#to kim and harry in their position as cops

[smthscoming]

not directing this at anyone in particular but lest we all forget... kim kitsuragi IS a cop and a centrist and acab DOES apply to him

he can be your uwu gay bby that's fine but he does make it clear he's chosen pragmatic moralism. so just like... think about that perhaps.

[mirlo]

Thinking about the RCM base salary.

5000 réal a year, aka 416 réal per month. That is very low. The price for a room in the Whirling-in-rags is 20 réal, so the week we spend solving the case Kim (and maybe Harry too) has spent at least 100 réal only for lodging, a fourth of their monthly salary. For sleeping in a hostel in the must run down, overlooked, law-free, drug-dealing part of Révachol.

And yet, Kim, in day One, gives you 100 réal, for free. Kim may be *precious of his tools* but his very very generous, to a literally drunk man he has met that day.

[eileenthecrow]

why is disco elysium one of the best games in the world

[suresne]

i’m hesitant to jump into the Kim Discourse but i disagree with statements that boil down his worldview/morality to “kim is a good cop first and foremost, no matter what”

there are so many examples of him doing shit in the game that directly compromises the reputation and aims of the RCM, and not just in a corrupt cop type of way (though there is some of that, obviously)

if kim only cared about being a good cop, why does he go along with harry’s unhinged side missions and whims at pretty much every chance he gets, putting aside the murder investigation? we know that he has “authority off the charts” and could make harry toe the line, but he almost never does. he has a stern affect, but it’s often just for show.

if kim only tolerates/likes harry because he is a detective of the RCM, why does kim clearly get joy from their adventures that have nothing to do with, and even sometimes interfere with, their police work? just because kim says that line to harry about how “an officer of the RCM shouldn’t be on the street” doesn’t mean he necessarily believes, even in the beginning of the game, that harry is only really valuable as a detective of the RCM. he may project that as a value he has adopted, but that doesn’t mean it’s truly how he feels.

kim uses his position in the RCM as a way to distance himself from things that are messy, like politics and emotions. it’s easier for him to say to harry “no RCM detective should be on the street” than “i care about you for some reason i can’t explain and don’t want to see you sleep in the dumpster.” because he’s a pathetic little man who can’t talk about his feelings

i’m not saying that kim isn’t misguided or that his admiration for the RCM isn’t misplaced. because he is, and it is. but making his seemingly unwavering devotion to the RCM the salient aspect of his character at the expense of other things just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

also arguing that kim could never grow or be radicalized is doing him a disservice, imo. knowing harry for a week makes kim confront the rigidity of his thinking about reality itself. is it really so strange that he could have the potential to reflect and reevaluate his worldview? the game didn’t make its characters so complex and human for them to remain rigid and unchanging.

[wanderingtycho]

By far one of my favorite things about the way Disco Elysium handles politics is that Libertarianism is treated as an absolute joke. Like the game is obviously sympathetic towards communists, but there are elements of sympathy towards the moralists and fascists as well. Not sympathy in the sense of “oh can’t we all just get along, we’re all human” BS, but sympathy in the sense that you are able to understand a persons thought process that would lead them to embrace moralism or fascism. Even if that thought process is deeply flawed, and leads to horribly off kilter conclusions, going through the centrist and fash quests gives you meaningful insight into the appeal of those ideologies.

But Ultraliberalism? The game just laughs at you, repeatedly and mercilessly. As it should, you’re a cop so poor a guy you’ve known for one day has to pawn some fancy hubcaps so you can afford rent, yet all you talk about is your grindset. Your hustle, how you’re gonna disrupt the market and groove your way into the lap of luxury. It’s delusion, utter stark raving madness, and characters treat you as such.

Kim is at a loss for words whenever you crank on your libertarian spiel, Evrart calls you a retard, you have to *trick* the mega-rich light bending guy into giving you mercury mining stocks because he’s simply too perplexed by you. Joyce, last of the self identified Ultras, doesn’t take you seriously. Sileng just goes along with it the same way he goes along with any of the other nonsense you can spout, because he’s on his own hustle, and there is no loyalty among charlatans. The only character who is wholeheartedly onboard with the money engineering and the visionary wave making lifestyle is literally named IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL.

But you see, all these things are just incidental, where the game makes it most potent jab at libertarians is when the vision quest stops. Notice I said *stop* not *end*. The communist quest line ends with a Rhetoric check in order to ask The Most Important Question about Communism. The fascist quest has you look yourself in the eye with an Endurance check to see if you can stomach the truth about yourself and your Vöws. The moralist quest ends with a heart wrenching Empathy check as you beg the iron grey and soulless enforcers of the status quo to please god help this district before war breaks out in the streets. There’s real personal stakes for Harry in all these disparate paths he can walk, what does Ultraliberalism get?

You and Kim look at a statue covered in tinsel and disco balls, Kim asks you why you went through with all this, and no matter what response you pick he’s like “Right, yeah, okay. Anyway, let’s finish the case.”

That’s it, no grand moment of pathos, no red Savoir Faire skill check to see if you really are the baddest hustler in the neoliberal hood after all. It’s completely limp, flaccid, lackluster. The game treats all the effort you put into this as exactly what it is: sad, cringe fantasies of a poor old man who’s huffing copium over the embarrassed millionaire mythos.

