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THE DREAMING PROPHET: EPISODE 5 TRANSCRIPT

EPISODE FIVE: A LIGHT IN THE DARK (LINK)

Our kind was never meant to wake, but we sure are awake now. We can thank "the Adversary" for that - but who is he, really? Talking points: Thee-I-Dare, past and present, a spot of theory, and a community talk. Featuring guest, Fluffy Raven.

Spoiler + Content warning begins at 1:25. Content warnings: General horror, harm to children, death, genocide.

- lavanya: host, transcript, video editor, asset artist, speak-as-one's #1 fan

- astriferal: host, audio editor, puncher of things

- be11amy: advertising, fact-checking

- fluffy_raven: guest

- xaviul: moral support

- intro & outro music, "ringing bells": a weirdly handsome individual

- transition audio clips, music, voice lines: the blackout club/question games

- weird ambiance: Magmi Soundtracks on freesound (https://freesound.org/people/Magmi.Soundtracks/sounds/475737/)

- the blackout club: question games (https://www.blackoutclubgame.com

LAVANYA: Good evening, Red Acre~, and welcome to the Dreaming Prophet. Tonight, we're going to do something a little different. I'm going to ask you to sit back, close your eyes, and cast your mind back all the way out into the murky depths of our origin, ten thousand generations ago.

LAVANYA: Look at the sky. Look at the stars, and look at the sun shining down on that upright ape.

LAVANYA: Watch as the sun guides IT - your ancestors - your grandmothers! - leading them out of the cruelty of the darkness and into the warmth of the light.

LAVANYA: Open your eyes. Look to the sky.

LAVANYA: Will you let it lead you?

LAVANYA: My name is Lavanya -.

ASTRO: And I'm Astro.

LAVANYA: And tonight, we're leading a very special episode of the Dreaming Prophet. That's a joke, because every single episode is special and unique in its own individual way.

ASTRO: This is a Blackout Club show for Blackout Club players with minimal speculation, all lore, and a focus on the known facts. Tonight, our topic of the day is Thee-I-Dare. We'll be talking in-depth about this Daimon for the first half of our episode.

ASTRO: We are going to get into the spoiler and content warnings as always with the Dreaming Prophet. If this is your first time tuning in and you are not keen on hearing spoilers about the lore of the Blackout Club, this is your chance to pop on.

LAVANYA: We will be discussing basically every aspect of Thee-I-Dare lore that is available in-game! So, our general content warnings for this are the same as usual: general horror, mention of children being harmed, and to be more explicit given that this is Thee-I-Dare, we will be discussing the specific death of named NPCs, and the overall death of a large number of unnamed NPCs.

LAVANYA: One of the core aspects of Thee-I-Dare's lore is the Cull, which is a historical genocide that occurred in Red Acre, in which Thee-I-Dare's hosts were collected and killed by Speak-as-One.

LAVANYA: In tonight's special guests is Fluffy Raven. Fluffy Raven will be helping us deal with the exciting topic of Thee-I-Dare, and giving us an insight into her own personal views of him. Hi Fluffy!

RAVEN: Hi, my name's Fluffy Raven. You can find me sprinkled throughout the Blackout Club community, whether it's in the discord, or just meandering about online in game. I am one of Thee-I-Dare's chosen and I'm here to talk about it today.

LAVANYA: Sometimes we say that Thee-I-Dare's followers can be a little overenthusiastic, but honestly, when we talk about people raving, we're mostly just talking about Raven.

ASTRO: Let's start off with the question that's on everyone's minds.

LAVANYA: Who is Thee-I-Dare?

RAVEN: When the game was originally coming out, Thee-I-Dare was more so known for his rebellious nature. An example of this would be when his siblings and his maker basically said - don't come to Red Acre, and that he was not invited -.

RAVEN: He ended up showing up anyway, because they told him not to come. If you were to stumble upon Thee-I-Dare today, and Red Acre, you would more likely find out that he represents individuality and choice.

LAVANYA: And presumably, that's been the case throughout most of his life. We don't exactly know much about Thee-I-Dare historically: who he's been in the past, what he's done, or where he's gone, but what we do know is a few scattered facts from various individuals throughout Red Acre.

