#everything else is easier

[sanctus-ingenium]

I'd like to say a prayer, how does it go?

[seagreenstardust]

It’s become so apparent to me that whenever Katsuki yells at Izuku in seasons 4 or 5 it’s usually a direct result of him getting flustered. If Izuku shows any ounce of caring about Katsuki, of being happy because of or for him there’s is almost always an explosion of shouting in result.

Katsuki Bakugo doesn’t blush when he’s flustered, he yells and blows things up and it’s astounding to me how clear that is in canon. He’s emotionally regulating the only way he knows how. We know his internal landscape is rapidly changing at this point so it makes total sense for him to end up in these situations where he doesn’t know what to do or how to handle or even identify his feelings so he falls back into what’s comfortable just to maintain a little equilibrium

[puppyeared]

adhd is when you shoot for the moon but you forgot the rocket fuel and by the time you realize it everyones already on the moon and then you panic and crash into the sun and it explodes

[honeypleasejustkillme]

i use dissociation more than anything i’ve ever learned in my 10yrs of therapy

[ageless-soul-au]

Hi, I think epilogue Warriors is the hottest (genderfluid) woman ever and so I'm sharing her with everyone. Also Legend is cool too. They could be in hair commercials together.

They're coming back from the castle and Wars is patiently listening to Legend bitch about whoever annoyed him while they were there. He just needs to get it out of his system 😂

Legend (he/him) and Warriors (he/she/they) belong to ASAU, please don't tag any other AUs ✨🏳‍⚧✨

Bonus bc Wars is hot when she's mad:

POV you're one of the queen's generals and you misgendered her top military advisor 🫢

[silhouette-cosplay]

Hello travellers! I'm Sil, an avid cosplayer and professional costumer with too many Lokis and a detail obsession. I handmake most of my costumes, and I love sharing the behind the scenes of my builds! My ask box is always open for questions (seriously, I will never shut up about making stuff xD)

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Astarion/Faded Drow Armour (Baldur's Gate 3)

FINISHED!!: Loki (Ragnarok concept art by Aleksi Briclot) Upcoming: Vax'ildan (Champion look from Critical Role)

Cosplay Masterlist (for this blog, which I only started in 2017, so this isn't everything I've made!) Loki (MCU) - Briclot/Ragnarok Concept Art | wip tag - Dark World | wip tag - Original Design | wip tag - Concept Tunic | wip tag - Avengers | wip tag - Jotunheim - Jotun - Prison | wip tag - Black Suit Black Widow (MCU) - Winter Soldier - Civil War - Infinity War | wip tag - Endgame Galadriel (Tolkien) - Mirror Gown | wip tag - Silverlode Cloak | wip tag - Lindon Gown | wip tag - Ceremonial Silver Vax (Critical Role) - Legend of Vox Machina | wip tag - Champion | wip tag Eowyn (Tolkien) - Shieldmaiden | wip tag Culinwen (LOTRO OC) | wip tag Raven (RWBY) | wip tag Qui-Gon (Star Wars) | wip tag Daenerys (Game of Thrones) - Dragonstone | wip tag Rapunzel (Tangled) - Classic - Rapunzel Rider Crowley (Good Omens) | wip tag Amity Blight (The Owl House) | wip tag Arthur Pendragon (BBC Merlin)

[13eyond13]

love it when a character that's hard to read intuitively for you has like a dedicated fandom interpreter who can just glance at their blank face in a panel and then give you a 3k word essay on their innermost thoughts & desires & fears and neatly tie it back into the themes & whatnot as if it's the most obvious thing in the world

[bacchuschucklefuck]

this whole thing being abt rage is also really interesting. I feel like it comes up so much in fiction as a motive because it's the one emotion that's unifyingly restless while everything else can be petrifying, and just personally nothing hits like impotent rage for me, esp. with teen characters, esp. with characters whose rage is stoked by Someone Else to further that Someone Else's cause. like you'll have done all that in a bout of passion and when you're done you look around you and nothing has changed. those sentiments don't get quelled by being satisfied. righteousness withdrawal is a horrible thing to intentionally drag someone into, least of all just some kids.

