#tldr the grief is neverending but so is the love. fr fr.

[meirimerens]

hallo!! Thoughts on the different endings of patho2?

i'm 1.5k words into a pdf about the fits and tack of patho equestrian au so i might be a little be distracted sorry i'm gonna try to make it make sense

first part of my answer: considering i've written a 25k words fic taking place directly after a diurnal ending and dealing with the grief (and etc) you can guess i might have thoughts. but mostly i have feelings.

at the heart(s) of p2 endings lie dichotomy that is explicited by Isidor; facing both past and future are ways of love, and yet they are incompatible with each other. I could be goofy and go "nice dichotomy idiot what lies outside of it" but ain't that the point? Isidor was not all kind. Isidor weighted sacrifices himself; how much death is acceptable for "herd immunity" in a sense. Choices that are made. Choices that are... willed, and yet he recoils, and yet he is reserved. When you tell him you are "choosing the past", he tells you that "you need not choose, not yet", but he doesn't say this when you tell you you are "choosing the future". Does that mean he discovered something? is he trying to warn you? he can't stop you anymore. the whole point is that he cannot stop Artemy. And the thing with the dead is that you cannot make them speak. you can act in ways you think they will approve, but they are dead, and cannot tell you if they do. the grief, regardless, is unbearable. whatever is your choice, you pay in grief, in neverending grief.

the Kin comes to your door and begs you to keep the Tower upright, for she festers the wound of Earth, and of that wound flow miracles and life and fantasies; for she keeps them alive. The themes of crushing colonization are present in text, within text; your choice can be the killing blow to this people. Tower goes down, miracles go down with it. Does it ought to? you are made to ask yourself if things can go any other way. nice_dichotomy_what_lies_outside_of_it. you are made to think about the worth of survival. those who walk out in the Steppe in nocturnal ending likely will not survive either. it's a long trek out, and nature is hungry. where i live, limestone deposits sometimes create holes under cover of leaves, and people fall in these holes, not to be found again. voracious. aurochs graze and whoever walks out in the steppe might just get eaten. can you kill a Living Earth? how far does she sprawl? I know what i think. I think she cannot be killed. I've written it, not just out of a IM_COPING.png but also because. between you and me i do observe some woowoo goddess living earth spirituality myself. Earth eats. earth swallows and spits out, spits life and kills. was she born before life? if she life? can't she re-birth herself? we have ouroboros as an implicit symbol within this game. we have body of one is body of all textually in this game. life of one, life of all. can she die? can winter be eternal? i don't think winter can be eternal. just at my window i see snowflakes and flowers on the tree across the path, both at once.

nice dichotomy. can earth eat and spit herself out of it?

this is a game. it is neverendingly replicating. can't she be? can she be? is she? right now, is she? i am back in. i walk the grass again.