katherinakaina

[katherinakaina]

I don't think they can really deny it when it physically effects their gameplay. I believe it will have the opposite effect of people getting what it's actually like (a tiny little bit). Because just saying 'this character is under a lot of stress' did close to nothing to make people more understanding.

i still cant really believe im living in a time where one of my favorite video game characters ever basically canonically has bipolar disorder and managing it is a gameplay feature.

[katherinakaina]

Honestly, after this interview I am dangerously close to having really high hopes. Dybowski was casually dropping words like 'cognitive biases', 'heuristic', 'pre-mortem' like nobody's business. He described a scientist like 'not somebody who knows everything, but somebody who doubts everything. Not somebody who has all the answers, but somebody with the skill to ask the right questions, acknowledge his mistakes and correct his map of the world. Every time the world turns out to be more complex than he expected and every time he's able to update. You need to have extraordinary flexibility of mind to see a valuable piece of evidence in something unimportant. That's how scientific discoveries are made'.

It seems like Daniil will initially be an old school traditional rationalist, thinking in Newtonian terms and trusting his own mind too much. But in the Town, created for him by people literally from the next century, he'll be able to change his outlook and become something more.

[katherinakaina]

Okay, so I’ve watched the recent interview because I became very curious what this whole “becoming Simon” thing was about. By pure coincidence I was thinking about Simon and what he represents the day before (I have books worth of Pathologic analysis in me) but I wasn’t going to write anything about it.

But this was concerning news. Because, well, we already have a protagonist who’s meant to be or become Simon during their 12 days, right? It’s Clara. And it’s very significant that Clara is Simon. Very very significant.

What is Simon? He is the creator and the keeper of the Town. The Town existed before him. But he is the one who molded it into its current form. And in doing so he molded himself in the image of the Town as well. Simon is a Bos Turokh transfigure. A semblance of the Town.

Simply put, Simon is the author of the game. Simon is Ice-Pick Lodge. He made it and now he steps aside. He has to die (death of the author, yes) for you to be able to enter it and interact with it. Their hands and their soul are everywhere you look. Every house, every street, the earth itself. But it is still in disarray without its creators and is dying to be understood again. Now you have to decide what’s best for it with your limited knowledge.

But knowledge does not remain limited. You start as a newcomer, continue as a local and finish as Simon’s reincarnation. You play the game three times and discover its remaining secrets and end up in the position where you know it as well as the people who made it. You have changed in the Town’s image and it has changed in yours. You are a Bos Turokh transfigure now. You have become Simon. You can see the whole picture now and understand that the whole Town is worth saving.

In the remake we play first as Artemy and he is pretty far from understanding the world he’s in. He doesn’t even really care for Simon. Daniil definitely cares a whole lot more. This time you return to the Town actively looking for Simon. You crave the next piece of the puzzle. And that’s why Daniil can go further than Artemy in his understanding of the world.

But only Clara can truly become Simon, right? What will she be doing then if Daniil already figured everything out?

So I went and listened. Basically, no, Daniil does not become Simon or time traveling Simon or anything like that (we’ll see what happens in the game but it definitely not what’s being said in the interview). But my vision seems to be correct in the way that Simon is deliberately setting up a puzzle for Daniil. A lesson for him to learn. And it is up to every individual player how fast they’ll learn it if at all. In this sense Simon is your teacher and you yourself is the student. And while learning you become more and more of a teacher yourself. So, become more Simon-like gradually.

I still hope you won’t become Simon completely. Like, you can’t, right? One whole third of Simon is yet to be discovered.

How I imagine it will go:

Daniil: “I’ve figured it out. I know all his tricks. The student becomes the master”

Clara: “MASTER OF SHIT!” - tears the layers of reality to pieces and shows the programming code underneath.

[katherinakaina]

Daniil is said to be a possible follower of a Russian scientist Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov.

