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!
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Youtube | Spotify
CW abuse/trauma/ptsd. It's a pretty raw song (both in lyrics and the way Black Dresses preforms their songs) so listen at your own discretion.
This song really speaks so honestly to the deeply self-destructive spiralling for B, in my opinion. Speaking politeness through your gritted teeth with a lying softness, boiling over, letting it out, feeling it on your bared, snarling teeth, breathing out smoke, "is it me? am I the problem? am I the evil monster?", "its always been me", spitting up blood, biting the hand that feeds and ripping them the fuck to shreds to be left alone.
Lyrics under the cut.
Why thank you for your opinion
What you think is so important
So let's talk this out i love it
You're so funny i hope you're doing well
Thank god for the tongue in your mouth
I'm so happy i'm so lucky
I get to do whatever i can be myself
But you know what? I have zero tolerance for
Bad little shitheads
Who only seem to fuck around
Same shit different day
You need to fuck off you need to go away
I don't wanna talk about it
That's all that I came to say
Get out of my space
You worthless fucking fuckface
Who the fuck do you think you are?
Who the fuck do you think you are?
Who the fuck do you think you are?
Who the fuck do you think you are?
Hey bitch, what the fuck's going on?
Is this how you wanna spend the
Last few years of your life? Of your life?
The last few years your legacy
Your legacy your legacy your
You can hide out in your tiny little lair
You can be the fucking evil monster terror
Scared you can be the evil monster
It was always you it was always you
It was always you it was always you
It was always you
It was always something I couldn't be
That was just outside reality
It was always something I couldn't know
That I didn't know that I shouldn't show
Because everything around me
Felt just like a bad dream
It was all or nothing
Be the kind of person you hate or be
Hated for the things that you
Thought were common sense
Just a little further
One day it will make sense
Hold yourself a little tighter
Your innocence
Preyed upon and vilified by
Your blood and friends
Who am I if I can't assign a
Name and place to what this is?
Everything that's mine feels rotten from
The touch of it everything all the time is a
Message that I shouldn't be
Who the fuck are you?
Stay the fuck away from me
I want to love myself but
Memories are killing me
I want to live but all the years
That came before won't let me be
I want to love myself but
Memories are killing me
I want to live but all the years
That came before won't let me be
I want to love myself but
Memories are killing me
I want to live but all the years
That came before won't let me be
I want to love myself but
Memories are killing me
Memories are killing me
Memories are killing me it hurts
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Omg pleaseee write carnival attendant dabi!! I wanna hear about all the tricks he had with pretty girls so bad lol. When a carnival came to my town once most of the people that worked the rides and stuff were foreign (I live in America) and there was this one guy that was Russian that was super cute. He would use his accent and speak in Russian to flirt with/impress all the girls lol. I can so see dabi doing that with Japanese and I would eat it up lol but I'm so interested to see what you have in mind for it!! ❤
i’m glad ur interested in the idea anon!!! i think it’d be a fun lil piece to put out for october/autumn/halloween!!!
omggg hehehe that’s actually really cute??? do you remember which ride/game he operated? and i can absolutely see dabi doing that with japanese, too!!!! oh my god just the thought has me swooning <333 this carnival comes to my town once a year and the guy i’m thinking of has been with them for several years. their workers are mostly composed of white men that will leer at you and call you names like ‘honey’ and ‘sweetheart’ etc, and the dudes who run the game stalls like to aggravate boyfriends but i believe that’s a tactic that’s used everywhere; y’know, make the boyfriend angry, make him spend money at your booth to prove that actually, he can win his girl that big stuffed bear, thank you very much.
the one attendant i remember being very cute, who was only with them for a few years, was a guy who ran the himalaya ride. he was young, maybe in his early to mid-20s and very lanky & tall. his work shirt didn’t fit him right, it was a little big and it exposed a good amount of his collarbone, and he had a lot of ear piercings. but he was very quiet and he had a sort of melancholic air around him that just made me feel ??? i don’t know, sad for him? he barely spoke to anyone at all (a lot of the other attendants are very chatty, both with coworkers and with guests), but he would bob his head to the music of the ride which i always thought was v cute haha c; it’s been over ten years since i’ve seen this man, but i still remember him so clearly, and i genuinely hope he’s doing well for himself.
i think one of the reasons why he stuck out to me so much was because he was so young compared to the rest of the workers. carnival life has always intrigued me, as it attracts people from all walks of life for various different & personal reasons, and i wondered what this man’s story was. obv it could’ve been as simple as wanting a job that travelled but idk!! he always struck me as being profoundly sad maybe i was projecting on him honest to god who knows
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