#this isn't about anyone who follows me

[vulpixelates]

i know it will never happen but i so desperately desire an origins-type playable backstory thing in all games but especially veilguard. i feel like it added so much depth to origins and made you feel instantly connected to your character in a way that gets lost in games like inquisition where you fill in the blanks as you go except for the bare basics. like, i do enjoy the freedom to willy nilly decide where a character was before the events of the story from a creative perspective, but the playable origins were just so good! especially when you go back to where your warden is from and can engage differently with the arcs there

[feathertailedcentipede]

I'm ANGRY. I'm ANGRY AT MY FRIEND!!!!!!! I DON'T WANT TO THINK ABOUT THEM!!! I DON'T WANT TO THINK ABOUT ANYTHING THAT REMINDS ME OF THEM!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!

[campbenji]

[ingravinoveritas]

The thing about being the center of attention is that demanding attention is not the same thing as commanding attention, and some people still haven't learned the difference...

[phoenixcatch7]

Reading loz/lu fics and it's just so interesting how wide the spectrum is of their personalities.

Sometimes it's got an in universe reason (different past (usually gender or species change), recent or ongoing traumatic events, a spectacularly bad first meeting), but sometimes (often) the characters are just... Weirdly angsty or peppy, there's no in between!

And I'm beginning to think less people have played more than one game than I thought XD.

Not that it's anyone's fault! One game is more than enough to be part of it all, and loz is exclusive to Nintendo consoles - and all the older stuff is frustratingly hard to get hold of. Heck, I'm still looking for wind waker, and that was really popular! And then you have to play it! They're not small games!!

But could people writing wild please ease off just a tiiiiiny bit so he can be a semi functional member of society pretty please XD? He's just as much a polite boy as any other member of the chain! He won't even run in shops! He can't attack npcs! He talks to every single person he's ever seen and remembers every single name. Yes, he's three quarters woodland creature with a hefty amount of trauma but he's also a fashionista who managed to avoid accidentally taking sides in a mayoral election and that's not easy!

[fromtheseventhhell]

Zutaras are really the original self-insert, "we understand the story soooooo much better than everybody else" girlies and they just never moved on

[mspiggy]

the only thing i'm gonna say about the american election is this: if you're white and you're out here spreading doomer shit like "all the queer people in america will be killed by 2028" (a real comment i saw someone make!), i think you should kill yourself, actually! because it sure sounds to me like you're dedicated to being completely useless and have no interest in getting involved in any sort of movement or organization dedicated to providing much needed aid at home or abroad. like, if you're so sure that resistance is impossible and the only thing standing between lgbt people and complete annihilation was a kamala harris presidency, then you might as well lay down and die! because you know what? right now, there are real people actually dying in an actual genocide as a result of america's current democrat president, and they sure as fuck aren't my fellow white queers of tumblr.

get organized locally or online. reach out to your neighbors. boost and donate to palestinians. read some theory. read any of the resources i've reblogged today. just do anything other than accept defeat like a fucking coward!

[mikakuna]

people who stay in fandoms despite having to deal with other fans attacking you for just talking about your favourite character in your own space... are very brave people. i, on the other hand, have left so many fandoms because i'm not emotionally stable enough to deal with my twin getting shit on for qualities i share with them!!

[victoriousfidelity]

without putting too fine a point on it, i am mentally all over the place and it's only going to get worse until mid-october (at least). i'm taking myself on a little theatre trip tomorrow, and hopefully getting out and spending some time on my own way down hadestown is going to make me feel slightly less like i'm on the verge of a complete meltdown - but i do still have to come back to the hellhole afterwards, so i'm not expecting a miracle. i want to write because it's the perfect distraction from everything, but at the moment i'm finding it impossible to get any peace unless my inlaws are both out at work. i'll likely keep working through my inbox + starters when i can, and hopefully i'll bulk my queue up a bit so i can start that up again. i'll also be updating sig's carrd, and finishing off the ones for @ofvanaheim and @harmbidder so that when i do feel like i can get some drafts done, everything is ready to go. please don't expect much from me ooc. i'll likely only answer messages very sporadically, especially on here. it's not personal. i'm just having a hard time coping right now, and the last thing i want to do is inflict that on anyone else. take care of yourselves 🧡

[wingsofhcpe]

protip, if you're an American and you see European people fearing for their futures and even their lives after these election results, maybe the correct response to it is NOT to accuse them of fucking up YOUR safety plan to move to Europe if America tanks.

