#yes i am ranting on tags again

[seven-tastic]

lukerosa but he doesnt get it

[drawedherbarium]

forgot to post this

[gemmahale]

There's a tiny part of me that's raging that I can't write a story without worldbuilding or plot or anything like that.

I started with the intent of making smutty hotness of my own desires. Instead I've ended up with a dozen worlds, each with their own fucking societies and traditions and season and shit.

All because I can't drop myself into a story - I have to have more than "what if - smut". It's always "how did they get there?"

And right now that feels like more trouble than it's worth.

[thetimecrystal]

begging people to know that tagging your selfie with a fandom tag is not how it works around here. And So Annoying

[presiding]

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!

[crimeronan]

orpheus sucked. i've said it before and i'll say it again: if you loved her you wouldn't look. rip to eurydice girl if you were married to ME i'd walk straight out of hell and keep walking and if i never saw you again it would be okay because i'd know you were alive and carry that with me and none of the rest of it would matter because THAT'S WHAT LOVE IS and anything else makes my skin crawl. your husband fuckin SUCKSSSSS dude i'm so sorry. i'm so sorry an ugly bitch would do you like that i'm SO s

[mamasplat]

the fanbase for idv is ableist as shit- and i think it’s time to explain the main thing that made me notice that

ada x emil

“oh their unhealthy together because of the power dynamic” “oh emil can’t consent” “oh ada is using him” “oh they feel weird together”

listen i understand if you are personally uncomfortable with ada x emil but you need to get your head out of your ass for a second

point one: emil’s health

emil mesmer is a full grown man in at least his 20s, he has ocd and memory loss due to trauma and he was abused for years making him a bit behind in education…but is he mentally 5? no. can he consent to getting married? yes because he is a full grown man and no matter his mental health and disability it doesn’t change the fact he is an adult. saying that he doesn’t know what’s happening is ableist and hurts real people who deal with these issues

point two: ada being an abuser

ada mesmer knew emil before the asylum, back when emil was on the streets ada gave him a loaf of bread. her wanting to take emil with her wasn’t out of a need for control but rather a want to assist and love

ada came to white sand street looking to perfect her hypnosis but found a new meaning to her life with emil, she took emil away from a place that would’ve surely killed him if she hadn’t freed him

ada mesmer put her whole life on the line giving up her job her home and her title as a psychologist for emil, if that’s not love i’m not sure what is

point three: “but they feel weird…”

…yeah no shit- it’s not everyday you leave an abusive asylum with your patient and get married when you skip town because you’ve been madly in love with a homeless guy for years without knowing it- their relationship is weird because the situation that brought them together isn’t normal

finally note

yes ada and emil have their issues, they have a clear unhealthy dependence with each other but can you blame them? they are all they have and have had for years.

think of ada and emil like a pair of chopsticks, without the other they are useless

calling ada x emil out right toxic is based in ableist beliefs. having your own discomfort is fine but when you make it everyone’s problem is when you need professional help, it doesn’t hurt anyone the only issues is people being unable to actually understand their lore in the many sides of their complex relationship

that is all…good night

[motokeith]

can we stop treating our participation in the voltron fandom as something horrific and shameful or is every single voltron post going to be prefaced with self-deprecation and disgust

[baekuras]

Tomorrow I need to do an eye checkup in english (instead of german aka the norm) and I just checked if there are any better ways to explains things or tell people what to do etc instead of my basically direct translations and turns out

nope

it sounds exactly as stupid as i already worded it, no special words or better formed sentences around 10/10 school english is good enough (nice)

[crunchity-munchity]

Not sure what's going on. I thought I had daydream block for a bit and then it went on so long that I genuinely thought I was doing better but these past couple of days I've been daydreaming non stop. So I guess it was daydream block the whole time?

Idk how to feel abt it because I wasn't exactly working on better alternatives or anything, I just fully assumed it'd go away on its own (foolish mistake). So like I'm not upset that it's back but I'm not entirely happy about it either because it's making itself VERY clear lolll

At least before I had reasons to procrastinate my homework but now I'm just doing it because my paras live rent free in my head and demand an audience

[insertsickusername13]

sorry guys I can no longer write richjake fanfiction, I don’t believe in love anymore

[catastrxblues]

good morning it is now 4 am and i have just finished watching atonement good night

[sebfreak]

love it when people follow you and then unfollow you two days later. like are you not reading my bio? do you not know the concept of a multifandom blog? it means that i reblog sometimes things you don´t know. and if you can´t or don´t want to see these things then maybe you should follow more blogs who have only one theme on their blog. 

it´s kinda like for me: hey i like you i follow you..... *two days later* urgh you reblog this? ah no i don´t wanna follow you anymore. (scrolling is an option too to find out more about blogs btw. this is what i do) 

[dykeredhood]

Thinking of how the facilitator for my most recent in-person work training said that all she recalled from her math classes was the Pythagorean theorem and that she neverrrrrrr uses that in her day-to-day life

This is the same woman who told the class that the triangle is the symbol for change… it’s a delta. It’s the Greek letter delta that refers to the change in something

This was the same facilitator who was in charge of another mandatory class I had to take a few years back; she began the session by telling us that when someone asks boomers to think of a kind of bird, they already have that knowledge in their own brains, but when the same question is asked of millennials, the first thing they do is bring out their smartphone. First off: it was her mistake saying that to classroom full of mostly millennials… second: if she’d legitimately asked us that question, I’d’ve had an answer without even needing to look at my phone (bird: an oriole. or Big Bird). It’s no wonder that the class devolved into an actual shouting match a few hours in

[swiftlydnp]

phil babe why do you keep posting at 2 am it's almost like you're in a *cough cough* whole different timezone or smth....👀👀👀

[aemondtragaryen-archived]

💭