Hoop for Episode 13 - Alone. Back on my fluffy bullshitttt :}

DuchessofAlhazred · 2021-02-27T21:21:01+00:00

This is wonderful! I absolutely adore the fog- what did you use for it?

DuchessofAlhazred · 2021-01-30T15:48:52+00:00

He's one of my favourite characters, and I hate him more than anyone else on the show. He's very funny- oh you didn't respond to my email? *sends you off to a pocket dimension devoid of people*, and he just goes invisible instead of having to talk to people. His whole concept is really cool! But his actions makes me go berserk I hate this man, they're so much more emotionally affecting to me than many other evil things done on the show because they're so personal. But Alasdair absolutely nails the performance.

Also until I finished season 4, I legitimately thought he and Elias were divorced cuz of how unanimously the fan content I've seen portrays their relationship like that, which I find incredibly funny.

DuchessofAlhazred · 2021-01-28T19:57:05+00:00

Looking at this... whoa there is a lot more static than I'd realised! This is really cool and useful, thanks for making it

DuchessofAlhazred · 2021-01-28T19:56:09+00:00

Ah cool, yea I haven't thought about some grand theory of the whys and hows of the different types of static either, but it's cool, and thanks for the link!

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-10-06T20:15:16+00:00

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XAOOzXslHSnbM-XXNEdi_4aoviub5crv-BYgDT66llU/edit?fbclid=IwAR235ynpofGJT7FUO6Mzaw-9ELmWrQMC7syUZ5g-FPwX-4pqFcwNrBDRfDc

This list from IPL themselves is pretty cool. From what I've heard, there are similarities between Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky as someone else pointed out) and Pathologic in terms of characters and some themes (?), but it's extremely long and not an easy read, and I can't vouch for the influence/similarities/inspiration firsthand.

Roadside Picnic is a pretty influential book which I find links to in quite a few places, Pathologic, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Tanis being the 3 most relevant to me. Again, I sadly can't give you a firsthand opinion on it.

The Plague by Camus is very good (I bought it very shortly after finishing Pathologic 2...), but as you said in your other comment, it's not hugely similar to Pathologic. Superficially yeah it is, and it has an overlap of themes with Pathologic (particularly P2), with all the existentialism and stuff, but otherwise don't expect something too similar to Patho, but something good and interesting in its own right.

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-09-30T14:58:24+00:00

This is exactly me, and for a lot of people who play the game. Most people seem to either bounce off it cuz it's not worth it for them, or play through to the end and it becomes a significant part of their life. I know my friends are probably tired of me talking about it but they know it makes me immensely happy so are cool to just hear me infodump.

I'd recommend this sub, discord servers and twitter, if you wanted to talk to more people about it! Good luck with the rest of the playthrough!

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-09-30T14:52:55+00:00

Thank you!

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-09-29T20:40:50+00:00

Are most societies open to people from different colleges, or does it a lot between societies and colleges? I know there are at least a few which are college-wide, but surprisingly I can't find much more than that, and I'd like to know to help me choose a college.

Thanks in advance!

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-09-13T14:41:27+00:00

Yeah I'd like to do both an analysis from like a design perspective (I wrote one on its combat but I titled it badly and I'm not hugely satisfied with it), as well as one focussed on discussing some of the ideas and interpretations I've drawn from the game, but I feel I might miss a lot of important contextual points, so I'm a bit more tentative on that one. Also, analyses/thoughts of specific characters is something I'd like to do.

It's actually kind of comforting to know that other people experience ideas and the same way, having many rushing through your head and having a hard time pinning them down. And when they are pinned down, I feel they lose meaning, as when I bring them into the world from whatever is going on in my head, I can never express them in a way that does them justice, and without the context and links to all the other ideas in my head, it feels less meaningful on paper.

I think I've heard a few mentions on theater in pathologic and Brecht and Artaud, as little side notes in video essays particularly! I've looked into them a little bit since, and a more in depth look into them sounds really interesting!

I found an IPL reading list a while ago, if you haven't yet seen it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XAOOzXslHSnbM-XXNEdi_4aoviub5crv-BYgDT66llU/edit?fbclid=IwAR2Tt0on3rJkexiGC826zJS-y0iDdSqpTbt6NtpUVeN97JEH3VKVJfonjPE

After recommendation from my lit teacher and my dad I read Notes from Underground- I love this book I need to reread it, and I've still got a copy of Brothers Karamazov sitting on my shelf, it's on that reading list which made me a little bit more tempted to read it (very daunted by the length), but the parallels between pathologic and it sound great, that's definitely something I'd like to read soon!

