#makes things easier i guess?

[superultratinymode]

me, a questing adventurer (questioning autistic person) fulfilling my adventure's calling by trying and failing to decipher the ancient magic runes (the dsm5)

[elektroyu]

Can't neglect the dog sketches forever, so here's

Day 17 - Norwegian Lundehund

This felt pretty tricky (these dogs are SO unique) and I was actually dreading it a little bit which may be the reason I procrastinated on it 😅 but surprisingly, it still only took 2.5 hours in the end.

[yourdeepestfathoms]

The you have any headcanon about Perrine and The Croon?

Perrine has an affinity for skulls because of The Croon, and they’re mainly the reason why she likes to collect them

The Croon refers to her as “calf”

Perrine sometimes catches glimpses of a tall figure out of her window at night, standing among the distant trees, hidden by just enough shadow to make her wonder if she’s just seeing things

The Croon gifts her skulls, bones, and small dead animals

When people say The Croon is evil, she’s the first to jump to its defense

However, Perrine does have a healthy dose of fear for The Croon

She doesn’t know why this is

But there’s always a level of wariness she feels towards it

There was this one night…

It was cold. The wind was blowing. Branches brushing against the cottage were like clawing fingers on the walls, desperate to get inside.

Perrine woke up.

Or maybe she had never fallen asleep in the first place.

She couldn’t remember.

It didn’t matter.

She got up from her bed.

All around her, the moonlight bleeding in through her window pooled ghoulishly into the empty black eyes of her animal skulls.

It felt like they were all watching her.

At first, she had gotten up to get a glass of water. Her mouth was dry, and the space behind her eyes was uncomfortably warm. But at the same time, she was covered in goosebumps.

But then, she found herself drawn outside.

Grass crunched under bare feet.

She didn’t even flinch from the cold.

Like she was in some kind of trance, she found herself delving into the woods.

And then, she saw it.

The towering beast of feathers and bone. It stood among the trees, nearly obscured by darkness.

The Croon.

She was scared.

She wasn’t sure why she was scared. She based her whole image around this beast, after all. She wore the moose mask because of it.

And yet…she trembled.

And then, she spoke.

“What’s the point of you?”

She asked it without thinking. It was a question that had been brewing in her head for ages.

“I mean…you embody and represent chaos…”

The Croon tilted their head for a moment, as if considering the question. The quiet night air was tense.

“Chaos…is beautiful and destructive. It’s everywhere, and it’s all-consuming. It doesn’t need any apparent purpose. It merely is. It destroys and makes and changes…over and over again. That is what I represent. Change is necessary. Everything must die, and from the destruction, something new is born. After a wildfire, flowers will bloom from the ashes.”

“But people like the flowers. Not the fire.”

“Perhaps. But they need the fire. They need the chaos and the change. Even if it destroys them. There is no new life without death, and there is no death without chaos.”

“But, you still destroy things. Why can’t you have something new without destruction? Why change?”

“Destruction..is just part of the cycle. It’s a part of change. There is beauty in decay. Death and destruction can be…art. The changing of the seasons, the wilting of flowers, the withering fall leaves… Even the most positive change is destruction for something else. Destruction and chaos are required for rebirth, for evolution. Because of change, everything is different, and everything is unique. There are no two things that are exactly the same, down to the last detail.”

“My friend, Cole, lost their parents in a horrible way. Is that supposed to be beautiful? Or necessary?”

“…Perhaps not. Not all destruction is beautiful or necessary. But not all death is cruel or senseless either. After all…without death, would you appreciate life at all? When an animal dies, and it decomposes, the earth gains the nutrients it gives to grow new flowers and new grass. New life. Even a death as horrible and cruel as that can still give new life to the plants and earth around it. It is the same with humans. A death, even a cruel and horrible one, can lead to new life for the remaining family or loved ones…or to the end of a destructive, hurtful cycle.”

“Cole has suffered since their parents’ death. There was no hurtful cycle to break! It’s not fair!”

“Death isn’t fair.”

Its voice had dropped to a low, almost guttural growl that shook her to the bones. But its empty eye sockets still held an eerie sense of calm.

“Life…isn’t fair. People die. Families are torn apart, homes and villages are destroyed. It’s the nature of the world. It’s a necessary evil.”

“…I don’t want to be a necessary evil.”

