[lovestereo]

Visit Original Link

[oplishin]

fucks me up that when i got into pathologic i was clara's age. And in a deeply pathologic way, she is eternally 15 (??) years old and 12 days old, trapped in a neverending play that she understands but cannot escape, while I theoretically learn and grow and change and am definitely not trapped in any ways the game would seek to comment on

[sunriseybee-deactivated20250315]

the sword of damocles

claraaaa

[ninakaina]

the thing is that the spiritual matrix of pathologic 3, which lies at the core of the entire story by nature, is a plot about a white boy who follows the path of the buddha-analog and becomes a bodhisattva-analog. which is fundamentally imo not an interesting plot unless buddhism is an exotic and slightly scary novelty to you. that's the plot of the film doctor strange. it's a story about buddhism (which objectifies it when created by & for westerners) rather than a buddhist story. not to mention the extent to which its portrayal of the ideology it heavily codes as buddhism is just, like, the absolute epitome of White Buddhism (the Western idea of buddhism which has very little relationship to buddhist reality) expecially given the way it seems to default to zen teachings with no consideration of the complexities of zen thought

whereas a more direct and educated buddhist coding applied to the bachelor route of pchd would have been a completely different story. like obviously if you think about it for even a second utopia (or "simonhood" in p3) is not nirvana or even a meaningful buddhahood, which is what the drawn parallels innately suggest. as everyone is always telling you, utopia is/will be a Real Place where Things Exist-- in fact, where things Exist more Meaningfully than they do in the present world-- and theyre going to go there (the conflation of this with nirvana is a result of culturally christian thought being applied to buddhism, which causes nirvana to be read as Heaven); it does not take any individual practice to go there as a layperson once it has been made to exist; and utopia is a place that exists to foster enlightenment. this is obviously a Pure Land.

Pure Lands in buddhism are sort of like planes of existence emanated by buddhas upon attainment of buddhahood, in which suffering is often believed to be eliminated, but most importantly where most barriers to enlightenment have been reduced or eliminated and you can receive teachings directly from said buddha. the idea behind Pure Land Buddhism (as i understand it; i attend some jodo shinshu services but do not follow jodo shinshu myself) is that rather than attempt to use countless miserable lives on earth to attain enlightenment / reach nirvana, the pro strat is to focus this current life on being reborn in a buddha's (partiuclarly amida's) Pure Land next time, where enlightenment is eminently attainable. this makes it very attractive to people with bad karma or other barriers in their practice. in that way Pure Lands are realms of endless spiritual potential, where "everything that can be discovered will be discovered; everyone who takes to the road is free" (and all that stuff maria says about the fragments of light cast by the polyhedron). in the case of amida's pure land it is a completely separate metaphysical realm from our world, but some buddhas (kannon and benzaiten in particular, coincidentally both female) are said to have Pure Lands that are physical places on earth like really cool mountains or lakes.

so a really interesting idea for a buddhist fantasy story (as opposed to a story about buddhism) would be a story about a group of bad people with terrible karma and a ton of worldly attachments they're not super interested in getting rid of, like hedonists and criminals and landlords, who decide they're going to build their own Pure Land where they (and everyone on earth) can attain enlightenment. probably they would congregate around some kind of advanced but slightly evil bodhisattva (mahayana vers; enlightened person who remains in samsara intentionally to guide others) figure with the belief that creating a Pure Land for her will brute-force her ascent to quasi-godhood, which in turn will power the spiritual reality of the Pure Land. and they would call her like the Dark Mistress or something and they would call the pure land Utopia. and maybe there would be some kind of cataclysm that befalls their community which would be a metaphor for death itself such that their survival in the newborn Utopia would be analogous to reincarnation in the Pure Land. if only someone had the funding and capacity to develop a video game with this premise in 2025

[sarkofagos]

pride flags made from pathologic classic textures

[daily-quotes-by-clara]

You're right... The evidence is incontrovertible... Every single fact about myself that I'm positive of speaks against me. I know that I can only exist in a dying world. I know that I have no place in a world without a plague. I know all that for sure. Does that mean that I am the plague?

-Clara in the Bachelor route, Pathologic Classic HD

[dekusticks]

Rule of Rose (2006)

[sharkrocket]

Clara’s hat meets Rubin’s nostrils 

[tarrarre]

More beer for the sensitive developmentally stunted adult woman

[drtemnova]

When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out.

[rathologic]

still obsessed with how bad grief manipulates clara! changeling route day 4 spoilers ahead (i REALLY recommend you play this on your own):

CLARA: …Filin, oh Filin, I know of you this: you knew ahead of time about the disaster that was to strike the town. […] GRIEF: …Sure, kiddo, ask away… Where did you get my name, anyway? Did Saburov whisper it to you, the scum? CLARA: You’re… not asleep?

when clara first tries to hypnotize grief, there’s no effect. this is supposedly due to an amulet he has, “a Steppe talisman… against maras like you!“ instead of being forced to speak, grief makes you do a little quest for him in exchange for information. just a fun little delivery errand. when you get back, he says the following:

Sure, go on. Whaddya wanna know? Just do me a favour and skip the mumbo jumbo part.

now, here you have the option to just ask him directly about the black twyrine trade. should be fine, since you already established he can’t be hypnotized. you already know bad grief from the other routes, right? that fun-loving, mostly harmless weapons dealer? you humor him, he deflects the question and tells you nothing, and you fail the quest. whoops!

but if you press on and use the words anyway, the prompt is a little different:

…Filin, oh Filin, I know of you this: you are the real ringleader of the killers!

and it works! grief avoided hypnosis the first time not because of his amulet, clara just had the wrong secret! and from that one stroke of luck he spins a web to trick the player into not using their powers on him. it certainly fooled me…

[konesertwyriny]

my weird uncle has this steppe talisman that makes it impossible for me to put him in a trance ughh.

[lamignonette]

[ponos345]

Happy pride month 🫡🏳️‍🌈

[rusha00]

Cat sketch

[risa-buck]

The river has provided quite a few unpleasant surprises recently. Could this indicate a mass dying off of fish? Hundreds of dead fish have washed up during the past week, the banks are covered in scales. This has made the people wary of eating fresh fish and they now prefer preserved fish like this one.

- description of smoked fish from patho classic

[artimimimi]

a little tea party

I don't really like how the work came out. (