#disco elysium meta

[mrtequilasunset]

I think abt this check so often. Him throwing his shoe through a window to destroy the man looking back at him. I think about him trying to rip the sink out of the wall while staring at his reflection. I think about the repulsion he feels for himself. I think about the way he probably grew a beard in an attempt to hide the damage left behind by the polio. Adopts the expression likely also in part because of said damage. I think about him feeling too disgusting to press his cheek against something soft. Too disgusting to look at a woman he thinks is beautiful. The way he can call himself a superstar but there are still the inevitable moments where how he really feels pokes through the cracks. The way disco elysium portrays insecurity is very important to me.

#disco elysium #harry du bois #disco elysium meta #aurrhbgrhgb chews on him #he is very pretty 2 me

[stellarwing]

Today on "tiny details in Disco Elysium that I am obsessing over":

Kim estimates the cost of Harry's sunken motor carriage as 40,000 reál and Jean puts it at 45,000 reál. This suggests that (at least) one of the following is true:

-Kim is better at guessing the cost of an MC than Jean (I refuse to believe that the inverse is true)

-Kim downplayed the cost to make Harry feel better

-Jean exaggerated the cost to make Harry feel worse

#disco elysium #disco elysium spoilers #harry du bois #kim kitsuragi #jean vicquemare #disco elysium meta

[twink-with-an-agenda]

Okay but. Something about Dora Ingerlund not being allowed to just be a human person. Because we see her through Harry's eyes, she is always either deified or demonised. Which is how women are often seen - either a perfect pure angel, or the evil bitch who ruined you. And in Dora's case, this harmful mindset is depicted perfectly. She's never just a woman, just some person, a human trying to make it through life. She is either Dolores Dei, a holy figure, resplendent and untouchable, or she's the ex-something, the shadow looming over you, the damn woman-thing who tore your heart out. Never just Dora. It's so fucked up, but so well done.

#this. came to me so randomly but now I'm thinking about it and i cant stop #I'm sure smarter people have written about this already #de #disco elysium #dora ingerlund #harry du bois #harrier du bois #dolores dei #disco elysium meta

[renmorris]

disco is very blunt when it comes to discussing how Harry's unhealthy relationship with his sexuality is based in his internalized homophobia and relentless fixation with being punished and degraded.

he’s a man who's very obsessed with hurting himself. meanwhile there's a half light check that straight up states he’s been sexually assaulted. electrochemistry tells us that he basically can’t have sex without being intoxicated because it’s too scary. In addition to dialogue about his piss and autoerotic asphyxiation kinks really driving home just how deeply solitary his sexual experiences are. it’s just. there’s a lot there

he has traumatic flashbacks when he’s hugged. this isn’t a man who has a healthy relationship with physical contact. it’s implied he hasn’t been held since his wife left him

thoughts like Rigorous Self Critique really drive home just how far he goes to hurt himself. the thought is somewhat dressed up in self improvement language but in practice it’s all about Harry literally sustaining his health through self flagellation. and in the process it shows you that while it’s an incredibly toxic mindset that’s stunting his growth and deeply hurting him, it is a coping mechanism that gets him through the day

and like DE's addiction mechanic I found myself relying on those boosts from failing checks as I was playing

#disco elysium #harrier du bois #disco elysium blogging #disco elysium meta

[centaurianthropology]

One thing that I think a lot of Disco Elysium meta misses (likely because a lot of it is very clearly written by young Americans writing from an intensely American-centric cultural perspective without even really realizing it) is that one of the singular and central themes of the game is massive-scale generational trauma in a home that is economically collapsing as its resources and people are being drained by an occupation.  People have noted that no one tries to help Harry, despite the fact his mental illness is incredibly obvious to everyone around him.  He tells Kim that he completely lost his memory, and Kim politely asks him to focus on the work.  He tells Gottlieb that he had a heart attack, and Gottlieb tells him that if he’s still alive it couldn’t have been that bad.  That he’ll drop dead sooner or later, but then so does everyone.

