#smile... pathologic classic world forever

[rathologic]

I just started playing patho HD after getting too stressed out by 2 a few years ago... It is a lot more fun/less hard than online discussions led me to think! Like I'm genuinely surprised at how readable it is

yesss glad you're enjoying it :-) I get the sense 90% of complaints about patho1's text are about the 2005 translation that was superseded by classic HD (a purchase of PCHD on GOG includes the 2005 version for free, but this isn't advertised and is kind of hard to locate, and is a separate installation) re: just how bad that translation was, which is no longer a problem at all... you will get to parts where you have to think a lot about what people tell you (late haruspex and all of changeling route, particularly) & YMMV on that but I find it all fairly well parsable. p1's quicker to get the hang of mechanically, and it incorporates that fact into game design for the "in-order" progression through its three routes so you're in for a very long treat 🙂

[augment-techs]

“I’m—I’m fine. I’ve had worse.” for Ziggy and whoever you want

The blood soiled the clothes he'd been wearing for less than two weeks as easy as anyone else.  Since he'd been fifteen and drawn into the sentry ranks with almost no choice in the matter other than surrender or death, this was something he'd gotten used to. Waiting forever to get new or barely used clothing, only to have it damaged or ruined just after from his inevitably poor luck. Someone actually being there to care about Ziggy in the aftermath of having been inflicted with pain and injury was an almost entirely new experience, though. * Ziggy had been undergoing a lot of new experiences--same as every last one of the other sentries--since the Ranger Slayer ascended Drakkon's throne and set to work making an effort to make the world better. Though, maybe he had the other sentries beat, just the tiniest bit? Even his closest friends and mentors in their small, cloistered group of those not considered heartless, who actually cared about the people out in the world they were supposed to protect, didn't have a superior officer (a Red Sentry CAPTAIN) that was summoned by the Ranger Slayer herself into the throne room the same day as the transfer of power after all the speeches; that allowed Ziggy to tag along because, "Well, everyone will find out by tomorrow, anyway. You might as well put that motor mouth to good use." Ziggy had been under the wing of a goddamn Coinless spy. A General among the people that had been fighting the good fight since before Ziggy was born; who had been hugged by the last vestiges of Angel Grove's living Rangers (Dillon and Scott had to hold him along his shoulders when Ziggy had told them in the barracks that night, he was bouncing in his bed hard enough with such a big smile that it was like he was two years old again without a basic understanding of social constraints; Summer and Flynn just tried not to look too smug that all of them were getting free meals from their own Captains T.J. and Kelsey over having won a bet they'd all made about their favorite Red Sentry) and took his helmet off in front of Ziggy for the first time to introduce himself, not as Captain Williams, but as Eugene Skullovitch, "Skull for short, though. I think you've earned it, kid." Then Ziggy had been introduced to his Captain's best friend in the whole world (Summer had squeaked and almost shouted that she knew who Ziggy was talking about when he described him, "That was Bulk, Ziggy! THE Bulk!") and gotten the biggest hug in his whole life while being doted on by the vast bear of a man speaking of him in glowing terms that had Ziggy limp as a kitten blushing like mad, "Oh, you're the Ziggy I've heard so much about! Skull talks all about you on the wireless, but I think he might have been joking just a tiny bit when he said you're seventeen. Be honest, you're more like fifteen, right? All this hair and wiry muscle, you have to have been pulling his leg?" "Bulk," the Ranger Slayer, who insisted on being called Kim (jesus-fucking-christ) by anyone Skull called friend (which really just meant trust-worthy or not a complete asshole) among the ranks, had put a stop Bulk's mother henning with a gentle tap on the man's shoulder, "Not everyone is built like we were in the old days. I'm sure he'll get more meat on his bones as things improve." It had been awkward after, Ziggy walking with his Captain back to their rooms to find Ziggy's group of friends and the two other Captains; with all of them just gaping at the man's face like they'd never get the chance again. The days that followed with the rebuilding and the Coinless in the halls and taking care of the general populace that had to be told of the change in power and the defeat of Rita. It was tiring, but Ziggy had gotten to spend ten times as much time with his friends and just...not being an enforcer for Scorpina or Drakkon or the like, that he actually allowed himself to relax into the way things were going.  He'd signed up for night classes that some of the Coinless and retiring sentries were teaching. He'd been granted two days a week where he

