#<- it's for the. fourfold bullet ask meme.

[meirimerens]

7 and 8 for the ask meme.... If. they have not been asked yet.....

[booming voice] welcome to my dark twisted mind

7. any ideas for how farkhad’s earlier projects could have looked like?

i think his previous body of work had a focus on architecture, on sculpture, and on paper¹ (gesture) Stuff, with quite a lot of works focusing on the physicality of paper (which feeds back into sculpture), including a lot of embossing. i know he's fond of the multi-tons printing presses, and to see how dry and wet paper react to being laid upon a printing matrix and then put through the crushing printing process (this is what he did to the twins. in a way. multiple tons of pressure and now the matrixes of them are embossed of his shape... i'm getting off-topic). architecture-wise, since his cathedral as a deep Gothic flair, i think he not only studied religious architecture (Gothic as in European 12th -16th century style) but implemented it, or parts of it, in his #designs: religious edifices are possibly historically The poster buildings for something "imbued with a soul": the soul of god and of faith itself... he used some of that. i think he knows of the history of Gothic edifices as deeply colorful, so i think he also worked and played with colors, but mostly as light(s)... kinda like. Marinella Pirelli's colorful cubes, but it was the 1910s (or the 1900s, or the 1890s, or the 1880s, of the 1700s. etc). this is how the Cathedral ended up with her deep red windows (i do not think they are simply stained glass. but something freakier. smirk emoji [cannot elaborate]). of sculpture, he began with a focus on the human body (classically trained), then the human body in relation to buildings (made basically mannequins to gauge size of his structures), then it got weirder. i think he could work with something like Louise Bourgeois' "Maman", but instead of a figurative spider, it is built shaped and experienced like a building. you just have to see it.

¹ i have this because of peter's line in the haruspex route "yeah, you're that salesman who used to sell me excellent drawing paper… You used to cut it wrong though… You started from the wrong end. I thought you were dead though? My brother killed you…" farkhad has never been a salesman. but he did have excellent drawing paper. in my mind's eye multiple characters/people have melted into a single, vaguer memory in peter's head, and the memory he has of farkhad permeates multiple instances of people he killed, got killed, didn't touch,... many such cases

8. what does the key with no lock mean to peter and andrey?

i ♥ key with no lock i ♥ thinking about key with no lock and i ♥ that i don't have any definitive answer, maybe because i don't want one, and maybe even because i don't think the twins have one. i think it is their metaphorical tell-tale heart. they know it's here. they know why it got here (a murder) (it is linked to farkhad). but they don't know how it got here. i don't think they know why a key. but they know they have to keep it. they know they have to keep it and, in the spirit of Buildings being the bond that unites all three of them (peter, andrey, farkhad), it is a key, that might unlock a Building, that binds them beyond death. it is in peter's care, unless he dies: i think it is a representation of a guilt made tangible. made prehensible. made so every lock appear like it could be the one, every door every drawer could blow the lid right off. keeping the key means you keep the secret, and the secret-keeping place or thing closed; but that means there is a lock. or is there? this makes the threat even more heady. haunting. it is guilt made tangible. when peter, he who was bearing most of it alive, dies, the guilt made tangible gets into andrey's hands, who before that lived better with it, because he's killed more, and is more used to killing. they will spend their lives wondering what the key opens, and if it opens anything, they better keep it close to themselves. the key "reflects light at odd angles" in the same was the heart beats under the floorboard: the body was dismembered to be stuffed under the boards, so it shouldn't do that. but it does.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR QUASTION 🫂

question me once more

[maxbanshees]

16 fourfold bullet questions for the fourfold bullet scholars out there

[ask meme or simply something you can reblog with answers in the tags. or however you'd like to answer these.]

what is thanatica?

what is the capital?

any ideas for how that experiment where daniil resurrected a woman went down?

anything that resonated with you in particular from the marble nest?

assuming the world goes on after the game ends, do you think daniil will leave the town? if so, to where?

any ideas for how the stamatins' earlier projects could have looked like?

any ideas for how farkhad's earlier projects could have looked like?

what does the key with no lock mean to peter and andrey?

what do you think is the purpose of farkhad's horizontal architecture?

any idea what will happen to them in the bachelor route?

first impression of farkhad?

recent impressions of farkhad?

first impression of the threefold bullet line?

recent impressions of the threefold bullet line?

pick a barnett newman painting for each of them

[the scariest question of them all] how would you describe their relationships... [including platonic / antagonistic / philosophers with benefits / etc.]

