#find yourself someone who looks at you the way Daniil looks at Andrey

[tennis-kittens]

So the conclusion from that epic ATP Finals interview is that everybody's in love with Andrey (X)

[shmowder]

I’ve Returned with some more falin stuff to give some more details! Since rambling is a job and oh boy am i absolutely aceing my end of the year evaluation.

“And only one year younger! Does that mean they met in university 👀 or high school sweethearts? I love relationships that are built on friendships.” The answer to that is yes!! They met in university falin hears a rumor about someone who finds to defeat death and feels drawn to seek him out…almost like something in his blood draws him to death like a wolf looking for a lamb. But their relationship starts off as casual collaboration on projects for shared classes then expends to having deeper conversations about death and their childhoods (Both of them having fathers who were in someway military men) then becoming Daniil inviting him out to bars and dinners….then something happens once when they’ve both had a fair share of wine leading to a relationship blooming in its wake. They get married in secret during their third year of university, they both believe they have hidden it well and nobody knows….everyone knows they both act far too obvious about it and both just keep drawing attention to the rings on their respective ring finger….they believe they were slick…they absolutely were not!!

In most of his interactions with Katerina it’s usually him slightly on edge around her, his dialogue never gets snippy or witty he acts almost like a small child talking to a adult they’re afraid of disappointing because he’s never genuinely had a mother type figure who actually seems slightly worried about him, he’s got bad parental issues on both ends of the spectrum so being around both Katerina and Alexander brings those out full force but as the days go on his snippy and awkward interactions become more akin to wanting approval from a parental figure wanting to hear he’s doing the correct thing and that he’s cared for in some way that can be views as familiar. At falin’s core he seeks out what he’s lost In childhood a family.

Not sure where to put this fact but nobody outside the saburov’s actually refer to him by name! Daniil always refers to him as mea vita or darling, Clara only refers to him as Fae, Andrey only refers to him by insults he hates falin and very well might have been the one who attempted to murder him previously (which if he was and Daniil were to find that out…things would go well surely!) and besides that Everyone else refers to him as the psychologist

“The two sandcastle kids took it literally but then had a fight and separated Falin and Clara.” That’s absolutely amazing and I’ll raise you they got into an argument over how to say Falin’s name and that’s why they got separated (For lore related context Falin’s name isn’t pronounced the way it’s spelled it’s actually pronounced Phelan and the only people who correctly pronounced his name ends up being Daniil and Clara because he’s too tired to correct anyone on the pronunciation.) Wait that made me just realize that Clara would be daniil’s sister in law….since she’s Falin’s sister oh that’s an absolutely funny thing to think about…

I’m so glad you picked up! On what I was going for with his period happening and removing his agency! One of the main themes I really wanted for his character is bodily autonomy and the utter struggle to keep that. He’s playing a difficult balancing act because his own body has now robbed him of that autonomy he’s no longer in control of the blood that flows! Hes had that choice ripped from him much like how in his youth he had all his personal choices decided by others once again suffers from an utter lack of control over his body but in a way that’s even more personally cruel.

Here’s some further lore he actually comes to town with a handgun because his father being a military man (or at least before the events of the main story he was) insisted falin always have some form of protection as “This world isn’t kind to people such as yourself…it’ll do you good to be a good shot” but it don’t worry falin tells anyone who will offer him a gun that “No I don’t have one of those could you give me one please?” He ends day 12 with far too many what does he use these for? Nothing he just wants to collect like like some kind of raccoon looking for shiny objects.

On the note of him and franziska’s interactions since both her and my other Patho character interact with Falin quite a fair bit, they are sorta friends? In the sense both are hiding a secret from the rest of the town (Falin being trans and Franzsika being a conman) so they do find some common ground with eachother which softens their thoughts on the other/ falin is much kinder to those who treat his sister well since that’s few and far between so they’re chill with eachother but they probably won’t ever speak again once they go their separate ways.

Uhhh the final thing I have to offer up for Falin is songs that remind me of Falin, Hand Me My Shovel, I'm Going In! by Will Wood and the Tapeworms and brand new city by mitski!

Also as a bonus a song for falin and daniil’s relationship, without you I’m nothing by placebo. I also have one more patho Character who I may or may not also share as a final hurrah! For the final day of this event!! If one wants to hear more of my oc ramblings that is lol

-Immune anon

Thanks for the expanded story!

