#I feel like a sitcom b plot

[caesarsaladinn]

I walked like four miles around that field, and no luck. I think something else is going on. did the horse eat them?

[doom-dreaming]

god is poking me wjth a stick and laughingggggg

work was a shitshow circus on so many levels. i come home to no hot water. dead bug in my glass of lemonade

[10hourshift]

Chapter 21

<prev -start- next>

Slight cw for blood

Fox's B plot part 1

[beebfreeb]

ohh do you think you could give us a full lore drop of ur hard times in houston ocs?? i think they're super interesting and i want to know more!

I'm really glad people are interested in them but also LOL this is a shared OC setting built around the idea of "what if there were a bunch of weird and mostly unpleasant people in a room together?" This is a sitcom to us.

But Rock, Fauzi and Breaker (the first three characters pictured for the unfamiliar) have a slice of life type plotline about being 3 really awful people who accidentally make eachother improve and grow over a long period of time.

Breaker is an asshole who doesn't take anything seriously and only cares about entertaining himself. His boyfriend, Cornelius, is a washed up b-list celebrity almost twice his age that he doesn't really like outside the fact he's rich and makes him feel important.

Fauzi is a cop and a bully who Breaker has developed a beautiful and terrible friendship with. They like to laugh at other people's expense and constantly egg eachother on to act worse and meaner.

Rock is the weird guy Fauzi beats the shit out of a few times a month of in exchange for really expensive restaurant giftcards. Unfortunately for everybody they start developing actual feelings for eachother, and even more unfortunately, Rock is Breaker's ex-husband.

There are various arcs and character interactions I want to draw eventually, such as the "Fauzi stops seeing Rock for a while because they've started dating their boss" arc and the "Cornelius dies so Breaker spirals and starts sabotaging all of his relationships" plot. Ohh and drawing out how these characters met would be fun as well.

[brucewaynehater101]

I personally am not a fan of romantic/sexual a/b/o but I do have a headcanon for Tim.

I believe that Tim, regardless of gender, wouldn’t have the scents of his parents on him since they’re gone so frequently, essentially making him packless. Maybe the elites of Gotham prefer to wear scent blockers so there would not be anyone aware of Tim being rejected by his parents.

Taking into account Tim’s distant relationship with the bats when he first became Robin it wouldn’t be a surprise is Tim wasn’t invited to cuddling sessions where they would scent each other. As vigilantes they also frequently would wear scent blockers to avoid identification.

All this is to say that I would find it comedic if one day Red Robin takes off his scent blockers and instead of smelling like the rest of the bats pack if instead you could tell that he had bonded with young justice, romantic or platonic is up to you, since many of the young justice members would have also been rejected from the other packs around them.

-abo anon

Hi!!! Definitely agree on not a huge fan of romantic a/b/o. There's some cool stuff with platonic a/b/o, but shifter and/or creature fics tend to have most of those cool features.

Let's get into the hc/au, though!!!!

Does this AU have anything to do with pack bonds or nesting? For the sake of it, we will say that it does.

You're right that Tim probably wouldn't have his parents' scent on him. In fact, he probably thinks this is normal.

Is it nice when his parents are home, he gets scented, and then he feels safe, secure, and loved for a bit? Yeah. However, that's a luxury, not a need. It's nice, but Tim can live without it. He has everything else he needs (Tim, buddy, no).

We tie this mindset into the Gotham elite one as well. Tim knows it's improper to just have proof of scents wafting around. Everyone wears scent blockers (perhaps this became a norm due to rich people having affairs, marrying for money, etc). Therefore, Tim thinks it has to be common that the upper class just doesn't scent, or doesn't scent often. It's like those weird sitcoms Tim sees on the TV.

Then he becomes Robin.

At first, due to Dick and Bruce fighting, Tim doesn't see much of the cuddling, nesting, scenting behaviors. They still do it, but not as often or openly.

As the family starts to heal, the Waynes aren't purposefully trying to exclude Tim or anything. In fact, Dick (and maybe Bruce too) want to engage in those familial/loving activities. However, it's very intimate and only done with people you consider family. Dick does consider Tim to be his brother, but Tim has his parents. Also, how would the Waynes explain scenting their son to the Drakes when the Drakes go to do a similar thing?

Even after the Drakes die, Tim has his "uncle." They can't really explain away the Waynes scenting Tim, so they keep refraining.

While all of this is happening, Tim has fond his place with YJ. He's learned what scenting really means, how it's healthy and vital to them, and how horrid it was that his parents weren't around enough to do it. Tim has complicated feelings on that matter, though.

He found YJ and, even with retired members, they make sure to visit often for scenting purposes. Everyone in YJ is part of the family.

As anon said, you can hc a romantic poly for the core four or do a qpr. Either way, they are everything to each other.

Since YJ core were the first to consistently scent and bond with Tim, Kon and Bart's deaths particularly burned.

Anyways, he gets them back and everything. The Waynes are settling down. Things are good.

Then Tim takes off his scent blockers, which, for plot purposes, he's never done in front of the Waynes (maybe something about propriety's sake and YJ being the only ones he takes them off for). Chaos ensue when the Waynes realize that Tim doesn't smell like them, not one bit. He does smell heavily of YJ, though.

Also, perhaps YJ didn't wear blockers, but the batfam didn't know what Tim smelt like (due to the blockers), so they never connected the dots.

[tj-crochets]

There's a post about like being in the B plot of a sitcom and the only phrase I remember is "a bird is very here" but today I feel like I was a sitcom B plot Which is a long way to say I just got a new bottle of vitamin D3, opened it, and it smelled like rotting meat???? And when I called the company's customer service number to try to get a refund, there was pushback about me identifying the smell of rotten meat correctly*??? Up until the customer service representative said "each batch can have a distinctive scent based on the source, like when we use lanolin" and I said "lanolin is not listed anywhere on the ingredients of this product" and then I was suddenly good to get a refund So yeah anyone have any recommendations for good vitamin brands? I don't think I want to go back to the rotting meat secret lanolin D3 *with each new person I got passed along to I had to be more specific with my description of the smell to get them to understand I was not misidentifying it. Rotting meat is a very distinctive smell and I was VERY surprised to smell it from a bottle of supplements lol

[meekmedea]

A little late since the ides of march has passed, but the idea did come to me yesterday haha. But this ides of March, Clemmie should get to shoot Coriolanus

Maybe the plot begins like ad astra per aspera, where Clemmie dies due to his direct actions, and wakes up at age 18 again. Here's where things diverge. Yes, she's 18, but she's not waking up on the day of the Reaping. She's waking up the first day of the 10th games.

Seeing the scales again is horrifying, but at least she can console herself with the fact that she woke up at home. This is still a chance to change things. And one of the things she wants is Coriolanus DEAD.

Unlike the book, when she makes her first public appearance, she doesn't snap at him. It's tempting to lose her cool, but instead she's rather pitiful about her hospital stay. She makes a beeline for him and puts on a show - "Why didn't you visit?" 🥺🥺

While Coriolanus is able to placate her, he has some slip ups and unknowingly has the bonus of some mentors nearby thinking that Coriolanus is a bit two-faced. Like hmm sure you were busy with all that... Too busy to visit our Clem, but not too busy to visit your tribute every day, and kiss her last night?

``

The first day of the games pretty much follows canon, and all Clemensia can think is that she wants the blond dead. Night falls, they're sent home, except Clemensia shows up at the doorstep of her cousin instead.

It's easier to admit to her cousins what had happened than to her parents. Also much easier to convince them to lend her a weapon, and help out the rest of the plan. It's about this time they learn that Coriolanus has been spotted heading towards the Arena.

Prometheus Herz: You realize that if this goes horribly wrong, Uncle is going to kill me. Clemensia: You're being so dramatic. Prometheus: Me? You're the one who's planning to sneak into the Arena. Clemensia: And you're the one who gave me the gun. Prometheus: Listen– ` Circe Herz: If you two don't quiet down right now, I can and will turn this car around. Clemensia + Prometheus: ... ` Prometheus: We should have taken my bike. We'd have been in and out 20 minutes flat. Clemensia: They'd hear us from a mile away. We should have borrowed Calypso's car. She wouldn't have asked questions or asked to come along. Circe: I can hear you two.

Clemmie manages to convince them she's going in alone. A horrible idea, really. But she's persuasive. 30 minutes should be enough to kill a guy, right? Regardless, she's got 30 minutes before Prometheus is sent in to drag her back out.

Finding him isn't hard, and she's in the shadows watching as he just brings the board down on Bobbin. It's brutal to say the least and she's like, now is as good time as any. So she aims and shoots. He falls to the ground. Except this is when she realizes Prometheus gave her a tranquilizer gun instead of an actual one. 😤

She's mentally plotting a(nother) murder when she gets yanked and slammed into a wall. Reaper. They're having a mini stare down. Meanwhile Bobbin has gotten back up, kicked Coriolanus once or twice, trying to figure out what happened to him while Sejanus has made it to safety. He's not being let back in to get Marcus or Coriolanus.

Bobbin is a bit disappointed that the blond is alive when he finds the dart. But he's also curious. And maybe the only reason that Reaper and Clemmie are too flustered to (a) commit a murder (b) continue the mini stare down. "Are you two done flirting or what?"

Clemmie negotiates for her continued survival and the dart that Bobbin retrieved. Reaper thinks this is the oddest conversation he's ever had with anyone. The feeling is mutual. This is like a sitcom for Bobbin, who's having a great time watching this.

She manages to get out within the 30 minutes, with 2 additions. Bobbin and Reaper. Her cousins have questions, Circe less so after she gets an explanation. Prometheus gets a lecture about bullets vs darts.

And by morning, Clemmie has two new cousins from her grandmother's side of the family. Nobody really pays attention to that. Not when there's the crisis of - hey, is that an Academy student in the Arena??? Is that Coriolanus???

[beifong-brainrot]

"Also the idea of him just having guns and money stashed around the house with his family somehow being blisfully unaware is so funny to me. It feels like a b plot in a sitcom." - it is very funny. Maybe some of the weapons get hidden at Kuvira's place too (paid for with illegally acquired funds from said gambling ring) or she just moves them around randomly in case of suspicion.

I mean, it is possible. Allegedly Kuvira and Baatar were together since either before or during Book 3 and none of the other Beifongs supposedly knew that they were even dating (according to an official Avatar RPG). This man was fully dealing with his mom's protege under her roof and no one suspected anything. Guns and money being hidden in random spots on the Beifong compound with no one noticing is rather plausible with that piece of knowledge.

(He's gotta use the engineering degree for something other than work.)

I can see that. Honestly the way Su was oblivious to Baavira probably Hooking up under her nose is so funny. Miss m'am you have seismic sense can you not feel those horny teens going at it.

Beifong family reality tv show sitcom style but every now and then you can just see Baatar and Kuvira running around in the background with increasingly dangerous looking guns and comically large bags of money and a suspiciously person shaped trashbag.

[froggywritesstuff]

abed's rom-com | abed nadir

pairing: Abed Nadir x g/n!reader

fandom: Community

request: @lilfartbox1 (i am so sorry for the wait 😭) : please any abed nadir comfort / fluff pieces like theres a little angst of them miscommunicating their feelings for eachother and then find out theyve both been doing the same thing of trying to make the other jealous etc

content warnings: not proofread, fluff, angst if you squint extremely hard

word count: 910

A/N: yikes this is rushed but i recently started watching community again and this had been in my drafts for too long so i wanted to finish it

Abed knew he wasn't the best at dealing with his emotions, often turning to his favourite sitcoms and movies for help. Especially when it came to romance. He hadn't had as much experience with it as he would've liked, so when he realised he started liking you in a romantic way, he quickly became panicked. You were part of the study group, meaning if he started liking you it could potentially ruin the dynamic of the friendship. But when Annie told him you felt the same way about him, he knew exactly what to do. Except he didn't. It wasn't working the way he had planned. He'd been reenacting an age old trope; person a makes person b so jealous that they eventually confess their feelings for person a. He started off small, making sure you'd see him catching glances at some random student in the cafeteria, and zoning out as if he'd been thinking about someone else. That was half true. To make it realistic, he'd always think about you when he pretended to zone out. When someone - normally Annie, who Abed told all about his plan - would catch him staring at someone and begin to tease him about it, he noticed how quiet you would get, how you wouldn't engage in any other conversations and would even leave because you were 'late for something else'. He didn't like it. The last thing he wanted was to know he made you upset. But no one in the movies ever stopped their plan halfway. As much as he wanted to, he didn't stop his plan.

He suspected that his plan was working when you started doing the same thing he did and made him jealous. It was either that, or his plan had backfired and you thought he didn't like you so you moved on. Either way, he still felt insanely jealous of whoever you began to like- whether they were real or not. He needed you to confess to him soon. Very soon. Being so jealous as well as not being sure if he had any reason to be jealous was driving him insane, he couldn't even focus on studying. Not that much studying was happening though.

"Abed, is everything ok?" he barely even registered the question, and was not able to recognize who's voice that was.

"What?" he mumbled back, his mind still elsewhere as he spoke with the group.

"We asked if you were ok." Annie began speaking, "You seem kind of out of it today."

Troy nodded, "Yeah, you and Y/N." Abed's head perked up at the sound of your name, suddenly giving Troy his full attention, "Neither of you have laughed at anything I've said today." he said, looking quite sad.

Abed looked over to where you were sitting, the two of you meeting eyes. You looked at each other for a moment, before announcing to the group you had to leave, not knowing that Abed was following behind you. You stood in one of the more secluded halls, startled when you saw Abed next to you.

"Shit, you scared me." 

"Sorry," he said, making less eye contact than usual, "I wanted to tell you something."

You nodded, signalling for him to go on.

"I like you, Y/N." he was quick with his confession, after hiding his feelings for long he wanted to get straight to the point, "I know you like someone else, but I need you to know how I felt." as he spoke, the situation became more and more real to him. No matter how cliche the plot between the two of you was, it wasn't a cheesy rom-com movie. It was real life. And in real life, there wasn't a guaranteed requited love story. There was a chance you could reject Abed's feelings, and his friendship with you would be ruined. "I'm sorry if this makes things awkward between us," he said, a frown taking place on his lips, "You're one of my closest friends, but I couldn't keep this from you, that wouldn't be fair to you."

You watched and listened to his confession intently, seeing how genuine his expression and words were. He wasn't playing a character, or just reenacting a scene - no matter how much his confession sounded like it was taken straight out of a rom-com - it was real.

"Abed," you began, "There's no other person. I made that up." you explained, though a part of you figured that he guessed that already, "I only acted like I liked someone else because I thought you liked someone else."

He couldn't help the smile forming on his lips, "I made that up too,"

His smile was contagious, as you quickly felt your lips turning upwards into a smile as you laughed softly, "You should start making romance movies."

"I have no interest in doing that. I could but I don't think I'd find it very enjoyable." he paused, "But I appreciate the sentiment."

"Speaking of movies, would you wanna see a movie with me sometime?"

"I would like that. We can look at session times together when we're finished studying. We should also get back to the library."

You nodded, unable to stop the smile growing on your lips as you asked, "Do you wanna hold hands when we walk back or...?"

He smiled softly and held out his hand for you to hold, "I would like that."

"Cool." you took his hand.

"Cool cool cool."

