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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3676 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 26, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Video games thread:

Back to Silksong after a few weeks break. A difficulty tweak mod made the game much more enjoyable for me. If you're in a similar boat to me — if you enjoyed HK1 but thought the Radiance ending challenges were too much, enjoyed the difficulty of early FromSoft games but thought they crossed a line around Sekiro/Elden Ring — I recommend the following changes to the config file, as the defaults trivialize the game a bit too much: 2x -> 1.5x Player damage, 2x -> 1.6x rosaries, disable Tool regen. On the other hand, consider changing the health regen to every 1 second; it only starts after you're 12 seconds damage free, so it won't make the boss gameplay much easier, but will make runbacks less tedious.

On my first post I complained that there's not enough exploration in Silksong. I'm glad to say the situation improves a lot once you read the Citadel at the top of the map. It acts as a massive hub area disconnected from the main fast travel network, with many hidden areas you can discover and tackle in different orders, lots of unlockable shortcuts, etc.

I can now recommend the game with a few reservations.

Hades 2 came out yesterday! I just got into Act 3 on Silksong but........ now I have Hades 2!

Like Silksong, I find difficulty in describing it other than "more of the same game, in a good way". New enemies, new weapons, new buffs, new mechanics, but the same general gameplay loop and overall feel. I especially like that since the main enemy is Chronos, there's a rare event where he ambushes you and temporarily sends you back in time for a level. And back in time is the first game! It's only happened to me once so I'm not sure how robust it is, but it was an instance of an old map with old enemies that would be in the same spot in the run that I was when I got ambushed. That's definitely a cool throwback mechanic.

I will note that the artstyle and characters seem a little bit.... woker? It's nothing too egregious, and it was a little bit like this in the first game, but just the levels of androgyny, the ratio of more female characters, the lore of being Witches, and the weighting of visual sexualization weighted more towards male characters than female ones generally gives off lefty vibes. Heck, Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation, and is straight up naked in the game (though conveniently self-censoring with arms and hair) looks like a lesbian.

Again, it's nothing too egregious, and the gameplay and story are still good overall so far. It's just a mild annoyance.

Heck, Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation, and is straight up naked in the game (though conveniently self-censoring with arms and hair) looks like a lesbian.

I don't know what sort of lesbians you're hanging out with, but that is definitely not lesbian presenting.

https://www.lovepanky.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/lesbian-stereotypes-1.jpg

Not like the short haired butch kind, the feminine one in the pair. I don't think lesbians adhere to the top-bottom dynamic quite as strictly as male homosexuals due, since there isn't a sexual requirement to, but often you'll see a masculine obviously lesbian paired with a more feminine one who sometimes passes for straight but is sometimes almost-but-not-quite-straight-presenting. I dunno, I haven't put a ton of thought into pinning down a strict definition, it's just a sort of vibe I've seen in certain lesbian pairings. But I think it makes sense in theory, given that some lesbians are attracted to feminine features, some will maintain enough feminine features to attract them.

But on further thought, I'm not sure if I've seen it in real lesbians or only games/tv/movies...

This is your brain on online gender war.

I don't think it's a war thing. Different archetypes of personality just tend to look certain ways. Have you never noticed? Like nerd glasses or problem glasses, or dark eyeliner, or cowboy boots, or tank tops, or half-buzz-cut, or high heels. You can't automatically and definitively ascertain someone's entire personality from how they look, but you can often make a decent guess. Because people tend to dress like and emulate people they respect and admire, which often happens to be people with similar personalities, so they end up looking similar to each other.

I will note that the artstyle and characters seem a little bit.... woker?

Most obvious with Hestia, who they drew as a fat black woman with vitiligo. That one attracted enough notice at the time that it has a KnowYourMeme page. The vitiligo representation thing always feels a bit surreal when I encounter it outside of Tumblr art. It's the sort of thing I didn't predict penetrating the mainstream corporate world, but apparently there's no actual limit and SJW Tumblr art fads will show up at Target years later.

