This Question Stumps #Christians Big Time - They Won’t Answer It Honestly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6A1oaR0yTY

#exvangelical #deconstruction #christianity #atheist

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 – That which hides hope with scars

CROSSPOST FROM MY COMADERY.

It may come as a surprise for some players to call Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 a Disabled narrative, and yet that is essential to the core of the story. Several of the main characters are disabled in different ways: physically disabled (Gustave and his prosthetic and Alicia with her burn injuries) and neurodivergent (Lune and Maelle).

The way disability is explored in this game provides a positive reinforcement that being disabled doesn’t mean a death sentence. We can thrive if given the support and care necessary for our survival. As the city and culture of Lumerie attests, this care and support is possible and crucial to everyone’s survival.

Lumeire: a city of cooperation

Disability isn’t seen as an impediment in the world of Clair Obscur, at least not at first. The game introduces us to Gustave, who in the opening sequence is presented as a Disabled character. He has only one arm, his other being quite the fancy prosthetic. Dialogue later in the prologue and Act 1 will reveal that the Lumeire society doesn’t seem to harbor negative perceptions of disability. No one thinks less of Gustave for this disability. 

Gustave and Lune both speak to Gustave’s apprentices, who worked together to create a prosthetic for Gustave’s lost arm. 

LUNE: Noco is quite obsessed with your arm. Your apprentices would be extremely proud knowing a gestral loved their work.
GUSTAVE: Yeah, they’d be insanely excited.
LUNE: chuckles Well, they did a great job designing your arm. It was quite a creative assignment you gave them.

Here we see how community comes together to aid those who are disabled. This society does not segregate based on ability, race, or sex from what little we see in the interactions within Lumeire’s inhabitants and the dialogue. Gustave may worry for Maelle, who is much younger being sixteen while the rest of the team is thirty-two, but Lune gently pushes back at him several times.

GUSTAVE: You know what Nevrons are capable of.
LUNE: She’ll be fine.

The people of Lumerie have faith in one another’s abilities, and are willing to challenge one another with projects. That doesn’t negate a sense of responsibility they may feel to protect one another, such as Gustave feels for Maelle. As the guardian of her, he can’t help but want her safe.

GUSTAVE: Maybe you should stay…
MAELLE: What?
GUSTAVE: It’s safer in the village.
MAELLE: And miss the chance to meet Esquie? No way.
GUSTAVE: Maelle…
MAELLE: I’m okay. We stick together.

Despite this conversation, he accepts her agency. This reveals an important aspect of their culture — the agency of individuals within it. Since their lives are cut short by the gommage, they are forced to cooperate and find new ways of being with one another. 

For example, in the prologue, if one goes up to a pile of furniture, Sophia will comment on how those preparing for gommage leave their belongings for others to reuse. Based on conversations Gustave has with various named characters, this culture or reuseability extends to repair and sharing of resources. This is very much a non-capitalist society where people are placed at its center.

This is one reason why disability doesn’t isolate people from society. Lumeire society doesn’t value people for what they can produce or what profits they can earn. It values them for the fact they are alive and cooperate with one another for survival.

In capitalist societies, value depends on profitability. People’s value in turn depends on the ability to market one’s labor to companies to earn a wage. The laborer often does not own the means of production, and so this selling of one’s labor into the job market is based in coercion since society is structured so that needs are only met if money is used to procure them. Wage work often requires long hours for a company, who will maximize profits over a person’s needs. This can and does result in treating workers like machines, as if they are merely cogs in the industrial machines of capital.

Marta Russel writes in Capitalism and Disability: 

“With the advent of capitalism, people were no longer tied to the land, but they were forced to find work that would pay a wage — or starve; and as production became industrialized people’s bodies were increasingly valued for their ability to function like machines. 

 Bosses could push non-disabled workers to produce at ever increasing rates of speed. Factory discipline, time-keeping and production norms broke with the slower, more self-determined and flexible work pattern into which many disabled people had been integrated.’ As work became more rationalized, requiring precise mechanical movements of the body, repeated in quicker succession, impaired persons — the deaf or blind, and those with mobility difficulties — were seen as — and, without job accommodations to meet their impairments, were — less ‘fit’ to do the tasks required of factory workers, and were increasingly excluded from paid employment.”

For those who cannot engage in wage work due to specific disabilities, the value of their personhood drops into negative territory. Often isolated and subjected to cruel invasions of one’s privacy and autonomy, disabled people are treated as disposable. This is due to them not having value in capitalist society.

For much of America’s existence, Disabled people were othered, often locked up in poorly maintained asylums, and died at much faster rates. Through the 1860s through 1940s, the Ugly Laws, as they came to be called, dominated many of the state and federal laws. These laws made it a crime for a person with a “physical or mental deformity” to be out in public places. Since a large percentage of Civil Wars veterans came home disabled, many of these laws targeted them.

As an example of an Ugly Law, San Francisco in 1867 banned: “any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object” from the “streets, highways,thoroughfares or public places of the city.” Other cities such as Chicago and Portland and many others soon followed suit.

These city officials claimed distinctions based on class, and furthered the demonization of disabled people with anti-begging ordinances. Thus locking out of public sphere and out of jobs many poor disabled people.

However, despite these ugly laws, the public grew fascinated with what they deemed “deviant bodies” and as early as 1840s, traveling “freak shows” in vaudeville, P.T. Barnum’s Museum in New York, circuses, county fairs, and World fairs. Disabled people were put on display based on “physical and mental deformities.” For some disabled people, this was the only way to survive.

Russell writes: 

“As a result, disabled persons came to be regarded as a social problem and a justification emerged for segregating them out of mainstream life and into a variety of institutions, including workhouses, asylums, prisons, colonies and special schools. Exclusion was further rationalized by Social Darwinists, who used biology to argue that heredity — race and genes — prevailed over the class and economic issues raised by Marx and others. Just as the ‘inferior’ weren’t meant to survive in nature, they were not meant to survive in a competitive society. Legislation, influenced by Social Darwinism and eugenics theory, was enacted in a number of jurisdictions for the involuntary sterilization of disabled people.”

Any benefits crafted to aid them came only after intense organizing across multiple movements in history. Even then, obtaining benefits comes with grueling and invasive means testing that excludes many who desperately needs it.

To illustrate this, let’s examine Social Security benefits. After the World Wars, Social Security was signed into action. However, the law means ‘medically unable to engage in substantial work activity.’ In a way, this disability category became essential to developing an exploitable workforce and controlling the labor supply today. Medicine focused on curing so-called “abnormalities,” and segregated those that couldn’t be cured into the category of ‘disabled.’ This served the will of the state and corporations who sought to push less exploitable workers out of the workforce.

