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This post is dedicated to all those Ninas out there, who are "just enjoying the show."
I have been pondering an problem that had come up for a second time in another meta I'm writing (I left it out of an earlier one for clarity) regarding acknowledgement of identity and faces in S2, but when you keep running into the same road-block, you have to tackle it head on. Then I ran into the exact same problem a third time here, and the beginnings of this meta has sat in my drafts file staring at me for several weeks while I've been doing other things. But finally, finally, the answer has come to me, while being kept awake by a passing thunderstorm at 1.30am.
MRS SANDWICH: You're a good lad.
CROWLEY: I'm not actually, either. But thank you.
Let's start with this exchange between Crowley and Mrs Sandwich, after Crowley has led all the Whickber St shopkeepers out of the ball to apparent safety. She calls him a "good lad," and he denies it, but thanks her anyway, and gives her a charming smile. We all know Crowley hates being called 'nice' and the last time he did something 'good' he got dragged down to Hell for punishment, so it seems like an odd thing to happen.
But the thing is, while Mrs Sandwich is complimenting his actions, he is responding about his appearance - that is neither 'good' (i.e. he is a demon) or a male human (i.e. he is an supernatural non-gendered entity.)
At this point you might be going "yeah, yeah, we know, we get that! Move along op..." but this matters, as you soon will see. We should also note that neither Crowley or Aziraphale judge Mrs Sandwich for being a brothel madame (how Aziraphale does not know this when her shop is just over the road from his I will never fathom, but there you go) and Crowley is actually quite charming all-round to his parallel character (prostitution and demons going hand-in-hand - er, not literally. But they went out the door as the vanguard arm-in-arm, though.)
The Metatron turning up at the bookshop in person is the next scene on the cards. Firstly, archangel Michael doesn't recognize him, but Saraqael obviously does.
Now, I know I'm guilty of saying that Michael may have had their memory adjusted at some time, but I'm going to suggest something else at this point. Saraqael knows who this is, because they have just had a fresh reminder from watching the recordings of Gabriel with Crowley and Muriel. And Saraqael is a pretty smart angel, so lets give them some leeway on this one. But for Michael, well, they are in the same situation as Aziraphale. They have only seen the Metatron as giant floating head without a body, so don't associate him with this appearance before them, and also because he has a beard.
Just before you jump on me and say "But he had one in the recordings!" yes, yes, I know. Two things, though, I want to bring to your attention: angels are not supposed to have facial hair,* and he doesn't have any in S1 (I checked!) and he also makes the comment "This calls for much less attention, though." Yeah, well a giant head floating through the streets of Soho would be quite a sight, wouldn't it, even though they had already been treated to the view of Gabriel's royal rear-end. Aziraphale had only met him once before, as a giant floating head in S1E4 who had had to introduce himself, so we could surmise this is Michael's problem as well, even though they were at Gabriel's trial. This is backed up by a tumblr ask/answer from NG as well, where he said "I think because they normally see him as a giant floating head, and not as a little man in a raincoat."
MICHAEL: Um, and who are you?
METATRON: For Heaven's sake. And I mean that most literally. You don't know me? Well, uh, what about you? Demon? Do you know me?
Demon. That is what the Metatron chooses to call Crowley in that company, and we know in hindsight that he knows Crowley's name - as does Uriel, and Gabriel. Even Muriel learns it. But they don't use it, at least not in S2.
Even more notable is that the archangels don't deign to him give the respect of using his chosen name at all. He's not not even their enemy at this point - he's beneath their notice altogether, even though they are in the same room. Only Aziraphale seems to acknowledge his existence, instinctively trying to reach out to him as he passes by.
To Nina, people are coffee preferences.
To Mrs Sandwich, they are desires that need servicing.
So then question I had, and that stopped me, was why did both Crowley and Gabriel question Beelzebub about their new face?
It stood out to me because you don't normally make an obvious comment about the change of actor for a character, and to do it twice - !! You can't ignore that. No meta writer should ignore that. There is a trope term for this, actually, called "lampshading," which means to intentionally call attention to an incongruent situation within a story before moving on, but in a show where nothing is an accident, this seems a bit trite to me. Eventually I realized that this was the whole crux of the problem to me - that while we all too readily take things at face value, its not the faces that really influence us, its our internal values.
In the case of Beelzebub, Crowley recognizes the demon, their power, and their identity via the flies without any doubt; he merely comments on the change of exterior appearance. In terms of value, he knows straight away he's dealing with someone dangerous, no matter what they look like. Gabriel, on the other hand, is judging the book by its cover, and because he doesn't recognize the new cover, he needs proof of which demon he's dealing with, or maybe if they are even a demon at all.
