pseudoquiddity

[pseudoquiddity]

gambling with angels is easy. they can't lie but they have addictive personalities; it's easy to clean them out then make them divulge secrets about the business of heaven to call your bets. my dad used to say "hey, watch this" and summon angels to play poker with him with a sort of bone flute he inherited from his grandpa, and they'd be holding horseshit and still want to call him. i'm talking "raise on a two pair" level bad at it, but they couldn't stop trying to win. my dad taught me all the secret names of God before i was out of grade school and i would use them to curse my enemies so they came down with leprosy. you can cure leprosy these days but it still sucks, especially for a child. but they had it coming for pissing me off

[pseudoquiddity]

my path was called the diaphragm

[pseudoquiddity]

the twyrine muse.

[pseudoquiddity]

China (around the same time period) (anachronisms aside) AU

[pseudoquiddity]

the first sentence…. i’m howling

[pseudoquiddity]

What's "the blocklist thing"? I wasn't in the fandom back then and i've never heard of it

Okay, so. Full disclosure - I was rather late to this sordid episode in the fandom's history, as I only started actively participating late in 2020 and publishing smut in 2021. So while I did end up on the blocklist and suffered consequences for that, I didn't have it nearly as bad as some people. I'm friends with some of them, and asked whether they might want to share the impact that the blocklist had on them. As a result, this answer ended up on the long side and touches on some heavy topics (mostly harassment). I wanted to answer it this way not just for you, but so other people could see the cost of such toxic social pressure in fandom.

It was an extremely bad-faith bulletin a user complied of authors and artists who created work that they deemed morally impure or worthy of shame/shunning.

- excalibutt

The block list incident involved a person in Pathologic fandom who made a list of writers and artists they found distasteful and pressured others to block them. Anyone who remained friends with people on the list also ended up on the list for maintaining their friendship. This led to an atmosphere of fear and harassment, with many creators withdrawing from social media altogether due to said harassment, or concern that their friends would face harassment for associating with them.

I straight up saw an incest survivor pushed out of the fandom by having people endlessly talk about how disgusting incest is, I saw a queer Russian couple targeted and harassed for remaining friends when they were literally dating, I saw a person who drew aged-up characters get accused of making “literal cp”, and I had friends added to the block list just because they were my friends and I happen to write fictional incest sometimes.

- anonymous

It didn't really affect me that much since I use a sock for all my kink meme stuff, so what bothered me most were the lies? Like it's one thing to list my name and say I write problematic content, cause well… that's true and I even advertise it right there in the tags on my ao3. But to say that I sent death threats to people was just an outright lie and even if I had been able to set the record straight without opening myself up to other risks, the damage would already have been done. Once rumours like that are spread, they're difficult to extinguish, and so the utter lack of fact checking and allowing misinformation to spread was the thing that really upset me about it.

I know that [involved person] had a similar issue with it where they claimed that she 'started a raid' or something when she had done nothing of the sort, and there was an instance early on where he added somebody to the list who had done literally nothing. He either confused a username or listened to somebody who was trying to hurt this person without verifying that they'd actually done anything he'd find objectionable. It took me pointing this out to him (back when the list was publicly editable) for him to actually go look and remove their name.

- anonymous

Yeah, luckily I didn't receive anything at the level of straight death threats, but I did get a lot of nasty comments and people who had been friends in the fandom who just ghosted me. It was extremely alienating, and I probably would have just bounced on Pathologic if it weren't for the freaks ♥️ Whatever little business as an artist doing commissions basically screeched to a halt at that point, and even though it was also my own actions to move on to other work after that, in a lot of ways I feel like it closed the door on working as an artist online for me. By the way, keep in mind this was all because someone saw I had left a comment on [involved person]'s fic and basically their word and interpretation on what that meant was enough.

Also like [previous anon] said, it was extremely maddening seeing the level of straight lies that were being tossed around about people I cared about, the ones about [involved person] were truly wild because she literally just posts fic and replies to comments in an extremely kind and thoughtful manner exclusively on AO3 and somehow that got spun into her being the leader of the free companies or some shit sldkjflsj

- anonymous

And, as I said above, I was put on the blocklist as well. Anyone who so much as scrolls through my work knows I write a lot of non-con. The fact I also try my best to help cultivate a kind, supportive fandom environment didn't matter. Interaction with my fics dropped like a rock overnight, especially non-anonymous interaction. I was lucky enough not to suffer the harassment that some people did, but it was a very isolating experience and another demonstration of how much influence that list, its creator, and its enforcers had at the time.

That last part is important. One person alone can't enforce that sort of moral paranoia and aggression in a fandom - it takes a lot of people willingly going along with it and more falling in line out of fear. I've seen people talk about how chill the fandom is now, and I sincerely hope it can stay that way. I hope that, if someone proposes this sort of list again, the answer is an unequivocal 'No, that isn't what we want our fandom to be'. There's bound to be a lot more activity soon with Pathologic 3 on the horizon, and with that, more people who are willing to use cruel tactics to make the larger fandom space conform to their comfort. If we want the fandom to remain a peaceful place, that means refusing to be goaded or bullied into attacking each other.

