I don't think it's that nice though. His every interaction consists of calling him an old lazy impotent fool. His last words are that in the King's time, he would've been shot without trial. He never comes out of the closet, not even with himself.
@@DevilishmanThe I don't think René would have been down with that to begin with - being as he was a fascist, homosexuality is... not a good look. Non-traditional modes of being and romance... are not a good look for a fascist, either. I don't know if their girlfriend would have even known that he loved Gaston. His walls are too high. Too solid.
'hopelessly alone, behind the unbreakable walls he spent a lifetime erecting. No one will ever know him'. This game is the finest piece of writing of our age and should be taught in schools.
I always wondered what Rene saw in Gaston. It never made sense to me that someone who seems to despise Gaston so strongly would want to be around him, much less play games with him. But that's just it, isn't it? No matter how harshly Rene treated Gaston, Gaston always embraced Rene with open and accepting arms. And that's what Rene loved about him. He's so scared to admit it to himself that he lashes out, but deep down, he feels genuine love for Gaston. And he will take it to his grave.
And he did. His final words were an insult too, “In Guillaume’s time you would have been shot without trial.” And you only learn the full extent of this tragedy if you go the fascist route, that is to say you internalize Rene’s worst impulses.
@@falconeshield Kinda makes it cute with Gaston just being the sweetest person ever to Rene somehow, They're both in my top 5 of most friendly people you can find in Revachol.
I love Rene. He and the deserter are two of the most competent and principled characters in the game, but both had their will subverted by the failure of the revolution and the counter revolution respectively. They are survivors lingering in the suffocating aftermath of modernity.
During my first playthrough I actually failed the boúl check, and threw it into the lake, but the game crashed so I didn't do it that time and I'm glad he wasn't mad at me anymore. :p
So, they loved each other, and they never confessed anything to each other. In my first and only playthrough, I actually wept hearing the harsh last words that Rene had said to Gaston. I never knew that Rene had feelings for Gaston, too.
@@nikobates6897 it's literally referring to internalized homophobia omg. are you one of those 'Kim was only joking about being gay' people too? this game is super gay, deal with it or don't, I guess.
Gaston mentions the wartime girl's passing like a grandma who's time had arrived. His reaction to Rene was pain, grief and bitterness to the sudden loss. He was not expecting it.
All this deeply hidden greatness from a bitter old man you just met playing petanque on a street corner, utterly irrelevant to the investigation. This is what i love about this game.
These Old Boys were told what to think by the heinously violent monarchy they grew up in. Gaston seems to have recognized and pushed against that cruelty, while Rene was mostly consumed by it. A man being sustained as lesser not by the state that put him there, but by his own hand. He could've had his loves, both with Gaston and their shared lover, if only he could have surpassed his pride and legacy.
When I first found out about this, it broke me because that was me for many years. I was used to feeling kinda sad for René, being basically a living relic symbolizing the failures of tradicionalism and fascism in general. But this came in like a punch in the gut that seeped through my insides, and tugged the most hidden, tiny shriveled nerve in my body, to remind me of this pain. Disco elysium was the first game to actually treat the whole "ha look at this fascist I bet he's gay and his obsession with virile masculinity is only a façade" thing with some much due respect. It's not funny, it's the saddest fucking thing that can happen with someone.
Haha, your comment is very ammusing. How does one even stray from traditionalism? I would like to know. But don't worry bröther, the hardened fascist will inherit the world while the ones who treat their emotions like a garden and not like a fortress will fall swiftly come the first storm to ravage said garden.
I must thank you. i grow up in east germany where racism is common. i allways wondered why i didnt like the way people bad mouthed about the east. The east was not kind to me either. I just realized that i was subconscious aware that they are all humans. Products of there environment, like Rene. But i didnt see the connection until now. So...Thanks.
The writing in this game is so brilliant. I love the royalist imagery of how that tenderness was crushed and smothered beneath his "brilliant" boot heel. It feels like it represents how that defining trait of his personality, his belief in this intolerant ideology, is what caused this suppression of his emotions despite still feeling them after all these years. Growing into a bitter but loving friendship, using it as a defense mechanism to beat away how he's felt about his friend for decades. And then he's gone.
This game has so many hidden layers of humanness. Going through my second playthrough on my shitty PC. Loving every second of it in spite of the graphical bugs.
