#remain with faith

[farinalvr]

﴿وَكَمۡ أَهۡلَكۡنَا قَبۡلَهُم مِّن قَرۡنٍ هُمۡ أَشَدُّ مِنۡهُم بَطۡشࣰا فَنَقَّبُوا۟ فِی ٱلۡبِلَـٰدِ هَلۡ مِن مَّحِیصٍ ۝٣٦ إِنَّ فِی ذَ ٰ⁠لِكَ لَذِكۡرَىٰ لِمَن كَانَ لَهُۥ قَلۡبٌ أَوۡ أَلۡقَى ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَهُوَ شَهِیدࣱ ۝٣٧﴾ [ق ٣٦-٣٧]

( 36 ) And how many a generation before them did We destroy who were greater than them in [striking] power and had explored throughout the lands. Is there any place of escape? ( 37 ) Indeed in that is a reminder for whoever has a heart or who listens while he is present [in mind].

[mindofserenity]

“Death is no longer terrifying, this life is.”

[soupetiedee]

Can’t even have faith in Connecticut smh 💀

Bonus

[bluerosefox]

...........

So.

Ghost King Danny (and or) Ancient of Space.

Basically POWERFUL Danny gets summoned to the DC world.

How?

Because his reborn lover/partner/wife(or husband) was being used as a 'sacrifice' to summon him. (Danny and his partner (not picky who, could be a DP character or a made up one) sometimes they relive lives together, but Danny due to King duties can't always join his 'other' (or Forevermores as I like to coin them as) into new worlds for a few years.

Who is partner was reborn as, I leave up to you all!~

[anetherealpoetess]

it's vital for my mental health that the show introduces celebrían and we get to see this man fall in love with his wife

[serpentface]

This was going to be a panel of a little comic but I got too invested in drawing minute background details so, here.

[scourgebff]

warrior cat twitter be so funny cause you’ll have someone say “i wish rootspring wasn’t being set up to move on from bristlefrost so quickly” which is understandable considering it’s only been a handful of months since TBC and they’ll get spammed with replies like “well ACTUALLY 🤓 i think it is good to show him moving on past his girlfriend’s death!!! don’t you want him to not be miserable for the rest of his life!!!!” and yeah sure but what tom in this series hasn’t moved on from the death of his love interest and was given a new one (sometimes multiple) after only a few moons with kits and everything once their obligatory angst for five seconds quota has been fulfilled. also wild take but i don’t think someone absolutely needs to have a wife and ten kids in order to gain a renewed sense of happiness and peace idk.

[qiu-yan]

sensitive topic incoming

not a haterpost i promise.

sect leader yao is not a reliable source

further explanation/hypothesizing:

it happened exactly as sect leader yao said: self-explanatory. the version of events preferred by jiggy antis

he mercy-killed rusong: maybe rusong was already showing signs of a life-altering disorder as a result of the incest. or maybe jiggy just felt that, if the incest information ever came out, rusong would be doomed to a life of suffering in a heavily prejudiced society. jiggy himself had spent his entire life suffering and getting kicked around due to his own proximity to society's pariahs/taboos, so perhaps he felt that he could not subject his son to the same miserable existence. thus, jiggy gave rusong a more peaceful end, before (in jiggy's mind) society could force rusong to suffer.

he allowed rusong to die through inaction: this is really only a "kill" under a utilitarian moral framework. by this explanation, maybe jiggy found out in advance that someone was planning to kill rusong; however, for any of the other reasons listed here, jiggy decided to do nothing and allow the assassination to happen. thus jiggy would consider himself guilty of allowing rusong's death to happen through inaction.

he did it to justify eliminating an opponent of the watchtowers: maybe the advancement of the watchtower project, which jiggy knew would make society a safer place, had hit a deadlock because of a particularly stubborn opponent. so jiggy killed rusong and framed the opponent in order to engineer a situation in which his annihilation of the opponent would be entirely socially sanctioned.

and here is where the utilitarian arguments come in. perhaps jiggy knew that the watchtower project would improve the lives of millions of people and would make society as a whole safer. and he saw that one political opponent as the final major barrier. and jiggy could think of no other way to get rid of this guy. so jiggy weighed the lives of those millions of people against his one son, and concluded those millions of strangers were weightier; his son became his iphigenia.

of course, this is still a rather unhinged plan to just come up with on your own, so perhaps a better explanation of events is this reasoning paired with the "he allowed rusong to die through inaction" series of events.

