#dishonored meta

[a--ttano]

i have so many thoughts abt the dh chaos system, but i find it hard to put them into words. this is specifically abt dishonored 1 btw

one of them: other games have tried to copy dh and fallen short, bc their narriative framework simply was not strong enough to support a chaos system like dh's. The game has a very simple narriative, and it allows for bread, swooping stokes to be drawn. It's elegant, in it's way.

In dishonored's narrative simplicity, it finds its strength, as it allows the complexity of the world it lives in to shine.

[my-fool]

I saw a dishonored whale meta post years ago, before I'd played the game and could understand the post itself, and I wanted to read it for my research but at this point there is no way there's any information in that post which I have not already taken down

[silurisanguine]

I do like how Billie does keep Emily in check. I could see Billie being angry...until i think the moment she found out Jindosh was going to use that device on Sokolov, she'd have no problem with Emily using it on Jindosh. She may not be the bloodthirsty woman she once was, but she dotes on Sokolov and she hates that he was tortured as it was. Knowing he'd have been practically lobotimised, she'd not think highly of Jindosh and find it poetic his genius was taken away instead.

Warranted Mistakes

-

The fandom talking about how messed up Jindosh's non-lethal takedown is <3

I thought I do my own exploration on Emily's feelings after the Clockwork mansion and in denial of the severity of her actions but good thing Meagan is there to keep her in check and call her bullshit out <3333

Maybe there'll be a part two bc I got more to exploreeeeee

[robynator]

obsessed with how daud canonically chooses to forgive billie when she gives him the choice between killing her and showing her mercy after she betrays him

obsessed with how just a few months later, daud does the same, placing his life in the hands of a man whose life he completely ruined, asking to be spared and, against all odds, walking away from that encounter alive

obsessed with the alternatives you're given to those options as well

how, if you choose to kill billie in low chaos she helps you guide the blade. how she looks up at you and smiles as you stab her. how you hold her hand as she dies and don't let go even after she's gone

how, in high chaos, you just don't get that choice. her death is brutal, just like all the other deaths at your hand. like she said, what's one more body? but she's not just one more body. she's your second in command, your confidant, the closest thing you have to a daughter. you don't kill her with the same detachment you do for everyone else. you don't simply pull her onto your blade, you grab her by the throat as you stab her. it's brutal and it's personal, and that makes it so much worse

how, if you end brigmore witches with high chaos, corvo will kill you because you are not true to your word. you say that you feel remorse over jessamine's murder and yet your actions speak otherwise. you are not sincere in your words and while corvo may not know that, the game does. and it's telling you that that's the only way it could end. that if daud goes down that path he will not ever better his ways, nor will he be given the chance to. the only way daud can live is if he is actually committed to change

but despite all those options, in canon, daud gives billie the chance to leave and make a new life for herself. and corvo does the same for daud. and that is a parallel i think a lot about

[kg-clark-inthedark]

@toyfriskman said my one screenshot of the outsider looked like the ben affleck smoking react meme and I-

[geminison]

to think of it the age in which dishonored exists is really short. it's the age of the first industrial revolution, everything is still fragile, new and exciting and so many new horizons are now open for the inventors and manufacturers to conquer (and the opportunities for capitalism to sink it's claws deeper, oops)

while empire lives through the interregnum, the entire world also goes through the turbulence of leaving the old ways behind and learning to accept the new ones.

now when I think of it maybe the changes of the world's state affect the void too, affect the outsider directly. maybe with the evolution of technology more and more people stop seeking the magic, stop worshipping the outsider, and with that the sacrifices stop. and maybe it's the thing that makes him want to seek a way out, to try arranging some way of leaving, be it by death or by becoming human again because being forgotten and left in an endless void is a much more terrible faith than being killed/made human again

[dreadfutures]

just finished, 100%'d everything except the codex (88% final codex) with a platonic inquisitor redeem positive rook + mythal's release.

on a scale from worst game ever to best game ever, definitely best game ever. it is certainly one of the best games to play - it's just really fucking fun. it's smooth. it's delightful and it's deep in a lot of ways. I would recommend it to people! and the team should be really proud.

As a game that's a love letter to Thedas, it really really works for the most part! There is so much fleshed out that we have been wondering about for so long, the characters do feel so alive and lovely. This was the first game where all of the companions were really, really compelling and real feeling. I enjoyed taking all of them out in different combinations and getting to know them and their relationships to the world. I really enjoyed the evolution of combat - I'm sorry, DA has *never* had fun combat, by the standards of its own genres. They have always been great games, but there are better CRPGs, better tactical RPGs, better action games. This one manages to nail that and was a joy to play.

As the conclusion to our worlds, the ones we shaped, it falls flat in a lot of ways - and actively undermines our world states, and the points of the other games, in a lot of ways that just... feel wretchedly unnecessary.

i have a lot of bones to pick with the game (how it handles its class issues, how it doesn't even want to touch the moral complexity that it spent *so long* belaboring in the past 3 games regarding mages and non mages or the dalish and their religion or the racism and prejudice at the heart of many of these flawed societies, how it *definitely was not justified* in leaving so much of your past personalized world state behind and it's insulting to claim so). Other people can write those essays though it's 2am I have spent more than a week, every waking moment, playing the game and i'm tired and delighted and inspired.

