#not even in the “ im not getting engagement way

[falseficus]

if i may play the devil's advocate for a moment -- it doesn't really bother me that most of the fan posting around disco elysium on this site is more focused on the emotional aspects of the game than the political ones. i mean, firstly, it's well-acknowledged that fanworks tend to fill the gaps of unexplored potential in the original work -- ie, envisioning darkness in lighthearted works, re-imagining dark works as lighthearted. a lot of the emotional or relational aspects of disco elysium are left ambiguous, abstract, or at the very least dependent upon player choice and interpretation. this renders them fertile ground for speculative art. by contrast, the game's political statements are, if you have the context to analyze them well, complete. there simply isn't much more to say.

beyond that, those political aspects are also leagues ahead of many other pieces of media in terms of their complexity, nuance, and real-world analysis. that's part of what makes the game so great, and i do think may fans understand that. but, to be honest, being capable of engaging with those aspects of the game (just glance at reddit, and you'll see that many fans don't even reach that level) does not mean that fans are capable of generating that level of work themselves. like, it's simply more mental work to come up with a piece of creative art/writing that expands upon the superb worldbuilding and commentary of DE than it is to write about harry and kim getting goopy nasty. people know how to do the latter because it is a commonly exercised muscle of fandom. the former is almost academic.

that doesn't mean people *shouldn't* engage with the political aspects of the game generatively/creatively. but also... like... maybe it's better this way. seriously, look at reddit, guys. the DE subreddit is full of people *attempting* to engage with the game politically, and the analysis they're putting out is hot steaming dookie. i lose brain cells every time im forced to read another take that earnestly assumes the game positions moralism as the Right and Good Choice for Revachol. on tumblr, analysis is generative, practiced through art/fanfiction... and if i had to see the type of shit i see on reddit on tumblr in the form of fanart, id kill us all.

so anyway, i dont think the fanwork hyperfocus on relationships/emotion indicates that people aren't properly understanding the political points of the game, but simply that those points are much harder for fans to process in a generative way. their underrepresentation in fanwork doesnt particularly indicate anything about the way people are actually receiving and understanding the themes of the game.

except for the people inexplicably clogging the tag with jean viquemare. they do not understand the game and will not see the light of heaven

[twost3ps]

*Au idea:Dreaded king Adam*

The council of heaven(or God) had to promise Adam to Lucifer(kind of like the Persephone story). The harem hates this idea but it’s no use.

Also just imagine their reaction to Adam coming into a meeting with a baby Charlie(she was made by magic by Lucifer to make Adam happy).

That to me can be either sad or funny because it can go one of two ways

An angsty route where the harem only gets to see Adam in the meetings and either romantically or not, miss each other’s company. Even if Adam does come to love Lucifer at some point or does willingly go down and feels content in hell ofc he’s going to miss the people he used to hang out with. Those meetings have a a great underlying vibe of longing that no amount to treasure can mediate

not my thing so there’s also the crack funny route where the harem would def be distraught before they're like :

"You know what imma sneak down there idgaf"

One of them was def crying for a bit before the decision is made (it's Mike and Jophiel)

Idk whether or not you're envisioning that Adam is together with them before the engagement or just likes them platonically tho but assuming he is romantic again I do find it funny if they sneak into lucifers castle with his help and they hang around until lucifer catches on (I mean Adam doesn't have be with them to just wanna hang out with his old buddies. It does get lonely in that castle lol. And what is hell to do againt what is basically a group of unstoppable forces)

They're all hanging out in the master bedroom till lucifer busts in shocked to see them all there

Lucifer: Wh- WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING HERE!?

Gabriel: Catching up with our boyfriend, duh. What do you want?

Lucifer: for you all to leave???

Uriel: mmnnnn.... naaaah..

Raphael: yeah we really miss our boyfriend so if you don't wanna be here could you just...? *he kinda just shoos lucifer*

Lucifer looks all pissed off: If you don't remember, IM the one who lives here and IM the one married to him.

Hes showing off his ring but there's a united scoff from the harem

Azrael: no offense but since when did you respect the sanctity of marriage?

