katherinakaina

[katherinakaina]

You don't have to play both. But the game shines at having different perspectives so you won't really know Pathologic until you play both games. The question is just where to start. P2 has better gameplay. P1 has more story and, arguably, better story.

I'd say, start with p1. For the common good, frankly. I notice a, let's say, peculiar commonality in people who played p2 first and only then (sometimes much later) play p1. They tend to share certain biases that they are cemented in by that point to such an extent that even an entire game contradicting them isn't enough to remedy the situation. P1 in Bachelor > Haruspex > Changeling order is the best option to prevent that, in my opinion. No guarantee though.

TUMBLR HELP ME

are the Pathologic games something you Need to play in order? or can I start with the 2nd one?

((It makes perfect sense if they're linear, But i've heard the most about 2 and the things i've seen from 1 look really old)

[katherinakaina]

The problem with house elves in Harry Potter.

Typical argument goes as follows: it is bad and irresponsible for an author to create enslaved people who love their enslavement and love their masters because of all the real world parallels to real slavery. Similar arguments were actually made about American slavery and every other slavery before or since. In our world such rhetoric is always propaganda. But in Harry Potter it’s portrayed as genuine.

For a children’s book especially, it’s not a good look. As a children’s book, Harry Potter contains too many dark and difficult topics and without satisfying lessons or conclusions it’s tempting to say – don’t introduce slavery into your story. Don’t create willing slaves, for starters.

But the problem is in the lessons or conclusions part, not the introducing part. And even willing slaves can be explored in interesting ways and really done justice when in hands of a competent writer with good politics.

How so? Well, don’t create such creatures just because. Make them into a coherent metaphor for something. There are several possible options, starting from less fitting:

1. House elves are dogs. Or children.

You can frame dogs as voluntary slaves if you don’t know much about dogs. Unlike house elves, they are perfectly independent creatures that do not have an inborn desire to obey humans. They need to be trained and even then they can be very stubborn and do not appreciate or even tolerate abuse like house elves do. Dogs are more like children. You have the position of authority over them but that makes you responsible and it is your job to make them happy and occupied.

But if you are really committed, you can frame childhood as slavery too. Being a child or a pet is a vulnerable position to be in. Your labor is sometimes exploited and you don’t control your life much. You know how it is.

So, there are creatures who love their sometimes actually slavery-like situations because they love their "caretakers" and you cannot solve this problem by just separating the two groups. It would be doing everyone a disservice.

But in Harry Potter, Hermione decides to free elves purely on philosophical ground and in her zeal doesn’t consider the reality of their special psychology. Who would even make such a silly mistake?

2. House elves are house wives. And Hermione is a lesbian separatist.

This angle really comes into focus when we meet Winky in the fourth book. She is a female elf and a loyal supporter of her master Barty Crouch Snr. You can very easily read her as this conservative fearful simple-minded wife that just wants to keep peace and make her husband happy above all else*. The only thing that is above the “husband” is her “son", her perfect boy who can do no wrong – Barty Crouch Jnr, a death eater and the main villain for most of the book.

In the beginning of the book, Winky gets "divorced" against her will, by her “husband”, for a public transgression that made him look bad. It’s this situation that shocks Hermione to the core and makes her believe that all elves should be free. But then Winky ends up in the Hogwarts kitchens (where elves live among themselves like in a convent) and we see that she’s devastated, blames herself, becomes an addict and never fully recovers. Hermione never gets strong evidence in the opposite direction and eventually abandons her activism.

This does sound like a cautionary tale a conservative would write about marriage. How feminism is women’s main enemy and how we all are deeply unhappy without the authority of a husband. Again, actual arguments that people make about modern society TODAY.

Obviously, that’s not how the real world works. But even here separatism is a bad solution. Yes, there is a rare house elf that can handle freedom**. There are women (not quite so rare) who don’t want to engage in relations with men. But it would really be doing everyone a disservice to force apartheid between men and women. Most wives love their husbands. Even when they are abusive. Most women can stop loving a particular man, but not men in general. There’s no escape from the biological prison of heterosexuality.

Anyway, those are all bad metaphors that require a lot of stretching. House elves don't look like creatures that evolved to cooperate with humans like domesticated animals or humans themselves. They are too subservient. Such a thing wouldn't happen naturally. They seem to be created (or altered) artificially to accept humans unconditionally***.