[puppyeared]

adhd is when you shoot for the moon but you forgot the rocket fuel and by the time you realize it everyones already on the moon and then you panic and crash into the sun and it explodes

[mwagneto]

i left my phone in my room and picked up an actual physical book and sat down on the balcony and read the whole thing can everyone please be so so proud of me

[akai-anna]

Round 1

Round: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

[randomidiocyncrazies]

twitter takes on toshiro makes me cry... bro was subjected to microaggressions for 5 HOURS and raised in a high-context culture (where you Do Not say negative things outright), and ppl are still like "no he's just a bad person bc he's mean to my boy laios"

[ssecond-hand-faith]

Because WHY did her affection level jump like that after one phone call??

[eclipsedrawsthings]

Faun loves these silly little hedgehogs, so naturally I had to give them designs that are easier for me to draw

These were actually super fun and I’m really pleased with them! :D

[13eyond13]

underrated funny thing about lawlight is they never actually did get to confirm that 100% of the time they were basically thinking exactly what the other person thought they were thinking every single time

[sciderman]

I swear I have read your big post regarding Peter Parker's neurodivergence and why it is best to avoid labelling him, but he definitely has a weird brain

Can't find it and feel kinda sad about it cuz I deeply related to it

i know exactly which post you're talking about and i can't find it either! i've raked through my archive, and it's just - nowhere to be seen. i think tumblr eated it (it happens.)

really, tumblr's search functionality is so so useless, i don't know what to tell you. there are plenty of keywords i can search to find it that post, but the search functionality actually just does not work!

undiagnosed audhd-addled peter parker, my darling, my light, my life, my everything.

i think peter parker's such an interesting creature to write, because a lot of people will point to a certain behaviour about him and say "this is an autistic thing, right?" but a lot of those behaviours are actually, in my head, tied to certain traumas in peter's life too.

people say "oh, the food thing, peter's a picky eater because he's autistic" and yes, absolutely. but also it's tied to his trauma with his parents.

peter gets overstimulated, and yes, it's an autism thing, but also he was bitten by a radioactive spider and his senses are dialled to 11.

it's a similar case i've found for myself, too – where a lot of friends i have kind of diagnose me because i have autistic traits, but actually - i'm hesitant to claim the label or pursue diagnosis because, actually, i know where these certain behaviours come from, and they come from certain traumas. there are events i can pinpoint in my life and say "yep. that's where this behaviour comes from."

so - i think there's a lot of overlap between trauma and autistic traits. the brain is very complex! i think the reason for that overlap is maybe as simple as the fact that people with autism and people with trauma are both doing the same thing - developing behaviours to protect themselves or soothe themselves. so - i think it's nice to be able to see a character like peter parker, who may or may not be autistic, but recognise behaviours in him and see yourself in him.

people who go undiagnosed for whatever reason - people who are really good at masking - so good, in fact, that they have no idea they might be on the spectrum - everyone and anyone at all can look at peter parker and recognise themselves. because i think we discredit the thought that every single brain does the same thing! develops certain behaviours in order to survive. every brain has that same software - we've just all been faced with different hardships that we need to overcome, and that's were all the differences come in.

autism is a spectrum, i guess - everyone falls into it to some degree. and i think events in your life probably push you along on it. but i don't know, i didn't study brain science. probably what i'm saying is very stupid and uninformed. of course there's brain chemistry involved. but i know people in my life living with autism and certain events in their life have exacerbated certain behaviours or made coping with it a lot more difficult. so maybe trauma is a catalyst.

[silly-solar-robot]

centaurified myself!!! because why shouldn't i (^:

i realised i draw VERY fast!!! this took me 30 minutes and 1684 strokes!! that's over 50 brushstrokes a minute!!

(i am a real person!! please don't tag as fnaf!!! read my pinned post!)

[beastsovrevelation]

Right, then. The sick part of my brain is terrorizing me once more, and taking an idea from it is like taking a bone from an angry rottweiler.

Who wants a fucked up Michael Langdon x Reader oneshot?.. I really do not feel like making a yet another OC, and adding a yet enother epic to my endless list.

