Pathologic

5 years of my life has been spent loving this game. I discovered Pathologic in January of 2020, though it wasn't until September of 2020 that I actually got into the game fully. Since then, my life has been forever changed by this game as I essentially grew up with it all throughout my highschool life, and it alone is responsible for the very friends I still keep today in real life.

During Covid, I was completely and utterly alone. I was in a new town, a new school, with no friends. I had just left a very bad situation and I was a very very scared 14 year old with no clue how to actually live a life or be a human. The only thing to keep me company was Pathologic as embarrassing as that was. Not having a true identity in this way, alongside not knowing how to live made Pathologic one of my lifelines. I genuinely do not think I would be the same person if I did not have this game during the hardest and loneliest time in my life. Whilst I never interacted with the fandom in any meaningful way, I enjoyed it in the comfort of my own head. I wrote some of my very first fics about Pathologic, my first real cosplay was a thrifted Clara cosplay that I still am proud of today. The first game I bought with my real money was Pathologic. It was a game that marked a period of my life I consider as the time when I was allowed to actually exist.

If I did not go to highschool wearing a shitty Daniil Dankovsky closet cosplay in Sophomore year, I would not have the friends I still hold as my very best. It genuinely changed my life, because if I did not wear that shitty outfit, I would not have been approached and befriended. I really do hold Pathologic as something that changed my life forever, that guided my development in a way that makes the person I am today, and I do not think my life would have been the same without it.

If you asked anyone who knew me at the time what my main personality trait was, they will say it was my Pathologic obsession. It was that bad. I have mellowed out in this years as loving a game for so long as intensely as I do makes you explore almost every nook and cranny, and the strange way I interact with my favorite game does not help. I do not interact with the fandom in any meaningful way, I do not post the art I make for this game nor do I really talk to others about it because of the very very personal relationship I have with it. I am almost afraid to see what others have to say about it in a fandom-y context. I have watched almost every single Pathologic video essay to grace this Earth. But I shant check what Twitter has to say.

I think that Clara is singlehandedly the character that changed my life the most. Without her, I don't think my personality would be the same. I was a strange, neglected, outcasted kid by both my family and my classmates all my life. I was struggling with my own issues at the time and saw them reflected in my interpretation of her almost perfectly, and she quickly became the character that I modeled my teenage years after. While I no longer hold her as my favorite (that falls to Anna Angel & Grace), she has always and will always hold a place in my heart for how much she meant to 14-17 year old me.

Which is why I created this very website, so that I can talk about Pathologic in a divorced context in which none will see unless they organically stumble upon this. Pathologic has changed, ruined and put me together because of when I discovered it, and I would not be the same person today without it.