#i feel personally victimized by this character

[stuckyparty]

A little reminder in these Neil Gaiman times:

Abusers groom allies as much as they groom victims. When they get accused, they need to have a list of people who will say they could never. They go out of their way to help you. They're funny and charming. They want you on the witness stand in their future trial.

If you got groomed as an ally and not as a victim, you would have no way of knowing who they are behind closed doors and you're not a bad person because you believed them.

The only thing you can do now is decide what to do with the information you have. That's the only part that is your responsibility alone, and you can choose to Sunk Cost Fallacy this shit or you can choose to be better. That is the one choice the abuser has left in your hands, make it wisely.

Sunk Cost Fallacy also applies to how invested you are in an artist's work. How much it defined you. How much it helped you through the hard times. How you imprinted onto these characters and let them share the burden of living with you for a while or a lifetime.

As a veteran of the 2007 Harry Potter internet forums, I am here to tell you that you did that. Neil didn't do that. The lessons you learned, the ways of being you adopted, the comfort you found, you did that. Neil Gaiman wasn't in your library nook or bedroom or study hall or apartment walking you through it. You consumed An Art and applied it to your own life because you are a sympathetic human being who wants to find community with other human beings.

The lessons you learned are yours. They aren't tainted by his behavior because he wasn't in your room telling you how to feel. You were feeling on your own. Take those lessons forward into something new and better.

None of this is an excuse to keep consuming his intellectual property and I will judge you hardcore for doing so, signed, the girl with a HP tattoo who hasn't read HP or fanfic in over a decade.

You don't get to keep it because it was important to you. It was important to you because of who you are, not because of who he is, and you can bestow your precious sympathy and attention somewhere else going forward. I believe in you.

Godspeed, little angels and demons.

[amsaro]

I was going to put this in the tags, but it spiralled.

As well as cowardly, it is also such empty, transparent virtue signalling. The minute an artist, or any well-known figure, is revealed to have done awful things, someone always wants to pipe up smugly "I never liked them anyway."

As if it has anything to do with you. Or as if this makes you somehow a better person. Even if it's true. Even if that art never resonated with you.

If it didn't, that doesn't automatically mean it's poor quality. Your personal taste is not the ultimate test of quality. And neither is it proof positive of innocence or purity of the artist.

Other commenters here are right, to a large degree. When an artist is still living, still creating (or potentially doing so) and has done awful things, and may continue to do them, making no effort towards amends or change*, we are faced with the unsettling reality that our continued consumption of their art supports them as they do this, and may contribute towards promoting their ideas.

If you have loved that art, if it meant something to you, this hurts. Before anyone says it, I'm not comparing this to the suffering endured by the victims in these cases. But this is the fandom website. We know what it's like to have a fictional world matter to us.

If you step away from a story, or character, or world that you have loved, because you cannot in good conscience support it - or even really enjoy it anymore, now you know what you know - that is difficult. Saying you never liked it anyway is not difficult. And if you genuinely never connected with that art, then it is easy to maintain your distance.

tl;dr you are not a bad person for having genuinely enjoyed art made by an awful person, and anyone who tries to make you feel like you are is a coward. A smug coward.

[zeta-in-de-walls]

A quick timeline of Tommy and Dream's friendship.

Dream and Tommy streamed together and they had a good time so Dream invited him to his server. Tommy streamed on the DSMP server and there's where he and the server both started to really blow up. Tommy and Tubbo were 16 and Dream was 21. (Tommy was on around 250k on youtube when he joined the server and Dream was at like 4 mil).

Dream gave Tommy a bunch of youtube advice around this time as well and they got into lots of long night calls as they were both pretty hardworking and interested in making it big on youtube.

When Tommy and Dream streamed together their streams were very popular. Their comedy seemed to mesh really well but there was some underlying friction. Tommy is hugely sarcastic and plays minecraft very ironically. He would at times like to misinterpret what people said and then remind them that he's a minor. Some of these jokes were funny. A few were more grating for me personally (Eg I never liked the 'what's the worst word you know' jokes). But yeah this was purely comedy and Tommy loves to take the mick out of his friends. Also sometimes Dream and his friends did make the odd inappropriate joke.

Eventually the server and the fanbase got really big and people got super invested into the minecraft roleplay. Tommy and Dream's exile arc where Dream played a cruel villain and Tommy his victim was particularly notable creating a huge narrative around their characters' dynamic.

Then Tommy started to get burnt out on the server. Everyone was a bit. Dream was also rarely ever online not to mention other things going on. Whatever the case, the DSMP was coming to an end.

There had been plenty of drama amongst the CCs and Dream had been through plenty. The most famous was the speedrunning cheating scandal. There was also the manatreed thing. But allegations started coming out that Dream could not ignore. He'd apparently been sexting a minor. A few other stories came out too. And fans began distancing themselves from Dream. There was pressure on the CCs too.

However, Dream had convinced the server of a new vision: Dream SMP season 2!! Reset the server and do it all over again. End all the current plots as best you can and get ready for more!!! So they made a terrible ending of them blowing up the server.

And then a lot of CCs spoke out and said they didn't want to do DSMP season 2. It didn't feel right. Maybe because of the allegations, maybe because the plot sounded bad.

So Dream pulled the plug on the idea. Tommy was probably not best pleased that season 2 tanked so soon after the dark ending.

But Dream came up with a new idea. THE USMP. It would be an international server with live translation or something. All we know is that he had gotten Tommy on board and Tommy was excited by this. Tommy wanted to do another server with Dream still.

But yeah, the allegations hadn't gone away and a new drama surfaced. Quackity had plans for his own new SMP he was passionate about and Dream was threatened as it sounded so similar to his own plan. (They happened to have come up with the ideas independently.)

This erupted into drama as Quackity left Dream on read and didn't engage with him.

And Dream's server.... didn't happen. Again the server he'd promised Tommy didn't seem any closer to being realised. Just like in the DSMP, Dream wasn't shown to being much good at organising anything. The ending of the DSMP was badly managed because communication was so bad.

So as USMP wasn't happening, Tommy had been seeing what was happening, seeing both sides and wrote a skit. If youtubers were honest which made fun of Dream's response to Quackity given everything. Tommy was likely mad at the USMP's failure to manifest and also the internet was really turning against Dream. CCs in general didn't want to associate with him. Partially the allegations, but also he is a difficult CC to work with and Tommy was likely very aware having organised big videos and vlogs himself.

Dream was shocked by this video. He felt betrayed at Tommy and thought Tommy was being two-faced. Being sweet in private but milking him for views in public. So he became antagonistic towards Tommy.

At this point, Dream sent a DM to Tommy's mother complaining about him. Yeah.

Seeing Dream's crazy responses and also facing more wake-up calls about his teenage years with hindsight and the Wilbur situation, yeah Tommy was very happy to cut ties with Dream.

He didn't make a huge deal about it but he stopped making content with him and he and his friends would sometimes joke about him negatively, sometimes on his podcast, sometimes just jabs here and there. He and his community were both anti-Dream though he'd never made any public statements about it, or what happened. The history was fairly private.

Until now, Dream saw Tommy making fun of xQc and decided to lash out at him and his fanbase and air out every issue he's had over the last few years. Tommy responded, and made it very clear he's blocked Dream and they're done.

[clingyduoapologist]

At the end of the day, Dream has no position. He has no angle to argue from, because getting away from the realm of allegation or speculation, the things he’s admitted to, the people he chooses to surround himself with, the things we’ve seen him do are already enough to disqualify him from being taken seriously in any capacity. Any opinion you form about Dream has to take into account the people that he himself has admitted to hurting. It’s not a situation or drama or discourse it’s a trail of destruction.

We’re not waiting for another shoe to drop or for a straw to break some camel’s back, because the camel’s been fucking run over. We can sit here and speculate about the degree to which he’s an asshole, over which allegations are really credible, who we can believe, but that doesn’t change the fact that Dream has already proven himself, at the very very insanely oversimplified least, to be irresponsible with his platform, with his fanbase, and with the other people his platform has allowed him to meet.

