Disco Elysium is a game about radical acts of humanity.

That’s the game in a single mission statement, but if you want the game in an overlong essay, read on: it is almost certainly the most human videogame I’ve ever played. (I would like to say the most human videogame ever made but so many games are made- most less famous than Disco- that may be just a little more human than it.) Of course it is about more than that, but I feel that expresses the core better than anything else. Because whilst Disco Elysium is about radical acts of humanity, it’s also mostly about the everyday mundane human ways we relate to each other.

This essay is about four men, whose ideas and works help me connect with Disco Elysium, help me draw a story out of its texts. I take 5,000 words to do this because I’m verbose. You can skip to the end if you want, where I elaborate on what I mean by “Radical acts of humanity”.

Whenever I play Disco Elysium (three times, which is uncommon), I always think of (at least) the four same men and their ideas. Four real life historical men, unequally influential, equally important, all men because, unfortunately, generations of patriarchal culture do be like that. Let’s look through Disco through the lens of these four fellas.

The first man I think about when I play Disco Elysium is Karl Marx, obviously, who just as obviously founded ‘Marxism’. Marx is already influential on Disco- the developers gave him a shout out during a victory speech at the Game Awards, because Daddy ZA/UM didn’t raise no quitters- but to me, the themes that leap out aren’t the in-universe parallels, but rather how Marxist thoughts inform the world and the game itself.

Marx is famous for writing of the ‘spectre of communism’, but much of his writing was about the vampire of capitalism and its effects on people in it, with communism depicted as a reaction, a natural reassertion of humanity in the face of capitalism’s inhumanity. When Marx talks of ‘alienation’, he means Capital’s power forces people to live by Capital’s rules, and Capital’s rules dictate that one must have money to live; and so people are divided into classes, where one class owns everything, and the other is coerced to sell their labour to the first. Capital’s desires must be met before yours can even be considered. Your time is spent on work your mind considers nonessential, foreign to its wants. Your existence as a self-determining individual with the power to decide your own destiny is trapped within the confines of Capital. The system takes your labour and sells it for a dollar; you get ten cents, and if you complain there’s a man down the street who’ll work for nine cents instead. You are alienated from the produce of your labour because it belongs to another; you are alienated from your fellow human for now they’re competition; you are alienated from your very will because you must satisfy Capital’s by default.

When I think of Karl Marx’s theory of alienation, I think of Lieutenant Double-Yufreiter Harrier ‘Harry’ ‘Raphael Ambrosius Costeau’ ‘Tequila Sunset’ du Bois, the human howitzer shell of poor life decisions who acts as our intrepid protagonist, is an alienated human being, his psyche scarred with the relentless toilsome existence of living in a world full of people just as alienated as he is. Marx talks of the alienated worker existing in a state of annihilation, of non-existence of the self. As Disco begins, our protagonist wakes from a state of oblivion- and it feels good. He doesn’t know his name or his face or his role, and yet Oblivion whispers to him in the cadence of seduction, of a lover inviting one back to a warm bed. Come back to nothingness, honey.

Almost immediately we learn that this was not an accident. When Detective Du Bois of the Revachol Citizens Militia, the Molotov cocktail who walks like a man, arrives on the scene of a murder, he does not do what he is supposed to do, which is retrieve the murder victim from a tree and question witnesses. Instead he flails his gun around, makes passes at waitresses, makes passes at a witness, trashes his hotel room, punches a stuffed bird (albeit one that, we are assured, had it coming), sings karaoke so atrociously that the hostel he haunts institutes a NO KARAOKE rule on the spot and drinks to such driven excess that when he comes to his brain has been purged. His job, address, name and face: annihilated. A question bubbles to the surface: what was reality like for this man that he would go to such drastic lengths to forget it?

There are many answers to that question, but one of them is that Du Bois is a cop, and doesn’t want to be a cop anymore, again for many reasons (Revachol’s police force is more an awkward compromise between a citizen’s neighbourhood watch and a police force than a top-down authoritarian force, so he doesn’t even have the near-unchecked privilege and power of your average real-world cop!). As we explore Du Bois’s past we learn that during his rampage, despite being smashed he manages an impressively systematic erasure of his cop-ness, flushing his papers down a toilet, throwing a clipboard in the trash, selling his gun and driving his police car with badge and uniform inside into a river.

Curiously, we also learn that Du Bois was good at his job, effective, disciplined, restrained and more efficient than his peers. He was driven and skilled and yet at the end he hated being a cop so much he performed an act of ego-annihilation so complete that he literally doesn’t remember his own name. We can speculate as to why- no doubt his having untreated personal issues and an intensely stressful job compounded somewhat, as does the poor pay and lack of time to address his own issues. It is sobering and ironic, then, that despite this immolation of the self, the very first detail we learn about Du Bois is that he is a cop. Indeed, we might not learn his name until much later (and often then only by finding his police badge). Everyone in the hostel Du Bois has disgraced with his presence know him as a cop, but not one of them can tell him what his name is. Du Bois is defined by his labour, and he has so little control over that status that not even hard fragging his brain can shake it off.

As we learn more of the city of Revachol’s dilapidated quarter of Martinaise, in the infamous Jamrock district, we learn more about Du Bois as well, and about the traumas they both share. That they share them is not coincidence. Martinaise is pockmarked by the craters and bullet holes of an old war fought and won against the old communist regime; these literal scars exist alongside a deeper marring of the soul of the city. The buildings are shabby old relics, if they’re whole at all; many are in half-ruin, rib-cages exposed to the winter wind’s keening. There is only one thing in the whole of Martinaise that has value to Capital, the docklands through which a stream of trade flows. The docklands are also consciously the cleanest, most functional locale in Martinaise. At the same time, the docklands are separated from the rest of the town by a wall and gate that turn it into a fortress. Despite their cleanliness, the docklands are sterile, unwelcoming, unnatural. They are alienated from the living decay that vibrates through the bones of Martinaise. This relative largesse does not extend to the depressed urbanity that rings it; that area is Not Valuable to Capital and so is allowed to rot.

The people, too, are depressed- a thread of sorrow, despair and bitterness worms its way into almost every personal narrative in Disco’s cast, compounded by the never-ending burden of Capital’s demands, generation after generation. The little girl who stands outside the bookshop, nervous and freezing, too busy hawking goods instead of receiving an education, is only there because her mother needs her to work now so the business doesn’t go out of business, and she’s a nervous wreck because her husband is always away on work, leaving her to raise a child alone. The countless oblivion seekers who talk of the legendary Tequila Sunset. So many people who spend their money on alcohol instead of fixing their own lives but at the same time it is Capital that gives them less than they are worth and makes oblivion seem appealing. Du Bois has to pay rent and damages to the hostel despite being broke and troubled because they need to pay for repairs because they use renting that room to live, but Du Bois is only there because a man was murdered there, and that only occurred because that man was there because Capital needed that man to literally kill a labour union.

Joyce Messier, the very avatar of Capital- a corporate libertarian (dios mio!)- is on the winning side. She is secure and powerful and wealthy. She is slowly having her ego literally obliterated by her work because Capital alienates everyone, even the wealthy, although not in quite the same ways. Joyce reflects on her life and experiences doubt and sorrow, on whether the end of history, brought about by the victory of her ideology, was ever worth it.

The second man I think about when I play Disco Elysium is Francis ‘History-Killa’ Fukuyama, a tragically intelligent American academic noted for his 1992 dancing-on-the-grave-of-the-Soviet-Union essay “The End of History and the Last Man”. He is the only one of the four men who isn’t dead yet.

The End of History is a concept posited by the likes of Hegel and Marx describing the culmination of human social evolution into an ultimate, final government system that, once achieved, would never again face serious challenge. Fukuyama’s essay says it’s liberal democracy. The Cold War is over, Communism is deader than disco, and (parliamentary) democracy (with a free market) was here to stay, babyyyyy!

Fukuyama copped a lot of ‘feedback’ for his essay, some of which was dopes misinterpreting what the end of history meant (it means that liberal democracy is the final, endpoint system for organising human societies, not that things will stop happening), others argued that liberal democracy had failed as a system and thus could not possibly be the endpoint, whilst some felt he had undervalued the existential threats of rival systems, like Islamic fundamentalism (lol). Fukuyama, a rising star of the neoconservative scene in the heady days of the 90s, defended his thesis rigorously, observing (correctly) that Islamic fundamentalism didn’t pose an existential threat to the Liberal west at all whilst observing that even the autocrats of China and Russia had to pay lip service to democracy.

When I last checked in on ol’ History-Killa, it was 2016, he was voting democrat and felt a lot more anxious about the nature of liberal democracy, because 2016 hit different but it hit everyone exactly the same.