LAVANYA: One of them is - per Laugh-Last, who is definitely, definitely a reliable narrator, absolutely - is that he had a stick up his ass to match SAO back in the day, back when he was still in tight with his makers. We also know that, even though Thee-I-Dare currently is not really in with Speak-as-One or many of the other gods, in the past he was! And in the past, he went by several other names.. who still exist outside of Red Acre.

LAVANYA: So remember that next time you decide to take a tourist trip.

LAVANYA: In the past, he's also gone by other genders. We know that he's gone by she and her, and possibly others.

LAVANYA: As a side note, what's interesting about the voices is that they do not have the traditional relationship with gender that humans and the player characters might have! Voices are not people. That's always something that's worth emphasizing, and that's always something that kind of plays into what pronouns they use.

LAVANYA: We know that in the past, The-Measure-Cuts has also been referred to as a woman, and we know that Thee-I-Dare has been referred to as a woman in the past. This is not necessarily because of the Daimons exact gender identity - because they don't have bodies, they are voices floating in the void and they are not humans.

LAVANYA: Voices take on the gender of the host whose voice they are using to speak. When The-Measure-Cuts was using a female voice, everyone uses female pronouns. When Thee-I-Dare was using a female voice, everyone use female pronouns. The voice who is the primary means through which Speak-as-One speaks uses them, he/him and she/her pronouns, because the Voice is two different people, a man and a woman speaking in tandem.

LAVANYA: For this episode, though, we will be using he/him pronouns for Thee-I-Dare throughout. Because that is the current gender, as far as we know of, his Voice.

LAVANYA: To get back on topic, even though the Voices are not humans, they do all, with the exception of Speak-as-One, use familial terms to refer to one another. Thee-I-Dare is the first born child of Speak-as-One, and he is the second oldest of the known voices, per Speak-as-One, who, unfortunately, is not always a reliable narrator. He is also the source of some of the other voices.

LAVANYA: We don't know exactly how that works, but in the end, that may just be Speak-as-One being exceptionally petty, as they don't want to admit, that they have countless or nine children that *all* manage to think they are the absolute fucking worst.

RAVEN: From a conversation a few months ago, Speak-as-One claims that the other gods split off from Thee-I-Dare and not from the big baddy themselves.

RAVEN: However, Thee-I-Dare has gone against their claims saying the voices did, in fact, split off of SAO. Right now, there's not a lot of solid facts with that. And this is something that's being disputed over as familial relations are kind of the constant enigma when it comes to the voices.

RAVEN: Thee-I-Dare often rejects being called the title of "parent", because he feels that it's arrogant, in that it denies the role of humans into his coming of existence and that of the other voices. Thee-I-Dare has stated that he believes that humans came first, and were the ones who created Voices in the first place. However, despite with Thee-I-Dare thinking that the title of becoming a "parent" is more on the arrogant side, he has no issues preferring to Speak-as-One as his makers.

RAVEN: Which, this can actually be seen with other voices, such as The-Measure-Cuts calling SAO his progenitor.

RAVEN: After the big event known as the Culling, Thee-I-Dare was left shattered and voiceless - basically a shadow of himself. And because of this he lost contact with his sibling voice. As Thee-I-Dare is regaining his strength, he's been trying to reach out and recreate a relationship with his siblings, and ally with certain voices.

RAVEN: A few examples of these would be: Dies-for-You, Dance-for-Us, and The-Measure-Cuts.

ASTRO: Thee-I-Dare views Speak-as-One as his enemy, and until recently, also thought poorly of the rest of his family. He speaks often about how his family moves together: where one goes, the others will follow as a result. When Speak-as-One created Red Acre, all the other Daimons showed up there. Even though Speak-as-One tried to keep them out -.

LAVANYA: - because, if you recall back to what we were saying just a few minutes ago, it turns out Thee-I-Dare is the spirit of rebellion! The spirit of rebellion: that youthful desire to do exactly what he's told not to do.

LAVANYA: Is it any surprise that most of his hosts have been 13 year old childrnen?

