I Stole Dialogue From My Own Fic And Made A Comic

i stole dialogue from my own fic and made a comic

hello off fandom

kitty clara pathologic!!! (warrior cats au)

Have a lot to explain for this one. Just like in Pathologic, she showed up in Steppeclan seemingly out of nowhere. All med cats have the -heart suffix there so she called herself Miracleheart. But everyone calls her Ratheart (deliberate insult) instead cause she's weird and lanky. She's a teenage kitty but is really tall. In Pathologic Clara is just a little taller than Dankovsky btw. I tried to lean into that with this drawing. She's a dilute calico thing. The bones are like a part of her body but she covers that up with all these red leaves and flowers around her chest. She has two sparkles in her eyes to represent the two miracles: the polyhedron (moonspire) and the earth/abattoir (bullplace), as well as a star on her forehead. The little scar on her leg is actually a steppe rune. If you look it up on the wiki it says it "denotes a connection with death". Her single yellow leg looks a little like it's made of bone when it's dark. They don't trust her but let her heal cats anyway since no one knows how to deal with sandcough. When the clan splits into three over their disagreement on what to do with moonspire, she becomes the sole healer of Humbleclan. If she gets her way and becomes a mistress (they're called queens in this au) her name is changed to Miraclesight (Ratsight for some). Also I thought I wouldn't name her Ratpaw cause she's already taken the healer/prophet role within the clan and it's not like Bullheart and Snakeheart are mentoring her. Click here for kitty Daniil and Artemy!!!!!

[Excepts] Moments in Time - Dialogues

[moments in time was my old document of random writings i did for pathologic, looser than my current works in between streams of the gorkhon. these dialogues don't mean much to me but they may be interesting to someone out there]

"How does one cope with their failures?" "I suppose one should let it go and move on, so as to not be dragged down by past mistakes." "But what if such failures had yet to happen?" "Then one would not need to worry about them." "You have a point. An exceedingly simple point that I don’t completely agree with, but nonetheless..."

~+~

"You both choose to lend credence to only what you arbitrarily believe to be possible, refusing to accept what you’ve witnessed of me before your own eyes. How is following Lines and observing microorganisms more believable than miracles of which you’ve experienced firsthand? You speak of a town that does not listen to reason and yet go on to complain when it is your reason that’s shunned, while being samely unjust in disregarding my own work, which you deem impossible by virtue of your own ignorance. You fear that which you cannot explain, just as the townsfolk do, and that is the difference between us."

~+~

"It seems you live up to your reputation, both good and bad. How goes it, Ripper? Divining any answers from the entrails you spill?" "Is this about that name you presented me with? Regardless, it’s unsafe to wander the streets so late at night, little Changeling." "Better the streets than the alleyways, wouldn’t you agree? And besides, the most dangerous thing wandering the pavement is undoubtedly you." "I concede to you that, but I may not be for long. You remain in danger of greeting the lesser evils anyway, my presence changes little. I cannot scare away all the dangers with my mere being, and even that does little to dissuade desperate bandits." "In the end, my smaller stature may be more advantageous to me than your bulk, then. I blend with the shadows that you cast, the light reveals you as it hides me. Even the biggest bull with the sharpest horns may be slaughtered if caught unawares, but prairie mice hide in his shadow. Careful you don’t fall victim to a butcher who cuts your pockets just as you cut flesh now." "Your concern touches me, little mouse. I promise I won’t be long in my work. Do try to keep safe yourself."

~+~

"Changeling. Care to explain what I just witnessed?" "What needs explaining to you, oh dandy Bachelor?" "You’ve killed a man without touching him. I want to know how." "I can do miracles. I’ve stated as such many times. The work of my hands does not limit itself to healing." "Would you cease toying with me? This is serious. One cannot simply wave their hand at a bandit and walk away unscathed. What did you do?" "Why even accost me and ask such things in the dead of night if you refuse to believe in what I say and what you saw? Your logic no longer serves you here, if it only leads you to disbelieve what you witness with your own eyes." "What you tell me just happened cannot happen. It’s an impossibility. I must understand how it came to be." "There are things you must learn to cease trying to understand, Bachelor. Especially since it’s so convenient to you to dismiss me as fiction but stare at the Polyhedron as fact. You choose to enrapture yourself only with wonders which serve you, and scorn those of others." "You cannot deny what is true and blur it with falsities. There is only one truth, what you speak of is opinion. Your opinion is that you perform miracles, when in fact you cannot explain rationally the acts you claim as your doing." "And how can you be so certain that what you see as truth isn’t only your opinion masquerading as empirical, as you men of logic call it. You have no leg to stand on." "I have no time to debate this with a child in the middle of the night. Go back to your nest and keep out of the way, street rat." "Better an honest street rat than a slithery snake poisoned by its own venom and conceit."

