Starlit Dream

Gale Dekarios: A Mansplainer or a Wizardsplainer? And I am off on another Gale related topic yet again, this time it involves a small subset of individuals who believe that Gale Dekarios is a mansplainer. Yes you heard it, Gale Dekarios is a mansplainer! I know, I know I want to roll my eyes hard enough to see the back of my skull as well. Let me preface this by saying I am not here to undermine the harm that mansplaining does to the recipients, typically anyone presenting as a women or playing as a woman. Mansplaining is a real problem in the gaming, TTRPG, and LARP-ing world. As someone who identifies as a woman I know this. When you are maligned, treated like you don't understand, talked down to, objectified, or your character is side-lined as milady who is helpless or forced into certain roles with expectations, it is infuriating. I just want my female barbarian to feast on the flesh of her enemies and use their splintered bones as toothpicks without someone saying women aren't supposed to do that. Mostly it's because your woman presenting character is too masculine and dude-bro paladin needs a girlfriend to protect and do the dirt with (because that's all your character is good for, oh and maybe healing), but we are not here for it. I've seen this happen to men playing characters that are women as well, it's a disease. It sucks, you experience it enough and any time a man starts talking it can be a trigger. I get it! With that in mind I think mansplaining loses its meaning when we take it out of context and just apply it to any kind of trigger. Context matters, understanding the material matters, the lore matters. What does not matter in Baldur's Gate 3 is your character's gender. Let's be very clear, if you are playing the game through the lens of a woman and your character is also a woman and you think Gale is mansplaining to you then you need to reset your game and play it as a man. I tend to spice up my gender variety for funsies and if you are constantly playing as the gender that matches your gender identity you might just view the game through that lens. I'm also going to be real I'm a M/M slasher, I go back and play Gale and Astarion as the origin protags because Bloodweave for life baby! But I do mix it up with genders. So what happens when you are playing entirely through a singular lens, when you are a woman playing as a character that is a woman? You might look at Gale as a mansplainer, but the reality is he's running on a script and he is going to say the same thing to you if you are speaking to him as a cis-man/woman, trans-man/woman, non-binary, or if you are Astarion (okay you might get a bit of variation because it's Astarion and not Tav), but the script is still the script. Your Tav is going to get the script. Now the second part of this is that Gale is a Wizard, you know when someone is a wizz they are very good and successful at the thing they do. Okay so if you are playing as a Sorcerer or some other magically tangent class, you might think Gale is a magic snob, that you are a Sorcerer or you are also playing a character that knows magic as well and him explaining magic to you is him being condescending and talking down to you. No. Gale is a Wizard, Wizards are magically superior, their knowledge is magically superior, this is the rule not the exception. Pick up your D&D handbook, flip to the part where it talks about Wizards and it will tell you they are supreme magic users, they are scholars of the arcane, they are the mathematicians and programmers of magic. They understand it. They have the Ph.D., Sorcerers at best have their A.S., and any other class that uses magic has their H.S. Diploma or G.E.D. Sorcerers are talented magic users, but their knowledge is limited, they rely on raw potential and inherent ability. They don't have the same range because they did not go to graduate school, but they believe they are superior due to carrying a magical birthright through bloodline.

My answer to that is, it's complicated, or perhaps not in the conventional way that people tend to think grooming happens. When I see posts about Gale being groomed it's accompanied by the assertion that Mystra found Gale when he was a child and was his mentor first. From a timeline perspective this doesn't make sense, we would have to throw out so much lore. Mystra was murdered by Cyric in 1385 initiating the Spellplague, she didn't come back until the events of the Sundering, so around 1479. Baldur's Gate 3 takes place in 1492. The earliest she could have met Gale would have been 1479/1480 which gives us a time frame of their relationship possibly being around 11-12 years. If we conclude that Gale is ~30 years old then the youngest Gale could have been is 17. If we conclude that Gale is ~35 years old then the youngest Gale could have been is 22. This lines up with Gale referring to himself as a very young man, not a child, when the events of their relationship took place. Also Gale makes another comment that suggests that he likely wasn't a child during his relationship with Mystra. If you romance Gale, he remarks that he had lovers before Mystra, but not after. If we assume that Gale met Mystra as a child then Gale would have to be much younger than we think he is. Now onto the subject of Mystra and Gale's relationship, adult grooming is a thing and the power imbalance is very real. A teacher getting into a relationship with a student is also problematic in any relationship where there is a teacher and student dynamic. Mystra has a history of changing and removing abilities from her servants and chosen, often times without their consent. This clearly illustrates an exploitative relationship. Also Gale, in all of his naivety of youth, perceived his relationship with Mystra way differently than Mystra did. Mystra has many chosen and most of them do not know one another. He thought she loved him, but he was amusement for her for a time until he messed up and she denounced him. Not only that but in order to maybe, possibly, earn her "forgiveness" Gale has to kill himself and even then forgiveness isn't assured. That's a steep price to pay. If you think Mystra is a good soul and Gale is a horrible person who stomped all over her boundaries, then you you need to learn more about Mystra's gross meddling with mortals. She is by no means innocent and has not only stomped on boundaries, she has done things that cross way over into non-consensual. The Gods are gross, Mystra is not an exception because she's a Goddess and presents as a woman, she's not vulnerable nor is she helpless. She is in the position to exploit and demand and she does it frequently. What also really gets me is how Gale gets labeled as being manipulative and abusive and Astarion is a beacon of perfection. He's not, he targets your character just to manipulate them, and that is his MO for a huge chunk of the game. His tragedy and changing over the course of the game doesn't reverse that, but it's somehow overlooked? Of course you have to view a person in terms of a snapshot. Looking at Gale based on a snapshot within his relationship with Mystra does not make him toxic and it does not mean that he was the abuser. Of course because Astarion was abused by a man, it's a different story, but Gale is a male character stepping on a woman's (Goddess) boundary, so he's necessarily toxic. It doesn't occur to people who play BG3, who have very little knowledge when it comes to the Gods in Faerun that Mystra is truly toxic and that a man can be abused and manipulated by a woman (Goddess) . Don't misunderstand, I love Astarion just as much as I love Gale, but I think it's a double standard to vilify Gale (who WAS mistreated by Mystra) and lionize Astarion while ignoring his machinations towards you in the beginning. Astarion is a classic case of hurt people hurt people, it explains his behavior but it shouldn't be ignored in criticisms of other characters. He's not perfect, if he were he would be boring and not nearly as interesting.

