filthy fucking God.

His deepest, most treasured friend will tell him this, and how does he respond? By basically telling her 'You don't know shit.' He ignores her. Threatens you if you try. A man who was willing to give his life selflessly to save the world will now threaten divine wrath if you even so much as irritate him. He will swing that hammer of power down just to prove a fucking point.

If you loved him and refuse him? Utterly disconnected. No genuine feeling. Just looking down on you like the silly little human you are. When you refuse him, he is disconnected from who he was and what he ever felt for you. Gale, a man who was groomed and just wanted love on an equal playing field; a man desperately lonely in his brilliance; a man so distraught by what he felt that he sought to break the barrier and become a god, not for power, but for benevolence-- he becomes Mystra.

He is no longer Gale. He is the God of Ambition. Another useless god in a pantheon of useless ideas. What good is ambition if it does not serve a purpose? To make him the god of ambition is to spit in his face, because what was his ambition? Where is it now, Gale? What are you?

What is your ambition and where the fuck is it now?

Gale is a kind, caring, compassionate man who went through a horrible, traumatic event that changed who he was fundamentally. Dumped and abandoned by his Goddess, it burned him. It hurt him in such a way that he made it his goal to change this dynamic and to become what she could not.

He was still in love with her. Of course he was. How it must be to love something that you know can never love you back. That you are one of many, and your time is over. You have served your purpose. And if you die, you die. If the realm dies, so be it.

Gale's is a story of hubris born of love. A man gifted with intelligence and power that he only wanted to utilize for the best; to do what he thought was right. He wasn't clawing after the crown for raw power's sake. He wanted to help. That's all he ever wanted.

The bookworm that will talk your ear off about his cat and his studies and his love of books. A man so brilliant that it's painful at times. A man who loved his mother and his cat. A man who loved a goddess and, in a story that could have no happy ending, decided to give everything to make it so. If it meant dying, then so be it. He wasn't clawing for the crown to save his own life. He was doing it to save everyone else's.

He fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the Gods. He touched divinity and it looked at him with a human countenance and so he believed he could grasp it.

The Gods are powerful, and yes, they are unknowable and, in a way, infinite-- but they are callous and cruel and indifferent. They are power with no outlet. Useless. They gaze upon humanity like rats in a cage, uncaring and unfeeling. Separated entirely. Sometimes they deign to make their presence known. But mostly? They sit on their heavenly thrones and revel in their own brand of bullshit.

This is what Gale will become. It is an insult to an incredible man to take away all that made him incredible and make him another b-lister jumpstart God up his own ass. Caring and love are work. They are pain. It is suffering and agony. But that is what separates us from them. We do not, and in some cases, cannot separate. It is our world, and we live in it. We must breathe in the poisons. Smell the blood that soils the earth. It is our world and we cannot separate. We love and we help and we learn--

Gale wanted to help. So he became a God.

But what do Gods do?

They watch. Through the gray window of indifference, they watch. They watch us tear each other open. They watch other Gods tear us open. They watch the wounds. They watch the graves. They watch the fires rage.

They watch and they listen to the screams. And when they are bored of them? They shut them out.

Gale became a god.

And so too shall he watch, removed from it all.

Not an ounce of humanity left in a man that ached so for humanity itself that it damn near drove him mad.

#gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #fuck mystra #fuck all the gods tbh #except you jergal #you’re ok

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