Disco Elysium doesn’t give libertarianism a poignant, profound conclusion because it’s an ideology undeserving of such treatment. It’s a hyper-capitalist cult mentality of toxic positivity and confirmation bias, a way for desperate people to trick themselves and other chumps into thinking they can bootstrap their way into wealth and prestige. It goes past wishful thinking into pure delirium, the game doesn’t engage with it seriously because it doesn’t have to, the only people who sincerely believe any of its tenants are morons and the clowns who sucker them.

[renmorris]

ableism in the disco elysium fandom is fucking crazy because you like, can’t even talk about Harry and Jean shooting up a church, or the hole in reality that exists there now, and how Sacred and Terrible Air confirms that trauma and death accelerate the growth of the Pale, or crazy shit like that Dora actually was confirmed by Luiga and Kurvitz to be Dolores Dei

because you’re stuck taking baby kindergartener steps with cruel morons as you have to walk them through concepts like 'disabled people aren’t evil' ‘flanderizing Kim into an emotionless or cruel or predatory person is racist' 'maybe the ableist cop who drops right wing dogwhistles and uses his position to punch down on vulnerable people isn’t a reliable source on Harry’s character' etc etc

there are so much more interesting conversations we could be having but I feel like I can barely get to them when so many people think Harry’s a bad person because he’s sick and poor as opposed to he’s a bad person because he’s a fucking cop that brutalizes civilians

[lifeless-discodancer]

You know how sometimes in DE fics when Kim transfers to precint 41 he and Harry don't get partnered together but instead Kim gets parnered with Judit and Harry stays with Jean?

Something i've never seen before is Judit becoming Harry's partner and Jean becoming Kim's wich like i get it, it sounds like the worst possible outcome but i think it would be so funny to read because on one hand we have Judit who has been working at C wing for only two months and who, based purely on the small amount of knowledge we have about her personality, is probably the epitome of the boring cop archetype, getting paired with Harry who will not leave her rest or leave her alone and will probably drag her into a bunch of weird shit and stereo investigations; and on the other, funnier hand we have Kim who above all appreciates a professional work relationship and who is also the number one champion of the holding grudges contest, and Jean who is honestly a huge asshole, incapable of forming any relationship that isn't codependent and who already left a weird (bad) impression on Kim by not doing his job for days and subjecting him and two other people to watch his public break up with Harry (also he came second in the holding grudges contest).

So this leaves us with:

Judit in the same position as the little girl who gets sat next to the loudest boy in class with the hope that she will be a good influence on him, except that she's not a little girl she's an adult cop with kids of her own that keeps getting asked to babysit other adult cops probably because she's the only woman in the unit. And i'm not saying this in a "Judit is the team mom" sense but in a "her workplace is so fucking misogynist" one. [Actually, now that i think about it this could be a good opportunity to explore the sexual harasment she experienced at the hands of her last partner, as well as her experience and the expectations her superiors and coworkers have of her, and the ones she has of herself, because she's the only woman in a male dominated workplace and (and a female cop on top of it (notice the emphasis on cop)) that she can't really fulfill because of the kind of person she is (a very normal, passive and tired kind of person). Also i think Harry would work nicely as parallel to her last partner. Where's the fic about it?]

Kim and Jean who already started on the wrong foot back in Martinaise even if none of them knew it at the moment. For them i can only imagine the most passive agresive partnership to ever exist but probably at the start of it they were doing their best to keep things civil. Jean was trying because, even if he thinks Kim is "bewitched by the shitkid", he's working with a decorated police lieutenant and, at least in his own mind, he's a very professional officer and he has to leave a good impression of himself and the C wing (he's definitely not doing that); Kim was trying because at first he didn't have much of an opinion on Jean (he swears) and, since he was complaining so much about Harry's work he thought Jean would at least have a good work ethic and be professional, also he too wanted to leave a good impression on his new coworkers. Of course the niceties went to shit the second one of them opened their mouth to say something that wasn't completely work related (it was like a game of chicken for days, weeks maybe, who will be the first to set fire to this perfectly normal, totally no filled with masked mutual annoyance, work partnership (it was Jean)). After that they argue like a couple of old ladies, and sometimes Kim thinks "maybe Jean is not that bad" but then Jean says something rude, or ableist, or homophobic or just something about Harry that Kim can't agree with, and then he dislikes him again, other times Jean thinks "maybe the lieutenant and i are finally understanding eachother" but then Kim will start lecturing him about something with the most condescending tone, or he'll drive his car like he's being followed by a missile, or give him a nasty side eye when he sees him taking drugs or even worst, he'll defend the shitkid when he's "rightfully" mad with him, and then he dislikes him again. This keeps for the entire duration of their partnership.

Harry is probably just a bit bummed out because he and Kim won't be partners anymore but he will try his best to not say that to Judit (he's a feminist after all), still he has to recover quickly from the disappointment since he has some real shit to worry about now (Shit like: I have to pay rent to my landlord?!!? How do i get into my bank account? Do i even have a bank account? Wait, who's my landlord? And other questions you would probably have too if you ever got amnesia that severe). He complains to Judit about not having Kim as a partner and Judit is rightfully offended but doesn't say anything (poor woman give her a break). He spends the entire duration of that partnership dragging Judit around Jamrock in side quests while she tries, unsuccessfully, to get him back on their current cases (he does not listen to her because he's a shit feminist), still he comes around to finish the original cases eventually (Harry apologizes a lot for not listening to her, Judit tells him it's fine because she's honestly so tired and it's so awkward(if she goes home to find even more work she's going to implode)). I think that with some time they would figure out how to work together, more or less, and they would have a pretty stable partnership.

