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precious-little-scoundrel · 24 days

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i was thinking about what late night talks with bucky would be like (call me crazy), and it got me thinking:

other than dying (though arguably some are not afraid of dying), what do you think some of the mota men’s greatest fears are? i could write a hundred essays on each of them, they all are so different!

Gosh, this is an incredible ask and it got me thinkin. Too hard, probably. And while I didn’t summarize thoughts for everyone I did think of them for Bucky.

So much so I wrote a little blurb on it. Sorry Nonnie if you’re not even into this universe, I totally get it but I found fic to be a more enlightening method for exploring this. I wanna hear those thoughts of yours! Send them, I beg!

Greatest Fear

They got a bit existential as the weeks went on and their nights got more conscious. Ida and Bucky’s minds grew restless in the cold now that their bodies were healing. Huddled in their bunk they had debated baseball vs football endlessly, and argued regarding the accuracy of each other’s training anecdotes, the morality of mobsters and who was the better boxer: Braddock or Baer.

They’d ended up talking of the war, and both being sick of the dead end that the question of the future brought, they circled back around more concrete -if troublesome- thoughts. Most hairy landings, worst sounds either heard from their crew over the radio and what flashed across their minds when they had to finally press that abandon ship control.

And finally, Bucky ended up asking her what her worst fear was. And when Ida didn’t have it readily to hand -too used to suppressing any such thoughts even to her own self- he clarified: “Besides dying, I mean. If you’re even scared of that. Knowin’ you, maybe you aren’t.”

“I’d rather not.” she admitted.

“So? So what gets you scared?”

“This your way of fishing for another ghost story?” Ida teased.

“No. Just feels like sometimes you gotta remind yourself what it’s all about. Scared of dyin’ means you like livin’ enough to rather not stop. That sorta thing.”

“You’re saying love for one thing drives fear for another.” She summarized.

“Dunno. Just mullin’ it over.”

“I’d go through anything not to lose John.” she conceded, “Funny enough I’m positive he feels the same, so what a snarl.”

“I know he does.”

“Yeah.”

“If they put a gun to Buck’s head I’d tell ‘em Roosevelt's address and his favorite drink order, too.” Bucky expounded, tongue loosened by her tiny admission of frailty. “And he’d hate me for it.”

“All different kinds of loves out there.” Ida murmured consolingly, thinking hard on how her brother had been in a rage at her condition when he first saw her, and yet one of his first questions was whether she’d given anything up. Her Johnny knew she couldn’t live with herself if she had and he wouldn't've wanted her to. And nothing about that struck her as cold. Just as Bucky’s dangerous devotion to Gale didn’t strike her as weak. Just different.

“I saw a train.” Bucky began a thought but his voice died out with such finality Ida wondered if he’d ever pick the subject up again. But after a long moment he did, with some far away quality present in his voice that she’d never heard before, “On the way here. We were on one set of tracks and it was comin’ up the other.”

Ida had memories of trains, a lot of them. Going south all alone, first trip down to the uncle and aunts during the worst year of the depression. Old enough to know her own folks couldn’t support her, old enough to question how a ticket could be arranged but not supper. There had been trains that took her to training in Texas, then on to Iowa and Nebraska. Trains that took her deeper into Germany. One entire train car just for herself and too many German soldiers. Then the train that took them away from Ravensbruck. Ida felt an unsettled anticipation around trains that the peaceful rightness of flight had never caused her.

When Bucky mentioned trains and didn’t go on, Ida folded her hand into his huge one and squeezed it tightly. “What about those trains, John?”

“Heard ‘em before we saw ‘em.” he clarified, nodding his head conversationally as he was want to do, like he was gaining momentum towards a hard saying. Ida braced herself, squeezed just a little harder. “Not the engines, the screams. Car after car, and nothin’ but arms and faces reachin’ out. Screaming.”