He loves to pretend that, because he’s admitted to things he’s done in the past, now he’s completely exonerated. That because certain specific claims haven’t been true, that all the criticism against him is petty and stupid and should be ignored. But specifics don’t fucking matter when he’s shown patterns of harmful behavior that haven’t seemed to change for years.

He’s had his chances to show us that he could do better. Too many, in my opinion. By now, my mind is thoroughly made up. What’s important now is to show your support for his victims, the victims of his friends, and to not accept similar behavior from to creators you love.

Dreamwastaken is someone I do not know, that I feel like I’ve gotten to know all too well recently. I will not pretend to know the extent of what he’s done, to get parasocial and try to divine some ultimate truth to his character. All I have to go on is what he’s shown us and what others have told us. And I feel like that’s more than enough to form an opinion of him as a creator, and as a person.

[cecizilla1]

Before someone sends a pipe bomb to my house, is it really that horrible and controversial to say that Jimmy was just as much of a victim failed by the same disgusting system as everyone else? While support from loved ones is important, he needed actual resources. We don’t know anything about him beyond that he was struggling, so all we can assume is that he couldn’t hold down a job that was definitely due to his severe mental health issues. There’s nothing wrong with being an advocate for a friend, but it’s incredibly irresponsible to put someone you know is unstable into a literal inescapable environment for MONTHS with people who don’t know what they’re getting into and ripping him away from the possibility of actual helpful resources like intense therapy, psychiatric counseling, and rehabilitation. This man needed to be surrounded by professional and community support systems, not a friend who dismisses everything he does because how is that productive at all? I don’t know, I just feel like so many people are avoiding this conversation because they believe they’re dismissing what he did by being empathetic in that way and it drives me up the fucking wall.

Although I’m not an obsessive, violent, sociopathic narcissist, it’s painful just dealing with being bipolar, past suicidal deviation, and comparing myself to my best friends who have accomplished way more than me while I’ve been struggling to even fill out one job application. The capitalist system we live in grinds us down to our bones that if we can’t climb up the social ladder, that if we can’t pick ourselves up from our lowest alone, we aren’t worth shit and are weak—which leads to people like Jimmy lashing out on everything and everyone to gain some sense of superiority.

As someone who is extremely passionate about how capitalism has completely obliterated what it means to be in a caring community because of its intrinsic suffocating individualism, its exploitation of the lower class, and how we are chained down to an unforgiving inherent debt for our whole lives, I just find it childish that so many people avoid thinking about this aspect of his character or completely override him from the story all together.

As much as I LOATH him, I can’t help but wonder what could’ve happened if he did get the help he needed. While it unfortunately blew up in Anya and Curly’s face because they were taken advantage of, is it that fucking horrible to believe that someone can grow and change if given the chance (as long as they obviously don’t hurt you in the process)? It’s the same reason why the prison system—especially the American prison industrial complex—should be abolished because how the fuck is locking someone up for the rest of their lives going to do anything for anybody in the long run? Obviously he needed to be brought to legal justice, but I believe that we should start at the core of why he is the way he is, what will be effective for everybody in the long run, and the possibility of him being reintroduced into society once he gets his mf shit together before people start pulling him this way and that (with boundaries ofc.) I’m a victim of sexual assault and emotional abuse myself, but I don’t want that person to rot behind bars. I just want to heal and move on. I don’t want revenge, I want closure. I want to be able to face that person and know that they won’t hurt anybody else if I am to believe that I myself can grow beyond what happened.

I know that many other creators have expressed the same sentiments already, but I needed to get that off my chest too.

Anyways, this game means so much to me because it touches on societal issues that I care about. Fuck capitalism and may everyone be free from this hell.

[lesbianherald]

Hi! Just curious. What exactly is that you didn't like about Viktor's arc? I've seen a few people saying the same thing and idk if I'm missing something or I'm just too over the moon about him that my brain has gone smooth haha.

oh no oh no i'm probably going to write like a whole dissertation about this I am so sorry I'm literally cracking my knuckles I have so many thoughts and not all of them I'll even get to articulate here.

Saying this upfront: you aren't smooth-brained for disagreeing with me or liking it. I want to say that outright as I'm a very opinionated person and I am going to state my very strong opinions very plainly.

That being said : I genuinely feel like season 2 needed like... character writing 101 for a lot of these characters, especially the two characters whose names start with a 'V'. I'm so serious if one of my students brought in a story like this, I would (gently) take it apart.

If you don't want to read the whole thing I'm about to unleash, the crux of it is this for me:

Throughout the course of the season, it's very hard to discern how many of Viktor's decisions are his own. He lacks the baseline autonomy that's necessary for satisfying development. The magic of the hexcore becomes a shiny distraction that makes meaningful development impossible. Additionally, season 2 forgets so many of the themes and threads they explored with Viktor in season one explicitly in terms of class and his position on war and weapons manufacturing.

And, like almost everything in season 2, these issues are compounded because his story is done at a pace that's completely lightning-fast and prioritizes the wrong things.

Here's my thesis:

How Does a Man Like Viktor Become the Machine Herald? Arcane's Answer: Magic orb or vague sadness or something idk.

Harry Lloyd said in a season 1 commentary somewhere that one of the main appeals for Viktor is knowing who he is in the game and wondering how you take a man like him, who is so kind and has people's best interests at heart, and see him slowly become the machine herald.

I agree 100% that this is part of the story's appeal for players. And it would be a delight and surprise for non-players.

We... get that very juicy premise ripped from us. We don't see him making decisions grounded in the character they set up in season 1 at all, really. And its very unsatisfying seeing him be rendered a mere victim of circumstance with vague attachments to his past self.

This is not necessarily a complaint about arcane herald vs machine herald (I did not play league and am not attached to the lore) but a complaint that a lot of what happens with Viktor in season 2 seems very unattached to his psychology.

Christian Linke himself said (and I forget where, so I am sorry if I'm paraphrasing terribly) that part of the question he wanted the audience to ask with Viktor is how much of this is really him? Bluntly. That is incredibly silly. It's such an important question that it makes all other interesting questions one might have about him really hard to parse.

That's not compelling. That's a mistake. That's not rooted in character anymore but a vague magical orb.

Here are some questions that would have been more interesting for us to ask, Christian.

How does his desire to tamper out human emotion prompt him to do the unspeakable? What leads him there?

How far is he willing to go to take away human pain and suffering?

Is his version of pacifism really, in actuality, a form of violence?

Will his connection with others be enough to bring him back to his humanity? (this is a question we were not prompted to ask, and if we were, it would have made the final scene (which I love regardless) a lot more satisfying.

What is the root of his hunger for power? How much of his quest is a hunger for power and control over others (rooted in a fractured and tragic sense of self)? and how much is it rooted in his desire to help? Where is that line?

Any of these questions or any other questions we could enjoy exploring with Viktor become tampered with and weakened by the fact that a vague magical entity is controlling him in a vague and unrelatable way.

In short, 'How much of Viktor is still Viktor?' is a far less interesting question than. 'how is Viktor going to act, change, and learn? ' We are forced to ask the first at the cost of the second. He clearly is not fully himself this season.

The Dropping of Themes and Traits

Season 1's exploration of Viktor was multi-layered and fascinating. I feel like we got to see the establishment of a kind-hearted, sometimes awkward yet quite funny, passionate scientist.

I don't feel we see much of any of this in season 2. The stupid fucking orb overrides a lot of the traits we've come to know and love. This would have been cool if done with an ounce of care, understanding, or autonomy.

In season 1, we see Viktor in a position of powerlessness over and over. We see Viktor ignored and looked down upon by those in power both for his disability and, crucially, for his status as a Zaunite.