[kimtiny]

Yooo

I am like 68?℅sure that you are French if you are not still whatttt is your opinion on the new French ghosts?? I have seen the episodes and have a lot of opinions,so tell me yourss

I am french! I finished the french ghosts just recently so here are my thoughts:

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

First, it's much more heavy toned and down to earth than the US ghosts. I understood that the og british and german ghosts are the same, honestly it's not the kind of series I personally like the most. I like the light hearted and whimsical US version.

And keeping on that tone, the US versions also has the ability to make us empathize with the ghosts from the get go. Where the ghosts are less present in the french versions, which makes the tender moments less impactful in the first episodes.

I'll use the example of Daniel and Pete. They're the scoot leaders with the arrow in the neck. First, Daniel's death is much more crude than Pete's. We see the hit and the whole 5 minutes of him trying to get to the hospital and dying, which is simply not funny and just made me sad! Where Pete immediately dies without empathizing how horrible his death is but doesn't make it less impactful of a death, just doesn't dwell on it enough for it to turn crude.

The US version's A plot is Pete and his wife, where in the FR version Daniel's death day and his family coming to visit in the B plot.

Pete's death day is very impactful and we see him discover his wife's affair and go through a whole range of emotion, Pete is the nicest character and seeing his pain is impactful because everyone is worried for him about it. We see his disappointment when his daughter doesn't come, even if its important for him he tries to stay understanding, which makes her arrival even more impactful because we know that's one thing that would make him happy. And finally when we see little Pete, it's truely a touching moment.

Coming from this episode to Daniel's, yeah it's disappointing. Daniel speaks of his death day to the rest of people but is ignored, he speaks to it to Alison (the living woman who sees ghosts) and he straight up tells her about discovering the affair, trying to turn it in a way it wasn't an affair but coming to term it was on his own in this same scene. We don't see his reaction other than quick anger, because he's not the focus of the episode. Therefor seeing his family at the end of the episode, didn't hit as much, and we discover that he has a grandson named Daniel through a dialog before we see the baby. It just doesn't hit as much.

But by the last 2 episodes, we empathise on the ghosts history and relationships much more. So it's much more touching.

SPOILERS LAST EPISODE SPOILERS SPOILERS

They introduce Isabelle, a kid ghost who seem to be a drown victim and the classic "creepy kid". The main ghosts reject her and call her ugly, when she literally does nothing wrong. At the end, as Alison ponders over what she will do with the castle and her upcoming baby, Isabelle comes to her and show her the room she used to live in. Alison tells her that she wish she could hug her, and Isabelle runs in her arms and they hug.

It's a very sweet moment that touched me deeply, because it's been built up between Isabelle, Alison's baby, the ghosts ect.

Now, still compairing the two versions I watched:

Humor: US ghosts being a sitcom they have gimmics, recurring jokes and punchline onto punchline. Which I like personally and the FR ghosts don't have that. So the humor feels less present, although the funny moments are VERY funny, I just wish they would do more light hearted moments to let the french humor shine.

Contruction: Where in the US ghosts, everything is fixed at the end and the projects goes well and they're happy with their decision. The FR ghosts grabs you everytime you have some hope and remind you how fucking stupid the decision of keeping the castle was. And where in the US ghosts, the ghosts are often the ones causing trouble, in France the troubles don't need a trigger LOL and the ghosts can't be blamed as much as the livings are.

Alison compaired to Sam: Now, from what I know from online discourse. I feel like alot of Americans would find fr Alison to be rude, let me tell you right now: she isn't. Sam is a people pleaser, she's trying so hard to be accepted she'll bend in 4 to please everyone else and be liked by everyone. Alison isn't like that, she's a strong headed woman who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to say no or be displeasing to the ghosts. But at the end, she's a very kind soul.

Overall, slow to start but worth it! Way too short tho, I really want more of it!

[grecoromanyaoi]

ok decided to post this publicly. the current name is 'when in rome' but im not sure i like it. it will ideally b a sitcom/comedy but unfortunately i keep putting in terrible and horrendous things into the plot that make it kinda hard to b a strictly comedy. like theyre a rich family in 1st century bc rome (60 bc to b exact). theyre imperialists. they have slaves. im trying to b as respectful as i can + trying to b comical so more under the cut. the characters r v basic for now.

so basically its abt the avianii, a rich patrician family. the parents are lucius avianus honorinus (sr) and cantilia. they have 5 children- lucius (jr), tiberius, aviana the elder, gaius and aviana the younger.

Lucius Avianus Honorinus (jr) is one of the main characters. he is kind of a loser.  He hates doing what he’s told. He hates not fitting in, but he also hates everything fitting in requires, because it's just not him. He’s neurotic, obsessed with getting positive reassurance. He can’t find it in society or his family, so he looks for it in sexual partners. He wants to be loved, to be desired, to be appreciated in any way. He’s desperate for it. Wants to please his parents and society but knows he never truly will. He wants to be a poet. His poetry is not great. hes got a working class greek immigrant bf and theyre being weird and gay abt it. he doesnt identify as nonbinary bc that label or idea didnt rly exist yet, but if he were alive today hed probably identify as nonbinary.

Lysandros (said bf) is realistic, sometimes borderline pessimistic. Grounded in reality. He’s sarcastic (deadpan snarker). He’s hilarious. He is a stonemason? smith? goldsmith? baker? builder? He’s good at his job, whatever it is. His wife, Laodike, and mother are back in Boeotia, and he sends them money. He doesn’t particularly like his wife, and she doesn’t like him either. They have a kid, Aristokles, who Lysandros figures isn’t his.

Aviana (the elder) is also a main character. she is a bit odd. Kind of a goofball. She says whatever she thinks all the time, never once stopping to think whether it’s appropriate or what the consequences will be. An autism diagnosis will do her a great good. She’s far from stupid, but people often think she is because they don’t understand the way she thinks. Often oblivious to situations around her, but sometimes understands/figures out more than she lets on. she dreams of a great love, but gets married to a man who turns out to b rly shitty and abusive, so she cheats on him w Adiantunnos, her gaulish (gaelic? idk. from gaul) bf who actually respects her (who is the only good parisian perhaps to this day).

Tiberius Avianus Honorinus is way too into the military and makes it his entire personality bona dea Tiberius shut uppppp nobody wants to hear abt ur siege in germania for the umpteenth time. He definitely takes after his father (i need to continue this im lazy)

Gaius Avianus Honorinus doesn’t talk at all. He is a high support autistic, and very likely has some sort of an intellectual disability as well. He likes listening to music, but only to very specific music. He only likes women’s singing, not men’s singing. his siblings (aside from Tiberius) love him very much, but Diotima (enslaved character) is the only one who understands him and knows how to care for him.

Aviana (the younger) is like 9 so i havent really thought about her yet.

Cantilia is a bit of a bully. She wants all her children to present as perfect, and for them to look like the perfect family. The fact that she rarely cares about her children’s feelings, wants or needs, and even Gaius’ mere existence makes it impossible for her to present them as the perfect family. Often jealous and especially mean to young women in her husband’s vicinity, especially to Boudilatis (enslaved character), because he pays them more attention than he does her.

Lucius Avianus Honorinus (father) is high key a terrible person. He definitely has autism but he displays it in ways that pass it off as his “man traits”, for example how he talks about politics and the military almost nonstop. He doesn’t understand his wife nor his children and doesn’t care to. Can be very cruel to his wife and children, and even worse to the slaves. He wants his children to be perfect, and for his sons, when he says ‘perfect’ he means ‘just like him’. He is only proud of Tiberius because he follows in his footsteps and succeeds at a military career. He is very disappointed in Lucius, but claims that “at least he’s not Gaius”. Highly misogynistic and homophobic, and quite a womanizer.

im trying to avoid anything controversial n racist so im keeping all the enslaved characters "white" (not how they saw race but whatever), mostly greek and gaulish, which were v common. Diotima will probably b a main character. she is the oldest one, and practically raised the children. she doesnt give a fuck anymore. she literally says to lucius one time 'theres nothing ur parents can do to me that they havent already done' (after he said they would get mad at her). her father was a prominent scholar in Greece, and he named her after a character in plato's symposium. he and his family were enslaved after he tried to lead a rebellion against the romans. she is extremely intelligent and has a vast range of knowledge about philosophy, literature, history, etc. its just that nobody knows this bc they didnt care to ask.

