I’ve done some bits of Act I in Baldur’s Gate 3 and I’m really digging Gale. I want him in my party even though we’re both Evocation wizards, but I just really like him. Mystra rejected him, right? What says I can’t become his beloved goddess with whom he shall omnipotently rule the Weave and all of Faerun by the end of the game, I who controls the light of the stars up above and he who controls the darkness within him

Amine Elgotaibi

An antique Gobelins tapestry from a series known as “Les Portières des Dieux” (The Doors of the Gods).

FEB2026

I put together and weaved this!

I’ve given a lot of in-depth thought to how I want to narratively handle the fact that even if you don’t deliberately trigger their romantic arcs, all of the companions enthusiastically come onto your character if you earn enough rapport with them lmao and decided that’d be a fun thing to type up into a post tonight. :] (all of them do try to come onto Jahen at the tiefling party, so. xD) I’m gonna put this under a cut so I can be as long winded as I want without hogging the dash haha <3

For Shadowheart - I really wanted her and Jahen to have a sibling-esque relationship right from the start without even a hint of anything romantic going on. Especially since she has all the exact right qualities to be someone he’d want to emotionally adopt immediately and I sort of wanted that to be Untainted by “attraction” in any romantic sense of the word.

This works on his end - she’s not really his “type” for one thing, and for another, he had much more pressing things on his mind right at the beginning of the story (he’s far more freaked out by the tadpole in a body-horror sense than she is, especially.) On her end, this was a little more difficult, because given how she describes being insanely attracted to Halsin - who shares several physical similarities with Jahen - it was much harder to conveniently explain why she wouldn’t have even thought about things in that way.

I eventually arrived at the decision to lean on the same social perception and adaptation she’s utilized throughout all her life to blend in with other Sharrans, and have it just be that she can tell more quickly than anyone else in the group that Jahen is sweet on Wyll. xD They pick up Wyll soon enough after the crash that I think even if she had any fleeting initial thoughts about Jahen physically, they’d have quickly cleared away once she got eyes on that situation and dedicated herself to being a friendly gossip about it instead. Also, she likely would have correctly deduced that if Jahen did succeed in his advances, Wyll wouldn’t be readily open to sharing, and thus didn’t bother to entertain thoughts in that direction either. and honestly, they fall so easily into the sibling bond. it’d have been a short journey between wondering how their relationship would shake out, to “brother from another mother” status.

For Astarion - I basically just imagine that he came onto Jahen several times over the course of act 1 and was turned down with bemused politeness each time lmao with the situation eventually progressing to Astarion deciding that must be a dead end - with some marked relief, at that. like I think him realizing that hey, he’s actually getting the protection he was after without even having to give up anything of himself first would have been an enormous weight off his pasty shoulders. welcome aboard pale elf.

I think it would be really funny though if MUCH later down the line, the repeated rejections start itching a little bit inside of Astarion’s ego - far past the point that he ever has to worry about losing his consent for that kind of thing of course - and he ends up deciding to ask Jahen about it. The answer would of course be that Jahen is a rather emotional sex-haver haha and at the time he could tell that what Astarion was asking for was absolutely not that. Jahen can do one night stands even, he just still likes tender and cuddly one night stands. His natural intuition would have told him the situation was very much not a match and the two of them were better off not opening that can of worms.

I also have a sort of messy/angsty idea in my head that idk if I’ll ever write or make “canon” but it’s fun to think about on rare occasion - that not long after Wyll and Karlach have passed on, Astarion decides to test the waters and come onto Jahen again, just to see if he can. And that Jahen, awash in grief and desperate for any kind of distraction, takes him up on it, and after the deed, the instant Astarion feels his moment of triumph, it immediately gives way into hideous regret, with him realizing he took advantage of Jahen’s pain just to prove something to himself. (I even imagine that he’s not truly *attracted* to Jahen in that way.) I don’t know if Astarion would be principled enough to admit any of this to Jahen in detail, but I think it could be a really interesting moment of growth that could serve him later in his immortal life, long after Jahen is gone. Maybe just another step towards being a slightly better person. And Jahen would be in too much turmoil anyways to question why it happened once and never again, he’d just move on to other distractions for a time. He never really has to know the truth, maybe he’d be better off being left in the dark on that one.

For Gale - I’ve talked about this one a little bit already - that Gale very much has that infatuation period in act 1, but Jahen never shows obvious reciprocation and Gale realizes without too much confusion that the feelings are not there on both sides. :’]

but! I also really like writing the progression of their relationship to reflect the fact that it might be one of the very first strong platonic (non-familial) bonds that Gale has ever had - and that he realizes along the way how extremely important that is and how much better Jahen’s friendship is for him than his romantic feelings would have been. very much a “I didn’t get what I wanted, but I got what I needed,” situation, and that in the end he’s much happier for it.