[fractalcloning]

As I scream into the void seeking a Narek RPer to play against, I have finally caved and must explain why I want this Romulan loungelizard to be more popular. (It won't happen, but I can dream.)

Reasons I like Narek as a character that nobody but me gives a shit about:

Let me preface this with a fact about me: I know Romulans.

I've RPed as Nero for almost two straight years in a large game. I've basically learned Rihannsu back to front for the endeavor. The person who played my Ayel and I both dumped countless hours into developing grammar and extrapolating cultural rules. We were dedicated to making them as believeable and accurate to canon as possible.

I have the whole timeline of the destruction of Hobus/Romulus down to memory. I know about all the neat little tidbits and trivia from comics and adjacent materials etc, etc.

This is to say: I have read and written quite a lot about Romulans in my time. I am very familiar with how they work and what data is available to draw from when writing them.

We do meet a few rank and file military Romulans from time to time, however. So we know how the general military operates in direct contrast to the Tal'Shiar. Caution and secrecy is sort of baked into their culture, which makes a lot of sense given that they're constantly at war with basically everyone, but they aren't (generally) unreasonable people.

In canon Trek, Romulans are often a little over the top with the sneaky-backstabbing-untrustworthy-nonsense. They're almost comical with how much scheming they do, but most of the Romulans we meet in canon are Tal'Shiar. The Tal'Shiar are known, pretty explicitly for the depth and breadth of their sneaky-backstabbing-untrustworthy-nonsense. It's kind of their whole deal, apart from mnhei'sahe (literally the ruling passion honor).

Narek, however, was a child when Hobus went supernova. He is from the very last generation that had any living memory of Romulus. (Elnor is also from this generation and they are great foils for each other, but that's another essay.) Narek is from a (presumably) respected family of--if not Tal'Shiar then Military--operatives. His aunt held high rank, his sister did as well, and both were inducted into the Zhat Vash, an organization that worked so quietly and efficiently that even the famously paranoid Tal'Shiar thought they were a myth. They orchestrated catastrophes and manipulated Galactic law to their ends, one of their members was the head of Starfleet Security and Narissa was on a personal basis with her.

Their underlying culture is present, but it isn't explored very deeply in any one canon source. Taken collectively, however, it is just as substantial as Klingon Battle-lust or Ferengi Capitalism.

Nero was a break from the norm, not because he was vengeful, but because he was the first non-military Romulan we'd ever really seen. His designs, the tattoos, the crew of his ship with their very un-Romulan loyalty, the way he talked and sought equivalent exchange of lives (mnhei'sahe), was a wealth of Romulan culture that we hadn't ever seen. He was a regular Joe, had a regular non-Military job, trusted and worked with aliens to try and save lives. His failure (not his fault) was something he absorbed and sought to rectify in the Romulan way.

Nero was super interesting both for how much detail he cast on Romulan culture, and in how he slotted into the Prime Timeline. Nero was a guy desperately clinging to hope, to the last vestiges of his civilian life, but he was cut free by the destruction of Romulus and set adrift. The only anchor he had in the AOS timeline was his honor and the driving need to balance the scales and restore it.

Narek, however privledge his family was, was a washout. He was a failure. We know he wasn't Zhat Vash, and whether he was even Tal'Shiar is up for some serious speculation. He doesn't act like military officers, and only seems to be play-acting as a Tal'Shiar, miming his sister when it suits him.

Narek may have had authority on the Artifact, but it was probably by dint of Oh granting it. We never get any clarification whatsoever about his rank or dayjob, just that he is fully devoted to helping the Zhat Vash. He is analytical, prepared, but he is not good at thinking on his feet and clearly does his planning off screen. He's meticulous but not especially skilled at hiding or regulating his emotional state. He is far less aggressive and stalwart than just about every other Romulan we've seen...except for Nero.

He was literally a placeholder sent to keep tabs on Soji. He didn't even arrive until Narissa had failed to capture Dahj. That Narek managed to get close to Soji, that he discovered her dreams and correctly surmised what they are, was more luck than skill. Before his assessments the Zhat Vash knew that Dahj (and Soji) could be activated out of their cover, but they assumed that they could capture them. They probably assumed they could torture the data out of them, if not dissect them and rip out a harddrive.

Narek found an easy way to get right to the information they needed. His attachment to Romulan culture is his puzzlebox--Before Nero we had never met a Romulan civilian and before Narek we have never met a cultural Romulan who plays with a toy, we had never seen a child's toy like that. Of course, the puzzlebox (Tan Zhekran) was a mechanism to illustrate his thought process, to make the differences between Narissa and him very apparent, but it was also something from his childhood (presumably). It's a weirdly personal affect for a Romulan and he fidgets with it almost constantly. It's a tell, something he shouldn't have, and it makes him accessible on an emotional level.

Narek is a civilian.