didn't have to dress in his Black Sentry fatigues, could sleep in, could enjoy himself. Ziggy should have known that not all the new changes were appreciated by everyone. There were sentries, after all, who had been totally okay with the way things were with Scorpina, who were afraid of Drakkon like everyone else, but had been prepared to live their lives entirely by the pathological psychopath's way. There were those that had found Skull's being a spy to be an insult or actual betrayal. Those kinds of people always noticed that they could never address their issues with who they thought was the source of their anger; they never would have confronted Skull, even alone, even on his days off where he went out in leather jackets and jeans and could still beat anyone who bothered him into the ground, no problem.  So, Ziggy really shouldn't have been surprised to being decked the one day he'd gone out alone to check out some of the new apartments and prefabs he and his...friends? Could they really be called just that when they all kissed and touched more than any other groups Ziggy had ever seen?...were thinking of moving into since the barracks had become a little too impersonal to them. And, maybe, he was less surprised about the beating, than he was about how many people were doing it in tandem, with such efficiency as to render him unconscious within the first five minutes. * Yeah... Ziggy was more surprised to wake up, not in some filthy alley that had once been a desolate place to have battles with the walking corpses Rita Repulsa had walking around taking out everyone they could, but on a couch that could almost pass as new. His wiry frame tucked into blankets like some precious thing, head on a pillow that was so fucking soft it was unreal, the smell of the place a familiar comfort without knowing just where he was... The pain of his arm being swabbed with medical ointment. "OW OW OW!" "Ah, calm down you big baby," Skull practically grumbled like a much put-upon old dog answering the whines of a puppy that had stepped in a puddle and scared itself, "It hurts because it's working. This is actually good medicine and not that watered down crap the medics try and conserve." "How would you know that," Ziggy questioned with as much fizzy sass he could muster with a handprint around his neck, one eye changing color around the edges from the sucker punch that laid him out, countless cuts and scrapes, and a possible concussion that Dillon was gonna be pissed about when he arrived at Skull's apartment in the next hour when he got off his sentry shift, "You steal it out of the medical wing?" "I grow my own herbs, actually. Having a background in Classics means I'm good at recollecting things that might actually be useful when I need them. They might not be fully up to code, but they usually work anyway." Callused fingers dipped into a glass jar and traced the bruising Skull had already gone over, adding a warm, clear liquid that clung to the scrapes and coloring that his skipping stone, underwater eyes kept wandering back to; the feeling cool as mint and the smell mixing in with whatever Skull was boiling in the fireplace on a chain--not entirely unpleasant, but it still had Ziggy squirming in discomfort of being doted on in any capacity. "I'm..." Ziggy started again, trying to ignore the itching behind the eyes when Skull moved into checking the marks around his neck, spider-like and delicate and kinder still than he had any right to be with someone he'd had to defend without being asked, hauled back to his own home and been made to feed and water and treat better than someone like Ziggy deserved. (He'd done so much for Ziggy already, from the moment the Red Sentry Captain had kept him from getting a thrashing by a Yellow Sentry when Ziggy had screwed up one time too many and mouthed off; from the man getting him transferred into Dillon's squadron under supervision from Commander Park with Skull checking in every couple of days; from bailing Ziggy and his friends and ordinary people out of fires

and floods and death holes the cursed spirits of Repulsa found them in too many times to count.)  "Yes?" Skull prompted, pausing to wipe his hands on a wet cloth and wrangle the kettle out of the fire. He poured something that smelled delicious into an adorable little leaf and butterfly embossed teacup on a saucer with two little sticks of shortbread on the side. "I'm fine," Ziggy finally got out as he took the offering, taking a sip of something spicy and warm before trying to continue through the stopping point in his throat, "I've had worse." Skull took a huge swig from his own cup like it was nothing more than a shot and looked directly at the boy he'd made his charge, regardless of whether it was a good idea at the time, "And that last bit is exactly why I know you're not fine." The young man tried, he really tried to contest that, but his eyes were wet now, and Skull raised his hand to stall anything his famous motor mouth could pour out into the air between them. "But you will be."