We're introduced to him as someone who is desperate to prove himself and carve a place for himself. He knows he's brilliant. And he knows he can help people with that big brain of his. That's all he wants. And he wants to make his mark (something I theorize is rooted in his loneliness as well as his ambition)

(Side note: I find a lot of the debate on whether or not Viktor is insecure a little silly because you can be both confident and insecure. He's incredibly secure in his abilities as a scientist, but I fully do believe he places all his worth on his work because he's not as confident in other places - represented visually by him trying to point out his boat when Sky is looking at him in the flashback. A 'don't look at me look at what I've made' type thing.)

Anyways. Viktor is willing to risk his position as an assistant and, honestly, his position at the academy and in Piltover as a whole to help Jayce. This is not just because he's 'lol so chaotic' or whatever. This is actually quite calculated. He knows he will get nowhere in Piltovian society without bending rules, because Piltover was not built for people like him.

"Do you think it was my life's ambition to be an assistant?"

But even in taking that huge step for himself, his new role is complicated.

We see him sit through meetings where his people are talked about like burdens. We see his closest (and honestly only) ally and partner speak over him in meetings and overrule his desires and wants when it comes to the future of hextech in massive ways. We see Jayce call all Zaunites 'dangerous' (I love jayce... don't shoot me please. But we do often forget that this does canonically happen and what makes Jayce so incredible is that he grows from this point)

The moment on the bridge directly causes him not to tell Jayce about what he's doing to himself. Jayce apologizing right after doesn't matter so much as it reinforces one of Viktor's fears: he is alone.

We see his illness, !!!!caused by Piltover's oppression!!!!, take over. We see him and Jayce grow apart. We see the way his loneliness impacts his desperation and the way his desperation impacts his loneliness and we see the way he's so damn afraid and just wants to live. We see how much he wants to help people, and how even though he's tried so hard he never got to achieve that because the limits of this society just don't allow for it.

Season 1 Act one is Viktor taking action for himself. season 1 Acts 2 and 3 are a brutal reminder that no matter how hard he works. No matter how hard he claws. He will always be who he is. And that makes him Powerless in this society. I honestly find it a really compelling storyline in terms of the 'bootstrap theory' and debunking that - but a different topic for a different time!

At the end of the season, he's able to gain a huge amount of power - speaking at the council about freeing his city - through Jayce's platforming and allyship. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter, because what the council is doing is too little too late - people in Zaun are too tired and too hurt - and he gets caught in the crossfire.

Despite all this, Season 2 does not engage with Viktor's being a Zaunite outside of the fact that he returns to Zaun first. But the themes explored related to class and power are gone - as they are with everyone else really.

It makes sense to me that one of the first things Viktor would do when granted a new body and new power would be to go and try to help people in Zaun, but the ambiguous mechanisms of the magic inside him, the immediate divorce with Jayce, and the bizarre way he goes about it don't make this land.

And even the return is rendered sort of meaningless. Where is the personal connection to this place? Why are we given no details related to his past here? Why doesn't he return to somewhere more personal for him?

He speaks in this cold, unaffected monotone. This healing ability seems to be the 'recursive impulse' - so him finally getting to help people just like he wanted feels rooted so much in the arcane influence it becomes murky and strange.

This is more nitpicky, and I'd be okay with it being ignored in the right context - but another aspect of his character that gets dropped is his work as a scientist. His desire to help people not through magic, but through invention. This would have been fascinating. (They try to keep this alive through vague allusions to 'look at what I've created' blah blah but again, so much of it is all ORB)

What inventions would a fully autonomous Viktor who decided to leave Jayce and return to Zaun of his own fruition create? Would they toe the line between inventions of progress and inventions of destruction?

Guess we'll never know!

Speaking of weapons. Let's talk about weapons. Let's talk about Viktor's vehement opposition to weapons not being explored within the context of his relationship with Jayce or outside of the rule that there are none allowed in the commune - which becomes quite meaningless when he agrees to work with Ambessa. Yes - he saw those blueprints on the table. But that's all we get.

Also, the fact that Jayce just unquestionably builds hextech weapons in the finale, and they're used as a good thing and a way to fight off Noxus, makes me want to claw my own hair out. Like - my themes ! Not my precious themes !

Let's also talk about him working with Ambessa. There's no build-up to that decision, not near enough character work to make that believable and considering the way the plot is written elsewhere, I fully believe this is a huge part of the problem of the writer's room dropping the issue of class. The idea that Viktor, the character that they set up, would ever willingly work with Ambessa is laughable. There are so many other ways he could have gotten to the hexcore in his fully evolved form, easily bested Jayce, and evolved. And they did absolutely nothing in the writing of season 2 to make that an interesting or satisfying choice.

An arc is only an arc if there is substance between point a and b. There's no substance here. There's vague orb. There are little glimpses of the pain he's in because of his separation from Jayce. Teeny tiny allusions to him trying to shut down his emotions. That's simply not enough.

You cannot bring a character who values choice and autonomy, whose been made to feel so powerless and is empathetic, to "choice is meaningless" without a deep study of his psychology and pain. Viktor taking away the autonomy of others, inhabiting their bodies. Being super chill with it. Okay. Coo.

Where does his desire for evolution even come from? For real? Because they seem to mistake Viktor's ambition with his desire for perfection, which is something that was never really... brought up? It could be believable that he felt this way. But where were the signs of this? Not just in season 1 but in season 2. He always wanted to help, not make humanity perfect. Because this is grounded in so little emotional logic I assume we're supposed to be satisfied with the idea that magic orb + machine herald form = ??? this ??? like ??? why???

If he wants to create a world where nobody can feel pain or complex emotions of any sort anymore, which is not psychologically where he was at the end of season 1 at all despite all he went through, you have to give us an event (ideally multiple) in season 2 that could break his mind this badly. Jayce killing him could have been this, but it happened so fast and was executed so impersonally that it doesn't work. He doesn't really acknowledge it happened the next time they see each other. Which... would probably be important to do... again emotional logic where?

His entire speech about humanity at the end of episode 6 feels like it's trying to be a catalyst. But it also feels... incredibly generic and impersonal. It felt written to play over a flashy montage of all the other characters fighting. Not for Viktor. If this was Viktor's moment where he finally snaps, we should probably focus on Viktor. And, of course, it doesn't help that he has this odd monotone this whole time, as if he's not fully in control of himself (this is not a rip on Harry Lloyd at all. He did what he was told and did it very, very well.)

Because remember. They wanted us to ask this. They wanted us to ask how much of this was orb. I think because they knew on some level they could not create a compelling enough story to get viktor where they wanted him to be for some reason without orb. That none of this would make sense without the vague spice of the arcane. And guess what it still doesn't.

Becuase people will not relate to a vague arcane influence. Connect to it. We would want to see what actually in his life made him become this. What in his psychology outside of magic orb made him do this? They provide vague tastes of this in the same way La Croix flavors its drinks.

Brought Back Wrong Can Work: Here's Why This One Didn't

I also really hate the trope of killing off characters only to bring them back. And back again. And... again. Because guess what. It takes one of the core elements of the human experience - death- and cheapens it. This for sure happens with Viktor the second time he dies.

But what i do like about bringing someone back from the dead is when you consider how doing so can bring someone back wrong. Or changed.

But because the orb is so impersonal. So bland. Such a vague sinister force that has very little to do with character, it doesn't... work. It doesn't hit. Viktor doesn't really grapple with being brought back from the dead against his will in a meaningful way.

Timing

You can see concepts of a plan, if you will, within this story. I can see how Viktor would naturally go to the undercity after waking up changed with new healing powers. But it happens way to fast. So bizarrely. I can see how he would build a society like this (of course, the power of that is dulled because orb and by the fact that we don't see it happen). I can see how the pain of being rejected and left behind by the only person who made him feel like he wasn't alone (Jayce) could have lead to a category 5 'make me evil' sort of meltdown.

