Okay, I Said I Would.

Random yap about the canonical differences between Demon and P1 Dude

I'm tired of people thinking that Demon and P1 Dude are the same entity/personality/have the same moral conduct. I understand how easy it is for misinformation to spread about old indie games. I am not here to attack anyone. I just wanna shed some light on a few things.

There is a reason that P1 Dude's journal entries sound and look completely different from Demon's. P1 Dude was completely detached from reality and believed he was killing monsters to "save humanity", not innocent people. Yes, P1 Dude was a terrified, anxious, traumatized, psychotic man. Meanwhile, Demon was a cold sadist that enjoys killing and spouting off goofy one liners. They have distinctive personalities.

RWS has stated many times that P1 Dude was an average guy that was really going through it before he "went postal". He was not plotting, planning, or scheming to kill a bunch of people. (He is not like Notim from Hatred.) Quite the opposite. He only purchased a Kevlar vest and armed himself at the point he felt his life was in mortal danger.

He lived in a dangerous area of Paradise in which he heard gunshots and screams after dark every night. When he began to feel genuinely threatened, he purchased a singular gun. (This is all in the lore.) The rest of his weapons are found and collected in-game. He did not begin shooting at anyone until the cops literally came barging into his front yard shooting at him first. While that doesn't justify him going on a killing spree, it is the moment that set off his paranoid delusion fully.

We know from the lore that Paradise is a fucked up place filled with dangerous people. There is something genuinely wrong with Paradise that pushed Dude to this point (even if he likely already had a few screws loose in his brain). The real-world threats he was experiencing amplified the delusion that everyone was out to get him. Chronic stress and trauma can make a person become highly psychotic.

The wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time makes all the terrifying difference. RWS stated he is an "everyman". He is meant to be related to without condoning what he does. The whole idea behind Postal 1 is that this could happen to anyone in the right circumstances. Anyone can develop psychosis if they experience enough stress.

In P1 Dude's journal entries, he repeatedly stated that he was scared and thought people were trying to kill him. He was straight up visually perceiving the people shooting at him as creatures infected with the "hate plague". Many of the loading screens show what people looked like through his eyes. They have heavily distorted, skeletal, and monstrous faces. On the flip side, Demon's journal entries are quite sadistic, playful, and a bit poetic. Demon speaks completely differently from Dude, aside from a few later journal entries when his sanity slips further. It seems like the delusion is worsening at that point and Demon (if real) is possibly taking over further. It is important to note that Dude never speaks in-game. That is all Demon's voice speaking. RWS confirmed this.

According to RWS, no one else can hear this voice but him. It was deliberately left ambiguous as to whether or not this is an actual demon possessing him, or merely part of his psychotic delusion. Nonetheless, P1 Dude completely lacked agency over Demon's thoughts/behavior. Thus, wholeheartedly blaming P1 Dude as if he was somehow aware of what he was doing during his psychosis is straight up nonsense.

You could say he was like a puppet for Demon/his delusions. To say there is no difference between P1 Dude and Demon is to fundamentally misunderstand how this character was written. He did not know what happened until the end of the game when he realized he was attempting to harm children. That's what made him collapse to the ground in shock and horror. Everything I have stated is 100% canon and can be sourced directly from the original Postal 1 manual, in-game lore, canon information in the game files, RWS' social media accounts where they answer fan questions, and old interviews with the original dev team.

This may be a tough pill for some to swallow, but there are people with psychosis so extreme they are 100% lacking in awareness of their own behavior. That is a real thing that happens to people all the time. There's a lot of ableism and misconceptions about how psychosis works in this fandom. Please don't contribute more stigma toward psychotic people, if you can help it.

With all that being said and done:

Do I think what he did is ok? HELL NO!!! I can deeply empathize with a traumatized psychotic man that thought he was “saving humanity” by killing monsters without condoning his actions. So can you. Severe persecutory delusions are no joke! That's a pretty tragic situation to be on either end of. Imagine thinking you were doing something akin to killing off a zombie outbreak…only to realize you committed absolute atrocities. That's peak psychological horror, my dude. That's raw and real as hell to me.

I am not primarily concerned with P1 Dude's overall sense of morality. My focus is on pointing out the clear moral discrepancies/dilemmas that were deliberately written into the lore. These are moral discussions in the context of Dude's delusional perspective. Obviously, from the player's perspective/morals, his delusion is completely fucked and not logical. It is a delusion, after all. Explanations don't and should never equal justifications. I am not focused on if he is good or evil, as I do not believe in that type of thing. My main focus is with understanding the context of his delusional thoughts and actions. I think people are just people. They're all capable of wonderful and terrible things. I am primarily concerned with the canon lore and ableism toward psychotic/delusional people. People do not choose their delusions or control them, period.

-Sincerely, someone who has experienced similar delusions.

Edit: I originally wrote this post when I was sick, sleep deprived, and had a hellish headache. I have since tried to elaborate on several points I feel I did not explain in a nuanced enough way, initially.

I have noticed some people quote the Postal Strategy Guide claiming that P1 Dude shot first. That is a fair concern to bring up. This is slight misinformation on the original writer's part. Even if you do absolutely nothing in the game but stand around, the cops shoot first. Paul did not work at RWS, was not a game dev, and did not write the lore. Misconceptions and errors are very common in game strategy guide books from the 90s and early to mid 2000's.

normal childhood to have

Do you think, when he was arrested, that Cell was seen as the same as any other prisoners? Do you think he resided in the same places, ate the same food, performed the same work? Do you think the guards saw him and his violent history and let him roam the same as the thieves whose POV we saw it through?