Idk how to end this. I just thought it would be a fun idea and suddenly i blacked out and woke up with a small esay in front of me. I hope you enjoyed this.

[earlofbats]

Okay so because this post about Harry being a bottom I'm going to give a genuine dissertation on the thematic relevance of sub Harry and maybe a little bit about dom Kim.

First I wanna establish the "Harry is definitely a subby little bottom boy" and is also definitely Bi and probably has some sorta fucking complex about it.

Evidence A. Contact Mike, Guillaume Le Million, Measurehead (when fascist).

Harry tends to idolize and gravitate towards extremely masculine figures.

This is probably due to a reflexive need to feel masculine and have masculine role models in the face of elements of identity that are seen as unmasculine by society and have become exacerbated by the breakup which had to be pretty emasculating for Harry.

Also :

Imma start a Harry's Kink counter here +1 light bondage.

+1 auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Uhm +1 uhh,Spanking? Additional +1 for being what I think is most possibly the horniest thought you have in the game also:

+1 Kim is a Dom.

I think Harry has kept his attraction to men or his desires about men fairly low key for his entire life. The way he conceptualizes Homosexuality in general as an "underground" society filled with whispering rooms and forbidden secrets is likely more of a reflection of how Harry views his own sexuality than how Queer culture is manifest in Revachol. (In reference to the way both Kim and The Smoker kinda laugh Harry about it)

The organizational element of the idea being likely reflective of the way internalization is akin to paranoia.

Harry is also extremely intimacy starved and I think part of that is due to an unmet need for affection and the desire to be taken care of. That masculinity and status as both a survivor and an oppressor was sorta thrust onto Harry, he was born the last year of the war on a hospital floor, given a name associated with war time and survival, grew up probably in a little street urchin gang, got into *Disco* (man I'm sure Harry brushed elbows with the underground then.) Was a gym teacher a good balance between masculinity and caretaker and guardian something that harry clearly excels at and enjoys. Then Dora encouraged him to be a cop for unknown reasons perhaps prestige, money, because Harry has a bleeding heart.

Engage Heterosexual Cop hell for 12 years then an additional 6 single Cop hell years.

And now you're like :

Another element is Harry's tendency to worship and diefy his partners which like man that's gotta be the subbiest fucking thing you can do. I honestly can't articulate all of the reasons why that's just extreme bottom behavior.

Harry is an empathic jelly creature who is forced to handle a job with dead people in it all day and has created this reflexive hyper masculine obsession to compensate for his perceived inadequacy in not living up to the patriarchal capitalist ideal of what's supposed to be his birthright as a well off, able bodied, 'straight', occidental, man.

Except the actual issue is that Harry is mostly perceived or perceiving himself as that, when in reality he's in clear conflict with his actual identity as a Poor, mentally Ill, bisexual, occidental, man.

And it's those last two that end up kind of making this smoke screen to Harrys deficiency in privilege. He can mask or hide behind being an Occidental Man.

Can buddy buddy with patriarchy and take up the idea of a Big Strong Manly Cop.

Something that Kim also seems to be doing by seeking out positions of authority he can compensate for the disrespect he gets as a Poor, blind, gay, seolite, man.

Last of which probably won't get him far because of how "juvenile" his body type is.

Kim can't really coast on patriarchy much the way Harry can. He has to work twice as hard cuz there's not a lot he can hide behind.

Pursuit for control in the face of denial

Vs

Shielding ones self behind control as a means of denial.

Dom/Sub dichotomy.

[just-plumli-stuff]

People are always talking about how we baby Jean but what about Harry? I’m basically sorry cop Harry in real life, and one of the most emotional things for me in Disco is finding out HARRY DOESN’T SUCK. In fact, Harry is a certified 360 spin kick genius. I assumed we were a depressed alcoholic floating through life and just an utterly destroyed broken human being. But despite all that:

-You’re famous enough Kim knows who you are and goes with your amnesia because he thinks the famous Harry Dubois is playing a funny prank. He lets you do all this shit cause he trusts you are THE Harry Dubois.

-Jean will take you back in literally every ending. He came to the Whirling in a wig, you guys have to be on better terms than he pretends you are to do that. He’s a dick, but honestly a lot of straight male friendship is calling each other slurs cause their fathers never taught them how to express love.

-Judit is weirdly defensive of you and I don’t know why she would be unless you were a GOOD BOSS. You let a chick on your task force you progressive thinker!

-Trant has some pretty kind takes on your position and seems if anything in awe of your methods. If Harry was a total fuck up would he try to mental gymnastics there must be a reason you got so drunk you wiped your brain?

- the Unsolvable Case and the World Mural, the other two times you were drunk off your ass were recent. Harry probably always been a drinker, but it’s possible shitty Harry is a more recent development.

I just wanna imagine Harry personally changed the lives of everyone in the phone call room and that’s why these 2 IQ losers are somehow carrying Precinct 41’s closing rate. Harry is a leader of men and chicks. HARRY DUBOIS ISN’T STUPID HE’S JUST TOO SMART FOR HIS OWN BRAIN AND A LITTLE SILLY.

