How ‘the earth is a better person than me’ Explores Self-Love
“O monstrous fault, to harbour such a thought!
Then, since this earth affords no joy to me
But to command, to check, to o’erbear such
As are of better person than myself,
I’ll make my heaven to dream upon the crown.”
– King Henry VI, William Shakespeare
In the waking theocratic nightmare of contemporary American life, I often turn to video games as a temporary escape from the fascistic horrors of my country. We live in times where it’s framed as controversial to express indignation at militarized police forces and criminal legal systems, where villifications of trans and queer people have amplified, where the fundamental human right to abortion care has just been overturned. On the morning that Roe v. Wade officially fell, I logged off from reality, once again seeking refuge from the inhumanity present in the machinist news cycle and social media landscapes. In that retreat, I encountered a game that was equally distraught, willing to collapse into itself by means of escape from a life that feels like a wheel of unending suffering: the earth is a better person than me.
I don’t know why I chose the earth is a better person than me to guide me through the tsunamic waves of anger, apathy, and despair that washed over me that morning. I was drawn to something between the peculiarly lowercase title, the evocative abstract comparison between the Earth and the self as beings hierarchically bound to one another, the black void of the minimal color palette and simple art style. At the time of this writing, the earth is a better person than me has received eight reviews on Steam. Perhaps that perceived neglect is why I dug into this game, because I was in desperate need to find a human connection in this hobbyistic escape that wasn’t designed by committee. Instead, I needed a game that was raw to the point of bleeding on me, so I could watch my own tears dilute the maroon honesty weeping onto my hands.
The notion that you will resonate with art in different ways at different times is foundational to how I approach and appreciate storytelling. Games like Life is Strange hit me at turning points within my life when I grappled with my own queerness but suppressed its expression, whereas games like If Found… caused me to break down in front of an audience because my hatred of hiding it harmed me vastly more than the secret itself. As I recently discovered in a months-long session of podcasts discussing these realities, sometimes these games don’t connect with you as deeply once they have served their purpose. But I am endlessly grateful for the vulnerable space that some games safely allow you to process suffering within – however transient – and the earth is a better person than me securely nestles itself as one of those examples for me.
The droning soundscape of the earth is a better person than me lends much to the strength of this game’s presentation, feeling like a moment hanging above time rather than through the passage of it. the earth is a better person than me’s story appears simple enough as a visual novel with the familiar mix of text speeds and save states, but the narrative that unfolds feels both structurally and tonally different to any visual novel I have played through thus far – which is saying quite a lot. You play the story as Delphine, a woman approaching 30 years old, who finds herself stuck in life – somewhere between a rut, an existential crisis, a midlife crisis, and pure unadulterated pangs of existential dread. Over the course of the narrative, you participate in Delphine’s flight from reality, her escape into nature, and the repeated lessons and lacerations she accrues in this self-inflicted pilgrimage through the untamed wilderness of her inner being.
The first choice you make in the earth is a better person than me sets you on a path to connect with an aspect of nature that confronts an unresolved inner traumatic tempestuousness for Delphine. This confrontation appears as conversations between Delphine and anthropomorphized interlocutors in the forms of moon, sun, river, dirt, flower, and tree, and they cohere in a way that feels bundled like a short story collection. None of these routes with Delphine feel greater or more important than the remaining connections she makes with these aspects of the Earth around her. Importantly, creator Kara Stone notes, these “environment characters” are not mere reflections of Delphine herself, but personalities that have desires of their own.
I don’t know that it makes much sense to talk about this game in a detached, objective – or worse, summative – manner. Rather, I’d prefer to retrace my personal journey with this game as it appeared for me, and why I found such solace in this seemingly humble inquiry into sensitive, burdensome thoughts.
The first route I played happened to be the last path that Stone wrote for this game: the tree. While I had no expectations for the earth is a better person than me going in, I was nevertheless whisked off my feet when, within a few minutes of clicking through narration and dialogue, Delphine starts having sex with this tree. The first note I took down for this game has to do with botanical BDSM, which is astonishing enough to be hilarious when devoid of context. In context, however, somehow I was convinced alongside Delphine to submit to the tree’s seductive advances, its reassuring caresses, and its affirming words – words which, you can immediately tell, Delphine is not used to hearing nor willing to accept as true, which is what makes their impossibility so tempting. Instead, she self-destructs and undermines her desires, practically gaslighting herself, as she sightlessly grasps into thin air for a modicum of agency and authenticity within herself. She attempts to take control and identify with her sexual dynamic with this tree, but even this attempt at consent fails to emerge unblemished – like a stone whose underlying moisture betrays the fact that it has just been upturned.
The next route I played in the earth is a better person than me is the route of the moon. After Delphine’s tryst with the tree, my disbelief was fully suspended, allowing me to find empathy and compassion for the moon character. This moon’s ontic reality is structured by cycles of time and being that are fundamentally incoherent to a human-structured schema of linear lifespans. Tragically, this moon forgets – like a psychological reset – as each cycle of its waxing and waning completes, wiping its memory. As Delphine finds herself exposing buried emotions with the moon, she struggles to accept the transience of time and the inexorability of change. In my playthrough, Delphine became so consumed by the darkness of night – orienting her sleep schedule to maintain her connection with the moon – that she became devoured by it.