Again Russell describes the process through which Disability came to be defined with United States of America: 

… Consequently, disabled individuals who are currently not in the mainstream workforce, who are collecting disability benefits and who could work if their impairments were accommodated, are not tallied into employers’ costs of doing business. The disability benefit system thus serves as a socially legitimized means by which the capitalist class can avoid hiring or retaining non-standard workers and can ‘morally’ shift the cost of supporting them onto poverty-based government programs — thereby perpetuating their poverty.

Being categorized as ‘disabled’, however, and the subsequent impoverishment that so many face when struggling to survive on disability benefits, serves another class function: it generates a very realistic fear among workers of becoming disabled. At base, the inadequate safety net is a product of the owning class’s fear of losing full control of what they do with the means of production; the American work ethic is a mechanism of social control that ensures capitalists a reliable work force for making profits. If workers were provided with a social safety net that adequately protected them through unemployment, sickness, disability, and old age, labour would gain a stronger position from which to negotiate their conditions of employment. American business retains its power over the working-class through a fear of destitution that would be weakened if the safety net were to actually become safe.”

Thus, in this way capitalism crafted the Disabled class in order to exert control over the labor workforce and segregate out people who do not fit the demands of labor. This approach places profits at the center, where people, often, come last in the equation. Disabled benefits is riddled with red tape, which can take multiple appeals and a judge hearing before the person has a chance of being accepted into it. Often Disabled people die before ever receiving a positive decision for benefits, and even if they do access it, much of the time it doesn’t cover all their needs, trapping them in an often deadly cycle of poverty. 

In contrast, Lumeire does not function like a capitalist city. People are central to the city’s focus. Value isn’t reliant on what one can produce for profit but on the fact a person exists. This collaborative and empathetic society functions this way for survival, yes, but the game hints that even prior Fracture, collaboration had been core to these people.

Sandra Daniels writes in Anti-Capitalist Resistance magazine about the Principle of Collective Access: 

“The principle of collective access is not simply about ensuring physical access into buildings or transportation, nor it is just about developing ‘inclusive‘ practice either. Collective access has to be created by recognising the inequalities that exist in power relationships, the fact that diverse groups of people are impacted upon by normative values and oppressive practices differentially. Inclusive practice requires addressing intersectional issues, managing conflicts of need and interest, as well as drawing on the creative imagination and experience of different groups of people.”

Collective access is incorporated into the society of Lumerie. Although it is done imperfectly — improvements are still needed, such as eliminating all steps entirely — the people draw on their creative imagination and the differing needs to build a functional, collective society for survival. 

Gustave, throughout Act 1, shares conversations with Maelle, Sciel, and Lune about life in Lumiere, where we see more examples of how collaborative their society is. For example, after finding the Gestral Village, Sciel and Gustave have a moment back at camp that speaks to the collaboration within their society.

SCIEL: I’m glad you’re here!
GUSTAVE: I would never abandon a fellow member of Aquafarm 3!
SCIEL: Aquafarm 3.
GUSTAVE: Aquafarm 3!
SCIEL: That was so long ago. You and Sophie were inseperable on that project.
GUSTAVE: Yeah, we were.
SCIEL: That was a good project. We fed so many neighborhoods at once. Kind of nostalgic thinking back. We really thought we were making a difference.
GUSTAVE: Hey, we’re still making a difference!

Sciel may take a more pessimistic look as the needs of the city weighed heavy on her, but Gustave refuses to fall into pessimism. He points out the difference they are still making, even on their current Expedition to fight the Paintress and end the Gommage. Per Sciel’s own words, Aquafarm 3 fed many neighborhoods, and their dialogue shows no evidence of placing monetary value on it. Instead, the value is placed on how many were fed by the project. 

This people-centric approach is one of the reasons they survive despite the bleak outlook of their lives, where each year the age one can live up to goes down, thus making their lives ever shorter.

In Lumerie, the environment may be damaged from the Fracture event, but the people found ways to smooth that over and still make areas passable for others. Streets here are made for people rather than vehicles, and the prologue shows this with the design of the streets and magic used to access grappling hooks and ropes. People with Disabilities do exist within the city, but they have mobility aids such as canes or crutches, prosthetics, and pictos to aid them in their day.

The people of Lumeire work together collectively to ensure as many people as possible survive. Considering how often pain and grief will rain down upon them, it makes sense that a collective energy to survive paints itself into the fabric of this city. To see how Lumeire’s collective care impacts the characters, let’s explore more of Gustave’s story.

Gustave and PTSD – Trauma and Shock

 The prologue reveals a world saturated with grief. A yearly gommage wipes from existence anyone over the age of the number the Paintress depicts on her monolith. This has forged a city of collectiveness and cooperation, but it’s also mired the characters in grief, ranging in complacency to acceptance to stubborn refusal.

Gustave is shown to be stubborn and unwilling to accept this is the way things much be. His dialogue with Sophie before the Gommage reveals this stubbornness plays a role in him joining Expedition 33. By the end of the prologue, the player will be subjected to their own shock and grief as the wonderfully written dialogue delves, with only a few lines, deep into the emotional lives of these characters. We connect with Gustave, Maelle, and Sophie right away, so when Sophie’s fate is revealed, it feels like a gut punch.

The game does not let up on the emotional punches. As soon as the expedition ship lands, we are greeted with what many players, myself included, assume is the villain of this story. However, the way the game shows this scene plays directly into how many people, when describing the moments leading up to and after the trauma, describe their sense of time. The seconds feel drawn out until the horrific moment unfolds, and then time speeds up and jumps in disjointed flashes.

The game masterfully shows this by the clang of the villain’s cane against the ground, which causes a blacked out screen briefly. Then we see our heroes leaving the ship. Another clang, and our heroes have noticed the villain. Yet more clangs as he approaches, as the commander Alan calls out to him. This method draws out the incoming confrontation, slowing down the pace considerably but also ramping up that sense of doom.

This man never says a word. He simply looks them over, lifts up his cane, and slices the head off of of Alan, the commander. That’s when the chaos starts, and the battle for survival is thrust on the entire expedition right away. 

This is also a cut-scene. The player can do nothing to stop it from happening. It feels like we too are paralyzed like Gustave is. Where we feel his horror and pain at the massacre. In this way, the game folds us into the emotional shock Gustave feels.

Another element lays in the detail of each part of the cut-scene. For example, Gustave is knocked to the ground hard enough that his ears ring. We hear the ringing with him. He struggles to stay conscious and keep track of Maelle, his ward, but his vision grows hazy and a bright light starts to suffuse the area.

It wasn’t until my second time watching this cut-scene that I glimpsed Maelle’s fate. A shadow of a person leans over where she lays, stunned by a knockout blow, but then Gustave briefly blacks out. We don’t see who or what that figure does beyond kneel at Maelle’s side.

