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Brainrot Recovery Centre

@screemnch

She/her (???)
Adult
Screaming into a plastic cup

one of the things i really like about pathologic is the way it makes you make decisions that have nothing to do with actual gameplay. like several npcs tell you that meat is dangerous, so you might choose to avoid it. or in pathologic 2, the kids tell you not to steal from the game, so you leave things behind that you could really use. i'm watching a lets play where the lper insists on attacking townspeople that are murdering women, even though he knows it kills his reputation.

there's zero actual repurcussions for not doing those things and they often actually make the game harder, but it still feels so bad and against the spirit of the thing that a lot of players do it anyway. THAT'S effective worldbuilding.

average ace attorney trial

phoenix: ah god im so nervous im so new to this

maya: we can do it nick!!! yayayayay

judge: hello i am here

edgeworth: hello i am calling my witness mr seekret murdahrer to the stand

seekret murdahrer: hi i am but an innocent witness. i saw harry willington kill that guy from my window. yes the defendant.

phoenix : oh shit uhhhh fuck i know!!! yes mr murdahrer um you claim to have seen mr willington from your apartment window and yet your apartment has no window!!!!

judge: order!!!!

edgeworth: tut tut tut you see mister wright mr murdahrer does have a window, your building plans are outdated!

phoenix: oh shit. um. i. LOOK AT THIS

judge: what the fuck is this

phoenix: this is a piece of tape! but as you can see, there is dust on this tape!! i picked it up at mr murdahrers apartment! in the dust on the tape you can see the serial number from the murder weapon!!!

seekret murdahrer: *rips off face* GAHHHHHHH fine i did it!!!!!@

judge: ORDER! anyway i find mr willington not guilty!

confetti: *falls*

maya: yayayay mr wright we did it!!!

edgeworth: Phoenix....... I Have Always Felt A Certain..... Way..... Towards You..... As If Our Lives Are Perhaps Intertwined...... This Thought Has Penetrated Me Deeply... And Yet I Find Myself Unable To Resist........

harry willington: wowowow thanks mr wright!!!! now i will go back to the novelty ninja dice factory and work there again!!!!

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I've been looking for things to make in objection.lol. There are absolutely no typos here

“I don’t know anythink about ace attounrey other than one guy says object or something” - my friend, in response to out of context memes.

The Pathologic Russian and English analysis: Artemy Burakh the Haruspex.

On this episode of “I am definitely not okay and dedicate my time to sillygoofy things” - we look at the Haruspex in the Bachelor's campaign. This alone took me a whole month, because there is a lot of funk happening in my life, so the Changeling will have to wait a little more. Anyway. Y’all maybe don’t know the drill quite yet, so let’s start at the beginning.

What is the Haruspex like in the English version? Well, discarding the “sweet but tired dad” persona that the entire fandom has assigned the poor guy, the impression I got while watching people playing through the game is that he is first and foremost a very impulsive person, and that, in a way, carries over to his speech. He’s also very cryptic to the other healers, in that ominous “you shouldn’t have done that” way. If I hadn’t read at least a bit of his dialogue lines for the previous analysis, I would have assumed that he’d be the one to use all those “rough” words every other sentence, since that’s how people from outside of the capital cities are usually portrayed. In the Bachelor’s campaign, he is almost like a goddamn cryptid, that tells you he doesn’t know what antibodies are and then presents you with a panacea on the very next day - he speaks very little and does not bother with niceties besides the honorary title. In the Changeling campaign, all those factors seem to be even more emphasised. Overall he acts even more distant, even more ominous and is even more threatening, since it’s seen through the eyes of a scared little girl (she’s also a miracle worker but we won’t talk about it now). Both of the campaigns are, of course, drastically different from what we have in the Haruspex campaign - which is where we get to see the whole “guided by the heart” thing in action. From the other two’s perspective, he is an ominous, potentially volatile, but still helpful figure. And his speech matches that exactly. So let’s get cracking.

Something that I've noticed in pathologic is this repeated dissatisfaction with the game, voiced in the game by characters who are partly or fully stand-ins for the developers, during those meta-narrative, fourth wall-breaking segments. When you talk to the executor in the theatre on day 12 of classic, he apologises for the game being substandard. When you first meet Mark Immortell in the tutorial to p2, he says the first performance of his play was a flop, clearly referring to patho classic. He becomes increasingly frustrated throughout the game, and in the end seems eager to move onto the new bachelor's route, saying this one didn't come out quite as he hoped. During the nocturnal ending, too, some of the Devisers, especially those at the very top, express doubts as to whether their efforts have paid off, or whether they managed to convey their vision, or whether all of the design choices were good. And I'd say even without being spelled out so literally, it would've been evident just in how much has changed between the original and the remake; the creators clearly wanted to do a lot of things differently, and by the end it seems like they still don't feel they've quite hit the mark.

