I am using KDE (with 13wm) an Arch linux.

the fonts in all of my gtk apps are terrible. they are barely legible.

this image has k3b next to deluge. the difference is huge.

https://imgur.com/a/c8yXj9S

how can I fix this?

solved: there was something in my i3.conf that was reading font settings in .~/Xdefaults which were disrupting the desktop look.