Classic Poetry Instead Of Song Lyrics And Not So Many WIPs, But Everything Else Is Quite Correct.

Classic poetry instead of song lyrics and not so many WIPs, but everything else is quite correct.

We’re fanfiction writers, of course:

We’re going to use song lyrics as titles.

We’re going to check for comments 30 seconds after we post something.

We’re going to have more WIPs than days of the week.

We’re going to use any excuse to post snippets.

We’re going to use ask box games to procrastinate.

We’re going to hype up our writer friends.

We’re going to scream, cry and throw up reading our friends’ work.

cherries + gale 💜

I had to make a research on different kinds of cherries, so it took a long time to write. But now I'm prepared to present you a little fic that got suggestive in the second part. Nothing explicit, but you can count it as a foreplay.

The Intricacies of Cherries

Gale x F!Tav, Druid Tav, suggestive. Post-canon, Waterdeep.

Who would think a summer day in a coastal city would be utterly unbearable? In moments like these Tav really missed her faraway forest home. Hot and humid air with a scorching sun made her think Grymforge had been a comfortable place to exist. She didn’t miss the tadpoles and bedrolls though. In fact, she was hurrying towards her new home – a nice tower cooled by magic (and thick stone walls, of course). Today was her day off at work. She had just been to the market – the hottest place with sweaty people around, which was awful in itself. But she didn’t endure it all for nothing. She was carrying a tasty surprise for her husband.

When she entered the tower, a cool breeze made her dizzy at first. A slight heat stroke, but nothing her druid magic cannot heal. She heard a distinctive smell of delicious food being cooked and heard a melody hummed by a familiar voice. That meant Gale had returned from Blackstaff academy and was making them dinner. When she entered the kitchen, he turned to her and smiled:

‘Hello, my love! Where’ve you been today?’ He looked back at the stove to control the food. She started unpacking her bag of holding:

‘I’ve been to the market, love, and look what I’ve found there! My favourite berries: raspberry, blueberry, blackberry, cloudberry and cherry. I hope we’ll enjoy them together.’ She pulled little wicker baskets filled with berries of one kind each and put them on the table.

Gale strode towards the purchases and grinned: ‘What do you think about adding them to the ice cream? Ah,’ he looked at the cherries and furrowed his brow. Then he put his index finger uo and continued: ‘It seems you mixed up the cherries. This is the sour sort,’ he pointed towards the cherries in front of him, ‘they are used for baking and brewing cider. You should have bought the sweet sort, they are suitable for consumption as they are.’

‘Who are you that you should teach me, a druid, what kind of cherry this is?’ she crossed her arms. ‘While you have always been a city dweller, I spent a big part of my life in the forest. And these are the cherries we consumed, not the saccharine kind you call “cherry” here. You just need to get used to the taste.’ She was offended that this magic man didn’t want to understand the obvious.

‘Get used to?’ Gale laughed. ‘I beg your pardon, but I remember, when I was a very young boy, I stormed into my mother’s kitchen, took a mouthful of cherries and tried to eat them. It was so sour that tears started running down my cheeks. Then she told me that these cherries were meant to be a filler for cherry dumplings. The dumplings were still delicious, but I learnt the lesson that day.’ He gave Tav a warm look. That charming look that made her forgive him for anything. ‘Every time I see them I remember that day and that acidic taste in my mouth.’

‘Okay, Gale, I can never properly argue with you. I was taught to eat them since before I could remember, that must be the reason why I enjoy eating them. I can think of making you a better memory to associate with sour cherries. Teaching you properly to eat them, so to speak.’ She gave him a mischievous smirk. ‘But only after dinner.’

‘Your wish is my command, my lady.’ He put the fire off and started to dish out the food.

* * *

It was not long after dinner when Tav was sitting on a balcony, a bowl of thoroughly washed cherries on the table by her side. She had already changed into the silken summer dress she wore at home, which was coloured in pink and orange by the setting sun.

‘What a sight to behold,’ she suddenly heard Gale saying. When she turned to the door, she saw her husband leaning on the door-post. He wore his linen shirt, half-unbuttoned and with his rolled up to his elbows. His skin, even more tanned in summer than usual, was a stark contrast to white linen. She looked wistfully at his forearms, his damp hair fresh from a bath, his smile and his eyes that seemed to devour her.

‘I remember you wished to show me something about the sour cherries,’ he chuckled, ‘I promise I’ll be an obedient student.’ Gale walked towards Tav and sat beside her. She resisted the urge to kiss him immediately. Instead she took a cherry and held it between her thumb and middle finger.