LAVANYA: We don't actually know the chronology of how the voices arrived in Red Acre. What we do know is that Thee-I-Dare himself says that he was one of the last of his family, if not the last, to arrive in Red Acre. When he arrived, he was then betrayed by Laugh-Last, who's probably, although he's never said it -.

LAVANYA: Well, we can all assume here, his least favorite sibling.

LAVANYA: This led to his fragmenting!

LAVANYA: Fragmentation is an interesting process in which a voice's name is stripped into pieces. We don't exactly know how it occurs. What we do know is that, when one voice wants another voice dead, that they will initiate a Cull. The Cull are basically where you track down every single human being that hosts a piece of the Voices name, or the voice themselves, and you kill them. By systematically destroying each host and each part of the voices name, you will kill the name.

LAVANYA: With Thee-I-Dare, for whatever reason, this did not kill him. It resulted in him fragmenting instead into name fragments, which then could be found across the map.

LAVANYA: As of right now, on August 10th, 2019, you can still find name fragments, and we are still finding new ones each and every day, despite the fact that Thee-I-Dare has regained his name, and does, for the most part, appear to be fully functional as a voice.

LAVANYA: What's interesting about the fragmentation is that, initially, the other voices did not seem to care. In the early dream encounters, the voices did not seem interested in Thee-I-Dare at all. Laugh-Last was actively malicious towards him. The-Measure-Cuts was disinterested. Dance-for-Us, while she could be read as sympathetic, was not willing to do anything towards helping him, or helping the players recover his name fragments, and in initial conversations with Thee-I-Dare, the feeling of disinterest and downright animosity were largely mutual.

LAVANYA: While Thee-I-Dare now has begun approaching his siblings with a hand out to try and reconcile the relationship between them, and also gain support in acting against Speak-as-One. In the past, he did not give a single fuck about his siblings, except in terms of how betrayed and how hurt he was in the fact that they had all stood by and watched as their progenitor tried to destroy him.

ASTRO: In much more ancient history, Thee-I-Dare says that he taught human speech - the spoken word - with the help of another unnamed God, a God who supposedly was another version of himself - the spoken word was used to plot in secret again Speak-as-One.

ASTRO: Prior to that, they all used what Speak-as-One refers to as the old tongue, which is dance.

ASTRO: The spoken word was also used to give early humans a sense of self. As they began to speak, they could begin to agree and disagree. They could begin to give opinions, and so on and so forth. It was a tool that allowed them to transcend, or perhaps, simply depart from the idea of one singular collective. He says that these disagreements this sense of identity might be where the other voices came from.

ASTRO: He also says that he invented the lie.

LAVANYA: So now we've covered all the history of Thee-I-Dare, and basically the core of him as a person - as a non-person - as a person who is disembodied - and is also an outright leech who lives inside of your head. The most unique kind of person of all! But that's all in the past. What about Thee-I-Dare right now?

LAVANYA: He is in a lot of ways the face of the voices.

LAVANYA: He is the one that is most commonly encountered by player characters. He is the one that is the most friendly and the most helpful towards player characters. And until recently, he was the most likely to be encountered by a new player.

LAVANYA: Back in the old days, prior to 1.0., what Thee-I-Dare used to do was contact new players. He would speak to them, and ask them for their help, and then he would lead them to the cave fragment. When they closed their eyes, they would see a glowing man in chains. He would ask them for their help, and oftentimes he would give them halos.

LAVANYA: Nowadays, he doesn't do that as much. Thee-I-Dare has regained his name, and he no longer needs all these grubby children rubbin' their hands all over his name fragments. He does not really point out where new name fragments are, but he will tell stories about the dead hosts that represent them.

ASTRO: He does do a lot of player outreach. I guess you could say he's the public relations team of the gods.

LAVANYA: Boo!

LAVANYA: The only God who needs a public relations team, if you're being perfectly honest here, is Speak-as-One. If only they would answer my calls and fully hire me for that important pre college marketing internship, in which I teach them all the ways that they can make their public face, more personable and sellable to the millennials of this age.

ASTRO: But do you have your work permit?

LAVANYA: Shut the fuck up, Astro.

