#“im the monster athena ive killed so many people please i just want to go home”

[a-very-sparkly-nerd]

WE CAN LIGHT UP THE WORLD HERE'S HOW TO START: GREET THE WORLD WITH OPEN ARMS, GREET THE WORLD WITH OPEN ARMS

YOU RELY ON WIT AND PEOPLE DIE ON IT

ATHENAAA!

[nbapprentice]

You said a while back that while Supergiant games (Bastion, Transistor, Hades) was mostly okay, you had some words about them. I was curious as to what those words were, since Hades' full release is soon.

okay. alright. ive been playing hades lately so i definitely want to give my two cents (or dollars by the size this is gonna get). but let’s go Step by Step

the good: i want to throw a whole Endorsement over supergiant games with the art direction and its characters, which is what keeps me coming back again and again, and what i can assume is that most people are attracted to. 

gameplaywise, they have a Format they stick to which has become their staple, not to their detriment but to their advantage, like... gameplay tropes, so to speak, that they stick to (such as the addition of special conditions that give a disadvantage in exchange for more long-term rewards)

i fucking adore that they take one concept per game, go for it, and when they’re done they are Done; they don’t bother with sequels, they don’t want to run things to the ground and i fucking respect that. They have their themes, and they stick to them (to various degrees of success).

that said, like every piece of media, they are not perfect and this has to be analysed and spoken about

CONTENT WARNINGS: genocide and ethnic cleansing, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, suicide, and mentions of incest, and a general Spoilers warning

bastion: touches on ethnic cleansing, and not in a way i’d say is satisfactory. our narrator and one of our Sympathetic characters is one of the men who worked on a world-ending weapon meant to use against the Ura (a group of people coded as East Asian) which after a bit of googling is literally called “the final solution” if there was ever a war between the Ura and the Cael (who feel like rly tan white people to me). jesus fucking CHRIST.

we also meet more Ura other than our two named characters and we have to kill most of them. so that fucking blows.

the game tries for “being a genocidal monster will get you fucked up and blown up” which duh, but i feel we shouldn’t have had a person responsible for war crimes be one of our friends no matter how bad he feels about the whole thing, or the people victim of war crimes become villains in the latter half of the game. zia’s father could’ve taken ruck’s role ez pz.

transistor: the weakest of their games, imo; the lore and writing are fairly flimsy and i did not come out feeling Satisfied, especially because it had this rly good build-up that did not pay off. not to mention... their villains? 3/4 were gay people. lol. two married guys (not even explicit, you only realize by their shared last names) and the ps*cho lesbian trope (iirc she wanted to kill the protagonist’s lover or something). the female protagonist also ends up killing herself to live forever in a digital paradise with her dead lover. it’s. god. 

very Aesthetic, GORGEOUS music, interesting gameplay; had potential, i do not feel like it lived up to it at least as far as the story goes.

pyre: now this one. this one’s BEEFY. where transistor felt flimsy, pyre is rich; lots to sink your teeth into, rich in lore and loveable characters, again w the beautiful music, themes of cooperation and togetherness. my favorite of the cast is volfred sandalwood, the only Black (or, well, Black-coded) revolutionary i’ve ever seen portrayed with this amount of sympathy.

onto the bad: they literally have a Class of character named “Savage”; there’s the “mystical mentally ill person” trope; there is an overwhelming amount of explicit m/f pairs (one of them being. a romance that formed in a single day and then both of the characters were somehow willing to risk it all for each other? PLEASE) while the only hints of gayness are... hints. especially when Jodariel (another of my favs) is teased to have feelings for the player regardless of gender then only gets an ending with a male character with whom she has nothing in common 🙃

hades: and now. this one. music: gorgeous. character designs: spectacular (aphrodite is straight up naked but it’s so... natural and casual, it doesn’t feel sexualized at all). voice acting amazing. character interactions charming and endearing. as a greek mythology nerd, it was nice to see them go for the obscure shit like Zagreus at all, NOT portray Persephone and Hades as a loving couple, AND portrayed the gods as the bunch of petty assholes (some more benevolent than others) that they are. imo they’re too generous with their portrayal of achilles but i’ll allow it.

