Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - gui

2024/12/03 (Tue) 15:08:42

since we're here anyway let me see if i can copypaste my essay i'd rather have it here on the bbs than on tumblr because of tumblr's stupid login idk if it's too long for the bbs though

----

Bien and Sar are interesting in their mandated un-interestingness: Bien is a character who is designated the antagonist instead of being the antagonist (which clearly mirrors Bread's cosmic role, although that's for a different post altogether). Sar, on the other hand, is a guy who just pops up with no context, no warning and no justification - though this reflects the "measure" he is tied to.

Being the most recently introduced character, Sar and Bien haven't had as much interactions compared to the other Nightmare Duo of BreadAVOTA, but the few chapters that do dwell on them have a vivid inspiration: Pavlov and his dogs.


----"Fall in love, won't you now?"----


The inspiration is no secret - Sar and Bien's introduction is blatantly labelled Pavlovian Love. What BreadAVOTA does interestingly is that it goes past the layman's knowledge of Pavlov and instead parallels the darker reality of Pavlov's experiments.

Let's start with the surface level interpretation, though. Sar "adopts" Bien and immediately starts conditioning him for his own ulterior motives. The "kindness" of all his interactions, from the superficially polite tone of his unreasonable request ("fall in love, won't you now?"), the constant preparation of food and the "leniency" for Bien's incompetence are all thin veneers over the character who is clearly the "actual" villain of the story.

With Bien being highly coded as a neurodivergent character, showing traits of both autism, schizoid personality disorder and schizotypal personality disorder (or even schizophrenia), Sar constantly talking to him like an ABA therapist would is hard to miss.

Sar's first encounter with Bien which immediately ends in Bien's "punishment" for attacking Sar, the very simple statement of "You don't tell me what I "should" be - I tell you", and all the lovebombing that comes afterward all points to his superficiality. He's nice to Bien as a form of conditioning him, and there's an underlying threat that if Bien goes out of line he'll get punished for it.

Yet Bien, despite being aware of this, can't help but feel a sense of flattery over Sar's exaggerated kindness, having been so deprived of kindness his entire life, like the dog that associates the bell with food even when it knows the sound won't satiate its hunger.


----Food and the bell----


Food is a common reward that Sar offers Bien in all their interactions, and we see Sar feed Bien in every update since they start living together: "Good [ Results and Discussion ]", "Christmas Cookies" and in Bien's personal blog entry, "(Call For) Help". In all three chapters, they also talk about music, with Sar playing a piano song before every dinner.

The food and the music have their own significance in the larger BreadAVOTA universe. The "food", which later turns out to be made of "Mindstuff", is said to be how Sar "satiates" Bien, although what it actually does is a little vague. We know Media sent Bon and Bien food supposedly made of the same stuff, with Media telling Bon in a letter that he sends stuff Bien needs to be "healthy" (complete with the air quotes), and it's largely implied the rest of the Living also eat MargiFood™ that Media insists is basically no different from "real" food... you know, for the Living.

Bien is (probably) part-Marginal, and the Marginals as a species are subtly implied to feel insatiable hunger, so the implication that Bien needs to eat "Mindstuff" might not be too surprising.

As for the music, for Bien, it's a way for him to connect to his father. And for the rest of the world, music seems to be one of the ways that magic is performed with: the Annotations seem to be preceded with a song, Sar says that songs are one of the linguistic presentations magic can take, and Ava describes Reality as a song, with the Wires of Reality making sounds and the Voice of Reality being the "chorus" of it.

Sar promises to teach Bien the piano, and with this in mind, Sar might be banking on using music as a way for Bien to rewrite Reality (supposedly because Ava's plans of making him a writer instead are going nowhere).

All that said, the constant association Sar makes with food and music evokes the imagery of the "classical" Pavlovian experiment: a dog is fed food while ringing a bell, and eventually it'll salivate when a bell rings even without the food.

Except for one thing...

There is no bell.


----"I'm trying - and will now shred ████ without mercy"


Warning for animal abuse


"██████'s e█rly studies concentrated on the █elationship between eating and variation in the s█cretion of gastric, pancreatic and salivary fluids in ████. To 'solve the problem' of observing and measuring secretions accurately, ██████ and his co-workers performed surgery on the ████ which made possible his 'sham feeding' system: '██████ would remove a ███'s [o]esophagus and █reate an opening, a fistula, in the animal's throat, so that, no matter how much the ███ ate, the food would fall out and never make █t to the stomach. █y creating additional fistulas along the digestive system and collecting the various secretions, he could measure their quantity and chemical properties in great detail' (██████, ████, p.█). All whilst the ███ was still living. Many ████ were sacrificed along the way in developing such procedures. █perating techniques routinely failed, whilst new developments and the promise of success often increased ██████'s fervour 'I'm trying – and will now shred ████ without mercy. You know, I have not worked so hard for a long time' (cited in █████, ████, p.███)."


Sar's shelf in I1-5-RD lets "you" (Bien) read excerpts from some of his books, and one of them contains a research paper about Pavlov's experiments (interestingly, with all mentions of Pavlov and dogs blocked out).

Although Pavlov's experiments are commonly taught to the general public and first-year psychology students to have used a bell, in reality his experiments were more complex (and often more brutal), using different stimuli like metronomes and electric shocks.