‘At first you need to watch carefully,’ she said and slowly brought the cherry to her lips. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Gale swallowing hard but never looking away. She bit through the skin of the cherry and felt the sour juice run into her mouth and down her chin. Her husband’s breath quickened. She threw the kernel into the bowl and said:

‘Now you can taste the juice on my lips.’ He didn’t need to be told twice. He licked the juice from her lips and kissed them. But the kiss was short, for he was too excited about what would come next. Tav smiled and ran her clean hand through his hair.

‘Good boy. Now, to the next part of our lesson.’ She took another cherry and popped it above the neckline of her dress. The juice ran down her hand, but a few drops reached the destination and made their way under the fabric. When she looked at Gale, his pupils were dilated. He swallowed again. ‘Now you can taste the berry with my fingers,’ Tav whispered, for Gale was very close to her now. He took her fingers into his mouth obediently, and, while wincing at the sour taste, he still shut his eyes and moaned with pleasure. Soon she withdrew her hand. ‘You did so well. Now as a bonus you can catch those droplets that escaped under my dress.’ Gale licked a stripe between her breasts.

‘As much as I enjoy the lesson,’ he looked into her eyes with burning desire visible in them, ‘I think I’ll never enjoy raw sour cherries. However,’ he gave her a mischievous grin, ‘I am all too curious to find out where those droplets might end up. And for this thorough analysis I would require a special environment,’ he stood up and extended his hand towards her, ‘so I suggest we go to the bedroom, my lady.’

‘I’m thrilled at the prospect of bearing witness to such meticulous research.’ She took his hand and stood up. ‘Shall we?’

Gale Dekarios: A funny guy. insp. by @margariemargarita

Happy international kissing day! Share your tavs kissing their 💜

Disability Pride Essays - Gale, Neurodivergency, and Chronic Illnesses

The third of the disability parallel essays is going to focus on everyone’s favourite wizard, the legend of Waterdeep, Gale Dekarios. Immediately I can hear the neurodivergent (ND) side of fandom sitting up and pointing at the screen: “He’s like me!” and you’re absolutely right, but there is even more to him than this too! Gale can arguably represent several chronic physical conditions as well as being the chosen of the god of Autism. Sorry, god of Magic. Both? It’s probably both, isn’t it…

So with this in mind we will be discussing neurodiversity as well as long term chronic conditions and “spoon theory” (don’t worry if you don’t know what that is yet, we’re going to go over it along with “spell slot theory” in a way that might help abled people understand how many of us manage long term illness). I may also touch on the plot point around the Orb and Gale’s fluctuating relationship with his will to live, as well as the desperation to find a cure - so please be aware that if these are things you may find to be triggering. As always, look after yourselves and each other first and foremost. And, of course, your input and thoughts on these topics are more than welcome!

What is Gale’s Disability?

Gale has several conditions that we can see affecting him in the game. Whilst “armchair diagnosis” of real people can be a harmful exercise, and not something we would usually encourage, when we look at him and his behaviours it is easy to see a lot of traits common in Neurodivergent people. So this can mean Autism Spectrum Disorders as well as ADD/ADHD traits, though as anyone with either (or both) diagnosis will likely tell you, these can vary wildly from person to person. The same diagnosis can present completely differently between two people, so we will be looking at specific traits rather than an overall diagnosis for Gale. A more subtle thing shown with Gale is some joint pain, stiffness - he will complain about his knees aching when rain is due, and generally casually describes a lot of aches and pains that are common with ageing as well as in chronic conditions that affect joints. This is potentially easily missed as it’s in just a few lines of dialogue here and there and some background conversation, but we can see it sometimes too in how he moves and reacts. And then, of course, there is the Netherese Orb… One not quite so fun little fact here too is that in the real world there can be a lot of overlap between chronic pain conditions and neurodiversity. Not necessarily causative, and there’s no strongly established link that I’m aware of, but it isn’t uncommon at all to come across in disabled and ND communities. I’m sure more research can be done into specific genetic conditions that may have a stronger and potentially causative link to them, but that would be going too far down the wrong rabbithole for now. Did I mention I have ADHD? What do you mean “obviously”?...

How Do We See The Disability In The Game?

With Neurodiversity, a lot of the “problem” from the condition does not actually come from the person themselves but in how the world and people around them react to them and their behaviours. We can see this in the player base, where some people just cannot stand Gale’s infodumping or talking in depth about his special interests in magic, or how they find some of his personality and interactions to be more frustrating than endearing. There’s also how he was treated by Mystra - if we remove the relationship and abusive part of that for now, he went from being a gifted student, a prodigy in his field, to being rejected and cut loose from that validation.

