Hates himself

Funny

Suicidal

Pathetic

Loves hard

Terrified of intimacy

I know Jean implies that Dora leaving was the catalyst for Harry being Like This, but in other places we get confirmation that Harry was already struggling (drinking, using The Expression to mask pain) before that relationship ended. I think Trant's hypothesis that Harry's struggles come from being exposed to a lot of second-hand trauma as part of his job holds a lot of water, though it is probably incomplete. If nothing else, Harry was born during a war and probably experienced a lot of trauma as a small child, too.

I don't think the Skills are new. They don't talk to Harry like they're meeting him for the first time, y'know? This seems to be a well-established part of Harry's brain. As far as what Harry was like before he lost his memory, I like to imagine that he was actually pretty decent at all of them, and that the decisions you have to make about where to put your skill points represent the damage that Harry's done to himself/regaining those skills and his memory.

That said, of the three archetypes, I tend to feel that the Sensitive or the Physical are closest to pre-amnesia Harry. I think he was high on PHYS (former gym teacher, good endurance even after all the damage he's done to himself, substance abuse) and moderately high on PSYCHE (creative, empathetic, strong personality, good at getting people to open up to him). I don't think he was stupid by any means, but I think his success came more from his dogged determination and his skill with people. And, for all that disco brings him joy, I don't think he's quite as suave or as musically talented as he would like to be. (Sorry, Harry.)

Nix Gottlieb is very much based on a real person. With the house Luiks interited there came a bunch of black and white photos. We started using these photos as blueprints for characters. All real people, all deceased by now. And one of them was a picture of a man with monk’s hair, glasses, and this strange, strange smile. This was a drinking buddy of Luiks' father. If you had to describe him in a sentence you would say ‘one horrible cunt.’ Absolute terrible fucking human being, but also a legend in this drinking circle back in the day.

This is a real story: there's a party that Luiks’ dad is at, and this guy ‘Nix’, he’s an actual doctor. Somebody at the party complains of a stomachache and Nix touches his stomach and diagnoses him with appendicitis. He literally takes him into a bedroom and operates. He cuts out his appendix and it turns out it’s close to the point where it’s going to explode, so it was very good that he intervened at the last moment. Two days later this person runs into Nix on the street and thanks him. And it turns out Nix was so drunk he has no memory of it. When he finally understands it’s not a prank, all the color drains out of his face, because what are the chances he didn’t kill the person by accident?

There was so much about this real person that was not an adaptation, we just put it into the game.

TY!!! And Yes I can: On a first pass through the game, Kim’s relationship to his sidearm is easy to read as basic cop vigilance, but once you start watching for it, any time a situation threatens to go bad, his hand goes to the gun. Sometimes even when nothing has happened yet, only when he is on edge, like walking into the book club. And sometimes that vigilance does escalate things, like with The Pigs, where he pulls his gun and starts shouting.

The badge is abstract authority. The gun is authority you can touch. It has weight. It sits on his body. It's physical security and responsibility in one.

The sidearm is the RCM saying: we trust your judgment in the final second.

The gun is symbolically physical in a way the badge is not. Kim is already a seolite man in an institution and a city that does not let him forget it: his authority is conditional. He has to be sharper, and calmer, and more correct, but worse is that the badge does not protect him from being scrutinized. in some ways, it also makes the scrutiny worse. It means he is someone who has been allowed into power, which means people are always waiting to decide he has misused it, failed it, or never deserved it.

So after Eyes dies, that matters in a truly awful way, because grief makes Kim extremely administratively vulnerable. If he is too numb, too angry, too honest, too strange, too changed by it, then suddenly his grief becomes a liability, and the first thing they would take is the gun. Without it, he is behind a desk. Without it, he is no longer trusted to be the person he has spent his entire adult life proving he can be. And worse: without it, he loses the choice of it. The finality. The terrible comfort of knowing that, whatever else has been taken from him, there is still one decision no one else can make on his behalf.

If I wanted to read into it further, I could also talk about juxtaposition. Harry loses his gun, willingly. or, more accurately: Harry disposes of his gun during the bender, along with his badge, his ledger, his memory, his name, and almost every object that proves he exists in the world as a detective except his green coat, and the interesting thing is that Harry does not treat the lost gun with normal professional alarm at first. Everyone around him understands it as a disaster, but Harry’s relationship to it is slippery and avoidant. The gun is gone because the part of Harry that could be trusted with it was also gone. Harry is the nightmare version of what happens when the performance fails, so Kim clings to the gun because it means he is still fit to choose. Harry loses the gun because he has already tried to abdicate choice entirely. And I think this is one of the reasons Kim is so fascinated by Harry, maybe even envious in some humiliating way. Harry has already done the unthinkable. He has become the institutional cautionary tale. He has made his grief, addiction, instability and suicidal ideation so public that everyone knows. The RCM knows. The union knows. The cafeteria manager knows. Strangers know. Children know. And somehow he is still standing there. Still a lieutenant double-yefreitor. Still allowed to come back.

