Based on those lines from DE, I tried to estimate Harry's salary in USD, using prices in Ukraine as a starting-off point (pros of being Eastern European...?)
And I also estimated the price of Whirling's special borsht.
This is not a serious math solution; I took a lot of liberties to round the numbers and didn’t spend much time looking for equivalent products. I mostly settled for the cheapest items sold at big chains of supermarkets.
Methodology here is not great. This is just for fun. I'm not good at math and statistics, sorry TT
What I did:
found the UAH prices for analogues of some items sold in the game
averaged the UAH/reál ratio to estimate the price of 1 reál
then converted the final result to USD
Price of 1 reál
Starting from the game items to feature in those calculations, Frittte products are probably the easiest to find analogues for. As for pawn shop and book items from the game, it’d be hard to estimate, I think, the prices vary a lot. Especially for second-hand items that have lower prices.
FALN pants were an exception, because maybe Cuno sells you the new ones? I took the average price of sweatpants made by a local brand popular among young people.
With magnesium I’m also not sure, turns out it's rarely sold by itself without added minerals or vitamins, such as B6. Medications in Ukraine are most frequently sold in blisters, not small plastic bottles like the one in the game art, so I chose the price for a small tube of water-dissolvable tablets.
The price of Drouamine is taken from the price of Ibuprofen.
The final number was an average of all UAH prices divided by reál prices
So, with those loose calculations, the price of 1 reál is around 41,7 UAH, by today’s exchange rates it’s pretty close to 1 USD.
2. Harry's salary
This is the numbers we get.
With his monthly salary Harry can buy, uuuh, 91 bottles of Commodore Red or 152 bottles of Potent Pilsner or 19 112,50 hryvnias.
Just for comparison,
Data for salaries is taken from the biggest work searching website in the country. Couldn't find the median salaries, though.
The price of a motor carriage Harry destroyed is ~40 000 USD/1 668 000 UAH. It'd take him 7 years 4 months to repay.
3. Conclusions
For a competent detective with a high rank who spent 18 years of his life working in RCM? I thought it’d be more. For lower ranks it'd be much harder to get by, puts into perspective how he lived with Dora.
Vibe-based? Livable, especially if Harry owns an apartment and doesn’t have to pay rent. If we say he spends around half of his salary on rent+bills, he can survive on inexpensive food (if he wants to also by substances).
Genuinely scared of thinking how Jean lives with an even lower monthly pay. Judit has three children... oh god. I hope Harry bought them a lot of kebabs (the price of a very delicious big kebab a friend bought me once was 120 UAH /~3 USD).
4. Bonus: the price of Gorący's special borscht
That's right, we're so normal about borscht here that we have something called "Borscht index". It's the price of ingredients used to cook this essential dish that helps to track inflation.
Information from the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine (March, 2025).
If we say Gorący's pot is 20 L (19 L borscht + 1 L vodka), the price would be around 1394 UAH or 33 reál.
Unless he's cooking the Polish barszcz czerwony, which is pretty different from Ukrainian borscht, if I remember correctly.
So, yeah, if we use Ukraine as a stand-in Eastern European country for Revachol, it'd be like this. Thank you for reading! Sorry if the math is very bad TT
… and the Insulinde as a whole
Very much inspired by ssshiversss and Map Max, whose versions of the map were absolutely invaluable for wrapping my head around this project. Combining their work with the original map of Jamrock, and doing my best to stay loyal to the (often contradictory) descriptions in the text of the game, I think I’m happy with what I’ve ended up with.
Much like my predecessors, I have elected to separate Coal City and La Delta, and in fact ignore any attempt by the game to convince me that La Delta is west of Martinaise. It just… It just isn’t.
Game description struggles aside, this was really fun!! Details/Description in the alt text.
I just like maps
hello!!! your art is gorgeous, could i just ask what brush(es?) you use? sorry if someone's asked this before💔💔
genuinely sorry i didn’t see this, i have few messages in inbox that i didn’t get any notifications for.
I almost only use the procreate brushes from here! The sketches i do i usually use the edge brushes, i also added color jitter for some brushes from the procreate pack
the link is to gumroad, the brushpack is free. If you use photoshop, or interested in the complete brush packs, theyre listed here
sometimes we (i) forgot
Interview with Argo Tuulik, one of the many incredibly talented writers behind Disco Elysium who is now with Summer Eternal.
Reminder that Argo has a crowdfund and has asked for help with essentials and legal fees. If Disco Elysium reached you in some capacity, consider checking out the full story behind the legal battle and donating to the cause:
hi everyone! I created a new sideblog EXCLUSIVELY so that I can post this text (I figured my main account is shadowbanned or smth) ANYWAY
you can read the 1-5 Acts' Summaries done by @parasolemn! They've done an amazing job and I wanted to take part in deciphering too, hehe
note: English is not my first language therefore word-guessing can be pretty hard for me. There are some minor places I couldn't undestand so I would highly appreciate your help!
