What is your favourite thing about Billie Lurk?
(Answers are obvious possibly but i love when people talk about her👍)
thanks for the ask!! YEAH ME TOO I love when people talk about Billie! I can't say I have a favourite thing specifically, but I can explain why she's my fav. apologies for not taking this qn literally, but -
short answer: she’s really cool
& you can stop reading there, or, for the maybe 2 mutuals who might have time to read this my thoughts on her as a character, her meta, and her character as raw potential...
long answer:
i considered making this entire thing a gush so you could read a gush about Billie. but, part of what draws me to her is that she’s not always well written, and in fandom she’s underrated for a literal protagonist.
since you ask...
billie is a cool character
when I played Dh2 (hadn't played Dh1), I was excited to see a black woman with disabilities who was captaining a massive ship by herself. wow.
then I discovered Billie’s backstory with Deirdre, the way she responded to that, then having to survive while living on the run, and her bisexuality. as well as her history with daud & delilah. fascinating!
she’s an outsider who has so much to lose, and knows what it's like to lose everything - having lost everything not once but three times - but nevertheless speaks truth to power. she's so brave! she went and helped Emily & Corvo and she must have known they might kill her! plus, she’s smart, she’s funny, she gets shit done, she’s gorgeous.
but... the meta
mild critique of fandom & arkane incoming.
skip this bit if you want - you've been warned twice now - jump to tired Hayao Miyazaki and read from there if you'd like my thoughts on writing her.
i thought Death of the Outsider was going to be amazing and then... well. *sad trombone* i've written about that before so i won't keep banging on. i figured others must be disappointed too, so I joined a few fandom spaces in hopes of finding camaraderie.
most people with complaints about DotO didn’t like how the Outsider and Daud were handled. which is valid & I agree. but it seemed like most paid no attention to Billie; when people talk about her it’s with respect to Daud, as opposed to in her own right. you could argue for fandom misogyny because people don’t talk about adult Emily Kaldwin that much either, but in Billie's case, it’s misogynoir (compare & contrast with the popularity of thomas, particularly the popularity of thomas portrayed as a white man for no particular reason that i've been able to discern - i keep asking around, is it in the books???).
i think this is a LOT better now than it used to be, which is fantastic. or perhaps i have found the correct echo-chamber? ha.
ultimately, The Fandom is a fraction of the entire picture, and not even the important bit since The Fandom is not who these games are made for. you can't make money relying on only your hardcore fans even if all of them spent a fortune on merch, this is true for any AAA game.
while it's true that Billie is underrated from a fandom perspective - but Billie as an underwritten protagonist is squarely Arkane’s fault.
it was reasonable when she was a side character - the lack of info in Dh2 makes perfect sense (if anything there was more lore in Dh2 which is kind of wild)-
- but as a protagonist in Death of the Outsider?
.... there’s lousy writing, and there’s whatever is going on with Billie Lurk, a black woman who mostly exists as a foil or saviour for light-skinned characters. In her own game there’s barely any of her own lore except where it's relevant to saving two dudes.
lore hints at, but barely touches on what race means in the Dh universe (xenophobia is stronger in Dh1; separate essay i guess), but Arkane has patted themselves on the back for portraying non-white characters, which feels like the same thing as the aesthetic of diversity we're seeing in advertising currently because it’s in marketing trend guides. it's self-congratulatory and it's a missed opportunity for deeper storytelling.
you can see an example of diversity at its most shallow in the way that Billie’s written: there’s little engagement with her as an entire person with history & wants & preferences, and the world she walks through in that game feels like it has nothing to do with her. you could make a case for alienation as a theme, but then, how do you handle the titular premise of 'Dishonored' without ever letting Billie make changes in an environment without a chaos system? it's disappointing from that angle too.
in my opinion, whatever it's worth, it was an accident Arkane created such an awesome character - they needed someone to betray daud. congrats billie.
all this said, it makes her an underdog as far as characters to enjoy & create art & stories for. it's nice to find so many like-minded, switched on people! <3
billie's character potential
she’s got a wealth of unexplored lore, being deeply intertwined with both Karnaca & Dunwall’s fates & criminal underbellies, as well as her connections to the witches & whalers, and three Empresses.
she’s lived a few distinct lifetimes and in the games we get to meet her at two peaks (KoD & DotO) & a low (Dh2 as Meagan).
her voice is very distinct, her dry & often dark humour is entertaining & fun to write. her perspective is really interesting - she’s had the widest variety of void-powers of anyone canonically, and she’s also lived through the highest highs and lowest lows.
she's got everything going for her :) i couldn't really pick a fav thing!
