#im putting my meanest takes in the tags but i think this reflects a writing model thats shooting for the most engagement

[planet4546b]

@synnthamonsugar @xivu-arath thank you for encouraging me!! i think that my biggest issue (outside of a general decline in writing quality) is an extreme narrowing of focus + that focus being almost exclusively on characters that are part of the main cast. like, earlier releases had the majority of their lore cards focus on characters that were previously unknown and would never show up again, little one shot weirdos that had no further relevance. this starts changing as far back as i believe opulence (there’s a card in there that pisses me off where drifter visits calus for no reason) and seems to reach its current level in lost, where almost every card has a major character in it somewhere and there’s this whole collection that’s just like. amanda talks to misraaks. misraaks talks to saint. osiris talks to crow. zavala talks to caital. etc etc which is how most seasonal lore continues to operate, just as various conversations between major characters about one thing or another (usually the current big threat on the table). the ones that aren't about main characters are about this small cast of important lore-only characters that sort of keep coming back - there are just way, way fewer cards about some random ass guy you will literally never hear from again.

this isn't an inherently bad mode of storytelling, and using the lore space to explore characters in more complicated situations when you have such a huge cast is a decent idea (if any of the characters were actually like. interestingly explored in that way. which like the iron banner armor from lost is just ‘oh saladin feels really bad for crow :(‘ over and over and tells us nothing about saladin, one of our oldest and most complex characters, lol) but this does mark a big change in the lore generally being used for worldbuilding to generally being used for character building. again, not inherently a bad mode of writing. but what it does is make the world feel incredibly small. this is sorta the star-wars-skywalker-saga problem, where because in a lot of star wars content someone has to somehow be connected to the main cast, the galaxy just feels tiny. you can't explore the complexities and weird side stories and bizarre little worldbuilding things as effectively if someone has to connect this to a main character or a big plot event or make it be a lead up to an upcoming story element. it just feels so much more limited!

theres still a lot of lore cards that i really like in the newer stuff too!! there are some interesting character moments and interesting concepts and especially some neat worldbuilding for a lot of the enemy factions from our new alliances. but overall i miss her (early d2 lore writing)

made it to lost on my lore journey and i’m realizing that my hunch about why i (unfortunately) haven’t liked the lore of the past few seasons was right and man is it making these last few seasons feel like a slog.