rusong was killed by political opponents and jiggy blamed himself: now we reach the "he didn't do it" section of the potential explanations. jiggy has a habit of claiming kills he didn't strictly perform himself; so long as the chain of cause and effect can somehow be traced to somewhere near him eventually, jiggy will claim credit for someone's death. this is how jiggy takes credit for the death of jin zixuan: even though [novel canon] no one forced wei wuxian to lose control of wen ning and no one forced wen ning to attack jin zixuan, jiggy still acts as if he can call himself jin zixuan's killer, simply because he sent jin zixuan to wei wuxian's location.

jiggy, in pursuing the watchtower project, aroused a lot of public anger. jiggy made himself, and by extension his wife and his child, the political enemies of many, and thus political targets as well. thus, if an enemy targets the life of jin rusong because they are jiggy's enemy, jiggy is entirely justified in feeling as if rusong's death is his fault. after all, if he hadn't pursued the watchtower project, then maybe rusong would still be alive.

jiggy said "he had to die" as a Cope: losing your son sucks. perhaps jiggy, in the despair following his son's death, tried to cope with the new reality by telling himself that rusong would have had to die anyways, because he was an incest baby. if rusong was always slated to die, then the fact that rusong is now dead can now be survived. thus, "rusong had to die" becomes an emotional coping mechanism for jiggy.

no, jiggy himself is uncertain if he allowed rusong to die through inaction: this one is a a bit fanciful but bear with me here. on one hand, jiggy loves his wife and son. on the other hand, jiggy is horrified by his marriage with his wife and by the existence of his son, because his wife is also his sister and his son is the product of incest. jiggy lives with not only this horror but also the constant fear of exposure, because if this information ever got out, the lives of himself, his wife, and his son would all be over.

rusong's growth thus becomes a source of dread, not hope: every day lived brings the possibility of rusong developing some disorder or condition that eventually proves the incest. is it not possible that jiggy, living every day under such fear, might come to believe that things would be better if rusong stopped growing older? if rusong died--then gone too would be the evidence of the incest, would it not?

now along comes the political opponent who assassinates rusong. jiggy does not see it coming and jiggy is thus unable to stop it. but afterwards, upon beholding the corpse of his son, what does jiggy feel? rage? despair? no--relief! he feels relief! though he also grieves, the constant fear shrouding his entire life has, for once, lifted!

but if jiggy is relieved by the death of his son, what does this imply? can jiggy truly say, with full confidence, that he did not see the assassination coming? can he really say, with heaven and earth as his witnesses, that his failure to stop the assassination was not to some degree a choice? is there truly no small part of him that did in fact see the assassination coming--yet, knowing it would be so relieving for him, simply chose to do nothing?

but if jiggy did not see the assassination coming at all--if rusong's death truly cannot be pinned on jiggy at all--then what does that say about jiggy's power? about jiggy's safety? jiggy being innocent of killing through inaction means that jinlintai really is somewhere assassins can penetrate into. then jiggy's son really was killed by a force jiggy had no way of stopping. then, in this situation, jiggy really was powerless.

you can remove the ambiguity and argue the case either way: jiggy knew about the assassination and let it happen, jiggy legitimately knew nothing and could not have stopped the assassination. but the ambiguity makes this scenario more interesting to me. jiggy lives for the rest of his days uncertain if he chose to allow his son to die through inaction, or if he really was just weak enough to fail to protect his son. maybe jiggy's memories of the incident even manage to start distorting after a while, implying either one or the other depending on jiggy's own mental situation.

thus, when jiggy says "rusong had to die," he's uncertain if he's justifying his actions or delusionally coping with a reality he had no hand in making. when jiggy says "i killed my son," he's uncertain if he's even telling the truth or not.

ah well. this is basically original fiction at this point. it's just a potential scenario.

anyways, these are just a few scenarios based on various meta and fanfics of this subject ive read over the past few months. you can probably come up with all sorts of explanations. whatever you come up with, though, should be better than just blindly taking sect leader yao at his word.

[jakeperalta]

the tories crashing and burning in the local elections

[wiirocku]

1 Corinthians 13:13 (CSB) - Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love—but the greatest of these is love.

[orchid-n-petals]

So I've already shared parts of this on a discord server, but I have to scream about Ketheric Thorm on here as well. Obviously spoilers about the character under the cut! It's a long one.

The entirety of act 2 is about him, right? Jaheira, Shadowheart and numerous other NPCs shit on him for his fickle faith. First Selune, then Shar, then, as we meet him, Myrkul. You hear about his changes of faith on a whim, you hear that he's the person responsible for the shadow curse, he is painted as a villain, plain and simple.

