A scientific consideration of cultural preservation in Gideon the Ninth
HYPOTHESIS: the Venus de Milo is in Canaan House
REASONING: John is keen on decoration (the rest of Canaan House, the Mithraeum, his fancy baby-bone crown). John has strong opinions on preserving things he considers ‘worthy’ (the earth, his friends, Shakespeare). Why not famous art? Canaan House is filled with old and rotting portraits - they can’t ALL be of Cyrus and Valancy.
EVIDENCE:
There was a single statue at the end of the corridor where it turned left. It must have once been a person, but the head and arms had been lopped off, leaving only a torso with beseeching stumps. - GtN p130-1 (when Gideon is looking for Harrow)
beseeching stumps?? It’s simply got to be the Venus de Milo. No stumps plead more tenderly:
But she has a head! I hear you protest.
Aha! Now we come to Palamedes and Camilla doing psychometry to figure out the age of Canaan House:
"Fiat lux! If you want to talk improbable, let's talk about this"-a scrape of stone on stone-"being three thousand and some years older than this." A heavy clunk.
About 3000 years older than another part of Canaan House? Hmm! And what’s that Camilla is holding?
“Standing next to him holding a big wedge of broken sculpture and the flashlight was a tall, equally grey-wrapped figure with a scabbard outlined at her hip.”
“The cavalier narrowed her hooded eyes, fidgets gone and absolutely still; then she exploded into action. She dropped the wedge of sculpture with a clonk, drew her sword from its shabby scabbard before the wedge had bounced once, and advanced.”
SCULPTURE!
CONCLUSION: the Venus de Milo IS in Canaan House! However, it was decapitated by known practical thinker and simp Camilla Hect so that Palamedes Sextus could do his carbon dating easier without tiring out his necromancer noodle arms
SECONDARY CONCLUSION: Camilla was going to use the head of the Venus de Milo to bash open the laboratory hatch
2K notes
·
View notes
Parallels/references/a couple theories about TMAGP EP1:
grouped in order of actual theories, vague things i noticed, and even vaguer comments! (using the same terminology as in TMA for ease)
HEAVY Spoilers !!
Stronger:
“Colin, mate, you know you’re never getting out of here” +won't leave until they figure out the errors “Or they finally kill me” → couldn't quit the Archives because they thought they just wanted to understand and know (but later found out they could only get out by dying or blinding)
Lena talks about cake → Mr Spider doesn't like cake + Elias seemed to love the stuff
pub called The Seward -> Peter Lukas vibes?
“There has to be a way to do this online” → haha ! you wish. (AKA supernatural interferes with internet so it cant be dont online)
“There's this box for a "Response 121" on the form.” → MAG121 is the episode Jon is woken from his coma/brought back to life by Oliver Banks
Talk about how there used to be a separate “Response” department → Elias tells Jon its their job to watch, not interfere (iirc)
Old as shit computer → old as shit tape recorders
AKA: the computer seems to be the only thing that can handle the supernatural
“ "Dolls comma watching" or "Dolls comma human skin" “ → violently Stranger and possibly Eye, has me in mind of MAG24 (the one the Calliope is first mentioned in, where the boyfriend is turned into a doll iirc)
Barely understandable, long as shit file names →barely understandable, long as shit files names by Gertrude
[in response to where the files go] “some long dead database that no one will ever look at or care about” → the Archives were unmanaged, decrepit and barely used by anyone outside of them
Work during the night - no sun, cut off from outside world → worked in a basement - no sun, cut off from outside world
Martin (and later Jon) taking the statements → did the same in TMA but in reverse (although I’d love to know if there's any reason behind them being called Chester and Norris, besides what's stated?)
Haha Martin and Jon (and Jonah) are now part of the World Wide Web → shit now they're part of the Web (just like with the tape recorders !!)
