#DE RETOUR....... GIRL CHILD REVOLUTION

[verloonati]

i've been replaying disco elysium lately and on my first playtrough i was at a place in my life where it deeply resonated with me because, well it's a fucking banger of a story.

But right now, i'm at a place where i'm going trough a lot of feeling dispossessed and powerless, a socialist that never lost faith in the revolution but lost trust in other marxists. And right now i don't think i've ever read anything as powerful as "Un jour, je serai de retour près de toi"

the acknowledgement of the current powerlessness. The promise of better days. The insurance that Girl child revolution never dies. The simple statement of that fact right where the people and the enforcers of liberalism died. right in the middle of all this misery, of all this hipocrisy, just this truth written on the ground in Incandescent letters of fire

[automatisma]

Un jour je serai de retour près de toi is probably one of my favourite concepts from Disco Elysium. It seamlessly ties together the political return of revolution in Revachol, the spiritual and eternal burning of the spirit Girl Child Communist and that specific feeling of being at the cusp of something world-changing despite all evidence pointing towards the previous catastrophic failure. All this while being a believable revolutionary motto that's vague enough to look like a love confession (naturally) to the ignorant eye while also carrying profound significance for people who know what Le Retour is - both conservatives and revolutionaries. And I'm not even considering the other returns (like THE RETURN from the island! or Harry's ex!).

[commie-eschatology]

Communist Harry DuBois and the Deserter

People miss that communist Harry DuBois in Disco Elysium is presented as a bad caricature of a Twitter leftist. For him, it’s about the aesthetic and identity, and not about the politics. 

It’s telling that he can easily swing between fascism, communism, moralism, and ultraliberalism. Harry is a (possibly recovering) alcoholic desperately searching for a sense of meaning after the love of his life left him. None of these politics are real, they’re convenient identities that he’s desperately holding onto. 

When you meet the Deserter, he calls Harry a liberal and an enemy of the people. Contrary to what seems like popular fandom opinion, he’s not being sectarian or pedantic. He only sees a fucking pig and enemy commander with delusions of being a revolutionary. From the final confrontation: 

“Conceptualization: You should engage him about inframaterialism. Impress him with all the ideas you picked up during the reading group. 

Rhetoric: No don’t. This man does not subscribe to intellectual daydreams. The communism he mourns is a planetary force.” 

Ultimately though, the future of the movement is not in the Deserter, who is utterly stuck in intense left melancholia, or Harry, who finds communism through a quest for personal self-meaning. 

It’s in Cindy the Skull, the reincarnation of Girl Child Revolution. Un Jour Je Serai de Retour Prés de Toi. One day, I will return to your side. 

[sleepymarmot]

YOU - "So you don't know what to write?" CINDY THE SKULL - "Have you ever tried your hand at graffito? When faced with a blank wall, most people write unimaginative stuff like *Pigs Go Home* and *Mona was here*." CINDY THE SKULL - "We rarely see pigs 'round here, though, just Union cads -- and my name's not Mona, so..." EMPATHY - She wants it to be something true -- and *total*.

---

TRICENTENNIAL ELECTRICS - No one replies, but the static grows stronger like rainfall. Then a female voice speaks out, completely different from the one before. Glorious and *total* somehow. Crawling inside your head. SHIVERS - FOR THREE HUNDRED YEARS I HAVE BEEN HERE. VOLATILE AND LUMINOUS. MADE OF SODIUM AND RAIN.

---

SHIVERS - I AM A FRAGMENT OF THE WORLD SPIRIT, THE GENIUS LOCI OF REVACHOL.

---

YOU - Wait, what exactly is an *innocence*? ENCYCLOPEDIA - The highest category of historic individual -- an embodiment of the World Spirit.

---

ONE DAY I WILL RETURN TO YOUR SIDE - The graffito has been painted over the traces of the fight that took place here. It smells of blood and heavy fuel oil. REACTION SPEED - This was Cindy the SKULL. YOU - Looks like Cindy the SKULL finally found the words for her masterpiece.

YOU - "Does this have anything to do with 'The Return' Klaasje is waiting for?" KIM KITSURAGI - "Could be. In Revachol West, someone somewhere is always whispering about Le Retour..." He squints his eyes at the writing. "It's an *aerograffito*, meant for Coalition aerostatics in the lower troposphere." INLAND EMPIRE - The return to her side. RHETORIC - The return of light.

INLAND EMPIRE - What if the words are not directed at the people of Martinaise, or even the Coalition aerostatics above the city -- they're meant for something above even those... SetVariableValue("plaza.graffito_concept_god", true) --[[ Variable[ ]]

---

ESPRIT DE CORPS - The officers go, leaving behind the writing -- still smouldering. ONE DAY, it says, I WILL RETURN TO YOUR SIDE. THE DESERTER - "Always waiting." The old man turns his eyes from the shore and back to you. YOU - "For what?" THE DESERTER - "For her to return." KIM KITSURAGI - "Her, who?" THE DESERTER - "Girl Child Revolution."

---

YOU - "Yeah, I lit it on fire. It was a poetic gesture." JEAN VICQUEMARE - "I knew it. Didn't I tell you, Trant? I told you it was our shitkid." TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "The line is from Lu Jiatun's 'Mirova 82', isn't it? About Girl Child Communism -- the titular *returning* character. The ghostly apparition of..." He looks around and, noticing the impatience of his companions, stops himself. "Good choice, Harry." ENCYCLOPEDIA - He is correct. It was the Seraise poet Lu Jiatun who in the Fifties of the last century composed a...

The words Cindy finds are *total* — like the voice of La Revacholière. They’re addressed to something high above — nicknamed “god” in the game data. The closest thing to gods this world seems to have are innocences, as well as the World Spirit they embody. According to La Revacholière, the World Spirit does exist, and she is a fragment of it. The Deserter thinks the writing refers to a different entity/idea anthropomorphized as feminine — the revolution. Trant and Encyclopedia clarify that it’s a line from a century-old work of literature, referring not to revolution but to communism, and the choice of the word “titular” is interesting — might the girl child be synonymous with the city of Mirova in that case? According to Inland Empire, the return is not by, but to someone who is referred to with she/her pronouns.