#and that it’s clear that’s the Dolorian church | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

familyabolisher · 2 years ago

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i'm sorry in advance for asking you about what was essentially, a small part of a month old jokey reply to a post. that said, what would you consider the implications of the "this world is enough" quote being said by specifically Joyce Messier to be, along with the ensuing "(...) this is the greatest and kindest arrangement the atoms had in them"... it's just that this is one of my favourite quotes in the game and your post made me realize I had been engaging with it in a rather superficial way.

It’s a very beautifully worded passage, which I think contributes in large part to why people latch onto it so much. Unfortunately, it tends to fall victim to the classic phenomenon whereby lines which are rhetorically effective and on the surface appear to articulate a clear and compelling sentiment find themselves isolated from their broader textual context in fan reception & thus taken at face value. The full passage is:

JOYCE MESSIER - "Great bodies of water, forest-covered surfaces... clusters of light where the cities lie. You've seen the montage, we all have -- this world is enough," she concludes.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - It *must* be. This is the greatest and kindest arrangement the atoms had in them.

Stripped of its political teeth, I imagine the idea of a world composed of the ‘greatest and kindest’ arrangement of atoms is somewhat comforting, as a poetic expression of a sentiment of hope and optimism for the world around you and for yourself in turn. However, it just can’t be easily cleaved away from the fact that Disco Elysium is an overtly and unsubtly political game; it’s a game about communism, and it’s a game which thinks about communism in such a way that the sentiment given here is undercut at just about every turn.

We see that this idea of a ‘greatest and kindest arrangement’ is coming in response to Joyce’s statement that ‘this world is enough.’ Joyce, in-game, is an ultraliberal strikebreaker invested with a huge amount of power relative to capitalist hegemony; put simply, she is not someone whose political voice is one with which the narrative aligns. To think about the present condition of the world as ‘enough’—and to respond, as does Harry’s Conceptualisation, with the suggestion that anything else would be less great and less kind than they are at present (such that all failings of greatness and kindness in the present state can be countered with the superlative)—is a sentiment coming from someone for whom the continuation of the capitalist social condition is hugely beneficial. Put simply, Disco Elysium, read holistically, is just not a game which believes that the capitalist social condition is ‘enough,’ and nor that it is the ‘greatest and kindest arrangement.’

Like—the game takes great pains to suggest that capitulating to the inevitability of the present condition only reveals the limitations of one’s framework. Time and time again, the game makes appeals to inevitability—of the fall of the commune, of the expansion of the pale and the consumption of Elysium—only to suggest that it is only by imagining a total rearrangement of the atoms, if you will, that we can prevent it. I wrote in more detail about this reading here if you’re interested, but the long and short of it is: the presence of the anomaly in the Dolorian church guides us as players towards the idea that the entropy of the pale is a construction of Dolorian moralism, which is to say, capitalist hegemony; the fact that infra-materialism, a theory of Mazovian socio-economics, suggests at the defiance of traditional laws of physics in a manner that may at first seem absurd but by the end of the communist plotline is proven possible in the fact that the tower is able to stand up on its own is in turn a suggestion that the pale’s entropy, too, is a ‘fact’ only inasmuch as it exists within the boundaries of what hegemony has termed factual. If the tower can stand, why can’t the world be overhauled at such a fundamental level that the expansion of the pale could be stopped and the Moralintern could be evaporated? This is the sentiment of the communist quest; rather than accepting the present condition of things (the “greatest and kindest” such that nothing else could possibly be better—it is worth remembering that greatest and kindest does not necessarily mean great or kind), the very belief that they could be changed is what allows change to take place. This is the sentiment communicated in Steban’s “In dark times, should the stars also go out?”.

My comment on the original post was just me being slightly glib about the fact that people consistently latch onto that line out of context. It’s a good line—it’s prettily expressed, and it’s certainly helpful for articulating the different political conditions at play in the game. However, I’m not convinced people are engaging with it in a way that fairly accounts for what it does relative to the rest of the text. This tendency to latch onto poetic language at the expense of thinking seriously about what the sentiment in question actually communicates reminds me of what Evrart says of Joyce:

You - "But she told me a beautiful story about the discovery of the Insulinde."

Evrart Claire - "Of course she did. Rich people have the best stories. About all the interesting things they've done and seen, all the beautiful places they've been to. It's just sentimentalism. She can afford to be sentimental -- and she can afford to lose as well."

I wouldn’t reify Evrart as the voice of the working class in Disco Elysium either, but I think this particular line cuts to the quick about how Joyce’s elevated, obscurantist language often makes it difficult for players to situate what she says within the context from which she appears to us.