When I think of Francis Fukuyama’s theory of the End of History, I think of Joyce Messier and Evrart Claire, the opposing poles in the ideological cold war raising the heat in Martinaise. Evrart serves as the boss of the Dockworkers’ Union, whose strike has shut down the precious Martinaise docks. Joyce is a negotiator for Wild Pines, the company that owns the docks themselves; however Evrart refuses to meet her. The unresolved situation and the tension it builds underpins everything in the story, but also springs in the backdrop of the city of Revachol’s historical context, in which Capital’s power is unchecked. Revachol is a political void, its revolutionary communist government being smashed decades ago. The smashers- an international alliance of humanist democracies- didn’t fill the void. Instead, it was left as a deregulated state, run by corporate interests and policed by international militaries. These nations are firmly unchallenged on the world stage, and the idea that anything could topple it seems inconceivable- the end of history.

Evrart puts on a leftist front in his methods and goals, but the prospects of him ever succeeding seem bleak. His goals are audacious. The dockworkers want a seat on the board; later they decide to take full ownership of the dockland itself. Joyce, meanwhile, is polished, elegant, charming, likeable and all too aware of how murderously ruthless her lot- libertarian capitalists- can be. Yet where Evrart moves brashly and loudly, Joyce and Wild Pines are subtle. They hide their hand. They attack from different angles, all at once, undetectable and secretive: Joyce is there to negotiate, but at the same time the company sends scabs to protest at the dockland gates, whilst also having hired a squad of secret psychopathic mercenaries as elite agents, each equipped with heavy weapons and armour worth years of cop salaries, to put the union back in its place. Even Joyce’s status is hidden- far from being a mere employee, she is in fact one of the owners of Wild Pines. The big guns are here. Capital’s power is overwhelming, financially, legally, militarily- but obfuscated. Cover stories. Disguises and lies, red tape and shell corporations, a thousand different subtleties. Capital does not like the spotlight and will do anything it can to obscure just how powerful it truly is. And it is this, I believe, that the tragic genius of Francis Fukuyama comes to light. When Fukuyama predicted that the end of the evolution of human social systems was here because one had become unassailably powerful, he was half right, but had misread who the winner was at the end of the cold war. Democracy had not triumphed; Capital had, and democracy was simply the host of the parasite. Buying into Capital is tempting: Capital is incredibly adept at extracting resources and wealth and turning that into power. But Capital does not need democracy- it will adapt to fascism and autocracy just as easily.

Revachol is not a democracy, and the only power in town is Capital.

And then Wild Pines loses. Evrart was anticipating everything from the start. He knows that at the end of the day, he can lose a thousand dockworkers and still live it, whilst the moment Wild Pines shows weakness the market will tear it apart. Wild Pines’ plans dissolve practically on contact, with the mercenaries going murderously rogue and the union holding firm. When Du Bois tells Joyce of Evrart’s plans, she realises the cost-benefit doesn’t favour Wild Pines and when faced with that, plus realising that people will die, she evacuates, and gives the Union everything they want. An unconditional surrender. Capital loses.

But this is a setback, not a total defeat. Capital still controls the city, Revachol is still a libertarian free zone, and international Capital’s airships control the skies with enough artillery to flatten every building in the city. The realisation that Capital is practically impossible to topple as a system is an open belief to all in Revachol, especially the bitter deserter- a veteran of the Communist revolution- who says that the basis for revolution has been lost, and will never come again.

But when I think of Fukuyama I also think of the Pale. After all, Disco is not just a story of dry politics- it is a game of symbolism, of abstract ideas and imagery explaining the feeling of an event more than the recitation of it will (The secret fifth man of this essay is Roger Waters, co-founder of prog rock band Pink Floyd, whose rock opera The Wall is a great companion for Disco; alas, I don’t know enough about the topic to really engage with it as it deserves. The Deserter has definitely watched The Wall though). For the end of ‘history’ is not just a wishy-washy higher concept in the world of Disco; it is a very real and horrifying inevitability.

Disco’s world exists alongside a phenomenon called the Pale, a property-less separative tissue that divides the world into islands of reality. The Pale cannot be described positively, only by what it isn’t. It is anti-reality, a space where even mathematics ceases. Travel through the Pale is possible albeit awful to experience, and it leaves radiation on you- long enough exposure affects you permanently. You unmoor from reality, experiencing events out of time, out of your time, other people’s memories, even maybe memories from the future. The Pale is timeless entropy, where all of human experience is expressed in a single formless mass without start or end. The Pale covers two thirds of the planet’s surface. The Pale is growing. The Pale is the product of humanity: pollution of the past, human history leaking into reality itself. It is a refutation of the idea that any human product can be eternal except nothingness, but also an embracing of a future where the universe itself is made up entirely of human history.

When Du Bois speaks to the phasmid at the game’s emotional climax, it’s not clear whether it is true communication or whether Du Bois is hallucinating mega hard. It doesn’t matter. Either way, the phasmid expresses terror at humanity’s incomprehensible consciousness, that it created the Pale that will annihilate everything around humanity as a side effect, whilst admiring humanity for being able to tolerate being inside its own head at all. The End of History may come, but whilst we may be done with history, history is not done with us; it pursues us, defines us, puts us into boxes and causes us to harm others without even being aware of it.

For Harry Du Bois and the people of Elysium, history is a prison, and the end of history an extinction.

The third man I think about when I play Disco Elysium is Carl Rogers, an American psychologist who founded the humanistic therapeutic approach. Rogers is a man who’s had a huge influence on me- because I am a therapist, and his shadow looms large in the field. Most therapists incorporate at least a little of his approach into their work. The core elements of Rogers’ approach do not emphasise specific techniques or interventions, but rather a philosophy. For Rogers, humans change when exposed to humanising interaction. Rogers teaches the power of listening, empathy and caring. You are there with the client, genuinely in the moment, not acting or hiding behind empty therapist personas. You try to understand the client and see the world through their eyes without being lost in their world. And finally, you practice unconditional positive regard: you accept the client as they are, without judgment, disapproval or even approval. The relationship begins then and there, and is not informed by the past: the Rogerian therapist treats the criminal client no different to the crisis survivor, and trusts in these simple human connections to transform a person.

When I think of Carl Rogers’ humanistic approach I think of Kim Kitsuragi, the long suffering detective sent by another precinct to assist you on the case. Kim is a consummate detective. He is thoughtful, attentive, highly disciplined and absolutely incorruptible. He arrives on the scene to solve a crime and leaves having saved Harry’s soul.

I love Kim more than any other fictional character ever made. I have an official ZA/UM copy of his aerostatic bomber jacket hanging in my wardrobe. It is warm, comforting and surprisingly practical. Kim made me want to be a therapist- and I was already a therapist.

Kim does not arrive intending to save Harry’s soul. He is there to perform a job; Harry, as his partner, is there to perform the same job, and Kim expects Harry to do that job; he won’t do it for him! But he sees Harry as more than a job- he sees a person. A person in indescribable pain. This is already generous: Harry’s antics have set the investigation back, impacted measurably on Kim’s ability to close this case. Yet Kim does not linger on it. He does not belabour Harry with criticism on how Harry’s personal issues have hampered the case. Kim simply moves on to asking ‘what do we do now to fix it?’

Kim approaches Harry with an opinion free of judgment. When they meet, Harry is hung over, dishevelled, hated by the locals, feuding with the hostel’s manager, missing a name, a gun, a badge and hasn’t even fetched the body out of the tree. Yet if this affects Kim’s opinion of you, he hides his judgment magnificently. Kim’s offers Harry unconditional positive regard, free of pre-judgment. He allows Harry’s actions in the moment, and they alone, to define their relationship and in doing so he offers Harry an incomparable and rare gift that no one else in the game can give him: a relationship free of the past that haunts Harry. Harry obliterated himself with alcohol and meth to try and be released from that past and the monster it turned him into. Kim gives that to him without asking and for free.

Harry is a man, not a monster. Kim helps him realise that radical truth through entirely mundane and simple human kindness.

Kim is not blind to Harry’s faults. But instead of condemning him, he finds an equilibrium with Harry, he moderates him, and knows to trust him. He knows when to step in and rein Harry back, to point out when he’s crossing the line. Kim treats Harry like a partner, but also as a hurting human being, and he tends to both in the exact way Harry needs. It’s a wonderfully mature relationship and brimming with the exact kind of simple human patience and empathy Carl Rogers hoped to see from therapists.

In the emotional climax of the game, the phasmid- a cryptid that Harry has been fruitlessly chasing the entire game, much to Kim’s disinterest (he is not one for the paranormal)- appears. At that moment, I felt my stomach drop out of my body. One of the dialogue options is for Harry to proclaim that this is it, he has lost his mind completely and utterly. That is how I felt. I selected it and felt miserable.

Then Kim says, “I see it too.”