God, I think we all knew someone like this if not ourselves. You can't love someone of the same sex because of these beliefs you grew up with. You have to build up walls, and harden your heart. Even hate the guy you deeply love, maybe hate the people who are like you. It's a depressing story and these people deserve pity. The damage they do to themselves, and to others around them.
"You reading too much into this, too simplistic to say all these extreme political views are just the result of frustrated relationships and sexualities". Yeah, it is exactly that. Every political ideology Harry can adopt is just his way of rationalizing why his girl left him. It's no coincidence either that the happiest hetero couple in the game isn't even about a political ideology, but about their quest for a giant invisible stickybug.
Its exeptionall clever within that as well. Fascism is an ideology that is rooted in sexual insecurity about "foreighn men taking women". Communism doesnt have such roots. But individual commuinist can be exeptionally sexist because they think being progressive means they dont have bias's. Harry was a progressive in his past life (most likely). But he is still exeptionally misogynistic despite and slight because of his "inexplicable feminist agenda" The couple isnt off the hook either. Their happy. But their lack of politics leads to the Husband being buddies with Gary a pathetic fascist. And the Wife being casually racist. Both are also left sypathetic. Their politically incoherent, like most people, their views arnt consistant
rené is such a fascinating character to me, because he's so emblematic about how fascism destroys humanity and happiness. in your conversations with him you can see how he's desperately holding onto this harmful ideology despite how much it has hurt and exploited him. it has to be true, otherwise everything he's done and has been done to him was all for nothing, and he can't live with that. so he holds onto it until the day he dies
really interesting to see this! during my first playthrough i had always recognized the three of them as a really interesting and subtle piece of polyamorous representation, and i may have been reading too much into it, but i still love getting more insight into their dynamic. god bless people like you who upload these scenes to youtube!
@@radimsirl Yeah, finding this information is probably REALLY hard for the average playthrough. I don't even think most people even did a vision quest and who would aim for the fascist one even accidentally? It's also locked behind some really high level checks.
Well... SPOILERS When Rene dies, you can ask Gaston if he "loved him". Without the context of this conversation, I took his response to be a true, brotherly fondness of Rene, despite how harsh he always was to him, like it doesn't read as romantic. But...seeing this, maybe it was? Gosh, this game has some compelling characters
@@jazmindodds tbh both ways i kinda see it as being more kinship than romance. They are fond of each other but still act like absolute bastards to one another that it comes across as 2 brothers than 2 lovers
@@Regularguy220 I just feel the special attention given to René strongly implies a romantic reading, like why would one so strongly suppress a friendship?
@@jazmindodds René is a bitter old snake who hates everything about the modern world and has nothing but contempt for weakness. Gaston is vaguely socialist, but didn't care enough to fight for Revolution, and now he spends his time enjoying the small pleasures of life and complaining about his bad back. Yet he's an old friend, just about the only one who can stand René's company, and the woman he loved, loved him also. René is a man for whom there is nothing but black and white, and since all good things are long gone, the only thing left is to endure the bad with dignity. Caring for someone like Gaston would be a shade of grey, so I can see him strongly suppressing the friendship.
@@theonlylauri Another thing to consider is that, as a dyed-in-the-wool Fascist, Rene would never have been able to come out of the closet. The thoughts that ocurr during this conversation all but confirm it: he's repressed his homosexuality so long that it's become second nature. It's the end result of a lifetime of denial and self-loathing. God, this fucking game.
Seeing a lot of cap on reading this as being more than just platonic tbh. Taking a few choice moments of bisexual thoughts on the part of Harry and Kim's honest and proud homosexuality and running away with it as "yeah everyone's just gay and they don't wanna say it and thats why they have conflicts" kind of spits in the face of the very specific story it's trying to tell. It's just facile at its worse, tell me this guy wouldn't be any less fascist even if he was gay, much as the Sunday Friend isn't any less of a sex tourist masquerading as an obsequious servant of capital
There's something a bit funny about the happiest functional hetero couple in the game not being about the political alignements, but about their search for the giant stickybug.
Is there some sort of a unspoken rule in entertainment industry that says "You can't make a great friendship between characters. Either make it romantical or fuck off"?
I feel no sadness for these fascist old men, pissing away time and memory, playing with their boules on a crater, stained with the blood of those who wanted a loving, caring world.