Becoming the Herald, asking Singed to begin the transformation, is the only true time in this show in act 2 (before his final moments) where it feels like he's making a choice for himself. But again, we get so little time with him. To see his emotions. To elegantly point from that moment with Jayce to Viktor's need to transform and in doing so rid himself of emotion (something that they did not expand on enough ) Like oh my god, how much more satisfying would it have been to see Viktor torn apart by his own emotions - in his own viktor way - and to have singed offer him a way out of his pain - and then have viktor take it. There are certain things that should be obvious.

But It's both the timing of and the structure of the story - how quickly we cut between plotlines - that makes this really hard to follow. That makes moments that could be something feel rushed and sloppy.

Let's Talk about Sky

Viktor's guilt over sky was absolutely reasonable to explore, but it was not.... all that haunted him. To make Sky the sole guide/companion to him in the astral/arcane headspace I found to be a bizarre and honestly kind of offensive choice.

Amanda overton said she was used as a "Jayce substitute" essentially. And... why? Literally why. Why would you write a character whose sole deal is having an unrequited crush on a man only to bring her back to be 'the embodiment of his guilt and loneliness' as well as a 'substitute' - it feels... icky to me? Just in a writing women and especially women of color point of view? And it didn't feel true to Viktor's character either.

I think if we actually got to know sky better in season 1, this would have worked because it would have been obvious how different she was, how she was a product of his mind or the hexcore or whatever (the lore being vague here doesn't help...)

Plot Twist because I keep hating on Orb: They Could Have Made The Orb Really Cool

Here's the thing. Magic influence on its own can be used to write extremely compelling plots. Walk with me.

Imagine Viktor wakes up. Immediately knows something's wrong with him. That something inside him is toying with him. Making him see things (visions of not only sky, but maybe his parents, Jayce, Heimer). He wakes up earlier in act 1. Despite his anger, he stays with jayce in order to better understand himself and his powers. All the while, he is haunted by whispers and visions of the hexcore. What if it whispers to him of his own insecurities and failures?

What if Things with Jayce are tense. Jayce has to admit to making weapons again, in an argument leading to more haunting visions from the hexcore offering him an out: emotional numbness. You would never have to feel again Viktor. If you let me in fully, you would never have to be alone again. You'd be more powerful, Viktor.

Imagine Viktor is there during that attack ambessa orchestrated. That he has the horror of witnessing Jayce wield his hammer in a genuine attempt to defend himself and the people he loves. He sees first hand how hextech is being used for destruction in a way that horrifies him.

Imagine him being accused of being a part of it because he's a Zaunite - humiliated in some way. Publicly. Imagine the emotional trauma of this resulting in a falling out so devastating he embraces his visions of the hexcore - gives into the numbness. And only then leaves. With the hexcore... he feels better than he has in years. He hopes he can give the gift of this to others. Now he is under orb influence, but now the way he's gotten there is more satisfying to me at least.

Now imagine him fighting the orb influence in key moments. Imagine the color in his eyes coming back. Imagine Viktor's relationship with the arcane being more of a dance than a vague entanglement. Imagine its influence haunting him in the same way Jinx's visions haunt her. Imagine it being personal rooted in his character.

Old Man Viktor

Listen. I am the old man Viktor connoisseur. I love him. I love the idea of him. I wrote a whole fic about him, during which I had to spend a lot of time with the story. It's sort of... very much impossible to make much sense of?

I'm not mad at the fact that it's an obvious retcon. Honestly, because I think from a storytelling perspective, it worked a lot better than most of the decisions they made this season.

But I'm not a fan of (shocking) how little time we spend with him. How little chance we get to understand his motivatons. And also. What the fuck he said to Jayce to make Jayce's first line of action killing him? In my fic, I made it that Jayce needed to shoot Viktor to get the hexcore out, so he could communicate to viktor without influence. But that felt like heavy lifting I shouldn't necessarily have to do for something so important. It also doesn't feel like a compelling or satisfying question to make your audience have to wrestle with.

The Final Scene

Want to say upfront I am not one of the people who did not like Jayce's speech.

I was quite moved by it. And aside from the perhaps out of place mention of the illness brought on by Piltover which I can understand the criticism for, I felt it was beautiful. (I am disabled btw)

That being said. I think i'd be a sobbing mess on the floor if the themes Jayce is presenting in his speech were more present throughout season 2. Because we really don't see this enough - the desire for perfection.

I'm also not one of those people who thinks Viktor's insecurities weren't present in season 1. To me, they were and were obvious, but not enough in his motivations and actions in season 2 to make Jayce's speech land like it could.

I really loved Jayce's arc in season 2. Him immediately embracing Viktor after he woke from the goo was surprising but felt right. But I wish they had more genuine conflict rooted in their conflict in season 1 that would allow their final moment to land even harder.

I really liked the final scene, and it made me an emotional mess. But weirdly, I'd almost like it as a short film removed from the context of the season two, which says just how little Viktor's arc this season contributed to the moment.

Final Thoughts

I'm so sorry I went so in-depth. I just love him as a character and feel he was very much not done justice.

We can attribute some of this to the lack of time. But when you know you have a lack of time, you need to write with that in mind instead of trying to do it all. And ultimately, I found a lot of scenes this season a waste of precious time. They had so many characters alone contemplating something intangible or alone and trapped for episodes. They didn't plan this with the care and precision needed to pull it off.

I also want to note that I know I say here a lot that there's a lot they needed to make "more obvious". This is not because I'm stupid. But when you're a writer, you need to know what to highlight and what you can leave vague so you leave your audience exploring the right nuances and asking the satisfying questions.

Anyways umm. The end. Holy shit, I'm so sorry I wrote so much.

[rhetoricalsoapbox]

Reminder to the GO fandom as someone who has been a part of it:

You are 100% allowed to be upset at Neil, you are 100% allowed to feel upset about your favorite characters being "ruined" now.

But, no matter how upset you feel, the people who were harmed by Neil are much more important than a book/show or the characters in it.

The GO fandom is a wonderful community, but the amount of people acting like Crowley, Aziraphale, or any other GO character is more important than real life victims is horrible.

Nothing right now is about any of your favorite characters or your favorite media, it is about real life people that have been hurt and affected by a horrible person.

The GO fandom will not disappear, no fandom surrounding any of Neil's work will ever fully disappear; you can still find your community, discover yourself and your identity, create for yourself, etc. But what matters most right now is being there to support and believe victims. I truly hope that they find peace in what they're going through. I hope that there will be justice for them.

You will find new things to enjoy and new people to bond with and new things to bond over. The people harmed by Neil are going through and have gone through hell and need all the support and backing they can get right now. You and your favorite characters are not the priority in this situation.

[gayofthefae]

This meme pissed me the fuck off and I'm glad we're finally talking about it.

I tell myself it was them coping with the intensity of the scene but the truth is homophobia shows it's roaring prevalence every time representation comes out to play.

Thankfully, I know that memes do not ruin the momentum of an emotional scene for many. For example, I once watched the "YOU'RE ALL I WANT! YOU'RE ALL I HAVE!" actual scene: heart wrenching.

But there is somebody who will laugh when they see this scene for the first time now "from the meme". And they will think they are laughing at a fictional character. But they will be laughing at queer people. I am furious at the people who made that happen.

This is a picture of a boy who has just committed to not being happy because he strongly believes that his decision is ultimately meaningless as he tells himself that as a queer person, he never had a chance at happiness anyways.

I am not religious, I can assume that Will is. I do not believe that I was made by God as a mistake, but I did at a point believe that I was an evolutionary mistake - a mutant failure. I remember that hitting me so deeply when he said he felt like a mistake. The feeling as a queer person that you were made wrong. That you failed at something.

Will Byers just stated that he feels like he is broken. He was made wrong and rather than gay, is a failure at being straight, but there is one thing and one thing only that makes him feel that this isn't true. He says that. And then he gives that thing up.