3. House elves as perfectly aligned Artificial Intelligence.

House elves have stronger magic than wizards, they think differently from them but still are perfectly loyal and obedient to those they consider their masters.

This is the best metaphor, in my opinion. After all, science is similar to magic. They are both really powerful. And both can be used for better or worse. You don’t have to write sci-fi to talk about any futuristic concept. Those are just aesthetics, really****. And that’s a pretty cool question to ask – if people could create a house elf… would they? Not a far fetched idea at all.

So, when written well a house elf can be a perfectly good narrative device. Introduce them into your story as a metaphor for domestic servitude or AI, an enslaved god in a box. You can even mix those metaphors. Make your house elf a stand-in for a waifu simulator. Make them Joi from Blade Runner 2049. Make it real dark.

Tone it down for a YA audience, of course, but still, why not? There are real life implications here. You can even start with the SPEW plot as well. Show that brute force lesbian separatism or rewriting the code of a perfectly happy and aligned AI is stupid and, in the latter case especially, really dangerous. Don’t separate families on the basis of some abstract philosophical grievance you made up. Don’t kidnap people’s pets. Sure!

What’s next, though? What do you do with a subservient creature you cannot just free?

In the real world we have laws surrounding all of these issues, protecting all spouses, children and pets from abuse. And when sentient waifus become a thing we will have to intervene as well.

How come this point never crosses Hermione’s mind? How come she gives up on SPEW and never finds a third alternative?

A better written Hermione would say: “Okay, Hagrid, I concede that house elves should not be taken from their homes. Fine. But are we really also fine with families like Malfoy’s treating their elves like dirt? Elves do become distressed when it happens, we can all clearly see that. Harry was right to free Dobby, we all agree on that. But do we agree that it was Harry’s responsibility to do that? No authority had taken Dobby away from his masters even though Dobby actively wanted to be taken. No authority had permanently taken the right to own house elves from Malfoys. They can just buy a new one and abuse them as well! I know you don’t have child protective services either, so we should probably start with that but can we at least agree that it's a goal for the future? There’s a pile of clothes for elves who want freedom in the kitchens now. That’s a good thing, right?”

But such a conversation can never happen in Harry Potter, about any issue*****. Because that would imply a systemic change. It would imply that the Ministry of Magic, portrayed as useless and incompetent most of the time, has to do something. And we can’t have that.

Instead we have a toothless morality that we should just all be better as individuals. We should help victims when some injustice really stares us in the face. And we should treat our own elves better. Be nice to your wife. Be kind to your children. Don’t hit your dog. Don’t inflict pain on your waifu simulator. What happens behind the closed doors of your neighbors is really none of your business. Family is the cornerstone of society and the government should not meddle in its affairs.

This is what makes Harry Potter's house elves irredeemable. Not their existence but all the lessons we expected to not learn from them. A competent writer with good politics wouldn’t stop the conversation on “well, they enjoy slavery so we must not intervene”. In a bad situation there’s always a less ridiculous alternative to doing nothing.

_____________________

* There are no sexual relations between wizards and elves anywhere in the books as far as I know. I’m only talking about the social dynamic of traditional marriage, nothing more. (Although in real world sexual abuse does happen in all of the situations discussed here)

** The only one we see is Dobby but even he was not free from his affection for wizards. He just switched from serving his family to serving the main character, not de jure but de facto. He risks his life and suffers abuse for Harry and in the end he dies saving Harry’s life.

*** As far as I know it was never confirmed how elves came to be in Harry Potter. Which is bizarre considering this author's love for writing extra worldbuilding. That suggests to me that she was uncomfortable with the topic herself and didn’t really want to make it into a coherent metaphor. Else she could have given them any origin story she deemed fit.

****I do mean that fully. A spell that reads minds and computer chips in brains can and should serve the same narrative purpose. You can go full Black Mirror in your fantasy novel. That one episode where people’s eyes film everything they see – literally a pensieve.

*****They ponder once that they sort children into houses a bit early and even though it would be a comparatively easy fix they still do nothing. They never do anything!

[katherinakaina]

What also happens often is people accuse the author of being racist for daring to depict "a threatening person of color" even when the story is full of examples of both threatening white people and totally non threatening people of color. Even when the story is generally about violence. It's such an obvious projection in my opinion.

Since it happened in real life and in fandom, I'm seeing an opportunity for another introspection?

How do you treat Black characters- Black people as a whole- when they are frustrated?

Do you feel threatened? Do you feel like they're threatening your faves?

Everyone gets frustrated. It's human. Everyone gets annoyed, everyone says things that they don't always mean, either in exaggeration or in complaint or in pain. When someone hurt you and you say you want them to eat shit, that doesn't mean you're actually going to go shove shit down their throat.

So when Black characters or Black people express their frustration, how are you receiving it? Do you receive and respond to their frustration the same way you do nonblack- usually white- peers? Do you take time to recognize where they are speaking from? Do you see if they're speaking from pain or exhaustion? Or do you immediately jump to defense? Are you immediately ready to assume the worst of them, that they're "one of Those ones"?

[katherinakaina]

I also love how it puts you in Daniil's shoes by making a steppe man in the position of unearned authority over you use this vague age old wisdom bullshit to meddle with your work and prevent things from being done while actively trying to just murder you and you can't even say anything about it without sounding ungrateful and disrespectful because well those are just steppe traditions this is just steppe wisdom, who are you some arrogant know-it-all colonizer? you think you know better that your elders? it's all this modern education talking shut the fuck up and jump into this hole!

i remember it being different in patho 2 but i love how i'm so used to towering over daniil as artemy that having to actually look up to meet foreman oyun's eyes is quite immersive and a good way to make the foreman intimidating. huge man meet huger man.

[katherinakaina]

real talk i think autism should come with a cartoonishly large warning bell thats strapped to your head and anytime you start saying something that you think is funny or well intentioned but could easily be interpreted as anything from slightly embarassing to completely evil the bell starts fucking screaming at you

[katherinakaina]

We don't have enough babies! Soon there won't be enough people to replenish the workforce and we'll all starve!

AI is taking all the jobs! Soon there won't be any jobs for humans to do and we'll all starve!

How can these two crises happen simultaneously and no one notices that they cancel each other out? How comes cheep AI can't reduce the workload of humans and help us take care of the elderly? Can Hank Green explain this one to me?

[katherinakaina]

Lucky guess! I think of him all the time...

he's bipolar ⚰ he's autistic 🥀 he's trans 💉 he's a bit of a freak ☣ i didnt say a name but 🕸 you thought of him, didn't you?

[katherinakaina]

I know, right? The whole town is transfem coded.

This kid is seen by society as both conduit for a force working thru her without her being able to meaningfully stop it AND a deplorable criminal who needs to be ostracized.

Clara is transfem coded.

[katherinakaina]

Holiday period is always an exhausting time of the year for everyone, and that includes you. After a particularly demanding December 25th, you’re curled up in your bed, embraced by a warm blanket, cradling a warm cup of toffee nut latte. Your most beloved comfort film has just started playing when suddenly, a loud knock is heard!

You make haste towards the source of the sound, led to the front door. You hesitate, unsure of what could be waiting for you on the other side, but take the leap of faith and open it. You gasp! It’s the three healers!! And they bring gifts!!!

They hand you over your share, and you thank them deeply and earnestly before they take off for the next house! You’ve barely closed the door before you start tearing through the wrap, beaming with excitement! They’ve brought….

... a hachiko plushie, a stem of bloody twyre and a bottle of milk!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! 💞

Oh wow! They are here so early. I wasn’t expecting any koliading children at my doorstep until after Christmas, which is tomorrow. But I see how excited Clara is. This is her first Christmas Eve after all. She just couldn’t wait for Soul-and-a-Halves so she talked Daniil and Artemy into going with her. She was always more comfortable with adults than other children anyway. I can relate, I used to be like that.

I can see that Artemy knows that this is not how this supposed to work. It’s me who should be giving away sweets to children. And they should be singing songs and perform little pantomimes. But everyone in town is fed up with the theatrical at this point. And the new Mistress feels like she’s taken too much already. She needs to give. Another reason why she would not be comfortable with Notkin’s lot this time of year.

Artemy looks pretty indifferent though. I know steppe people follow the lunisolar calendar and don’t particularly care for orthodox cristian celebrations. Their big winter holiday is somewhere in February and has to do with celebrating milk? I don’t know the details but that’s why he gives away bottles of milk, I assume.