[katherinakaina]

if you're active in the pathologic fandom reblog with or comment your current profession/level of education you're currently in you get the drift what are you doing in ur life rn. i'm trying to empirically establish an observation of mine

[katherinakaina]

It is peculiar that the man whose final philosophy is "I do whatever the fuck I want" is so reliant on others. On his father, Daniil, Aglaya, the children and, like, society in general, choosing to preserve the Town above all else. I think Artemy teaches us that we really should investigate our inner processes and hidden motivations.

Okay finished the Haruspex route of Pathologic Classic! I need to play Clara's route to see the whole picture but I'm already fascinated by the differences between P1 and P2 in terms of characterization. I think I like Pathologic 2 even more now considering how they improved on Artemy's route, I am sorry to say I didn't like it at all in classic... This is all just my personal impression after first playthrough ofc. Ramblings about both Artemy and Daniil ↓ I think what bothered me about Haruspex was mostly just his attitude and his messiah plot. Once the first day is out of the way it's all smooth sailing for him, a bit too much so?? The only personal conflict he has is figuring out his father's exact wishes for him and choosing a sacrifice. Killing anyone is treated as fair or something that needed to happen and the Haruspex is always shrugging it off... And either option, Aglaya & the Town or Polyhedron... It just doesn't seem like he is that attached to either? So it doesn't feel like he is sacrificing much personally? Like sure he wants to save the Town because of his messianic qualities, but that's again more about fulfilling his 'role' rather than genuinely wanting to save lives, or at least it read that way to me. I'm sure it's meant to be both and P2 makes this far more apparent, but in P1 it elicited a rather squinty reaction from me. Plus well yeah, getting rid of Polyhedron is pretty much just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, like yep he sure didn't care about that thing lmao so getting rid of it isn't such a difficult choice at all. The suggestion that the Polyhedron could be his Udurgh is kind of useless because the Town and Earth are far better candidates and fit with Kin beliefs better, which in this game Artemy pretty much doesn't doubt at all.  Maybe this is why the Bachelor is so present in his route? Daniil did say he'd commit suicide if he lost, maybe we'd want to think twice about pushing him towards it... But again! Does it seem like this guy cares ahhh haha... The dialogue option that is actually engaging with what Daniil said is pretty much there to make it clear to the player what the Utopian ending is and what it would be like.

Ngl at first I thought he was meant to be the 'sacrifice' until they said it's a woman. Every time Artemy learned something about the Bachelor's motivations he'd write down in his diary like '...if it matters' since the player can always choose what ending to go with I guess. I also find it curious that he can say that they are friends but still always writing only 'the Bachelor' in his diaries while Daniil switched to 'Artemy' and 'Burakh' during the final stretch. The one-sided yaoi................ 🤔 At least Artemy doesn't get mad at him for ordering to set the mythic bull on fire, I guess their friendship did mean something to him after all at that point. Also when Capella tells him that he should ask the Bachelor for help with getting into the Polyhedron since the Bachelor 'fawns upon you a lot anyway' the Haruspex just goes 'oh yeah! ok' fjdghdjg... Now that I think about it I DID like the Haruspex route for what it did with the Bachelor hahah, his dialogues and letters are just so good sometimes. Like wow, I felt this.

Very cool, if i was Artemy I'd totally abandon my weird murderous calling for this. Tangentially related... P2 had one moment that I remember from my last replay when Rubin, if kept alive, falls into a deep deserved sleep in his home, and Artemy just starts emotionally monologuing at him.

Like, P1 Artemy would never, but also it goes to show that he's still very much a repressed man here too, buying into toxic masculinity ideals who can't just talk to his friends about his feelings directly... The same character, but more complex. I want to make it clear that I DO like him and his motivations in P2 actually, and his personal conflict being more about the future of the Kin makes that game much more powerful to me than what his classic route was. I heard that initially he was planned to be far more violent and dark, so maybe he could have been sort of a villain protagonist and this was changed later and this is why it feels a bit bland? Hmm... Idk this is fun to me because meanwhile the Bachelor didn't feel that different to me in both games lmao. A highly stressed educated guy who is just trying to prevent the spread of epidemic the 'right' way and then clinging to the only chance he has left to preserve both his ideals and his life. He is a bit less polite in P2 at first (while still very much helping by warding off Rubin) but then rather quickly becomes more cordial to Artemy and vice versa (and wow it sure is nice when Artemy can actually be polite and friendly..). And the moment when he explains some of his personal deal to Artemy feels rather similar in both iterations mood-wise.