In that moment my fear and sadness was transformed into joy and relief that Kim, sober, professional and rock-steady Kim could see this postmodern fairy tale creature, the same as I could. My world view was not out of hand. I- that is to say, Harry- wasn’t alone.

I wept.

At the end of the game, Harry meets with his former co-workers who he told to fuck off for ‘cramping his style’ before the game even begins. These are his colleagues, but also his friends, pushed to breaking point by Harry’s terrible personality as he loses his struggle with his demons. They are weary and exhausted and wonder why they should take Harry back. If you wish, you can play Harry becoming a better person. No alcohol, no drugs, no bribes, superlative cop work, kind and helpful to those around you. Embracing the second chance your self-obliteration gave you. Your colleagues then point out, horrifyingly, that this isn’t even the first time all of this has happened, and that you ‘went good’ in the past as well, only to break again. Why would this time be different?

I think it will be. I hope it will be. Because now Harry has Kim.

The fourth man I think about when I play Disco Elysium is Terry Pratchett, British author responsible for the Discworld series, a fantasy series about a disc-shaped world balanced on the backs of four colossal elephants standing on the shell of an astronomical turtle. It is, as one might guess, a series full of the whimsical and the absurd. The geography is eccentric, the people more so. The narration is irreverent and self-unimportant and peppered with off-hand references and gags. His style has been endlessly mimicked but never replaced. They are the single most shoplifted book series in Britain.

There are very few settings as human as Terry Pratchett’s. This is a writer who can create a world where the natural laws are more like natural guidelines, where the home of the gods is a joke to retirement communities, where the first protagonists were a terrible, cowardly wizard and his too-fearless, too-naïve, too-curious tourist companion. Yet the setting’s absurd unreality doesn’t make its occupants less human. Pratchett’s incomparable gift was that he created a setting full of parody and satire and nonsense and used it to draw out the human in his characters, even if they weren’t human. A golem who embraces reasonable, rational atheism in a setting with jealous, living gods. A dwarf woman whose interests and expression of gender run counter to her society’s expectations. A vampire who overcomes their addiction to blood by sublimating it into a fascination with photography. Many of these ideas, when introduced, unfurl from parodical ideas to genuine explorations of the human condition, as silly, petty and as beautiful as it is. Humans are human, even in a flat world on the back of a turtle.

Pratchett had a gift for making his characters seem like gags at first, exaggerated and archetypal, yet revealing their complex, often contradictory, very much human natures to you over time. I think that sense of exploration, of hidden depths, is what helps make them seem so lifelike and resonant. In reality, people are rarely everything they seem to be at first. That isn’t to say that their exterior is false- a person who is boring on the outside often just has a boring outside. But people always keep something back, something hidden, and simply becoming aware of that makes us think of them as people.

When I think of Terry Pratchett’s complex characters and absurd world I think of Elsyium, the area of Martinaise and the people who live there. Elysium as a setting is more grounded and ‘philosophical’ than Pratchett’s, but it has its quirks of the absurd that reflect human nonsense. The statue of the deposed king in Martinaise, for instance, installed after a revolution in a district that hasn’t been rebuilt from the war that deposed him, by careless corporate overlords who were soon kicked out but managed to prioritise a statue being built that is immediately vandalised. Or the grim comedy of a chain of quests dealing with the ‘Doomed Commercial District’, a district where all businesses seem supernaturally cursed to fail, with an exception determined because her tower is technically outside of the boundaries of the district.

So many of the people in Martinaise seem like archetypes and stock characters at first. Union boss Evrart Claire is a classic corrupt union boss, more mob godfather than working class man. Joyce Messier is polished and clever and unflappable, an elegant woman who grew up rich and remains so. Plaisance, the careless bookshop owner who runs her daughter ragged in the cold to Teach Her a Work Ethic. Even Kim is a stoic, utter professional, dedicated solely to his work.

Then you learn a lot, or a little, and the façade falls and you realise the truth. Evrart may be running a criminal operation, but when he expresses his hatred for Capital and his leftist beliefs he is being bluntly sincere. Joyce fully acknowledges the inevitable power of the international forces ruling Revachol and her complicity in them and their crimes, but dig a little, and she spills how she truly feels: that Capital has failed people, that it was all for nothing, and that Revachol was disgraced by surrendering- that it should have burned every building to the ground before ever letting the coalition take it whole. Plaisance isn’t careless, she’s anxious, run ragged at the responsibilities of caring for a child and running a business whilst neglected by her husband and repeating the traumatic lessons of her mother. And when Harry says something and Kim has to turn away because he’s too busy hiding his laughter, it’s beautiful. When Kim is easily swayed into breaking for an hour to play a board game, he admires the pieces, sets the board, read the rules then (usually) runs rings around you before declaring triumphantly, “Nobody fucks with Kim Kitsuragi.”

Nearly everyone in Martinaise is like this. So many of them have contradictory hidden depths that serves to make them painfully human. The story of Rene, the hateful old royalist, and his affable friend Gaston, is wonderful. Childhood rivals for the same woman (who died before she could make a choice), Rene wears his old royal uniform and expresses his hate for foreigners and communists. He expresses contempt for the apolitical Gaston (fence-sitters are cowards), who cheerfully returns it. When Rene dies of heart failure halfway through the game, Gaston is heartbroken. Buried beneath layers of trauma and hurt and memory is genuine affection between the two. The Deserter on the island- a lifelong militant survivor of the communist rebellion- despises Rene as a memory of the royalists, hating him, savouring the idea of one day shooting him dead. He never does, and he too feels grief at the death of Rene. He hated the royalist, but he was a foe he could kill, a remnant of a dead ideology. He cannot kill Capital.

There are few characters as beloved in Discworld as Death. The literal anthropomorphic personification of mortality, Death is the psychopomp humans see when they die. He guides them to their afterlife. He is very fond of cats, and muses on the nature of humanity with fondness. He is not human, but he has a boundless empathy for life. He isn’t to be feared. This kind of anthropomorphism is common in Discworld, where the world is alive, the gods are alive, and cameras are boxes containing little demons that paint really quickly.

When I think of this, I think again of Harry Du Bois. Harry is a living contradiction, to the point where his skills argue and fight with each other. Harry is also incredibly sentimental, not only for the past, but for everything. Sentimentality is that thing that allows a human being to imbue lifeless things with life and meaning and feelings they don’t have. Sentimental people hesitate and feel bad about throwing out a computer, or worry about the hurt feelings of a doll. One of the first things Harry can do is gently stroke the hair of the murder victim; the victim thanks you for this. At the same time, he can gently pat a mailbox, and call it a ‘good box’. This makes the box happy. It heals his morale; it makes him feel better. Sentimentality, kindness to the lifeless, is rewarding and good and the product of Harry’s vast soul.

Harry sentimentalises and anthropomorphises everything. He has divided the voices in his head up to represent his compartmentalised skill sets. They then quarrel and fight and work together and encourage him. Some are communist. Some are fascist. One of them wants to get high and bone down.

Throughout the game, Harry can claim to ‘commune’ with things telepathically. His horrible, garish necktie. The city of Revachol itself. A giant insect. This is probably the ravings of a man experience alcohol withdrawal and psychological trauma, yet at the same time offer information he could not possibly know. At the very least, their viewpoints are beautiful. Revachol loves him; he is a son of its soil. The necktie calls him a good man. And the insect expresses its fear of humanity and its Pale even as it admires Harry for having the ability to comprehend existence without going immediately insane.

When Harry finds the Phasmid, a cryptid that a married couple have spent their lives looking for so fruitlessly that Lena, the gentle and adorable wife is doubting her story of seeing it- the story that attracted her husband to her in the first place- he talks to it. It talks back. He asks- are you the miracle? It says that he is the miracle. It encourages him.

“The arthropods are in silent and meaningless awe of you. Know that we are watching — when you're tired, when the visions spin out of control. The insects will be looking on. Rooting for you."

Harry can respond to this in several different ways. My favourite is this one:

“Of all the creatures I’ve met you are the kindest.”

That Harry has love and softness to spare for an insect in a world so cold and hostile is a testament.

I once met Terry Pratchett at a Discworld convention. I spoke to him and shook his hand- he was unwell at the time, and his grip was very gentle. I hadn’t read many of his works by then, but I’d liked what I read. I was there with a friend who saw Terry as his hero. I told Terry, “Thank you for writing these works. They inspire me to write as well.”

He said something very much like, “Good. If there’s a story in you, and you have that want to tell it, take that want with you. That’s what I hope those books do for people who read them.”

I cannot be sure, but I think he would have liked Disco Elysium very much.

The only one of these four men who I can be absolutely certain influenced ZA/UM’s writing of the award-winning Disco Elysium is Marx. The other three are more translators between the game and myself, ways of discussing my own experiences, ways of understanding how the game makes me feel.

