#i think grief and lara are best friends again after the plague…

[nonsenserli]

“Poor Gravel was completely distraught! Never seen her like that…”

tiny work in progress :) I’m in a bit of a slump right now, so… not super productive! oh, well. Hope y’all are well!!

[originalcontent]

Aww heck, I never posted about Marble Nest! Let’s talk about Marble Nest. We played it, we got all four endings, there were a couple things I maybe wanted to try but we didn’t but that’s okay, it would be pretty easy to replay. A couple thoughts.

As a player character, Daniil makes for a very very different playstyle than Artemy. It’s wild how all the actual mechanics of the game can be the same and yet such slight tweaks can change the feeling of the game so much. Like how everyone talking to you but how almost no one trading with you makes the whole town seem completely different.

Daniil sees the town as a chessboard and Artemy sees it as a body. This Daniil seems to know a lot fewer people than Artemy knew.

The pacing is also very interesting. The whole “time to make your nightly rounds” thing, is that something Daniil does? Is that part of his gameplay loop?

Coming out of having just finished Pathologic 2, wherein everyone’s constantly bitching at and/or trying to kill Artemy every four seconds, playing as Daniil felt like a fucking power trip. People are like “hey can you do this please” and I’m like “...wait can I do this? I can just do this??” 

I think overall I prefer playing as Artemy, although maybe I was just more accustomed to it.

Daniil is a BITCH.

No seriously, when playing Pathologic, I felt kind of bad about continually dragging Daniil because deep down there was always this little part of me that was like “you know he’s just trying his best, same as you, he doesn’t deserve all this shit you’re throwing at him” but now that I’ve gotten to walk a mile in his shoes I can definitively say that he absolutely deserved all of the shit I was throwing at him, and also I think Artemy deserved to punch him once. (After that they can go back to being friends/lovers/colleagues, however you interpret them, but he should get to punch him once.)

Okay enough about Artemy, he’s didn’t even appear in this game.

Wait one last thing, in the list of townsfolk it showed Artemy as having a name rather than being called “Haruspex”, but in the main game Daniil was listed as “Bachelor”? 

God, that list. Seeing so many dead kids. :( Daniil you did not protect my children. Oh, Mark Immortell was there and was in danger, in the Bachelor route am I allowed to let him die from the plague, is that a thing I can do, please? My besties Lara, Bad Grief, and Victor were also dead, but Stakh was alive! I tried to visit him but I couldn’t, the game doesn’t let you cross the river even if you go alllllll the way around it. I tried to find Aglaya too but couldn’t.

Seeing the town map was so heartbreaking. Quarantining the stone yard and letting everyone else die is a pretty pragmatic decision bUT ALSO!!!!!! My KIDS.

The loop was neat, how everyone kept saying you were dead and how you didn’t know why until the end, and I loved how the town kind of was your body. (Do the fires mean you’re feverish? Does the cold mean you’re dying?) This game has always been excellent about how it nests themes within themes and symbols within symbols, and Marble Nest was no exception.

Kind of hilarious tho how the ultimate theme is “if you don’t want your favorite character to die, just stop reading the book, or maybe start over and reread the parts where they’re still alive forever.” Turns out you really can beat death Daniil, good job. :)

(“But wait! I may be a fictional character, but the disease which kills me is also fictional! AU in which it’s not real fuck you” Honestly what did I expect coming from the same people who had a plot-critical messenger murdered offscreen by the understudy of the protagonist.)

This character’s themes seem to be very lofty. Again, I think I vibed more with the more grounded side of things, but I love metafuckery so you know.

That time I was in that house and I was like “I might need to check out some rooms” and the other guy was like “here, I have the master key” and hands me a lockpick, I actually laughed. Incredible.

The PANTOMIME. God that was such a vibe. Compared to everything else in Pathologic, it was so animated! I do love the “you’re heartless, come back to me when you have a heart” and then in the next loop I hand them a human heart and they’re like “.....dude, have you ever heard of a fucking metaphor, holy shit why are you giving me this.”

The CLOAK. The MASK. The S A N D A L S. Hhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Wearing the ensemble and literally being immune to the plague zone, I was like “wow this is fucking op how is this even allowed” although I guess Marble Nest was also written so that you can last the whole game on literally one piece of toast.