And that’s the most important thing: so does everyone.  Look at Martinaise.  Look at the world in which Harry lives.  It is not our own, but it is adjacent to ours.  More specifically, it is clearly adjacent to the states of the Eastern Bloc: overtaken and occupied by a faraway government that clearly doesn’t care about Revachol or its people.  And that is obvious in every tired face, every defeated citizen, everyone trying to eke out a little happiness or meaning in spite of the overwhelming trauma and damage around them.  The buildings are still half-destroyed.  The bullet holes are still in the walls.  The revolution was decades before, but it still feels to the people there like a fresh wound.  The number of men of Harry’s generation who are not alcoholic or otherwise deeply fucked up are very few.  Some, like Kim, hide it better, but the deeper you dig into his history, the more you realize how damaged Kim is.  He’s more than a little trigger happy, and hates that about himself, but he is a product of his environment: Kim’s entire life is seeing people he cared about shot and killed, so his instinct now is to shoot first himself, to protect those few people left who still matter to him.

Harry is not unique in his trauma.  He is a distillation of an entire culture of people who tried to rise up and make something beautiful, and were instead routed and occupied.  He is trapped between the occupation and the people on the ground, along with all the rest of the RCM.  Their authority comes from the occupying government, but it is implied that they were formed out of the remnants of the citizens militia which sprung up from Revachol itself as a way to try to mitigate some of the horrors being committed on its streets.  The Moralintern sure as hell wasn’t going to get their hands dirty, so they happily conscripted (and therefore could better control) this group, who are only recognized in certain places, and whose authority mostly amounts to giving out fines.  The RCM is corrupt, but it is corrupt in the same way its culture is.  Bribes are considered standard with them, not a moral failing, but a necessity, so long as those bribes are correctly logged as ‘donations’.  It’s how the RCM stays afloat, and the rest of Revachol completely understands that.  Everyone would take a bribe if it meant they kept eating.  Everyone would take a little under-the-table money if it meant keeping a roof over their heads.  The officersof the RCM certainly don’t make enough to see a doctor.  They have an in-house lazarus, and if he can’t fix them they just die.  Mental health care?  What mental health care?  Harry doesn’t get it for the same reason no one else does: it doesn’t really seem to exist.  There are no counselors, no psychologists, no psychiatrists.  How would they even start?  If the world is what is broken, if everyone is suffering a similar catastrophic amount, it makes sense that Harry’s trauma would simply get rolled up with all the rest.  Kim asks him to get on with the job because Harry’s suffering is not remarkable in Revachol.  He is one of an entire generation who have an astronomical number of orphans from the revolution, and so many younger people are left more or less orphans as their parents drink themselves into oblivion like Cuno’s father.  So Harry’s truly unique attribute is embodying all that trauma, having it all inside of him, filling him to bursting.

To really engage with the themes of the game, engaging first and foremost with the reality of Revachol is imperative.  Imposing our own reality onto Revachol, particularly if coming from an American perspective (which tend to have the habit of both viewing the world through an American lens and not realizing they’re doing it because they’ve never experienced a different lens), will always feel shallow to me because of this.

All that is to say, I would love to hear some more explicitly European meta about this game, and especially Eastern European meta.  If anyone can point me to some good, juicy essays from that perspective, I would be grateful!

