#If you are mad that I shat on any one of the conspiracy theories I don’t care

[mr-president]

i think one of my favorite o’saa character moments (other than the confession booth scene ofc) is the bookstore scene bc there it becomes incredibly apparent how close-minded someone supposedly seeking enlightenment can be, especially regarding emotion/compassion

i say this bc it a) shows just how much of an sad pretentious bitch he actually is (karin LITERALLY calls him a “sad man”) and b) it serves as criticism to those in academia/scholarship in an “apply your politics/philosophies to people sort of way”

like, he criticizes a fucking bookstore as a method of “escapism,” as if the fictional world writers create is completely removed from reality, when in fact fiction and stories have always been a tool to help people understand their reality better. fiction can be raw escapism but it often helps us understand our emotions, other people/cultures, and what’s wrong with a little escapism if it even helps you a little bit? that’s not to say he’s wrong—if you want to understand the world then perhaps it is best to see it for yourself—but o’saa doesn’t consider how not everyone had the same options he did, has his willingness to abandon everything in pursuit of a greater goal.

o’saa wants so desperately to understand the world better than anyone else that he completely forgoes the fact that emotions are just as much a guiding factor in the world as any “magic”/science he studies to further his understanding of it. what he views as “reality” is just one aspect of it; yes, gods do in fact control the world and influence it, but that’s only on the most macro scale. but the mundane, arguably, affects peoples lives even more, and isn’t it worthy to understand that as well?

the confession booth scene shows that he’s capable of understanding the emotions of others, but the bookstore scene reveals that there’s a level of elitism to his beliefs and philosophy.

in other words, though he’s a genius, o’saa lacks compassion.

this can be said for a lotta the enlightened souls that we’ve seen actually—nas’hrah’s a complete bastard, valtei can suck my balls, and enki’s a bitch. only nosramus is quite friendly, and he’s also the only one to figure out true enlightenment on his own.

anyway back to o’saa and the bookstore. all of the other playable characters call him out on his bullshit because stories have the power to help people, change them, or even save them. o’saa, in his mad quest for enlightenment, hasn’t really changed as a person, has he? he himself says in his intro that ever since he left home, he hasn’t felt a genuine emotion. that allows him to see how religion manipulates masses of people, to relentlessly pursue enlightenment without worldly ties—

but the bookstore scene shows that you kinda need “worldly ties” to achieve enlightenment because as nosramus said, the world is constantly changing and enlightenment is not one sudden change. rather, it is continuous, and you have to consider everything.

and i like to think that in that moment, getting shat on by his party members about his shitty literary opinions, he maybe realized something like that.

he doesn’t have a nosramus to anchor his pretentiousness like enki did, but i think a lotta the themes of funter (fear & hunger: termina) is how relationships formulate and change people.

o’saa didn’t need nas’hrah, he needed someone to tell him that he’s a stupid pretentious little shit and to stop drawing himself as a mary sue. and then be his friend anyway and listen to his batshit insane conspiracy theories (that are true).

tldr; he’s like me when i was 11 basically.

[also-mcsquared789]

Disco Elysium — Day 1!

Holy shit! The last few hours of me playing this has been an absolute whirlwind... learning all about the world, the governments and the conflicting politics, all the characters and factions and the hanging corpse at the centre of it all. While being absolutely off my rocker while I was at it, as my poor sidekick attempted in vain to ignore my witticisms and absolute chicanery.

I knew beforehand this game was going to be something special from everything I'd been told, but I don't think it was the incredibly colourful writing or the stylistic presentation that did it for me... but when, as I was talking to the manager, my horrible necktie compelled me to yeet myself across the room into the path of a poor old lady in her wheelchair. That's when I grew to love it.

So, I am embroiled in a murder case — that seems to be a lot less about figuring out the murder itself, but about navigating all the factors around it. There were two horrible kids who mocked me with racial slurs (to the point where I considered shooting one of them in the face). There was this rich negotiator who tricked me into figuring out her criminal drug conspiracy, of which I have yet to solve... there were these two old men who shat on me for successfully beating them in a game of shotput. And I have not met these infamous Claire brothers yet, but I HAVE met their henchman Measurehead: He falls on that dial of being so unbelievably racist that he becomes fascinating to listen to, in all his utter madness. Heh, it was a big day.