When he stumbles to his feet, Maelle is gone, most of his expedition killed, and those left are being yanked into the mists by Nevrons no one can see. When Gustave ends up confronted by the silent killers, the game fades to white.

This brilliantly directed cut-scene reveals several important narrative clues:

1. There are people on the Continent (as in outside Lumeire’s dome) that can age. Why gommage doesn’t effect them has Gustave, Lune, and the others baffled.
2. Someone or something looks out for Maelle. We don’t learn why until Act 2.
3. The lethality of the Nevrons and the diversity of their attacks reveal how expeditioners are killed. Now we know why Lumeirians rarely see anyone return from an expedition.
4. The trauma of this event casts a dark shadow over the expedition’s survivors. Details in their reactions, words, behaviors, and the sounds spell out the symptoms of shock. The games music and audio effects amplify these symptoms and reactions.

To show point four, we hear, almost as soon as Gustave awakes in a lush canyon, the fast beating of his heart. It sounds as pounding drums in our ears, and he thumps his chest and struggles to slow his breathing. The racing heart and struggle to breathe is a sign of shock and/or panic, both typical symptoms of developing PTSD.

The sequence of us guiding him through the canyon until he reaches the mound of dead expeditioners has a disjointed feel to it. He never says a word, and his behaviors are largely instinctual, especially when faced with a Nevron at one point. He doesn’t stop to use his lumina converter on that Nevron, only stumbles forward as if in a daze. His shock reveals developing PTSD symptoms.

Originally termed ‘shellshock,’ Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was first identified during the World Wars when soldiers exhibited ‘shock’ after brutal battles, where their compatriots were blown to pieces. The symptoms lingered and caused great distress in returning soldiers. Researchers, psychologists, and doctors alike would soon discover that PTSD can form from any traumatic event, not just after a brutal battle.

If left untreated, PTSD can become debilitating and destructive to one’s life and relationships. Often soldiers with severe PTSD struggled to return to society with many ending up in dangerous situations, prisons, asylums, homeless, or worse. Those heavily afflicted with PTSD were deemed unreliable laborers for a capitalist society’s needs, and thus were often shifted into the disabled populations.

PTSD doesn’t just happen to those recovering from war. Any traumatic event can induce this within an individual. If the traumatic event happens over a longer period of time, such as child abuse or trapped in an abusive relationship, the patient is often diagnosed with Complex-PTSD, which is a more intense and debilitating form of PTSD. It’s also requires a slightly different form of treatment since the way memories are stored differs from a traumatic event that happens in a brief amount of time. 

Symptoms of PTSD may include (C-PTSD also includes the following in its list):

• Intrusive memories, nightmares,
• avoidance,
• negative changes in thinking and behavior,
• suicidal thoughts,
• feeling emotionally numb or struggling to feel any positive emotion,
• feeling detached from events or friends or family,
• rapid heartbeats and/or breathing,
• ringing in one’s ears or diminished senses or vice versa where one’s senses feel intensely heightened
• feeling as if in constant danger,
• irritability and/or outbursts of anger,
• being easily startled or frightened,
• trouble concentrating,
• self-destructive behavior.

Because the game took great pains to show us these characters before the traumatic event, we can compare who they were in that prior time to how they react/act after the traumatic act. The changes we see then relate to the effects of surviving a massively traumatic attack.

 This game paints Gustave, our lead in Act 1, as someone in shock, who is developing PTSD based on how his symptoms manifest in his behaviors. Within a cavern filled with dead expeditioners, he finds Catherine, who at the farewell festival had drank wine with Gustave, dead with a Nevron spear in her chest. It proves too much for his shock-saturated mind.

This scene becomes a cut-scene, where the player is once against helpless to intervene. We can only watch in mounting horror as he sits down beside a fallen comrade, manifests his gun, and prepares himself mentally for the deed. Indeed, if left untreated, suicide risk increases exponentially for those suffering from PTSD.

The camera angle stays on Gustave for this scene, but there is a flash of motion on the edge of the right side of the screen. It’s after he closes his eyes that the person speaks.

“If you do that, we both die.”

Lune chooses to situate herself next to him, so that the blast of his gun — considering how his weapons and pictos work — would catch her as well as him. By doing so, she trusts him to choose life because she understands that even if Gustave doesn’t put much stock in his own life right now, he will put stock in keeping other people alive.

Once again, the game shows us who these characters are. Lune will put herself into danger if it means saving another, and Gustave will do all he can to not harm those with which he allies. Two different reactions that speak to the same truth: compassion for another person. Despite their very different reactions to trauma, the cooperative spirit of their home-city invokes compassion for one another. Lune will not let Gustave die, and Gustave, in turn, can’t leave Lune to face Nevrons alone.

The level of detail contained in these cut scenes, the careful staging, the camera shots and angles, all play a role in emphasizing crucial elements of the story and characters’ personalities. Because of the careful thought put into each frame and layer in the game, we are able to explore how the game reckons with disability. 

For Gustave, he has been disabled twice — once when he lost his arm, and again with the traumatic attack that leaves him with PTSD. Despite this, he continues forward the best he can. The game portrays him in a positive light, and that is incredibly unusual for a form of media.

To explore why this is, let’s take a look at another of the disabled characters in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — Alicia Dessendre.

Alicia and the portrayal of disabled characters

When we first meet Alicia Dessendre, it is before the reveal that we are in a painted world of a Canvas. Instead, we see a heavily scarred woman with one eye who appears in Maelle’s nightmares. She wears a porcelian mask over part of her face to cover the scars.

The first time the woman doesn’t speak, only seems fascinated by Maelle. She reaches out as if to touch Maelle. The next encounter is when Alicia speaks to Renoir about the innocence Maelle has due to the nature of Maelle’s existence versus her own. This conversation roots itself in heavy shame from the burdens of her scars and a guilt that is unnamed. 

Often in media, ugliness and physical scars or deformities are used to signal a villain and/or evil. One can see this best highlighted in Wizard of Oz: here Glinda is portrayed as a good witch who is also beautiful, while the evil witch, Elphaba, is shown with green skin, a hunched back, warts on her face, and a crooked nose. The evil witch is the one who imprisons Dorothy and her loyal friends, and ends in her death by melting. This trope also appears in many Disney movies, where the villain has a visible deformity to mark them. Other movies such as James Bond and many Marvel and DC movies use disfigurement and/or mental health as signals that a person is a villain.

One famous scarred figure and disabled villain is Darth Vader from Star Wars, who in Return of the Jedi reveals he can’t live without his suit. So although he knows he will die when he asks Luke to take off the helmet, he insists so he can see Luke with his own eyes instead of through the suit. We see the scars and disfigurement of his face then. Despite this, Darth Vader’s story is one of the few outliers where a villain is seen as redeemable without the need to cure them of their disability. He ultimately dies in the end, regardless, which sends another message — disabled people can’t thrive, and death is their ending.

