#agency briefs

[rogergrandnat]

Marketing truths that bear repeating - time and time AGAIN - MAF293

Marketing truths that bear repeating – time and time AGAIN – MAF293

This week let’s talk about marketing truths that bear repeating – AGAIN. Which really means busting some marketing myths that won’t go away. This week it’s just me and the mic and this is episode 293 of the Marketing and Finance Podcast. What you’ll hear about in this episode: 3 marketing truths we need to revisit again and again Why marketing is more than just promotion The full academic…

[dirtytransmasc]

if they don't give Helaena one scene that doesn't strip her of her agency or just treat her like fodder, I'm gonna scream. if they don't give Helaena one scene with her dragon, I'm gonna scream. if they don't give Helaena one, better yet, multiple, scenes with Aegon, her brother, her husband, the father of her children, I'm gonna scream.

[zivvis]

barbie doll gore mod where you can do his hair and put him in situations. it's exactly the same mod

[merriclo]

this is primarily a silly hypothetical but do you think Akutagawa ever dropped off/handed over Kyouka’s important paperwork.

in all likelihood, it was probably Kōyō who did it, and probably alongside the files detailing Kyouka’s past, but the idea that Akutagawa just. like. mailed the ADA her paperwork is so funny to me

it’d be so silly if, in the middle of their first mission together, Atsushi’s just like. “hey by the way. about that package you sent the agency.”

“yes. Kyouka-chan’s important paperwork. i ensured that everything was included. her birth certificate, immunization records, et cetera. why, is anything missing?”

“no. it’s all there. thanks.”

and then they’re immediately back at each other’s throats

[fungh0u1]

eeveryone says they love emo bitches until they meet one

[aa-apocalypse-au]

any information to share about the infection?

OOC Response and actual answer in the hashtags.

[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!

[clockworkcheetah]

rockband/neighbours au, but its dirk's pov (oneshot collection)

(chapter contains mentions of dirk gently/michael assistent, but this is dirk-centric)

[aerithisms]

why does jill need rescuing so many times in ff16 omg. game came out in 2023 and its only significant female lead is treated like princess fucking peach

[fogwitchoftheevermore]

ok so i was gonna draw these but um. i got lazy. so i'm now just going to write up a tumblr post establishing this headcannon so when i eventually post my fic about it i can link to this as an explanation.

so hi gang. back when i first started cosplaying life series characters i wanted to make up a way that allowed me to more clearly distinguish my cosplays in between the seasons, even if it was just something small and for me, and this led me to here.

basically, what happened here is i decided to give each player a little mark/tattoo like thing representing themselves and each season they didn't win. this has now morphed into a headcannon, that all of the life series players have a physical reminder of every game that they don't win from the watchers, to remind them of what they're missing while they're gone, in an attempt to encourage them to come back. (they're not particularly effective, but oh well, the watchers like to commit to a bit). the winners don't get one because they accidentally set a precedent by not giving grian one (they didn't WANT him coming back), and while the same thing applied to scott, they don't quite feel the same way about pearl or martyn. however, it's also just a little bit of cruelty that there's not physical reminder of what you went through if you win. it only lives in your mind, as fickle as your mind can be, especially in these games. it's on brand for them.

i'm throwing everyone's marks below the cut, specifically what they look like post limited life. i will also explain why i chose each of them, because some of them are more obvious than others.

grian: three purple eyes on the back of his right hand. look the watchers are doing this, of course it's a reminder of what he's supposed to be doing instead of playing these games. for him, it's meant to serve less as encouragement to sign up again, but as encouragement to stop. if you hate us so much, why are you letting us give you more reminders of what you are to us?

scar: a (non painful, because it's not real) injury representing the way he died in each season. there's a bruise on his ribs that never goes away, covered by two scars from ren's arrowhead and grian's sword, tinged in a skulk-y blue.

scott: three flowers on the inside of his right elbow. a poppy for third life (duh), a lotus for double life (victorian flower language is "estranged love"), and hemlock for limited life (victorian flower language is "you will be the death of me").

jimmy: four canary feathers clumped together on his left shoulder. no explanation needed.

pearl: the first two phases of the moon (starting with the full moon) on the inside of her left elbow. obviously due to her name, but i think it's also important to note that last life began a few months into s8 and ended a month before the end of s8, so she would've had her first one show up a month before the moon… well...

martyn: three tally marks on his right eyebrow. this one is less representative of martyn and more of his relationship with the watchers. it's a small mark, it almost looks like a deliberate eyebrow slit or a scar if you're not paying much attention. but as time goes on, and martyn's understanding of/connection to the watchers increases, it's harder to mistake. it's harder to hide what's really happening.

ren: three crowns on the left sideburn. also very self explanitory.