In Pavlov's studies of digestion, as the excerpt says, he would cut out a dog's esophagus and create a fistula. No matter how much a dog would eat, the food would fall out of its throat and never reach the stomach, meanwhile Pavlov and his fellow scientists would collect the secretions to study.

In "(Call For) Help", Bien complains about feeling the need to vomit, and Sar tells him that's impossible because there's nothing in him to vomit.

Sar: "Co? No, no, that isn't right, you can't vomit, there is nothing in you to hack up. Remember, I know exactly what's inside of you, I made sure to keep track of the dataset when I opened you up the first time around. But it's fine, we can skip the cookies if you're not feeling it. Oh, you'll try to eat? For my sake? How wonderful. You're such a good boy."

We see in I1-4 that Bien's body is completely hollow, and while it's never been completely explained there's implications here and there that because Demon's don't naturally have Bodies, their Bodies might only superficially resemble "Real" Bodies. What's interesting is that Sar spends all his time feeding Bien - for him to comment that there can be nothing inside of Bien to vomit implies Sar must have certain expectations of where exactly that food is going.

Bien does have one thing inside of him: blood... or something like blood. If he's meant to closely parallel Pavlov's experiment that could make for some interesting theories.

The feeding experiments aren't the only things Pavlov did to his dogs though, and Sar's actions parallel some of his other experiments. The "spinal cord surgery" (and the foreboding implication that it wasn't really "just" a spinal cord surgery but a full on vivisection, based on how Sar describes it) is similar to Pavlov's own experiments where dogs where vivisected to study their digestive systems, and Bien's current living conditions resemble the "laboratory for central nervous system research":


----The Towers of Silence----


Bien's point of view is never shown post-surgery: we're only ever shown Sar, who looks at "you" as if you were Bien and does all the talking. If Bien "says" anything we can only hear it from Sar repeating and implying it, but never from Bien actually being given the chance to speak.

It signifies Sar's dominance over him, both as a character and in the meta-textual context of the narrative. But besides that, Bien's perpetual silence is an interesting parallel to the Towers of Silence experiment.

The "Towers" were soundproof buildings where experiments were performed on dogs specifically to try and break them down into madness: random stimuli were paired together to see how the dogs would react, like electric shocks coupled with force-feeding. "(Call For) Help" shows this the most blatantly. Where Bien ate on his own (if reluctantly) in the previous chapters, in "(Call For) Help" it seems that Sar is actively force-feeding him, with the last lines being Sar telling Bien to stop fidgeting.

Ava, at one point in Bien's blog, compares herself to Bien, saying that Bien's neuroses over his isolation (at this time, when he was alone in the military bunker) reminded Ava of her own experience in the "Recursive Panopticon" - with I1-3's Further Reading section showing to us that the Recursive Panopticon seems to be something vague, surreal and maddening.

There's another very obvious parallel here in regards to being an experiment for brutal psychological experiments, of course...


----Like Father, Like Son----


Bien's not the first Demonic teenager subject to inscrutable experiments. That crown goes to his father, Bon, whose experiments under the Maldevaran Centre of Supranatural Research and Development were similarly vague and highly traumatic.

Here are excerpts about Milord and Postrel, two of the dogs the Towers of Silence, taken from the Kingdom of dogs exhibit https://kingdomofdogs.org.uk/other-observations (where the book on Sar's shelf is referenced from)


"Milord - Markedly more placid and peaceful than POSTREL. Expected his experimentally induced breakdown to reflect inborn character difference. Hypothesis confirmed — M has broken in the direction of ​‘inhibition’.* Previously established conditional reflexes disappeared. Stopped salivating to most ALL positive stimuli as shock was increased. Attempts to cure Milord with bromide solutions and rest unsuccessful. He has been retired. Phlegmatic character. Balanced, calm, consistent, not easily aroused. *Results later rejected in their entirety

Postrel - We are combining shocks with food to test if breakdown can be experimentally induced, and if direction of break reflects inborn character — choleric in Postrel’s case. Hypothesis confirmed — Postrel has broken in the direction of ​‘excitation’.* Previously established conditional reflexes are now erratic. Salivation in response to ANY stimuli excessive and undifferentiated. The animal’s reflexes are shattered. ​‘Will now observe therapeutic effects of bromide salts. and rest. Choleric character. Lively, sociable, extremely excitable. *Results later rejected in their entirety.
Bon and Bien are really similar to the dog of Pavlov's experiment: the more "placid" Bon, who is better at controlling their Demonic "instincts" compared to the more "choleric" Bien, who was far more impulsive and violent. Bon breaking down and becoming more subdued seems to reflect Milord's results - we haven't seen what will happen to Bien yet, but if this parallel means anything then it looks like he's going to become far more erratic under Sar's care."


Going by how Bien reacted to his time with Ava in the bunker, this is likely to be the case - Bien already seems predisposed to neuroticism, constantly freaking out and fluctuating between childish excitement to detached and even cruel apathy in his appearances.


----"Your presence (here) is of utmost value to the recipe..."----


So Sar is an evil mad scientist and Bien is the schizoautistic kid he's bullying to the death. Alright, we can leave it there, I guess? Sar is nice to Bien because he's gaslighting and manipulating him, case closed.

Well, I recommend reading the paper that Sar's shelf has in full. The paper itself claims that its intention isn't merely to "damn Pavlov in retrospect" but to focus on the lives of the animals that were experimented on and to dispel the illusion that they were completely passive in the experiments.