Someone talks about how they're sorry, they should've listened, couldn't face not hearing him again → martin @ jon and vice versa
Stranger statement with hints of the Dark → first TMA statement was a Stranger in the dark, and it does put me in mind of the Anglerfish tbh
Sorting system for the statements (although there's is a Lot more detailed and v different) → Smirke’s Fourteen
Gwen openly does not like Lena → literally anyone @ Elias
Asked if they were tricked into working here → well, we know the Archives and Elias
“The awful, terrible thing that landed you here?” → most of the Archives (excluding Sasha and maybe Martin) had something that made them Marked, that mostly led to them working there
Someone who's into spelunking listed the Institute as “cleared” → who could that be (if we know them at all)? Buried avatar, i'd guess, but we don't really know any of them
Photos of the Institute don't show up → photos of the supernatural don't work
The Institute was “weird”, made the subject paranoid → lingering Eye
Fire twenty years ago that burned the Institute → Like the fire at Hilltop Road? Or like that time Gertrude tried to burn down the Institute?
Third floor was the most burned → assuming that's the top floor (and correct me if i'm wrong), wasn’t Jonah in (and later killed) on the top floor?
“offices like little cells” → employees were certainly trapped ! also Millbank Prison
Worried non-existent doors were going to slam shut → the Distortion
Weren’t any papers → left behind before the Institute came to this Somewhere Else (assuming it's the same Institute)? (we need an actual name for the original universe and this Somewhere Else)
Suspicious stains on some floors → my darling, that is blood ! or possibly squished worms, or ink. or possibly something Else
“an old wooden thing with a bunch of similar symbols on” → genuinely unsure what this could be
Strange symbols → For all the Fears, or just the Eye, i wonder? I think i remember them saying something about an Eye symbol at this point, but now i can't find where
“you get a job, I get a fresh victim. It’s all in your contract.” → Elias @ his employees
“To new beginnings, with old friends” → to a new beginning, with our old friends Jon, Martin and Jimmy Magma :)
“You’re not as clever as you think you are. You think you've got us all fooled, that no-one knows you're listening, But I do. I know. I’m going to find you and then…” → hi what did he mean by this
They (jon, martin & jonah) are Watching and Listening and following through technology→ just like Elias (Panopticon vibes tbh) and Sergey Ushanka
Vaguer (idk if theres anyhting here, but wanted to include it anyway):
Alice loves coffee -> Martin loved tea
Meeting in a cemetery → Sasha with Michael pre-prentiss attack, Naomi Herne
Not wanting to stay at home because it's full of memories → Jon moving with Georgie, Martin moving to the Archives
Gwen Bouchard wants Lena’s job → Bouchard (appeared to) climb the job ladder quicker than he should have
Heh bug list → corruption
“You don’t seem like the usual hopeless wasters Lena hires” “The awful, terrible thing that landed you here?” → okayy no need to be rude. But anyways the OG Archives crew were actually pretty disconnected from the rest of the world +were barely there by choice?
“freight cars near Brighton” → hey where did Melanie get her first Slaughter mark ?
“it’s not too awkward working with an ex?” → Georgie and Jon?
FR3-d1 -> i feel like there's something there, but i cannot figure it out
Just words that made me irrationally scared:
Stranger(‘s)
Distortion
Opposites:
Starts with a party for someone leaving → couldn't quit the archives
“ …you are perfectly within your rights to resign. No one is forcing you to stay here.”
please put any opinions/additions in the tags !!
179 notes
·
View notes
Alright, I'm going to attempt to hopefully clear up a few misconceptions and assuage some worries about this Disco Elysium sequel and the general situation at za/um right now.
I see the shitshow that is unfolding on social media, and as someone who has known about this whole disaster for over half a year now I'd like to weigh in on it and provide some context for everyone who may not know the full story.
First off, Robert Kurvitz was fired at the end of last year. December 2021. As is strongly implied on Martin Luiga's twitter, the reason for this is greed (calling them "money men" and "crooks" and other similar statements for like, months now), and the executive producers, Tõnis Haavel (who has previously been tried for fraud) and Kaur Kender (who has previously been tried for... other things.) screwed everyone over. Kender provided funding for the game, as the majority of the original za/um cultural association did not have the financial means to.