#Disco Elysium #is such a good game #but I found a lot of the meta around it frustratingly shallow #and very VERY American #which is also frustrating #given how clearly Eastern European the roots of this game are #I have no problem with people using a game or other work of fiction to inform their own lives and experiences #but I find it strange when people engage with the game #as though it was coming from an American perspective #asking why certain things happen or didn't #based on how they would play out or have played out in America #anyway this a rambly way to request some meta from other cultural perspectives #I am very interested in reading it! #Disco Elysium meta

[swamp-cryptids]

I love how intentionally Kim and Harry are written to contrast one another down to the detail of Kim being an absolute skeptic who doesn’t entertain the idea of the supernatural vs Harry having actual real prophetic visions one of which is required to complete the game

#disco elysium #rambles #disco elysium meta #disco elysium spoilers #kinda I guess #I love writing #kimharry #sorta #harry du bois #kim kitsuragi #YES I posted this on Twitter already. I don’t follow the rules #seethe liberals

[godspeedmajortom]

I love that Harry can find the purple leopard print leotard and say, "This is the kind of animal I want to be." I love that it takes +8 electrochemistry to do this, that Harry has to be so in touch with what brings pleasure to his physical form to even notice the fabric in the river, to not just dismiss it as another piece of trash amidst the milieu of Martinaise malaise. I love that putting on the bodysuit requires him to reject fear and embrace his queerness (and let it embrace him), and that once he does, he will never let it go. I love that Harry will strip naked in the middle of a sleet storm in front of Kim to don this salty, weathered thing because he has finally, absurdly, found something so perfect for him.

Half Light protests, Physical Instrument mocks, Composure warns, but E-Chem knows. "Don't you *want* to feel different?" Of course. Of course you do, Harry. Of course you want to become someone who you actually want to be.

It's so beautiful that Harry can actually discover a meaning for himself, some small solution for the depressive horror of his pre-bender life. Thank you, leopard-patterned bodysuit. And thank you, Helen Hindpere, for adding this to the game.

(Fayde Reference)

#harry du bois #disco elysium #disco elysium meta #disco elucidations

[starstrike]

I'm obsessed with how Shivers will outright tell you that the anodic music kids will fail. I think this implies that, even if you build up the club, nobody will ever visit it.

I think this was one of the times in Disco Elysium that I really... got it. After reading this, I decided to tell the kids to scram. They wouldn't succeed anyways. It felt terrible. I reloaded my save; I couldn't stand to do anything else. Just because hope, beauty, or love are temporary, does that make them any less valuable? Just because you know something will be snuffed out doesn't mean you shouldn't try. That hope and love is valuable for its own sake.

At the time, I was going through a severe depressive episode. I was moving out in six months before moving cross country, so why should I bother investing into my environment? I had this old fish tank I'd poured effort into, once. Got some new fancy aquasoil that would be great for my plants, but it needed time sitting underwater. I left it like that for… oh, months. This damaged, empty, sad little thing that I had once loved immensely.

But building that nightclub with those kids made me change my behavior. I got myself a $6 betta fish, shoplifted some plants from petco, and built my tank up again. Even knowing I'd need to break it apart. So what if it ends? So what if the dance club never becomes popular? You build something and dance with your community, even if your dream fails. Even if it ends. There was love there.

And I think that's one of the things Disco Elysium is about. The kids and their nightclub is a microcosm of the knowledge that the pale is enroaching on Insulinde and the rest of the world. There is a literal, tiny, hole in the world inside of that church. The hole is another reminder of entropy, of the End. And all of this takes place in an edifice of a centuries-old regime and a religion of maintaining the status quo. A religion of broken glass and broken promises. But you take those shards and build on top of them, transforming their meaning. You grow, you build, instead of apathetically letting things remain the same. You find hope and beauty and love even though you know it's unsustainable.

Because the 'now' is valuable in itself. And I love that about this game.

#disco elysium #disco elysium meta #shivers #acele #also pls rb if u like this teehee #ren meta #ren rambles

[mylasteverlution]

Disco Elysium has a lot of fascinating fictional technology but I have been rotating the radiocomputer in my mind for months now. From what I can gather, they operate in a way very similar to modern cloud computing. It doesn't seem like the mainframes we interact with have any processing capability. Instead, they use antennas to process "on air":

SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER - "Alright, well... All radiocomputers perform operations up on air, so in order to gain more processing power you need to invest in a *good antenna*."