I began this essay by discussing how Disco Elysium is a game about radical acts of humanity. I then clarified that by stating it’s about the basic, everyday ways humanity relates to each other. Then I talked about four men with ideas, and also mention the power of Capital a lot, which doesn’t seem human at all. I do talk a lot about human kindness and nature and relating to each other and our own alienation from it.

Disco Elysium is a game about radical acts of humanity. Or rather, the game is about normal acts of humanity, in a world that has made such things a radical act. To care about others, to sentimentalise the lifeless, to give irrational meaning in a rational and inhuman world run by a rational and inhuman machine is as radical an act as any. And yet the ordinary can triumph over, or at the very least push back against the extraordinary force arrayed against it.

Disco Elysium is a game about humanity, and acknowledging its flaws and misgivings and giving you space to hate it if you like, but if you dig a little you’ll find beauty there. Radical beauty in ordinary things.

If you have ever suffered, ever wanted to stop being you anymore or felt helpless, controlled by a machine or a substance or the vast uncaring world, then Disco is made in honour of you.

“It is made in honour of human will. That you kept from falling apart, in the face of sheer terror. Day after day. Second by second.”

ME - First, Notes. No, It's Declaration of Defeat.
LOGIC [Medium: Success] - What were you defeated against?
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Impossible: Failure] - Disco.
INLAND EMPIRE [Impossible: Failure] - Myself.

ME - Below, I have written a very long loooooong and TOOOOOOG text.
HAND/EYE COORDINATION [Nedium: Success] - TOG, British TOG2 heavy tank. Famous for being a long, big and slow tank.
REACTION SPEED [Medium: Failure] - However, there is no response that good writing has been achieved.
PAIN THRESHOLD [Formidable: Failure] - It may be that the senses have been numbed by over-rewriting the text.
LOGIC [Medium: Success] - I myself prefer short sentences that get to the point.
ENDURANCE [Formidable: Failure] - I get really tired of writing long sentence...
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Impossible: Failure] - However, as far as searching the internet is concerned, no articles can be found that involve the Disco Elysium/DE' matters I am about to describe. So a lengthy explanation became necessary.
ME - Logic is essential when analysing and critiquing anything, not just games. Rather, analysis and critique rely on logic. I felt lost in a logic maze as I thought and wrote about DE. There are three causes.
VOLITION [Medium: Failure] - 1st, my motivation. I personally respect when I read good critiques and analyses. But I can't help it if I myself am not interested in logical writing work itself.
LOGIC [Medium: Failure] - 2nd, my logical ability. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not very smart.
INLAND EMPIRE [Impossible: Failure] - And the 3rd problem. This was very biggest. DE is a game created by a will... or something that transcends logic and intelligence. In other words, it is a mistake to try to put such games in the frame of logic again.
ME - And, due to the large amount of text, there are likely to be many typographical errors. There may be parts to be fixed over the next few days.
SAVOIR FAIRE [Formidable: Success] - Final and compromised edit made on 25/08/2022. Note, the passive skills checks and Thought cabinet in bold are from within the Disco Elysium text. Those that are not are fakes written by me.

# Conclusion
ME - The gameplay and mechanism of DE is not touched here. I leave it to the critics to explain and analyse how DE is a great RPG. Below, my six speculations.

1. Fifth(zero?) column/Ravachole/Anarchism
Robert Kurvitz/RK and ZA/UM are anarchists. If there is a real person as a model for Harry, it is Bakunin, not Marx. Most references to political ideology in DE are from the perspective of anarchists and not communists.
2. Passion/Destruction/Creation
Passion for destructive creation. Or passionate destructive creation.
3. Chance/Coincidence
Coincidence as violence exercised through die rolls. Coincidences that destroy all outcomes, worlds and events.
4. Reason/Intellect/Rationality
Zaum. Language beyond reason and intellect and rationality. This experimental language and concept is used to destroy and re-create word sense, sentence meaning, context and narrative itself in creative writing, including existing theories of writing.
5. Again, a summary of speculation
In light of the above 4 points, the DE’s aim is "destruction against any object or idea".
6. On meaning and value
That the world of this game is meaningless. And that our world may be meaningless too. But, is meaninglessness worthless?

ME - I have written many more, but the main points are these 6 points. Although it is not a text that can be called an analysis, there are two people who were the main references. And I believe that these 2 persons may be the CORE of DE. See link for overview.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
Daniil Ivanovich Kharms
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success] - In addition, I also consulted material on these three individuals.
Carl von Clausewitz
Henri-Louis Bergson
Charles de Gaulle
SAVOIR FAIRE [Easy: Success] - The following text is redundant and meaningless and can be skipped.

# 0. My DE playthrough
ME - I'm not a particular fan of novel games.
DRAMA [Trivial: Success] - 嘘だッ！/LIES!
REACTION SPEED [Legendary: Failure] - Ugh, I ain't lying.
COMPOSURE [Heroic: Failure] - T-then give me evidence that it's lies. Evidence/ショーコ.
ME - ...I think I've read more than the average amount of adventure, sound novels and visual novels, including some I haven't recorded in my logs. I can say that DE was the most difficult of them all. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that I'm not very familiar with foreign games, English is not my first language and the Japanese version of DE has not yet been release. However, DE felt there was something more to it. I want to know what that something is. As a result, it's a long. I don't think it's an enjoyable read because of the redundant explanations.
EMPATHY [Medium: Success] - But I had worked so hard to write it and I wanted someone to read it.
I forget what it was that led me to know about DE. Because it's the hottest game abroad? Because I read an article about DE on a Japanese game introduction website? I don't know anymore now. I think it was a foolish calculation to buy it even though I don't understand English very well. The stupid calculation of studying a language while playing a game.
VISUAL CALCULUS [Godly: Failure] - That foolish calculation, of course, backfires.
ME - But I am a würm, which is becoming extinct in Japan these days. Böök würm. Of course, I get angry at sloppy translations, esoteric technical books, or uninteresting bad books, and I throw the book itself. That's the weak of e-books. Throwing my device every time I come across a bad book would bankrupt me. kindle devices are expensive. Reading can make me angry and depressed. Yet I don't dislike reading itself. And foolish calculations that it might be a good way to learn a language. Unfounded confidence in reading. My million-word journey has begun.
VOLITION [Medium: Success] - Game start. Archetype is SENSITIVE.
ME - At the beginning, the protagonist's incoherent thinking is baffling. I have no idea what it means. I managed to get ready and left the room. A woman smoking a cigarette was in front of me as soon as I left the room. I associated her with Fiana from Armoured Trooper Votoms because of her facial modelling.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success] - Armored Trooper Votoms. Japanese robot animation. Aired in 1983. Hard-core content that does not look like anime. Next episode preview is poetic.
RHETORIC [Medium: Success] - The predator, the prey, and the scavenger of the scraps. A violent city where one cannot survive without fangs. A city armed with every manner of vice: Uoodo. Melkia's Sodom, born of the Hundred Years War. With the scent of cordite still clinging to him... Chirico finds himself surrounded dangerous people. Next time, 'Encounters’. Chirico drinks, and the coffee of Uoodo is bitter indeed.
ME - I sense from her voice that she is a ヤベー/dangerous woman.
RHETORIC [Legendary: Failure] - ヤベー, not Yekokataa. What is Yekokataa?
HALF LIGHT [Medium: Success] The original version of KLAASJE's voice gave the impression of a dangerous woman.
ME - At the bottom of the stairs is a no flower old Asian man.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success] - no flower/華がない. The Japanese expression 'hana ga nai/華がない' refers to people who are not flamboyant in appearance.
EMPATHY [Formidable: Success] - The modern way of putting it is... The character KIM gives me mixed feelings. I plan to write about him elsewhere.
ME - I leave the café and head for the victim's body. There were gremlin there throwing stones at the corpse. The most disappointing thing about the final cut version was that this gremlin's voice was changed. I don't remember where it was written, but there was a comment that the original version of Cuno was a truant and the FCver Cuno is a proper school going child, which made me laugh out loud.
HALF LIGHT [Easy: Success] - FINAL CUT? NO! FINAL COMPROMISE VOICE EDITION!!
ME - For now, I ignored this noisy gremlin. Click on hanging corpse; Harry vomits as ENDURANCE check fails. At this point, my own MORALE values were running out of steam. With tears in my eyes, I successfully complete the ENDURANCE and HAND/EYE COODINATION checks, lower the body to the ground and begin the autopsy. And when the option to touch the pubic area of the body came up, my eyes staring at the monitor became vacant. The eyes of a dead fish.
DAMAGED MORALE -2
VOLITION [Impossible: Failure] - I closed the game window after losing my MORALE value due to DE' difficult English writing and dark jokes beyond comprehension.
ME - One day, a few days later, I read some DE developer interviews in the hope that they would help me play. One of the most striking statements came from the main writer.
ROBERT KURVITZ, DISCO OF GOD - "The main thing to understand about text is that people don't understand text."
ME - Looking back, I feel that these words were the catalyst for my positive attitude towards DE. I realised that I was being weirdly defensive because it was English in a game, and then I decided to change my attitude towards this game a little. Read with the senses, not with the mind. I responded to dark jokes that go beyond my common sense by consciously numbing my senses. Sense of seeing rather than reading the text.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Easy: Success] - Don’t think, feel.
ME - Whether in English or Japanese, what you see is the same text, whether on paper or on a monitor. The same thing I've done with all the books I've read and all the games I've played, I've applied to DE. I dared to read it diagonally, spit on it, shake the monitor, hitting pc, all sorts of things. I don't think I've ever muttered the F-word as much as I did in this game.
DRAMA [Heroic: Success] - THE TIME HATH COME.
HALF LIGHT [Legendary: Success] - TIME OF COMPROMISE.
VOLITION [Easy: Success] - INCREMENTAL READING.
ME - I then proceeded to investigate, in a style of compromise and incremental. After a long period of successes, failures and strays, he/I became a communist superstar cop and thus returned.
VOLITION [Easy: Success] - Started the 2nd round with a custom build.
ME - I completed the options and events I didn't read in the first round, failed the AUTHORITY check (93% chance!). and investigated with a gremlin who became KIM's replacement, obtained the flower and saw a surprising side of DESARTER. The result was an apocalyptic fascist cop. I read most of the text in 2 rounds. But I thought I didn't fully understand what the game was trying to say. It was around that time that I discovered this website, Backloggd. Around October 2021. I read through the many reviews in the hope that it would give me some insight.
REACTION SPEED [Heroic: Success] - This review in particular opened my eyes. Really excellent.
SUGGESTION [Godly: Success] - I don't think my writing is any better than Minaplo-san', so please jump to the link above immediately.
ME - Once I found Minaplo-san' review, I could say that I had almost achieved what I came to this site for. However, searches for 'anarchism' and 'Kharms', which I have been think and speculating about disco, did not turn up the articles I had hoped for.
INTERFACING [Godly: Failure] - Maybe my google searching is not the right one.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Fomidable: Failure] - "Do I have to write my own, personalised DE' answer myself?"
ME - Despite that thought, DE is not a game that can be easily answered. ...Japan is on the Western side of the political spectrum, but is a non-European-American cultural area.
LOGIC [Heroic: Failure] - I'll not mention anything prior to 1945.
ME - For those living on such an island, the world of DE and Estonia are different worlds, and the Estonians who created it are otherworldly. Still, I didn't give up and wrote down little by little what came to my mind and what I had noticed. At this time, the total KB of DE-related text files had reached 500KB. It will not be long before it reaches 1MB. And it was only at the end of 2021 that I was able to output the whole skeleton -- outline, editing what I had written so far in Markdown format. This long text is the result of adding redundant sentences to the outline. The deadline is 30 May, the birthday of a certain revolutionary. It was then extended by another month and was finally completed today, 1 July, the anniversary of his death. Here is an itemised list of what I came up with.