The original za/um cultural association consisted of Robert Kurvitz, Jüri Saks, Martin Luiga, and Aleksander Rostov, originally founded in in 2009. The group, along with Argo Tuulik, played many different ttrpg campaigns over the years, several of them set in Revachol (centred around Precinct 41), and slowly built the world up from there. Kurvitz released the book The Sacred and Terrible Air, set 20 years after Disco Elysium, back in 2013* but the novel flopped, and it was decided that they would make a video game. Rostov has always been more than just an artist for Disco Elysium, as you can see from the dev threads he frequently updated promoting the game, as well as on his personal instagram, tumblr sketch blog, and several other accounts he used while the game was first gaining traction.
*The most notable credits for TSaTA are as follows:
Author: Robert Kurvitz, Editor: Martin Luiga, Cover Design: Aleksander Rostov, Worldbuilding: Robert Kurvitz, Martin Luiga, Kaspar Kalvet, Argo Tuulik. Helen Hindpere and Kaur Kender also appear in the credits.
I say this because some of the staff at za/um are now accusing fans of being unable to overcome the "auteur theory" of it all (ie. seeing Kurvitz as the singular creative mind behind it all) but the fact is that they have now lost not only the original ttrpg campaign's game master, The Sacred and Terrible Air's author, and Disco Elysium's lead writer/director (Kurvitz) but also their lead writer for the Final Cut's political vision quests (Hindpere) as well as their "co-founder" and art director/designer (Rostov). They are all CREATIVE LEADS, and not just well known only for their reputations/titles.
Luiga himself (who originally broke the news) was an Elysium world builder and provided much of the pale and innocence-related lore. He was also a part of the original tabletop campaigns (Chester McLaine is his player character!), but left midway through Disco Elysium's development due to creative differences (or as he says, "bad vibes" at the company). He is credited as an editor, but claims to have written a good chunk of the text in the game, including much of Joyce's dialogue about the pale. I have seen people discredit him due to his early departure, but Rostov also tweeted out confirming that he, along with Hindpere and Kurvitz were no longer at the company, with no additional comments. Rostov also posted a drawing on his twitter several months back depicting a man jerking off over an NDA, so take that as you will.
So what does this mean for the future?
Luiga has said that he has hope for the sequel, which could either mean that the script was finished or nearing completion before Kurvitz was fired (likely, and fits a pattern in the industry) and it's just a matter of finishing the actual game development aspect, or it may be that he has hope for the original za/um creatives to be able to re-acquire the IP.
I think it's worth pointing out that the original pitch for "Disco Elysium" was actually "The Return", and Disco Elysium was meant to be the smaller-scale prequel to introduce players to the world. Considering that the team was planning on this sequel all along, I think it's possible that a large amount of the "original" game was written years ago, so it's not all that far fetched to believe that the basic outline may be finished, or even that a large portion of the script already exists. Keep in mind that there are a large number of writers for both Disco Elysium and The Final Cut, and it may still be possible to work with a base that the others provided. We have no idea how far into development the sequel may be. Of course, proceeding without three key members of the original team is kind of a kick in the balls, and imo really quite disgusting, especially with how long the company has been keeping their departures secret (dishonesty is not a good look lmao), but it may still be canon, true to the authors' vision, and genuinely a good game in the end.
Argo Tuulik, original Elysium world builder and part of the old ttrpg campaigns, as well as a main writer on Disco Elysium, is still working at za/um. Justin Keenan, former writer on The Final Cut who wrote the political vision quests alongside Helen Hindpere, still works at za/um (and has been promoted to lead writer, according to his LinkedIn), as does Kaspar Tamsalu, who painted several character portraits, (René and Gaston) and worked as a concept artist on the original game. Plenty of the original creatives still remain. The sequel could very well still be in good hands at the development level, even if the higher ups are "crooked".
So, in conclusion... If this game comes out and they still haven't worked things out with Kurvitz, Rostov and Hindpere? Honestly... fuckin' pirate it. But it is very likely it could still be a great game that plays out as it was meant to! All that being said, FUCK za/um as a company, don't support them through Atelier or their merch store. I wish everyone luck if they do attempt to get the IP back, and I sincerely hope this fan pressure will help get things moving for them.
3K notes
·
View notes