Plenty of players found they disliked Gale, that his romantic advances and compliments to them were unwelcome and “too much”. In terms of Neurodiversity, Gale is expressing himself relatively openly with his feelings, and could potentially be seen as attaching to the player on a deeper level as a “favourite person” which can be a trait for some. Of course this was changed in the game to a degree after some backlash from those who weren’t keen on him expressing romantic interest after very little interaction, but not all of that is gone from his interactions or the speed with which he forms a strong attachment to someone he trusts. Then there is his “specialised diet”, which in this case is that need to consume magic objects. Honestly there are several ways we can look at this one. From a more literal point of view, we can consider him as literally eating the items like a food source which might be akin to people desiring to eat non-food items. It could also be similar to having “safe foods” which are things that have familiar flavours and textures. However the theory I find most interesting around the “consumption” of magic items is thinking of it more as medicinal.

Either way, Gale needs regular “doses” of the “cure” to stave off some very visceral symptoms. We not only see the relief when he is able to take the “cure” by consuming the item, but we also see the pain and struggle if too much time is left between “doses”. It’s shown in his character model, how he holds himself, you can hear it in his voice breaking as he’s overwhelmed by the symptoms of the Karsite Weave trying to eat away at him. If he doesn’t find any help from the player, too, he will simply leave to find his own solution. There isn’t a choice to just “ignore it and it will go away” - much like any serious illness it needs to be treated or it will get worse.

How Does This Reflect Real Life?

The real life reflections of Neurodivergency are quite easy to see for those of us familiar with those feelings and behaviour patterns. I could spend a while going over them, but then in my experience the fans who are deep enough into the fandom to be reading an essay of this length dissecting the character and the nuances of him…well, if you’re still reading and you’re neurotypical then I will be a little surprised. I mean this in a lighthearted way, of course, I’m sure there are a good number of neurotypical fans and those interested in this kind of topic (in fact it would be lovely for more NT people to spend a little time listening and learning when possible) but there is a very strong correlation between those of us who are ND and having a hyperfixation on one topic. A little like Gale’s hyperfixation on magic and learning everything about it, even to his detriment. It’s a special interest - he could never be satisfied just knowing most things about magic, he needed to know everything. That’s how he ended up in the situation with the Netherese Orb - he found a problem and became quite fixated and determined to solve it. That’s what problems are for, after all, to be solved. And he did it all with good intention, hope, and unfortunately without thinking through the greater consequences either. The single-minded devotion to a task, without seeing the bigger picture, can be a boon as much as it is a curse to ND people. The pain is also one that will feel familiar to people in the real world - whether through age or chronic conditions, this can often be affected by things like the weather and changes in temperature and air pressure. We need more rest, we complain casually, we make small pained noises when we move, and we adjust our actions to fit our needs. In some ways, we could see Gale’s need for magical items to stave off the condition the Orb gives him is like a need for insulin or similar long term medicines. It’s not optional and the consequences of putting it off - or avoiding it entirely - can be dangerous or even deadly. The way he feels around the outcome there could also be similar. Whilst in the real world someone isn’t going to just explode and take out a 10 mile radius with them if they don’t get their medication in time, if they were to pass away then the loss would be felt keenly amongst those around them, leaving an impact on their loved ones. 

Neurodiversity

There is just so much we can say about neurodiversity, but rather than dissecting it piece by piece I think it might be better to take this opportunity to reflect on how meaningful and validating it can be to see these traits in characters we love. These aren’t things that are shown to be flaws or undesirable, simply a part of the entire personality of the character - connecting can really just be, well, validating. That’s the thing with representation. It’s not about making a huge fanfare over every little thing, it’s integrating characters and character traits naturally and treating them normally - the way that we would rather like it if the real world around us might do. It’s also a way to learn to love ourselves through the love of the character - to think something like “I adore listening to him ramble on about his favourite topic” and perhaps feel a little less self-conscious when we ourselves talk more in depth over a hyperfixation or special interest. Something like, oh I don’t know, writing a long series of essays about subtle disability representation in a popular video game…

Chronic Illness and Spell Slots

This is where it gets interesting with the comparison to game mechanics. An old theory that people have used to describe the long term impact of chronic illness is “spoon theory”. Spoon Theory was a way that a chronically ill person described their energy levels to a friend to help them understand more clearly how we have different limits. So the idea is at the start of a day, you have a certain amount of “spoons”. Every task in the day requires one of these spoons to be used - that might be going to the shop to buy food, taking a shower, going to work, socialising with someone, making an important phone call, or even something as simple as getting dressed. You have to be careful where you use those spoons, because once they’re all gone, that’s it. No more. You can’t just get more from nowhere, and if you try to borrow one of tomorrow’s spoons you’ll have even less for that next day. A newer and far more accurate comparison, at least in my opinion, is spell slots. So different tasks are like different spells, and might take a certain level of spell slot to complete.