It was so weird to go around places where I know twyre grows and not hear any bugs. I did take a nice incredibly long walk through the steppe just to see how far the game would let me go though, because it was nice and pretty and who the fuck has time for that while in Pathologic? 

I didn’t really talk much before with Georgiy Kain, but fuuuuuuck what is wrong with that guy? If Daniil’s been hanging out with him, I can fucking understand why he became obsessed with the polyhedron at the end.

And Aspity, oh god I have so many questions, what are you, I don’t think we ever cleared that up.

And Shrew! What’s her deal?? There were actually a lot of very memorable NPC’s who didn’t even have their own custom designs.

I don’t know much about Pathologic 1 but I think Eva killed herself in the Bachelor route? Does that mean she’s going to die in this Bachelor route if it ever comes out? I mean presumably Marble Nest already deviates from that game quite a bit since I don’t think Artemy dies in it (and I don’t think Daniil does either.)

Gee Daniil! How come your mom lets you have two funerals?

A little sad Changeling never came by to say hi, I would have liked to see her. Although I guess she’s busy trying to save my ass irl. I know I remembered seeing the steam page for Marble Nest earlier and being like “huh that’s sort of a strange poster for the game, isn’t Artemy supposed to be dead?” And then I played it and I just took a moment and turned to my sister and was like “hey look at this” and she was like “...yup that’s literally the game.”

Overall it was a fun time. Very short comparatively, very clever. 

[silenthillmutual]

16, for the Latin prompt thing

De gustibus non est disputandum. There’s no accounting for taste. (prompts)

Artemy had a thought - a rather dreamy, optimistic and ultimately unrealistic thought - that staying in town after the panacea had found its way into the hands of the sick would have made Dankovsky less acerbic. The kind of stress they were under, it made sense he’d see the man at his worst; give him time, and he might be an entirely different creature. At least, that was the bullshit explanation he’d given his friends when he told them exactly why it was the Bachelor hadn’t left. They stared at him, slack-jawed, and Grief had his mouth open to make some sort of comment before Rubin nudged him in the side so hard he nearly fell over. 

“That’s great, Cub,” Rubin said, in a voice that let him know it absolutely was not great, and that he was seriously starting to regret not going out to the front with Block. It was, in all, a slightly better reaction than he thinks he would have received if he’d told them the truth, which was this: “Familiarity breeds affection” worked just as well on him as it had on Dankovsky.

For whatever it was worth, Daniil was slightly different outside the anxiety of the pandemic, but the key word in the thought was slightly. The second key word was “anxiety,” because the man seemed to have it in spades. It was strange to watch someone with so much confidence, who spoke so well and in a voice so flat just vibrate with nervous energy at all times. And his opinion of the people only changed a very, very little bit.

“I don’t think I should accompany you,” he told Artemy one evening. He’d walked with Artemy all the way to the Lump, and then stood outside frowning at the door, looking like the wind could blow him over.

Artemy looked at the door, and back to Daniil. “What? Don’t tell me that guy scares you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, and just to show how very unafraid he was, he’d snorted. “But I will say something, and you will be the one regretting it.” 

“Me?” He wasn’t sure if he should be amused or offended. “I will be regretting what you say? Erdem, that’s not now it works.”

“I don’t regret my choices.” He looked at Artemy very sharply when he said it, like he was imparting some sort of knowledge on Artemy that Artemy couldn’t quite understand yet, and looked away when he continued. “But you will regret bringing me with you.”

He was right, and he was wrong: Daniil didn’t hold his tongue, now that the lives of several thousand people were no longer at stake. All this time, Artemy had thought he’d heard Daniil at his most vicious and cutthroat. He thought that’s what those twelve days were like. Artemy was an absolute fool; nothing could have prepared him for the verbal beatdown Daniil unleashed upon the younger Olgimsky. 

And to think, he once considered “coward” a weak insult.

It was probably for the best that boos Vlad was no longer among the living, or Daniil would not have made it out alive. Artemy would have been upset had Capella not looked simply exasperated by the whole thing, throwing glances at Artemy that he could just feel meant Why did you bring him with you?

