#post doto

[toyfriskman]

hey

hey guess what

i wrote it

new fic out

post doto, human outsider, he doesn't know whats happening

[refinedstorage]

old daud what coulda been

[presiding]

humansider by @lapinneok

[honeywafflez1art]

First Visit circa 1852 (???)

Sketches and the background by itself under cut, bc they're pretty cool too <3

Don't judge the paper sketch too bad it's from back in April anyways-

[no-light-left-on]

So the Death of the Outsider lacks a chaos system and it makes perfect sense

(I recommend reading my other post on how chaos works in the DH universe first but it is not mandatory.)

The point of the chaos system is, at its core, a reflection of how a world already at its tipping point reacts to the player's actions: Dunwall ridden by the plague and oppressed by the Lord Regent’s rule, Karnaca bloodfly-bitten and slowly torn to shreds by the Duke with people scared after the recent coup.

Billie, however, simply exists as a person once the world has been tipped towards the better, Emily having reclaimed her throne and Karnaca slowly but surely steering towards better times. Her quest is not motivated by politics or by a falling empire. It is entirely personal to her, Daud, and the Outsider.

Billie is an ex-assassin. She puts the world on a tipping point, but she does not decide whether the world rights itself or comes crashing over the edge. She takes jobs from the black market, sometimes killing people for money, because that is all it is to her - a job. And while she may kill innocent people while at it, there is no more terror it can bring atop the cruel rule of the Duke and people dying in the mines. In the end, she will disappear into the shadows. It is just another mugging, another unfortunate murder of a father coming home in the evening. Nothing more, nothing less. No responsibility to take over it after.

She is dedicated to her quest, and that quest is not even hers - it is Daud's, and she is just going along with it out of maybe guilt, maybe old times' sake. She is not even that interested in killing the Outsider herself, has very little stakes in it, and decides to go through with it because it's what Daud wanted. There is no world that can react to her because she is the world that is reacting, in a sense, to Daud's wishes and the Outsider's subtle interventions.

Compared to, say, DH2 which takes place months before the events of DotO, Billie has very little to lose, no place to reclaim, no world to save. The results of her actions, no matter what they might be, won't change how the world is at the end of the game. Emily can choose whether a brilliant doctor lives so she can save lives, she decides whether the Howlers or the Overseers take over Batista, dictates who rules and with how much power, with what level of cruelty. Billie is killing a god, no matter what it takes, and there is little need for consideration of how this result is achieved.

The game does not even have targets, save for one, the Outsider himself. All the missions are about gathering intel and preparing for the job. The structure of the whole game is very different to serve the purpose of the plot and honestly it's a clever choice so that the focus remains on the one thing only - killing the Outsider.

One thing I did not mention in relation to chaos in my other post is that the chaos also influences the Outsider and his speeches at the shrines. Which, fair enough, it is just one more change in dialogue among many. But in the case of DotO, he is directly involved. He is not an observer anymore. He has real reason to be emotionally invested in what is happening and what Billie is doing. He needs to bait her into murder, or change her mind to spare him and free him from his eternal imprisonment. There can't be a change from interest to cynicism as Billie kills more people to get to him, because in the end, he is the target. He wants out of the Void by any means necessary, which means he has to be fully invested at all times. He has no reason to suddenly go soft and make subtle comments. He comes across as so much more malicious in this game, maiming Billie and being so incredibly cruel when he tells her that Daud has passed while she was away. All this because he can't risk her changing her mind, thinking to herself, “Hey, maybe he sucks but he’s not That Bad” and then turning on her heel to leave. He is trying to influence Billie instead, which he didn’t do with his Marked (unless you count his mentions of multiple possible outcomes as influencing, or him telling Daud about Delilah).

So no, the world won't change for you, the player. It won't change because you chose not to kill anyone, not even the contract targets, because if you don't do the dirty work, someone else will. And the Outsider cannot change either, because Billie is not changing the fate of an empire. She is changing the fate of Him, personally, and he cannot afford to let her choose the only bad choice - indifference. So there is no point in a chaos at all.

