#griefposting

summary: and we'll wake up to find it was all just a bad dream...

wc: I have no idea, not very long

content: Valko x gn!reader, nightmares, fluff that might now be considered angst. Possibly ooc!valko, but I GUESS WE'LL NEVER KNOW NOW, WILL WE???

a/n: to prove how very normal I am about The Character, I made this weapons-grade copium for the loss we have suffered. Not proof-read, barely edited, coming straight from the broken pieces of my heart. I AM NORMAL.

excerpt: A brief pause and then Valko huffs, suppressing a laugh because he knows you're upset, but unable to help it because the idea is so ridiculous.

"I would never leave you, cub. You know that."

"I do," you reply, "but you didn't want to. It was something... something making time go backwards. Every moment since we met, everything just winding back until you... you were gone."

pathologic-the-play isn't strictly a tragedy: rather it's easily read as something of a problem play, presenting moral and technical dilemmas with a mixed, ambiguous tone and forcing the audience to develop their own interpretation and judgement of the events. this also proves itself in the way comedy forces its way discordantly into the dark plot. in p2, we're made to understand from the get-go that the town is entirely populated by Tragedians, and mark's theatre of death is the theatre of inevitability, of tragedy, absorbing everything into itself and commanding everything outside: including bad grief, who of course is relegated to the theatre of death if he dies in-game. grief's position as the fool on this stage is why he has the ability to save artemy from the theatre of death on the first day. the whole premise is kind of silly, and the conversation with the fool-ish fingersmith npc presents it in a bizarrely lighthearted manner consistent with the style of humor grief employs-- at the end of which you're encouraged to "go say hello" to bad grief. it's a moment of literal, mechanical comic relief, a jarring moment where the plot surfaces from punishing drama for one unexpected breath before diving yet deeper. you could say that like the placement of the porter's scene in macbeth, bad grief's antideath boon gives the lead actor a moment to duck backstage and wash the blood from their hands. the face of the comedic matrix of the play, grief's interlude begs the question of if the theatre of death is as inevitable or as bleak as it seems; if this really is a pure tragedy.

in both games, like the gravedigger in hamlet, grief provides an alternate view of the grim themes at hand: not a lighter one, but certainly a more absurd one, through the same type of "meaningful nonsense" that defines the wise fool. the Gravedigger appears in only one scene, following the harrowing death of ophelia; the gravedigger turns a miserable scene (ophelia's funeral procession) into a farce in which he is literally throwing bones in the air as he coaxes hamlet into engaging with his nonsense. this is an emotional and thematic turning point in the play. susan snyder says "In the [to be or not to be soliloquy, death] was at least a significant reality, at once fearsome and desirable. Now the comic perspective calls even that reality into question... the end of life makes every life equally absurd." grief's confession to clara in the changeling route similarly perverts the theme of Death which has been so mythologized in the bachelor's route previous: what was terror, what was incomprehensible wickedness, what was The Invisible Enemy, to bad grief is "some jolly fun times". this is a thematic turning point for pathologic as well, as the player's perspective shifts from The Invisible Enemy to The Path of Logic: of the difference in hamlet after his conversation with the gravedigger, santha cassell says "he is beginning to approach death in a more complete, less intellectual way, one more conducive to action, and with increasing affinity with the wise fool's perspective." clara is undergoing a similar process through this quest as she grapples with pragmatism and scrupulousness (choosing whether to keep this confession secret) and is invited to recognize both death and transgression as not always matters of mythological or dire motivation, but as mundane, human processes: something that she can interface with and, for pragmatic purposes, may also be able to enact.

of course, clara condemns grief's behavior outright-- because grief's behavior is condemnable. the meanings of grief's meaningful nonsense-- as well as the style of his nonsense-- are constantly objectionable. pchd grief as a character is most like troilus and cressida's thersites, the worst-behaved of the fools: "a fool who exceeds his license... we do not empathize with him. like any other fool he asks riddles, calls names, and offers commentary but with unmatched vituperation. his language... poses a large contrast to the discourse of the soldiers around him, who are usually engaged in elevated debate... he is vessel and valve for what is unspeakable to others." (cassell) grief's dialect is so distinct from the rest of the bound that dankovsky picks up when andrey is imitating it (and in this imitation, andrey is aligning himself with the absurdly graphic/pedestrian perspective on death that grief represents), and is also far cruder than the others (idt anyone else says "cunt" even once). he is also distinct from the other bound in his lack of a characterizing path line. even his total lack of development or sympathetic dimensions differentiates him from the other bound, sharing thersites's constancy and self-knowledge within his bad manner. a fool is not meant to change or reflect; it is not a character, but a literary device. through all these discordant qualities of language and position, grief speaks frankly and consistently to violence and social collapse. he's the right fool for pathologic-the-play: a dissonant but shrewd finger on the pulse of the town, and in the establishment of patho as a problem play he serves the same role as thersites in t+c: "we are not allowed to assume much about the structure and premises of a play if a character is there to disrupt the patterns that it tries to establish." (cassell again)

