swallowtailed - Tumblr blog

[swallowtailed]

we kissed. it was nothing more than that.

[swallowtailed]

Cannot stop thinking about Ruby and how brutally Klaasje fucks her over despite everyone in Martinaise's clear affection for her. How everyone seems to like Ruby and her 'gruff charm,' how she gets passionate about radio technology and loves movies from the 20s, likes 'a beer on the beach to watch the sunset'. She's an 'old lady whisperer,' Isobel likes her and even defends her, the Hardie boys are clearly very fond of her. Even when you're being blasted by her pale latitude compressor, it's hard not to like her at least a bit. She tested it on herself first! The Half-Light reaction of sympathetic fear to Klaasje's accusations, and then Drama cutting in to point out that the fear isn't to do with Ruby, it's the fear of being arrested that Klaasje is feeling. Her first response, out of fear of the RCM and the Moralintern, is to use the presumed biases and homophobia of these RCM officers as leverage to pin the blame on Ruby, even as nearly every other scrap of information you can collect describing Ruby's personality contradicts it.

[swallowtailed]

[id: a digital sketch of kim kitsuragi and harry du bois from disco elysium playing boggle. the two are frantically scribbling down words in their respective notes while studying the boggle board. harry on the right is being consulted by his skills visual calculus, encyclopedia, reaction speed, and hand/eye coordination, who are all similarly absorbed and frantic over the game. /end id]

you know how it is with boggle

[swallowtailed]

Party Until You Drop! Ecstatic Vibrations, Totally Transcendent

[swallowtailed]

shhhh I'm disco-ing

[swallowtailed]

okay, a bit of research confirms for me that we got very nearly the worst possible outcome of the tribunal--eight people died, incl elizabeth, titus, and in fact all the hardy boys but two. kim was the only person we managed to save. horrifying.

finished disco elysium...

i mean first of all, obviously, beautiful game. genuinely stunning. it's always a joy to get to enter a completely realized world and a narrative that is entirely grounded in its setting. so that whipped.

i do feel like i understand why the murder mystery isn't the most discussed aspect of the game on here--the solution is really underwhelming as a murder mystery ending. it's a great thematic beat for the exploration of revachol as an ex-communist city and the reverberation of political violence through the years, and the insulindian phasmid was breathtaking. but that is not, foremost, a murder mystery. (the structure doesn't help--from my reading, each act follows a different mystery plotline before ending and revealing another plotline that begins, effectively, from scratch. which again is a good thematic move but... cmon)

game is also very noir in its handling of women which is: frustrating!

the final beats re the pale and our amnesia were pretty convincing--i liked the conclusions that the swallowing un-reality of the pale was emanated by humans and that harry had made himself forget. excited to read some analysis of those plotlines.

the soundtrack has also been extremely good throughout the game, but particularly in the final scenes--the tribunal, the boat, the island.

interesting to look back on what i thought was going to happen, bc i was ultimately entirely wrong about having been spoiled on who the murderer was lmfao. (but i am glad i looked into content warnings ahead of time.)

good game.

[swallowtailed]

painted a lil kim as a treat

[swallowtailed]

we need to launch full investigation wtf was that about

[swallowtailed]

The thing that I adore about the Disco Elysium fandom is that, despite not blocking or avoiding spoilers in any way, I have never once been spoiled on a single plot point of the game. I still have no idea who committed the central murder of the game, or even if we ever solve it.

I do, however, have a vast second-hand knowledge of Kim, his interests, his hobbies, his responses to Harry's shenanigans, and what dialogue options will produce which reactions. This game is not about solving a murder it is about becoming best friends with Kim Kitsuragi and that's how it should be.

[swallowtailed]

if you cannot hear it, how can you ever save it?

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diversity win!

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literally wake up some nights in a cold sweat thinking about this

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I think there's no greater indication that disco elysium is sympathetic towards communism when it literally says "communism is failure" and then the literal gameplay itself rewards trying and failing. The most obvious one being the Shivers check at the FELD mural, which is an Impossible 20 check BUT opens itself up again and again the longer you spend in the world doing things, but even just looking at sheer probabilities, for any given white check, rolling first and THEN putting a point into that skill upon failure is more likely to grant you success than putting a point first and then rolling, but that would require failing first.

Other things too: Precarious world saying you'll 100% fail red checks no matter what (not necessarily a bad thing, btw!! throwing the boule into the sea is a success but like. in some other ways one would want a perfect petanque throw instead. but people wouldn't typically assume that failure is desirable sometimes from the start) persuading you to accept that you'll fail some things that is irrevocable, for a world where everything is just a tiny bit easier.

The faux game over screen when you faint after reading Dora's letter— emulating a sense of failure on the scale of the entire game. When it rolls up most people go "What?? Game over?? No way, what did I do wrong!!" and waking up after that, with no huge or lasting impact on Harry's health or morale really tells the player, "Sometimes things will seem so bad that it all seems like it's coming to an end, but it's not the end, it's really not the end, go drink so water, you can still go on despite this failure"

I'm sure there are other things as well that are eluding me but like. The literal gameplay rewards failing and succeeding far more so than simply succeeding every single time, and I think you get a fuller experience of Elysium that way too

[swallowtailed]

he says this after winning a board game.

[swallowtailed]

WAIT. WAIT. KIM CAN GET SHOT?

finished disco elysium...

i mean first of all, obviously, beautiful game. genuinely stunning. it's always a joy to get to enter a completely realized world and a narrative that is entirely grounded in its setting. so that whipped.

i do feel like i understand why the murder mystery isn't the most discussed aspect of the game on here--the solution is really underwhelming as a murder mystery ending. it's a great thematic beat for the exploration of revachol as an ex-communist city and the reverberation of political violence through the years, and the insulindian phasmid was breathtaking. but that is not, foremost, a murder mystery. (the structure doesn't help--from my reading, each act follows a different mystery plotline before ending and revealing another plotline that begins, effectively, from scratch. which again is a good thematic move but... cmon)

game is also very noir in its handling of women which is: frustrating!

the final beats re the pale and our amnesia were pretty convincing--i liked the conclusions that the swallowing un-reality of the pale was emanated by humans and that harry had made himself forget. excited to read some analysis of those plotlines.

the soundtrack has also been extremely good throughout the game, but particularly in the final scenes--the tribunal, the boat, the island.

interesting to look back on what i thought was going to happen, bc i was ultimately entirely wrong about having been spoiled on who the murderer was lmfao. (but i am glad i looked into content warnings ahead of time.)

good game.

[swallowtailed]

for @daftpatience

[swallowtailed]

I love Roy generally but I love this line in particular because he's saying three things simultaneously, the first factual, that he lived by the river all his life, then separately that he felt a need to do something, the second emotional, that the river was his home since childhood and he couldn't let that happen to his home, and the third psychic, that the river didn't have the heart to not do anything, that it hurt itself in its attempt to clean away the radiation, just as he hurt himself in the futile attempt to help, that he and his home are of the same.