"As Todes noted, this set-up facilitated a relationship in some ways akin to 'pet and master'; it resembles what we might today call a companion species bond. That said, on the experimenter stand it was a relationship often defined by a shared tedium. The hours would often drag for both – experiments were monotonous and wearisome, involving little more than pressing a button to trigger a stimulus, measuring saliva, proffering small amounts of food at strictly regulated intervals. And then waiting. Apparently, a key challenge was staying awake – either animal falling asleep at the 'wrong' time was potentially ruinous for the experimental procedure. However, it also meant human and canine co-workers got to know each other to an unprecedented extent compared to Pavlov's early career."


Sar's and Bien's time together, despite their shared goal being something larger-than-life and implied to be urgent, is remarkably mundane. The contrast between the Protagonist Half being a disjointed mess of lulrandomxD events to the repetitive, maddening tedium of Bien's life is notable. Bien reads and writes and codes and reads and writes and codes, and when he moves to Anselir with Sar, Sar makes him do all those things again, enforcing a strict schedule on him as a way to keep time stable in the disjointed reality of Anselir.

The presentation of Sar and Bien's time makes it foreboding. Sar's constant dominance of the conversations, his creepy attitude, the visuals from Bien's point of view being a contrast of a dark background with neon text and highly pixellated and distorted graphics, and Bien's increasing incoherence and borderline-psychotic episodes, these are all different elements that make Bien's portions of BreadAVOTA notably more disturbing than Bread's half of the narrative.

And yet, when you look at it literally, nothing ever actually happens. Bien embodies the "measure" he is stuck in, as the Eye of Space.


Sar: "Eventually the weather caught the memo. If this were Maldevara, I estimate it had taken me seven years to learn how to make it rain. Here in (Anselir), it felt longer by an eternity, but also, like no time at all, like I had always known. Even when things changed, it was as if the change always was, so really there was no change at all. In a world where things always stay the same, you quickly come to realise you have the capacity to miss even the things that you hate."


Like the Towers of Silence, Bien's stuck in an inescapable torture (especially with the unspoken but horrifying implication that the spinal cord surgery "tethers" him to Anselir so that he can't ever leave), but it's not the type of violence we see happening in the Time measures (where violence, it seems, is rendered meaningless because it undoes itself).


Bien: "the thing about this place is that directions are kinda meaningless. i played a videogame once where like, if you go offscreen you enter a new area, right? but the areas just seemed random, like they changed every time you went offscreen. it's like, the game had a "concept" of what a "tree" and a "rock" and a "lake" was but how many of those things and where they were across the screen was placed without consistency. anyway. it was like that. there wasn't "breaking" the exile because walking across the valley was just repeatedly going offscreen, you werent going in circles so much as you simply werent going."


Bien's torture is more psychological in nature. From his life at home, his time at the War, his time in the bunker to his present day in Anselir, Bien's lived a life of being constantly trapped, in a situation where no matter what changes it stays the fucking same.


----...and more importantly, to me"----


And the interesting parallel he has with Sar is that Sar is stuck in the same situation.

The obvious interpretation is that Sar is nice to Bien because he needs Bien for whatever bullshit experiment he's trying to run, and that he doesn't really care about Bien to any meaningful degree. And maybe that's true now, but my personal theory is that over the course of them being stuck together in Anselir, a place where it's confirmed that even short periods of time feel like forever, Sar's going to develop a genuine attachment Bien.

Sar's an enigmatic character whose motives are hard to guess, and a major factor to that is that we already met Anthony, and even though Sar is Anthony... well, he's really not like Anthony.

We don't know why exactly Sar is so different, but the author does say that being alone for so long drove him "mildly insane." Anthony's antisocial and seems to hate everyone to the point of considering hate as a more important emotion than love, so seeing Sar being so polite (no matter how fake) is a jarring change in character.

In I1-5, there's one detail I noticed. When Bien asks about the MargiBirds, Sar says that he adopted Media's mannerisms so that the Birds would listen to him. And Sar is... vaguely Media-like, in that Media himself is a person who is superficially polite just to get what he wants. But Media and Sar don't exactly act 100% alike, although it's hard to pinpoint in what way they differ. I guess in a way Sar has a more uncanny quality to him, even though Media's the one who's literally an alien computer ghost.


Sar: "Ah, I guess I am getting ahead of myself again. Pardon me! I know I must be overwhelming you with all this new information, but truth be told, I am just excited to talk to somebody again!

I have been waiting (here), by myself, for a long, long time[2], that I was almost afraid my prophecies had wavered, and that nobody was going to come back for me, and that I'd be [here] in [Gdyskoti] forever, alone.

… I mean, sure, there are the birds, but I'd rather have a person, like you."


The last line here is pretty interesting. I think that in the absence of any "Living" company, Anthony gradually grew more miserable in Anselir, and his weird personality was a way to try and get the birds to interact with him more just so he'd have someone to talk to. And man, Sar talks a lot.

I can't help but feel that although Sar likely has his own secret goals that take priority, he does feel genuinely relieved that Bien is there with him to spend the tedium of eternity with, even if it might be less about Bien as an individual and more about just having an actual person in Anselir.


----Results and Discussion (And Conclusion)----


BreadAVOTA as a whole strongly delves on themes of isolation and alienation, and the (often terrible) results that come from having it imposed on others without them having the power to do anything about it.