Edit: I FORGOT MY THESIS. Super apologetic people will apologize for shit they didn’t even do. If you, like me, woke up as Harry Dubois and assumed you are the worlds greatest fuck up you need to examine why. Harry could have been literally anyone but we assumed he/we were a bad person.

[randomisedmongoose]

I've been thinking about parents and kids in Disco Elysium.

Fathers first: who actually has a present, positive father figure?

Kim never knew his, and says that he thinks his father wasn't that great of a person anyway. Harry doesn't remember his, and doing the fascist route and talking with Measurehead indicate that he wasn't around, if not actually abusive. Little Lily's dad killed himself, and wasn't that much of a help before that anyway. Judit's husband is, according to her, half a husband and probably not that good of a dad. Acele's dad was a drug lord and "a bad man". The paledriver says she "never had a father" - she might have forgotten him, though. But the father she remembers definitely isn't hers. Plaisance's husband, Annette’s dad, is distant and quite possibly emotionally abusive. Cuno's dad is... uh. Yeah. No. Abusive and pretty much gone. Easy Leo and his mum had to move from Iraesh because his da was too violent. Billie's husband Victor doesn't seem to be that good of a father to their kids, even if she clearly loves him and will miss him awfully. The racist lorry driver has three kids. Wonder how good of a dad he is (my money is on not that great). Tommy Le Homme has children that he misses dearly, but he's still distant from them.

Fathers are distant or gone, and that’s almost universally seen as a good thing that they are, because when they're actually there they're awful. The only positive, present father figure we get on screen is Trant. He's supportive, interested in Mikael's hobbies, protective and inclusive. We get one possibly positive father figure story from Measurehead, but the man himself is described as the perfect pinnacle of masculinity, which in this setting probably isn't that good really, when not seen through his son's eyes.

Also, Harry's own relation to fatherhood. We don't know what happened when Dora got an abortion, if Harry wanted her to or not (and it doesn't matter really, it was her choice to make) but it does mean he's not a father now. And judging from what the game tells us about fathers and everything we know about him pre-game, this is probably a good thing.

Mothers, then? Much more present, and a bit more complex.

Kim doesn't remember his mother, either. Harry has a fond memory of his, being loved and cared for, but she's spoken of in the past tense. Lilienne does her best and seems to genuinely care for her children, but she works all the time to put food on the table. Joyce is a mother, how good she is is up for interpretation. In any case she's not present, but considering her age her daughters are probably adults. Billie clearly loves her girls and knows and supports what they do, she's present in their lives even though they're nearing adulthood. Judit is an overworked cop with a partner that doesn’t seem to contribute much – not the best of circumstances for a kid, but we have no idea who helps her and her situation outside work.

The only mother we get an explicitly bad picture of is Plaisance’s, Annette’s grandmother, and by extension, Plaisance herself (hello, generational cycle of abuse, we'll get back to you). There are two bad mothers that are more metaphorical: the Mother of Silence, aka. the 2 mm hole in reality, that will eat you whole and never spit you out, and Dolores Dei, who is described as Humanity's Young Mother – nurturing and abusive at the same time, granting humanity the complete world while murdering the parts of it that rejected her gifts.

So mums run the entire gamut from godly to shitty with every flavour of overworked from all social classes in between. Despite the caring mother figures, we're left with a complete picture of children as largely abandoned by their parents emotionally or practically, if not outright abused.

Distant and abusive parents tie very nicely into the theories of the Pale that says that it consists of recycled memories, and part of what makes the world stagnant. Everybody's stuck in a perpetual cycle of generational abuse with no way of getting out. It takes drastic action to change it, because you're not just working against your own trauma and ingrained habits, but against the grain of history.

But, here's the kicker, we as a player can do that – to some extent. We can try to break Harry out of the cycle. We can make him kinder and calmer and less violent. But he had to literally erase every aspect of himself, and he didn't even manage to do it completely.

We can save some kids, but no matter how we play the game, we're not allowed to save some of them. The ravers, we can help them. Cindy, we can give her a little bit of artistic inspiration. Mikael is set already, he doesn't need us. We can do our best to make sure Little Lily and her brothers aren't evicted. We can even give Cuno something other (better is debatable) by recruiting him to the RCM.

Cunoesse though? She's lost to us in all futures. She's the only person in the game besides ourself that we can actually kill (not counting the mercs), and the only one beside ourself that actively wants us to do it. There's already been circumstances that led her to where she is, and we the player can't break her cycle. All we can do is hope that there's someone else who can. And boy does it seem bleak.

[d1sc01nf3rn0]

Everyone argues that authority is a skill that's about how much you make people obey you BUT I disagree, and I say it's a skill that's about being trustworthy.

Like, yes, if you have high authority the skill starts getting authoritarian BUT only you are able to hear it, and you're free to listen to it or not. And even then, even Volition gets paranoid and reactive like that.

HOWEVER people feel compelled to listen to you when you say it, and based on the dialogues I say it's because they're evaluating how much they can trust said authority. That's why when you fail the skillcheck you come up with authoritarian or nonsensical arguments.

