Oohhh hi hi I've been thinking about this for a bit!
Is the adventure line/The Narrator's tie in any way sentient, or is it just a part of him, like an extra arm? Wanted to know because I've only seen it move only once i think!
thinking about how the theme of letting go (and the related motif of critically examining long-held beliefs/relationships) appears with the companions.
there's arcade and veronica, who were raised in insular environments and surrounded by enemies their entire lives, who fundamentally disagree with the politics of those groups, and who have to find a way to reconcile the love and loyalty they have for the only families they've ever known with their personal ideologies and goals.
while cassidy and crimson caravans aren't major factions in the vein of the ncr/enclave/brotherhood, cass' quest also revolves around whether she upholds the legacy of her family or follows her own path.
boone is disillusioned with the ncr after the bitter springs massacre but still wears his first recon beret, perhaps as a sign of lingering loyalty, or perhaps as penance. he participated in a horrible war crime because he was following orders, because that mindset was drilled into him since he joined the military. he's not as ideologically opposed to the ncr as arcade and veronica are to the enclave and brotherhood, respectively, but the similarity is worth noting.
what makes these companion quests so memorable is that we're meeting these characters at critical crossroads in their lives, where they have to come to terms with complicated attachments, where they'll define themselves by whether they choose to hang on to a legacy or strike out on their own.
99% of Trad Pub: The goal of a good book is to use an easy to relate to character as a lens to explore profound plots and interesting experiences.
Me: The goal of a good book is to use interesting events to fully lay bare the depths of the souls of people who represent the weirdest little fuckers the world has to offer.
formerly an essay in tags but - billie lurk. half-nameless, misremembered woman. her powers derived from the things taken from her, without any catharsis or empowerment. the rat charm, tied with deidre's hair, her lover's voice in the mouth of rats. her arm and eye, taken, given back only to cause her chronic pain, then lost again. foresight seems a cruel gift for a woman who botched the timing of her takeover of the whalers, and bet wrong when it came to delilah.
she never bore the outsider's blessing; his first visit to her was more like an assault. every other dishonored POV character gets the choice to be selfish, and for that selfishness to mean something, but billie's actions have no effect on the world at large, either, in a game without a chaos system.
some say that corvo is the ghost, but he can reach out and change things. billie's buried herself twice and come back and nothing she does seems to matter - she is less a protagonist, more a convenient full stop in the narrative.
try this: open doto, start a new game. sit in her cabin. notice how little of billie there is. even the woman she loved more than anyone has the face of another named character.
she sits amongst the assets of other games: empty canvases and a dressmaker's mannequin that wears nothing.
okay so i finally had time to watch the trailer for kaeya’s new skin which wasn’t new to me bc of uhh leaks and i noticed sth aside from the fact that he’s fucking gorgeous
at this point, i’m sure we’re all aware that kaeya’s vision is different to that of other mondstadt visions; it has two prongs/wings instead of three, which was/ is believed to be because he isn’t fully ‘from mondstadt’, that he’s torn between mondstadt and khaenri’ah or that he feels like he doesn’t belong
so tell me why
i refuse to believe it’s an oversight on hoyo’s part like c’mon but i didn’t think the vision ‘frames’ could change; when scara received his, everything was already attached but what do i know, maybe they can
also we just saw kaeya talking about his heritage in “caribert” and now this? what an odd… coincidence hoyo…
the implications if this is wilfully put here by hoyo? that he’s finally a full mondstadt citizen? that he thinks he actually belongs to mondstadt now? please, he deserves it <3