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iamfuckingsorry · 1 month

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Thinking about that mural from DE

You know which one

TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD, FOR THE NEW PEOPLE. IT IS TOO LATE FOR US. WREAK HAVOC ON THE MIDDLE CLASS

The next world mural. In the game, you encounter this piece very early on if you interact with everything available, you probably see this mural before you've ever even heard of Dora or before you've started to get really serious about your commie tendencies, if that's how you choose to play. And the reaction is like, "wow, this is kinda profound actually". Or maybe it's like, "oh lol, this game really is commie af isn't it" (even though later on it turns out that the game is much more critical of communism than you'd think at first). And the story in the ledger provides some insight into Harry and Jean and how they work together too, so it feels like it makes sense, it fits in very well at that moment in the game and that's it.

But looking back at this mural after you've played through the entire game, knowing what you know of Harry's relationship with Dora...

It's Harry's own fucking love story in a way, isn't it?

Him and Dora came from very different backgrounds. He's genuinely poor, grew up checking the trash cans on the streets for tare and edible food, spent his teenage years running around with a bunch of kids who all OD'd or got themselves killed one way or another over the years. He had dreams of getting an education, getting a chance to use his creativity and curiosity and learn about all that that is worth exploring in this world (which is everything), but those dreams are long dead. She's solidly middle class, with access to all the education and art and music he's always dreamt of, with her family to always fall back on. She's everything Harry's ever dreamt of growing up. She might as well be living in another world.

They fall in love with each other and she moves to Jamrock to live with him. Jamrock, the biggest fucking ghetto in Revachol, full of tweakers and gangsters and just thousands upon thousands of poor people permanently down on their luck trying to get by, with no proper aid or government and a police station so understaffed and underfunded they never even stood a chance. And they can barely make ends meet even living in Jamrock, moving from shithole to shithole, never knowing when they'll have their electricity cut, when something will happen that gets them thrown out, desperately scrambling for a new place to stay. And Dora could never do that, not really - she never actually lived in Jamrock, she always had the possibility of leaving, of going to work across the river and visiting her parents whenever she felt like it or just escaping, packing her shit and getting on the tram and never going back. And as long as she knew she wasn't really, truly stuck in this miserable shithole forever, she wasn't ever really living in Jamrock. And it could never be enough for her.

And she wanted more - for herself, for Harry, for their family, who even knows. Maybe she saw Harry struggling trying and failing to make a difference as a gym teacher and thought he could do more good with the RCM. Maybe she was getting desperate, living in this fucking shithole, and thought they needed more money. Maybe it was something completely else - but what is certain is that Harry ended up joining the RCM, and the 41st, and everyone there is on speed, everyone is miserable and desperate and always running behind playing catch up with the case load, with the crimes, with the drug addicts and rapists and murderers, and Harry, who's always been like this close to a genuine mental breakdown, just fucking falls apart. He needs to help people, needs to make a difference, and working at the 41st, with the budget and case load and staffing situation and the pure fucking misery in the area. He goes out and meets a miserable person after a miserable person and he can't do anything else than be nice, make their day a little bit more manageable, do his best- but he knows that no matter what he does, his best won't be enough. He won't be able to make a dent in the pure fucking misery that is Jamrock. But he needs to, so he drinks, he smokes, he does drugs, he loses any semblance of control he ever had over the voices in his head, the dude telling him to hit shit and the dude telling him to forget everything and just get fucked up and Revachol herself screaming at him about her imminent death. And in the end Dora can't stand it anymore and she leaves (and, honestly, good for her. I'm happy for her. But this is about Harry, and Harry isn't, he isn't able to be happy for her at this point in time).

And like. I personally doubt that she'd have left just because of the money if everything else was good. I honestly even doubt that the money was that big of an issue for her to start with, it was all the other issues first and then the fact that they couldn't even rent a fucking VHS and play it at times became just one more thing on top of this already massive pile of shit that broke the proverbial camel's back. But in Harry's mind, he was never rich enough for her. She was always the middle class girl who settled for the poor fuck, and he was never gonna be good enough for her because he was just a broke dude from Jamrock. She was perfect and so so beautiful and at one point her love was the only thing keeping him going, and then she left because he couldn't even

And from what we can see in the game she was the only person he's ever really, truly loved.

But in his mind, they could never be together again. They could try as they might, but it was never gonna work out, because she was a rich girl and he was just a poor miserable fuck. He grew up looking for change on the streets, she took piano lessons in a fancy part of town. The difference was just too large to ever truly be bridged.

So for post-breakup Harry, prior to Martinaise and even during the events in Martinaise, true love was never actually possible. It is possible only for the new people, in the next world. It was too late for him - he had his chance, and it was an impossible thing, it could never have worked out and now he's wasted it. Because of the inherent differences between different social classes. It is too late for him. So yeah, fuck it, wreak havoc on the fucking middle class. Fuck those rich bastards who took Dora from him, and fuck Dora too.

