Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Disclaimers:

• The Penguindrum image isn’t (just) because I’m obsessed, it’s how I’m approaching Disco Elysium and its overflowing unreliable narrators: Nobody is lying; everyone is saying their truth, which may not be the absolute truth. This game is huge and the writers clearly have thought a very long time about the world and I don’t think there’s any fact in this game that is a throwaway line (and if there is, well, they should’ve written it better and it’s our town now). That doesn’t mean that the writers don’t make mistakes, and I’ll note what I find, but every detail has significance. So I’ll be compiling everything, and any contradictions and information from less-than-trustworthy sources will be noted as such.
  • This is basically saying yes, I’m going to be listening to what the racists say. Unfortunately, stereotypes are “helpful” in determining facts about the country even just in perception.
    • If I didn’t do this, we would know jack shit about Seol.
  • I will be clearly noting down when these come from said untrustworthy sources, mostly Racist Lorry Driver, Measurehead, Gary, and Sunday Friend/Charles so you can season them with as many grains of salt as needed. Measurehead’s dialogue will be put into sentence caps for readability, so the extra note that it’s from him will be needed.
    • That being said, Measurehead’s race classifications won’t be noted because that’s just stupid. I unfortunately will be writing some of his observations but like you don’t need to know about how he thinks certain races will be sterile or whatever. I didn’t need to know it either, it sucks.
• All of that being said, Disco Elysium is a highly symbolic and at times allegorical work, and certain aspects of the world might be a truth about Harry, or can be read that way. It is referential and unconnected and symbolic all at once, and probably the best way to respect or capture the world is being in flux about the reality.
  • This is also a way of saying that if you don’t like certain aspects you can just like. Ignore it or say it’s stupid. That’s transformative work baby, the author is dead, long live the fanfiction.
• This originally started as a “I don’t know what fantasy country this is and I’m too afraid to ask” and evolved into. So much more. But its origins are still “hey what are the influences of these countries?” so I’ll be noting any historical parallels and real world context and googling a lot of random words.
  • As far as I’m concerned though, language used is the greatest indicator of what real life country is the inspiration for that country.
  • I will not be considering characters’ accents. That requires me prioritizing voice actors and that’s not a debate I’m interested in dipping my toe into.
    • Also I don’t know accents.
  • Similarly, I will not consider characters’ names as “proof” of country origin/inspiration. There’s enough wiggle room of “we don’t know if their parents are immigrants” and “people’s names don’t have to match their home country” that it’s not worth considering.
    • This point is a bit flexible, and if enough people are interested, I can add that.
      • (There’s a link to my tumblr about more things I’ll consider adding if requested) (and you can also just request something that isn’t there) (offer me head pats and I’ll do anything)
• All this being said though, reducing anything to a one-to-one “fantasy [blank]” is unfair to the worldbuilding of Elysium. It’s just handy shorthand to build upon.
  • Also I’m not Eastern European so I’m already missing out on contexts no need to be more reductive than we already are.
• On the writer:
  • I am the worst person to be doing this. I’m a White American. I can be pale and still have a tan line. The blood vessels on my wrists are as bright as neon. I am so White that the lasting influence in my first relationship was introducing my Asian datemate to the sitcom Friends.
    • In addition to this, I’m not great at history. My knowledge of Eastren Europe starts and ends with “Pathologic fucking slaps.” I don’t know what the USSR stands for. I’ve been using USSR and Soviet Union interchangeably and I’ve just had the thought that maybe those are two different things. I cannot provide cultural context. I can provide googling of random words.
  • Also sometimes I have poor reading comprehension so while I hope I read everything correctly, I might not have. If something smells fishy, it may be me.

Notes:

• I will only be considering what is in the game itself as canon with the exception of the dev blog lore pieces. The dev blog was made to hype the game as it was being developed, so it ends up being intertwined with the creation of the game and people’s perception of it. And also I want to include the wild giraffe lore. Mostly I wanted the giraffe lore. But any other information a crew member has said on their twitter or blog or whatever will not be included; if the information was important, they would’ve put it in the game in the first place. This holds true for the artbook as well, because even though I’m super interested in how they portrayed innocence Sola…it’s concept art, it’s just concepts, it’s not final.
  • I won’t lie, this atlas has been slowly chugging around for a long time and there wasn’t a decent translation of Sacred And Terrible Air so it wasn’t even an option. I still hold true that lore shouldn’t be locked behind multiple mediums to be understood, but I’d figure I’d be honest about the fact that it wasn’t an option.
• Research method is as follows: Looked at the map in the bookstore, wrote down the countries and cities and etc, searched those words, picked up other terms and searched them creating this big spiderweb of searched items, and occasionally noting specific terms and searching them. Certain dialogues were read in full, but for the most part, just the surrounding contexts were read. This is about as detailed as I can make it without completely losing my sanity, but there is a chance that certain facts slipped through the cracks, so please let me know if you find anything.
  • Information gathered from the dev log will be cited as such, with a link in authors notes. The thought cabinet and item descriptions will also be cited but I’m not going to link the wiki.
• Elysium doesn’t number their centuries, which makes time calculating confusing and also incredibly verbose. To at least cut down on the verbose part:
  • BCC—Before Current Century
  • PC—Previous Century
  • CC—Current Century
  • ACC—After Current Century
• To explain the a couple context subheadings:
  • LANGUAGE LINK: Usually a translation of a word or other uses of language.
  • IRL LINK: Something that’s a link to a country or culture, such as a place name or specific history.
  • IRL CONTEXT: Usually a description of a term, concept, time period etc. to understand what it could mean. Aka, random things I’ve googled and realized that I didn’t actually know the meaning of those words.
  • There may be some overlap between these, either because sometimes that’s how things work or because I forgot my own system.
• When searching words, some of them have cut and dry easy translations while others do not, often because of how translation works. In these cases I sometimes just put the word into the Wikipedia search bar and see what it thinks I want. I didn’t do this consistently and it didn’t always work but hey, I did it enough to note.
• I do plan on updating this with corrections (grammatical and otherwise), additions of facts I’ve missed, and IRL context. Especially cultural context. My kingdom for cultural context, good god. Please let me know if you have anything to add, either in the comments or—especially if it requires a dialogue—on my tumblr.
  • That link also has various I’ve considered adding, so it’s worth checking out for that. Also if you want to support me with head pats you can go there.

Changelog

• July 28 2023:  Version 1.01
  • delecttric made a bunch of comments, pretty much the day this was posted, which was very overwhelming but I’m very grateful for their help.  Their contributions are as follows:
    • ELYSIUM:  
      • IRL Context on Elysium’s population to Earth’s circa 1970s.  
      • Additional context on Franconegro’s “concrete churches”, a simple correction that’s spawned another rant at Franconegro’s expense.  I know far too much about concrete now.
    • MUNDI
      • Some fun possible context for cobo/Coppodoci
      • Proper lRL Link to Oranje
      • Correction of Old English to Early Modern English
      • I added a language link to “oranjenrijk”, which I discovered all on my own, and then delecttric descended from the heavens and pointed out that I made a mistake in my hubris.
  • Other people also helped out:
    • MUNDI
      • Geeneelee clarified the use of “oe” instead of “ö” in Königstein/Koenigstein
    • REVACHOL
      • Pepperly provided some additional context on a Detroit comparision
• September 13, 2023—Version 1.02
  • ELYSIUM
    • Regrettably, my hatred of Franconigerian technology is slightly less founded.  stormwreath asked for clarification on trains, which led me to research trains and add more context that makes Franconigerian era trains slightly more reasonable.
  • GRAAD
    • stormwreath again came through with a bunch of notes:
      • Context on Measurehead’s use of “demos”
      • “Context” on Hussars
      • Clarification on the abbreviation of “Yekokataa”, because google translate hated me when I was writing this and never gave me the cyrillic.
  • IILMARAA
    • delecttric provided a correction when I mislabeled Hadhramaut as a Saudi Arabian region rather than Yemeni.
  • PALE
    • delecttric brought up an essay on the pale, which has been added as a reference because it was neat.

Special Thanks To:

• Adam Zee, a good friend and military linguist turned “guy who lives in the woods and writes fanfiction”, for being willing to listen to my rambles about a game he has not had the spoons to play, helping me figure out the alphabet, and explaining to me how guns take it up the butt. Here’s the conversation we had about the alphabet, and then other various conversations that helped me
• The members of the small discord channel I’m a part of, for listening to my unhinged rants on increasingly small details, pointing out lore I missed, and tolerating me in general.
• Tom Cardy and his song Party Dog. He didn’t write it for me, he doesn’t know me, it’s not connected to Disco Elysium, but it embodies the progression of this research.
• A lot of people on tumblr who spent over a year reblogging one post where I yelled about the size of a mountain commenting about how much they needed this atlas. I delivered.
• delecttric at this point has earned a spot in the special thanks, for continuing to point out my errors.