The decision to make such a unique fictional world with a supposed focus on "worldbuilding" and yet to only ever show Maldevaran life in passing, and the tendency to focus on characters who are mostly unlikable and difficult to understand are risky decisions from a writing standpoint, and it's a little arguable whether rolypolyphonic actually does them well, but I recognize that there's a specific question being asked in choosing to make the story be about what it is. It's a question Ava herself asks Bien when she criticizes Bien's shitty fanfictions:

Why should anybody in the audience care about these unsympathetic characters?

Bien's reply is framed as "stupid", but it touches on one of BreadAVOTA's themes: "why do i need to write down why people need to "sympathise" with mieszko? it should be obvious. you should simply feel bad for anybody ever."

Bien being apathetic and violent usually would be in poor taste considering how he's so coded to be autistic/schizophrenic, but BreadAVOTA's worldbuilding helps toe around the fact by making physical "death" something more trivial and by focusing on the more existential aspects of Maldevaran philosophy, which touches upon the real experiences of people with "bad" mental illnesses: schizophrenia, personality disorders and and "conduct disorders".

The idea of people who become "villainous" as a result of poor upbringing isn't new to fiction, but BreadAVOTA does put an interesting focus on the "poor upbringing" not necessarily being explicit abuse or trauma but a more silent yet perpetual feeling of alienation and disconnect, fitting for the story's overarching theme being an "allegory for schizotypy".

The Kingdom of Dogs leaves us with this compelling message, which feels relevant to Sar and Bien and BreadAVOTA's themes as a whole.

"It is an understatement to say that we rarely get to hear about these aspects of Pavlov's work today, a forgetting which extends to the majority of scholarship on Pavlov, where dogs appear only in passing as experimental objects, never as subjects about which we should express care or concern.
BreadAVOTA doesn't necesarily asks its audience to "like" or "care" about its characters, and as the breadposters (all three of us) have noted there's a tendency to make the characters hard to like or care about. But it's not a story that tries to convince you to like the characters. It's just taking the opportunity to express these uncommon perspectives from the first person point of view."

Paraphrased from the author's own words, "there's always the risk of offending people with my portrayal of being schizoid, so you can go and read books that say nothing bad about being schizoid by virtue of never saying anything about it at all."

I doubt that Sar and Bien's relationship will stop as something so one-sided and passive, where Sar tells Bien what to do and what to say, but that eventually it's going to be complicated by the effects that both of them faced being isolated growing up (Bien in his Exile, Anthony/Sar as the youngest Judge), the way they were pathologized for it, and the unhealthy concept of relationships they formed as a result.

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - gui

2024/12/03 (Tue) 14:54:59

you reminded me of this thread and i just realized i called out bien being treated like a "dog" on the actual day of release

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - kii URL

2024/12/02 (Mon) 21:10:50

necro but i just noticed in i1-5rd if u look at the credits "the bible: the catholic church" is credited LMAOOO

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - gui

2023/09/29 (Fri) 13:41:34

> PAVLOVIAN LOVE
starting off strong here with a pretty blatant title

the "-featuring-" format is new, i wonder if this suggests whatever this event is is a sort of "performance"

"GIVE ME FOUR MORE YEARS, AND WHEN FOUR YEARS PASS BY HE'LL SAY YOU MIGHT AS WELL HAVE CALLED ON TO ME THE FIRST DAY AROUND BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN HERE AN ENTIRE ETERNITY AND I HAVE DISCOVERED NOTHING, YET WHEN THE DREAM ENDS AS IT IS DECIMATED BY THE CONSEQUENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS HE MIGHT REALISE THE VIRTUES OF THE NATURE OF HELL, WAKE UP ALL OF YOU MISERABLE CORPSES, WAKE UP, WHEN YOU ASK ME WHAT IT IS LIKE AT THE END OF THE LINE AT THE MOMENT OF IRRELEVANCY, THIS IS IT, YOU HAVE TO SEE IT FOR YOURSELF, THE EYES OF THE LIVING INCARNATE, BELOVED SON, GOOD BOY

SAR as SAR"

bien's longwinded introduction vs SAR as SAR is kinda funny
but i wonder if this references ava's previous question to bien asking him "what do you remember about who you are?"
at least this being an "introduction"of the characters makes me think of that? idk
in the abruptly cut flashback in the last update we can hear ava talking to bien and its canon ava was the one who woke him up
the writing is too vague and stream of cosncuousness-y as usual but the mention of "four years" (which is how long he's been dead) and "fermata" talking about how bien spent all that time dreaming, this feels like a potential description of a dream
so ava was trying to wake him up for four whole years but bien didn't want to because he was dreaming about exploring the valley of the corpses

this line:
"I HAVE LIVED IN THIS VALLEY OF THE CORPSES ALL MY LIFE YET SAW NOTHING OF IT, MAYBE IT IS CALLED THAT BECAUSE YOU NEED TO BE A CORPSE TO SEE"
i assume bien never travelled the entire valley, either bon didn't let him i'ma ssuming, or the whole "time compensates for space" thing makes travelling almost impossible, it would explain why he talks about the log as having "GRAVE, MINUTE DIFFERENCES"

iirc the nature of the time-based measures is that nothing is consistent and everything changes over time so it checks out

after four years it looks like bien got bored of everything and decided to listen to ava, gets woken up from his dream into an undead ("DREAM ENDS AS IT IS DECIMATED BY THE CONSEQUENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS") and then decided to wake up the other dead soldiers for. reasons? i always assumed he did it to hunt down all the bon merch but i wonder if there'sa deeper reason now that there's more hinting to the idea bien was woken up by ava instead of just waking up on his own