Just saying.

[mari-the-dreamer]

So. . . . anyone wanna take a guess what I've been playing? ^^;

[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!

[shinraelectricpowercom]

Current Events in Silm fandom rlly reinforce my feeling that, despite claiming an ethos of acceptance/tolerance of anything that doesn't hurt ppl, a lot of ppl in the section of Silm fandom I frequent do follow a set of socially-agreed-upon mores about what concepts are "not acceptable" to discuss or propose (or the ways in which certain topics must be discussed to be acceptable), that you all seem to have agreed on despite the things those mores restrict not being harmful to anyone.

And when someone does say smth that violates those mores, the response is disproportionate to the amount of harm done (which is typically none, imo). I know it's tempting to say "but we just want people to be comfortable and safe", but treating ppl badly for the sin of sharing thoughts you dislike is NOT the same as preventing people from doing things that are harmful. The former is much more of a harmful behavior than the sharing of the thoughts that sets it off. Fannish etiquette, people: you shouldn’t act like someone’s meta makes them morally suspect just because you disagree with it; save the “this is morally bad” for things that are ACTUALLY harmful. We're all stuck on this website together & if you want to have any sort of community, you need to ACT like you're in a community, and that means letting other people say things you dislike. Block them if you need to! I block people all the time because i know it's better for me AND for them if we can both blog in peace.

I am not particularly comfortable with the young-queer-on-tumblr silm fandom rn due to this tendency to rebuke things that are uncomfortable rather than harmful. Maybe that's fine with you. But if your goal is to make all fans feel comfortable and accepted, you need to actually do that. If your goal is to make people who share your unwritten rules comfortable in your space, you need to admit that, and write those rules down, and curate your space so it follows them.

Edited 8:10am PST to clarify the specifics of the behavior I find concerning.

[otterandterrier]

10 likes and I open a fourth personal instagram account that I actually use to connect with family, friends and acquaintances

[carefulfears]

mulder and diana literally have the most intense divorced energy anyone could ever have...they have the chemistry of two people who've been married for decades and maybe don't wanna be married anymore, maybe aren't married anymore, but once you're married you're grandfathered in. you're always married. haven't touched each other in years, go most days not even considering the other, but owe each other something, and aren't sure of what it is. diana lies and lies and lies to his face, and then dies to save him. she feels entitled to him, she knows what's best for him, what's his is theirs. always. she was there when he got it. she helped him build it. (she tells him herself: "don't forget that"). so much of what she does appears as she's trying to establish a claim over him, but she doesn't have to try. she just is. she's irreproachable. you don't talk about the wife. (and you don't talk to her, as scully and diana arguing is met only with mulder's impatient, "scully...scully...scully.")

any time she comes up in conversation, his friends are uncomfortable. i love the way byers goes "well....yeah?" when scully asks if he knows diana. he says it like he's surprised that scully didn't know about her. when scully won't stop pressing mulder about diana in one son, all three of the boys tense up. the camera keeps going to their reactions. (you don't talk about the wife. they were there. "i always wondered why they split up.")

scully says "special agent diana fowley" as though maybe if she had one more title to throw in, she would disappear. diana says "fox" like she has something to prove. mulder says "diana" like it communicates everything he doesn't say. and in a way, it does. the first time scully heard him call agent fowley "diana," she knew.

[dodger-chan]

I have a very dear, very close friend, a little younger than me but not much. We met in middle school, roomed together when I went to grad school where she was finishing college. She was the only non-family member at my wedding.

And she's a massive Taylor Swift fan. This is actually kind of my fault. She was only vaguely aware of Taylor Swift before I fell in love with Red and brought the album along on a car trip. She liked it enough to give 1989 a shot and was hooked from there.

She bought me a copy of The Tortured Poets Department.

Normally this is not an issue. She's far from the only Swift fan I know, far from the most obsessive. But...

She loves this album so much she wanted to share it with me so we can talk about it and I think it might be the worst* album I've ever listened to.

*My personal taste, not an absolute judgement.

She's going to be so upset with me when we talk next weekend....