Could some of you mazovian peudotheorists explain to me where in this entire interaction is it implied there exists a romantic attraction between the 2 old geezers. The only thing Rene feels remotely happy about is the past when Harry leads him to reminisce. The fact they stayed together for so long is more a testament to their childhood bond than some moral perversion they supposedly both hold for eachother. And Rene not talking about personal things such as his feeling is just his ideals of stoic masuculinity on display (admirable). The notion there is something he feels for gaston is so vague it is an insult to the writers of this game to take it and headcannonize it as you have.
"Moral perversion" there is no point in having a conversation with you lol. All I'll say is: why are you even here? This game goes out of it's way to mock and pity people like you at every available opportunity. Do you just have a humiliation kink or something?
Well, here is my answer; though, I do want to note that not all people who support LGBTQ+ are also communists. The dialogue path that leads down to this starts with a discussion of love, specifically, a time when people could love. Rene reminisces a bit for a while, but then gets very angry when Harry states that he believes he can get history back on the right track. Rene then proclaims that no one deserves second chances, including himself, as otherwise it would make everything meaningless. Then, it goes into an empathy skill check, as Harry has to recognise that the shadow that fell on Rene's face is different from how he normally presents himself. This peek of some other emotion is notable because Rene is a soldier, and soldiers are trained to suppress their emotions. Not everyone is mentally ready to take another human life when they join the military, so boot camp trains new recruits to suppress their emotions so they don't hesitate to kill; the yelling drill sergeants at recruits who aren't allowed to react is one of many examples of this training. The idea of the other side being an "enemy" also means soldiers need to suppress empathising with the other side, viewing the opponents as a "them" to be defeated, not real humans. Additionally, Rene admires and supports the old monarchy. He believes the leadership of a single, strong man would lead the nation to prosperity. Monarchs need to seem powerful in order to maintain their control; otherwise, their rule will be doubted. Showing emotions may be seen as a sign of weakness for monarchs, so Rene may model himself off the kings he admires and also hide his emotions. If you pass that skill check, you can recognise that Rene is showing a rare emotion, regret, but not why he's feeling it. For that, Harry has to be able to brace himself from the pain of realising what Rene's true feelings might be, and the implications it has for the rest of Rene's background. If successful, the narrator reveals it to be a regret towards not doing something with Gaston, implied to be some form of love towards him that's been stamped out by his suppression of emotions, replaced with his rivalry and proclaimed hatred of him. Now, it's not outright stated that this is a romantic love, but I feel this is intentionally done by the writers, to leave it up to interpretation. There are a few things though that would support the theory of romantic love. One is his initial proclamation of "no second chances", or otherwise everything would be meaningless. In this context, I believe what is implied is that Rene is afraid of showing his true feelings to Gaston, and Gaston accepting them, because it would mean dealing with everything he's done to Gaston. Rene doesn't want to give himself a second chance at a better relationship by admitting his true feelings to Gaston because it would mean dealing with the fact that he's wasted decades rivalling, belittling, hating on, hurting him, so he hides his true feelings from everyone, even himself, and convinces himself that he has no such feelings for Gaston and that they will always be enemies. Deep down, though, he regrets it. Another is how it would fit narratively based on Rene's background. Monarchies in history are known for not being very friendly to homosexuality. With Rene's political views, though, if he admitted to himself he romantically loved Gaston, he'd have to deal with the idea that he supported and fought for a system that would target him purely just because of his sexual attraction, and the unfairness of such a system in targeting minority groups like homosexuals. This would mean having to come to the reality that supporting such a system is morally wrong, but that would then mean asking the question of if the revolutionaries were right that the monarchy should've been abolished, which would loop back into questioning all the decades he spent, yet more reason for him to suppress those feelings. Finally, there is the tenderness that Harry catches in Rene's look. For soldiers that suppress emotions, I feel that type of look is usually reserved only for those who are very close to them, those who they care for deeply. That gaze may be evidence for a deep platonic love instead, but it isn't evidence against a romantic love either. The same could be the same for my first point, too. In the end, there are implications there for it to be romantic, while being vague enough that it could also be platonic. Disco Elysium isn't shy of having LGBTQ+ characters, after all, so there is a chance Rene could've been canonised as having romantic feelings. I think, though, that the writers deliberately left it like this, so people could come away with their own interpretations on these two characters. There's nothing wrong too with either; romantic or platonic, both should be encouraged, and I hope to see more depictions of it.
