our nature is our conscience's guard

no one, who wants to make up a story, will tell a lie / pathologic sideblog

[rathologic]

jon / pathologic classic lover and modder

Under 18? Block the tag “#minors dni” (here’s how)

Be aware of the ongoing assault case + grooming allegations against former IPL lead dybowski - Support Renata, the plaintiff! - Related: notes on “getting into” patho respectfully

I stream sometimes! currently: on hiatus

Join me on the Pathologic Modding Wiki in documenting the series’ technical workings :-)

p1 fog removal mod | p2 fog removal mod | character height/age/lore spreadsheet | my youtube

[meirimerens]

I shall come, when my time does, to the crest-top of the Areopagos,

Hunted and pursued as I have hunted and pursued,

But punishment I'll take smiling, for I'll have come on a white horse.

Archangel Michael poses based on Van Der Weyden's Judgement Day Beaune altarpiece (1445-1450) and Raphael's Saint Michael Overthrowing the Demon (1518)

Erinyes based on 4th century BC Paestum vase and Jocelyn Herbert's costuming for Peter Hall's staging of Tony Harrison's transladaptation of the Oresteia :)

[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

[g3sztenye]

day 7: the inquisitor arrives at the cathedral

[sarkofagos]

pride flags made from pathologic classic textures

[stoopidpoopid]

Perhaps turning inside out will help?

(I fear I've yassified her too much, but she is serving face in her classic portrait.)

[arianwells]

Tripwires of Fate

[jan-kapoli]

Pathologic 2 Hungarian translation

hey Pathologic fans! i'd like to make a Hungarian fan translation/localization of Pathologic 2 (and eventually classic HD). i have read this article on how to make a translation, but it's very bare bones. if anyone has experience in the following, please contact me at [email protected] or in this tumblr blog

experience in translation and localization (i think i know the difference between the two)

experience in packaging mods for pathologic

experience in Unity (i need to get the hungarumlaut (ő,ű) working in the game)

knowledge of the Russian language. i am comfortable translating from English, but i don't know a word of Russian (but hey, this is a great way to learn a language)

i have little experience in translation, having only translated boardgame rulebooks (that's how i learned English). i have a vague idea on how to start:

first pass would be to map out pathologic dialogs and link references between texts to preserve as much context as possible

secondly a meaning-to-meaning translation would take place (translation)

finally i would revisit dialogs and texts rewriting it to be more natural in Hungarian, diverging from the word-to-word translation

if this is not how a localization should be done, please let me know

in a few days i'll set up a GitHub repo for the fan translation. please suggest me workflows for tracking dialog and context for the texts. any additional help is welcome

please share this so it reaches more people

[ponos345]

Better to die on a playground than a battleground

[rathologic]

I remember looking him in the eye and thinking: nothing, we have absolutely nothing in common!

[rathologic]

Voronika Croy is trans? If there's any subtext (or your HCs) I'd love to know

unspecified medical condition and history of medical abuse (note: being a young woman is kind of a terminal condition in patho)

estranged from family, who she doesn't expect to recognize her

"it's a male-only facility. i'm the only one here"

appearance is totally inconsistent between the ARGs she appears in (even different photos within the same ARG) and the game

computer-savvy (transfem stereotype)

for certain people, seeing her causes a pervasive realization of the wrongness of their own body

"i don't know who and what you are; i do, though. you are my happiness and I always love you" -- her dad

"trans carrier, inc"

murdered by the state

[rathologic]

Akira Yamaoka musical trailer (Ice-Pick Lodge, 2026) / word up (dancekovsky, 2020)

[meirimerens]

mine de charbon, mine de cuivre, mine de soufre, mine de plomb.

[msjoker]

Bad grief pirate AU

[hazelnutpie]

sun and moon

[precevazia]

not having played patho3 is so beautiful because every once in a while one of you posts like Idk how I felt about the rubin non-euclidean dicksmashing quest in day 7 and I just have to wonder what on earth the writing on this game is like

[daniil-dankovskys-daily-quote]

The town based on slaughterhouses has no eatables? Are you joking?

-Daniil Dankovsky in the Bachelor Route from Pathologic Classic HD