#god of war is holypunk if only because

[raccoonskoodilypoopdungeon]

idk if this is right but i scrutinize anything that uses the punk suffix as a descriptor or for marketing. for example a game says its "holypunk" what does that mean? how does your game handle themes of religion and how does it react to a worldview where the human spirit is not only righteous but the point? where love undoubtedly is the main motivation for your characters and loss is the inciting incident

i have rule i semi-adhere to for media criticism which is to ideologically meet shit where it's at (or where it's presented to me). i like to call it the "i didn't make you market it that way" rule--like, if lancer's union was just presented as a sci-fi setting, that would be fine. i don't expect all sci-fi settings to be communist utopias! but when the creators of lancer use the word utopia like 20 times & bandy around words like 'mutual aid' and 'post-scarcity' and 'anticapitalist' when describing it, then to me that becomes absolutely fair game. similarly if someone says 'stardew valley is fun i like farming :)' then i'm not gonna reply with a long post about how it's ideologically petty-bourgeois--but if they say 'stardew valley is anticapitalist', then they've opened up that can of worms and it's fair for me to point out that the worms exist.