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doctorpariahdax · 7 years

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Stick around Corvo fans-How Daud was thrown away and enlightened as a character in Dishonored series.

This is gonna be long so buckle up kiddos. There's a couple things that immediately come to mind for fans of the Dishonored universe and from what I've come across is that you either love Daud or you hate him. And I don't think that's directly a flaw with the character himself but how he was presented. There are a couple things I want to list that I'll further elaborate on that pertain to how Daud was thrown away as a character (ruined) and elaborated on. -dauds inital purpose -mercy or le death -yay classic redemption arc - except lol maybe not what did you do -true character nature -the marked and the outsider's approval -the purpose of doto -the end of daud Now to give you full disclosure I have not yet run through all of Dishonored 2 or doto. I am by no means a completionist, I don't feel pressured to explore every nook and cranny just for some obscure letter written by one of Delilah's witches that tells you something about someone somewhere about hlahblahblhab. Now because I'm a responsible impulse efficient and self controlled person roaming social media I spoiled the end of doto for myself and I am deeply saddened because Daud is my favorite character. I don't know if it's a kink of mine to like dangerous emotionally unavailable and unattainable men (cuz he's ded. Lel nah he's fictional) but Daud was genuinely more interesting to me than Corvo. This is not to say that the first Dishonored is bad, but the story was lacking for me - I'm very much a story seeker- and when the game first came out I played the intro and immediately set down the game thinking, "ehng...". When I decided to give Dishonored another try (*cough this summer cough six years later cough*) I kept going not because of my interest in Corvo or the outsider, or getting Emily back safely (don't get me wrong I like kids but Corvo is either best or worst parent and I can't decide which); I kept going because I wanted to know more about the "villain". He's an assassin, a merc for hire which to me meant his character is either going to be really deep or inexplicably shallow. I was upset at first, he wasn't in the game as much as I thought he would be but Dishonored has a tendency to shove information by into your face /after the fact/. I spared the villain hoping I would see him again. I didn't. ....until I found out there were dlc's. Staying with my rant? Digital cookie for you. Dishonored's story telling was on par and in many cases far better than the knife of dunwall, but the first dlc was very much a setup for the brigmore witches dlc, which in turn was what I think the best story telling in the whole Dishonored series.. Gonna go into my points listed above now because either don't want you to read through this thinking it was total anxiety induced stress writing (...which it definitely isn't....by the way....) There's a general healthy mindset that people inherently dislike villains, evil doers and all round moral miscreants, Daud being an assassin for hire and not much more in Dishonored as his initial purpose was already be placed in a rough position that a portion of players might find amiable but mostly for his badassery and not much in the character development isle. The way I see it is that you first are greeted with Daud's be character development in one of two ways(or a blend): you want Corvo to be moral and spare Daud, or upon hearing that Daud reports to you there's something by inside of him suffering you spare him to let him suffer more. Daud's intial purpose was to be a 'bad guy' and in either scenario he is still seen as being the bad guy or getting a cliche "this is worse than death and you deserve to suffer" sort of ending. When you come to knife of dunwall Daud is...tired. there's no simpler way for me to describe it. He's lived above and away from any higher power than himself (cuz we all know the outsider doesn't seem to give a hair on his left ball about Daud but he'd dress in drag and do the hula for Corvo...#dauddeservesbetterfriends) And we know or at least can vetire the thought that Daud has adjusted to his life as a killer, but he doesn't seem active enjoyment from it. I'm not exonerating Daud's tendency for murder, but think of it this way, he is a serial killer by death count but he's not a Ted Bundy or Hannibal Lecter. Killing doesn't give him satisfacyion, it is just a job and people are hard to become attached to when you have to look at them often as return receipts and cashiers. That's not to say that Daud doesn't feel love. I genuinely think he loved Billie as a sort of best friend and daughter. The death of empress kaldwin has hit daud hard too. He knew it was a bad idea but it was habit, it was just a contract, and jessamine meant nothing of compromise to Daud personally. When Daud is betrayed by Billie and given a death date from the outsider Daud has already submitted in some form to his own fleeting mortality and is pained after decades of his reputation getting ahead of himself to the point where he wouldn't say 'no' to a contract. I feel that Daud felt as though he was becoming more of a Lecter esque serial killer to the public, that who he was, his identity had been lost underneath the bodies he's left in his wake...and he regrets all of it, realizing its futility, pointlessness. People are just contracts to him, but he never actively sought to I'll with the purpose of hurting the very fiber of others' existence... When you spare Daud as Corvo his single line proclaiming how extraordinary your willingness to give him clemency is isn't a line to me that was ultimately thrown to the wind, it was something that genuinely sparked upset and fascination in Daud. Corvo did something Daud hadn't done since he had moved from