"Bravo," says Nina, "Just enjoying the show." She's already seen a few that week, not to mention just in the general flow of life as a shop owner involved with customer service. If you've had any sort of life in a customer service role I'm sure you've got a few stories you could tell of things you've seen or experienced as well! I know I can.
The conversation between Nina and Crowley after Aziraphale walks away is amusing for all the assumptions Nina makes about them based on what she's observed that week, but also because Crowley tells the truth every in every reply to Nina, and yet she still has no idea what he's really saying. But her judgements, based on her experience and values, still manage to drop the proverbial ton of bricks on his head so badly he slinks off to sooth himself with some alcohol while he thinks about it instead of catching up with Aziraphale to continue being the angel's nameless shadow.
This problem with judging people on previous experience and not on who they actually are is everywhere in S2.
It's Ennon treating Aziraphale, an angel he's never met before, as a slut.
It's Elspeth judging Aziraphale on his accent.
It's Mrs H. giving a powerful demon a blistering tongue-lashing because she thinks he's a just simple human black marketeer.
It's Crowley refusing to call Gabriel "Jim" because he believes Gabriel is faking it.
...and so on. These are just a few examples. I'm sure you can spot a few more.
Which brings us back around to the meeting of the supernatural Councils in the bookshop in S2E6 and Crowley's "invisibility" to the other angels and demons gathered there. A demon to the archangels, an arch-traitor to the demons, why would they want to acknowledge him? Once he restores Gabriel, he becomes rank-less and faceless to them because they don't need him any more - its basically an act of celestial racism.
Nina and Maggie don't really know any better, they still think Mr Crowley and Mr Fell are just, well, "partners." OK, so maybe they've been doing some weird shit the last few days manipulating things in the neighbourhood but they're still obviously a couple a group of the two of them in their human eyes - and neither do they seem to care that they seem to be mlm, either. No judgement there.
A number of times I've seen ops say they've been watching GO with family members who are seeing it for the first time, and the family member thinks they are just "close friends." Why? Because they haven't seen S2 and the kiss? Because they haven't verbally said "I love you" to each other? Do they really need to say that to prove their feelings for each other? Is that just your values creeping to the fore?
And where did you get your values from?
Sometimes you need to stop and question why you think what you think. I'm not just talking about religious indoctrination. Some expectations put on us by by society at large can be insidious. Expectations around how gender should act, the life purpose of a gender, your worth to society if you don't meet certain unspoken standards, age-related behaviour, social norms around alcohol consumption, the way they dress, what someone eats, the way they eat it, that you must be seen to be productive, or busy...take your pick for whatever is prevalent around you at the moment and for your culture. Just start by noticing, and being aware.
Yes, it is pointless, because demons and angels all come from the same angelic stock. There was a bit of a disagreement at one point and they split into two groups, and judgemental labels got applied to them. They are both still bureaucratic horrors. Which ever side wins the final battle, humans still lose.
Mortal humans all look the same inside, too, if you take their face and skin away and take the societal labels off them. We forget that about ourselves all the time.
There doesn't have to be any wibbly-wobbly timeline stuff going on to explain things. What ever happened to the concept of Occam's Razor? The simplest answer is usually the correct one. And that was what I realized in the middle of the night - the cliche I had used to title this was the answer. It's about being aware of those ingrained, instinctive, judgmental values that you don't realize you've learnt, and looking past the faces that you meet.
*oh lawdy, I'm giving strength to all of you who want to believe he is a demon then, aren't I? But do demons have facial hair either?
What do Rick Sanchez, Don Quixote, and Harry Du Bois Have in Common?
In all three of these stories, these characters are āself-awareā in that they intentionally play into the tropes of the stories theyāre satirizing (Rick Sanchez satirizing sitcoms, Don Quixote satirizing chivalric romances, and Harry Dubois satirizing roleplaying games). However, the trick to their āself-awarenessā is that theyāre lying to themselves.
This post is LONG, so feel free to skip to the end if you're just interested in "The Self-Aware Player of Harry Du Bois" (in bolded green) if you don't feel like reading the rest of the analysis. I go into the meaning of the political vision quests, the meaning of the 4th wall breaking RPG elements like copotypes and Jamrock Shuffling, and the effect this has on the player's relationship to Harry Du Bois!