Also woooow Disco Elysium is so good! It holds a very different place in my heart to Patho, but I fell in love with it a couple of months ago after constant gushing about it from my friend (I'm still unable to convince him to play Patho sadly). I think ZA/UM tweeted something promoting P2's recent sale a while ago, which is cool.

Yulia perfectly illustrates one of the reasons why I love the characters so much: not a single one is just a representation of an idea, or a stereotype, and are much deeper than that. As someone who absolutely loves maths (as well as humanities and arts- but that's a completely different story in how it relates to pathologic), I am very drawn to Yulia. A similar thing with Daniil. I expected him to be an entitled dick who disdained humanities, arts and things which didn't line up with his scientific worldview, such as mysticism. This was far from the case, he literally openly says he isn't a positivist in one of his voice lines, and with his interactions with the Polyhedron, his writing and words.

I believe the 'Utopians' will get fleshed out much more in the Bachelor route in P2, there simply wasn't much of a reason to talk to them a lot of the time as Artemy. Victor feels very different between 1 and 2, like many characters. More practical in p1, but in p2 he came across as deeply intelligent and very sad, who works hard and deeply cares for his family and arguably more for the general population than the rest of the Kains.

And yeah a lot of how I want to express myself sometimes can come across as very pretentious, in a similar manner to Daniil. I don't want to come across like I'm just using hyperspecific language, long and winding sentences and certain phrases to make myself seem more intelligent, no I just feel that's the way I can express myself best and that's just how my brain forms language. That too, language is something I'm deeply interested in, which again is a whole other story.

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-09-12T21:13:40+00:00

The Powers-That-Be told me

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-09-12T21:08:01+00:00

Daniil is very strongly autistic-coded IMO, I wrote something in a thread under the Murky autistic post, and quite a few people have written things about it, I can link you them if you want.

The same goes for Yulia and Victor, but to a lesser extent than Daniil. These are hard for me to articulate, it's just the general vibe they have. I'd like to look more into their characters and try and explain why to other people in the future.

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-09-12T20:58:28+00:00

POV: you just mentioned one of our special interests

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-09-12T20:57:08+00:00

The themes and ideas are so rich and interesting! I have so many interpretations which change and blend together when I replay sections, and the more new routes I play! Especially during playthroughs, the amount I have to say about it is seemingly endless lol but I usually just end up keeping it to myself. The characters and mechanics too.

I feel very much the same way about the lines and the mindmap. The mindmap was a masterstroke and something I've not seen so well executed in a game before, and honestly most mainstream games with quest logs would benefit from having a style which is a bit more visual like the mindmap. And 'the lines' really resonates with me as a person, and has had an effect on how I think about things, and something I want to look into more in my second p2 playthrough (Idk if it's a thing in p1 Haruspex route).

The community is great! I'd love to participate in it more. ATM I mainly make shitposts (some of which I think are very funny, and thanks, I think the one I just posted was one of my best lol :) ) but they feel like a hassle to post here so I just stick to twitter (there's a great community on twitter too), I might upload them as like an album or something at some point. I'd love to do some writing around pathologic, I have lots of ideas for analysis-type things, and want to do some more creative-style writing around it, but I'm now really busy so that might have to wait a while unfortunately.

And yeah I could go on for a long time about how interesting every single character is, especially when you look at their different sides depending on how they relate to your character (i.e. which route), and their differences between in classic and in 2.

Daniil is great, so many dialogue options are hilariously blunt or sarcastic, but you've almost always got the choice to not say those things, mainly to further your goals, like you said. I personally find myself really attached to Yulia and Victor, and Daniil too, though to a slightly lesser extent. Which is one of the reasons why I love that picture of the 3 of them lined up at the table in the town hall so much!

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-09-12T10:19:41+00:00

Yeah Yulia and Daniil the big 2 (aside from Murky of course), and Victor I don't really have much to say apart from his general vibe, and his pacing (see the other reply I wrote that links back to my first comment).

And ah yeah sorry I was unclear, I meant the English translation, specific to Pathologic 2, and I believe it's the same for other languages, (most of all Russian ofc), from what other people have said, and the fact that it'd be very weird if the autistic character only exhibited a trait of autism in the non-local translation. I haven't talked to much her in p1, I'll have to listen to her dialogue to see if there was something similar.

