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themanwhomadeamonster · 9 months

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The 1999 combat theme and its foreshadowing because the autism got to me and I spent too long trying to figure out this soundtrack

Jumping off from @brokenjardaantech's WITW music analysis post here - go check it out, it's very insightful and lays the foundations for what I'm about to talk about! And thanks to @theterribletenno for the burst of inspiration by giving me a massive oh shit realisation in the most chilling way possible LOL

Spoilers under the read-more; TL;DR at the end :'^D

To preface, the soundtrack is structured in an ABC structure with bridges between A and B, as well as another between B and C that borrows from A. The key starts in Cm, briefly modulating to Gm in section B then back to Cm during the second bridge, and settling on Em for section C. In-game for WITW you most likely will only hear up to the first bridge since the Technocyte fight only goes for around a minute long

Sections A, the bridges and partially C feature genre similarities to grunge rock with fuzzy guitar chugging, whammy bar, and palm muting, while the drums are notably sharp snares (except for the first bridge, which are clean bass kicks that gradually distort transitioning into section B's style). Musically, it sounds like a typical fighting soundtrack meant to hype you up - the melody is confident and likes to push and pull its rhythm. But in section C it notably become emptier in its layering while keeping the distorted drums, placing emphasis on the lyrics (which I'll get to below lol). Heavier syncopation and polyrhythms are also introduced.

Section B however is the main outlier. This section is where it most strongly resembles industrial rock: rhythmic synth layers begin to accompany the melody (a pedal point line that plays every semiquaver/sixteenth note), synth drums replace acoustics and the guitars drop the fuzz that is characteristic of grunge and steadily strum every quaver/eighth note. Compared to the push and pull rhythm of section A, this section is steadier, less chaotic than the other sections, it wants you to focus on this section.

Notably, the lead guitar introduces a familiar leitmotif: This is What You Are (which @brokenjardaantech goes more in depth regarding its use in WITW). Here, though, its second chord becomes flattened (Dm -> D♭m) and introduces a diminished, dissonant sound. To me this was the first hint that the song may actually be about Arthur's downfall. This is What You Are is a musical leitmotif that recurs in moments of vulnerability, especially when someone is at risk of losing their sense of self, their identity and what they are. It plays during The Second Dream when we discover the Operator, during the New War when Eidolon!Lotus just lost herself to Ballas and can't recognise the Tenno, and in WITW during the Vessel "fight" when the Tenno is forced out of their Warframe.

I was prompted to actually dig more into the lyrics because I saw @theterribletenno bring up something really interesting

In this specific song, the leitmotif is diminished, it's corrupted. "Surrender to the corruption" - this is what Arthur is afraid of. I brought up earlier that section B had a genre shift. The contrast of the music is important, it's highlighting something, and together with the musicality of the leitmotif, it's making a sense of urgency and danger. The leitmotif is a warning to Arthur.

Section B sings these lyrics:

Break it, break it, Break it open!

Compared to the desperation in the other lines, these two lines are sung mockingly. The Infested are trying to break Arthur, and are succeeding. Their voice is becoming his. But there are actually two vocal lines in this section - you can also hear muted backing vocals in a much less aggressive and lethargic tone warning that "Disillusion". Arthur is trying so hard to keep his own voice and stay clear-minded but it's being drowned out and he's nearing his breaking point, and Albrecht, based on the Codex Fragments you find, is well aware of this.

In section C, while the layering is less intense it's noticeably more heavily syncopated and polyrhythmic, and introduces new (accompanying) echoing and dissonant synth layers reflecting the confusion and disorientation that Arthur begins to feel (these synth layers are actually introduced in the second bridge, but are more easily heard in section C). Section B and C also keep the synth/distorted drums that section A and both bridges lack (at most it's a reverb in those sections); the industrial sound of the song becoming associated with the increasing influence of the Infested over his humanity.

So I tried deciphering more lyrics for each section; I haven't figured all of it out and most of it could very well be wrong because of how heavily clipped the vocal line intentionally is so I don't want to make anymore assumptions than I need to, but I can understand enough of it to realise that the song is foreshadowing Arthur's corruption to the Infested. In green are the lyrics I'm confident are correct:

Sting it, sting it, sting it! Sting it, sting it, sting it in the flesh!

Bridge:

I don't understand! It brings more disease!

Break it, break it, Break it open! (Disillusion)

Bridge:

Sting it, sting it! Sting it in the flesh!

Who's dreaming? Who's the [???] It's a vision[?]!