The only information we get about what "on air" really means is from the same conversation with Soona:

YOU - "Wait, what's 'on air'?" SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER - "On the *front*. The unified front of radiowaves, licensed and controlled by Lintel in the East-Insulindic region." SOONA, THE PROGRAMMER - "It's all around us," she waves her hand, "that's what 'on air' means."

The nonspecific language used here really invokes cloud computing to me. I think there are two main possibilities for how this could work, one being much more likely than the other.

The more likely answer is that information is sent to and from the in-game equivalent of data centers, which would host massive computers with processing capabilities. I'm not sure what their processors would look like, but they'd almost certainly be analog (the lost Feld tape computers are most likely the in-game equivalent of early digital computers).

The significantly less likely (but more interesting) answer is that in-game radio waves are somehow capable of processing information on their own. I have no idea how this would work, and as far as I know there's no real-world analog. But it's clear the world of Disco Elysium has some crazy things happening with radio waves (see how they interact with the pale), so I'm not ruling it out entirely.

The filament memories are like hard drives, but my guess is they would function more similarly to an optical disc (CDs, DVDs), which use patterns in the disc to encode information that's read using lasers or light. The filaments glow inside the mainframe, so it's not a huge leap to assume they're read using light.

The amount of thought put into radiocomputers is so fascinating. As far as I can tell, their version of the internet has been wireless from the get-go, which makes perfect sense! Antennas and other wireless radio technologies would have to be pretty damn powerful to communicate across and force dimensions on the pale. And you have to assume huge amounts of government money has gone into funding their research and development for those purposes. The technology of radiocomputers is so tailored to the world of Disco Elysium, and it's been a lot of fun trying to untangle how exactly they would work.

#i would loooove to hear other people's thoughts on this!! i tried to find conversations abt it and didn't come up with much #also if anyone wants me to elaborate on the feld tape computer thing lmk... its a long post so i didn't want to go into more detail #but i do have Thoughts about it #cyan.txt #disco elysium #disco elysium meta #soona the programmer

[switchyfox]

I don't think I've seen a post about these before, so here are the four extra scenes and bits of lore you can unlock in the collage mode.

#disco elysium #disco elysium spoilers #disco elysium meta #talkin #they gave me chill when they came up not gonna lie #especially the last two

[mrtequilasunset]

While we're on the topic of Trant's role as a wealthy man touring poor neighborhoods, I've seen a few people with the take that he's blissfully unaware of what he's looking at in Martinaise. And while I'm sure that applies to a lot of rich folk in Revachol, I think it does a huge disservice to Trant's character to say that. Yeah he's a bit goofier than Joyce or the Sunday Friend, but he's not just sharing silly little fun facts because history is his special interest or whatever. He's a very politically intelligent man. He carries a gun on him because he knows what kind of neighborhood Martinaise is. His laid-back attitude doesn't come from not knowing better, it comes from him simply not needing to care. After he's done doing what he came there to do he's going to get in his motorcarriage and go home and wash his hands of the poor people smell and he won't have to think about it again until the next time he wants to give someone a history lesson. I like his character because I think he's interesting and fun and we learn a lot from him and I like the dynamic he adds to our little task force, but he absolutely knows exactly what's going on. Probably better than most.

#and i think in a way that kind of makes it worse #i enjoy him the same way i enjoy jean #anyways #disco elysium #trant heidelstam #disco elysium meta

[stellarwing]

This post contains spoilers for Disco Elysium!

Ever since I learned what the good cop/bad cop score actually represents I have become obsessed with checking it constantly as I play through the game to figure out what makes Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi tick. There have been many things here and there that surprised me but I would like to share my absolute favorite thing I have learned about this man.

First, lest I give you all the wrong idea, I want to make it clear that Kim does very much enjoy watching Harry do good detective work and cracking open a case. But everyone knows that already. It's much less fun and interesting than this:

Kim loves it when Harry fails in a way that gives Kim a chance to swoop in and comfort him.