serkonos, and without the incentive of pay - Corvo decided to spare a life. That ruptures something deeply in Daud, who had already endured his midlife crisis and brings me to the third bullet point "classic redemption arc" although it does matter what you do....that changes Daud's character to me...idk. All in all the only right way I saw to play brigmore witches was to go non-lethal stealth...and trick Delilah into her own spell. Daud is a master assassin. It made no sense for him to merely go jumping around murdering everyone who saw him (this is how I initially played Corvo because dayum I was bad at stealth games also pc controls, but then again Corvo isn't a master assassin when you first meet him...Daud is). After a struggle with Delilah, you hold onto the platform and read her citations and she flies off of you, into the painting, I wanted there to be a classic breathless hero who mutters calmly "gotta quit smoking" ( drum crash) and goes about his business. But! Something I feel a lot of fans of Dishonored overlook is that Daud had no need to further pursue Delilah. He could easily have faded into obscurity around the second mission when he realized that Delilah was after Emily and not him, but he ventures forward, accepting his fate - tired and downtrodden about his choices and the inevitable futility of his fate- in the efforts to save the life and hope that still exists in young Emily, the daughter of the empress he murdered right before her eyes. It's a move of an apology, a silent, self accepting apology with no further requirements for acknowledgement. Which brings me to the true nature of daud in addition to the nature and approval of the outsider to his marked ones. Daud in canon does not kill but traps Delilah. Daud is a mater assassin. He's quick he's quiet he is an efficient man with little room in his life or care for killing as a sport....he is to some extent evil, but he is not incapable of doing good to simply do good. The outsider is decribed furtively as a true neutral character who appeals to the benevolent options but is known to commit 'evil' by not intervening. He seems to be a strong advocate of free will but does extend the occasional helpful hint to his marked ones. Daud is told by the outsider that how he handles Delilah will be viewed with great curiosity which is another added caveat to Daud's evolution as a character and devolution as an identity. The outsider became bored with Daud, stopped willingly checking on him, but when Daud does the 'unusual' sparing Delilah but torturing her for (what was supposed to be eternal) ...he gains the outsider's favor, even if for juat a moment. He fades into obscurity for both Corvo and the outsider, even to his own men, abandoning the identity of 'daud' and presumably not going on a killing spree. The purpose of doto.....I'm not 100% sure of a 'purpose', but doto makes or breaks Daud for most people. For me it did both. But it didn't break Daud's character development for me because he saw the outsider specifically as an excuse for all the murder and the theiving and the murder and did I mention Daud murdered? He had to kill the outsider to prevent another 'daud'. The outsider was the omniscient condoner. 'daud' would not have ever easily existed to such fame or success without the aid and the passive/spontaneous condoning of the outsider and his abilities. Few be if any would have managed to be a 'daud' identity without being able to be so far above the confines of human abolity to cheat mortal instruments of death.... Corvo and his attempt to save Emily would have been a fly's breath shy of impossible without the outsider to tinker with the impossibilities. Daud's action to kill the outsider was selfish, I can see and agree with that, but he only wanted to destroy the exoneration of evil, not to simply forgive his transgressions by eradicating and blaming the one who allowed and corroborated with him to be such. How doto has presented Daud in doto and how many people have received and reacted to Daud's presented purpose in doto did misrepresent and destroy in some regards the development they took with Daud's character, but let me reiterate that his character development itself was not thrown out the window, it was how his character was presented in a plot and the narrative around doto. ...let me again remind you I said I haven't exactly finished doto....because I spoiled it for myself and I don't want Daud to die...again....finally? Maybe not the right words - oh look I've made myself sad, fancy that - but the point. Of this ramble which now I don't know how to end and I don't think I've ever spent so long on Tumblr in one sitting .... Daud is not a poorly constructed character. Doto poorly presented him and he deserved better. Doto also made Daud's character solidfied. He's not a gentle being. He's stern, violent, reserved and determined, but he's also deeply emotional and self loathing. He aspires to destroy the outsider because of what the outsider allowed in to do, he did not pursue or seek to blame the outsider into naively forgiving himself for the crimes he committed. It was a matter of settling his conscience. Probably with the abuse of his powers, a lot of stress, whiskey, cigars, and breaking a handful of bones repeatedly over his career and his guilt Daud was well aware he was on his deathbed long before Billie found him and he had been haunted by his blindness and decades of him /having forgiven and forgotten/ his crimes that it drove him to death. Daud is not a poorly constructed character. I would argue he was a character that the Dishonored series put the most time and effort into.

#Long post #lmao #outsider forgive me #Daud #assassin #Dishonored #Dishonored 2 #death of the outsider #Billie lurk #Corvo #Corvo attano #the outsider #character analysis #also I'm tired and I've never spent this long on Tumblr in one sitting

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