#the light here is something else

[robo-dino-puppy]

ruin and light in the stillsands

[mipexch]

been thinking about something wicked a little too much lately. no harm in romanticizing the ominous dreadful unstoppable force

[stormofdefiance]

want to do a properly thought out write up on this but.... Sunday and Aventurine have so many parallels. Sunday the oldest of an orphaned sibling duo who wishes to sacrifice himself (in a sense) for his sister, Aventurine the youngest of an orphaned sibling duo whose sister sacrificed herself for him. The way Aventurine puts his left hand behind his back to stop it from shaking and Sunday who holds his right hand behind his back during particularly intense moments. Both who feel fundamentally alone no matter how many people they surround themselves with, who actively build self-destructive walls to keep themselves from others, who struggle to find a sense of peace and happiness for themselves, who hide every emotion behind a placid smile, who willingly transform themselves into actors within the grand theatre of life.

[puppyeared]

Why are ppl scared to call it what it is and say we’re still going thru covid on top of seasonal illness. Like. That’s pretty important right. I was watching the news and they were like oh yeah we have an unprecedented number of flu cases “as well as other sicknesses” without actually saying Covid. No announcement abt vaccinations or masking or anything. Also if I hear someone joking abt “war flashbacks” for mentioning covid I fucking hate u

[wynandcore]

Okay I wanna show my favorite piece of Uprising concept art, it’s been in the back of my mind ever since I saw it

Look at that.

[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

[swordheld]

hi! your blog is one of my favourites and i absolutely adore reading your thoughts. my grandfather recently passed away and it feels like i lost myself with him. how do i continue living after this? there is this constant weight on my chest and it feels like an emptiness has made a home inside of me. how do i go on when it feels like the world crashed on my shoulders?

hello, love! this is so very sweet and kind of you, and i hope you're treating yourself gently and kindly right now - there aren't words for a loss like this. that heaviness is difficult, and hard, and painful. it's okay if things don't feel okay, right now, or even soon - i think that's something that a lot of the people i know that have gone through similar grief feel: like they should be able to get back to a relative 'normal' in a [insert far too short period of time].

but it's okay if it hurts. that's where i'd like to start. you're allowed to feel that emptiness, that world-crashed feeling that goes beyond words, beyond time. don't feel like you have to rush this to feel some sort of better. things get easier with time, i promise you this, but sometimes painful feelings are important to feel, too. cry, scream, feel your emotions. they're a part of you. grieve.

it's perhaps a little silly, but when i think about death i always think about a couple of space songs: mainly drops of jupiter by train and saturn by sleeping at last. there are perhaps others that speak to the emotions better, but these two have always hit something a little deeper for me, and are popular for a wide-reaching reason.

and while personally i don't know much about grief like this, i do know a lot about love; and i think they're a lot of the same thing.

the people we love are a part of us, and this is why it takes from us so deeply when we lose them, because it does feel like we've lost a part of ourselves in the wake of it. but it's because they were so central to our experiences of living - our lives, that the separation introduces a hollowness - a place where they used to be. a home that now goes unlived in.

an emptiness, like you said.

but just because they're not here physically, doesn't mean he's not still there, in your heart, in your life, your memory. you can hold him close in smaller ways, as well: steal a sweater, or cologne/scent for something a little more physical and long lasting for remembering. hold onto the memories you cherish, the things that made you laugh, the ease of slow mornings and gentle nights. write them all down, slide a few photographs in there, go through it and add more when you miss him. keep them all close, keep them in your heart.

you're not alone, in this. he's still there, with you, it's just - in the little things.

he's with you in the way you see and go about your daily life, in doing what he liked to do, in the ways he interacted with the world that you shared with him. the memories you recall fondly when the night is late or the moment is right and something calls it into you like a melody, an old bell, laughter you'd recognize anywhere.

but i think, perhaps most importantly above all others - talk about him. with your family, your friends, his friends, strangers; stories are how we keep the people we love alive. the connections they've made, the legacies and experiences they've left behind, and so, so many stories.

how lucky, we are - to love so much it takes a piece of us when they go. grief is the other side of the coin, but it does not mean our love goes away. it lives in you. it lives in everyone who knew him, in the smallest pieces of our lives.

the people we love never really leave us, like this: they're in how we cook and the way we fold our newspapers, our laundry, in the radio stations we tune in to and the way we decorate our walls, our photo albums. they're in the way we store our mail, organize our closets, the scribbled notes in the indexes of our books. the meals we love and the drinks we mix, the way we spend time with one another. they've been passed down for generations, for longer than history - and we are all the luckier for it.