UPD 10/04/2025 @parasolemn kindly helped to fill in some lacunas I had in Endings! At the weekend I'll try to edit other gaps myself
Cunoesse has brought Cuno to Hämärä Maa as a replacement for a kid she drowned three years ago.
Cuno and Jaakko – the drowned kid – don’t have much in common. Both are/were boys with red hair, and about the same build but that’s about it. Only a child’s mind would come up with a plan to replace the dead kid with an ‘identical’ one so she’d be accepted back in her tribe.
But Cuno can’t just be like Jaakko, he has to *become* Jaakko.
The Suru(?) have a coming-of-age rite that involves drinking a brew made of the bone marrow of a blind underwater cave fish. This experience has sometimes profound, sometimes devastating effect on one’s consciousness.
Perhaps this “Naming Ceremony” doesn’t happen until the Hämäräns are 10 years old, so that’s why Cunoesse never got her name, and this is the pretense under which she lures Cuno into the ceremony – a name for herself (but Cuno doesn’t know it’s also going to be a new name for him.)
Cunoesse believes that if she subjects Cuno to this ceremony and “spirit guides” him through this process Cuno might actually *become* Jaakko. Or at least accept he’s Jaakko now. She’s been laying foundation for this transformation throughout this whole journey.
Cunoesse’s people thought her dead, drowned with the boy. Hardly anyone could recognize her at first sight.
Maybe Cunoesse hid the body (under a rock in one of the caves) before she fled Hämärä Maa, so in her mind no-one can definitively claim the kid she brought back isn’t Jaakko.
We want this to be a truly visually … and spectacular setpiece where you can bind the rules of everything <…> and apply dream logic.
The entire underwater showdown will be in FELD.
We can depart form/ play with the … perspective, switching into a side-view showing the vastness of the dark screen, with the C&C small figures sinking.
Experiment with overlays, filters as well as tainted and/or 3D mode/ed addictions (??) in the scene, showing people, motifs and icons elements from their journey. There can be lots of … with the visual elements reflecting decisions the players has made throughout the game.
Competitive Red Checks are the key now feature we want to test here, to create unique playthroughs and the impression of truly “fighting yourself” as the rolled value of Cuno or Cunoesse’s Red Checks affects the difficulty of the other’s counter attack.
For the first time, … and commune with each other.
Cunoesse comes out of the trip with +1 Psyche is she lives.
Blue notes:
Multiple life/death outcomes.
Swarm/Locust City side-plot reaches its conclusion.
New home for Locusts
Funeral cultural event
(another note totally unreadable for me, sorry)
_____________________________________
In its bare minimum implementation Hämärä Maa could have the same density as the Deserter’s Island finale of Disco Elysium, where the game’s entire conclusion is communicated through a small number of characters – three very extensive and immersive dialogues (one of which is a stylized dream sequence) followed by a posse epilogue. Although railroaded, Disco’s finale had a “page-turning” quality to it that we should aim for as going too much into the mundane idle of the Hämärans would kill the pacing. However, since the entire journey has been about getting to the island, we should give the player at least a little more to see and do than the Deserter’s Island did.
An example of how the task chain at Hämärä Maa could look:
Face Cunoesse’s folks
Find a new home for the Locust City.
Learn how the brew works
Make the brew
Go to the caves
Survive the caves
Bring “Jaakko” to his parents.
Reactivity/Outcomes
Cuno drowns and Cunoesse is this time for real exited by her people
Cunoesse drowns and Cuno returns to Jamrock alone.
Ending 1 – Jaakko Ending
Location: Hämärä Maa
Cunoesse is alive, Cuno is brainwashed
Notes:
Cunoesse’s manipulations worked. Cuno has fully internalized Jaakko.
The scene closes with Cuno diving dead-eyed among the Hämäran boys. He’s one of them now.
Loss of Identity. No more Cuno-sentences.
Ending 2 – Pale Ending
Cunoesse is dead, Cuno is alive
Location: Tréville, deserted
Notes:
With Cunoesse dead, Hämärä Maa holds nothing for Cuno anymore. He turns back, aimless.
He lands back in Tréville and finds it deserted. The prison has finally moved.
Cuno sits with him. With Cunoesse’s death, Cuno’s prison has left him too. The thing about freedom is that no one tells you where to go.
Cuno waits with the prisoner indefinitely. We fade to white and roll credits.
Ending 3 – Bad Ending
Cunoesse is dead, Cuno is dead
No notes, no location
Ending 4 – Circle Ending
Cunoesse is alive, Cuno is dead
Notes:
With Cuno dead and her plan failed Cunoesse must exile herself from Hämärä Maa again.