Bucky’s bruised eyes were fixed, downcast gaze somewhere in the vicinity of her throat, but Ida knew he was seeing something far away. “I think I saw where they take them.” she muttered before she even had time to weigh her contribution to this horrid tale.

His eyes focused again and he looked at her with silent inquiry. “They took us to a labor camp first. Before here. Apparently one of the nicer ones, they had intentions of treating us as civilians.” Ida had been preoccupied with her aching body and her sharp terror of failure while at Ravensbruck, but not so much as to not notice the haunting vestiges of humanity answering roll beside her. “I felt like I was in Hades, the cold hell. Where the living damned can peruse each special misery waiting for them when they die. Called it a labor camp but I don’t know how skeletons like that could produce anything. Last bits of human resilience used to put together some industry to keep their oppressors fed, equipped. What an end.”

“Scares me shitless.” Bucky replied vehemently, and Ida realized they’d gotten full circle in their talk, that he’d dragged more out of her than she ever intended. Somehow neither his statement of fear nor her own felt weak in the moment. “That folks could get so hard they could do that to each other -I don’t know what to do with that, Ida. How’s it get to that point. Why’ve you got Fritz and then you’ve got…that? Same country, same sauerkraut, same uniforms. Scares me shitless.”

MOTA taglist, I only have one so ignore if this is not the universe you signed up for:

@stylespresleyhearted

@ab4eva

@earth-to-lottie

@suraemoon

@blurredcolour

@steph-speaks

@crazymadpassionatelove

@rubyfruitjungle

@taestrwbrry

@storysimp

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@xxanaduwrites

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@piastrinho

#Ida and Bucky snuggling and having some seriously angsty chats #but also- I’ve been long pondering what may have fucked Bucky up most about his time before the Stalag and I don’t think it was the lynchin #masters of the air #mota #mota fanfic #integrated au #those who can

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presiding · 4 months

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a doctor turned serial killer turned doctor again, an actor who paints, a gang leader, a mining baron, and a vice overseer walk into the room.

oh yeah and they lead karnaca now.

dishonored 2 is my fav game but i think it's mid, story-wise. here's why dh1 works and why dh2's overarching story sorta misses

tl;dr: story integration is critical for gameplay that offers audience payoff, but emily's personal arc from dishonor to honor is inconsistently demonstrated in the story, and is not an interactive part of the gameplay.

essay/long version under cut >

recap: what's dishonored's deal

[skip if you want] dh1 is an underdog story: corvo is an honorable man swept up in the machinations of a callous city, so his canonical ending being 'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation being restored in a more hopeful city, due to his & the player's rejection of the violent connotations of the tagline 'revenge solves everything.'

similarly, in dh1 DLCs, daud's story arc is that of an anti-hero: a dishonorable man who realises too late he has done irreparable harm. he sees the error of his ways after a single monumental death, and eventually a single life redeems him when he/the player stepped in to circumvent a terrible fate for a child, enabling her to rule unfettered.

daud & corvo come to a satisfying conclusion within the extent of their narrative arcs. it doesn't matter that a child on a throne isn't really a fix for a decaying empire - the player's actions throughout the city of dunwall was what mattered - and these stories could be framed as parables. in that sense, young emily as a ruler is a metaphor for a hopeful future for the city & empire.

dishonored 1 & its DLCs are also great examples of storytelling with perfectly integrated gameplay - you, the player, worked towards the outcome that redeemed the protagonists.

in your efforts to save young emily, you either achieved a good outcome (corvo) or prevented a worse outcome (daud).

bringing us to dh2 -

what's emily's arc

emily's arc is a coming of age: we're introduced to a reigning empress who questions her role & skillset ("am i the empress my mother wanted me to be?"), then her titular fall from grace occurs. from there, she learns to reject the violent, selfish connotations in 'take back whats yours' tagline (a la daud & corvo!) while rediscovering why her rule is critical to the empire.

