#dankovsky lore

[meirimerens]

thinking about dankovsky age like 10 slowly realizing not only does he not Believe but he Never Believed and all he has instead of faith is fear. and he fiddles with the baptismal necklace he was given by his godparents and is realizing damn. it feels like it burns my skin where it rests and it is heavy as lead. [it is not, he is having a psychological reaction, but that's meaningful nonetheless]

[lukashaa]

Drawing over blobs of colour is fun

[arazmis]

Legit haven't uploaded anything to tumblr in years but I figure someone might also enjoy the fruits of my Patho brainrot

ie. What if Pathologic 2 was a Mignola-style comic?

Volume 1: The Bachelor

[shogoakuji]

the changeling brothers, artemy and ersher burakh. the false haruspex, daniil dankovsky

[julijbee]

no, keep going. i think you're finally getting somewhere.

[shmowderslut]

I recently started a "im going to read EVERYTHING" bachelor playthrough, and im surpriced i havent seen anyone talk about the many-legged fugitive side quest. Im sick and feel like my brain is filled with rats, so here's my unorganized and unholy feelings about it.

MINOR MECHANIC SPOILERS BELOW!! PLOT SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

First of all the house you need to go in is *not* easy to find, it is not the nearest house to the staircase (also theres two of them!) and definetly isnt visible from the stillwater. I have to confess, i needed to look it up online, and even the guide had misplaced the marker! As always, the frustration fuels me, and makes my love this game even more. And this is day 1! Its a nightmare and i love it. If youre stuck here, its okay, it seems like so many people were too.

Plot and character spoilers under the cut!

Okay now into the juicy stuff. Technically not about the quest yet, but we're getting there.

You get the quest talking to Lara Ravel, after learning about her from talking to Yulia in the main mission. A thing i dont think is mentioned a lot is that Yulia dislikes Lara Ravel. Now Yulia being a queer woman in stem (i will not accept criticism on this) She raves about all the other women like theire goddesses (they are) but she sees Lara as ungenuine and almost sad.

"She pities everyone she comes across, for she knows they will all die just like her dearly departed. She sees a corpse in everyone she looks upon"

And maybe i havent been paying attention, but this is very different from how Lara is usually portrayed, as a literal angel and a philanthropist. She always stood out to me as a surprisingly simple and good character is pathologic, so i was exactic to find out this detail of hers. Also the relationship says a lot about Yulia and her no-nonsense attitude, that she values honesty over good deeds.

Then we finally get to the quest in itself, where Lara tells you the children have brought an old dangerous game back. They used to play doctor using a dangerous mix of medicine and pretend healed eachother. She asks you to find a secret stash these kids hid and destroy all the shmowders (again, i went a lil insane trying to find the house). Unfortunately the bachelor is just too late, again, and the stash has been distributed among the children.

Theres 2 dogheads you can talk to, one of them tells you more about shmowders. That they doent believe in shmowders and its the little kids who are playing epidemic with deadly conjuctures. They blame Capella for distributing them, and all the kids should just go to the polyhedron to stay safe.

The second doghead tells you that yes, the shmowders do work and they came in use the last outbreak. That the kids were safe in the polyhedron, but some of them wandered out and made shmowders. Shmowders that were stored in this stash, but have now disappeared. Also as a fun fact, he tells you the spesific people who made the shmowders. Now i dont recognize these, but if you do please tell me.

"The original ones were made by Catchfly, but they were no good; the disease would pass, but the person would pass away along with it. But then Beaker's brothers made some nice ones. Crowfoot's weren't too shabby, and neither were Flanky's..."

I just think its neat to have an in universe reason the pumpkin girl sometimes carries a shmowder. Also this plays into what i think is the most prevalent pathologic theme, two impossible truths existing at the same time. The shmowders are a live saving medicine AND poison. Its childrens imagination AND real. You get the jist, my head hurts and im going to sleep

Also if you read this far, thank you?!? I am in no state to check this for clarity, but im pretty rambly (battling to not write a fanfic about this quest) and this is not my native language

[grirnoires]

imagine if you will... play in this space with me...