And I think about it a lot. In a way, as a fellow creative, I can definitely relate to the frustration of your work not living up to the vague ideal you've conjured up in your mind, and how hard that ideal can be to capture. I have my issues with p2 too; it certainly improved some things, while some things in my opinion were done better in classic, and some things I have a vague notion could've been done differently but I can't quite tell how. Classic is, of course, not perfect either; I mean, it's literally unfinished. Some themes, topics or storylines sure could've used more delving into. I find some of the mechanics suboptimal, the jank is there. But I also genuinely love it, and it always felt unfair when Mark was bashing it in p2, and during the conversation with the executor I was always so sad that I couldn't reassure him that no, it was brilliant, I loved it, thank you for giving me this experience. Maybe it would've been weird for them to code in a dialogue response where the player praises their game, but they also deserved it.

And in the end, I just always come back to that quote from Peter, you know, about brilliant, unfinished things. Classic to me is such a gem in the rough, but also genuinely achieving a lot of what I think it aimed for, and though I don't wanna be the type of fan who complains about remakes by default, I often am, the drive to polish and refine it is also changing it significantly and that gives me mixed feelings. This also might be controversial to say, with all the anticipation and enthusiasm I see around, and I really don't want to rain on anyone's parade or be presumptively negative, it might be great, but I'm nervous about the p2 bachelor's route for a couple of reasons and idk. I'm in a weird spot. I also would've never told an artist that actually they've done their best already and should just stop, right? That would've been extremely unkind and probably untrue as well. It's not what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to pit two bad bitches against each other either, classic and p2 are really two separate games to me though they're also not and I can't escape comparing. Guess the point is that in my opinion classic was good, and a lot of it deserves to be carried over to the next iterations. Also that Mark Immortell has bad opinions and I want to fight him in the empty lot behind the theatre

I've been sick, so I made more Ace Attorney Text Posts. I... Don't know why.

Yes Miles. You and Phoenix need these nine children

As per usual, more Ace Attorney Text Posts underneath the cut

The Pathologic Russian and English analysis: Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky Part 2.

I've decided that whenever I go to have my psychiatric evaluation, I'm gonna show them these series of mini-essays. The things we do... Anyway, here's the second half of my prickly prick analysis, this time from our precious miracle worker!

As the Changeling: the Bachelor in this campaign is actually a lot more consistent in between the English and Russian versions - he’s a lot meaner, condescending and all we know and love him for, so to speak. In terms of formality, he almost always refers to Clara using the informal “you,” which is understandable - she is a child, and someone who he doesn’t hold in high regard. His mannerisms, unlike in the Haruspex run, don’t change halfway through the narrative, which can be attributed to many different things - the fact that in the Haruspex run Eva survives and so Dankovsky never has to deal with the guilt of her death, for example. Or maybe the idea that he constantly treats Clara’s abilities with scepticism and doesn’t see her as crucial to the fulfilment of his plans, almost viewing her as disposable. Whatever it is, the manner of speech is very similar to how it is in the first half of the Haruspex run - you’ve got your little filler words, diminutives, rough words and an informal but deliberate sentence structure. There is a lot more frustration in his dialogues with Clara, which can be explained by the idea that he is literally out for blood for half of the game.

Overall, I was a little sad to see how many dialogue options just lead to the exact same thing via different routes, so there won’t be as many notes here as I’d like there to be. That being said, I’ve already started gathering material for the Changeling section of the analysis. Additionally, with the repetitive nature of Clara’s campaign, I’d like to preemptively say that I’ve done my best to put these in chronological order, but I make no promises on accuracy. That being said - here are some things that I wanted to specifically point out.

The Pathologic Russian and English analysis: Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky

So uhhh.... Turns out my priorities aren't as messed up as I thought, which is why it took me a whole month just to finish this thing. Let's cover some basics shall we? The approximate structure will, depending on the length of this analysis, go as follows: I’m gonna tackle Patho Classic and the three healers from each other’s perspective, look at shared dialogue options and then talk about all the other important NPCs and how they interact with the playable characters. Since Patho 2 only has the Haruspex run, we’re gonna move through that a lot faster in a similar fashion, and then we’ll look over Marble Nest.

What I’m going to be focusing on: there’s a huge amount of dialogue between all the characters in the story, and I couldn’t possibly note down all the differences at once. I will mainly be trying to relay the “voice” of the character that is present in the original Russian version and noting the biggest differences. If there are also pieces of dialogue that shine a different light on a few story aspects, I will point these out too. Mainly I will talk about how the characters in these interactions seem to treat each other (which will be difficult, since opinions of characters change frequently in this game), note interesting mannerisms and sometimes quote the fun differences and try and fail to explain why the use of this specific idiom is funny in this context. Sooooo yeah.

The Bachelor

Willow Mellow as per her original character concepts 🍀

i hesitated a while about whether to give her green or brown eyes, decided on green as a callback to the Herb Brides model (which she ended up being) and to match the clover. gave her a little bit of acne because her concepts put her at 15(!) years of age, or 17 on the wiki. character concept texts use outdated/offensive language, but here they are under the cut: