The Shimmering Pale
In Disco Elysium, ‘The Pale.’ In The Gone World, ‘The Shimmer.’ In one, it’s “a nervous shadow cast into the world … eating away at reality”; in the other, it’s where “millions run[…] in great packs until their bodies disintegrate … Some people stand with their faces toward the sky, their mouths filled with silver liquid.” Looking at the two leaves you feeling like you’re trying to track a tennis ball flying from one side of the net to the other, but the ball keeps deteriorating well before it ever reaches the other side. Doesn’t matter where you start. It’s like trying to play game theory where the game in question just … falls apart, where the only thing we might have left at the end of it all is the strange, echoing, ghostly sound of the ball having once been hit.