He's a civilian in a family of spies and operatives, raised alongside his sister on the same stories, with the same care. There's no way a Zhat Vash didn't have a family home on Romulus. While Elnor is a nice example of the new generation of Romulans, Narek is one of the last examples of what is used to mean to be a Romulan. He saw Romulus and escaped with all his surviving family when it as it was destroyed. Narek was raised on Romulan tradition (private names for family), Romulan stories about the end of the world, and he is haunted by them because he knows they're true, they're real. His sister and aunt have seen it, seen the message that drives people mad, about Ganmadan. His living relatives have dedicated their lives to preventing it and, even if he isn't actually Zhat Vash, he does the same.

Narek is a failure, by his culture's standards, by his family's standards, but he is also the only one of them who lives in the end.

He's a civilian who is trying, desperately, to avert another Romulan apocalypse. He has already lived through one and somehow this next one is even worse. Like Nero he sees the writing on the wall--but instead of doubling down on the traditional sneaky spy shit, he tries something new--unlike Nero, it works! He makes headway where nobody else could.

Unfortunately, it's kinda fucked up, but he then gives up everything in the pursuit of this goal. (Which to him, seems like a noble one.) Narek gives up who he is (by playing at being Tal Shiar), his safety (he has no idea what Soji is capable of or what might set her off, they only have records of Dahj killing a dozen agents before being blown up), and eventually resigns himself to killing the woman he's fallen in love with (the baseline requirement for giving out his real name). He does it all for the greater good, to save people and he doesn't seem to make much of a distinction between Romulan and other organic lives. He has his little plans, tracking La Sirena in a single cloaked ship, hiding his presence to tail them, firing on them despite being wholly outmatched, allying with Sutra however temporarily, trying to sway Soji again, turning to Rios, Raffi, and Elnor for help--he's willing to do anything because he's terrified that everything is about to end and it will be him who failed to prevent it.

The very last shot we see of him, after his plan to detonate the transmitter fails completely, is him on the ground being dragged away by the Coppelius androids. He doesn't posture or threaten, doesn't say ominous shit like the other Romulans we're used to--He begs. He claws at the ground, trying to stay, and he begs. He pleads with Soji, calls her his love, tries that last ditch hail mary because it's all he can do. He fails his task and she's the last person he can reach out to and, in the end, despite the very real threat to her life, Planet, and Picard, Soji smashes the transmitter. The apocalypse is averted.

Narek failed but he also succeeded. His aunt is dead, Oh has been outed as a traitor, and his sister is killed by Seven of Nine. In a cut scene, apparently, Narek was supposed to be arrested by Starfleet. So he's facing (at the very least) retribution from the androids and the ExBorg. Starfleet is very likely to arrest and interrogate him, if not imprison him indefinitely since he has ties to the Zhat Vash and, subsequently, will be on the hook to explain the Utopia Planetia disaster. Soji hates him, for good reason, and his homeworld is long gone. Narek has nothing...but the world was saved.

Narek is singular because he's all about needing and interacting with other people, he has no real authority, nobody he commands. He's a civilian (insofar as any Romulan can be) and is a soft, emotional boy who hangs on to his childhood toys. He's driven in equal parts by fear and a deep sense of failure, like everyone else in the show, and he takes the steps that seem right and necessary to him (also like everyone else on the show).

Narek was a great contrast against Elnor in every possible way--from his evasiveness to his fear of death--and he was a great foil for Soji. On Coppelius, Soji's terror clouds her judgment and she very nearly does terrible things to protect herself. Her actions, her opinions, her hesitation were all driven by fear. The ends seemed to justify the means. She reflects Narek's state for the whole show. Season 1 is about finding safety and meaning.

Narek is afraid for the whole duration of the show and his choices all reflect that same desperate need to find permanent safety, to live. Soji exists on the peripheral of that with the Ex-Borg, and as a synthetic, and then she falls headlong into it after his betrayal. Narek regrets trying to kill her and the symbolism of his losing that box, of him trying to kill her in a room that is so very culturally Romulan, right after telling her his name, makes it very clear that killing her is killing some piece of himself. But the ends justify the means. He can and will give up everything to save the world.

And his last line in the show is desperately pleading with the woman he loves as he's dragged away.

Then we never see him again or get anything resembling closure for Soji or Narek.

Which I will be big mad about forever, because they didn't even get the bare minimum acknowledgement and closure of "moving on and living life is paramount because it is finite and beautiful ". Nope. Nothing. I'm furious forever.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I hope if Star Trek Legacy happens we get Narek as a sort of...side character creeper informant ala Garak. I also hope we get Soji on Seven's Enterprise because I love her.

[presiding]

hi!! could you please tell more about the AU where delilah gets powers from chaos?? i'd really love to know, if you don't mind, ofc! :)

It's an AU so grain of salt but I was thinking about fissures created between the world and the void because of things like Delilah's resurrection/ritual.

What if Delilah worked out not just how to resurrect herself, but also how to create fissures where the void leeches into the real world, and could harness the same power for herself?

What if the player's high or low chaos was not just a function that fed the plague or the city's morale, but was a measure of increased void-power entropy?

Or put another way - if you use void magic to kill, it creates fissures, where the void interfered in life & death and it should not have. The void stole potential from the world, which Delilah could harness as sacrifices to become more powerful - and so you're indirectly helping her by choosing chaos.

I think it would make her a much more compelling enemy, too. It would be cool if by a certain point in the game, if you've been high chaos , rather than just hijacking your dreams she neutralises the Outsider herself and starts visiting you at shrines, and answers when you try to speak to Jessamine.