What we know is that the Return is supposed to happen within a few months after Disco in '51, and Ambrosius gets elected as an innocence in the same year, before autumn. In '52 Jesper's mother takes him to a perfumery there and the way they talk about Revachol sounds like it's a place where luxury perfume gets made. In '72 its considered a fashion capital. So I don't think there's a successful communist revolution happening there, but there is an attempt, since "the return" has communist connotations too. It is its failure that will probably result in nihilism winning. The pale is also referred to as "light" in SATA, and there's this line in DE:

also this:

Ambrosius got popular by talking in radio shows so this could be a nihilist radio show. The point of nihilism and entropolism is that they reject the world in its current form and want the pale to cover the earth, and to return to the past

(Saint-Miro's speech from SATA)

There is an interview with Helen Hindpere where she talks about the Return:

HH: I would say [history is] a spiral, not a circle. We are returning to the same themes but always with a new twist. MM: Spiraling upwards? HH: Exactly.

HH: (...) I think the Return is one of the most important concepts in the game, even though we don’t explore it much other than via snippets here and there. We could get psychological or Lacanian here, like the idea of returning to your mother’s womb. MM: Or Freudian: the return of the repressed? HH: Yes. It’s what signifies revolution in the world of Elysium. It’s the same idea I talked about earlier. Revolution is usually imagined in the future, but here, it’s as if it’s something you have already felt. It suggests why we’re so drawn to notions of revolution. Everyone has felt it in their life at some point, so it’s a return to that feeling you already know. It’s a bit of a poetic, mystical explanation, but the Return signifies revolution and the aspiration that one day it will happen after all. MM: It’s like art. In the realm of aesthetic feeling, we appreciate that which we already sense but cannot yet find words for. And yet Adorno talks about the artistic act as the creation of that which we do not yet know. HH: Definitely. Art can surprise you, like when you later look at an artwork you yourself created and say, “so that’s what that is.” It’s like discovering a part of yourself. In the context of society, I agree that it’s like showing something that might still be unknown to the collective consciousness. That’s what you’re striving to do. JA: And yet it contains some of what we were addressing previously regarding Measurehead’s fascistic time travel, how it’s a forward-looking return. HH: Yes, I noticed that connection as well when I was talking, but I had never put that together. On the one hand there’s Measurehead’s return to better times, and on the other there’s the “return” forward into a utopian world that we have never known and has never existed, but feels like home.

This interview confirms that the Return is communist in some parts, however it's not just an uprising that gets crushed, there's something more to it. This psychological "returning to the womb" "return of the repressed" bring to mind this paragraph again:

(Side note, the 4th planned novel's title "TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINE DAYS REMAINING" had a Sappho quote which was: "Evening brings the child back to the arms of the mother." this interview reminds me of that. Might be stretch but if we look at how elysium uses the times of day for metaphors, communism is the "morning" and the city where Dolores Dei was crowned is translated as "evening comes." "229 days remaining" sounds apocalyptic. so my wild guess is that the novel could have been about the end of the world and this type of "return". maybe.)

Robert Kurvitz has said this about revolution (on the Beyond The Frame podcast):

It's how I image - the End of Evangelion – it's what I imagine it looks like when world revolution comes - blood shaped crosses exploding in space, human bodies popping like zits to form a unified red ocean of some. Hugely the more apocalyptic, pale side and the larger part of Disco Elysium [was inspired by Evangelion]– which Disco Elysium only shows a very small part.

Here the revolution is associated with the apocalyptic pale side of Elysium and sounds more like the pale dissolving people.

There's also "nihil-mat" (nihilist materialism) which is connected to Ion Rodionov, so it's not a nihilism that is opposed to communism. I think Saint-Miro might be inspired by this ideology but it's probably not what he follows. "[History is] a spiral, not a circle. We are returning to the same themes but always with a new twist." So there can not be a communist revolution again that's the same as the turn of the century revolutions.

The failure of communism and the spread of nihilism is a huge theme in both DE and the book, the Return could be a key element in this narrative. Martin Luiga has said that he wrote text on or by Miro in 2021 which could mean that they were planning on including Saint-Miro in the DE sequel. (the sequel was cancelled in 2022)

Forgive the clickbaity title, but the “new” ““lore””, as well as the broader reaction to it, has me raising one if not both of my eyebrows, especially over what I interpret as a really bad-faith and uncharitable interpretation of Trant (that both DOES and does NOT fit what we’re given in canon). 

Take everything I say with a grain of salt and with the knowledge that I spend an inordinate amount of my spare time thinking about this fictional man and his Problems. Trant Heidelstam has, for better or for worse, become my goddamn special interest.

I’m not sure how to approach this aside from using the classic internet technique of a nice numbered list:

Twice Divorced Well, what much is there to say? Two marriages failed. That’s about all the information we’re given. He has a better track record than my own stepdad. We’re only left to assume that he’s the one who initiated both divorces, which in and of itself shouldn’t really be seen as something shameful or flaky. Marriages fail, especially in Revachol. Oftentimes divorce is the kinder, saner option than attempting to make a shit relationship work, especially with a child in the picture. What this says to me about Trant is that he’s willing to commit and willing to acknowledge when something isn’t working.

