#a part of me wants to blame something

[penrose-quinn]

I hope my three day trip with my friends will finally put my mind at peace. I just feel so lonely...

[serenhob]

I could be sleeping but this is what I choose to do instead

[qquokkari]

thinking about how suguru’s ultimate ideal was to create a world where sorcerers like himself and satoru wouldn’t be needed at all, much less overworked. but in leaving to pursue that goal he left jujutsu society with only one active special grade sorcerer, effectively dooming satoru to spend the last of his teenage years and all of his short adulthood being overworked by the higherups. and if suguru had meant a little less to satoru, if satoru valued his opinion only half as much, it wouldn’t have been a problem; but satoru truly did see suguru as his moral compass, so he let himself be used for the benefit of others when he likely wouldn’t have cared enough to do so before he met suguru. satoru let himself be worked to death because suguru left to make a world where nobody would need to be worked to death. even if suguru never talked to yuki and didn’t come up with an extreme plan, even if he just left jujutsu society behind the way nanami did, even if he stayed in contact with satoru, it couldn’t have changed anything between them. they were doomed from the second suguru gave satoru something to really care about, because suguru was never going to stay and satoru was never going to follow.

[pyrrhiccomedy]

who loves the antichrist

Olivie - His Lover

I remember his heart in my heart.

I remember his weakness, his follies, his flaws.

I remember that he can be hurt, and put my hand over his wounds.

When you stand upon the burning hill;

When you huddle in the dark;

Do not forget that I alone remember your heart.

Volo - His Knight

My lord burns me, spends me, restores me.

My lord's hand is my hand: my lord's will is my will.

My lord aims his sword at heaven, and I am his sword.

I tremble; I shiver. I stand before a greater light.

Have mercy upon me, my lord.

My anguish is complete, and my soul is yours.

Bellefleur - His Queen

I will make him for my hand.

I will make him for my enemies.

I will make him what he wants to be made.

He is great, and I will make him greater.

Look neither to the left nor right. Trust my hand upon your back.

A sword exists for a purpose.

[toddtakefive]

thinking about todd and his resolve toward… not quite isolation, but being alone in a room full of people again. he goes along to the study room to sit on his own and do his homework, he sits at the poets table and follows along with what’s being said while keeping quiet, he goes to the meetings at all but doesn’t necessarily contribute (in fact, if you watch him when cameron is telling the story ‘from camp in sixth grade’, you can see that he recognizes it before any of the other poets but doesn’t voice it until they all have). he’s not alone, necessarily, if you want to get technical about it, he’s just lonely, and he’s generally okay with that. he doesn’t have friends and that’s fine, he doesn’t participate in class and that’s fine, he doesn’t have a relationship with his family and that’s fine—he could live without any real connection and he’d have been, more or less, fine.

the thing about when he says “i can take care of myself just fine!” is that he isn’t really wrong, you can infer that he’s been doing it his entire life anyway, it’s that ‘taking care of yourself’ isn’t the same thing as really living or being happy. todd’s an introvert, certainly, and even as he gets closer to the group he defaults to sitting quietly in the background, but he’s also denying himself community out of fear not introversion. todd isn’t friendless because he’s an introvert, although that definitely plays a part, he’s friendless because he pushes anyone that might want his company away. if anyone has every wanted for his attention in the first place. (neil’s unwavering interest in him is unique (even when it comes to the rest of the poets, who are fine with todd coming along and joining the group, but aren’t really hellbent on him being there in the beginning) and his refusal to accept it is a direct result of being so lonely growing up.)

there’s obviously something to be said about the implications of his parents neglect, and the more than likely fact that he grew up friendless, and how those both play a part in in him being so skilled at dodging social interaction/being so avoidant of it, but by the time we see him in the movie he’s all but accepted his fate as being alone his entire life. he’s already accepted being the family disappointment, and he’s already accepted he’ll never amount to anything, and he obviously doesn’t like it, but he’d have managed living with that knowledge without the confirmation that it was all wrong. would he have been miserable? almost certainly. but he’d have managed. he’d done it for that long already, anyhow.

