the values of Ireland or Revachol

i saw this post just now:

The urge became too strong.

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— Simon McGarr (@tupped.bsky.social) 7 September 2026 at 16:24

which was a quote of a quote of this post:

Planned changes to Irish citizenship requirements will ensure that new citizens have an “understanding” of the country and its values, the Taoiseach has said. jrnl.ie/7154915

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— The Journal (@thejournal.ie) 7 September 2026 at 14:25

and i wanted to respond by linking to a larp story, but then i realised i hadn't got around to writing about the larp, and it seems such a big task... so let's just have this story as a one off post.

so. recently i played in the larp 97 Poets of Revachol. if you recognise the word "Revachol", it will be from Disco Elysium. that's the setting of the larp. as you might expect from a Disco Elysium-themed larp, a large focus of it was politics - people having different political ideologies, how do they interact, what are the contradictions inherent in those, etc.

what i'm getting around to saying is that i played a fascist in the larp. but not a completely out-and-out fascist^[1]. no, i was someone who... let's say i "had concerns". i was "not racist, but".

but i also had a caring side! i also had a job as a teacher. and alongside my regular teaching, i also taught the special "integration" course for the immigrants.^[2]

which is a nice bit of design, of course. immediately sets up this tension for my character - i want to do good work at my job, my vocation, but i also have, uh, certain beliefs. can the two things coexist? how do they? how do the immigrants feel about it? not that they have a choice (but how do they feel about not having a choice?). lots of feelings to come up to the surface there, for everyone involved.

now, how this was actually expressed in the gameplay was that there was an in-game lesson i had to teach. something i like about larp, something that's very distinctive about larp, is that there's no audience - we're all participants. but when you're teaching a class, well, you are kind of performing a bit, within the fiction of the world. your students are, a bit, an audience. and if you've got an audience, you do want to do a good job performing for them. so as the time for the lesson came around, i did feel a little bit of pressure.

this was partly to be doing a reasonable impression of a teacher. and partly, well, giving the immigrant players the experience of being taught by a racist. i felt responsible for other people's play, and i didn't want to let them down.

so, for example, i started the class off by taking attendance. everyone has to speak, and they get a little moment to choose how to respond. and then for the players whose characters had non-Revacholian names, i of course asked them to spell those out, with a little bit of that tone of affront when their names were not immediately familiar to me.

this wasn't entirely my own invention, because i did not have to prep this whole lesson myself. when i started the game, i was given a hand out with a lesson outline to work from. here's some basic history, here's what we expect from immigrants, discussion topics, etc etc. i was working quite closely from this - not least because i am not a Disco Elysium mega-fan, so i didn't actually know the worldbuilding to any level of detail at all. so i was doing a lot of -- and in the thirties, an important cultural development happened in Revachol. what was that, class? anyone? anyone? ^[3]

(again, this seemed like a good way to make the class less focused on me, and give other players an opportunity to play. also just seemed like decent pedagogy)

so the class went on. and eventually we connect back to the start of this post, and we get to the bit where i was telling all these immigrants - we expect you to integrate, and assimilate. to adopt the values of Rechachol.

and someone asked me, very reasonably: so, what are values of Revachol?

and i went: uhhhh...

now as a person, i am aware that "the values of Revachol" are kind of a meaningless thing, invented purely as a way to attack immigrants for not living up to them.

but as a character i am committed to the idea there must be some, and that these immigrants do not, in fact, live up to them.

and as a player, i honestly don't know the worldbuilding enough to have good ideas for bullshit answers to this question.

and again as a character i'm honestly not the reflective, not that driven by ideas. my character isn't a fascist because of a deep commitment to the ideals of fascism, she's a fascist because her sister is and her boyfriend is and because the immigrants resent her (for being a fascist) and it's much easier psychologically to blame them for it rather than herself. so i don't think she would really have a good answer here in any case.

so i mumbled something about justice and openness.

and then someone who was paying attention asked: weren't you just saying that in La Cage [the slum we live in] there isn't really any functioning justice system?

uhhh, yeah, that's right.

so how can you say that justice is one of the main values of Revachol? if there's no justice to be found?

and I think this is something that is beautiful about larp, and about this larp in particular. it's one thing to think about fascism in the abstract. and it's another thing to argue with a fascist online and maybe win, within your own mind. and it's another thing to really try to embody being a fascist. and then feel your ideology eat shit.

and at the moment of experiencing your character eat (rhetorical) shit, also be thinking: ah, i think i have done a good job here.

there's an even longer pause now, and i say: okay, so! what does everyone else here think that the values of Revachol are?