[o-uncle-newt]

Cabin Pressure Advent Day 9: Ipswich

IIIIIIPSWIIIIIICH!

In my opinion, Ipswich heralds a really key moment in the development of not just Cabin Pressure, but John Finnemore's (solo) projects in general- it's his first really genius episode in terms of plotting, where he first utilizes Chekhov's Gun with pinpoint precision while also building a watertight and well-structured plot that incorporates great character work.

He shows signs of it earlier in the show, obviously, but this is the episode where he first does it basically seamlessly. Douz is the closest, for sure, but the culminating moment of the plan, however genius it is, still handwaves away a few inconvenient questions like "is it any more legal to drive a plane on the highway than to take off without clearance?" Other episodes also have some good moments but the Chekhov's Gun placements are a bit obtrusive (Cremona and Edinburgh, for example).

(I'll make a note about Gdansk- it has some great Chekhov's Guns, but the plot is basically constructed AROUND them. That requires a lot of its own skill in plot construction, but is different than here.)

What I think is so great about Ipswich is that

a) the Chekhov's Gun is not just planted seamlessly, it's also planted unobtrusively- the masterful way that the number "nineteen" is hammered into our heads at the beginning, only for there to be a red herring appearance of the question/answer that puts us off our guard, and then that final moment of realization and resolution... it's just so good. Smaller ones like Martin's inner ear issue are also handled super well- we hear about it in a very specific context that is relevant to the plot and we don't even think twice about, only for it to come back in a new way later out of nowhere. Chekhov's Gun blends in perfectly with the decor.

b) everything is directly in the service of the plot, and makes sense. This is where there's the difference from Gdansk- there, there wouldn't BE a situation in the first place without some of those Chekhov's Guns that were planted (like the seven dwarves game), whereas here there is a very specific plot (how does MJN do when they need to prove their skills in front of regulators) and all of the Chekhov's Guns directly relate to that. Douglas's use of the "hey chief" line is hilarious both the first time and the second, and is used in utterly characteristic ways that also fit in completely logically with what they've been doing in this episode. There's of course a certain amount of coincidence that you have to allow because that's what makes it a sitcom episode rather than real life, but everything is still done incredibly realistically. (At least, from a human perspective- I don't actually KNOW whether the trainings are like that, but from what others have said they seem to be at least somewhat based on reality so that's cool!)

c) everything is directly in service of the theme! There is also a theme and it melds perfectly into the episode- who is the alpha dog. From beginning to end, we know that this episode is about power struggles, and the fact that something that just seems like a (fucking hilarious) joke- Douglas's whole "hey chief" routine- ends up coming back in something that he addresses, in a certain amount of seriousness, to Carolyn is just perfect. It shows what is only confirmed in the next scene- that Douglas knows who the alpha dog is. And, incidentally, one of the reasons why he knows this is his own realization that if they don't pass, it will "make him feel unemployed." He HAS to concede and that makes the moment only more powerful. (I'd also add that the "Marvin and Dougal" convo serves as a kind of textual evidence for Martin and Douglas, in this episode's power struggle, really being equal beta dogs, but that's not a Chekhov's Gun, just close reading.)

Anyway, I may be overly reading into any of this, but the upshot is that I listened to this, after listening to the prior eight episodes, and was just so massively impressed by the structural quality in a way that surpassed any of the prior episodes- but which I know, as an obsessive listener, is only a harbinger of some brilliantly plotted episodes to come- and the next one is, of course, the fantastic Johannesburg tomorrow!

[twistedtummies2]

What do you think about the "Descendants" franchise?

Well, before I go into detail, let's put it this way: one of the reasons I was unsure about "Twisted Wonderland," when I first heard of it years ago, is because the concept vaguely reminded me of Descendants. I have since occasionally described the game as "Descendants Done Right." So, yeah, not a fan. :P First of all, I should point out I really only know the franchise through the movies: I know that there are some books, and I believe a TV show, both of which follow their own continuity. MAYBE those are better, but I can't say I'm in a hurry to find out. As for the films...I feel they're all such vast missed opportunities. Regarding the main characters and the plots, I feel there are some great ideas in there, somewhere, waiting to burst from their chrysalides, but they never really get a chance to. The movies favor "silly Disney sitcom antics" over any real substance. Most of the main players feel like stock characters I've seen a million times before, most of the jokes just aren't funny, to be blunt, and the drama and romance feel so half-baked. Not to mention, it feels like every plot is kind of the same thing, but with a few bells and whistles changed, over and over again. :P I also take umbrage with the depictions of the classic Disney Villains: I know one friend of mine actually really likes the way they're depicted as "has-been villains," but a.) that simple fact is part of my problem, because I have great respect and love for the characters, and b.) more importantly, even that aspect is inconsistent. They can't seem to make up their minds on whether the old vanguard of characters, especially the villains, are meant to be treated seriously or not. You can make a character funny AND also a force to be reckoned with - that's kind of the hallmark of the Disney Villains - but these films don't seem to know HOW to DO that. Not only that, but a lot of them just do NOT feel right with the characters we know: Jafar is absolutely NOTHING like Jafar, and Kristin Chenoweth - God bless her Glinda-playing heart - is just WOEFULLY miscast as Maleficent, to give two examples. Some of the portrayals of the classic villains are okay, but most of them are just so many levels of "missing the point entirely." As for the music...ehhhhh, I'd say it's hit or miss. Mostly miss, to be honest, but there are a few songs, scattered throughout the movies, that I like. And I'll give the films this credit: I have seen and sat through every single one of them, however begrudgingly. I think it's because I have this faint hope that at some point, SOME point, MAYBE they'll finally do something WORTH seeing. I think the third film came pretty close - it's the closest I have come yet to actually liking these sorry pictures - but even that one has too many flaws for me to get fully behind it. Overall...there's some glimmers of goodness in the Descendants movies, but at the end of the day, I think the ACTUAL Maleficent said it best...

[vampire-abed-truther]

Worst Three Community Episodes (IMO)

@sappynonsense here's my thoughts!

3. Economics of Marine Biology

Summary: The Dean, Annie, and Jeff do everything they can to bring in a super rich student, while Troy and Shirley take a physical education education course.

The whole episode is difficult to watch as they hurt each other in name of getting a rich student to join, as well as ruining the campus that surrounds them, instead of hurting each other out of their own flaws and learning and growing. All they really learn is to not try to appeal to rich students by ruining what makes them greendale. 

Jeff was sent to distract Pierce, and their bonding session is the B plot, however it’s lackluster and was done better before. The B plot is the classic sitcom trope of ‘I’m only hanging out with this character I hate in order to get them to comply, but I find I’m actually enjoying myself and now I feel bad’ moment. However since they’re just trying to get pierce out of the way of the rich student, there’s no worthwhile reason that jeff has to hang out with him, as opposed to season 1 where they were working on an assignment for spanish class. He has no reason to need to put any effort into it. The fact that they keep hurting each other to appeal to this rich guy makes all the episodes jokes hurt, instead of make you laugh, let alone how insufferable the rich guy is, just honestly making it a really hard watch.

The only good thing is Troy and Shirley’s C plot with the physical education education. But because it’s a C plot there’s less put into it, making it feel like, at best, a B or C plot, and shouldn’t be the funniest or most entertaining plot in the episode. Because it is a C plot, yet it far surpasses it’s B and A plots.