Maybe sometimes you call on your powers, sometimes nothing happens, and you can hear distant mocking laughter.

I think it's got potential for what DoTO could have been too - rather than trapping her in her own painting, maybe she finds a way to escape again so in DoTO, she's the one who kills the Outsider... or tries to, until Daud & Billie team up to stop her.

[silurisanguine]

Where did you see that? As their model heights are the same. and only Corvo's height has been given as 6'4" and that's never been officially confirmed by Arkane.

it's one of those days when everyone needs a reminder that the Outsider is about a whole foot shorter than Corvo

[greyswarden]

it was a really difficult decision to make but ariel did go through with the dark ritual, but it’s a choice that gnaws at him and feels some shame about. a grey warden has to die for the archdemon to be slain and the blight officially ended, and he felt hopeless. that’s what grey wardens are supposed to do. he has to die for all of it to end because it’s his destiny as a grey warden to, but it would be asking for something he’s not ready to part with yet because he wants to live just a little bit longer, even if his future remains unchanged, anyway. he knows it’s a selfish and cowardly choice that he made because he was just too scared and wanted more from life, and a choice that will surely come with consequences, but it’s a choice he made and will have to live with

[don1t1red]

Honestly, one thing about DotO which always bothered me is how Billie seems to be so lonely in her journey. And not in a way of "she is a lone-wolf" but in a literal sense of loneliness and not-belonging. It almost feels like it is her first day in Karnaca, a city where she doesn't know a single thing or person. Which isn't true. I know that a lot of people have already talked about this, and so I won't jump into the depth of criticism. Treat this post as a bunch of thoughts which occurred to me in my first playthrough.

Firstly, there is no recognition from different people. Stilton, for example. In DH2 she was ready to battle her way to his house and help him, she payed with her blood, her eye and her arm. And yet in DotO we don't see any valuable mentions of this man. Yes, we have a photo in her cabin but that's it! Nothing more nothing less, just a photo which exists in the cabin only to show us, the player, the Void rifts. Almost like it was never meant to actually represent their relationship, just a funny mechanic of the game.

Maybe I don't understand her character to that extent but when I firstly played and heard Billie's monologue about the state of the Dreadful Whale, I had a thought. Was there no one who could help her with that? And my first thought was Stilton, especially after I saw their photo together. But alas she didn't mention anything like that which was completely fine… till the The Stolen Archive mission. With a plot progression things became absurdly stupid. Billie learns that the cult uses Shindaerey as their hideout. And what is Shindaerey? It's a literal mining quarry.

And so you want to tell me that Billie who I know, cunning Billie, who was, by Daud's words, extremely good at unsolving mysteries, won't at least ask Stilton about this quarry? She won't ask a mining baron of Karnaca? Really? Give her skills some credit! I'm not asking for a 5 minute long cutscene but at least a small panel in the pre-mission briefing where Billie talks to him about that, and where we can see how worried he is for her. She is not alone and, no matter what, there is still at least one person who remembers her, sees her and wants the best for her. But again, for whatever reason Billie has no valuable connections in this game, it seems. So it didn't happen.

Two other people about which I keep thinking about are Thomas and that person who borrowed Billie's skiff and returned it during the Follow the Ink mission.

If that note from a certain T. was actually from Thomas I can't think of good enough reasons not to include some of the letter which might happen in between them during the events of the game. Thomas knew that both Billie and Daud were in Karnaca but he didn't know that Daud had died. And honestly an unfinished letter from Billie to him where she tries her best to write about their master's death but just can't - would be absolutely gut-wrenching and insightful. Also it could be interesting to see the difference in how Billie is talking about this event and how she is living through it in reality. Because - obviously - people's internal and external dialogues would be different and seeing that difference in Billie would help us, the player, to understand some shapes of her character.

Or maybe Thomas would learn about Daud's death himself somehow, maybe he could recognize Billie's work as she goes though the city to uncover its secrets. And, finally, it would be simply fun to find a small lootstach from Thomas on one of the missions, accompanied with a letter from him. How is he now? What are his thoughts about Billie? How do her actions are seen by the common folk? Or by the gangs? After all, a good character is not only divided by how the story sees that character but also how this character sees themselves and what other people in the story are thinking about this character. And, as I already said, this small letter exchange between Billie and Thomas could cover up those aspects.

And so we are left with only one character whose presence and absence in Billie's story bothers me. That person who borrowed the skiff. Because the skiff was Billie's main link between the shore and the Dreadful Whale. We learnt from DH2 that in any port there would be a “fee” for leaving the ship there, later, in DotO she complains that hiding her ship wasn't an easy task. So whoever borrowed it must be a good friend of Billie, as absence of the skiff puts her in a bad and potentially dangerous situation. Besides there is a note by a certain M., which talks about meeting with Billie later. I was kinda excited to see who this person might be. Someone whom I already know? Character from the first game? Maybe from the second one? Would it be a howler or black market dealer? Would they give me some special mission akin to one that Emily can get in the Royal Conservatory mission? Well, should I say that I was left wondering as there was not a single special NPC which met the criteria.