Daniil is here only because Artemy is here. He does not leave Stillwater without his close intimate friend unless it’s to visit Cathedral. And this ain’t Cathedral. I hope he’ll get better soon. I hope he’ll finally let Clara touch him. He seems to be fine walking together with her and that’s already huge. But nobody can blame him for his reluctance. He lost most of his friends to her miracle.

They walk away and I look at their backs for a moment. Will they climb Polyhedron, I wonder? Have they already been to Abattoir? To the other side of the river? To the steppe settlement? Even after all the losses the town seems to only grow bigger. The result of having such a young Mistress.

Well, I can only wish them luck.

[katherinakaina]

I am more interested in that crying baby.

No cats are credited for that one background noise cat yowl in Patho 2...who are they? Are they orange?

[katherinakaina]

Yes, the creators decided to portray Victor's commune as unsettling and culty. They left it up to interpretation, in my opinion, to what extend it was Victor's influence and to what extend it's just calm and happy people would really look relatively similar. I don't see hard evidence that Victor changed them any more than a couple of years of therapy would. And people do consent to therapy. People would consent even more often if it was one day trouble, free and all work done for you. I would!

Arcane being unsustainable is another stupid plot point. Singed warned Victor about it, they could have started working together and found a better solution before Victor decided to do away with humanity. But in any case, I repeat, this is a show. All the events in it are a deliberate choice. The creators decided to make the world go to shit the second poor people started receiving healthcare. They decided to portray medicine as creepy 'covid vaccines put microchips in your blood so Bill Gates can control you' kind of thing. Plot justifications are irrelevant, even if they were strong. And they aren't even strong, in my opinion.

In real life you also don't know exactly how all the medicine works if you didn't produce it yourself. That doesn't mean you can never consent to anything. It also doesn't mean that it might as well be a hivemind. But art keeps warning us against hiveminds as if it's a real possibility that we should worry about instead of demanding more asses to healthcare.

People about real problems: We need to do terrorism on health insurance ceos until there’s free healthcare for everybody.

Contemporary art: this character who started healing poor people for free is wrong! because, um, his motivation was rooted in internalized ableism of not wanting to die young of a preventable illness. and also disease is just an imperfection and they make us human or something. you see, using technology to make weapons is of course not ideal but medicine is what’s really dangerous! we must make sure we don’t go too far on medicine.

When will people realize rich guys make all transhumanists bad in media because they are defending the status quo? I sure am glad it’s not working but it would really be nice to push in the opposite direction for once.

[katherinakaina]

We don't know if Victor removed anything people didn't consent for being removed (like addiction or depression). He states pretty clearly 'I won't let you erase his humanity'. He only reached his stupid conclusion after Jayce blew him up which is such an insulting plot point since we know Jayce could have just shown Victor his vision of the future. And Victor would be like, wow, thank you, I guess I won't do this thing I wasn't going to do. Because you know what is also an end to pursuit? Not pursuing at all.

And either way, this is a show. Anything there is a creative decision. If they chosen to show that medicine alters your personality it is not because it does it because they are making a statement. A very dangerous one.

Like with arcane. We are not in danger as a society to start using magic for anything any time soon. The only technology that resembles arcane in real world is AI - uses language, we don't fully understand it, potentially very powerful, also a very real existential risk.

(The metaphor is not perfect. Arcane is shown to widen the disparity between the Piltover and Zaun, specifically the way current access to medicine only for the rich does. AI is, sadly, for the masses)

And the only use of AI that everyone agrees is good is in medicine. Looking at scans and such. Catching cancer early and so on. But arcane, the show, tells us that this is the only thing we should not be doing.

How far we can go with transhumanism? Pretty far, I'd say. As long as people consent to treatment we have little to worry about. It is not a topical concern while we are still dying left and right. The contrast between brutal reality and abstract philosophical speculations is maddening.

People about real problems: We need to do terrorism on health insurance ceos until there’s free healthcare for everybody.

Contemporary art: this character who started healing poor people for free is wrong! because, um, his motivation was rooted in internalized ableism of not wanting to die young of a preventable illness. and also disease is just an imperfection and they make us human or something. you see, using technology to make weapons is of course not ideal but medicine is what’s really dangerous! we must make sure we don’t go too far on medicine.