## 0+ What I thought after 1 round of DE
-What is DE a game? Isn't really an RPG? What is an RPG in the first place?
-Considering RPGs with Uncle Bandage in Ultima Online. ©HIRANO KOHTA
-What is its narrative classification? Is it a mystery?
-About 24 SKILL. DE and Billy Milligan are not related in any way, are they? I'm a bit angry that some Japanese DE introduction articles mislead people into thinking Harry is a 24 multiple personality.
HALF LIGHT [Trivial: Success] - Japanese games journalism, especially Famitsu and Dengeki, is rubbish!
-24 discours instead of 24 skills? Pun?

## 0++ What I thought after 2 rounds of DE
-About the times and Don Quijote
-To make readers laugh out loud at the eccentricities of a crazy middle-aged man. That the roles and positions of Kim and Sancho are similar. DE is Don Quijote?
CERVANTES, LA LEYENDA ESPAÑOLA - "The benefits that Don Quixote will bring to the world when he comes to his senses are nothing compared to the pleasure his madness will give us." Don Quixote, Part 2
-The sorrows of the age itself. The sadness of the present day, which continues from the 20th century.
CHARLES DE GAULLE, L'HOMME DU 18 JUIN - "Uncertainty is the hallmark of the modern era. Conventional practices, future prospects, or the torrential denial of the doctrine of regulation. Moreover, never before have so many trials, losses and disillusionments, and also the various glimmers, shocks and threats of so many civilisations, so shaken the established order. The army, which is responsible for transforming the world, first suffers from this fact and weeps for its lost passion." - Le Fil de l'Epee
-I personally think Rene and de Gaulle are very similar. Ask a French person and they will say ‘Non'. The only thing that's the same is the way they died? They both died of heart attacks.
-And when de Gaulle died, when Rene died, they had someone to cry for them in their death. But when DESARTER dies, will anyone cry for him?

## 0+++ DE is really communist game?
VOLITION [Formidable: Success] - ...Writing from this point on was quite difficult.
ME - This section aims to observe the game of DE, with a focus on politics. The observation equipment is a Japanese-made old telescope. I'm unable and unwilling to examine the details of each political ideology and its forces.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Formidable: Failure] - The additional quests in the final cut were interesting, but personally I think they are not necessary parts of the game.
ME - I'm not interested in political ideology. I threw Marx' Das Kapital away halfway through and don't remember it anymore, and I don't like communism. Nevertheless, I still find Marx's idea and thought useful and I read excerpts and summaries. And above all, I'm not European. Living in the Far East, I cannot act as a microscope. Only an Eastern European or European would be able to see DE in the high resolution of a microscope.
DRAMA [Imppossible: Failure] - Historically and --
EMPATHY [Imppossible: Failure] - Emotionally too.
ME - Before moving on to the main issue, I will briefly touch on the political forces in DE.
LOGIC [Medium: Success] - I'm not interested, but I need to preface this for what I'm about to explain...
ME - Firstly, communism. Based on Intellect. It is the most significant subject of DE and many people who have played DE consider it to be a communist game.
PERCEPTION(SIGHT) [Easy: Success] - Color is blue.
INLAND EMPIRE [Formidable: Success] - I only half agree with that impression, but I thought about the 'half I disagree with' in this long article.
ME - Secondly, moralism. Based on Psyche. DE and the biggest winners in the real world? Moralism has been criticised quite bitterly, although not very prominently.
SUGGESTION [Easy: Success] - e.g. Kingdom of concience’s solution.
PERCEPTION(SIGHT) - Color is purple.
ME - Thirdly, fascism. Based on Physique. Fascism is probably the most ridiculed thing in DE. At the same time feared? But I believe it is a reflection of RK and RK's home country, Igaunija/Estonia. The main reason for thinking this is due to the following ENCYCLOPEDIA.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Godly: Success] - Igaunija -- a god-forsaken (and tiny) territory in Graad that has not once, but twice wasted its independence on microfascism. The less said about Igaunija the better. Matter of fact, let's stop saying things about it right now and continue what we were doing.
PERCEPTION(SIGHT) - Color is red.
ME - Fourth, liberalism. Based on Motorics. Surface winners in the DE world? The state dies, but capital does not.
RHETORIC [Legendary: Success] - "国破山河在 -- The country breaks, but mountains and rivers remain."
PERCEPTION(SIGHT) - Color is yellow.
ME - From here, many questions came to mind.
"Will communists honestly admit that communism has failed?"
"Are there communists who prefer disco?"
"I laughed a lot reading DE's writing and I've never laughed so much in any game I've ever played. But have any communist writers I know been so humorous?"
"Isn't it not always communists who can talk about communism?"
For example, religion. Some Buddhists and Muslims are familiar with Christianity. The reverse is also true.
The first example that came to my mind was a Protestant atheism researcher. He went from atheism to Marxist studies and became a diplomat in charge of the Soviet Union. Then he was arrested. Now he is a writer.
[Another example is a person who was more familiar with Buddhist teachings than the high priests of Buddhism. He is an artist.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Godly: Success] - Art is an explosion!
ME - This has nothing to do with DE and communism, but there are probably many people on this site who are more familiar with the Japanese game than I am. Especially when it comes to Suda51' game, I have no chance.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Heroic: Success] - I really enjoy reading the excellent analysis and reviews on this site and at the same time I appreciate
ME - When search 'communism and DE', we often saw accusations of being pro-communist in reviews and comments on DE. Each time, I thought half of those opinions and impressions were right, while the other half were wrong.
INLAND EMPIRE [Godly: Failure] - And I am probably half right and half wrong too. No, I may be all wrong.
ME - One day, I began to consider that DE was not written from a communist standpoint. They don't reflect, they don't admit failure. This is what I consider communist. Even assuming that RK was a former communist who had converted or abandoned his political beliefs, it was inconceivable to me that he would portray communism with jokes mixed in. ...Then I remembered that communism is not the only revolutionary force.
VISUAL CALCULUS [Godly: Success] - "So from which position do I assume DE was written?"
ME - Before moving on to the next item, I'll try to imitate DE here and do a red skills check.
HAND/EYE COORDINATION [Impossible: Failure] - Impossible to observe/snipe Europe from the Far East.
VOLITION [Challenging: Success] - But it should be worth a try.