(Common) Rick Sanchez (L)
Although Rick acts like he can see the audience and uses marketable catchphrases like āWubbalubbadubdubā to appeal to sitcom sensibilities (āBazinga;ā āDid I do that?ā āLegen- Wait For It -Dary;ā etc.), the truth of the matter is that WITHIN HIS REALITY, he is not a sitcom character.
He truly does not know heās in a sitcom.
Heās just an asshole.
ID A screenshot from the show Rick and Morty, with subtitled dialogue that says:
Wubbalubbadubdub! That's my new thing! I'm kind of like, what's his name, Arsenio! Wubbalubbadubdub! See you next week.
Beside the screenshot is a picture of the mentioned Arsenio, who is the titular character to a sitcom called The Arsenio Hall Show
End ID
Rick has ATROCIOUS main character syndrome. Truly obnoxious. We happen to be enjoying (debate-able) it from our TV screens, but he doesnāt know that! Hoeās just calling his family āside charactersā and taking them on traumatizing āB plotā adventures to humor-cope with his multiverse induced nihilism. (it is NOT WORKING)
Dan Harmon, as a big fan of the storytelling theory behind sitcoms, has a thing for these type of self-aware-but-not-really characters in his shows. Abed (from his other well-known sitcom named āCommunity') is basically a film student obsessed with film tropesā
Which means heās eternally making meta self-aware quips on the show without actually being self-aware. Heās not Deadpool, he's just a movie nerd.
It's a wink and a nod to show the audience, Hey, weāre aware that nowadays people are savvy enough to comment on when theyāre in a wacky sitcom plot.
This is āsome looney tunes type shit,ā amirite guys?
(This trick is called lampshading, it got popular recently with Marvel movies and the influence of Joss Whedon's writing (@dingdongyouarewrong), but it's also going through a bit of cliche fatigue right now. "That happened" jokes are an example that I know so many people are sick of, partly because it feels like writers include self-awareness/lampshading as a shield from criticism by pretending you can't critique a problem they're self-aware about!
Let me highlight it to you in the rest of this essay as a tool in satire/pastiche.)
'Donkey Hotel' (according to my speech to text)
To explain Donkey Hotel's deal, I must remark: This guy is on some ancient mental illness type beat.
Now, in the ancient era of Hippocrates, there used to be the hot idea that there are four major human temperaments, and these temperaments are influenced by the balances of liquids in our body called humors. And that an imbalance of the four would lead to an over representing of a temperament.
Don Quixote had a 'Choleric' temperament, which is an overrepresentation of yellow bile and characterized with qualities such as 'hot and dry' and emotional irregularities such as increased anger or behaving irrationally. That's our knight!
Now obviously we know that the idea of 4 Humors in our body controlling our temperament is a BS simplification of mental health, BUT, thereās usually a kernel of truth in ancient theories. The universe really was made up of elements like Aristotle theorized, just not the fire, earth, water, air that he thought they were.
Similarly, our author our man, Cervantes, was using the 4 Humors more to develop a physical/biological explanation to Don's mental illness.
All this to say, Don Quixote is currently deluding himself into believing he is a gallant knight, off to defend the honor of his lady love, the total paragon of a chivalric romance novel because, and I quote, āhe became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits.ā
Let's pause.
An escapist stupor that completely wiped the mind of its host?
(FANART BY @so-engery! Check them out!)
ID Two images. One is is Gustave Dore's "Don Quixote Dreaming" drawing. The other is Disco Elysium fanart by Marie Enger @so-engery.
Both showcase the main character of their respective works, slumped and surrounded by mad figments of their imagination, highlighting the parallels between the two.
Harry with his Skill voices and Don with knights and fairytale creatures. End ID.
Thatās our boy, Harrier Du Bois right there!
And while obviously Harry's condition at the start of Disco Elysium is more based on modern understanding of psychology (aka alcohol did it to him, not intense insomnia and a chivalric romance bookathon), itās real neat we get this this little parallel before we even dig into Harry!
Now, with that neat explanation of why heās self-aware out of the way, Don Quixoteās deal: Again, heās not actually self-aware, heās quite possibly the opposite of self-aware, and EVERYBODY (even the audience!) knows it. Heās only self aware in the sense that heās acting like a character in a fictional story, which he is, but heās got the wrong genre.
He thinks heās in an action/romance, but heās actually in real lifeāA satire of the action/romance genre!
Well, caveat.
Is Don Donning the 'Don' Inspirationally or is he Donning the 'Don' to Act as a Don About the Downs of Chivalry?
I read it as Don Quixote donning the 'don' title to act as a don at the college of 'please touch grass and stop romanticizing romantic chivalry.'