The UK-based group named Changing Faces has been pushing film industry to change the way people with disfigurements and other disabilites are portrayed on screen. Their campaign, ‘I am not your villain,’ fights to dismantle this trope. As a disabled person in their video shares, “it just sets this stereotype that people who are different are scary and mean.” Another person says concerning society’s view of his disfigurement: “They may make a snap judgement that the person is evil or there’s something negative about them.”

These stereotypes increases the discrimination faced by people with physical differences and/or disabilities, and also impacts their mental and physical health. The need for stories that hold a positive representation of disability is crucial.

In contrast, heroes are painted as non-disabled, athletic types. Amanda Leduc writes in her book Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space concerning heroes in Disney movies: 

“Most importantly, it’s a message that assumes absolute and unrealistic able-bodiedness. No one with glasses. No crutches, no wheelchairs, no visible differences from girl to girl apart from the colour of their eyes and hair. Perfectly symmetrical faces abound. Some of the princesses – Mulan and Merida in particular – are athletes, with the kind of unrealistic body control and power that even able-bodied people often struggle to obtain. The message is that heroism isn’t possible without physical ‘perfection,’ especially for girls.”

These messages paint an excluding picture, and despite millions of disabled people existing within the United States alone, very few games, films, and other media portray disabled people positively and give them a chance at a happy ending.

This exclusion and the use of disfigurement to denote evil has its roots within the capitalist system, which built up the category of disability in order to segregrate the labor into those that can perform labor and those that were disposable. Over time, the disposable caste became associated with badness, ugliness, and valueless.

In the United States, this view of disability extended to those trapped in the slave trade. Moya Bailey and Izetta Autumn Mobley, in their article ‘Work in the Intersections: A Black Feminist Disability Framework,” wrote:

“Race – and specifically Blackness – has been used to mark disability, while disability has inherently ‘Blackened’ those perceived as unfit. Black people were – and continue to be – assumed intellectually disabled precisely because of race.”

As an example of this, after Civil war, insane asylums increased, and patients were segregated based on gender, race, and “physical and mental deformities.” These places were often deadly due to poor medical hygiene and care, and experiments were often conducted on patients. The diagnoses for admission ranged from epilepsy to religious excitement to disease of the brain to fatigue to hysteria.

Those admitted included war veterans, women, Indigenous people, Black people, and anyone the medical establishment deemed ‘physically or mentally deformed.’ They’d often become trapped there, with their right to freedom rescinded. It was incredibly hard to leave the insane asylum, as even arguing for freedom could be deemed a ‘mental deformity.’

For Black patients, medical institutions relied on harmful and inaccurate ‘race theories’ — many of which described Black people as feeling less pain and labeled as intellectually inferior than those deemed ‘white’ by US standards. This resulted in even worse care than white patients, increasing the malnourishment and mortality rates.

Historian Jim Downs wrote: 

“freedom depended upon one’s ability and potential to work… Scores of disabled slaves remained enslaved for decades.”

If not trapped in their prior enslavement, they often ended up incarcerated within insane asylums. Due to the ugly laws enacted during this time period, many who were deemed ‘disabled’ by society could not go out in public. So if they could not labor the way capitalists deemed acceptable, they were labeled as disposable, bad, dirty, and other untrue stereotypes to ‘justify’ the eugenics and incredible harm committed against their bodies and minds.

The fight to end institutionalization, as this is called, continues today. Disabled people of all races, genders, ages, citizenship status, and class have collaborated across movement lines to push for their rights, starting with labor and right to work regulations, such as Section 504, to sweeping laws that prohibited discrimination based on ability such as the ADA, Americans with Disability Act.

Despite these wins, many stories still fell back on the stereotypes that painted disabled people as inferior, bad, dirty, ugly, and/or villainous. Finding stories that showed disabled people’s lives as worthy of life, dignity, liberty, and happiness was relatively rare.

Amanda Leduc writes: 

“If society is used to not seeing disabled people in stories, society becomes used to not seeing disabled people in real life. If society is used to not seeing disabled people in real life, society will continue to build a world that makes it exceedingly difficult for disabled people to participate in said world, thus perpetuating the problem. In this world, there is no need for a wheelchair ramp because hardly anyone who wins an award will need one to get onstage. But what if we took it for granted that anyone, regardless of ability, might be able to achieve, and built our stages and our environments accordingly? 

It is time for us to tell different stories. 

It is time for a different world.”

This is where Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 enters the picture, as the game shows a willingness to tackle disability in a way that rarely falls back on negative presentations of disabled people. Even the societies within the Expedition 33 world originate from a collective care framework rather than a profit framework.

Because Lumerie is not a capitalist society, it’s view of disability falls into the collective care framework. We see this painted again and again in the prologue, various interactions and conversations by characters throughout the game, and in the endings. Thus, we see how Lumerie is a different world telling us a different story from the norm we usually see in video games and other fictional media. Disability is painted into the world with a thoughtfulness that surprises, considering how often Disability is used to denote ‘evil’ or ‘antagonists.’ 

Although this game does fall for the trap Leduc mentions, the athletic prowess of the leads, other non-athletic disabled characters still exist and are painted with care. Such as the man in the prologue with the cane, who asks Gustave and Sophie for a favor for his son. He is able to exist as himself, without great athletic prowess, and still have his concerns be validated and needs taken care of just like any other person.

In turn, the disfigurement trope is turned on its head by Clair Obscur.

Despite how ominous our first encounters with Alicia is in Act 1, she’s never the true villain. In fact, she does not harm the heroes, only shows up to silently witness Maelle from a distance or when she is sleeping. She shows a curiosity and deep sadness toward Maelle’s existence and this connection the two share. In Act 1, the player doesn’t know what that connection could be.

By the end of Act 2, we learn that Alicia is prepared to die and accepts her fate. Earlier she had given Verso a letter, and he waits to read it until the Paintress is defeated and the Expedition 33 returns to Lumeirie triumphant. Here she reveals the painful, genocidal truth of who really implements the gommage, and her acceptance of her likely death. She embodies the tragic character, doomed by the narrative to never be happy. This is the fate of many disabled people in fictional stories. So although Alicia is not a villain, simply an observer of events, she still embodies the typical tragic ending for Disabled people.

Does Clair Obscur change that fate for our Disabled heroes? In the case of Gustave, he thrives in his moments as a hero but subsequently dies protecting his loved ones. But he is also not the only Disabled character in the game that has a chance to be a hero.

Maelle = ‘real world’ Alicia Dessendre and family

In Act 3, we learn that Maelle is actually real world Alicia, who lost her memories when she was painted into the Canvas as a baby by her real world mother. The Alicia we’d encountered thus far is the painted version crafted by her mother. 