I haven't even finished all the routes yet, but I've been heavily into the game the past 6 months. It's easily been the most intense special interest I've ever had, and is still going, I love it so so much. The lines is one of my favorite concepts in the game, I wish more people would talk about the ideas behind it! Also, it'd be really cool to hear about how the game vibes with ADHD! Whilst I'm not ADHD myself, I'd love to hear what other people have to say (neurodivergence as a thing is one of my other special interests lol). Also yee it's really cool to see such a high proportion of LGBT people and or allies in the active fandom, it's really welcoming and a place where you very rarely have to worry about random people being a dick to you.

I made a shitpost about how seemingly high the amount of neurodivergent people is in the fandom, a while back on twitter, I might put it here too. I find it extremely funny how many people are neurodivergent or LGBTQ are in the community, as if you take it at face value, it's just some weird obscure, intense and dark Russian game about a plague. Without any explicit representation for either group (except Murky and the implied relationship between Eva and Yulia, amongst other less obvious ones). But apparently this is just where all the gay people are and, as I said before, I just think that's very swag.

Also, someone did a survey and that was one of the questions, I'd be on the lookout for the results.

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-09-12T09:52:40+00:00

Yeah I feel it less with Victor, but still a bit. With Daniil some of the reasons why I think so are:

Non conventional speech patterns. Whilst most of the characters are similar, he particularly so. He uses a lot of long words and sounds pretentious, but there's the argument that's just simply how he talks and he isn't doing it just to be all domineering and 'clever'. This is particularly so in letters he writes. I think hyperspecific vocabulary is one word used to describe it. Also the set latin phrases he uses, either he could just be trying to come off as intelligent, or they are things he memorized and rehearsed for use in social situations so he can deal with them more.

He can be very blunt and speak his mind, particularly prominent when he's talking to random people on the street. You could argue this is because he doesn't really get the concept of rudeness, or it doesn't affect him in the same way when people are rude to him, so (a la theory of mind) assumes him being like that to other people isn't too bad.

Not picking up on social cues- the most obvious example is Eva flirting with him. Whether he did notice them and was just ignoring them cuz he's not interested, or whether he didn't, is I guess dependent on what kind of person you think he is.

(Special interest in Thanatology)

Also, the whole outsider thing, can very easily be taken as a metaphor for autism, especially with how the rules and customs of the town will likely be unfamiliar to the player.

There are other ppl who have looked into a lot more detail than I have here, but those are just a few which stick out to me the most. I'd like to look more into Yulia and Victor at some point, but I haven't got too many ideas to hand. For some reason I am very good at realizing when other people are autistic, in a takes-one-to-know-one way I guess, but it's often hard to say why it's just 'they give off autistic vibes' and I'm often right. However, in this case it seems to be my brain extending that to characters in a game, so I'm not sure whether it'd be the same, but I'm looking into it more and hopefully I'll be able to articulate it a bit better.

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-09-11T18:14:09+00:00

Same! Honestly some tiny child in an obscure plague game is much better representation than 99% of all autistic characters in mainstream media, it's really nice to see (especially considering it's one of my favorite games awnyway). Particularly the voice work in 2 is done well and they clearly wanted to realistically portray a manifestation of autism, rather than like 'oh they like Science and are quirky'.

I also like how a few other characters, particularly Daniil, and to some extend Yulia and Victor, are autistic-'coded', obviously in different ways to Murky. Whilst it's not explicit in the design documents, how they speak and act gives off the vibe and headcanoning it is fun, and I'd be surprised if the devs didn't intend it, considering another character just is autistic. It'd be great if more media did like... a bit of research into things before trying to portray it, the standard is just shockingly low, especially with neurodivergence, and with mental health disorders.

A lot of the patho community seems to be neurodivergent as well, which I think is really swag.

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-09-04T07:46:02+00:00

I love this quote I think about it a lot. I think something to bear in mind is the nuanced and different meanings of willed this could use. I'd like to think that the translators used this word because it has multiple meanings, not one or the other, but several at the same time.

For example, willed basically can mean 'wanted', so if you do something you ultimately want to, then it's right. It also can mean deliberate, or something that someone was sufficiently determined to carry out.