[pseudoquiddity]

Stunning pathologic masterpeace by @masterworker-shargo

Love this madly <3

[pseudoquiddity]

everybody say happy sweet 16 slenderman

[pseudoquiddity]

🌲📹

[pseudoquiddity]

pathologic + rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead

[pseudoquiddity]

[pseudoquiddity]

I know this is going to make me sound pretensions but I have to get it off my chest. I feel an unimaginable rage when someone posts a photo and is like "this picture looks like a renaissance painting lol" when the photo clearly has the lighting, colors and composition of a baroque or romantic painting. There are differences in these styles and those differences are important and labeling every "classical" looking painting as renaissance is annoying and upsetting to me. And anytime I come across one of those posts I have to put down my phone and go take a walk because they make me so mad

[pseudoquiddity]

One of my predictions for P3 is that the Bachelor's edicts will get progressively more and more absurd. Not just "no dying," but also "all skirts must be cut above the ankle" or "memorize and recite a poem." Edicts that walk the thin line between insane and an effective way to micromanage an extremely specific issue.

[pseudoquiddity]

[pseudoquiddity]

out of curiosity, do you have any ships you enjoy? or pairings that arent romantic? its possibly the last thing i would expect you to talk on your blog so (excluding some posts)

laughed a little at this message I guess I really don't talk about shipping... awesome. I partake in some from time to time and there Is some stuff I really enjoy but it tends to have low output... well,

lara/yulia (p1): I am a HUGE YULILARA FAN which is a low bar since there's like 3 of us. what is there to lack?? yulia and lara textually were once close friends, then had a falling-out (partially over yulia's fatalism and hypocrisy), and now they're bitter. really easy to read as exes. I love human suffering I think that's the point of pathologic so I'm mostly into pairings that won't work out :-)

yulia/maria (p2/3): okay hear me out I have privileged information (read the quest titles in quarantine) But this will be good. and it's even good from what we have so far. I love women who are mutually jealous of each other's relationship w/ eva + hate each other on ideological grounds + have nasty sex. aglayulia (didn't make this list but I enjoy it) makes it even crazier... me when my detested aunt comes to town so I torture her ex about it.

artemy/the fellow traveler (p2): deal ending is the best ending and choosing to reject mark's play and travel forever with the one person who's been consistently kind to you is the Best choice for har2spex. the Entire scope of anything in the world could be reached by deal ending artemy/ft. the motif of "a fate like a good wife"/"escaping fate" frames him as a romantic partner. "now that we're inseparable, I'll hold you tight". it's so good MY PLAYLIST

artemy/grief (p2): bartemy nation. artemy and grief are obsessed with each other however you slice it in p2 (you told your gang I'm your best friend and they all recognize me on sight? I bring you up unprompted in various conversations? we had a secret lair together?). it's really fun in that context of a long timeskip (read 301, a great piece of writing), but also just a great dynamic during the game, especially considering the direct parallel between grief asking artemy to escape + aglaya's escape. one of VERY FEW patho ships where the parties involved have a history and also get along in the present day

aglaya/artemy (p1/2): another really good dynamic but this time it's even canon. I think every day about their p2 escape sequence and how integral that is to the game's themes (...how fucked a mistake it was to doom that + how it was handled even worse for nara). compelling (author's note: I forgot to finish writing this paragraph please imagine I did that, will be left for another post)

daniil/eva (p3): honorable mention since this is topical today. I'm neutral on it in p1, but I think it has a lot of potential for p3! Mostly if the writers show eva's survival to be incompatible with the utopia. Trying to save her makes sense as the core of a game that's now about time travel... we've seen what happens when Dankovsky doesn't stop her and lives with the linear time consequences in 1, and I'm really into the idea of rearranging everything else that happens to the Town in hopes of avoiding that. whatever's being set up with the "married to his work" theme is going to work nicely with establishing a choice between his mission/eva, and it's a beautiful parallel with p2's "fate like a good wife" theme, And it means we'll have to look at eva's rationale and interiority in more than just an optional task that lasts 1 day. it's also like... I love characters being forced to grow and I love that the scene we have of them in quarantine includes dankovsky apologizing to eva, it seems like a very Groundhog Day attempt at altering the course of events. hopefully can + looks like it will be good. 🙏

vasily filat/me (p3): you know it.

[pseudoquiddity]

caving as an extreme sport is sooo unfathomable to me why are u as a creature of the daylight doing that. were u born without the dread in ur bones or something

[pseudoquiddity]

honestly what p3 makes me wonder more than anything else at this point is how much of this new stuff IPL would've implemented for p1 if they'd had the resources (time, money, manpower, egg) to do so. would the bachelor route have been set up like a film instead of a play? would these time bending mechanics have been involved? hell, would there have been monologing? skips over walking through town? different survival mechanics?

it's so easy to look at change and go Eugh but idk man maybe this is what they always envisioned for dankovsky. if so, even if I/you/we like it less than his classic route, I just think it's kind of cool that they have the means to explore it now. it's not everyday a studio (especially one as small as IPL) gets an opportunity like this to reimagine their work 20 years later