#responses

When He Realizes His Feelings

For the first time in forever, the self-proclaimed god of flamboyance finds himself tongue-tied.

He notices how his heart races when you’re nearby and how his usual over-the-top lines die on his lips.

He tries to act normal at first, but the wives notice immediately: “Tengen-sama, you’re… unusually quiet.”

He blurts out during dinner with them: “I think… I want a husband.” Dead silence.

His wives burst into laughter and joy, instantly supportive and curious about you.

Suma starts squealing, Makio teases him for finally being flustered, and Hinatsuru smiles knowingly.

They encourage him: “Go for it! You deserve someone who makes you feel this way.”

⸻

How He Confesses / Asks You Out

For once in his life, he doesn’t plan some flashy performance — he’s too nervous.

He spends forever rehearsing what to say, then scrambles last-minute and blurts it out.

“I… uh… listen, you’re… more flamboyant than anyone else I’ve ever met. And I—dammit. I want you to be my husband.”

His ears turn bright red as soon as the words leave his mouth.

If you tease him for being nervous, he groans, covers his face, and mutters, “Unflamboyant. So unflamboyant.”

If you accept, he immediately regains some of his flair, sweeping you into a dramatic hug — but you can still tell he’s trembling with relief.

⸻

The Relationship

Tengen brags that he now has “the flashiest husband,” and his wives are just as proud to show you off.

His wives adore you. You’re folded into their family seamlessly — they treat you as much their partner as his.

He’s affectionate to a ridiculous degree, but there’s a sincerity in it that wasn’t there with his usual theatrics.

He absolutely melts when you call him out for being soft. “Don’t… don’t say that in front of them!” (while blushing furiously).

He trains with you constantly — partly to stay sharp, partly because he likes watching you move.

At first, he tries to outshine you, but eventually, he realizes he loves when you outshine him.

Protective, but also deeply respectful. He brags about your strength endlessly: “Did you see him out there? That’s my husband!”

His wives sometimes tease that you’re the only one who can truly quiet him down — and it’s true. Around you, the world slows.

⸻

Overall

He goes from being the loudest, most confident man alive to the most nervous lovestruck fool — and it’s adorable.

His wives love seeing this new side of him, and they welcome you wholeheartedly.

The relationship becomes a blend of warmth, affection, banter, and yes — plenty of flashiness (once he stops being shy).

But at the core, he finally found someone who makes even the god of flamboyance blush.

If you like the Powers-that-Be noose-tightening desolation of Pathologic + as well as its more abstract forces such as the players in the sandbox moving puppets, and narratives within narratives, you might like this novel. It’s very melancholy and poignant, and the author’s use of magical realism is understated and integrated into the world it paints in a very compelling way. I’ve been thinking about this novel a lot since I’ve read it last summer. Some key words: community, invigilation, oppression, memory. 

Quote: 

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

I actually made this text post, as shown, 8 months ago, and it really resonated with way more people than I expected:

When you start TLHOD, it does not seem either gritty or depressed and more like a very sociopolitically relevant thriller dressed up in a science-fiction costume. That being said, I read the last 20 or so with tears streaming down my face. I don’t really tend to sob as I read things, but god, this gets you. It’s a beautiful story, it’s horribly depressing, and I still can’t believe this was written in 1960s with how nuanced and insightful it is irt gender, gender roles and the entire political commentary surrounding the concept of “patriotism” and themes of Otherness and exile. 

Quote (which made me feel choked up reading it, damn it):

Djuna Barnes, I Am Alien to Life + Nightwood

If you’re in the mood for a collection of poignant, haunting and deeply unnerving short stories, this is it. The stories are a good entry point, and they’ve very recently published in this collection; but if you’re curious, I do also recommend Barnes’s Nightwood, a Lynchian nightmare of a tormented lesbian modernist novel. It has … a lot going on. T.S. Eliot of the Waste Land fame wrote a raving introduction for it. As most modernist writing, bear in mind there’s a lot of tws for this, but even keeping that in mind, it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve ever read. Gender nonconformity (the character of the Doctor, in particular, stands out to me), desolation, toxicity, oppression, striking use of symbolism.

Quote: 

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room + Another Country

Another favourite of mine. Few people on earth could write so beautifully about despair as Baldwin did. I love his writing. I think he was genuinely one of a kind and in many ways nothing compares. Giovanni’s Room is short, succinct, beautiful and horrible. Another Country is dynamic and sprawling, and entirely haunted. Baldwin is the sort of writer that just stays with you forever, so beware, but also, you’re welcome. 