~+~

"Oynon. Put that thing down, you’ll hurt yourself." "Are you sure of that? Or are you only afraid of me deeming you worthy of a bullet in you as well?" "It seems we both forsake the hippocratic oath. I wonder why you choose to wander at night shooting at any shadow that so much as moves the wrong way." "Is there such a thing as a shadow moving the right way? Regardless, I do not owe you any explanation. I need only say I was in the right to defend myself." "A shadow must always move to accompany its source, I thought you’d be aware of that. Walking at night is not an activity I’d advise you partake in, not if you value your life and your purse." "It figures this town would consider brutes and savages as commonplace as rats. It’s a wonder you didn’t succumb to bandits far earlier than this plague business. Even the children partake in gang activity. What else, will you loot the corpse of its organs just as he had taken the few valuables in this house? I wouldn’t be surprised if you were indeed a butcher just like your kin folk." "Don’t forget I learned part of my practice in your capital, emshen. The only difference is context. I’d say you couldn’t possibly understand the reasons which motivate me to do what I do, but you could attempt to comprehend. Alas, you refuse to."

~+~

"If you were to choose a finger of mine to cut off, which would you?" "What sort of absurd hypothetical are you presenting to me?" "I’m only curious, Bachelor, lighten up. Besides, it’s merely a simple hypothetical. Indulge me this once, you dull man." "Why insult me if you wish for my cooperation, then. Regardless, which is your dominant hand?" "I’m ambidextrous." "Well, then I suppose this one, if I were to choose." "My right little finger? How come?" "It’s expendable and out of the way, hardly noteworthy if you were to lose it. You wouldn’t miss it and would retain use of the hand." "Ah, I suppose if one can hold a teacup without such a finger it is superfluous, then." "Quite, if you want to put it that way. I only ask that if you’re to lose a finger as punishment for theft, you not come to me seeking help, Changeling." "What a brutal practice. Is it common?" "Cutting limbs as punishment for crimes is a barbaric and antiquated concept, however, I wouldn’t put it past this town." "I was asking of your blatant disregard for my health and safety, actually."

~+~

"You know a great deal about the human body, yes? If I were to request you to cut off one of my fingers, which would you favor?" "Is this a jab at my infamy as the Ripper? I’ve not left any corpses fingerless, Clara." "Oh no, it’s merely a thought exercise. Humor me." "You’ve been spending too much time with Dankovsky and his theoretical rambling. Still, I’ll answer. You’re ambidextrous, right?" "Yes, how’d you guess?" "It’s observable. In that case, pragmatism dictates the left ring finger go." "How so?" "The world favors right-handed people, and the ring finger cannot move independently from the others anyway. Most importantly, the wound would be at less risk of infection or reopening due to carelessness or nerve damage. If one were to cut the little finger, it’d be fairly unavoidable to bump it against surfaces callously, especially if the stub becomes numb. It leads to ease of infection, soreness, and brittle bones. As well that losing it would cripple your grip strength more than the ring finger. "Oh, how thoughtful of you to consider my long-term comfort. I am a menkhu, a surgeon. My priority is my patients’ health and safety. That being said, try to keep out of trouble, Clara. If you’re hurt, you can come to me for help." "You’re kinder than a saint, Haruspex. I would know, I am one."

~+~

"Stop looking at me like that. " "Like what?" "Like you know everything. It's unsettling and unbecoming." "What if I do know everything? Might I look like this then?" "It's impossible, one does not and cannot know everything, least of all you." "Well, I don't know what I don't know, therefore I know everything. It's simple logic, as you'd say." "That's a childish sentiment."