emily's rule is no longer metaphorical, but:

a literal thing for audience assessment (is emily a good ruler?) AND

the crux of her storyline.

at the beginning of dh2, emily is introduced as a disengaged leader ("i wish i could just run away from all this;" "i dont know if whether i should sail to the opposite side of the world, or have everyone around me executed"). the antihero has a precedent for the dishonored series in daud, so it's not at first glance an issue*, however, the fact that emily has ruled poorly reframes corvo & daud's endings as being less than ideal (a moralistic retcon) *we could talk here about how ready an audience was in 2016 for a flawed women as a protagonist, hell, even in 2023,,,

throwback to the beginning of this essay when i said:

'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation

emily's story arc, unlike for daud & corvo, is literally about the quality of her rule. we're no longer in metaphor territory (ironic phrase): a parable-style ending doesn't work.

does emily become a good ruler

we know she becomes a good ruler because the game says so. it is narrated to the audience via a (literal) word of god in the space of 30 seconds, after the final boss. the outsider tells us that emily becomes known as Just & Clever.

drawing a distinction here - this narration is not the same as the player actively being involved.

the player does not throughout the game become aware that emily has made political allies. during the game, she doesn't talk to these characters about saving karnaca or being a better ruler to the empire (there's a few lines might imply it, but you need to be actively looking and being careful to wait for every voice line. it's a far cry from daud & corvo's fight to save emily being unmissable - even though daud doesn't know at the beginning that's the goal).

how does the game show it

you can coincidentally not kill most of your subjects and never be aware that emily is looking to restore karnaca by means of instating a council - it's never brought up. it *couldn't* be brought up, because that council serves under the fake duke (armando), who is the last person she speaks to before she leaves for dunwall. its her suggestion that he rules karnaca, but armando's condition is that he will rule as he sees fit.

to back up a bit, emily's canonical method of restoring karnaca is by banding together key allies - hypatia, stilton, [byrne &or paolo], pastor, under a council beneath the duke's body double. they are passionate people who would each individually make worthwhile advisors, but if you think about those characters sitting at a table trying to reach an agreement, it feels like an assortment of people that emily didn't kill along the way and doesn't feel organic (up to interpretation). it's not stated if emily herself banded this council together, but logically she must have (worth a mention these are mostly characters that you as the player had reasonable rationale to kill during a high chaos run, except pastor). the underlying concept may be that karnaca's power is returned to its people - which is interesting given that the monarchy remains and armando's decision is final.

this overarching solution could also be taken as a critique to dh1's 'put your kid on the throne,' which is another reason its worthwhile looking at how emily was shown to be a better leader. obviously my point isn't that her solution was bad given the circumstance, but i mean she has very little agency here in all. if emily was shown to be more controlling as a leader, this could be interpreted as character growth, but that's not the case.

coming of age

how do you learn & grow when you can't specify your failings? emily doesn't really touch on her shortcomings as an empress. she non-specifically worries delilah makes a better empress than her. it's hard to argue her worries are meaningful when someone good at their job will still worry when lives are in the balance.

emily's best 'aha' moments (eg. crack in the slab comment about gaining perspective) are consistently undercut by a conversation with sokolov or meagan afterwards in which she demonstrates she hasn't learned anything (before the grand palace, emily condemns 'toadies sucking up to me' and is reminded by meagan that she's part of the problem). the story is confused about what it's trying to say about emily's progress, and when she's meant to show progress, if she was meant to show any progress at all. it could be argued that emily was never even a bad ruler, she had just been fed misinformation about the problems in karnaca and been the victim of slander by her political enemies. the game doesn't make this clear - it's easier to argue that the opposite is true given that her allies only have criticism.

worth a mention here that the heart quotes about armando - a fake ruler - interestingly mirror emily's character concerns. "see how he sighs? his life is a gilded cage." but this essay is already long.