This was an absolutely absurd twist. The game makes such a big deal about the love triangle between Rene, Jeanne-Marie and Gaston then just comes out with "jk, he's actually gay lol". Came out of nowhere and wasn't explored with enough depth to be even remotely believable. Considering the political vision quests were only included in the Final Cut, this whole revelation feels like something that was tacked on at the last second and not meant to be in the game. I'm not homophobic either (I'm actually bisexual and Kim is my spirit animal) but if you're going to include something like this you can't just toss it off at the last possible second and expect the audience to buy it. Really half-baked and underwhelming.
It's absolutely platonic, their reading is incredibly off on these two. They're lifelong enemies who cannot bear to say they are friends for different reasons: Gaston can't admit Rene is still deserving of his honesty and Rene is too bitter to ever allow his honesty to prevail even after Gaston stole his love away from him. People get way too fujoshi over this game I swear, there's so much about love as a philosophical concept explored to ignore its different applications beyond just sexuality
@@ILoveEvadingTax They get like that because it is. For me the whole point of the game is precisely about how we try to rationalize a personal problem with something as insanely global as a political ideology, and that is encapsulated in Harry. Everything he can be is just his way of rationalizing "why did my girl leave me?": -Liberalism: Because I was poor -Moralism: Because I didn't value her opinions. -Communism: Because I didn't care about solving society's problems beyond just arresting criminals. -Fascism: Because I was puny. It's not coincidence either that the happiest hetero couple in the game isn't even about ideologies, but about their quest for a giant invisible stickybug.
when im in a "make a game with the most sad bisexual men" contest and my opponent is zaum
💀💀
The Challengers are Supergiant (Zagreus from Hades) and Sega (Kiryu from Yakuza)
@@theforgottenranger Kiryu???? How times have changed.
@@falconeshield Kiryu being one of the bisexual sad men is my headcanon now, Thanks.
I believe it was implied that René was only "in love" with his partner because Gaston was also in love with her
This kinda makes the whole girlfriend thing between the two of them make way more sense.
I mean it is odd the wartime girl didn't settle for one guy. It did feel off.
I just find endearing how René chose to spend the last of his days just playing with his love at a park
I don't think it's that nice though. His every interaction consists of calling him an old lazy impotent fool. His last words are that in the King's time, he would've been shot without trial. He never comes out of the closet, not even with himself.
@@vwem1237 Not nice at all. Endearing, though.
@@Malachite7Only if you know those Barbs come with familiar echoes
Well, that certainly explains why their girlfriend could never commit. She must have felt she was just a proxy.
Idk. I think both truly loved her too. But they also loved each other, and for Rene, I think it poisoned something in him.
No, no, she has 2 hands. They also have two hands. Wrong times.
@@bibrosko Maybe she just wasn't up for a polyamory relationship.
@@DevilishmanThe I don't think René would have been down with that to begin with - being as he was a fascist, homosexuality is... not a good look. Non-traditional modes of being and romance... are not a good look for a fascist, either.
I don't know if their girlfriend would have even known that he loved Gaston. His walls are too high. Too solid.
@@bibrosko No one like being the third wheel even in a trouple
'hopelessly alone, behind the unbreakable walls he spent a lifetime erecting. No one will ever know him'. This game is the finest piece of writing of our age and should be taught in schools.
I always wondered what Rene saw in Gaston. It never made sense to me that someone who seems to despise Gaston so strongly would want to be around him, much less play games with him. But that's just it, isn't it? No matter how harshly Rene treated Gaston, Gaston always embraced Rene with open and accepting arms.
And that's what Rene loved about him. He's so scared to admit it to himself that he lashes out, but deep down, he feels genuine love for Gaston. And he will take it to his grave.
And he did. His final words were an insult too, “In Guillaume’s time you would have been shot without trial.” And you only learn the full extent of this tragedy if you go the fascist route, that is to say you internalize Rene’s worst impulses.
he's basically a tsundere for gaston
@@october1820 But a really mean one, an old, bitter one
@@falconeshield Kinda makes it cute with Gaston just being the sweetest person ever to Rene somehow, They're both in my top 5 of most friendly people you can find in Revachol.