When will people realize rich guys make all transhumanists bad in media because they are defending the status quo? I sure am glad it’s not working but it would really be nice to push in the opposite direction for once.

[katherinakaina]

I think you can leave apple basket gang as it is but then also make Artemy and Vlad childhood friends. It makes sense that Big Vlad didn't let his son run around with the commoners. But he would have encouraged him making connections with the future Warden. This friendship could have the vibe of being forced onto you but also to be the most helpful since Vlad would be the one in the position to actually give you money and food and put in a word for you. It would also give Artemy one extra friend which he desperately needs (since he left the town as an adult and having only four acquaintances when you are the only heir of a local elder is pathetic). And would increase the sense that Artemy was groomed for his position since early age. So Artemy, Vlad and maybe Rubin can have more of a separate burdened heirs gang going on. Very angsty very homoerotic. And imagine the betrayal when the Termitary situation is unraveled. How could you lie to me this whole time? I thought you were my friend. The drama!

hot take: they should have used vlad jr. as the 4th kid in artemy's childhood friend group (the "apple basket gang") in pathologic 2, not bad grief.

so, artemy, rubin, lara, and vlad jr. here's my totally objective and non-haterish reasoning for why this would have worked better:

i think it's annoying that they aged bad grief down from a weird 56 year old queen to a relatable twenty-something

bad grief's whole dilemma in classic is about repenting after having lived a life of crime, which doesn't really work if they make him so young that his life is just getting started. in pathologic 2 he instead has a subplot about aglaya giving him an existential crisis, which they still could have kept.

hell, they could have kept basically everything except for the childhood friendship stuff and that campfire meeting. there was that tiny subplot that went absolutely nowhere about blowing up the train tracks to keep the inquisitor from showing up, artemy still could have schemed with grief on that.

it's lame that he went from being a guy who actually killed people and tried to PRETEND that he didn't (patho classic) to a guy who's all aww i never actually kill people it's just the people who work for me 🥺 i have no control over my gang 🥺

on the vlad jr side, incorporating him into the whole "reconnecting with your childhood friends" thing artemy has going on would have worked super smoothly, considering a major part of that seems to be artemy realizing that all his childhood friends are actually pretty racist to him! vlad jr obviously is that, but it could just go to show how the kinds of things you might not notice as a little kid become way more important once you're older

plus in general it would just give more space to flesh out the whole dynamic between the burakhs and the olgimskys, which i think is explored less in patho 2 than it is in classic

it ALSO would give some space for another dynamic that seems to have things going on in classic but is forgotten about in patho 2, which is vlad jr and lara. i'd have to go back and look but it's implied that the olgimskys helped fund her house of the living? and overall vlad jr and lara have interesting parallels in being invested in the idea of themselves as philanthropic good samaritans, which would have been interesting to explore.

hell, vlad jr ALSO has an interesting parallel with the other three in having "daddy issues" as a major part of his arc (see lara defining herself around her dead father and artemy and rubin around isidor). compared to bad grief who's kind of the odd one out in that regard.

[katherinakaina]

People about real problems: We need to do terrorism on health insurance ceos until there’s free healthcare for everybody.

Contemporary art: this character who started healing poor people for free is wrong! because, um, his motivation was rooted in internalized ableism of not wanting to die young of a preventable illness. and also disease is just an imperfection and they make us human or something. you see, using technology to make weapons is of course not ideal but medicine is what’s really dangerous! we must make sure we don’t go too far on medicine.

When will people realize rich guys make all transhumanists bad in media because they are defending the status quo? I sure am glad it’s not working but it would really be nice to push in the opposite direction for once.

[katherinakaina]

Yes. I speculated that he was less distraught than people would expect because he anticipated his father's death. But I totally agree that he also isn't that close to Isidor to begin with. (I also think that his lack of lamenting in both games is thematically relevant but I'll write about it some other day)

Why is this a hot take though? I think people are hesitant to explore such readings because death of a parent is such an emotionally charged topic in real life. So it's kind of a taboo to suggest that a character might not feel all that strongly about it.

