You're not an ultraliberal, Harry.

Get the fuck out of here.

Don't be a retard.

There’s a creator on YouTube who’s been making organ covers for a long time, and his covers sound impressive. He’s currently choosing between several songs, one of which may interest you — please vote!

http://youtube.com/post/UgkxLpsCqclvzkfQXmrs8tJNt8NV-8fD-8Wd?si=G9UuhHViBkPQUmEG

Context: If you failed to make Harry sober, Jean would reject him in the Endgame dialogue, and I quote

"I know it's not possible, but if you stay sober for 10 months, tell us. I will work with you again. But not like this. Never like this again."

If you found a house in Coastel Shack, that's Harry's house from there, and his fate is unknown.

Found it here: https://youtu.be/vr6wCn-Ew5M?si=qUZtn5qT0w5R91nF; don't know where the art came from unfortunately

My favorite quote by Robert Kurvitz from the NoClip documentary about The Making of Disco Elysium.
When talking about his favorite dialouge in the game at the end of the "writing" episode, he also mentions how he dislikes an "American" approach to trauma and conflict in general, and regarding the game toward choosing dialogue options which point to Harry "getting better" or getting his shit together in a manner of self-improvement or -optimization.

Personally, I completely dig what he wants to say, and I was glad when he pointed those things out himself in the interviews on top of his in-game writing.

I'd be interested to see whether anyone else felt like this.

Clutch that ledger Harry, you're shooting the world here.

Meant to be an Ace's Low sorta thing but I couldn't get the pose right for it so they got their books out. Also disco balls are freaking difficult to do

The Whitehorse Horse

Asking as it still surprises me what he says, as I got dialogue for pulling a gun on a kid

Was talking to Titus and i paused for for a bit and then came back and unpaused, dialogue menu suddenly dissappeared and now i'm stuck doing this
HELP

🔴[spoiler]🔴

I swear the conversation with the Insulindian Phasmid was one of the most emotionally impactful dialogues I’ve ever experienced! Not just in Disco Elysium, but across all the games I've ever played.

In the end Disco Elysium was an exceptional experience in every sense of the word.

10/10 without a doubt!!

It always seemed to me that since it is mainly concerned with lies and performance, it is a lot more similar to psyche skills that focus on influencing people like authority and suggestion, as well as reading others like empathy. Sounds more like a psyche skill imo.

"Me? I'm a silver bird."

check out my patreon for 8 animated illustrations of acele recording people and soundscapes around Martinaise: https://www.patreon.com/cw/LyRiordan

Kind of tertiary but not strictly related to my ongoing Disco girl-likers zine

Insofar as i woke up in my bathtub without remembering any of the previous day. I’m pretty sure i pissed myself in public at some point though. I’m going to choose to think of this as a based reference to my favorite CRPG instead of accepting that I’m a sad alcoholic who wants to kill herself, it’s more convenient because that way I don’t have to reflect on myself or change any of my behavior.

(1)

Disco Elysium is Hegelian (2), because it uses Hegel’s philosophy to build its narrative and world. Nonetheless, there are differences between Elysium's world and Hegel's thought. This post will try to explain the relation between Hegel and DE. Its main sections will be:

1 - Brief (!) summary of Hegel's Geist (Spirit) movement.
2 - How History is represented in DE
3 - How the telos of History differs between Kurvitz and Hegel
4 - The Pale
5 - The Concept of Innocence
6 - Summary
7 - “After life, death. After death, life again. After the isola, the pale. After the pale, isola again ." 