Love did him in, just like the rest...
Rene is one of the most interesting characters I've talked to in this game.
I love Rene. He and the deserter are two of the most competent and principled characters in the game, but both had their will subverted by the failure of the revolution and the counter revolution respectively. They are survivors lingering in the suffocating aftermath of modernity.
Actualy same
@@Cesmust and also both some flavor of barking mark and unpleasant. But you can't help but feel sorry for them.
During my first playthrough I actually failed the boúl check, and threw it into the lake, but the game crashed so I didn't do it that time and I'm glad he wasn't mad at me anymore. :p
So, they loved each other, and they never confessed anything to each other. In my first and only playthrough, I actually wept hearing the harsh last words that Rene had said to Gaston. I never knew that Rene had feelings for Gaston, too.
By love, I’m pretty sure he meant the brotherly kind. Unless there was some sort of polyamory involved, but I find it unlikely.
@@nikobates6897 Actually it's pretty explicitly gay, at least on Renee's part. The developers confirmed it. Renee was super closeted
@@raguelelnaqum link please?
@@nikobates6897 it's literally referring to internalized homophobia omg. are you one of those 'Kim was only joking about being gay' people too? this game is super gay, deal with it or don't, I guess.
@Aliciel De Boisnoir LOL hmm you know what, fair. I strongly stand by my point, but fair on the execution!
Now I get why Rene and Gaston bickered like an old married couple.
Gaston mentions the wartime girl's passing like a grandma who's time had arrived. His reaction to Rene was pain, grief and bitterness to the sudden loss. He was not expecting it.
All this deeply hidden greatness from a bitter old man you just met playing petanque on a street corner, utterly irrelevant to the investigation. This is what i love about this game.
Aw man the line about walls hit too close to home
The entire game does.
Fr.
These Old Boys were told what to think by the heinously violent monarchy they grew up in. Gaston seems to have recognized and pushed against that cruelty, while Rene was mostly consumed by it. A man being sustained as lesser not by the state that put him there, but by his own hand. He could've had his loves, both with Gaston and their shared lover, if only he could have surpassed his pride and legacy.
I get the feeling the wartime girl loved both but neither loved her emotionally. One would've married her to make her the beard otherwise.
When I first found out about this, it broke me because that was me for many years. I was used to feeling kinda sad for René, being basically a living relic symbolizing the failures of tradicionalism and fascism in general. But this came in like a punch in the gut that seeped through my insides, and tugged the most hidden, tiny shriveled nerve in my body, to remind me of this pain.
Disco elysium was the first game to actually treat the whole "ha look at this fascist I bet he's gay and his obsession with virile masculinity is only a façade" thing with some much due respect. It's not funny, it's the saddest fucking thing that can happen with someone.
Haha, your comment is very ammusing. How does one even stray from traditionalism? I would like to know. But don't worry bröther, the hardened fascist will inherit the world while the ones who treat their emotions like a garden and not like a fortress will fall swiftly come the first storm to ravage said garden.
I must thank you. i grow up in east germany where racism is common. i allways wondered why i didnt like the way people bad mouthed about the east. The east was not kind to me either. I just realized that i was subconscious aware that they are all humans. Products of there environment, like Rene. But i didnt see the connection until now. So...Thanks.
@@tinysealexe Truly, your honorary glands are over sensitized.
@@tinysealexe Nice prose, but it won't save the West. Continue being replaced, cömrade: I'm brown and only date white women. Say goodbye to your race.
@@tinysealexeIt is better to die peacefully than live a life of struggle.
The writing in this game is so brilliant. I love the royalist imagery of how that tenderness was crushed and smothered beneath his "brilliant" boot heel. It feels like it represents how that defining trait of his personality, his belief in this intolerant ideology, is what caused this suppression of his emotions despite still feeling them after all these years. Growing into a bitter but loving friendship, using it as a defense mechanism to beat away how he's felt about his friend for decades.
And then he's gone.
This game has so many hidden layers of humanness. Going through my second playthrough on my shitty PC. Loving every second of it in spite of the graphical bugs.
God damn that's heartbreaking
God, I think we all knew someone like this if not ourselves. You can't love someone of the same sex because of these beliefs you grew up with. You have to build up walls, and harden your heart. Even hate the guy you deeply love, maybe hate the people who are like you. It's a depressing story and these people deserve pity. The damage they do to themselves, and to others around them.
