#maggie plays disco elysium

[icespyders]

i finished disco elysium today!!! & as someone who plays a lot of choice-based rpgs, the way the game acknowledged the way i played was particularly fun and rewarding (readmore for spoilers)

so obv at the end you're confronted by the cops from harry's precinct and kim can defend you (i assume if he hates you, he does not defend you, but i literally unlocked that Goodest Of The Good Cops achievement at the end of day 1, because i've been trained on bioware games to make every companion in every video game love me), and i got a real kick out of some of the dialogue i got during that finale sequence. particularly: one thing kim said to defend me was that i was unbelievably stubborn and thorough chasing down leads, no matter how vague or unrelated to the actual case they seemed to be, and that's 100% how i play rpgs lmao, i chase down every dumb random sidequest no matter how far it diverts me from the main plot. and in this game, some of my most joyful/interesting/thought-provoking/just plain nice moments were in these random sidequest diversions, so i loved how the game basically gives you a thumbs-up for that. and i was really unsure how to play it with evrart & joyce, who i give information to and why/when, and felt like i fucked up, and the game acknowledged that too, kim had some dialogue like, ok, yeah, maybe it wasn't a smart move, he ran his mouth a bit too much to the wrong people, but it was an ethical move and it maybe helped the whole situation, somehow, slightly. and i did okay in the tribunal sequence so kim noted that too, how i got in between the mercenaries and the union guys and put myself in harm's way and minimized the bloodshed. and! i didn't even realize the game would track my drinking/smoking, but the fact that i stayed sober and only smoked once (to light that graffiti on fire, lol, i did it for ART ONLY) was verbally mentioned by a couple characters and seemingly improved their opinion of me. OH OH and i was a very Sorry Cop and characters noted that in particular, kim was like ok yeah he apologizes for everything and it's kind of weird, but still, he's a good guy. and my actual partner is like YEAH YEAH i know you're sorry, you're always sorry, you fucking sad sack. & obviously my insane political views were noted (kim like "i know he's a communist, and also somehow a centrist, idk how he reconciles these things in his mind, but he's a good cop, i promise") (i never got to go back to my communist book club :(((( i read all the literature, i just didn't have time to go back, i ran directly into the plot too fast :(((((((( tragique)

and i was SO EXCITED to meet the phasmid...that was so nice...what a weird and lovely and odd game. it's just very rewarding, because like...i never felt like i was playing Perfectly, yknow? i started the game and was really intrigued by it, but felt a little overwhelmed as my Need To Play Perfectly habit crept in. so i put the game aside for like 9 months, worried i'd never get back to it or finish it, picked it up again 2 weeks ago and felt kinda stuck...and then i got to day 3 and i just cruised through to the end. i played pretty much blind, just looking up a sidequest or two when i was stuck, progression-wise, but i always have this bad habit in rpgs where i want to do things Right and get way too invested deep-diving on wikis trying to orchestrate the most perfect outcomes possible. i tried to kind of free myself of that habit for this game and play looser (though i am grievously guilty of save-scumming ahead of checks and doing dice rolls over and over again, but save-scumming is a sacred art to me, who the fuck doesn't do that in rpgs, if save-scumming is wrong i don't want to be right!!), so i wandered through the game, flailing around and fucking up and failing skill checks, always wondering if i could be Playing Better, but all of that second-guessing is worth it, because in the end i felt really rewarded by this sensation of acknowledgment i got from the game. this feeling that my failures and my successes were noted and catalogued and referenced directly as my companion character sticks up for me at the end. i'm always seeking that in rpgs, that acknowledgment, the sense that my choices mattered and were noted and made both subtle and obvious impacts. and disco elysium has so many variables that i REALLY didn't expect it to be as specific at the finale as it was! like, seriously, i can't get over it, the game scripted shit to acknowledge "you pursued so many fucking sidequests with a maddening and almost obsessive determination, good job," i feel so SEEN. and i got to hold hands with a big bug. what a game

[dragonomatopoeia]

Air's End-of-Year Youtube Video Rec-List Round-Up

In light of recent events and also because I wanted to, I have put together a rec list of various (mostly longform) videos that I've enjoyed this year. Not all of these videos were released this year, however-- I just happened to see them for the first time in 2023. For readability and quality of life purposes, I have put this list under a readmore and divided the videos up by category, then creator, which means that some youtube channels might appear in multiple categories

I reserve the right to edit this later as I remember more videos, but I feel comfortable publishing it as is, considering it has almost 100 videos on it at this point

Cooking

Get Curried Chili Garlic Rosemary Chicken Recipe | How to Make Chili Garlic Rosemary Chicken at Home | Prateek Anardana Chicken Recipe | Delicious Himachal Style Anardana Chicken Recipe at Home | Chef Prateek Old Delhi Style Tangdi Kebab | How to Make Indian Starter Tangdi Kebab Recipe | Chef Prateek Dhawan

How to Cook That The $10 Million dollar lie (Betty Crocker) Debunking the Pink Sauce Controversy | How To Cook That Ann Reardon Top 7 Best Easy Lemon Recipes 🍋 | How To Cook That Ann Reardon Toxic Foods promoted on TikTok! | How To Cook That Ann Reardon Why is Pyrex exploding? | How To Cook That Ann Reardon

Library of Congress' Youtube Channel El Camino del Mole a New Orleans El Camino del Pan a Baltimore

Immaculate Bites LEMON BUNDT CAKE FIRECRACKER SHRIMP

Simply Mamá Cooks 3 EASY Beef Pot Roast Recipes perfect for the cold weather EASY Chicken Tamales Recipe | How To Make Tamales Easy NO-KNEAD Soft Dinner Rolls + FLUFFY From Scratch Milk Rolls Recipe Zuppa Toscana Recipe EASY | Olive Garden Potato Sausage Soup Recipe

Fraud, Grifts, and Scams

FoldingIdeas Contrepreneurs: The Mikkelsen Twins The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse In Search Of A Flat Earth This is Financial Advice

Maggie Mae Fish Is the "Off-Grid" Lifestyle a Lie??

