#they're basically a cult and they're VERY annoying and their stupid shit is so fucking widespread

[silverbirching]

SO WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT HADES 2, RIGHT

At least we had all better be, while I'm waving this broken bottle around.

Look guys I'm a Classical mythology wonk. And I don't mean like, "hey I read the Percy Jackson books, they were neat", I mean when I close my eyes before I sleep I pray to every god who might conceivably be listening that Linear A gets deciphered in my lifetime. I mean I've got a giant metal print of Circe Invidiosa by John Waterhouse in my bedroom. I mean that if you make the mistake of mentioning Hadestown in my presence you have unwittingly activated the trap card of "Sam talks about his string-and-sandwich board conspiracy theory about how Persephone was a terrifying eldritch queen of the dead and the entire greek world was scared shitless of her, so maybe knock it off with all these tender waifs in flower crowns, artists of the last two thousand years for two solid hours."

(The Percy Jackson books are extremely neat, btw)

So cut to 2020, the year of shit, and here comes a game from one of my favorite studios of all time, about one of my favorite subjects of all time, and it's gorgeous and deep and full of stupid gay drama and the art melts my eyeballs and the voice acting (true to Supergiant tradition) is basically indistinguishable from foreplay. So I played it. I played the absolute balls off of it.

AND THEY'RE MAKING A SEQUEL, HOLY SHIT

so the Thing about Chthonic deities is the underworld really creeped the Ancient Greeks out, so there's not a lot of writing about them that has survived to the present day, since if they were worshipped it was usually by mystery cults or more in an avoidant "please please please don't notice me I've been a good boy please" kind of way.

Hence why our favorite bisexual softboi dreamboat Zagreus doesn't really feature much in the mythology, except he was probably an offshoot of Dionysus and usually got synchronized with him, Hades himself, or Mycenaen Poseidon. They make a joke about this in Hades, btw (they make a fucking JOKE SONG about in in Hades).

BUT DID YOU KNOW ZAGREUS HAD A SISTER!?

Her name is Melinoë, and she's also cited from very limited sources, but I want to show y'all the brilliant Apostolos Athansssakis' translation of one of the view sources we have, the Hymn to Melinoë:

I call upon Melinoë, saffron-cloaked nymph of the earth, whom revered Persephone bore by the mouth of the Kokytos river upon the sacred bed of Kronian Zeus. In the guise of Plouton Zeus tricked Persephone and through wiley plots bedded her; a two-bodied specter sprang forth from Persephone's fury. This specter drives mortals to madness with her airy apparitions as she appears in weird shapes and strange forms, now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness— all this in unnerving attacks in the gloom of night. O goddess, O queen of those below, I beseech you to banish the soul's frenzy to the ends of the earth, show to the initiates a kindly and holy face.

My guess would be is that Supergiant will not have her be the child of Zeus under false pretenses (there's sources that indicate Zagreus is also a child of Zeus) but still. Dope. Rad as hell. Zag's baby sister is a twin-bodied goddess of nightmares and I am excited a normal amount.

Also Apollo is gonna be in this one, you guys.

Look at this magnificent pain-in-the-ass. I can already tell you he's going to be 10,000% annoying, and I am completely here for it.

#hades 2 #hades supergiant #greek mythology #zagreus #hope you guys are ready for more of this #this is literally what my stream of consciousness is 24/7

[utilitycaster]

A lot of people who try to analyze religion in Exandria need to watch the Adventuring Academy episode where Brennan and Matt talked about worldbuilding, specifically when Matt said “In a game like dungeons and dragons, or a lot of role playing games where ultimately part of the game is to overcome villains and rise up and become a hero, there has to be some level of universal antagonism… there is a pure and defined entity or force that is evil, it may not be realistic to some stories out there, but that’s [how it works in DND].”

This is true, and it's really interesting to watch this happen because Matt will make a huge, unambiguous evil like Lucien or the Vanguard, or Brennan will do so with Asmodeus and people will do everything they can to try to come up with reasons to woobify them or argue why they're justified...but I haven't seen this happen in most of the D20 seasons, and I think it's because the villains in most D20 seasons have been things that reinforce people's beliefs, namely, capitalism and abuse of religious power. And to be clear, capitalism and abuse of religious power fucking suck, but it's telling that people assume the villain is capitalism in places where that doesn't apply on a wide scale, or in some cases, exist (EXU Calamity, Neverafter); or that the Ruby Vanguard or Tomb Takers, both of which have pretty much every single hallmark of a cult but just aren't affiliated with the main pantheon, are actually the good guys.

Incidentally: this is like, quite literally how people get sucked into cults. One of the leading cult researchers in the world, Janja Lalich, is a survivor of a now dissolved explicitly leftist/anti-capitalist cult. Abuses of power, which is, ultimately, what both Brennan and Matt lean on as their Universal Antagonist traits, rely on confirming people's existing biases and exploiting them - even if those biases are broadly good! This is in fact why I can get so fucking adamant about what is mostly silly fandom shit, because I do, on some level, look at some takes that completely lack critical thinking and am like oh you'd 100% buy into all kinds of dangerous patterns of thought if someone packaged it nicely; even something as stupid as the Caleb Werewolf Theory relied on circumstantial evidence and false information that you could easily verify was false. And it's annoying but mostly harmless in the context of fandom, but it always makes me wonder - does this person do this with political posts on social media?