[silenthillmutual]

daniil dankovsky is autistic and here’s why:

because i’m autistic and i said so

i kid, obviously. what sort of autistic person would i be if i wasn’t read to back up my silly little claim with an overly long post of evidence a total of three people will read? (hi ned hi jordan hi raven :))

i’m aware that this is cringey because adults aren’t supposed to have autism or interests or talk about either of those things, but this is my blog and you are free to block me if the cringe is too much for you.

these are some things i picked out from the DSMV’s diagnostic criteria, found on the CDC website:

deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect

abnormal social approach

abnormalities in eye contact and body language

defecits in […] understand[ing] relationships

difficults adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts

repetitive motor movements or speech

rigid thinking patterns

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input

there’s also some misc. stuff not in the diagnostic criteria (though it may be in the adir or gars-3) i thought was worth noting.

important note from the diagnostic criteria: “symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning”. i’d say that in his case, they do.

spoilers for pathologic classic, pathologic 2, and the marble nest

deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

in bachelor route of classic, daniil

seems completely oblivious to eva making advances toward him, to the point where she complains to him that he’s ignoring her in favor of asking questions about simon.

seems surprised when people mention maria being in love with him, despite outright asking her a couple of times if she’s flirting with him.

not to mention the fact that he asks her that at all.

his inability or resistence to making connections with others is typically considered one of his character flaws. although it is not outright stated in the dsmv criteria, one trait of autism and other neurodivergencies is “having extremely high or extremely low empathy” - and daniil, despite being a doctor, lacks empathy. which is not to say he doesn’t care at all. i think that he does, but is terrible at showing it.

for example, this scene from marble nest:

Sticky: You must feel terrible… right? That’s fine. I forgive you. You just got confused… Adults always do. Daniil: Oh yes, adults are always occupied with the most asinine nonsense. Like feeling anxious that a bunch of urchins keep roaming the streets, putting themselves in mortal danger!

daniil clearly cares about sticky’s wellbeing (and the wellbeing of the kids looking after him, though he’s not cognizant that he’s in a coma), but his way of showing it is… kind of by being a jerk. all of which bleeds into the next item on the list

reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect

he has no problem sharing his interests, but in both pathologic classic & pathologic 2, daniil speaks with a flat affect - which is to say that he lacks intonation. the words we read him saying may be dramatic or come across as passionate, but the actual voice reading his lines is very monotone, which may contribute to being read as lacking emotion.

and in pathologic 2, he has a voiceline lamenting not telling “her” (eva?) how he felt

in marble nest, he’s teased by the tragedians for being “heartless”:

Tragedian: Maybe. Possibly. But it’s useless to explain to a heartless man. …Take heart, Excellency! If you ever find it, that is. And then come back to us… Even though it all sounds like a rather implausible turn of events.

abnormal social approach

daniil has a tendency to say things that are tactless, odd, or just socially inappropriate. i probably don’t need to point out too many examples, as i think it’s fairly obvious - these are the things people love to pick at when it comes to him, but i do have a few in mind. like, for example, from haruspex route in classic:

Haruspex: What of the antibodies essential for making a serum? Bachelor: I don’t know for sure yet, I’ll send you a report in a few hours. Don’t go about cutting people’s hearts out for your panacea until then. It’s a… controversial solution, you know… Haruspex: What?! Do you even hear yourself? Bachelor: Sorry! I meant no offence… it was just a momentary lapse of… well, you know. Haruspex: None taken.

until artemy points out, daniil doesn’t seem to be aware he just said something rude. even with therapy, picking up on social cues doesn’t come naturally to people with autism, so we tend to say things that come across as rude or strange to others without realizing we’ve put them off. we tend to lack a “filter” that tells us when things are or are not appropriate to say. even when we may recognize it, the rules may not make any sense to us. for example, it makes very little sense that allistics favor politeness over honesty.

i think the glaringly obvious abnormal social approach in pathologic 2 is him threatening to hold artemy at gunpoint to get in the house, which is just overkill, but my personal favorite comes on day 7, when he’s complaining about the orders aglaya has given him. artemy stops him to say he doesn’t understand what daniil wants from him, to which daniil replies:

