I very much hope that the six supreme court justices that voted to allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT people--despite the original complaint being completely fabricated--get treated to a lifetime of businesses discriminating against them.  I hope that every time one of them walks into a restaurant or requests a service, they are told that they have to leave because “we don’t serve your kind here”.  

It’s only fair for those fucking ghouls to reap what they sow.

Okay, that was a GOOD episode.  The first episode definitely had some pilot difficulties, but it seriously feels like they’re hitting their stride with this one.  I am totally in love with what Laura’s doing with Arlo, and Ashley is a delight as Auggie.  Anjali’s performance as Charlotte gets more and more nuanced and tragic, and I can’t wait to see where she’s going with it.  They were all so compelling this time around, and taking some major hits and poor roles meant that they all got shaken up a lot worse this time around.

Matt’s DMing also felt a lot more tuned into the horror side of things this episode, with the monster being intensely Soulsborne-y (the mass of bodies glommed together is such a Dark Souls thing, but I love it!), and had a lot stronger of an eldritch horror vibe, with some Hunger Beyond Time coming after everyone because of an artifact.  I really, REALLY hope they get sent to Oldfaire next episode, as it’s their last for this Circle, and I really want to see that part of the city, given how much it’s been hyped up, and how likely it is to intersect at least with Arlo’s backstory, and possibly also Charlotte’s (and maybe Howard’s too??).

But there was one stand-out tonight, in an episode in which everyone was on top of their game, and that was Robbie Daymond.  Holy shit, no one heard “you are in a horror game” and took it to heart quite like he did.  He’s going full Reanimator, and I love his choices.  His self-trepanning scar was horrific in the best possible way, and then there’s whatever happened at the end with him.  Who is Dean?  Was that his reason to get into Candela?  And what the hell does it mean that the phantasmal force just dove straight into his head??  He is getting more and more unhinged as we get into this story, and I am so here for it.  I get the feeling he’s the most likely character to die in the next episode, with Charlotte very close behind (”You have to give everything” has a very ominous ring to it), and I think Arlo and Auggie might make it out to make later reappearances, but who knows?  They rolled like ass tonight, so hopefully they saved a lot of sixes for next time.  I’m honestly only sad that we only get one more episode with this Circle, but then again it makes sense.  Horror campaigns generally have to run short, because they lose the scares the longer they go on.  And I can really hope that next episode is downright terrifying.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the level up for the next game.  The more I see this system play, the more I really want to pick it up once the Core Book drops.  The flavor of Newfaire is great, and I think it would be great for short campaigns with friends who really want to dig into some gnarly horror material.  

Man, that was a fun episode.  I am seriously going to miss these characters, as they’re all so delightful and vivid.  The players are great, and they’re a fantastic intro to a system I now really want to buy once it comes out.

Good lord, but Robbie Daymond understood the assignment when it came to being a horror protagonist!  Howard’s scar scene was fantastic.  

Also, congratulations, Matt.  Your penchant for Soulsborne-style body horror is really coming through in this episode.

Going to say it now: I have enjoyed all of Laura Bailey’s characters, but Arlo Black may be my very favorite.  Her wide-eyed kookiness and hilarious line delivery have utterly got their hooks into me.

That, and she’s exactly the sort that makes my goth lesbian heart go pitter pat.

One thing that I think a lot of Disco Elysium meta misses (likely because a lot of it is very clearly written by young Americans writing from an intensely American-centric cultural perspective without even really realizing it) is that one of the singular and central themes of the game is massive-scale generational trauma in a home that is economically collapsing as its resources and people are being drained by an occupation.  People have noted that no one tries to help Harry, despite the fact his mental illness is incredibly obvious to everyone around him.  He tells Kim that he completely lost his memory, and Kim politely asks him to focus on the work.  He tells Gottlieb that he had a heart attack, and Gottlieb tells him that if he’s still alive it couldn’t have been that bad.  That he’ll drop dead sooner or later, but then so does everyone.

And that’s the most important thing: so does everyone.  Look at Martinaise.  Look at the world in which Harry lives.  It is not our own, but it is adjacent to ours.  More specifically, it is clearly adjacent to the states of the Eastern Bloc: overtaken and occupied by a faraway government that clearly doesn’t care about Revachol or its people.  And that is obvious in every tired face, every defeated citizen, everyone trying to eke out a little happiness or meaning in spite of the overwhelming trauma and damage around them.  The buildings are still half-destroyed.  The bullet holes are still in the walls.  The revolution was decades before, but it still feels to the people there like a fresh wound.  The number of men of Harry’s generation who are not alcoholic or otherwise deeply fucked up are very few.  Some, like Kim, hide it better, but the deeper you dig into his history, the more you realize how damaged Kim is.  He’s more than a little trigger happy, and hates that about himself, but he is a product of his environment: Kim’s entire life is seeing people he cared about shot and killed, so his instinct now is to shoot first himself, to protect those few people left who still matter to him.