TL;DR: the grunge/industrial genre hybrid represents Arthur's humanity/Infested respectively, and the song becomes increasingly industrial as the song progresses, most noticeably through the increasing distortion of the drum sound. Section A sets the stage, section B serves as a warning to Arthur that he's losing his sense of identity as the Infestation drowns out his "voice" while a dissonant version of This is What You Are plays, and section C is him experiencing confusion and disorientation as the Infestation continues to corrupt him.

#i'm assuming the last section might be about the tenno transferring to arthur since the singer brings up dreaming specifically?#please correct me if i misheard any lyrics the auditory processing do be processing badly #wf said we took the themes of grief compassion and identity and are throwing it back at you tenfold #warframe #warframe spoilers #warframe 1999 #wf arthur #audio #music #i haven't done musical analysis in a long time so i've forgotten some terminology especially with audio mixing rip...#but yeah idk i enjoyed this soundtrack it's musically simple compared to wf's other stuff but a lot of thought went into it thematically #i love when music tells a story in itself through its sound rather than lyrics #bc even without the lyrics the intention behind this song's composition is still very clear

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enden-k · 9 days

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OMG??? LUKA LOOKS SO ETHEREAL 🙏almost makes me want to forgive him for everything hes done

this is a good moment to mention that i feel like luka gets overhated waaaay too much in the fandom, idk if its just me who tends to like the more ""problematic""/troubled/antagonistic/dubious/morally grey/etc characters so i find him interesting but i rlly dunno if the hate is a bit too much or if i missed smth significant that explains why hes hated sm that ppl cant even leave their hate out of the comments on anything luka related hghh

but anw thanks tho :]

#i mean madarame is my problematic wife and SLDM is OBVIOUSLY adult audience #but seeing luka from a non adult audience targeted thing getting hated sm even tho mada is sm worse compared to him makes me think its #prolly younger ppl who just hate on him simply for his tactics during his round and whatever went on with hyuna #tho ofc correct me if im wrong if i did miss smth that explains all this hate bc otherwise i stand by the point its overhate at this point #or ppl liking to forget this is fiction idk #maybe im just getting tired of ppl and should go back to avoiding fandom or comment sections when i rewatch the rounds lol #dark media/adult fandoms are sm more chill oof oof #reply

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presiding · 9 months

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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.

#are you a dh1 enjoyer but less so a dh2 enjoyer?#have you ever wondered why you don't love dh2 as much?#here's 1.8k words that might articulate some of that.#light reading.i guess #this essay wasn't meant to cover everything - just the core of the plot and why its important to integrate story & gameplay #and to compare dh1 & 2 #dishonored #dishonored 2 #dishonored 2 spoilers #emily kaldwin #daud #corvo attano #this week i'm cracking things out of my drafts!#<333 don't get me started on doto.#some of this might be contentious. idk i try to live in a bubble #the meme version was easier to read i know i know #this essay would have been a lot longer had i integrated more references from the game #i know a few others have said this but imagine if they went a different way with emily #like she realises shes not fit for the job and maybe no one is and says fuck the system cause shes got a rebellious streak #and does a kickflip on the monarchy and institutes something else. i dont even care what. make it funny #and then for the sake of continuing the trend we spend dishonored 3 undoing the horrible leadership emily instates <3 #i think they really loved emily as a character. i FEEL the love i believe its there.but didn't think enough bout how she would be perceived #there's a good couple comments from baldur's gate 3 devs about how much work goes into writing women to account for sexism #there's more that i could have added to this essay but for brevity's (ha.ha) sake i'll leave it there #other textposts about this game that i see around tend to romanticise dishonoreds story a little more

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amphibianaday · 2 years

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day 1121

redesign of a frog bug fakemon i maade in 2019

#amphibian #frog #fakemon #described in alt text #i think im removing its fairy type idk if it fits #also only 2 pairs of legs 3 was just excessive #man i forgot i actually made a model of it i hope i still have the file #might be a fun project to pick back up #maybe model this version too and compare them in 3d!!!#the more i look at the old one the more that design grows on me but i wanted to do another attempt anyway #ignore the fact that the nincada inspiration is even less subtle here

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lvminisciel · 5 months

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You are a god, and i am your scales.

not even close to a compliance,

i am but mere scales, flocked around

bits of me will soon fall into the abyss

as you soared with your grace

amidst grayish hue

dutifully, every single being within me

shall worship you with no argue, unquestioning, unyielding.