From you? Oh, nothing. I was just sharing.

to daniil, they were just having a normal conversation. but some part of this - his tone or his words or maybe even his body language - didn’t give artemy the impression that this was supposed to be a regular conversation. (we could, in fact, attribute the same idea to artemy here; why didn’t artemy pick up that this was a normal conversation? the reason i count it towards daniil is because artemy doesn’t seem to have this problem with anybody else. for the record: i don’t think artemy is neurotypical either.)

abnormalities in eye contact and body language

it’s hard to get proof of this in video games, but i will say i think it’s very funny that in pathologic 2 daniil’s idle animations are “pacing”, “sitting like he desperately wants to start bouncing his knees but is stopping himself from doing it”, and “standing unnaturally still” - but there you go. i don’t know anything about making gifs, or i’d gif this one specific talk menu idle he does where he holds eye contact for about three seconds, looks away uncomfortably, and then looks back out of the corner of his eyes.

deficits in […] understand[ing] relationships

mostly examples from his route in classic:

when the army arrives, he can claim to block that aglaya, whom he’s known for two days, is his best friend

he seems baffled by the fact that everone is smitten with maria and working with her, and seems equally baffled by the idea that she’s smitten with him

despite eva implying on day two that she is in a relationship with andrey, is completely blindsided by the revelation on day 6, asking him, “How in the world is she ‘your woman’?”

i’d also like to use his sign-off on his letter to artemy, day 2 of the haruspex route - he signs it as “Your friend (hopefully)”. i know i’m not the only autistic person who used to ask people if we were friends or not. pro tip, if you’ve never done this: don’t. it really weirds people out.

difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts

the fact that he stands out is blatantly obvious even in pathologic 2 and in the haruspex route of classic. people will comment on him being an outsider and mention that they don’t trust him. but you can watch it happen in real time in his route, because he never fully acclimates to the town. he says something about this to aglaya on day 7:

Bachelor: Was there any particularly notable backstory? I’m deadly tired of all these people. They’re inhuman. They tell the future, believe in walking zombies, and die in all manners of painfully abnormal ways. Inquisitor: Your line of t hinking is obviously falacious - and I was implying something rather mundane. I promise you, no one can really tell the future around here: and neither are deaths inspired by third parties uncommon. Mysterious phenomenons do occur here sometimes… but hardly more often than anywhere else.

actually, there’s an example of him saying something similar to artemy on day 5 in pathologic 2:

Damn this town… I feel I’m trapped in a nightmare. The absurdity of it all… There’s no one to talk to. Everyone’s so volatile. They all seem to want to help, but… their help is worse than hostility.

some of this can be explained by the town’s strangeness, but keep in mind that the first instance happens after he’s been there and involved in the ongoing for an entire week, and the second at nearly a week in. clearly he’s struggling to adjust to the changes.

it’s also worth noting that his reason for fleeing the town in the nocturnal ending?

I have no place here anymore.

This town is no longer mine. No longer human. No longer rational. It doesn’t… accept the likes of me anymore.

repetitive motor movements or speech

it’s harder to see the motor movements in classic, but remember how i pointed out earlier that he paces? pacing is a form of stimming. murky, who is canonically autistic, can also be found pacing as one of her idle animations. having stock phrases for characters to speak when you come near them already ticks off the box on “repetitive speech”, but that by itself doesn’t really cover what they’re talking about - echolalia.

but you know what this does fit with? “‘quoting’ things(communication is HARD! sometimes we need to take shortcuts and use someone else’s words)“

i’ll get to the more obvious example in a minute - i want to point out something that happens very early in pathologic 2 first. you know how you first meet him and artemy accuses daniil of trying to guilt-trip him by asking if it’s true that isidor would still be alive if artemy had come sooner? keep in mind that he spoke to rubin first. and this is what rubin says, when you get a chance to talk to him:

Yesterday, I was told you had killed your father.

That’s not far from the truth, Burakh.

