#burda crit

[ninakaina]

i found the vague.i'm actually not sure it's about me (while i was making this post, mutuals have suggested it may be about posts by @sarkofagos that i hadn't seen before the vagues were sent to me, which seem to fit better) but i'm going to respond as though it is because it's a response to ideas i support, and it's an opportunity to expand on the concepts i've been talking about. and as discussed if you don't want people assuming you're talking about them don't vaguepost.

coming here to make a full response because i think this is an opportunity to clarify my objection/criticism of this content and because twitter is an unserious website where complex analysis goes to die even more than tumblr.

first of all let's start with a definition of the thing i'm complaining about. i'm literally just going to quote wikipedia because i can't be assed to get into it. "A nuclear family... is a family group consisting of two parents and their children (one or more), typically living in one home residence. It is in contrast to a single-parent family, a larger extended family, or a family with more than two parents."

i could be wrong but i don't know of anyone arguing that two people raising kids is inherently conservative. it is the emphasis on & hegemony of that framework to the exclusion of all other layers of community being involved in childrearing, the exclusion of any other household members besides the parents and children, and the exclusion of the ability of a single parent to meet their children's needs, that makes it conservative. why doesn't anyone else ever live at the burakh house? as jon has asked: where is oyun? why does artemy always need daniil to watch the kids: where is his entire canonical support system? why does someone need to watch the kids? why is artemy suddenly in need of someone to share parental duties with? that's not my man...

i personally can't be bothered to argue about the oocness of dadkovsky because to me it's just cartoonish but it definitely is ooc for artemy in a way that frustrates me, in part because of the above concept and also (in the realm of "hey you know these guys don't like each other right") i don't think artemy would want daniil around his kids. i think he cares too much about them to let daniil act daniil-like towards them. read a fic where daniil screamed at sticky and artemy was fine with it :person_standing: MORE importantly though i think it (further) degrades sticky and murky's agency. it's pretty important that canonically in p2 sticky and murky adopt artemy and not the other way around. it's their choice. murky actually adopts sticky as her brother before she accepts artemy as a father figure. content that makes daniil sticky and murky's parent by virtue of his relationship with artemy, by contrast, draws on conservative structures of family and power; it is predicated on the (perceived) universal law that the romantic partner of your parent is your parent, and their position as an adult in your household gives them power over you. the idea of this system being replicated with sticky and murky flies in the face of the independence and willfulness they both demonstrate in canon. it's especially bad with murky, whose relationship with artemy is earned through a struggle that comprises one of the major plots of the game; the reduction of her character to an adult-dependent little girl who accepts the authority of and even demands affection/attachment from Some Guy Artemy Is Fucking, which is so pervasive in domestic burda, is kind of antithetical to what makes her a compelling character imo?

side note inb4 the gotchas: it's true that burda nuclear family content is a more inclusive definition of a nuclear family for including adoptive children and same-sex parents (although this is now an accepted definition of a nuclear family). however i personally despise the idea that gay liberation and child welfare means equal access to the same repressive systems that tormented women and children and elders throughout the 20th century.

there's nothing wrong with wanting "deeply traumatized people [to] find peace after a traumatic event" -- BUT the implication here, that the way to find peace is by constructing a nuclear family unit, is definitely a conservative ideology, especially when the actual game shows artemy finding peace in fatherhood WITHOUT a romantic partner or co-parent. do you see what i'm saying?

[ninakaina]

the 3 burdas fyi + my better ship prescriptions:

two men who are diametrically opposed, two sides of the same coin in that they're polar opposites nothing in common, opposites attract i guess and the killing each other is sexual (the most understandable version as it's based on their canon dynamic although i think the sexual dimension is still firmly in hc territory, but worth mentioning that this burda is extremely commonly racialized into Artemy Brown Man Big Hands Violent penetrates Frail Lilywhite Dark Academia Twink. which is a function of the fact that imo pursuing someone he hates this much sexually is inherently out of character at LEAST for artemy. others have said it before but if youre into this burda and you're not racist you should probably just get into daniil/andrey; or if you want the psychosexual mortal enemies narrative foil aspect ill happily introduce you to maria/eva)

two men who are two sides of the same coin in that they're different on the surface but are basically the same at their core (this is where you see a lot of "asshole with a heart of gold" daniil, hurt/comfort overcoming their differences post-ending. the "left and right hand" quote will be misused here. artemy can be moderately in character in this burda but daniil cannot because this burda heals or denies the bitterness and cerebral avarice that defines him; more often than not artemys dimensionality and struggle is erased to focus on daniil's problems or only brought up to claim that being persecuted for death experiments is the same as experiencing racism so they understand each other. petermaria does a complementary dichotomy massively better, or if you want to get crazy lets talk nina/victoria)

two men who like and love and adore each other and are lovingly raising children together (where are you getting this from. get away from artemy's kids. no one is in character because daniil is sappy and fluffy and emotional and artemy doesn't insist on his own personhood, set boundaries, or ever act mean. if you want artemy to be with someone he actually likes and you dont have weird idolization of the nuclear family why dont you check out my beautiful artemy/grief (p2) ; if you want domesticity with daniil go to eva/daniil shes the only person who can tolerate him ; if you want nuclear family content pathologic is not for you)

[ninakaina]

