If you're here and haven't played Misericorde: Volume One, please go there or see my review. These are two parts of a continuous narrative, and I highly recommend the first.

I will again open by saying that I think a key to writing an interesting story -- no, actually, a key to being an interesting person -- is that you need to read and to live and to think broadly. History, Sociology, Politics, Comparative Literature, Art History, Anthropology; perhaps the common theme uniting the humanities is a desire to make sense (or find truth) in the world by building patterns and connections. The "comparative method" as it were. Being able to recognize that people who lived five hundred years ago are not so different than we are today, or that people whose lives have a very different shape than our own can still feel the same way we do. What makes a world feel real, lived in, enduring, and vital is when the author brings this kind of cultural savvy to the table.

It's hard to believe XEECEE, the game's pseudonymous author, wouldn't agree with me, because our protagonist is told early on that she's "a writer, not a reader", which is of course a contradiction in terms. Many people, maybe anyone, can stitch together passable prose, but reading is fundamental to writing that lasts. In addition to all the points of reference in the first volume, White Wool and Snow evokes The Great God Pan, The City & the City, giallo films, Sherlock Holmes (a different story this time), The Castle of Otranto, Mists of Avalon, Lady Snowblood, Portishead, and maybe even Liam O'Flaherty. The mood wanders from Plantagenet to boarding school coming of age to fin de siècle and back again. What I'm saying is this: before I look for anything, I look for a mind at work. And one is in evidence here, on every page.

There's a lot to love about all the core things the game is trying to do. The murder mystery at the heart of the plot. The character relationships (just as humanistic and generous as the characterization in the first game, and joined by two new great cast additions that are very near to my heart and I hope yours as well). The attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher. Wait, what? Never mind.

But to me the scene that created the greatest space for reflection was a quiet scene of no real importance early on. Hedwig is outside wandering through nature and expriences something between a panic attack and a daydream just from being, because she does not know how to be. This is a really typical detail in narrative accounts of people recovering from what the Sociologist Erving Goffman called "total institutions", places of literal or metaphorical confinement that define a subject's entire life. Jails, convents, nursing homes, hospitals, asylums.

People who exit these spaces into the real world frequently have mixed feelings about doing so. They don't know how to exist in physically open spaces, let alone socially open spaces. Freedom is wonderful, but it's also paralyzing. It's filled with doubt, uncertainty, temptation. When your freedom is limited, you might feel restricted and chafe under the rules, but you have a path to follow. Set free from that path, you can experience the agony and the ecstasy of what freedom is, unmoored from constraint but adrift at sea. Alone and free who you want to be, you may feel cleaved in two, torn between which of all the possible You to be.

You may have days where you don't know how to spend all the time you unexpectedly find yourself with. You may have a hard time constructing a linear narrative of your life, of being true and honest about things that have happened to you. You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack, you may find yourself in another part of the world, and you may ask yourself "Well, how did I get here?". This is one of the real tensions explored in a lot of Nun fiction, including here. Some people do ultimately decide that they need constraint, submission, and obedience to control themselves, they might find themselves temperamentally unsuited for freedom. It's not a matter of whether god is real or not, it's a matter of whether or not you need him to be to find your way through the world.

Robert Merton, the American Sociologist and one of the most important writers of structural functionalism (strangely, very close to name-dropped in White Wool and Snow, if you can believe it?!), wrote extensively about deviant behavior. What religion calls sin. What the legal system calls criminality. He grouped behavior into four long-term personal orientations towards laws, norms, and codes: conformism (following the rules to achieve the goals expected of you); ritualism (rejecting the goals set for you and resigning yourself, but going about the petty motions of life as expected); innovation (cheating to achieve your goals without following the rules to get there, fraud and deceit); and retreatism (rejecting the systems and structures of society and behaving as you will, punk anarchy). This is the lens I choose to interpret Misericorde through: how these orientations play out against each other, in word and deed; sexually, spiritually, politically, and socially.

If any of this sparks something in your mind, if you think about some of the same things I do, then you must, must, must play this game. And if not, if instead you find yourself thinking "why is this guy overthinking my horny nun game?", hey, that's fair too. White Wool and Snow has exponentially more horny nuns than the first. You do you. Meanwhile, bring on Misericorde Volume Three!

One final disclosure: XEECEE gave me a key for Volume Two a few days before release, presumably because of my glowing review of the original game. There was no expectation of coverage, but since I've never taken a review copy of anything, I did not check the "free" box below and I'd be happy to pay it forward; the first person that has read Misericorde: Volume One (public Steam profile required so I can check) and comments here, I'll buy you a free copy of Volume Two to make it even. Edit: Offer has been claimed, thanks for reading!

Misericorde is back at last, with a volume 2 that's a little longer than its predecessor.
I wasn't sure what to expect after volume 1, which I'd found particularly promising, and I have to say I didn't come away disappointed.

The writing is as gripping as ever, the characters as engaging as ever, and what's more, the tension and drama are even more present this time, keeping the atmosphere and qualities of what we experienced previously, while more than once even displaying the feel of a mysterious thriller or a fantastical horror story, while remaining engaging as a pursuit of its murder mystery premise. Most of the times though, it strives as a psychological drama, where it still shines the most, but beware as it even becomes sexual this time.

And so, the tribulations, self-reflections and interpersonal conflicts of our protagonist Hedwig step up a notch ; I won't hide the shameful and painful pleasure I took in watching our protagonist fall to her lowest depths and succumbs to her weirdest instincts, while we as readers are left to ponder whether her thoughts and decisions are supposed to be reprehensible or judged, seeing the way she treats other or admonishes herself, or whether we're simply caught up in her spiral of constant thoughts and sometimes awkward, sometimes stimulating conversations, clouding our judgment, making it hard to decide.
Hedwig remains a character that is both odd and complex, while fundamentally remaining unexceptional and confused in the grand scheme of things, making her so human and I love her for it. No matter how delirious her trepidations may become, she seems so real.

Admittedly, it takes a certain talent and passion as a writer to succeed in truly blending the reader's perspective, external as they may be to the setting, with that of a perspective that seems so far removed from our own, and yet at the same time feels so close ; so effective is the characterization, whether it's Hedwig, or the rest of the nuns, who all remain so intriguing, while constantly disrupting our perspective on them during one chapter or another.

I can't wait to discuss what is thematically at stake here with my fellow Misericorde enthusiasts and then to see what's in store for volume 3 when it releases someday, which will probably unravel the remaining mysteries and the grand meaning of this already meaningful story, at least it sure means something to me! But there are still things that I have no answer for. For now, congratulations on another awesome release! With once again an awesome soundtrack! Such an underrated story should be experienced by many more.

Sister Hedwig is still just like me fr.

Though in all seriousness, Misericorde is criminally underrated. I've only finished Chapter 1 so far, but the writing is tight, the music banging, and the art impeccable. Can't wait to see where this mystery goes.