chmok

Banging my head against a wall over the concept of Ersher again. Crazy how a single line can add that much more depth. Artemy's already contending with questions of, does he have the right to determine the future of the Kin? Of the other half of town? Of the whole town? And now, he isn't even the original heir. Artemy doesn't seem like a "what if" kind of guy, but if Ersher survived, he'd be the Haruspex; he'd be the one making decisions as the son most likely to become the Menkhu. And for a family that's entrenched enough in cultural traditions, surely that's a weight on Artemy's shoulders.

Artemy's "does it matter?" response is so true in that, whether he's Ersher or Artemy, he's still the Haruspex and the man doing work around town. The title, position and the role matter more than the name. It really contributes to Artemy not expressing his grief very plainly in the game, to stretching himself thin around the town, to his own de-personalization.

And now here I am making assumptions, but the name Ersher sounds more culturally closer to the Kin than Artemy does. I wonder if Ersher more closely resembled Isidor. I wonder if, when the boys occupied the same house for however long that was, they were made into a dichotomy. The Kin-inclined, father's son Ersher and Artemy, whose friends are all from the town and who looks more like his mother. But then Ersher dies, and so does this dichotomy. Now Artemy has to contain them both - or, really, has to choose between one or the other. I wonder if part of Isidor realizing they had to embrace either the past or the future was the death of his son.

(And can you imagine... being Rubin... who has always been Isidor's "second choice," his reserve son if you will, but he's not even that. Artemy not being the original heir makes Rubin feel that much closer to slotting himself into the Burakh family, but he'll never be enough.)

(Hullo, hullo! Very kind of you. I'm a journalist and an immigration papers editor, which means... slow-going reading, but things are well)

How did you react to the Powers That Be?

When I first played as the Bachelor, I didn't have enough cures for everyone so I only got to talk to The Powers That Be. I didn't get to have that "the children are also a part of the game" conversation and confirmation, but... I sort of felt like it didn't matter. What I had been through, playing the game, was legitimate experience enough and Daniil can complain about being a doll, but he still has to walk back down five hundred stairs and tell the commander he'd like to shell the town. I definitely had a very Haruspex-like perspective on it, just without the gloating that he can do. The Powers That Be felt like they were a part of the town, anyway, just as stuck here as I was.

Who/what do you think the Rat Prophet is?

I'm a little poisoned by an IPL Q&A on either a forum or Reddit wherein they said they don't even know who the rat prophet is, so I just have to shrug my shoulders and agree with them - as far as P1 is concerned. But P2 places him squarely in the theater so I think he's essentially what Mark (or the player) is; a character with the benefit of a linear arc, or a linear point of view. In my mind's eye I see him with a cigarette watching the construction of P3 going: not this shit again.

He's another small part of the conversation about fiction's impact on reality and where fiction and reality intertwine. He reminds me of Woland's entourage in Master and Margarita, I guess Behemoth specifically. He's just part of the local theater gang, and he takes his character as seriously as he wants to take it because his role is rather small and also he seems to not like being an actor, same as... every actor in this play, he just gets to say that out loud. As for The Rat Prophet, he's just "the thing from below the ground," used as needed for the plot, the layer between the body of the earth and sky. He's topsoil. So he talks to Katerina of the Humbles, the unromantic martyrs and liars, because he's from the "dirty" part of earth. My theory is that (if you let him) he speeds up decay in the crowded graveyard.

How did you feel about the depiction of older characters/children?

What I love about kids in Pathologic is the agency they have and how equally capable of deceit and scheming they are. Sometimes they say stupid things you can dismiss, and other times they want to engage as a legitimately independent state capable of self defense and you have to accept this because their willpower is enough to make them a threat. They're just as mired in social expectations as adults are, and you can see them struggling or consolidating or consorting with that. Broad statement, for P1 and P2: I'm so glad they're such prominent players in the story!!! There's a lot I could say about each kid. Taya's been my favorite since forever. I could nitpick some things about both P1 and P2's interpretations of the kids, but the same way I could criticize any character in Pathologic, regardless of age. Equal footing.

