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Now that I've finished Disco Elysium, here are my parting thoughts (spoilers, of course).
  • It's very strange, you can tell the writing for this game is all-timer level great because people can have wildly divergent interpretations of the game's ultimate tone. It's either one of the most depressing and defeatist games ever made, or one of the most optimistic and hopeful. And both interpretations are equally valid.

    (I'm more in the optimism camp, for the record).

  • Confession: I have only recently been finally playing Disco Elysium. (CW: possible early/mid spoilers with some SV discussion, and a little ranting)
  • spoiler

    You: I know I can get history back on the right track.

    René: The "right track"? This is the right track! The only track. (he gets visibly annoyed) This is the world we shaped, a reflection of what we are: cowardly, ugly, and numb. And there are no second chances. We don't deserve them! You just can't go back and restart — that would make everything MEANINGLESS! (a shadow of pain comes over his face)

    Empathy: There's something substantial moving in him, trying to get out.

    Volition: He would sooner die than let it surface.

    You: What is it?

    Empathy: Regret.

    You: Regret about what?

    Pain Threshold: (as the camera zooms in on Gaston) Him.

    You: Him?

    Pain Threshold: There's tenderness in the carabineer's look. Tenderness that's curdled into pain or something darker.

    You: Ex-love, ex-tenderness...

    Pain Threshold: Even worse, a love aborted and smothered, stamped beneath his brilliant boot heel.

    René: (you catch the old carabineer's gaze slowly leaving his opponent's wrinkled face as his dark eyes meet yours — whatever turmoil raged in him a moment ago is quelled for now)

    Conceptualization: Like the last rays of the evening sun gently kissing the day goodbye, before giving way to unfathomable darkness.

    Volition: Willed back into the darkest unexplored depths of his mind — never meant to be shared, seen or confronted.

    Composure: A true master of his emotions.

    Inland Empire: Hopelessly alone behind the unbreakable walls he spent a lifetime erecting. No one will ever know him.

  • Confession: I have only recently been finally playing Disco Elysium. (CW: possible early/mid spoilers with some SV discussion, and a little ranting)
  • It isn’t that nuanced in its portrayal of fascism (or for that matter hustlegrind Ultra mindset or pretentious ironic detachment cynicism for that matter) but in my personal subjective opinion that’s fairly accurate because those lines of thinking don’t require much thinking to maintain and analysis of those beliefs threatens them fundamentally, so it’s rarely done.

    If you pursue the fascist path in dedicated fashion it actually does get quite nuanced. I won't elaborate more on what I mean by any of that.

    As far as I know though Ultraliberal is only ever a caricature because that's exactly what it is and what it deserves.

  • NSFW
    CW: Homophobia. Putin compares European use of alternative (non-traditional) energy sources to their acceptance of LGBTQ+ ("non-traditional") relationships
  • Literally no one here is arguing that Ukraine is good, but the actual leftists (as opposed to national chauvinists) here are arguing that this is unmistakably an inter-imperialist war and not some convoluted "the invasion of Ukraine is anti-imperialist because Russia is on the imperial periphery of a super-imperialist bloc" bullshit argument.

    I'm someone who can absolutely advance arguments that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was caused by outside imperialist circumstances. But now that it has happened, and is actual fact? There is zero "critical support" of Russian aggression here. The only legitimate communist position in this scenario is for Ukrainian and Russian soldiers alike to turn their guns on their own generals. Will that happen? No. But that's the fucking position the Bolsheviks themselves took from the start, not some ridiculous stance about how actually the Kaiser was right to resist all along and criticizing the German war effort is bad.

  • NSFW
    CW: Homophobia. Putin compares European use of alternative (non-traditional) energy sources to their acceptance of LGBTQ+ ("non-traditional") relationships
  • Anyone on this site who genuinely believes Vladimir Putin does "anti-imperialism" out of any motive other than supremely cynical, convenient, competing imperialist interest seriously needs to re-evaluate their stances and sources. Or, otherwise, go join the fucking Maupinite/Hazite clowns who are basically doing the most cringe reactionary shit imaginable, because they are your people.

    I say this as someone who has for a while tried to stay out of the dogmatic factionalist bullshit in favor of just shitposting when it comes to this site. If you've been suckered into believing a siloviki-dominated hyper-capitalist kleptocracy like Russia is a genuine force for "anti-imperialism", you've been fucking had in the worst way possible. Even the most mindless simping for modern Dengist China has a more rational basis.

  • What movies are pure liberalism?
  • I mean real talk I suspect the two leads are animated using some measure of rotoscoping or motion capture and that's the main reason for it

    Also funny thing about this, the real message of the film is about why all forms of public transportation are bad, so yes this is one of the most lib films ever

  • What movies are pure liberalism?
  • No they're not named. But what it does explicitly state is that the discontent against the noble Romanovs was literally fermented by demons, and the male lead in one of the palace servants and helps her and her mother escape. Then in the next scene the opening musical number is the people of St Petersburg Petrograd Leningrad singing and dancing in the streets at the rumor that a Romanov princess survived, and they quickly shut up when a commissar (hammer and sickle on his cap) looks at them angrily.

    I also have to say, it's a really strange choice that the two leads (and members of the royal family) are the only characters designed to look like real uncanny people, and everyone else looks like a caricature.

  • So, why did protestans broke with catholicism?
  • "Turn your actual prayers to a deity that may not exist into commodities to buy and sell."

    :jesus-cleanse:

    And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. — Matthew 21:12–13

  • what hoi4 does to an mf cw:ableist language
  • The Nazis had to continuously pursue their revanchist aims and win in order to maintain popular legitimacy. The German economy was also disastrously overheated and on the precipice of catastrophic collapse, which was only prevented by going to war, getting insanely lucky against France, and then plundering continental Europe for needed raw materials and wealth. The Nazis had maneuvered into a position where they had to go to war for their regime to survive, by design.

    They also, like all fascists, were ideologically incapable of objectively evaluating the perceived strength of their enemies. Hitler gambled that Britain and France would back down again, and gambled again that the Wehrmacht had the capability to defeat them quickly.

  • Gusano be mad
  • These public trials and executions were held to the overwhelming approval of the public, pretty much for the purpose of mollifying widespread popular fury toward former Batistiano thugs and terrorists who had made the masses suffer and killed their relatives for years. Historians believe they most likely prevented a bloodbath of mob justice that would have killed hundreds more indiscriminately, and the trials were the method by which the revolutionaries established their authority and re-established some semblance of rule of law.

    If you were tried and executed because of these trials, it's because you were a close collaborator with the murderous Batista regime. "Police chief of Santa Clara", yeah, I fucking bet he was.

  • Genuine question: why does everyone hate Trotsky(ists/ism)?
  • personally i dont get the fucking point of self-identifying as a trot anymore

    stop relitigating a fucking century-old personal spat

    oh wait now i get it its just communists who are too cowardly to associate themselves with stalin

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    LeninsRage [he/him] @hexbear.net
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