I will say that I'm not much of a leftist, so a lot of what I've seen about the game's politics is going pretty well over my head. But in regard to the case, part of me does have a theory that several members of the Union is responsible for this supposed man's lynching, and the attempt to cover it up (from speaking to Sylvie) — possibly due to a conflict within themselves. I suspect the dead man may be one of the Claire brothers, Edgar... but that is of course based in not much fact. Considering what I've heard about the main brother leading this group, I do think it would make sense for him to do it — but even if it was, I suspect the big questions surrounding the case will be about whether I choose to expose it. And I don't think the answer to that will be very simple...

My unnamed character, meanwhile, is going through the wringer. I've tried to hold him back, maybe a little too much — it took the entire morning for me to gain enough morale to be able to even approach the body — but it does not take a lot for him to slip the cracks of what we would know as sanity! I've died only once, and that was only because I had failed to kick a mailbox... but rest assured, I've learned my lesson and will not be doing that again. 😂 As for poor Kim, he clearly is better than me at my job — and I hope I will have a lot more opportunities to show my appreciation of him as we go. He has to put up a lot with me, but it seems more and more that these paths need to be taken to uncover the heart of this mystery. More than anything, I hope there will be an opportunity for the both of us to escape the political machinations here safe and sound! And maybe also beat up the Cuno(s?) while we're at it.

I have finished most of Day 1 by 8pm, and will start Day 2 when I get back to it. Thank you everyone for recommending this game! It is all so much — maybe too much — but I am deeply entrenched in it now. I owe it to myself to give this character a happy ending, despite all the intrusive thoughts and profound hopelessness! I just hope I can do ir by the end of the week.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to ask me any questions that you can! (I have not been able to get into the harbour yet, nor the village. I know of several ways I can speed up time, which I think I may have to do so in the future as I close out more leads.)

[bitchcraftmagic]

Every day I become more and more fearful of the growing conspiracy world. My own parents have fallen down the rabbit hole of the conspiracy force fed to them through the false reality created by fascistic media conglomerates. TikTok girlies spout strange delusions about the constant threat of kidnapping by a shadowy sex trafficking ring. Even people going on and on about the Mandela effect nonsense make me want to scream. In a world with ever mounting real world issues so many people would prefer to live in imaginary terror beyond their control.

I am, by nature, an extremely credulous person. I am hard pressed to believe in anything beyond the tangible. But that doesn’t mean I am beyond conspiratorial thinking, on the contrary it can make me more dogged in my more outlandish beliefs. I am my father’s child in this way. But what makes the difference, what makes me less inclined to conspiracy is my ability, my desire, to explore discomfort. I want to know, I want to understand, the things that make me uncomfortable. Conspiracy requires a slavish devotion to comfort.

Conspiracy only thrives because it is affirmation. The Mandela effect only captures the imagination because it’s harder to digest that human memory is very fallible and usually not that accurate at all. You remember the Berenstain Bears wrong because you were a child and children aren’t very good at reading or remembering things. People remember Mandela dying in the 90s because he was released from prison around that time and big news about non-Western world leaders usually has to do with their death. It was in the news, people weren’t that checked in especially in the US because we are generally self centered assholes and they assumed the big news was that he died. The end. Believing in alternate timelines is easier than confronting your own faults. It’s so much easier to say “oh that was a glitch in the Matrix” than to admit that you’re not good at remembering things and you didn’t really care that much about Nelson Mandela, a person you should probably care about. It’s comfortable. Realizing you were kind of an oblivious asshole is not.

It feels like a “harmless” conspiracy at the end of the day. So what? Thinking about the multi-verse is fun! Right? Except the reality we live in right now is important and real and happening around us and needs attention. The existence of a world where children’s stories go by a slightly different name is irrelevant and, frankly, not as interesting as you think it is. We are experiencing THIS reality. Not anything else. Falling into the trap that our inconsistent memory is good, actually, gets us into trouble. Human memory is faulty. Very faulty. So faulty that it can��t be taken too seriously. It gets people convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. It gets them killed. It causes people to dispute reality because we remember emotions better than we remember lived truth. The sooner we reckon with the fact that our memory needs to be questioned, needs to be taken with a grain of salt, the sooner we can tackle some real world shit. But that’s uncomfy, and it’s hard. It’s so much easier to be sure in our memory.

