#she seems so interesting and cool

[the-whispers-of-death]

I'm so sorry, this is literally just a brain dump with no structure or anything 🫧

My first OC I came up with goes by Bandito (I haven't decided on her actual name yet), and she's pretty heavily inspired by the Twenty one Pilots song of the same name.

Bandito is either Ghost's sibling or close childhood friend. They joined the military together and were both captured by Roba after being betrayed by Vernon. While Ghost was buried alive, Bandito stayed in custody and continued to be tortured. Ghost was told Bandito was dead and took his revenge on those who had betrayed them both. Bandito managed to escape Roba's clutches, but heard the news about Tommy and the rest of the family, and since Sparks' body was assumed to be Ghost, they both assumed the other was dead. (I'm using the Ghost comics for the backstory because it's tragic and what better character development than serious trauma?)

Bandito is a member of Shadow Company, who works between the Shadows and the 141 as a sort of liaison, supporting the 141 on missions when requested. She and Ghost have not yet realised who each other are.

Bandito wears a hoodie with the oversised hood pulled up, and a bandana wrapped around her to obscure their nose and mouth, with dramatic eyeliner. The callsign 'Bandito' has a couple of explanations - It can be a reference to her skills in sabotage and infiltration, the desire for freedom from her past, and maybe a tongue-in-cheek reference to all the times she's pickpocketed her fellow Shadows and 141 members for fun (She's weirdly good at pickpocketing). The bandana also has some personal significance, either as a physical symbol of her defiance or because one of her bandanas was a gift from Simon. On missions, Bandito tends to wear darker colours to blend into her surroundings, but she much prefers to wear brightly coloured and patterned bandanas.

She has a unique skillset geared towards stealth operations and infiltration, and is particularly skilled with knives. She also excels in a particular brand of interrogation (the more violent kind - while Bandito resisted Roba's torture and brainwashing, it left its mark and her moral compass is a little scuffed, so she can easily stomach torturing people). She is motivated by a sense of loyalty to those who took her in (Graves and her fellow Shadows, and eventually the 141), as well as a desire for some sense of normalcy. She knows this is unrealistic but surrounding herself with those who care for her seems to help, especially on the days where her past seems to haunt her a little too closely.

My second Blorbo is a guy called Damien but he goes by either Crow or Coffee, and then after that they just get progressively less well-thought out - but some of them are called Viper, Winter, Doberman, and Andromeda.

Holy hell this is long I'm so sorry

I'm struggling to come up a callsign for my new OC (why is naming the hardest part?), so I feel ya about naming Bandito. I love her though, I hope she and Ghost eventually realize they're both alive.

I don't have much to say, except that I love her, I love how traumatized she is.

[fandom-geek]

vaguely fascinated by osana sov's naming choices. she chose for her daughter a name that can mean "bitter (strength)" or "lady" in two ancient languages (hebrew and aramaic) and for her son a name that means "old friend" in another ancient language (old english)

like every other golden age character has a name that's pretty normal by our standards, which tbh includes mara, then osana just names her other kid uldwyn. then again, even osana's name is either a variant of the hebrew hosanna or after an obscure and possibly fictitious old english princess-saint whose name means something along the lines of "godly solitude", so i suppose mara might be considered the odd one out

[caluupin]

neuvi is meeting his peepaw rn

[sysig]

Let him dad her!! (Patreon)

[thebestusernamepossible]

Literally going insane, might have to write fanfic for the first time in 2 years because the people™️ do not get my favorite female characters like I do and I feel the insurmountable urge to write her. I’m going to bite drywall why don’t ppl see her complexities. PLEASE STOP WRITING HER ETHIER AS DOMICILE MOM OR BITCH (or just for shipping) she is so so cool please guys please.

Also while I’m here, fandoms tendency to shove women in the ‘pure powerful goddess who can do no wrong’ box and then proceed to never give them an actual narrative role other than like ‘supportive’ or ‘took out a few background guys’. Like why DOES this incredibly badass and complex female character just get shunted into doinging some cool flips, getting praised about it (she’s the strongest fighter, so feminist wow) then never getting actnowleged as a 2 dimensional character.