I have two examples of this coming into play:

1. Billie's Husband

When you talk to Billie to break the news about her husband's death there's an Empathy check to see how well you do it. If you pass the check and do everything absolutely perfectly, Kim will tell you that you did a good job and talk about what happens next. You neither gain nor lose points at any point in this interaction.

If you fail the Empathy check Harry completely botches the death notification. You neither gain nor lose points for this. Once you step outside Kim wants to talk to you about how it went. If you say there's nothing to talk about, you lose 1 point. If you admit you fucked up and apologize Kim reassures you that it wasn't that bad and you gain 1 point.

Once again, there's no way to gain points if you do everything correctly. What this means is that the version of the scene that makes Kim happiest is the one where Harry screws up the death notification but is apologetic enough about it that Kim can feel good about cheering him up.

2. The Moralist Quest

During the climax of the Moralist quest when you contact Coalition Warship Archer you have the opportunity to earn a total of 3 points. If you tell Archer about the 2mm hole in the world but then refuse to go with them, regardless of the reason you choose to stay you gain 1 point.

Once the conversation is over and you are disconnected from Archer there is a passive Volition check. If you fail the check then you climb down off the statue and that's it, that's the end of the scene. You leave with your total of 1 point. But if you pass the check you are given the option to stay sitting on the statue a little while longer.

If you choose to stay, Kim asks you if you're okay and tries to reassure you that you made the correct decision. Simply for going through this scene and giving him the opportunity to talk to you about it you gain 2 points.

There are a couple dialogue choices you can make but you get the 2 points regardless of what you pick. There are very few actions in the game that earn you double points. This is the same amount you get for finding the bullet in the hanged man's head. And you get it just for giving Kim the opportunity to comfort you after your failed Moralist mission.

Kim wants Harry to need him so bad.

#disco elysium #disco elysium spoilers #kim kitsuragi #harry du bois #kimharry #harrykim #disco elysium meta

[geeneelee]

One of the most horrifying realizations I had about Disco Elysium is that I’m pretty sure Evrart was banking on Harry and Kim killing Marianne (the Pigs).

He arranges the meeting, and when you lay it out it sounds like an inevitable set up for her to be murdered—two police officers (one from the bloody murder district) meet up with a mentally ill woman (with a history of verbal aggression) in the middle of the night, alone, knowing that she is in possession of a firearm, and without telling them what to expect. That’s one of the most “I feared for my life” situations imaginable.

If he wanted to keep her safe, it would have been dead easy to send someone to retrieve the gun and give it to Harry.

#this isn’t going to be a popular one in some circles #disco elysium #disco elysium meta #I like Evrart as a character but this is his worst move

[renmorris]

honestly the way Jean treats Kim is just as dehumanizing as he treats Harry, just you know. through a different lens. a very racial one.

he ignores him entirely until the end of the game, once he realizes that Kim isn’t just some random Seolite cop, he’s the important Seolite cop.

and the way he tries to kiss up to him as a superior officer while completely disrespecting his experience and what he actually has to say. I think is very transparent. he dismisses Kim's evaluation of Harry as 'bewitched' as naive and unreliable.

and if Kim is shot he ignores Kim’s orders to cover Harry who's been left in Martinaise (and in fact later lies to Harry that Kim is dying, not just ignoring his responsibility to cover Harry but taking out Kim’s justified anger against him onto Harry instead)

like Jean doesn’t like Kim, you guys. that’s not respect. he doesn’t go there because he cares about Kim, who he’s ignored all week. he goes there to play politics with a superior officer because he’s building his case against Harry. his behavior with Kim is downright slimy. and Kim isn’t fooled. he's furious.