[fruityharuspex]

i've become addicted to character.ai and i'm talking to Artemy on there, roleplaying as Daniil, and i'm making them talk about their feelings but also i make them sleep because they've been up for 7 days straight at this point. it's like therapy but for pathologic fans. also i make them kiss (and they are both boys) teehee:33 it's almost as if i actually have them both in a fish tank and i can tap on the glass

[averagepathologicenjoyer]

Thinking about how pathologic classic sets up this concept of gameplay as the player entering this world as a part of it and not automatically as a 'hero' character and then if you do well enough in it as a 'hero' character would then you are shown that everything you experience in the world is just two children playing in a sandbox with dolls, and that nothing you have experienced is real or true, but for that time you were playing as that character it was real and true.

Which adds another level of gameplay, as while some might call the idea of 'oh but it all wasn't real!!' some kind of cop-out, in reality you as the player are also acting as the children that created this world. Whatever is real for you as the player is the reality for that character. In the Bachelors route the logic of science is the reality and it works, everything else fails and the Bachelor 'wins'. In the Haruspex route, traditional medicine and cultural practices are the reality and that works, you 'win'. In the Changelings route this abstract idea of magic and fantastical concepts is the reality, and again you 'win'. Another character can only 'win' when you the player accept the others realities upon yourself and heal their bound, who fell ill only because you were not in control of them.

The more you play the game the more you are reinforcing this idea that the progression through those 12 days are as a result of you the player manipulating the world around you to make it more likely for that character to 'win' based on how they have interacted with the world through your control. You are doing the exact thing those children are doing, over and over, a game of make believe where you know its not real, but no one else seems to (besides Clara) and the knowledge of this causes the characters to despair at their own insignificance. It's very cosmis horror when you think about it. Clara is probably the only character to acknowledge this because she is still a child, she still is able to suspend disbelief and accept the fantastical nature of things, just as the player does when they boot up the game, which is also why her route is so out there and weird. Yes it has a lot lacking, but it also gives the player the feeling they have wanted, to be the 'hero' who is chosen to do all these wondrous things that no one else can that aren't based in reality, albeit at the cost of also being a child in the given world and therefore virtually completely defenseless and vulnerable.

None of this is even touching the various themes the game lays down for you (of which there are a lot) but when you add that extra layer on top it adds a new feeling to the playing experience. I was thinking about the opening theatre sequence and the line 'if we ourselves are to suffer deception, our hands are no longer tied' and what that means, and I felt that it meant that when you, the player, are decieved into believing that none of this is real, by treating it as a game, then you are free to do anything, there is nothing that can stop you from doing anything or even just, doing nothing. When you believe that everything is real (like the game wants you to, as that is the point of a 'game'), that this is a world, you feel you are bound by the laws of that world and therefore can't do what you need to or want to do because the world is expecting something from you. You can't steal or kill people because in the context of the world that is bad, but, theres also nothing really stopping you from doing that anyway and treating the worlds given consequences as just another obstacle to overcome, and Clara is the only one aware of that. That's my reading of it anyway.

The more I play pathologic the more I think about and read into the smaller things, or even things that might seem pointless to look into, but it makes me appreciate the game more and what it has going for it.

[styxnbones]

Pathologic Vampire The Masquerade AU bc apparently I'm not the only person in the middle of this venn diagram of fandoms

Artemy: Tzimisce, from a long line of Kolduns, though with little knowledge of sorcery himself. More capacity for Vicissitude than Isidor (his sire, obv) had, though mostly focused on Animalism and conventional Protean.

-Rubin: Was ghouled by Isidor, with the expectation that he would one day be embraced. Hence, there's some tension between him and his 'brother' Artemy, who was embraced, especially when it appears that Artemy killed diablerized? Isidor and ruined Rubin's chances. Since Isidor's death Clara has become his regnant.

Daniil: Tremere. He's an arrogant academic who the fuck else would embrace him. I also like to think he's got connections with the Ministry back in the capitol (snakes <3), and is only very begrudgingly operating under the Powers That Be Ivory Tower. He got in touch with Simon to hopefully learn Oblivion/Necromancy in a Know Thine Enemy type way as part of his quest for a greater understanding of death/undeath.