2. Intro to Recycled Cinema

Summary: The Save Greendale committee makes a movie with Abed’s unfinished footage from a previous project, which features the now famous Benjamin Chang.

The jokes are the same every five minutes. Like a recurring unfunny joke about Chris Pratt and his muscles/attractiveness. I get it!!! Chris Pratt has muscles!!! For a show based around comedy, this episode is beyond lazy. 

The framing device is awkward and hard to work with. The characters don’t want to be there, making the movie, and have no real motivation for saying or doing anything they’re saying or doing, because ultimately all they’re doing is filming a crap movie to make money. 

Jeff gets suddenly upset about his death scene being cut from the movie, when previously he didn’t care about the movie at all. This wasn’t hinted at or developed upon at all. It felt like a lazy way to throw emotional nuance at an emotionally stunted episode. 

This episode features season 6 Britta. I just don’t like season 6 Britta she’s the worst form of Britta. The writers slowly whittling her down from this very grounded character to an absolute buffoon is so disheartening. I honestly like season 2 Britta the most, when she’s comfortable enough with the group to be silly too, but not stupid. 

Honestly, I think this episode is the ultimate lazy writing episode because you expect so much more from Community.

1. Advanced Introduction to Finality

Summary: Jeff is about to graduate, but is afraid of that change. So he imagines that it’s interrupted by the most evil version of the study group members from The Darkest Timeline.

The motives of the Darkest Timeline study group are unclear, as they both seem to want to steal Jeff’s life and make him evil too. This seems like a pretty big oversight, and if you try and hit me with that "it's all a dream!" bullshit to make it make sense, it's a show first and foremost before it's a dream. Community is a show, this is the show, it's always been a show.

They put paintball into the episode, which is a classic reference to season 1 and season 2’s paintball episodes. I think this is a desperate attempt to try to insert something popular to make up for the lack of conviction in the writing. I take a lot of issue with this because we already established in season 3 that paintball was "forced" now. It works in season 6 as a grand finale comeback, but not in the direct next season after declaring it forced and overdone.

With the paintball being shoved in, with almost no blocking, so the fights aren’t exciting like they are in every other paintball episode, but they're clunky and just really bad to watch.

The actual graduation is sidelined for the darkest timeline stuff, which turns out to all be a figment of Jeff’s imagination anyway. I don't like the "it was all a dream" trope unless it has some sort of deeper thematic purpose or message, like in Ouran Highschool Host Club. They use Haruhi's dream about Wonderland to explore deeper themes they're struggling with and really portray the more symbolic abstract aspects of each character. Ultimately, this is the graduation episode. This is what the show has been building up too for the past four years, and they wasted it on pandering to an audience with paintball and darkest timeline stuff. Stuff Jeff doesn't even care about!!!!!!!

these are my thoughts feel free to share urs!!

[linisiane]

What do Rick Sanchez, Don Quixote, and Harry Du Bois Have in Common?

In all three of these stories, these characters are ‘self-aware’ in that they intentionally play into the tropes of the stories they’re satirizing (Rick Sanchez satirizing sitcoms, Don Quixote satirizing chivalric romances, and Harry Dubois satirizing roleplaying games). However, the trick to their ‘self-awareness’ is that they’re lying to themselves.

This post is LONG, so feel free to skip to the end if you're just interested in "The Self-Aware Player of Harry Du Bois" (in bolded green) if you don't feel like reading the rest of the analysis. I go into the meaning of the political vision quests, the meaning of the 4th wall breaking RPG elements like copotypes and Jamrock Shuffling, and the effect this has on the player's relationship to Harry Du Bois!

(Common) Rick Sanchez (L)

Although Rick acts like he can see the audience and uses marketable catchphrases like “Wubbalubbadubdub” to appeal to sitcom sensibilities (“Bazinga;” “Did I do that?” “Legen- Wait For It -Dary;” etc.), the truth of the matter is that WITHIN HIS REALITY, he is not a sitcom character.

He truly does not know he’s in a sitcom.

He’s just an asshole.

ID A screenshot from the show Rick and Morty, with subtitled dialogue that says: Wubbalubbadubdub! That's my new thing! I'm kind of like, what's his name, Arsenio! Wubbalubbadubdub! See you next week. Beside the screenshot is a picture of the mentioned Arsenio, who is the titular character to a sitcom called The Arsenio Hall Show End ID

Rick has ATROCIOUS main character syndrome. Truly obnoxious. We happen to be enjoying (debate-able) it from our TV screens, but he doesn’t know that! Hoe’s just calling his family ‘side characters’ and taking them on traumatizing ‘B plot’ adventures to humor-cope with his multiverse induced nihilism. (it is NOT WORKING)

Dan Harmon, as a big fan of the storytelling theory behind sitcoms, has a thing for these type of self-aware-but-not-really characters in his shows. Abed (from his other well-known sitcom named ‘Community') is basically a film student obsessed with film tropes—

Which means he’s eternally making meta self-aware quips on the show without actually being self-aware. He’s not Deadpool, he's just a movie nerd.

It's a wink and a nod to show the audience, Hey, we’re aware that nowadays people are savvy enough to comment on when they’re in a wacky sitcom plot.

This is ‘some looney tunes type shit,’ amirite guys?

(This trick is called lampshading, it got popular recently with Marvel movies and the influence of Joss Whedon's writing (@dingdongyouarewrong), but it's also going through a bit of cliche fatigue right now. "That happened" jokes are an example that I know so many people are sick of, partly because it feels like writers include self-awareness/lampshading as a shield from criticism by pretending you can't critique a problem they're self-aware about!

Let me highlight it to you in the rest of this essay as a tool in satire/pastiche.)

'Donkey Hotel' (according to my speech to text)

To explain Donkey Hotel's deal, I must remark: This guy is on some ancient mental illness type beat.

Now, in the ancient era of Hippocrates, there used to be the hot idea that there are four major human temperaments, and these temperaments are influenced by the balances of liquids in our body called humors. And that an imbalance of the four would lead to an over representing of a temperament.

Don Quixote had a 'Choleric' temperament, which is an overrepresentation of yellow bile and characterized with qualities such as 'hot and dry' and emotional irregularities such as increased anger or behaving irrationally. That's our knight!

Now obviously we know that the idea of 4 Humors in our body controlling our temperament is a BS simplification of mental health, BUT, there’s usually a kernel of truth in ancient theories. The universe really was made up of elements like Aristotle theorized, just not the fire, earth, water, air that he thought they were.

Similarly, our author our man, Cervantes, was using the 4 Humors more to develop a physical/biological explanation to Don's mental illness.

All this to say, Don Quixote is currently deluding himself into believing he is a gallant knight, off to defend the honor of his lady love, the total paragon of a chivalric romance novel because, and I quote, “he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits.”

Let's pause.

An escapist stupor that completely wiped the mind of its host?

(FANART BY @so-engery! Check them out!)

ID Two images. One is is Gustave Dore's "Don Quixote Dreaming" drawing. The other is Disco Elysium fanart by Marie Enger @so-engery. Both showcase the main character of their respective works, slumped and surrounded by mad figments of their imagination, highlighting the parallels between the two. Harry with his Skill voices and Don with knights and fairytale creatures. End ID.

That’s our boy, Harrier Du Bois right there!

And while obviously Harry's condition at the start of Disco Elysium is more based on modern understanding of psychology (aka alcohol did it to him, not intense insomnia and a chivalric romance bookathon), it’s real neat we get this this little parallel before we even dig into Harry!

Now, with that neat explanation of why he’s self-aware out of the way, Don Quixote’s deal: Again, he’s not actually self-aware, he’s quite possibly the opposite of self-aware, and EVERYBODY (even the audience!) knows it. He’s only self aware in the sense that he’s acting like a character in a fictional story, which he is, but he’s got the wrong genre.