And the meme is stupid as fuck too. The caption format is "[me when I'm sad]: picture of person crying"

"Me when the vending machine doesn't let my candy out" [picture or borderline suicidal queer person actively hurting himself on purpose as a result of being an abuse victim from a very young age]

"he was crying because he saw his haircut 😂😂"

You will NEVER understand the queer importance of that scene.

:(

[maxdibert]

Years ago, when the Marauders fandom wasn’t the world of absurd OCs with colorful hair and nonsensical relationships it is now, the James stans could hate Severus all they wanted, but they NEVER made stuff up or used fanon to talk about the character. I mean, I was around during the LiveJournal days and participated in many discussions, and when someone criticized Snape, it was based on things that came from the canon, not from some made-up crap pulled out of an AO3 hole.

Now, you find Snaters accusing Severus of being a sexual assaulter when CANONICALLY the only one who received that kind of assault was him, by James. Or they make up that Severus was jealous of James being with Lily and, like some kind of incel, stalked her everywhere, when CANONICALLY he never says anything about his feelings and accepts the end of their friendship from the start. They also go on about not liking Severus because he’s a purist and a racist, and whatever else, but then they’re the biggest fans of Barty Crouch Jr., who was literally Voldemort’s number one fanatic, who tortured people into insanity? Or Evan Rosier, who came from a lineage of Voldemort fanboys? It’s a fandom that’s descended into complete nonsense. Plus, they completely make up the characters; the James and Sirius from that fandom don’t exist—they’re completely OCs because the REAL ones weren’t like that.

I’m not surprised that people who were part of the original Marauders fandom hate these new fans. It’s not just that they’ve taken a bunch of characters and stripped them of their personalities to mold them to their liking and project their fetishes through them, but they also claim they’ve done it to be social justice warriors against Rowling, while actually falling into super harmful and dangerous stereotypes and constantly whitewashing violence, bullying, and classism. Not to mention their prejudices against Severus Snape, which are basically filled with victim blaming, body shaming, and often repressed classism. So, under that colorful and LGBT-friendly facade, what you really have is a bunch of kids who, instead of creating their own OCs, are hungry for popularity and likes, so they’ve taken existing characters and mutilated them.

Honestly, they get on my nerves. But what amazes me the most is the CALM with which they base their arguments on theories they’ve read or fanfics, and when you respond, they say they’re not going to read. Of course they’re not going to read—they’ve never read more than two consecutive lines in their lives, which is why all they know about the characters comes from Tumblr instead of the books, and why all their hate for Snape is based on the crap they’ve read in a few poorly written fanfics.

But, well, what can you do? There’s all kinds in the vineyard of the Lord, even idiots.

[bayambii]

hsr make out headcannons

warnings: not ns!fw but a little filthy

characters: gepard, kafka, sunday and seele

bambis comments: gen the most hodgepodge of characters but whatvr. someone just throw me against a wall alr 🙄🙄 SORRY ITS SO SHORT FOR SEELE I PROMISE I LOVE LESBIANS 🩷

gepard

definitely like obsessed puppy boyfriend GOD I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

it’s not like.. desperate in like a weird way. but like desperate in a very hot way

making out isn’t like a want for him, it’s very much a need. like it’s the air that he needs to breathe

he’s like almost always falling all over you when you guys make out, and it’s so cute stawpp

his hands!! help!!!

wandering hand syndrome! ok.! he cannot help it he just needs his hands in your hair and on your thighs and oh em gee it’s up your shirt now hehehrhhh

definitely would have you wet just from making out cause it’s a very sensual thing for him he can’t help it okay

he’s a heavy breather, and definitely pants a lot

you would think because he’s so in love with you he’d want to step back and look at your face more but he’s very VERY busy okay

you give this boy a job and he will complete it

( the job is to get you horny )

kafka

mommy freaking mommy hello

another victim of wandering hand syndrome but for her she CAN help it. she just really wants to touch you. in . more ways than one ! :D

i feel like she’d grab your hair and bunch it up like crazzyy

like after you guys r done you back up and you’re like oh my god. my fucking hair kafka what da hell

she don’t care

very much into telling you what to do, or where to pay attention

where to kiss where to touch yes freaking maam whatever WHATEVER YOU SAY OK

she likes a height difference and very much is into looking down i repeat DOWN AT YOU

that’s hot idc

sunday

i know people like to characterize him very like dominant but I DISAGREE PEOPLE I DISAGREE

he’s very much a people pleaser

scratch that, he’s a YOU pleaser

he loves to freaking worship the hell out of you, kissing whatever he can

only someone of his purity can put his hands on you like this, okay?

he’s very much into like a height difference like kafka, but this time looking up at YOU

like you’re in his lap and he just rubs his hands along your arms looking up at you

he’s very much a starer loves to freaking stare at you

just THE THINGS HE WOULD DO TO JUST STARE AT YOU ALL DAYY okay

if he could get paid to stare at you, man he would be rich as hell

he’s not really as much of a wandering hand person, but just pays attention to one spot

yeah you know the spot ;P

seele

she’s also very desperate but desperate and ROUGH

man she needs you and needs you bad

she’s always grabbing and pushing at you

does she want to be close to you or super far away from you? the world may never know

but there’s also moments where damn she just wants to be taken care of

like lay back and just let you kiss all over her

either way, it’s all out of love

she breathes a lot too. is she asthmatic? no she’s just very much in love with you

[goldenwoods]

This post is about the gaiman situation.

Right off the bat, fuck him and his associates. It's rare for someone in a position of power to get what they deserve but I hope he joins that short list. And I wish the victims well. What a horrible situation to be abused by a man masquerading as a champion for inclusivity and human rights.

That said, I don't understand the vitriol put towards people who're trying to recontextualise their relationship to gaiman's media in light of the revelations. I'm talking about those posts and comments getting angry at people for grieving, accusing them of not prioritising the victims.

Which is such an unwarranted accusation. Obviously, if they're under a post or article about the victim's testimony and they go "my season 3 :(((" or "my poor characters don't deserve this :("in the comment section then yeah, they're pretty disgusting. But the same accusations shouldn't be levied at people trying to come to terms with the fact that their formative experience was written by a monster ON THEIR OWN BLOG.

This isn't putting fictional characters before victims, it's just that there can't be much said about such a black and white situation that isn't already said by a million other posts ("fuck gaiman, fuck his supporters, hope the victims get justice"), whereas how a reader themselves deal with the fall of someone they've put on a pedestal is a much more complicated and nuanced process that they have to think through. If anything, I think it's a sign of a healthy community who treat 'fuck gaiman' as common sense and not something that needs arguments about. I don't know if there are ways to help the victims yet beyond just showing support on social media (let me know if i've missed something), but I don't think going after any fan daring to talk about their own relationship to the text is helpful at all. And I can guarantee you those who're grappling with how they feel towards the text now –– those feeling betrayed and angry –– will be quick to rally to support the victims because they're only feeling conflicted because of how disgusted they are with the author.

(For context, I don't feel attached to Gaiman at all so this is not related to any personal stakes I have in this. I enjoyed GO the show, but never read or watched any of his works otherwise. I was planning to get a copy of GO the book but the allegations surfaced first so that didn't end up happening either. I am partial to David and Michael's acting but even then I'm just a casual fan and if they react in a disappointing way to the Gaiman situation, I feel like I could stop consuming their works without much emotional turmoil.)

EDIT: since this is getting a fair bit of attention, i want to summarise my midnight ramble a bit: the crux of the problem is that lots of people treat this blogspace as a mega-conversation, which is how the 'you're not focussing on the victims enough' accusation come up. Think if you're in a conversation about how person A had been hurt by B: OF COURSE your response should be 'gosh that's fucked up. hope A's doing okay', and if your response ON THE SPOT is 'ohhhhh shit i don't know how to feel about the fact that I used to really like B lemme monologue about my complicated emotions out loud' then yeah you're the problem. But if you respond compassionately but spend a sizeable amount of time afterwards in your own head ruminating over how you used to think B was a really good person? ...then you're just a normal human being with a moral compass. Tumblr is the latter and not the former. It's the collection of dumping grounds for people's thoughts, not an online forum that give you a measure of where people's priorities are.