#ask #disco elysium

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ratkingdnd · 6 years ago

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Chapter Eighteen - The Moth Jafar

Buffalo, given his latest bout of arrow keeping, is inspired to find some Shadowfell related arrows from a fletcher, if one existed in Morgoth. The group go to the gloom market, the area is populated with all different sorts of people and creatures; a couple of ghoul kids rolling an eyeball around, a fresh vegetable vendor run by a female human, a pale man in a large coat (looks Dolorian) talking with other dolorians, a small bunch of skeletons swordfighting with bones and some ghosts floating around. Buffalo mentions to the group "I want to find the dodgiest looking guy here to buy stuff off of, he should have, or at least know someone who sells arrows". Between two little marquees, Dolgan see's a little man, eyes darting wildly around and a dirty shoal covering his hunchback. "That's the guy we want to see" says Buffalo and he starts to walk over. "Hello" says Buffalo, "Well hello..... says the small man, how can I help you?". Buffalo asks "Do you know of any fletchers around here?" and before the small man can answer, Buffalo feels a hand on his shoudler. It was Malumchite, the leader of the Dolorians he had met earlier in his Shadowfell journey. "Buffalo! Con Clavi!" Malumchite chimes, "I've been looking for you guys! I have a job for you, if you're not too busy". "What is it?" asks Buff. "We need a church cleared out of creatures. It is/was the church of our origins as the brotherhood and there are certain things we need from it" says Malumchite. "Like what? and why can't you get it yourself?" asks Buffalo. "Arm bands. Arm bands that could help out our brotherhood. Arm bands that once belonged to the Dolorians" Malumchite says solemnly. "As for why we cannot do it ourselves - we cannot commit violence on sacred grounds, but you can. We can offer 1000gp for the job". Scaly steps forward, with his reptilian tongue flicking in and out of his mouth and looks Malumchite in the eyes, "1500gp and we'll do it". Malumchite, looking straight back at Scaly, almost entranced, says "alright, 1500gp it is".

Malumchite, then sits with the group for a moment, explaining that the church contained what they believed to be an 'Enfermat'. A left over experiment from their leader Anguis Anhela before he moved to the material plane. Malumchite expected the job, including travel time to take them roughly an hour, it wasn't a terribly difficult job, the brotherhood just couldn't do it themselves. The group say that they'll complete the job, but beforehand they wanted to go into the small mans shop. Malumchite agrees and the group leave.

The small man, leads the group down a few alleys, each one getting smaller and smaller as they travelled downwards. Eventually they got to a small staircase that lead directly down into a door of a cellar. The small man motioned over his shoulder for the group to follow. As soon as they entered the store, the smell of old stone and musk permeated their noses. The small man walked behind a table and says "Welcome to Wilmots Trinkets!", the group look around and see various odds and ends on rickety old shelves; a jar of old fish, a small handheld mirror with a shade in it, a perfectly black stone, a medallion of some sorts, dice and some incense. In the corner, near the desk, was something covered by a blanket. Dolgan picks up the black stone and has a look at it, feels it in his hands. He then pops it back on the shelf. Ned walks over to the blanketed item and asks Wilmot what it was. Wilmot walks over to the blanket and pulls it off in one swoop. Dust flies around the room, making the heroes cough a little. As the dust settles, the heroes notice it was a full length mirror. Ned walks towards the mirror slowly as it seemed to have something in it. As Ned edges closer and closer, whatever was in the mirror became more and more clear, until before Ned noticed, he was inside the mirror, looking back out at the rest of his party. Buffalo turns around to see Ned trapped on the otherside of the glass and looks straight over to Wilmot "He's stuck in the mirror!", "Yes he is" says Wilmot. "It'll take 75gp and I can get him out" a large smile creeping across Wilmot's face.