I had a friend in college who used to like to get me worked up by talking about the Matrix as if it were real. And it worked. It could still work, honestly. It is, to me, the most frustrating conspiracy because it is utterly meaningless. We are living in this reality. We are experiencing this world. The “simulation” doesn’t change a thing! I still experienced grief. I still experience trauma, joy, love, fury, desperation, humor, ecstasy, and pain. It doesn’t matter whether it was “real” and if we live in this false sense of unreality what motivates us to change? To experience and explore the discomfort of our reality if it isn’t even real? It’s so much more comfortable to think that I can’t make a significant change in the world because it isn’t even real. And aren’t all the people trying to make the world better hilarious! Don’t the know it doesn’t matter! Don’t they know nothing matters! What dumb assholes, huh?

God, it makes my blood fucking boil.

I could talk about QANON or other more prominent and starkly awful conspiracies but I think most folks who aren’t consumed by the right wing media understand is dangerous and foolish. But I find it more important to talk about these less focused conspiracies. They are not discussed, usually, with much negativity because they are “fun” and “interesting” but at the end of the day they achieve the same goal as other more obviously dangerous conspiracy theories. They divorce you from reality, from lived experience. They paralyze you from trying to make real and effective change. They let you live in a strange comfort, that it is all out of your control, that there is another world where other things run smoothly I’m just not living there any longer. There is no other world there is only this imperfection. But we can change it, we can shift the needle but in order to do that we need to live here and no where else. The fantasy must die. Discomfort needs to be embraced if there is any hope of making this world a better one to be in.

[memes-saved-me]

Ok hear me out- the suffer brothers are great and all. The story they have written so far is great and look at all the attention it got. But sometimes they’re put on this pedestal like they’re gods. Yes they brilliant, but they ARE human. All the theories going around talking about ‘What if they made it look like this, for a big twist’ ‘what if they actually didn’t forget wills birthday and it’s gonna be a plot line in s5’ Like cmon, not every single detail in the show is relevant and some big conspiracy. Like how everyone’s mad abt them forgetting wills birthday, shit I would too! They wrote that what?..4-5 years ago?? Maybe longer? Would you remember a small detail like that? Like I’m sorry but the writers are allowed to forget tiny details. It’s not affecting the main plot in any way. Maybe the fans will be mad bc it could’ve been something more, but they are literally human bro. If they come up with some insane twist, props to them. I bet they could. But they are not gods! Some ppl need to give them a break..🥴

Not only referring to Wills birthday, but just all the crazy theories suggesting why certain ppl died, or aren’t dead, etc etc.

I follow this blog that had insane theories abt Billy coming back and at one point believed them, but can we as a fandom just face the fact that maybe the writers actually have never even thought of that? As fans of certain characters, we will pay more attention to them. As writers they are looking at ALL of them. Not the specific tiny details of every single one. That turned into a rant and I wasn’t gonna make this so long but damn it had to be said. My Ted talk is over 🤗

Also I love your blog btw <3

My biggest problem with what you said is the fact they don't rewatch their own show. Like yeah, they created something brilliant and are good writers in some areas and I agree not every detail is intentional or important but they have twisted a bunch of stuff from past seasons to fit s4 and I hate that.

It comes across as careless especially the whole Max and Billy relationship which feels disconnected from S3 as if it didn't happen anf Billy died in S2 when they were at eachother's throats. The forgetting Will's birthday I laughed at but in S1 Winona Ryder had to tell them certain songs hadn't been released yet because they hadn't bothered to do some research. Fic writers do more research than that.

I agree that they're human and aren't masterful geniuses but damn google is right there. They claim they spent all of lockdown perfecting S4 and it was really good but they fucked up certain parts and that's fine to point out.

They're not going to write what we create here and that's fine because I enjoy what they have done and what we have separately. I enjoy their 80s fanboy story and they're not interested in exploring certain characters which is a shame but fair enough.

I do think they get shat on and praised too highly at the same time. Some areas they do brilliantly and others they lack concerningly so but same lol.

Some of the shit fans pull up is insane. They really aren't that thorough and Billy is well dead. I didn't even expect his cameo. That's why people believing Eddie is alive make me laugh. They said he was written to die, that's why he was so likeable. Which in and of itself is lazy because they're scared to kill of the main cast and almost killed Max.

Most of the heartfelt character driven moments are from the actors themselves. Billy's dad, Robin coming out and El's hand on Billy's face. Amazing moments they didn't think of but that doesn't matter because they happened.

I mostly agree with you but I do think they need to at least google a few things every now and then lol

And thank you! I really appreciate that and love that you came to me with your rant. Send me one anytime haha