[lobo-inu]

saw a post that reminded me of my really bad past experiences with tesblr, and how lucky i am to finally have a tes server that’s like…. actually safe. and full of people who are nothing but genuine. especially now that i’ve healed a lot, too.

i’ve heard SO MANY horror stories about rumors people in this fandom spread - and i’ve also been a victim of them too, lol. been called a scammer (was getting donations for a live saving surgery. thats it), a mysoginist (literally just explaining my mother-based trauma and being scared of adult women lol), and also like. had rumors go around about me apparently letting minors into an 18+ server. even tho i fucking hate interacting with minors online w a passion. i made a past server that was previously 15+ to 18+ and kicked all minors bc they could not fucking behave and respect boundaries.

oh, also pure ableism when it comes to a Very stigmatized diagnosis of mine. :| that was from the same person who called me a mysoginist. people over here making insane headcanons for me, i guess 😭

….so yeah. just awful, out of character shit going around.

i’ve lost a good few people i considered friends who were quick to listen to these rumors instead of just. idk. communicating with me.

this fandom irks me a lot with it’s behavior on a personal level beyond that, though. Skyrim had been one of my most intense hyperfixations since i was in a single digit age. so it sucks having such a hostile and drama-hungry community when all i wanna do is share OCs and shit.

this sounds fucking insane, but past experiences here have caused my anxiety disorder to skyrocket to such a drastically dangerous degree, so its kinda crazy that i’m even back here. typing this out is giving me chest pains lol. like this is probably one of the worst fandoms to get involved with

with that said, thank you @ the people who’ve made my return an enjoyable experience. and thank you to those who stuck around even after i left in 2023, and stuck by me and my honesty vs rumors. yall are the fucking real ones. and also the babygirls server, friends both new and old - i love u guys. thank yall for helping me continue this personal healing journey of mine (yall know what i’m referencing).

if anyone has had any ridiculous experiences here, do feel free to share 😭 cause i know i’m not the only one. also god i love the babygirls server. pls join the babygirls server

[presiding]

AITA? the guys at the pub told me to find a woman because she's sleeping with my enemy but all i had was a picture of her ass that i extorted from a well-known pervert. he couldn't name her and i didn't recognise her ass so i gatecrashed a party. i narrowed it to 1 of the 3 hosts but they were basically the same woman, idk, i cant tell them apart. some guy in a mask told me he was in love with the woman i needed and would deal with everything, i just needed to get her into the basement. so i told her she was in danger and she followed me into the basement where i strangled her. i never got proof she was involved but i guess it doesnt matter cause i found the ass i was told to find. i told my daughter's governess and she went quiet but the guys at the pub clapped me on the back. AITA?

poetic justice in revenge games: what's with lady boyle's last party in dishonored (2012)

a longpost i'd prefer someone else made tbh

references at the end

—

where to start?

dishonored 2012 is a revenge game (tagline: "revenge solves everything" [see also dh2: take back whats yours]), where high/low chaos story outcomes represent different types of power fantasies for the intended younger male (1) core audience.

the story & level design

each dh1 level is designed around the concept of revenge. with Corvo as the player character, each betrayal he experiences in the story gives the player rationale to seek out a target for justice in each level.

"The difference between Dishonored and how it works in Half-Life 2 is that it's a lot more personal. I think you get that involvement because the character has personal relationships with people from the beginning. And it's very clear that people have fucked with you in a very personal way," [Austin Grossman] said. "I'm biased, of course, but I think Dishonored grips you much more viscerally, more emotionally." (2)

dishonored is a game about choice: between low or high chaos options, each level's story can justify your decision to kill or neutralise - (nb: this means each target must have done enough wrong to "deserve" death) - and each level design prioritises player decision-making/freedom.

a common misconception about dishonored 1 is that its a game about morality, or right and wrong, but i argue its not that deep (affectionate). the chaos system is more about your role in the city's ecosystem than a morality simulator - kill more people, rats feast, the plague gets worse and the city becomes more chaotic.

poetic justice

because dishonored is a revenge game, each level involves choosing a fate for your primary target/s that will feel like justice to you, the player.

while assassination is always an option, the ultimate goal for each level is to engineer a fitting end for your victim.

this ‘low chaos’ option is reinforced in two ways - if poetic justice isn’t fun enough on its own, the game also rewards you with achievements for choosing ‘nonlethal’ fates.

[sidebar: enough players gave feedback that they didn't enjoy the confusion of choosing the 'right' way to play, that this feedback loop was removed from dh2:doto and deathloop (3)(4)]

storywise, low chaos/nonlethal endings are designed to feel like poetic justice.

to achieve this, the target's neutralisation must be 1) uniquely tailored 2) to the deserving victim.

a common phrase you’ll see in the dh fandom communities is:

“the nonlethal fate was worse”

but if you inspect the villain's actions/planned actions there’s an aspect of scale. your decision to incapacitate a single person leads to countless lives improved, in addition to avenging their role in the character's downfall (see also: the central premise of game called dishonored). this aspect of scale in wrongdoing (eg. villains extend their villainy to not just the player but in-universe to many people) gives a feeling of heroism to acts that might otherwise feel cruel.

because this game is designed around catharsis in revenge, it's important that the player feels that their actions are both fitting and justified - generally in a “turnabout is fair play” sense. these actions may be cruel viewed without context, but they are justified in terms of scale - this game isn't about being moral, or following the law, it's about revenge.

dishonored examples of poetic justice:

campbell branded a heretic and cast out because his power came from weaponising Overseer beliefs & systems

delilah trapped in the paintings she planned to capture a child in.

sokolov who trapped civilians for experimentation, was trapped in an animal cage

each villain demonstrably, within the game’s narrative, earned their fate - and because these are fates they planned to inflict on others, or already had done worse, the player character feels justified in their choice, and by additionally tailoring to each character, there's a sense of personalised and fitting revenge.

with the exception of…

who is Lady Boyle? good qn.

in dh1, there is only one female primary target - Lady Boyle.

canonically, the player must neutralize her because she is providing funding to the man on your daughter’s rightful throne.

in broad story terms, you are asked to find her because she is burrows' mistress.

the clue to her identity is a portrait of her ass ("finest hindquarters in all of Dunwall" - Sokolov), and when you get to the party, almost no one knows who she is even though she's the host.

in terms of level design, she is literally interchangeable with her sisters - the game randomly changes who your target is, and the character models only differ by colour. in terms of the universe, she's less a person, more of a sex symbol. as well as anton's comments about her ass, there's also the pendleton brothers' comments about wanting to fuck her, as well as multiple partygoers comments about the boyle sisters' sexual availability. there's a lot of gossip ingame but little is substantiated (as a reminder: the majority of dh players have only played dh1 and have not/will not read the canon books).

from both an internal logic perspective, and an external logic perspective, it “doesn’t matter” who this only female target is. she's barely a person, more a piece of ass.

poetic justice (for her)

unlike other primary targets with their tidy poetic endings, Lady Boyle (canonically Waverly) is not personally responsible for mass deaths (unlike, say, Sokolov), nor has played an active role in your downfall. let me expand on that.

a comment i've seen a bit:

"well she deserved it because she's partying while the city burns"

a woman planning to stay sober because she's afraid someone's after her doesn't sound like she's having fun.

her funding is not proven story-wise other than hearsay until Corvo has already finished the mission (a note from a guard in the next mission mentions the Boyle funding has dried up) (otherwise its speculation, its not actually in campbell's black book).

there’s no evidence she is providing this money willingly, nor even that she feels positively about Burrows (the letters in game hinting at romance are from him). one of the plot-points is that burrows was using his former role as Royal Spymaster to blackmail nobility with secrets. so, there's just as much a chance that she was his victim. (i've heard others say this is canon but i wasn't able to find evidence for that... if you know something i am curious!)