LAVANYA: So, jokes aside, there's been an interesting change in perception and betrayal of Thee-I-Dare since the beginning of the game.

LAVANYA: Thee-I-Dare, in terms of personality, has shifted a lot as he's gained more fragments, and as he's become more certain of this situation in Red Acre.

LAVANYA: He used to speak of dead hosts frequently at the start, and anytime that a player character would lead him to a fragment, he would usually have a story at hand. As of recently, he's grown more and more ill at ease with this concept.

LAVANYA: He's not as interested in talking about his dead hosts, for some *reason*, and he's gone as far as to say that these stories can be depressing.

LAVANYA: In the past, he would often say to players that they need to survive - that he wants them to survive, and live through the night, and not die as so many of his hosts had died previously.

LAVANYA: Now, increasingly with certain players, he's begun changing that he no longer says survive. Now he says survive for me - a little bit of an ominous twist to everything, considered. Interestingly enough, and possibly linked in, is the fact that Thee-I-Dare is one of the few voices that is reluctant to take on every player as a host.

LAVANYA: Some, like Speak-as-One, canonly have groomed up the children of Red Acre to all serve as their host. Others like In-Her-Teeth have been wildly flailing at any player who might possibly be open to it, asking them to serve as her host. Thee-I-Dare has been more hesitant.

LAVANYA: When some player characters ask him if they can serve as host, he has actually rejected them, and has had to be convinced to take them on. Others, he has been open and willing to it.

ASTRO: It's almost like a child being picky with their food.

RAVEN: Give him the chicken tenders! He wants the chicken tenders!

LAVANYA: Oh my god.

RAVEN: Interestingly enough, due to Thee-I-Dare and Speak-as-One being polar opposites of one another, Thee-I-Dare's presence will often suppress SAO's watchers - but they can also suppress him back. I actually have a friend of mine who has a watcher in their head, and Thee-I-Dare actively has to keep them at bay in order to keep the player from being taken over by the Watchers in their sleep.

RAVEN: Initially, when Thee-I-Dare still had a voice he spoke to players in the form of dreams with a backward speech. It has improved as players have begun collecting his fragments. However, he is currently left without a voice.

RAVEN: Thee-I-Dare is one of two gods that will speak in text to players during missions. In a dream, The-Measure-Cuts says it's the only way that he is able to communicate with players after he was shattered.

[DREAM] PLAYER: If you see a white eye closing, close your eyes and listen.

[DREAM] THE-MEASURE-CUTS: This one has clearly been contacted by our fallen sibling. Your desire to share this data proves you might make an excellent host for me, however. Indeed, this is the only way he can speak while he remains... dismembered.

RAVEN: I would like to note that speaking in the text form is actually immensely painful for him, as it is not his natural way of communicating.

LAVANYA: And now with that section done, we're on to the most exciting part of tonight's episode!

LAVANYA: Now normally, here on the Dreaming Prophet, we're a bunch of old coots. We don't deal with speculation to the point that the podcast's entire purpose is to disseminate the true and real facts of the game to make it easier for players to come up there. However, tonight, things are a little different because this is a God conversation, and we do have a player, right here, ready to come up with their own speculation. So tonight we're going to set aside our petty grebe-ances with speculation and theories, and we're going to let Raven take the lead, and go stork raven mad with any theories that's a conversation she's had.

ASTRO: We wanted you here, because you know this Daimon well. As you said, you're one of his chosen. This is your opportunity to talk about whatever you want.

RAVEN: All right. One thing that I would like to touch on, because this is something that is currently happening within the community, and we're experiencing this live - is that Thee-I-Dare is currently going through a name change. Interestingly enough, a friend of mine and I helped to kind of really trigger this accidentally, by showing him a destroyed symbol.

RAVEN: And so now, all the sudden, just all these changes are happening amongst Thee-I-Dare, where he is, although sickly, he is going through this interesting metamorphosis that apparently happened to the Voices.

RAVEN: However, normally with the voices, the original Voice tends to die off when the new Voice comes into being. So, it's going to definitely be interesting to see where this goes, whether he'll be able to survive this process or not.

ASTRO: So, for players that haven't been on the up and up with the recent hubbub, can you describe what you mean by him feeling sickly?