But after it all, Artemy threw an arm around Daniil’s shoulder and brought his body close to bury his lips in Daniil’s hair, tears streaming down his cheeks from holding in his laughter too long. “I don’t regret that at all,” he told him. He felt Daniil’s arm wrap around his waist, leaning into him, and Daniil’s head against his chest. He wondered if Daniil could feel how fast his heart was beating, and ushered him along elsewhere. 

This is how their relationship begins. The paper plastered over them, the urgency of the plague slowly peels away and reveals whatever it is they are underneath. It’s confusing, to go from rivals to friends and straight to this in-between where they’re colleagues who are sort of friends and maybe something else. And in the greater scheme of things, perhaps the movement isn’t as slow as all that, or maybe it’s just that the shift is so smooth he doesn’t notice when they move to more intimate touches. 

So their first kiss has no build-up. It’s not done in private, and the permission is given silently in the way their lips brush against each other, soft at first, until they smile into each other. 

The fact that they don’t share this moment in private is how they leave themselves open to unsolicited comments, though the way news spreads in this town and the way people just are, it would have happened sooner or later anyway. It’s not like Artemy’s unused to them, being from the Town and all, and he would have thought Daniil would be used to it now as well. For some reason, he still reacts to whispers with glares, quiet scoffs that only Artemy can hear, clenched fists when they walk side-by-side and grips that crack his knuckles when they hold hands. 

“I thought you were something of a celebrity, back in the Capital,” Artemy finally asks. 

“What?” Daniil’s head whips back around to Artemy’s face, expression twisted into a scowl. His grip on Artemy’s hand is giving him pins and needles. “Yes, I suppose I was. What of it?”

Artemy shakes his head, smiling to himself. “You’re breaking my hand here, Danya. People talking about you is not new.” 

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Daniil counters. “And even less what they say about you.”

Oh. Right. Artemy shrugs, but he’d been ignoring it for long enough that the memory of it all, the things they say, feels uncomfortable, and the shrug turns less into a gesture of indifference and more into an attempt to roll the feeling off. “They’ve always said things like that.”

“I’m aware,” he grumbles. “De gustibus non est disputandum.” 

He blinks, and curls their arms toward his chest to grab Dankovsky’s attention. “You’re going to have to help me out here.”

Daniil looks up at him. “There’s no accounting for taste,” he explains.

Artemy tugs at his lip with his teeth. “Yeah,” he says, “I’ve heard them say that.” 

“I think your taste is excellent,” he says. It’s in a tone Artemy has come to find endearing, despite the awful ways he’s heard it used. A lilt, to indicate a joke they should both be in on.

But it feels uncomfortable here. “Not mine, erdem. They’re talking about yours.” 

“Nonsense,” Daniil says, pulling their hands closer to him, the back of Artemy’s hand to his lips. “Your friends made clear in no uncertain terms that they have no idea what it is you see in me. Most definitely, the sentiment is about you.”

“They what?” That’s a conversation he’ll have to have with them some other time, about honesty and also maybe not embarrassing him to his significant other. “No, Daniil, I mean the other townspeople. They question -”

“I know what it is they question, dearest,” Daniil interrupts him. He looks very sharp, again, eyes dark and hollow. “And it is lucky for them that you have tempered me. And that Block confiscated my firearms before he left again.” He’s not sure if that last part is meant to be a joke or not, when he seems so very serious. “And I am saying that is they who lack taste. I...” He looks away, and Artemy can feel the anger rising in his hand again. “During those awful days, I heard them say things about you, about your appearance and your temper. Awful rumors. For a while I was convinced you must have had a twin, like that strange girl, or that they were seeing ghosts like that shabnak creature. They couldn’t possibly be talking about you.”

Artemy doesn’t know where to look when he’s talking. He’s been chewing on this in the back of his mind for too long, now. He knew how to ignore what people said when his world revolved around his kids, but when he was with Dankovsky, it was harder. Lara, Grief, Rubin - it’s normally only their opinions he sought, but that didn’t make him deaf to everyone else. “You don’t have to say that,” is what he says, in mumbles. 

He doesn’t even know why he says it. 