1. [Inland Empire - Challenging 12] Is Robert Kurvitz really a communist? If he isn't a communist, what is he?
INLAND EMPIRE: 5
EVEN
??%

+1 Revachol? Reval? Ravachol?
+2 Pro-communism but at the same time critical.
+1 Harry's face isn’t resemble Marx(Mazov).
+1 Crypto-communist CINDY THE SKULL.
+1 DESERTER - "You're an inert lumpen with a gun."
+1 "Thank you to Marx and Engels for providing us political education."
+1 ENDURANCE [Godly: failure] - Uh oh. Organisation hasn't exactly been your strong suit, historically speaking...
-5 Not a matter of speculation. (No official data available).
-3 Political ideology isn't my interest.

This is a Red Check.
It can not be retried.

INTERFACING [Easy: Success] - CLICK AND SCROLL!

CHECK SUCCESS/FAILURE

INLAND EMPIRE [Challenging: Success/Failure] - ANARCHISM.
PERCEPTION(SIGHT) [Impossible: Success] - Color is darkness or blackness or --
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Impossible: Success] - Nothing.
ANCIENT REPTILLAN BRAIN - I know you do, baby... I know...
ME - Whether this skills check is a success or a failure isn't clear to me.

# 1. 5th(zero?) column/Ravachole/Anarchism
"Let’s dance the Ravachole
Long live the sound, long live the sound
Let’s dance the Ravachole
Of the explosion!" - La Ravachole

Gregory resumed in high oratorical good humour. “An artist is identical with an anarchist,” he cried. “You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway.” - THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY

ME - Modern anarchism originated in Proudhon. Anarchism is a forgotten force, less conspicuous than communism. First, let me lay out the famous words of anarchists who were active at the same time as Marx. Stance on capital and property rights below.
PROUDHON - "Property is robbery."
ME - When I first read these words, I couldn't help but laugh.
RAVACHOL - "Anarchy is the obliteration of property."
ME - Aren't you guys too radical?
Indirect Modes of Taxation - Taxes are racist.
ME - I-is this true? Tell me Savvy.
SAVOIR FAIRE [Godly: Success] - This is true.
ME - Is Japan a racist state then? Japan is the world's most heavily taxed country.
SAVOIR FAIRE - Unfortunately, it is true.
DAMAGED HEALTH -2
DAMAGED MORALE -2
ME - OH, MY GOD!/な、なんて事だッ！
COMPOSURE [Legendary: Failure] - ざわ・・・ざわ・・・
HALF LIGHT [Challenging: Failure] - The racist Ministry of Finance, the main source of this, must be destroyed as soon as possible!
ME - ...Tax discrimination aside, all four political forces broadly classified in DE recognise property itself. Even communists like DESARTER abhor the minions of capital but do not think of eliminating property itself. The only difference between any political ideology is how property rights are handled and who controls them. In other words, they recognise property itself, more or less. But not the anarchists, including Proudhon and Rabashol and others. Proudhon does not recognise property rights. When it comes to Ravashol, he denies property itself.
SAVOIR FAIRE - They are in denial of capital and property...
ENDURANCE [Medium: Success] - Änd they reject the pölitical institutions, the gövernment and the stäte...

BAKUNIN, DON QUIXOTE OF THE REVOLUTION - "The State a Historically Necessary Evil. It is not so with the State. And I do not hesitate to say that the State is an evil but a historically necessary evil, as necessary in the past as its complete extinction will be necessary sooner or later, just as necessary as primitive bestiality and theological divigations were necessary in the past. The State is not society; it is only one of its its historical forms, as brutal as it is abstract in character. Historically, it arose in all countries out of the marriage of violence, rapine, and pillage - in a word, of war and conquest - with the Gods created in succession by the theological fancies of the nations. From its very beginning it has been - and still remains - the divine sanction of brutal force and triumphant iniquity. Even in the most democratic countries, like the United States of America and Switzerland, it is simply the consecration of the privileges of some minority and the actual enslavement of the vast majority."

ME - The more I read the writings of anarchists, especially Bakunin, the more I came to believe that Harry's model was Bakunin. DE gives the middle finger to all political forces. Its stance is similar to Bakunin's attitude.
INLAND EMPIRE - But they could not kill PROPERTY and the state. Like the communists in DE.
ME - And It's also an unmissable fact that he predicts the future of communist regimes and proletarian dictatorships, including later Stalinism.
BAKUNIN, DON QUIXOTE OF THE REVOLUTION - "If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself."
ME - Criticism of communism had been made before the Russian Revolution by Bakunin, who had exceptional, if not theoretical, intuition. And history has moved on, as if to trace Bakunin's criticisms and predictions.
COMPOSURE [Formidable: Success] - The memo about Bakunin is still to follow, but before that I would like to take a break with a digression.

## 1+ What I thought after 3 rounds of DE
PERCEPTION(HEARING) [Godly: Failure] - errr....
-On geopolitics
-Mackinder and Spykman
-The geopolitical position of Estonia
-Estonia has a total population of approximately 1.3 million. In Japanese prefectures, this is equivalent to Yamaguchi, Ehime, Nara and Nagasaki.
-After all, DE and Revachol are merely a reflection of RK's homeland, Estonia.
-Japan's geopolitical position with history.
-On Tokugawa Ieyasu, the most boring man in the history of Japan.
PERCEPTION(HEARING) [Fomidable: Failure] - errrr.....
Kingdom of Conscience - Centrism isn't change -- not even incremental change. It is control. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it.
-The situation and assumptions are different in Japan and Estonia.
EMPATHY [Impossible: Failure] - The sorrows of a small country can only be understood by those born in a small country.
-Ideology is only ideology, not power.
HALF LIGHT [Formidable: Success] - Furthermore, for DE, all political ideologies are toys to be mocked.
PERCEPTION(HEARING) [Medium: Failure] - ....ERRRRR!!!
HIRANO KOHTA - "In Russia, soldiers can be harvested in the fields/畑. In China, soldiers can be harvested in the fields/田んぼ. In the USA, the entire land mass is made up of resources." - About Hearts of Iron
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Impossible: Success] - So ideology is colour. Not size itself.
ENDURANCE [Godly: Success] - POWWERRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!
INTERFACING [Medium: Success] - HE IS A GODLY TORQUE DORK GUY.
AUTHORITY [Challenging: Success] - I don't care about political ideology. Look at the human.
ME - In this sense Cuno is saying the right thing.
YOU - "It‘s simple, Cuno. I have to find communism. Communism killed the hanged man."
CUNO - "Is that like a fucking street name or something?" The kid stops to think. "It's pretty cool to Cuno."
YOU - "The coolest, Cuno. But unfortunately it's an ideology, not a person."
CUNO - "C‘mon, pig..." The kid snaps his fingers. "Thoughts didn't kill Cuno's gimp. It was a person. Even Cuno can figure this shit out."
-Whichever political ideology you choose in DE, you will be ridiculed. In other words, we dance in the palm of anarchism's hand.
-The bottom line is whether or not to recognise the existence of the state.
-Is it better to have no state or to have one?

# 2. Passion/Destruction/Creation
BAKUNIN, DON QUIXOTE OF THE REVOLUTION - "The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too."

