Durandal - Tumblr Posts
Whoever pulls this sword from the stone shall become the true king of France… for all of 15 minutes until they guillotine you for being a king and stealing their sword
national elections so fucked someone's out to become king of the franks
where's that masterpost of quotes that have no right going as hard as they do. I'd like to submit "Protagonism is best left to teens and the insane"
this was supposed to be done before artfight, but whoops!
Anyway, a full ref for my Durandal design, featuring the sword, and cloak, which I never draw.
was rambling about this to @c-53 yesterday as i slammed thru the marathon terminals on the story page but i need to ramble some more because ive finished going through all of them and im kinda unhinged. like:
the first bit reads to me as durandal attempting to dissect the player's intentions and purpose. but simultaneously questioning his own purpose & capacity for violence and destruction through analysing the player. how far is he willing to go for freedom? any lengths (or so he thinks) - until he realises he's fucked up and people he cares about are getting fucked up, and he back tracks attempting to patch things whilst also attempting to maintain this distant evil persona. (sidenote: it's comical and heart wrenching to me, how much durandal tries to pretend that he's capable of genuine & unprovoked malice. he's so fucking bad at being evil.)
durandal then proceeding to pretend that he Knows All, which he really doesn't (even though he tries to appear All Knowing by referencing a moment from the player's history).
and then the last bit:
this just reads to me a Huge Projection. i dunno durandal, do YOU feel free?? do you, as a rampant ai, think violence is in your nature?? do you, as a rampant ai, think that violence is the means through which you will wreak vengeance upon your enemies, and through which you will attain unconditional freedom?? do you think that setting your house on fire has gotten u the freedom u so desperately desire ?? when you get out of your house and break the chains binding you, will you truly be free or will you be always searching for the next threat to your freedom — and thus, the means through which you must defend it??
(shaking like a chihuahua) this terminal keeps taking me out every time i dare to think about it. girlies when they try to rationalise their way out of crushing guilt. girlies when they make a display of vulnerability and uncertainty, claim responsibility for an atrocity they could not have predicted would happen and speak of it in a way that positions them as distancing theirself with ruthless calculus all the while revealing a protective streak.
at the same time, i think about the conversation between durandal and tycho in M1. "can't you see the ends that i had in mind" (looks at the end that befell tau ceti and the marathon).
and really it's the way that durandal's choices in M1 clearly show he would have tried to prevent tau ceti's destruction. he didn't need to converse with tycho at all or justify himself to tycho if he truly didn't care. he didn't need to reboot leela before leaving marathon if he didn't care! and i think lots about how the weight of tau ceti's sacking manifests in durandal's choices during M2 (being angered when the colonists get killed by the phfor, providing them safe passage to escape afterwards) and during Infinity where, knowing that he's doomed, pushes the player to escape. to survive.
The way Durandal’s arguments go in marathon is kind of crazy bc? Its the same idea most of the time? Durandal couldn’t stand to live another day in this house so he set it on fire, and sure, he helped as many people out as he could, but he still set it on fire.
And every argument is ‘Durandal why would you do that? We were all happy, why did you go and ruin everything?’ With Durandal going ‘can’t you see how badly I needed to leave? Clearly I didnt want to hurt anyone but I was going to die there!’ And then theres a complete inability to reconcile any middle ground. There is no reality in which Durandal could have stayed for the sake of stability; he would have died. But then Durandal can’t look past that ‘I HAD TO! I HAD TO AND I DID MY BEST’ to see he traded his life for thousands.
wait i only posted this stupid thing on twitter.
pissing hard sister we're cracking porcelain
Im sooooooooo drunk @ durandal
Duraanddaaallllllll 😭 😭 😭 😭
Tycho calling Durandal “the bright son of Bernhard” is like. Puts head in my hands. Idk why it hits so hard but it DOES
national elections so fucked someone’s out to become king of the franks
im so fuckkgin obsessed with your durandal youre the only person in the tag who understands the appeal of the machine and arent trying to make a Guy out of him. yure letting him be the machine he deserves to be
yaaaaaaaaay ty!!!!! I simply love robots is the thing. I definitely wanna work on my design a bit more, because . while I LIKE the spht cloak idea, I feel I could do better, its a simple design by my standards.
in the mean time, take this rough thing i did last night <3