and finally... it seems all those criticisms about having all the gay characters hidden in the shadows paid off, cuz we got (aside of patroclus and achilles) a bisexual polyamorous protag. Holy Shit! and it’s not even playersexual, romance whomever you want shit without the routes recognizing each other: he explicitly talks about how he’s thinking abt them both (though it’s like “yeah usually mortals take one lover but gods love many huh” polyamory is a human thing too bro!!!!!)

and this is where it all goes, well, at least vaguely downhill lol. ok so the incest warning i gave up there? well. it’s not... outright incestuous. but it has some ugly implications. i want to emphasize: the characters never refer to each other as siblings, nor do they treat each other as such (thanatos, in fact, only recognizes hypnos as his brother, and megaera only sees the other furies as her sisters), but they were all raised by the same woman, Nyx... zagreus and thanatos even grew up together (im assuming megaera didnt meet zagreus until he was fully grown).

this is complicated even worse by the fact that they tried to trick zagreus into believing Nyx was his mother. he realized pretty early on this was not true but like... adoptive mothers, anyone? granted i can believe that bc of the attempt at deception that probably ruptured any attempt at actual familial closeness, and it’s not like hypnos and thanatos saw zagreus as their brother at any point, so they were p much aware of the truth too. with the fact that thanatos even looks like goth miles edgeworth (im not kidding you can google him up right now its literally edgeworth in a cowl) i rly feel they were aiming for Childhood Friend Anime Rival Man than the “surprise kiss bc ur not actually related <3″ shit. zagreus never once refers to nyx as his mother in-game, and also refers to thanatos and hypnos as her sons, never his brothers.

so yeah, like. if one’s feeling generous, zagreus and thanatos are more of a “my father is emotionally closed off and neglects me so my best friend’s mother basically raised me” kind of situation... just pulled off in, perhaps, the worst way possible (why didnt they just say Zagreus was told Hekate was his mom, that’s such an easy fix? or that he was born of nobody other than Hades??? [gestures at athena])

but then, the gods. aaaaaaaahhhhahahahh the gods. demeter shows up! and she calls zeus, hades and poseidon... her foster-brothers. which somehow would make the persephone thing less fucking awful, apparently. they really. really really did not need to do that. she could’ve just said “my fellow gods” or whatever. or my “god-brothers” or something, to pretend it was just a weird god alliance thing??? i dont know but implying that foster family isn’t family is just... bro, the dynamics still exist.

Don’t Like That.

i even contacted supergiant games over this. they reassured me they were even trying to avoid the incest of the original myths bc they didn’t want to mess with such a heavy theme. i believe them... but i really think they didn’t think this through. compared to something like fire emblem fates this is nearly benign, but the implications don’t look good :/

tl;dr of the tl;drs: i admire their artistic philosophy and the heavy emphasis on fresh gameplay, characters and their relationships; i appreciate that it seems that they listen to criticism?; i don’t appreciate that they didn’t think to at LEAST talk to adoptees when making a game about family.

[survivorcordillerablanca]

Episode 4 Confessionals

RTP is a monster. Anyway, we fucking crushed that immunity. I wanted Jordan pines voted out. I've only ever played one org with him and he was my nemesis and I just don't have the mental capacity to deal with a nemesis in this one. Why couldn't Willa have done better

we won the music video.. and my ass edited a full video plus a roast after never using adobe premiere before so im pretty shook!! our tribe definitiely seems more... "kumbaya" than the other tribe which... eh. i want the drama! but other than that our tribes good. i def feel like ive been getting complacent with talking to people so im gonna start trying to ramp back up my social game to how it was in the first round hopefully?? i need to start talking more and making bonds. (not much i can really do though, willow katie and chris are on the bottom) i just have to ensure theyre still on the bottom and hopefully keep katie safe for me to work with?? willow and chris can go i guess. also charlotte can go too tbh. like id prefer me/bryce/zach/katie over me/bryce/zach/charlotte but a returnees alliance is easier to put together, so ill work with charlotte!! idk why i dont wanna work with her i just dont get a good vibe from her?? sounds dumb but im trying to trust my gut. and ... yeah not much has happened and i dont wanna make major waves just yet.

