Why is Bachelor the most disliked and criticised among the three healers?
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, changing my mind several times. Initially I thought that it’s mostly because he’s obviously autistic and has little filter which I know from personal experience people can’t stand. The recent wave of anti-intellectualism triggered by tech bros is to blame as well. He also has a peculiar mix of vibes which make him appear simultaneously as a gay jewish academic for a more conservative russian audience and as a White colonizer to tumblr leftists.
But all of those are superficial. There are beloved characters with all of these flaws, including in Pathologic, and he isn’t even a woman to be hated for random nonsense.
I believe the real deep reason why Daniil is universally considered a negative character even by most of his fans (aka ‘he sucks, I love it’) is that he is Responsible. Hear me out.
All three main characters are active protagonists who make choices and shape the world around them. Hell, Clara’s story is about redefining her entire essence. But both Clara and Artemy, within the story, are being dragged to the town through the will of circumstances (Isidor, Isidor is the circumstances). Artemy is driven by the duty to his family and his people, which feels like big time Fate and beyond one's control. Clara is a child with initially limited choices and is immediately integrated into a family unit to be bossed around for half of the game. Their stories are about freedom and yet they don’t feel like they have many choices (in the beginning). Daniil’s story is about being trapped by the narrative but he is the one plagued by decisions. Even if you think he had no choice but to accept Isidor’s invitation because his lab was on the line – well, you chose your career, mate. Artemy didn’t, he was born into it, his father made the choice for him. Daniil’s father wanted him to be an officer. Daniil’s decision to be a medical scientist is a rebellion from before the game had even begun. And then you can say that he slowly loses freedom while both Artemy and Clara gain more of it. But the first impression is the one that matters. And even though we know Daniil as the one who ‘was always doomed to fail’ we still feel him as the guy who got himself into this predicament in the first place. He just had to get involved, had to become a doctor, had to choose the most ambitious project there was, had to lead said project putting his own life on the line. He, he did this, he chose it. Despite his parents, his government and even the gods of the world themselves being against it – he chose it. He took on this Responsibility.
And that’s the thing with responsibility. Everybody knows it’s horrible to be responsible, everyone tries to avoid it at all costs. Think bystander effect – if a person falls clutching their chest in the middle of the crowd, people will try to avoid getting involved, even if it’s not all that difficult to help, like dialing a number. Everyone waits for a hero to step up or for a doctor to just happen to be in the crowd. Being a doctor is a perpetual immunity from the bystander effect because you just are a responsible one by default. And you chose this.
One would expect us as a society to treat such a person like an absolute godsend. To recognize that this is someone who volunteers to do the most unpleasant job we all avoid doing. To be grateful. But no. Since we all intuitively understand that being responsible is the worst feeling in the world, that we could only ever be forced into this position, we suspect people who volunteer to only be interested in one single perk that the job may have – feeling important, essential and, of course, superior to others.
The worst thing is that the job does have this effect, especially if you do it for a long time and especially if you’re faced with a lot of ungratefulness and unfair criticism. Think a janitor with little-power syndrome, someone who has to clean after everyone else for years with no adequate compensation, no social recognition, nothing. Think mean nurses, think bad mothers. Humans did not evolve to be heroes, we evolved reciprocal altruism. If you do not reciprocate adequately, it builds resentment. Resentful people feel like they’re better than you even while they serve you. They have nothing to treat themselves with but this empty moral victory. And oooooh how we hate them for it.
What we want is to be served silently, to be asked for help in a most polite way, to always have the option to refuse helping without any feeling of guilt or shame. We hate being manipulated into feeling guilty by a resentful person’s bitching because this is the feeling that threatens to make us responsible. Very privileged people hate being guilted because they want to keep doing nothing. People who are overworked themselves hate it because they’re triggered by a perspective of shouldering one more thing. In the end, the reaction is similar.
We want our heroes to be humble, to take it all without complaint, to go above and beyond for our sake. We want them to be our parents basically (Kin’s relationship to Wardens comes to mind). Daniil is the worst hero imaginable because he chose to inflict this upon himself and then had the audacity to be human about it, to build up some resentment, to feel a little superior to those who exploit his and other people’s kindness or actively get in his way. In short, Daniil receives all the vitriol the real life humanitarian workers and activists receive but without any support that they have at least a little bit of.
Yes, ultimately, his ending is a bad one. He is too tired by the end of his journey and he succumbs to resentment entirely. But as someone who relates to his struggles a great deal, I refuse to leave him alone in this. As a player I take on the Responsibility for the town and I shoulder Daniil’s grief and hatred and exhaustion and steer his hand towards a better solution. He never should have been left alone, it was never fair to expect him to shoulder all of this alone. I am there, I control his actions. I can do this one for him.
Tragedian: Oh! Then I apologize profusely... You are definitely not a doll, but that seems to be unhelpful for our hero now. He is humiliated, crushed, but most importantly he is deprived of the power that we have all hoped for. By the way, are you still willing to take responsibility for him?
> Yes. He is my responsibility. I will stay with him to the very end. His words shall be my words. His deeds shall be my deeds.