Harry is not unique in his trauma.  He is a distillation of an entire culture of people who tried to rise up and make something beautiful, and were instead routed and occupied.  He is trapped between the occupation and the people on the ground, along with all the rest of the RCM.  Their authority comes from the occupying government, but it is implied that they were formed out of the remnants of the citizens militia which sprung up from Revachol itself as a way to try to mitigate some of the horrors being committed on its streets.  The Moralintern sure as hell wasn’t going to get their hands dirty, so they happily conscripted (and therefore could better control) this group, who are only recognized in certain places, and whose authority mostly amounts to giving out fines.  The RCM is corrupt, but it is corrupt in the same way its culture is.  Bribes are considered standard with them, not a moral failing, but a necessity, so long as those bribes are correctly logged as ‘donations’.  It’s how the RCM stays afloat, and the rest of Revachol completely understands that.  Everyone would take a bribe if it meant they kept eating.  Everyone would take a little under-the-table money if it meant keeping a roof over their heads.  The officersof the RCM certainly don’t make enough to see a doctor.  They have an in-house lazarus, and if he can’t fix them they just die.  Mental health care?  What mental health care?  Harry doesn’t get it for the same reason no one else does: it doesn’t really seem to exist.  There are no counselors, no psychologists, no psychiatrists.  How would they even start?  If the world is what is broken, if everyone is suffering a similar catastrophic amount, it makes sense that Harry’s trauma would simply get rolled up with all the rest.  Kim asks him to get on with the job because Harry’s suffering is not remarkable in Revachol.  He is one of an entire generation who have an astronomical number of orphans from the revolution, and so many younger people are left more or less orphans as their parents drink themselves into oblivion like Cuno’s father.  So Harry’s truly unique attribute is embodying all that trauma, having it all inside of him, filling him to bursting.

To really engage with the themes of the game, engaging first and foremost with the reality of Revachol is imperative.  Imposing our own reality onto Revachol, particularly if coming from an American perspective (which tend to have the habit of both viewing the world through an American lens and not realizing they’re doing it because they’ve never experienced a different lens), will always feel shallow to me because of this.

All that is to say, I would love to hear some more explicitly European meta about this game, and especially Eastern European meta.  If anyone can point me to some good, juicy essays from that perspective, I would be grateful!

Ashton and Silence

One of the things that has fascinated me this campaign is how ready-built Ashton is to be a leader, but how Taliesin plays low charisma to constantly stop them from being one.  Ashton has great ideas, and tends to be one of the two most grounded members of the group.   He has excellent moral intelligence (far better than they’ll admit), and one-on-one Ashton excels at talking people down from their worst points.  

But they also are in constant pain, and they’ve spent their entire life being told that they’re worthless as anything other than a slab of muscle.  So they silence themselves.  And the more unfamiliar the environment or the more people around them, the more they clam up.

Last episode was one of the best examples I’ve seen yet.  Ashton was almost entirely silent this episode.  He admitted to hating camping, likely to do with the chronic pain, but also to do with the unfamiliar environment.  Ashton is a city barbarian through and through, and they thrive in cities.  They are far more confident in cities, even when they don’t know them as well as Jrusar or Bassuras.  But the wilderness?  On an unknown continent?  He’s already on the wrong foot.

And then they go to the village, and before they know it things are spiraling.  It turns out this place was a powderkeg waiting to blow, with two factions that are, at least from appearance, both highly suspect.  The Vasselheim faction are clearly outsiders come here to impose their culture on the locals, taking too much from their land, bleeding their farms dry for distant tribute, and recently sending more and more armed thugs and more religious oppression.  Add to that the Flameguide being clearly an asshole who won’t listen to reason (very classic lawful stupid paladin, and I agree with Emily, likely a Conquest Paladin, some of the worst to deal with), and the Dawnfather folks are clearly assholes who aren’t wanted there.

But though the townsfolk in general seem sympathetic and just want to live free and worship as they will, their charismatic leader also seems to be full-on with Ruby Vanguard ideology.  She wants to tear the gods down, mistaking gods who are behind a divine gate and can’t interact with humans without a great deal of faith, with the corrupt religious institutions that sprung up around them.  But at the same time she gives a distinct feeling of hating those institutions because she’s not them.  She flat-out said that she didn’t want to stop with the town.  She wanted her own elemental worship to take over the world.

It’s a great set-up, because the townsfolk just want to be free, so they’re throwing in their lot with someone who has grand and terrible ambitions.  It’s Ludinus writ small, and playing out on an intimate scale.

And the team wasn’t really given any choice.  Once they were exploring the options, they were already sort of stuck with the elementalists.  And they mostly just want to prevent casualties, but the people in charge of those potential casualties have no care for the people who could die.  They see only glory and their own faith.

Orym spoke up, because that’s what Orym does.  But Orym’s confidence has been shaken, and there was little to no way he was going to manage to sway two fanatics.  Denise sort-of spoke up, as did Laudna, both trying but both also failing.  Bor’Dor and Prism were both basically on the side of ‘let’s fuck up the gods, whoo!’ from the off, Bor’Dor because he doesn’t really know what’s going on, and Prism out of academic bitterness.  In another life, she would have been hard-core Rube Vanguard fairly easily.

And then there’s Ashton, silent in the back, deeply uncomfortable, surrounded by an elementalist group that feels a lot like a cult with a charismatic leader.  How much must he be associating this with the Hishari?  Does it have any connection?  Some remnant faction?  Are they fighting on the side of his nightmares?

But they say nothing.  They stay silent.  They are barely noticed, despite being a big rock person in an elemental-worshipping town.  People should be all over them in fascination, but they aren’t, because Ashton has practically vanished.  They needed to speak up.  They needed to stand with Orym to try to de-escalate things, but instead they are sneaking in the background.  Why?  Lack of confidence.  Self-loathing.  Fear.  This is where Asthon’s low charisma springs from: they will never trust themselves to do the right thing, to say the right words, to really step up and be counted.  So they hide, and things crumble.

General Thoughts of Candela Obscura E1

So, for those who are waiting for the drop for Youtube, I’m just going to put these under a cut.