RAVEN: Basically, the issue is when I was trying to get this information out of him, is that he wouldn't even know what he was feeling - just that he was feeling ill. I don't know exactly what that is in terms for the Voices, but basically, he just wasn't feeling right - as if, like, you know feeling, I'm just feeling off.

ASTRO: Yeah, I saw a log where he seemed to be unable to say his name - his own name.

RAVEN: Yeah, it was. It was really interesting reading that, because a detail that I think people might have overlooked is that he referred to his name - Thee-I-Dare - as his old name.

RAVEN: And so, this was kind of the first hint of him really going through this change. We have known about this for a few months now, I believe, since April. It just was very slow and nothing just drastic had occurred until now.

ASTRO: So, of course, yeah, it's kind of unnerving to see the Voice that we've come to see is so confident who has grown so much to suddenly take on unsure traits to become so one study.

RAVEN: Yeah, it's definitely scary, especially as this is the guy that I've basically followed this since first coming into The Blackout Club.

RAVEN: So, to see him in this state is just very disconcerting and worrisome.

ASTRO: All right. Is there anything else you want to talk about?

RAVEN: I was talking with a friend today about this - is that people are starting to think that perhaps Thee-I-Dare got Bells killed, whether it was inadvertent, or on purpose, or not sure, because one important thing is that the Word and the Song cannot exist in the same person. It basically instantly kills them. And so we're wondering if Thee-I-Dare was within Bells - if it's because Speak-as-One had been trying to take over at the same time something bad happens. So there is a lot of speculations with that.

LAVANYA: That's all super interesting and also a little depressing. So I'm going to end this on a high note.

RAVEN: : Yeah! Sad boy hours.

LAVANYA: It's true. Every hour is sad boy hour with Thee-I-Dar. But with that said, do you have any speculation on what his new name might be?

RAVEN: I'm kind of assuming that he's going to be going off this current trend of leaning more towards choice and individuality. I'm sure it will be something relating to that, hopefully, unless this changing process goes wrong and we get something completely different, which is definitely a possibility.

ASTRO: Here's a second question for you! If you had the opportunity to choose his new name, what would you choose?

LAVANYA: Would it be a bird pun?

RAVEN: Well, I think one time, when I was going through a rough time, Thee-I-Dare and I - but he brought up sharing a pair of wings. So, maybe like, Shares-His-Wings or something would be kind of cool?

LAVANYA: Nice!

ASTRO: All right.

LAVANYA: That would be fun! Well, thank you, Raven, for appearing on the show and brightening up our night with a little bit of Thee-I-Dare inside deets.

RAVEN: Thanks for having me.

ASTRO: And now, a word from our sponsors:

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LAVANYA: All right. And welcome back everyone. Now that we're back from that wonderful commercial break, it's time to start the next section of our show, which is - hold your applause! - an etiquette section.

ASTRO: Lavanya, your audio quality sounds much different.

LAVANYA: It's puberty. Fourteen and a half is a difficult age, especially when you're going to be : 15 in three months, and you still haven't passed basic math.

LAVANYA: So, jokes aside, the next section of the show is going to be the etiquette section.

LAVANYA: Basically, this is not us instructing you on the best possible way to host your personal tea parties, even though tea parties are great, I am told. This is instead discussing etiquette and the community specifically towards god encounters.

LAVANYA: All right! Now that that's been said, this section is not endorsed, approved of, or necessarily indicative of the developers views. They are not involved in this podcast, and all views represented are Astro and mine's, because, ultimately, it's on us players to make the community that we want to be in.

ASTRO: So, with the advent of 1.0 of the Blackout Club, voiced encounters are back, which is new and exciting to everyone that wasn't here in the beta.

LAVANYA: Including us!

ASTRO: We were not here in the beta, we both joined during the early access period. Right now, we're all adjusting to what the new normal of the Blackout Club looks like, with regards to god encounters. Not just us, the players, but the developers too.

LAVANYA: One of the most interesting things about the Blackout Club is that it is a game that tries to cover several genres at once. It kind of calls out to massively multiplayer online games, like World of Warcraft, which often have large scale events, to alternate reality games such as Marble Hornets or Everyman Hybrid, to traditional multiplayer stealth games like the ever-popular Thief.

