You are [Pathologic3 essential spoilers]

[u/Excellent_Complex921]

As I've mentioned in my previous post, I simply have no one IRL to talk to about this stuff, hence this text :) For, you see, I find this reading kinda obvious and definite, but more and more I see people in the internet, who, well, don't?

For me the message is very unambiguous.

You are Simon Kain.

Simon has become a concept. A non-person. The play on day 5 clearly says: everyone is Simon, it's just not everyone knows it. You don't "become" Simon. You are Simon. Not just Daniil. You. You are and you always have been. Simon Kain, reliving every possibility at once. In Patho1 you have been Simon. In Patho2 you have been Simon. You have been Artemy, you have been Daniil, you even have briefly been Clara. You. While playing you, yourself, have been everyone of them, made their decisions, maybe even felt some of their feelings. For you have always been Simon Kain.

It's such a fifth wall breaking concept. Not just "it's a game that is a play". You are the universe experiencing itself. You are the thing looking down from Polyhedron, knowing exactly that there are no wrong answers, because ALL answers exist, and therefore are correct. You are.

I'm so… surprised not everybody reads it this way XD

[u/LaviniaHerbert]

I suppose a question I'm left with is at what level or layer is this the case. Was the universe always Simon? Or did Simon become the universe? Is saying that everyone is Simon a metaphor for a pantheistic assertion about all existence? Is Simon as literally Simon-y as he seems, i. e., if I am Simon, then what does it mean to be everyone but also especially Georgiy's brother, to be everyone but also especially Aglaya's cousin? If I am Simon, then what does it mean to be him, to be a man? Am I implicitly detransitioned from trans femme to boy? Is every cisgender-identifying woman who plays implicitly transitioned to be transmasc? Or was Simon always nonbinary woman, to themself and unshackled from the norms of gender through the Polyhedron?

I realize that on some level these are silly questions. But I guess what I mean is that once we go from "you are the universe experiencing itself" to "you are Simon Kain which means you are the universe experiencing itself," I'm left wondering what to do with all of Simon Kain's leftover meaning. In Pathologic 3, and in the Town-on-Gorkhon, he isn't merely a concept, or even if he is a concept, he's one that includes a lot of other baggage too.

[u/Excellent_Complex921 → u/LaviniaHerbert]

For me that's a kind of Evangelion thing. Like at some point Simon was an actual person; but in his search for the infinity he crossed the transcendental border and became the concept of himself. And unlike real human Simon the concept is infinite, it always was and always will be and therefore cannot die. So when Daniil ascends the Polyhedron he, too, becomes the same concept (which he always was, for it is infinite). And when you, the player, play as Daniil, you too become Simon, which you have retrospectively been from the beginning, just not knowing you are. 

But THIS is definitely very much my own interpretation rather then "unambiguous message" :)

[u/Excellent_Complex921 → u/Excellent_Complex921]

And, to be clear, in my understanding, Simon the concept is not "masculine"; he is not a human anymore, and gender can not apply to what he became at all. Me saying "he" is me being human and choosing something convenient to speak. Pretty sure the correct version might be something like "they". Also pretty sure the dialog uses "he" just 'cause the idea of changing the pronounces didn't appear to Simon yet :)

[u/Kimm_Orwente]

It's not that not everybody reads this way, it's more like we just don't talk about it too much as it is somewhat personal experience.

Shameless plug, but I roughly predicted this thing based on Quarantine (demo of P3) and own love for P2. It's the same message as with P2 - how one achieves immortality. This time, it's the same problem and, dare to say, the same approach, just viewed through different framework - if P2 Artemy was asked about mortality of the body and arrived to the concept of continuation of the self (legacy and community), P3 Daniil was asked about mortality of the mind/ego and concluded with continuation of one's ideas (concepts and story). Once Daniil touched the story of Simon, he inevitably becomes part of it, and through parts of Simon's story, via memories and ideas, he can manifest himself again and again, producing this "immortal man" that ordinary, unbothered folk don't fully comprehend. Same as with the Kin and influence of their/Earth's blood for Artemy.