In the real world, Alicia is shown as highly isolated, stuck in an abusive environment, and her autonomy largely lost. She is a symbol of how the real world treats Disabled people. They aren’t seen as holding value. Clea says as much during the start of Act 3. Here is the latter end of their dialogue:

ALICIA: (unable to speak due to injury, she tries to sound out the words anyway) I want to help.
CLEA: You will do nothing. You’re too weak to do anything useful. You’d be a liability. The Writers used you against us once before. They won’t hesitate to use you again. And I can’t promise to make the same choice as Verso. Verso traded his life for yours. I both love and hate him for that. The damn fool. Although, if you really want to be useful, then enter the Canvas and help Renoir. I need him back here sooner rather than later. I can fight this war alone, but I’d really rather not. Do you think you can do that?
ALICIA: … (gasps out a yes)
CLEA: Lest you forget, those two are in there because your naivety cost Verso his life.
ALICIA: … 
CLEA: Good. Go to the Canvas when you’re ready. And repaint your throat while you’re in there before you completely forget how to have a conversation.

In this conversation, Clea is revealed to be hyper critical of her family members, and although she does seem to care for them to an extent, she also shows great anger at the situation. However, she specifically blames Alicia for Verso’s death. She first dismisses Alicia as too weak to be useful and calls her a liability. She has no faith in Alicia’s abilities to do anything. She then makes it clear that the Writers used Alicia. However, Clea doesn’t lay the blame squarely at the Writers’ feet. Instead, she includes Alicia in this blame, and makes it clear twice.

This is a form of emotional and verbal abuse through the use of blame, shaming, and devaluing the person with very little sympathy for their needs or agency. Alicia needs support and care, not this verbal stabbing for things she likely had no true control over. Alicia is not the one who starts the fire that kills Verso, and even Clea admits that Alicia was used. Thus, Alicia had no idea what the Writers had planned. For a survivor of a traumatic even that nearly costs them their life, this conversation contributes to that trauma. Clea shows little to no empathy for Alicia in this scene. 

Since she is going away to work against the Writers — possibly her revenge — she needs Alicia out of her hair. So what does Clea do? She offhandedly suggests Alicia go into the Canvas to assist Renoir, but once Alicia does so, Clea’s advice to her makes it clear that she knew Alicia did not have the experience to do this. It serves as a calculated move to remove Alicia from Clea’s responsibility. Yes, what Clea must face likely requires much of her time and energy, but the callous disregard for Alicia and her feelings and needs highlights how little support Alicia has in the ‘real world.’

This isn’t the first time she verbally abuses Alicia in this story either. We see painfully barbed comments that strike at Alicia’s insecurities whenever we encounter the ‘Faded Woman’ in Forgotten Battlefield and the Endless Tower. Clea’s dialogue here reveals that prior to Verso’s death, Alicia did not engage in painting as much as the other members of the family. Instead, she often read books and kept to herself. Her isolation preceded the traumatic death of Verso and significantly worsens after his death.

At the end of Act 2, while in the Monolith, the characters catch glimpses of Aline’s memories. In them, we see a strict and precise task master, who strives to teach Painting to her children. One memory reveals Alicia arguing with her mother, and her mother’s harsh gestures imply equally harsh words. Alicia runs away in tears, but because these scenes are black and white, it’s hard to know exactly who they are until after the reveal of who Maelle actually is at the end of the Act.

Later in Act 3, especially if one goes to The Reacher, we learn that Aline only found one of Maelle’s paintings worthy of being placed on the wall — a realistic rendition of the manor. No other painting by her is deemed good enough, and Maelle admits that she preferred other activities like reading, writing, and exploring outdoors. She didn’t fit in with the strict norms of her family, and she suffered isolation and neglect for it.

This paints a world in which Alicia has little to no support. She’s essentially isolated, her world relegated to the walls of the Dessendre manor, and her voice literally taken from her. The scars of the fire are still visible on her face and throat, and one of her eyes is missing. It makes one wonder at the state of healthcare in this world, because even in our real world, skin grafts to assist in healing burns were developed starting in the 1800s. Is the Dessendre’s ‘real world’ thus not an allegorical setting akin to the 1800s? It’s hard to say based on the few scenes we’re given of their ‘real world,’ but either way, the lack of care given to Alicia shows a blatant disregard for her needs.

Clea may care for her younger sister to some degree, but her verbally abusive nature whittles away at what little confidence and hope Alicia has left after the life-threatening fire. Layer this with her mother’s brutal and precise task master approach, and we’re left with a fairly hostile environment. Research has shown healing can be heavily hindered if one stays in abusive and hostile environments.

Does Verso provide support? Prior to his death, the only clues we’re given relies on the Axon Renoir painted to represent him: The One Who Guards Truth With Lies. Although the Axon mostly represents how Renoir saw his family members, the Painted Verso fits this persona in disturbing ways. Throughout Act 2, Painted Verso outright lies to the team and admits to it. He omits important information until he is called out on it, and then tries to justify his behavior with no sign of accountability for the harmful impact it had. 

Perhaps the most alarming action he did is the conversation Verso has with Maelle that maxes out the relationship mechanic. 

MAELLE: So wait, you’ve been watching me this whole time? From afar?
PAINTED VERSO: I’d slip back into Lumeire occassionally.
MAELLE: You knew where I was, and you left me there too.
PAINTED VERSO: I couldn’t exactly take you with me, but I tried to look out for you. And once you left Lumiere I stayed close. I pulled the really dangerous Nevrons out of your path, and I pulled you away on the beach.
MAELLE: … but you also let Renoir kill the rest of the Expedition. You didn’t help them.
PAINTED VERSO: There were too many of them to save.
MAELLE: I need to ask you something…
PAINTED VERSO: What?
MAELLE: You wouldn’t lie to me, right?
PAINTED VERSO: I think we’re well past that.
MAELLE: On the cliff… Gustave…
PAINTED VERSO: What is it?
MAELLE: Did you let Renoir kill Gustave? Could you have saved him?

It’s here the cut-scene offers the player the choice whether to lie to Maelle or speak the truth. It’s the first time in the game, that the player gets to choose an option that speaks truth rather than lies. Up to this point, many of Painted Verso’s dialogue options held only remnants of truth amidst a field of lies and omitted facts. In Act 2, he gaslight Maelle, manipulated her in rather disturbing ways, in order to push for the outcome he wanted.

If the player chooses the truth option, Maelle’s final gradient attack will be unlocked, but if the player does not, then that final gradient attack will stay locked. The lie option ends the scene with Maelle’s trust broken and her reactions rather forced, her pain evident. .But what is the truth then?

Verso simply sighs and answers, “Yes.” He admits to letting Gustave die. 