What? I forgot about someone? Deirdre? Oh, right. Deirdre. The best person in Billie's life and the worst death in Billie's memory. Right. It's almost too easy to forget that she exists, as Billie talks about her approximately two times in the game? More or less so. Should she talk more about her? Maybe, I don't know. But I remember thinking about using the rat charm in the Void or in the quarry. I thought that in the Void I could hear the real Deirdre speaking, this idea gave me chills back then. To adjust to the voice of your loved one's from rats, only to hear her cursing you for all you have done or to call you from beyond. I thought that she would appear somewhere in the Void, just in the corner of my vision. But again it didn't happen. And I don't know for better or for worse. As in the current state if you want to completely strip her out from the game - you won't lose a single thing. After all, a rat charm is just a rat charm, and so is a voice in it, as it never changes and never really speaks to Billie, it was never a personal matter.

Overall, I don't want to be another person who throws rocks at DotO as, honestly, I like Billie and I'm just… sad, I guess. I'm sad that the game about such a character fails to make me think more of her. I'm sad that the plot of this game was kinda ruined with a terrible script. And, at the end of the day, I'm just sad that Billies didn't get her chance to shine in her own game.

But nonetheless I still like Billie and, at least, her sarcastic comments on the surrounding was always a delight to hear, so I'm gonna replay this game one more time in vain hopes to find what I see in it.

[silurisanguine]

Gods yes i subscribe to this. it's why Marked and Billie with her Void artifacts are the only ones safe from the Void's touch. When the last whale dies the Void will devour the world. The Void whales swim between realms, the only ones capable to freely doing so. As if they are the Void's chosen emissaries that humans have forgotten about. killing them all off would make the Void very upset.

Love the idea of Outsider being higher but not the highest deity. And who is the highest one, you may ask me? The Void! Just the eldritch god, as old as the time itself, lonely and eager to communicate. But along with that Its only touch is deadly for mere mortals, as It's a pure havoc that will absorb the very soul of the one It's communicating with. 

Corvo describes the Void as an “endless cold”, Daud says that the Void feels like “if you cried for help but no one answered”. And for them it's true but for the eldritch one it's the form of communication. A love language. It lets you roam inside freely and It expects you to let It do the same, let It roam inside of you. Cup your soul in Its improvised hands to hold just for a moment, to study, to feel your emotion, to live through your memory. To show you some love in Its term, to do the softest thing It can do!

And who knows maybe this communication was the main goal of whoever created Outsider. But as time went by, this goal was lost and forgotten. So here It is and here is Outsider, both so old and not even sure how much of them was inherently theirs and how much they have absorbed from each other. 

[serpentface]

Hai-Taihe, a minor spirit known in the rural north of the Nekhuatseth forest, seen in the spaces between major towns and cities.

She is described as a mangy, heavily scarred bitch bearing signs of past pregnancies. She's mostly a normal looking dog but closer inspection reveals paws with unusually long fingers and distinct thumbs, and the tail and eyes of an elowey. She appears to lone travelers in the wilderness, almost exclusively on moonless nights. She will sit down at the fireside and strike up conversations in fluent (though antiquated and overly formal) Nekh, and it's usually only after she disappears that one notices that it's "kinda weird" that a dog was talking to them.

She is variously interpreted as a protective local spirit who guards travelers, and as a minor god of death that guides the living through moonless nights where the boundaries between the living and the Otherworld of the dead are thinnest. Sightings where she does not speak are regarded as omens of impending doom.

This folklore is contemporary, with the Hai-Taihe figure only showing up in stories from the past couple centuries and having no obvious presence in older mythology. Some scholars connect her to relics from the Sethym culture, extinct for almost a millenia. They left few direct records and their histories are distorted by generations of oral retelling, but motifs of a dogheaded elowey figure are common in the area, often in conjunction with sword imagery. The figure is often found on intricate metal amulets left as grave goods for high ranking clanmothers, and in stone or clay figures left in the boundaries of settlement territories (the latter commonly depicted as heavily pregnant)

[The meta reality not known in-universe: Hai-Taihe is an actual physical entity, a living god once known as [NAME FORGOTTEN] who was worshiped as a tutelary deity to the ancient Sethym. She was conceptualized as a mother to the people and the tutor of the sword, companion to the hunting god [NAME FORGOTTEN], who taught the people the spear.

The demon [NAME FORGOTTEN], a god of cannibalism and the dishonorable hunt, is said to have devoured the tutor of the spear. The tutor of the sword was chewed on and spat out half-dead while trying to rescue her, and her consumed companion was twisted in the demon's stomach and excreted as something new and terrible.

The tutor of the sword lost her identity with the cultural extinction of her worshipers and has found new life as Hai-Taihe, unable to distinguish the boundaries between her own mythology and living memory, both of which are half-remembered at best. She feels a great affection towards mortals and wanders in an endless, futile search for her companion, the devoured god now known as the spirit Arweny. She wishes to kill her, as an act of mercy.]

[stillness-in-green]

why do you think Deku never tried to talk to Shigaraki? doylist reason is obvious but what's the watsonian reason?

