#tiago

[rupsttus]

[disco-archetypes]

YOU - "You sure you didn't just switch one drug for another?"

TIAGO - "It's not like that at all, man. It's just faith and joyful service."

DRAMA - Too gleeful, those words -- he is lying. Not to you -- to his very own self.

YOU - "Faith is a kind of drug."

[willknightauthor]

What happens in the Dolorian church in Martinaise is a profound bit of worldbuilding. At first Elysium seems like a normal, secular world, and if anything it's surprising how absent religion is from it. Liberalism has become the religion. The only real reminder that Moralism was once a fully functioning world religion is the abandoned and broken church west of the lock.

But learning about the pale point, the history of the churches, it makes sense now. The pale is directly interacting with human thought and society because they are both manifestations of information in the universe, in an evolving dialectic. Dolores Dei pulled information from the future and literally expanded the world by inspiring others with her dream. She was, by the standards of our world, a prophet. The churches, built around nascent points of pale particles, are a social attempt to control the pale through the collective act of ritual dreaming. By dreaming the divine, humanity pushes back the death of the world, for a moment.

By the time the game takes place, that side of Moralism is long dead. The churches have been abandoned and their function forgotten. Moralism has degenerated into liberalism. The Revolution was a moment of mass dreaming, of the future manifesting itself. It was the best hope to push back the Pale, but the MoralIntern crushed it, and restored global stagnancy. Growing entropy is accelerating the consumption of the world by the Pale, and no-one knows what to do because there is no future, only past.

Harry though, depending on how you play him, has the potential to start the reversal of this process, if just in Martinaise. The man who has effectively dedicated himself to a kind of monastic worship of the Pale (unknowingly) is the first one to start the process. (Never give anyone too much credit, even Harry.) But if Harry helps the homeless ravers start a club in the Church, he is effectively helping to start a new ritual community with the same properties as the old Moralist Church, right under the pale point.

If you get Noid to warm up to you, you learn he's a kind of organic existential philosopher. He even discourses with Tiago. He and the others don't just party as a hedonistic act, they maintain partying as a kind of ritual act of life affirmation and contemplation, an attempt to transcend themselves and realize something new and powerful. In short, they are reaching into the future to create something new. It's ridiculous 90s Euro club music, but the way they do it it's as ritually powerful as any church service.

This ties into the more general theme of Disco Elysium, that the human power to dream of a new future and then collectively act to bring it about is a powerful act of creation that pushes back the boundaries of the universe, and is necessary for our species to even survive. To crush the revolution, to crush democracy, is to crush the future. Elysium has killed God, but they haven't gotten to the next stage of becoming gods.

Dolorian humanism ironically does not end up elevating human beings. Only the communards had a chance at elevating humanity to a level of creative consciousness that would allow them to tame the Pale the same way they used to with religion. And the revolutionaries, even though the Moralists never recognized them as such, were likely pulling from the future as much as Dolores Dei. Kras Mazov will never be recognized as an Innocent, but in terms of prophesying and inspiring people with a dream which could push back the Pale, he effectively was.

Now with the revolution at a low point, the world is in a kind of existentialist limbo, lacking the conviction of faith in either the divine or the future. The old is dead, but the new cannot be born. What happens in Martinaise is the beginning of the return of that faith.

[somewhere-something-is-happening]

“This is the Church of the Mother of Silence.

You are welcome here.”

Acrylic on canvas

[disco-dancing-in-the-desert]

[dolorianwolf]

Cindy brought cuno to book club/art session

So long as people keep enjoying these I’m not gonna stop making them

[miragecounseling]

happy trans visibility day ♥

○ tiago, khi's academic rival and secret love (he/they) ○ fleur, fox's love interest but she doesn't know their secret!!! (she/her) ○ callista, my cute modremvari (they/them) ○ keir / harrison fox, the pirate captain turned good that is also secretly a dragon (he/him when presenting as human solely to keep up the ruse, but any pronouns are fine)

[damiendo]

Félicien Araud (Tiago) : le nouveau venu dans "Un si grand soleil"

[birth-mother]

JONATHAN SIMS AND MARTIN BLACKWOOD?!?!!?

[eusouevangelica-eusouevangelico]

A fé positiva não é a fé santíssima que Deus concedeu aos Seus filhos, pois toda glória que declara a suficiência do homem em si mesmo é maligna e pecaminosa.

Ref.: Tiago 4:16

[rupsttus]

imagine how the ravers dyed tiago's head with poppy flowers

[disco-archetypes]

TIAGO - "Habitual alcohol use has made you into a scared little pussy, homes. But don't worry, everything's gonna be alright -- you've come to the right place."

RHETORIC - Hold on, stop it right there. "Pussy"? What's with this?

YOU - "I'm not scared. I just don't understand why the female sexual organs have to be associated with weakness."

TIAGO - "You've really got a case of frayed nerves. *Pussy* in this usage comes from *pusillanimous*. Everybody knows that."

RHETORIC - Uhm.... oops?

[just-aust-in]

Tiago

[kfvarela]

Next ⏩

[disco-dancing-in-the-desert]

[fredericolimablog]

"Peça-a, porém, com fé, não duvidando; porque o que duvida é semelhante à onda do mar, que é levada pelo vento e lançada de uma para outra parte."

Tiago 1:6