Dankovsky’s reaction is so immediate he barely registers the loss of a hand on his until he runs into the mans body, now in front of him. Daniil’s hands are firm on his waist, holding him in place, and the look in his eye is resolute. “Tyoma,” he says, like the name itself is a sentence. “I told you once before, didn’t I? That I don’t regret my choices. I don’t slip in my words.”

“Right.”

“My attraction to you is no mistake, and my words are not lies. You are attractive, Artemy Burakh. It is not my fault if the rest of this godforsaken town is fucking blind.” Artemy snorts, and tries to look away in embarrassment, but Daniil reaches up to grab his face, forcing him to look him in the eye. He’s so very, very serious, but looking at Artemy, his face softens until his eyes are warmer and unfocused. “You... You do know I love you, right?” 

This is the first time either one of them has said it, and it feels so soon. So early. And it feels like a long time coming, too. “Me too,” Artemy says, instead of something that actually makes sense.

“Well I should hope you love yourself.” It’s said with a smirk, but the nervous energy is there, too, vibrating as always. Artemy shakes his head, and moves Daniil’s hand to kiss his palm. “This town, as always, is full of idiots.” Daniil doesn’t bother to keep his voice down when he speaks. “So don’t listen to them. They’re only still here because you have a kind heart.”

[arysthaeniru]

What if Clara was a midwife?

“The midwife is a relic of barbarism. In civilized countries the midwife is wrong, has always been wrong. The greatest bar to human progress has been compromise, and the midwife demands a compromise between right and wrong. All admit that the midwife is wrong.” - Dr Joseph DeLee, 1915 being completely wrong. 

Listen, I love Clara so much. She’s so weird, and everybody kind of hates her, and her weird double is so trippy, and I adore her sass. And everyone knows that Ice Pick Lodge didn’t quite have enough time/resources to shore up her route in Pathologic 1. And I just keep thinking: I do love Clara as she is, but imagine if she was a adolescent midwife, instead of a weird healer child! Imagine how much more thematically cohesive everything would be!

Clara’s story route is all about how old and new CAN coexist together, but it requires maintained, thoughtful sacrifice, to create that peace. That essence of sacrifice is what every midwife goes through all the times. What can pragmatically be sacrificed? Whose life is more important? How do you deal with the tensions and demands of the old and the new, and who bears the knowledge of that sacrifice? Clara facilitating the birth of something new in the the Town-upon-Gorkhon just becomes so much more interesting with her as a midwife, instead of a saviour figure. 

I also think it would lead better into the idea of doctors who aren’t really seen as doctors solving this plague best. Artemy’s steppe knowledge and Clara’s midwife knowledge would have equally been seen as complete nonsense by people like Daniil, who don’t understand the importance behind those kinds of cures, and the sorts of relationships that have to be maintained for it. 

And why the age-up? I think it just works so much better! Part of being an adolescent negotiating your future and the rest of your life, is that constant diplomacy and sacrifice between old and new. I think it also allows for Clara to have really interesting relationships with the rest of the town’s leadership, because of how being a teenager is such a transition phase.

So imagine with me, if you will, a new Clara and a new route. 

Clara isn’t actually an outsider to the town in this version: she’s Katerina’s bastard daughter. Everybody knows the her secret identity, but she doesn’t really live with the Saburovs anyway, she has her own place, a small but well-maintained house to do her work out of. 

Alexander still trusts Clara, but he resents her now, because she’s a reminder that the lack of children between he and Katerina is not a mutual thing, but specifically his own lack of potency. I bet that would make his ego really dented, and make him even more of an asshole. 

Clara still wakes up in a grave at the beginning of the story, but this time, it’s because she actually really died. When she walks around town, her reputation drops because the dead aren’t supposed to come back to life, and most people are horrified by your existence. 

Clara, upon initially coming back, is told by the Tragedians that she has to save people with her hands--she takes this to mean she continues doing her damn job. But to do that, she needs people to trust her again, and for that she needs Isidor’s approval. Too bad he’s dead now.

Sidenote: Clara’s midwifery job sometimes meant cutting the baby out of the mother. But she can’t legally cut flesh out of anybody, so she’d call Isidor up. She never much liked his necessity, but she and him got along fairly well.