I imagine that Gale’s tentative romantic hopefulness was not entirely baseless; that Jahen is more or less just a very huggable guy and isn’t super aware sometimes about how that might come across to a stranger because he spent so much of his time alone prior to the nautiloid capture. but it was all innocent platonic friendliness from his perspective! xD Gale just had to figure out what page they were both on and it didn’t take long.

For Lae'zel - I actually do think that Jahen reciprocated some of Lae'zel’s attraction early on in the story before he and Wyll officially became an item. But Jahen would have reached a very similar conclusion for Lae'zel that he reached for Astarion: Lae'zel’s desires for sex are not compatible with his desires for sex. I don’t even think Jahen has anything against rough sex; I just think he’d still want the emotion to be there underneath! xD he’d have essentially concluded that Lae'zel would end up breaking his heart and he’d end up frustrating and annoying her. So he turned her down.

Of course, this very much hinges on the fact that with an early rejection, the two of them don’t realize that Lae'zel has an incredibly deep emotional well for strong bonds that she hasn’t had the chance to tap into yet. Of course, in their “canon,” this instead ends up turning into a situation where her friendship with Jahen is able to be much more heartfelt and important to both of them than either of them would have expected.

In some kind of AU situation where the only survivors of the nautiloid crash were Jahen, Lae'zel, and Astarion, then Jahen and Lae'zel would have ended up an item and they could have figured that out in a romantic sense. xD but it’d have entirely hinged on Shadowheart not being there to be a softer one-night-stand option at the tiefling party, and on both Wyll and Karlach not being around at all. which brings me to…

For Karlach - so, one of my Big Secrets is that when I first played the game, since I went in completely blind, I had no idea if I was even going to play a romance with any of the companions. also that if I was, I wasn’t set on any one particular one and was just gonna see where things went, if anything. by my first-ever tiefling party, Jahen had the best relationships with Wyll and with Karlach, obviously. and I almost went with Karlach instead of Wyll.

the two main reasons I ended up going with Wyll instead of Karlach were 1) I kinda bungled the dialogue tree with Karlach the first time lol and ended up not choosing the right conversation options to lead to initiating the romance arc (I didn’t think Jahen would come out so bluntly, I thought he might flirt a little first, then realized I’d missed the chance when that option disappeared) and the two of them ended that interaction still solidly friends LMAO, so I was thinking if I wanted to get that going I’d have to reload a save, and 2) I really liked the interactions that played out between Jahen and Wyll after the successful “steal a kiss” roll. Jahen leaning down to deliver the most chaste sort of kiss I think he’s even capable of haha (and imagining this was him deliberately reining in his usual enthusiasm out of respect for Wyll’s comfort), the way Wyll kind of stutters and giggles and clears his throat after it happens, the little pat to the shoulder exchange, etc.

I was just sort of instantly enthralled with this idea of a dynamic where the boisterous & rascally guy that Jahen had grown into in my mind would work so hard to accommodate and entice this young honorable man he has so much in common with and end up winning him over so much that they’d end up inseparable. Then as I continued playing that angle and they had so many exchanges that worked so well with Jahen’s ranger-ing and Wyll’s slowly progressing quest, I was soon completely hooked on their romance and enjoyed it more than I’ve enjoyed any romantic storyline in a very long time. :] AND I ended up loving the platonic friendship between Jahen and Karlach so much - especially because she tells you she loves you right before her near-death scene regardless of the type of relationship she has with you - that I ended up incredibly happy I didn’t start her romantic arc with him because the platonic version of their relationship matters so much more to me now.

yet the fact of the matter is that Jahen and Karlach are, in fact, ridiculously compatible in numerous ways. xD but after entwining Jahen with Wyll romantically, and getting to experience how rich Jahen’s and Karlach’s friendship is, I really wanted Jahen and Karlach to be best friends forever. and not for any preference for monogamous romance either - just that the “best friend” or “platonic life partner” is such an important relationship to me. and the two of them are also compatible in this way. and it felt like it would work so perfectly! and I really wanted that to happen!

of course, as far as during-the-campaign events go, this is easily explained away by the idea that Wyll is set on monogamy, so even though Jahen and Karlach themselves are each prone to easily jumping into allo relationships, neither would have even had the thought to do so with each other with things playing out between Jahen and Wyll the way they did. and so it works out that Jahen and Karlach’s relationship develops purely platonically (with a love as strong as the FULL CONCENTRATED POWER OF THE SUN) . BUT. however. the three of them then go to hell together. XD and. AND. Wyll & Karlach realize they have romantic feelings for each other there (well, maybe it’s more like Wyll realizes this and Karlach finally stops repressing this lmao).