#disco elysium blogging #disco elysium meta

[cosmos-dot-semicolon]

I'm sure it's been said before but I love how every bit of Disco Elysium's version of centrism is named so it fully leans into the golden mean fallacy. The gall you have to have to literally call your party the 'Moral' one and your leaders 'Innocences' is so fucking funny and absolutely terrifying to me. They literally worship their war criminal political leaders as gods. It's arguably less insane than the in-universe fascists.

#disco elysium #disco elysium meta #dots dots dots #maybe i should read political theory formally

[crustaceousfaggot]

So I've been thinking a lot about the setting of Disco Elysium. Specifically it being set in late winter/early spring. It's not something I've really seen anyone else bring up.

I mean, the symbolism seems pretty obvious right? Spring is the time of new beginnings, winter is ending and we're entering a time of potential and rebirth. Definitely nothing new. But I think it goes beyond that.

I live in one of the coldest major cities in the world. Not *the* coldest, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a city with over 1,000,000 inhabitants that gets colder than it gets here. Winters are long and brutal and difficult, and when the soil itself is frozen and covered in a foot of packed snow it's really hard to believe that the world could look any other way.

And don't get me wrong, winter is beautiful. The world is quiet and picturesque. There's none of the usual dirt and debris in the streets because it's all buried under the snow. The way that fresh snow sparkles under street lights at night is one of the most breathtakingly gorgeous things I've ever seen.

It's early April right now, and the snow is melting. It's not all gone, but it's getting there. When the air starts to warm up there's this feeling of excitement and anticipation in the air. Spring is here, and any second now the world will be bursting with new life and beautiful greenery.

But it's not. Not yet.

For about a month and a half after the snow starts to melt, the world is grey. No glittering snow, no budding flowers, no swirling red leaves, just puddles of brown water and lawns of brown grass. It's like winter had ended, but the world has yet to realize that it's supposed to be spring. Until it remembers, we're all trapped in a world where there is no season at all.

Sometimes it snows, but the snow never sticks around. Sometimes it rains, but the rain never brings flowers in its wake.

That last month of winter, that first month of spring, whatever you want to call it, is my least favourite time of year. I heard it described once as "the long-preserved corpse of autumn, finally allowed to rot", and that phrase stuck with me. There are eight month old leaves on the ground, skeletal and bleached grey by a winter trapped under the ice. Without the snow to cover it, you can't ignore just how much we've let our city go to shit. The trees are bare and skeletal, and even the evergreens look washed out and grey when they're not contrasted against the snow. Most of the birds aren't back yet, so the only sound outside my window is the ever-present hum of traffic.

It's impossible to ignore the movement and the sounds of humanity, but at the same time the world has never felt so stagnant.

I think there are all sorts of comparisons you could draw here, some of which hold up better than others. The one that first comes to mind for me is sobriety- the line "Full recovery will take years, though. It’ll be depressing. And it’ll be boring. Don’t expect any further rewards or handclaps." from the "Waste Land Of Reality"o thought is one which really stuck with me on my first playthrough, and one which feels especially appropriate here. But that's just one angle.

How much of this was intentional? I don't know. Probably not most of it. Part of me just wanted to go on a little tangent about the seasonal purgatory I'm trapped in once again. But I genuinely don't think there could be a better time of year to set a game like Disco Elysium. That bleak dusty shoulder season, where all the ugliest and most honest parts of nature and civilization are on display. The time of year where I've gone through the ringer and come out the other side, but everything still looks and feels like shit. It's just a different kind of shit.

Spring isn't here. Not yet. And when it does come, it won't fix anything. There will still be garbage on the ground and pollution in the air, there will still be class inequality and senseless violence and I will still be mentally ill.

But still.

For the first time in months, I can feel the wind against my skin without it hurting.

Whatever that's worth.

#I don't know what this is you guys #don't take it too seriously #i just had a thought and then I had to get all 'ooOoh this is very profound' about it #disco elysium #de #harry du bois #hdb #disco elysium meta #1k