but p2 bad grief is Different. as mark has been brought to center stage mechanically, grief's role has also been increased in scope narratively. while he's still in an imitation of motley, his relationship to the principal characters is no longer that of a licensed fool: instead he's the protagonist's best friend, a peer, who offers concrete support in addition to the definitional thematic/social/individual insights in form of "verbose nonsense" (quote artemy), but without the fool's license relies on the patience of his friends to weather his objectionable comments and erratic behavior. what i'm saying is p2 grief is mercutio. like mercutio, grief performs all the functions of a shakespearean fool for the first half of the play, including the "comic relief" antideath mechanic as discussed above, but with the added dimension of genuine care for artemy and a real character's positionality within the social world. mercutio's death in act iii of r+j is a different type of thematic shift: it instantly drops the illusion that mercutio is the fool (in the sense that the fool is other than a real character, sort of a suprahuman in its own right, who can always get away with ridiculous behavior; other fools die, such as in titus andronicus, but only as absurdity in itself), and it makes death and dire consequences a reality for the other characters, kicking off a sharp turn towards darker themes. it's the decisive moment that makes the play you're watching into a tragedy; the literal death of comedy. bad grief's ego death in act iv of p2 immediately strips away all of his pretenses. grief's enlightenment is part of the arrival of the inquisitor, and emphasizes it as the pivotal point of the play. like mercutio, what happens to him has nothing to do with farce or knavery, but is a form of real consequence; he throws himself unwisely into danger ahead of his friend, and what happens to him tells artemy that the situation they're facing is far stranger and more harrowing than he had imagined-- this death of comedy also mirrors and marks the shift in tone and pace that carries through the rest of the play.

They could have just fixed the game. They've had two years of very consistent feedback. They could have added another way to farm diamonds. Not even a lot of diamonds, just more than what they had. They could have adjusted the lighting. (They were already starting to, albeit slowly, proving that they could have the whole time, it just took negative IGN article to force their hand.) They could have focused more on the main story and given Sylus and Caleb their appropriate content. They could have added battle progression. They could have communicated better with the players. They could have made a single decision not based around "but will this get us the maximum amount of money in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of effort?"

Guarantee the return on investment would have been exceptional if they'd been willing to put even a fraction of their income towards making the best game they could instead of what they actually did: ignoring demands that would cost them money, ignoring their creative teams that actually understood the players and the game, and then letting a new character they hoped would make up for their missteps get sniped by angry, borderline psychotic people that they themselves created by pushing the money-making "parasocial" side of the game over the part of it that was actually valuable: storytelling, a fun and unique battle system, and rich characters.

This is why I hate capitalism to my core. Maybe it could work with another species. It will never work with humans. We have a tendency towards tribalism and an instinct to hoard resources. Pathological greed and unchecked xenophobia is literally destroying all life on this planet, of course it's gonna manifest in a billion-dollar company. You don't accrue that kind of wealth by caring about other people. As someone who's suffered directly from the legacy of "trickle down economics" in America, I can tell you honestly that the only thing that rolls downhill from the 1% is their shit.

But that’s not what I mean.

I don’t picture her somewhere looking down at us or keeping up with everything we’re doing. She was tired. She fought hard and she was ready. I think she stayed just long enough to know we’d be okay, and then she finally went to rest.

And I’m glad for that. She deserves to rest and renew.

When I say “she should be here,” it’s not about her. It’s about me.

It’s about the fact that I still need her here. Not in some spiritual way. Not in a “she’s still with you” way. I mean here. Physically. In the room. In the moment. And these big moments make that really obvious. They’re the kind of moments you’re supposed to have your mom for. The kind where you look over without thinking and expect her to be there.

So when I say “I wish she could see this,” what I really mean is…