[radioroxx]

ok hi tumblr. thought. while i understand that technically yes people have all the freedom to assign clover a gender + pronouns based on personal headcanons… i dont really get WHY people do it

dont get me wrong im all for a little fun and for messing around with pronouns, but… isnt it more fun to let them keep the they/them?? whats the point of taking that away?

iiii dunno. i just think its strange lol

[superbellsubways]

hate being an artist that likes fictional characters i feel like everytime i post art of a character and tag it the people going through the tag absolutely hate my ass LOL

[presiding]

a doctor turned serial killer turned doctor again, an actor who paints, a gang leader, a mining baron, and a vice overseer walk into the room.

oh yeah and they lead karnaca now.

dishonored 2 is my fav game but i think it's mid, story-wise. here's why dh1 works and why dh2's overarching story sorta misses

tl;dr: story integration is critical for gameplay that offers audience payoff, but emily's personal arc from dishonor to honor is inconsistently demonstrated in the story, and is not an interactive part of the gameplay.

essay/long version under cut >

recap: what's dishonored's deal

[skip if you want] dh1 is an underdog story: corvo is an honorable man swept up in the machinations of a callous city, so his canonical ending being 'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation being restored in a more hopeful city, due to his & the player's rejection of the violent connotations of the tagline 'revenge solves everything.'

similarly, in dh1 DLCs, daud's story arc is that of an anti-hero: a dishonorable man who realises too late he has done irreparable harm. he sees the error of his ways after a single monumental death, and eventually a single life redeems him when he/the player stepped in to circumvent a terrible fate for a child, enabling her to rule unfettered.

daud & corvo come to a satisfying conclusion within the extent of their narrative arcs. it doesn't matter that a child on a throne isn't really a fix for a decaying empire - the player's actions throughout the city of dunwall was what mattered - and these stories could be framed as parables. in that sense, young emily as a ruler is a metaphor for a hopeful future for the city & empire.

dishonored 1 & its DLCs are also great examples of storytelling with perfectly integrated gameplay - you, the player, worked towards the outcome that redeemed the protagonists.

in your efforts to save young emily, you either achieved a good outcome (corvo) or prevented a worse outcome (daud).

bringing us to dh2 -

what's emily's arc

emily's arc is a coming of age: we're introduced to a reigning empress who questions her role & skillset ("am i the empress my mother wanted me to be?"), then her titular fall from grace occurs. from there, she learns to reject the violent, selfish connotations in 'take back whats yours' tagline (a la daud & corvo!) while rediscovering why her rule is critical to the empire.

emily's rule is no longer metaphorical, but:

a literal thing for audience assessment (is emily a good ruler?) AND

the crux of her storyline.

at the beginning of dh2, emily is introduced as a disengaged leader ("i wish i could just run away from all this;" "i dont know if whether i should sail to the opposite side of the world, or have everyone around me executed"). the antihero has a precedent for the dishonored series in daud, so it's not at first glance an issue*, however, the fact that emily has ruled poorly reframes corvo & daud's endings as being less than ideal (a moralistic retcon) *we could talk here about how ready an audience was in 2016 for a flawed women as a protagonist, hell, even in 2023,,,

throwback to the beginning of this essay when i said:

'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation

emily's story arc, unlike for daud & corvo, is literally about the quality of her rule. we're no longer in metaphor territory (ironic phrase): a parable-style ending doesn't work.

does emily become a good ruler

we know she becomes a good ruler because the game says so. it is narrated to the audience via a (literal) word of god in the space of 30 seconds, after the final boss. the outsider tells us that emily becomes known as Just & Clever.

drawing a distinction here - this narration is not the same as the player actively being involved.

the player does not throughout the game become aware that emily has made political allies. during the game, she doesn't talk to these characters about saving karnaca or being a better ruler to the empire (there's a few lines might imply it, but you need to be actively looking and being careful to wait for every voice line. it's a far cry from daud & corvo's fight to save emily being unmissable - even though daud doesn't know at the beginning that's the goal).

how does the game show it

you can coincidentally not kill most of your subjects and never be aware that emily is looking to restore karnaca by means of instating a council - it's never brought up. it *couldn't* be brought up, because that council serves under the fake duke (armando), who is the last person she speaks to before she leaves for dunwall. its her suggestion that he rules karnaca, but armando's condition is that he will rule as he sees fit.