A super popular adaptational take, however, is to read him like he's an inspirational dreamer held back by a harsh reality.
Big Nate's Book Reviews on YouTube did a sweet review that highlights this perspective, along with his lil doobie,
that Don Quixote's perspective brings fresh child-like imagination and fantasy to the mundanity of the lives of the people around him. Nate says that Don Quixote and Sancho are "Truly the homies;" they're the first times he's ever felt that he could "find friends in characters in a book."
So there's definitely a joy and a message to the dreamer reading! BUT I tend to be a bit cynical about this, like it can feel a bit too similar to USAmerican Exceptionalism to me.
To clarify what I mean, let's do a Rick parallel.
Don Quixote, as a character, is more similar to the FANS of Rick and Morty than he is to Rick. (Which is its own commentary about how little we have progressed as a society since this book was published like 400 years ago, but also the way media is influenced by prior media.)
To explain THAT, lemme first say that thereās a sort of meta irony (which is how I describe this phenomena according to J-Regās theory of satire, but I donāt know the actual name of this) in the āheās just like me frā guys. āLiterally meā guys. Guys who pseudo imitate Patrick Bateman, literally any Ryan gosling character, etc.
ID A youtube screenshot of 3 different videos titled "literally me" "Literally Me" or "Literally me (I'm mentally insane)" with different Ryan Reynolds characters as the thumbnail.
In the "I'm mentally insane" video description, one of the tags is the word "sigma." End ID
Often these characters are meant to be made fun of as parodies of another trope, like Don Quixote is to a chivalric romance protagonist, but thereās a certain subset of the audience that is either too dumb to get it or just doesnāt have the context or background to get it.
Like the dudes who watch fight club, and just end up making fight clubs of their own. Or the way people misinterpreted Bruce Springsteenās āBorn in the USAā as celebrating the US, instead of its true message of lambasting the US for its hypocritical treatment of its veterans. Or the glorification of Rorschach from Watchmen despite him basically being a MAGA. Or the way USAmericans didnāt get Starship Troopers because it was a parody of US military fascism.
There are tons of examples of these because of satire usually says more about the reader/viewer than it does about the author, like a Rorschach test (he really is aptly named). (And itās why itās more often fascists/conservatives wildly misinterpreting leftist media. People are more likely to come with a conservative perspective than vice versa bc conservatism is, by its definition, the norm. Though this does still happen on more progressive sides e.g. TJLC.) They didn't see or chose not to see the irony.
Cue the Reddit dudebros misinterpreting Disco Elysium as pro centrist or āall ideologies are equally bad" and the INSANE 'you have to have a high IQ...' 'rick is good and objectively correct' Rick and Morty fans.
ID Two screenshots. One of the infamous "To Be Fair, You Have To Have a Very High IQ to Understand Rick and Morty" copypasta. One of a Disco Elysium Reddit post titled "Disco Elysium is Not Politically In Favor Of Any Ideology." End ID
Speaking of Rick and Morty fans, this is what I mean by the idea that Don Quixote is more like Rick's fans than he is like Rick. Much like the way Don un-self-aware-ly misinterprets his satirical reality for the chivalric romance of his favorite novels, so too do Rick and Morty fans un-self-aware-ly misinterpret Rick's nihilist satire on the sitcom for what is cool and good to do in real life. Plus, I can totally see these type of dudes unironically saying "Milady" to keep chivalry alive. But, there's one level further to this, beyond even seeing the irony, which I call the 'he's just like me fr' guys.
Now, in the case of the 'he's just like me fr' guys, it's not that they're mistaking the satire for sincerityāthey totally understand that Patrick Bateman is a satirical take on Yuppie 'grind till you make it alpha' culture.
They're doing a secret third thingāmeta ironyāwhere they understand that Patrick Bateman is meant to be bad but act like they're un-self-aware and missed the irony anyway.
It's supposed to be a joke, buuuuut it's a joke the same way people will say "SLAY!" as a joke until it's unironically a part of their vocabulary. The ambiguity is key.
I'd argue that the dreamer Quixote approach is an application of 'he's just like me fr' view to Don Quixote, where he's 'a Chad rejecting reality in favor of the perseverance of man's whimsy' to some people, even as they joke that he's delusional ("Literally me (I'm mentally insane)").
Don Quixote certainly isn't doing it on purposeāagain, he's un-self-aware, and he even got bullied out of it in part 2 (which admittedly I haven't read). Yet, there's a genuine sadness there of a man with such a penchant for adventure getting bullied that makes you wanna start humoring him.