[meirimerens]

3 and 15.... I come to you with knees bent and face turned up to kiss your palms as if in prayer asking for 3 and 15 on the ask meme.....

honestly this ask scared me because i was literally writing a piece of PMPE where it is discussed how the plague in dankovsky's ears sound like psalms and prayers are you in my walls...? oh well that's topical. LET'S GO

3. any ideas for how that experiment where daniil resurrected a woman went down?

love this question love it love it ok so the collective-imaginative vision of the anatomist resurrecting the dead before a crowd is very Victorian, it's very 19th century, at a time where mediums and other spiritualists were a more and more common sight; it's Gothic, it's Frankensteinesque. now, while patho's time period is purposefully ambiguous, many consider it 1910s-ish, with p2 being a little later (possibly closer to 1930s from what we've seen of the bachelor's route behind-the-scenes), so by this time, this type of thing would have been quite passé, and for Dankovsky especially, who's a man of the future, and not of the past, at least as far as medicine goes. the only account of him resurrecting a woman is from Lilich, and in the text it is also mentioned she didn't introduce herself by this name. the canon explanation for this is that puppet-players are not remembering their past games right, and are not weaving a coherent story; but i see this as... dankovsky would not do this kind of thing publicly - again, too Victorian, and with everything that entails; the pompousness, the stuck-upness,, the religiosity, the good mores; he is not of that kind. he would do this privately, he has. privately, perhaps surrounded by his peers at Thanatica, and as such, he remembers there being a woman - not Lilich, not even Karstlich (how she says she introduced herself as then), but his memory faltering¹ he thinks he remembers it. same for Lilich, in her own right: she attended one of his lectures. it did not contain reanimation, it contained something else; but his reputation, preceding and running after him like a bloodhound, has shaped her remembering of it. he has never resurrected a woman, privately or publicly - how so? how come? because he has never defeated death. we begin the game with him desperately trying, because he has always failed before.

¹ this is not faltering. i see it more as closer to greek myths: a single myth will be different from era to era, from storyteller to storyteller, from island to island. they are all true. this is not faltering, this is a truth polymorphic.

15. pick a barnett newman painting for each of them

my favorite question. let's get on with it.

this is Andrey. do you see the un-inked strip? and do you see how the ink seems to bubble up all around it, like festering around a wound, like matter accumulating by the Lack, bubbling up like anger, boiling? this un-inked stripped is what he sees as his Lack. he is the one constantly bringing up peter as his soulmate, them being two sides of a same coin, he is the one who declares the threefold bullet line. he is the one who acts in lack, in order to fill the lack. kill to keep peter close. go forward to bring dankovsky closer. kill a man because you couldn't keep him. matter, his own, and other's, accumulate by the Lack. dead fish where the water has drained.

this is Peter. the twotone is because i think he's bipolar (true fact). it is also because the pitch-black rectangle, the monolith, is the shape of farkhad's grave - it is farkhad's grave. (it is farkhad.) he is the guilt-bearer, he is eaten. half of him eaten by guilt, like taking of his bed. this half would be where he has space for andrey, for dankovsky, for himself expanded, but the murder put in its place the casket. he and andrey have been drifting apart since the murder, peter says of it he has been "hurting for 10 years" because of it, because of andrey's act of it. see how the black monolith encroaches into the lighter ink's space, but the reverse isn't true, because the black of the monolith is so absolute? this is happening to him.

this is Dankovsky. his shape is different from the others, because he is different from the others. he does not quite fit in with the twins. he is in the middle: he is cleaved. he is cleaved because he lacks: his life work has been destroyed, and he is slowly realizing everything is slipping out of his grasp. he is cleaved in two, there is a hollow for a third thing, a third part, a third piece. andrey calls it: molded me, my brother, and you into a single person… The fire of war has molded us into a threefold bullet. dankovsky is cleaved piece into which the already-molded peter and andrey could fit. if they were molded. and andrey, paining peter for years, has quite kept them from being so. dankovsky will keep this cleave, his hollow: he says "keep your dumb head cool", he reins back in. the hollow is fit for grief. at his sides, shadows approach and stand, but do not encroach. still, they threaten. one is bigger, one is seeping out. one grows and swells like an oil spill. (a monolith, baring hazier parts, in the fog of unknownness)

this is farkhad. come then forth thee monolithe... stands tall, pitch-black, front and center, middle. not unlike his grave. on his sides, matter frames him, maybe follows, or threatens him. matter boils, bubbles, or streaks. matter reacts to him, or around him -> the twins. the single white line, maybe the breaking of the bond, or the knife strike. see there, to the right, three lines? they are brackets: } . they are bringing-together brackets. he is the bringer-together... for the better and worse.

this was so fun :3 thank you... [ask me a little something something?]

[maxbanshees]

ohh if not already taken, could I trouble you for your thoughts on 1 and 2 for the fourfold bullet ask? foundational ghost laden entities that they are—

IT IS NO PROBLEM AT ALL thank you for indulging this old man... [gasps reading Foundational ghost laden entities. because they really are. Invisible icebergs behind them and also in their future. or miniature buildings full of people they once knew but can no longer recall the faces of, maybe only names, disembodied names...]

2 was answered here...

1. what is thanatica?

grounded theory: imagine asking a child to describe the workplace of a scientist or a lawyer or a physicist. but instead the profession is "anatomist-slash-fighter-of-death-slash-smart-guy". quite literally this is what i think it is... some kind of ambiguous institution [did he build it? did he inherit it?] for the ambiguous field of thanatology [did he invent it? did he pioneer it?]. is it even a building? could it just have been a basement or like the thanatologist's equivalent of a photographic van at some point? someone's drawing room? letters between colleagues? a bond? Wow this "grounded" theory doesn't sound grounded at all but i think a lot of daniil's character relies on that thin sheet of intellect that covers him [which, directly underneath it has a guy who is only a bachelor, not even a doctor, and other not fully formed things] so.

insane theory: a book.

