#billie's not surprised by anything anymore but maybe wyman would freak out over most of it. could have been a lot of fun

[presiding]

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.

#billie lurk #even the wiki is wrong about her its infuriating #pulled this out of tags because fuck it #in daud's DLCs even the stories that weren't about him were about him #but billie's stories are the scrapheap. they're the stuff they couldn't squeeze in elsewhere. cheap jokes and macguffins #i'm not even roasting the devs for this i think releasing dishonored in 2016 then DotO in 2017 was a feat (derogatory) #games should be made slowly and with love #and i know that everyones talked about this endlessly #but billie is my fav and it sucks that she got a game that only causes me to grieve for her as a character #not FOR her as a person #only the potential story that never was. that she never got. #you can have your strong black woman and not turn her into a trope. give her depth and range and heartache and agency. yes there was traged #but how did it SHAPE her? #dont get me started on her being designated caretaker of a former god and dying assassin. what the fuck #some of this i'd be more okay with if she was younger - i mean. the blank canvases? really? #this game could have been about wyman and there's not that much that would have changed in terms of the core story #“found out the asshole that killed your mother is still around. gonna go deal with that.” #emily who is stoned: “cool.bring me snacks on the way back” #wyman: “oh he's saying actually it was gods fault and that its possible to kill him. well i have literally nothing in my schedule” #billie's not surprised by anything anymore but maybe wyman would freak out over most of it. could have been a lot of fun #also you cant fuck up wymans characterisation. they barely exist. #local empress sends her enby girlboyfriend to kill god #pres writes increasingly deranged essays in the tags #death of the outsider spoilers #i have to complain about doto once every year or so or i die #but i'm not really gonna let arkane hide behind dev excuses when it comes to racism like. its not enough