Water, The Stuff Of Life Itself

to make things clear i just love showing the sentimental, tender aspects of otherwise codependent fucked up relationship of jean and harry. harry is a sap, you see. a week with kim and if you're nice to him you develop this trust that can be reached only if you're together in the line of work. jean and harry were working two or three years together max, but as that snapcube quote says, SOMETHING JUST HAPPENED. you dont just help your partner get into the motorcarriage as if hes a flightless bird when he's been running around for a week straight!!! as argo tuulik said, there is caring and tenderness within jean, beside his absolutely awful behavior. this is curious to say the least.

it is, i think, symptomatic of the way larian has built this brand: bg3 was always marketed as being mature (read: sexual), and that was one of the big draws for players - myself included! especially as media pulls more towards extremes, with mainstream video games starting to get increasingly graphically sexual, graphically violent, and the vogue for 'grey morality' becomes the norm, those boundaries get pushed, and it becomes more and more of a selling point.

larian obviously focused on this, along with the How Do You Do, Fellow Kids brand, the increased accessibility of game devs on twitter, and adopted it heavily into their marketing strategy, and are now pretty reliant on the horny gamer crowd for a lot of their audience, and more importantly, they're doing this on purpose.

which is how you end up in situations like this.

characters (white men) the players want to fuck get centred: they get updates, they get more content, they get favoured. halsin's gone from a side character in EA to a half-fledged romance option, to a full romance option: he shows up in the promotional material, is larian's poster boy for the sex scenes, he gets more content with every update.

now gortash gets more heavily implied situationship lines with the dark urge, because players are horny for him. nevermind that some people aren't playing that way, or that he was originally set up to be a lower-level antagonist; nevermind that if the durge's storyline needed expansion, it should've been with orin and sarevok and bhaal, or that it muddies the writing for the rest of gortash's arc + characterisation: people want to fuck him, so it gets put in the game. it's not even to do with karlach, whose quest so desperately needs expansion! it's specifically catering to the people who want their character to have a Relationship with the slaver, because they're either not interested in or not able to focus on strengthening the weak spots in the narrative: they're just doing things that will net the 'my favourite dating sim' people lmfao.

meanwhile, literal main character wyll gets his quest demoted to a subquest, doesn't get bugfixes, doesn't get a single unique romance greeting after 6 patches and months of requests. he's not a Horny character, so he doesn't get the focus: he's not a player favourite, so he gets nothing. it's just... so unbelievably, indisputably racist, and it's incredibly grim and disappointing to watch it happen in real-time.

My DE charity digital zine for Palestine is OUT on Itch.io!

This Disco Elysium-themed NSFW digital zine is a collection of 60+ more or less finished sketches I drew from 2022 throughout July 2024.

It contains requests I posted on Twitter, pieces I sent over my newsletter, and 12 still unpublished new ones drawn specifically for this zine. Multiple characters and pairings are depicted, with a focus on Harry and Kim's relationship.

This zine was conceived exclusively as a way to raise funds for the brave people of Palestine. All proceeds will be split between UNRWA and Medical Aid for Palestine. 

The DE community is big and quite international, so the price was chosen to make the zine accessible to as many fans as possible. Please consider donating more if you can. Every contribution, no matter how small, can help make a difference! I hope you enjoy it, and thank you so much for your support! ♥

Content warning: nudity and sensitive content (mild gore, bondage)

DOWNLOAD IT HERE!

there was a great study a few years that went into the whole "ppl online are bigger jerks than irl cuz theres a virtual wall and no repercussions" and the researchers were expecting to see that be the case but it turns out that people who were really angry or argumentative online were also found to just be assholes in person and people who were pretty patient and nice online were found to be patient and nice in real person as well

and it just debunked that whole cynical idea that people will naturally be mean if theres no punishment for it

when it comes to disco elysium, one of my favourite things within the game is the usage of lungs as a motif of love and the representation of this through dolores dei. it’s an incredible way of showing it, as when you love someone or something it almost seems to sustain you, becomes the air that you breathe.

however, another thing i noticed is that an overwhelming majority of the characters smoke. smoking is famously damaging to your health, more specifically to your lungs - almost like smoking is a metaphor for the way these characters show their relationships with others.

some prime examples are:

• harry du bois, who smoked heavily before losing his memory (and after, depending on player choice), a clear instance because of dora and her effect on his life and relationships for years after she left

• the smoker on the balcony, who is never seen without a cigarette, and is in an unloving sexual relationship with someone who can never understand him or truly know him at all

• klaasje amandou, who is also never seen without a cigarette, believes that she is at fault for all of her relationships collapsing and has a skewed view on what it means to love

however, my favourite example is, of course, kim kitsuragi. yes, he smokes as he enjoys the control he has over his addiction and the “cool factor” it gives him is satisfying, but i think there’s a more specific reason there - kim is so repressed that he consistently walls himself off from relationships.

kim himself says that he smokes one a day as he goes over his notes. to me, this says that he is causing minor, daily damage to his interpersonal relationships that builds up more and more over time. the fact that he does it specifically when going over notes says a lot to me too - that his work is what he’s using to push others away.

he does break this one a day rule, however - in the ending where the player chooses not to recruit kim. harry leaves kim behind. they shake hands, and as soon as harry turns away, kim lights a cigarette, a visual representation of the damage caused by another partnership cut short.

IT'S DONE

94 pages containing most of my Disco Elysium Fanart alll made up and pretty for you.

You can get it here on my Ko-fi! :)

[If you are here for the Disco Sapphics - this pdf does not include any of that since it's going to be it's own thing. Follow here or on Ko-fi to get notified once it's done!]

Feel free to use the cover in every day conversation btw. I know I have

I was recommended @tea-stained-tabby’s disco elysium + rdr2 crossoverer fic and it did not disappoint so I made some art inspired by my favorite parts

Oh my god.. My Shayla

Kim kitsuragi would lose his shit

Gdańsk Stocznia

the boys of my heart (im a lesbian)