I liked his route in P1 a lot, surprisingly so, and I now understand why so many people liked him before P2 came out and afterwards too... There's just something very real about how he is the intelligent Capital doctor but with an extraordinary dream to combat death itself, possibly given to him by the Powers That Be due to these children trying to cope with people dying around them. And instead of favoring him for it they hate him! They leave him with nothing but this final chance to fix things, even if that means destroying everything and rebuilding anew. Daniil's desperation feels very real and thus more compelling, plus like... I mean it's pretty much confirmed that it's not just the Polyhedron and that the soil itself is 'rotten' (literally in the meta real world and through blood beneath the earth in the Town itself) and the decease could return again, sooo his ending doesn't look that bad comparatively. I also appreciated how Maria (or uhh was it Nina talking through her here as well?) explained how their Utopia doesn't actually mean a 'perfect' place, more so just an impossible dream.

The Bachelor doesn't mind this at all, a detail I loved.

...Hmm that said maybe P1 makes it a little too easy for him to kinda ignore the Kin issue, he is only mad about their circumstances when it comes to Vlad choosing to doom thousands of the Kin workers inside the Termitary (which is just his doctor ethics). I mean it is realistic for him to ignore the implications of representing the imperialist side, he does mention his father was a military man too at some point I think... Still, he is very quick to accept the Kin's unique beliefs as something that has obvious merit, trusting the Haruspex with that side of things in both of their routes, and he doesn't make much of a distinction between them and regular Town people when it comes to patient treatment. If anything it's probably a sign of how the writers weren't thinking that hard about this worldbuilding aspect at the time... even if I appreciated them showing the downsides of the Kin's society, I think those were done better than in P2 purely because it was a bit more realistic (I am talking about sexism mostly, such as selling their own daughters and not respecting their autonomy, plus the mention of Kin politics and different ruling clans rather than the hive mind situation implied in P2). Like, it is more obvious in P1 that wholeheartedly embracing the Kin's return to tradition isn't such a good solution for them either, but one that will likely happen anyway with Artemy and Taya as their new leaders. And it could get trickier in Pathologic 3 I think, especially since most of us really appreciated the portrayal of colonization in P2 and would expect it getting addressed again in future games of other character routes, but we'll see I guess! Either way I look forward to that game a lot now.

[katherinakaina]

would be quite a laugh for me if ice-pick lodge decided to do away with the markers that indicate which choices will end conversations in pathologic 3. it'd be perfect. you thought you were safe! you thought you knew how conversations worked! ha! you dweeb! this character's AUTISTIC!

[katherinakaina]

I keep seeing once in a while people pondering on an apparent contradiction in Daniil’s character – he is said to be a rationalist but he is evidently extremely emotional. Those things do not go together, right? People notice their confusion. They find all sorts of interesting explanations. From him being manipulative and performative, using his displays of emotion like tools to control people. To him not being rational at all actually, him lying to himself and others, not even knowing who he is, pretending and failing.

Every time I get over it and completely forget and then another one of these hits me in the face. What I forget is that in common understanding rationality is opposed to being emotional. While in the community it is a basic level understanding that there are rational emotions and irrational ones. The same way there are rational beliefs and irrational beliefs (which is to say true and false basically).