so this quickly turns into a scenario of it being that the main reason that Wyll & Jahen are romantically/physically involved and Karlach & Wyll are romantically/physically involved and Jahen & Karlach are best friends and love each other wholly platonically is “because I said so.” and idk I feel BAD ABOUT THIS for some reason. because it’s my preference, I like it better that way, Jahen and Karlach being platonic life partners is so extremely important to me. xD i want the rep sooo bad. I want to write it like that soOoOo bad. but at the end of the day, I’m an aspec person writing allo characters. and whenever I see allo folks writing their tavs/durges going to hell with Wyll and Karlach while romancing one of them, it always becomes a three-way romantic/sexual throuple. y'know? idk my preferences feel Invalid somehow. 😭

I think I have mentioned before that Jahen and Karlach will gladly share bedspace with each other while doting on Wyll together. so even in my perfect version, they’re not averse to sexual contact with each other. but I’d really like for it to be platonic sexual contact between the two of them, and for romantic sexual contact to be exclusively from either of them towards Wyll. I even have it in my mind (and mayyybe. miiiight end up actually writing into the avernus fic) that while in the hells, Karlach starts to get Extremely pent up before Wyll is ready to have sexual contact with her (as he really prefers to take things slow in that regard) since she doesn’t have any of the other companions around at that point to let off some steam with (and everyone else in the hells is, lol, devils.) and that with Wyll’s consent, Jahen helps Karlach take care of some of that energy/need as a friendly, loving act of service haha. I’m imagining he uses his hands rather than other body parts and does a lot of aftercare to make sure she’s feeling okay afterwards. and it’s immensely fulfilling to me to imagine this happens and does not change anything for them. they are best friends. they love each other. they can get physical sometimes without it fundamentally altering their relationship.

I think the way this sort of thing works out best for me to imagine despite the fact that they’re both allo characters is something along the lines of this idea (one of my favorite framing devices of all time), that their friendship is a path the two of them have already followed so deeply into the woods at the point that it would be a loss to abandon it and try to switch tracks onto a romantic path instead. and I know, I knowww - friendship and romance are not mutually exclusive and oftentimes the best romantic relationships have both. in fact, Wyll and Jahen’s romantic relationship has both. and I also know that sometimes allo folks feel like “romantic” and “platonic” feelings can sort of blur together but the very idea of this brings about an intense aversion reaction for me, and I won’t be writing it that way for my own comfort tbh.

for me, for Jahen and Karlach, the friendship love is too big, too important at that point to accommodate an unfamiliar change into romantic territory, and remaining platonic is more fulfilling than making the switch. I personally can’t even conceive of what “romance” truly feels like, so it’s even easier for me to imagine the depths of their bond than it is for me to imagine the intricacies of the one between Jahen and Wyll. xD and hey, at the end of the day, it’s me who’s writing it. I’m just gonna have to ask that “because I said so” is enough to justify why it happens this way, I guess. I love the way their story has gone, and I can’t bring myself to change it just because it’d be more believable from an allo perspective if I overwrite their friendship into something else.

deflected doubleweaves exploring rhythm and movement

2025

jacquard weaves using the TC2 machine exploring rhythm and movement

2025

Jess Feury

took a ridge heddle loom wkshop! soooo fun

moodboard

The woven gifts I’ve made for Christmas this year. I have a few more to make but I think I’m done with tapestries for the moment lol.

They are all cotton yarn woven on a lap loom and then painted on with watercolor. 💖

Sometimes I get this heavy urges to do something which I have zero knowledge on. I went for playing badminton like this. One day out of the blue, I bought a keyboard (poor man’s piano). I have never learned singing or knows anything about music. This was few years ago. Now I am getting an urge to get into fabric. Not just buying fabic and sewing. I want to buy cotton and wool and spin and weave and stich and dye. Mind you, I live in a city in a 1 room kitchen place and work from 9-6. I have never seen a weaving setup in person. Maybe this is what people call as a fool’s confidence.

Sunrise (mine.)

Pilling showing off the new chest hair weave at Joe’s Bar & Grille. B. Fagan admires.

OH BOY-

I think I’m going to try to answer all these questions with Weave bc he needs a lil more lore so here we go!

This is Weave, btw. :3

🎀- Tell me a fact about them

Weave’s wings are limp patagium and fall about his shoulders like a light cloak. In order to use them to fly, he slips his top arms into his wings. The telescopic bones of his upper arms slip out, not only filling out the wing and providing structure and shape, but also hollowing the thicker bones out, making it easier to fly.