[axe meme]

[maxbanshees]

6 and 15 for the fourfold bullet asks? I want your Barnett Newman hot takes and also your headcanon on what the fuck the House House was (I personally think it was the house from House of Leaves)

MY TIME HAS COME [stands on stage awkwardly]

6. any ideas for how the stamatins' earlier projects could have looked like?

[I HAVEN'T READ HOUSE OF LEAVES YET SO I CANNOT COMMENT ON THAT IN DEPTH... BUT BASED ON WHAT I KNOW OF IT... *chuckles, is delighted, agrees*]

the house house: oh man. i actually think the house house wasn't that remarkable to the stamatins [just a house within a house, probably with transparent materials like glass, which is technically impressive since there are a lot of unsupported corners, but visually it's quite... well... consistent and unsurprising.]

OR. possibly.

it was something like the melnikov house that features two intersecting cylinders despite using more "mundane" materials like bricks.

BUT. i think it was especially offensive to everyone [in conjunction with all of their works] because it was. extraneous. unnecessary. impractical. or a subversion of what their project implied the Work was going to be for [maybe they had pitched it as modular or divisible apartments that could easily be constructed. and it clearly did not end up being that. it was more like their pet project where they experimented with unconventional bricklaying patterns. which makes more sense for a melnikov house aligned House House. in the case of a glass House House it just. looked like an eyesore idk.]

dancing bridge: cable stayed bridge that sways a lot. or something about it's ornamentation is twisty and bendy.

the downgate & the other stairway round: more experiments in twisty and bendy architecture.

the alley of heroes: this was ignicordia's idea from a few years back, but it's a bunch of empty pedestals Because andrey doesn't have any heroes & has no respect for whoever would have commissioned themselves or their friends to appear as heroes.

the cold hall: the fagus factory but with a lot of cantilevered elements. lots of steel and glass, especially at the corners. like an irregular block of ice. could also be a very narrow hall of marble, so it's quite literally a cold hall, but i don't know... that's too heavy in my opinion for a stamatin work.

15. pick a barnett newman painting for each of them

"In his text "The Ideographic Picture" [Newman] explained his own and his friends' art on the basis of the concept of  the ideograph, that is, a sign, a symbol, or a figure that conjures up an idea without naming it." [x]

these guys and their works are like signs and symbols and figures and canvases that conjure ideas on their flat planes so. well. [forgets where i was going with this, wanders directly into pothole]

peter: cathedra. [the vertical, towering, and... secular? polyhedron. and the counterpart it outshines (the cathedral, the earth, andrey, etc.)]

andrey: the third, tertia, and triad [well.]

farkhad [CHAOS CHOICE]: rothko chapel by. rothko.

daniil: adam [technically the subject/act of exploration in these paintings could better be applied to the stamatins ("Adam, by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, sought the creative life to be, like God, ‘a creator of worlds’") but seeing adam (an origin point of something) and black and red, with three red bands in specific, or four black bands, makes me. well. think of. daniel. and fourfold bullet. (EDIT: there are only three black bands idk how i saw four)

[axe meme]

[maxbanshees]

2 & 7 for the fourfold bullet asks!!!

YIPEE oh we matched with questions 1 and 2 in a way... yayy

2. what is the capital?

grounded theory: a nondescript large city. The city over there. a city that is not like the town on gorkhon. petrograd / st. petersburg. possibly even a city in mainland europe like paris. the location where some characters, like daniil or victor or aglaya the stamatins, can be young and ambitious and even larger than life, though not in the same way that they are in the town. the town where the protagonist/hero meets his first influential teachers and gets into his first barfights, but which is never seen in the text itself [or is covered in a dreamlike, transient way]

insane theory: the capital letter at the start of a sentence.

7. any ideas for how farkhad's earlier projects could have looked like?

yes. [looks haunted] i think he was a sort of craftsman. maybe a stonemason like in the original texts, or a woodworker. maybe this was in the family. so his earliest projects might actually have been in those crafts, and were done when he was younger, before he got fully into architecture. maybe he was just a boy in his father's woodworking shop making a chair and then model houses!

but well if we're talking architectural works. i think... the stillwater and the cathedral show an oscillation between... forward thinking experimentation and tradition of a sort (even if a secular cathedral is subversive... in form and presence it's very traditional, or at least pays homage to Tradition, or utilizes Tradition)

both works are still linked by their connection to the earth and horizontality, though, so.... his earlier work could oscillate between tradition & service [religious commissions, like church restorations, the construction of small chapels, apartment blocks, lighthouses, factories might be of special interest to him because of the demands from the workers and owners for how the inside is laid out & the flexibility that the outside/nonworking spaces would grant him], & personal experimentation [erm... maybe still conservative, like miniaturizations & studies of / riffs on portions of larger buildings, like just reconstructing pieces of the alhambra, ex.: the court of the myrtles. for fun. and for enrichment.]

[axe meme]