Maelle’s pained sigh, her facial expression, and body language show how it pains her to hear. And yet, she does her best to try to forgive him for it. This moment is one of the few times Painted Verso doesn’t try to mask his truth with veiled lies or misdirection. He directly states he did it because he was afraid that “if you found out about the Canvas and he was there, you’d refuse to help me send Maman home.” In turn, Maelle simply thanks him for telling the truth and proceeds to change the subject.

The game insists that the bond between them grew, but Maelle is more guarded and uses false cheer in the conversations they have at camp after this scene. It seems to me that the game lies about their bond growing closer — again that clue that Verso is an unreliable narrator — as Maelle’s trust feels fractured afterward. But because of how Lumeire raised her with kindness and care, she does her best to move forward and forgive. She’s already learned her lesson that revenge does not heal the wound of grief. She’d pursued it by destroying Painted Renoir before the end of Act 2, and she learns from this that revenge is not the path to healing.

For Verso? To let Gustave die, to gaslight and lie to Maelle about it until confronted, is a level of abuse and harm that rivals even Clea. As much as Painted Verso cares for Maelle, he also did her great harm. The only time he truly apologizes is in this moment, and yet he also seems to backtrack on this in a later conversation within a dungeon, where he justifies his actions up to that point in the story. So does he truly hold himself accountable for the harm done? Not really.

Renoir, to his credit, does not blame Alicia at any point for what happened to her. He seems to truly care for her, since he watches over her throughout Expedition 33’s journey as the Curator. The axon he paints for her, in contrast with the others, is about his expectations and hopes for her to reach her potential. While the other axons he painted embodied the personality that he saw in that family member: Verso — his manipulation and layers of masks that hide his truth, Aline — she who paints with wonder but also can trap a person in an illusion, Clea — a person with a city on their back who refuses to accept help. Hers is the only axon already defeated before Expedition 33. Yet despite his high expectations for Alicia — as in her axon reaches for the stars — this proves more a burden than a help. 

Thus, when the player finds this axon, Maelle’s cut-scene shows her listening to Painted Alicia, abiding by her Painted Self’s wishes, and then freeing the axon to drift away toward the stars. Through this action, she literally lets go of her father’s expectations and accepts who she actually is. She doesn’t have to try to live up to it. She simply needs to be herself. It’s a massive growth for her character, but it also shows that even Renoir, who is not abusive to her, has failed to truly see her. 

Instead, his duties to the family, his devotion to his craft, and his time spent in Canvas — he speaks at one point to hundreds of worlds he and Aline made together — implies an unintentional neglectfulness toward Alicia. Thus, even her more accepting father, still doesn’t make time for her, and in their final confrontation scene at the end of Act 3, she asks him to please give her the autonomy she desperately seeks. The one thing that everyone in the Dessendre family keeps taking from her.

To return to her scene with Clea, situated as before the events of the Canvas in the Clair Obscur timeline, Alicia must face several painful truths: she is newly disabled and without support. She is blamed for Verso’s death, which adds to her guilt and pain. This, in turn, increases her isolation, where she hides in her room unable to face a world that refuses to offer her any sympathy.

For what does she have to look forward to at this point? So, despite wishing to help, Clea leaves her with only one choice: enter the Canvas to assist Renoir.

Except she’s doomed to fail as Clea doesn’t bother to properly train or prepare her. Her ‘advice’ gets tossed at Alicia last minute, during her panic attack, and as someone whose had panic attacks prior, it is near impossible to hear what others are saying during them. Clea doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. It puts Alicia out of her hair, so Clea can focus on the ‘real world’ issues and ignore the needs of her sister.

Thus, their mother easily takes hold of Alicia and paints her into Lumerie as a baby. 

Whether Aline does this to help her daughter is unknown. It is far more likely that this is a calculated move to give the people of Lumeire a protector. Aline doesn’t want Alicia to side with Renoir in this conflict, and what better way to convince her youngest than to have Alicia be born as a Lumeirian? Alicia is given no choice in this, and the act of painting over her suppresses her ‘real world’ memories. Leaving her only with this ‘feeling’ that she’s different somehow, and that something is not quite right.

Thus, her ‘birth’ as a baby and her growing up as Lumeirian reveals a very different childhood for her. Over this, we hear a loving monologue, where the words are not riddled with near-impossible expectations to reach for the stars. Instead, it’s layered in a hope that she will be surrounded by love, and that she, in turn, will show this love as a shining light to others.

Maelle, Lune, and Neurodivergency

As a Lumierian, she has no facial scarring or visible deformities or illness. She’s abled-bodied and fairly well-adjusted due to the care and support Lumerians give her. She’s taught people-centric values that deeply contradict the more individualistic ‘real world.’ So although her Lumeirian self isn’t necessarily disabled, she still struggles with feeling like she was out of sync with the world. She says as much to Gustave, Lune, Sciel, and eventually Verso. She never felt like she belonged, and her ‘weirdness’ though tolerated tended to put her apart from other children.

Her time as a Lumeirian gives her a loving chosen family, yes, but it also plays with an interesting neurodivergent theme. Feeling ‘out of sync’ or that there’s something everyone knows but she doesn’t are all fairly common feelings within the neurodivergent world of those with ADHD, Autism, and other learning and behavior differences.

Lune also exhibits highly neurodivergent behaviors, which may explain how the two gravitated toward each other throughout the course of their journey. Lune felt cut off and out of place among her people just like Maelle. She struggles with social interactions at times, has a deep yearning for truth and learning, and often speaks her mind bluntly. Maelle falls into a similar pattern with her own bluntness and desperate need to know the truth. Both tend to fall into patterns of silence, where they observe more than they speak — Lune even more so than Maelle. They also have a tendency to hyper fixate, which Lune does continuously throughout the story.

For example, at the start of Act 2, Sciel lays on the ground and looks up at the stars while Lune works on a rock near her.

SCIEL: What are you working on?
LUNE: Contingency plans. If we fail Expedition 32 will need every bit of information we have.
SCIEL: But how are you going to get it to them?
LUNE: I asked the gestrals for help.
SCIEL: Smart.

Here we see Lune fervently working on her notes regarding everything they’ve learned thus far. This is an action she does continously throughout the game. In a way, one could describe her work as a hyper fixation. As the scene continues to play out, Lune brings up the memory of how they met at the Crooked Tower.

LUNE: I was surprised to find you there. I thought I was the only one who knew about that room.
SCIEL: I had to get away from the harbor and those damn petals everywhere. So I climbed up.
LUNE: It wasn’t logical but part of me really believed my parents and their expedition had succeeded. That they’d stopped her. Then the paintress woke, and I knew they weren’t coming home.
SCIEL: You know, it meant a lot to me, the comfort we shared that day. But you avoided me after. Why?
LUNE: It — it wasn’t personal. I cut a lot of people out of my life.
SCIEL: Okay. Not personal.
LUNE: That day, when I knew my parents had failed, they were counting on me to finish their work.