This leads to this large fight, tho since lucys outnumbered, so he's not winning here. Thankfully, adam is there to calm them down. Adam argues that while yes hes married to lucifer, it wasnt fair to be pulled away from the people he cares about so no, hes still going to see his harem (whether romantic or not is up to you. He can just like being around them as friends while still loving lucifer or at least growing to love him)

So lucifer gets at least one archangel or virtue visiting every day. This oddly gets the siblings closer to lucifer again. They sometimes hang out with Lucifer as well or just him for old times sake

They could even have their own rooms there too. It would be kinda nice to see and bond with his family again. Maybe Lucifer opens the marriage idk tho

When they see Charlie for the first time, they're shocked and a bit jealous. Gabe def wanted kids with Adam lol. They're actually pretty good with her all things concerned, but they do dress her up and act like she's their own. Since she's made of magic and young, I do think they have some moderate influence on her appearance. Like she's still forming in a way. So when they first get their hands on her, they change the color of her cheek marks to their responding colors. It's like that scene in sleeping beauty with the faries and the dress, but imagine the rainbow instead and whats changing is charlies cheeks and hair color. Adam does get huffy about it tho and they all reluctantly turn her back to red cheeked and blonde

Ngl in the early stages they were trying to be another parent to her as a sort of get back at Lucifer for 'stealing' Adam, trying to get her favor whenever they visit or have meetings. But they chill out over time. Doesn't mean they don't get a bit smug is charlie seems to prefer going to them for some things.

The only really dreaded thing is, for the harem at that point, is not being always able to barge in

This was probably supposed to be more angst or something my bad lol

[pines4thetwin]

When you mentioned fused stancest I literally could not stop thinking about how they would act if they couldn’t infuse for a while everyone’s reaction to how they function as one person. I would love to hear more of you take on it.

I have so many!! This ended up longer then i expected (Sorry if this isnt what you meant)

So I actually wanted to write something like this concept but the angst is like a parasite and it takes over everything

I think if they got stuck as a Fordley (thats what im calling the fusion) the reactions would go like this:

Mabel is squealing and thinks its so cool and definitely asks to ride on their shoulders. Shes having the time of her life (and even asks if she can try the fusion machine too.) Two grunkles for the price of one and all that but now they are one cooler taller Grunkle.

Dipper hates it. He constantly gets jumpscared. He'll go down to get water and Fordley is creeping around in the middle of the night to get snacks before slinking back down to the lab and dippers like cluching his chest and shaking and sweaty and he really just wants them unfuse already.

Stan would be upset cause why would ford even build something like this. And then he fucked up and now theyre stuck this way. But also he's secretly pleased with the fact that the intensity of his feelings for stan drove Ford to literally create a way for them to be one.

Ford is only too pleased because this is what he wanted. Now he's only thinking that they get to do all the things they love together just like they always said they would do as kids. They'll watch stans shows and do science stuff and he's pleasently surprised with how their minds blend together so well. Even if stan pretends he doesnt enjoy the explorations they go on Ford can feel that he does.

They still work on a way to fix the machine so they can get unfused but only cause stans still a bit pissed at not having a choice in the matter but Ford fully intends to convince him that being one is how they are supposed to be.

Wendy would be like wtf then rapidly compartmentalize and just nod and be like "this is my life now."

Soos looses his mind and fanboys so hard and writes all types of fusion fics and has tea with them to ask how it feels to make his fics as canon as possible. He will also au the hell outta Fordley.

They definitely become an urban legend cause some townie or tourists saw them slinking around in the woods "Seven foot tall, four eyed creature spotted in the woods of gravity falls. Hairless cousin of bigfoot??" And all of the photos are super blurry and you got some people saying it has four arms and debating if it eats humans or only family sized bags of toffee peanuts?

As for specifically with the angsty one i wrote

Ford refuses to let them find a way to fix it cause he doesnt see them being stuck as a problem

Stan is (rightfully) upset and refuses to engage with Ford. Ford eventally coaxes stan to hear him out and they slowly work through their issues cause really what else can they do when their literally stuck together. And then maybe stan realizes that being them isnt so bad and he begrudgingly respects fords audacity (and insanity) to make what he wanted a reality.

And when they do (mostly stan) finally accept the situation, they allow themself to truly start to think of themself as one and i think even the deformites of their unstable fusion would start to shift into a more stable form.