ME - Now, I will concentrate here on the lumpen-revolutionary Bakunin. First of all, I want you to look at this picture.
AUTHORITY [Heroic: Success] - Behold!
PERCEPTION (SMELL) [Medium: Success] - Smells like stray dogs...
RHETORIC [Impossible: Failure] - This is an indescribable smell.
SUGGESTION [Medium: Success] - Compared to this picture, I think Harry looks more like Bakunin than Marx. What do you think?
ME - Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin. One historian described him as.
"A man who, through his dramatic personality and experience, through his often misdirected but passionate actions, connected with, reflected, added to and sometimes derailed almost every aspect of Russian revolutionary thought." A friend of Bakunin described his features as. "Strength. Wild power. A profound movement in which the spirit is wild and turbulent. Constant, far-reaching desire. Dissatisfaction with the present. And furthermore, an exacerbation of the self in the present. Demon and fallen angel in human form." Another said. "Anarchism culminated with Bakunin and fell after his death."
LOGIC - Why Bakunin?
ME - The first thing was that Harry did not see any resemblance between Marx, the guru of communism, and Harry. Next I read the scene where DESERTER refers to Harry as a lumpen with a gun and it stuck in my mind. So I began to link anarchism and DE and to wonder if Harry was Bakunin rather than Marx. Neither Marx nor Lenin. Bakunin rejected all possible ideas. Not only the rejection of ideas, such as the aforementioned criticism of Marx and communism, but for him everything in the world is subject to destruction. There is very little combat in DE. But to me DE seems subversive and creative. DE is haunted by the specter of Bakunin, not Marx!
INLAND EMPIRE [Legendary: Success] - "な、なんだってー！！/W-wtf!?" by MMR.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Legendary: Success] - MMR -- マガジンミステリー調査班/Magazine Mystery Reportage was a legendary occult manga that used to be serialised in Weekly Shonen Magazine.
PERCEPTION(HEARING) [Medium: Success] - It is similar to the tone and way of saying PLAISANCE.
PERCEPTION(SIGHT) [Medium: Success] - All the characters in this manga are like PLAISANCE.
COMPOSURE [Medium: Failure] - I half-seriously believe that the loss of anything analogous to this manga has made it easier for conspiracy theories to spread on the Japanese internet.
PAINTHRESHOLD [Medium: Success] - Ridiculous fiction has a immunity effect.
ME - What did Harry, obsessed with the incarnation of destruction in political ideology, destroy? The only person Harry could break was himself. The world of DE that Harry had to destroy was already broken when he was born. In 1991 -- RK was 7 years old -- the destruction/collapse of one utopian state simultaneously meant the creation of many states, including Estonia. This may also be a reflection of reality? The Soviet Union collapsed, has Estonia, which was part of the Giant Communist State, turned into a micro fascism state? Whether 1991 should be seen as a success or a failure, positive or negative, I do not know.
INLAND EMPIRE - I have noticed that Revachol is Estonia. But Estonia is not Revachol. But at the same time Revachol is Estonia.

## 2+ Remarkable trinity
ME - One of my hobbies is reading, especially books on war, which occupy half of my bookshelves. Of these, Clausewitz's theory of war is one of the classics I often return to. I particularly like the trinitarian theory/Remarkable trinity he preached and use it a lot when thinking about things. It is a useful concept that can be applied to anything, so in writing this text I have attempted to apply it to DE. If Bakunin's passion for destructive creation was at the core of DE, he thought that coincidence and reason were alongside that passion.
LOGIC [Medium: Success] - In my home country of Japan, where knowledge and discussion of war is taboo, but abroad, I think it is essential education.
PAIN THRESHOLD [Impossible: Failure] - Japan is a country allergic to war.
SUGGESTION [Easy: Success] - For those who do not know, I quote Clausewitz's outline of Remarkable Trinity.

1) primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force;
2) the play of chance and probability, within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and
3) its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to mere intellect.

ME - According to Clausewitz, the various elements of war can be divided into three main categories. Passion, Chance and Reason. DE' passion, as already mentioned, relies on the spirit of Bakunin. The next section is on coincidence.

# 3. Chance/Coincidence
YOU - "Yes. Coincidence is all that safeguards us."
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.

ME - I wrote a text about dice, TRPGs, wargames and war itself (Russo-Japanese War and World Wars), but omitted it. I don't feel the need to, and I think this her word explains it all. The next section is on reason or intellect.

# 4. Reason/Intellect/Rationality
KHARMS, THE FUTURIST POET - I told myself that I see the world. But the whole world was not accessible to my gaze, and I saw only parts of the world. And everything I saw I called parts of the world. And I examined the properties of these parts, and examining these properties, I wrought science. I understood that the parts have intelligent properties and that the same parts have unintelligent properties. I distinguished them and gave them names, And, depending on their properties, the parts of the world were intelligent or unintelligent.
And then I realized that I am the world.
But the world-is not me.
Although at the same time I am the world.
But the world’s not me.
And I’m the world.
But the world’s not me.
And I’m the world.
But the world’s not me.
And I’m the world.
And after that I didn't think anything more.

YOU - "Are you a thought reader?"
EGG HEAD - "NO NATION, BUT TRANCE NATION! NO WAR, BUT CLASS WAR!"
YOU - "Does that mean you're a thought reader?"
NOID - "Don't be a lunatic. Of course he isn't. Germaine here just yells random things. Odds are, sooner or later one of them will come off as thought reading."
LOGIC [Godly: Success] - So, it's not this one. It's the world that's the thought reader in this equation?
YOU - "So it's the world that's the thought reader?"
NOID - The young man picks up level and inspects it against he floodlight. The water sparkles in the small measuring tube.
"Yes," he says after a while. "I think it's correct to say that."
SHIVERS [Medium: Success] - THE WORLD IS A COLD SINK.
YOU ARE IN ITS ARMS.

ME - The original language of DE is English. But isn't that only superficial? After playing DE for a long time, I came to such a question. I had no idea about Zaum (RU: зáумь), the original name of the ZA/UM company. There is no Zaum page on the Japanese Wikipedia. English Wikipedia was available and I read it. "zaum can be defined as experimental poetic language characterized by indeterminacy in meaning." I became interested in Zaum because of this statement. Next, I searched for Zaum in its katakana form Zaum. A page on Slavic cultural studies by Hokkaido University was found.(https://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/literature/literature-list.html) However, reading the papers here did not help me understand Zaum. I searched for a good, systematic book on Zaum. That is where I came across a book. Beyond Rationality(https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/biblioplaza/en/A_00143.html) This book dissects the concept of Zaum, with Daniil Harms at its centre.
INTERFACING [Impossible: Failure] - There is no feedback on Amazon reviews or on book review websites.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success] - It seems to be a common practice in academic books. It's said that if you publish an academic book in Japan, there are only two intended readers.
ME - I read through to the end. And I thought.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Godly: Success] - "Zaum is what RK and ZA/UM tried to express in DE. The name of the organisation ZA/UM has an important meaning for them, it is both a means and an end."
ME - In order to consider the zaum used in DE, the three methods of zaum presented in "Beyond Rationality" are laid out below. The following quotations are taken from the bibliography.

1. "Phonetic zaum", transcending the meaning of words by swapping sounds.
2. "Semantic zaum", transcending the meaning of a sentence by swapping words.
3. "Obstructive zaum", dislocating context and obstructing narrative.

ME - The most commonly used of the 3 zaums in DE may be the phonetic zaum.
SUGGESTION [Medium: Success] - This scene made me laugh so hard I had to hold my stomach.
ME - I would be strongly convinced if the culprit who made me laugh so hard I could hardly breathe was phonetic zaum. I seriously believe that the success of the Japanese version of DE will be measured by whether many Japanese who play the Japanese version laugh here. ...If the Japanese translation of DE fails, I will mutter quietly.
PERCEPTION (HEARING) [Godly: Success] - Quietly, she mutters to herself: "He isn't doing what he's designed to do... isn't the spell working..."
ME - It is difficult to give examples of semantic zaum.
INLAND EMPIRE - Perhaps the whole of DE?
HALF LIGHT - τὰ ὅλα...
ME - Obstructive zaum may be typified by a sentence from the FC version of Moralism Quest.
KIM KITSURAGI - "... It's been long winter... Long and cold..."
ME - When I first read this, I thought it was a zaum interpretation of a certain novel, but maybe not.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Next, On Zaum's concept.
ME - I stated in part 2+ that I was thinking of this text in reference to Clausewitz's theory of the Trinity. When DE is considered in terms of the Trinitarian theory, the most unique aspect is probably with regard to reason. This is because Zaum, as the name suggests, aims to transcend reason and intellect. The following quotes are taken from the bibliography.

