i'm really enjoying pathologic 2, actually. i mean, i didn't think i wouldn't enjoy it as much as i was worried it would just, i don't know, muddy the water. and maybe it will, but i'm not really bothered by that anymore. that said, i do think patho 2 took a fairly unsubtle game and increased its unsubtlety by about tenfold.
well. calling og pathologic 'unsubtle' doesn't feel quite right, but i'm not sure what word would feel right. maybe it's 'distinct in its sensibilities'. I think og patho felt more obtuse, whereas patho 2 is like. here. take it. do you get it. here is the information. do you see the themes. i am announcing them to you in such a way that you know that i am saying something thematic. i'm not far enough into the main story of 2 to be able to say that there's less reading between the lines, but it feels very much so far like there's less reading between the lines. whereas the original had a somewhat different... i don't know, affect? it felt like a hostile workplace where everyone recited shakespeare about even the mundane. in patho 2 nothing feels mundane in the first place, everything feels loaded in a way that og patho was but didn't feel, if that makes sense.
but i think that's okay. at the very least, it feels very much like leaning into the 'theater' aspect of it, which is enjoyable. pathologic 2 feels to me more like... bonus content? not to be Stuck Up For Pathologic HD but i enjoyed the feeling of grinding my face against a cinderblock, having to tease out information and conclusions. it felt like a game that you had to figure out, but you actually weren't really doing any ground-level figuring out of much; you're not a doctor, your character is, so the puzzle of Solving the Plague belongs to The Story, whereas the question of What the FUCK is This Town's Deal is your job. it's a very linear game in most respects, but all three playthroughs come through as a thematic package deal.
i so far get the impression that pathologic 2 can be played on its own and be enjoyed in its own right! however it exists to me as like. director's commentary. i'm really liking the playing with different character relationships and alternate things, the expanding of steppe language and the kin, love my worm guys, but i like it because of how it enriches my eternal mind rotation of og pathologic. sorry guys i played the original pathologic and it broke me and remade me in its image. sorry.
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retcons. they're a writing tool. they're not fundamentally a bad tool. though I greet them more often with an "ugh, retcon" than a "nice, retcon"-
and that's often because they're overwrites. sometimes carelessly so, the 'didn't pay enough attention to what came before'/'guess I changed it' route. And sometimes retcons are the 'that's not the story I want to tell now or I can do better than that' route.
Andor is doing the second type of retcon, and interestingly so, because there wasn't a whole lot there to retcon *and yet* they are managing to do that.
When Rogue One came out, Disney dropped a bunch of expanded universe material. The NEW expanded universe, because they'd already ditched the old one, to avoid conflicts; this new one could be consistent (ha, ha, ha).
In those 2016 detail books we got the facts on Cassian Andor's backstory: from the planet Fest (clearly carefully chosen for its old EU history), father killed during a protest against militarization on Imperial Academy planet Carida (another world with EU history), involved with a Separatist cell from age 6 on...
Anddd anyone who'd read those extended materials knew Andor the show was ditching that backstory within seconds of him dropping the name 'Kenari' in context that was immediately clear it was his home planet. I appreciated at least getting a nod to the backstory we had since 2016 with dropping that his 'cover story' planet was Fest. They definitely were aware and chose not to go that route. And that's OK! they have a story they want to tell, they're digging into some interesting themes and meanings and...
Well. Either way it's a retcon. A minor one that 97% of the audience will never notice or care about. And yes they're still keeping to the spirit of that key line in Rogue One-
"I've been in this fight since I was six years old"
- clearly the mining disaster on Kenari presumably happened when Cassian was six years old. So his childhood was ruined by the Empire then and he's been resisting them ever since, it's not that it renders it untrue it's just-
it's just that he's pulling a moral high ground with that line over Jyn whose life was also ruined by the Empire at eight years old and was raised as a child soldier by Saw Gerrera, a character whose very name is designed to evoke guerilla warfare...?
I mean a Cassian who's already been in prison and is scrapping by and sticking it to the Imperials all he can, drawing those character parallels between them even closer then are we, but the whole crux of that (excellently written & filmed I'm still not over it) argument hinges on Cassian's relationship with/committment to the Rebellion above all else. The show's retcon has just... shortened that relationship. By quite quite a bit.
And there is now some unintentional irony, from this retcon, if Jyn was actually (via Saw's cell) part of the Rebellion longer than Cassian.
...it's fine, it's fine, tbh watch them retcon Jyn's backstory soon enough, it's a very minor retcon and maybe future episodes will reveal Cassian has been doing more actual rebelling than it seems and... nonetheless. Ugh retcon.
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ok maybe im just dumb, but maybe some of you will be able to explain this to me.
Why do people play games that they so openly hate and shit on?
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So while waiting on a render I did some silly research for this ding-dang fic tracing roads and potential locations and
Is that...
*squints eyes*
...is that Piss Pott Island????
Is that real? Is anything real.
It is in fact real, and it currently stands at 4.9 out of 5 stars on google reviews.
these are the first two photos of piss pot island in google.
Bonus: How are the lands out by Wappocomo river?
They're fine.
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