It's ironic but not: Meta irony.
ID A screenshot of Jreg's "Post-Irony, Meta-Irony, and Post-Truth Satire (Video)" thumbnail. End ID
But yeah, meta irony is all fine and dandy when it's about slaying, but when it's about emulating the patriarchal psychopath, Patrick Bateman, or using edge-y humor to spread alt-right talking points, you start to wonder if there can be something insidious to the 'he's just like me fr' approach.
To put it best, the wild popularity of the Dreamer Don Quixote interpretation feels like the result of USAmerican 'grind till you make it' 'individual exceptionalism' 'it would suck for you, but i'm built different' values distorting the absurdity of being a reality denying dreamer, the same way we struggle to understand the Starship Troopers because it just feels normal/celebratory to us.
Don Quixote
So I think Don Quixote resonates strongest, for me, in the way it boldly states that reality is beautiful and worth living in without needing the opium of escapist fantasy.
For one, Cervantes is a rare ye olden feminist king who takes the time to point out that one man's escapist chivalric masculine fantasy is another woman's misogynistic reality.
To demonstrate, he has many examples of female characters telling off men for projecting romantic fantasies on them, but a more relevant way is how he writes Don Quixote as literally renaming some random woman he's never met 'Dulcinea' because he's decided she is his Lady he's given his eternal servitude to.
He renames her Dulcinea because it's "a name, to his mind, musical, uncommon, and significant, like all those he had already bestowed upon himself and the things belonging to him."
Which is PEAK satire of the misogynistic objectification of chivalry. If only the Rick and Morty "Milady" stans had the self-awareness this book had 400 years ago.
(Sidebar, but does anybody else think Don Quixote would make an absolutely killer Drag King persona? Don Queerote... Plus the ballet about him would help with the pre-existing choreo/music. Just a thought!)
But on another level, Don Quixote is full of interesting characters or stories outside of the chivalric knight conceit!
ID Pen illustrations (aka engravings by Gustave Dore) of two events happening simultaneously at the same inn in Don Quixote.
The one above is of Don's assault on the wineskins in his sleep. The one below is of the reunion of Dorotea, Luscinda, Cardenio, and Fernando in the inn. End ID
People often clown on the novel for having so much time dedicated to the soap opera antics of side characters totally unrelated to the knight plot, but their antics being outside of Quixote's chivalric view emphasizes how life is interesting even when you're not following a delusional knight lifestyle!
Romance and reunions and betrayals that Don never really understands because he's too busy fighting windmills and wineskins! Yes, the delusion allowed him to go out and explore the world, but there's something so silly and sad about missing whimsy of real life in favor of living in escapist Knight Fanfiction. Reading about Cervantes's soap-opera-worthy life only reinforces this whimsy for reality and touching grass.
The Self-Aware Player of Harry Du Bois
Preface: My main experience is JRPGs, not so much other Western RPGs and tabletop games. So although Iām saying itās a satire of these tropes, and I noticed a lot of these things as āsatireā and 'parody,' Iām not totally enmeshed in the subculture the creators were going for, so I might need some corrections.Ā
Finally, this transitions into the deal with Harry! It's fascinating to me to think about how satire is used as the 'touch grass' or 'be fucking for real' genre. Oftentimes it's making fun of tropes/conventions by humorously contrasting them with realityāso how does this play out with the RPG!?
Weeellll, it goes hand in hand with the idea of RPGs as escapist power fantasy. RPGs are often thought of as the ultimate self-insert fantasy by its detractors or worst players, ahem looking at all those DND horror stories about entitled mangsty murderhobos.
One of the most infamous criticisms of Disco Elysium is its lackluster combat.
ID A screenshot of a random forum discussion post by dungeon master Zed Duke of Banville. It reads:
"Disco Elysium has neither combat nor exploration, and therefore is missing two of the three fundamental components (or sets of components) that define the RPG genre." End ID
The game has essentially bordered off your ability to make Harry into a power fantasy murderhobo because you just are physically unable to equip an longsword or cuisse to murder your average citizen on the street of Martinaise.
But even on a less mangsty level, it subverts a lot of the basic expectations of RPGs.
Like the encounter with the racist lorry driver! You never get the ability or quest to change his mind,Ā you only choose how you react to him.
Where other RPGs might let you act as the white savior or the white knight of chivalric romance, no questions asked, you're changing the minds of everybody who's wrong so we can all get along, Disco Elysium really makes you confront your ability to whiteknight, makes you confront if whiteknighting is even helpful, and why you wanted to whiteknight in the first place.