To that I say, this is Pathologic. Nothing is normal here. Everything is fucked up. Especially relationships between children and parents. Those are kinda the main theme even.

my hot take on artemy (in p1):

you see, i've seen the interpretation that artemy is suppressing his grief for his father's death during the events of the game, as well as that from an emotional standpoint he seems to be the most collected out of the 3 protagonists because he was expecting his father's death, but i see this and i raise you, artemy is experiencing no grief over isidor's death whatsoever, and any negative emotions relating to isidor stem from the fact that he doesn't feel like he thinks he should.

because think about it, artemy probably has not seen his father for ten years. does he even remember what his father looks like? how he talks and acts? does he remember what it's like to be held by him, to be his son? combined with the fact that he may be suppressing some bitterness over the fact that he was never afforded any agency about his own life decisions, as well as the fact that in a sense he has been preparing about his father's death since childhood, it's only normal that he might not be that affected by it.

but of course, his father just died and the whole town is acting like this is the greatest tragedy of their lives, because to them, it is. he was a beloved local figure, a respected doctor and a grandpa to the townschildren. so for him to return and find out that out of everyone, he was the one the least connected to his own father yet the one everyone expects to be affected the most puts him in a weird mental space where he feels like he needs to justify his lack of emotions, primarily to himself, which is why he has the option to snap every time someone mentions him.

i might support my claims with in-game text later, for the time being duty (that Damn Paper) calls to me

[katherinakaina]

Hear me out. Pathologic 2 is my favorite game. Pathologic Classic HD is my favorite book.

[katherinakaina]

🧡🖤💀

for pathologic ofc

🧡: What is a popular (serious) theory you disagree with?

I have a hard time assessing what is popular. As far as I can tell, anything you’d call a theory is rather unpopular around here. Most people just go with the text and take all the characters at their word. Which honestly baffles me, because the game warns you every chance it gets that everybody’s lying to you all the time.

For example, most people seem to think Aglaya is sincerely in love with Artemy or the player. And, strictly speaking, it doesn’t really change anything whether her feelings are genuine or she’s just manipulating either him or you directly. BUT I feel strongly that her being a master manipulator and all around heartless bitch makes for a better character. Maybe I just find love and affection less interesting than cunning and ambition – especially in women. But when a character is introduced like ‘oh, she’s devilishly smart, she’ll achieve her goals no matter what, she’ll make you do her bidding and you won’t even know it, every thought you have in your head was planted there by her on purpose’ I am going to assume she had you all fooled, sorry.

🖤: Which character is not as morally good as everyone else seems to think?

Lara Ravel. She has a very particular brand of darkness that nobody seems to be talking about. Her deal is that she wants to be a good person. That’s why she always tries to sign up for all these humanitarian efforts like House of the Living, Isolation Ward, testing medicine, working at the Hospital or having water delivered to her house in p2. She romanticizes the idea of being a hero, a beacon of light, of giving away everything she can. “Lara reads too much classic literature” as Daniil puts it. The problem is, she tries. Doesn’t actually go through with any of it. Because she’s a coward.

Bachelor: Are you that afraid of death?

Lara Ravel: Utterly…

She says this on day 10. After you’ve seen her trying to involve herself in events and put herself in danger so many times. After she talks big talk about how she’d totally go and kill Alexander Block. And yet she always lets the circumstances stop her. And now you know why.

Is this too understandable to be a moral failing? People seem to think worse about Daniil for even considering fleeing the town. Or maybe you are mad at us americans for not going against armed police more often to stop a genocide. Or at russians for not overthrowing our warmongering regime yet. Whatever it is, sometimes people should risk their lives. Extraordinary things won’t be achieved without extraordinary effort.

Anyway, I think Lara is my favourite bound. I honestly want to write a separate post about her, especially her p2 story, because it has interesting things added there. Her story is probably the most well written in general, thematically consistent and human. And just plain relatable. We all wish we were Danill Dankovsky. But we all are Lara Ravel. Too afraid of death to make anything of our lives.

💀: If you had to choose one major character to die, who would you choose?

If you think about it, it’s a bit of a plot hole that Aglaya doesn’t try to get rid of all the humbles to make the Changeling's ending impossible. She can’t just execute them without being too obvious about it, but she can plot and scheme to make that happen. Like, what if it was her who gave that gun to Anna on day 9? Would be fun if one of them actually died as the result of this whole thing or even all three of them. Something like that.