Recognizing her self-sabotage, Delphine reverts back to spending time with the sun (i.e. waking up during the daytime) and ends up having sex with the sun, which feels like the romcom trope of characters who sleep with an undesirable person to spite the dissatisfaction and accompanying instability found in their current relationship. Delphine observes that the sun isn’t a good lay, and she returns to spend the final days of the waning moon – her moon – tenderly loving it as it fades into its final sliver. As her moon disappears into the dark night sky forever, Delphine realizes that she may finally be able to confess an internalized secret that she cannot otherwise bear to utter, even to herself. But the moon fades away, and our imagination is left to fill in the gap when Delphine trails off finally, “I’m–” (The game strongly hints at sapphic desire perhaps occupying the other end of this sentence, though my playthrough did not ever yield Delphine’s explicitly omitted words.)
My next path through the earth is a better person than me was the river, or water as Stone refers to it. This river is reassuring in vapid or half-hearted ways, carrying the opinionated weight of a parent telling their child that they are the best in the world. In this path, Delphine examines how much she despises her body – specifically its appearance. The river path confronts her physical and psychical reflections, mirroring them literally as the river reshapes Delphine’s appearance back to her – fixing the nose she hates or the wrinkles that forebode her aging skin, the very skin she should have taken better care of when she was 18, and so on. Delphine scolds her body for its stretch marks, flirting with surgery as unaffordably necessary procedures to rectify the hatred she feels for her perceived imperfections. (As a trans woman, these themes hit particularly hard, especially as such procedures are excluded from most major healthcare networks as purely “cosmetic.”) Ultimately, Delphine resents the river for showing her a glimpse of her insecurities perfected, for being a little too comfortable with dismissing her concerns, that her life will get better if she simply worries less about things.
Dirt was the penultimate route for my playthrough of the earth is a better person than me, and I encountered it as a consequence of my interactions with the water character above. You can also initiate interactions with the dirt through the game’s initial choice, but this intersecting route was a first for my playthrough. The dirt path feels like a discussion with your innermost apathy, vocally realizing you are worthless. It inspires a sort of all-too-familiar millennial dread, where you recognize that despite everything you are unable to survive fully independent of your more-stable parents. There’s a guilt attached to feeling the societal ‘should’ about becoming an ‘adult,’ getting a ‘career,’ and moving ‘out,’ that this path seems to want to investigate. The dirt allows Delphine to sink into that feeling, to see where those “I wish I had never been born” or “I’m such a burden” thoughts truly lead if not vigorously pruned back. Worse, I found myself relating to how Delphine articulates her alienation from this Earth, these people, this body, this self. The dirt is somehow comforting even as you sense its sinister nature.
My final path through the game was the rose blossom. This flower calls out to Delphine, like a damsel in distress motivating her to save it some trouble and angst by plucking its thorn. This simple act of kindness and service rapidly devolves into a scathing look at the irreconcilable desire to prune one’s own body into perfection, particularly as a woman. Soon, this act of pulling a thorn from a beautiful rose becomes obsessive acts of self-effacement through the popping of pimples, plucking of eyebrows, binging and purging of food. These compulsive acts of asserting control over one’s less desired physical qualities manifest beyond Delphine’s psyche, as she chooses to pluck and pluck away at this rose. Finally, the rose pleads you to stop, shrieking that it doesn’t want to become bare, until Delphine has removed all petals – like the eyebrows she plucked to the point that they wouldn’t grow back.
After reckoning with the topical diversity of the earth is a better person than me, I lingered in the space for a while longer. I spent this time playing a few choices differently, examining how some of the early game interactions lead you into different paths more surreptitiously than others, and reflected on the kind of person that Delphine ultimately is. I did not reach a point of resolution that felt like a panacea, where she makes it through her period of self-discovery in the forest, though some endings hinted at hope. Even if we never hear Delphine come out, per se, and even if we don’t see who answers her phone call as she lines up trusted family members and a hotline in her mental speed dial, there are dashes of insight and potentially optimism here that should not be taken for granted.
Kara Stone mentions on her website how difficult this game was to write, and that difficulty truly shows throughout the earth is a better person than me. This game reads like an exhibitionist peak into someone’s insecurities, but is delivered like a shot of honey as the prose draws you in. It feels like a scream of anguish that inspires personal growth, letting out the stress of vainly holding everything in at once. The ecosexual exploration within this story is unique to anything I’ve experienced in a game; absurdities and all, it was an effective vector into understanding this young woman’s queer relationship to herself and the inhospitable world around her. In a time where it feels like the world is burning down, the earth is a better person than me reminded me of the importance of connecting with myself, even the ugly, uneven parts that I struggle to love.
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