not even close to an envoy,

i live on day by day

believing that i am covering you, safeguarding, protecting—

even when Your might is greater than all of us combined

i am but a mere mortal devoting my insignificant existence to you,

an omnipotent immortal who shall rule this bountiful land

dutifully i tread my path

whatever appeal you shall i serve

i am more than grateful to be alive within your grasp

please do use me to your heart's desire

a being dedicated to you and only you

if it is death you adore,

my carcass shall be handed to you on a silver platter

if it is life you crave,

then i shall travel between realms

even if it meant trapping my soul in the process

if it is love you yearn

then i repent, my Lord,

for i have none to give

nor do a temporal frame such as i

deserving of such decorum

please forgive my incompetence, your Highness

you may have my skull in exchange, if you wish

#tw // implied gore #tw // implied suicidal tendencies(?)#when i tell u sebek would've gladly sell his soul for his lord #ths man knows no bounds #n hes truly passionate of his loyalty #sebek zigvolt #malleus draconia #twst #twisted wonderland #miè writes ✍️#miè's poems #notice how the 'i' are written in lowercase; whereas any term referring to his Lord begins w/ uppercase?#its cz he deemed himself as a lowlife compared to his Lord the almighty #idk ive always seen sebek yelling out 'humans!!' even if hes half human himself as some form of insecurity of his #bc hes not as great as those of a full-blooded fae #even tho thats not true #alas; hes still a boy. hopefully he'd soon realize that he's just as worthy with the way he is #WHY DOES THIS TURNED INTO ME RAMBLING #miè rambles.. i guess

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puppyeared · 4 months

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who up seeing their disorder in a fictional character but feel like its not their place to put a name on it

#id have to be waterboarded before i can talk abt how i see a lot of my adhd and personality in mitsumi iwakura let alone post it #idk how to talk abt this without feeling like im talking over or invalidating ppls experiences relating with a character #someone was talking abt how ppl tie laios' autism to special interest and social difficulties but not much else which kinda flattens it #and then went into a respectful in depth analysis of other autistic behaviour that laios exhibits and it wasnt phrased meanly #its fascinating and important to me to hear someone explain a little bit abt traits that they recognized and often go overlooked #because it does help me learn more about it. but i think thats also where hesitancy kicks in when it comes to depicting it accurately #like i have adhd and some of my adhd symptoms overlap with autism (time blindness and pattern seeking behaviour) but that only means #it feels familiar to me even without having autism. on top of that traits arent always cleanly determined as being /caused/ by #a disorder. to understand my environment i compare it to something unrelated but similar to make it more familiar and for the longest time #i thought that was a personality thing and not an information processing thing since i loved playing pretend in my head as a kid #so if you make a character who experiences that hoping to reach people that also experience that and tell them its not weird or #smth youre making up like. thats the goal. ppl who dont get it arent expected to it just means it doesnt cater to them but it helps them #become familiar to it yk? since i dont have autism myself i dont feel confident i can depict it properly or explain it in my own words #but that doesnt mean im trying to dismiss it or try and cut it out completely.. ill just leave the floor open to someone who /can/#a lot of issues around fanon depictions are when smth is baselessly popularized or a characters personality and behavior is flattened #especially to fit them into a trending meme. its harmless and its supposed to be for fun but it gets tricky when you drag things that #need to be carefully explained beforehand or else it gets lost in translation. like that tweet abt 'hyperfixating' on cooking pasta #once it becomes popular language usually the original meaning is left out for the sake of simplifying it for everyone that when it #circles back theres a sort of hesitancy like. am i using it the way it was intended or am i unknowingly using the popularized version of it #actually thats probably why i felt wrongfooted during diagnosis bc it felt like i was misusing the words i heard to describe what i felt #i /know/ i see a lot of myself in mitsumi because our minds are always somewhere else and we tend to put good faith first and for me #that personal connection is enough. but idk it feels like its always gonna have to be 'palatable' first before i can talk abt it openly #mad respect to writers and creators who stick to their story even if theres the looming fear of ppl misinterpreting it and letting them #have it.. its been almost 2 weeks and i am so close to deleting that m3 dunmeshi drawing bc ppl keep saying chilchuck wouldnt have 200 HP #IT LITERALLY SAYS I MADE IT WHILE WATCHING EP 1. I USED EARTHBOUND LOGIC AND I WASNT EVEN TAKING IT SERIOUSLY CHILL #yapping

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henry-fox-biggest-stan · 1 year

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Just finished rereading the iliad, so thinking about Shauna and Jackie and Achilles and Patroklos, because the similarities are there.

The fight scene where Jackie (Patroklos) tells Shauna (Achilles) to get out because she can’t be around her at the moment, is, to me, similar to the scene where Patroklos is telling Achilles to go out and fight the Trojans.

And then Shauna (Achilles) tells her no, she won’t go out and if Jackie doesn’t feel like she can be around her that sounds like her problem, so maybe she should go out. Similar to Achilles not going out to fight the Trojans and save the Greeks, but instead agreeing to let Patroklos go out with his armor to help them.

Agreeing to go out is what causes both Jackie and Patroklos to die.