bigb: an arrow, a diamond sword, a piece of dripstone, and another diamond sword on his clavicle. each represents the weapon that shows up around him the most in each season. he's killed by a bow and a crossbow across all three of his deaths in third life, he kills cleo with a diamond sword in last life and looses his first life to lizzie's sword, he is killed by mobs only in double life until grian and the dripstone, and bigb is killed by and kills with a diamond sword most often in limited life.

etho: four sticks of tnt behind his right ear. this is less related to his life series and more his general... everything. it's etho, of course it's tnt. the "behind the ear" thing is also very funny to me because it takes etho AGES to figure out where his is- he knows he should have one, everyone but grian has one, but someone else sees it first MONTHS after third life has ended.

impulse: four arrows on his neck, pointing down. his final deaths in third and last life are to bows, and his first (and arguably only, as bdubs looses the other two lives) death in double life is to a skeleton. the limited life connection is a little more sparse but 1. the watchers had already committed to the bit and 2. he killed quite a few people with bows this season, including bdubs and i am nothing if not annoying about those two.

skizz: three hearts on his wrists, one on the front and inside of his left wrist and one on the outside of his right wrist. hearts are the general symbol of the life series, but skizz is also the definition of "heart on his sleeve". in this case it's just on his wrist, cause i think it looks better than his shoulders/upper arms.

tango: lichtenberg scars along on his left ankle that spread farther every time he looses. these are the scars that you get from being struck by lightning. lightning strikes when you die, and tango's deaths continue to be the most frustrating part of every season for him, the part the watchers think he'd most want to rectify. i know the lightning strike on death wasn't a thing in third or double life, but shhhh don't worry about it. i'm retconing.

bdubs: numbers of a clock on his left side. limited life rounded out the 12, 3, 6, and 9. further seasons would fill in the rest of the numbers and the hands. this is also entirely self explanatory.

cleo: four red stitches around her right wrist. (the stitches existed prior to her playing in the life series, but they change colors one by one after every season. were she to run out of stitches, she would either start suddenly generating more on the same area or ones on other parts of her body would start changing color.) for her, it's just something small that she'd constantly be seeing, as she works with her hands often and the red stands out well against both green zombie skin and the more human colored parts. it makes the series stick in her mind, reminds her of what she still wants from it.

joel: four vertebrae outlined down the spine. the bones part comes at the start from his dogs in third life, and then it becomes more of an association with death as the seasons go on. it's specifically outlining his vertebrae because one thing about life series joel is that he has a spine. he is never a coward, even when it might serve him better to be one.

mumbo: one broken heart on his chest. as martyn discussed in his post limited life stream, last life messed mumbo up bad. like, so bad the watchers decided they couldn't put the guy back in. his is very literal- a broken heart over where his real heart is, where he took multiple injuries over the course of last life, for once, in a mostly non malicious way, a reminder that he shouldn't come back. (i say mostly because, hey, nice to give him time to recover, but it's less because they actually care about the guy and more because they know he'd be no fun like this)

lizzie: small fairy wings on her right shoulder. representative of the fairy fort, of course. were she to show up in another season, it would be something else to represent her alliances, because that's always where lizzie thrives in my opinion, with other people (even if fairy fort was a mess, lol).

[dukeaubergine]

“It’s totally possible that Tim has the biggest kill count of all the Robins because of that time he blew up the League of Assassin bases.”

If that’s the case, then arguably Stephanie has a similar kill count thanks to being the person who deliberately kicked off War Games.

It just depends on how many levels of separation down the chain-of-consequences we’re willing to go.

[theheadlessgroom]

@beatingheart-bride

On the one hand, Wilhelm understood this response: He supposed, being what so many people would consider a monster, a child of the night who lived on blood, being immediately feared upon revealing oneself as a vampire was to be expected, and in that regard, she didn't hold it against him and June, for reacting the way they did. They did it out of a desire to protect their son from what they thought was a threat...

...but at the same time, the guilt nagged him, even with her understanding. Maybe it was because it just wasn't like him to jump to conclusions about people and assume the worst, and he hated to think that he'd done it now (granted, he'd never thought he'd ever meet a supernatural being, but even so...). Maybe it was because he knew what it was like to have people judge him without hearing him out-even though he'd been sober for decades, there were still some who assumed the worst of him, thought he'd fall off the wagon at any given moment. It lost him a lot of job opportunities, people thinking that of him.

Maybe because he'd so forcibly kept Randall away from the woman he loved, he rebelled, trying to see her night after night, despite what might be out there in the darkness. There were things more fearful than Emily lurking in the dark-muggers, clearly. Maybe if he hadn't been so quick on the draw like that, trying to keep the two apart, his boy wouldn't be laid up the way he was now...

The thought continued to gnaw at Wilhelm as he knelt beside June, who seemed similarly distressed at the thought of being the indirect cause of her son's injuries, though she didn't say so as she sighed, "I just...thank God you were there, Emily. You watched over him, and you protected him when he needed it the most. That...that means the world to us. Thank God for you.