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - gui

2023/09/29 (Fri) 13:57:40

"At your sleeping form, I gently probe with an electrode playing with your love
It coalesces to innocence I see through the lens of pure reductionism"


sucks that the mv for pavlovian love was cancelled but i guess the lyrics only are meant to describe the situation which i'm guessing ks supposed to be sar replacing bien's spinal cord since that's where we left off

the original song's mv has rin holding an electrode which is apparently this needle-looking thing. sar was sewing in the last update so i think he's supposed to be associated with needles as a whole

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - gui

2023/09/29 (Fri) 14:25:27

"Can you say where in space did these feelings that I had
Have now gone, stolen from me the moment we crossed paths
Sending signals across all of the synaptic gaps
Communication done through the needlepoint at last"

needle mentioned immediately called it fuck yeah world's most competent breadposter. i'm writing this at a shitty party and i'm kinda going insane btw


didn't sar mention needing to "stitch" bien into this measure (anselir) so that they's sync or something. tbh i forgot and can't be assed to look for it rn if i'm wrong nvm

"Through this transient route, fall in love, won't you now?
Is it love, as it seems, or is this reality?
Through this transient route, fall in love, won't you now?
Can you find it inside: measuring where love can hide?"

measure mentioned
i respect how these lyrics both rhyme and reference the story despite being translyeics
i feel like i'm being pavloved myself by keeping track of all the fucking sci-fi keywords here
based on the title i think that whatever sar is doing with the spinal cord isn't actually for making bien "adjust to the space-based measure". or it could do that too but its MAIN role is to basically speedrun bien having love/loyalty for sar, like a mind cotnrol thing
idk why the spinal cord instead of like a brain or a heart but then again who kmows how demon anatomy works
interesting note: thr written lyrics is "or is this reality?" but the song itself says "or is this another dream?"(i think? the vocaloid is muffled as fuck)

"Through your peaceful sleep, I gently weave in a tapestry of a new heartbeat
And it spikes and roars on monitors I see through the core of pure materialism"

more sewing metaphors

"Can you find when in time did these feelings lying bare,
Its defence just pretenses of logic without err,
Received signals across all of the dendritic webs
Communication done through the needlepoint again"
i'm not sure about the symbolism here but i like the use of space in the other verse and time here. ooh themes and messages symbolism even.

"Through this transient route, fall in love, won't you now?
Is it love, as it seems, or is this reality?
Through this transient route, fall in love, won't you now?
You can find it inside: measuring where love resides."

fill your heart with "it" is love i assume
so sar is basically admitting his master plan is to just lovebomb bien
i find how openly "the bad guy" sar is suspicious tbh

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - gui

2023/09/29 (Fri) 22:31:06

ok back to my liveblog also rolypolyphonic can you change the bbs text colors? these default ones suck we don't even have black.

"Welcome back, Benedykt! Cheche, just kidding, we can keep calling you Bien. How are you feeling? The operation was a success, as predicted."


is bien short for benedykt or is sar just calling him that? anyway benedykt is a funny name it sounds way too serious for someonelike bien
"chechee" so he has an anime laugh. like going nishishsihshi



"Well, I told you what I would do before I did it. I just replaced your spinal cord.

It wasn't too hard. There isn't a lot of stuff in your body. Well, "not a lot of stuff" is understating it, it's practically empty. Nie, nie, this is typical Demon fare, I didn't mean to suggest there should have been more stuff. Actually, even among the Living, having "more stuff" inside isn't really great, since "more stuff" seems like a euphemistic way of gesturing to fluid in your lungs, or parasites in your stomach, or a tumour in your brain. Demons don't really get those kinds of diseases so it's no matter. If it helps, I made sure you had an adequate amount of stuff inside of you, enough to optimise and not so much to detriment."


in the update where sar cuts bien in half we can see bien has no internal organs so i think saying he is "practically empty" is literal. media implies as much that demons are empty beings or lacking in imagination, i think i agree with kii (hi) that since demon bodies are compensations bien lacks internal organs because he doesn't "imagine" himself having any

the "adequate amount of stuff" is a weirdly specific line, it makes me wonder if sar did more than just put in a spinal cord. assuming the pavlovian love lyrics are meaningful i wonder if weaving in a "tapestry of a new heartbeat" might suggest giving bien a heart?

it's possible then that the "heart" would symbolize love and the "spinal cord" would symbolize his connection to the world, in this case anselir. since the spinal cord basically connects the brain to the rest of the body using it as a metaphor for "connection to maintain control of your body" would actually make sense

it's hard to come up with conclusions because we don't yet know about demon anatomy a lot

"It is no surprise that they established a government of fleeting entertainments with the Media as Representative, as without a constant supply of new things to consume it gets boring very quickly, with no way to return to what is antiquated..."

i always wondered why there never seemed to be much acknowledgement of bon after they get exiled, then again i thought since we never see any ordinary maldevarans yet maybe it just hasn't been discussed in the story how people reacted to the exile but i wonder if everyone already forgot bon?