Petite Pixels and this otter pattern, I am in love!

Interestingly enough I can’t find the actual post because it’s no longer there to which I am thankful for. The Sailor Moon fanbase is filled with enough vitriol, especially when you factor in the gate keepers and people who think they own fandom interactions. For the record I’ve been a fan of Sailor Moon since the mid 90s and I don’t need a fandom card or permission to post or interact with the content I like to make entitled people happy. I’ll gladly defend my position to anyone at any time and I’d be glad to do that in a respectful way. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that this was not meant to be a flattering response, simply because it was boring enough to reshare and likely dump on before removing. It’s the reason I don’t actively interact with the Sailor Moon fanbase. Thanks for removing the post though, I never intended, nor did I want my content associated with the dark side of the Sailor Moon fanbase. 

It’s the age-old debate, granted I’m a little bit late to the party but my thoughts are not. It’s the Who Did It Better? Sailor Moon Edition! The epic battle of moon versus moon! Now keep in mind no matter what I say it is just an opinion, I don’t expect everyone to agree with it, this is Sailor Moon after all, not science. Disagree but be civil alright? Before I start this I was watching Sailor Moon Classic and reading the Sailor Moon manga roughly side by side. When I say I was reading the manga I mean not the manga that you know as manga but little comic book versions that were done chapter by chapter. I want you to also know that I was watching the Classic dubbed version and the errors in the dubbed version translated to the comics as well so at least it was consistent. When I watched the Classic subtitled version I was also reading a better and truer version of the manga (and it was actually a manga) alongside it. So why bother telling you this? I want you to know that my assessment of Sailor Moon Classic and Sailor Moon Crystal are not coming from a place of 90s nostalgia. That’s what a lot of people tend to argue in these debates, and because Crystal follows the manga for what it’s worth I can’t be accused of having that 90s nostalgia for Classic. So let’s break down the categories. Story Art Music Mythos Character likability Character development Ability/Power Growth Pacing I think I have hit most of the categories that tend to come up in a lot of these debates so let's go through them one by one. In terms of story, Sailor Moon Classic takes this category. The reason why Classic takes it over Crystal has everything to do with the fact that Crystal’s story is little more than a regurgitation of the manga and not a very good one. I’d almost rather read the manga for the extra bits that Crystal leaves out, it might not seem important but those little bits add up when telling the story of Sailor Moon. The first story arc of Crystal was already rough, but it turned into a dumpster fire when they tried to execute the Shitennou romance with the Inner Senshi. Classic told it’s own story and I think the execution overall is much better, Crystal felt like it was all over the place, especially in the first two seasons. The third season was better by miles, but it tripped out of the gate when it should have come sprinting out of the gate making it feel like a weak cash grab. No doubt it is, much like it’s shounen brother Dragon Ball Super. In terms of art Sailor Moon Classic also takes this category. Okay so it is not always consistent and it is not up to present-day standards, but that would be an unfair comparison. Sailor Moon Classic came out in the 90 and Sailor Moon Crystal came out in the 20-teens. They ought to be judged based on the standards for their own time right? If I judged Classic against the manga then yes the manga would win, but this is anime vs anime here and the quality for Crystal was just far below what it should have been, the inconsistency is way more jarring than in Classic, and the CGI transformations were cheap and they took me out of the moment. Even season to season they have a hard time staying consistent with the animation, granted season 3 was again an improvement over one and two, but my understanding is that there will be more changes with season 4 (the movie releases). For the music category, Sailor Moon Classic takes it yet again. The only thing I like about Sailor Moon Crystal as far as the music goes is some of the orchestrated stuff, I think that is better than Classic, but overall none of the songs are memorable, none of the transformation music is memorable, most people immediately think Moonlight Densetsu when they think of Sailor Moon and I can honestly say that there was maybe one song I personally enjoyed from Crystal and that was Eternal Eternity. The rest of the OP and ED songs were just forgettable honestly. In the mythos category, finally Sailor Moon Crystal takes it home for the win with the help of the manga because I did think the mythos