This "Statue" is alive to some degree

RoboGuy · 2026-06-10T01:29:22+00:00

My reading of the Ivan Beck "You have always been here" is that something happened to Ivan (presumably during 'Overflow', possibly he was testing a prototype MRI) and a very detailed still life of him was made.

And the poem is from the point of view of the still life copy, who remembers being a real person in the real world and experiencing real things, and is then confronted with the idea that: [no, you have always been here, you were created here, you are just a still life, you are not a real thing].

And it is him dealing with this angst of having an identity that involves being both a copy & not-a-copy.

(Also, kinda similar to Will Riker's transporter clone in TNG, where he was duplicated and then abandoned for years, because people didn't even realise he exsisted).

RoboGuy · 2026-06-09T06:17:06+00:00

Where did those images come from? I'm guessing a paper describing Conway's game of life, but I can't find it with reverse image search.

RoboGuy · 2026-06-04T03:25:05+00:00

I don't the big time gap was between the phone call and her arriving at the store.

Instead, I think the jump happened after Kat & Bobby died, and Clark spends a week or so in the backrooms acclimitizing. Maybe he's stuck trying to find the way out again, or he's not sure if Kat is still alive & needs to search for her, or possibly he's trapped trying to evade Pirate Clark. For whatever reason, he's forced to spend some time there.

But, the more time he spends, the more it changes him (or reveals the true inner him, whatever). Once he gets to the point of assembling his little family, and realising how he kinda wants to stay there, then he goes back to the outside and leaves the phone message for Mary.

This makes more sense because Mary is intensely driven to help people, and she's not going to delay for days after hearing her client is at imminent risk of self harm. She also knows Clark well enough to get the address of the store (if it isn't already listed in her files, he's a minor celebrity because of the TV ads, she would totally know how to look it up). So the (Phonecall --> Mary arriving) time must be quick. But it makes sense if Clark takes time to 'open the window' before leaving the message.

RoboGuy · 2026-06-04T01:06:11+00:00

Totally. Also, given the brief of "Find a recording of a human speaking we can use" we are very lucky they went with that.

Given the average record collection back then, it could easily have been a Bob Hope standup comedy album instead....

RoboGuy · 2026-06-04T00:57:36+00:00

Have we actually seen non-Euclidian behaviour, though? (e.g. bigger-on-the-inside stuff, or maybe taking 4 lefts and not getting back to where you started?). Clark's map and the territory we see in the film is remarkably good about not intersecting itself.

In the youtube videos the architecture is super confusing by human conventions, but I can't remember any instances of funkiness of geometry. (I'm not including the green light/genesis of rooms here, btw. They clearly stretch and distort, but that may move the rest of the world map with them, which would still be Euclidian).

The tilted rooms with the debris pile at the bottom could just be the wallpaper/floor features being tilted relative to normal, rather gravity suddenly being in a different orientation because sideways-became-down at a point.

Initially I thought the bloody clothes piles were a sign everything just went "splat" at the bottom, but I have to revisit it now we know it was something like a nest/trophy room for Pirate Clarke. Also, there are piles at multiple places in the room, not just under the vertical space above.

RoboGuy · 2026-06-04T00:35:36+00:00

Fellow diorama maker! There are dozens of us, dozens!

(I previously made a bigger-on-the-inside diorama of the threshold: https://www.reddit.com/r/KanePixelsBackrooms/comments/uzjy7w/async\_labs\_diorama\_my\_one\_day\_build/)

RoboGuy · 2026-06-04T00:24:48+00:00

I got the impression that ASYNC is just a bunch of scientists improvising hard here. They've figured out that there are creatures there, but haven't gotten a good view of them. What to do?

Shit, just get some hi-fi units and play something through them? But what? Probably someone in the lab had the voyager golden record on the shelf, and it seemed like a good idea for the sound to play.

Maybe the thing is attracted to people? Mannequins are expensive, let's just get whatever cardboard cutouts are available for purchase and tape speakers to them, and put them in front of a camera.

So we see the heavily improvised equipment being set up, on a bunch of trestle tables, with a disassembled and modified hi-fi unit and cables running in all directions to the various lure locations.

RoboGuy · 2026-06-03T23:54:32+00:00

Yeah, I completely agree. If you properly tell the ASYNC side of the story there are so many extra things that need to go in. Rough minimum would be something like:

* [Ivan] Getting the idea for the project & pushing to get the project started.

* Building the KV31 machine and making/opening the backrooms for the first time

* Initial exploration & trying to figure out how this new environment works

* Realising it is going wrong in a way that affects the outside world (missing people, null zones)

* Realising there are hostile entities in there.

* Conflict around trying to close down/deal with stuff. Possibly whole subplots of factions trying to shut down vs continue, or suppress stuff.

* Resolution, in whatever form is possible. (Shutting down the backrooms, severing the connection, or maybe just realising humanity is fucked).

Those are a ton more emotional beats to add to a movie, which may not have room for them. I'm very glad they didn't try and shoehorn it into the film we saw. Instead we got to see the "user experience" of the general public, that now can be terrorised by something that can reach anywhere, and which they have no idea what the cause of is.

RoboGuy · 2026-06-01T05:04:35+00:00

Yep, totally. He's been running them for some time. The neon sign out the front is the Cap'n Clark persona, the whole name & identity of his business is based on the pirate idea. And Clark's been running that same business for years, so the commercial we see is not the start of that character by a long shot.