think about what you shared with him, and do it intentionally. bring him into your life, like this, again. whether it's crosswords or poetry or sports or anything else. if one doesn't help, try another. something might click.

i hope things feel a little easier for you, as they tend to do only with time. i hope you find joy in your grief, even if it is small and hard to grasp at first. know that your hurt stems from so much love that there isn't a place to put it properly, and that it is something so meaningful and hurting poets and storytellers have been struggling to put it into words and sounds that feel like the fit right for eons, and that it is also just simply yours. sometimes things don't have to make sense. sometimes they just are - unable to be put into words or neat little sentiments, as unfair and tragic as they come.

but i promise it will not feel like this forever. your love is real. and perhaps, on where to begin on from here - i think it's less on finding where to begin and just beginning. and you've already started. you've taken the most important and crucial step: the first one. wherever you go, after that, from here? you'll figure it out. you always have, and you always do. it'll come, as things always do. love leads us, as does light - and you're never alone in your hurt. in your grief, your missing something dear to you. i think if you talk about it with others, you'll find they have ways of helping you cope as well - and they have so much love of their own to spare, too.

as an aside, here is the song (northern star by dom fera) i was listening to when i wrote this, for no other reason more than it makes me think of connections, and love, and how we hold onto the people we love and how they change us, wonderfully and intrinsically. it's a little more joyous than the others i've mentioned, and plays like a story, and it made me think of what is at the core of this, love and stories and i am here with you, and maybe it'll bring you some joy, if you'd like it. wishing you all my love and ease 💛

[rain-on-wax-feathers]

nonhuman burr, washington, and eliza!!!

[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.

[alackofghosts]

safe and sound now

[nezz-cringe-crib]

i think it's really interesting that misa was actually chosen by a shinigami to be given a death note, meanwhile light just so happened to come across a death note. makes me wonder what would've happened if light had never picked up the death note, because i'm assuming misa would've still been attacked, and therefore still be given a death note. if kira didn't exist, who would she start worshipping for saving her life? would she just worship the shinigami? would remmisa be real? the world may never know.

[yuwuta]

i politely demand you talk about your nge/pacrim au!

thank you for enabling my behavior and for all your art omg <33333 i will attempt to coherently and briefly outline my thoughts

the short version is: yuuta/rika saves you post-battle and both are irrationally upset when it turns out that you already have a boyfriend. 

yuuta would like to take some of the credit for digging you out the rubble, but the truth is, it was like his mech was on auto-pilot, overriding all of his controls to dig you out of a lifeless environment and stash your cold, limp body in the center chamber until yuuta and rika were transported back to the base. 

yuuta doesn’t understand why he lost control of rika like that, nor does he understand why he feels so upset when he goes to visit you in the infirmary and there’s already some other man by your bedside holding your hand. he vaguely recognizes kokichi as a junior engineer who’s done a few surface level repairs on rika, and he’s surprised and green with envy to find out that kokichi is also your boyfriend. 

yuuta doesn’t understand the anger he feels, or the headache he gets, or the panic attack that’s threatening to rise in him, or why his feet automatically drag him back to his mech, or why he feels like he could hear rika’s faint sobs and screams in his head and he lay in his pilot chamber. none of it makes sense and he can barely sleep because of it, but it happens every time he thinks about you and kokichi for too long; and strangely enough, if the thinks about how rika seemed to come to life to save you for too long. there’s some kind of missing link he can’t piece together. 

when you’re conscious, you can’t seem to recall any part your childhood, and only have your memories from college onwards, save for bits and pieces of the attack you were a victim of. yuuta learns that you were studying to be an engineer, that you were moving to work at the hangar and be closer to your boyfriend, that kokichi was slated to pick you up from the airport that ended up being the site of attack. a small part of yuuta wishes kokichi had been there, thinks that rika wouldn’t have found him in the rubble. 

you’re the miracle save, and somewhat become the baby of the hangar. world-renowned pilots you’d only ever studied in class stopped by to give you their condolences, offer their help. you try to remain calm when satoru gojo and kento nanami make an appearance as a duo in your tiny recovery room, calling you brave and bowing to you with a home cooked meal in hand. senior engineers do their best to recover your work from college, assuring you that your injuries and recovery period would be a non-factor in the hiring process—that you were free to start as soon as you felt comfortable. you get the most attention from yuuta, who makes himself a friend, and a critical part of your recovery, essentially firing your physical therapist in favor of fixing you himself. 