Here Lune shares the reason for her hyperfixation. As an apprentice to her parents’ work, along with Tristan from the prologue, she had been brought up with the idea that the work must be completed regardless. So in her grief, she turns to this work, to her calculations, her mapping, her research of past expeditions. She pushes aside attempts by others to build friendships with her. Although she realizes, talking with Sciel in this scene, that friendships aren’t a distraction, she still maintains afterward that hyper fixation. She simply allows the others to help hold her in check, which is similar to what Maelle will do throughout Act 2 and especially Act 3.

Hyper fixations on specific topics are incredibly common for neurodivergent people, and it can become easy to fall into that fixation, to not allow any distractions, to work on it day and night for weeks or months or years. Often to the detriment of one’s health. Part of that stems from the way our brains are wired, but part of that may also stem from our environment, how we were raised, and if we use it as a form of escape.

Due to how toxic American society is for disabled people, including neurodivergent people, forms of escape were often necessary for survival. Clair Obscur may not have the same originating trajectory for disablement as our real world, but they do have a similar drive to escape from intense emotions like grief and pain. We see this here with Lune.

And we see this with Maelle, once we learn the truth of who she is. She struggles to connect with people; hyper fixates on things she enjoys such as fencing; quietly observes; and speaks bluntly her truth. She, like Lune, also struggles to meet people’s gazes, often looking to the side or away from them as they speak. In contrast, other characters like Sciel and Verso will meet the other’s gaze steadily. Small tells like this are meant to show the differences in behaviors that are often used to denote neurodivergent characters.

Similar to how Lune escaped into her work, Maelle may escape to this world where she is treated with love, care, and respect, where her autonomy is respected, but is that truly a bad thing? Considering the abuse she faces in her ‘real world,’ I’ve argued (as have others) this isn’t. One can read my analysis of Clair Obscur’s endings here.

Despite their differences, they are still accepted within Lumerian culture, as they still are able to contribute to it in their own unique ways. Again, the value placed on them comes from their existence as a person worthy of care. This is in contrast to our world where value is placed on the labor one performs in order for their employer to increase their profits.

So although they may admit to feeling out of place, their ‘weirdness’ and behaviors are accepted in a way that does not happen in the ‘real world.’

Conclusion and Epilogue

The ending of the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 offers the player two choices. They can side with Painted Verso, who wishes to end the Canvas and the existence of every sentient being in it. Or they can side with Maelle who wishes to save the Canvas and restore life to those gommaged by Renoir. 

It’s a difficult choice. In my last essay I dug into both choices to show details that hint at how the game misleads the player. 

In Maelle’s ending, she is given agency, autonomy, and her chosen family who supports her, even despite her disability. She may choose to keep her painted face rather than the scarred one, but you can still see remnants of scars on her neck, and her neurodivergency doesn’t go away as it’s core to who she is. 

In Verso’s ending, Maelle returns to the ‘real world’ as Alicia, and ends up trapped in the same suffocating and isolating environment that prevents her healing. We see no true changes in her parents behaviors or even Clea. When Alicia/Maelle looks toward Clea, her older sister’s face hardens, and she soon walks away. This reveals that Clea has not changed, and she still blames Alicia. As for the parents, none of them look at Alicia/Maelle in the scene. They hold one another and look at the grave. No one reaches out to make sure she’s okay. No one comforts her, and she only smiles when she hallucinates her Canvas family. When they gommage away, her body language wilts. 

Again, healing while still in a hostile/unsupportive and/or abusive environment complicates the process, and often makes it near impossible. As the triggers that exacerbate the trauma symptoms continue. One must leave in order to find true healing. Alicia/Maelle cannot do this in Verso’s ending. She has no real support system.

It’s only in Maelle’s ending that we see her with her chosen family, who loves and supports her. Who holds her accountable, and Maelle, throughout all three Acts, shows a willingness to be held accountable, apologize, and do better. (Her interaction with Verso after Maelle grants Painted Alicia her wish reveals how Maelle listens to Painted Verso’s feelings, acknowledges them, apologies, and does her best to do better.) This shows she can grow and learn from her mistakes, and those around her provide the accountability for her to stay true to the path that is just and kind.

Maelle’s ending also provides agency to Painted Verso. Her question to him plays over the scene at the opera house, where she asks, “If you could grow old, would you?”

It’s an offer for him to finally end his immortality and be freed from his legacy as a painted manifestation of a dead brother. The game however cuts the scene with a glimpse of Alicia in the ‘real world,’ where her face is covered with paint to signify she has the Canvas/Painting sickness. WIth how the colors fade out of the scene and Maelle’s sad smile, both recognize that they are dying.

But for Maelle, she is able to share her life with people who love and support her, who provide her with care, and who see her worth regardless. This gives her the space and time to start the long healing process. It’s a promise of sorts in her ending, and it’s absent in Verso’s ending.

Thus, depending on the player’s choice, Maelle can either lose her autonomy, her voice, her support network, her chosen family — where people choose for her — or Maelle keeps her autonomy, her voice, her support networks and chosen family. Where she is able to choose this for herself.

Often Disabled people’s choices are restricted, if not taken from us entirely by people who believe they know what’s best for us. This is why institutionalization was so popular throughout our history, and still is today, and it’s why disabled people like myself fight so hard to end institutionalization, to push for us to be where the decisions are made about our health and our lives.

Clair Obscur paints us two endings that reveals this dire choice: essentially institutionalizing Alicia/Maelle or giving her agency to choose what is best for herself.

And that’s really what it comes down to for Disabled people, isn’t it? Our current society tells us that we cannot choose for ourselves, that we are ruined, that we are disposable, that we do not deserve care and support — all because we cannot perform labor the way capitalist society demands. These messages are painted all over media, such as using disability as a trope for villainy or for tragic deaths to bolster a hero’s journey. Will we be given the care and support we need to thrive? Will we be given agency to choose our own fate and route to healing?

Clair Obscur offers that choice to the player, thus placing the fate of a disabled person in their hands. In a way, the player acts as the judge who determines the fate of a disabled person, to determine whether they ever access the care and benefits they need. It is a replica of how our real world works, and it forces a painful glimpse into the struggles of disabled people. 

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game about Disability and Grief. It paints the world in gorgeous detail, provides Lumeire’s culture of collective care and cooperation as a foil to our more profit-driven, oppressive real world. It twists disabled tropes on its head and asks hard questions about the fate of disabled people, the fate of entire sentient species, and what it takes to heal.

In a world replete with painful and inaccurate disability representation, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 shines as a rare gem. And as a disabled and neurodivergent person, I am grateful for that journey.

