LAZY WHALER

something about the fact that among the Fates Worse Than Death that make up the non-lethal methods in Dishonored, the recipient of the one that is closest to being an actual act of genuine mercy is Daud, who apart from Burrows has arguably wronged Corvo more deeply than anyone else ever could. you can frame it as another more insidious form of cruelty—maybe Corvo leaves Daud alive purely so he can drown in his regrets over what he's done—but Daud himself doesn't seem to view it that way, identifying it an "extraordinary" act of mercy. even the Outsider breaks his usual habit of speculating on Corvo's actions to simply call him fascinating, and because Corvo is a silent protagonist the game denies you any peeks behind the curtain into his intentions the same way Corvo denies Daud and the Outsider any sort of explanation. maybe like Daud he recognizes a mirror ("it didn't matter until I saw it in his face") and is unsettled by it. maybe it makes a difference that Daud was just the knife and not the spymaster who put Jessamine in its path. maybe he's killed half the city himself by that point and can no longer justify throwing that stone. maybe he's killed no one and refuses to start now, even for the man who ruined his life. up to you. make your choice and live with it. game of all time btw

I need to [remembers I shouldn't make suicide jokes] join a whaling crew

the thing is the king charles portrait is genuinely incredible and exactly how I would execute a portrait of a member of the british royal family but also I literally cannot fathom why the british royal family would have it made

like yeah if I were going to make a portrait of king charles I would absolutely have just his smugly smirking face leering out of a mass of red that could only be read as blood and gore, and have his military uniform fading ambiguously into the same background to lay bare the brutality of imperialism concealed by the pomp and ceremony of the british state, and make the entire thing sort of look like it was decaying to indicate the rot of the empire. like I really struggle to imagine a better visual metaphor for the nightmarish history of a dying empire than the king's spiffy military uniform and saber and sash and rows of epaulets being literally made out of a rotting field of blood and gore. but like why did he have it commissioned... why did he have it MADE and then say Looks great I'm putting it on the wall... HE EVEN LOOKS LIKE HE'S IN HELL