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I recently was able to restart my adhd meds after a few months of them being out of stock so I have been reading wayyy more DE fanfic again, and something I find kind of interesting is how prominant certain in-game choices are in regards to Harry's fanon characterisation. I understand why the communist route and sorry-cop copotype are by far the most common ways ppl write Harry- I think most people playing the game end up identifying with those dialogue options and therefor end up following those routes (and its a fairly big time commitment to replay with the intention of seeing all the different route you could take)- but I do sometimes really wish there was more writing for the different copotypes and political orientations because the ways Harry's internal processes and position in the world are affected are REALLY interesting to me. I completely understand being uncomfortable (or just uninterested) by the idea of exploring an ultraliberal, moralist or facist character- I think fanfiction as a medium is compelling in part because you are conveying your own relationship to a piece of work, including your own moral reactions and beliefs applied upon the work's characters- but I think DE includes the option to *play as* a character occupying these roles (rather than just presenting them through npcs) in order to invite players to experience and examine the act of being these things both internally and within social contexts.
I think Harry can be fascinating and heartbreaking as a character study in any of these routes, and the gameplay can feel radically different between them even following the same plot. For example, I found the moralist route deeply evocative. It has an uneasy, desperate feeling to it as someone struggles to occupy the in-group, to live in normalcy and civility in the face of their own world ending. It creates an odd position for Harry as accutely disabled and vulnerable- contrasting percieved social acceptance and safety with the tearing of reality "as it should be" at the failure of the social mechanisms he believes in to meet their promise of happiness or safety. The gameover at the statue left me genuinely stunned when I first got it, its sort of horrifying in it's bluntness, and I found it really upsetting in this specific raw way. Its an excellent way of demonstrating, emotionally, the failure and cruelty of liberalism upon those who believe in it- but also its devastating for Harry's character as he is presented through the moralist dialogue. I also found it rlly compelling how the honor cop dialogue options explore Harry as a person seeking dignity in the face of their social ostracisation, and how apocalypse-cop explores the social modes of someone who has fallen out of the "normal reality space", how impaired his ability to live is in response to a full awareness of overwhelming, total threat. I'm not good at writing essays and stuff, idk if I'm explaining this well, but all of the routes are written with such an intimate and personal examination of how it *feels* to occupy different modes of being- of the way the world will treat you if you interact with it in certains ways, or the person you will be and the emotional shape your life will form depending on your framework. I think its kind of abstract and difficult to write properly, but I think its something you can reaaaallly sink yourself into if you find Harry a compelling character- I personally do (lmao) and its something I love seeing whenever I get the chance. I get the appeal of Harry as an exccentric mentally ill communist whose political beliefs are, in social contexts, extentions of his rejection of social norms and position as othered under liberal belief- I do also just enjoy the fact that this version of Harry is only one mode of being he could occupy, and the varying ways in which he is socially, emotionally or cognitively enabled/disabled by other modes of being, and the position the game takes in exploring them all as choices or as routes and reactions by the same person- as someone afloat and disempowered in the world attempting to find "how to live".
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