#dankovsky lore

[meirimerens]

Because you mentioned Daniil‘s mama, does she ever meet artemy? What does she think of him? Does she ever find out about him and daniil being together or does daniil even come out to her? <3

she's at the wedding❤️ not said in jest btw she is.

I've mentioned it a few times in my #dankovsky lore and/or #yeva nazarovna dankovskaya tags (latter one including images of yeva interacting with burakh. Need to remake them but they're here and real still) dankovsky has been out to his mother since he was 15 after he realized age 11. for a while he didn't say anything because at age 12 like who cares but later it became that he kinda needed to say something lest he gets asked over and over about a fiancée so he preferred to readjust his mother's priorities before it became annoying. she's taken it better than his father, for this stuff I'll send you to the tags mentioned above because rewriting that in full kinda tires me a bit so you can read it [here] or [here].

she loves her grandkids because she was all on his ass with "you can still adopt right 🥺" even as he hadn't gotten a companion in his entire life. she's particularly fond of murky because murky looks Just Like Him For Real and is sad that she dislikes bangles and jewelry because yeva had kept all her jewelry for a future wife of her son's, then when that became obvious that That'd Be A No Ma'am for a future adopted daughter of his.

But Before That she has to kinda Meet Burakh indeed. after coming back to the city after his Hell on Earth countryside trip, dankovsky starts visiting more often from a feeling of "damn [scratches head] like is kinda precious and I should hang out with my mom before she's gone" and it becomes more and more obvious to her he has someone because he's like. Brighter psychologically. Less like the annoying stuck-up he's been. Mentions needing to travel back to the steppe often with a fondness that's not Colleagues-Only Related. so she starts "so is there someone👀 there is someone riiiight👀" and eventually he admits it. she's so excited to meet the guy (his dad a bit less because while he had made peace with him being gay [cf lore tag] he didn't really make it with dankovsky Having A Companion). Eventually yeva manages to convince her son to convince burakh to visit. and he does. a bit awkward. she thinks her son has good taste. both parents are quite in awe at the guy their son managed to bag because they're quite a bit smaller than him. yeva thinks it's so fun because she can ask him to fetch things on the shelves but dankovsky senior A Bit Less until burakh asks about the beetles collection and they get to bond by senior Proudly Discussing his and his son's collection. she reads his palms and is like I See👀 A Long And Prosperous Marriage 👀 [they hadn't even discussed that before]. Eventually burakh invites the dankovskies to ToG where yeva, who's a rather modest orthodox christian woman, is Vaguely Struck by the herb brides [cf this thing 2021 art jumpscare] but she respects the tapestry of the cultures of the world so she eventually just goes "what strong and athletic women🙏 I used to dance when I was younger um NOT LIKE THIS PERSONALLY but I did. But my knee… you know" And indeed eventually they are at the wedding. Love wins.

[meirimerens]

Do you think daniil and/or artemy can ice skate? Who would you think is better at it/enjoys it more? I love your brain

Yessiree I do.

Dankovsky is better at it because he's had more practice — regardless of if the Capital is Moscow or St-Petersburg (depending on when one thinks Pathologic takes place [pre- or post-1917 revolution]), he grew up here and both of these cities from what I'm gathering have a history of popular ice skating spots. He'd go with his mama and kept going until her legs became too bad to ice skate. As a grown man he's sometimes slipped away from his lab to melancholically ice skate to clear his mind. This much is true.

Burakh also got to experience ice skating a bit, but less: the Gorkhon river, because it is full of animal blood and guts and lard and the machinery rust and oil from the Termitary, doesn't freeze over very well, and his dad had multiple times told him to not wander on the ice because it was unstable. At most, and he and his friends needed to wait until the tributaries of the gorkhon to the south froze over, and even then it was sloshy ice. When he was sent to the Capital to study, he did indulge in ice skating at the same rinks Dankovsky is familiar with.

Nowadays with his bad leg he does not ice skate as much... but when visiting Dankovsky at the capital, if he lets himself be convinced, he'll follow. He'll have him pull him like a work work so he doesn't have to move his legs too much. Childish behavior!