"I have been waiting (here), by myself, for a long, long time[2], that I was almost afraid my prophecies had wavered, and that nobody was going to come back for me, and that I'd be [here] in [Gdyskoti] forever, alone."

ew traumadumping

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - gui

2023/09/29 (Fri) 22:41:03

"Much of the faculty of magic becomes concentrated in the eye, a demon itself may represent as the eyes of the living incarnate. As the particles of air, units so complete yet distant all able to penetrate through the every of spaces, with only a hole penetrated by the thinnest of needles, any vulnerability is not only visible but easily exploitable. The devil does not have a heart. This devil perceives but lacks experience, or rather the experience becomes as intangible as soul, the devil will not agree if you refuse to play, the manifestation of the herald marks the beginning of the game.
It is understood that there is no winning against the devil, although there is a way to extend the game to several rounds. Contrivance as the machine of negotiation, the demand for just compensation. The devil's fingers are the thinnest needles in the world, the body is a vessel susceptible to holes, to be captured is to be sublimated into the enemy team.
The universe loves as it loves, as it fights is to aid in of running away. One simply must move forward into time.
The experience of love is a hole in itself, the devil will invoke it. He who loves what more than what can love for life loses immediately, for such looks back, and the mechanism is such - through the manner of perception, the function of one's eyes, like an engorged tick or an inflated balloon, eventually a bloated corpse, you will experience a possession as your organs being crushed inside of you. If you take your feet off the ground, the world will not hear your footsteps, and it cannot hold your hand. Your teeth and hair and nails may be the first to fall out. Your lungs and heart and blood coalesce into your esophagus as forced into the smallest space, your limbs expand as barotraumatic fungal sores, your spinal cord becomes a doll's elastic a puppet's string and a body's wire. This devil will turn your ribcage into an abode. This devil will hold your arteries in its palm. This devil will weave the blood vessels between fingers and the blood into wings, then wave around the fibres of musculature as the flag of droll amusements. This devil does not have a heart. Possession is a taphonomic embolism that forces the soul to make space where there is none and the world to make time where it has run out. This devil will nibble then imbibe your existence like soup first stitch together the body second or rather simultaneous as so as the mechanism of such. This is reality as agreement of the soul and a pithy illusion as evidenced of the body, a mind may serve to negotiate.
The first path is to make it through, avoiding the revelation of the vessel's holes, entry barred for that fatal distention. When one loves as love for life as life, for life to be an act of living itself, such is the love that becomes contrary to death; if life exists forward into that time, one keeps to looking and escapes. The devil can skip a turn this way, although it is automatic that a round returns eventually. This time the game is to hide.
The price one pays for quality love is to have one's existence implode and writhe and entangle within you, for a vessel to crash in onto itself is merely a kindness that allows it to end. When the devil invokes and consequently kills, the introduction of a paradox through a contrived conceived marginal note buys enough time, if not to live then to argue with.
The second path is to look and yet still live, and anybody who lives deserves to suffer.
If an angel can contain the devil within an impenetrable vessel before the soul can radiate, the body becomes a mechanism for control. It need only contain a heart and a spinal cord.

- Account by the Lamadamargidae of Gdyskoti, Anselir
In exchange for all four premolar teeth

Notes: That's the most coherent account I've ever gotten out of these sick fucks. Well, coherent is overstating it. 'Detailed' might be a better word. I don't remember any of this at all, so I can only assume I won (delayed) through the 'first path' which, if I understand correctly, was just to run and hide away.
My jaw feels numb and I can't get the taste of ink out of my mouth."

transcribing this took an hour out of my time fuck that it delayed my liveblog earlier

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - gui

2023/09/29 (Fri) 22:53:34

OH FUCK NEW COLORS ALREADY thanks rpp for silently stalking my liveblog

"Much of the faculty of magic becomes concentrated in the eye, a demon itself may represent as the eyes of the living incarnate."

"eyes" symbolizing magic is something media has mentioned, because it "looks cool"
calling demons the "eyes of the living incarnate" isn't new, the margibird in ch6 that talked to bon called them that

the next part is completely incomprehensible to me, nice gorey description though. skipping over that

"If an angel can contain the devil within an impenetrable vessel before the soul can radiate, the body becomes a mechanism for control. It need only contain a heart and a spinal cord."

HMMMMM
we know angels kill demons to stop the apocalypse, although we were never told how besides the implication that their eyes and their hands are the most important part to destroy
that might be how to KILL a demon though, to destroy its (noticable outer) body parts
to CONTROL a demon might be to GIVE it (inner) body parts specifically the heart and the spinal cord
this might hint further to what sar actually did during the "pavlovian love" section

" I don't remember any of this at all, so I can only assume I won (delayed) through the 'first path' which, if I understand correctly, was just to run and hide away.
My jaw feels numb and I can't get the taste of ink out of my mouth."

ok so anthony has met a demon before bien, is this about bon? or maybe even a demon before bon

- Account by the Lamadamargidae of Gdyskoti, Anselir
In exchange for all four premolar teeth

i wonder if the margibird's scientific name means anything in particular? also the sudden jump from how he got the typewriter (exchanging a book) to this information (giving FOUR OF HIS TEETH?) is wow lol
makes you think just what anthony gave up each time he made a trade like this

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - gui

2023/09/29 (Fri) 23:03:24

"So, did you notice anything interesting?

Ah, you didn't get it... either."

the way sar pauses before saying either makes me think sar knows what the journal means now and is just trying to "bond" with bien by pretending to "study" together. that or i'm overthinking this.

