i love making friends in fandom, i love playing with our toys together, i love coming up with increasingly niche aus, i love lifting strangers up, i love motivating people to create, i love watching someone get excited over an idea and immediately running with it, i love yelling in tags together, i love seeing someone gain confidence in their writing/art because people were kind to them <33
OKAY TIME FOR THE BABILLION-WORD WRITEUP ABOUT THIS
so, in writing down my no-core-companion run, i've had a lot of fun adjusting in-game events to better suit a gameplay-less novel experience (splitting up the party, condensing/combing events to flow more naturally, etc). example, i split the party in the temple of shar in the written version to cover more ground, but also because durge's urges are calling him to do harm to briar, so he's actively putting physical space between them (he would've split off with minthara bc she's expendable but both sides needed a healer and he wanted to see what he could learn from halsin)
anyway one thing i realized is the freedom i have to explore my versions of existing characters (im new to fan fiction okay this is also so novel to me). while i was drafting the skeleton out for act 2, i was like "ahh its gonna suck for halsin when minthara joins up ahaha"
and then i stopped. "wait why the fuck would halsin let her in the party." and then i thought "hmmm why would halsin let her in the party?" but this time with intrigue. got the ball rolling in my brain bc, as briar and durge, as written thus far, WOULDN'T. they don't know or care about this lady. so what if it was halsin's choice to save her? why would he choose this? what does it mean for their relationship?
so ive been having fun looking over the many sides ive seen people point out about halsin - how he's absolutely capable of vengeance (case in point, he hunts you down if you kill the grove), clearly has some understandably complicated feelings about drow (ESPECIALLY those who perpetuate their systems), but also a well of empathy and the tendency to doubt his own judgment. so i kinda fell in love with this version of halsin, wanting to enact justice on minthara, knowing it's also an extremely personal vendetta, hating himself for letting it BE personal/selfish, and still managing to recognize her humanity because she's going through something he, as a survivor & victim of so much trauma and loss, probably understands very well. this, alongside minthara's genuine attempts to sort herself out and pull her weight (even if she's absolutely not shaken her upbringing's influence) muddies things further.
my durge deeply respects and is envies halsin, viewing him as a desirable person to be (in control, kind, gentle and authentic), so this comic was originally supposed to be durge reckoning with the more human sides of halsin he blinded himself to. but i didnt script this out and just let my stupid lil heart carry the dialogue, so it ended up focusing and centering halsin's emotions with a fun dash of "durge is as socially inept as he is eloquent". it was fun to bounce his curtness off of halsin's gentler manner of speaking, even if the two have pretty similar character voices to me.
i realized durge absolutely cannot help halsin in this department, certainly not in a little speech, but that it would also be diminishing of halsin's interiority to have durge dismiss or resolve his unease so easily. instead, he asserts his own mistrust of minthara and makes his feelings known without pushing halsin in either direction, he reasserts his faith in halsin's judgment, but unfortunately his Urge is 100% on board too and decided to make things very awkward. halsin appreciates the gesture.
ive also decided minthara calls dyven "alhoon" (al [dead] + hoon [outsider/abomination]) partly because she cant remember his name and partly because he's a little twat.
finally, since durge is REALLY hard to draw consistently, ive been using a lot of direct references from a really awesome resource i got from a user here like 2 years ago but i cant find the name so once i do imma update this to include a link bc they deserve credit for thaaaaaat
anyway this is what ive been doing between work days so yippeeeee not my worst single draft
i love you durge. all that smart doesnt help you one bit
I'll post the last few in another post, but this fic helped me grow as an artist. From the beginning, I was practicing my style and seeing what worked for me.
Shadow is currently writing part two and then I'll be drawing away for those chapters! Can't wait to finally post part 2 pf MLC ✨️💗
Here’s something I did for @shadowvikingao3 and @wyrdkell’s fic Dead-ication. A wet Astarion is my favorite Astarion so here he is and well, part of Gale
SO I was thinking about how strongly Tara dislikes Gale's in-game hair and beard and it made me wonder if it was originally a result of him locking himself away from everyone but then sort of became intentional later. Also brace yourselves for some character analysis which seems to be unpopular in fan works but is interesting to me:
Gale knows he's handsome.