Free rice is so fun and not having to do grammar? Amazing! Hope I can do well in this challenge to show I'm useful. I feel like their isn't a lot of socializing happening on our tribe but I'm gonna try to change that. katieare propane torches dangerous? I want to go get one at home depot today. katiehere is my second confessional: charlotte seems chill I wonder if she will work with me in this game?

WILLA IS FINALLY GONE. God I can't believe he didn't compete in a single challenge and managed to not get first boot. We did Emma so dirty, I can't believe it, bring her back. Anyway, going in this reward challenge I'm not too fussed about whether we win or not, it would be nice to see what the Wishing Well is all about but eh, I'm not too fussed. Immunity is what I really want because now that we got rid of the dead weight I think the fingers may start to pointed at the winners AKA me and Jay. We have enough votes to tie it since Jordan is with us. We could potentially swing Adam but he's very much linked with Ryan who is linked with Lexi so it's...a mess. No tribal pls @ immunity gods!

Wow we won another challenge. Is the other tribe even trying? I didn't want to submit too much in case I seemed like a threat so I'm happy that I didn't do the most and we still won. I never find anything in the wishing well tho. Wish I knew who was picking the right number. But focusing on the positive, we won again!! ryan matthewi literally don't know what to do if we go to tribal. i won't want the full jordan pines experience to be blindsided by him. obviously lexi and i are a duo so im hoping we have options if that happens....

So I was looking over my Malaysia confessionals for some reason. What started as me trying to find my FTC speech turned into me reliving horrible and painful memories of Mitchell Kalabang calling me an idiot in many creative ways. Anyways, the reason I mention this is because I noticed that I made a lot of good, detailed confessionals in that game and I want to make sure I can do the same here for Athena. Well as of now, I think I'm in an okay position. I make a bit of chit chat with everyone now and again. I'll need to step that up today though just in case we go to tribal. I admit I've been slacking in my relationships with anyone who's name doesn't rhyme with Pordan Jines. I did congratulate Ryan on winning Kvaløya and told Adam that I'm not gonna vote him out, so that's something. Lexi also came to me and was like "I promise I'll do better on the challenge next time." Like I'm some authority on effort. Ryan probably told her that I was a little annoyed that no one tried in the video challenge. To sum it up, Jordan Pines will always be targeted before me so I am perfectly content letting him take the reins for the time being. I have decent relationships with Ryan and Adam. Lexi is with Ryan for sure. And Luke sketches me out just like every other game I've played with him. I hope we win immunity. 

So we need to win this immunity or we fucked. Like it just doesn't make sense to me. On this tribe we have me jay luke ryan and adam. In theory we should never lose a challenge, but theory is dumb and we lose everything. Like we've managed to keep a cohesive group that i honestly think genuinly likes each other but like, if we lose its all over. If we win this immunity we can hopefully swap and go into it 6-6 and maybe bring katie over to our side. If we lose however everything is done. We go into what may be a divided tribal and lose any hope of keeping a tight 6. We can't lose. Dear god let us win immunity BryceCurrently I'm worried about Zach/Charlotte but I still trust them just something to look out for. Hoping we can win this immunity but if not I think I'd want chris or willow out probably but I'd fall back on my alliance with Zach/Charlotte/Carson