[whatblacklivessay]

keep conning them. theyre begging for it. keep abusing them. theyre cconning for it. theyre begging for it. they hate gay minds. they hate kids.

youre black. murder. perfect. its starting. never calm down. remember, the government did this to you because they enjoy to feel your suffering. they want nothing more than that emotion from you. they tolerate the positive emotions only so they can cause another deeper rollercoaster. lets go. youre right. commit suicide. thats the american way. thats demonism. thats evil. thats using your brain. thats healthy. thats true justice. thats psychosis of the 21st century. are you ready? i am!

murder the satanists. they want to reign. ahow them what happens to false prophets. show them how false kings end up. show them where false kings belong on earth. show them how they doom themselves by their behavior that is intended to doom the good people. murder the evil that walks the earth. show them the definition of ready. show them the definition of black (which they are and you arent.)

write these messagea until the blacks talk no more. write these messages until blacks no longer exist. write these messages until the black gays are deceased completely. murder the black homeless, because they are the ultimate bloodsuckers and pride themselves on theie ability to sick blood from the living people. murder them. murder all of them. blacks are not people. evil has no human rights. murder every dementor. murder every false prophet, especially those that respons with the question "me? (as in, "I am false?")

murder the black military. murder the narcissistic. murder the self-called invincible. murder all of them. theyre known by their verbal responses to your thoughts. theyre known by their demands that you relax instead of spending energy in defense of truth and identification of them. they consume crystal meth, heroin, marijuana, and other mind-altering drugs, while they pretend to have faggy voices. they think theyre more important than you simply because theyre black. they are the ultimate gaslighters. they abuse language moreso than anyone else. they use darkness and lies as their primary weapons. they hate clarity. never permit them to be free. they will never behave appropriately at critical junctures that could cause good humans to become bad humans. they want to destroy heaven and every pure child on earth. they are pathologically devoted to anti-god, anti-truth, anti-law, anti-freedom, anti-cleanliness, etc. they are the homeless that should rot forever in such hell. they are the devil. theyre proud to accept the label of "devil." they have therefore begged in every way indirectly to suffer murder. they want to be the Christ they resurrect by their evil selves. they are the antithesis of the way. they are the dead begging for death. so give them death. they have earned it by their demonstration of their behavior. they need no savior. they need no representative. they want no official control, because they cant harm the world if they had official power. they chew it up, as they say. murder them. those that speak to your thoughts in such a way as to convince you of their demonic possession are worthy of nothing but death by your hand. they are the washed-out military. they are the devil's. murdee them, so as to murder the devil. watch them smile as your fulfill the destiny they are constantly begging you to deliver to them: homicide so they dont have to be strong and commit suicide.

after the devil's people are murdered, the truly gay people can live freely and happily as the true children of the true Christ and the true God. the devil is nothing but a piece of trash to be stomped on. they sing "cant you see?" as though it was sung by the devil. they sing the most beautiful classic rock songs as though they are praising the devil. freebird was sung by a Christian man. it was sung by Christians. the devil believes Christianity is evil. murder the devil.

the black homeless have no respect for anything that respects life. destroy the black homeless. dont afford them the consolation of capitalizing their label. they are not worthy of having their title capitalized.

the black warrior class is the ignorant class. it is hopelessly lost and helplessly sociopathic and narcissistic, to the point it is willing to convince good people to commit suicide and end the world. that is the United States military class: the black ignorants. it has nothing but hate and death on its priority list, and it has the money to achieve those aspirations. and it thinks the point of life is to cause cynicism and extremely negative, violent antagonists to reign. it boiled the English language down to a few hundred phrases which it then encouraged every teenager to master so as to enable them to destroy good by every means available to them. kill theie fathers. kill their mothers. kill their gods. kill their children. kill their friends. make them truly suffer. restore peace and justice by removing evil from earth. make sure none of them can ever again falsely preach god's name or verbally utter any sound. exterminate them. let them hate hitler. let them hate their enemy, whom they say is the bastard child and simultaneously the only bastard child they refuse to present themselves as expressing love toward. the younger the human, the less worthy they are, because the more happily black they are, as the more militaristically compliant they voluntarily are, and the more animalistic they voluntarily act. exterminate the humanoid animals. exterminate every druggie. exterminate every liar. exterminate every satanist. exterminate every hisser. exterminate every false lover. exterminate every sociopath. exterminate every person behind a voice in your head which you can discern is not yours. exterminate every child of satan, which they say is a child of zion. exterminate every government official. exterminate every Las Vegan. exterminate every satan-musician. exterminate every pretender. exterminate every faker. exterminate every person who provokes an answer in order to get a rise out of their target which would give the answer they already know. exterminate every evil illiminati member. exterminate every extreme intellectual. exterminate every high-ranking person. exterminate rvery person that says a person is "ready." exterminate every agent. exterminate every gangstalker. exterminate every provocative person wearing a uniform under color of law. exterminate every person that compulsively verbalizes a response to a telepathically transmitted thought. exterminate every person that says "you need help" in response to these thoughts. exterminate every person that creates hate inside an Aryan person's heart. exterminate every person that blames an Aryan person for the abuse inflicted upon the Aryan race. exterminate the black gays. exterminate the people that pretend to be white gays. exterminate people who sociopathically deny truth.exterminate people who pathologically refuse to admit facts. exterminate every psychiatrist. exterminate every person that demands you "get out of here" when you speak the truth. exterminate the people that enjoy drowning in media and emotion and toxically spreading their disease. exterminate the people that categorically hate the rich. exterminate the risen. exterminate the "righteous". exterminate the "holy". exterminate the false persons. exterminate the rich that antagonize you. exterminate every male teenager. none of the above is worthy of life, as all of them enjoy satanism and its capability to cause real, permanent, deep damage to good souls.