You betrayed him. You left when he needed you most. He cried out for your help, but you didn’t care. He was in peril, and you were too busy elsewhere, He believed, truly believed, that your arrival would put an end to his troubles. And, as always, he was right.

i’m not saying this was necessarily the game’s intent, but it’s entirely possible daniil is parroting back to artemy exactly what rubin said to him.

now, for what you’re probably expecting in this section: the latin. people love to refer to his use of latin as “random”, so let’s clear that up:

it is not latin daniil has made up. with the exception of latin that is mispelled in the game’s texts, all of them are proverbs or otherwise common sayings. you can find most of them on the wikipedia list of latin phrases, or through a 3-second google search.

he’s a doctor. him having taken latin isn’t anymore strange than a lawyer taking latin. in fact, if you pay attention, artemy also took latin; this is implied when artemy tells him he’s always sucked at it.

his uses of latin actually aren’t random at all. what he says fits the situation, and sometimes is used in place of him having to come up with something to say on his own.

prime example:

Forget it, Burakh. I have a splitting headache. If you have no urgent business, then we’ll talk later. Later, later… Qui non proficit, deficit.

qui non proficit, deficit - he who does not advance, loses ground. in other words, “i’m sorry, but i really do need to keep working.” one of his voice lines.

as for why he doesn’t translate the latin: it probably wouldn’t even occur to him to. these are not obscure sayings. the utopians all have a certain degree of education - what would he need to translate them for?

this bleeds into something that isn’t really mentioned, but that i’ve found i have a lot of trouble with in everyday life. autistic people have a tendency to either overexplain (and then have everyone get mad at you because they feel you’re being condescending) or underexplain (and have everyone get mad at you because you haven’t explained anything). the latin would be a case where it feels like a justified underexplanation. you’ll notice that when it comes to anything scientific, he tends to do the reverse, and overexplain. this also happens in classic, whether artemy has asked him to clarify or not.

rigid thinking patterns

the thing i had marked for this was simply his strict adherence to western medical practices and refusal to acknowledge the supernatural, even when it seems obvious - he has a conversation in his route in classic with yulia about this, and that is in fact how he manages to get to her: by asking saburov if there are any other logical skeptics in town. it should be noted they seem to be breaking with this in pathologic 2, where one of his voicelines is “I’m no positivist. There are things in this world beyond our mundane perception.” i have no idea where they’re planning on going with that.

there’s also a quote floating somewhere around twitter about him having been raised by a military man, and militaries tend to enforce very rigid routines. you could say the same thing of block - who (in classic at least) i also have my suspicions about.

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

special interests. the one that should obviously come to mind is thanatology, though i would argue latin if not classics in general is a special interest of his as well - in addition to his usage of latin, he also references pericles in the marble nest and was probably refering to the roman occupation of haruspicy in addition to augurs in the same text. he also makes references to shakespeare more than once in both marble nest and pathologic 2.

hyper- or hyperoreactivity to sensory input

i don’t have much written down for this one but there seem to be several places in classic especially where he asks npcs to stop shouting at him. we don’t really have the privilege to know their volume or how they’re interacting with him, but i think it’s also worth noting that he’s the only one of the healers who wears gloves. in pathologic 2 he’s the only named character i can think of who wears them at all. his thing in the lucid dream about the brain being “a border”? gloves are his border, as is his jacket, which may be worn to cut down on sensory issues.

he will also sometimes seem to “overreact” to the situation at hand - such as in classic, when some dogheads mispeak and say that daniil is going to “sterilize” them, and instead of understanding that they must have mispoken, freaks out over the idea that they think they’re going to be… well… sterilized. or in haruspex route, when his reaction to the inquisitor arriving is to threaten suicide.

miscellaneous

he never goes anywhere without that carpet bag. we don’t see it in pathologic 2, but we do hear about it and he doesn’t let it go for a second in classic - not even in the cutscenes where he’s using the microscope. his bag could be a comfort item.

“getting very attached to things like inanimate objects” could work for the bag - but you know what it actually fits the bill much more obviously? the polyhedron. in the haruspex route he recognizes that it’s a lost cause, but he’s still too attached to it to let it go.

in classic at least, daniil is absolutely terrible at lying. most autistic people either are not good at lying, or feel uncomfortable or anxious with having to lie. when he’s asked by yulia and the kids in the polyhedron to lie to block (for different reasons) he’s clearly uncomfortable with the idea that it’ll work. and when it actually comes time to come up with a way to lie to block about why he needs five rifles, your options are to either buckle and tell him the truth, or simply say that you need them for “self-defense”. block believes that you’re not lying to him, but daniil can’t come up with any embeleshments to explain why he needs what he’s asking for.

