disco-elysium-sideblog

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[id: a sketch of lilienne carter and her daughter little lily from disco elysium. the two are on the martinaise beach front as lily shows off a long stick with a piece of seaweed to her mum. lilienne watches, amused, as she sits on a log. the two are set against a muddled beige/blue backgrounds.]

taking after her mum

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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.

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I actually need about 90% more interaction between Titus and Elizabeth

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i kinda miss my wife . who is mhw ife what am i saying

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most characters to go by something that is not their real name (excluding those whose titles are given to be something different by harry, but refer to themselves by their given names) FAKE/MODIFIED NAMES 1. klaasje/katarzine/annouk, trying to make her past lose her trail 2. cuno(kuuno), angry at his life and trying to express „that rabid cuno shit” 3. (re)joyce, not actually specified why but implied to be due to a bad memory. i will note though that she refers to herself as „rejoyce leyton” when attempting to prove her transparency to you TITLES 1. egghead and noid (grouping them together) the hardcores, part of a counterculture movement (constructed self) 2. fuck the world and pissfaggot, they are also self expression/counterculture driven like the hardcores but theyre more uncertain and out of place (constructed self) 3. call me mañana, found himself in a cultural archetype and made it his own (constructed self) 4. the three drunks (rosemary, dont call abigail, idiot doom spiral), obliterated by their hardships (destructed self) 5. the pigs, similar situation to the above (destructed self) 6. the paledriver, was most literally shattered by job exploitation so can only now be defined by said fact (destructed self) 7. tequila sunseeeet (destructed self) teetering the topic of this post are the ideological agents sunday friend and the deserter, they dont refer to themselves as those things but their monikers are still a prevalent part of their person so i couldnt leave them out entirely

ADDENDUM: The smoker/"martin martinaise" should be on here, the martin thing just slipped my mind. I cannot find the words for him rn this is just an apology to all smokerheads

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love how gaston is the newspaper writer for evrart and rene was begrudgingly given a job at the union and leo is evrart's little aide and last time deserter ever had someone give him money to do something it was from edgar. claire brothers collecting strange old men like postage stamps

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Something about Kim Kitsuragi being Japanese in particular. The duality of the imperial colonialist government and internment camps. The violence inflicted and suffered. The leadership too prideful to care about the people, people left to fend for themselves in countries that hated them even more. Embracing the worst of what western nations were doing, becoming the boot, defeat, denial of its history. Horrific acts to show superiority and apathy that in the end were never enough; you will never get to join the club.

You are the average Seolite man. Fend for yourself. Don’t think too hard about the injustices of this world that crushed you under their weight, just climb over them. Become the boot. It won’t be enough. It’s all you have.

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I love Trant Heidelstam as a character he is so fascinating to me. I want to study him under a microscope. He’s a divorced dad with partial custody. He used to be addicted to pyrholidon and replaced it with four hours (!!) a day of martial arts. He is disturbingly (upper?) middle-class. It’s never totally clear what his job is.

He’s essentially the only one from Harry’s squad that actually attempts to speak to him with any ounce of respect. He also ultimately detaches himself from the situation at any given opportunity. You can tell that he believes Harry much more than the others, but he won’t step up to defend him and in the bad ending he’ll abandon Harry for dead just like Jean and Judit.

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need more fics where harry is so "nosy" he actually kinda crosses the boundary of what anyone would consider acceptable (like borderline stalker behavior, reading kim's journals, going behind his back to ask about him at the 57th, etc) and kim knows he should be pissed but secretly the attention starved neglected child in him is like 👉👈 he cares about us... wants to know more about us.... he's obsessed with us yayyyy we're winning at being the coolest most specialest guy ever :) !!

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kim you make me so insane 💖 he is sometimes cast as the moral backbone of disco elysium, but i would argue he is the romantic. he is a moralist who’s settled on dogmatic solidarity with the police force. your first interaction with him is the certainty that he would die saving you: a brother in arms for whom there is nothing higher. the conversation ends with him saying i have seen cops go through worse. 

so again: is he the backbone? when kim is really really niceys to you— but what does that mean? are you special? or are you his superior officer. kim hyping you up when you piss yourself, or getting kim to dance, and at the end when he literally would die and does kill for you, it’s an authority check. 

with kim as the moral back bone there is no act of being a cop that is vorboten: you are free to blackmail and steal and rifle through anything that pleases you and kim will always back you. 

kim has limits and you can push him to yelling fuck at you, but equally after the fire fight he does not sort the dead in to cop/ not cop. it’s tender. his infinite and indefatigable tenderness exists but is rooted in a shared oppressive brotherhood.

every time he’s genuinely shocked that you are an extremely good cop, exceptional even. kim you make me insane. anyways back roleplaying the kind of animal who wants to kiss you but doesn’t get to because unfulfilled desires are even better.

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KIM...DO YOU WANT TO TRY DRUGS KIM.....YOU CAN BE HONEST KIM.....

The most likely post canon scenario of Kim and Harry working at the 41st Precint is not "Harry gets sober" but "Kim gets hooked on drugs too"🥴

There is no way working at the understaffed and overworked precinct would do any good to Kim or let Harry's sobriety last for long

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"Kim is so reserved and quiet" dawg he wears a bright orange bomber jacket

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these guys

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YOU - "Don't forget the "funny" tie too."

TITUS HARDIE - "How can I forget." He nods at your tie.

HORRIFIC NECKTIE - You and I are going to dance in the moonlight under a billion stars.

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The Allez-Vous En (translation: Leave Here) graffiti in the fishing village is so important to me actually. At first I didn't quite understand it, I thought it might be directed at Harry or the player or that it was just something to show that the people living here were crazy recluses. But. Then we learn about the coalition aircrafts. And it turns out this graffiti is actually a small show of resistance from the people of the fishing village against the coalition. And that is so beautiful to me. Just. Resistance in the face of oppression

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we need to consider Harry’s epilepsy more it seems like he’s more prone to sub clinical seizures (the ones you don’t lose consciousness, not necessarily triggered by flashing lights) but he is absolutely having a pass the fuck out seizure at the church during that failed shivers check. was he at the discotheque back in the day with shades on, not seeing shit…

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really not a fan of the interpretation that harry du bois is infinitely stupid and weak and horrible at everything. i feel it greatly contributes/goes hand in hand with the cute dumb helpless "golden retriever" infantilized interpretation of him and it's also just mean and not true.