No matter what Billie does in the end, the outcome will be the same - the Void will change. sShe will change the universe as they know it, but no matter how she goes about it, the change will come. She is not faced with a question of what she wants the world to be. She was guided there by others, expected to do one thing - kill a god. The world has set her up, and now she has to react.

And so she comes to the Void and is met with the only choice that will matter: Is she going to show mercy, or remain the same?

[deathlonging]

i sound like a broken record but genuinely i love billie lurk's character so much. i love that the person she loves most is someone with a ticking clock and shes counting down. i love that she watches daud slowly and inefficiently come to the realization that he has a choice as an assassin and decides to kill him for this difference between them. i love that your choices as daud in the dlcs are never free from her judgement even after she leaves. i love that her exit from the whalers is the final straw for the gang's lifespan even though she wasn't close to any of them except daud bc its her and not daud that represents who the whalers truly are. i love that with all the hints of daud having had a bloody and messy manner of doing his job shes canonically a ghost and excels above all at plotting and recon. if she'd gotten the mark she'd have had an entirely different more violent set of powers despite being less chaotic than daud ever was on all fronts. she accompanies daud everywhere through the first dlc and never once intervenes in a fight on her own. shes even gay. who is doing it like her

[arkane-secret-santa]

[Sign up here]

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This is a fic exchange event for the 4 major Arkane franchises: Dishonored, Prey, Deathloop, and Redfall. You will have just over a month to write a fic in any of those fandoms, that is at least 300 words, and contains the trope or prompt provided to you.

Due to the nature of the fandoms, NSFW content is allowed, both in terms of gore and sexual content, unless specified otherwise by the person requesting the fic (in their DNW).

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Rules Summary:

Dishonored, Prey, Deathloop, Redfall franchises

300 words min

NSFW ✅

FAQ:

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No. The sky is your limit. But you will have to have completed the fic by the 23rd. It cannot be ongoing.

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No problem. Stuff happens, especially around Christmas. If you want to drop out, just DM me here or on Discord so I can find a replacement to write something for your secret partner.

Do keep in mind that this is a community event, and that if you drop out and no one is able to replace you, the person you were matched with might be left without a gift.

I missed the signups, can I still join?

Only as a pinch hitter unfortunately. This means that you will need to write a fic for someone whose partner dropped out, and that you might not receive a gift (I will try and sort something out, but I can't promise anything).

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Disclaimer:

This is my first time running an event on AO3, as I've only ran these types of things on Royal Road, so I apologies in advance for any potential technical difficulties.

[llitchilitchi]

DotO truly just... is a game isn't it

[oysterie]

yeah death of the outsider is kinda shit I see that now

[lesbianaglaya]

finally playing dh:doto and i mean. having fun. love that daud looks terrible. but the tonal… idk inconsistency isnt the right word. okay rephrasing. trying to have a game with the same vibes as dh1 and dh2 (and the daud dlcs) but not having it take place in a time of major political upheaval makes all the previous games feel like. what was the point here. because if there are still draconian security measures in use and catastrophic infrastructure breakdowns even when things are “better” (and like, dh2 did try to qualify it as marginally better and critique empire. it also failed. but that’s a different post.) then why did we care if burrows or delilah were running things? and with the problem of doto being ‘outsider bad’ instead of ‘fascist coup’ theres a huge gulf between the problems billie actually sees compared to the problem shes trying to solve. which in turn cheapens the environmental storytelling dh is usually so good at by making the small scale tragedies she sees feel pointless. and it would be one thing if you could interpret billie as totally apathetic (i dont think she is but that aside) but the game has her explicitly comment on things like the eyeless draining people of their blood for aristocrats like! doto suffers even more pronouncedly from the problems of dh2 except almost worse because both billie and daud feel like characters who should know better than the game tells us they do while emily can at least be interpreted as blinded by privilege. which sucks because like i love billie! I want to spend time with her! and im having fun! but a daud billie dlc could have been soooo crazy and it instead… isn’t.

[don1t1red]

I hate how imperialism is so indoctrinated in DH1 that there is no option to destroy the Empire and have your happy ever after.

"Oh but Emily could do that and be a great leader of post-imperialistic society!" Yeah but we already have DH2 and we see that Emily isn't really interested in ruling her people at all. She acts only if it's becoming personal.