He thinks he’s in an action/romance, but he’s actually in real life—A satire of the action/romance genre!

Well, caveat.

Is Don Donning the 'Don' Inspirationally or is he Donning the 'Don' to Act as a Don About the Downs of Chivalry?

I read it as Don Quixote donning the 'don' title to act as a don at the college of 'please touch grass and stop romanticizing romantic chivalry.'

A super popular adaptational take, however, is to read him like he's an inspirational dreamer held back by a harsh reality.

Big Nate's Book Reviews on YouTube did a sweet review that highlights this perspective, along with his lil doobie,

that Don Quixote's perspective brings fresh child-like imagination and fantasy to the mundanity of the lives of the people around him. Nate says that Don Quixote and Sancho are "Truly the homies;" they're the first times he's ever felt that he could "find friends in characters in a book."

So there's definitely a joy and a message to the dreamer reading! BUT I tend to be a bit cynical about this, like it can feel a bit too similar to USAmerican Exceptionalism to me.

To clarify what I mean, let's do a Rick parallel.

Don Quixote, as a character, is more similar to the FANS of Rick and Morty than he is to Rick. (Which is its own commentary about how little we have progressed as a society since this book was published like 400 years ago, but also the way media is influenced by prior media.)

To explain THAT, lemme first say that there’s a sort of meta irony (which is how I describe this phenomena according to J-Reg’s theory of satire, but I don’t know the actual name of this) in the ‘he’s just like me fr’ guys. ‘Literally me’ guys. Guys who pseudo imitate Patrick Bateman, literally any Ryan gosling character, etc.

ID A youtube screenshot of 3 different videos titled "literally me" "Literally Me" or "Literally me (I'm mentally insane)" with different Ryan Reynolds characters as the thumbnail. In the "I'm mentally insane" video description, one of the tags is the word "sigma." End ID

Often these characters are meant to be made fun of as parodies of another trope, like Don Quixote is to a chivalric romance protagonist, but there’s a certain subset of the audience that is either too dumb to get it or just doesn’t have the context or background to get it.

Like the dudes who watch fight club, and just end up making fight clubs of their own. Or the way people misinterpreted Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ as celebrating the US, instead of its true message of lambasting the US for its hypocritical treatment of its veterans. Or the glorification of Rorschach from Watchmen despite him basically being a MAGA. Or the way USAmericans didn’t get Starship Troopers because it was a parody of US military fascism.

There are tons of examples of these because of satire usually says more about the reader/viewer than it does about the author, like a Rorschach test (he really is aptly named). (And it’s why it’s more often fascists/conservatives wildly misinterpreting leftist media. People are more likely to come with a conservative perspective than vice versa bc conservatism is, by its definition, the norm. Though this does still happen on more progressive sides e.g. TJLC.) They didn't see or chose not to see the irony.

Cue the Reddit dudebros misinterpreting Disco Elysium as pro centrist or “all ideologies are equally bad" and the INSANE 'you have to have a high IQ...' 'rick is good and objectively correct' Rick and Morty fans.

ID Two screenshots. One of the infamous "To Be Fair, You Have To Have a Very High IQ to Understand Rick and Morty" copypasta. One of a Disco Elysium Reddit post titled "Disco Elysium is Not Politically In Favor Of Any Ideology." End ID

Speaking of Rick and Morty fans, this is what I mean by the idea that Don Quixote is more like Rick's fans than he is like Rick. Much like the way Don un-self-aware-ly misinterprets his satirical reality for the chivalric romance of his favorite novels, so too do Rick and Morty fans un-self-aware-ly misinterpret Rick's nihilist satire on the sitcom for what is cool and good to do in real life. Plus, I can totally see these type of dudes unironically saying "Milady" to keep chivalry alive. But, there's one level further to this, beyond even seeing the irony, which I call the 'he's just like me fr' guys.

Now, in the case of the 'he's just like me fr' guys, it's not that they're mistaking the satire for sincerity—they totally understand that Patrick Bateman is a satirical take on Yuppie 'grind till you make it alpha' culture.

They're doing a secret third thing—meta irony—where they understand that Patrick Bateman is meant to be bad but act like they're un-self-aware and missed the irony anyway.

It's supposed to be a joke, buuuuut it's a joke the same way people will say "SLAY!" as a joke until it's unironically a part of their vocabulary. The ambiguity is key.

I'd argue that the dreamer Quixote approach is an application of 'he's just like me fr' view to Don Quixote, where he's 'a Chad rejecting reality in favor of the perseverance of man's whimsy' to some people, even as they joke that he's delusional ("Literally me (I'm mentally insane)").

Don Quixote certainly isn't doing it on purpose—again, he's un-self-aware, and he even got bullied out of it in part 2 (which admittedly I haven't read). Yet, there's a genuine sadness there of a man with such a penchant for adventure getting bullied that makes you wanna start humoring him.

It's ironic but not: Meta irony.

ID A screenshot of Jreg's "Post-Irony, Meta-Irony, and Post-Truth Satire (Video)" thumbnail. End ID

But yeah, meta irony is all fine and dandy when it's about slaying, but when it's about emulating the patriarchal psychopath, Patrick Bateman, or using edge-y humor to spread alt-right talking points, you start to wonder if there can be something insidious to the 'he's just like me fr' approach.

To put it best, the wild popularity of the Dreamer Don Quixote interpretation feels like the result of USAmerican 'grind till you make it' 'individual exceptionalism' 'it would suck for you, but i'm built different' values distorting the absurdity of being a reality denying dreamer, the same way we struggle to understand the Starship Troopers because it just feels normal/celebratory to us.

Don Quixote

So I think Don Quixote resonates strongest, for me, in the way it boldly states that reality is beautiful and worth living in without needing the opium of escapist fantasy.

For one, Cervantes is a rare ye olden feminist king who takes the time to point out that one man's escapist chivalric masculine fantasy is another woman's misogynistic reality.

To demonstrate, he has many examples of female characters telling off men for projecting romantic fantasies on them, but a more relevant way is how he writes Don Quixote as literally renaming some random woman he's never met 'Dulcinea' because he's decided she is his Lady he's given his eternal servitude to.

He renames her Dulcinea because it's "a name, to his mind, musical, uncommon, and significant, like all those he had already bestowed upon himself and the things belonging to him."

Which is PEAK satire of the misogynistic objectification of chivalry. If only the Rick and Morty "Milady" stans had the self-awareness this book had 400 years ago.

(Sidebar, but does anybody else think Don Quixote would make an absolutely killer Drag King persona? Don Queerote... Plus the ballet about him would help with the pre-existing choreo/music. Just a thought!)

But on another level, Don Quixote is full of interesting characters or stories outside of the chivalric knight conceit!

ID Pen illustrations (aka engravings by Gustave Dore) of two events happening simultaneously at the same inn in Don Quixote. The one above is of Don's assault on the wineskins in his sleep. The one below is of the reunion of Dorotea, Luscinda, Cardenio, and Fernando in the inn. End ID

People often clown on the novel for having so much time dedicated to the soap opera antics of side characters totally unrelated to the knight plot, but their antics being outside of Quixote's chivalric view emphasizes how life is interesting even when you're not following a delusional knight lifestyle!

Romance and reunions and betrayals that Don never really understands because he's too busy fighting windmills and wineskins! Yes, the delusion allowed him to go out and explore the world, but there's something so silly and sad about missing whimsy of real life in favor of living in escapist Knight Fanfiction. Reading about Cervantes's soap-opera-worthy life only reinforces this whimsy for reality and touching grass.

The Self-Aware Player of Harry Du Bois

Preface: My main experience is JRPGs, not so much other Western RPGs and tabletop games. So although I’m saying it’s a satire of these tropes, and I noticed a lot of these things as ‘satire’ and 'parody,' I’m not totally enmeshed in the subculture the creators were going for, so I might need some corrections. 

