[killers-anthem]

grey 18 they/them ukr/ru/eng

personal blog for writing and stray thoughts. medical biology student and clinical researcher, not very active.

mostly disco elysium and sacred and terrible air as well as film, 20th century art, literature, neurology and philosophy. if it was made by humans there's a good chance that i like it.

the killer’s anthem - drunken angel (1948) akira kurosawa, fumio hayasaka

[theesteppenwolf]

"Oh! And, gendarme. One last thing…" "About that question you asked earlier. It reminded me of a certain poem that you might appreciate…"

STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST - "It was written by a young communard who was killed on the barricades during the Coalition landings. The story goes that he wrote it on the last night of his life, keeping watch from the barricades in the middle of the night. I don't have the whole thing committed to memory, but there's a line in it I think about sometimes."

YOU - "What's the line?"

STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST - "In dark times, should the stars also go out?"

"Anyway, goodnight to you."

[pearll002]

Klaasje i looveee youuu!!!

I rarely go for a painterly approach but today i felt inspired

[yellow-yarrow]

Could you please talk more about le retour and its nihilist attributes rather than communist? (only if you want obs)

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

also this:

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

(Saint-Miro's speech from SATA)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In SATA the world seems to be ending by Mesque bombing every country and accelerating the pale's spread somewhat which eventually covers Elysium. This takes a couple of years. Since Kurvitz is a fan of End of Evangelion, I can imagine that it's not that simple. Maybe it's not just this slow process that ends with everything disappearing, but there's some big scale weird event that also happens at some point. Is that the Return, or something else? (Argo Tuulik said in a podcast that Kurvitz planned something mind-blowing for the sequel) Who knows but all these things make me think that nihilism was supposed to be introduced in the sequel which was also supposed to be about the Return so those things could be connected.

[killers-anthem]

klaasje calling herself a "destroyer" and being almost relieved at harry breaking down the door, her wanting to rampage *soldier of the apocalypse* style to rebel against the moralist society that failed her connects to harry's actions before the start of the game and zigi with his belief in ambrosius saint-miro and nihilism when he's younger. we know that she came to revachol because of rumours of the return, an event that can mean a number of things but possibly refers to the return to the pale which entropolists advocate for, and says that she part of the anti-human task force which further connects her to the anti-object task force that harry and zigi are a part of, her response to the thought of causing the world to disappear is reminiscent of saint-miro's speech. harry waking up with a broken window, the one in klaasje's room and zigi throwing a brick that breaks the one in the lund house and causes him and målin to meet, whom he calls "destruction" and eventually leads to him disappearing into the pale just like her and her sisters, like how harry attempted in the church with another shattered window, and what klaasje is doing by trying to run from the world and her past. you can also draw parallels between harry's relationship with alcohol, zigi being so drunk he can’t feel the cold, klaasje coming down from her high and shivering, and the warmth målin feels from the cherry speed

[yellow-yarrow]

There are a lot of parallels between the Deserter with Klaasje and the Linoleum Salesman with the Lund sisters and the LS disappearing. And this conversation with the Phasmid reminded me again of those parallels... Could it be that the LS was destroyed because he saw what was hiding in the the Lund sisters? Or their absolute negation "camouflage" effecting him backwards in time.. anyway, interesting thing to consider. He looked at me too long. And I am destroying him.

[piece-of-reese]

disco mural in oil pastel for the cover of my sketchbook :)

inspired by this really cool interpretation of the mural and also the miserable dirty slush that’s currently all over everything in the city i live in

[killers-anthem]

all the times klaasje is described as small, little, fragile, or child-like

[killers-anthem]

it’s so scary when you remember that she looks like a 20s movie star and charlotte has a movie star smile and her birthmarks are reminiscent of anni’s as well as dora’s freckles anni’s bicycle accident that chipped one of her teeth and the speck of green in the corner of klaasje’s eye

[yellow-yarrow]

omg yeah... also Dros stalking Klaasje, and saying that she knew that he was looking + Malin spotting Jesper spying on them.

[palin-tropos]

considering the interpretation that absolute negation means reconstituting the world from the pale, it would be funny if nilsen thought this whole time that rodionov built like a weapon of mass destruction but it was actually the power of love, which was within him all along. that would really piss him off

[killers-anthem]

all the times klaasje is described as small, little, fragile, or child-like

[killers-anthem]

it’s so scary when you remember that she looks like a 20s movie star and charlotte has a movie star smile and her birthmarks are reminiscent of anni’s as well as dora’s freckles anni’s bicycle accident that chipped one of her teeth and the speck of green in the corner of klaasje’s eye

[killers-anthem]

all the times klaasje is described as small, little, fragile, or child-like

[lycanthrop-ee-art]

i love revachol so much i letterpressed her

[bigskycastle]

Turns out the opposition were a loud minority. And that love truly is possible in the next world – for new people. And it is too late for us.

[killers-anthem]

i will forever think about how the unofficial motto of moralism in the game is referenced in a passage in sacred and terrible air

particularly how it functions as a signifiers of moralism as an ideology of stagnation, by keeping the world exactly as it is they squander their ability to make change and let ambrosius saint-miro get elected and plunge the world into the pale. the hope promised is temporary and fleeting and they are just as ineffectual as the ghosts they create in trying to preserve the status quo, while the world is swallowed by its own history

jesper exemplifies this mindset throughout the book the singular hope for the girls rediscovery is all that drives him and once he loses it he disappears just like them. because this ideal is focused on the past and not the future it falls apart, the girls don’t want to be found and any hope is whittled away with the pretense of him being a good person or caring about them beyond reliving his childhood. the synopsis of the book shares this sentiment as do his friends

ignus nilsen says that is hope and communism itself, the only thing capable of fighting back the pale, and he is reduced to a spectre roaming the world. it is a cautionary tale as much as it is a story about the human desire to keep things as they are or return to how they were, that hope lives on even as no one believes in it. the symbol of hope broken at the beginning of disco elysium is fixed. anything is possible for this world

[killers-anthem]

i find it interesting how there is a sticker with a smiley face on the padlock of the church, that noid put it there, and how harry connects with it being from the future, with the same happening at ulv's house 20 years later but the padlock is open and the window is smiling instead. ulv is known for speaking with the dead the original depicts a dead man smiling because history is ending, and they are at the end of the world. alternatively he is smiling because of communism, and ulv's music reaches back into history and mazov and dobreva and abadanaiz hear it but they're dead and he's smiling because he doesn't care

[killers-anthem]

whatever kept you company in this world, what kept you safe, has left your side, never to return again...

[yargoelster]