The architecture behind her is fucked up too.

Would have been too spicy to make her a white woman with soot on her face, I guess.

While i have issues with wokeness in Hades 2 Hestia isn't really it.

She is the goddess of the hearth and having skin like coal and ash feels like a thematically appropriate take. I didn't even consider that they tried to do something ridiculous like vitiligo representation.

I got more irritated at retarded stuff like Hephaestus wheelchair or the uglification and darkening of Athena making her look like a racist caricature.

The "which way, Western man?" memes really do write themselves. On the topic of shameless box-checking representation, disabled Hephaestus was a pretty good one too.

I prefer Western Hestia over Japanese Hestia, at least the western version refers to her myth (the embers on her head referring to the hearth) and isn't just "generic large chested girl of ambiguous age".

Hephaestus is disabled in the lore, though.

Hephaestus is described in mythological sources as "lame" (chōlos) and "halting" (ēpedanos). He was depicted with curved feet, an impairment he had either from birth or as a result of his fall from Olympus. In vase paintings, Hephaestus is sometimes shown bent over his anvil, hard at work on a metal creation, and sometimes his feet are curved back-to-front: Hephaistos amphigyēeis. He walked with the aid of a stick. The Argonaut Palaimonius, "son of Hephaestus" (i.e. a bronze-smith), also had a mobility impairment. Other "sons of Hephaestus" were the Cabeiri on the island of Samothrace, who were identified with the crab (karkinos) by the lexicographer Hesychius. The adjective karkinopous ("crab-footed") signified "lame", according to Detienne and Vernant. The Cabeiri were also physically disabled.

In some myths, Hephaestus built himself a "wheeled chair" or chariot with which to move around, thus helping support his mobility while demonstrating his skill to the other gods. In the Iliad 18.371, it is stated that Hephaestus built twenty bronze-wheeled tripods to assist him in moving around.

However in those cases when he is described as lame, such as in the Illiad, he is depicted as limping, dragging his foot, and/or using a stick to walk, not a wheelchair. I strongly suspect the reason why they put him in a wheelchair is similar to why WOTC printed a Wheelchair Accessible Dungeon for D&D, because wheelchairs specifically are treated as an icon of "disabled representation".

I was wondering where the Wikipedia article you quote got this:

In some myths, Hephaestus built himself a "wheeled chair" or chariot with which to move around, thus helping support his mobility while demonstrating his skill to the other gods.

So I followed the citation and it's an essay in Rhetoric Review using "theory from the field of disability studies", and it doesn't use the term "wheeled chair" even once. Rather it describes him as riding a "proto-wheelchair" on the basis of a single cup showing him on a winged chariot. Nothing indicates this winged chariot is serving as a substitute for walking rather than as a chariot, nor is there anything about it "helping support his mobility while demonstrating his skill to the other gods". (Is it even specific to him or does there exist art of other gods in winged chariots as well?) And then the Wikipedia article makes it even worse by creating the term "wheeled chair" and putting it in quotes, so that people who don't follow the citation and get past the paywall will interpret "wheeled chair" as a literal translation of some Greek source.

In the Iliad 18.371, it is stated that Hephaestus built twenty bronze-wheeled tripods to assist him in moving around.[96]

And then this is just an egregiously false reading, it says nothing about helping him move around. They're tripods (a pot/cauldron with 3 legs to straddle a fire) that move themselves around. The same passage says "he moved to and fro about his bellows in eager haste".

I'd argue this is actually one of those areas where you can get away with it; Hephaestus is specifically the god of the forge and crafting, and does have a limp. It fits well within his character to have him develop a mechanism for easier mobility. I wouldn't object, for instance, to Artemis and Apollo being portrayed as redneck hunters armed with rifles, as it still fits well within their characters.