~+~

"A raven is very similar to a writing desk, if you think about it." "How in the world are those two things even remotely similar?" "Well, they both exist, for one. That's a very specific thing that unites them." "Many things don't exist. Unicorns and dragons don't. fairies, mermaids, demons, angels. A fairy has more in common with a raven than the writing desk." "Ah, but think of a fairy. As a concept, it exists. As an observable thing? Many illustrations or statues depict fairies. Perhaps one cannot prove or disprove the existence of living creature fairies, that much is true. Still, the fairy exists." "A raven and a writing desk are still far too dissimilar. One is alive and one is an object, for one." "I never specified the raven to still be living. Perhaps it is dead and taxidermied. Stuffed, if you will. And a desk is only a dead tree mutilated beyond recognition, anyway, so it was once alive as well.  I still hesitate to believe your assessment that they are at all similar.  I would propose to you then to think of something that does not exist. Not a concept that can only live on as words and feelings, not lofty and unreachable ideals, but the true non-existent. The ideal equivalent of a new color, unfathomable. Take then, that feeling, the vague idea of what does not exist, and compare it to a raven and a writing desk. What you see is that they are far more alike than such a thing that does not exist." "What I find does not exist is the point of this conversation, Changeling. You have proven nothing to me so frivolously. It was a fruitless use of time."

A small comic thing.

Basically it’s Claras and Khans first interaction, anyway-

They will definitely be friends

[Excerpts] Moments in Time - Changeling & Death

[these segments were little studies into how to describe death and the aftermath of waking up in a new lifetime, dazed and dissociated. i also toyed with having each death take a toll on clara's body, losing fingers and eventually an eye with each failed attempt. there were also plans to explore the pathologic 2 meta-worldbuilding of the events being a play, but i went in a more overt paradoxical manner]

Death was a peculiar experience. Peculiar was a good way to describe it, as “harrowing” or “traumatizing” would be too little on a bad day, yet “panic-inducingly nightmarish” or “soul-shattering” is a bit much on a more pleasant day. Waking up from death was disorienting and a small bit horrifying, but she’d still come back up. The mere ability to stand up after such events was already significant enough to put them a peg down in the “mildly upsetting events to once-in-a-lifetime debilitating horror” scale.

Sometimes, she would run into the Bachelor in alleyways where one could try and fail to sort the shades of shadow between light and dark; or encounter the Haruspex on the edge of town where the steppe would lap at the fragile order constructed by the people of the settlement. Even less times, during those encounters, she’d be pensive, murmuring aloud the experiences of death and rebirth as if to make them somehow more real, spoken into lucidity. The men would listen, awed, enraptured, or disturbed, perhaps even bored, as she droned about horror and numbness, footsteps too light for a corporeal person, but too heavy for a ghost.

“What ho, did I see over yonder, I say? I welcome blades into myne bodies but somehow the cut still hurts like an intrusion, I suppose the skin was still broken into. How could I open my skin without it being a wound? No doors, only walls. Skin. Stranger still that when I grow accustomed to the pain it numbs and fades, cruelly depriving me of what I had made friends and peace with.” She kicked a pebble, the sound disturbing her into looking back at Burakh, who sat still, silently listening to her on the abandoned railway. He was picking away at a clump of grass. “No, not grass, swevery. Why, all grass has a name, and yet we only call upon it when it suits us. ‘Come, Clara, do us a miracle’, ‘Step aside, little Changeling, you’re in the way’. Names are what carry legacy, reputation, without a name I am only a different apparition with the same face. How could they know it was the same body if they did not see where I left to, where I came from? No name, no reputation, no recollection. What name did I hear in the darkness of the earth as I lay on my gravesite, waiting for my return? The dirt has no use for names…”

“A name given could be abandoned, yes. Who did give me my name? I cling to it still, like a child hugs a toy from a parent long gone, not even remembering their mother’s face. Tragic, tragic. Tragedy is meaningless to who dies, it is only a tragedy to Medea, yet her children see none of it, as only the living fear death. Medea? Who is Medea? Am I living or dead? Where have I heard that name? Is it latin?” The street was cold under her fingers, but they were too numb to notice. Dankovsky paused his rummaging of pockets from nearby, eyes darting to her before cutting the hum of the night stating “...It’s greek, actually.” Yet she did not acknowledge him as he sighed. “The time between death and awakening is always infinitely small, like waking up without knowing I was asleep in the first place, disorienting, yes, disorienting. Was I even oriented in the first place? Dreams happen stretched into the time we sleep, taking up time that does not exist when we are awake, yet we retain the memories. No memories, some memories, yet not of the past, of the present, and memories of the future still. Yet they don’t always match, a match that does not catch, yet it still burns away, to ash, to ash, to ash…”

~+~

The Changeling was without an eye. She could feel it, or the lack of it, as it were. Lacking an eye, two fingers, three doctors. What a sore sight. Literally.