in the manga was handled better than in Crystal, but Crystal tried. We actually understand our enemies, we know their history, we know their real motivation. Just looking at the first arc of each story as an example in Crystal we learn that Beryl wasn’t just some evil entity without a cause for the sake of being one like in Classic. We understand why she was so enamored by Endymion, where it wasn’t really clear before. She was a witch from Earth who was in love with Endymion and heart broken when he fell in love with Princess Serenity. We learn that the Shitennou were once loyal to the Prince Endymion, but their minds were poisoned against him. We get to see the darker side of Serenity’s anguish over losing Endymion. And one thing I liked was when they actually went to the moon in order to learn all of this history as opposed to being ejected into a different dimension by Kunzite which was just strange. I also like that we learn that all of the Senshi are princesses in their own right and get their powers from their respective castles and they have their own gowns which are awesome and I hope to one day see in Crystal. So congrats to Crystal and the manga by extension for the mythos.   For character likability, Sailor Moon Crystal also takes this category (Crystal might be catching up). For whatever reason so many characters in Classic had their personalities altered to either extreme levels or shitty levels. Mamoru was a total dick and I can see why so many people dislike him, the Classic version of Mamoru was a real jerk especially in season one where he would make fun of Usagi’s weight and he was just borderline verbally abusive...well maybe not borderline, he was. Mamoru in the manga and in Crystal would never talk to Usagi or anyone that way, he may have teased her, but he was never cruel to her and you could see that he loved her much more in Crystal than you can see it in Classic. Usagi, don’t get me wrong I love Usagi, but it’s almost like she reboots every season, just about. We see her grow in one season and she’s just as immature, childish, and insecure in the next season. She’s far more mature in Crystal, even though she is clumsy and a bit of a crybaby at times, though when she grows she grows. Rei is just a straight up bitch in Classic and Chibi-Usa never stops being annoying, the only seasons I liked Chibi-Usa in were the seasons when she wasn’t there. She’s so much better in Crystal and in the manga, she and Usagi have a stronger bond and they care more for each other, and Chibi-Usa does what she can to cheer Usagi up as well. They are not opposing forces as much as they are in Classic. Michiru and Haruka are also woefully changed from the Crystal and manga version. In Crystal they want to work with and to the same ends as Sailor Moon and the others, Haruka desperately loves her princess and you can see how heartbroken she is when she can’t save her or when she fails her (especially in the manga). In the Classic they treat Sailor Moon and the others like they are in the way like they have to earn their respect, they often have different agendas from the Inner Senshi, and they come off as double agents too. Character development. Sorry, I have to hand this to Sailor Moon Classic, this is what I was dreading with Sailor Moon Crystal and anyone who has read the manga and is being honest with themselves should agree that the characters in Crystal and the manga are very much underdeveloped. Their histories, their personalities, their quirks are watered down and when you think you’ve gotten to know one character half a dozen more characters pop up to push them to the back burner. The Inner Senshi are quickly pushed aside when the Outer Senshi show up and you have even more Senshi show up in later arcs that the only characters you really get to know are Usagi, Mamoru, and Chibi-Usa. The others barely get a moment to shine. Ability and power growth goes to Sailor Moon Crystal. I always felt like the other Senshi were constantly lagging behind Sailor Moon in abilities, power growth, and transformations in Classic whereas they grow when Sailor Moon grows in Crystal so we get to see more abilities, transformations, and powers. Even Mamoru gets to be badass in a way that he wasn’t in Classic with his roses, he gets Tuxedo La Smoking Bomber which is pretty badass looking in spite of the name. Pacing is a tie! The pacing is pretty shitty for both of the shows, we can all agree on this much I think. Sailor Moon Classic was running alongside the manga so it kind of had an excuse, it had to have fillers so the manga could catch up. Still, it was stuffed with fillers, some of them I liked and they were fun, some of them were unnecessary and added nothing. Sailor Moon Crystal blows by really quickly, so fast you feel like you don’t get to know the characters very well, you don’t get a flushed out story, in fact, pacing contributes to the reason why Crystal fails in other categories and it kind of has the manga to thank for it. The Overall Winner is! Sailor Moon Classic!