I feel like when situations come out like this, it's important to save ire for when the diversity for diversity's sake actually ruins the end product; like, the 2016 Ghostbusters wasn't bad because they chose an all female cast - it was bad because they didn't realize that the reason the original Ghostbusters was good was that it was more about the realities of starting a small business than it was about the paranormal. You could easily have made a 2016 "female leads" version of Ghostbusters that wasn't garbage; were I writing it, I'd have set it up as an allegory for the realities of balancing working at a small business with raising children and maintaining a household. You can even make the lead women in the show the daughters of the original cast; that way you don't shit on its legacy, while continuing to explore the themes that made the original great.

I think as long as you're sticking with the correct themes and characterization, you can get away fairly easily with including extra diversity; however, most of the people including the diversity have long since had their brains dissolved by the woke milieu, and can't write anything interesting that isn't just "diverse = good." It's not bad because of the diversity - it's bad because it's bad, and you're only seeing it because a lot of people have had their brains rewired to think 'diversity!' is the same thing as a good and interesting story, so approved it despite it's terribleness.

And, of course, religion is the perfect way to shield an inferior story (and writers), since you can just launder your failure with claims of the audience’s irreverence.

The parallels between being woke and being in a religion have definitely not gone unnoticed.

I've been playing the game for quite a bit in early access and while I enjoy it well enough this does feel like "safe horny" the game, but extended to every single character and interaction. Everything is so HR approved and "safe" that I find myself just skipping through all the dialogue. Nothing is said and while it's mildly witty at times it's never funny.

I think a major issue is that they've replaced many of the major roles with women for the sequel and they don't think it's ok to make jokes at the expense of women so what we get is a whole load of anodyne nothing.

I think a major issue is that they've replaced many of the major roles with women for the sequel and they don't think it's ok to make jokes at the expense of women so what we get is a whole load of anodyne nothing.

2015+ in a nutshell.

How do you make the goddess of beauty look that ugly? She looks like someone drew a man and then added breasts. It's truly a remarkable feat of bad art.

How do you make the goddess of beauty look that ugly? She looks like someone drew a man and then added breasts. It's truly a remarkable feat of bad art.

Have you seen any women by Michelangelo?

Can't say I have.

...she's fine? Like I can normally see where female uglification complaints are coming from even when I disagree, but I have no idea what you're on about here, she's perfectly goonable as is. Is it the shadowing on her face making her features too angular or the bracelets accentuating her pointy elbows or what?

I couldn't care less about elbows. The problem is that is straight up a man's face on a female body.

I think it’s broadly the total lack of anything approaching softness or sensuality. Hades 1 Aphrodite I’m not super keen on either but she has a coquettish pose appropriate for the Goddess of Love and Lust. This one in holding a sword and shield and looks like she wants to beat you up. Aphrodite is always dangerous but not like that.

I’m reminded of a previous post saying that one reason people liked Sydney Sweeney was that she’s one of the only models to have doe eyes and look soft and approachable rather than glaring at the camera.

Is it the shadowing on her face making her features too angular?

This, IMO.

Wait, I think that might actually be the art from Hades 1. Hades 2 is this

Slightly less masculine, slightly more lesbian.

Which I suppose partly undercuts my point about it changing. I think it's largely deliberate. They're trying to portray a sexual character but not like... actually sexy. They're trying to say "this character is sex positive, but we're not trying to appeal to straight white men, because that would be gross.

This also is related to the race-swapping of many of the Olympian gods to be black or Asian. Again, it's not like super obnoxiously egregious: it's not like the story goes out of its way to talk about them being oppressed by the white gods or something. But it's anachronistic in an obviously post-2010 progressive way.

Unfortunately your second link is broken (it goes to some decade old reddit post), so I still don't know what the Hades 2 version looks like. But it sounds like the devs are kind of slaves to the culture war, and feel the need to make everything reflect it. Which is unfortunate.

I wouldn't say "slaves to". Again, it's not too egregious, and not enough to ruin the game. But their earlier games didn't seem to have this issue quite as badly. Or maybe I just didn't notice as much because they were original fantasy worlds so they weren't race swapping classic mythology.

