Calling...

when it comes to disco elysium, one of my favourite things within the game is the usage of lungs as a motif of love and the representation of this through dolores dei. it’s an incredible way of showing it, as when you love someone or something it almost seems to sustain you, becomes the air that you breathe.

however, another thing i noticed is that an overwhelming majority of the characters smoke. smoking is famously damaging to your health, more specifically to your lungs - almost like smoking is a metaphor for the way these characters show their relationships with others.

some prime examples are:

• harry du bois, who smoked heavily before losing his memory (and after, depending on player choice), a clear instance because of dora and her effect on his life and relationships for years after she left

• the smoker on the balcony, who is never seen without a cigarette, and is in an unloving sexual relationship with someone who can never understand him or truly know him at all

• klaasje amandou, who is also never seen without a cigarette, believes that she is at fault for all of her relationships collapsing and has a skewed view on what it means to love

however, my favourite example is, of course, kim kitsuragi. yes, he smokes as he enjoys the control he has over his addiction and the “cool factor” it gives him is satisfying, but i think there’s a more specific reason there - kim is so repressed that he consistently walls himself off from relationships.

kim himself says that he smokes one a day as he goes over his notes. to me, this says that he is causing minor, daily damage to his interpersonal relationships that builds up more and more over time. the fact that he does it specifically when going over notes says a lot to me too - that his work is what he’s using to push others away.

he does break this one a day rule, however - in the ending where the player chooses not to recruit kim. harry leaves kim behind. they shake hands, and as soon as harry turns away, kim lights a cigarette, a visual representation of the damage caused by another partnership cut short.

there was a great study a few years that went into the whole "ppl online are bigger jerks than irl cuz theres a virtual wall and no repercussions" and the researchers were expecting to see that be the case but it turns out that people who were really angry or argumentative online were also found to just be assholes in person and people who were pretty patient and nice online were found to be patient and nice in real person as well

and it just debunked that whole cynical idea that people will naturally be mean if theres no punishment for it

Why Disco Elysium Is So Good

A brain dump of feelings I have about disco elysium and why I think its sick as hell

disco elysium being an inch wide and a mile deep makes it the most tragic thing in the world there’s no continuation of it

ur future nurse is using chapgpt to glide thru school u better take care of urself

kim “cover them up slut” kitsuragi

It’s been a while, and this project fought me every step of the way, but I managed to finish this book. This is a Frankenstein’s monster of two fan translations of Sacred and Terrible Air slapped together and haphazardly edited some more to my personal satisfaction. As far as I could tell while I was typesetting it was even more bleak than already bleak world of Disco Elysium, and deeply nihilistic to boot.

So I wanted to make it look as disturbing as I could manage (and still want to hold it long enough to read).

🫁 Endpapers are hand-inked neurographics;

🫁 I painted and splattered the edges to look as moldy as possible;

🫁 The spine is linen, and titled by hand;

🫁 The design on the cover is a concept art for the game (I know the book is not set in Revachol, but I wanted a very specific brand of Eastern-European angst, and that church fit the bill).

And a close-up because the file is like GIANT

for april fools this big disco elysium youtuber just pulled a fucking King-ass move and instead of a prank leaked everything about the cancelled version of Disco Elysium's sequel

like the version they were thinking on before the implosion

IT WAS GONNA BE ABOUT CUNO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dde8H1YhP-U

(copied from a message a friend sent me. i thought you'd enjoy this)

hey i haven't watched the full thing but this is fuckin insane. i love this and hate this and I'm gonna rip my hair out and draw fanart about this probably. thanks for sending this.

EDIT: now I've watched the whole thing and holy fuck is it fascinating. fascinating and heartbreaking that regardless of it's authenticity it's not real. i was particularly and especially enthralled by the art of new characters and the hints of what would've potentially happened

ughhhhh im gonna go crazy

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.