Itās part of the fun/humor experience of Disco Elysium that you at first expect to solve the worldās problems with a couple quests and lines of āgoodā dialogue and then get socked in the faced with the fact that yeah, you canāt do much, youāre one person, what did you expect, asshole? Cuno doesn't fucking care!
ID a screenshot of Disco Elysium dialogue
YOU - "Don't call it a dump, you've made it nice and cosy here."
NOVELTY DICEMAKER - "Yeah." She stares out of the window, not really hearing your words. "Or maybe it's the entire world that's cursed? It's such a precarious place. Nothing ever works out the way you wanted."
"That's why people like role-playing games. You can be whoever you want to be. You can try again. Still, there's something inherently violent even about dice rolls."
"It's like every time you cast a die, something disappears. Some alternative ending, or an entirely different world...." She picks up a pair of dice from the table and examines them under the light.
End ID
Like, Neha is highlighting this little meta element of how you can stack your Harry in any RPG to pursue a certain ending or situation, but the actual outcome is still influenced by a dice roll out of your control.
A lot of the satirical humor in Disco Elysium comes from the absurdity that you can do everything right or everything wrong, and the dice can still fuck it up or save it for youānot just for things like high-fantasy attacks, but mundane things like remembering your name.
The dice are, at their core, about how RPGs aren't just for the control fantasy, of winning high-fantasy battles, but also can represent life as it is, mundane and uncontrollable.
Similarly, Harry is clearly writtenācomplete with all the 'lore' that this would entailāto couch his RPG protagonist nature in the real.
If RPG characters are blank slates? Let's give ours amnesia! Need fast travel?! Kim teases the 41st Precinct for constantly running everywhere by calling it the Jamrock Shuffle. He needs to have deep and intimate conversations with everyone, even when they're strangers? Yeah, that's so weird we gave him the name 'Human Can-Opener,' and everybody remarks on his uncanny manipulation skills.
It's commenting on difference between controlling an RPG avatar and navigating in a human body.
As Kurvits said: āIn reality we do not have control, or complete control, of our minds. Just like our body, it is something that we give-not even commands wishes to, and we hope it's gonna do it. We hope it's not gonna break down, we hope it's not gonna rebel against us.ā
In one type of RPG fantasy, we don't even question our total control and even assume the joy is from the control. But in Disco Elysium, we lack control and find joy in it anyway. That is the fun of the game making us, the players, 'self-aware' about its RPG elements, and it especially resonates with anybody not able-bodied, anybody neurodivergent.
Harry Du Bois and Self-Awareness: Copotypes? More like Cope-otypes.
So that's on Disco Elysium and being aware of RPG elements in general, but let's deep dive into Harry and his Copotypes and political alignments like the OP!
I kind of want to round this last one out with what this all means. WHY am I, and others, linking self-awareness and satire? What's the link here?
Irony is one of the major tools of satirical writing, and there's always a little irony in being self-aware and doing it anyway, I think. It's specifically that Meta-Ironic element/Lampshading that is so rich for Touch-Grass satire because it parallels the futility/irony of self-awareness in real life.
The copotypes work this way.
ID A screenshot of a youtube comment.
@jbeast3385
"Harry fundamentally takes on extreme interpretations of every ideology in the game as a coping mechanism for the tragedy that is his life, and it's amazing to see the amount of care given to extending an understanding of why each ideology appeals to his fractured mind. Each quest makes him something of a Don Quixote, searching for a purer purpose through political thought, failing spectacularly with it, but still fundamentally developing him and inspiring others beside him." End ID
The copotypes and the political alignments are a parody of classes and moral alignments. Rather than being a knight or a wizard, you're a superstarcop or a sorrycop! They don't do much, like there are no fireballs for an art cop, but they do poke fun at the ways the player is choosing to play Harry! Instead of chaotic good or neutral evil, you can be a communard or an ultralib! Which both involve spouting hilariously inappropriate talking points to the other citizens of Revachol.
What's fascinating, as @fagcrisis of this post says, is that these alignments are statements of how your Harry copes with the real world and the past/how he justifies what he does.
From the Solution to the Boring Cop Thought:
When someone says something political, the first three thoughts in your head are a ludicrous hodgepodge of communism, fascism and stock tips. When they ask you why you did something, it's superstardom, apocalypse, or the *mea culpas* of a flagellant cop monk
You start off making some choices based on the limited dialogue options of Harry's bizarre personality. If you play it like any other RPG power fantasy, BAM, the game hits you with the "Regular Law Official" thought, and you're labeled "Boring Cop." Or if you're apologizing to get the 'good' route, BAM, the game hits you with the "Rigorous Self-Critique" thought, and you're labelled "Sorry Cop!"
