#mmm i suck

[immodestly-marina]

*chomp*

[keoke03]

What's a "Team Magma"?

[das-a-kirby-blog]

Hey, don't cry. Metadede, okay?

[sketchi23]

hwy you guys wanna see smth ccol io drew uh tw eyestrain

its my self insert and melvin!

[higgs-the-god]

[lxnarphase]

Love me a man with some big full lips

[missxoier]

I had to get it out of my mind so obviously it has no context

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

10-19-2024

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

something about that whole incident must have changed something in my brain chemistry cause my insomnia’s gotten bad again

the past few days i’ve getting to sleep at two or three. kinda sucks i guess, but i don’t really want to resort to taking melatonin again

[jazzy-a]

I hope that Sett gives Yone the full mom treatment as their band mother.

......

Sett greeting someone with his mom and Yone standing with him.

Sett, smiling: And these are my moms!

Sett's mom: *smiles*

Yone, facepalming:...

Yone, sighing in resignation before shaking the person's hand: Hello....

[presiding]

What is your favourite thing about Billie Lurk?

(Answers are obvious possibly but i love when people talk about her👍)

thanks for the ask!! YEAH ME TOO I love when people talk about Billie! I can't say I have a favourite thing specifically, but I can explain why she's my fav. apologies for not taking this qn literally, but -

short answer: she’s really cool

& you can stop reading there, or, for the maybe 2 mutuals who might have time to read this my thoughts on her as a character, her meta, and her character as raw potential...

long answer:

i considered making this entire thing a gush so you could read a gush about Billie. but, part of what draws me to her is that she’s not always well written, and in fandom she’s underrated for a literal protagonist.

since you ask...

billie is a cool character

when I played Dh2 (hadn't played Dh1), I was excited to see a black woman with disabilities who was captaining a massive ship by herself. wow.

then I discovered Billie’s backstory with Deirdre, the way she responded to that, then having to survive while living on the run, and her bisexuality. as well as her history with daud & delilah. fascinating!

she’s an outsider who has so much to lose, and knows what it's like to lose everything - having lost everything not once but three times - but nevertheless speaks truth to power. she's so brave! she went and helped Emily & Corvo and she must have known they might kill her! plus, she’s smart, she’s funny, she gets shit done, she’s gorgeous.

but... the meta

mild critique of fandom & arkane incoming.

skip this bit if you want - you've been warned twice now - jump to tired Hayao Miyazaki and read from there if you'd like my thoughts on writing her.

i thought Death of the Outsider was going to be amazing and then... well. *sad trombone* i've written about that before so i won't keep banging on. i figured others must be disappointed too, so I joined a few fandom spaces in hopes of finding camaraderie.

most people with complaints about DotO didn’t like how the Outsider and Daud were handled. which is valid & I agree. but it seemed like most paid no attention to Billie; when people talk about her it’s with respect to Daud, as opposed to in her own right. you could argue for fandom misogyny because people don’t talk about adult Emily Kaldwin that much either, but in Billie's case, it’s misogynoir (compare & contrast with the popularity of thomas, particularly the popularity of thomas portrayed as a white man for no particular reason that i've been able to discern - i keep asking around, is it in the books???).

i think this is a LOT better now than it used to be, which is fantastic. or perhaps i have found the correct echo-chamber? ha.

ultimately, The Fandom is a fraction of the entire picture, and not even the important bit since The Fandom is not who these games are made for. you can't make money relying on only your hardcore fans even if all of them spent a fortune on merch, this is true for any AAA game.

while it's true that Billie is underrated from a fandom perspective - but Billie as an underwritten protagonist is squarely Arkane’s fault.

it was reasonable when she was a side character - the lack of info in Dh2 makes perfect sense (if anything there was more lore in Dh2 which is kind of wild)-

- but as a protagonist in Death of the Outsider?

.... there’s lousy writing, and there’s whatever is going on with Billie Lurk, a black woman who mostly exists as a foil or saviour for light-skinned characters. In her own game there’s barely any of her own lore except where it's relevant to saving two dudes.

lore hints at, but barely touches on what race means in the Dh universe (xenophobia is stronger in Dh1; separate essay i guess), but Arkane has patted themselves on the back for portraying non-white characters, which feels like the same thing as the aesthetic of diversity we're seeing in advertising currently because it’s in marketing trend guides. it's self-congratulatory and it's a missed opportunity for deeper storytelling.

you can see an example of diversity at its most shallow in the way that Billie’s written: there’s little engagement with her as an entire person with history & wants & preferences, and the world she walks through in that game feels like it has nothing to do with her. you could make a case for alienation as a theme, but then, how do you handle the titular premise of 'Dishonored' without ever letting Billie make changes in an environment without a chaos system? it's disappointing from that angle too.

in my opinion, whatever it's worth, it was an accident Arkane created such an awesome character - they needed someone to betray daud. congrats billie.

all this said, it makes her an underdog as far as characters to enjoy & create art & stories for. it's nice to find so many like-minded, switched on people! <3

billie's character potential

she’s got a wealth of unexplored lore, being deeply intertwined with both Karnaca & Dunwall’s fates & criminal underbellies, as well as her connections to the witches & whalers, and three Empresses.

she’s lived a few distinct lifetimes and in the games we get to meet her at two peaks (KoD & DotO) & a low (Dh2 as Meagan).

her voice is very distinct, her dry & often dark humour is entertaining & fun to write. her perspective is really interesting - she’s had the widest variety of void-powers of anyone canonically, and she’s also lived through the highest highs and lowest lows.

she's got everything going for her :) i couldn't really pick a fav thing!

[keoke03]

would you like to see more pokemon :)

(@purriors)

Sure.

[rainswhenyourehere]

it is. 2.10 am and my school starts tomorrow i am TERRIFIED like. it isnt even funny idk who ill hang out with i nee dto hardcore study or some shit its gonna b.e the shittiest time evver . so. due ot lack of time and energy and in the best intentions to hopefully keep me alive i fear hibi inactive era si going to start. around here

[bedforddanes75]

i think i might just fucking die if i dont post this right now Ok guess what? guess? guess...u wanna guess the colour of my underwear. ok cowboys here wtf ugh anyway dont tell me its bad ill come and get you

[firesofdainix]

Since I'm going to upload something non-solarballs related in the next few days (I'm trying to build up a writing buffer) here's a snippet for the first chapter of As the Years Go By (aka my Jupiranus multi-chapter)

-

That was what Jupiter said.

He’s learned that Jupiter was a whole lot more keen on sharing information he learned by observing his appearance and assessing what was inside of him. Which is… weird, but he’s less intimidating than Hades.

But Uranus hates him more than his younger brother.

Another thing he learned about Jupiter: he was the first Giant to ever be created, and yet he plays second fiddle to the larger gas giant.

It was a pathetic display, and every time he thinks about Jupiter's wasted potential, his lips curl.

It was taboo to begin hating on a planet he barely knew, but Jupiter is making it extremely easy.

When Helios peers down to study him, Uranus expects a lot of things— Hades was his favorite planet, so there are some bouts of strictness and stoic interference when it comes to the one who is in charge, right?

Wrong.

Because, even before Uranus had been a year old, he realizes that Helios fucking sucks.

[iheartnimbassacity]

my joltik act like a twitch chat to me. i can understand them perfectly, and they constantly make fun of me.