From here:

A popular belief about “rationality” is that rationality opposes all emotion—that all our sadness and all our joy are automatically anti-logical by virtue of being feelings. …

For my part, I label an emotion as “not rational” if it rests on mistaken beliefs, or rather, on mistake-producing epistemic conduct. “If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is hot, and it is cool, the Way opposes your fear. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is cool, and it is hot, the Way opposes your calm.” Conversely, an emotion that is evoked by correct beliefs or truth-conducive thinking is a “rational emotion”; and this has the advantage of letting us regard calm as an emotional state, rather than a privileged default. …

Becoming more rational—arriving at better estimates of how-the-world-is—can diminish feelings or intensify them. Sometimes we run away from strong feelings by denying the facts, by flinching away from the view of the world that gave rise to the powerful emotion. If so, then as you study the skills of rationality and train yourself not to deny facts, your feelings will become stronger. …

I visualize the past and future of humankind, the tens of billions of deaths over our history, the misery and fear, the search for answers, the trembling hands reaching upward out of so much blood, what we could become someday when we make the stars our cities, all that darkness and all that light—I know that I can never truly understand it, and I haven’t the words to say. Despite all my philosophy I am still embarrassed to confess strong emotions, and you’re probably uncomfortable hearing them. But I know, now, that it is rational to feel.

Daniil probably suppresses some of his emotions to be taken seriously. But this is masking. And he is bad at it. He has strong emotions and strong convictions and they spill out of him regardless. He also values truth and honesty and that’s another reason why he can’t fully suppress his authenticity.

But all of it is about how to behave in polite society. How not to freak out neurotypicals. It has nothing to do with his thinking process, his beliefs and his goals. His rationality.

Now you can argue that his sincerity and his openness are irrational instrumentally, which is to say they lead to his downfall. He should have masked better and become more cynical if he wanted to succeed. Maybe? But that would also have its downsides, I’m pretty sure. (we’ll see what apathy meter does to his decision making soon enough)

Anyway, that is not the point I see people make. And I just really want people to stop making it. Strong emotions, strong ideals, passionate belief in a better future for humanity – those are all perfectly rational if they align with truth. And he does fail as a rationalist quite a lot as well, but this is purely an epistemological issue that has nothing to do with him being emotional.

[katherinakaina]

Have I told you about my Thanatica in this timeline?

Thinking about the 'close, intimate friend' line and the time loop. Daniil might have known Artemy(s) for so long by that point, repeating the plague over and over, but Artemy only knows Daniil for a handful of days.

[katherinakaina]

Saddling up my new high horse called "I believed Daniil experienced human emotions and wasn't a heartless cold-blooded killer before it was spelled out by gameplay mechanics"

[katherinakaina]

Speak your truth!! Fanon Clara and fanon Daniil are both really irritating (to me). I always think I just don't like them until I remember that in the game itself they're actually fine. It's just the way a lot of people talk about them that grinds my gears.

To be fair, fanon Artemy is not much better. It’s just that his fanon version is mostly flattering so his fans tend to be less annoyed. But it is similar to Clara in the way that he is nine parts this cute cinnamon bun golden retriever himbo papa bear and only one part covered in blood and a bit dangerous purely for the sexyness factor. Well, in the game it’s more like 3 parts papa bear and 7 parts you wouldn’t actually want this dude anywhere near your children. The ratio is even worse for the first game.

Initially I wanted to say that I don’t understand the point of this character bending. What’s the appeal of these characters if they need to be distorted into something they aren't in order to be compelling? But then I started thinking about my own version of Daniil that is admittedly a bit different from how he’s actually shown in the game. Same as others, I take parts of his characterization that speak to me the most and inflate them, let them take the center stage. For me it’s his immortalism and his rationality (or his pursuit of rationality, as any proper rationalist would correct me). I feel like both aren’t explored nearly enough but are stated as and supposed to be his main defining qualities (huge hope they will actually become such in p3).

So on some level I can empathize with the desire to enhance your favorite character here and there, make them make more sense. It’s just that apparently things that make sense vary drastically from different points of view. For me, sarcastic snarky grinning Clara makes very little sense. She’s a tormented child, what’s she’s so happy about? Golden retriever Artemy or cold blooded killer Daniil go in the same bin. At this point I don't see it as gentle tinkering with the source material but full blown repurposing.

You take a doll from a different game and put it into your own, going mostly from how the doll looks and a short description on the back of the box. You take close to nothing from the previous game, rewriting the character almost completely. And then you go and talk to people who played the previous game and you use the same doll and the same name but your conversation makes no sense. This happens in every fandom, I assume. But considering it’s Pathologic we are talking about it stings just a bit extra. Like those poor souls will never escape their fate. In a way, it’s fitting.