But some of the Kin say that Artemy is a menkhu like his father, so maybe she should run after him to re-establish herself? Too bad Alexander is convinced he killed Isidor, and has already killed three people in town already. Alexander’s death warrant for him means he’s already gone into hiding. She can’t convince him to change his mind about Artemy 

Katerina doesn’t trust Clara anymore: she says her real daughter is dead, and that Clara is here as a horrible monster to lead her and the town astray. She wonders if this is the morphine addling her mind, but then she meets the Rat Prophet and everything makes sense. Also it’s implied the doppleganger is coming around whenever Clara’s not there to intimidate Katerina. 

When Clara goes to sleep, exhausted, confused, and nowhere closer to regaining her job or position in the town, she realizes she’s inherited the visions which she couldn’t see before she died. She’s a Mistress now. 

Capella, who used to be her friend, and Maria with whom she used to be amicable, are unimpressed, and don’t believe in her visions too much. They’re all arguing about the role of the Mistresses in town, and now Klara’s joining the midst, it’s becoming uncomfortable. Klara’s task is to try and convince them of her own validity and her own importance to the future of the town. Capella, especially, is easier to convince, but the weird friendship that used to exist before Clara’s death, is very tenuous, and Artemy can easily fuck it up. 

Speaking of Artemy, when Clara does eventually find him, he’s not actually a menkhu yet, so he’s completely useless on that front. But also, the Plague is happening, and he’s useful there, and he’s getting the trust of his father’s people. You get him to vouch for you, and it temporarily helps, but most people are still too freaked out by you. Clara and Artemy still don’t get along, though, Artemy’s way too condescending of Clara and they bristle against each other, uneasily. 

Daniil, on the other hand, is actually impressed by Clara when they first encounter each other. After all, beating death was the dream, and Clara did it! But Clara doesn’t like how he talks about her work, and also has no idea how she survived her brush with death, so the initial interest fades off, quickly. Daniil and Clara are still prickly with each other, but the threats of violence are less frequent, because a teenaged girl is harder to threaten to spank.  

Notkin, who Clara also used to be friends with, now thinks she’s just a half soul. He’s impressed by that, though, not scared, and all of his kids trade with her. But the Soul and a Halves generally insult Clara before doing anything.  

Khan’s Doghead clan respect Clara, because of her survival, but Khan maintains that the Polyhedron rejects her because she’s too old. Cara can prove him wrong by seeing all of the beautiful mirages of the Polyedron, but also telling him they’re all lies. This can make Khan made and lock off the Polyhedron, but the dogheads will still trade. 

Grace is probably Clara’s only real friend, and even she is being intimidated by Clara’s double. Grace is very convinced by her ability to speak to the dead, and Clara believes her, but also believes it’s dangerous. 

Clara and Andrei almost throw hands on the regular, one, because he thinks she’s presumptuous and very creepy towards her brother, but two, because she also stopped a lot of Herb Brides from coming to Andrei’s establishment, because they were all getting thrush from the twyrine. 

Clara still gets the daily missions to go and verify whether people are responsible for the plague, but this time, it’s because Alexander believes that Clara has inroads with all of them, because of previous midwifey encounters with them. This is true, but most of them don’t trust Clara anymore, so she has to do a bunch of errands around town to improve her reputation and prove she remembers her midwife skills. This can be helped by visions, or by rumours. Soon, Clara starts to build a lot of reputation amongst drunks and believers of her magical miracles (mst of the violent miracles done by her doppleganger) 

Clara’s double is still around, and is still the manifestation of the plague. At several points, people will suggest that Clara’s reincarnation is why the plague is happening and it’s uncertain if this is true or not. A lot of Clara’s missions are finding the double and asking her why she’s doing what she’s doing. 

Her relationship to Bounds, I think, would also be a way to explore their sins more. I think for a mature game, Pathologic doesn’t often discuss the relationships of sex and love to death very much, and I think there are some complex things to say about love, and children, and “sin” that could be really explored through a route with a midwife main character, who’s supposed to be investigating the sins and crimes of Anna, Yulia, Lara, Grief, Oyun, Big Vlad, Rubin and the Saburovs. I think dealing compassionately with the ideas of cheating, STDs, abortions and all the stuff around sexual health/freedom of women that nobody really wants to talk about could be an interesting way of how Clara reconciles the old and the new: by revealing secrets and letting them not be foul anymore.