[presiding]

a doctor turned serial killer turned doctor again, an actor who paints, a gang leader, a mining baron, and a vice overseer walk into the room.

oh yeah and they lead karnaca now.

dishonored 2 is my fav game but i think it's mid, story-wise. here's why dh1 works and why dh2's overarching story sorta misses

tl;dr: story integration is critical for gameplay that offers audience payoff, but emily's personal arc from dishonor to honor is inconsistently demonstrated in the story, and is not an interactive part of the gameplay.

essay/long version under cut >

recap: what's dishonored's deal

[skip if you want] dh1 is an underdog story: corvo is an honorable man swept up in the machinations of a callous city, so his canonical ending being 'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation being restored in a more hopeful city, due to his & the player's rejection of the violent connotations of the tagline 'revenge solves everything.'

similarly, in dh1 DLCs, daud's story arc is that of an anti-hero: a dishonorable man who realises too late he has done irreparable harm. he sees the error of his ways after a single monumental death, and eventually a single life redeems him when he/the player stepped in to circumvent a terrible fate for a child, enabling her to rule unfettered.

daud & corvo come to a satisfying conclusion within the extent of their narrative arcs. it doesn't matter that a child on a throne isn't really a fix for a decaying empire - the player's actions throughout the city of dunwall was what mattered - and these stories could be framed as parables. in that sense, young emily as a ruler is a metaphor for a hopeful future for the city & empire.

dishonored 1 & its DLCs are also great examples of storytelling with perfectly integrated gameplay - you, the player, worked towards the outcome that redeemed the protagonists.

in your efforts to save young emily, you either achieved a good outcome (corvo) or prevented a worse outcome (daud).

bringing us to dh2 -

what's emily's arc

emily's arc is a coming of age: we're introduced to a reigning empress who questions her role & skillset ("am i the empress my mother wanted me to be?"), then her titular fall from grace occurs. from there, she learns to reject the violent, selfish connotations in 'take back whats yours' tagline (a la daud & corvo!) while rediscovering why her rule is critical to the empire.

emily's rule is no longer metaphorical, but:

a literal thing for audience assessment (is emily a good ruler?) AND

the crux of her storyline.

at the beginning of dh2, emily is introduced as a disengaged leader ("i wish i could just run away from all this;" "i dont know if whether i should sail to the opposite side of the world, or have everyone around me executed"). the antihero has a precedent for the dishonored series in daud, so it's not at first glance an issue*, however, the fact that emily has ruled poorly reframes corvo & daud's endings as being less than ideal (a moralistic retcon) *we could talk here about how ready an audience was in 2016 for a flawed women as a protagonist, hell, even in 2023,,,

throwback to the beginning of this essay when i said:

'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation

emily's story arc, unlike for daud & corvo, is literally about the quality of her rule. we're no longer in metaphor territory (ironic phrase): a parable-style ending doesn't work.

does emily become a good ruler

we know she becomes a good ruler because the game says so. it is narrated to the audience via a (literal) word of god in the space of 30 seconds, after the final boss. the outsider tells us that emily becomes known as Just & Clever.

drawing a distinction here - this narration is not the same as the player actively being involved.

the player does not throughout the game become aware that emily has made political allies. during the game, she doesn't talk to these characters about saving karnaca or being a better ruler to the empire (there's a few lines might imply it, but you need to be actively looking and being careful to wait for every voice line. it's a far cry from daud & corvo's fight to save emily being unmissable - even though daud doesn't know at the beginning that's the goal).

how does the game show it

you can coincidentally not kill most of your subjects and never be aware that emily is looking to restore karnaca by means of instating a council - it's never brought up. it *couldn't* be brought up, because that council serves under the fake duke (armando), who is the last person she speaks to before she leaves for dunwall. its her suggestion that he rules karnaca, but armando's condition is that he will rule as he sees fit.