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Oh yeah also to be exact for stream purposes, average playtime from all 60 reviews is 10-12 hours, but total range is 8-15, double for a 100% playthrough. You do have to progress in the side content to progress in the main story (complete x missions/get x points/get to x rank type of deal), and you'll probably want to progress in the side content to level up since it's money-based and that's the fastest way to make money. I'm pretty sure the variance comes from getting sucked into the side content (probably not likely for your playstyle) or having trouble with the bosses at a lower level (they're apparently pretty hard this time).
It also looks like the Infinite Wealth demo is split into two (an adventure mode with the extra cutscenes and another one that's basically the demo we've seen around). Adventure mode Allegedly doesn't have proper saves at the time of writing (this was an annoyance for one reviewer so I assume it's long enough to warrant that), so it's worth taking that into account too. Anyway that's about it lol don't quote me on any of this because my brain just shut off after a certain point <3
OK BET TYSM CHAMP YOURE A LIFESAVER soooooo doing Quick Maths in my brain i might divide the stream up in two if i start playing at 4:30PM and i plan to marathon it.
ill take a break 3:45 - 5:45 saturday morning since that's a part of my regular routine and ill feel weird if i dip on it. I Dont Need Sleep but god forbid i skip out on all That apparently. plus it's a good break period to get exercise in and move around LMAO
going from 4:30PM -> 3:45AM's like.....10~11 hours... so that's about halfway through the game if i get entranced by side content... if we do somehow finish it all in one shot then we can just do the IW stuff after my routine.. epic.. it prob wont be any longer than an hour if that so stream- AUSPICIOUSLY THINKING- should wrap up around 7~9AM saturday.
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hello! i read your fic (though we may) fall apart last night and just wanted to gush about how much i enjoyed it.
it’s not often i get to read a fic from gojo’s pov that really moves me, but yours did just that. i know the main focus was reader and gojo but the way you delved into his character, the way he thinks, the way he feels, the way his past pushes him to act in this situation. i loved reading it!!!!!! and i love how you strung this connection between his past and present — i ached for him a little but it was so nice to see how far he’s come. the banter between them was also fun; gojo, no matter how he’s grown as a person, is still gojo in the end. i am so incredibly fond of him.
anyway, just wanted to say thank u for writing!!!!! and i’m glad i got a chance to read it. hope u have a great day ahead! :’)
hello ari!!
omg you are so sweet, i saw the tags you left last night and i was in awe and now i am in extra awe that you took the time to come and leave an ask!! on the next day even!!!! i'm crying. T_T
(i'm putting a read more because i kinda rambled lmao)
okay so, first, i have to agree that i also think that mappa legit spent half the budget on those eyes of his!! money well spent if you ask me LMAOOO
anyway! it makes me really happy to know that you felt moved by my fic!! while writing it i kept thinking that gojo was even MORE insufferable than usual since we could see more into his brain. in fact, my beta was like 'god he's so annoying' while he was going through this one LMAO.
when i wrote the first draft of this, i actually kind of struggled on how to include suguru because i knew i wanted to, but at the time i just wasn't sure how to do it. so i'm glad to know that the way i figured how to do it went over well!!
and the banter!! everyone always likes to comment on my banter (in general). gojo's a really good character to do back and forth with i think. it makes writing dialouge for him really fun. (also in this particular fic it adds a lot of levity i think… well, i think there's some kind of twisted levity to be found in his pov.)
but really, i should be the one thanking you!! for leaving such nice tags on my fic!!! for even coming back around to leave an ask!! my heart is FULL!!! i hope you don't just have a wonderful day, but a wonderful week too!!!
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