It's Important To Have A Group Of Ppl That You Can Just Sit And Think About The Character With

Dinner is served

Haha! Same! I spent my teen years slowly being turned gay by these two (a joke - I was already gay!).

More people discovering ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’.

I couldn’t be fucking prouder as a veteran fan!

This TV show is truly timeless.

Enjoy, virgins. It’s one wild and gay fucking horse ride.

A lil bit more Karlach/minthy but moslty, Karlach strong back time

look at these two characters…wouldn’t it be a shame if they…tenderly rested their foreheads together…

My Girl (Chapter 5 - Baldur's Gate 3 fanfic)

I'm here! And someone else is as well 😲

Yups, this is the one in which Lae'zel gives birth. Are you ready?

Ship: Shadowzel

WC: 1,272

Warnings: some of the eggs don't make it. It also gets a little angsty, but it's basically what you'd expect from a story about childbirth.

Read under the cut or on AO3. Comments and reblogs will make me very happy!

Shadowheart paces up and down the corridor. Goes down the stairs. Then back up. Leans against the feeble railing and counts the metallic pipes creeping up every wall. And the iron beams holding up the ceiling. What a hideous place! She pities the members of Crèche Zav'rai, forced to live in such depressing surroundings.

Her glance keeps returning to the double doors behind her back. They're way too thick and robust to let any sounds through, so she has no way to know what's happening on the other side. How many hours have gone by? Is Lae'zel alright?

It was the middle of the night when Lae'zel woke her up. Her thighs were moist and there was a sharp pain in her lower stomach. According to what she had read, those were unmistakable signs that the eggs were coming. So they hurried out to the crèche despite the rain pouring down and the darkness; too nervous, too excited to notice. Much to Shadowheart's surprise, those gith have been rather hospitable to them both. They've allowed her to borrow a few clothes and take off the ones she was wearing while they dry near an old furnace that is now used for forging swords and spears instead of steelwatchers. Now all she can do is pray that the doctor and her assistants are as competent as they were polite. Or hopefully more.

Through the high, distant windows, she can see that the day is dawning. Soon the halls are filled with steps, instructions she can't understand and the sounds of different tools. Every now and then, small groups of young gith walk past her, giving her curious looks. Some seem surprised, some wary. Of course. She must be one of the few – if not the only – istiki to have ever set foot in there. Even Orpheus seems to be watching her closely from the painting on the wall.

She muffles a yawn with the palm of her hand. The chairs in the makeshift waiting room – which is technically just the landing in front of Am'aari's office – look anything but comfortable, but she lets her full weight collapse atop one of them. She's exhausted. If it weren't for the nervousness of not knowing how her wife is, she would have already fallen asleep. A part of her thinks it's ridiculous. Why shouldn't she be allowed to be in the same room while Lae'zel gives birth? Especially when it's not a usual birth. The vision of Lae'zel cradling her own stomach – which at this point looks comically big and round compared to the rest of her – and holding back a grunt as she bends makes her wonder if that's what her parents' hens experience whenever they lay eggs. On the other hand, if she recalls correctly, githyanki eggs are a considerable size, much closer to an owlbear's than a chicken's. Squeezing one of those out must be excruciating.

No. She mustn't think of that. Lae'zel will be fine. Her people will take good care of her. They won't let her die. Unless they consider dying at childbirth another form of terminating the frail.

That last idea gives her chills.

Breathe in. She'll be alright. She's as tough as they come. If she's made it through the pregnancy with no complications – extreme mood swings and reckless ideas aside – she'll make it through this. She's fine. She's fine. She's fine.

The incurable wound in the back of her hand flares. It hadn't bothered her in months. Shar must have forgotten about her, after all. The pain is not as intense as it used to, merely a sting, and it doesn't come with fragments of traumatizing memories. Perhaps Selûne's wicked twin is only reminding her to embrace loss. Or feeding on her dark emotions.

Such assumptions are crossing her mind when the opening door startles her. A young gith pokes their head out.

“She is ready to see you now.”

That sounds like good news – a sign that she's still alive and conscious. Quite honestly, that's what matters most to Shadowheart. Her legs shake as she stands up and follows the doctor's apprentice inside.

Lae'zel is lying in a narrow bed, drenched in sweat. Although there are no visible traces of it, the metallic stench of blood lingers in the air, barely disguised by soap. Her wife's eyes are no more than slits, like a sleeping cat, but her face brightens as soon as she sees her. A hand reaches for Shadowheart's weakly.

“How are you feeling?” Shadowheart asks.

“Exhausted. Dazed.”

Her cheeks are flushed and her brown hair sticks to her head, damp and darkened. Shadowheart's thumb caresses Lae'zel's knuckles.

“Does it hurt?” she wonders.

“Now? It does not,” Lae'zel responds, her voice small and raspy. “I have been given some concoction to numb the pain.”

“That's good.”

Even nodding seems to be a big effort for her. Their hands still touching, Shadowheart bends down to plant a gentle kiss on Lae'zel's lips. Apparently, she doesn't have the strength to return it, but her tired smile grows wider. Ghustil Am'aari's steps approaching distract them from the conversation.