On the contrary, if you pass a high authority check, your arguments can be pretty sensible and well intentioned (like asking Titus to tell you who's the "rape" victim, because the victim needs help, regardless of what happened to the guy that did it).

The most perfect example of this, is the skillcheck at the Mercenary Tribunal.

It could be a reaction speed skillcheck, but no. It's an authority skillcheck, and they make emphasis on the fact of whether Kim trusts you enough or not.

Kim listens to you not because you're his superior, he listens to you because he trusts your orders.

Kim starts listening to you from the beginning because you're from the RCM, and he believes and trusts in the RCM, despite everything. It's after multiple things in the game that he *TRULY* trusts YOU.

It's a repeated fact in the game that no one listens to you because they don't trust the police; but modifiers that give bonuses to authority come AFTER you do things that make them trust you, even a little.

Another similar example is that "Evrart told them to cooperate" is a modifier. They listen to you, because they trust Evrart. They don't believe he would have told them to cooperate otherwise. They only listen to you based on that trust.

Cuno would be another example, where he starts telling you stuff because you respect him; not because you're an adult, and certainly not because you're a cop.

In the same sense, that's also why you're able to fail an authority skillcheck regardless of you lvl of authority if you lack certain modifiers. You could have a lot of authority, but that doesn't mean people will trust you enough to do or say everything you ask.

A missed point when it comes to positions of authority is that they must be trustworthy, because at the end of the day, it's does not matter how high in the hierarchy you are, people won't listen to you if they don't want to.

Harry's "human can-opener" reputation comes because people feel compelled to tell him stuff; maybe because they understimate him, feel at ease with him, or another reason, but it rarely is just because he's from the RCM.

[ishouldgetadiary]

there are definitely cleverer people to discuss this at length than me and there are probably people who already have and come to the same or better conclusions, but i do just want to say that an aspect of kim kitsuragi i can't get over is his disconnect from being seolite (outside of the racism). i don't know, it's very important to have asian characters with strong cultural ties who have that culture accurately expressed through their character/stories and i do love those characters, but it's somewhat rarer to see the alternative (at least, when race and culture is acknowledged at all), let alone it being a point of pride for them, the same way it is for kim. all of this to say, i feel haunted by what he says when you ask him about his heritage.

i didnt ask him about it on my first run (because i found the way the question is initially asked to be kinda rude and i was afraid of if it'd make him like me less, lol) but i did in my current replay and the way he dances around the topic, 'i'm half seolite, well technically, my parents were both quarter, i guess you could also say im quarter, i don't know the language or culture and i've only lived in revachol', it fucks me up so bad! first is how you can tell it's mostly a defensive tactic for him, at least when he starts the rant— somebody asks about the race thing? deflect. i'm only half. i don't even know the language. i'm not one of those seolites. second is how he loosens into pride when he realises/remembers that harry isn't asking to be racist, he is genuinely having trouble remembering that the concept of race exists, but also because it lets kim kinda show that it is something to be prideful about in revachol.

dont get me wrong— i think kim kitsuragi is genuinely proud of being as revacholian as anyone else. he loves revachol. i dont think he’d go along with harry so easily on random side quests or have opinions on if harry helps or hinders the people of martinaise if he actually didnt care. i dont even know he’d still be a cop or (more accurately) be one for as long as he has been, especially when he’s spent most of it as a juvie officer, if he didnt believe in revachol. it’s people, what it is, and what the country could be. people like to take his position as a police officer as just his way of feeling a sense of power in a post revolutionary (khm. and racist) world that has never had the space for him or his dreams, but kim is more three dimensional than that. ESPECIALLY when there are ways that being a cop gives him less power than regular citizens in revachol. he likes, wants, and believes in both, and that’s not necessarily hypocritical. in the same way, i dont think it’s at all hypocritical that his pride is rooted in both his love for revachol AND the way white supremacy has impacted him. because yk, when he’s proud about his lack of connection to his heritage, it’s not just his love for revachol speaking, it’s also the disdain that we, the player, hear for seolite people (at least what we hear from or related to kim).

that all being said, i dont consider that to be a terribly complex thought at all— real life people are complicated and multifaceted, so kim kitsuragi is written to also be complicated and multifaceted. in disco elysium, the writers are never worried about presenting the world in a better or worse way than it already is. yes, it is definitely a heightened version of our reality, but it also presents everything as direct as possible. case example would be the racist lorry driver in what he says versus how he’s presented. in that very first interaction when kim confronts him and harry catches up on what just happened, he denies and hides in the same way a lot of people deny and hide that they are being racist, but you, the player, cannot avoid or pretend he isnt being racist, because it is literally in his name. you are not given the grace of real life where there is the option of either the benefit of the doubt or genuinely questioning your own assessment. despite all of that, ultimately, it is still haunting for that early kim question to be so reminiscent of what i see in real life.

in the example of a shorter ramble, kim's own ramble weirdly reminds me of myself, but in the opposite direction. i very easily and quickly tumble into word vomit and over-detail my heritage just to make it make sense that my name isnt white. and i'm not gonna boohoo over my own personal situation at all when i know i benefit from white supremacy, but i hate that ultimately, white supremacy ‘won’ when it comes to 'me'. because just like kim kitsuragi, i don't know a language that isn't english, i dont know a different culture, and i've only lived in my predominantly white country.

but a more apt comparison is my own father. a man who’s internalised shame cant even allow him to comprehend why somebody white would want a tan, because he’s always been at least a little tan, and that’s part of what ‘clocks’ him as not fully white, who does try to connect with his mother’s culture, but just kind of ended up with only odd bits and pieces of it and the language, because it was something that would’ve just made life harder than it should be, and despite everything, he’ll still do things like dunk on chinese people. there may be more to say, but you get the gist. and yet somehow none of it has quite reaches the point where he can recognise it in himself. because he knows racism and white supremacy is bad and he’s obviously against it, but it is hard to acknowledge that it is greater than just the lorry drivers and measureheads of the world. because we live with the consequences and the rot of white supremacy within us. assimilation has done it's job to it's logical conclusion.

