#moni talks

Jack and Pope as twin brothers and me in the middle yes lord please

omg the idea of them frotting in front of you <33

jack would so so so be teasing to pope also and yes jack calls pope “pup”

very much think reader and pope play with each other while jack watches and just lazily paws at his cock. hngh sometimes he’ll make one of his pups pump for him because owner shouldn’t have to do anything <3

Same polarity

Wands/Swords(fire/air)

Cups/Pentacles(water/earth)

♣ when the suits/elements are both masculine(yang or positive) or feminine(yin or negative) - “moderately strong” because they are “friendly to each other”

♣ such pairs are complementary and compatible - they easily coexist, tending toward compromise, balance, and moderation ♣ they encourage us to seek information and knowledge through communication with, or observation of, the other

♣ success comes through balancing the polarized urges and by integrating their commonalities

Complements

Sword/Cups(air/water)

Wands/Pentacles(fire/earth)

Ψ when the suits and elements complement each other - “somehow friendly”

Ψ these cards are not totally comfortable with each other - they tend toward excessiveness or inhibition, disorganization or friction Ψ both need to control creative power through discrimination( wands+pentacles - give us intensely, sensory desire; swords+cups - can be emotionally willful)

Ψ each tends to receive, stabilize, internalize, secure, or attract the other

Ψ they may also act as corrective and therapeutic forces on each other

Contraries

Wands/Cups(fire/water)

Swords/Pentacles(air/earth)

♦ when the cards are of “contrary elements” - they tend to “weaken each other greatly for good or evil, and neutralize their force”

♦ these cards are incompatible and antagonistic, representing conflicts of interests that can lead to blocks, or suppression ad inhibition of energies

♦ these cards neutralize each other, allowing a third element to operate more independently

♦ at their worst - the elements work at cross-purposes, producing fear or frustration and a sense of crisis; they expose root vulnerabilities and weak points in the other(revealing insecurities, and uncertainty)

♦ each must learn self-reliance and how to maintain internal as well as external boundaries(conscious adjustments and modifications are necessary)

♦ we must be willing to let go of untenable situations since holding on can block the energy that is needed for moving on elsewhere

Immersive Sim:

Dishonored falls into a category of game called Immersive Sim, which in short means a game where the player has the ultimate choice in how to approach a situation. To paraphrase a quote from Warren Spector, the lead developer on Deus Ex, 'a key should not be the only way to open a door.'

The same thing applies to characters; though you are playing as a specific person, your decisions as a player greatly determine the personality and traits of said character, as well as their impact on the world. 

In theory, I love immersive sims. In practice, especially in a series, games run into a lot of issues when it comes time for the sequel. Dishonored is no different. 

If we take the first game in isolation, Corvo can be as violently destructive or as quietly imperceptible as you want. However, unlike the Mass Effect games, which take into account what you did in the previous games, Dishonored doesn’t; instead the game has its own true canon, which can be especially frustrating if you like to play loudly and violently. I will talk way more about this when we get to the level breakdowns, but suffice it to say, your actions have way less influence on the world than the game would like you to believe they do. 

Corvo Attano:

Ironically, though he is our protagonist, we know very little about him, especially in the first game. We know is that he is devoted to both Jessamine and Emily, that he is very close to Emily, acting as her father figure, and that he is respected by the people who know him.

This is where the issues start. Does Corvo know Emily is his daughter? Does Emily? In the first game, the answer to both seems to be no, and yet, in the sequel, this is common knowledge not just to Corvo and Emily, but the Dunwall public as well.

The game never explains why Corvo and Jessamine aren't together, whether it's a personal choice or if marriage between nobles and commoners is illegal. This lack of clarity does bring up some questions about the world, since we see that Dunwall, and by extension the Isles are quite conservative and traditional, with the Abbey having a very large influence over its citizens.

How is Jessamine an Empress? Why is her being unmarried or her having a child out of wedlock not a bigger issue? Why is Emily’s birthright not an issue for succession if her father is unknown? Does the Abbey not have anything to say about the fact that the Empress just seemingly had an immaculate birth?

This isn't just idle speculation; it brings me to a much larger and more serious problem with the first game, namely

Sexism and Misogyny:

I want to do a little experiment. I’m going to list the most important characters in the game. Ready? 

Royal Protector Corvo Attano;

Empress Jessamine Kaldwin; 

Princess Emily Kaldwin;

The Assassin Daud; 

Royal Spymaster/Lord Regent Hiram Burrows; 

High Overseer Campbell; 

Lords Custis, Morgan and Treavor Pendleton; 

Admiral John Havelock; 

Overseer Teague Martin; 

Granny Rags aka Vera Morley; 

Slackjaw, leader of the Bottlestreet Gang; 

Ladies Lydia, Waverly and Esma Boyle; 

and Inventors Anton Sokolov and Piero Joplin.

Do you notice something about this list?

Let’s do it another way. 

These are all the female characters in the game:

Jessamine Kaldwin, 

Emily Kaldwin, 

Granny Rags; 

The 3 Boyle sisters;

 Governess Calista Curnow, 

& Cecilia. 

6. There are 6 female characters in the whole game. 

I am not counting named NPCs like Madame Prudence, Lydia, Alfa, Elsa or Miss White, the same way I'm not counting Alec, Griff, or Lord Ramsey for the men. And I am not counting the 3 Boyle sisters as separate characters when they serve the exact same function and have the exact same character model. 

Actually, I think the Boyles deserve their own section because–

Lady Boyle:

After escaping prison, Corvo is tasked with eliminating 5 people who have orchestrated Jessamine’s murder. Those 5 people are: the Lord Regent, the High Overseer, Lords Custis and Morgan and Lady Boyle.

