Art fight has killed me

For the first time? It was probably a tossup between the dialogue for Thief in episode 2 and a specific line for him, both of which I would've caught on some random streamer (who was skipping through the dialogue really fast, mind you, so it was impressive that I caught this and liked it.)

I'd been playing the older versions of Dicey on and off during quarantine classes at this point to see if it was worth buying, but this is sort of where I started realising 'OH, this game has actually good writing alongside its impressive gameplay? Holy shit, I have to buy this!' Then the rest was history.

I think I've spoken before about this but that first quote is probably one of my favourites from the game. It's like two sentences of writing but it manages to convey so much about Lady Luck in so few words in a way most games (and even books) struggle to do. Like from this, you learn:

Lady Luck takes a lot of notice of people's personalities, as well as their sense of self.

She's emotionally intelligent enough to not fall for the whole 'evil and brooding people' are complex idea that many people subscribe to, as well as actually identifying it as a problem.

She doesn't pull any punches in pointing out people's flaws on live television.

She is also good enough of an entertainer that she manages to do this whilst making things fun and engaging for the viewers.

But her being able to identify this is ALSO because (?) she is evil.

She's haughty and condescending as all hell about this. (Perhaps justifiably, as we learn later on in the game.)

She's an absolute hypocrite and is proud of it.

She's beloved and well-established enough as a TV figure to be able to joke about this so truthfully.

Her dialogue with Thief establishes the same thing in a more subtle way. You can't quite tell if she's being genuine when she starts off praising him, since 'cleverest little cube-boy,' I am just realising while typing this, is a really stupid string of words. I think it's the alliteration and how diminuative it sounds. 'Cleverest' as a word (a real word: I had to double check that) is also something you don't really hear said outside of like, classrooms. Despite its literal meaning, this is praise for like, a pre-schooler. Perhaps that's to make the show more accessible for a general audience; perhaps this is a backhanded insult. It flows rather nicely into the fact that she tries to immediately undercut his confidence, as well as the implication that the dungeons (and herself) are much bigger and more existentially important than him. It's such a good contrast within like a single exchange. And the fact that Lady Luck can flip back easily from her really ominous persona to an upbeat one both makes her a funny

Thief also gets really nice characterisation in this despite not speaking as much. He's one of the contestants that doesn't really get asked stuff before he speaks: he just goes for it. You can almost visualise him grabbing a mic right there as he spots an opening to speak. And unlike the rest of the dice who usually refer to the enemies as such, or even like them (Witch/Robot), Thief very much sees them as an obstacle from the start and calls them monsters without any prompting. Also, unlike most of the other contestants, he's someone who thinks they deserve their prize from the start, and sees it as a given. He has pretty strong convictions of what is right and deserved, despite his namesake as a criminal. This flows wonderfully into Lady Luck tearing that down. All the writer has to do to show where things are headed is to have him speak slightly less confidently and hesitate for the first time since he got onto the show.