everyone makes you feel welcome, but yuuta makes you feel safe. he holds your waist while you re-learn to walk, he sneaks you into the pilot’s lounge while the jaegers have their repairs done—and nods in faux-sympathy as you mourn the presence of your boyfriend, who seems busier than ever these days with nuisance repairs, jokes about how yuuji and megumi seem to be particularly reckless with their jaeger lately—he squeezes your hand when you have headaches and fractured flashbacks of your past that you can’t piece together, he holds you when you cry out of pure frustration of not being able to remember who you are

yuuta’s a real smooth talker, too. always knows exactly how to comfort you while your boyfriend is busy, always talks to the press about you so preciously, always makes you feel like you have a purpose even if you can’t remember your past self—maybe you weren’t meant to remember anything before him and rika, maybe it was meant to be this way. it’s a twisted comfort, but it’s something to cling to, it’s better than crying over memories you no longer have.

everyone notices yuuta’s weird reverse stockholm syndrome lol… the way he hovers over you like he’s your sole protector and savior, the way he demands to be privy to all decisions about your health care, the way he remains close to you with no fear of your boyfriend. nobody says anything, though—yuuta’s a pilot, a good one, and one the few solo pilots in the entire world. he’s precious and vital to humanity, worth a thousand men, worth ten thousand engineers. besides, his friends see something special between you two, especially the co-pilot pairs; satoru and kento, megumi and yuuji, choso and yuki—they know compatibility when they see it, and boyfriend or not, you have something special with yuuta. they all share a common thought: kokichi is fighting a losing battle. and even if he could beat yuuta, he’d never win against rika.

[realchemistry]

Buddie fic teaser

I was listening to "Down Bad" and the idea for this fic came to me. My brain works in funny ways so it doesn't really match the song (at least for now), since it's basically a different take on accident-induced-amnesia.

Anyways, this is just a teaser, I literally thought about it today so it's not done and it might never get finished. Maybe posting it here will help move it along...

No name fic, rated T thus far since the starting point is the shooting.

When Eddie went down, Buck felt a part of himself died with him. It was like an out-of-body experience: he could see himself paralyzed, completely frozen, unable to function because his best friend in the whole world had just been shot. Eddie’s body gave out, hit the pavement, and Buck was pushed to the floor. Eddie was bleeding out right in front of him, and Buck felt himself dying along, but there was no bullet hole to blame. It was all pain, the worst of aches he’d ever known, it was like his heart was ripped apart as Eddie’s body was torn. Eddie seemed to be reaching out, and Buck’s brain went back online. He thought about Chris, about their love for each other and his love for them. Buck had to make it right, so he gathered his strength and wits, and got into action. After dragging his best friend’s body, after placing him in the truck, after tending to his wound, after dropping him off at the hospital, Buck still didn’t feel completely alive. There was a lot of waiting involved, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of crying. When he was told that Eddie was going to be okay, that was when his heart started beating again. Buck ran to the hospital, he needed to see Eddie alive and well for himself. The only reason he hadn’t been right next to his bed was because he knew Chris needed him and, if he was honest with himself, he needed the kid just as much to get through it all. Once he got to Eddie’s floor, Ana was waiting outside the door. She didn’t look as happy as Buck was expecting, all things considered. He wanted to greet her quickly and move on to the room but she stopped him. “Hey, Evan, just, you need to know something before you go in.” “What is it?” Buck was feeling dizzy all of a sudden. “When Eddie woke up, he didn’t… he didn’t remember some things. The doctor said maybe he hit his head or the trauma—” Ana sounded defeated. “What does he remember?” Buck asked, dreading her answer.

[skrunksthatwunk]

yyh shipping opinion charts (NIGHTMARE MODE)

blank versions below cut

[ratatatastic]

post practice interview | 5.5.24 (x)

also the tight smile after he corrected that reporter reads very...

[tragedykery]

english is so correct for the word “moon” that’s exactly the right word for it. double o for visualising the roundness (x2)! u/ʉ vowel similar to the sound of a wolf howling! & I can’t explain it but a word for moon simply Needs to have a nasal consonant in there, and the english one has not just one, but two of those thangs. my sincerest apologies to other languages but english really wins this one