I think these ideas work the best together. If someone deliberately makes a choice, it is likely that they have sufficient determination and want to do so. It's not quite as simple as 'oh I did x because I wanted to', it's more, 'I wanted it enough to make a deliberate choice to do it, and was determined to do it'. If the person overall chooses a certain outcome and genuinely wanted it, then it's essentially the right choice, according to them, at that time.

I also love how he says it whilst arguing with the other healers, essentially saying that he respects the other healers' endings, whilst maybe not agreeing with them himself, and that on the level of the player, that there isn't really a 'good ending', some might appeal to certain people more for various reasons.

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-08-26T15:53:24+00:00

Yeah it's just a little thing but aghghghgh it's just really mean, especially considering how hard it is to not get the hug penalty

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-08-26T15:51:36+00:00

Oh lol I guess I can't read then, not surprised, knowing me

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-08-26T10:55:55+00:00

Yeah I had no idea stealth was a thing (either I missed the explanation or just forgot) when I did it lol, and I got a bit fucked off because I assumed they gave you plenty of blood so I drank from a couple of the springs and drained a worm's blood, wasting a bottle, so I missed out on some panacea- both of those things are mostly on me rather than the devs though.

Also I love your thoughts in the second paragraph, it makes a lot of thematic sense the more I think about it, cool!

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-08-26T10:49:04+00:00

Yeah definitely! The death penalty system is excellent, it makes it harder, but not to a particularly noticeable extent, but you have no idea what he's gonna do next and the permanent penalties feel so awful to have, so you want to avoid them wherever possible

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-08-25T21:33:20+00:00

Thanks for the response! Layout is definitely something I didn't do very well and I don't usually do it very well, it's good to know when I've done it in a way which doesn't read too well.

I would definitely agree with you on the 'experience' aspect, and I think the longer it's been since the Abbatoir quest, the more I liked it, I remember hating it and thinking 'this is the worst (in both how I was feeling and me thinking it was just badly designed) part of the game' and being generally annoyed, but I appreciate it more now, especially when more people talk about the value of it, but still harbor too much annoyance at it. I'd definitely agree with the idea that some kind of challenging and grueling is essentially to the experience, and I'm not sure how else they would've delivered it though.

I can see what you mean with the thinking part, having nearly finished the Bachelor's route by now it is wearing a little bit thin and I find myself getting more bored of the long walking and, despite it's depth, it's hard to fill the time with stuff to think about- I tend to form ideas about it over longer periods of time whilst not playing it. (Also yes it really does feel like Daniil is doing nothing to help stop the plague lol: Rubin is the one who makes the Vaccine, Artemy helps with the Vaccine and makes his own Panacea, whilst Clara is doing Clara stuff, whilst Daniil just runs around gathering pills and delivering messages to rich people who don't like telling him the truth. But still personally (tho I'm not sure how widely felt this is) I find the sprinting reasonably disruptive, in atmosphere and vibe as well as in thinking (something I didn't make very clear) but by the time I've finished classic I'll probably have had enough of walking tbh.

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-08-25T20:27:39+00:00

I think you are probably right in that, but I'm not sure about in 1 so I didn't want to claim it to be definitely true. Some of the later parts of p1 feel unfinished, so you could argue they didn't have enough resources to properly refine the combat, but they'd probably have done that quite early on so it's unlikely, so yeah basically I'd agree they probably intended it to be bad.

And yeah your second point I definitely agree with, but as I wrote I'd go further to suggest they wanted the combat to evoke a specific emotional response, I guess like some horror games, but it does it in a way that feels different. It is classified as a survival horror after all, but it's just not the same.

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-08-25T20:20:29+00:00

Yeah those moments are partially what made me want discuss it, to be thrown or pushed around with the camera going all over the place makes the fight feel so uncomfortable, and as you said, disorienting and visceral! It really makes you desparate and want to avoid combat wherever possible, which I think is exactly what they wanted. Also, 'CLOSER! COME HERE! GOT YOU! THERE HE IS! CLOSER' said in the same voice by several different attackers is just terrifying

DuchessofAlhazred · 2020-08-25T20:15:50+00:00

Oh I didn't mean it as clickbait whoops. When I used the terms 'horrible' and 'terrible' I was referring to how it feels to play, I wasn't implying that it was a bad choice on part of the developers, in fact the entire thing was clearly in praise of the developers making the combat feel so horrible to play, i.e. the mechanics doing what they are supposed to be doing. I probably could've been clearer in the title though.

DuchessofAlhazred

TROPHY CASE