to complete this mission low chaos/nonlethal, you either need to lure her upstairs to drug her, or strangle her, or lure her to the basement before doing either of those things.

your options are to knock out a woman who has done you no direct harm, and you have no concrete proof she's done you indirect harm, and then traffick her unconscious body to someone you have no reason to trust.

let's review:

is her fate warranted in terms of scale? we only know it's true she was giving money to burrows in hindsight (eg. second runthrough), so not really no.

is her fate poetic justice? she is sex trafficked not because she regularly kidnaps people, but because she is the woman target, and is reduced to the sexual availability that so many NPCs comment on—she is not even a specific woman, given that she is gameplay wise randomly interchangeable with her sisters.

so it's not a case of turnabout being fair play.

yes, there’s a canon ending but that’s not the point here—we’re talking about the experience of playing dh1 first run.

let's rewind to another quote from the writer above:

“[...] it's very clear that people have fucked with you in a very personal way,"

assuming that the point of each level is catharsis for the assumed player, you can read this another way:

if your entire understanding of Lady Boyle as a character is that she is an unmarried woman who is presumably sleeping with your enemy (she's referred to as "the lord regent's mistress" regularly),

and she is someone that many people want to fuck, or at least comment on her sexual activity or attractiveness,

and as the assumed player you view any of this as punishable,

then... I suppose it is poetic justice that she will be locked in some creep’s sex dungeon for the rest of her life as revenge, regardless of her lack of role in your downfall, and regardless of how willingly she aided your enemy.

in other words, in this narrative's logic: sexually attractive women have this coming. as a target, lady boyle is less of a character and more of a trophy to be won.

contrary to poetic justice which is tailored and deserved, Lady Boyle’s fate of being handed unconscious to her stalker, is neither tailored (there was no precedent for this to happen to her - contrast with the targets who take lives), nor deserved (there’s no proof she had anything to do with corvo specifically, other than being his enemy's mistress. its debatable she was funding burrows willingly).

the purpose of a system is what it does

in a game that prioritises player choice, it is not possible to progress the game without choosing either to sex traffic Lady Boyle, or kill her.

this isn't equivalent to random bits of lore you can skip - you cannot get progress past the 5th level without making this call.

it's bad faith to argue "maybe he just locked her up and never intended to sexually assault her" within a universe that provides, unprompted, comments on this woman's body, attractiveness & sexual availability.

It is also canon. this is what corvo decided to do.

but isn’t the empire just sexist?

"when he says bring the bottles, i bring the bottles. when he says undress, I undress." - recurring maid NPC voiceline [multiple environments]

the world introduced within dh1 is sexist and sexually violent. this is valid - i include these themes in my own dishonored fics too, so the issue isn't the inclusion of these issues.

the difference here is that this is a game in which player choices are inherently about justice. rather than being a bystander trying to the right thing in a cruel world, you are an active participant in sex trafficking, and you are rewarded for this behaviour (achievements, a reward later in your room, and this contributes to the 'low chaos' ending).

this isn't corvo fighting the in-universe sexism, he's not even leveraging it --- this is corvo and therefore the player perpetuating it.

there’s no specific storyline reason to mete out a karmic punishment to lady boyle, then, well... is this cathartic to the player? given dh1's target audience, it's not a huge logical jump to say the story assumes you the player won't notice that this isn’t a deserved ending (accurately, given how few talk about this. and we've had years to talk about this). she's a sexy interchangeable woman who might be sleeping with your enemy, and there's rumours she's funding him too, and at that point ingame that's enough for her to deserve this fate.

my most generous take is that it’s lazy writing to forgo a poetic ending for a level/target.

a canonical retcon

the developers later expressed regret about this (see below harvey smith tweet).

presumably to address that "corvo is canonically a sex trafficker" thing, they added a storyline to a supplementary book which demonstrates that Lady Boyle was able to manipulate their way out of being kidnapped by her stalker.

imo this doesn't help:

this information is not in the game - almost no players will know of this (consider the # of book sales vs # of videogame sales). in writing, if it’s important, it will be both in the story and clear to the audience.

It reinforces myths that victims of sexual violence are deserving, or are lying/exaggerating etc. “you lived so why are you complaining?” and/or "well she was a manipulative bitch in the end so she deserved it all along”

gritty 'realism'

“its realistic because women are raped and stalked every day”

hiram burrows has cctv.

people love realism while the power fantasy caters to them. part of the power fantasy of corvo attano as a character is how the women in-game treat you (cecelia trusting you, emily being adoring/attentive/learning from you, esma boyle & lydia etc wanting to fuck you, piero talking to you/begging as though you're the arbiter of callista's honor in the bath scene, and saving countless NPC women). and this level, this target, is part of the power fantasy.

the thing about narratively punishing characters for being women, or having the wrong skin colour etc—is that, when you defend those writing choices by saying its realistic within the context of a fantasy game, you’re saying that inequality and the structural violence supporting it is inevitable, even when everything is made up.

additionally, it's gatekeeping: you're saying that escapist power fantasies are only for certain people. comparing “poetic endings”, there is a massive difference between the real-life statistical likelihood of, for example:

“put to work in your own slave mines,”

“getting kidnapped by a stalker.”

in my experience, people invoking ‘realism’ as a defense of their favourite media don’t want to discuss the ‘realistic’ things — more often, they want the people for whom their ‘realism in fantasy’ is reality to shut up so they can go back to enjoying their gritty fantasy, with other people's lives as wallpaper.

but pres i like this game

me too.

on that note, thanks for reading this far - its natural to resist analyses that critiques something you like. its easier and more comforting to shrug and say everything was justified.

as genius as many elements of dishonored 1 is, it is still a game for young men made in 2012... which isn't an excuse, just a reason. dh1 had every opportunity to not slip into this type of lazy writing - there's no particular reason to handle lady boyle & this mission this way as its not even satisfying at a player/audience level.

this isn't one miss-step, this is multiple miss-steps, and is less commentary on in-story/in-universe sexism, but more just regular sexism on the side of the devs, which is in turn excused at an audience level.

by working out what a game did well or poorly, we can learn how to do better in narrative design. we can also learn to identify similar plot shortcomings in other media.

and, from my perspective - it's another little contradiction to sit with in the things we enjoy. ah, dishonored, you beautiful ugly perfect fallible game.

talking about it

it's important to talk about this storyline.

don’t use the main fandom tags to criticise people who find this storyline shitty. it's weird. even if you don’t care about extending base-level empathy to people who have survived sex trafficking and rape/assault, it’s also citationless behaviour; the devs said lady boyle's fate was a miss-step.

part of why this is rarely talked about is - well, it’s hard. its emotionally difficult to talk about sincerely, and its even more rare to find an audience who will listen.

as a person who has survived similar violence, i feel like i need to write an 2,000 word essay with citations to prove that the only female villain in this game is treated in a way that isn’t justified in a doylist sense, nor in a watsonian sense. and honestly? that's not great.

citations:

1 - Dh demographics targeting (pdf) 2 - Quote source 3 - Dev interview & (4) article with dev quotes

[ewingstan]

I Need to think more about how Ward treats the trope of reformed/defanged villains.

Parahumans have always played in the space of "nominally villainous character who the heroes can have a non-threatening relationship with," previously exploring it with the joint hero/villain efforts against the ABB or the Endbringers, then with Miss Militia accepting to accept Skitter's dominion in her territory. It was largely political non-aggression. Ward has plenty of that, but the interactions between the Undersiders and Breakthrough have both a more personal element to them and less of a "same side now, different side tomorrow" element. They were co-sponsoring a junior league of capes, for crying out loud.