“May I speak to you for a moment, istik?”

“Her name is Shadowheart,” Lae'zel corrects.

Shadowheart can't help but grin at that. It's sweet that Lae'zel acts protective of her even in such a state. Nodding at the doctor, she squeezes her wife's hand and trails behind the healer. Once outside Am'aari pushes the heavy door closed.

“Lae'zel has laid three eggs,” she informs. “Two of them are too small, but the third one looks healthy, so the likelihood of it hatching is high. This is normal for a first-timer.”

A certain relief invades Shadowheart. She may have had a few months to mentally prepare for the possibility of more than one child, but it's still daunting. At the same time, she feels a pang of pity for the two hatchlings that will most likely never make it. How will Lae'zel feel about it once she's lucid? Will she mourn their loss? Call herself a failure for only being able to bring a single hatchling into the world? Hopefully not.

“We have decided to keep Lae'zel here until the egg hatches,” Am'aari continues. “We think it is best for her to be under observation, and for the hatchling to have its mother nearby when it arrives.”

“I understand,” Shadowheart responds. “Can I stay with her?”

“I am afraid not. As a new crèche, our resources are rather limited.”

A jolt of anxiety courses through her innards. Being separated from Lae'zel, especially in such a delicate moment, terrifies her. Not being able to comfort her when the effects of that potion wears off. To hold her when she wakes up in the middle of the night in that unfamiliar bed. To celebrate the baby's arrival with her. To hear immediately if something bad happens.

“How long will she need to stay here?”

“For as long as the egg remains unhatched. We cannot possibly know the exact timing. It may be three days or a full tenday. You may visit her if you wish to, but chances are that she will be sedated or resting, especially on the first few days.”

“Of course. Thank you, ghustil.”

Only once she's far enough from that old factory, dragging her two feet to the closest portal, does Shadowheart allow herself to shed a few bittersweet tears. Sweet with the happiness that everything went well and that she will finally meet their first child soon. Bitter with the uncertainty of how she and Lae'zel will manage without each other, even if it's only a few days.

Don't be sad, my love, I will protect you with my life.

Sorry for infodumping about my special interest out of nowhere, you said a keyword and it activated my unskippable dialogue

feral prints|high res on patreon

notes and thoughts on the Nine-Fingers Keene tag dive

First, the unpretty Sheets chart:

For a deeper explanation of how I break down the roles, you can see this post here; and here is a comparison of NF's tag accuracy (percentage of main + side works) vs the rest I've done:

Raphael: 75% | Nocturne: 71% | Nine-Fingers Keene: 62% | Aylin/Isobel: 56% | Minthara: 54% | Alfira: 44% | Jaheira: 36% | Araj: ~27%

Please note that at this point, Minthara's is ~9 months out of date, the rest between then and now. Take these as a general baseline versus a hard truth.

Similarly to Nocturne, Act 3 easy-ish-to-miss Nine-Fingers Keene steps neatly out of the broader fandom spotlight and into the hands of people who actually like her.

Actually - I believe a lot of people genuinely like the women of BG3. But I also believe people do not care about them, which becomes really obvious with the amount of reverse-thought-criming in some characters' tags (Jaheiraaaa). AO3 users writing about Astele Keene, especially in her more recent works, like her and they care about her.

The minor role tags were in large part due to: a character, usually Tav, has a connection to the seedy underbelly of the city, and they need to call in a favor from NF. They will meet with her and/or discuss her and/or think about her for a few paragraphs.

Nine-Fingers' main ship was, predictably, with Jaheira. Her second largest fic-status was no tagged ship at all. The other ship-fics were individual one-shots with various characters (no repeat ships).

Regardless of relationship status, she's a girl's girl for sure:

This is subdivided, so works tagged both 'gen' and 'f/f' for example are counted as one of each; 76% of her works are not only ff, 76% of her works include the ff category.

And if we change this to only include works that actively ship Nine-Fingers:

Something else interesting is that Nine-Finger's tag is small enough that I could screenshot the entirety of my Roles column:

(rotated so it's oldest -> newest by post date. main, side, minor, mistag)

We can see her early tags were all side, background, a few mistags; the most recent works being on the other end of the spectrum, almost entirely fics truly about Nine-Fingers; and a pretty smooth gradient in the middle.

I am not going to lie, at first I was like yay looks like people are finally learning to tag :-) but, what this more likely indicates is just the fading popularity of a two-year-old game -- especially with newer shinier fandoms pulling audience from the bg3 pool. Users posting more recent BG3 fanfic are primarily those still standing in the now-settled dust, writing about favorite characters/settings/lore, with a drop in the general kind of 'this is my Tav's epic love story from beginning to end (with every NPC mentioned tagged as well)!' written and posted on a new-fandom high. I imagine that brand of enthusiastic-cum-careless writers are probably posting the same but with Rook now? Sympathy to my Veilguard mutuals.

Like I mentioned above, it's been almost a year since I posted my first Minthara infographic. It will be interesting to go back this summer and see what's changed for her as well, and if the above holds up for an unavoidable Act 1 character like her versus a more missable, late-game char like Nine-Fingers.