Dudes Shouldn't Have To Prove Themselves By Having Spartan Greyscale Homes With Dollar Store Rubber Shower

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.

People will be like Kim and Harry is a bunk pairing because Kim deserves better than Harry.

Which like sure probably but Kim isn't gonna get better than Harry and you gotta take it from Kim's pov.

You're a 43 year old gay cop who's blind without his glasses, has back problems, wears historical cosplay to work, is a consummate professional who's married to his car and takes way too much pleasure in being a party pooper.

You're not exactly prime dating material and on top of that there's probably a lot of racist weirdos out there in the dating pool you're getting sick of bumping into.

But then up and saunters this sloppy ass bear, he's a weirdo and a fucking absolute mess who can't even remember what money is, but he's an incredibly intelligent and talented detective.

he's also weirdly kind if not incredibly creepy but he makes you laugh and gets you to enjoy yourself when you normally wouldn't and then all of a sudden he is absolutely enamoured with you, transfixed even, who thinks you're not only too good for him, but you're deserving of the best possible person and he recognizes this and he's desperately willing to do literally anything to be good enough for you. And you're over here thinking about how you've been settling for less than your worth and at least this wet dog of a man is not only recognizing your worth but seeing you as more valuable than you've ever dared to see yourself.

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

ok i saw the meme i needed it to be rememed

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.

im starting a collection

i can’t wait for when chatGPT and ai image generation also crashes and each prompt cost $50 an attempt. oh you can’t get your stolen big tiddy anime ghibli art for free anymore? you want to buy real big boy art from real artists now? beg for it. beg for it like a dog.

"UNPROFESSIONAL"

Watch out the bear Kim.. ^^'

Disco Elysium spoilers ahead.

One of the best things about Disco Elysium is the way in which it talks about having community, love, and support—or, perhaps more importantly, about not having it.

But you don't have to be alone. Not forever. Even we learn this, somewhere along the way. Take this interaction with The Pigs.

And then? What do we, a sad, lonely man, say to that?

I find myself thinking of our interaction with Tommy Le Homme…

… or even Idiot Doom Spiral.

What if you don’t have anyone, though? What if, rather than finding your way through your troubles, or making a family out of the people you have, you instead decide to turn away from the world?

That’s what happens with René.

It’s what happens with The Deserter too.

We see how that loneliness affected them. How it killed them, day by day. And how it doesn't have to be that way. How you can change.

This is a game about lonely people. Maybe one for lonely people too. And because of it, because of its community, we don't have to feel alone anymore.