[meirimerens]

slightly on the topic of the last ask slightly/alot not but: in general how do you think sticky, and especially murky interact with dankovsky? like sticky seeing him as a doctor/role model in that way seems quite natural. how do you think sticky sees rubin? do they bond.. they have a lot of similarities in my mind: both under isidor but NOT the heir. obviously applies more to rubin as hes the same age as artemy but lieke.. yeah. also, sticky also has that My Only Interest Is Medicine/ very studious in a way that artemy is not implied to have been to the same extent [as rubin at least, or not at first at home] . okay this ask started off with me wanting to ask about murky and dankovsky and i got distracted.. anyway: thoughts on murky and daniil? do u like the common hc that they bond over beetles? does he see his younger self in her standoffish autistic swag. would she paint him in the family portrait. etc. sorry for the essay in yr askbox

sticky considers dankovsky a Medical Role Model in the way he only half does burakh, not as a values thing but as a percentage thing. burakh's practice hinges in both his Capital knowledge and the steppe ways of his father and his communities whereas dankovsky is pure unfiltered Capital (and westbound) knowledge. dankovsky brings last year's Medical Knowledge Treatise (not the current year's, people need those) to sticky who's obsessed with the slightly gross anatomical lithographs in it (i know this because i've written it). i think he doesn't like. think much. of rubin. beyond "under/after a burakh but not the heir", they have very little in common. rubin has a whole airport worth of baggage wrt heritage and heirness, it's particularly more visible in P2 since he and burakh have actually very few interactions in P1; whereas in p1 he was put forward to be formally adopted as a foster son, that is not a thing in p2, it's actually way funnier (as in painful and cruel), instead he says of isidor [to artemy] "your father", "your father", until he stops and says "father", "father", putting himself as a burakh heir. it's less about being on a same plane as artemy, a brother to him, it's about being him. when the game dev docs call him "artemy's doppeldanger", that's very much this. Anyways i don't think Sticky cares much about him. they have little in common, sticky doesn't have a tenth of the Heritage bagage Rubin has, and while rubin shoulders burakh in his practice and sticky can be #inspired, he neither has the novelty of dankovsky's Capital Endeavors nor the utmost respect sticky owes burakh for literally saving his life. he's also over 2m tall (6'9"), generally grumpy, and vaguely scary. and still sneers and barks at burakh even years after The Event because he still has the heritage en travers de la gorge + grieving and coping. bad.

as far as murky goes i don't think she cares much about dankovsky at first either. she can get sick in p1 bachelor route, but for the endeavor of us making a story with a certain linearity and mashing all of the routes into one, she does not, and only gets sick from the obligatory p2 All Children Sick event. same as sticky wrt rubin, she doesn't owe dankovsky her life (does not realize it. in the event of a linear story, dankovsky did very much help this guy greatly. tons, in fact. but it is not dankovsky who visited her when ill and promise to save her from the illness. these two, too, i don't think have much in common to start off. she is not stand-offish in the way that he is, i don't personally hc dankovsky as autistic so that would not be in my instance something that they find a mirror between each other over, his grief as an adult man over failure (or feeling of it) is completely unlike her own childhood grief of losing both parents and having the man who (she considers) is their murderer walk around the community, be relied upon and loved. grief rewires a person (real #grievingheads rise up) but it did not rewire them the same and they do not exteriorize it the same at all. she does come around to him, from 1) having seen him around already and he's not that bad 2) that's Old Man's Man and if old man Good and Loving then by extension... etc. she Does draw a family portrait i know it for a fact. she does it and never mentions anything of it. that's just her silent way of saying "you cool so we cool👍" i do fw the beetle bonding heavy though i do. i don't think dankovsky brings his collection to ToG (incl. because some of it is at his dad's) but during a visit to the town his Old Ways catch up to him and he gets enthusiastic bout some beetle crawling around and catches it. starts telling everyone about it. murky fw his collecting ways (she collects plant specimens [including hers] and rocks) so she trails him around and starts asking him about other bugs that are Not Beetles because she thinks it makes sense they be grouped together and he has to be like i'm so sorry i have no idea what this thing is. (eventually he gets himself an entomology book and they start bugwatching together. love prevails etc)

[meirimerens]

What are your thoughts on dankovsky and burakh's individual relationships with their fathers? can they relate to each other a bit in that way?

gonna be real i think i could invent whole cloth a russian homosexual only child male from late imperial/early to mid-soviet era whose father has expectations of him [regardless of what these expectations entail] and he and these two could bond over this. the concept of Parent Has Expectation Of You (especially father has of son & mother has of daughter) is pretty universal as far as like Human Experience goes.