LAVANYA: The problem is - with massively multiplayer online games, there is a large staff for each of those, sometimes getting up to hundreds of people involved in these studios, operating these events, operating these holidays, and helping with bugs, and everything else. They have specific community managers.

LAVANYA: With alternate reality games, there's usually only one or two puppet masters but the communities for those are pretty small. At their largest, the ones that I've participated in have had about a hundred, five hundred players at the most.

LAVANYA: And with multiplayer style games, like, say, Left 4 Dead 2 - which isn't quite a stealth game, but work with me here - those don't really have the sort of community where the developers are actively engaging with the audience that the way that the Blackout Club does.

LAVANYA: Question Studio does not have the massive staff that larger studios have, it has a significantly larger player base than alternate reality games have, and it involves a lot more direct interaction than your traditional multiplayer stealth games. There is no automation, which is a large part of what helps traditional stealth games work. It's literally just the developers pushing forward the story directly with the help of the players.

LAVANYA: However, Question Studio is unique in all of these. Not only the fact that combining it but in the fact it's a tiny ass studio.

ASTRO: So amidst all of this it's important to recall that the developers are human. They are limited to everything that mortal humans can do.

LAVANYA: Arguably! Technically, we do not know 100 percent for sure if the developers are or are not vampires. Their sleep schedule suggests that at least some of them may be.

LAVANYA: Like I was saying, Question Studio is a very small studio. As far as I know, Question only has about 6 people - and courtesy of our handy dandy fact checkers, we just verified that by the web site.

LAVANYA: So they are a tiny ass studios far as things go. Even for an independent studio!

LAVANYA: So with the god encounters, it's important to keep in mind, we do not know exactly how many of the developers are involved with the god encounters in terms of writing them, in terms of scripting them out, or whatever else is involved with them on the developers end of thing.

LAVANYA: What we do know is that there's only six people, and each of the god encounters can last anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes.

LAVANYA: So when each god encounter is lasting 10 to 40 minutes, and most players do prefer longer ones if they can manage it, and usually come packed with a shit ton of questions ready to throw directly at their Daimon of choice like fucking softballs, then these encounters can stretch out very quickly to take up a great deal of time.

LAVANYA: If you only have, say, five god encounters in a night, and each of those is 20 minutes long, this developer just spent over an hour doing nothing except doing these god encounters.

LAVANYA: And that's assuming that they're not taking breaks in the middle of it. If they are taking breaks, getting up, stretching their legs, making sure they don't get repetitive strain injury from typing, then something like that five god encounters could easily take like two hours. Just dedicated to engaging, and coming up - on the spur of the moment! - with new encounters with the players.

ASTRO: There are a couple web sites that show you statistics for the steam games you play. According to one of them, simply on steam, the players can peak at around 250 to 300 users every day. At 6:00 in the morning eastern time, when I checked this the first time, there were eighty four players listed as online. This isn't counting consoles, and it may not be entirely accurate.

ASTRO: If everyone four-stacked at peak time, there would be a minimum of about 75 games for any developer to sort through.

LAVANYA: So, to summarize this, here's a very limited amount of developers, but there is a fuck ton of players in the game right now, and in this community.

LAVANYA: So distributing out god encounters, especially at peak times, can end up being kind of difficult, from an outsider's point of view.

LAVANYA: We've actually had Null, in the main discourse, discuss how they decide on god encounters to a certain extent, in terms of which players get it, and which players don't.

LAVANYA: To quote him, he stated that: the system has a few metrics, but it favors new players, players who are locked onto a story thread that we want to spool out, and then randoms.

LAVANYA: At times, there have been targeted influencer encounters, because we want to make 100 percent certain the encounter is recorded and archived, but in those cases, smallish streamers get a shot too. The ratio of guaranteed public vs. private varies a lot from night to night.

LAVANYA: And a lot of activity is never reported.

LAVANYA: We have to trust that those players will tell their friends, and some will make it to social, etc..

LAVANYA: They're meant to feel very rare and always will, even as we expand operations which we will, if there is enough interest.