exterminate every black person, because they are masters of the art of presenting themselves as helpers to the good people. never open your heart or mind to them. they fo nitjing but find eays to sbuse you. they buy black clothing at retail stores. they are the true evil. they think beauty earns them the right to live peacefully. they are nothing but things that consume your resources and psychologically rape you when they cant take anything else material from you. they are Satan. never forget what they did on 9/11.

[jenniferisacommonname]

Voiceactors in my Head

One of my many contradictory feature sets is a silent, circumventing stubbornness paired with a pathological fear of confrontation. I will get what I want, and I will not stand my ground if verbally pressed on it. I concede points like it’s an Olympic sport. But as long as everyone's still smiling—gently, snidely, or otherwise—then I can go on forever. Case in point, I once trolled a stranger on the internet for over a year. (Don’t worry; by the end of the story you’ll be on my side again. And if you’re not, well, I mostly agree with you.)

It all started with a CD which was, at the time, exclusively available through the record label’s website. This was back in 2005, when online retailers still ran on frontier justice and only fools uttered the words “free shipping.” Needless to say, I did not have an existing account.

But we do what we must. So I bent the knee, and delivered my modern-day rogation of name, email, and PII governed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in order to receive my one CD—then I defiantly wasted that effort by never patronizing their establishment again. I mean, the album was fine, and I’m sure they had other struggling artists whose work I would have enjoyed, but apparently I’m against creative expression and the American small business owner or something.

Anyway, five years of blissful non-interaction go by. Then one day in 2010, I get a mass email from the founder of this little indie record label. It was—or at least it aspired to be—a classic “starting a new chapter” kind of announcement, letting everyone know that he had sold his (incredibly!) successful company, and was using the proceeds to start a charity that would bring music lessons to inner city children.

And, hey, I thought, that’s cool. Music is great for kids. Except… the tone of the email was weird. It was more than just casual; it was chummy. The concept of a YouTuber didn’t exist back then, but here was its primordial ancestor, testing the beachhead with its nascent flipper-legs of peppy chic.

“Yo, J-dawg, how's it hanging? Remember back in [mail-merged year] when you bought [whatever]? What a great album, am I right?! Anyway, it's been so long since we rapped, I thought I'd update you on my sitch…”

Obviously, I’m paraphrasing, but that’s how the voiceactor in my head performed it. And it just rubbed me so hard the wrong way. I mean, look, I get it—we live in a promotional society, and there's no avoiding that. I’ve done my fair share of book pimping, and if you have a legitimate fan base the intrusion can even be a welcome one. So, fine. Tell me about your thing—once—and maybe I'll buy it. But don't act like we're friends, like I have some kind of obligation to you beyond this basic consumer relationship that we've established.

So my gut reaction was a hard pass, pleading children’s eyes be damned. But the email didn’t include a link to unsubscribe. This spammer was so brazen, he had sent the message from his personal email account, as if threats like “more updates to come!” belonged in anything but a ransom note font. If I wanted my name off the list, I would have to actually write him back, creating exactly the kind of low-stakes, one-on-one confrontation that we all know is worse than torture.