I think both Burakh and Dankovsky have this Classic flavor of relationship with their fathers which is There Is Love, but dad is not very expansive about it, not very vocal about it (until it is too late, cf. Burakh), and love mostly shows itself as expectations. papakovsky had a certain distance created between he and his son because he caught on early enough that son was gay and [i've talked about this numerous times to tldr] distance installed itself as dad saw the son's homosexuality as a reflection on him, but he evently Stopped Being That Way around dankovsky's adulthood. burakh didn't have this with isidor because Didn't Know He Was Gay until it clicked like day 9. so the distance was not about this. but his whole narrative is about dealing with inheritance and with distance and To Me a coming-of-age narrative at like 26. cf. ATA if i stay real.

so while they Do bond over the Father's Distance and the Father's Expectations i think they could bond over this with any other slavic male (balkans included) over this. you know. and the Expectations Weighed Heavier on Burakh than Dankovsky since his entire route is about dealing with these expectations -- and finding himself following them, after 10 days of absolute suffering testing how bad he wants it and how ready he is to do it. he and dankovsky got other stuff to bond about. mostly that time they (almost) got kids in their care killed i think that's strong enough of an event to bond over.

[meirimerens]

thinking about dankovsky age like 10 slowly realizing not only does he not Believe but he Never Believed and all he has instead of faith is fear. and he fiddles with the baptismal necklace he was given by his godparents and is realizing damn. it feels like it burns my skin where it rests and it is heavy as lead. [it is not, he is having a psychological reaction, but that's meaningful nonetheless]

[meirimerens]

I draw Peter as having had long(er) hair even as far back as toddlerhood it's funny to me if he was born with a little mane. just like dankovsky was born with bushy brows.

[meirimerens]

this is probably a very niche thing, but do you have any hand headcanons about pathologic characters? as in, who's right-handed or who's left-handed... or both.

YESSSSS OMG #YASSSSSSSS I DO! I DO IN FACT! IT'S NEVER TOO NICHE FOR ME HONEY #THOUGHTSHAVER

since most of the population is right-handed, imagine that if i'm not mentioning anyone they're either right-handed OR i don't have any particular headcanons. + you get some handwriting headcanons as well, a "buy one get one free" deal

Dankovsky: right-handed, relatively neat writing when he wants, otherwise you're getting that Doctor's Handwriting

Burakh: naturally right-handed, but he trained himself to be able to write with his left hand when he sprained his wrist age 14. his left-handed writing is kinda fucked up and it's obvious that's not his natural dominant hand, but if you squint and focus it's readable

Clara: ambidextrous, but she has very rarely written in her life so she doesn't even notice.

Andrey: naturally ambidextrous, has a left-handedness dominance

Peter: naturally ambidextrous, has a right-handedness dominance

(fun fact about ^ i headcanon that they always had to be sat together at school and for a while the teacher didn't understand why they didn't get any work done and then realized that's because the way they had them (peter on the left and andrey on the right) their elbows keep bumping in each other's so they just switched them around and it was fine)

Rubin: naturally left-handed but trained himself to be able to write/do other stuff with his right hand in case (it was for him a thing of like Discipline)

Lara: right-handed, relatively clean handwriting unless she starts losing it and scribbling

Grief: left-handed

Eva: right-handed, neat handwriting, likes to either embellish her lettering a lot or have very "dry", austere, almost worryingly simple shapes

Yulia: right-handed, a nervoussss writer, very tense grip on the pen, very low and slanted letters

Nina and Victoria: both ambidextrous

Katerina: naturally ambidextrous, her proficiency in both hands has been coming and going, and her morphine addiction has made her lose her grip and stability on her writing to the point it looks like chicken-scratch now

Capella: naturally ambidextrous, she uses mostly her right hand so far but will learn to use the left one more as well as she grows up + trains with stuff like sewing, embroidering, playing instruments,...

Khan: right-handed, relatively clean handwriting. it gets cleaner and more precise as he grows up because he goes on to go to college and learn languages, so he takes pride and effort into materializing the letters of languages other than his own like greek, arabic, any using the latin alphabet, etc.

Notkin: left-handed. he's barely literate because of his Shit Life Syndrome making his writing, when he tries, somewhat unintelligible. since he barely ever writes he has no muscle memory of how to hold his pen so his left hand doesn't smear the ink all over.