"Do you know who you're dealing with!" yells Buffalo, pulling out his short sword and walking directly at Wilmot, using his free hand to push Wilmot up against the wall and using his other hand to push the tip of his short sword so far into Wilmot's throat that you could see the dip created by it. "30 gold! I'll do it for 30 gold!" says Wilmot, struggling to talk with the sword pushing in his throat. Buffalo lets go of Wilmot, as he pulls out 30 gold pieces from his rucksack and throws them at him. "GET. NED. OUT" Buffalo says in a menacing voice. Wilmot walks to the back of his counter and grabs a small hammer. He grabs his throat, muttering to himself and swings the hammer at the mirror, smashing it open as Ned falls out flat onto his face. Ned gets himself up in a second and grabs Wilmot, slamming him into the ground "What do you think you're playing at!" he yells, "I just....I just need some money" says Wilmot. "You have no idea how hard it is in the Shadowfell, I was always going to let you out! It just looks like you had some gold to spare for poor old Wilmot". Ned get's up, taking his weight off of Wilmot. "He's useless, useless and harmless", Ned says brushing small bits of mirror glass off of him. "Here...take this" Wilmot holds out a medallion with his head bowed down. "It can read minds, sometimes". Ned yanks it out of his hands, looking at it a little closer. "Where's the fletcher in Shadowfell?" says Buffalo, finally lowering his shortsword. "He was just outside near where I bumped into you guys, just right of the flesh market" responds Wilmot. "I didn't see any stall or anything" says Buff, "He doesn't have a stall, he sells everything that is on his person. Look for a guy with a big overcoat. He's a Dolorian, so he's ashen faced too, you can't miss him". The heroes start to walk out of the shop, Ned slamming the door open, the small bell ringing as it smashes against the inside wall. "I'll be taking these" says Ned, holding up a cracked mirror and some dice, "Uh..." Wilmot goes to speak up, but Ned looks back at him with a cold stare and Wilmot pipes down. As the door closes behind Buffalo, Wilmot yells out one last sentence "The answer is 'Who's there'".

The heroes walk back out into the bazaar, but they weren't at the same place they entered. They walk out from behind some of the stalls and see Barnabas standing at a stall full of rugs and carpets, having a chat with the shop keep. "Ahhh Con Clavi, I was looking for you!" says Barnabus. "Yeah, we got a little stuck" says Ned, still annoyed. "We need to go to the church of genesis" says Buffalo, "Do you know the way?". "I do! I can get you there in a few minutes if you would like?", "Sure we can wait" says Buffalo as Barnabus turns around to continue whatever transaction he was doing with the shop keep. As far as he could tell, the rugs and carpets seemed to be made out of hair and tendons, of what type of animal or creature he had no idea. "Alright, all done!" says Barnabus turnign around, "What did you buy?" asks Buffalo, "A future" says Barnabus as he whistles and walks over to his centipede.

Barnabus wasn't wrong. The trip to the church was extremely short. The church was quite broken down, looking like it hadn't had any maitenance done on it for decades. "Alright, so what are we doing here again?" says Scaly, "We're here to clear out this church so the Dolorian's can have it back. Something's here and we need to get rid of it because apparently they can't" says Buff answering Scaly matter of factly. "Okay" says Scaly, "Lets have a look around the place, make sure that it's all good to go in", the heroes walk around the entire church, making sure to be quiet and find a back door. It was much smaller than the front doors being only a single door.

The heroes split up, two in the front, two in the back and decided to tactically slaughter whatever was in the church. Dolgan and Ned slowly open up the back door silently whilst Buffalo and Scaly open up the front door. The stench that comes out of the church is putrid, smelling like a mixture of rotten flesh, feet, faeces and vinegar. As the light shines through the doors, it reveals a horrid sight. A fat, green bodied, pustule infested creature with one horn growing out the side of it's head, but the horn was rotten and had bugs and maggots crawling through it. "Ewww what are we standing in" says Scaly, Buffalo looks down and see's a tonnes of crushed maggots underneath his feet. He lifts one foot and see's a saliva like slime stuck between his foot, the floor and the maggots. "That is disgusting" he whispers, Buffalo starts to feel itchy noticing some of the maggots had started to crawl up his legs. "Let's do this quickly and get out" says Buff to Scaly, swiping the grubs away from his legs. Buffalo holds up five fingers to Dolgan and Ned on the other side of the church, he counts silently "Five, four" dropping a finger each time to indicate the countdown, as he gets to three he stops counting and pulls back on his bow aiming at the monster in the middle. One comes and the heroes spring into action, Buffalo releases an arrow, Scaly a crossbow bolt, Ned throws a javelin and Dolgan runs over to smash the monster with his hammer. Halfway over to the monster, Dolgan realises he couldn't move nearly as fast as he normally does, feeling a giant weight in his pocket. He reaches down quickly, finding the smooth black stone he saw in Wilmot's before, "What the..." he says to himself, before seeing the monster his friends had attacked starting to get up. He quickly throws the rock on the ground and smashes down with his hammer, it's pustules bursting as he does, covering him with a sick green slime. "Eeerrggh" yells Dolgan as he sees Ned run past him and leap into the air, landing on the back of the now standing monster as he hands on to it's rotting horn. Ned pulls back, using his weight to his advantage as he rips off the horn and green pus and slime starts gushing out of the side of its head. Buffalo shoots another arrow, hitting the creatures eye as he reaches to pull Ned off of its back. Dolgan yells "Watch out!" to Ned as he lifts up his hammer again swinging in an uppercut fashion under it's chin. The hammer connects, smashing into the monsters jaw. The hit was so brutal that the monsters neck snaps backwards, almost off of its neck as it falls onto the ground dead.