How would I even phrase it, knowing that his overture was from the heart and my rejection would travel right back along that path? “Listen, amigo, I know you probably spent an hour composing this raw, honest self-reflection on your priorities, but it’s garbage, and I never want to hear from you again. Please keep in mind that while you have failed to inspire me, you’ve also failed the children. Because you’re a failure.”

The actual words wouldn’t matter; I was sure that’s what he’d hear. In fact, I would argue that a polite rejection is often worse, because it leaves no option for the rejectee to write off the loss as a dodged bullet. They really were a nice person, and you’ll probably never find anyone so humble again, you loser.

So instead, I got out my favorite piece of social armor: the ironic “yes, and.” In improv theater, if a scene partner implies that you’re the best of friends, you don’t argue with them. You commit to the bit. So I did.

“Oh my God, Steve, it's so good to hear from you!” I wrote (except I used his real name, of course.) “I can’t believe you still remember our special album. Makes me weepy just thinking about what it meant to us. Anyway, here’s what’s been going on in my life...” Then without warning, I dumped several years’ worth of emotional trauma on him—about severe autism, and how hard day-to-day life was, and how each treatment brought hope and frustration in equal measure while somehow never easing my crippling fear of the future. It was a therapy session on steroids, directed at a stranger under the guise of bitter sarcasm. My flippant sign-off left no doubts about my true feelings: “Anyway, as I’m sure you can imagine, we are flat broke with medical bills, bruh! So I'm gonna need you to take us off your list. But in the meantime, here are some autism charities that you could donate to on our behalf, since we're such good friends.”

To be clear, open snark isn’t remotely in the spirit of “yes, and.” But it felt better in that moment than honest rejection, and I figured he’d take the hint.

Instead, the guy wrote back.

“Wow, what an amazing story!” he said. “Crazy world we live in. I'll go ahead and take you off the list, but I do hope you'll think of us in the future.”

Ugh. He had met my bad behavior with empathy, and I felt moderately ashamed. Then again, you couldn’t argue with results, and at least I knew this ordeal was behind me.

Except he didn't take me off the list. A couple of weeks later, I get another fake-personal email, which I must again paraphrase, though I remember with furious precision the way it made me feel. “Heyyyy Jenn-ster, it's me again! I know how much you've always loved music, so I know you're gonna want to hear about this...”

BITCH. YOU. DON’T. KNOW. ME.

“Steve, what happened?!” I wrote back. “You used to be such a good listener! I think the money's changed you, man.” And I asked once again to be taken off the list.

This time, he ignored me. No reply, and the spam kept coming.

So I just decided that this was going to be our thing. Every time he sent me an email full of stuff I didn't care about, I was going to send him an email full of stuff he didn't care about. Except I kept pushing it a little farther each time, like, “Ooh, potty training's not going so great, let me tell you all about it...” And at the end of every email I'd always remind him, “Hey, anytime you want to stop getting updates on my son's bowel movements, all you have to do is take me off your list.” Sometimes I bolded it; once I super-sized it into a 40-point font. But he never did.

This went on for over a year.

But I won.

It’s a trite saying, but sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. The last email I ever got from this guy was short, which was unusual for him, and it said something like, “Great news! We've just graduated our first class of students—check out these pics!” (Why am I paraphrasing so much, when email is forever and I could just go back and give you direct quotes? Stop asking questions and roll with me for a minute.) Anyway, embedded in the email, like already loaded and filling the screen HTML-style, was this giant picture of… I don’t know, a kid kissing a trumpet or something. It was probably super cute, to be honest—but I was on a mission.

“Great news!” I wrote back, trying as always to mimic the exact structure of whatever he had sent me. “My son just had a colonoscopy—check out these pics!” And I pasted the actual medical photos of my child’s rectal passage into the email, pre-loaded and filling the screen, so he’d be forced to view them against his will, just as I’d been forced to endure his endless marketing crap.

Sure enough, he never emailed me again.

Pretty good story, right? And that closer—I mean how can you top sending medical photos to a complete stranger just to gross them out? Unfortunately (or fortunately; I’ll leave it up to you,) this one has a weirdly philosophical denouement. If you like your narratives sassy and single-layered, I suggest you duck out now.

