#blish

[millenianthemums]

i vote we name him… blish………

[ilona-art]

"𝐒𝐨... 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐝. 𝐈 𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐝." A few days ago I had a chance to meet the wonderful talented Tommy Earl Jenkins. And it was only afterwards I realized he also voiced one of my most memorable GW2 character: Blish. A true hero...

Sponsored by ArenaNet

[asomics]

remember when everything was fine

[levy120]

Not me putting my newest Blorbo of the Week through the Wringer, No, sire :')

A while ago I got back into gw2, wanted to see if it would stick and after reaching my personal goal-post went and purchased one of the missing Addons - and got around to playing the EoD Story.

They truly ramped up Gorrik in this, the best boy, he deserved none of this - and then I got to the "Logs" and "Bottle your Emotions" and I was done for. 😂

So um, long story short, I wrote some ficlets for the best boys to cope. Sorry not Sorry.

Rating: PG Genre: Gen, Fluff Characters: Gorrik and Blish Words: ~ 1,500 Summary: Gorrik tells Blish about his plans of joining the Inquest. Timeline: Prequel (Pre Personal Story) Critical Tags: Bugs & Insects, Terminal Illness

Rating: T Genre: Gen, Angst, Horror Characters: Gorrik and Blish Words: ~ 2,300 Summary: Blish goes through his consciousness transferal. Gorrik has many nightmares yet to come. Timeline: Prequel (Pre Meeting the Characters In-Game) Critical Tags: Terminal Illness, Blood, Implied Animal Death, Mention of Euthanasia, Hurt No Comfort, Meltdown

Maybe there will be more, maybe there won't be; but for now, these two are stuck on my mind and you're welcome to suffer with me. Bon Appetit.

[guildwarszeke]

LWS4 EP 4 SPOILERS

oh my fucking god. oh my god

if taimi dies im giving up this game (slash LIE.)

[amberhearth]

Gorrik taking a moment for himself to think about someone

[guardian-instincts-bad]

okay none of this is new information but as usual i am thinking about gorrik and arenanet just. really never considered the timeline of his life and the implications of that at all, huh

like, okay, for eod you needed him to have a relationship to ankka and you needed ankka to have connections to the aetherblades, so you threw them both in thaumanova, fine

except. thaumanova. which blew up in 1324.

and no, we don't have a canon age for gorrik. but we know taimi's age, that she was friends with blish, and that blish is older than gorrik

now. taimi didn't know that the brothers had joined the inquest. which means either they'd kept it a secret from her, or more likely, it happened after they lost touch

taimi was born in 1313, meaning that the absolute oldest she could have been when she last saw them, is ten

now sure, taimi skipped a couple years, she's a prodigy even among asura - but age really matters when you're in single digits. for blish to be a friend, rather than a mentor, he can't be much older than maybe four years above her? i'd put that as the reasonable upper limit, they could be closer

(i'd also honestly guess that gorrik is a bit younger than taimi, given a) how much he looks up to blish, and b) that taimi prior to s4 only thought of him as blish's weird little brother, they weren't friends. and again, at that young, age matters - if you're 7, your friend is 10, and his little brother is 8 or 9, your first connection to him is probably not "oh, the little brother", because he's not little to you)

but assuming im wrong on all of that, just going back to our facts, that puts gorrik at the most about 2-3 years older than taimi

which means that the age we're looking at, for joining the inquest, thaumanova, all the stuff with ankka... he was somewhere between 9 and 13. could be even younger but im giving him the benefit of the doubt

gorrik says he never thought about ankka romantically and i believe him, but if there was ever anything there from her side, it was definitely a kiddie's first crush kinda thing, like oh we are a boy and a girl who are best friends clearly this is what romance means

because both of them were so fucking young

god knows spending her teenage years in the aetherblades was not great for ankka's everything, and by the time we find gorrik and blish in bug in the system, they've been working for the inquest for at least 8 years

that's almost half his life, at that point. working for an organisation that the thaumanova fractal and rata primus make incredibly clear does not value the lives of its workers in any way at all - they'll feed you to their latest experiment just for standing there, and gorrik wasn't just keeping his head down and going along with it, gorrik was actively sabotaging their research when he morally disagreed with it

(and this isn't even getting into why they joined the inquest in the first place, which i will bet anything i own on being because of blish's illness and needing the technology to save him)

and to their credit, i do think this comes across in bug in the system! because if you go back to early gorrik, first half of s4, having played through the rest of the story? the difference is shocking, like he is so distrusting and snide and defensive as hell of his brother, he talks like he expects you to attack him or blish at any moment

but then they never do anything with that ever again, and like, i love all the new gorrik content, genuinely i do, but arenanet there are layers to this character that you have entirely forgotten about, and god i wish we had a story that actually explored that

[dk-thrive]

It has so little akin to the bang, the flash, of the volcanic eruption that, at the moment it is made, the experience is often not even noticed.

“It is a mistake to believe that the crucial moments of a life when its habitual direction changes forever must be loud and shrill dramatics, washed away by fierce internal surges. This is a kitschy fairy tale started by boozing journalists, flashbulb-seeking filmmakers and authors whose minds look like tabloids. In truth, the dramatics of a life-determining experience are often unbelievably soft. It has so little akin to the bang, the flash, of the volcanic eruption that, at the moment it is made, the experience is often not even noticed. When it deploys its revolutionary effect and plunges a life into a brand-new light giving it a brand-new melody, it does that silently and in this wonderful silence resides its special nobility.” — Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon (Grove Press, 2006) (via Whiskey River)

[guildtree]

What Lies Within: Bottle Your Emotions Masterpost

While traveling across Tyria to fill up the Recollector with sad emotion juice, the Commander has to choose two out of four people they'd like to reminisce about, plus one mandatory option. For those who can't be bothered to replay, want dialogue for archival purposes, or don't own a necessary expansion, here is a masterlist of all the options during the Bottle Your Emotions step of the newest patch.

Spoilers. Duh.

Mai Trin (mandatory)

Blish

Cinder

Aurene

Vlast

All playthroughs were done with the same human female Commander. I have no idea if there is race-specific dialogue. I will be trying some of the other last-instance date options as well, so let me know if you'd like to see that!

[ratasum]

I'm just picturing Garrus and Vezz checking in on the krewe at some point between LWS4 and IBS, after the krewe's little mini-adventure, and there's four pairs of big, round asuran eyes staring back at them where they're all putting a data crystal into a golem.

@wall-legion

[kutscene-kestin]

Since there are simply more people on reddit, I have posted my latest rambling over there, despite the fact that everything I post there gets downvoted for some reason. I don’t fit the vibe or something, I guess. Whatever. If you want to watch me try and make sense of Gorrik’s age, here’s the thread. If anyone sees this on here and wants to reply, though, feel free to do it here instead. Whatever works.

[garretcain]

Yea sex is great and all but cuddles in the cold under a warm blanket now thats the stuff

[lichqueenlibrarian]

That Mr Spock is a bad influence

[queer-as-used-by-tolkien]

In What Lies Beneath/What Lies Within stories post-EoD in GW2, Gorrik (canonical autistic boy) records experiences and research in an audio journal.

The demon that's making people hallucinate their worst memories got to him somehow. He makes an audio log narrating that experience after the fact.

I was there when his brother died. I was there - I was to blame for it. I felt so strongly about it for months.

I expected Gorrik's audio log to be a tear-jerker. I expected to feel it right along with him, to relive the experience alongside him.

I didn't.

He's a terrible storyteller.

He described feelings, sensations - more physical than emotional, if I recall correctly - in a sort of detached way. Aside from him being an awful storyteller, and that he wasn't INTENDING to tell a story with an audience, I think this is also partly because he's autistic.

Who he is and what his goals were informed how he wrote the story. Even I, when I'm journaling, face the question of "do I write this so someone else, or my future self, could feel the emotion? Or do I PROCESS it? Do I write down what I need to write?"

It just felt so real. It wasn't staged to make me feel feelings about his brother dying. The experience wasn't about me. It was about his brother. But the audio log wasn't about me OR the brother. It was about GORRIK.

And I think that's beautiful.

Having story thoughts about the fourth wall:

It defines the difference between allegory and applicability. An allegorical story leans on our world to find its full meaning. Ideas, characters, settings, all symbolize something else that's in our world, thus obliterating the fourth wall and bringing the two worlds together. This can be useful for a message-forward story, but it has the side effect of making the world and characters seem less real, because it's not a place with its own independent existence--it relies on our world.

In an applicable story, the fourth wall is firmly in place. The character is a character. The setting is its own setting. They have an independent existence within their own little world. We can draw parallels to our world, but even without that meaning, the characters and setting still feel like they exist in a real, independent world.

An applicable story often has more impact and a stronger message, because the message comes out of the story and character, rather than being pulled from our world and pasted on top of the story.

As an example--I was thinking about this because I saw Ratatouille recently. In Remy's situation, there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between his world and ours--an oppressed subculture, a life of poverty--but instead of trying to map that onto a specific real-world situation, they're still just rats, living in this weird version of Paris where sometimes the worldbuilding elements are just weird. The actual message of the movie is about art, which comes from character, not from the way the world is built. Compare this to something like Elemental, which started out as a way to explore real-world racism and the immigrant experience. Because the message is built into the world, commentators get distracted by the ways it doesn't map onto our world, and have a harder time connecting to the characters.

The fourth wall is also important to romance. The reason so much of the romance genre feels so fake and unreal is because it's so often concerned with the effect the story has on the reader--reaching through the fourth wall to give the reader things the reader finds romantic or arousing, regardless of anything that's specific to the characters or world of the book.

In a well-done romance, the fourth wall is firmly in place. The characters are not avatars for the reader and their romantic ideal, but people with their own independent existence and relationship. They live in a well-built world that has shaped both of their personalities and affects their relationships. The development of their romance is specific to these two people, and would exist independent of any audience reading about it. The story has more impact on the reader, because it's coming from outside our world and gives the reader unique characters to love, instead of just pulling the reader's desires out of our world and pasting them on top of the story.

[levy120]

Character Study: The Dragon's Watch Asura on their own future

A while ago I came across a post talking about a PTSD symptom called “foreshortened future” and it was a serious topic so I didn't wanna reblog and clog the tags with fandom (and I don't know if the described symptoms accurately apply here to make a case for this)

BUT I for sure couldn’t stop thinking about the Dragon's Watch Asura in this light because that sense of "I can't see myself in the future" applies to all three of them without exception.

We have…

Blish, who is the catalyst, the one who strove to fight for the time he has and wound up dying twice for it.

Taimi, who despite pushing through with a "rest is for the weak" mentality, knows since day one that she lives on borrowed time, knows that "there is an end" but "won't let that stop her".

And Gorrik, who despite being of health (to our knowledge, he might still be at risk if Blish’s sickness was genetic), has lived through multiple traumatic events - from surviving Thaumanova to the death of a loved one. 

Once Blish is gone, Gorrik throws himself from acute project into acute project because "he just wants to feel useful" and he needs to work in order to cope and keep himself distracted because the SECOND he's forced to sit still and can't apply himself... we get the Prison Journal.

It is truly harrowing. 

-

There's... something to say about Anet's decision to pair him up with Taimi.

As far as I'm concerned, this ship did not have to happen. They vibed great enough as colleagues. From how I saw it, Taimi seemed to have a greater interest in Blish, definitely the closer connection for sharing a coleg, while Gorrik was "the weird little brother, being off doing who knows what (working at the Inquest)" while Taimi and Blish rivaled each other in educational notoriety. 

To Gorrik, Taimi was "what's left" after Blish; and to Taimi, initially and objectively, he was the one who'd executed Blish's procedure in the past, and her last remaining lifeline if she wanted to take this into consideration. It is mentioned that before EoD they have been tinkering on not further disclosed "Golem Mods".

After Blish's passing it was only natural Gorrik would focus all of his concerns on Taimi's wellbeing (whether she approves or NOT) now that he could no longer fuss over his brother. Both, because it's in his nature to do so from growing up with Blish, and because no one would want to see a friend suffer that same misery if you KNOW you can help it.

As that, their partnership works as a very organic platonic relationship.

That being said, I can understand though why they would gravitate to one another under the light of shared trauma bonding.

As much as I want to say they deserve to be happy with each other, I can't help but think of all that must be bubbling under the surface considering the circumstances. 

None of them can truly plan further than their current projects, but they make up for that by giving them their all. 

What that means in terms of their relationship is something I have yet to wrap my mind around. 

-

On the one side, we have Taimi who seems to have been happy enough with their arrangement. Then along comes Ankka and sparks what Taimi winds up calling "jealousy" but I perceived as Taimi's deep-rooted resentment for the Inquest. 

Throughout the story, Gorrik holds a bigger resentment towards Ankka for her betrayal, than Taimi holds for her as a person. I believe that to her, the larger threat was that she represented and challenged everything that she wished for Gorrik to be "better than".

And that fear IS warranted!

When Gorrik does refer to his days with the Inquest to the Commander (like working with Ankka or living at Thaumanova before it blew) it is exclusively with fondness. And when his hurt for Ankka boils over he goes on a "Forgiveness is for the weak" vengeance crusade that bears no compromise and has both Taimi and Marjory express concern for him. 

On the other side, we have Gorrik - who is followed by Death. From the almost poetic nature of the tiny lifespan of bugs, to the losses he has already faced, and is still bound to face at an uncertain point in an uncertain future.

He's so used to it that upon slaying Ankka - someone who despite everything, he also cared about once upon a time - that he outright claims that he's "tired of feeling like this."

…and if watching Ankka die is having that effect on him, someone who betrayed and hurt him and in his words “had to pay”, then I fear for his reaction the inevitable day he outlives Taimi.

It's like everything he cares about is fleeting and or fragile. And yet, Gorrik truly flourishes in the fields that challenge that. From executing his brother's golem procedure, to repopulating both the Rollerbeetle AND saving the Skyscale from extinction.

And that might just be what Taimi sees in him. 

[retroscifiart]

Art by Doug Beekman for ‘The Devil's Day’ by James Blish (1990)