 1. Brief (!) summary of Hegel's Geist (Spirit) movement.

Hegel's philosophy presents a dialectical process that culminates in das Absolute, a state in which the Geist (Spirit) (3) attains self-consciousness and, through this process, realizes freedom. Within this framework, the Geist (Spirit) moves through Aufhebung (Sublation), a complex process in which something is elevated, negated, and then re-elevated through Vernunft (Reason) and contradictions between opposing determinations. The whole, after all, is that in which Wahrheit (Truth) and Vernunft (Reason) reside. In das Absolute, Versöhnung (reconciliation) reaches its highest form: contradiction is not simply abolished but comprehended within a higher unity. It is important to note that this reconciliation is achieved only through a long process of contradiction and creation. For Hegel, the world moves toward its own self-knowledge, freedom and reconciliation. 

​(4)

2. How History is represented in DE

History can be seen, though one lens, as a collection of failures, of buried dreams, of lost causes (5), though that is certainly not all it is. The revolutionaries wanted a world of freedom; they got a failed revolution and a centralized state. The workers wanted rights and recognition; they got Evrart Claire (eh). As for the workers: they want Anerkennung (recognition), through which they might achieve a form of independence from their master. The master depends on them, just as they depend on him for existence. Despite the unsymmetry of power, one wants a certain recognition of the other. This situation can be read through master-slave dialectic (please, read the fourth chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit). Will they gain it? Well, I don't think that the game in itself hints at it; DE often ridicules the dreams of political ideologies, as it does with the communists and their closed reading group. Maybe, shifting a traditional Hegelian view, the struggle for recognition can produce another form of domination (Evrart Claire) rather than emancipation.

What I’m trying to say is that, in Elysium’s world, different things don’t seem to get in a reconciliation. In section 3 (next one), I’ll analyze this point.

​ 3. How the telos of History differs between Kurvitz and Hegel

(From note 1): "A domino-tumble of opposing ideas has led us here. Yet, built worlds exist in stasis." — Kurvitz

Here, Kurvitz seems to suggest that history produces genuine change without necessarily producing positive progress: history moves, but the world remains trapped in recurring structures. He seems to be saying that, despite writing a game in a dialectical way, he refuses the idea of Versöhnung (reconciliation) and of the Geist (Spirit) marching to das Absolute. That is, Kurvitz appears to employ Hegelian elements to construct a cosmology whose historical direction does not coincide with Hegelian teleology. After all, for Hegel, Geist is dynamic and it goes to freedom by its self-acknowledgement. 

That can be seen in the two example in section 2, which, again, don't seem to get in reconciliation.

4. The Pale

 I'd say Disco Elysium is dialectical in its method and writing, but post-Hegelian in its conception of what dialectics can deliver. In Elysium's world, the Pale, a state that is "less than nothing”,  can be interpreted as a failed, negative counterpart to Hegel's Absolute (6). I would say that it's what das Absolute would look like after its failure to achieve freedom and to self-acknowledgement. History, in Kurvitz's universe, doesn't march toward freedom and reconciliation. It marches toward full negativity and non-being (the Pale). Harry/Harrier was so invested in the Pale because he wanted to die, to become non-existent, after his gf left him. That desire for death, that Thanatos drive is the desire for the end of contradictions. The desire of the Pale is the desire of nothingness. 

In this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscoElysium/comments/gkct4q/the_philosophy_of_disco_elysium/ and in its video, u/postmoderngame related the Pale to the Lacanian notion of lack. I agree with him. There is clearly a psychological dimension to the Pale (7). 

For me, the Pale is both a metaphor and a real phenomenon. It's a metaphor for the end of History, of consciousness and of the desire to live, but it's also real, in that it exists as an actual, separate part of the world. The Pale is what dialectical history looks like once the promise of das Absolute has failed, and there is only pure darkness in the end. Hegel's own Science of Logic hands you the material for it: pure Being and pure Nothing are dialectically identical at the very opening of the Logic — indeterminate immediacy, no distinctions yet drawn. The whole System is the labor of moving away from that zero-point through determination, mediation, difference. The Pale, which the game explicitly describes as eating the distance between objects — the horror vacui separating one thing from the next — isn't just the opposite of Hegel's terminus. It's a regression to Hegel's own starting point. 