Joseph Broderick, The Pilgrimage

This is a recent discovery! If you enjoy the repressed-small-town aspect of Pathologic, this might be the thing. Broderick describes, with all the relish due to someone shunned by his own country, the small-mindedness and hypocrisy of a little Catholic Irish town, and everything that goes on underneath its surface. It’s queer and repressed, and everything is toxic, awful and stifling. This was the tagline that enticed me to pick it up, and it did not disappoint: 

The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk

Again a favourite author, and this time I’m going for thematic/atmospheric relevance to Pathologic. The Empusium is a strange novel, definitely less structurally “normative” than, say, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead or Flights (another favourite of mine): it meanders and at times seems to abandon the plot for the sake of its atmosphere (to match the narrator’s whimsical mind). And its eerie whimsy is really unique and delicious: you visit a German resort town by the border of Poland where the main character goes to convalesce from tuberculosis, circa 1913. And something odd is happening there. Again, themes of gender, gender nonconformity, Otherness, medical malpractice, folk horror. I read it in Polish (it was only translated very recently!) so I don’t have a good quote on me, other than what I found online. 

What sets this one apart is that it’s actually not gritty or depressing to read, in my opinion. But Mieczysław, our “final girl” so to speak, is a delightful character and this story really goes well with Pathologic/Dankovsky, so I thought I’d include it anyway. 

Dostoyevski. Yeah.

This feels like stating the obvious, because of course Pathologic enjoyers would find something compelling in Dostoyevski. That being said, finally biting through Crime & Punishment really did enrich my experience of Patho, and it was indeed a miserable time start to finish, and well worth the read!

Honourable (unread) mention:

I’m stuck reading Ulysses for the foreseeable future, but José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of the Night is the next thing I want to get my hands on, and I believe it might just fit this list.

Blurb: This haunting jungle of a novel has been hailed as “a masterpiece” by Luis Buñuel and “one of the great novels not only of Spanish America, but of our time” by Carlos Fuentes. The story of the last member of the aristocratic Azcoitia family, a monstrous mutation protected from the knowledge of his deformity by being surrounded with other freaks as companions, The Obscene Bird of Night is a triumph of imaginative, visionary writing. Its luxuriance, fecundity, horror, and energy will not soon fade from the reader’s mind.

Also: “It would be a crass understatement to say that this book is a challenging read; it's totally and unapologetically psychotic. It's also insanely gothic, brilliantly engaging, exquisitely written, filthy, sick, terrifying, supremely perplexing, and somehow connives to make the brave reader feel like a tiny, sleeping gnat being sucked down a fabulously kaleidoscopic dream plughole.”

Film: 

I’m going to have to be very brief here, because we would be in this post for hours. That being said: 

Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky - this is the closest thing thematically and tonally to Pathologic that exists, imo. An adaptation of Strugatski brothers' Roadside Picnic, in addition to the tone, themes, setting, language (I can go on), also has a pretty visceral history: almost everyone who worked on this project, including Tarkovsky himself, died horribly after exposure to the toxic environment of the location they chose for the Zone.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but from the beginning, while watching, you’ll be struck by how much the imagery of Pathologic is visibly influenced by Tarkovsky’s cinematography: a girl moves a glass with her eyes looking uncannily like Clara. Scientists idly roam a stark-looking laboratory. Rails lead us away from the City into wilderness.

TV:

The Terror: I do believe a lot of Patho enjoyers already know of The Terror but it truly IS thee gritty depressed show of all time. Underlying themes? Match. We have colonialism, polar exploration, the Other, 19th century, naval, haunting. It made me frantically drink orange juice for week after watching it because I was so afraid of magically acquiring scurvy.

Netflix Dark: There was a brief window of time when not everything Netflix produced was slop. Dark belongs to that era. Much like Pathologic is firmly steeped in Russian literature, theatre and culture, Dark is firmly steeped in German literary canon. It’s a very intricately woven and executed narrative: as hard to believe as it is, all the increasingly convoluted plotlines are resolved logically. It’s also unbelievably harrowing to watch, at times, taking the “doomed world” to a new meaning. But if you enjoy a philosophical approach to time travel and morality of it, with a dash of nihilism, that’s the place. It’s one of my favourite shows, even if I’ve only been able to stomach watching it with someone else, but I’m just really impressed with the storytelling.