Lady Boyle is the ONLY female assassination target. She is also the only one who had no involvement with the plot to kill Jessamine.

One of the Boyle sisters is the Lord Regent’s lover, and she is financing his grab at power, specifically paying off the City Watch. When you read her journals, you quickly realize that she's in way over her head, has no way out of the relationship without jeopardizing her life and her family’s reputation, and she even talks fondly about Jessamine - she misses her, she likes her, and hates how bad things have gotten without her. 

We need to take her out because we need to take out Burrow's financial backing, but the justification for killing her is given by Lord Treavor Pendleton who is a) a super unreliable character, who b) has a very incel-adjacent relationship with all the Boyle women, and c) whose proof that Boyle ‘helped’ Burrows kill Jessamine is just ‘trust me bro’.

The only argument you could make is that in a transitive way, Boyle’s money paid for Daud, but that’s such an incredible reach that I sprained my neck just typing it. 

What’s worse, is that the alternative to killing her is so much worse than committing murder, that I don't even think the developers realized what they'd written.

Back to the Sexism:

You thought we were done?

Calista Curnow, along with Cecilia is one of the two female characters who like Lydia serve mostly to flirt with Corvo. What makes Calista different is that she's a) Emilly's governess and b) a canon 'love interest' for Corvo. Heavy quotations around "love interest", because it's part of the WORST subplot of the entire game.

Calista exists so that Inventor Pierro Jopin can stalk and leer at her. And when I say stalk, I mean that literary, because you catch him watching her while BATHING.

You, as Corvo, can tell him off, only for the game to give you the option to ALSO spy on Calista. You can enter the bathroom and 'apologize', and even proposition her; she rejects you, but the game lets you enter the bathtub even AFTER she does. The game treats this as a joke; if you do it you get a game over screen, but there is nothing funny about making your protagonist someone who is willing to sexually assault someone. You can even poses Calista and make her get out of the bathtub to ogle her naked character model. She not treated like a character; she's treated like an object for the male players to jerk off to.

Ceclia has a different subplot that ends up being crucial in helping Corvo in the latter half of the game, and she is the only character to have an actual arc throughout the game. She out as a cowardly, meek woman, who is afraid of Corvo and afraid of standing up for herself, but inspired by his bravery, she ends up escaping certain death and leaving Dunwall. 

Jessamine Kaldwin, is immediately killed, and spends the rest of the game as a LITERAL object, her physical heart and metaphysical spirit trapped in the mechanical heart the Outsider gives to Corvo. He only role is to be Corvo's literal spirit guide.

We never see what she was like as Empress, we learn very little about her opinion of Dunwall, her allies, or even of Corvo; all we know is that she loves Emily and wanted to cure the plague. Despite having many voice lines as the heart, most of them are about other people, and almost never about her.

Emilly is, thankfully, spared any sexualization, being 10 years old. She is, however, much like her mother, treated like an object more than a character. The game claims she imitates Corvo and watches everything he does with great interest, but in reality, outside of 2 scenes where Corvo plays hide and seek with her, she exists to get kidnapped and rescued.

There is only one female character that isn’t sexualized, isn’t in love or obsessed with Corvo, isn’t in constant need of rescuing, and whose motivations have nothing to do with Corvo:

Granny Rags:

I love Granny Rags. If Arkane ever magically gets the chance to make a Dishonored 3, I want it to be all about her. I want 10 more books about Granny Rags instead of whatever the Corroded Man is about.  

We meet her as a blind, crotchety old woman, but in her youth, she was so powerful and beautiful, that princes fought over her favour. She rejected them all, devoting herself to studying the occult and earning an Outsider mark. Because she can’t see Corvo, it’s unclear if she knows who he is, or thinks he's her late husband, but she ropes him into her schemes.

In addition to her side quests being the longest and most involved they are also the most morally fucked up. She’s never a direct antagonist, in fact for most of the game she's on your side, helping with runes and alternative routes. Even when she ends up fighting Corvo, it’s only because he gets between her and her soup.

So, to recap, out of the 6 female characters, only 2 aren't sexualized, a child and an old woman, and only the old woman gets to be an actual character with motivations and goals unrelated to Corvo.

Yes, We Are Still on the Sexism

I can already see the comments. 

Monika! This game is supposed to be brutal! And Dunwall is supposed to be sexist! The Abbey preaches that women should stay away from science and stick to the kitchen! That’s why it makes total sense that the only women in the game are maids or sex workers!

Well newsflash! Dunwall DOESN’T exist! The devs actively chose to build their setting in a way so as to exclude any female characters save for sex workers and maids. The place where you will see the most female NPCs in the entire game is a literal brothel. So no, they were not making a commentary on Dunwall's sexist society.

Even if they were, they did a piss poor job of conveying it, because the game never makes any commentary, outside of depicting misogynist actions.

The world the developers built doesn't even make sense under their own sexist logic! Once again, I have to ask: how is Jessamine an Empress? How is she unmarried? Why would a society where women can't do anything apart from raise children, cook and clean have a succession line of the eldest child instead of the eldest son? How come the Abbey never questioned Jessamine's decision to not marry or her daughter born out of wedlock? And if we are to believe that Jessamine is a good ruler, why wouldn’t she push back on the Abbey’s teachings?

Look, I love this game, I do. But part of loving something is being willing to acknowledge its flaws. I am glad that people did it, because guess what? The games improved! Even in this game's very own DLC the things I'm complaining about here start to change, and the games are better for it. But that would’ve never happened had people not acknowledged the issues in the first place.

Part 3: Dishonored: Gameplay

Part 1: Dishonored