– The cost is too high. I've played this too many times. I can no longer bear the brunt of such a toll. The Tower will fall. The Town will be leveled. My Bound will be sacrificed. Is it too selfish of me to wish to perform the ultimate miracle? Is it selfless enough of me to desire to save them all? I am the Devotress, my last wish every time is that I could've found a better way. I wake up as a Changeling after my death throes. 

Clara ran. She didn't know why, but there remained a sinking feeling of dread, alongside the stinging of the harsh breeze, cold. Her legs carried her to the theater, where the Changeling stopped at the lip of the stage, boots almost escaping its domain. The director turned towards Clara, away from the winded girl onstage, frozen in a moment of desperation. 

A theatrical sigh, befitting a man such as he. “You're downright terrible at meeting your cues, Changeling. Which is it this time, too early? Or too late?”

She passed by him with nary a glance. “I'd prefer my arrival to be too early, if it's all the same to you.” Clara reached out to the Changeling onstage, breaking the barrier between them and taking her own warm hand.

[Excerpts] Moments in Time - Changeling Time Loop Scenes

[part of the premise of moments in time was the changeling being stuck in a loop of reliving the events of the game until she reached an ending that satisfied the condition of an unequivocally good ending. at the time it meant me wanting everyone to survive but costing her a great deal of sanity. i never got far with the premise, as it was too burdensome for a novice writer]

Clara could only imagine how many memories she held deep in her psyche at this junction. It was a turning point in her existence, not being numb and empty, but accompanied by the comforting buzz of unconscious knowledge, wisdom that only seeped into true awareness in her dreams and premonitions. The first times had been the most excruciating, the confusion and hurt seared her brain every step of the way out of that muddy grave and into a bigger coffin; a coffin fit for a bull the size of a town, a coffin that held dreams of long-gone hosts. A tomb the size of the world.

A sense of wrong had chased her every step, she had felt as though she was an actor on a stage rehearsing, only to be told it was already time to act out a play she didn’t know the script for. Every response she gave to others came with a jolt, a shock that told her she’d said something wrong; her confused and anxious words only served to prompt looks of disappointment in others. There was an epidemic, a plague, and she was only a girl with no memories at all, so why do they look upon her asking for a saint? She could not be any of the things she’d been told she was, why, she couldn’t recall creating miracles or stealing objects. Something was deeply wrong.

The only time she had felt some semblance of right in the world, a correctness she’d never felt before, was when she gazed at the two acting doctors spearheading the effort against the pest. Of course, that was a rather generous description of their actions, which more closely resembled desperate attempts at grasping the reins of a situation above them all. Yes, they were familiar in the same way she could look down at her hands and discern they were hers, in the same way one could look in a mirror and instantly determine which muscles would change one’s expression on their twin visage. They were the Bachelor and the Haruspex, and the Changeling knew they were to be as light and dark are to each other, halves of a whole, mirror images that created a cohesive narrative, united by dusk and dawn.

~+~

Clara felt as though, if pressed, she could accurately describe the experience of death. There always lingered inside her a sense that she had already gone through everything before, a feeling of stagnant deja vu which she carried like a satchel on her person, a familiar weight. It was a blessing, surely, to not be caught completely off guard, to always know what to say, but it also irked her at times, to know a conversation would go nowhere, or feel the cold seeping into her boots before even stepping outside.

There were worse things, though. The loss of the feeling would strike her like if she were rolling out of a bed tangled in warm blankets, only to unravel when she hit the hard ground. Not that she had the luxury of blankets and beds, even in metaphor. As it were, unexpected events would shake her to her core and exhilarate her both at once, a shot of adrenaline and juvenile glee at facing a new experience. It was as if her saintly mask would melt away to reveal a scared but excited girl, and only a girl.

The source of such unexpected events was almost always Dankovsky or Burakh making choices different from what she would expect, drawing the rugs from under her bruised feet and leaving her to recollect the pieces of her shattered premonitions. If this was what it felt like to be a Mistress, she had newfound respect for the unruffled dames of the big families.