Commander: Are you hiding something from me? Bachelor: No.

he comes across as naive to other characters. in classic, capella has a voiceline saying, “The Bachelor is not smart. Intelligent, yes… but not smart.” in Pathologic 2, Daniil complains that Aglaya takes him for “a useless dreamer”. he’s also easily used by the Kains to fulfill their endgame in classic.

my final, and absolute favorite: he takes things way too literally. autistic people (and adhd people, from my understanding) have a hard time differentiating jokes and sarcasm. so my favorite moment in marble nest is a case of him taking that earlier advice - to “take heart” literally, by bringing the tragedians a literal human heart:

Tragedian: Oh… Excellency. What a sordid sight! Sorry for underestimating you. You definitely do have… how shall I put it… a creative touch. But this is pure madness. You can’t take things so literally! Daniil: You wanted me to come back to you with an open heart. Well, here I am. …It looked too fitting to be a coincidence.

your mind map, after this, updates to say “I misunderstood the tragedians.”

conclusion

people don’t stop being autistic with age and i think he’s a good example of what it’s like to be in your late 20s and be autistic. i’m sure i missed things as i haven’t finished haruspex route of classic yet and there may just be some other things he does or says that i missed! if anyone has anything to add they think fits i would love to know, thank you for your time :)

[mnogorgannik]

2 10 n 11 :)

this is basically an essay im so sorry. watch how hard i can infodump (ill put this under a cut hopefully it works bc sometimes tumblr decimates the keep reading things if theyre in asks)

2. Who’s your favorite of the Bound? What do you think of the different ideologies they have? Which of the factions are you most aligned with?

WE ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER I AM A PETER LOVER THROUGH AND THROUGH!!!!!! oh baby i love that morally questionable architect. pretty early on in getting into pathologic (it’s coming up on a year now...) i thought about peter stamatin too hard and now i’m here. but really i find him to be such a fascinating character!

the thing about pathologic that i love is how almost every character can be as complex as you want. pathologic does an excellent job of implying a lot of character traits while only exploring some in further detail, which in some games is frustrating but patho does it so well! it consistently hints at traits and lets you fill in the details yourself. peter’s character is extremely interesting to me... and maybe a little more relatable at times than i want to admit lol.

i think i’ll talk about both stamatins though! their dynamic hurts me a lot. i’ll start with andrey bc i’ve been thinking about him lately. although i’ll bounce back and forth between both stamatins.

i’ve said this before but i’ll say it again.... andrey’s role as a protector who inadvertently hurts the people he cares about really gets to me. he is not a shield but, in his own words, a battering ram. and the problem is that battering ram has a recoil.

i have to wonder how that mentality of his came about, anyways. the implication is that it’s always just been him and peter, so did he take on that role because there wasn’t anyone else to do it?

in his efforts to protect peter from... military, i believe, he kills four people. which leads to daniil getting mistaken for andrey, which leads to daniil getting shot. and almost dying. he protects peter but to a smothering extent, peter even says he’s been suffering for ten years bc of andrey which is a LOADED line. he protects on a physical level but he kinda fucks up on the emotional.

there’s a horrible irony in peter and eva being the people he cares about the most and both attempting suicide. with eva once she’s missing he immediately goes running off trying to look for her, and . ahh i can’t remember right off hand what exactly he thought happened. but ik he was probably expecting a fight. with peter he says that after that he’ll never let peter leave his side, at least “as far as his knife can fly”... it sounds cheesy but the one thing he can’t save anyone from is themself.

and god the way andrey bases his ENTIRE sense of self worth on peter fucking hurts. they’re not peter and andrey, the architects. they’re Peter And Andrey, The Architect. (thinking about “one architect, two brothers” here.) andrey thinks he’s larger than life and all but he’s constantly living in peter’s shadow. their theatre of death positions come to mind here, with peter standing up, looking down at andrey. but andrey is on his knees in front of peter, arms limp to his sides.... separated by a wooden beam...

