hot take: they should have used vlad jr. as the 4th kid in artemy's childhood friend group (the "apple basket gang") in pathologic 2, not bad grief.
so, artemy, rubin, lara, and vlad jr. here's my reasoning for why this would have worked better:
i think it's annoying that they aged bad grief down from a weird 56 year old queen to a relatable twenty-something
bad grief's whole dilemma in classic is about repenting after having lived a life of crime, which doesn't really work if they make him so young that his life is just getting started. in pathologic 2 he instead has a subplot about aglaya giving him an existential crisis, which they still could have kept.
hell, they could have kept basically everything except for the childhood friendship stuff and that campfire meeting. there was that tiny subplot that went absolutely nowhere about blowing up the train tracks to keep the inquisitor from showing up, artemy still could have schemed with grief on that.
it's lame that he went from being a guy who actually killed people and tried to PRETEND that he didn't (patho classic) to a guy who's all aww i never actually kill people it's just the people who work for me 🥺 i have no control over my gang 🥺
on the vlad jr side, incorporating him into the whole "reconnecting with your childhood friends" thing artemy has going on would have worked super smoothly, considering a major part of that seems to be artemy realizing that all his childhood friends are actually pretty racist to him! vlad jr obviously is that, but it could just go to show how the kinds of things you might not notice as a little kid become way more important once you're older
plus in general it would just give more space to flesh out the whole dynamic between the burakhs and the olgimskys, which i think is explored less in patho 2 than it is in classic
it ALSO would give some space for another dynamic that seems to have things going on in classic but is forgotten about in patho 2, which is vlad jr and lara. i'd have to go back and look but it's implied that the olgimskys helped fund her house of the living? and overall vlad jr and lara have interesting parallels in being invested in the idea of themselves as philanthropic good samaritans, which would have been interesting to explore.
hell, vlad jr ALSO has an interesting parallel with the other three in having "daddy issues" as a major part of his arc (see lara defining herself around her dead father and artemy and rubin around isidor). compared to bad grief who's kind of the odd one out in that regard.