Mabel is lowkey scared of them because of what happened in the lab but she slowly warms up to Fordley. But its only after her grunkles stop fighting. (dont ask how you can fight when you share one body because they do it and they do it easily and she can tell)

Dipper is confused cause no one actually sat him down to fully explain what happened and he's working on context clues only. He's too scared to ask Fordley and anytime he asks mabel she just goes wide eyed and pale. And then one day everything is cool. Like Fordley is still there but he's happier and engaging with the nibs and mabel isnt scared of them anymore and dippers even more confused because nobody has clued him in????

Maybe i should just turn these into fics atp?

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

further

ok i spent A Long Time running around the forest/crossroads for random enemy spawns to work out orb/dagger a bit too and i do think it is helpful for those big mobs of lower power enemies for sure, so ty tho those who recommended that. it still has not fixed my issue of dying to the 3 powerful enemies who chase me over the whole map BUT i have davrin/taash now so at LEAST i can use taunts to give myself some breathing space i hope :|

realized another way that it is frustrating me is that the camera seems weirdly hard to control during combat sometimes. i THINK that it is automatically directing a certain amount of control so that you stay facing the battlefield, but unfortunately due to the "needing to run for my life" bit when this engages it prevents me from seeing WHERE the clear areas are to run and adding to my frustration. bc like i keep either accidentally getting stuck in corners/ledges or leaving combat grounds (AND THEN EVERYONE HEALS BACK UP FUCK ME) bc i cannot simply TURN AROUND AND LOOK ABOUT. like clearly this is a feature thats supposed to be helpful and if you are playing the game a different way probably is/probably most people don't even notice but i do think it's part of whats making it hell for me rip.

like i just did the taash recruitment and during the final antaam fight was DESPERATELY trying to pan the camera to look for health potion vases to smash and it simply would not let me, and would not let me turn to move towards them, and kept forcing the camera view back to the battlefield center. i had to backwards roll basically off the map/into the water to get control of it again so i could swing the damn camera left to look for the vase and this is when it realized i was out of bounds and it gave everyone their armor/barrier and some health back and im still very mad about this. had to take a bunch of screenshots of a silly little slug lizard to calm down again.

gameplay combat comments (complaints)

jesus fucking christ i am playing a warrior next bc it SUCKS how long you have to wait to get one… i’m so fucking squishy and so is everyone else but the horrible armored mercenaries just spend all of combat SPRINTING directly at me and so i spend 15 minute dodge rolling around while neve/harding/bellara barely make a dent in them. it’s not fun!!!! this is not fun combat! WHEN WILL I FINALLY GET A TANK… like i know i’m bad at combat at the best of times but spells for mage also feel so slow i wish i could kill the animation and just get to damage bc by the time it’s gone off i have gotten stabbed 3 times and am on the brink of death

[athina-blaine]

for my money, labru is head and shoulders above other ships involving them simply due to the unmatched yap potential, i imagine them feeding off each other's energy like they're slipstreaming in mario kart until they start going fast enough to break the sound barrier

[way-too-obsessed-gamer]

My personal take on the coalecroux official wedding rings (like they are dating and perhaps decide to do an actual wedding) is that they can look like anything but they must be enchanted. One always feels like the cold side of a pillow and the other always feels like a warm blanket. Yes the former goes to Gideon and the latter to Kremy

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[moeblob]

They're soulmates in every single universe and I miss them at the most random times.

[ourhouseishaunted]

people acting as if laios can Do No Wrong and infantilizing him because he is autistic are annoying as hell. especially because laios belongs to my favorite genre of character: "person who desperately wants friends and deep relationships because they're lonely, and while part of their problems stem from people not wanting to understand them and refusing to meet them where they are, they also genuinely come across in a way where you Completely Understand why others can get turned off from them"

[liquidstar]

How is tumblr going to ban porn and then show me ads where two triceratops are straight up having sex