"Let's get out of here, this is disgusting" says Scaly, Buffalo nods scratching himself all over, "I'm really itchy" he says. "Yeah me too" says Dolgan, "And my throat seems to be really itchy, feels like it's closing up". "Me three" says Ned, leaning over, struggling to catch a breath, "Are these what they were looking for?" Ned continues, holding up a bunch of metal looking cylinders. The cylinders had spikes on the inside and some kind of symbol on the outside. "Maybe" says Buffalo, lets start taking them out I guess, the heroes gather a bunch of the metal cylinders and start carrying them out the door, still itching and scratching themselves. Outside, Malumchite is waiting with a bunch of other Dolorians. "Did the rot grubs get to you?" asks Malumchite, "I don't think so, but we're itchy as hell, what the hell was that thing?", "It was an Enfermat. an abyssal creation of disease and filth, turn around" says Malumchite, "What?" says Scaly, "Turn AROUND" reiterates Malumchite. The heroes all turn their backs and feel white hot pain shoot down their spine, a wave of heat overcomes them as they see their flesh singed. Buffalo falls over passing out from the pain. "Hey, you okay?" Buffalo wakes up to Malumchite holding his head up with a flask full of red liquid, "drink this", Buffalo bats it away, "No way, what the hell just happened!?", "You were infected by the rot grubs, we had to burn them off as they were under your skin" says Malumchite. "Why didn't you tell us?" asks Buffalo, "You were already out of the church, the risk of contamination was already way too high, we had to do it then and there. This is a health potion drink up". Buffalo rips the health potion out of Malumchites hand and skulls it back, feeling better the instant the liquid touches his tongue.

Ned looks to Malumchite "Can I have one of these?" he says, holding one of the cylinders. "Yes go ahead, put it on your arm and it will auto attach, be prepared to feel pain though". Ned latches it around his leg and yells out "Aarrrgh!", "It will make your stronger in the long run" says Malumchite, walking towards the pile of the other bands and wincing as he attaches one to his arm. "As promised" Malumchite says, handing over 1500 gold pieces to Scaly, "We appreciate the effort, please let us know if you ever need any help". The heroes thank the Dolorians and start making their way back over to Barnabus, Buffalo quickly runs back to Malumchite "Do you know a fletcher in Morgoth" he asks, "As a matter of fact I do. He's a Dolorian. The answer is 'nock nock who?'", Malumchite says. "Thanks" Buffalo says walking back to Barnabus.

The trip back to the market is short on the centipede bus, Dolgan once again finds the rock in his pants again, picking it up and flinging it off of the ride, before looking back at his hand and noticing it back there again. "What the hell, I can't get rid of this stupid rock!" yells Dolgan, "What do you mean?" says Ned, "I keep throwing it away and it keeps appearing on me somewhere later, sometimes within seconds, also it's really heavy...". "It's heavy?" Buffalo snickers looking at the hand sized rock, "Let me have a look" Buffalo says. Dolgan hands over the rock, "Woah it is quite heavy" says Buffalo, throwing it up in the air and catching it with one hand whilst smiling, but it doesn't land back in his hand - "What the hell?". Dolgan holds his hand up with the rock in it, "See" it just keeps reappearing "And for some reason it makes me really lethargic, like I can hardly move with it on. "Try this on" says Scaly, handing over the winged boot of Aldrich they had received at Tallow Swamp. "It makes me move more, so maybe if you're moving less, then wearing it will allow you to move your normal speed?", Dolgan places the boot on and immediately feels a wealth of haste inside of him.

The heroes arrive at the market, seeing a bunch of Dolorians around, they decide to look for one with a large coat. It's not before long that they find a tall Dolorian wearing a hat and an overcoat large enough to fit in another person. Buffalo walks over and says "Hello". The Dolorian turns around facing Buffalo and says "Knock knock", Buffalo remembering what he was told before says "Who's there?", the Dolorian looks back at him saying "Knock knock". "Ah shit, I don't think it worked" Buffalo says looking back at the group. "Try the other answer" says Dolgan, "Oh yeah!" remembers Buffalo. The Dolorian looks back at Buffalo, "Knock knock" he says, Buffalo says back "Knock knock who?", the Dolorian says again "Knock knock". "Try both" says Dolgan. "Knock knock" says the Dolorian, "Who's there" says Buff, "Knock knock" says the Dolorian, "Knock Knock who?", a smile creeps across the face of the Dolorian "Nock Nock's Nock Shop, how are you?" as he opens his coat revealing a multitude of arrows lined all along the insides.

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