You can tell throughout the time that they're definitely left-leaning. Bastion had a bunch of stuff about xenophobia and colonialism being bad. I never finished transistor but it was generally anti-establishment. Pyre had a made up religion that was abused by corrupt leaders to excommunicate people they don't like. But it's never so terrible that it ruins things. None of them are ever obvious and stupid ripoffs of current events, and Pyre still has you participating in the religious rituals because it wasn't the religion itself that's bad it's just the corrupt people exploiting it.

And most importantly the core gameplay remains good enough that it makes up for the slightly offputting lefty vibes (with the exception of Transistor, which I didn't find very compelling)

But yeah, they're clearly embedded in lefty culture, if not the actual war part of it. And they seem to be gradually slipping further and further into it.

Try: https://old.reddit.com/r/TopCharacterDesigns/comments/1cctx3h/aphrodites_design_from_hades_and_its_sequel/

Thanks! Weirdly the second iteration looks way better, because she actually looks female in that one. No idea what happened in the first game.

It's the wrong way around. The armed one must be from H2, because the unarmed version was in H1.

Yeah I figured that it was the H2 version first, then the H1 version. So I did have the right order in mind when I said that the second iteration looks better.

I haven't tried patch 1.0 yet, but I did play back when the alpha was released.

From what I remember, it's not bad, but I much prefer the vibe of Hades 1. Hades 1 is just very strong thematically - at first you think your dad is kind of a bad guy, keeping you down, but as you fight your way to the surface for your first glimpse of paradise, it becomes apparent that the curse is much deeper than you know: it's in the blood. You were born condemned, to a Sisyphean quest to seek paradise but be denied access, and yet... through your failure, you make lots of friends, realize your troubles may not even be that bad compared to theirs, and well, I won't spoil the ending, but one can almost imagine Sisyphus content. It's a very deep game.

Hades 2 isn't bad, it just... it feels like Arcane season 2 compared to Arcane season 1. It would feel a lot better if its predecessor hadn't set the bar so high. And yes, as you mention, it does feel a bit woker.

Now, admittedly, I haven't played the new 1.0 patch for Hades 2 yet, so I may be missing key aspects of the story that pull things together in ways that make the game deeper. But from what I remember, Chronos sure felt like an actual bad guy, in a very cookie-cutter sense, and there didn't seem to be much thematic depth behind this, like the passage of time rendering the gods increasingly impotent or something (the main character is a witch, after all). It just felt quite shallow.

You were born condemned, to a Sisyphean quest to seek paradise but be denied access

One of the major thematic turn-offs of Hades 2 for me is that, back in Hades 1, getting to the surface distinctly felt like a proper goal given everything you have to overcome on the way. The ...events that transpire once you finally get to the surface (to avoid spoilers) only add to the payoff; Zagreus is cursed, his kin was not meant for the surface world, and even with all his willpower he cannot manage more than a few minutes to try and come to terms with what he has found, and attempt to salvage it, before he is inevitably dragged back to the underworld and has to throw himself at the challenge again and again. There is no escape, as it were. Despite only getting a small sliver of dialogue every time you beat a run, the story still visibly progresses and you can't help but get invested in it. I think Hades 1 is easily Undertale-tier meta storytelling and one of the best in-story explanations ever for the bog standard "you must do X successful runs to get the ending", it is so immaculately arranged that you barely notice the seams, especially with the little twist of not having to fight a boss on the final run.

Compare this to Hades 2, where gaining access to the surface stages is... literally just a cheap early meta unlock for Melinoe; it is complete and total immunity, and the matter is never brought up again afterwards.

I understand this was largely gameplay-story segregation since they wanted to make the surface stages actually playable, but I still feel there should have been a better way to go about it. It solidly soured the initial impression of all the overpowered witchy bullshit for me, and so far it doesn't really get better - there does not so far seem to be a problem the protag's Quirky Cast of Strong Women doesn't immediately think of a meta unlock solution for.

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