Is...is there anyway we can...repay you? Or, better yet...make it up to you, for everything?"

[lord-squiggletits]

Onyx Prime = Shockwave time travel plot is such shitty writing I could and WILL (eventually) write multiple essays about it it's so fucking bad.

[erraticroses]

.

[an0leander]

incredibly beautiful post by op that touches on why dead boy detectives is such an important show for queer people and how well it handles the subject

on a similar, but much angrier, note: this is exactly why it was cancelled but a show like heartstopper isn’t

dbda isn’t palatable for cishet people. they need queer people to be more easily digestible and explained plainly to them. they don’t understand the subtext of simon and edwin in hell, of the cat king, of the complexities of charles’ sexuality that queer people do because it’s our lived experience

and this isn’t to say this is a good reason for dbda to be cancelled, no, quite the opposite. it is the stupidest reason out there especially with dbda’s popularity. in a show like heartstopper (which is a show i also personally enjoy), the characters sexualities and genders are spoon fed to the audience which is not necessarily a bad thing, but there’s a clear difference between how heartstopper tackles queerness and how dbda does.

i see something similar in an also cancelled show shadow and bone, which is a remake of a book series i hold very near and dear to my heart. there’s two characters, wylan and jesper, who get into a relationship but it’s never explicitly stated that they’re gay. jesper flirts with men and women, similar to charles, and it’s never mentioned in universe. there’s another character briefly on screen who is visibly genderqueer but it is not commented on nor are they asked anything about it. a cishet person watching will want to know what they are and WHY they’re there, instead of just accepting that they are.

shows where being queer is just normal, an everyday thing, seem to be cancelled because to cishet people it’s not an everyday thing. a lot of cishet people need to see queer people as some spectacle to understand them. to them, heterosexuality is still the norm and anything else needs to be almost taught to them.

i don’t have much else to say on this, just that i’ve seen an odd pattern of some queer shows being cancelled and others not and the differences between them.

as someone who is a huge fan of other queer content (like heartstopper and red, white and royal blue), dead boy detectives feels so incredibly different.

despite how much i love those two, they don’t feel like they’re made for queer people.

in a lot of ways, they feel like media made for cishet people about queer and trans people which is fine and doesn’t make it unenjoyable, but dbda has a totally different feel to it.

it feels like queer media made FOR queer people.

they have so much nuance to their characters and don’t shy away from it. charles openly flirts with both edwin and crystal despite the fact that he never says anything about his sexuality and edwin’s backstory doesn’t try to hide the horrifying way that queer people were treated historically and i think that’s really important.

though he is very clearly repressed, he is still unapologetically queer. he showcases his jealousy loudly and there is no doubt in the viewer’s mind that he is queer even for a moment.

same with monty and the cat king. they’re so vibrantly and boldly queer. monty begins flirting with edwin nearly the moment we see him and as does tck. what i really appreciate about tck is his gender nonconformity. i think that’s so important and i honestly really appreciate that they don’t even mention it.

with tck in particular, his actions can be considered rather predatory, but we never really feel like that’s due to his queerness which is FASCINATING because that is a really harmful stereotype of queer people, but it never feels like that’s what they’re going for or like they’re using it to demonize queerness.

with jenny, she says so casually that she’s attracted to women and it’s not even something that they have to discuss again. it’s such an unimportant aspect of her character, but it’s still so unabashedly there. i love that niko doesn’t even say anything about it when she learns, she just accepts her, no questions asked.

even with simon, he very clearly discusses his sexuality in E7 when he tells edwin that he liked him, but he never has to say the words. we just KNOW contextually because he talks around it. he i would argue that he is the only instance of a character discussing shame in their identity and it immediately results in one of the loveliest quotes in the show.

“if you punish yourself, everywhere becomes hell.”

he has spent over a century repressing himself and when he finally tells edwin, the boy he liked and treated terribly because of it, he is immediately told that it is not torture to be queer. he is immediately told that there is nothing wrong with his sexuality.

the confession scene btwn edwin and charles in E7 and the scene in E6 where edwin is TRYING to confess are so fucking important to me. nearly immediately, charles tells edwin that it doesn’t make any difference that he’s queer and that he accepts him. when he does confess, he doesn’t make him feel bad for it. he tells him that he loves him too, but that he can’t say he does in that way right now, but that he’s the most important person in his life and that that will never change.

the scene in E7 where they’re on the roof and edwin tries to apologize for potentially having made things awkward, charles shuts it down immediately. he says “it doesn’t.” and that’s the end of it.

this show exemplifies queerness through a queer light and it’s very clear who the intended audience is for dbda not to sound like i’m hating on the first two pieces of media (rwrb is literally one of my special interests, trust me, i adore them both), but maybe that’s why hs was given a third season and dbda was cancelled within five months of airing. i feel that these two pander to straight people in a lot of ways, but dbda doesn’t. it’s something that is incredibly important to me and i’m really happy about it.