The game makes you 'aware' of your playing style, a little poke to say 'Stop being so scared of failures! You're boring! Sorry is not enough! Stop trying to be 'lawful good' (ACAB) and be a human!'
From the same Solution:
It's not easy, reaching for the fourth option -- the normal one. But you have. And now you're not *just* crazy, you're also *boring*.
Some people get this taste of self-awareness and fully embrace diving into the deep end of the gameāDisco baby! Others lean into the sorry/boring/moralist cop in an ironic 'self-aware' sort of wayālike the technique of Lampshading, since we're our own writers as RPG players.
But on a Harry level, it's also about HIM becoming self-aware of his habits, of internalizing these thoughts about his actions, his past, his coping mechanisms.
Seeking either āsweet oblivionā or to become āa different kind of animal,ā many of the possible roleplaying choices are rooted in his desire to forget, evade or reframe the past. Whether self-destruction through drug abuse, fantasies of superstardom or visions of impending doom; itās all in the service of not wanting to face the past, and the disastrous effects Harryās continuous failure to do so has had on his life.
- Vice
As the @fagcrisis of this post noted, Dora pretty much ALWAYS mentions the way Harry escapes reality by thinking of himself as an archetype, like other people are NPCs in an RPG. "like hes a self aware character but in the shitty way where him knowing he is a character and him acting like it only makes it worse because there isnt a story to escape from, he just cant cope with the real world" He's pulling a meta-ironic ''he's just like me fr" with Guillaume Le Million (who hangs himself) and superstardom the way "he's just like me fr" guys do it for Ryan Gosling.
And each copotype and political alignment are an opportunity to satirically critique the flaws and failures of each coping mechanism.
Cope-otype: Fascism
"Fascism, being marked, according to Paxton, by a need to compensate for humiliation, promises easy solutions to someone like Harry. Itās a crutch to prop up threatened masculinity, a rhetoric to shift blame for personal failings to ominous outside forces."
- Vice
This game's satirical take on fascism is sort of perfect, literally making it about the lower intestines, 'gut instinct,' and bullshit (@spilledkaleidoscope). To be frank, fascists are 'full of shit,' and the vision quest highlights the way fascism isn't about a coherent ideology like 'returning to the past,' but rather it's a hodgepodge of SHIT thrown together to prop up hurt ego, threatened masculinity, of giving an easy scape-goated answer to the question of how Harry's supposed to face his past and his future.
The answer? He shoots it.
It's accurate in a way that doesn't reinforce the 'cool' aesthetics and pageantry fascism is obsessed with, what with literally calling fascists full of shit and all. Kim notices your change in expression, your stoic 'noble suffering' fascist face, and immediately calls it constipated. Bless.
Yet, even as Kim calls you out, even as you're aware of fascism's failures, how it destroys you ala Harry Du Bois -> Detective RaphaĆ«l AmbrosiusĀ Costeau, Fascist!Harry still believes because he can't face a wounded ego.
Cope-otype: Ultralib
Ultralibs on the other hand? I think it's telling that Idiot Doom Spiral is basically ultralib Harry's foil and a major questline NPCāthe one who gives you Tequila Sunset.
Even the names are foils. Idiot Doom Spiral names himself that way to romanticize it, to make it into a marketable story, "but it keeps him in this state too, like a vicious cycle. The name āGeorgeā is a name that still connects him to humanity," while Idiot Doom Spiral is a way to 'accept his place' even though it's miserable and keeps him from doing something about it, nor connect with other people, as @kindaeccentric put it in this post.
Similarly, the megarich light bending guy in the UltraLib quest LITERALLY is much more unlikely to connect with poorer people because the Rougon-Macquart coefficient literally dictates that we cannot see the richest people because their networth bends the light around them. It's an inversion of the way rich people are ignorant to poverty in real life, and here's a really good fic that covers this coefficient!
Finally, this mirrors Tequila Sunset as a name as well, the way it's a cope for hating himself. Instead of being miserable, he glorifies his misery by calling himself a funky, disco drink name, even as it symbolizes being washed up or even symbolizes the pale swallowing all, depending on how you play him (@palin-tropos).