Honestly, this one’s pretty tricky to answer.  It’s very hard to get myself into the headspace of Deku (and the people in his own headspace!)—mainly because I get extremely uncharitable, extremely quickly.  Mainly about Horikoshi, yes, but that does extend to Deku, too, as well as the broader world he lives in.

The brain goes immediately to answers like, “His world is so incredibly slanted towards retributive models of justice that the fact that he even thinks about wanting to know Shigaraki’s motivations makes him a candidate for mad sainthood to the people around him.  The fact that he doesn’t follow that impulse through all the way to actually asking is immaterial; while Villains have to be punished for their actions, for Heroes, it’s the thought that counts.”

See how I’m already drifting back towards meta-narrative analysis at the end there?  Deku brings a lot of that out in me, especially from Villain Hunt onwards.  Like the wooden doll he’s named for, he comes off to me as a vessel for the plot to happen through more than he does a consistently written, well-thought-out character.  Trying to think of him through a purely Watsonian lens—no refences made at all, period, to what I think the story was trying to express or what Horikoshi’s intentions towards that story were—I almost immediately jump the tracks into territory that is all but certainly incompatible with what I was “supposed” to take away from MHA as a story.

But, you did ask, so I’ll follow the thought experiment through.  If I were to try and set down to paper an explanation for Deku’s actions from a purely in-universe stance—say, for writing canon compliant post-series fanfic—what would be my explanation?

(Hit the jump.)

Right off the bat, from a cultural perspective, I think Deku is afraid that if he tries to make excuses for Shigaraki, it would be disrespectful to Shigaraki’s victims.  That’s why you get the heroic characters constant harping on about how they can’t forgive the Villains, even though, as adjuncts to the police, “forgiveness” is utterly immaterial to them doing their jobs.  Too much sympathy for criminals, in some peoples’ eyes, becomes indicative of a lack of proper regard for the victims of crime; this is very much a dynamic in play in Japan’s legal system.[1]  Ochaco initially has the same impulse, where she’s terrified that even thinking about Toga Himiko’s human circumstances puts her in danger of forgetting the suffering Toga and the League brought about.

1: That’s a meta consideration, yes, but one that I think the target audience would understand to be implicit in the canon as written, so I’m treating it as a Watsonian detail.

Ochaco and Deku commiserate and ultimately encourage each other to embrace their desire to understand their respective Villains, which leads to Ochaco talking to Toga at some length!  Ochaco must do this because asking Toga these questions if the only way she has to reach that understanding.  Deku does not have to ask, however, because he has a cheatmode to fall back on: the mindscape shared between All For One and One For All.  If Deku thinks too much open communication with Villains risks dishonoring Shigaraki’s victims, well, he doesn’t have to openly communicate.  He doesn’t have to talk to Shigaraki the person at all.  He just has to find that crying little boy in the mindscape again.

I also think it’s notable that Deku very much does stop talking about wanting to save Shigaraki after he talks to Gran Torino.  From that point on, everything he says about Shigaraki becomes about wanting to understand him instead.  Coupled with the idea that he insists upon not forgiving Shigaraki, I get the sense that what Deku wants is not to help Shigaraki at all, but rather to simply bear witness to his truth.  And even that much feels self-serving to me—as if Deku doesn’t care so much that Shigaraki is in pain, but rather that Shigaraki might have a point, that Shigaraki’s pain might be valid.  Shigaraki having a valid point would destabilize everything Deku believes about Heroes and Hero Society, and Deku has, by that point, seen enough that he’s too upright to look away, to “sweep things back under the rug,” so he has to find out Shigaraki’s story to judge it for himself.

The fact that he feels he has the right to judge Shigaraki’s story speaks to the arrogance of Heroes—the same arrogance that leads them to declare their lack of forgiveness as if it’s in some way relevant to doing the job in front of them—as well as a deeply rooted defensiveness: that they must have, and be perceived as having, the moral high ground over those evil Villains.  I think, for example, of the Flamin’ Sidekickers and their cringingly awkward self-justifications to Dabi about their continued association with Todoroki Enji.  Their reasoning has zero bearing on either Dabi’s pain or their own heroic responsibilities to assist in the arrest of a known murderer/terrorist/arsonist, but they feel the need to spell that reasoning out to the child abuse victim/volatile Villain anyway, seemingly for no in-character reason save to rationalize the deep discomfort that Dabi’s video accusations provoked in them.

Heroes must be seen as morally just—this is the whole basis for the authority they’ve been granted to wield their powers against other people.  Best Jeanist talks about this idea explicitly, as does Police Chief Tsuragamae.  Far more damningly, it’s what led to the HPSC using agents like Lady Nagant and Hawks to quietly dispose of anyone that would present a threat to the public image of Heroes and, by extension, the fragile peace that rests on that public image.

Heroes must be pure and righteous, and Deku is just as apt to believe that as any other Hero—maybe even more apt, given that he’s also had All Might leaning on him about the bearer of One For All being the Pillar and the Symbol of Peace.  All this baggage winds up conflicting, however, with the horror and reflexive need to help Deku feels upon seeing the small, crying child within Shigaraki.