… and yet it is a limbo, and a hollow one at that. regardless of how white i am, i still dont fully relate to my fully white peers, because there are ways in which i dont share in their accepted shared experiences. my father has never felt accepted in either club, ‘too japanese for white australians and too australian for japanese people’ (can you believe that disco elysium was almost banned from my country)! our fully white peers will never know what it’s like to be able to look at the face of a complete stranger of a different race and see family. to see their aunts, or grandparents, or parents.

but kim kitsuragi talks of that limbo with pride. he may never feel a true sense of community with either white people or other seolites, and this is something his brain seems to choose not to fully acknowledge, even though he definitely feels it. and really, it’s haunting in the same way i find both my father’s and my involvement in society disconcerting. the truth that, in spite of where white supremacy and assimilation can get you, you will never truly achieve the community or peace of mind there is in ignorance.

despite all that, on a brighter note, i do think that in terms of what kim truly likes harry for and what gains his trust in him is the choice for harry to be that sense of community he needs. (if i am remembering right) kim will only really trust you if you chose to defend him from the several racists you’ll encounter and make jokes at their expense with him, because it’s highly HIGHLY unlikely that barely anybody goes through that effort for him. even when it’s pretty clear that the writers were going for humorous ‘haha, white guy trying his best to be an ally’ dialogue choices, kim himself doesnt really show that he finds it obnoxious or unwanted, it’s genuinely something he would rarely get other rcm members even though that is the community he’s definitely and wholly part of.

anyways i have no idea if this post made any sense or if im really wrong (i could be!) because it came from a more personal place than maybe typical character analysis but whatever

[keingleichgewicht]

like, ok. disco elysium is mostly about bigger things than personal morality, and it is too smart to be interested in asking whether kim and harry are "bad people," because people cannot be ontologically bad* even if being a cop is very close, and the distinction in itself is a carceral conceit, it's not worth talking about in any model worth talking about. and that's probably part of the point, and part of the point is that There Is No Ethical [PLAYTHROUGH OF DISCO ELYSIUM]; existing in a world like revachol, or ours, and getting to stay morally decent, let alone while in the kind of positions of power kim & harry inhabit, is impossible but more to the point it's also a dangerous fable. it is a dangerously incorrect way to approach the ideas that the narrative is offering you.

*or good!

& that said, insofar as disco has anything to say on personal morality, i think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of the next world mural:

it is too late for us, and it is also too late for these two mean-hearted cold-spirited, bullying old cops; we have seen too many ages of the world already, we have failed to rise too many times. it is too late for true love and it is too late for good men. it is too late to be forgiven. "you can never save anyone nor can you atone for your sins", &c, "you shall not go down twice to the same river, nor can you go home again."

WREAK HAVOC ON THE MIDDLE CLASS

it is too late to be good men. harry and kim are never going to be able to be good men, because you can't fix what they've each done to people, or the kind of trigger-happy control-hunger that leads them to bully and steal and coerce, or the various steam-kettle pressures (racialized, in kim's case) that pushed them to become these people (pressures which are unlikely to let up any time soon, either, and hence why it's so unconvincing to pretend they're ever going to stop being cops.) and yet, you know! and yet! you can't aim for "redemption" because it's a bankrupt concept, and you also cannot pretend that you can just walk away from any of these things; not in this world; maybe in the next, not in this one.

but that isn't a message of despair, any more than disco is ever doing a message of despair! be vigilant i love you. you can go home again, as long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been. kim and harry are really not the point although by definition it is true for them as well -- but IS THERE A CHANCE FOR THEM TO GET BETTER? is functionally equivalent to asking IS THERE A CHANCE FOR ANY OF US TO GET BETTER? or even more fundamentally WILL THE RETOUR EVER COME? and the only answer disco has for us on this front is, i don't know, well will it???

[sydmarch]

Who is Angus to Evrart?

full dialogue of the scene that line is from:

You - "Tell me about Titus Hardie and his crew."

Evrart Claire - "Oh, they are simply fine young men -- all seven of them! Exemplary Union members. Always working to advance their position in the local socialist-democratic movement. Core members."

Evrart Claire - "Old Theo used to run them, but things really *kicked into gear* when Titus took the reins and named the group after himself." He starts laughing. "Gotta love his initiative." You - "What more can you tell me? Who's second in command? Who's the most violent?"

Evrart Claire - "Harry, they're almost all of them *great* guys, born leaders. Whatever happened, I'm sure they only had the best interests of Revachol in mind."

Evrart Claire - "Work with them -- hell, interview them! But don't fight them. They really are just like you -- men who like beer, women, and some *order* on the streets."