[sprucestairs]

hhhhhh I need to properly reread Percy jackson again. This post brought to you by the fact I was about to make a post about a scene I very vividly remember of Will Solace trying to convince Pollux not to keep fighting with his good arm broken before Percy manages to convince him not to bc he promised Dionysus, then thought to myself "huh maybe I should fact check that- I mean I did also convince myself that Travis stoll died in this battle when he actually just went to college." And guess what? That scene ✨️didn't happen.✨️ Pollux was trying to convince Percy to let him rejoin the fight very half heartedly, while propped against a tree, and Percy was just like "hmmmm... no"

[cacw]

do you know the movie manchester by the sea? im watching it right now and it reminded me of someone i know. here is a drawing i made for you 💖💞💖💕

1) i dont even have words for the things im feeling right now. youre so good to me. youre too good to me sam i will be going to staples soon to get this printed so i can tape it to my wall. ive spent so much time looking at it already... its the only thing i could think about last night. i fell asleep thinking about it. a few sparse tears may have been shed because 2) i stopped everything i was doing to watch this movie and it bummed me out so bad. all the more because i was thinking about this frostpod picture the entire time... very on point. thank you so much for thinking of my horrible little family IM RUNNING AWAY.... IM RUNNING AWAY TO STAPLES!!!!!!!!!

[cynningly]

oh to have your story be told hundreds of times yet still be unable to change it

The Guardian, The Firebrand, The Damsel, The Voyeur; damned to repeat this cycle of torture until they all fall prey to it-

-only to begin it again

“THE GREAT FLOOD SHALL WASH AWAY ALL THE ASH, READYING THE WORLD FOR ANOTHER GREATER, CYCLE”

-HABIT

[lesbiansanemi]

Currently trying not to vomit over the fact that I essentially just lost almost a thousand dollars brb

[claitea]

just one of those nights again (thought about n so hard i started Physically feeling sad like theres a weight on my chest)

[a-chaotic-dumbass]

fascinated by how the asoiaf fandom refuses to have any nuance in the books that r entirely based on different perspectives

[uncanny-tranny]

On the "darker" side of being comforted by one's immortality (not in the physical, but metaphorical), I've always been comforted by bone needles.

The idea that even after death, you've still been remembered by how you are used. No, bone needles probably weren't used with human bones, but it's a reminder that you aren't just going to... disappear. I'm comforted in the knowledge that I don't end in a "me" but in a "we," in nature. Everything about me is reused material so much more ancient than I am, and knowing that, I feel so much closer to the world.

[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!

[mikhailoism]

idk why but im kinda obsessed with the fact that bobby was a figure skater and i need to talk about it more. like I need a young bathena au with famous pro figure skater bobby.

or maybe even better and more interesting, an au with retired pro figure skater bobby who finally decides to follow his family's legacy and become a firefighter... like maybe he did skating for awhile maybe retired naturally or... had a big accident that severely injured him preventing him from ever skating again, think something like his original back injury ... and healing from that he can't figure skate but maybe firefighting is still an option (idk the logistics of what kind of injury would prevent u from skating but doesn't for firefighters but I'm sure it exists idk) and he's still young too most figure skaters retire in general mid to lates 20s ish. but say this injury happens at the height of his career and it's devastating and it still does lead him down the dangerous paths of addiction... and he does rediscover firefighting and that sort of saves him in a way. and maybe eventually things follow down a similar path in canon... maybe not.. but for now it does and he's eventually in la and everything is the same except he was once a famous figure skater and that's just really interesting to me ando would add interesting layers to bobby

[moneygoblin04]

I am stressed, and I am on edge, and I feel like I'm actually, legitimately reaching my limit. It's kinda funny how my mom was the one to push me there

[tomaturtles]

Happy one year anniversary of me reading campus apocalypse for the first time and being so normal about it