"Well, I did technically ask you not to touch the books, so it would be a little unfair to get angry about this, not that I could get angry to begin with."

so he can't get angry, would explain why he's so smiley all the time
in the vn he says he imitates media a bit so that the margibirds will obey him more and eventually it stuck so that he can't even use swear words anymore, but i wonder if there's something else explaining his extreme personality change from his more annoying living self.

> Just a chocolate cake[4]?
>[4] Truly the Devil's food.
>Do you like the cake? It's chocolate, just like you wanted, some nice butter ermine frosting and vanilla icing between the layers of sponge...

devil's food cake is apparently a type of chocolate cake so he's making a pun here but also i kept going back to this line because it bothered me a little

side comment: the fact that we never see bien's direct dialogue and only assume it from context is a fantastic narrative choice because it further pushes just how "feeling like the main character" sar is and how submissive and listless bien is

anyway again i may be overthinking this but sar asking what bien wants and (assuming these are his exact words) bien asks for JUST a chocolate cake and sar gives him a chocolate cake but like a devil's food cake with vanilla in it is what was bothering me.

again it may be nothing i'm sort of making meta-assumptions instead of taking the text at face value here but because rpp as a person is known for being really particular about following requests with people you're in a close relationship with i wonder if it's intentional that sar technically didn't give what bien wanted but in a way so subtle that if bien complains he'll look like an idiot

(devil's) food for thought

"Technically, even a simple cake might take an hour or so to make, but in this measure a lot of tasks can be finished instantaneously[5]. It might be disconcerting at first, but you'll pick up on it in time. Or not-time? Cheche.

[5] That is, if you know what you're doing: otherwise, the exact opposite happens, and it never seems like anything gets done. Such is the nation of atemporality."

more space lore

"Are you done? You can just put the plate by that empty spot on the table there. Over there. Look to where I'm pointing. Good. Here, let's try reading something a little more straightforward."

the way he talks to bien like... a dog

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - gui

2023/09/29 (Fri) 23:20:42

CIPHERED MESSAGES???? AGAIN???????????? FUCK YOU

alright gonna take forever but let's go, i'll seperate them by the sections in the paper but idk how they're meant to be read yet this is just a raw transcript

> INTRODUCTION

A
vara
(unknown numbers)
l

we know vara is a name that refers to two characters, high messenger vara (the angel that sacrificed herself so media could have a body, supposedly) and V.A.R.A. (compooter)
not sure if A and l mean anything

> REVIEW
r
u
u
s
a
ng

no idea what this means

>METHODO(LOG)Y

LOG
M
e
L
l
0 (?)
,
de
a

no idea what this means either

> RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
(note: the numbers are obviously dates but idk what dating scheme they're supposed to have, i'm just assuming the numbers of the date given above in the methodology matches the one below)

4 (?)
6
(unknown numbers)
(unknown letters) < anthony's mom
(unknown number) < her exact age, we know she's in her twenties at least
(unknown numbers) < number of transferees, was also censored at the top
(unknown letters) < anthony's name, could just be "anthony" but media later says "i know that's not how your name"
7 (?)
unknown numbers again god i'm tired
(anthony's name again)
h
e
l
p

well help is a word but that isn't very helpful
anthony's ref sheet says something like "why don't you call for help?" (paraphrased too tired to look it up but yeah it says help there) so may be relevant to him specifically


> After all that effort ███log█ put into bringing you here too
no idea what this is but based on context probably a name?

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - gui

2023/09/29 (Fri) 23:46:58

've liveblogged so hard that the bbs is wondering if i'm a spam bot so i'm dumping the rest in one post

"█nselir is the sixth Marginal nation, with twelve different regions, although most existing records only describe its southmost region Gdyskoti, which is adjoined to Malde████'s northmost region, Jesenne"

jacthony real

"The garden, supposedly, has plants, although there is no way of ascertaining this, or more specifically, it is meaningless even if true"

this is such a wtnv line

"Notably, it is Legal to leave any time and to return to Outside society. For the most part, it merely seems no Judge can find a worki█ exit."

interesting, the marginals seem to be exploiting the nature of time-based measures and how spaces are never consistent to make sure judges can't leave

"While migrating for other reasons is not Illegal, it is a cumbersome, bureaucratic process requiring the completion of several forms, licenses and other requirements. These requirements seem to arbitrarily change relatively quickly and are applied retroactively, before previous applications have been processed, rendering any completed steps void and mandating a citizen start from the beginning."

kafkacore

"Although there are preliminary sources[4] claiming that only Judges are allowed to participate, at least two Outside citizens were taken: A███a Tarnowska (human, F, age 2█), and her son Antoni Tarnowski (human, M, age 4). While his mother was not reported among the ██ successful transferees, Antoni Tarnowski was accepted as a Maldevaran citizen and renamed ███████ Tarnowska in accordance with more conventional Maldevaran naming styles."

ok so anthony actually has a legit polish (sorry """"ANSELIRIAN""""") name and him having a female surname is because of maldevaran laws
i wonder why they were made to transfer too

"I mean, we don't typically keep children here. It's not very good for their mental development. Clearly. Ahem. "

media once again being his usual passive-aggressive british self
so anthony was already pretty violent at four years old, but what really made him get inducted as a judge is having visions. which is fair, i don't find it believable no matter how rare that anthony is the first minor to have violent tendencies but i can believe he's the first prophet