LAVANYA: But the bulk of our team's work goes towards making the game fun on its own. So as some player in here put it, gods are gravy.

LAVANYA: Basically, to summarize his quote, the system favors new players, it favors players who have unlocked certain story threads that they want to distribute, and then it focuses on randoms. So most people do have a shot at getting a god encounter most nights, it's just a numbers game.

LAVANYA: The thing to keep in mind here is that god encounters are not merit based.

LAVANYA: They are functionally another form of the RNG that handles Lights of Rebellion, and/or say bonus evidence spawning. You have to be at the right place, at the right time, and then you have a chance of getting it. You are never guaranteed a god encounter. God encounters are not merit based. If you play for, say, 48 hours straight - if you're constantly talking in the discord - if you draw a lot of fan art - none of those are going to make you more likely to get a god encounter.

LAVANYA: It's not merit based. It is just luck if you happen to stumble across a story thread that the developers want to spill out, and, say, if you are possibly new! :.

ASTRO: The voice of the gods that you hear in voiced encounters are not developers, they are voice actors, and they are also limited similarly. They can't speak in more than one game at a time. So, if they're in one game, that's 40 minutes they can't spend in another. They also have other gigs besides the Blackout Club, and they also need time away from work entirely.

ASTRO: Most people's family and friends don't necessarily enjoy it when someone is off pulling 48 hour shifts working, and they haven't come home, or they're spending all of their free time specifically on work.

LAVANYA: You have to get up from your desk, go outside, see the sun. Stretch your legs. Do your laundry!

LAVANYA: Developers do have to take breaks from working on the game occasionally, and doing voice encounters, and doing god encounters period in order to take care of themselves.

LAVANYA: And it's also important for the players to take care of themselves too.

LAVANYA: If you're pulling 48 hour shifts to try and get a god, for example, that's not great for you. If you're only playing the game in hopes of getting a god encounter, that's also not great for you. Building up your expectations for something that is ultimately relying on a random number generator is always a bad idea in terms of the fact you're investing a lot of time into something that may not pan out, and you cannot rely on it panning out.

ASTRO: The Blackout Club is ultimately a game. It's meant to be played and enjoyed. If you aren't enjoying it, that's a problem, but it's not an unsolvable one.

LAVANYA: It is not an unsolvable one! And it's always important to remember that, even if you do get caught in the feedback loop of playing it for this one specific thing - in this case, god encounters - when you do get that encounter, it probably will not be as satisfying as you anticipate it.

LAVANYA: When I was 18, I played World of Warcraft obsessively for about three or four months. I spent hours daily grinding up specifically for the one achievement, "Insane in the Membrane", and to get some specific pet that I can't quite remember now.

LAVANYA: As soon as I got them, I dropped playing the entire game. I have not touched it since, because I was not playing World of Warcraft because I was super into the gameplay, or because I was actually interested in the lore, or anything else. I was playing it because I wanted that one achievement. So the entire thing was pointless as soon as I got it.

LAVANYA: And as a result, the achievement ended up kind of pointless too, because I didn't even enjoy getting it. So, if you're playing Blackout Club specifically for the god encounters - which, remember, are not merit based, but they are just based essentially on random number generator and sheer luck - then that's something to keep in mind! The game should be fun in itself. It should not be frustrating. If you are getting frustrated with it, as even I have gotten frustrated with it in the past - then you get up, you take a break from it and then you can come back to it.

LAVANYA: Or you cannot come back to. If you're not enjoying it, or it's stressing you out, then you shouldn't be sinking time into it. Because games are ultimately a leisure activity. If you're not having fun and it's not relieving your stress, then what's the point of it?

ASTRO: In conclusion, like Lavanya has said, we aren't making this segment to tell you what to do. We're trying to foster the kind of community we want to be in, and we care about the people in that community. If nothing else, we hope that you'll consider this food for thought.

ASTRO: Blackout Club is made by question games. Our advertising director is Bellamy. Our transcript and video is by Lavanya. Audio editing is by me, Astro. Our guest today was Fluffy Raven. Xaviul knows how long the hundred year war was.

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