selûne's weakest soldier @grousebrood - Tumblr Blog

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

hi this is the first fanfiction i've ever published and it came out of me in a trance and it's very quiet and sweet and odd if you like that! it's also a modern au and very much stretching the boundaries of what's on-topic but

Rating: M for smoking and swearing and heavy topics (see tags)

Category: F/F

Ship: Shadowheart/Transfem OC or Tav

Summary:

Two failgirls bond over their religious exhaustion and a few cigarettes.

Tags: Trans Female Character, Friends to Lovers, Religious Guilt, Angst and Romance, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Smoking, Implied Transphobia (Kind Of), Trans Affirmation (Kind Of), Religious Fanaticism, Implied/Referenced Abuse (Brief), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting

#bg3 #shadowheart #bg3 fanfiction #shadowheart x tav #oc: helena fiddlefitz #grousebrood

lesbianshadowheart

#I’m a real purple bitch

blacksalander

Teeth

badasserywomen

Some more Lady Dimitrescu and maid snacks

nikoniko808

Happy Halloween~ 🐺🤟🥁🐲

patreon | twit | bsky

feyspeaker

divine prints | patreon

orinthered

might colour this later eheeeeee

hatepotion

there’s no heterosexual explanation for any conversation between these two

raintides

i wanted to draw the entire tadpole squad but forgot i am super not great at drawing group pictures. send help

#cute sh

optiwashere

How do you feel about Shadowheart's romance in game/ I've seen some complaints about it being shallow and vapid. I blame this on Act2, the lack of a romance scene

In general?

I think it's a solid exploration of what it's like to try and be with someone that is struggling with their sense of self, navigating an abusive relationship, and who has what might seem like oxymoronically intense and lax boundaries over personal details and feelings, etc. Is it like, The Perfect Story of All Time? No. That doesn't exist.

Also, it's a video game and Larian has limited budget/time. Shadowheart has a ton of content dedicated to herself as it is. Part of enjoying these stories is accepting the constraints.

However, I think Act 2 works spectacularly for her romance BECAUSE it lacks a dedicated romantic scene until the end of the Gauntlet/Nightsong sequence. A lack of it says way more than having it would.

She's a zealot on the brink of realizing a goal in Act 2. She won't realize it, and it's an unrealistic goal, but she doesn't know that.

She's being presented with the opportunity to finally be accepted by her abuser as Good and Right and maybe that she can be Special — while also trying to hide herself from the PC that does care about her, someone who actually respects her boundaries, because that's new and unique and strange and not what she's been taught she deserves as a Sharran. Loss and emptiness cannot abide a full heart.

If she adheres to the conformity of her religion, she'll be accepted by a goddess that won't get out of her head or her body. (Extratextual interpretation, but) If she allows herself to accept love from an external source, that means she's capable of being loved and that's very difficult to accept for someone who is programmed to be a certain type of way. Go look up actual cult deprogramming practices and try to trace the lines between that and what Shadowheart experiences. This is an exercise left to the reader.

My take is the people that find the romance "vapid" have never been in a relationship with someone who has a harrowingly troubled past. Not that I expect them to, or that that's an aspiration anyone should have. But they've never tried to love someone who is VERY hesitant to even call it a relationship in the first place for X, Y, or Z reason. A genuine real world example is trying to maintain relationships with folks that have borderline personality disorder.

It's literally the meme of "you accept my neurodivergence until it looks like something that isn't out of a John Green novel."