She goes into another Murder Hangover, back to sleep and hibernation.
The Internal Skull(?) announces “A new epoch of timekeeping is beginning”
(two another unreadable notes for me)
Ending 5? – New Tribe Ending
Cunoesse is alive, Cuno is alive
No notes, no location
I love you Acele: the organized crime refugee, survivor of violence, always on party drugs, the teenage girl hanging out with adult men because there's no better option, who makes weird conceptual sound art even after her boyfriend sells most of her equipment, who gets screamed at by a cop and decides to give him therapy, who somehow still thinks people are sweet.
I love you Cindy: the homeless artist squatting in the coalroom, who does massive street art challenging the occupation, belongs to a famously violent gang but likes people too much to go around stabbing most of them, and terrorizes the rich lady into leaving her block.
I love you Soona: the antisocial programmer, who loses her job and her dream and dedicates herself to finding out why, worries about the unemployed writers, moves her professional-grade computer into a busted-up old church to run science experiments, who lets the homeless ravers move into the church with her so she can use their sound equipment, who makes the ravers listen to her thoughts about elves.
I love you Billie: the working-class woman with an alcoholic husband, who shrugs off intrusive questions and accepts a hug for the sake of the working class, who tells the weird intrusive cop that he isn't a fuckupatoo after all, who sewed a blue lining into her husband's ratty old jacket to keep him warm.
I love you Lilienne: the single mom who survives selling fish to rich people she'll never see, who carries a sword around, who sees a cop that reminds her of her dead alcoholic husband and takes the time to be kind to him when she doesn't have to be.
I love you Isobel: the old washerwoman who has stayed when all her children and neighbors have left, who takes in the drifters and strays who pass through the village, who won't give them up to the cops even when they find a bullet in her spare room, who calls the cop a dark omen but also lets him stay for free.
I love you Elizabeth: the local girl who went off the law school and came back a firebreathing socialist, who can stop the head of the local gang in his tracks just by saying his name, who never concedes an inch to the cops, who will try to reason with armed mercenaries and put her life on the line to protect her people. Who will run the union one day if she lives.
I love you Neha: the dicemaker who bounced back from the death of her first dream, who makes dice into art objects (the cursed die!!!), who remembers all the failed businesses and weirdos, who knows how precarious the world can be, but moved into the most cursed building in Martenaise and made a corner of it into somewhere cozy, sunlight, and safe.
I love you women of Martenaise: you live in the ruins, one of the worst neighborhoods in an occupied city, the beachhead that no one ever bothered to rebuild. You live in grinding poverty, where every government and school of thought has failed even more than they have in the rest of the city. You refuse to let Harry intimidate you, but (some of) you help him anyway—not because he's a cop, but because he's a man who has hit rock bottom, and you all know what that's like. Some of you fight for causes and some of you make art and some of you care for your families, and all of you give what little you can spare to make your community just a little bit better.
Fuck i just realised how much funnier it would be if in swap au it would STILL be harry who loses his memory. A sweet guy and a genius, but clueless, so he has to be lead around by a toal disaster of a man. Fuck. I might have to redraw the idea for the comic from the beginning. B'D
Every time someone draws Kim as a 20-something Korean idol with said idol's hair and muscles and a broad back I want to scream. Kim is a man in his 40s with a receding hairline, wrinkles and is very thin because of poverty, bc the socio-economic context in which he grew up. Like all Disco characters, his physical appearance speaks about his context, his life and the political situation in the region.
Extra hate points if he is portrayed as a Seolite who misses a country with which he has no cultural ties. Kim's central theme is that all the nationalists, xenophobes and racists in Ravachol treat him as if he were a migrant, even as if he had just arrived as well as humiliated by his fellow cops and superiors, treating him as a teenager and keeping him in juvenile police as punishment not only bc of xenophobia and racism but also under this patriarchal idea of seeing those it oppresses as children. Here we can easily point to the western colonialist and patriarchal fetish of viewing asian people (and global south ppl in general) as underage or eternally young, which the fandom unfortunately does not escape. Surprised that they then draw Harry like an actual 40s or even 50s years old white european guy? not really bc you can't escape the imperialist mindset.
Kim is born and raised in Revachol, he feels as much a part of it as Harry does. I think there's even a dialogue where La Revacholiere tells Harry that Kim is part of Revachol and loves him too.
yet deeply despise him to the point of obliterating everything that makes him Kim Kitsuragi and everything Disco Elysium is about. If they can't stand how the characters are (and how they are tied at their core to the game's story and what the game talks about and its politics) maybe these people should go play a game about a stereotypically attractive, Euro-white teenage girl looking for her neighbour's cat in the alps.
#same
ok....... i finished the game.. but i nev r got to dance at the church :( at the disco elysium :(((