You can figure it out pretty early on that Isobel was resurrected and that she is his daughter; the detail as well that he wants Isobel alive is so on the nose, it gives him away completely but there are still a few questions that remain unanswered, mainly about his faith.

And then you get to the mausoleum and the picture assembles; this entire tragedy, the death of hundreds if not thousands and the complete ruination of a landscape was all, ALL because you had this absolutely wrenched, heartbroken father who had lost everything and nobody answered his grief. He was left woefully alone, the Goddess whose daughter his daughter was involved with did nothing to save Isobel.

Imagine outliving your wife and your daughter. Imagine dedicating your life to fight the Lady of Loss, your Lady of Silver's enemy, and then be left so completely alone and in silence with your grief, with your loss. It's so, so poetic how and why he turned from Selune, and it's so understandable as well; he broke. His spirit completely broke. He couldn't deal with that void of having lost the only two important people in his life, seemingly undeservedly so. He was going mad with this and a lot of his ire was likely targeted at Aylin who, in his eye, represented Selune; she's literally her daughter, after all, and it was implied that even before the deaths of his family, he sort of saw Aylin courting Isobel as Selune taking his daughter from him, despite his service. This relationship was clearly not seen by him as a boon of "giving his daughter to the Moon-maiden".

His ways in the past clearly didn't spare him from tragedy and having to cope with it (which he clearly didn't, he snapped under the weight of his grief). He was clearly angry and unable to do anything, furious and helpless, which is a dangerous combination. A good part of his first change of heart must have been fuelled by a sense of revenge.

But then Shar didn't provide any balm to his aching heart either. If you read his letters in Grymforge and in act 2, he is so focused on enacting the will of Shar because he believes that healing lies in oblivion. Everything would be easier if he could just forget, if the damn world could just forget, if nothing was remembered because without Melodia and Isobel, nothing was worth remembering.

Then came Myrkul. Literally the only god who was not only able, but WILLING to give back his daughter to him. Imagine spending your all, EVERYTHING you have to serve two gods who would not give a single shit about the greatest suffering in your life. You were basically nothing, your loyalty didn't matter for shit, everything that was taken from you amounted to no recognition whatsoever: you should simply cope and seethe. Your grief will not simply go unanswered (which is not inherently antagonising) but ignored.

And then comes this supposedly evil entity who can alleviate your pain just like that, snap of a finger and it's a done deal.

I am so serious when I say that I believe Ketheric's main incentive was to extend Aylin's immortality to Isobel as well. You can read in her diary that she feels a taint after having came back, and there are things not even Selune can cleanse, but at this point, Ketheric doesn't care about Selune, vengeance is secondary if not tertiary, he's done that war during his Shar years and what did it give him? Literally nothing.

He doesn't even care about the fact that Isobel is still her cleric. He cares about the single most important fact: Isobel is back. Life is worth living again, there is something for him, and it was not Selune or Shar who gave it to him but Myrkul, and for this singular gift, he would raze the world for the Lord of Bones. Like people can clown on him for being disloyal but the man has the loyalty of a dog bonded to its owner.

He is powerful and is willing to go to insane lengths for crumbs. What is raising a single life for a god? Nothing. It has happened and it will happen again. But Ketheric will go to the ends of the earth to serve the single god who actually listened to him. The one god who didn't ignore him.

He knows that what he does is not the morally upright thing! He is so insanely self-aware that allying with Orin and Gortash and doing this entire plot with them only to then betray them is morally reprehensible at the best of times, he knows that people hate him, etc-etc. He was a Selunite at one point and he's not stupid. He just doesn't care; it could be literal Asmodeus and he wouldn't care as long as he got what he wanted, no matter the price.

He is probably the only one from the three of the chosen who has complete clarity over his situation, he almost sways (if you pass the check during his confrontation), he is not an inherently evil man blinded by power.

But he is inherently loyal to those deserving, and as of the story's standing, completely broken by his grief. In his eyes, at this point, the only one deserving loyalty is the one who actually listened to him. Isobel lives. It doesn't matter that she hates him, that his entire life has fallen apart, that literally nothing else that is good has come of it, because Isobel lives.

I don't think he regrets a single thing. His consciousness might tear at him at the end, but I believe he would do everything over again, exactly as he did, because in the end, his daughter was brought back. Because what would a grieving, broken parent give to bring back their child? Everything. Absolutely everything. And it's such a simply given answer, no second thoughts, no doubts.

Nobody can tell me that this man is fickle. Nobody. This man was willing to burn the world to the ground, create a Boudica destruction layer all by himself for the one single thing he wanted. For any God that would listen.