Saving small crying children is the absolute, innermost core of Deku’s personal framing of Heroism—seriously, he says this nearly word-for-word in Chapter 1!—and so, like Shouji says of the heteromorph riot, it isn’t something he can ignore and still call himself a Hero.  He’s unprepared for that personal brand of Heroism to conflict with the demands of professional Heroism, because he never expected to face someone who was both Evil Villain and Crying Child at the same time.  This is what he wrestles with over the course of his time away from UA and why, ultimately, he decides to use the mindscape as a way of resolving the conflict.

(Note again that I'm talking about my fanfic explanation here. Deku's reasoning is much murkier in the canon because of the canon's late turn towards locking us hard out of Deku's personal feelings and thoughts when they're about anything more complex than chain OFA combo moves.)

Remember that Deku begins the Villain Hunt Arc with a tentative desire to “understand Villains” so that he can perhaps use that understanding to avert or at least deescalate conflicts with them—and then the very first Villain he falteringly tries to understand is fucking Muscular, who shuts him down cold.  Deku never tries that hard[2] to understand a Villain again—Lady Nagant dumps her backstory on him with very little prompting from him, he has nothing but ultimatums for Overhaul, he doesn’t seem to ask any of AFO’s other minions any personal questions whatsoever, and with Shigaraki, he goes straight to the mindscape instead of even attempting a dialogue.

2: Insomuch as you could call asking three invasive, judgy questions in the middle of combat and then throwing in the towel “trying hard”.

My take is that Muscular scared him off of trying to verbally uncover the backstories of Villains—even though Shigaraki is ready to all but hand the first Hero to ask an illustrated history of his grievances with Hero Society, Deku can’t trust that anything Shigaraki tells him will be the unvarnished truth.  Unlike Shouto, he has no one to corroborate the truth with, but unlike Uraraka, he doesn’t just have to make the best of it, either.  He can instead utilize the mindscape, an approach that sidesteps all of the issues that a spoken dialogue would entail:

Getting Shigaraki’s truth via the mindscape means he can trust the answers he gets, rather than having to filter those answers through Shigaraki’s warped worldview.  This allows him to honestly evaluate Shigaraki’s perspective, gauging whether Shigaraki has a real point that Deku has any responsibility to address, some injustice that needs to be corrected independently of Shigaraki being held accountable for his crimes.    

Having decided that—for reasons of justice, All Might’s Pillar mentality, and his own peace of mind—he has to know Shigaraki’s truth, Deku comes to feel self-righteously entitled to that truth.  Thus, even though Shigaraki always seemed perfectly willing to share his thoughts in their previous encounters, Deku can’t take the chance that he’ll change his mind and rebuff Deku like Muscular did.  Using the mindscape takes that agency away from Shigaraki, rendering his willingness to share moot.    

No one other than people with access to the shared mindscape can perceive the interactions happening within it.  This means that, no matter what Deku learns or how he reacts to it in the moment, he doesn’t risk being seen as disrespecting Shigaraki’s victims by prioritizing the feelings and perspective of a vicious terrorist.    

Finally, on a tactical note, the encounter Deku has with Shigaraki in the mindscape during the Jakku battle seems to happen nigh instantaneously.  If he can get his answers at the speed of thought, that means he doesn’t have to specifically draw out his battle with Shigaraki until he’s resolved things to his personal satisfaction.  This is ideal, since Shigaraki presents an incredibly dangerous threat to everything and everyone around him, and Deku’s Hero education has repeatedly emphasized the importance of ending battles quickly.

There's just one problem with all this: Deku is assuming access to Shigaraki’s mind.  And why wouldn’t he?  He got in there without even trying last time, after all!  I assume that’s also why he rolls up to the battle with zero plans of any kind: he doesn’t understand how the mechanics of the shared mindscape work and none of the prior bearers can advise him because it’s a brand-new phenomenon for him as the ninth bearer, so they’re just as clueless about it as he is. 

Lacking that knowledge, he opts to simply take it on faith that he’ll be able to access that mental space again, find the crying child in it, and uncover enough about Shigaraki’s history to render his own judgement of it.  He's the Deku who does his best, after all; if it doesn't work, at least he'll know he tried. The good faith attempt, however it turns out, will allow him to satisfy his own sense of justice while not interfering with whatever temporal justice the adult Heroes are planning for Shigaraki—to which Deku fully believes he must be subjected as punishment for his crimes!—be it arrest or an execution broadcast to the entire world.

Unfortunately for Deku, thanks to his being waylaid by Toga, he turns up late to the battle only to find Shigaraki’s psyche sealed up tighter than an All Might-themed wall safe.  Then, since he never had any kind of plan for talking to Shigaraki, and his own ability to plan things is strictly limited to combining quirk abilities on the fly, he has to wing it until Kudou is able to come up with a plan for him.  Naturally, because Kudou is Kudou, and Heroes’ solutions are tailored to Heroes’ strengths, this involves violent psychic assault.  And why not?  It’s not like Deku believes Shigaraki deserves the mercy of a gentler approach.  Just think of all those people he hurt!