On another note, this was also one of the most recent cases him and Jean worked on prior to Martinaise. I don't remember the date exactly, but it was in his last ledger, it must have been pretty recent. Do you think he saw the mural and thought about it the same way I did? Maybe this was the one that truly pushed him over the edge? The impossible love. It truly was too late for him. The only way to fix it is a new fucking start. And how do you get that?

After life - death. After death - life again.

#disco elysium #harry du bois #harrier du bois #dora ingerlund #DE #herr's personal tag #next world mural #when first playing the game I didn't even really stop to think about the middle class line #the love part of the mural honestly felt very powerful to me #and I opened the compartment and read the letter right afterwards #so i had a lot to think about in addition to just this #anyway #this is more of a “what if” rant than any actual metaanalysis #our story about Dora is extremely influenced by Harry's point of view #but at the same time #every design decision in this game is deliberate #or most of them anyway #is this something the game designers were actually thinking of when designing the mural?#was that an intentional decision on their side?#or is it just me reading too much into random shit while missing important details elsewhere again?#who knows #midnight rant

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keirientez · 3 months

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#nudity warning #guess whos back from college yipee (i was trembling for the entirety of my first day)#it was nice to be talking to people but having to talk to people drained so much out of me that i slept at 9. which is bizzare #drew the middle one while waiting for my afternoon class. what is there to even say i fantasize about women daily #also i like to think for fem!reborn but young she’ll have those puffy flowy dresses but black.#since if reborn originally followed traditional mindsets and standards when it comes to clothing he went for suits (which he later #-proceeds to expand his wardrobe and goes for crossdressing looks like reboko (one of his alt identities)#but would mostly have clothes following the traditional sense #fem reborn would love vests and formal clothings too i think but if in child form the fandom had reborn originally in an ouji-esque look #with top vest and shorts. so i think those puffy lolita dresses are cute for her #tsuna is just tsuna lol but i referenced her hair from levy mcgarden in fairytail #her hair is extremely iconic for me its so pretty #one reason why i chose her hair for reference is that if you just change her hair color to brown she’s literally tsuna’s fem doppelganger #another reason is that i like levy mcgarden #shes just silly ok i love her #and if youre in the fandom you’ll know her abilities which for me at 14 year old was cool as hell #katekyo hitman reborn #r27 #sawada tsunayoshi #reborn #fan art #genderbend

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pivsketch · 1 year

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one of my friends told me "it seems a lot of your design decisions when it comes to your ocs depends on whether or not it makes you laugh" and my answer to that is yes. and there is no better way

#TAGCEN #for example this is a lot funnier censored so im keeping it that way #cuz like cmon if i dont entertain myself then who will #anyway back in march i was musing about what chips parents would be like #and ive settled on ''rather average upper middle class but also just a little bit weird. and extremely passive aggressive''#they met in college and would bitch to each other bout how much they hated the TA for their statistics class & eventually bonded over that #so when two people have the foundation to their relationship be ''being snide gossipy bitches with each other''...#...and their son decides to make a sudden and nonsensical career shift............#... anyway the family had some pretty tense thanksgiving dinners for a while there. but they do eventually patch things back up #kind of a midground compared to taggart (great relationship with his family) and basil (abysmal relationship with his family)#samson is a total enigma. but ultimately he got a neutral-positive deal going on. just would never bring it up

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betterbemeta · 1 year

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I once saw an eye opening breakdown of how different navigating an urban or suburban area is for a child that's half an adult's height, how much less they can see due to the height and configuration of the environment. The presentation was about safety, how a child might find an environment not designed for them dangerous, but it also made me think about how we all must have memories about 'normal' places that are stored from that alternate perspective:

distances are twice as far

the point of view is too short to see over obscuring barriers, making even mundane environments maze-like

features or conveniences we don't use as children are alien

we are often skipped without logic between destinations as adults 'take us places' without telling us why

Many environments have few to no ways for children to interact with them so they seem barren,

environments that children DO interact with (jungle gyms, play structures, gardens or parks, swimming pools, etc.) are extremely vivid to the exclusion of their surroundings,

Some environments are seen only from the seat of a car and are viewed quickly and in a mass sample without context (unfamiliar neighbourhoods, streets with houses, stores on avenues you never will visit yourself)

rooms are much taller and more empty because we measure space in reference to ourselves and we're physically smaller

When unsupervised, children must pay attention to areas that guardians would have carried them or led them through, calling attention to many of these features even more

Uncertainty about intentions of adult people/entities with more agency than you in these spaces, outside of routines familiar to children

these map 1:1 to emotions conveyed by the Backrooms. Many people remember being a much smaller, more confused explorer.