Anyway getting back to the main point, I think watching/listening to Brennan commentary on Adventuring Academy is generally a really good idea because he is a very smart guy with a philosophy degree and has a strong grasp of the genres in which he works as well as TTRPGs as a storytelling medium, and talks to other people who also have a good understanding of the morality of fantasy stories. And if you listen to this, you will in fact get that the basis of evil in these stories is not something as specific as "capitalism" or "religion"; it's quite literally as basic as "exploiting other people simply because that is an option available to you and you don't care about them." And obviously that's the whole basis of capitalism, and it's a serious problem that exists within organized religion, but like...not to repeat myself from this weekend but I keep thinking about the "Suvi without the imperialism" and it's like...she is a 20 year old woman whose parents died for a cause and we have had ONE episode with her as an adult. We know nothing about the Empire except that it's an empire and it is at war. Like, can you look at imperialism and understand why it's bad? Can you separate the concept of imperalism - which, to be clear, is based on power structures - from say, your 21st century understanding of empires in the real world? Or do you see the word Empire and go "Bad Thing" without any capacity to analyze because that's how you end up looking at two flawed things in a story (well, if we're lucky; see the middle paragraph) and deciding one is perfect and correct for no reason other than because it opposes the thing you think is worse. And Brennan is REALLY good at skewering that, and Matt is REALLY good at portraying multiple complicated and flawed perspectives, but you do have to like, use your brain slightly.

#answered #Anonymous #i'm having flashbacks to when people were like The Dynasty (theocracy ruled by the same person for a millennium) is perfect no notes #simply bc the dwendalian empire was ALSO bad #cr tag #long post

[swangtup6]

Album Review: Sort Vokter - Folkloric Necro Metal (1996)

Sort Vokter was an ambient black metal band active in mid 90s Norway. This album is their only release and has a bit of a cult following (a lot of people in the comments section of the video I'm listening to it on right now claim that it's "perfect"). Does it live up to the hype? Let's discuss.

The first thing to note is that on this album, every instrument is played by a different member of the band on each track, like the bassist on track 2 might be the vocalist on track 3 and the keyboardist on track 4. It's a cool concept, but I don't know how well it benefits this band's music.

The guitar on this album is one of the weakest parts. The guitar is SUPER fuzzed out and distorted, to the point where it's essentially just white noise, with no discernable riffs or melody (at least for the first couple tracks, and after that it cleans up a bit). However, even after the tone cleans up and becomes more melodic, the riffs aren't anything engaging at all, they're very generic and sound lazy.

Next is the bass. The bass is really audible, which is cool, except it also has a shit tone and is annoying as fuck. It's black metal, I don't wanna be blasted in the face with distorted ass bass every single track for like 40 minutes straight, it's annoying. And the only way you can identify any melody or riffs outside of the synths IS THE BASS, which is really just not something I like at all. It sounds like shit, it was a stupid idea, I hate it.

Third, the drums. The drums on this album are programmed, which usually isn't something I have a problem with, except they sound Really Bad on this album. I think it's the very clear, spaceus mix, but every time they play the crash cymbal on this album all I can hear is how fake it sounds. The actual programming isn't that bad, I wish it was more human, but the drums mostly just plod along with very basic blasts, not even particularly fast. They just hold the pace, which, given the stripped down nature of this album, is a positive. Overall the drums are a mixed bag, but ignoring the fake cymbal makes them pretty decent for what they're intended to do.

The synths are one of the highpoints of this album. They add a ton of great atmosphere, fill out the sparse mix, and add most of the melody to this album. I honestly wish they'd used them MORE if anything. However, it doesn't seem like this album was supposed to be very melodic, as the melodies are supremely basic, relatively boring, and overall just not satisfying or good enough to be a reason to listen to this album.

And now, the vocals. The vocals are probably my favorite thing on this album, which is crazy because they're pretty mid. They're very typical 90s norwegian black metal vocals, and I can't think of anything they do better than their contemporaries. They're not bad at all. In fact, they're quite decent. They're just not anything beyond that.

Finally, the BOGO deal of the production and atmosphere. These are very linked, so I'll talk about them together. As I mentioned a little before, the production on this album is very sparse and has a lot of space. I like this quality a lot actually, I think it fits the album well and gives it a somewhat light and airy feel that is genuinely quite pleasant. I'd be surprised if these guys hadn't gone to like... a legit studio and paid decent money for a mixing engineer too. However, it's still a VERY clean mix, almost slick. And this is black metal. This album, for the most part, is incredibly high fidelity, which isn't a positive. I tend to like RAW black metal specifically, and because this doesn't sound like it was recorded on a potato, it doesn't appeal to me as much as it could.

Overall, I think this album is pretty bland and underwhelming, as well as overproduced. I think it's worth checking out, but it's not the kind of thing I can see myself revisiting anytime soon if at all.

5.7/10

Standout Track: Tårers sang

#youtube #music #music review #metal review #metal music #dungeon synth #black metal #keller synth #atmoblack #ambient