As for the older characters... that's - who? Simon and Georgiy are the oldest, and then Big Vlad, Saburov and Victor are a little below that. I'm happy Dankovsky is in his 30s in P2/3 and that probably means the Stamatins are also in their 30s. Nice to be playing and interacting with characters not exclusively 18-24. I wish Yulia was in her late 30s, 40s, though. Aglaya too. Maybe contrary to popular opinion, I'm glad that Katerina is generally younger than Alexander. It just feeds further into their shared desire to fit the status quo and Katerina comes across as older, even if, In P1 at least, she isn't that old - but addiction and severe stress and chronic pain have drastically aged her. I guess I'd like to see more older women in Pathologic, but I'm not sure where besides my opinion that Yulia should be older. And Aglaya. Aglaya,,, Aglaya cougar rights,,,

Have you ever tried to explain Pathologic to the uninitiated?

[ smoking guy ] every day of my life. I used to have the "There's three healers who arrive at a Russian steppe town for separate reasons..." pitch down. Two people let me explain the game to them for an extended period of time because they wanted to ask me out; so, I'm sorry about that. With my friends, we now open the conversation by saying "there's this niche yet hit videogame..." Generally, I don't just vomit information about Pathologic on people - I only do that if I want to recruit them, and then I'm much more scheming about it. The best job I ever did was explain just enough about Clara to a friend whose favorite characters are ambiguously magic little girls, so that was kind of a slam dunk.

Otherwise, if someone asks about my phonecase (that concept art of Clara in her grave), I politely explain it's a very cheap videogame often on sale about three healers who... and my friends around me audibly groan.

What was your craziest misconception/funniest misunderstanding while figuring out the lore?

Okay, so, well. Embarrassingly, I thought that Andrey wasn't a proud murderer, contrary to all that he said, a la A Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In that book, a pair of drunk twins set out to murder someone, compelled by family honor. But they don't want to do it, so they announce to everyone that they're going to. No one really stops them so they "kill him openly, but are wholly innocent," or something like that, as announced by... a judge, maybe. I thought that the Stamatins had the same thing going on - specifically Andrey. I thought he talked himself into this murder-bravado performance in order to protect Peter, possibly from imprisonment. And Peter was the real murderer all along? Unsure. Somehow I got through the Bachelor's route thinking "Andrey's a good egg, poor fellow."

[ Loud incorrect buzzer ] I make up for it by writing Stamatin fic and posting better, more accurate opinions of them here.

Favorite flaw of Pathologic?

This is probably not answering the question at all, but the flaw that fills me with the most joy is the curb outside the Flank's grocery in P1. I'd walk down those stairs behind the Crucible, hang a left, walk down those stairs, try to swing into the doorway and get stuck every time on geometry. Each day, the Bachelor woke up and stubbed his toe. It's probably the clearest memory my Bachelor has of the town.

If it's not obvious from my series of posts about translation, I'd love to do localization... Not that I'm a professional but this is a fantasy question for a fantasy world. I'm definitely not the only person in the Pathologic community who love love loves the differences between all the translated versions of Pathologic. It's a deeply cultural game and getting to see how people figure that culture should be conveyed in other languages is without fail fascinating. This, too, is a kind of narrative development...

22. How much of the story were you able to piece together on the first run?

Outside of many details that initially evaded me because I was busy starving and trying to - I don't know, kill Var, I think I "got" the whole story on my first playthrough, except I didn't realize that after the Bachelor, the Haruspex would have just as fleshed-out a world and so would the Changeling (their mechanics aside). I was totally on board with shelling the awful little town what hated me. I didn't understand Daniil's intense antagonism with Aglaya but I was in support of his extracurricular hobbies, so long as we both agreed with annihilation. And Eva's final conversation that made me extra hateful. So - I understood the story, but I have a completely different and less emotionally whipped perspective on it now.

26. If you played more than one route/series entry, how do you think the order shaped your experience & feelings?

My order went something like...

P1 Bach. -> Marble Nest -> P1 Haru. -> P2 Haru. -> (big break) -> Changeling.

I played them kind of mercilessly back to back to back to back so the Marble Nest was like a refresher. It propelled me through P1 Haruspex. Something about all the time in the steppe was almost too relaxing, and then Oyun would poison me, and I'd have to not bumblefuck around. The order I played the games in definitely made it so that I got the story in as measured a way as possible, but also, because of that order, and how fast I played, I was super overconfident for P2. I had like... hours under my belt at that point in the town and I really thought I had a leg up on P2. Maybe I did, I died 16 times and none of them to hunger or exhaustion, but by the time Rubin died I felt I was fucking up severely. My hubris crumbled and I sat on that for 24hrs before turning back time and getting #serious but then Rubin up and died anyway into day 7. Playing the games like this turned the series into a big "we're so back" "it's so over" linegraph that eventually stomped my ego into mud. I will have learned nothing by P3.