#was talking to my brother abt the art critic thing and his response was basically yeah you WOULD do well with a job that requires you to cri

[cinnabeat]

i really like my seminar class tbh like i didnt think a class where i had to do readings every week and then discuss them as a class was gonna be enjoyable but im a fool if i thought discussing anything even vaguely literary was not gonna be my favorite thing in the world

[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.

[uniformbravo]

ok here are some of my Actual s2 thoughts (voltron spoilers below)

so back when i first watched s1 i guess i wasn’t totally 100% into it?? i dont remember if i ever really talked abt it on here but i remember being a little confused and trying to figure out why it was so popular bc i honestly didn’t think it was that great but idk i must’ve warmed up to it at some point between then and now bc i was way more into it this time around aaaaa

i rly did like s2 better than s1 tho??? idk maybe it’s just bc it’s new so it’s the hype of new content & everything but dang overall i do feel like i enjoyed it more

i rly like the art style and especially the animation style like this is probably just me coming to this show straight from lolirock but like... while lolirock has a really appealing art style im honestly not a fan of the type of animation they use so it felt really nice to come back to like. hand-drawn stuff idk just! voltron is a v visually appealing show in all aspects god bless

everyone is still super trans wow i can’t believe every character is trans

tbh i love shiro? but it’s weird bc i actually think he’s rly boring when it comes to his “leadership” kind of characteristics but like also he suffers a lot and gets a lot of the plot-heavy development and normally i might be annoyed by that but im just...... so weak

also speakin of shiro there was a lot of shiro/keith this season and like..... ok im gonna be honest i dont rly ship them or anything like at all im not too keen on the two of them that way but this person i follow has this au where they’re brothers and imagining them that way made me enjoy their scenes like 100% more so like Good Shit (but tbh keith saying “you’re like a brother to me” or was it maybe “father” i can’t remember but either way that line killed me pls i want them to have a rly strong platonic bond i want shiro to feel rly protective of keith and i want keith to feel safer around shiro aaaaa i love it so much)

pidge starting to adopt altean terms and phrases fucking killed me dude like with the time vocabulary n shit, even the others started picking it up a little bit it’s So Fucking Good im so happy aaaaaAA

i still love keith and lance i hope they never calm down w/ each other and keep fighting forever bye (like rewatching s1 when lance is like “yOU AGAIN” and keith is like “who are u” hfhdgd gOD that was so GOOD)

a lot of the character development was rly good but tbh im a little disappointed by the lack thereof when it came to lance and hunk like ?? at this point they’re still treated like the Joke Characters for the most part, i mean lance did have his one little moment of glory in that one episode but i would really love to see like. an actual full character arc w/ him. and i know hunk did have some stuff in s1 w/ like the balmerans & shae but this season it felt like he was just kinda pushed aside and i mean the same could be said of pidge, who did have a lot of story in s1 but barely anything in s2, so maybe i’m just being a little impatient lol i mean. if u take a step back and lay it all out, s1 focused on shiro, pidge, allura, and a little bit of hunk, and then s2 focused on shiro and keith, so maybe s3 (idk if it’s even confirmed yet but like hypothetically) will focus on lance and hunk more? and probably shiro again tbh  i mean it doesn’t really feel like anything’s been set up to go into a lance or hunk arc, but at the same time there wasn’t really any setup for keith’s whole s2 thing in s1 either, so there’s still the possibility that it could all happen in s3 but like. with the way s2 went and the unanswered questions it left about keith i can see s3 being very keith-centric, not to mention all the reminders we got about pidge’s whole family issue this season, so s3 will probably focus on that a lot too idk i mean at the end of the day they are pretty short seasons, it makes sense that they can only focus on a select few characters at a time, so i feel like at this point it makes sense to just sit back and wait to see what happens, & then if hunk and lance are still kind of shoved aside w/ nary even a mere setup then wtf actually

not to keep running w/ the negativity & criticisms but honestly what i really love in a show is complex characters written realistically and w/ voltron i feel like it /almost/ delivers but not really? like, not to bring up lolirock again but that show has fairly one-dimensional characters who are written relying more on their character type than anything with a ton of depth; the protagonists are Good and the antagonists are Evil; auriana is the goofball, talia is the responsible one, iris is the main character or the “pure good” one, mephisto is the clumsy villain, praxina is the irritable villain- like it’s all just very straightforward (most of the time). i feel like voltron is a little more complex with its characters than lolirock, but in the end it still kind of sticks to the same method of characterization; it’s definitely not as cookie-cutter, but each character does have one or two characteristics that blatantly stick out and make them.... i dont know, really predictable? like you Know that every time a girl shows up lance is gonna hit on her, and every time there’s some cool technology pidge is gonna fawn over it and every time there’s food hunk is gonna say some shit about being hungry, and keith and lance argue a lot and shiro gets the team’s shit together because he’s the Leader and it’s just like basically, with voltron it feels very “telling” rather than “showing” with most things, and besides manifesting in the story it shows in the way the characters are written, too. in most situations, the characters’ reactions are written based more on those few main characteristics they’ve been given than more realistic reactions to their current situation, and maybe that’s a little confusing but i’ll try to clarify actually im sorry but i just completely lost my train of thought and i can’t get it back, it’s currently coming up on 1am and im incredibly tired right now so i’m gonna have to cut this short but like. basically, the characters in voltron kind of have their main characteristics and it’s fine to have things like that bc it helps define characters but the way the writers use them feels a lot like those hogwarts house sorting quizzes that are like “what’s your favorite animal? a) lion b) snake c) raven d) badger” like it tends to be relatively straightforward and predictable in a bad way, and a lot of that execution has to do with the storytelling style the show has overall

ok ANYWAY let’s say something more positive now: the soundtrack to this show is absolutely phenomenal tbh i remember thinking this last time too, just the general sound it has, it feels like an homage to the older series and acts as a subtle way to bring that kind of aesthetic into it and i rly like it (i mean i’ve never seen the old show so idk what kind of aesthetic it has but u know what i mean. the kind of “old video tape sound” kind of thing. u know the game oxenfree, which has a similar music aesthetic. god idk how to explain this i hope u know what i’m trying to say. i rly like voltron’s soundtrack)

like i didnt mean to go on this big rant all “here’s everything i didn’t like abt voltron what a Bad Show” bc i actually really like it a lot!! the fact that im picking it apart like this is actually a good sign that i like it bc if i dont care abt something i won’t put in the effort, u know? if i don’t like it then i won’t be all “here’s what i hope to see from this show in the future” right

anyway it’s fuckin 1am bye, i love voltron goodnight