#i was gonna put it in a reblog but apparently you can't add videos in a reblog. f. so i will simply link this there instead

[tomaturtles]

Oh yeah here's the painting timelapse of my day 5 piece!

[time-is-restored]

do u guys think it maybe says smth that im currently getting more narrative + emotional fulfilment from dostoevsky that Hates You as compared to the fucking football sitcom.

anyway patho au thoughts below <3 <- (it actually turned into a manifesto abt my thoughts abt Original flavour pathologic. will add au thoughts in a reblog otherwise this is gonna be unconscionably long LMAO)

the thing about the Macro Metaphor™ (oh yeah baby this is gonna be a POST) in pathologic is like. at least w how i experienced it pathologic had to be a video game because it had to give its players the closest thing to free will that is possible in a world that has been crafted from the ground up to give you An Experience™.

and the fact that what little free will we APPEAR to have is largely an illusion cast by various dialogue trees stating that we are doing something unexpected is . very much the point! to get anything out of pathologic you have to 100% buy into the fiction as presented to you. bc the game is incredibly meta, that includes buying into the idea that what u are playing IS at its core a video game made by ppl w a very specific and esoteric mission statement, who are doing their level best to funnel u towards the themes + questions that they find most important within this narrative.

. okay ive gotta talk about The Loop actually strap the fuck in (note: a lot of what follows is copied + pasted from me explaining my feelings abt pathologic to someone who Has Not Played pathologic, so sorry if im being over explanatory at points!)

so in clara's route there's a specific bit of dialogue u can get w the developers where they say clara is 'the only one out of the three [protagonists] that could accomplish a True miracle. who could break the loop.'

the 'loop' in question is. kind of hard to pin down. but its basically referring to the inherent contradiction at the heart of pathologic existing as a game: the developers wanted to explore how it is impossible for a miracle to exist in anything other than a temporary moment of spontaneity. if you try to cage it, it is no longer a miracle, it is a process which has consequences (in the game, this consequence is - at least according to some povs - the plague):

SO they give the player a closed system of a world, in which free will is By Definition impossible (you can't do anything the developers haven't explicitly programmed in), and essentially ask you to perform a miracle. on one hand, they admit to hoping that you can do it. on the other, they acknowledge it's impossible, without some Other miracle interceding.

thats why, in this same conversation w the developers, they talk abt the other healers' endings like they are simultaneously predestined, and like they can be changed after all! like here:

^ put a pin in that 'except for a lapse of judgement, but we're not concerned with that' comment!

SO. this is what's so interesting about CLARA being (apparently!) able to break the loop

bc the only thing that concretely sets clara apart from the others (they all have a bunch of superficial differences, but im pretty sure its not bc she's a girl, or a child, for example) is that she has no backstory.

she wakes up with no memory of her life, no real understanding of herself outside of what she is being accused of being (a thief, and a plague bearer). she is able to lie (state something about herself that has nothing in the game supporting it) without lying (state something about herself that has nothing in the game contradicting it).

due to pathologic's own rules (in this case, im literally just referring to it being a video game that was coded by a team and then released on steam), there is no way for a character to truly do something unexpected. clara acknowledges this specifically and gets rlly morbid abt it here:

however! because pathologic is inherently a conversation between the developers and the players, and the developers can't actually control OR react to the completely internal experience the player has while playing the game, there is a level of free will here that can't actually be eroded!

the game can TRY to account for as many different dialogue options, quests, endings, general opinions abt the world + its characters, but bc the total amount of code has to stop somewhere before infinity, it can't get it 100% right. there are emotions + opinions abt pathologic that u are going to experience as a player that pathologic itself cannot or has not accounted for!

clara's miracle is that she's (in universe) as unrestrained by the programmers as the player is (out of universe). she can't be caged any more than u can! YOU can't be caged bc u literally don't exist in the world that the developers have 100% control over, even while they spend several hundred hours of gameplay trying to convince u that u do. and CLARA can't be caged bc there's literally nothing to tie her down! she has no degree of verisimilitude that she has to stick to, no bounds on what is reasonable vs unreasonable for her to do. we ultimately don't know enough about her for her to ever be 'out of character'.

pathologic is inherently a role playing game, but when clara (or, technically, you AS clara) rejects the role she is given, you break from one of the most restrictive shackles the game has had weighing u down in the past two playthroughs. daniils often a prick to ppl he shouldn't be, burakh can't be neutral about His Fucking Town Dying, etc. if u took those things away from the characters just to give the player more freedom AS a player, the game would be compromising with you - something that pathologic explicitly refuses to do (14% of ppl who play the game ever beating n1, etc).

but clara can say fucking ANYTHING!! like. i cannot emphasise enough that you, as the player, as clara, lie about the fact that you have an identical twin, and then summon this twin into existence. its literally the first thing you do in the whole game!

because that's the rule!!! the player cannot be allowed to say something about the world that isn't true, without the explicit and recognisable intent of telling a falsehood! but NOTHING that clara says can be demonstrated to be false, bc there's nothing to check against!!! the executors EVEN imply that the version of clara you meet throughout the game (the one u call the 'evil twin'), IS actually clara, and those conversations are the PLAYER talking to the 'original' clara. which means that by PLAYING the game, you are in equal parts replacing + rewriting clara!