to back up a bit, emily's canonical method of restoring karnaca is by banding together key allies - hypatia, stilton, [byrne &or paolo], pastor, under a council beneath the duke's body double. they are passionate people who would each individually make worthwhile advisors, but if you think about those characters sitting at a table trying to reach an agreement, it feels like an assortment of people that emily didn't kill along the way and doesn't feel organic (up to interpretation). it's not stated if emily herself banded this council together, but logically she must have (worth a mention these are mostly characters that you as the player had reasonable rationale to kill during a high chaos run, except pastor). the underlying concept may be that karnaca's power is returned to its people - which is interesting given that the monarchy remains and armando's decision is final.

this overarching solution could also be taken as a critique to dh1's 'put your kid on the throne,' which is another reason its worthwhile looking at how emily was shown to be a better leader. obviously my point isn't that her solution was bad given the circumstance, but i mean she has very little agency here in all. if emily was shown to be more controlling as a leader, this could be interpreted as character growth, but that's not the case.

coming of age

how do you learn & grow when you can't specify your failings? emily doesn't really touch on her shortcomings as an empress. she non-specifically worries delilah makes a better empress than her. it's hard to argue her worries are meaningful when someone good at their job will still worry when lives are in the balance.

emily's best 'aha' moments (eg. crack in the slab comment about gaining perspective) are consistently undercut by a conversation with sokolov or meagan afterwards in which she demonstrates she hasn't learned anything (before the grand palace, emily condemns 'toadies sucking up to me' and is reminded by meagan that she's part of the problem). the story is confused about what it's trying to say about emily's progress, and when she's meant to show progress, if she was meant to show any progress at all. it could be argued that emily was never even a bad ruler, she had just been fed misinformation about the problems in karnaca and been the victim of slander by her political enemies. the game doesn't make this clear - it's easier to argue that the opposite is true given that her allies only have criticism.

worth a mention here that the heart quotes about armando - a fake ruler - interestingly mirror emily's character concerns. "see how he sighs? his life is a gilded cage." but this essay is already long.

while corvo & daud spend their games (and through the gameplay) 'earning' their redemption, emily is being led by the NPCs around her to a conclusion and a fix for the political mess in karnaca: meagan & sokolov guide emily to her missions, and there's no recurring quest for emily to investigate possible allies. she is able to gather the people she hasn't killed to herself by manner of... post-game narration. during the game, she's primarily concerned with getting her throne back.

an easy fix: if there had been less dialogue & narrative focus on emily's failings perhaps the ending would have felt more satisfying. it has the feel of cut content, but i don't know what was cut to be able to comment on it.

so what went wrong?

i can't help but wonder if arkane were worried they would lose a certain demographic if corvo wasn't playable (may have been deemed too much of a risk - 2013 was a different time), and so they had to take out story elements that were unique to emily's growth as a character/empress, because the usual storyline/gameplay integration had to work for both characters - in other words, gameplay that made sense for both corvo & emily was prioritised before emily's story & character development. which is a silly problem to have in a game that added character voices for the sake of improving characterisation - maybe emily's tale would have felt more akin to a parable if she had less lines that betrayed her ignorance (to the disdain of those around her).

i wish more care had been taken with emily's story. most players will never really notice the large variety of different endings - they're not particularly satisfying in and of themselves.

it's ironic that one of Emily's complaints is about her father/protector being overbearing, when his (parallel universe) presence in the gameplay may be one of the reasons her own narrative arc falls flat.

what are the upsides here

changing tune from what didn't work - don't you think the concept is fantastic? it's a great idea overall - can you imagine if the coming of age storyline was better integrated into the game?

it's valuable to talk about the integration of story and gameplay and characterisation from a craft perspective. dh2 genuinely is my favourite game - it's beautiful, the imm-sim design philosophy makes the world a delight to explore, the combat gives endless creative options for tackling any fight, there is a far greater diversity of cast in an in-text canonical way. there's loads to love!

i love emily as a dodgy leader, to me it adds interesting dimensionality to the outsider's narrations - of course in dunwall there's never a neat happily ever after! emily, like the outsider, both work well as characters who hold ultimate power but aren't necessarily worthy of it - and this makes perfect sense for the dishonored universe's morality & critiques of power. however, within this grey area there's still plenty of room for a satisfying ending, which isn't what we ended up with, whatever the true reason for that was. and also, damn, emily's a marked assassin empress, if she can't lead well then who can?

while dh1 was criticised for its narrative simplicity, dh2 in contrast and in hindsight shows us that simplicity isn't so bad - there's satisfaction in gameplay achieves a clear, simple narrative goal.