Half Light - Separate one from the herd. You - "So let me ask you this... Which one of Hardie's boys is your least favourite?"

Evrart Claire - "Oh, that would definitely be Fat Angus. His feet smell from a city-block away and he's always having noisy stomach troubles. Horrible, revolting guy."

You - "So let's say something happens to Fat Angus... let's say a citizen's arrest..."

Evrart Claire - "You would die, Harry," he says, grinning. "You would die and in the process start a bloody and completely unnecessary war between the Débardeurs' Union and the Citizens Militia."

Evrart Claire - "Angus, his ever-growling stomach, and his smelly feet are all part of the Union. You have as much right to *arrest* him as he has to arrest you... "

Evrart Claire - "...actually less, because it's his home and his backyard. You are a guest here, Harry. Please remember that."

Evrart Claire - "Oh Harry..." He starts laughing. "This is getting real grim and there's no need for that. We are friends." He sits back and looks you in the eye with a wide smile.

i love thinking about this dialogue in comparison to when you get his real opinion on the hardies:

Evrart Claire - "Harry, I bugged her cabin. I bugged her whole boat. I had cameras surveying her boat. Hell I even wanted to bug that thermal cup, but my boys advised against it."

Savoir Faire - They must have done it while Joyce was busy questioning the locals. You - "So you've been listening to our conversations all the time?"

Evrart Claire - "Not me personally..." he stretches his arms like a discus thrower. "I had guys recording and processing this information for me." You - "The Hardie boys?"

Evrart Claire - "Hell no!" he exclaims. "They'd fuck it up. They can't do anything right. I mean my *real* boys. My special task force boys."

Kim Kitsuragi - "Where are these boys?"

Evrart Claire - "They sure as hell aren't hanging out in the open with beers in their hands for the cops to question." He bursts out laughing. "They're pros, Mr. Kitsuragi."

he doesn't like angus & doesn't even like or trust the hardies as it turns out! and yet i do 100% believe that he meant it when he said harry would die & it would start a war between the rcm and the union. not because he really cares about the hardies personally but because it would reaffirm the union's power/obviously they would have to respond to something like that. but finding knowing his true thoughts about the hardies casts an interesting light on this convo:

You - "The remaining mercenaries are organizing a tribunal to take on the Hardies."

Evrart Claire - "Tribunal?" He appears aghast. "That sounds *serious* Harry. We Union men should be *shitting* ourselves..." He rubs his chin and smiles suddenly: "I wish you hadn't told me that. I'm gonna lose *sleep* over this. Let's change the subject."

Empathy - He's clearly happy about the tribunal.

You - "You don't *seem* too worried about it." Evrart Claire - "Oh, Harry, what do I *really* think about the tribunal? You're trying to climb to second base with old Evrart before you've even courted him properly."

obviously he's happy about the tribunal because his end goal is to start a war with wild pines but there's a total lack of concern for the hardies both here where they come up specifically or for the union in general when discussing the prospect of a war with harry:

You - "Have you ever heard what two Giant Seraise Hornets can do to an entire colony of bees? They destroy it."

Evrart Claire - "I have. It's a great story, Harry." He nods. "Did you also know how the bee colony kills the giant hornet? They swarm and blanket it entirely, until it suffers a *massive heat stroke* and dies." Empathy - He crosses his hands, contently, thinking of the interior temperature of the wasp rising. Endurance - They cook it alive in its exoskeleton.

Evrart Claire - "Harry, we outnumber them fifteen hundred to one. And that's just Martinaise. With all the unions in Revachol -- and with public opinion on our side -- we can hold off two men. Or fifteen men. Or even fifty men."

Evrart Claire - "The more they send, the worse it's going to look for them. They made a *huge* mistake hiring those guys. *No one* likes foreign mercenaries. The leftists hate them, the fascists hate them, even the moralists think they're *in bad taste*."

is he really just that confident in the union? does he view the hardies specifically as expendable because he doesn't have much faith in them? or are his real thoughts more along the lines of "yeah people are probably gonna die but if that's what it takes then so be it"? we already know he's willing to kill if need be but i'd imagine he'd view tiphaine holly (an ineffective leader who's his direct opponent) differently from the members of the union he's supposed to be looking out for... we can never get his opinion on the tribunal after it happens (screams cries throws up) but i could see him being overall satisfied with the outcome.

Evrart Claire - "What was always going to happen. We take the harbour and she fucks off to Ozonne, uncorks a bottle of wine, calls her partners and says they need to distance themselves from this nasty business before the big shit spinner splashes everyone."

Evrart Claire - "Only difference is the Union doesn't have to lose 2,000 men to machine gun fire."

like, 3-7 deaths compared to 2,000? anyways this is so much more than the question you actually asked i just love to think about my fucked up little guy.

[1tbls]

de/dm thoughts. i don't know all dm lore/history yet so excuse any inaccuracies

hmm, i think kim and harry would be tall-men, since that seems suited to their class, to the fact that they live in one of the major cities of the world and their status as cops. this in-between space, in a way. the tall-men seem pervasive and relatively secure in their position in society, though of course there's still socioeconomic inequality.

jean would be a kobold because i think it would be funny. judit a human or dwarf, im not sure.

trant would be an elf or half-elf?

these ones are just vibes. joyce = human. neha = half elf. cunoesse = feral little beast girl like izutsumi? cuno = awful tiny halfling child.