The Undersiders haven't really filled the old "villain" niche since Rachel's epilogue in Worm, when she helped take care of a rampaging broken trigger with the heroes. Even so, its notable how the Undersiders have done remarkably little in the way of old-fashioned crime in Ward. Hell, the most "anti-social" thing Tattletale's done is sell info on Rain to his cluster, along with selling info to villains more generally. While playing all sides was something that got you slotted as a de-facto villain in Worm, it seems like it actually does get treated more like neutrality-if-not-heroism within the new state of things.

That's mostly notable because a neutral cape in comics tends to default to being a hero with a punk coat of paint. Your Harley Quinns and Deadpools show up on hero ensemble teams nowadays way more often than they're robbing banks. The Undersiders almost feel like they're falling victim to the same sort of heroism drift much of the time, though wildbow seems to want to point out that such a position needs hero buy-in. Vista can tell Victoria about how Aisha and Rachel are basically just ersatz co-workers, and that could accurately describe her relationship with them. But Taylor tried doing something similar, and she didn't actually have that "friendly anti-hero" position until she forced the PRT into a position where she had to be inducted. Before that, even if she was being more proactively heroic than Rachel and Aisha are nowadays*, she was still treated fully as a villain. Friendly anti-hero status requires buy-in from the in-group, and Vicky has always been more hesitant to grant that status—especially to people like Rachel who barely fit into her idea of "cape." At least Lisa plays the game.

*This is, of course, ignoring that Taylor was actively seeking to usurp Protectorate control of the city, whereas the heroes have never really had a similar monopoly in The City, and most of the efforts to form such a monopoly that Victoria has spearheaded have included the Undersiders in some form.

[luanna801]

Funnily enough, Jin Guangyao's "Even if he hadn't been murdered, A-Song still had to die" line is actually a significant part of what makes me think he didn't kill him. Because if we assume he's lying through his teeth and totally did murder his son, and he's just saying whatever lie will calm Qin Su down and put her off being suspicious of him... why even admit that much? Why not keep pushing back as hard as he can against the accusation, double down on "Of course I would never have hurt him, I never even considered such a thing, he was my son and an innocent child and I loved him, how dare you even suggest otherwise"?

It just seems like a really weird and counterintuitive move, if he's trying to falsely convince Qin Su he had nothing to do with this, to go the "I didn't do it, but if I'd done it, how could you tell me that I was wrong" route.

(More thoughts under the cut.)

It's not totally out of the realm of possibility - I know of real-life murderers who said roughly comparable things about their victims (see, for example, this infamous statement from historical murderer Richard Loeb, who looked the police dead in the eye and said "Yeah, actually, that kid is exactly the victim I'd pick if I was going to murder someone" about the kid he did in fact very much murder). But I don't really think it fits Jin Guangyao's MO - he's not an arrogant braggart seeing how much he can get away with, he's someone who's incredibly careful and doesn't just go blurting out incriminating things about himself.

I guess he could be hoping that if he convinces Qin Su it was ~totally all for the best, actually~ she'll just drop the whole line of accusation and stop feeling like she needs to dig into this any further. But again, that doesn't really seem like his strongest argument if he's just going to lie here anyway. Despite how upset and horrified she is here, he still has fifteen-odd years of her knowing him as a kind, seemingly? decent person working in his favor. I don't think that view of him would have entirely evaporated in an instant (although it's clearly severely shaken by the things she's learned).

So I think if he'd stuck to insisting he was horrified at the very thought and outraged she'd accuse him of such a thing, she might well have backed down and possibly even apologized for thinking he'd go that far. By contrast, him acknowledging that he did think Jin Rusong needed to die, even if he simultaneously claims not to have actually killed him, is just likely to make her feel like she's on the right track by suspecting him and he's probably just trying to downplay his culpability.

It's also true that it's a very emotional conversation that he does not handle well in a lot of ways, so like. He could be lying but just doing it in a really dumb way because he's panicking. But everything else he says in that part of the conversation (about being grateful to her for accepting his background, wanting to lie to her so she'd be shielded from knowing the awful truth, etc. etc.) seems to be an attempt at actual honesty, however warped and incredibly mishandled that attempt is.

And I think it makes the most sense to me that the "A-Song had to die" line is more of the same. He's genuinely trying to explain his perspective to her and get her to understand how he's constructed this in his mind, not getting that this is only going to understandably horrify her even more. And that is very much a thing you see in his confrontations with other characters, for all his ability to lie - he's just as likely to respond to accusations with at least some form of how he genuinely justifies things in his mind, even when it's something the other person is not remotely inclined to accept and ends up backfiring spectacularly (see for example also his confrontations with Nie Mingjue).

So to me, that's the reason that makes by far the most sense for why he'd say this. If he was going to lie, it would make more sense to claim total innocence and deny that such a thing had ever so much as crossed his mind. It's only if he's actually trying to be honest, in his very messed-up way, that saying he thinks this death was inevitable and maybe even for the best makes sense as a thing he'd willingly admit in that moment.

[utilitycaster]

Thank you for writing up that post about the engagement of the alleged themes in campaign 3. I've seen the argument for them and honestly that plus some of the C3 stuff has almost made me feel weird playing a cleric in this setting. The implications just are so unfortunate if it really is the angle they're going for?

Hi anon,

So I have two thoughts on this. The first is that like...it's actually really difficult to make a story set in a fantasy world that deals with racism and colonialism because you have to develop fantasy racism and colonialism, which is a really fucking unpleasant headspace to exist in! And then, if you do, you have what I alluded to in tags on a different post today, where you will get people up in arms about how D&D or an actual play show or a fantasy work depicts orcs or goblins as racist or antisemitic stereotypes and then it's crickets when it comes to any real-world support of black or Jewish people. Chuck Klosterman said sci fi is philosophy for stupid people, and I disagree, but I do think speculative fiction is frequently sociology, anthropology, and geopolitics for stupid people, particularly if it's a setting with a lot of magic and fantasy races vs say, works like Butler's Patternist series, or a lot of Latin American magical realism, or (girl who just finished Disco Elysium voice) Disco Elysium, where there's a lot more grounding in our reality. I think this post covers the concept of real vs mythic, and I think the Critical Role stuff with the gods is in the realm of the mythic and people are trying to force it into a very human narrative. And yeah, the implications are really unfortunate if you do.

I think it's worth noting that a lot of high-profile (and beloved) TTRPG/AP projects from actual people from colonized cultures imagine a world in which they were never colonized (I am far from an expert but just off the top of my head: Coyote and Crow; Into the Motherlands; Desiquest; Islands of Sina Una) rather than make a story where a bunch of mostly white characters explain how they are the victims of colonization from two separate sources and only really focus on the one that's way less obvious and true but don't worry they're GONNA FIX IT, maybe, idk, should we open this door? I just don't know! golly gee this is tough!

The second related thought is just that D&D isn't a game that is well-suited to dismantling complex political structures either on a narrative or literal level and also it's pretend so you can do what you want forever. I mean don't call other people slurs while playing it but if we're talking in-world? I genuinely think that people who are unabashed murderhobos in D&D are often perfectly fine, generous, and lovely people in real life, and a lot of people who are like "I unionized the goblins! We're playing non-combat D&D! I de-escalate every situation" are often the sort of person to claim it's ableist to suggest that perhaps you should try to use reusable shopping bags. Like, are you living your values in your real life and capable of critical thought? then who cares if your D&D character is kind of a dick, or the show you are watching doesn't align perfectly with what you believe? And I find people who get overly hung up on how good and virtuous they are for their media consumption tend to be compensating for a lack, or at best a deep insecurity, about how they comport themselves in their real life.

so anyway yeah if the cast actually is like "yes i see this as a decolonialist work" I am going to have Thoughts and Pretty Harsh Critiques but to grant the CR cast the benefit of the doubt here, I think it's just...a mythic, epic scale story that draws from interesting sources (creation myths, the idea of a world created as an envious reflection by a sealed hunger) and didn't come together very well. I cannot extend that same benefit of the doubt to those fans who have argued otherwise, however.