OZAWA HIROYUKI, RUSSIAN LITERARY RESEARCHER - The Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century is said to be an artistic revolution, in contrast to the Russian Revolution that took place at the same time. However, the Russian avant-garde is not only an artistic revolution. It goes beyond art. Or it sought to extend the concept of art and renew the epistemological framework within which humans think about the world. As a result, it sought to transcend human beings. A prime example is the Cubo-Futurism language experiment, Zaum. Zaum is a neologism based on the phrase beyond reason and is a symbol for incomprehensible neologisms in general. And it is a concept that embodies the orientation of transcending reason and intellect. Zaum doesn't and should not remain at the level of language. Zaum goes beyond words, beyond sentences, beyond language, entering the realm of meaning. Beyond the level of language, Zaum-like paintings and Zaum-like architecture can be produced, as can Zaum-like poetry and novels written without Zaum. But they are all aiming for a Zaum-like horizon. P37-40
ME - Again, quoting from ibid.
OZAWA HIROYUKI, RUSSIAN LITERARY RESEARCHER - Definition of Zaum. Taken as a whole, the Russian avant-garde movement was driven by a destructiveness that sought to reject modern rational knowledge and an innovation that sought to grasp the world anew. Their interest in areas such as primitivism, intuition and theosophy, which are incompatible with the modern knowledge developed in Europe since the Enlightenment, speaks volumes. It is well known, for example, that the ability to intuit, proposed by the mystic Ouspenskii and the philosopher Bergson, as a means of grasping a reality greater than that which can be grasped by reason, strongly attracted the leaders of the Russian avant-garde. The orientation to transcend conventional intellect and grasp a new world was embodied in the Russian Futurists in the concept/method of Zaum. Naturally, many Futurist poets use Zaum, but not only are there marked differences in usage and form, but also in the purposes for which it is used. It is therefore extremely difficult to uniquely define Zaum. This book therefore focuses on the state of thought and art in Europe and Soviet=Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, when doubts were being cast on modern reason. In addition, considers words and concepts that have an orientation 'beyond reason and intellect' and that 'cannot be grasped by reason and intellect' as 'Zaum' or 'Zaum-like things'. P54-55

ME - I will further consider what it meant for DE to transcend reason and intellect. Marx, Engels, Lenin and communism failed and the USSR collapsed.
PERCEPTION(SIGHT) [Formidable: Success] - While turning away from some imperialist and communist state.
ME - This can be seen as a failure of intellect if expanded.
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] - Although my own true feelings are that there is no violent ideology that has had more violent results than communism.
ME - At the same time, this is still the case today. Europe, including Eastern Europe, continues to fail on the basis of reason and intellect.
SAVOIR FAIRE [Impossible: Failure] - My home country, Japan, continues to fail on a different vector.
ME - In this light, RK and ZA/UM' use of Zaum to create DE may be a manifestation of a strong will to transcend communism and, above all, to transcend intellect, psyche, physique and motorics power, even the five senses.
VOLITION [Formidable: Failure] - ...I would like to go into further depth about zaum, but I can't finish the sentence forever, so let me compromise here. And I don't even know how much of the quoted text is legal from a copyright point of view.

ME - Now, having played DE so far, read a great deal of text, and done a fair amount of research on Zaum, I thought. I wondered whether Zaum would work if Zaum-like texts written in DE were translated into Japanese.
REACTION SPEED [Easy: Success] - I immediately thought, "Impossible."
HALF LIGHT [Medium: Success] - I would certainly be internet lynched if this opinion was read by Japanese players looking forward to the Japanese version of DE. HA-HA-HA.
ME - It may not be something that a non-native English speaker can say, but normal English text can be managed with a good translator. However, in light of the above zaum methods and concepts, one has to be negative about translating DE in Japanese. In addition, this suspicion was further deepened by reading Harms' note on the 'language machine'.
KHARMS, THE FUTURIST POET - So far I know that there are four types of language machines. They are poetry, prayer, song and incantation. These machines are not constructed by calculation or thought, but by other methods. Its name is the alphabet.
ME - In other words, the question is whether Zaum and language machines work in Japanese, a non-alphabetic language. Translation problems, such as foreign literature, and differences and quality between languages are only minor issues. I cannot judge the extent to which DE incorporates the Zaum-like methods and concepts cited above. However, it is hard to imagine that they are so committed to Zaum that they use it in the name of their organisation, and that they do not use Zaum methods and concepts at all. As the concept of Zaum is alphabet-dependent and has methods/concepts that cannot be easily imitated, the Japanese version of DE will be a text of a different dimension, apart from the poor quality of the translated text. However, it is not without hope. Although it is not possible to determine this due to lack of documentation, it is said that Velimir Khlebnikov, a poet from the early days of zaum, referred to Chinese characters/漢字 and described them as 'the best conception transmission motif'.
INLAND EMPIRE [Formidable: Success] - In addition, and this is a scary speculation, ...RK may have also entrusted the success or failure of the translated version to chance and uncertainty.

# 5. Once again, a summary of speculation
LOGIC - Let me summarise again.

1. Passion for destructive creation. Or passionate destructive creation.
2. Violent event destruction is represented by dice. A system in which the success or failure of a thing is determined by a die roll.
3. Zaum. The linguistic method/concept, which transcends reason and intellect and destroys and creates existing sounds, meanings and narratives.

ME - Harry frequently speaks of prophecies that world will be doomed in the not-too-distant future. However, the only person Harry could actually destroy was himself. Self-destruction may have only made the situation worse. In Minaplo-san' words, Marx, DESERTER and communism could not kill capital. And Bakunin and anarchism could not kill capital, nor could they kill the state. Harry suffered with poverty, alcoholism, depression and, above all, a broken heart, and wanted to destroy it all. But he too could not destroy capital or the state. What he could destroy was himself, his own heart.

JEAN VICQUEMARE – "You know what he told me? 'I don't want to get better -- I want to get worse.' Those were his words."
YOU - "I don't want to get better -- I want to get worse."
KIM KITSURAGI - "I... uh, don't really know how to respond to that, lieutenant double-yefreitor."
KATSUTA KICHITARO, BAKUNIN' RESEARCHER - "Classical Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory may be reduced to the paradoxical proposition that 'the worse it gets, the better it gets.'"

ME - But maybe a different world awaits at the end of self-destruction. Even if the world itself doesn't change, maybe I can see the world in a different way -- that's what the end of the DE story has made it seem to me.
KHARMS, THE FUTURIST POET - Will miracles exist? This is the question I want to hear the answer to.
ME - And... is the future really dead?
EGG HEAD - "THE PAST IS THE FUTURE, BUT THE FUTURE IS DEAD!"
ME - No one knows what the world and the future will look like from now on. I don't even know what the day after tomorrow will be like. In any case, I look forward to the future of the ZA/UM, to its great development in the future, to the Great Leap Forward, to the Cultural Revolution.

# 6. On meaning and value
KHARMS, THE FUTURIST POET - I'm only interested in silly things. I'm only interested in things that do not have any practical significance whatsoever.

PISSF※※※※T - "What I mean by this is -- we are all Pissf※※※※ts. And that the world is inherently meaningless."
INLAND EMPIRE [Godly: Success] - That much is true.

ME - What I am writing now is probably pointless too. Readability, clarity, lack of contradictions, things I've thought of, things I've noticed, speculation. It's a jumble. I've given up trying to put it all together because there's no way I can put this stuff together. Compromise! My Volition and Endurance have reached their limits too. But does meaninglessness imply worthlessness?
EMPATHY [Heroic: Success] - Everything has no meaning. It is the lack of meaning that makes it valuable. And that value can only be understood by those who have experienced the same pain. Experience does not always lead to understanding, though.
HALF LIGHT [Heroic: Success] - The same is true of my country. The country is governed by two forms of violence: morality and order. And they are operated by the innate human traits of vice and jealousy. How wonderful.
VOLITION [Challenging: Success] - In honour of your shit, lieutenant-yefreitor. Which you kept together in the face of total, unrelenting terror. Day after day. Second by second.

# 跋文/Post script
ME - I am not very smart and have a remarkably low IQ. But I think that even I, who am not very smart, can see something if I try hard enough to think about it. I really wanted someone smarter than me to write a discussion of DE based on Zaum and anarchism. But no one writes about that, even after three years or so since the launch of DE. That's why I had to write such a long article to convince myself.
PERCEPTION(SIGHT) [Formidable: Failure] - It could be that I just can't find them because of the language wall.
ME - ...Between 2019 and 2020 I despaired of the game. I thought that I should graduate from the game. I will avoid specific explanations. I have no taste for hurting people who still love and enjoy Japanese games. So I wanted to distance myself from video games before I became completely disillusioned. About 20 years ago, a man was disappointed with Japanese animation and cinema. One day, that disappointment disappeared with a film.
ITOH PROJECT, GENOCIDER OF BONKURA - "I like animation, but the way the current narrative is being consumed as a style only leads to disappointment...... But now my unresolved feelings are gone. I have a 'Fight Club'."(https://itoh-archive.hatenablog.com/entry/2015/09/24/173952)
ME - His disappointment with anime and Japanese films and my despair with Japanese games are very similar. But just as he had Fight Club, I have Disco Elysium.
VOLITION [Godly: Success] - That is all, let us now put a full stop to this very long and abnormal sentence.
EMPATHY [Impossible: Success] - Thank you truly for your patience and for reading such a long and poor readability text to the end.

1 July 2022, Clausewitz's birthday and Bakunin's death anniversary. Original version posted.
25 August 2022, Disco Elysium Japanese edition release/distribution day. Final compromise cut version posted. And dedicated to all reviewers of this site.













It's truly, truly been... a very long roundabout path...
My million-word journey, this long text, for this one word......
Aitäh......
Thank you ZA/UM. Thank you Robert Kurvitz.
Truly...
......
Truly......
ありがとう...
I can't find any other words to say...