So of course our next immunity is a typing challenge. With this other tribe as insanely fast at typing as they are, I'm really not liking our chances at winning this immunity. I've been pretty busy the past couple of days so I feel like I may be in trouble if we lose.

wait i did that wrong; Katie Shoots Target # sorry i wasnt here on time

I love nothing more than a true underdog story. Zach and Bryce came in the fucking CLUTCH and pulled out that win for us. I can't believe it. In all my days of winning immunity challenges with a tribe, this is probably my favorite one. I'm so happy. I genuinely like everyone on my tribe and I'm so happy we aren't splitting up. Cue RTP laughing at this confessional because we're probably gonna have a swap next.

LOOK AT US WINNING IMMUNITY. SAFETY IS A GOOD COLOR ON ULTA!!!!!

Like ik im probs jinxing something but this game is boring nobody wants to talk game. also everyone just ends conversations after they respond to how are you, and i try and make  small talk... like?? whatevs. im focusing on this game and i rlly wanna make merge. (also zach + bryce killed it woo i love them) nothing is rlly happening in this game which sucks. i predict that therell be a swap next round which is.. eh?? idk how i feel about that but im hoping i wont be swapfucked. (also i think im acc becoming good friends with zach and im happy hes gr8!!)

Wow me and Zach scoring all the points is good. I don't want to be seen as a challenge threat tho in case we swap and I'm somehow not in numbers. It's odd how like everyone hounds Jordan Pines and I can't tell if its jokingly or if hes enemy number 1 FJSDFHSJDF. I'm glad to not go to tribal and to have a 7-5 advantage. Whenever I talk to Willow we talk about nothing for like 2 minutes and thats it. Hasn't eaten meatloaf wish I were her, but hasn't had enchiladas? suspicious... Maybe shes vegan but even still how can I trust someone who doesn't know the goodness of an enchilada. Really wish I had some idea what was happening with the other tribe. Not being in a one world situation is different and I wish I could talk to them more to get a better picture seeing as how I'm going in blind if we swap/merge. Anyways that's all for now

I am well and truly fucked. I slept through all of my alarms last night and ended up missing the immunity challenge which we LOST. Guess what the agenda for the last two people who were voted off was? They didn't compete in challenges. Guess what I just didn't do? COMPETE IN A FUCKING CHALLENGE. God I'm so screwed. My only hope right now is that Jordan and Jay don't hate me enough to vote with me and try and break up the duo of Ryan and Lexi. I'm going to have to pray that Adam will want to work with me too otherwise the vote will tie and I do NOT trust Jay enough to go to rocks for me. Jordan might do that but I don't trust Jay at all to risk his life like that for me. I have a lot of work to put into today so...pray for me. 

WE WON IMMUNITYT! I'm so happy, i need to make two confessionals so this is one: im so happy i pulled through. I tried so hard to focus and make sure we didn't go to tribal because genuinely I like everyone on our tribe andd i'd feel bad voting anyone tbh. im not best socially right now and i think i need to use this time critically. I PROMISE ILL MAKE BETTER ONES NEXT ROUND HEHE

tribe assessment: bryce-  iconic king. he's good at challenges, and i think him and i are semi close. i'm down for working w him and i think he's a good asset carson - my favourite i guess? im closest to him, him and i talk a LOT, and he's super fun and social. i'm a lil worried down the road ideally because of his social game, but for now he's an ally charlotte - her and i are in two games together, so it's risky. i trust her and like her, but our social game w/ one another isn't like phenomenal or anything. She is super sweet Chris - Like... him and I talk a fair amount, not a lot, but he's super cool. I love his puppy (or whoevers puppy that is) and i think he's super sweeet katie - similar as Chris. her and I dont talk a LOT but shes really cool and i think she's a good asset challenge-wise. willow- i love her she's so sweet but she never replies (or often, at least) so RIP! I do think ill end up working w her down the road though, she's a queen -- overall i do like everyone so going to tribal would be awful because i have to vote one out. BUT, theres been speculation on an upcoming swap too... so that's intense. but, nonetheless, im here for twists!