I felt there was something unspoken between them. Turned out to be very heartbreaking
"You reading too much into this, too simplistic to say all these extreme political views are just the result of frustrated relationships and sexualities". Yeah, it is exactly that. Every political ideology Harry can adopt is just his way of rationalizing why his girl left him. It's no coincidence either that the happiest hetero couple in the game isn't even about a political ideology, but about their quest for a giant invisible stickybug.
Its exeptionall clever within that as well.
Fascism is an ideology that is rooted in sexual insecurity about "foreighn men taking women".
Communism doesnt have such roots. But individual commuinist can be exeptionally sexist because they think being progressive means they dont have bias's.
Harry was a progressive in his past life (most likely). But he is still exeptionally misogynistic despite and slight because of his "inexplicable feminist agenda"
The couple isnt off the hook either. Their happy. But their lack of politics leads to the Husband being buddies with Gary a pathetic fascist. And the Wife being casually racist. Both are also left sypathetic. Their politically incoherent, like most people, their views arnt consistant
That's heartbreaking. Hope I don't end up like this poor bastard.
Here's hoping none of us do
rené is such a fascinating character to me, because he's so emblematic about how fascism destroys humanity and happiness. in your conversations with him you can see how he's desperately holding onto this harmful ideology despite how much it has hurt and exploited him. it has to be true, otherwise everything he's done and has been done to him was all for nothing, and he can't live with that. so he holds onto it until the day he dies
He's failed to detatch the values he wants to stand for from the ideology that espouses them. Many such cases.
really interesting to see this! during my first playthrough i had always recognized the three of them as a really interesting and subtle piece of polyamorous representation, and i may have been reading too much into it, but i still love getting more insight into their dynamic. god bless people like you who upload these scenes to youtube!
I don't think there was any polyamory, I think it was simply a confusing attraction to a romantic rival he otherwise would have detested completely.
Same!!
God this makes me wanna cry
It's curious how many Psyche comments there are for the Turning Back Time quest dialogue despite being obviously meant for a Psysique built
HOW DID I MISS THIS?!?!?!
I am not sure but I believe that you can only have this conversation if you pursue the fascist vision quest - i.e. speaking about the past.
@@radimsirl Yeah, finding this information is probably REALLY hard for the average playthrough. I don't even think most people even did a vision quest and who would aim for the fascist one even accidentally? It's also locked behind some really high level checks.
@@OddManeuverI did it accidentally lol by 4 points but I didn't progress because I didn't feed on Rene's misogyny
I love that whenever my gaydar goes beep beep beep this game confirms it 🧙♂️
"so, how many tragic queer characters you want in this game"
YES
3:46 my god.. so beautiful. So tragic.
my favorite type of fascist are the repressed homosexuals
Man it's really weird having my favorite LGBT adjacent video game scene be part of a literal fascism sidequest. Happy Pride everyone!
Rene is one of the best characters in the gane imo
Oh shit, rené loves/loved gaston romantically? and not the girl? does gaston feel the same way i wonder
Well... SPOILERS
When Rene dies, you can ask Gaston if he "loved him". Without the context of this conversation, I took his response to be a true, brotherly fondness of Rene, despite how harsh he always was to him, like it doesn't read as romantic. But...seeing this, maybe it was? Gosh, this game has some compelling characters
@@jazmindodds tbh both ways i kinda see it as being more kinship than romance. They are fond of each other but still act like absolute bastards to one another that it comes across as 2 brothers than 2 lovers
@@Regularguy220 I just feel the special attention given to René strongly implies a romantic reading, like why would one so strongly suppress a friendship?
@@jazmindodds René is a bitter old snake who hates everything about the modern world and has nothing but contempt for weakness. Gaston is vaguely socialist, but didn't care enough to fight for Revolution, and now he spends his time enjoying the small pleasures of life and complaining about his bad back. Yet he's an old friend, just about the only one who can stand René's company, and the woman he loved, loved him also. René is a man for whom there is nothing but black and white, and since all good things are long gone, the only thing left is to endure the bad with dignity. Caring for someone like Gaston would be a shade of grey, so I can see him strongly suppressing the friendship.
