I was tagged in a variety of games, so allow me to just share one tiny snippet in a single post! Tagged by: @fireflyeyes, @dynamicducks, @saylofwaterdeep, and @ele-millennial-weirdo.

Hi guys!! Looks like that demon Clementine has power over me again, and we might get a new Terms of Affection update NEXT WEEK.

Sadly, that demon decided my first draft of the dance scene wasn't enough, so I am reworking it. I just spent an hour searching for the perfect inspo song for them. Since I have a lot of love for Belgium, and more importantly, for a song 't Smidje, we call the "Belgian dance" (belgijka) in Polish, we are having so much fun with it!

She turned to look at him with such profound betrayal that he briefly considered apologizing to the entire concept of music. Her fingers had begun, some minutes ago, to drum against the table in the tempo the band was failing to find, and had not stopped since. "That is a reel. A reel, Gale. A reel is supposed to move. A reel is supposed to make old men remember being young and young men forget being shy. That - " she pointed at the floor with her wine, an accusation, " - is a procession. Those people are not dancing. They are waiting in line for a dance that is never going to arrive." "Perhaps they are tired." "I am frequently tired, Gale. I have performed with a broken finger, a broken heart, and once, memorably, a broken violin that I finished the set on out of pure spite. Tired is not the crime here." She set the glass down with the click of a verdict being entered into record. "The crime is that they do not want anything. Music without wanting is furniture. And these people deserve better than furniture." Her eyes moved across the room once more - the slumped dockworkers, the men yawning into their cups, one old woman by the wall whose hands were folded in her lap as though she had given up waiting for a reason to unfold them - and then those pink eyes came back around to him, and Gale watched the anger convert itself, with alarming efficiency, into intention. He knew that look. He had seen it exactly twice before, and both times his life had become significantly more complicated within the minute. "No," he said, preemptively. "You do not even know what I am going to say." "I know that expression. That is the expression you wore before you jumped off a table."

"Don't worry, darling! I'll help you!"

A year after Tav's disappearance, Gale is still fishing the Crown of Karsus out of the Chionthar - and one drunken night, he invents a beloved. Enter Clementine Alberral: drow bard, professional menace, and surprisingly convincing girlfriend. The lying is easy. Surviving the moment she stops is not.

Chapters: 3/? Relationships: Gale (Baldur's Gate)/Original Female Character(s),The Dark Urge/Gale (Baldur's Gate)

Chapter 3: Six Terms and One Lie

"So let me get this straight." Clementine had claimed his wine the moment she sat down, which he was beginning to understand was less theft and more a natural law, like tides. "That big, weird guy, Murdork —" "Murdock." "That's what I said. Anyway. He went to your mother, to say that you're dating somebody? Are you having some mommy issues?" "I am not having — " "And he said devastating drow beauty? He did say that, yes? I need this confirmed for professional reasons. He strucked me as someone observant."

Render made by the lovely @rdekarios as part of our art swap. I stare at it daily and it brings me such joy.

Emerging briefly to show off a thing I actually finished as part of an art swap with @rdekarios. Featuring her OC Seraphina and Gale. (Slinks back into my hidey hole till my dissertation is finished).

i am SO behind on tags but listen - i have been infected with abba and that means we are going back to clementine (i swear i'm still working on new durgetash!!!)

i was tagged by @saylofwaterdeep, @cinder-rellish181, @fireflyeyes, @litsenn, @elinorbard, @gortashsrighthand thank youuu!!

Terms of Affection 3 looks like a great party (not for gale tho)

"So let me get this straight." Clementine had claimed his wine the moment she sat down, which he was beginning to understand was less theft and more a natural law, like tides. "That big, weird guy, Murdork - " "Murdock." "That's what I said. Anyway. He went to your mother, to say that you're dating somebody? Are you having some mommy issues?" "I am not having - " "And he said devastating drow beauty? He did say that, yes? I need this confirmed for professional reasons. He strucked me as someone observant." Gale pressed his fingertips briefly to the bridge of his nose, a gesture he had learned from a decade of academic committee meetings and which had never once helped. "I do not have mommy issues. I have a mother. Who has issues. With me. Those are entirely different grammatical constructions. And he did not go to her. He encountered her. During her daily walk. Which he clearly researched in advance, because my mother's daily walk is not a public event, it is a military operation with a fixed route and a known schedule, and the only people who know it are family, neighbors, and apparently vindictive Blackstaff professors with too much free time." "So he ambushed your mother!" Clementine turned the glass slowly by its stem, considering this with the expression of a general receiving intelligence about enemy movements. "On her walk. To gossip about your love life. Gale, I have humiliated a great many men in my career, and I want you to know that this is the first time one of them has responded by tattling to somebody's mother."