peter’s side of this dynamic is fascinating too. his dependency on andrey is. ow. leaving all practical matters and decision making to him... there’s this resentment (That’s Fine I’ve Been Suffering For Ten Years Because Of Him) and lack of communication that especially shows through for him.

while in p2 andrey completely crumbles if peter dies, peter doesn’t seem to care...... at all....?? which hopefully is elaborated upon in p2. he’s willing to talk to aspity about worrying if andrey is angry with him but he can’t bring it up with andrey himself. when he asks how andrey is doing he stops and says andrey is a “tough man” and can handle anything. in general, while it’s definitely there for andrey, themes of dependency are really glaringly obvious for peter.

one of my favorite peter things i’ve talked about before is still his ego!!! peter has a gigantic ego!!! he really does think that even though he’s hit the ceiling and can’t go any further he is still “a true architect” and “the rock upon which is built the stairway to tomorrow”. he has a blunt edge to him and he doesn’t ever tell you more than he thinks he needs to which i love. if he doesn’t want to tell you something he isn’t gonna do it. this is a character trait i think ppl miss which is sad because it’s so good and adds another layer of depth to him!

it really does hurt me how he’s valued for his mind alone (AHEM AHEM AHEM. GEORGIY) but it’s the thing nobody understands about him. i’m nowhere near as smart as peter lol but i do know that pain of feeling like none of your ideas can be understood because you just can’t express them the way you’d like, and then feeling like you’ll never be able to make it happen.

also, here’s a little thing  i’ve picked up on. this connection probably doesn’t exist but i’m making it because the stamatins make me lose my mind and start becoming one of those people who looks for connections in everything i guess. peter standing in the theatre of death, andrey below him. peter’s loft being at a high point in the town, the broken heart being underground. peter’s loft is also higher north on the map but the broken heart is lower south. just smth interesting

i have more thoughts on them of course! but this is all getting awfully long. i feel like i’ve only just gotten to the tip of the iceberg  even though i’ve written so much skfjskfjs this just feels quite surface level or. at least what is surface level for me who thinks about the stamatins so hard.

anyways i’ll keep my answers to the other two parts of this question quick! peter and andrey’s more creative vs practical mindsets are rly neat. especially because i would actually argue peter is a little more grounded in reality in certain aspects. not all, but certain ones...... their take on the utopian ideology is interesting. hot take: peter’s version of utopianism leans a tad towards humility. and andrey /does/ feel “straightforward utopian” but i think in certain regards? this man has a bit of a termite streak..... (hi al if you’re reading this). but i won’t get into that right now i’ve already gone on so long. saving that for later.

i think all of the factions kinda suck in their own way sometimes, honestly? although all of them are well written and have their pros and cons. were i in pathologic and i had to choose one i’d probably be a termite but everyone around me seems to think i’m a utopian. is it bc i love peter so much

10. What would you be like as a Pathologic character?

this question is a hard one! i did make a self insert once, mile-a-minute, but they’ve become their own oc by now. i think i’d be very...... very afraid...... probably isolating myself why does every pathologic character break quarantine???? also you could trade beetles with me :) thats about all i’ve got sorry this is real short

11. What is something you would change, writing-wise, about either game?

UGH i’ve been gushing about pathologic because. obviously i love this game so much. but the way it handles racism & such (in both games!) leaves much to be desired :/

i see a lot of the points it’s trying to make but i think the way they’re handled can be very messy. there are moments that work very well but. a lot that don’t. (i am aware that dybowski writes partially from his own experiences)

all too often the game “validates” the kin’s oppression and... at times paints them as oddly antagonistic? i don’t like how often as artemy you’re able to be like “i’m not one of those beasts” and i think there are better ways to touch on his internalized racism. in general the constant comparisons to animals is weird. you get big vlad who is obviously explicitly racist comparing them to animals, but then sometimes it’s like “ACTUALLY calling them animals is fine :)”

i think the herb brides are kind of. Hm. in their portrayal. also using parts of the buryat alphabet to denote an accent is weird. making odongh and herb brides inhuman is weird. connecting the kin to Magic is weird.

and, listen, i’d really like to not be playing Artemy Burakh Experiences a Microaggression Simulator every time i’m playing the haruspex route. hate that you either can’t call ppl out on their shit or if you can it ends the conversation/bars you from getting necessary information. glad you at least get to drag the vlads, i guess?