-The Kains: Hecata Family 100%, like they literally canonically have necromancy. Simon is the lowest gen, of course, with Georgiy and Nina being his childer (though Georgiy was only embraced shortly before Simon's "final death"). Nina, as well, embraced Maria, just before her own. Victor is just a ghoul, the poor guy, because his brothers still needed someone who could walk in the sun to actually run the town. Kaspar is still human, I think.

-The Stamatins: Twin Toreadors. Though they came to WoDToG as humans, their reputation preceded them and had already caught the attention of Farkhad, their future sire. Though it's thought he sired them both, in actuality Farkhad only embraced one of them, before being staked by the other- who was then embraced by their twin. Rumor has it that the two didn't just put Farkhad to final death, but that he was diablerized by the second childe. (Though no one has proven anything, and which twin would be the diablerist is anyone's guess.) They also both knew Daniil prior to his embrace.

Clara: Antitribu Malkavian. Crawled from the grave, in true shovel-head fashion, and took on the mantle of a saint to those lurking on the fringes of the WoDToG. Her madness manifests as her 'twin,' though in this au they are truly one and the same.

-The Humbles: All ghouled by Clara, with the exception of Katerina and Aspity. (In the Humbles ending her "sacrifices" are embraces to form a sabbat pack.) Katerina was already a Caitiff, though she was embraced by the Nosferatu? Gangrel? Rat Prophet, and not dealing with it very well. Aspity is her own mysterious thing (aka I can't make up my mind about her, but she's definitely not one of Clara's ghouls).

This is all ive got so far, though if anyone else has ideas/opinions id love to hear them. Also, though this has been lurking in my head for a while, the posting of it was spurred on by @cabbagege's awesome art and chatting w my friend @dykeferatu so im gonna @ both of you

[plan-3-tmars]

(@doomed-bythe-narrative) my daniil propaganda is that he's a doctor who is trying to (naively) defeat death and even when he learns theres a deadly plague in the town that keeps getting worse as the days go by his main quest of curing death never changes

UNTIL he learns on the last (12th) day that he is just a doll in a children's game and he's not real and none of it is real does his quest change to say that it was all in vain because, it was

all his hopes of curing death and later of finding a vaccine was a literal game all of his work and research is just made up

this suffering was a game for fun

(pls give this prickly prick ur vote)

Doomed by the Narrative: SEMIFINALS - 1

[meirimerens]

I draw Peter as having had long(er) hair even as far back as toddlerhood it's funny to me if he was born with a little mane. just like dankovsky was born with bushy brows.

[mlarty]

I've been really curious about your ocs, the ones for your universe "Utroba" specifically your lady doctor (does she have a name?) cause I adore her design but what's her personality? Does she have any supernatural abilities? Is she a hero or villain? Stuff like that.

Oh wow question about UTROBA, god yesssss thank you for asking. A lot of things in this project are still really raw and we only share concepts and some art, but we have something to tell about this lovely woman

Her name is Grigora Vocula. She is the second main character of one of our UTROBA stories after Temir and his companion-partner. She is a doctor of medicine, and also a teratologist and aberration consultant — think of her as a special pathologist who studies the original mutant monsters (aberrants), and also helps in investigating cases with them and sometimes with local cultists

She's not the villain in our story, but she's not a hero either. She's just a very good doctor who knows how to do her job, but she gets involved in a very big story. Her personality is inspired by characters like Dana Scully, Dankovsky, Gregory House, Filipp Preobrazhensky, Kim Kitsuragi... Grigora is cold, emotionally closed, authoritative, cynical, but lives her work like a real nerd and can really be passionate if we talk about her as a professional. She doesn't see personalities in people and is surprised when they see a person in her

While she lacks empathy, she is faithful to her personal principles and the law, viewing the world around her as a system of rules and logic. She is used to being alone, living alone, and working alone. Okay, not entirely alone; Grigora has a little dog — proof that someone can be really dear to her, even though she denies it. In any case, dead bodies have become much better friends for her than colleagues... However, Temir destroys everything one day when he suddenly decided to awakens on her table right before the autopsy. It’s a looooong story

She doesn't have any supernatural abilities, but at some point she will have to face the risk of becoming what she is fighting against — an aberrant, and it will look something like this

And a few lil facts about her

She's tall. Like.. really tall. 192 cm of authority

A heavy smoker

Grigora is a lunar. Lunarism is similar to our albinism in UTROBA, but with its original lore. It also affects her appearance, making her skin and hair colorless, and her eyes moon-yellow. So she make up her eyebrows and eyelashes to make them black

Loves crosswords and card games

A representative of the intelligentsia and has a privileged status in communist society

[hayheadd]

How would u represent the dogheads as warrior cats?