I don't know, I just have a lot of thoughts about his character.

[ghostly-knight]

All of the Ro'meave brothers are gods favourite sacrificial lamb. All three. In completely different ways. They are completely different but completely the same. Different lambs, but all nothing more than a sacrifice in the eyes of their parents, society, and even Irene herself. The Ro'meave brothers are a herd of sheep ready for the slaughter and take it in stride; both fully knowledgeable and completely unaware of what will happen, what is happening, and what has already happened. The Ro'meave brothers are all the favourite sacrificial lambs picked out by Irene herself.

[yumespooki]

Starcatcher Gregor and Moloch -- there might be rambles in the tags

[shmowder]

In case you missed it, Game Rant did an interview with Nikolay Dybowski about Pathologic 3. Here is the link for it.

And here are the bits that stood out the most to me:

Q: The non-linearity of time and how it will be related to the nature of the Town are also core story components. How did this affect design and direction?

A: Connecting non-linear time with a long, narrative-heavy story that involves many characters and cause-and-effect chains would be extremely difficult. We focused on what the player feels in the moment rather than on gathering information in the right order. The latter approach works well in shorter formats like Her Story or 12 Minutes, but in Pathologic, it would be overwhelming.

We wanted players to feel like “everything, everywhere, all at once”—similar to Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five. Different versions of reality coexist simultaneously, creating a “quantum” feeling for the player. Look at the time travel mechanic as an opportunity to correct mistakes, or even to make deliberate mistakes in order to unlock new paths and ideas. It is like a "sanctioned save scum."

-

Q: Conversely, how will it (Pathologic 3) connect to and consider the events and characters in Pathologic 2?

A: Consider it as two subjective retellings of the same events. This is the same Town, the same twelve days, the same participants and events that occurred in the Haruspex’s story. But this is a different perspective. Like two witnesses recounting the same event in Rashomon, the stories vary greatly, each focusing on different details. Finally, we always give our heroes the right to make honest mistakes, forget, and even lie. Every narrator is an unreliable narrator.

-

Q: How did Pathologic’s previous philosophical explorations help inform or play into the narrative and themes here?

A: Everything we now see as true and valuable, we’ve kept. Everything we’ve outgrown, like childhood clothes, we either reimagined and reinterpreted to give these ideas new meaning, or let go of them. After all, we’ve grown a lot (hopefully, along with the industry). When I first conceived Pathologic, I was 21 and completely alone. Now I’m 47, surrounded by incredibly talented people who enrich this universe as much as I do, and that makes a difference.

We’ve kept the idea of the tragedy of utopian projects. We kept the idea that the plague is a voice of the natural order—one that the thinking human mind cannot accept—and that it has its own truth. We retained the belief that evil cannot be defeated with its own tools or outplayed on its field; yet it can be defeated realistically in a different, orthogonal way. In another dimension.

-

Q: It’s mentioned that the Bachelor is searching for an immortal man in Pathologic 3. Can you say if this is in reference to Mark Immortell?

A: No, there’s no connection between Simon Kain (one of the town’s rulers) and Mark Immortell (the director of the town theater). Mark is a clown. He awkwardly mimics Simon, parodying him, which is why he takes on this pseudonym. He's fully aware that he’s a jester, and the gesture itself is ironic.

-

Q: What do you hope players will take away most from Pathologic 3?

A: The hope that humanity remains a promising and capable species.

-

Also, new game pictures and screenshots dropped:

(some are old ones I forgot to post)

[trappedinafantasy37]

Welp, I just did the embrace Bhaal ending with Daedra and I gotta say, this is objectively the worse ending. And it is very much the ending I never wanted for her. Because this was always going to be the ending for a Durge who embraced Bhaal. And Minthara being killed was always going to be her ending too. What makes all of this worse is that Minthara saw it coming too, she just did not realize it.

When she first tells you about Orin, she criticizes Orin by saying that if she could turn the plot of the Absolute towards slaughter, she would take it. Minthara also criticizes Orin for wanting to be Daddy's Little Girl who would do anything to please Bhaal. She perceives these to be character flaws within Orin. Sadly her analysis is incorrect, because these are innate characteristics of Bhaalspawn in general, including Durge. All Bhaalspawn are born with the same urges: kill other Bhaalspawn, breed more Bhaalspawn, and then kill everything. Of course, a Bhaalspawn can fight these urges. But it is a never ending fight, one we see Durge struggle with throughout the entire story. They only "beat" these urges by having Bhaal's blood removed from them.