I saw this a lot when I was in the Batman fandom, particularly with Cassandra Cain. She is a highly complex and interesting character, but in fandom she’s kind of shunted to ‘Badass therapy dog who takes care of the men’. Because even on the slight chance her backstory is brought up it’s always never delved into and mostly used to make her etheir more tragic and in need of support on a surface level or to let her be compassionate with the men characters who get their actual problems foucused on. It’s a unqiue kind of frustrating because it’s like almost letting the cool female character be cool, but it’s more like the idea of a badass women is shoved in your face, maybe joked about (or if we’re lucky she gets to beat up a few bad-guys), but ultimately treated like a cardboard cutout. Interestingly this actually isn’t entirely a female character thing, it’s also common with like old grandfather/grandmother characters and the elderly in general. But it’s usually badass women from what I see. :/ Why can’t fandom explore their stories (people do but why is it so much less), why can’t they be the prtags of cool AUs or time-travel fix-its, or crossover events

Idk I think I’m just frustrated, and I typed out more than I thought I would. Also Ive seen what happens to some other posts complaining about fandom misogyny, so please know if you’re a TERF, fuck off you have no place in this discussion. We will never agree, and frankly all of these points apply to canon Trans Women characters. Don’t say shit ill fucking end you.

[ironunderstands]

Genuine question, where are yall getting the “robins eye dots + the stuff behind her are Xipe colors” from?

Because like I don’t see it, like at all. Xipe has like every color under the sun behind them and the shades aren’t similar to Robin’s at all, they aren’t in the same order and there’s like three million other colors mixed in there. I do think the “that rainbow behind her represents moon lesbians” is a little silly because even if it looks like the flag I doubt hoyo’s devs know what those are (I learned about them today 😭).

However, the other colors on the traffic lights and her cheeks straight up look like they are meant to look like a lesbian flag or at least a pastel version of one, and for the life of me I can’t see where people are coming from when they say it’s related to Xipe. I guess her eyes cover the other colors, but purple and yellow are still missing if she truly wanted to represent them on her face alone

Idk man, let me know your thoughts

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Sword of Kaigen

standalone fantasy set in a rural mountain village at the edge of an empire that still holds traditional values, with families of powerful water/ice magic warriors

follows a powerful young heir who begins to question his beliefs about the empire when a new boy comes to his village from the city

and his mother, a housewife who has tried to forget her youth as a warrior and vigilante in the city since she moved back home to a loveless marriage

when there’s a violent attack on their village that they’re unprepared for, everything changes, and she has to embrace her old skills to protect her family and people

[mintaikk]

Whats the ship name between Flug & Miss Heed? I've just been calling them Paperheart rn

[r0semultiverse]

The implication that Terezi is stronger/immune/indifferent to Dirk's narrative writing/reality-warping powers is interesting. 👀

I am so excited for the new writers to explore her character more.

Hopefully this also means we'll be seeing more classpect & god tier power exploration as well!

[frenchfry99]

Yo turns ur cats into an old sappy punk rock couple!!

Iris and Forrest Petals!

Had those in my pocket for a while but didn't really know what to do with them,,, Saw @evillillad 's metal au and wanted to revive my sillies!! I love the ideas you come up with for this one!!

Lineup of Iris' band! Just a concept for now tho, might add one more member later! ❀

I feel like Poison Garden would be a more old-style hard rock/glam rock/glam metal band at first , but Daria as the youngest would bring more modern elements into their music. They love to experiment with genres so it's really welcomed!

Annie has been a close friend of Petals for a long while, knowing them almost since childhood, so she was all up for Iris's idea of creating a band

Oh to be two old punks raising your silly cats together 😔😔 (though they're not even that old, somewhere around early/mid 40s). Young and reckless in their past, Iris and Fozzy are now loving and supportive parents of two lil rascals. Old softies from your neighborhood who act like parent figures to pretty much anyone younger than them hueheh

I don't have quite much for Forrest now but he's definitely a certified malewife lol

Billy and Lilly are absolute lil gremlins in any au and in this one especially

[jichanxo]

how it started:

how it's going:

[astriiformes]

Sent an email to one of the professors I took a great history of science course with last spring asking if she'd be willing to serve as a faculty mentor for an independent study and/or undergraduate research project for both my degree capstone and maybe also part of my grad school applications and I am so so anxious and proud of myself at the same time.

[faaun]

How was your date with the butch? Have you had your two exams? Hope you do well!!<33

hi hi omg i forgot how much i updated u guys but the first date was great and the second date was also great and we held hands and then i started panicking abt my exams and she had a dissertation deadline so i havent seen her in a while 😭 i miss her but she is TERRIBLE at texting but hopefully will see her soon !!

did 1 exam the other one is tmrw we are NOT sleeping tn once again !!! wish me luckkk + ty for asking i hope ur days have been filled w comfort and joy !!!

[toytulini]

I thought Ursula was pretty Biologist-core but in the end her arc was less Biologistcore than others. Levi was also pretty Biologistcore. maybe even Ghost Bird core?

[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!

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!