[katherinakaina]

TLDR: Clara is a miserable wreck and we should stop forcing that grin onto her face. Let her ugly cry. Let her have a complete meltdown.

Okay. I can't shut up about Daniil's mischaracterization. But honestly, Clara's fanon version is even worse and almost nobody is talking about it.

One kinda superficial thing that nonetheless bothers me is that in maybe 6 out of 10 fanarts featuring Clara - she smiles. This mischievous trickster grin. Or just a happy childish smile. Even when she's all fucked up and monstrous she still smiles. (god forbid a woman goes five minutes without smiling am I right?) She's generally portrayed as a rather upbeat character. Super arrogant but in a fun way (her arrogance isn't threatening like some other people's). She has some meta awareness that makes her special and therefore kinda above it all, detached from the bleakness of the narrative she's a part of.

Yeah, no. That's not Clara from the game. This is the official art. This is the vibe we should be going for.

The happiest we ever see her is here:

Sad tired little smile. Just absence of misery and fear is the best she gets.

When you interact with her in the game she's pretty much always upset about something. I don't remember a single happy chat with Clara. Maybe there are some, but they must be rare. When she's angry with you - she's angry. Now you can go out of your way and imagine her as sarcastic and snarky. But she really isn't in a position to be like that. Only in the beginning when she has backing from the Saburovs but that doesn't last long. In the end, when it matters, she has way less influence over the situation and it makes more sense to me that she would be tired and frustrated, not snarky.

I also remember her smiling more in her p2 animation. Fanon got into my brain as well. But no, these are the most she ever smiles for just a few seconds. She mostly stares at you, almost blankly.

And everyone who played her route knows that, yes, she can be silly and childish a couple of times. But she's mostly scared and confused and tries to survive in the world she understands not that much better than the rest. She's as much psychologically tortured by her 12 days, if not more (I would argue more), than the other two.

Anyway, she is not smug all knowing invincible blessed by the narrative fun loving jester or whatever. 90% of the time she's either sad or extremely sad. And that ratio is not represented in fan works. It's like she's stripped of her struggle and her complexity. And I don't love that for her.

[katherinakaina]

There are two types of first time Bachelor's route players:

🤔 Wow, Daniil is way nicer than I thought. Fandom portraits him as such a douche. Yeah, he has his moments, as all the healers do, but he is overwhelmingly nice and helpful. Interesting.

🤪 Only started playing and Daniil is THE WORST! Everything he says makes me cringe. Like, a wealthy and influential woman just offered him sex and he, can you believe it, politely ignored it! What a weirdo! Anyway, I'm going to continue taking everything he says out of context and presenting it as the worst thing ever because it's just so much fun!

[katherinakaina]

Remember that iconic scene in the Revenge of the Sith? Where Palpatine makes his speech and the Senate cheers and Padme, the senator from Naboo, utters her line:

"Well, the Republic sucked anyway. Remember how they didn't help us with that blockade? Yeah, they had it coming"

[katherinakaina]

"It's not single issue protesters' fault that Harris has lost!"

I mean, yeah, probably not. But, excuse me, didn't you mean to say 'achievement'? Isn't that what you guys wanted to happen?

Because I remember my dash filled with hate when she was nominated. I remember people wanting to teach democrats a lesson so bad. But the second she lost... silence. And the first thing after that - IT'S NOT OUR FAULT!

Bizarre. Shouldn't you be celebrating? Maybe you moved the needle maybe not, but either way you have won. You did plan for that, right? Right?

[katherinakaina]

The Second Outbreak is here.

[katherinakaina]

Here for burnout simulator. Here for Daniil setting his heart on fire and being left with cold black charcoal in his chest. Here. For. It.

can i just say the micromanaging different districts is exactly what i was hoping for with the bachelor route, i want every death in the town to feel like a personal failure to the point where each death becomes less and less personal