Catnip: right handed, clean and pretty handwriting, her grammar is kinda shit but she has an excuse. she's an orphan.

Dandy: left-handed, messyyyy handwriting, but his grasp on grammar's preddy good. paired with his sister ^ they make for Notkin's Redaction and Deciphering Team.

#yasssss!!!!!!

[meirimerens]

do you have any headcanons for pathologic characters having mental disorders and/or neurodivergency? from what i can tell from your ATA fanfic, Burakh probably has posttraumatic stress disorder. (as well as, well, Mishka being canonically stated to be autistic.) so what are your thoughts?

boy do i. throwing in other stuff that's not necessarily a mental health condition or neurodivergency but that i think affects them like brain-wise + for me to rember lol.

In general basically Most people in this town from an atmosphere of social misery have a little Something Something. most are grieving and some are Poorly Coping with a shit past, whether it is because of abandonment, loss, grief, so on and so forth. the plague adds More Grief and hands out PTSD like corn to the hens. some who have like. Syndromes that could be brought to a psychiatrist i can think of

Burakh: PTSD (war medic lore + The Plague Bro) + might lend him some Prolonged Grief Disorder if i feel like it

Dankovsky: i don't think how he is pre-Events comes from pathologies i think he's just a closeted gay male in academia, that plays a number with your mind (the self-aggrandizing and prideful behavior of being a know-it-all man in academia + the fear, restlessness and paranoia that comes with having to keep your homosexuality secret -> combo of evil). develops PTSD thorough the game, mostly becomes Twitchy, reckless behaviors, intrusive thoughts, and then it settles in post-events like nightmares flashbacks the usual

Rubin: PTSD (soldier/mercenary p1 lore) like shell-shock PTSD which in my mind's eye translates into obsessions/intrusive thoughts. he also has a lil Something Something from having had Not The Best parental figure and having to fight for recognition until he burned himself but i'm not sure what Diagnosis that is. it's just Shit's Fucked Diagnosis. self-esteem in the dumps.

Petr: i go back and forth between bipolar, bipolar schizophrenic, schizoaffective, like i haven't settled on something yet, but bipolar (or bipolar-like, like the "mood disorder" of schizoaffective) is a given (mixed episode in P1 and depressive episode in P2 if you care). obviously addiction. i go back and forth if i see the hallucinations/delusions he has as something from the bipolar disorder, from the addiction, from something else entirely... very hefty and powerful game so all if fair. + The Guilt. (might become paranoid from that)

Andrey: i don't know if i want him to Just Be Like This or for whatever his problem is to be pathological. someone infused in me an ADHD diagnosis for him and while i go back and forth he strikes me as the kind of guy who behaves better on Ritalin. but is it because of a neurodivergency or because he just loves drugs. much to think about. + The Guilt (might become paranoid from that too but ykno. "motor activity eliminates mental activity"...)

Anna: Girl's Scared Disorder. i'd say paranoia but is it paranoia if they're really after you... ykwim. Obdurate/insular paranoid, but is it truly pathological if walls having eyes is like not out of the reach of possibilities... etc

Katerina: canon addiction and what that brings. i think hers pushes her mostly to depressive episodes instead of aggressive/exteriorizing ones.

all of the orphans, by virtue of being orphans, have some kind of Issue, because not being socialized properly/cared for/living in social and psychological neglect like Does A Number on your brain regardless. most of them kids got that SLS (Shit Life Syndrome)

Mishka: her canon autism + methinks an attachment disorder because it fits with the timeline of her losing her parents around 3 of age. Prolonged Grief Disorder too perhaps? much to think about

Notkin: Tourette's, mostly motor tics. + a dys, i was shared the hc of dyslexia and i think i'll espouse it. i also think his family life was kinda shit + living in the streets is Actively Dangerous so like. (C)PTSD? i think it's The Least Of His Problems but it mostly makes him twitchy, doesn't dare get much sleep, needs to never have anyone or anything behind his back, stuff like that

Grace: some kind of FASD (fetal alcohol syndrome disorder) since her mother canonically drank while pregnant with her, i think hers mostly manifests as memory problems and learning/speech disabilities (also doesn't help that. orphan), poor reasoning and judgment skills & vision problems. all of those are also wrapped in the package of like. not having been properly socialized as a child

^ shit life syndromes