#separate important context

[birbs-in-space]

heard someone say (irl) a while ago that a partial solution to the housing crises/young people generally being priced out of owning was to build more condos.

except here's the thing. i'm financially better off than most of the people in that group. im privileged enough to have savings. i could not afford even a 10% down payment for anything other than a shoebox, and once i moved in, i'd be hit hard by monthly hoa fees, because yes, most condos in the area are in hoa areas. i'd be lucky to get 1k sqft condo for the equivalent of what my dad bought his 2k/7k house for at the turn of the century.

here's the other thing. landlords love to buy up condos and rent them out because in most places in california, condos aren't subject to rent control. i know this because i rent a condo. also? owners also don't have to even worry about common area management because they put their property into the hands of a property management company who just pays the previously mentioned hoa fees.

so. idk i guess it could be temporarily good for temporary slapdash construction jobs but it just feels like an incredibly ineffective solution when, simultaneously, there are literally a large number of massive mansions sitting empty 10-11 months of the year because they're someone's summer home.

[lady-raziel]

Would you rather have future generations, who can and should judge the decisions of those who came before, view you as a person who thought the right way or as a person that actually did the right thing

[hephaestuscrew]

I'm a big fan of the way that Gabriel Urbina often includes details within the Wolf 359 scripts that can't be directly translated into audio, for example: the "tears silently streaming down [Minkowski's] face" in Ep31 Securité; Eiffel being "wrapped up in a blanket" when telling Lovelace about his traumatic experience of feeling like he was turning into Minkowski in Ep32 Controlled Demolition; the way "Hera and Eiffel stand together, his arm around her shoulder" when confronting Pryce in the finale; the idea that Eiffel "salutes" Minkowski after his speech to her before the memory wipe... These details make reading the scripts an even more rewarding experience. 

But I do think there's an interesting question here about to what extent these details are canon. After all, when changes have been made in the dialogue between the script and the final recording, I only consider the dialogue that actually ended up in the episode to be canon, although the version in the script might still provide interesting insights. But with details in the scripts that are inherently not audible - and therefore never intended to be literally included in the episode itself - should we consider them to be canon, or bonus content, or Word of God, or simply a tool used in the recording process? 

I know that it is possible to have an entirely full experience of the show without ever reading a single bit of the scripts. The scripts are placed in the 'Extras' area of the show website. 

Obviously the primary purpose of the non-auditory script details is to inform the actors in their performances, and perhaps provide some considerations for sound design. When I read the scripts, I can often feel how the non-auditory script directions are reflected in the feel of the voice acting. 

But once I've noticed these script directions, I also can't help having them feed into my experience of the scene when listening, in a way that enriches the experience beyond purely the audio, and informs my understanding of these moments. The script directions tell us more about what the writer was envisioning for a scene.

I love sharing the script directions that feel significant to me, and when I do so, I feel like I'm sharing something more significant than a behind-the-scenes tidbit. I feel like I'm sharing further knowledge of what happened in that scene. The script directions feel like a true part of the show to me, more so than the comments the writers and actors have made in Q&As. To me, these non-auditory bits of the scripts feel like canon, but a slightly lesser form of canon than the episodes themselves. But I don't know if I can fully justify this view. I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts.

[hn-undercover-9503]

NEW PART SCAR'S SURPRISE IS HERE AND I LOVE THIS CHAPTER SO MUCH. First part of ghosts of my past is out now!!!

[herebecritters]

Please understand that, more often than not, works of fiction are a fictional exploration of concepts and ideas rather than a declaration of morality

[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!

[codacheetah]

I am thinking of mal du pays on this mal du mfriday

[itspileofgoodthings]

also I had a breakthrough today that I had in fact overthought a Specific Problem to Death and that I had created a monster in my own mind and that’s why it felt like I was being eaten alive every time I tried to solve it.

[techn0tony]

I drew maskless Donnie from my Sep!AU (past timeline to my F!AU) so that I could show some of his burn scars. The right half of his body was burned from a chemical weapon explosion. The scars and his eye are blue because the weapon was a mystic weapon that has magic associated with the colour blue is all. Also he is totally blind in his blue eye

[just-a-little-unionoid]

You know I think we can resolve a lot of our problems and moral dilemma by asking ourselves "does this really matters that much?"

[spark-circuit]

decided to play with PNGs of my Nuggets like dolls lmao. i would've done Nine too but he 1) deserves a solo post and 2) i....... need to get another reference image of him with Spider Bud glasses

[smile-files]

this might be a hot take... but if you care about disavowing media made by bad people out of fear of looking like a bad person yourself more than you care about actually doing good things... you might have your priorities (and your morals) screwed up a bit :/

(see my tags for more of my thoughts on this topic! please try to avoid making make bad-faith assumptions about what i mean!)

[kaurwreck]

do we think this might be a reference to the Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, United States and China – Final Protocol for the Settlement of the Disturbances of 1900, or am I catastrophizing.

[coquelicoq]

Une petite houle, venue du large, imprimait au canot un léger roulis, et quelque crêtes de lames clapotaient à son avant. (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, 2e partie, chapitre III)

today in sentences that would have made me weep quietly into my dictionary if i had read them a year ago before jules verne expanded my marine vocabulary by ~1700%.

[kuraokcmi]

The sadness whenever Satoru refers to his body as an altar && sacrifice. Knowing even in his death nothing will be spared which is a play on sometimes loving a God leads to obsession. I'm never sure on how to explain it deeply but the idolization he goes through is not truly genuine affection whereas the mortal behind the weighty name is hardly recognized && he understands, accepts it, thus carries the hopes whoever harbors him in their heart will let go to spare them pain. He's a genuinely pure soul with good intentions albeit, a fool, dreamer, someone who fell due to their own idealistic nature && it never stops making me teary.

[z-eusie]

I think there will always be a difference to me between the Gods (historical, religious) and the gods (narrative). on one hand I fully acknowledge that gods are a product of their time period, of the historical, cultural, and religious context of their era and that it can be irresponsible to assign morality or personality to them outside of that context. I acknowledge that the gods are powerful, significant deities upon whom my own 'silly headcanons' have no merit. the gods in their original context are beings I would never claim to understand or represent in any way resembling accuracy.

but I think the gods in a narrative context, as representations of concepts, as representations of important lessons and 'archetypes' (in a manner of speaking) are completely different. these are the versions I play around with, the ones I assign a level of humanity that might be unbecoming of their true selves. narratively, I'm going to write the gods in my own context, with human values and experiences. it's not meant to be a true representation of the gods in their original contexts.

I think it's important to acknowledge a) why these figures are significant and where that comes from, but also to b) find ways to connect to them on our own terms. and I do that by writing them in my little stories, portraying the humanity of them in every way I think they could be capable of.