again, this isn't even CLOSE to the degree ur able to transform the other protagonists - the opinions they do/don't have abt their own fate + endings are explicitly laid out to u in black and white. daniil can think the polyhedron is beautiful, OR he can be afraid of it, etc. while you can CHOOSE to change ur mind between each conversation, there is no 'both' or 'neither' option at any point. you have to pick from what ur given.

like . this is the dialogue u get after asking abt what the haruspex's route was 'about'. the line before this says 'Executor: Diverging branches. He was the only one who could attain true freedom. He wasn't facing the kind of dilemma that the ever-deceived Bachelor found so dismal.'

its like. this is simultaneously the most obtuse thing these fuckers say in the whole game but also!!! there were feelings involved!!!!!!!!!

the 'loop' is that there is no freedom, and yet there is love. the game is not real but you get attached to the player characters as if it is. you see things through their eyes, and start to agree that these pre-determined, tragic resolutions to an explicitly harsh binary choice are correct, for the characters enacting them (HENCE THE 'except for a lapse of judgement' comment! pull that pin back out! yes, anyone who plays the bachelor's route is able to CHOOSE to guide him towards another ending. but how many of those players are able to genuinely sit with the bachelor's ideals + fears, and convince themselves that that is an action he himself would take! not you, but dankovsky! the developer's aren't concerned with any given instance of the player abusing their authority over the healers' lives. they're INTERESTED in taking that authority and choosing not to abuse it. to commit to the world as written. to make the impossible choice).

clara's route is like yes obviously there is a journey programmed in here there is an ending just like there is for every other character, and clara (the npc, when you don't play as her) argues for it just as strongly as you do when ur playing her + taking her over. but what's JUST as inevitable is that someone will push past that, will play through her route, will separate her out from the developer's (admitted!) confusion + rush + muddled intentions, and make a true miracle happen! its a loop! but its a miraculous one! the miracle is that you played the game at all!!

look at this! look at clara staring her fate as written in the eye, and saying 'fuck off, im busy!'

the miracle is the fact that the developers, while making a game about how you cannot cage a miracle/force one to persist, gave the player enough freedom to prove them wrong. the miracle is the fact that clara rejects her fate-as-written, to be the plague bearer, to destroy the game and everyone involved in it, and instead DEMANDS to be a miracle-worker who can and will save the town and all the lives within it. the miracle is that you save everyone that it is possible to save. the miracle is that you want to save them at all. the miracle is that the player finishes all three routes of pathologic. the miracle is that anyone who experiences this game, first-hand or second-hand, whether they finished it or not, now has a totally unique experience w and interpretation of that game. freedom clawed from the jaws of a closed system.....

the miracle! is art!!!!! is the inherent flimsiness of communication, both symbolic and written and visual and auditory and!!!!!!!! the miracle is that you're playing a game made two decades again written in RUSSIAN while the game developers pull out literally every trick in the book to make you have a TERRIBLE time and want to give up and you DON'T!!!! you refuse to give up on what they're telling you! you refuse to not let this experience matter, in however small a way!!!!!!!!!

the miracle is that the game devolpers could not build a tomb foreboding enough to keep the players from diving in head first, crashing face first into spice traps and vats of acid and plague bearing rats and fucking homing-missile knives and. idk. mummies or some shit what the hell do you find in a cursed tomb

the miracle is that the game means something to you even when the game is actively trying to force u to give up + let go of any sense of agency and control. 'your actions are meaningless, you are helping no one, this bloodshed is inevitable and in many concrete ways you are making it worse' -> 'OH BOY DAY FIVE <3'

the miracle is also that clara convinces like seven fucking people to die for her but. y'know. this might as well happen.jpg

like . this is the dialogue u get after asking abt what the haruspex's route was 'about'. the line before this says 'Executor: Diverging branches. He was the only one who could attain true freedom. He wasn't facing the kind of dilemma that the ever-deceived Bachelor found so dismal.'

its like. this is simultanoeusly the most obtuse thing these fuckers say in the whole game but also!!! there were feelings involved!!!!!!!!!

the 'loop' is that there is no freedom, and yet there is love. the game is not real but you get attached to the player characters as if it is. you see things through their eyes, and start to agree that these pre-determined, tragic resolutions to an explicitly harsh binary choice are correct, for the characters enacting them (HENCE THE 'except for a lapse of judgement' comment! yes, anyone who plays the bachelor's route is able to CHOOSE to guide him towards another ending. but how many of those players are able to genuinely sit with the bachelor's ideals + fears, and convince themselves that that is an action he himself would take! the developer's aren't concerned with any given instance of the player abusing their authority over the healers' lives. they're INTERESTED in taking that authority and choosing not to abuse it. to commit to the world as written. to make the impossible choice).

clara's route is like yes obviously there is a journey programmed in here there is an ending just like there is for every other character, and clara (the npc, when you don't play as her) argues for it just as strongly as you do when ur playing her + taking her over. but what's JUST as inevitable is that someone will push past that, will play through her route, will separate her out from what the developers wanted from her, and make a true miracle happen! its a loop! but its a miraculous one! the miracle is that you played the game at all!!