Münecat I Debunked Every "Body Language Expert" on Youtube The Problem with Tony Robbins (Deep-Dive - Pt.1) The Problem with Tony Robbins (Deep-Dive - Pt. 2)

Super Eyepatch Wolf The Bizarre World of Fake Martial Arts The Bizarre World of Fake Psychics, Faith Healers, and Mediums Influencer Courses are Garbage: The Dark Side of Content Creation Tom Nicholas Griftonomics: Why Scams are Everywhere Now

We're In Hell A History of Spam on the Internet Hustling America: I Can't Believe This Show Is Real The Problem with Voluntourism WE Charity & the Nonprofit Industrial Complex

Gaming

Hbomberguy Halcyon Dreams: The Legacy of Dragon's Lair

Jacob Geller Games that Aren't Games How Can We Bear to Throw Anything Away?

Li Speaks An Exploration of the Avata Star Sue-niverse It's Time For You To Play Flash Games Again The Strange Case of Kissing and Flirting Games Untangling the Lore of Devilish Hairdresser

Mandaloregaming The Mystery of the Druids: A Bizarre Adventure Game

People Make Games The Games Industry Must Not Stay Silent on Palestine Investigation: Who’s Telling the Truth about Disco Elysium? Working at Valve: 'A Fearless Adventure' or 'Lord of the Flies'?

PowerPak Dead Space 3 Is Worse Than I Thought King's Quest - The First Adventure Game King's Quest 2 - A Bridge Too Far... MyHouse.WAD - Inside Doom's Most Terrifying Mod Squirrel Stapler is Absolutely Nuts Tunic is Deceptively Brilliant

Super Bunnyhop Perusing Pentiment's Boisterous Bibliography

History

BobbyBroccoli The image you can't submit to journals anymore

Cambrian Chronicles Wikipedia's King who Doesn't Exist

Defunctland Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History

Elliot Sang How Tea Became European McMindfulness: When Capitalism Goes Buddhist

Intelexual Media Creating The Conservative New Right In The 1970s A Buffet of Black Food History

Kaz Rowe A Deep Dive into the Deadly World of Victorian Patent Medicine Why Have So Many People Seen Ghost Ships? Why the Myth of the Library of Alexandria Is Wrong

Kendra Gaylord 500 years of dollhouses and what it meant to teach girls Alice Austen, the 1880s photographer: her house, her photos, her love life What happened to cheap food? Diners, Automats, and affordable eating

Nerdsync Bonkers origins of superhero memes The Scandalous REAL Origin of Superman's Lois Lane Superman's Uncomfortable History with Nuclear Weapons

Premodernist Advice for time traveling to medieval Europe

Stepback History How The Vietnam War Birthed a Generation of White Terrorists OK Fine I’ll Talk About Ancient Apocalypse

Tantacrul Notation Must Die: The Battle For How We Read Music

Film and Television

Be Kind Rewind How Breakfast at Tiffany's Turned into a Totally Different Movie | Adapting a Classic Casting the Women of Valley of the Dolls | PT 1 The Making of Valley of the Dolls | PT 2 How the "Old Ladies N' Hijinks" Subgenre Became a Thing How a "Sacrilegious" Film Changed Hollywood Forever... So I watched BLONDE... Why Tallulah Bankhead Never Became a Movie Star

Big Joel The Song That Broke West Side Story

Cherrybepsi Can We Kill the Final Girl Trope Already?

Hazel weird & kinda scary tokusatsu girls

Jane Mulcahy The Lunacy of Teen Wolf (Part 1) What is the 'psycho biddy' genre?

Maggie Mae Fish BLACK CHRISTMAS Before & After "Me Too" The War on "Woke" Hollywood: A History of Blacklists and Strikes Why is Clint Eastwood

Princess Weekes Black Trauma vs. Black Horror Why Are There So Many Confederate Vampires? Why Don't Worry Darling Doesn't Work ...

Shanspeare EUPHORIA: Sam Levinson’s Unfulfilled Fantasy The Girlboss-ification of the Horror Genre TikTok Femininity Coaching and Aestheticizing Racism

Science and Technology

BobbyBroccoli The $21,000,000,000 hole in Texas The man who faked human cloning How to catch a criminal cloner

Eastman Museum's Youtube Channel Photographic Processes Series

Technology Connections What's the deal with the popcorn button?

Practical Engineering How Flood Tunnels Work What's the Difference Between Paint and Coatings? Why Is Desalination So Difficult? Why Railroads Don't Need Expansion Joints

[icespyders]

i started playing disco elysium and today i got back-to-back game overs wherein first i gave myself a heart attack knocking on a door too hard and then almost immediately after reloading my save i resigned in shame because i couldn’t emotionally handle lacking a proper uniform & looking like shit any longer. game of all time