Finally, this transitions into the deal with Harry! It's fascinating to me to think about how satire is used as the 'touch grass' or 'be fucking for real' genre. Oftentimes it's making fun of tropes/conventions by humorously contrasting them with reality—so how does this play out with the RPG!?

Weeellll, it goes hand in hand with the idea of RPGs as escapist power fantasy. RPGs are often thought of as the ultimate self-insert fantasy by its detractors or worst players, ahem looking at all those DND horror stories about entitled mangsty murderhobos.

One of the most infamous criticisms of Disco Elysium is its lackluster combat.

ID A screenshot of a random forum discussion post by dungeon master Zed Duke of Banville. It reads: "Disco Elysium has neither combat nor exploration, and therefore is missing two of the three fundamental components (or sets of components) that define the RPG genre." End ID

The game has essentially bordered off your ability to make Harry into a power fantasy murderhobo because you just are physically unable to equip an longsword or cuisse to murder your average citizen on the street of Martinaise.

But even on a less mangsty level, it subverts a lot of the basic expectations of RPGs.

Like the encounter with the racist lorry driver! You never get the ability or quest to change his mind, you only choose how you react to him.

Where other RPGs might let you act as the white savior or the white knight of chivalric romance, no questions asked, you're changing the minds of everybody who's wrong so we can all get along, Disco Elysium really makes you confront your ability to whiteknight, makes you confront if whiteknighting is even helpful, and why you wanted to whiteknight in the first place.

It’s part of the fun/humor experience of Disco Elysium that you at first expect to solve the world’s problems with a couple quests and lines of ‘good’ dialogue and then get socked in the faced with the fact that yeah, you can’t do much, you’re one person, what did you expect, asshole? Cuno doesn't fucking care!

ID a screenshot of Disco Elysium dialogue YOU - "Don't call it a dump, you've made it nice and cosy here." NOVELTY DICEMAKER - "Yeah." She stares out of the window, not really hearing your words. "Or maybe it's the entire world that's cursed? It's such a precarious place. Nothing ever works out the way you wanted." "That's why people like role-playing games. You can be whoever you want to be. You can try again. Still, there's something inherently violent even about dice rolls." "It's like every time you cast a die, something disappears. Some alternative ending, or an entirely different world...." She picks up a pair of dice from the table and examines them under the light. End ID

Like, Neha is highlighting this little meta element of how you can stack your Harry in any RPG to pursue a certain ending or situation, but the actual outcome is still influenced by a dice roll out of your control.

A lot of the satirical humor in Disco Elysium comes from the absurdity that you can do everything right or everything wrong, and the dice can still fuck it up or save it for you—not just for things like high-fantasy attacks, but mundane things like remembering your name.

The dice are, at their core, about how RPGs aren't just for the control fantasy, of winning high-fantasy battles, but also can represent life as it is, mundane and uncontrollable.

Similarly, Harry is clearly written—complete with all the 'lore' that this would entail—to couch his RPG protagonist nature in the real.

If RPG characters are blank slates? Let's give ours amnesia! Need fast travel?! Kim teases the 41st Precinct for constantly running everywhere by calling it the Jamrock Shuffle. He needs to have deep and intimate conversations with everyone, even when they're strangers? Yeah, that's so weird we gave him the name 'Human Can-Opener,' and everybody remarks on his uncanny manipulation skills.

It's commenting on difference between controlling an RPG avatar and navigating in a human body.

As Kurvits said: “In reality we do not have control, or complete control, of our minds. Just like our body, it is something that we give-not even commands wishes to, and we hope it's gonna do it. We hope it's not gonna break down, we hope it's not gonna rebel against us.”

In one type of RPG fantasy, we don't even question our total control and even assume the joy is from the control. But in Disco Elysium, we lack control and find joy in it anyway. That is the fun of the game making us, the players, 'self-aware' about its RPG elements, and it especially resonates with anybody not able-bodied, anybody neurodivergent.

Harry Du Bois and Self-Awareness: Copotypes? More like Cope-otypes.

So that's on Disco Elysium and being aware of RPG elements in general, but let's deep dive into Harry and his Copotypes and political alignments like the OP!

I kind of want to round this last one out with what this all means. WHY am I, and others, linking self-awareness and satire? What's the link here?

Irony is one of the major tools of satirical writing, and there's always a little irony in being self-aware and doing it anyway, I think. It's specifically that Meta-Ironic element/Lampshading that is so rich for Touch-Grass satire because it parallels the futility/irony of self-awareness in real life.

The copotypes work this way.

ID A screenshot of a youtube comment. @jbeast3385 "Harry fundamentally takes on extreme interpretations of every ideology in the game as a coping mechanism for the tragedy that is his life, and it's amazing to see the amount of care given to extending an understanding of why each ideology appeals to his fractured mind. Each quest makes him something of a Don Quixote, searching for a purer purpose through political thought, failing spectacularly with it, but still fundamentally developing him and inspiring others beside him." End ID

The copotypes and the political alignments are a parody of classes and moral alignments. Rather than being a knight or a wizard, you're a superstarcop or a sorrycop! They don't do much, like there are no fireballs for an art cop, but they do poke fun at the ways the player is choosing to play Harry! Instead of chaotic good or neutral evil, you can be a communard or an ultralib! Which both involve spouting hilariously inappropriate talking points to the other citizens of Revachol.

What's fascinating, as @fagcrisis of this post says, is that these alignments are statements of how your Harry copes with the real world and the past/how he justifies what he does.

From the Solution to the Boring Cop Thought:

When someone says something political, the first three thoughts in your head are a ludicrous hodgepodge of communism, fascism and stock tips. When they ask you why you did something, it's superstardom, apocalypse, or the *mea culpas* of a flagellant cop monk

You start off making some choices based on the limited dialogue options of Harry's bizarre personality. If you play it like any other RPG power fantasy, BAM, the game hits you with the "Regular Law Official" thought, and you're labeled "Boring Cop." Or if you're apologizing to get the 'good' route, BAM, the game hits you with the "Rigorous Self-Critique" thought, and you're labelled "Sorry Cop!"

The game makes you 'aware' of your playing style, a little poke to say 'Stop being so scared of failures! You're boring! Sorry is not enough! Stop trying to be 'lawful good' (ACAB) and be a human!'

From the same Solution:

It's not easy, reaching for the fourth option -- the normal one. But you have. And now you're not *just* crazy, you're also *boring*.

Some people get this taste of self-awareness and fully embrace diving into the deep end of the game—Disco baby! Others lean into the sorry/boring/moralist cop in an ironic 'self-aware' sort of way—like the technique of Lampshading, since we're our own writers as RPG players.

But on a Harry level, it's also about HIM becoming self-aware of his habits, of internalizing these thoughts about his actions, his past, his coping mechanisms.

Seeking either “sweet oblivion” or to become “a different kind of animal,” many of the possible roleplaying choices are rooted in his desire to forget, evade or reframe the past. Whether self-destruction through drug abuse, fantasies of superstardom or visions of impending doom; it’s all in the service of not wanting to face the past, and the disastrous effects Harry’s continuous failure to do so has had on his life. - Vice

As the @fagcrisis of this post noted, Dora pretty much ALWAYS mentions the way Harry escapes reality by thinking of himself as an archetype, like other people are NPCs in an RPG. "like hes a self aware character but in the shitty way where him knowing he is a character and him acting like it only makes it worse because there isnt a story to escape from, he just cant cope with the real world" He's pulling a meta-ironic ''he's just like me fr" with Guillaume Le Million (who hangs himself) and superstardom the way "he's just like me fr" guys do it for Ryan Gosling.

And each copotype and political alignment are an opportunity to satirically critique the flaws and failures of each coping mechanism.