Besides neither DH2 nor DotO never tries to address her changes in the Empire or give us some real examples. In DotO she just "tries to renovate" the Empire instead of trying to understand why she has to do that and if it's even a good foreign policy to maintain.

"Oh but you can destroy the empire in DH1! You just have to go high chaos and let Emily die!" Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. No one is addressing high chaos as a "good option".

Not to mention the fact that DH1 tries to push you to decide between a chance for colonies to finally get free and death of a royal child. The game simply does not believe in fact that you may hate Dunwall for everything it did to other nations or to your protagonist; it does not believe that you will [at least try to] perceive Corvo as a character with a great inferiority complex because of his nationality, and his story as an example of self-reflection. And therefore it gives you this choice instead of an opportunity to leave the decaying city behind and flee somewhere with only one good person who was ever close to you - Emily.

You *have* to play "a bad route" to do what you think would be the best option and the game's narrative will do its best to make you aware of "how bad" you are.

What am I trying to achieve here? I'm trying to give you [my reader] a different perspective to play this game or to make any fanworks or just a thing to think about. And maybe to give you a chance to listen to the Outsider’s monologue after the game with slightly more understanding of a problem the next time you play.

"It's just as well. The Empire was dying already. Completely rotten. All that was needed was the right man to send it over the edge."

[presiding]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[honeywafflez1art]

Calling all of my long gone Dishonored mutuals, for I bestow upon you ✨️audiobook reader humansider✨️

[no-light-left-on]

if we get dh3, and if it follows the previous main characters, the only thing I hope for is seeing the Outsider be happy

will he smile? a genuine, proper smile? how would it look? small and shy? or wide and toothy? how do his lips curve? would one corner lift more? does he have dimples?

what makes him smile? or laugh? how easy is it for him to embrace and show joy? how genuine is it, and how much of it is sardonic? who is he once we remove the void and let him embrace humanity?

[icedjuiceboxes]

Tongues and Teeth

A post Dishonored 2/DOTO, Billie X Emilly Comic

CW: None

Part 1: The Blade Verbena

Page 1-3 (Current)| Page 4-6 | Pages 7-9

Notes, Thank you's, and chitchat belowwww

Hey fun fact I started this comic in fucking,,,, November of 2023 and since then I:

Had an artist crisis and doubted everything I made and had to rethink everything I knew about art

Been to Australia (Twice)

got into a situationship

Read 8 books

Left a toxic job and started a new job with full-time hours

Thank you to @stealingpotatoes and @lapinneok who I threw into a groupchat and has to listen to me scream and cry about dishonored, my art, and my failing love life. I used their work as mild inspiration like Potes's fanfic The Blade Verbena 1853 (...same braincell) and Lapin's design for Billie. Check out their work!

Artist's notes:

Title of the comic is named after the song of the same name by The Crane Wives. I needed to name the whole comic something other than Blade verbena like I nicknamed it, because the blade verbena only happens for one part. The song is very billie and emily coded and I didn't wanna think too hard so bam. It's the name of this comic

Each part is separated by locations, so there's about 8 parts, each of varying length and depending whether or not I have the strength to write that many parts.

I have no idea how many pages Part 1 but we're looking at about 20 pages. Maybe less. Maybe more.

I decided to post in pages and not full parts, because again a) 30 pages is a fucking lot for one post. I want max attention we're breaking that shit up. b) Uhhh I have to post otherwise it will live in my folders forever as I wonder if it's good enough to post LMAO

[bellonathedragonborn]

FINALLY posting my oldish Daud DLC pics.

It’s so jarring fighting Corvo. Since this was a low chaos run I was able to defeat him in the dream.

I wish we could see more of the Gristol countryside instead of Dunwall in both games. Reminds me of Fable 2-3.

On a more serious note. After playing these DLCs finally I can understand now why people didn’t like how Daud was handled in Death of the Outsider.

Like in the canon ending of these DLCs he owns up that IT WAS HIS FAULT he became an assassin. Only for DOTO to have him lapse and blame the Outsider for it all. Like?? Why??