[thegrimreaperisanerd]

hii i have a maybe somewhat difficult question:

how do you go about writing all of the police/detective stuff? I have no knowledge at all about that except having played the game a few times and watching bbc sherlock back when that was a thing.

I have so many cool kimharry things in my mind that i need to get on paper but i don't know how to involve all the cop stuff in a natural way because i don't know anything about it and don't want it to be too wildly incorrect.

so yeah.. how do you even learn the things for this?

thank you so much i love your work

Quite a difficult question I won't lie...... But I've answered at length so it's going under a readmore

This isn't my favourite thing to discuss online as it can trigger my psychosis, but I have an actual dismaying amount of experience with cops. I don't want to talk about it but... Bit like Cuno I suppose. Good ending for that kid is doing public services training ages 14 - 16, and going "oh this is shit actually" once he's got an out from his abusive parent, then working at a restaurant

I quite literally cannot go into detail - so don't ask because I WILL delete this post - but an ex military police officer told us a "funny story" about a "prank" he played on some kids in an occupied location during the late 80s that I recognised as psychological torture, but made my peers laugh. So I decided to become a faggot and poet instead.

~NOW FOR THE FUN ADVICE THAT IS ACTUALLY OF USE TO YOU!

Research:

Honestly, the amount of time I spend looking up stuff for writing is probably more than the time I spend writing. The internet's being fucked by SEO but it's a start. Like... There's plenty of info out there written on the police and their role in systematic oppression, I'm pretty sure there's free PDFs floating around on Tumblr actually...

If it's more "day in the life" I honestly don't know. Maybe reddit or if there's one of those "Ex-[blank} reviews [blank] in movies" videos on Youtube for cops, but obviously take everything said with a pinch of salt.

FAYDE:

Fayde is the best tool at your disposal. We bully Kim a lot for his dedication to the RCM but that makes finding out info pretty easy. EDC too! I've never played with high EDC so just typing in key words (especially names of other officers to try and get character info) and scrolling through is helpful.

Good keywords are "precinct", "RCM", "Militicia" as they'll bring up opinions/ info from other characters.

The RCM is not a traditional police force:

I would worry less about accuracy and more about being interesting. It doesn't need to be a perfect representation of police work since the canon makes a point of there being a distinction in the powers and roles of the RCM. Go listen to the collapsing tenement cut content. You don't need to write about them filling in forms if it's not relevant. It'll show in your writing if you're unsure/ bored.

Make them worse:

If you're going to write one of the officers doing something shitty (yes, that includes Kim and Harry) but worry that you've gone too far then I promise you haven't. Dickheads are drawn to positions of power and the impunity it gives them. There's a reason I wrote one of the 57's officers as a groomer.

Make them less competent:

Don't trust the police, but also don't expect anything of them.

As recently as Monday I had to call for the fire brigade because a lit (thankfully poorly made) petrol bomb had been left under a neighbour's car (I live an irritatingly interesting life for somebody who lives in the middle of fucking nowhere) nobody was harmed. Cop came to find me afterwards to get an interview from me since I'd spotted it and he told me, I kid you not, "Yeah, we're not gonna do anything unless anything else happens." Like, I expected as much but I wasn't expecting him to up and fucking say that. You're welcome for 85% of my council tax, you fucking moron.

Harry's a special case because he's, like, psychic and got "maybe if I solve *THIS* one my wife will let me sleep in the big bed" disorder, and nobody wants to read a case fic that they... don't solve (or do they..? *winks*) But if you care about realism you need dick-in-hand dipshits. Another favourite quote of mine from an officer two years back; "Is 'right wing' the good one or the bad one?" So the advice here is you're writing a cop well if you're reading it and thinking: holy shit please just go work at a TESCOs instead.

Don't worry so much:

You should write, first and foremost, for yourself. I like detective fiction, I have wasted an unfortunate amount of my life dealing with police due to my job and shit childhood. (I did originally write far more about this, but frankly it's better for myself if I don't bother. That's why it's taken me five days to answer this)

I've read/ watched a lot of detective fiction and I'm always more drawn to stuff that is less based in police work. Private investigators, investigative journalists, kid detectives like Nancy Drew, ect.

In particular my favourite book, perhaps of all time, is called Hideaway by Dean Koontz and is two fathers (one: the killer's father - a talented doctor who brought his shithead son back to life - and another, the doctor's most recent patient to be brought back from the brink who has developed a psychic link with the killer as a result) trying to stop him, but never actually meeting! It's one hell of a read if you need inspo.

Val McDermott is a good author for crime writing with less police input, too. She has a book called Killing The Shadows which is excellent. The Killer's motive is taking out crime writers who've romanticised psychological profilers after he was wrongly convicted. Fair enough! Until he starts... Killing about it? Sort of defeats the message... Anyway, what's fun about this book is that before each crime writer is killed (in the same way they wrote THEIR killers killing!! Love that) you get to read the first chapter of each writer's most famous work. So you are essentially getting six crime books in one (first chapter of at least) ...Also the main character's husband is a crime writer called Kit, which I've only remembered just double checking the book name now. Lol???

...This is just turning into me recommending books.

TLDR: write what you know, write what is fun, ACAB, don't even worry about it