But because Minthara sees these as character flaws within Orin, she fails to see them in Durge as well. And when Minthara learns that Durge is a Bhaalspawn, of course she is elated. Durge is the child of a god. A deeply religious Minthara would obviously admire that, almost as far as borderline worshiping Durge (cause old habits die hard). She truly believes that Durge is nothing like Orin and would never be anything like Orin, and she has to believe this to be true because she does not want to be afraid of Durge like she is of Orin.

Despite popular belief, Minthara is indeed capable of love and has a strong desire for it. I have always read Minthara as a person who strongly wants what she feels she cannot have. And in Menzoberranzan, genuine love is frowned upon (or at least making it known). So of course she wants it. And there is no shame in that. It is trust that she struggles with, and she always has good reason to be distrustful. And the moment she became an exile, we see her start to deconstruct her previous ways of life, but with great difficulty as it is hard to let go of the only things you have ever known. She wants to love, she wants to trust, she doesn't want to be afraid, and she doesn't want to kill her lovers.

Thanks to the business with the Absolute, Minthara finds herself in a unique position in which she actually can read someone else's mind. And for the first time in her life, she has guaranteed certainty that the person that she loves won't hurt her, or betray her, or use and abuse her, or kill her. And that was a promise Durge made to her. And so she openly embraced Durge with everything that she has and becomes devoted.

Sadly, devotion is Minthara's fatal flaw. There is nothing wrong with being devoted to someone or some god, of course. But Minthara is too devoted in which her devotion makes her blind, and she has spent so much of her life being devoted to someone other than herself, and she does not know how to live a life without being devoted to someone. She does not realize the crux of her devotion until she is turned into a sacrificial lamb by Orin. It is Minthara who questions the worth of devotion if it only leads to death and she starts to become a little more selective of who she devotes herself to. Cause she was once devoted to Orin and was willing to be devoted to Bhaal if given the chance, and yet she was still put on that altar. But this never happens if Orin never takes her.

Edit: I forgot that Patch 7 added in the second part of Minthara's dialogue about Orin. Meaning Minthara can still come to question the worth of devotion, even without being a kidnap victim to Orin. However, she questions her devotion after Durge has made their choice in regards to Bhaal. Despite her beginning to question devotion, she still remains devoted to Durge as she perceives Durge as her savior, and not being like Lolth or the Absolute or Bhaal.

Her devotion to Lolth, still ended with her being abandoned (or so she feels) and left vulnerable to the Absolute, because her devotion to Lolth did not make her an exception. Her devotion to the Absolute still led to her mind being ripped apart, because her devotion to the Absolute did not make her an exception. Minthara may be of a feline nature, but she does not have nine lives and cannot always get lucky. Every time she has devoted herself to someone, it always led her close to the grave. Her devotion to Durge, encouraging Durge to embrace who they are, will get her rewarded with death. And death was always going to be her reward.

And of course she thinks this could never happen to her. She read Durge's mind and Durge did show her that they would never hurt her. That Durge would never do to her what Lolth or the Absolute did, or even previous lovers did to her. That her devotion would be rewarded with mutual devotion. But this is coming from a Durge who has not embraced Bhaal just yet and does not yet want to become Daddy's Special Baby. And Minthara is not stupid for believing that Durge was sincere. No one wants to believe that the person that they love would ever hurt them. That does not make someone stupid or weak. Minthara could only read Durge's mind, not Durge's future.

When Durge embraces Bhaal, she still believes them to be the same exact person with the same exact desires as when she read their mind. Durge has finally followed her advice and embraced themselves, become exactly what she always saw them to be. Durge is now on the path to ascension, to true godhood. And Minthara's proximity to it all will keep her safe from all threats because she would be that god's consort. She can finally have a life without fear or distrust. She will have a god to worship, someone to love, and a new house in Durge's name. She will have everything she could have ever wanted and all she had to do was be devoted. All she had to do was be herself.

In that moment, her devotion to Durge makes her blind to the reality that Durge has changed and has become the very thing she herself criticized about Orin. She still believes that Durge won't hurt her and that Durge won't use the Absolute as a tool for slaughter. Her devotion makes her blind to the fact that Bhaal is like Lolth and the Absolute and most certainly will use Durge like a puppet. Her devotion makes her blind to the reality that Durge has only become a master of their urges, because they are willfully giving in to them and no longer fighting them. And the urge wants to kill everything, no exceptions. Her devotion makes her blind to the knife that Durge will inevitably turn against her, because her devotion was never going to make her an exception.

[weregonnabecoolbeans]

I haven’t said this enough recently but I’d like to take a moment to remind everyone…or idk…whoever sees this post…

That I love Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Thank you.