Cope-otype: Fascism

"Fascism, being marked, according to Paxton, by a need to compensate for humiliation, promises easy solutions to someone like Harry. It’s a crutch to prop up threatened masculinity, a rhetoric to shift blame for personal failings to ominous outside forces." - Vice

This game's satirical take on fascism is sort of perfect, literally making it about the lower intestines, 'gut instinct,' and bullshit (@spilledkaleidoscope). To be frank, fascists are 'full of shit,' and the vision quest highlights the way fascism isn't about a coherent ideology like 'returning to the past,' but rather it's a hodgepodge of SHIT thrown together to prop up hurt ego, threatened masculinity, of giving an easy scape-goated answer to the question of how Harry's supposed to face his past and his future.

The answer? He shoots it.

It's accurate in a way that doesn't reinforce the 'cool' aesthetics and pageantry fascism is obsessed with, what with literally calling fascists full of shit and all. Kim notices your change in expression, your stoic 'noble suffering' fascist face, and immediately calls it constipated. Bless.

Yet, even as Kim calls you out, even as you're aware of fascism's failures, how it destroys you ala Harry Du Bois -> Detective Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau, Fascist!Harry still believes because he can't face a wounded ego.

Cope-otype: Ultralib

Ultralibs on the other hand? I think it's telling that Idiot Doom Spiral is basically ultralib Harry's foil and a major questline NPC—the one who gives you Tequila Sunset.

Even the names are foils. Idiot Doom Spiral names himself that way to romanticize it, to make it into a marketable story, "but it keeps him in this state too, like a vicious cycle. The name ‘George’ is a name that still connects him to humanity," while Idiot Doom Spiral is a way to 'accept his place' even though it's miserable and keeps him from doing something about it, nor connect with other people, as @kindaeccentric put it in this post.

Similarly, the megarich light bending guy in the UltraLib quest LITERALLY is much more unlikely to connect with poorer people because the Rougon-Macquart coefficient literally dictates that we cannot see the richest people because their networth bends the light around them. It's an inversion of the way rich people are ignorant to poverty in real life, and here's a really good fic that covers this coefficient!

Finally, this mirrors Tequila Sunset as a name as well, the way it's a cope for hating himself. Instead of being miserable, he glorifies his misery by calling himself a funky, disco drink name, even as it symbolizes being washed up or even symbolizes the pale swallowing all, depending on how you play him (@palin-tropos).

So much of the ultralib plotline is about adding value — whether by sprucing yourself up with a new name like Tequila or Idiot or by 're-conceptualization' — through stuff like grind/hustle culture. An obsession with increasing networth but also 'giving back' to the community, as philanthropists put it.

But the satire of the ultralib vision quest is highlighting how hollow 'adding value' is, how much of it's just competition for wealth for the sake of wealth with no real meaningful answer or value.

ID Two screenshots of the game Disco Elysium. The first is of the horseback monument as it is. A matrix of cables and ropes isolate the fragmented bits in thin air. The second is described as this through in-game dialogue: HORSEBACK MONUMENT - The scaffolding around the old monument has been taken down, In its place are the spoils of your investment. Numerous rods and ropes still hold the original reassemblage in place. YOU- Reflect on the re-conceptualization. HORSEBACK MONUMENT - An apricot sceptre shines party-bright across the monument. Glitter balls dangle like severed heads below the eternal king of disco. It is unmistakably a vision of you in your prime -- a killer on the performance floor, icon for all. End ID

It's 'reconceptualizing' the Horseback Monument — the symbol of both the bombing of the revolution and the enduring of spirit the communards anyways, the way they've built a monument to freeze in time the moment of the profligate king being blown up — by building it in your own image. The fact that to do so you need to exploit the labor of an artist so you can make a profit, and it doesn't truly 'give back' to the community in any way. In fact, it's almost the opposite, like you've ruined the community monument by painting yourself AS THE KING.

It's why even Harry admits that "You're just insane, insane and gone. Even six billion won't fix you if she’s not there." Each copotype and political ideology contends with their own version of this as Harry learns to grow and face his past head on.

The Marriage of Fictional Conventions and Real Human Psychology

In the end, you can't just lean into an ideology or an archetype and hope that it'll answer all you problems.

But more than that — being self-aware about your issues doesn't solve anything either, no more than lampshading "fixes" any problems with your TV show.

It is this parallel between what Harry learns as he progresses and what the player learns as they progress that makes us empathize/resonate with Harry.

From acting erratically, then realizing it's part of an ideology, self-awarely adopting an ideology, to seeing how it fails and learning not to hide behind it. From "He's a blank slate so I can project my power fantasy onto him," then "I don't actually have a lot of power or control here," to "He's not just my RPG character, he's a person."

He's becoming a person, twice over.

It's ludonarrative resonance or consistency. A marriage of literary convention and real human psychology, on two scales.

And this resonance demonstrates why this genre of self-aware pastiche character is so popular: At it's best, you're forced to contend with the characters as fully realized people, paradoxically because they highlight the difference between fictional conventions and reality.

By acknowledging and poking fun of the fictional conventions, Harry Du Bois, Don Quixote, and Rick Sanchez feel more real to us.

And their stories come packaged with rich themes about dangers of disconnecting yourself from reality and the short distance 'self-awareness' alone can take you, which will resonate with almost every one of us here on the Internet. At least, I know it resonated with me.

BONUS:

Shen Yuan from Scum Villain Self-Saving System (@whetstonefires) also fits this list!!!!!!

[samthecookielord]

(Intro) - (Previous)

With a bit of convincing, Ivor gets Jesse to take a potion of eepiness! yay!

And with that, you get Jesse to take a goddamn nap already. You only realize after they’re already snoozin' that you probably should have kept them awake to teleport everyone back

Oops lol.

So you have to take them back on foot. ‘Cause they snooze for a while. Ivor and the entire redstone block he added to the potion <33

On the way, Jesse talks in their sleep! How cute and quirky of them. They say things like “we need to get rid of the sun, it’s bad for him” and “i gotta kill romeo” because they’re just so silly and quirky.

The player regains control of Jesse. The first thing they see when they wake up is a picture frame. It’s the picture from before except they fixed it and jesse isn’t obscured anymore. Maybe there’s like notes from each of the friends next to it. insert another group hug here. We don’t have a ton of ideas for this episode lolll i guess it’s like a slice of life episode about repairing your relationship with the beacontown citizens? Also stella is there! Stella probably had a silly sitcom B plot while all the wacky stuff with the main cast was happening. Maybe she made up with Lluna too. We love to see it

Also you can show Twoben to the guy with the pigs. You know the one. You can show him Twoben. And Twoben’s little booties. Also maybe kevin from stampy is there because why the hell not. omg yay

Radar is now honest about being a zombie and you get him an umbrella so he can walk around during the day without overheating. Since you’re god you can just set the time to night if need be anyway. Provided you light up beacontown really good. Also you go to him privately and tell him that if he wants to quit his job on account of the manslaughter that would be ok

Jesse: Hey… Radar: Yeah? Jesse: Just so you know, if you don't... feel comfortable still working here, I get that, and it's okay. I can help you find someplace else, if you want.

Radar thinks for a moment.

Radar: Actually, I think I’ll be okay.  Jesse: Really? Radar: Yeah. It was… really scary, but we’re friends. I know you never wanted to hurt me, and it was scary for you too. It’d be kind of nice to stick together, I don’t know. Jesse: If you’re sure.

Radar goes to Romeo to help make sense of his notes on Jesse’s powers. He is the only one who can do this because he is really good at not immediately punching him for everything even if he really wanted to. He is so brave. Gold star for him.

and then uhhhh that's the end of the doc! aside from dedicated episode to oc shenanigans. theres probably a lot we missed simply due to forgetting to put it on the doc LOL but we hope you enjoyed!

...

it's not over yet?

(? You can now play as Radar)