i also was talking about this but wrt peter specifically, and this issue is present throughout the game but it’s especially visible with peter, i don’t like how often you can mock him for his addiction.

he’s obviously in an extremely rough patch! being able to be just so plain cruel to him about the dependency on alcohol (and iirc in p1 hallucinogens, bc aglaya mentions it) he’s formed to cope with his mental illness & trauma just feels bad. especially because yes it is not a healthy coping mechanism at all but... it still is a coping mechanism, if that makes sense?

the way you’re able to constantly rub it in his face feels awful. peter is fully aware that it isn’t good for him and shows a desire to quit. even if he didn’t it would still be awful to say because. it’s just insensitive. like you don’t just go up to someone and keep being like HEY YOU DRINK A LOT YOU SHOULD STOP DOING THAT DO YOU KNOW WHAT WATER IS? feels really bad to keep harping on something that causes him pain and that he struggles with every single day.

however peter does have moments where he tells you Not to say that, or if you pry into why he drinks he’ll outright say he doesn’t remember you being his friend, which is better than nothing.

in p1 moreso than p2 i hate how you can be like oh he’s craaaazy he’s off his rocker he’s delusional!!!! that “why, i never... an architect of schizophrenia!” comment sticks in my mind because it’s just... so genuinely mean. especially because if i remember correctly that line is from when he’s planning on LITERALLY FUCKING BURNING HIMSELF ALIVE

i think if they were going to have all of this they should have gone more in depth on how it’s really. not good that he’s treated so poorly. and i do believe that’s what they were going for, a la the art book w/ the whole “not to be made into a drunken clown, this is a tragic character”, etc. but it just doesn’t land. i’m holding out for the bachelor and changeling routes in p2 to see if they expand upon any of it but i highly doubt i’ll be satisfied in this regard.

i stand by the One time it was really fucking funny to clown on peter being the time you can tell him little girls eat raspberries and earthworms and he just believes you

[silenthillmutual]

The decisions place you in the context of higher authority. No longer an army of one, you have decided to mobilise the population to fight the disease alongside you, since your personal accomplishments were not enough.

i feel like there’s a lot to unpack with this part of the letter

first i’d like to point out that part of daniil’s dialogue with andrey involves them recounting being involved in some sort of riot together

adding all the sums together my guess is that daniil is something of a troublemaker, and that despite some of the truly bitchy things you can have him say (that i will assume are his internal monologue if you choose to have him not say them), the kind of trouble he makes has something to do with unionizing people

i don’t really know how to put this other than like. clearly daniil is a very Proud person. a lot of educated people get that. and one good way to get someone whose fatal flaw is Pride to do what you want them to do is to insult something they should otherwise be proud of...you know, their accomplishments. so the Powers That Be don’t want him to:

make any sort of connections or home among the people of the town

make the town join forces, as it were; part of your job as daniil is negotiation, but you will also get most of your news from people on the streets, many of whom are disgruntled about some sort of inequity they’re dealing with and that you can, if you want, react with outrage at their treatment (see: aspity’s lies about the water, his disgust at how vlad the younger talks about the people who work in the termitary, etc)

actually be successful in combating or even surviving the plague. this is a win/win situation for them; you get a threatening letter from them about how they will leave your laboratory alone (for now) if you are successful in this endeavour, but the truth is that it really doesn’t matter. either what you do should you survive will not be enough for them, or you will die, in which case there is no one left to defend Thanatica. 

i rarely even get that kind of depth and subtlety from books i read or movies i watch so it’s very awesome to see this sort of thing being emulated in a video game.