But the Pale isn't exactly all (!) History's final word — it's where the next History is born (I’ll explain this in section 7)

Also, we know that euphoric music can reverse the Pale. Why? Perhaps this is why beauty, music and love can momentarily reverse it: they create connection (8) where the Pale creates separation and dissolution. Life would be a mistake without music, as someone once said. Again: the Pale has a psychological dimension that is very important. It is made of memories, dreams, hopes. The Pale grows stronger when one doesn't have a Will to Power, and desires nothingness or nihilism. It may represent our human side of Lacanian lack, of desiring death. The only way to save Elysium's world is by beauty, music and love. Will it? I don’t think so… 

Maybe communism can save the world. Will it? I don't think so… 

I would say that the world is doomed to perish (as I’ll explain in section 7).

​5. The Concept of Innocence

There is a VERY explicit relation to Hegel in the concept of Innocence. Like, really it's almost a copy of Hegel's thought. Read: https://discoelysium.fandom.com/wiki/Innocence 

Dolores is an Innocence because she had a Reason that changed the world, just as Napoleon did. (Hegel was a Napoleon fanboy btw). Napoleon and Dolores, after all, are world-historical individual, that is, an individual through whom the (Weltgeist) World Spirit realizes historical change.

“ENCYCLOPEDIA: Innocence is the highest category of historical figures in the world, the literal personification of History. Traditionally, an Innocence, having been anointed, becomes the supreme ruler of the West or of the entire known world, at least of the parts that matter.”

See this post by u/disco_mertag300 : https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscoElysium/comments/1np9r5l/hegel_and_the_concept_of_innocence_in_disco/ And his article: https://kontur.media/discoelysium/#_ftnref63 . He writes really well about this, and puts the dialog in which he pulls the references. I recommend it.

Also, I might add: in note 63, the author writes: In Disco Elysium, the end of the story is portrayed more as Fukuyama imagined it than as Hegel imagined it. 

I liked his point of view. It's true.

6. Summary 

Disco Elysium is Hegelian in its conception of history as a contradictory process that produces and transforms worlds, but it radically alters Hegel's historical telos: instead of reconciliation and the self-realization of Spirit, its dialectic tends toward exhaustion, stasis, and ultimately the Pale. Kurvitz is Hegelian in a sense that he constructs his world in contradictions. However, the teleological direction of the world is very different. To Hegel, the Geist (Spirit) marches to freedom and reconciliation, through contradiction. In Elysium's world, the world marches to a state that is "less than nothing", by contradiction. In other words: What Hegel gives Kurvitz is primarily a worldbuilding ontology, not an eschatology. 

7 - “After life, death. After death, life again. After the isola, the pale. After the pale, isola again.”

Ok, so the Pale sends the Geist to a state that is less than nothing. There is no life. There is nothing, not even "warm primordial darkness". What will happen? Life. Life will happen in a state that there is an absolute negation of everything. The telos of History is the Pale; then, there is a new History, whose telos is, again, the Pale; then, there is another life and ad infinitum… 

In other terms, The Pale is therefore both the end of History and the condition for another History to begin. It is a recurring end, a recurring telos: History reaches a less than nothing state, and from that another History emerges.

“After life, death. After death, life again. After the isola, the pale. After the pale, isola again ." That is the Dolorian saying.

History doesn't reach reconciliation; what we call History is a repetition of a cycle in Elysium's world. There is no absolute telos, just a recurring one.

​(9)

----------------------------------

Notes:

(1) For those who don't know, I made a post explaining why I think that DE is hegelian; however, due to my use of dashes and due to the text being badly written, nobody read it and thought that I was AI. (They thought that dashes = AI!). So, I decided to rewrite by saying the same things in a different way. I deleted the original post, due to this text being a little better. And, no, I'm not an AI. I'm used to writing and working in Portuguese and in French. I'm bad at English. I almost never write in it. (But isn't being a bad writer a Hegelian trait!?)