@@theonlylauri Another thing to consider is that, as a dyed-in-the-wool Fascist, Rene would never have been able to come out of the closet. The thoughts that ocurr during this conversation all but confirm it: he's repressed his homosexuality so long that it's become second nature. It's the end result of a lifetime of denial and self-loathing.
God, this fucking game.
Endurance words at the end are so beautiful for some reason
A true master of emotions. No one will ever know him
Christ it's sad :(
I like the implication that Rene's playful side isn't rare, just seldom witnessed by others
May I just say, that profile picture is immaculate.
//Tribunal spoilers
I only got the confession after Rene died, omg.
Many people forget you can love without sex. Love the stranger if you're single~
Physical love is simple
Emotional love isn't
Second one makes us all more spiritual than just instinctial chemicals
challengers (2024)
if you liked this you would love the movie i dream in another language
I was just about to comment this!!! Great film and its crazy how many parallels there are
the writing in this scene was oof
Seeing a lot of cap on reading this as being more than just platonic tbh. Taking a few choice moments of bisexual thoughts on the part of Harry and Kim's honest and proud homosexuality and running away with it as "yeah everyone's just gay and they don't wanna say it and thats why they have conflicts" kind of spits in the face of the very specific story it's trying to tell. It's just facile at its worse, tell me this guy wouldn't be any less fascist even if he was gay, much as the Sunday Friend isn't any less of a sex tourist masquerading as an obsequious servant of capital
There's something a bit funny about the happiest functional hetero couple in the game not being about the political alignements, but about their search for the giant stickybug.
Is there some sort of a unspoken rule in entertainment industry that says "You can't make a great friendship between characters. Either make it romantical or fuck off"?
I feel no sadness for these fascist old men, pissing away time and memory, playing with their boules on a crater, stained with the blood of those who wanted a loving, caring world.
Gaston ain't facist?
POV: you are bought in
the deserter has logged on
i love fascists and i hate commies, now cope you NPC
But he isn't fascist though.
Could some of you mazovian peudotheorists explain to me where in this entire interaction is it implied there exists a romantic attraction between the 2 old geezers. The only thing Rene feels remotely happy about is the past when Harry leads him to reminisce. The fact they stayed together for so long is more a testament to their childhood bond than some moral perversion they supposedly both hold for eachother. And Rene not talking about personal things such as his feeling is just his ideals of stoic masuculinity on display (admirable). The notion there is something he feels for gaston is so vague it is an insult to the writers of this game to take it and headcannonize it as you have.
Yeah to me this is like non platonic brotherly love.
"Moral perversion" there is no point in having a conversation with you lol. All I'll say is: why are you even here? This game goes out of it's way to mock and pity people like you at every available opportunity. Do you just have a humiliation kink or something?
Well, here is my answer; though, I do want to note that not all people who support LGBTQ+ are also communists.
The dialogue path that leads down to this starts with a discussion of love, specifically, a time when people could love. Rene reminisces a bit for a while, but then gets very angry when Harry states that he believes he can get history back on the right track. Rene then proclaims that no one deserves second chances, including himself, as otherwise it would make everything meaningless. Then, it goes into an empathy skill check, as Harry has to recognise that the shadow that fell on Rene's face is different from how he normally presents himself.
This peek of some other emotion is notable because Rene is a soldier, and soldiers are trained to suppress their emotions. Not everyone is mentally ready to take another human life when they join the military, so boot camp trains new recruits to suppress their emotions so they don't hesitate to kill; the yelling drill sergeants at recruits who aren't allowed to react is one of many examples of this training. The idea of the other side being an "enemy" also means soldiers need to suppress empathising with the other side, viewing the opponents as a "them" to be defeated, not real humans.
Additionally, Rene admires and supports the old monarchy. He believes the leadership of a single, strong man would lead the nation to prosperity. Monarchs need to seem powerful in order to maintain their control; otherwise, their rule will be doubted. Showing emotions may be seen as a sign of weakness for monarchs, so Rene may model himself off the kings he admires and also hide his emotions.
If you pass that skill check, you can recognise that Rene is showing a rare emotion, regret, but not why he's feeling it. For that, Harry has to be able to brace himself from the pain of realising what Rene's true feelings might be, and the implications it has for the rest of Rene's background. If successful, the narrator reveals it to be a regret towards not doing something with Gaston, implied to be some form of love towards him that's been stamped out by his suppression of emotions, replaced with his rivalry and proclaimed hatred of him.