Now, is this all heckin’ uncharitable?  Does it paint Deku as well-intended but blindly self-righteous and ethically timid? Oh, for sure.  And I do think there was a point at which Deku wanted to save Shigaraki in a truer sense—indeed, he’s quite plain-spoken about it in the OFA Mental Conference in the aftermath of the first war!  However, it’s absolutely within his established characterization to run into things that make him uneasy and take the first out an authority figure offers him that spares him the work of demolishing and rebuilding his entire world view.  Look no further than the aftermath of the mall scene. You can draw a straight line from Deku taking Tsukauchi's out (that Shigaraki is just a sore loser) to him also taking Gran's (that killing Shigaraki could be a way of saving him).

That’s the mentality I would lean on to explain Deku’s anemic efforts to truly save Shigaraki in the end: an inherent desire to help people that has been hamstrung by a learned dehumanization of Villains, a repeated emphasis on swift, unthinking action as a Heroic virtue, a culture that regards sympathy for those involved in a crime as a zero sum game, and, last but not least, a psychological complex about the basic nature of Heroism rooted in his fraught childhood.

Deku says he’ll “never forget” Shigaraki. If it were me writing the sequel, “never forgetting” would look an awful lot like, “Following a particularly frustrating day of the Pro Hero grind, Midoriya Izuku opens his eyes at 4AM one cold winter night in his early-40s with the horrible, inescapable realization that what he did as a teenager to a deeply victimized young man barely older than he was himself back then was fucked up in ways he can never repair or take back.  And further that now, not only is he going to have to spend the rest of his life trying to make up for that act, it’s going to be much, much harder than it would have been back then, specifically because he did what he did back then and let the world get away with calling it heroism.”

Thanks for the ask, anon! I hope you find the answer interesting and at least somewhat believable, for all that it certainly isn't tonally in-line with the story's portrayal of its much-lauded protagonist.

   

(P.S. On top of convincing both All Might and Deku to not pursue saving Shigaraki in any concrete sense, Gran Torino also takes partial credit for Nana's decision to abandon Kotarou. Torino Sorahiko might actually be the all-time world champion of convincing OFA bearers that preserving One For All is worth abandoning children to their grim fates. Give him a hand, everyone. What a great and admirable Hero who absolutely deserved to survive all the way to the end of the story and who definitely is not a symbol of all the most jaded and cynical priorities of the old order.)

[silurisanguine]

So right, the last mission of Dishonored 2 is seriously lacking in chaos difference. I love how in DH2, chaos shows up much more during each mission in Karnaca. The consequences of your actions show with areas of that city very changed (see the palace district with the bloodfly infested alley way and dead beggar.) Compared to DH1 where there isn't that much difference in areas apart from a few extra weepers...but the last mission of DH1 shows it all come crashing down. (and is frankly a better level than the low chaos option). That's where Dh2 last mission is seriously lacking. There could have been so many opportunities to REALLY show how what you did in Karnaca effected Dunwall and Delilah herself. Especially considering how good chaos options shows in Karnaca during the game. The stakes should be so much higher in High chaos and a better situation in low such as suggested above.But adding to them what if you took the highest chaos route- Corvo/Emily's statue could have been moved to somewhere very dangerous and if you arent good or fast enough, it's destroyed. (echoing young Emily dying in the highest chaos option in DH1). Dont get me started on the low chaos option for dealing with Delilah, because that worked so well the first time. Plus displaying a magical painting that if damaged, might it not damage the magic too? Yeah...

It just occurred to me that Chaos does not really affect the ending in Dishonored 2 the way it does Dishonored 1. Like, the final mission is still largely the same either way. In fact, you can play high chaos the entire time but choose to spare Delilah at the end. Which I find very weird. Like it should completely take away my agency at this point.

While the low chaos ending was flat, the final high chaos mission with the loyalists was so so good. The game was telling you “you’ve made your bed now lie in it.” From Samuel turning on you and alerting everyone with a gunshot to the fact that Pendleton dies with or without your interference to the fact that Martin shoots himself to the fact that Havelock will jump off the ledge with Emily, you have NO agency. These events will occur because of what you have already done, completely disregarding what you choose to do in the moment.

Dishonored 2 has more subtle changes based on high chaos. Aside from Emily and Corvo’s dialogue (which, in my opinion, is a classic example of telling instead of showing. Easy to forgive though) there are little hints sprinkled throughout the game that what you’re doing is negatively impacting the world. The clerk at Addermire who hangs herself and the men playing cards who get into a shootout come to mind. But this doesn’t culminate into anything other than a slideshow ending narrated by the Outsider. The player’s return to the tower is the same no matter what you do. The only difference (I think) is that Delilah is either painting or waiting in the throne room.

Why not have the low chaos ending be a bit different? Instead of the Overseers dying when they rushed the Tower, why not have them stationed outside, holding their own, protecting the few citizens left? Why not have the player save the High Overseer who has been captured, winning over the overseer forces? Then the high chaos ending can stay the same—they rushed the tower and failed and Emily finds them all dead.

The same can go for gang presence. You’re gonna tell me the Hatters and the Bottle Street gangs will just give up territory super easily? I know they’re scattered throughout the final level, but they attack on sight! If you’re low chaos, they ought to recognize you as the empress and decide that the only way to save their own skins is to help you kick witches out of their territory. High chaos, they blame you for all this mess and attack you on sight, same as always.

I don’t know.

I just think that the final high chaos level ought to make me confront my choices and force me to face the consequences. I shouldn’t have any control over what happens narratively.