There always seemed to be a bit of a mismatch between how people depict Gale's confidence in fanworks and how he presents himself in-game to me?
One of his very first interactions at camp he does, admittedly cheekily, play off his Mirror Image as fastidious grooming habits, and dismisses the spell with a sly little "Handsome devil, isn't he?" It's playful and could be read as a bluff, but it does exist and doesn't feel particularly misplaced. This is a man that fucked God. I think that is great assurance that you must on some level be looking pretty good on the regular.
He also thinks he's charming, which he is! He has a line somewhere about having a dazzling smile. He calls Karlach "rough around the edges" but that he supposed he could be "smooth enough for the both of them." He is entirely confident that he can befriend Minthara and is the only one to even think to attempt it.
He is not a shy lover, either, once you are in private. Some of his lines are straight up scandalous. He may be a bit shy and bluster when you're the one to bring it up, but later on he is shameless. The "For now, I'll keep my mouth shut. Unless you have use for it, of course" line made my jaw drop. ALSO when you ask Gale if you were his first aside from Mystra, he says no, you are not. But you are the first AFTER Mystra. In fact, Loroakkan insults Gale by implying it was NOT by magical merit that he gained her favor, and all that merit did was insure he lost it.
Gale's insecurity is about his sense of self worth, and how the metric he judges his own worthiness is by what he can do, not who he is.
I think the reason it bothers me to see this TYPE of insecurity attributed to Gale is that he is our token "bookish nerd" character, and it feels too easy to just assign the one "nerd" character the traits "inexperienced virgin who wishes he looked more like the leading man but actually the lead romance thinks he is sweet despite all his shortcomings." Especially when there's almost nothing in game to draw this conclusion from. And I dunno, maybe some people think that formula is still satisfying as a story but I think its boring. This dude is an absolute dweeb who is also handsome as all hell which is one of the many reasons you are able to pay attention to his forty-five minute long speech about the history of gnolls. He does that and then shoots Astarion down in the same breath. Let autistic people be hot. That's allowed.
I was hoping to have the next chapter of Free Lunch out at the start of Feb, but I'm starting to come to grips with the fact that that is just not going to happen on time. Like, it's not even close.
I don't know that anyone that anyone is really even keeping up with it really, or if anyone that is keeping up with it is following me. But if you're not in the BWC server that I regularly overshare in, I'm in the middle of leaving a very bad relationship, which is going about as poorly as you'd expect. I've been through shit, and yet this has arguably been one of the worst months of my entire life.
I joke a lot about how this fic was originally supposed to be a short, light-hearted fic about Astarion and Gale working alternating shifts and hating each other, and how it's grown into something much more than that. Much of what it has become has been a huge outlet for me during the past few months. While I'm not facing nearly the same situation, I do know what it feels like to be trapped with no clear path forward. Now, moving into this next phase of the story, I'm finding myself less willing to revisit that place for the sake of story.
I am also carrying the most difficult course load thus far. I'm spending 30+ hours a week on my homework, as well as working and going to class and apartment hunting on top of it all. I hardly have time to sleep at the end of the day, much less write. I'm optimistic that I'll adjust here soon, and get caught up on all of the homework I've fallen behind on, but it hasn't gone as smoothly as I would have hoped. It hasn't gone smoothly at all.
I'm staring down the barrel of a massive bout of depression, to be frank. I have very little confidence in myself, and even less in my work. Everything that I'm writing feels flat and lifeless. I'm working on finding ways to connect with myself and my emotions without completely falling into them.
Updates will come, I'm currently in the middle of the next chapter. But it'll take some time.
I have no words to explain how much this breathtaking commissioned piece by the beautiful @miurgen means to me. From the moment I saw their gorgeous art, I knew that I would jump at the opportunity to have a piece done by them and it's everything I could have asked for.
It's so tender, so intimate and so them. Just in time for my birthday too.
Thank you so much for putting so much love and care into this my friend, your skills are truly remarkable. I love everything about it.