This is a hard one!

Now. I try to stray (bark) away from the canon of both pathologic and warrior cats as little as possible, within reason. It gets hard when pathologic's whole thing is mindfuck magic shenanigans and architecture, something that cats ... can actually do in warrior cats, they cat build to some extent and are smart. But making masks and theatre performances is something that cats usually don't do...

I have considered eeeveything to make it fit. I have considered things like the warrior cats pathologic happening like 2 km away from the actual real pathologic with the humans, I have considered the powers that be actually still being human children but they're just playing with their warriors ocs instead. Don't worry the first one is scrapped but the second... Mmmm... Anyways. It would make sense for say, Executors to have weird looking above average sized raven skulls and for Oyun to wear an actual bull skull since he's a big cat and being able to carry bones of an animal that weighs up to a ton all the time would be a testament to his strength. Tragedians though? Hm. Apparently in the lore of p1 Mark actually dug the masks up from the ground with them being relics of some sort of kin tradition, like the Executors being the birds of death. So that backs up the bull and the ravens, but what about the vaguely human mime mask? To be fair TO ME the game doesn't explain their lore either, so I can just say it stays a myyystery... But if you care, maybe the tragedian masks were something that the old cat kin made out of like, a big bone then cut holes in it. They still have the abattoir, and no, cats killing bulls isn't silly, cats canonically have GOD and they can ride trains and go to the mall (which happens in Tigerheart's and Riverstar's books, I may know my cat lore...) and also do surgery with fucking rocks

I have explained them having the polyhedron and cathedral and weapons applicable in gameplay (within reason). But dog heads are something that cats absolutely cannot make. A flower cloak, sure. A bone mask, whatever. They don't have plushies though. They can't stitch... They don't have cloth production. And I like to keep my pathologicisms recognisable. I put the outfit patterns on cat fur so you can take a look at it and definitively say, hey, that's mister Danny Dankovsky D. Diddles Dickhead right there. So making the dogheads completely unrecognisable would be very unfortunate. So after that pretty long ramble I am going to inform you that I am taking the easiest possible cop out! The heads are plushies that they have because they do. Because they have the plushies and there is not an issue. They tie it to themselves with grass for stability and there's stuffing spilling out which is very patholgicly. Here's a quick doodle on cat finch, that's the ginger kid who eats knives.

Or maybe I can use the elaborate web of cop outs that IPL have constructed for themselves. See, co-author, it makes sense because god is children and children are stupid. Actually no, this makes sense because this is a videogame! No this isn't a videogame, this is a theatre performance! Goodnight!!!

[enlitment]

Thanks for the tag!

Omg you got Elle Fanning inThe Great? That's a massive W! Jealous! (actually kind of scared now to open my camera roll –)

Danill Dankovsky from Pathologic! You know what, he may be insufferable, but I'm not complaining (+1 for annoying Latin quotes +1 for canon knowledge of anatomy +1 for sad wet cat vibes)

(actually strictly speaking the first person on my camera roll was Žižek, but I don't think he counts as a fictional character)

Tagging @sparvverius @cattus-catos @katrina20lh @gloomth-and-wanderings & @theamazingmurderrocks ✨

^tagged by @soctherapy but the post was getting too long

this isnt a win for me.......

Tags!: @rae-unbeloved @lil-gae-disaster @fictionalcharactergraveyard @livelaughlovelams @alexanderhamiltonhasafatass

[slice-of-julysky]

You know what is unfair?

When Powers That Be kids play, it’s a town in a sandbox, interesting lore behind and Daniel Dankovsky as one of the dolls.

When I play, it’s me doing my homework and pretending to be my favorite patho characters doing their super important tasks

Who do you think gets more fun?!?!