#backrooms #growing up literally changes your point of view #why they feel 'nostalgic'#but also why they seem to center so much on a specific middle class experience I think #or alternative versions relate more or less to different people #maybe its also a warning sign that Environments in America are extremely alienating to children #there is a traumatic subtext to a lot of the Backrooms somehow. vibes? This is a hostile environment even if 'familiar'#I wonder if a more communal upbringing and transparency for children would defeat the backrooms imagination seeds #like would somebody who grew up doing 'my first errand' type stuff like in japan store these core memories the same way

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soldier-poet-king · 9 months

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I said I wasn't gonna be mean and argumentative bc it alienates people and makes me feel bad abt myself but this is one (1) thing I'm certain about and it Actually Matters

No Jesus didn't say that being rich is inherently evil and all rich people go to hell but he did very much say the whole camel and needle thing. And rich people are SOOOOOO desperate to make it about anything other than wealth.

And like. "Not all rich people" isn't exactly a good argument here. The VAST majority (if not all) methods of accumulating wealth are unethical, either directly unethical, or at the very least profiting off of an economic structure which is designed to disadvantage the many for the benefit of the few. Yes yes there is no ethical consumption under capitalism or whatever, but there's a major difference between....buying everyday items and living on an average wage and the vast accumulation of wealth we see in the west.

I'm not even talking about the ultra rich! (Although I'd certainly argue they are the most unethical here, and the unbalanced ownership of the means of production IS a problem, regardless of your opinions on Marxist theory). But I'm talking about the comfortably middle class here too! I can't stomach it. And I genuinely don't understand how people can live like that and are still able to live with themselves. Too see suffering everyday, not even globally, but in their own cities. Obvs the exploitative ultra rich are The Real Problem here, but I think we're becoming far too comfortable with the accumulation of even casual wealth, when poverty and desperation and class inequality are only worsening.

And just to kick the hornets nets because I can and am frankly reaching a point of idgaf anger, Christians making these arguments in defense of wealth often tend to hold certain opinions about the government, and taxation, and how charity should be an individual decision and not "enforced". Okay. Fine. I don't actually like the govt either and in my ideal world sure that'd be the case. But I live in the real world and in the meantime people need to be fed and housed. However, these are the self same people who are often defending their own comfortable middle class lives and disposable income* and who aren't participating in the "freely chosen" mutual aid they apparently prefer. It just. Hm. (Leftists are ABSOLUTELY not off the hook for this one either, but when it comes to the explicitly religious argument against wealth, it oftener is a more conservative issue. 99% of religious leftists I know are radicals)

Anyway! Greed is perhaps the worst sin! Imo! The root of the majority of societal ills! And I will not fuckin stand for this rich people apologism! One good egg genuinely trying to do good in a sea of selfish people does not change the fact that the methods of accumulation are unethical, (and if it is inherited, holding onto unethically gained goods for your own benefit while others suffer is STILL unethical)

*to be clear I'm not saying we should all be ascetics. I like my creature comforts too. I'm soft and weak. But within reason. Within a certain degree of limitation. There is a point beyond which not only can we not live with our conscience, but we have a moral obligation to help each other, to do something with that wealth. Not just sit on a nest egg for another few decades so we can go on some extra vacations when retired. And yeah it's a process and we're not all zaccheus to transform ourselves overnight. But cmon. Most of us aren't even trying.

#franposting #to be clear. I'm NOT attacking anyone who rbed that post #i love u all dearly and like i GET possibly what its trying to say. and im trying to interpret it generously #but also it's SO abhorrently incorrect #and for allsll my neuroses and doubts and fears.#this is one of the few things i am absolutely certain on #ik i am extreme. im not even saying everyone needs to be as extreme with it as i am #i feel guilt over things and spending i perhaps shouldnt #but there is a point. a point where it has gone too far #and i think we dont acknowledge that that point is much closer to upper middle class than it is to billionare #i cant stomach it. i cannot stomach the way so many of us live #i see my school friends. my coworkers. and i am disgusted by the way society has chosen to live #and by the way individuals choose to perpetuate it #im barely scraping by sometimes and stressed always. but this is preferable to wealth #i genuinely fully belief greed is the bigger cause of evil than any other vice. absolutely #and yet it is the one we rationalize most because so often we dont acknowledge it for what it is. as greed #we say its investing or nest egg saving or maintaining a certain level of living #and i am. and continue to be. disgusted #maybe i am an angry evil vile radical. so be it #i cannot look away from the worlds suffering anymore. nor my part in perpetuating it #i will walk gently on this earth and live open handed and open hearted #and in doing so. i will rage rage against the dying of the light.#it is not mildness. i am fighting against going gentle into that good night #peter singer with what we owe each other was a bit extreme and maybe triggers my ocd in a bad way sometimes #but also he definitely made some points viz. the moral obligation to help others up to where it would not incur an equal harm to ourselves #anyway! im mad! but anger is better than empty sadness perhaps.#i am going to reread the grief of stones. and continue on my righteous anger religious injustice bent. thara celehar the only one out there

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