We expect that the measures you have taken are temporary. Speaking of what may be described as the microclimate of the town, we don’t want any irreversible changes to take place. In particular, we hope that the instructions you have issued would not lead to any undesirable moods among the local townsfolk. We would rather avoid mass psychosis, depression, or panic that are sometimes characteristic of situations like this.

i think there’s two really interesting things going on here.

the first is that this raises a very valid concern, one that you have to talk about in areas of study like cultural anthropology: cultural relativism. you want to study a culture and interact with it, but without being too biased, passing judgement, or changing the way the culture exists too much. to a degree, all of these are unavoidable, both in-game and in the real world. you know that daniil is guilty of the first two even if you never have him say some of the things he’s thinking. 

but i think too many people look at this without nuance - not just as far as this game goes, but for plenty of other media and facets of real life. you don’t want to be ethnocentrist, of course, but not every cultural practice is good or defensible. you see it all the time when weebs try and defend things like hen.tai, lo.licon and shot.acon. there’s an ethical dilemma that comes in engaging with other cultures, and it’s really not as cut and dry as simply calling yourself an outsider and assuming these practices are okay. 

this is a huge misstep that happens in the film Midsommar. i read an article about how the main group being anthropologists is actually essential to the horror of the film; they are able to be gaslit because they let their cultural relativism put them in danger. they ignore the warning signs that they are being initiated into a cult, that they are being manipulated, and even that the cult is made up of white supremacists. it’s very possible that the reason Pelle is a foreign exchange student is to find people like this group of anthropologists who have stepped back too much from themselves their culture. 

this also reminded me a bit of a discussion on reddit i saw about colonized countries talking about their relationship with their colonizers and how those two interact, although Pathologic is so vague i’m not sure if you’re meant to read daniil’s route as being related to colonization or not; i know artemiy’s route has more to do with that, and that seems to be connected to some of the other families in town, specifically the olgimsky’s. 

the second thing that i think is interesting about this, is that it is once again setting daniil up for failure. they don’t want him to change the town too much, but they want him to be successful in combating the plague. given that the town has no hospital or morgue, that the only access to the outside world for them is the train, and that in order to keep the disease from spreading he has to issue quarantine and change how people go about their daily lives? he can save the town OR keep it from changing; he can’t do both. not to mention that the Powers That Be are sending people to help enact whatever changes daniil deems necessary... they are purposefully escalating the situation, knowing that they are going to make him fail in some way or another. 

Please keep in mind that when we offered to cease the persecution of your laboratory and to facilitate your research, we meant that as a reward for you being able to find a surgically precise solution to the problem. It is of no importance to us if you do it yourself or instigate the Inquisitor to do it on your behalf. 

so in other words: the government openly admits to persecuting him. not just laughing him off or ignoring his requests for funding or what have you, but actively attempting to sabotage him.  they will only stop these activities if he is successful - and success to them is “surgically precise” - which i take to mean does not rely on herbalism. this probably sets up why daniil is a pain in the ass on artemiy’s route; his life more or less depends on there being some quantifiable and scientific explanation for the plague and how to combat it. 

the government also doesn’t care about the town. it doesn’t care if the town is successful. they’re not sending other doctors, they’re not acknowledging rubin or artemiy as healing professionals. they’re sending enforcers. if daniil fails to find something of worth to them, everything he’s worked for up to this point in his life will be destroyed. and he will fail, as he’s been told at every turn that there is no scientific explanation for the sand pest and no precise cure. what fixed it last time was herbalism. he’s going to fail, no matter what he tries to do. this is the letter you receive by the end of day 4, and the game is 12 days long. you know before you even hit the halfway point that there is not going to be a happy ending for daniil. 

daniil certainly has a tendency to look down on herbalism, but given that he seems to have had high regard for isidor burakh i think you can take this one of two ways, or perhaps take the third option and say both: either there is some elitism going on that ties into racism, or this could be comparable to people looking at the anti-vaxxer trying to cure every disease under the sun through the power of organic foods and essential oils. (again: i think it’s a bit of both. were there more time for him to explore shit, it’s very possible daniil would grow out of the former. he seems really interested in artemiy, has little tolerance for how the ruling families run things on a basis of violence and various -isms, and again he seems to have some esteem for both rubin and isidor who we learn later are more akin to herbalists, as isidor and artemiy specifically are indigenous) i think this explains a lot of why he says insensitive things (or says things insensitively). 

i think it’s also important to keep in mind that he doesn’t know what’s going on in the clara or artemiy’s routes. he only has his point of view, which as an outsider is going to be heavily skewed by whatever he is told. he can’t possibly know everything. 

i think the last thing i wanted to end this overly long post on was this: his field of study is thanatology. the study of death.

why in god’s name do the Powers That Be want to destroy research into longevity? just food for thought, but this game is 17 years old, and i think it’s especially relevant now.