Easy tasks we can repeat a lot without trouble, like perhaps talking to a friend online or taking a nap, those are like cantrips. We can do them whenever we need to. Small tasks might be a level 1 or 2 spell slot, which we have more of, but a large task that is very tiring and/or causes a lot of pain need a level 5 spell slot. And there’s the trick - you can spend your level 5 slot on a lower level task, potentially doing more than you might usually do with that task, but you can’t spend a level 2 slot on a level 5 task. 

There’s no way to refresh those spell slots without adequate rest, too. In the tabletop version of D&D if you’re suffering levels of exhaustion or don’t get the right amount of uninterrupted rest, you won’t get back all of your spell slots. Which is quite accurate to real life, where not getting what you need means you may not be fully refreshed and replenished for the new day either. 

When we talk about chronic illness too, depending on the person there might well be things that would be cantrips for other people - things that don’t feel like they expend any real energy at all to do - which take a whole spell slot for us. Having a shower might make an abled person feel refreshed and energised, but someone with a chronic illness might instead feel drained and tired after expending that energy. This can apply to both physical tasks and mental or social energy too. People who are introverted will likely understand when I say that for some of us it takes away our energy to socialise with others and we need time alone doing our own thing to recover some of that. Extroverts might find this strange, as they more often feel like a positive social interaction is energising to them and gives them a real boost.

So there you have it, spell slots! A way that might make it easier to explain how tasks take energy, and how we’re simply not able to conjure more energy out of thin air.

The Cure and The Desperation

I’ll preface this section straight away with a very simple part - most neurodiversity neither wants nor needs a cure. What’s needed is understanding and adaptation, patience and compassion to work with what the individual needs in order to succeed. Child has a special interest? Let them indulge that passion and learn all they can about it, that might become their career or long term hobby later in life and bring them a great deal of happiness and satisfaction. This section, when we’re talking about a cure, it’s for those chronic conditions that cause suffering. The parallel being how Gale researches and is willing to trade anything to end the agony that the Orb causes him. He’s ready to throw his whole life away because the torment is too much, until another option becomes available. Even when there are other choices, he’s still willing to detonate, potentially because he feels he has become a hindrance or a burden to those he loves. This…honestly this is something that those with complex and/or long term care needs can struggle with. It is hard not to feel like a burden when you need someone else to take care of menial every day tasks on your behalf, or need to keep asking for aid from those around you.  That’s where the right support is absolutely vital. In those lower times, to remember in ourselves and sometimes to hear from others that they choose to care for us and that there is more we bring to the world. That our worth is not tied to what we can and cannot do, but instead in who we are and what our presence means to those who love us as we are.

It’s something we don’t always talk about, even within disabled communities, because these are deep and difficult feelings within ourselves and we don’t want to inadvertently cause more upset in those who are struggling or have been affected by loss of this kind. So to see that reflected too, the sorrow, the struggle, those very heartfelt and genuine conversations with Gale as he weighs up his options…that’s important to recognise too. Particularly for abled people to try to understand the depth and complexity of our feelings around the exhaustion of dealing with an illness that never goes away - we want to live, but sometimes we feel the weight of that struggle burying the will to keep fighting it. Even if the condition itself is stable, not degenerative, and not deadly, it is still a burden to ourselves. 

What We Can Learn From Gale’s Story

Gale’s parallels to disability are complex, but there’s a lot worth learning from it. Whether it is about fully loving someone’s eccentricities and neurodivergent traits, or learning to understand chronic health through the lens of spell slots, it’s important to know more about ourselves and those around us. For Gale, I see so much of people finding him to be a comfort - “he’s like me”, “I can relate to him” - and that’s what we need. Of course not every person playing the game will feel a connection to him, or even like him as a character, but he is there and to a lot of us he has been an important and meaningful influence through his story. We can also look at the different ways his story can end - several options all quite drastically removed from each other. The ambition is a cautionary tale, the temptation of a “simple fix” is another when the crown can arguably lead to worse endings either under Mystra or losing sight of the better parts of himself beneath the allure of power and godhood. I could probably ramble on for another thousand or so words, but I’ll leave it here for now, with that reflection on everything he can mean to different people and disabilities.

Remember to be kind to yourself, and allow proper recovery of your spell slots before you try to spend levels you don’t have available.