a slightly more traditional promo post but also my special plea to you my friend.
for those staring down the barrel of the P3 release next week, The Forge is an invitation to return to the weird world of the utopians and re-enter the kind of close reading that results in engaging interpretation of a text as incoherent as pathologic. like pathologic, it lacks an omniscient narrator and offers information purely through the flawed perspectives of the characters who are party to the events in question, or who hear about them second-hand. it’s to you as much as to peter that maria says, “Actually, I suspect you’ll have to forgive my ongoing evasiveness. Don’t be afraid to ask me questions! I know that you are insightful, inquisitive, and sensitive– this is also why you are the person to whom I’ve written.” you will get out of the forge what you put into it; it demands interpretation, and what is said explicitly is only a part of what happens. some of the mystery is guided, but several more threads and themes are addressed only through implication or unreliable conjecture. my secret agenda in writing this is to expand the cohort of effective maria kaina analysts.
i know every fanfic author ever says that their work is rich in themes and motifs but like actually this is the densest piece i’ve ever written, as well as my longest completed work (22k, 2-3 hrs reading time based on beta readers). i really hope everyone who decides to give it a shot has a good time and i’m so appreciative of the feedback and interpretations i’ve already received!!
please take a day off. just take a day off like you need to take a day off so bad. you don’t even need to get a hobby, just start by doing something enjoyable for no reason other than that you enjoy it and telling yourself it’s not a waste of time. people care about your wellbeing. you don’t need to go to hell
The tone of their dialogue was meant to reflect that they live in this heightened space, inherently brushing up against the fourth wall. I don’t know what possessed me to say “what if in English they spoke entirely in iambic pentameter,” but once I had I was basically on the hook to do it. So I did it.
This makes me one of very few living people who’ve written a large volume of iambic pentameter verse drama for money, on a deadline.
Pathologic is full of compelling and complex female characters. However, women are underrepresented and often ignored in fan content. The vast majority of posts in the Pathologic tag are about men, and there are 11.6 times as many M/M AO3 fics as F/F ones. Let’s do something about it!
During Pathologic Women Week, Sep 21-27, @ninakaina and I invite you only to create and reblog Pathologic content which centers women and lesbians. Tag your works with #pathologicwomenweek, and we’ll reblog them onto the @pathologicwomenweek blog.
We’ve included some creative prompts designed to overlap with pathologic_fest (run by @fellowtragedian). Feel free to follow one set, both, or neither. For more information about the prompts, read on :-)
Okay, I have the same issues with how Aglaya is presented in P2 that many others have already spoken about. But man, I need to hand it to IPL in terms of how her death is executed within the game. It’s one of my favourite examples of environmental storytelling in the whole series.
It took me until my 3rd playthrough to find her body. (On my 2nd playthrough I tried to leave town with her, which is a masterful scene in and of itself.) You’re in such a rush on that final day. Running on fumes with no time to sleep, probably halfway to starvation, just desperately running in circles trying to find that fucking courier. You already know Aglaya is dead, but you’re never told how or where, and there’s so much else going on that looking for her probably isn’t your top priority.
You’ll miss her entirely unless you take the shortcut around the back of the Town Hall, and even then she’s easy to miss. The streets have been lines with corpses for days, and there’s nothing to make this one stand out.
I remember just standing there for a second, looking at her, dead in the grass in a puddle of blood, while the realization of what I was seeing sunk in. It’s so jarring to see her like that, this visceral reminder that The Inquisitor bleeds like anyone else. You can’t interact with her - of course you can’t, there’s nothing she could say to you. You can loot her body if you want. She isn’t carrying a note, or a journal, or any identifying items, just a revolver. It’s in perfect condition - was it never used, or did Aglaya just take meticulous care of it? My shotgun was close to breaking, so I took it.
Just like any other corpse, you’re given the option to take her organs if you choose. You probably won’t; she was uninfected, and it’s not like you have the time to brew painkillers anyways. But you could. The idea made me recoil. Over the course of the game you get so desensitized to the fact that you’ve been killing people to steal their organs, and having the option of doing so to a named character makes the realization hit you all over again. Why does stealing the kidney of a stranger feel like Valuable Loot, but doing the same here would feel like an act of defilement?
Idk how much of this was intentional, but the whole experience affected me pretty deeply. In that moment I was Artemy, stumbling accidentally into the body of this person he’d cared about. Standing in shock for a moment while the reality of the situation sunk in. Searching her body in hopes of some explanation, and finding only an empty revolver. Instinctively reaching for a scalpel, and then hating himself for it. There’s no time to grieve, so after a moment or two he gets up and leaves.
When your Bound die, they just… Go away. They despawn, like the video game NPCs they are. It still hurts, but you don’t have to look at their corpses or root through their pockets. But Aglaya was a person - more aware of her unreality than most- and she was taken out behind the Town Hall and gunned down like a dog. God I love this fucking game.
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