Thank you for reading.

#AnalyzingVideoGames #antiCapitalism #capitalism #Characters #collectiveCare #CultureOfCare #Deconstruction #disabilities #disability #disabilityJustice #disabled #games #healing #healingFromAbuse #HistoryOfDisability #justice #PTSD #videoGames #writing

I didn’t lose God when I left religion—
I found a deeper connection beyond the walls.
✍🏽 New reflective piece: RAPTURE

#Rapture #SpiritualAwakening #Deconstruction #Faith #PersonalGrowth #WritingCommunity

Read “RAPTURE“ by LIFE'S MOMENTS AND EVENTS on Medium: https://medium.com/open-microphone/rapture-0d97d1ce7c76?sk=1207f2af9534120ca0a2e830afd631ae

Critique du biopouvoir : dénaturaliser l’État pour penser la domination contemporaine

La #critique du #biopouvoir ne vise pas seulement les #techniques de #gestion des vies : elle oblige à dénaturaliser l’#État lui-même. #Foucault, #Derrida, #Agamben, #Clastres : tous montrent que l’État n’est pas une donnée naturelle, mais une #construction historique, dont la #biopolitique n’est qu’une #évolution – et non un #progrès. #déconstruction #PhilosophiePolitique…

https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/06/17/critique-du-biopouvoir-denaturaliser-letat-pour-penser-la-domination-contemporaine/

#SundaySchool

We Created #GOD in Our Own Image, and in Our Image God was Created - God is an #Illusion from Our #Mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBhEpDeBW2A

#atheist #exvangelical #deconstruction #gods

Jaurès : l’État, la guerre et le monopole de la violence – La militarisation permanente du politique

Jean #Jaurès a montré comment l’#État moderne justifie sans cesse son #armée et son #MonopoleDeLaViolence par la menace de la #guerre. La préparation militaire s’inscrit ainsi au cœur de la vie #politique et sociale, façonnant durablement l’organisation collective. #violence #CritiqueSystémique #militarisme #déconstruction Jaurès : l’État, la guerre et le monopole de la…

https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/06/13/jaures-letat-la-guerre-et-le-monopole-de-la-violence-la-militarisation-permanente-du-politique/

"Hardest Part of Leaving #Christianity, Most Difficult Part of My #Deconstruction Journey - Belonging"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6mHAhJTAnQ

#atheist #atheism #exvangelical #religion

On a demandé aux gens à quoi ils pensaient quand on disait “handicap”.
Le mot qui revient le plus ?
👉 Fauteuil roulant.
Ce n’est pas faux. Mais c’est loin d’être complet.
🧠 80 % des handicaps sont invisibles : douleurs chroniques, troubles psy, fatigue, maladies invalidantes…
Le vrai problème, ce n’est pas le handicap.
C’est le regard qu’on pose dessus.
#Inclusion #JusticeSociale #HandicapInvisible #Déconstruction #handicap

Sortir du sommeil anti-utopique : Déconstruire l’État-nation et réinventer le politique

⚡ Pour dépasser la #mégamachine étatique, sortons du sommeil anti-utopique (#Abensour) : l’État-nation n’est pas naturel, mais une #construction historique de #domination. #Alternatives : #communs, écologie relationnelle, #fédéralisme expérimental. Refonder la #politique, c’est oser la #pluralité et l’#autonomie collective. #Utopie #Déconstruction #EtatNation #Ecologie #Clastres Il…

https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/06/09/sortir-du-sommeil-anti-utopique-deconstruire-letat-nation-et-reinventer-le-politique/

#Doubts Are #Sinful in #Christianity, #Faith is a #Virtue aka #Blind #Belief, Believing With No #Evidence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHh541S5SwQ

#atheist #atheism #exvangelical #deconstruction

What Happens When You Leave a #Religion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3M02xYOeuc

#atheist #atheism #deconstruction #skeptic

Happy #Pride! In line with the times in which we live, I’m #NowReading “Why I am Not a Christian: and other essays on religion and related subject.” By Bertrand Russel.

His speech is from 1927 and the same arguments could be made today.

#Christianity #OrganizedReligion #Deconstruction #RecoveringChristian #ReligiousTrauma

#déconstruction #peinture #lambeaux #humain #art #caséine #couleurs #workinprogress

Au-delà de la mégamachine : déconstruction de l’État-nation et expérimentation démocratique pour un avenir habitable (Essai)

Et si l’État-nation n’était qu’une fiction historique ? Cet essai propose de déconstruire la « naturalité » de l’État, d’explorer la mégamachine qui façonne nos vies et d’ouvrir des pistes pour une démocratie écologique et post-bureaucratique. #Déconstruction #ÉtatNation #Mégamachine #EcologiePolitique Sommaire Introduction I. Généalogie de…

https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/05/24/au-dela-de-la-megamachine-deconstruction-de-letat-nation-et-experimentation-democratique-pour-un-avenir-habitable-essai/

Beyond the Nation-State: Deconstructing the Megamachine and Reclaiming Collective Futures

The nation-state is not a natural given: it’s the product of ancient centralizations, rationalized by bureaucracy and perpetuated by the megamachine. Deconstructing this fiction is the first step toward experimenting with new forms of democracy and autonomy, even if the system resists. #Deconstruction #NationState #Megamachine #DirectDemocracy The nation-state is often presented…

https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/05/24/beyond-the-nation-state-deconstructing-the-megamachine-and-reclaiming-collective-futures/

Song Deconstruction:
Daft Punk - One More Time (2000)
https://www.amazona.de/workshop-song-deconstruction-daft-punk-one-more-time-2000/

#PeaceLoveMusic #Song #Deconstruction #DaftPunk #Musicproduction

🎙️ NOUVEL ÉPISODE — T’as pas les couilles !
💥 Masculinisme, virilité, mecs qui hurlent sur TikTok et coachs en testostérone mal digérée… On a voulu comprendre pourquoi le “vrai mâle” fait autant de bruit en ce moment. Et surtout, pourquoi ça marche.
👊 Avec notre invité·e Camille Saltiel, sexologue et spécialiste du masculinisme, on démonte les ressorts de cette fraternité.

#Podcast #Masculinisme #Virilité #ÇaRésonne #Déconstruction #Féminisme
#Podcast #Société #PodcastFrancophone #PodcastSuisse

How to Escape #Evangelical #Christianity

https://www.thekaysemeloneshow.com/p/014-how-to-escape-evangelical-christianity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_9_Xysb3v8

#atheist #atheism #exvangelical #deconstruction

On nous a menti sur Haïti : Rencontre avec Claudine Civil
jeudi 22 à 18h, Concordia, Paris
https://agendamilitant.org/a6482 #décolonisation #Haïti #France #Déconstruction