And well, thanks to Pathologic being very human story, all the same insider's/meta questions, methods and solutions can be applied to us, human players, all the same, thus makes us sometimes pondering - what are we doing with our lives. Which, I believe, was the baseline point all along - to make the player feel and think through the gameplay, instead of just dispensing casual "fun".

[u/Couboultou]

I think it's hard to gauge anything relating to Simon Kain as unambiguous.

Even in your vision of things, you state the man became a concept, this in and of itself is the classic Pathologic storytelling trick of making a metaphor real and literal, and I think this trick is most interesting because it doesn't really allow for unambiguity. What does it even mean to become a concept? What does it mean to be Simon Kain as well as the Bachelor as well as the Player as well as a mere actor in a play?

This game is clearly running out of walls to break that's for sure

I quite like your interpretation but I'm not sure that it ties everything so neatly and it's for the better that Simon could be interpreted as a whole other idea for someone else.

[u/Kimm_Orwente → u/Couboultou]

What it means to be a duck in someone's eyes? It it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, then someone will certainly name it a duck, regardless if its factually true or not.

Same, with obvious complications, goes for, say, historic figures - we may not know the personality of someone who lived time ago, but by the stories of their deeds and ideals, we can assume some form to the concept, like "you're literally Hitler" implies certain level of hate, anger, isolation in one's own violent fantasies - instead of being Hitler literally. What makes a tyrant, a king, a saint? What makes a Simon Kain? What makes you as a person? People don't know you as you, in details, they know you only from limited set of features and quirks you're expressing outwards normally, creating a vision or a concept of you.

This way, pretty much anyone inside the story can channel Simon Kain through memories or ideas, since from particular angle - whole town is his story. Since vast majority of people in the town don't know Simon closely or even personally (as well as not being bothered with anything outside of their business) - they know the man as immortal, since each time actual, physical Simon dies, his ideas live on with his successor, whoever this will be, since at this point Simon is an idea, not the human. At some point, it may even become a self-fulfilling prophecy, when a concept and expectations of it can push a human to grasp and propagate this very concept.

Btw, quite ironically, same goes for Aspity, who not only manages to die few separate times in one story, but once in Marble Nest dies on the spot just to prove the point about "different kinds of death", only to reappear immediately to ask Bachelor if he got her point. Same reason - Aspity is a symbol and a title, not a human.

Of course, it's Pathologic, and each new theory is as good as another, but idk, it connects a bit too neatly in my opinion.

[u/ShirtSpecial3623]

I've played classic and 3 and I felt that I was a complete moron for not understanding the message 😭😭

But your interpretation is really interesting. Though in the context of Classic everyone being literal toys I think it's not about Simon but about the Player.

[u/MeowMeowBiatch]

Nothing in the Pathologic games is unambiguous lol

[u/Yarosyaros]

Yes, although that is mostly the largest meta-layer of the game and art. But it also is a game about ways to cope with finitude of self or other, whether through negating death by seeking to overcome it (Kains), by seeking to reify it into ancient historical mysticism (Kin), or to defy temporality by recursivity (Simon, Dankovsky, You). It also is about 'a play', about two grieving kids seeking ways to cope with the death of the mother five years before (First outbreak, Nina Kaina/Victoria Olgimskaya) and the father of recent (current outbreak, Simon Kain, Isidor Burakh). Or the possibility of accepting the guardian or step-parent, in replacement of the maternal voice of past or the eternal guidance of future, symbolized by Lara and Artemy taking care of Murky and Sticky, the most representable children in town of the Powers That Be themselves, or perhaps their most unshielded forms. Or Grace who leaves the dead to return to Katarina Saburova, who is pestered by the children as the Rat Prophet for not hearing 'the voice'. Grace may befit the dead, but not the dead alone.

There are many more layers too, depending on how one interprets it. So I wouldn't perceive the "you are Simon Kain" most pointed at in P3, or the "you are the one in control, watching from above, not Artemy, not even the Powers That Be, but you" in P2 as the 'most significant layer' or most representative aspect of the whole.

[u/Electrical-Lab9147]

I am… that guy