So much of the ultralib plotline is about adding value ā whether by sprucing yourself up with a new name like Tequila or Idiot or by 're-conceptualization' ā through stuff like grind/hustle culture. An obsession with increasing networth but also 'giving back' to the community, as philanthropists put it.
But the satire of the ultralib vision quest is highlighting how hollow 'adding value' is, how much of it's just competition for wealth for the sake of wealth with no real meaningful answer or value.
ID Two screenshots of the game Disco Elysium.
The first is of the horseback monument as it is. A matrix of cables and ropes isolate the fragmented bits in thin air.
The second is described as this through in-game dialogue:
HORSEBACK MONUMENT - The scaffolding around the old monument has been taken down, In its place are the spoils of your investment. Numerous rods and ropes still hold the original reassemblage in place.
YOU- Reflect on the re-conceptualization.
HORSEBACK MONUMENT - An apricot sceptre shines party-bright across the monument. Glitter balls dangle like severed heads below the eternal king of disco. It is unmistakably a vision of you in your prime -- a killer on the performance floor, icon for all.
End ID
It's 'reconceptualizing' the Horseback Monument ā the symbol of both the bombing of the revolution and the enduring of spirit the communards anyways, the way they've built a monument to freeze in time the moment of the profligate king being blown up ā by building it in your own image. The fact that to do so you need to exploit the labor of an artist so you can make a profit, and it doesn't truly 'give back' to the community in any way. In fact, it's almost the opposite, like you've ruined the community monument by painting yourself AS THE KING.
It's why even Harry admits that "You're just insane, insane and gone. Even six billion won't fix you if sheās not there." Each copotype and political ideology contends with their own version of this as Harry learns to grow and face his past head on.
The Marriage of Fictional Conventions and Real Human Psychology
In the end, you can't just lean into an ideology or an archetype and hope that it'll answer all you problems.
But more than that ā being self-aware about your issues doesn't solve anything either, no more than lampshading "fixes" any problems with your TV show.
It is this parallel between what Harry learns as he progresses and what the player learns as they progress that makes us empathize/resonate with Harry.
From acting erratically, then realizing it's part of an ideology, self-awarely adopting an ideology, to seeing how it fails and learning not to hide behind it. From "He's a blank slate so I can project my power fantasy onto him," then "I don't actually have a lot of power or control here," to "He's not just my RPG character, he's a person."
He's becoming a person, twice over.
It's ludonarrative resonance or consistency. A marriage of literary convention and real human psychology, on two scales.
And this resonance demonstrates why this genre of self-aware pastiche character is so popular: At it's best, you're forced to contend with the characters as fully realized people, paradoxically because they highlight the difference between fictional conventions and reality.
By acknowledging and poking fun of the fictional conventions, Harry Du Bois, Don Quixote, and Rick Sanchez feel more real to us.
And their stories come packaged with rich themes about dangers of disconnecting yourself from reality and the short distance 'self-awareness' alone can take you, which will resonate with almost every one of us here on the Internet. At least, I know it resonated with me.
BONUS:
Shen Yuan from Scum Villain Self-Saving System (@whetstonefires) also fits this list!!!!!!
Best Self-Aware Satire Character Who Learns How to Become a Person
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I noticed that a lot of film adaptations of fairytales nowadays have a lot of lampshading of typical fairytale tropes in them. Not that I disapprove of that; a little bit is good and establishes some balance in our day and age (does no one even remember that the Grand Duke does this a lot in Disneyās 1950 Cinderella????), but I feel like the movies today do too muchĀ of that, and it tends to get heavy at times...
Despite us spotting the (pun intended) lampshading of our dancing Dean I havenāt seen anyone yet commenting on how queer (and specifically bisexual) Cole PorterĀ was, not to mention the subtext of singing āLetās Misbehaveā while dancing on the freaking map table (the very thing that so often separates Dean from Cas) in an apparently empty bunker.Ā
All I can say is: Dean Winchester, you dream in fanfic.
āLetās Misbehaveā lyrics:
We're all alone,
No chaperon
Can get our number,
The world's in slumber,
Let's misbehave!
There's something wild
About you, child,
That's so contagious,
Let's be outrageous,
Let's misbehave!
When Adam won Eve's hand,
He wouldn't stand
For teasin',
He didn't care about
Those apples out of season!
They say the Spring
Means just one thing
To little lovebirds;
We're not above birds,
Let's misbehave!
Let's misbehave!
Let's misbehave!
If you'd be just so sweet
And only meet
Your fate, dear,
'Twould be the great
Event of nineteen twenty eight,
Dear!
Let's misbehave!
Let's misbehave!