while corvo & daud spend their games (and through the gameplay) 'earning' their redemption, emily is being led by the NPCs around her to a conclusion and a fix for the political mess in karnaca: meagan & sokolov guide emily to her missions, and there's no recurring quest for emily to investigate possible allies. she is able to gather the people she hasn't killed to herself by manner of... post-game narration. during the game, she's primarily concerned with getting her throne back.

an easy fix: if there had been less dialogue & narrative focus on emily's failings perhaps the ending would have felt more satisfying. it has the feel of cut content, but i don't know what was cut to be able to comment on it.

so what went wrong?

i can't help but wonder if arkane were worried they would lose a certain demographic if corvo wasn't playable (may have been deemed too much of a risk - 2013 was a different time), and so they had to take out story elements that were unique to emily's growth as a character/empress, because the usual storyline/gameplay integration had to work for both characters - in other words, gameplay that made sense for both corvo & emily was prioritised before emily's story & character development. which is a silly problem to have in a game that added character voices for the sake of improving characterisation - maybe emily's tale would have felt more akin to a parable if she had less lines that betrayed her ignorance (to the disdain of those around her).

i wish more care had been taken with emily's story. most players will never really notice the large variety of different endings - they're not particularly satisfying in and of themselves.

it's ironic that one of Emily's complaints is about her father/protector being overbearing, when his (parallel universe) presence in the gameplay may be one of the reasons her own narrative arc falls flat.

what are the upsides here

changing tune from what didn't work - don't you think the concept is fantastic? it's a great idea overall - can you imagine if the coming of age storyline was better integrated into the game?

it's valuable to talk about the integration of story and gameplay and characterisation from a craft perspective. dh2 genuinely is my favourite game - it's beautiful, the imm-sim design philosophy makes the world a delight to explore, the combat gives endless creative options for tackling any fight, there is a far greater diversity of cast in an in-text canonical way. there's loads to love!

i love emily as a dodgy leader, to me it adds interesting dimensionality to the outsider's narrations - of course in dunwall there's never a neat happily ever after! emily, like the outsider, both work well as characters who hold ultimate power but aren't necessarily worthy of it - and this makes perfect sense for the dishonored universe's morality & critiques of power. however, within this grey area there's still plenty of room for a satisfying ending, which isn't what we ended up with, whatever the true reason for that was. and also, damn, emily's a marked assassin empress, if she can't lead well then who can?

while dh1 was criticised for its narrative simplicity, dh2 in contrast and in hindsight shows us that simplicity isn't so bad - there's satisfaction in gameplay achieves a clear, simple narrative goal.

#are you a dh1 enjoyer but less so a dh2 enjoyer?#have you ever wondered why you don't love dh2 as much?#here's 1.8k words that might articulate some of that.#light reading.i guess #this essay wasn't meant to cover everything - just the core of the plot and why its important to integrate story & gameplay #and to compare dh1 & 2 #dishonored #dishonored 2 #dishonored 2 spoilers #emily kaldwin #daud #corvo attano #this week i'm cracking things out of my drafts!#<333 don't get me started on doto.#some of this might be contentious. idk i try to live in a bubble #the meme version was easier to read i know i know #this essay would have been a lot longer had i integrated more references from the game #i know a few others have said this but imagine if they went a different way with emily #like she realises shes not fit for the job and maybe no one is and says fuck the system cause shes got a rebellious streak #and does a kickflip on the monarchy and institutes something else. i dont even care what. make it funny #and then for the sake of continuing the trend we spend dishonored 3 undoing the horrible leadership emily instates <3 #i think they really loved emily as a character. i FEEL the love i believe its there.but didn't think enough bout how she would be perceived #there's a good couple comments from baldur's gate 3 devs about how much work goes into writing women to account for sexism #there's more that i could have added to this essay but for brevity's (ha.ha) sake i'll leave it there #other textposts about this game that i see around tend to romanticise dishonoreds story a little more

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