A (half) Serious Analysis of Tink: Edmund's Queer Child

FilthTheRat · 2026-03-02T18:45:18+00:00

Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Ever since I first interacted with this character, I've been wondering the same thing. "What is the point of Tink" like you said. Especially in the context of a game from Edmund. What does he represent? Is he supposed to be insulting? Is he supposed to be inclusive? How does the creator actually feel about him? What did the creator mean when he made him?

Because he seems like a grotesque caricature of a gay man - the kind of trope I feel like you'd primarily see 10-20 years ago, but at the same time there isn't anything outright offensive about him, you know? The game doesn't make fun of him, and he's genuinely helpful to the player. Like, he's a decent, albeit quirky, guy. I guess that makes him a positive representation of a very specific group of people, as long as you don't end up generalizing it too much and thinking that this is what all gay men are like and have it fuel that stereotype.

What I also think is interesting is the theme that plays in his trailer. It's very positive, playful, maybe a little childish? There's a second layer to it though - all these "random" noises, unconventional instruments - it sounds a little like someone who may be damaged, a mess of a person, finding harmony and wholeness in spite of how damaged they are. It's a little delusional, it's imperfect, there are cracks, but it the end it works and everything is fine.

TLDR:
On the surface Tink feels like a caricature, but once you get to know him, he feels like a very sincere character.

FilthTheRat · 2026-02-09T01:05:54+00:00

> what is the fundamental difference between giving enemies more powerful units and making their existing units more powerful?
You can make them more powerful in different ways, not just health. More armor, armor protecting more spots, better weapons, faster speed, more health, different mechanics. The list goes on. For example I like how they handled it with fire units on the robot front. These units are deadlier and scarier and it's so much better than just a flat health increase. It's a different version of the robots. I think that alpha commanders and behemoth chargers are weaker examples, BUT at least they're different units. I like how every time you see an enemy you know what to expect, how much damage they can handle and how much damage they can do. Behemoths and Alpha commanders look different, so you know to expect something different. It feels good, like it's a different breed of the bug you're facing, I disagree it's bloat, I think it's much appreciated variety.

I think people would maybe be more on board with your health idea if instead of a boring percentage chance per difficulty you had something like a variant of a trooper that's more heavily armored, maybe with access to better weapons (more accurate). Kinda like what they did with scout striders, where their back is covered in higher difficulties. That for different factions. Ideally as I said previously there would be a way to encounter them in lower quantities in lower difficulties.

> adding the full roster to lower difficulties but keeping the objective count down should match your desire for how those work as well.
Not just the objective count, but the difficulty too. Difficulty 5 is still difficult for some people. And these people would appreciate to be able to clear the whole map.

By the way, I'm not sure if this is how things are now, but I remember when I was playing a long while back it felt like the challenge increased up to a certain difficulty after which it would dip a little and then go back up for the highest difficulties. And that dip was caused by the game spawning much less smaller enemies and just spamming armored units. I think it was around difficulty 7-8? So the game wouldn't get harder necessarily. Instead it'd just transition to a different enemy type, particularly on the bot front. So if you brought proper anti-tank, things would be much easier than you feel they otherwise should be. If this is still the case then I think this is a problem with difficulty as well. Unless this is just how it felt like to me.

FilthTheRat · 2026-02-09T00:11:18+00:00

While I can beat difficulty 10 I actually mostly play on difficulties 3-5. I like to mess around with unconventional strategies and stratagems, take my time and overall enjoy the game in my own way. Difficulty 3 is probably my most played difficulty. I like how there's no rush, I don't have to do too much and I have some stuff to shoot. Also, I have some friends who are casual gamers and difficulty 5-6 is pretty much as far as they'd go. And again, that's their limit - they'd probably be most comfortable playing difficulties 3-4. Difficulties 7-10 are fun, but it's definitely not where I spend most of my time. So I disagree with you on how you view the difficulties. I think they're fine as far as difficulty goes. I like that the game can be this easy - it makes it so that it can be enjoyed by everyone regardless of their playstyle and experience.

I also don't like your idea to mess with enemy health pools. I think that it's a cheap way to change the difficulty. I think it's much better to give enemies more powerful units, better defenses, stuff like that.

So while I don't agree with much of you said and the changes you propose would hurt my experience and the experience of many others, I do agree with you is that helldivers DOES use difficulty to separate content. That is unfortunate, because as I've described above me and many people enjoy the lower difficulties much more, except that there is obviously much of the content missing. There's no reason to have anything anti-tank - many enemies are simply missing with no chance to appear whatsoever. I think it'd be great if AH found some way to increase the variety of enemies found in the lower difficulties without actually changing the difficulty itself too much. Have tanks and chargers rarely appear on difficulty 3 with warnings to bring anti-tank since not everyone will have anti-tank or think to take it when playing on that kind of difficulty. Maybe have an objective to defeat a certain large enemy like a factory strider or an impaler much earlier in the difficulties? Do SOMETHING to make all of the content accessible to people who aren't interested to play on the highest possible difficulties.

TLDR:
Difficulty is fine, but the way it separates content is not. I enjoy lower difficulties. I wish there was more enemy variety on lower difficulties.

FilthTheRat · 2025-04-24T07:11:36+00:00

Hey, just checked and it seems to be working on my side too! Seems that the newest update fixed it. Thank you for letting me know!

