#jamrock shuffle

[linisiane]

The Self-Aware Player of Harry Du Bois

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, which is exactly what Disco Elysium is doing with the RPG!

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!

By subverting our RPG expectations, it forces us to become more aware that these expectations even exist and how they fall short of reality. Yet, despite this subversion, the world of Disco Elysium feels so much realer to us.

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.

[discoelysiumconfessions]

6-5-23

[makaronypoflotskiofficial]

disco elysium is also really good because it joins the echelon of video games that illustrate why cardio is great(ly helpful) and awesome(ly useful)

[neproxrezi]

invasion pvp system added to disco elysium, allows invader to take control of cuno and follow the detective around martinaise until he has a critical morale breakdown

[57sfinest]

speaking as someone who played team sports for like 2/3rds of their life there's this thing that coaches universally do where if theyre pissed off at something a player does during a game they just start squatting on the sidelines. like if you look over and see your coach squatting you know you're fucked next practice. i think harry does this squat i think even after total brain reset he gets annoyed while on an investigation and just drops into The Squat and most people are like huh ok but anyone who's ever been subject to the whims of a gym teacher sees the stance and has an immediate fear response.

[juliaaadoodles]

🔃

[neetclown]

Too much patience for this dude.

[flhoarder]

“Where’s your homo, homey” mate you’re wearing a fishnet wife beater at work can we talk about that first

[cryptiduni]

it’s him.

[caramel-mousse]

Playing Disco Elysium and I adote how Kim will just follow you everywhere even when youre doing plainly illegal things. Like yeah he disapproves of all my breaking-and-enterings but by god he's going to follow me right inside

[bluastro-yellow]

disco elysium is a deeply relatable game for me because I too want to pick up every piece of junk and clothing on the ground

[jlemonster]

yesterday it hit me (slapped my face), the fact that its been over a year since my top surgery and you know im happier because I. JAMROCK SHUFFLE?? EVERYWHERE??? LIKE BOY WHERE YOU RUNNING TO? im also so jingly with me keys and chains u_u go little man so full of life

[queen-beefcake-sqx]

[lays down in a ditch] oh ow yeah sure ow okay I’ll just — [adds to both my DoraHarry AND “Harry Listening to Sad FM While Thinking of Kim” playlists]

[yekokataa]

i’m in my very small rural hometown at the moment and i went to the library book sale and found a china mieville book i’d never read before. i opened it up and it turned out to be a signed copy

[chocochococoffee]

me, yesterday, still thinking about how i should be playing disco elysium instead of being at the job: hmm hmmm what about DE but with daemons

brain: what about having a big bear

brain: what about having a big bull

me: both?

brain: both?

[mood2you]

>Tell Evrart you mailed the signatures (Lie)

"I know the mailbox, Harry. I know everyone and everything that happens in this town and I know there's no letter in it yet."

(ID: Harry and Kim next to the mailbox with the green outlines around Kim and the mailbox and cursor halo around Harry's head.)

Evrart probably has guys pet it whenever they pass by.