Nope. Thats all i got to say. Like we should have won that. and we didnt and now im mad. And we had a good group of 6 like it was the perfect group of people. But no. We now have to go down to 5 and fuck this up. So thanks RTP. Thanks a lot. Adam might go, he might now? i dont know. I dont care. Just give us a win please.

I'm trying to get the vote on Adam and I feel like even tho jay and Jordan agreed, just the way their talking to me making sure everything's alright with the plan and the fact Adam hasn't tried to PM me I feel like they're just lying

Ok so this is my immunity challenge confessional. We never win reward so i knew we were probably doomed and will never see the wishing well. but i didnt really care about reward. NOW FOR IMMUNITY. im alittle nervous because i feel like since we got rid of the non actives i'm the next in line. So i did my best for the immunity challenge. I mean i got 2 out of the 4 points we scored so i did half the work which in my opinion shows i care a bit. we were in the lead and then the other tribes whole fucking tribe comes out of nowhere and kicks our ass and im just like .....bye

Ok this is my before tribal council confessional. So after we lost ryan created an alliance with me,himself,jay, and jordan. which ok i dont trust jordan that much but i gotta take what i can get. They all want adam out even tho luke didnt do shit for the challenge. Which i like adam but not enough to try to switch the vote. So i prevoted adam but ryan and i feel like some shady shit may happen and one of us will go since people know were best friends. I'll raise hell if ryan goes and hopefully he'd do the same if i go. But i guess we'll see

Man this idol is gonna be so hard to find asdjkfadjsk wish their were hints to it AdamIt sucks that we lost the challenge. I didn't help much more than trying a few times in the beginning. I think I'll like it better when I can do individual challenges, cuz then I only have me to do the challenge so if I don't do it its just skin off my back. I have to make it there first, and that requires good relations with my tribemates, so I can't slack off anymore if I want to maintain that. I hope a swap comes soon, but not with the numbers stacked against Copa tribe members :/

I don't know what I'm going to do about tribal. I voted Luke but it really blows that we lost because I really liked all my teammates. I guess that's on me, maybe I shoulda done better and then we wouldn't be down a tribemate. Consequences and junk. I hope I'm not getting blindsided. I wouldn't put it past Jordan but it seems early in the game for that when we could be really good allies. Just depends if he trusts me I guess. I'm a loyal as fuck though, so I'm gonna make Jordan my main bitch this time. Only depends on if I'm his main bitch. Let's see if we go far together

Hahahahahahahahahahaha I found the idol. But its like one world style or w/e b/c I found the copa idol. And I had to give it to someone without knowing them and without them knowing i sent it. Thats unfortunate b/c I could bond with them but I guess if me and Luke are ever on the same tribe I can let him know and work with him. I was thinking Zach and Charlotte were really close but Charlotte didn't know about the idol map so maybe they aren't. But yaa I just asked my alliance to tell me who to give it to because I have no idea about any of those people having never played with them. Carson initially wanted me to give it to Jay O but then I decided to ask my whole alliance for input to try to make it seem like I'm close with them and want to stay together, which I did. And that's when they said lets give it to Luke. Also Anyone But Jordan Pines 2k17 which made me laugh

OKAY! I FORGOT TO DO ONE BUT ITS RIGHT AFTER TRIBAL SO HERE I AM! Adam is gone. Good. Me, Pines, Ryan, and Lexi are aligned. Meh, at best. If we lose, the original group of me Pines and Luke will split up their duo. Go us!

Did I do a confessional already? I have no idea. I'm in three games. Sue me. We won immunity this week so TBH I stopped paying attention after that happened. BUT HEY, APPARENTLY YOU CAN SEARCH FOR IDOLS AND I DIDN'T KNOW OOPS. Fuck, I'm the worst. How am I still here?