Now, it's not outright stated that this is a romantic love, but I feel this is intentionally done by the writers, to leave it up to interpretation. There are a few things though that would support the theory of romantic love.
One is his initial proclamation of "no second chances", or otherwise everything would be meaningless. In this context, I believe what is implied is that Rene is afraid of showing his true feelings to Gaston, and Gaston accepting them, because it would mean dealing with everything he's done to Gaston. Rene doesn't want to give himself a second chance at a better relationship by admitting his true feelings to Gaston because it would mean dealing with the fact that he's wasted decades rivalling, belittling, hating on, hurting him, so he hides his true feelings from everyone, even himself, and convinces himself that he has no such feelings for Gaston and that they will always be enemies. Deep down, though, he regrets it.
Another is how it would fit narratively based on Rene's background. Monarchies in history are known for not being very friendly to homosexuality. With Rene's political views, though, if he admitted to himself he romantically loved Gaston, he'd have to deal with the idea that he supported and fought for a system that would target him purely just because of his sexual attraction, and the unfairness of such a system in targeting minority groups like homosexuals. This would mean having to come to the reality that supporting such a system is morally wrong, but that would then mean asking the question of if the revolutionaries were right that the monarchy should've been abolished, which would loop back into questioning all the decades he spent, yet more reason for him to suppress those feelings.
Finally, there is the tenderness that Harry catches in Rene's look. For soldiers that suppress emotions, I feel that type of look is usually reserved only for those who are very close to them, those who they care for deeply. That gaze may be evidence for a deep platonic love instead, but it isn't evidence against a romantic love either. The same could be the same for my first point, too.
In the end, there are implications there for it to be romantic, while being vague enough that it could also be platonic. Disco Elysium isn't shy of having LGBTQ+ characters, after all, so there is a chance Rene could've been canonised as having romantic feelings. I think, though, that the writers deliberately left it like this, so people could come away with their own interpretations on these two characters. There's nothing wrong too with either; romantic or platonic, both should be encouraged, and I hope to see more depictions of it.
@@KaebukiThank you for this, I really enjoyed this write up 🙏
This was an absolutely absurd twist. The game makes such a big deal about the love triangle between Rene, Jeanne-Marie and Gaston then just comes out with "jk, he's actually gay lol". Came out of nowhere and wasn't explored with enough depth to be even remotely believable. Considering the political vision quests were only included in the Final Cut, this whole revelation feels like something that was tacked on at the last second and not meant to be in the game. I'm not homophobic either (I'm actually bisexual and Kim is my spirit animal) but if you're going to include something like this you can't just toss it off at the last possible second and expect the audience to buy it. Really half-baked and underwhelming.
It's absolutely platonic, their reading is incredibly off on these two. They're lifelong enemies who cannot bear to say they are friends for different reasons: Gaston can't admit Rene is still deserving of his honesty and Rene is too bitter to ever allow his honesty to prevail even after Gaston stole his love away from him. People get way too fujoshi over this game I swear, there's so much about love as a philosophical concept explored to ignore its different applications beyond just sexuality
@@ILoveEvadingTax They get like that because it is. For me the whole point of the game is precisely about how we try to rationalize a personal problem with something as insanely global as a political ideology, and that is encapsulated in Harry. Everything he can be is just his way of rationalizing "why did my girl leave me?":
-Liberalism: Because I was poor
-Moralism: Because I didn't value her opinions.
-Communism: Because I didn't care about solving society's problems beyond just arresting criminals.
-Fascism: Because I was puny.
It's not coincidence either that the happiest hetero couple in the game isn't even about ideologies, but about their quest for a giant invisible stickybug.
Is there a single straight character in this game??? Or is everyone exept the dead body gay or lesbian??
Lol there's like maybe 4 gay characters and thats stretching it
* 10% of cast is gay *
EVERY ONE IS GAY
@@lohollywood1f428 bith what? its like seven
@@julesmlf my bad g
@@lohollywood1f428 Kim, Harry, Ruby, Glen, the smoker on the balcony, his sunday friend, Rene, maybe Gaston? I count 8
I'm not crying, you're crying