My views on chapter 8 as a Brazilian 🇧🇷

I finished the entire chapter and read through every line of it, so let me tell you what I ultimately think now. Previously, I made a post about the 2.2 trailer when it first released in the CN server. Some of that criticism still lingers on, mainly the critics related to "violence as a cultural trait", but I'm gonna reserve a section for that. All I say here doesn't apply to all Brazilian players' perspectives or their lives, it's just my own experiences, so keep that in mind.

I will start by talking about the good aspects of the story. Chapter 8 is a great reflection upon the facilitators of violence and things (or people) that make suffering a "viable currency", exchanging it for power, dominance and twisted ideals. Anjo Nala and Lopera are pragmatic examples of that. Their stories were quite engaging and emotional; nowhere as good as Isolde, 6, Marcus and Lucy (arguably the best written characters in the main chapters), for example, but still solid stories with enough ground for instigating some kind of sympathy on the players. Igor is also an intriguing character with an immense potential of development (something that also applies to Urd, due to lore implications related to the Storm). The sense of bittersweetness was present in the entirety of the experience: something sweet due to the care, solidarity and understanding between the characters; something bitter due to the extremity of conflict that surrounded each corner the characters found themselves on.

Now, the negative aspects, starting by the anachronistic details. I suspect that this happens due to lore reasons related to the Storm (as Santos said in a line that they were in a "fake place in a fake time", or something on those lines, and it was really suspiciously worded + the appearances of people from different eras turning into completely unique individuals in other times, which means things can merge in the occurrence of the Storm, they're transported). Lore aside, it's still weird seeing stuff from the colonialist period resurfacing in the mid-to-late 20th Century... There were some weird historic placements, such as citing plantation in the Northeast (which was predominant in the 19th Century) or Andalusian architecture (???) in the outskirts of São Paulo (okay, Moorish Architecture was indeed implemented in the colonial period in notable parts, which then evolved to Afro-Brazilian variants, but it's still something that made me genuinely confused). The violence as something so defining, so tied up to existence, was not handled in an elegant manner. Sure, Brazil can get violent in some parts – as someone who's been through tough times in poverty, I can say it's a place with many disturbing people and corrupt stuff, and it has many facilitators that lead to conflict and sorrow in a plethora of forms due to historical circumstances–, and I understand Bluepoch wanted a more visceral concept related to facilitators, BUT the execution wasn't the most ideal, and I think it relies mainly on the lack of Brazilian characters that speak Portuguese and live through the stuff they try to portray. There's lack of "humane density" (i.e. actions, thoughts and feelings that feel relevant in the surface, and also have diverse implications behind them, with Igor and Nala being the closest to that, but not quite) that could connect us to the kaleidoscopic feelings of each character, mainly to a Brazilian audience such as me. It's the opposite effect of making a "Mary-Sue kinda character" – sometimes I feel all this violence creates moments of pure "shock value" that don't have much value whatsoever, because we can't necessarily connect with them as players. It's just violence as a currency and??? Okay, what more about it? Care to explain? If the situations aren't "black and white", then they should delve into the different aspects of the conflicts, not only on an extreme example of a sorrowful environment that happens to harbour and nurture some occasionally happy and resilient people (sometimes, when they aren't robbed or killed by gangs). This is a story that could be made into any other country, that it wouldn't change the final result due to the lack of a proper pivotal character that can resonate with the local settings (Anjo Nala was a great try, but somewhat still failed). Even though these were fictional scenarios, they mixed up the themes in the book "Tristes Tropiques" without doing a proper research into the specifics, like the native local groups and societal settings that Levi-Strauss cited vehemently (which could be perfectly translated into a fictional sphere without interfering much in the virtual experience), and the BP writers chose to focus on the favelas without putting an effort to represent the complex multifaceted layers of their inhabitants (again, even though it's fictional, we could still use better writing and world building). The Heartfelt Home was one of the few good settings: Mamãe Mariana handing some paçoca over to Lopera and Anjo, while they share their feelings, felt more Brazilian than anything else in the entire chapter.

All-in-all, I still had some good moments, and those were all related to Anjo Nala, as I couldn't connect to Lopera, Mr. Duncan, White Rum, Igor, anyone. They felt distant to me. Nala carried the entire 6 hours on her back, she really deserves the love she gets tbh. Anyways, I hope BP can get better at writing stories. I saw some of the 2.3 and 2.4 stories when they released, and they were quite good, at least a bit better than what they did with 2.2, so there's hope, I guess!

Ps.: Ptolemy is hot, and he can kiss me anytime 💋