Something that I think gets somewhat lost in the Cuno and Cunoesse plot is how the first step to getting closer to Cuno is to separate him from Cunoesse… like that’s a thing Harry notices and thinks to himself: if I want Cuno to talk to me, I have to separate him from Cunoesse. His thought process and his tactics are straightforwardly manipulative. The check is called “get_cuno_alone”. You play up to Cuno how scary and out of control Cunoesse is in order to get him to open up to you. The thing is: she’s eleven. And you’re playing as a cop who can punch Cuno and shoot Cunoesse.
Cunoesse is right to be afraid of Harry, not just because killing her is a real thing you can do in this game, but also because Harry intentionally tries to split her from Cuno, who is all she has. Without him, she doesn’t have clothes or food or a roof over her head. She doesn’t even have a name.
CUNOESSE - “Don’t make yourself into a pig, Cuno. You’ll have to take me away…” A leaden silence fills the yard.
SUGGESTION - So that’s what this is about.
Cunoesse is afraid that Cuno will sell her out for a chance of a better life. And I feel that’s the implication in the Cuno partner ending: he left Cunoesse to become a cop because that’s what the player convinced him, intentionally or not, to do.
YOU - “Where is Cunoesse?”
CUNO - “Cuno doesn’t want to talk about this shit.” There is a moment of thoughtful silence. He almost looks behind him.
COMPOSURE - That is a look of a man who knows he’ll be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.
I know this moment gets read as fear a lot (especially since a check during the end game says that is is in fact scared of having to face Cunoesse if you leave him behind), but to me it reads like Cuno knowing that he’ll never have 100% conviction in his choice. It’s heavy… He took responsibility for C’s life when he took her in. Initially, he is willing to fight you to the potential death to protect her from what you represent. But he’s just a kid himself. It was never going to end well… but in this route, it ends the way it does because of Harry being a cop and interacting with them as a cop. I feel like that’s gotta be something that we take into account when we talk about C. We’re playing as a cop who’s willing to potentially disrupt her one and only relationship just for the sake of our investigation. Our relationship with Cuno depends on whether or not we can “get_cuno_alone.” And in the end, when we do, we’ve potentially ruined both these kids’ lives even worse than before.
disco elysium modern au where cuno has a reddit acc and goes up to cunoesse like “hey c check this shit out” and its some r/cursedimages 2018-type shock meme on the world’s crustiest ipad then cunoesse just pulls her phone w a uncensored 2 minute beheading video on r/watchpeopledie and cuno throws up on the carpet
Alright this will be stream-of-consciousness bunch of thoughts I had, composed into what is something readable. Hopefully it might inspire people to do something with this, because I saw these points and don’t know what to do with them.
Part 1: Jean and Volition comparison.
so there is a theory that the skill portraits are inspired by/ have some analogy to characters Harry meets in the game. In this case, the proposal is Jean= Volition. The evidence for such is Jean’s features between their portraits, and their manner of speech. The former is more subjective I feel, so I’ll use this to showcase their speech and some extra details.
Now, there is something to say about Volition trying to stop Harry from consuming drugs, a role Jean seemingly had to some degree (despite he himself being a speed addict), but I’ll address that later. Because before that we are doing to have to take a closer look at Volition first.
Part 2: Love and the Crown
Volition seems to be associated with the crown, it’s portrait seemingly depicts one, Suggestion calls it Crownhead and a passive check when Joyce starts feeling uncertain about Evart is done by Volition (instead of say Composure) and is likened to a crown cracking.
Now what am I cooking with this? I have a thought that this crown is refencing ‘Crown of Immortality’ that ‘Dolores Dei’ talks about, which itself is a reference to the Perikarnassian theory of love being a relay out of death. After all, the crown was given by the rulers of late antiquity, and antiquity is probably a good term to describe the age of the
Perikarnassians.
Now, one of the side theories of this is the concept of the ‘next world’ being part of the Perikarnassian teachings. Love being the string that connects them all even after ‘death’. Which is why the ‘next world’ mural references love.
And both Jean and Volition reference their appreciation of the concept indirectly, Jean when he stops the removal of the mural (saying that despite apparently all the complaints against it, people did actually want to keep it).
And Volition, if the Insulindian Phasmid runs away.
Part 3: So what now?
If the crown is a reference to immortality and through it, love, it potentially offers some additional angles of interpretation. For one, the Volition art depicting a semi-damaged/broken crown, and the visuals used of crown cracking on Joyce’s head when she finds out Evart might be a bit more bloodthirsty than she thought.
Then there’s a matter of Jean and his relationship with Harry, especially since if we assume that the state of Volition’s crown is meant to be whole (see Joyce’s being described as cracking), then what does it mean if Jean-influenced-Harry-Volition has a slightly broken one.
Potentially one angle of exploration is with regards to Harry/Jean’s addictions. Jean, it is commonly assumed, has high volition; it is how though he is a ‘sack of shit barely kept together by crazy glue’ dealing with depression, cluster headaches, Harry ect. he still keeps on going. Load bearing barely. He is also implied to have tried to restrain Harry’s consumption of drugs (of alcohol at least), a role Volition tries to do as well.
But we also have a Martin Luiga tweet noting that Jean has a speed addiction (among other things going on in his life).
I’ll leave that for everyone else to discuss however, the purpose of this post was basically to gather up a whole bunch of Things and bring them to Show. And I hope it might generate more Thoughts in general, one I’m not equipped to expound upon myself right down.