Before Jackie dies she has a dream (vision? whatever that was) where Shauna goes out to get her and bring her back inside, apologizing and giving her food. Similar to how Patroklos, before he died, killed many Trojans and believed he might be saving the Greeks after all.

Then it snows, and Jackie freezes to death outside (different to how Patroklos died, killed by Hector) and Shauna realizes what happened when she saw the snow through the window, and she runs outside to find Jackie’s corpse buried under the snow.

My friend is dead, Patroclus, my dearest friend of all. I loved him, And I killed him.

Now where the parallels get good.

Shauna, like Achilles, keeps Jackie/Patroklos’ corpse and visits it daily, talks to it, even does her makeup once. Achilles kept Patroklos’ corpse on their tent, and it wasn’t until Patroklos’ spirit came to him during a dream to tell him to give him a funeral, since otherwise he couldn’t enter the underworld, than Achilles started his funeral. Similar to how Shauna kept Jackie’s body until Tai said they had to get rid of her corpse and than what Shauna was doing wasn’t healthy.

They cremate Jackie, just like they cremated Patroklos.

Do not lay my bones apart from yours, but let them lie together

That’s what Patroklos spirit tells Achilles during that dream, which reminds me of “I don’t even know where you end and I begin”.

When he rejoins the battle, Patroclus does so as Achilles' surrogate, literally impersonating him by wearing his armor, and he represents Achilles' double as well as his opposite.

-Sheila Murnaghan, introduction of the Iliad, Stanley Lombardo’s version (1997)

In the most extreme moments of his grief for his most beloved person, Achilles presents Patroclus not as his child, parent, or wife, but as himself. The ultimate form of love is to see no difference between the self and the beloved. Patroclus' journey into battle wearing the armor of Achilles transforms him into his friend, in the eyes of the Trojans. He becomes Achilles also, tragically, in his violent death before the walls of Troy, killed by Trojans through the help of Apollo, just as Achilles soon will be. Once Patroclus is dead, Achilles tries to transform himself into his dead friend, by rolling in the dust and, like a dead man, abstaining from food, sleep, or sex. He anticipates joining Patroclus again, and becoming indistinguishable from him in death, when their bones are together in one jar."

-Emily Wilson, introduction of her version of the Iliad (2023)

Meanwhile Shauna (and the other girls, but she did it first) eats Jackie, Achilles doesn’t do that with Patroklos, but he does say this line

I wish my stomach would let me / Cut off your flesh in strips and eat it raw / For what you've done to me.

He says that to Hector, Patroklos’ killer, before killing him in revenge. Since Jackie didn’t have a killer (and if she did, it was Shauna, even if she chose to go out), Shauna has no one to kill in revenge, no one to wish to eat for the intense grief, so she turns to Jackie.

Also Jackie was always meant to die, she was doomed by the narrative, she died because she was meant for life outside the woods, for a normal life, the life they had before, she wasn’t meant for a cannibalistic cult, that’s kind of what Jackie’s death represents, she was a symbol of societal norms and hierarchies (being this popular prom queen and Shauna talking about how back home they were probably “missing their perfect little princess” and how Jackie tells her than she’s such a cliché for thinking of her and their relationship like that), whatever, but also Patroklos. He’s constantly described as gentle, kind. Which is weird to see given than he has one of the highest body counts in the book (if not the highest). Also people who are always described by those adjectives, kind, gentle, sweet people don’t usually belong in a war. Smh.

while Achilles is violent, quick to anger, and jealous of his own honor, Patroclus is gentle, concerned for the bonds of friendship between members of the army, and compassionate, and he reenters the war out of pity for the many Greeks who are dying because of Achilles' absence.

-Sheila Murnaghan, introduction of the Iliad, Stanley Lombardo’s version (1997)

Our Patroclus was, gentle and kind to all / When he was alive.

Then they gathered the bones of their gentle comrade

As Hector, who killed your gentle, valiant friend.

I will never stop grieving for you, forever sweet.

You killed his comrade, Gentle and strong,

Also, Achilles is described as having man-slaying hands. Isn’t Shauna the butcher of the yellowjackets?

#something about Achilles being compared to a spear in tsoa if I remember correctly #it’s been years I read it but it was something like ‘you can use a spear as a walking stick but it doesn’t change its nature’#Achilles being a killer #ruthless #being described as having man-slayer hands #isn’t Shauna the knife? the blade? the butcher?#Shauna tries so so hard to be normal she doesn’t even WANT to be the butcher and yet she is #she is she always is isn’t she #this might only make sense to me idk #the iliad #yellowjackets #achilles #shauna shipman #jackie taylor #jackieshauna #yellowjackets analysis #I guess #paralells #patroklos

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