🔥- Something they’re passionate about

Weave loves fashion and clothes-making (Hence why we’re STILL working out his outfit). He has some conflicted feelings about it since it literally runs in his family, but he’s decided to make it his own thing in his own way screw what he was taught. He makes all The Squad’s clothes of choice on the oldest, crunchiest sewing machine you can imagine. He refuses to use anything else.

😨- Their Biggest Fear

Being stuck. In anything. Toxic relationship of any kind, nets, small spaces, glue, you name it. Being stuck can cause him to panic/act out more than anything else.

🥀- A memory that still hurts

He once tried to show off one of his outfit projects to his family. It was a gesture to repair a growing rift between him and his family, especially his younger sister and parents. They laughed at it and said his work was pointless since it wouldn’t go to anyone of status. He knows it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened to him, but it’s still ranked in his top worst moments even now.

💗- someone they care about deeply

Anyone in the Hiram Squad, but especially Gesine! Gesine was the only one who didn’t accept a new outfit from him after he joined the Squad, but always says kind, yet honest things about his projects if he asks. Both have a great appreciation for good beverages, so they go to the bar together a lot to yap together and chill. Gesine gets hard drinks, and Weave gets mocktails and juices.

🛏️- How do they act when they’re tired?

At first, he’s just a little slouchy, then his usually cool temper withers to a thread. If he makes it past that without blowing up and passing out, he gets whiny, fussy, and extra pessimistic and perfectionistic, which makes him want to sleep less. Anything beyond that he’s a melting ball of anxiety and chills.

Main tell if he’s tired is he starts pinching the top of his snoot a lot.

🎧- A song that fits them

oooooh this is tough-

after much searching I found a new song that is quite perfect!
Blue Sugar - by Ren Zotto

Writing On the Wall - by Will Stetson is also a good match for him

🍓- Something they love
Weave loves his found family. He wants them to be happy, which is something he hasn’t particularly wished for anyone but himself before. He still doesn’t completely understand it, but he’s willing to stick around and find out.

⚔️- What would they fight for?

Honestly, Weave might fight for fun or catharsis. It’s not uncommon to see him hop into a bar brawl just for the lols. He loves a good battle of wits and insults as well. It’s enrichment for him.

He would fight to kill for the Squad if they required it.

🌙 - What are they like at night?

Unless he goes and gets drinks with Gesine, Weave spends most of his nights doing his passion projects. New outfit designs, small clothing orders, patching the Squad’s outfits. It’s the main time of day he can have to himself to do it, and, most often, he won’t sit idle on it. When he’s doodling designs, he likes to sit with the rest of the Squad and listen to their radio or yap with them. He used to be more wild and wander the city at night after leaving his old home, but it’s too draining and he’d prefer spending the night with people he knows and brainstorming.

☕- A small, everyday thing about them

His favorite beverage is Cheeli juice. <3

🧸- how do they comfort someone they love?

Depends on the person. He’ll usually ask them if they want to go out for drinks/he’ll bring back drinks, or he’ll give them something he’s made and just sit near them if they want him to.

Wilko specifically they’ll go take walks and vent to each other about their childhoods. They’re the only ones who really know each others’ histories.

🙃- a weird little habit they have

He poses a lot. It’s not intentional, but whenever you look at him you’d probably think he was posing for some unseen camera. It’s just the way he is. He also sticks out his tongue when he’s being silly or thinking hard.

🌧️ - what makes them cry?

It’s hard to make him really cry. He’ll fake cry all the time because he likes putting on superfluous acts and bits because he thinks it’s funny. The easiest way to make him cry is probably trap him in something or tear one of his projects on purpose. The former he’d probably panic and the latter he’d go somewhere else and quietly cry where he hopes nobody would find him.

If he thinks to hard about his past, he sometimes cries too. At night, alone…sometimes.

💋- how they show affection

HUGS! Lots of physical affection, including draping himself over the couch when everyone else is around, hugs, blowing kisses, saying “I love you guys” at random moments. And also gift-giving. He memorizes your likes, dislikes and favorite colors, and will make outfits, blankets, coats, plushies, you name it!

If he lets you use a wing for a blanket, you are not a friend you are a confidant of the DEEPEST level.

PHEW! Thanks for sending the ask for my rants!! This was fun!! :3

Got that innovative low attention span. I get bored too long and I start learning how to create a loom out of cardboard to weave #mycardboardloom

My desire to weave bracelets was awakened this year sometime in the summer, even in the spring, I managed to get everything I needed only in Sentebra, and Silksong was released in Sentebra and now my friends joke that I am a spider-weaver.

And this is all a coincidence, and it’s just funny.