I wanted to say that your burda rant is so good, you literally get it so bad… I fucking hate this ship and all its greedy and evil ignorant fans, people on twitter keep bringing up Eva/Aglaya everytime and it’s soooo annoying at this point,can they let us breathe and enjoy those two women without having to bring up this dumbass ship, Evanill and Aglaytemy is always shat on but Its never about why it won’t work..but how their mere existence is gonna ruin their weird fantasy that burda is somehow canon, they just hate women so bad that we can never discuss them separately without burda being brought up… misogyny is so common in this fandom it’s insane…

i was informed that eva/aglaya here means eva and/or aglaya. 100% agree

[ninakaina]

yo i saw your anti burakhovsky post and i personally haven't thought of it as problematic, could you explain why you think of it that way? this is an honest question, like i don't have a strong opinion on it either way, i just thought it was interesting :)

hi! i haven’t been online in a while so i didn’t see this (it was sent about 2 weeks ago). i’ll probably miss some beats here but bear with me. 

first of all, i’ve seen some really good posts about racism in the WAY burakhovsky is often portrayed in the patho fanbase, by relying on stereotypes of brown & indigenous men for artemy. many of those posts are by actual indigenous people, which i can’t find in the search function (surprise surprise) but i highly recommend them and if anyone can find them please do link them in the reblogs. 

secondly, daniil is racist. that’s basically one of the central aspects of his character. i went into a whole explanation of this but... play the game. either of them. you can also go though the pathologic wiki and look at item hover quotes for a good side-by-side comparison of daniil and artemy’s perspectives. daniil’s racist. he spends the whole game outright dismissing artemy’s race and culture and artemy himself due to his race and culture. granted, basically all the white people in pathologic are racist in one way or another, but daniil is definitely up there on the list, and it’s a lot more serious than many other characters’ microaggressions because. he literally tries to get them all killed. his view of the plague in classic is that it’s the fault of the kin culture for their religious practices, and his solution is to bury them all (townsfolk & kin). so. inherently. shipping him with a member of the kin, especially one who he actively dismisses in order to advance this agenda, is something that people should at least put more thought into.

[ninakaina]

ppl be like ‘oh i like BurDa because of they are foils!! perfect matches’ and then ignore all the pathologic WLW ships in pathologic that are also foils... hmmmm

reading this hit me with an urge to lift up my laptop by the base over my head and throw it on the ground cracking it apart at the joint like the so no head guy. you’re right. 

[ninakaina]

the fact that they did mention that meme makes me really believe that they confused the tone of your post bc it's a common response to a "critique" of yaoi that's it's clearly just homophobia, there's variations of the image that says "reading yaoi is so misogynist but what did we expect from stupid women" anyways I'm super lazy so I'm definitely not going through your blog and that's on my business but i would appreciate if you shared some of your visions of why burda is a bad ship bc i'm quite fond of them and I'm playing pchd for the first time and i wanna think about this game forever

hmm ive never seen the meme in question before so i trust you on this <3

the main reason i hate burda is because it's so inescapably popular. the pathologic fanbase has become basically synonymous with the burda fanbase, it's almost impossible to get eyes on non-burda content (including non-ship content and analysis). i've said before that there are other ships i would hate more if they were anywhere near the popularity of burda, but they're not, because nothing is.

generally Most of my issue with burda is with the behavior of its shippers. five years ago i just kind of thought it was annoying and not real but after all the things i've seen i just can't stand it. i have various longer posts on how burda is uplifted to the point of erasure of all other characters and pairings and is a major vector for the misogyny that plagues this fanbase. it is Also a major vector for the racism that plagues this fanbase, due to artemy being a racialized person and daniil being racist against him (yes, personally and directly. i'm not going to fight about this anymore). i have extremely rarely EVER seen burakhovsky content without some amount of misogyny or racism

i also know tons of people who have been harassed merely for Not Seeing It

the fanon also just tends to revolve around fundamental misunderstandings or full on erasures of the characters themselves and the themes of the game. they're diametrically opposed which i thought was the appeal but most people seem to even do away with that? if someone finds burda content that says something interesting about the characters can you let me know. also it treats artemy so fucking awful all the time. i just threw a bunch of posts into a tag #burda crit so you can see a couple of my thoughts

i don't see what people see in it at all so i can't really refute any evidence or speak to a platonic ideal of an in-character burda dynamic because i just don't know where people get the idea that they're into each other. sorry. based on what. obviously they're narrative foils but the tension they have is that of they should be killing each other and not even in a sexy way to me.

as referenced above daniil's plot and themes revolve around white supremacy so it makes me uncomfortable for that reason. because artemy is an indigenous asian person. I LIKE DANIIL DANKOVSKY (disclaimer i have to make every time)

again. there are so so so so so many more compelling dynamics that add dimension to the characters involved that get completely ignored or actively attacked in favor of burda. i don't know Which Burda you're interested in (imo there are like 3+ different forms of burda and i think people tend to like different ones because they seem mutually exclusive?) but whatever you see in them there's another dynamic doing it better and more interestingly.

[ninakaina]

Saw your burda post and it got me wondering why so many people ship it. I think it’s because the relationship between the three healers is central to the game and the central conflicts it’s interested in discussing (note that I said three here). The thing is, the game itself (both of them) has a tendency to give Clara the least attention of the three so most people only really pick up on the conflict between Artemy and Daniil. The only thing is, most fandom spaces don’t have room for central relationships that aren’t familial or romantic, so it just gets shoved into one of those boxes.

Daniil and Artemy’s relationship is important, I think; as friends, as enemies, as colleagues. But they’re not the only two in that central dynamic and it can be explored in more ways then they wanna kiss

they're also two men who stand next to each other. clara is overlooked not just due to the game (i would argue p2 makes her as relevant as dankovsky) but due to being a female character