meanwhile

Thank you so much for giving me a chance to talk about how BPD Gale is literally so real.

While you can easily make the claim that Mystra is Gale's FP, and how he both idolizes and reviles her within the same breath depending on his rapidly changing mood, there's so much more to it than that.

There's the subject of his alignment. How at first he seems like a genuinely good guy, constantly giving approval for doing kind acts towards others. The more you delve into his reasons as for why, though, it quickly becomes apparent that he's far more neutral in standing. Doing good acts is something he hopes will bring him closer to Mystra once again, but more importantly, being good is not necessary to keep him at your side. You can be an awful, deranged person who attacks refugees just because you can, and so long as you convince him he'll be lost without you, he'll stay.

He is desperate to be accepted, and yet he is the first to volunteer his own dismissal upon learning about the orb. He believes whole-heartedly that he is unlovable and not worth expending any effort on, so he tires himself out in trying to be someone reliable and useful. Without any means of proving himself, Gale truly thinks he's not worth anything. That's why he doesn't fight for you if you break up with him. He assumes any relationship he enters is as doomed as the one he had with Mystra, not because of anything wrong with you, of course. He assumes himself to be the problem even when there isn't one. He genuinely thinks it's inevitable that he will be left alone by everyone he cares about because he's done nothing to deserve them in his eyes.

You can presume a lot of that has to come from his upbringing. The fact that he was such a troublemaker in his youth, possessive to the point of narcissistically believing he had the right to a book he didn't buy or a staff he was forbidden from wielding, all point to him trying to find purpose to his talents and the expectations that came with them. His ego inflates the moment he comes near a source of power he thinks he can control, for no other purpose than the belief that he will be revered and respected when he does eventually tame it. His ambition is nothing more than a means to impress the one he loves most, and I truly mean this when I say there is no way God Gale doesn't become your personal stalker should you refuse to enter the heavens with him.

All and all, Gale is a pretty classic borderline. His contradictory narcissism and self-loathing come together to create a man dying to please yet only out of a sense of self-preservation. He is desperate for a reason to understand why he exists, and his only means of finding peace in that split existence is for someone who truly loves him to say he is enough and to treat him like he's enough.

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