Or do you think they saw this barely 18-year-old, who turned to violence and cannibalism as a means to survive, and recognized the danger he posed? Do you think they held him down, fought against his struggle, and let the other prisoners know that he wasn’t like them?

Do you think Cell was confused, confused as to why he was so different from the other Brazilians that lived in those same conditions? Do you think that he saw them as threats not because they were ones, but rather, because he knew that they lived so much better than him, yet still wound up here?

Do you think this man— if you could even call this teen a man— saw JV, Pac, Mike, and Guaxinim as threats out of jealousy? Empty wishes that he could have lives their lives and made smarter decisions to be a free man roaming the earth?

Do you think he cried when they held him down and put that infernal thing on him?

Não.

Ele é um animal.

Os animais não sentem.

hi postal nation. watch my animation of p1 getting high

So... Cellboier decided to give us old man yaoi, I am honoring their wishes

(can't believe i am unaronically writing about Abueloier and his "friend", dear fucking god)

There was blood under his nails, but that wasn't new. He sometimes scratched too hard or got too rough with the guards after trashing around his cell. Those were the bad days, when he couldn't even control where his hands landed.

Any other day, he couldn't control where his thoughts landed. That was the real danger. Not the scratches and bruises, the teasers and beatings. None of that compared to what years of confinement can do to you.

It probably would've been even worse had he not met him.

"Hey" he had whispered one night from the cell next to his, just over a year ago, after the guards left "You okay?"

"De puta madre" Abueloier hissed, touching his busted lip "Y tu qué? You're new?"

"Got transfered today" the man behind the wall moved to the front of the cell, Abueloier instinctively followed "Are they always like that?"

"Only if you're crazy enough to start breaking shit in your cell and threatening to kill everybody"

"Are you?"

Abueloier almost heard a smile in his whisper. He'd always remember that as the moment he realized he had finally found a match, someone of his caliber. An equal, a partner.

"On my bad days" he answered.

The other huffed a short laugh "Well, it's a pleasure to meet you at your worst"

"I'd hope so, you would hate me at my best"

From then on, they moved together as one. It was them against the rest of the inmates, the guards, the entire prison. They shared every meal, every recess, and talked about what they'd do once they made it out.

"I'll build myself a house" he spoke around a spoonful of beans "Maybe a castle"

Abueloier laughed "You dream too big"

"Okay then, what will you do?"

He shrugged and looked down at the stale beans on his plate "Make tacos, probably"

The talking got to planning, the days got longer and Abueloier's mind got louder. Every time his new friend explained what they had to do, his voice morphed into some distortion of what he said. The last days were bad, worst than bad, and nothing could stop that train of thought from flying off the rails.

"How do you know their schedual?" his hands shook, they had been doing that for a while.

"I told you already, I sneaked into the office-"

"Yeah, right. Fucking likely" there was a noise coming from his right but nobody noticed, so Abueloier didn't turn to check. He kept staring into those wild, troubled blue eyes and decided that if there was a white figure at the corner of his eye, he'd not give it the satisfaction of being noticed.

"You trust me, right?" he tilted his head, some of his hair brushing the neck of his uniform. Had that smile always been part of the design on their uniforms? Was it there at all?

"I do" he sighed and closed his eyes, mostly to avoid noticing more than he could handle "We can do this, and we will. Together"

There was blood under his nails, and it wasn't his or from any guard. His only friend tried to sit up to cough up blood but winced when it only made the knife dig further into his abdomen.

"Why would you do this to me?" he heaved, but Abueloier was about to ask the same thing.

"Where do you know them from? Was this entire thing just a trick to get me to them?"

That smile was plastered everywhere, he could see it in the blood that poured from his friend. He would see it in the tears that fell to his hands.

"I would've gone to the end of the Earth with you, but you chose them" he pressed his forehead to a bloody chest, feeling the difficulty of its rise and fall "You chose them. You chose them. I would've chosen you"

The realization came seconds before those wild, troubled blue eyes dimmed into nothing. There was blood under his nails, on his hands, on his clothes, pouring from his friend's body. There was betrayal laced to his last words.

"I choose you too" it sounded like a scratched record, wet with the blood drowning the sound from his throat "At your worst and at your best"

The guards found him some time later, maybe minutes, maybe hours, could've been days for all he knew. Turns out they didn't wear white, never did, in fact. The smiles from the walls were no longer there, the eyes in every corner had completely dissapeared. No trace of bears or artificial voices telling him about other people's intentions.

All that was left was a life sentence and years worth of lagoons in his memory, blissfully blank and confused. Still, he managed. He got a job as a janitor, even went out sometimes to meet up with his grandson, but always tried to avoid that good for nothing husband of his.

Those eyes, they looked too lively. Too wild, too troubled for anyone's good

N-NO, I.., I'M NOT COMP- COMPLETELY OBSESSED WITH HIM, Y-YOU ARE SPREADING LIES... ～(　TロT)σ

I know the flowers Cellbit gifted Tallulah and Chayanne after he met up with Philza were most likely ones he just picked up in his travels [?] *but* I looked up the meaning after he gave Tallulah Fireweed and Chayanne Hyssop;

And I'm so normal about this by chance meaning of this.

Hello QSMP fanbase.

I was dragged into this fandom and I don't think I'll be finding my way out anytime soon.

[Context: While talking about how he lost his leg, Pac accidentally says "Felps" instead of "Cell"]

Pac: Felps— no, it was Cellbit. Guys, I got confused, it was a lot of trauma in my life, they bit my leg while I was awake and conscious. At that moment, I passed out, I don't remember if it was Cellbit or Felps, both of them were there.

[ Translation via @TZC_updates ]