to back up a bit, emily's canonical method of restoring karnaca is by banding together key allies - hypatia, stilton, [byrne &or paolo], pastor, under a council beneath the duke's body double. they are passionate people who would each individually make worthwhile advisors, but if you think about those characters sitting at a table trying to reach an agreement, it feels like an assortment of people that emily didn't kill along the way and doesn't feel organic (up to interpretation). it's not stated if emily herself banded this council together, but logically she must have (worth a mention these are mostly characters that you as the player had reasonable rationale to kill during a high chaos run, except pastor). the underlying concept may be that karnaca's power is returned to its people - which is interesting given that the monarchy remains and armando's decision is final.

this overarching solution could also be taken as a critique to dh1's 'put your kid on the throne,' which is another reason its worthwhile looking at how emily was shown to be a better leader. obviously my point isn't that her solution was bad given the circumstance, but i mean she has very little agency here in all. if emily was shown to be more controlling as a leader, this could be interpreted as character growth, but that's not the case.

coming of age

how do you learn & grow when you can't specify your failings? emily doesn't really touch on her shortcomings as an empress. she non-specifically worries delilah makes a better empress than her. it's hard to argue her worries are meaningful when someone good at their job will still worry when lives are in the balance.

emily's best 'aha' moments (eg. crack in the slab comment about gaining perspective) are consistently undercut by a conversation with sokolov or meagan afterwards in which she demonstrates she hasn't learned anything (before the grand palace, emily condemns 'toadies sucking up to me' and is reminded by meagan that she's part of the problem). the story is confused about what it's trying to say about emily's progress, and when she's meant to show progress, if she was meant to show any progress at all. it could be argued that emily was never even a bad ruler, she had just been fed misinformation about the problems in karnaca and been the victim of slander by her political enemies. the game doesn't make this clear - it's easier to argue that the opposite is true given that her allies only have criticism.

worth a mention here that the heart quotes about armando - a fake ruler - interestingly mirror emily's character concerns. "see how he sighs? his life is a gilded cage." but this essay is already long.

while corvo & daud spend their games (and through the gameplay) 'earning' their redemption, emily is being led by the NPCs around her to a conclusion and a fix for the political mess in karnaca: meagan & sokolov guide emily to her missions, and there's no recurring quest for emily to investigate possible allies. she is able to gather the people she hasn't killed to herself by manner of... post-game narration. during the game, she's primarily concerned with getting her throne back.

an easy fix: if there had been less dialogue & narrative focus on emily's failings perhaps the ending would have felt more satisfying. it has the feel of cut content, but i don't know what was cut to be able to comment on it.

so what went wrong?

i can't help but wonder if arkane were worried they would lose a certain demographic if corvo wasn't playable (may have been deemed too much of a risk - 2013 was a different time), and so they had to take out story elements that were unique to emily's growth as a character/empress, because the usual storyline/gameplay integration had to work for both characters - in other words, gameplay that made sense for both corvo & emily was prioritised before emily's story & character development. which is a silly problem to have in a game that added character voices for the sake of improving characterisation - maybe emily's tale would have felt more akin to a parable if she had less lines that betrayed her ignorance (to the disdain of those around her).

i wish more care had been taken with emily's story. most players will never really notice the large variety of different endings - they're not particularly satisfying in and of themselves.

it's ironic that one of Emily's complaints is about her father/protector being overbearing, when his (parallel universe) presence in the gameplay may be one of the reasons her own narrative arc falls flat.

what are the upsides here

changing tune from what didn't work - don't you think the concept is fantastic? it's a great idea overall - can you imagine if the coming of age storyline was better integrated into the game?

it's valuable to talk about the integration of story and gameplay and characterisation from a craft perspective. dh2 genuinely is my favourite game - it's beautiful, the imm-sim design philosophy makes the world a delight to explore, the combat gives endless creative options for tackling any fight, there is a far greater diversity of cast in an in-text canonical way. there's loads to love!

i love emily as a dodgy leader, to me it adds interesting dimensionality to the outsider's narrations - of course in dunwall there's never a neat happily ever after! emily, like the outsider, both work well as characters who hold ultimate power but aren't necessarily worthy of it - and this makes perfect sense for the dishonored universe's morality & critiques of power. however, within this grey area there's still plenty of room for a satisfying ending, which isn't what we ended up with, whatever the true reason for that was. and also, damn, emily's a marked assassin empress, if she can't lead well then who can?

while dh1 was criticised for its narrative simplicity, dh2 in contrast and in hindsight shows us that simplicity isn't so bad - there's satisfaction in gameplay achieves a clear, simple narrative goal.