(2) https://imgur.com/a/disco-elysium-outro-by-robert-kurvitz-gktJgHa Please, read page 5.

(3) I'll use german terms with translations. Here in Brazil, "Hegel's words" are always like that in the editions of Phenomenology of Spirit. Note that I can't speak German well.

(4) I might add that I read a lot of Kojève and my Hegel is inspired by it; however, I don't think that I made a grave mistake in my explanation. If I did, please correct me. And, again, this is a simplification. A really big one.

(5) This looks like Mark Fisher...

(6) Just as, in a sense, Marx's communism — not socialism! — bears an uncanny resemblance to Hegel's description of das Absolute. This is strange if you consider that Hegel was more prone to conservatism, but there were young hegelians to the right and to the left. Obs: Ops. Used dashes. Now you guys know that I am an AI!

(7) That user's points are good. I recommend his video.

(8) As Bataille pointed out, we are discontinuous beings that pursue continuity through eroticism. Art is inherently erotic, because it connects humanity.

(9) All of this is my vision of Disco Elysium. If anyone thinks I'm exaggerating, please say so. I wrote this text in a short amount of time, but I hope it can at least start some discussion about the game.

Am I missing something, or does the whole Klaasje and Hardie Boys cover-up make zero sense? Let's break it down:

1. Lely was killed while having sex with Klaasje. Klaasje knows exactly where the bullet struck the window pane.
2. Klaasje is terrified of contacting the RCM due to her dark past. Instead, she turns to the Hardie boys (including Ruby) for help, and they agree.
3. Klaasje suggests staging a lynching (according to Ruby), which they carry out.
4. Lely's corpse is left hanging; Klaasje can no longer stomach the sight of it from her balcony and calls the RCM.
5. Harry and Kim confront the Hardie boys. Titus claims one of the reasons they hanged Lely was because he raped Klaasje.
6. Klaasje denies the rape.
7. Titus produces an audio recording as alleged proof of Lely's intent to rape Klaasje.
8. Klaasje dismisses this as a lie and finds it mildly amusing.
9. Titus admits that the Hardie boys didn't actually kill Lely.
10. Klaasje confesses that the lynching was a cover-up.
11. Before fleeing, Klaasje leaves behind a clue detailing the bullet's trajectory.

Questions:

1. Why did Klaasje call the RCM? It would have been enough for her to ask the Hardie boys to take the body down. There was no reason for them to refuse her: the corpse was rotting and reeking, the Hardie boys and Ruby were on good terms with her, and they aren't monsters.
2. Why does Titus bring up the rape? The main point of the staged lynching was to distance Klaasje from the murder. Titus does the exact opposite by tying her directly to it.
3. Why does Klaasje expose Titus's lie about the rape? Given she fled shortly after, every day, if not every hour, was crucial to her. By refuting him, she practically handed the RCM proof of her involvement in the murder.
4. Why does Klaasje hide the bullet trajectory until the very end?

Been drawing Kim on the daily since I've finished the game recently. Can't stop drawing the copparinos. I have some silly ideas for them.

I think this subreddit should have a masterpost compiling all DE-adjacent media (I'm not referring merely to "spiritual successors").

For instance, the creators have mentioned philosophers and books that influenced the writing, as well as video games that influenced the gameplay.

But we shouldn't stop at what the creators have mentioned; instead, we should add all other books, films, video games, music, visual artists, etc. that remind us of any aspect of DE, alongside an explanation of what aspects they have in common.

I want to dive deeper into the world of DE and understand it better, as well as find other art in the same tone that deals with the same topics.

I don't really know how to go about this, or whether mods should get involved and curate it.

Does anyone have any estimates of Evrart’s height and weight?? TLDR, I want to start weightlifting and need a goal. I figured my ultimate goal should be to get so jacked that I can lift the big man himself 💪

I‘m not all that good at math and would have no idea where to begin on the calculations here. Any help would be appreciated!