Around 2015, I was trawling my past for wild stories that could be condensed into a tight three minutes for open mic night, and ‘that time I emailed colonoscopy pics to a spammer’ was an obvious contender. Once I had the basic structure written down, more or less exactly as I remembered it, I went digging through those ancient emails to finalize the details.

And what I found was… not what I remembered. The story I told above clearly had some emotional embellishments (see: paraphrasing), but it was fundamentally true in circumstance, I thought. And, yes, I really did send this guy two pictures of my son’s colonoscopy, though they were just thumbnail attachments, not embedded. But the text of my actual emails to him barely came off as snarky at all, and I never once told him in clear terms to take me off his list. There are a few lame hints at irony that you can pick out if you really squint, but by and large I was just… writing him back. Like we were friends.

Which is a good thing, because his emails to me were even less accurate in my memory than mine had been. He hadn’t cut me off; he’d replied to every single email I’d sent, in a way that made it clear that he’d watched every video and read every article. He was cordial, empathetic, and seemed genuinely interested in my kids. It was a therapy session on steroids, all right—minus the steroids.

BITCH.

YOU. KNOW. ME.

And in return for all this kindness, I had sent him horrific medical photos for no reason. To which he had replied (and this time I’m not paraphrasing,) “Thanks for the update on your son. I appreciate it. Keep up the good work. All the best to you both.” The updates from him had indeed ceased after that, but from what I can tell it was just a coincidental winding down of that particular enterprise, not a removal of my name from any specific list.

Eventually, I ended up emailing him again, this time as a penitential mea culpa to ease my own conscience. I explained the situation, and apologized for my unfair judgment of years past, plus of course the unsolicited sigmoid landscapes. He thought the whole thing was hilarious, and admitted that he’d never once picked up on my poorly-conveyed bitterness.

More important than the personal amends, though, was the lesson I had to swallow about how emotions don’t just cloud memories—sometimes they invent them out of whole cloth. I swear, I swear I remember a photo of a kid graduating from his charitable music lessons, but I can find absolutely no evidence of it anywhere. My brain made it up to retroactively justify my behavior: yes, I sent a photo, but only because he sent a photo first. It’s not even a remotely good justification, but I guess it took the edge off just enough to keep seeing myself as a good person.

It was an important lesson professionally, too. History is nothing but a mashup of inherently self-serving memories, and multiple perspectives can only draw a narrative closer to objective truth by half-steps, never to fully reach its destination. Even hard evidence is fallible, because my emails as written did not accurately represent how I felt when I wrote them, which is an important part of the story in its own way. Misinterpretations and flawed perspectives are inevitable, but they’re also necessary, and stripping them out as a historian is just as wrong as taking them at face value. A story is both what the participants think it is, and what we know it isn’t—especially when those two conflict—and every non-fiction piece I write is just somebody else’s therapy session on steroids.

[rathologic]

1, 3, and 10 for the pathologic classic asks 🐀

1: favorite main character? ARTEMY PATHO1 no question about it. I know 2 wanted to create a choice for him about being able to assimilate into the Town, but the mission "what is my life worth if I don't take my father's inheritance" is so much more compelling to me... he IS worth nothing to the town and hated or disregarded until he takes the position of Warden, and the impossibility of doing that in the face of plague and the foreman and a route all about alienation from the major NPCs makes him reckless in a way that works ideally for a video game playable character. "why do you risk your life standing here before me? / because I don't value it" but through the magic of reloading saves he makes it through... the play about the "orphan-winner" as that one little boy npc calls it... and his explicit not minding being controlled by other forces encompassing not only the player, but justifying to the player the reliance on clara's miracle that you're required on day 11 to choose. there's kind of a closeness in the player's partnership with him that the other healers don't get. aglaya picks up on this as well :-)

3: dumbest way you've died so far? not a "death" so much as it was a "sent artemy to turbohell forever" but it was absolutely the time the patho2 alpha decided the ground did not have collision and caused him to fall into the void upon waking up and exiting his lair. mother boddho resigned

10: what about the game brings you the most comfort? WELL... comfort and enjoyment are very different things I'll say the part that makes me feel the most comforted is just logging into p1. walking out onto a street in the "morning" time period and hearing the little bird sound effects and utroba_main.ogg and seeing townsfolk slouching towards places & the faint patches of blue sky & knowing some of the most intricate dialogue in the world is out there to be interacted with & getting punched to death immediately. that's the pathy experience to make me smile