"an entire spill of MargiBirds"

so they're called a spill aww

"Are you writing this down? Could you retroactively change me saying 'MargiBird' to 'the Lamadamargidae'? Or at least 'proto-Marginals', though I imagine that term is a bit more ill-defined. You know they don't have to be birds, right? It's completely incidental. And I really had nothing to do with it. So I'd rather avoid tenuous associations..."

he is never beating those birdfucker allegations

"you're not going to change it, are you? Please go back to your room, Anthony. Yes, I know that's not how your name"

looks like this paper got cut off
also this implies that his maldevaran name isn't exactly anthony but that media just calls him that. considering bread says media calls jacques emfoi "jack enfoye" on the radio i guess it's because he has a strong british accent?
i wonder if "sar" might be from his maldevaran name then since sar says "sar is short for anthony"? saranthony? antsarny????

"Dataset 1 - TASKS UNDER TRIALS

Transcription and data-encoding; occasionally through a technological device, but more often than not hand-written
Errand running, often procuring consumable products from Outside
Playing video games, usually text-based adventure or role playing games
Media analysis
Annotations, usually but not necessarily the High Judge's duty"

god i wish i had a job this simple, except maybe for the annotations
in the comic we know the radio communicates "codes" for unknown purposes but it seems aligned with the encoding job here

"Dataset 2 - MATERIAL BELONGINGS UNDER LEGAL PERMISSION

Jewellery
Clothes
Packaged snacks (eg candy, biscuits); all other consumable items must be eaten in the dining room
One hammer, or adjacent items (eg a mallet)
One pointed chisel, or adjacent items (eg an icepick)

All these items are provided by the Court, and the Judges are permitted to trade with one another or to request a Marginal to replace an item. How "adjacent items" is defined is contingent on a Judge's ability to convince a Marginal their desired replacement is such."

judge wages are jewelry so no shock there
the symbolism of a hammer and chisel (or "adjacent items") is noticable but idk what it means. bread's weapon qualifies as a "chisel" and so does sar's needles (electrode?) jacques obviously has the judge hammer, and so does def-se

"While physically, there is no change in how one perceives reality, the qualitative internal experience of it becomes muddled and surreal, often described as if the very core from which reality is experienced becomes detached: things look, sound, feel, smell and taste the same, but this sensory information is always interpreted as foreign or insignificant. It can be inferred that this is an approximation of how Marginals experience perception."

ohhhh very interesting, the "ai" aspect of the marginal's isn't very touched upon because for the most part they're just shapeshifting aliens who act human ("""LIVING""") but the sort of chinese room idea that they don't actually "experience" things the way we do makes a lot of sense

> Look at me. Look at me. Listen.
> First, let's do something easier, yes? First, something easy.
> What blocks? Look at me. What blocks?
> Oh well. Come over here. Look at me. Come here, over to my side. For now, let's just listen to some music. You can do that, yes? We can just stay put and listen.

he's so overbearing god
the repeated "look at me" sounds really condescending again he talks like he's dealing with a pet dog

"Try not to squirm so much."

hey what are you doing sar :D??


"All the things I brought over to here, they stay the same as ever, until you yourself try to make it change. In a way, it's how I preserved my mortal body. You move time forward by imagining the space around as decrepit, anachronistic, obsolete..."
"Here in (Anselir), it felt longer by an eternity, but also, like no time at all, like I had always known. Even when things changed, it was as if the change always was, so really there was no change at all. In a world where things always stay the same, you quickly come to realise you have the capacity to miss even the things that you hate."

more space lore
so in time-based measures things never stay consistent, and you move across "space" by actually moving through time. you go to another place by travelling approximately how much time it takes to get there
in space-based measures things always stay the same unless acted upon and you move through "time" by moving across space. that is changing a space to look "older" will make time "catch up" to it
that's my understanding at least?

" Oh, your hair is very soft."

ok normal of you

"You look tired already. Is my voice all you need to fall asleep? My hands, or my voice, me. "

so cool so normal

"There are no off keys with me as your audience."

AL NIENTE MENTIONED HE'S TRYING TO PAVLOV BIEN INTO ASSOCIATING HIM WITH BON ALARM BELLS ALARM BELLS

"Say thank you."

he's evil you're honor

also the song is a chopin song. man he loves polish culture

polish translations:

tak = yes
nie = no
Rozumiesz o czym mówię? = you know what i'm saying?
co nagle, to po diable = what is done in haste is the devil's way
co dwie głowy, to nie jedna = two heads are better than one
przepraszam za to zamieszanie = sorry for the confusion
przyjaciel z radia, o mały głos-ary = a friend from the radio, with a little voice-ary (?)

liveblog done. going to bed.

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - kii

2023/10/01 (Sun) 16:38:15

thank u for ur loyal breadposting gui this liveblog was so good 2 read TT_TT

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - RealSlimShady123

2023/10/01 (Sun) 22:50:22

from the newest update. alt link: https://imgbox.com/351pCv4y

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - gui

2023/10/02 (Mon) 11:41:07

> from the newest update.
EY YO??? bien has been electroded. where in the update was this was it a hidden link somewhere

Re: i1-5: good [results and discussion] liveblogging thread - 123 Eminem

2023/10/02 (Mon) 19:31:30

in the large space below the song lyrics, right above "welcome back, benedykt". it was transparent and the background was black, so it wasn't visible