[puhpandas]

thinking abt the ggy easter eggs rn

[hurglewurm]

me: keeps drawing random one-off fanarts from things that aren't currently big at all

also me: why no notes on my arte

[nbmudkip]

rehyperfixating on a children’s game that came out in 2015, is one of the least popular entries in its series, and has minimal content, the vast majority of which i’ve seen before. the series has been dead for nearly 10 years, nothing has happened recently that would warrant anyone’s returning interest in it, very few of my friends give a shit about this specific game, and those few who played and liked it in the past have no reason to give a shit about it at all right now. i have been coasting through on a playthrough i’ve been doing with a friend who’d never seen the game before and who was kind enough to let me show it to them, but we just beat the game, and after we play the epilogue we will have nothing left to do, and on top of that they really have just been humoring me as they have their own very strong current hyperfixation they would much rather be thinking about. also i am depressed enough right now that literally nothing else except for waiting to play this game with them and playing this game with them and watching them enjoy it at least a little has been able to briefly quiet the constant cacophony in my head screaming how much of a worthless, lazy, constantly-failing miserable excuse for a living person i am and how much better everything would be, especially for myself, if i stopped existing lately. would anyone like to volunteer to 🔨💥⚒️Kill Me With Hammers🔨💥⚒️ because i would really like for someone to 🔨💥⚒️Kill Me With Hammers🔨💥⚒️ right now

[sukibenders]

Being a woc fan of Bridgerton can be a struggle, especially when it comes to liking the poc characters on the show, especially the woc. Like I remember when s1 came out and the blatant microaggressions and just plain racism coming from this fandom was atrocious. You had people spewing very hateful things about Charlotte, Marina, and Simon and undermining the latter two's pain and trauma at the hands of the white characters---Marina was treated terribly by the Featheringtons and, whether you like Penelope or not, you cannot deny that she also played a part by releasing that letter to the Ton and Simon was violated Daphne no matter how people try to spin the story to offer her some form of sympathy (it still blows my mind that people would want to though).

S2 is just as bad (not even including how they changed the Sharma family's storyline than how it was in the books when that wasn't necessary) and the racist undertones many of the fans have towards Mary and Edwina (as well as Kate but for her it's carries more brown woman needing to be saved by a white man when Anthony is involved because a lot of you all in the fandom are quick to use this trope such as "oh, he's the only one who truly knows her"). The lack of screen time for this family really ends up hurting them to but even with that, whether you like Mary and Edwina or not, it would be a lie to deny the racism a lot in the fandom hold towards them (and how that falls onto the actresses because it was very apparent how many in the fandom couldn't let two Desi women shine without having to bring down the other and Netflix played into that too for drama) and paints every small thing they do as being terrible crimes but in the same breath will not have the same smoke for the Bridgertons, who have their own set of problems (but because they are also the main family, among other things, they are provided more grace without consequences).

[cerealmonster15]

haikaveh... save me haikaveh...

i KNOW it's been talked about to death but. the haikaveh research project. it literally haunts my mind. i cannot get over the implications. alhaitham going through his school life as someone that most people dont even really know about because he keeps to himself and doesn't socialize, with kaveh being the one exception to that, finding his way into his life as his Best Friend, and then leading to alhaithams one and only time he participated in a research topic. his bio says he only ever did ONE joint project!!! one!!! the one with kaveh his best friend and i think also his only friend at the time!!!! and then it ended in not only the project falling apart but also alhaithams only friendship. kavehs best friendship. they were each others closest person. they had no family around - alhaithams parents having died when he was young and his grandmother dying before he joined the akademiya, and kaveh's dad dying when he was young and his mom having moved to fontaine. like even if you dont look at it through a romantic lens it's still undeniable how important they were [and are] to each other..........

i'm getting off track but my point is very specifically for alhaitham, the one time he got close to someone, made a friend, even agreed to join one(1) group project ever, it ended in disaster. it led him into a fight so bad that his one and only friend said he regretted that friendship!!!! it was so bad alhaitham left the project and he and kaveh didnt speak for ages until they just happened to run into each other again at the tavern!!!!! like obviously it has to be incredibly awful for both of them but i just think how this probably had alhaitham in the cynical mindset that friendships and collaborations like that might just never work out for him because the one time he let someone into his life, it blew up on him and he was all alone again. even though alhaitham never seems to care much if people dont like him, that clearly cant still apply to someone he was exceptionally close to. like if he didnt care he woudlnt have been the one to take his name off the project and mutually not speak to kaveh...... kavehs words are the ones that hit the most significantly to alhaitham.......... kaveh is said/implied to have had at least some other friends while at school / people knew who he was, but not so much alhaitham. people didnt know him and the ones that did just knew he didnt socialize/he was not easy to get along with. he only had kaveh and then, for a while, he lost him too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[girl-bateman]

am I overreacting yes or no QUICKLY