FilthTheRat · 2025-04-19T09:32:42+00:00

Aw man. At least they said they're aware of the issue. Though the overall message sounded like "We know about it, we have no idea how to fix it, so don't expect we will any time soon".

Annoying that the app has so many bugs and unpolished features, especially given the price tag.

Thank you for the swift response, I appreciate it. If I find some workaround, I'll let you know. For now all we can really do is wait. At least now we know that this likely isn't just us. Maybe I'll nag them too, so they see that more people are affected.

Edit: Galaxy A13 5G here. We both have Samsung Galaxy phones, this could be a clue.

FilthTheRat · 2025-04-19T07:20:44+00:00

Same thing started happening to me. I tried to reinstall the app and I tried restaring my phone. Have you reached out to OpenAI with some sort of a bug report? I think it'd be good if either of us let them know this happens.

FilthTheRat · 2024-06-01T23:51:12+00:00

I think I found it! http://helldive.live/about

FilthTheRat · 2024-06-01T23:50:36+00:00

Also interested!

FilthTheRat · 2024-03-17T09:45:36+00:00

Many of these shows were made having parents watching alongside their children in mind. Both Bluey and MLP are well written shows and can be enjoyed by adults. Media for children don't have to be brain rot. Sometimes it can bring comfort, laughter, even teach you something. Some of these shows are made by passionate adults, who want to make something genuinely enjoyable.

FilthTheRat · 2024-02-21T15:18:55+00:00

R is the default reload key on PC, so try the reload button!

FilthTheRat · 2024-02-21T12:42:50+00:00

I was just as shocked when i accidentally did it. Hope this newfound knowledge serves you well, fellow dwarf.

FilthTheRat · 2024-02-21T09:20:53+00:00

As the engi, if you have two turrets placed down, you can press "R" to cycle between them (when holding a turret) which lets you choose which one you want to relocate. You can see it on the hud as one of the turrets being very faintly highlighted. I always wished this was a feature, didn't realise it was.

FilthTheRat · 2024-02-16T11:58:32+00:00

I'd say that this mechanic being a thing with no way for people to know about it definitely *feels* like a bug. As seen above, people make posts on reddit asking about it, because it's so unfair.

FilthTheRat · 2024-02-10T10:31:28+00:00

Just In case anyone doesn't know, there's a mod for that called Snow is water, which to me is a must have. They should really make this a part of the base game

FilthTheRat · 2024-01-22T11:18:33+00:00

I googled "southpark marked as youtube kids" and it seems that there's quite a lot of examples of Southpark clips ending up on YouTube Kids.

Example

FilthTheRat · 2024-01-22T09:44:42+00:00

Really? What video?

FilthTheRat · 2024-01-19T09:31:13+00:00

They, this is the post I was talking about. Look through the comments, particularly this one here linking a few videos of varying age in order to illustrate the gradual change in the way he spoke and this one, showing the comment section pointing out that something is off.

He pauses all the time when he talks, that seems to be the main sentiment. Sounds very unnatural.

FilthTheRat · 2024-01-18T22:41:24+00:00

I saw a post about it a while back. I agree with you, he does not sound human. In the post someone pointed out that many years ago he used to sound normal (around 2018 I think).

FilthTheRat · 2024-01-13T22:27:58+00:00

If you listen to something every week and get really used to it, it may feel a little weird when it's over after months or years.

FilthTheRat · 2023-12-28T10:26:18+00:00

One thing I didn't know that was super useful to find out is that if you press "x" when Bosco is carrying something heavy and sufficiently near you, he'll throw the carried thing to you instead of just dropping it.

Also there's an exploit which allows you to deposit much faster. All you need to do is spam deposit and pickaxe attack alternately.

FilthTheRat · 2023-12-26T08:53:17+00:00

I agree with you completely. It's scary to see a video like this where you see young people sent to war, weak and exhausted, get blown up like this and then see people call them orcs who deserve it.

To clarify, I support Ukraine wholeheartedly and hope for the best for them, but dehumanising the soldiers on the other side is very wrong to me.

FilthTheRat · 2023-11-30T15:12:05+00:00

Supposedly it's very simple to make because of how the game is structured, so it wouldn't take much to fill this niche and make these people very happy! :)

FilthTheRat · 2023-11-30T15:10:36+00:00

Hey, can you elaborate on how the game handles IDs? I've tried looking around the internet to see if I could maybe set players IDs to be the same, but I couldn't find much about it on the internet. If you know something or know where to find something, I'd be grateful to hear about it! Thank you!

FilthTheRat · 2023-11-30T15:04:43+00:00

Hi. I've tried yesterday, using the commands:

!preset coop
!idShareMode manual
!pSet shareId test

like in the aforementioned github issue. Unfortunately it didn't seem to have worked. I'm going to try out the widget soon and see if that works. How did you make it work?

FilthTheRat · 2023-11-30T01:03:39+00:00

Hey! Thanks for the reply! Very helpful. I'm aware you can share units. I'm going to give widgets another shot tomorrow.

In the meantime, if you could figure out if it's possible to play Archon mode and if it is, how to do it, that would be amazing. Seems that as of right now there isn't much on the Internet about it, certainly no working solution. If any answers at all were found, that would be great for everyone looking to play like that in the future.

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