Moved Countries Twice Again, why is this a bad thing? It’s a stretch, but the implication here could be ‘being disloyalty to a nation’, which is…[gestures broadly at the rise in populist rightwing thought]. Since when does being a globe trotter who has trouble putting down roots make someone a ‘backpedaler’, I ask.

Pulled out a Business Venture Maybe I’m biased here because I’m speaking as a business owner. A small business owner, but one that still deals with an intimidating profit margin for a pissant like me. Investing and running a business is fucking scary, especially in our own modern day setting. There have been times when I’ve been overwhelmed, exhausted, and terrified that I made the wrong choice getting tangled up in the rat race. I’m fortunate that I have good business partners. That isn’t always the case. Backing out of a business venture that you see is about to crash is not backpedaling. It’s fucking business.

 Heroin and Yahtzee Arguably the funniest fucking thing to add to the laundry list. I have to wonder if they swapped heroin for pyrholidon once they settled on his backstory in the final game. The game addresses that Trant was a past addict, and suggests that he simply trades one addiction for another (stick fighting being likened to a kind of addiction). Harry has a moment of “game recognizes game”. And, as a friend pointed out, addiction is not really something you can ‘backpedal’ your way out of. You deal with it for the rest of your life. It’s always there, hovering over your shoulder. It’s something that requires VIGILANCE and a tremendous amount of self-discipline and social support (and, let’s be real, financial stability) to overcome. I think the game isn’t subtle in its implication that the reason Trant was able to kick the drugs is directly related to his proximity to privilege, something that Harry noticeably lacks. As for the Yahtzee thing… This is weird, but only because I have an insane backlog of knowledge of Tarmo Jüristo, who the devs cited as being their inspiration for Trant (I’m going to make a whole fucking number for this one, so just hang with me). But Jüristo had a pretty intense poker phase, which actually ended up inspiring some of his later work with statistics, specifically Bayesian statistics. But I digress. Whether it’s Poker or Yahtzee, gambling is gambling, and I think that’s another weird thing to say someone ‘backpedaled’ out of. Implying it would be…more upstanding if he saw his gambling addiction through? Kept up with it? WHAT are they trying to say here?

 No Clear Agenda/Seeking Political Power Alright, I’m coming back to Tarmo again. And god, I feel like if I say his name three times he’s going to find my blog post again, but it’s the goddamn devs fault for basing this character off of someone who I find to be so incredibly interesting. So you’re about to witness me be a fanboy real quick, because I think more people should know about this guy. Taken straight from the Praxis website: “Tarmo has been an active member of Estonian civil society. He was one of the original members to sign Harta12 (a civil initiative focusing on problem areas in state governance) and publicly stood for the ratification of the Registered Partnership Act in autumn of 2014.” This man was fighting for civil liberties in Estonia when it was certainly uncool to do so, specifically for gay rights and marriage equality. He’s a staunch leftist and an unapologetic statistics nerd who practices Kendo and Brazilian Jiujitsu. He founded SALK, one of Estonia's most important leftist political organizations that swept the most recent elections, which was unprecedented, as right wing ideology has infected the West almost across the board. (Also, he’s a playwright on the side). So, I’m to believe that this guy, who is by all accounts someone with an incredibly diverse background, a vivid curiosity about the world around him, and a desire to see progressive thought put into action… THIS guy is the cited inspiration for Trant, so much that Trant’s design looks like him… But Trant isn’t supposed to have a clear agenda aside from “seeking political power”. When put vaguely like that, it sounds nefarious by default. But why would he work with the C Wing? Why would he put his faith in characters like Harry and Jean, who, for all their flaws, are two men who fundamentally want to see the world put right. A fight that feels so futile most days that it destroys them from the inside out. Why would a man with “no clear agenda” help the RCM? It doesn’t add up. As I said to my friend earlier: if they didn't want me to interpret Trant to be a well-rounded man who is interested in civil liberties and self-discipline, then they shouldn't have baSED HIM OFF OF TARMO FUCKING JÜRISTO.

In conclusion, I rebuke this ‘backpedal’ thing with my full fucking chest. If it was given to us in context of the game – maybe Jean or Harry giving Trant shit about all the choices he’s made in his life, ribbing him for the perceived flakiness – that is one thing. That diegetic lore. That’s coming from the mouths and the opinions of the characters. But instead we’re getting this information (allegedly) from the authors. And when it comes from the Creators as opposed to being from the Creation, I can only see it as something petty, mean-spirited, and unfairly biased against a character who should be given the same grace and nuance as any of the others. 

something I love about DE writing is the lack of fantasy oaths — in fanfic you sometimes see characters say things like 'dolores dei's tits' or w/e but I don't think that happens in the game. what is occasionally used in the game is 'host', eg host in heaven, host of hosts, which is a lovely crib from catholic theology and possibly quebecois swearing — it's familiar enough to provoke the right gut reaction in the reader, but it's just slightly wrong for a modern/common usage.

what does it mean? it's not host as in eucharist because afaik there's no sacrifice/transubstantiation story in DE theology. here's the fayde results for 'host'. let's do some fuckin corpus analysis