MacCready's "Tunnel Snakes Rule!" line feels like it's dripping in irony, but him being an unironic Butch Deloria stan would be the funniest shit ever. He was, like, twelve. Either MacCready verbally tore Butch to shreds at the front gate of Little Lamplight (and probably made him cry, let's be real) or began to hero worship him.
I often wonder about the quote-unquote logistics of Corvo the Black/Emily the Butcher endings. Emily makes more sense to me, in a way, carving her way through the empire only to come back with blood caked under her fingernails and realising that she did everything her father refused to do 15 years ago. but why did Corvo have a similar choice?
what happens to the statues later? does Emily keep her father trapped in stone? does Corvo look at his daughter, frozen in the moment and considers freeing her? is he at his deathbed when he finally reaches out and cups Emily's cheek, freeing her into a carcass of an empire that he gutted for her, in her name, in the name of her mother?
when I first heard of the endings I thought that if you reach very high chaos, you are locked into this choice - Corvo or Emily tries to free the other and the stone just doesn't budge. they are trapped. the quest is over but the world knows that the bloodshed was extreme and this is the punishment they have to face
I think some part of me will always be that kid walking out of a huge movie theater into a grey overcast afternoon not realizing her world was about to be permanently changed but feeling changed already herself by the animated Disney film she'd just seen that she would spend a year acting like she was too cool to be affected by, even though she'd never cried at a movie before that and and the cries from the speakers were still ringing in her ears on that cold, overcast afternoon, right before her world changed
WILSON BEING A SCIENTIST AND PSYCHOTIC IS SO SO IMPORTANT TO ME DO YOU UNDERSTAND? SCIENCE IS ABOUT PROVING THINGS TRUE WITH EVIDENCE AND HE EXPERIENCES DELUSIONS (BELIEFS DESPITE EVIDENCE) WHICH LIKE ARGH HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH SCIENCE MUST BE SO PERSONAL AND COMPLEX AND ARGH ARGH ARGH ANYONE WHO HAS EVER SAID HES A BAD SCIENTIST EXPLODE NOW!!!! HES LITERALLY SO BRAVE *HOLDS MY HAT TO MY CHEST* MARCH ON SOLDIER! *SHEDS A SINGLE TEAR*
This might not be anything, but while writing about your fics, the way you have the characters' mannerisms down PERFECTLY got me thinking about mirroring...
There's a lot of it in 7 (Horii is a directorial genius etc etc), most of it more intentional than these probably are, but there's something so interesting about mirroring that takes the tone of a (relatively) fond memory, a familiar gesture, and inverts it in the way shown here.
OH I'M GLAD YOU'VE NOTICED THESE TOO I think I mentioned it months back (or I drafted a post 'bout it but didn't think it was anything noteworthy) but I always really did like how the Arakawa Family mimicked each other's mannerisms (also circling back to how Jo and Masato calling Ichiban 'Ichi' presumably after picking it up from Arakawa)!
Aoki actually does the same sitting gesture too! I went back to double check and skim through the rest of the game's cutscenes, and as far as I could tell unless I skipped a scene, it really is only these three that do this specific pose:
It's such a small detail but I love it immensely and it really does highlight their connections with each other and it drives me insane