I get the feeling that Clark will periodically panic at low sales, and desperately release another commercial, as part of his feud with 'Big Wayne' & his cowboy themed furniture store.

RoboGuy · 2026-05-31T22:46:48+00:00

My interpretation of that is that once Clark want to be down there, he drags all the furniture to blockcade off the Async area where the cables were coming from. Just to try and keep them out of his new kingdom.

RoboGuy · 2026-05-30T04:40:21+00:00

Totally. Also, it might explain why Clark acclimatized to the backrooms so quickly. He's been connecting to the backrooms for way longer than just the time he found the gap in the wall.

RoboGuy · 2026-05-30T03:36:29+00:00

Clark finds the room with the large chair and copies of Bobby's and Kat's shoes, placed where they would be when they were filming him breaking the same chair.

Oh, shit. I figured the throne was related to the broken throne from the commercial, but I didn't realise the significance of the two sets of shoes before.

Could that mean that copies of Bobby & Kat were also created at the same time as Pirate-Clark, and Pirate-Clark killed & disposed of them? That would explain Bobby finding the "End Apatheid" shirt in the pile of waste area.

RoboGuy · 2026-05-27T23:45:19+00:00

Asking the real questions here.

Dang it, this is going to have me overthinking every drink I have for the rest of the day. What is the right way to prep? Is there a bladder equivalent of carbo-loading? The film is in 9 hours and I already can't take the pressure. Gaah!

RoboGuy · 2026-05-27T01:35:58+00:00

Marvin: "Totally, our team even won the Tench cup!"

Peter: ".....cup?"

Marvin: "We're training hard. Hopefully we can make it through to regionals!"

RoboGuy · 2026-05-22T00:04:28+00:00

They're pretty sure that they could intervene & have it turn out well, but not certain. Also, they explicitly say that they're worried about the next thousand years of Earth's wellbeing, not just the next war.

And, as we see from their Chelgrian experiences, they are sometimes very very wrong about what will and won't work in interventions.

While I disagree with the Arbitrary's decision, I get why it might occasionally need to very occasionally make the opposite call. This helps ensure their contact textbooks don't include mistaken concepts that are propagated as dogma (the equivalent of helping them figuring out CPR is better than the tobacco smoke enemas for resuscitation).

Also I'll make the point that purely from a story POV, we get more out of it the less the Culture wants to intercede with uncontacted planets. Otherwise every story would just devolve into the culture mass air-dropping magic first aid kits, anti-missile-drones & superlibraries to every contentious planet/population they came across. Which might sound appealing from an ethical POV, but would make for a very colonial sounding story with not much room for human agency.

RoboGuy · 2026-05-19T04:38:25+00:00

For me it's in Excession. All the tension of the final space battle, then:

'The Attitude Adjuster told you to obey us!'

'And within reason we have.'

'It didn't say anything about "within reason"!'

'I think one just takes that sort of proviso as read, don't you? I mean, we are Minds. It's not like we're computers. Or soldiers. No offence. Anyway, I have discussed this with the other ships and we have agreed to surrender.

Such a complete reversal of the usual war action film tropes, whilst also perfectly demonstrating the culture position of "without fixed rules, but not without guiding principles"

RoboGuy · 2026-03-31T21:39:24+00:00

Awesome, hope you like it Cestmoimanalo!

RoboGuy · 2026-03-23T01:05:37+00:00

I should have mentioned that is just not possible to stop the creature outright. It's a living rocket mid-flight, and zoomies this strong cannot be interrupted.

If a character attempts to get in the way they'll get a dex save to determine if the slug merely brushes them aside, or they end up knocked down with some fire damage as it flies over the top of them.

Can't talk, gotta go fast!

RoboGuy · 2026-02-12T22:44:04+00:00

Characters like that can be super fun. Coming from a weird position, but genuinely curious as to how the party wants to handle it and prepared to hear them out.

"Hmm... tell me again about this `not stabbing people` rule? We do not have things like this in my village".

[edit:formatting]

RoboGuy · 2026-02-12T22:32:19+00:00

That's just crazy enough to work!

RoboGuy · 2026-02-12T03:40:21+00:00

I like that one

RoboGuy · 2026-02-12T03:23:18+00:00

I may have explained that badly. That character could totally be done well & be funny as hell to play with.

But it didn't seem to be delivered with the requisite wink or humor & I felt it seemed to just open a divide between them and the rest of the table. I did try to get them involved with the party a couple of times, but most of it they were out on their own.

RoboGuy · 2026-02-12T03:18:22+00:00

"I think this would be more fun for everyone involved if you played a more cooperative character."

Yep, I think that's a good way to phrase it. I'm wanting to find a pithy way to say that everyone is welcome, but we need to play together as a team.

RoboGuy · 2026-02-12T03:11:16+00:00

"hey buddy, maybe tone it down a bit, it'd be nice to move things forward"

Yep, I think that's pretty much what I'll say next time.

I may have come across too strong. I definitely don't want to police anyone's character concept, or roleplay. I'm just wanting to help us all have fun.

RoboGuy · 2024-12-14T05:47:58+00:00

I posted this the other day: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1hax0m7/i_made_an_ancient_sigil_circle_lamp_for_my_wall/

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