[arins-art-alley]

oh my gosh OH MY GOSH I NEED MORE BABY WEREKRAKENS THEY ARE so cute (only if you wanna) Did werekraken callie n marie get along?

Bbys!!! Their bond was so good, callie was actually the one werekraken that could calm marie down!

[katkit-drops-alt]

SO UHHH I may or may not have gotten a bit carried away and made a OC for @blackkatdraws2 / @blackkatdraws ‘s blank script au

yeah have this crappy 1 am sleep deprived doodle of her

a tid bits of lore abt her in tags ^^

[feralmoonlight]

FEESH Brain said color them. Brain also proceeded to fuck off and nothing looks good SO Sea creature boys, sun chasing moons tail. They’re air-breathers, but based off of a combo of sea lions/leopard seals, coelacants, and eels, prefer warm coastal waters with deep drop offs and reefs or rocky shorelines, are very much territorial predators, are highly intelligent but can’t mimic human speech, and of course YN is gonna dive headfirst into the water with them cause why wouldn’t they?

Throwing moons (outdated) colors down under the cut cause I keep losing the post i added it to lol

New colors are more like this but still not it... aaa

I think I’m gonna still go MORE grey even cause I want the fins colorful and the main body ‘natural like fur’ but he still a bit too blue/purple OK I think i got it

Throwing a link to a cute seal with a butterfly down here so i dont lose it lmao https://www.tumblr.com/cipher-the-sidhe/698929167002173440/headspace-hotel-thebaconsandwichofregret

[ratwithhands]

i wonder when anyone is going to tell the league (in Battle Addict au) that straight jackets are actually pretty bad at keeping people actually restrained when they can think clearly hruoiehgboerhg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivuuJxX1hXg (when praciced, its even easier to get out of than shown here lol)) but this au is incredibly interesting! fascinating looking at how the public reacts to things in the extreme and how the people who they target suffer for it, and how much misinformation is spread. really got me curious how they sped their time and how this effects emmets mental state. it cant be easy with everyone acting like hes a monster. and while ingo doesn't get the majority of the attention- if must be so hard to see his brother suffering like this. and im sure he isn't spared so scorn as well. really really fascinating- and a verrrry clear reminder of what people used to think mental disorders were like and how people with them were treated.

Funny thing: that’s partially why there’s some minor edits to Emmet’s straitjacket. There’s a narrow bar that his arms have to slot through, as well as a set of belts tied to his upper arms to keep them from moving too far from resting position. Homeboy weaseled out of the first one after like two weeks and they said "ok do it again this time mf" and handed him the new one.

The league would probably put Emmet on "leave" (house arrest) if they saw him get out of another one/realize the strait wouldn't work. That is probably what's keeping him from breaking out more than the actual jacket is.

As for mental state,

The household is certainly seeing more absences and mental health days. The worst part about the diagnosis for Emmet is that everything he used to enjoy has lost its worth because any time he sits down to study, he's just proving he is crazy and battle obsessed. He forces himself out of his old habits but he doesn't have anything to fill the void so he's stuck in a perpetual state of being exhausted and disinterested. Ingo may or may not be subconsciously picking up these beliefs as well

Thank you for your ask! Took a while to respond cause of school, but I do hope to outline more about their lives and habits when I get free time. I gotta run though, so see you guys later ^^

[aceofstars16]

Prayers appreciated I guess. Mental health is still eh and spiritual health isn’t any better.

[thatsitso]

Just finished The Lord of the Rings (I cried)

[milkovski]

“show me what you’ve got tough guy ;)”