Finally finished with Sacred and Terrible Air, anybody here can help explain stuff?

3 months ago by Wrufieotnak to c/discoelysium

Now I'm finally finished with this book, I read the Team Ibex translation. While it was interesting, I had multiple question marks after reading. As I now learned from reading TvTropes that this was supposed to be the prologue for a whole series, making me interested in the world was probably the goal. But do we have nowadays any more information regarding some plot points?

First, which English translation is considered better in your eyes? I only read this one and while my confusions might stem from that translation, I didn't exactly like the book well enough to read the other translation to check.

Now to the plot points:

What happened to the girls? In TvTropes its said they run away? I never picked up anything like that while reading. For me it was an undisclosed mystery all the time.
was there any mention in DE of the total end behind the pale, the Rodionov trench?
also how did Rodionov know about all the future stuff? Is it supposed to be like in Asimov's Foundation: everything is just mathematics in the end and with the correct formula, you can calculate the world's trajectory?
What happened with Jesper leaving Khan? As Jesper is going North, I do not really share Khans assumption that it was too much for Jesper. As prologue of the series it probably was supposed to set up the protagonist trio and then distribute them all on different paths.
Are the girls similar to Innocents (with capital I)? Or is there any explanation why they have such a strange connection to the pale that the text directly says that Zigi gained pale related superpowers from their vanishing? And they realized "something is going wrong"? Wrong compared to what?
also regarding the Innocents: What exactly is the connection between the Pale and the Innocents? From DE I got more the feeling that they were mystically connected to human thought, but here Saint Ambrosius says human nihilism brought him into being. But at least the people shown in the books weren't exactly nihilistic. I mean even Ziki didn't seem to really believe it in my eyes. So to me it read more like a normal "crazy person in a position of absolute power in a nuclear armed theocratic country" instead of the mystical "advances human technology and thought simply by existing" that I remember about Dolores Dei.
I remember that there was this one fact sheet from the start of DE development that explained the Innocents as beings who receive future thoughts and technologies through the pale. But I'm sure it also said that those were only earlier ideas and they scrapped that. But since DE started development after the book, does it hold true here? So does that mean its a closed loop time travel? People in the future are nihilistic, because SoMeBoDy is nuclear carpet bombing the world while simultaneously the world is getting memory wiped and these thoughts then influence a certain person to start sending out Easter eggs for the whole worldin the first place?
And on that topic: why is the genocidal campaign of Ambrosius advancing the Pale? I thought the Pale was Human thought or rather the combined human remembering of the past. By eliminating humans, shouldn't that instead stop the Pale, since there are less humans who can remember?

So in general: I don't think my time was wasted reading the book, but I also wouldn't really recommend it to anybody but hardcore fans.

alb 3 points 2 months ago

First, which English translation is considered better in your eyes?

I read the group tauri(?) one first, and like you I was confused and weirdly upset when I finished it. I guess I just really wanted closure. Then I discovered the team Ibex translation and read that immediately afterwards.
As to which one is better, I wanna say team Ibex, but it's hard to give an objective assessment seeing how I read it after already reading the first, and a second reading in general really helped me with this book, especially with its wildly non-linear structure.

What happened to the girls?

I saw a lot of fan theories online. I don't like headcannon and was trying to find specifically anything backed up by evidence or allusions in the book. I don't know what happened, but I think after their disappearances they've been becoming a non-entity.
You mentioned the image that the agent showed Tereesz near the end of book. The agent was very clear that he had the image developed several times, and the negatives forensically tested, to make sure they weren't tampered with, and yet the girls disappeared from them. Even their own mother didn't have pictures of them in her house, and when the boys visited her she was staring oddly at the pictures of the girls that Tereesz gave her like she was trying to remember them.
I think the girls are literally being wiped from history, as to how? Probably something tied to the Pale.
The book has a short chapter explaining the concept of a non-entity, how sometimes it's deliberately initiated by people, I think Rodionov and co were investigating it.
Ignus Nilsen seems to have been interested in the concept, he even has a model of the Harnankur placed in a museum where dozens of eyes are looking at it constantly 24 hours a day, because almost everything related to Harnankur has disappeared, including (at the end of the book) the only other remaining model which Khan had.
So whether they escaped or just vanished and got swallowed by the Pale isn't clear, but what is clear is that they're slowly becoming non-entities.

What happened with Jesper leaving Khan?

I think he just decided to finally forget the girls.
This part describes the self-chiller (awesome character btw) doing his thing when Khan and Tereesz met him, "The only sign of life in the lifeless tableau of the Lund children is the eerie, impossible memory of someone named Jesper.". I assume the self-chiller has some sort of ability to find things through the pale, and the only thing he could find about the Lund girls at that moment was the memories of Jesper who was surfing dozens of kilometers away.
The game (and the book I think) both describe the pale as being the memory of the world, which ties to the concept of non-entity.

why is the genocidal campaign of Ambrosius advancing the Pale?

I'm not sure I can answer this but there is a part in the book that might give us some insight here. When Zigi was talking to Ignus Nilsen in the Pale, and Ignus started describing comradery and cooperation in building a state, for a moment Zigi's chest lit up and the Pale receded around him. I'm not sure if this means Nihilism causes the Pale to advance and Communism is supposed to cause it to recede, or maybe this is just my naive and simplistic interpretation.

I also wouldn’t really recommend it to anybody but hardcore fans.

Honestly, I think I have very mixed feelings about the book. For one it's an enjoyable world with interesting characters, but the hard and depressing tones really put me down when reading it, maybe I'm just an overly empathetic creature.
The lack of closure was also disappointing, I know it was an introduction to a series of novels, but that doesn't change the fact that we don't have those novels and probably never will. So we're left with lack of closure.

Like I said I don't necessarily like headcannon and speculation so I tried to tie things from information found in the book itself. Some of these I definitely didn't notice myself and found them online. One particular source that I liked a lot -because they just tried to explain the book in simpler terms without speculation- was this 3 episode long podcast, this link is the first episode.

The book gave me very different vibes than the game to the point that I sometimes forgot they're related. The book was very depressing to the point that the author dedicated an entire chapter tying up secondary and tertiary characters and none of them seemed to have a happy ending.
If it ever continues I'd be most interested in seeing what both Khan and Zigi do.

I was very happy to see this thread tbh, since when I read the book most content I could find about it online was months if not years old, I was hoping for a lively discussion.
Sorry for the wall of text.
Also Khan is GOAT.
I keep adding things but here's a nice song.

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Wrufieotnak 2 points 2 months ago

Thanks for the detailed answer!

As far as I understood it, the self chiller can talk to the memory of deceased persons in the Pale. But if they are not dead, he can't get in contact with them. Thus proving that the girls are not dead.

And interesting part about communism rejecting the pale, I somehow missed that part. But it would fit to the communism side quest in the game. Strong enough conviction, like belief in communism, can reshape reality and therefore can also counter the Pale.

I will check out the podcast when I have time, thanks for linking it!

And yeah the game is melancholic but optimistic, but the book very much makes it clear to the reader, that the world is going down. Maybe to increase the stakes when it is saved in the finale, but somehow it never felt like a book about saving the world. Like Disco Elysium, it felt more about the personal stories of some "normal" people in a big world and they aren't in positions to change it.

And Khan felt very much like the main character of the trio to me as well. And I found fascinating how much of his behaviour fits to ADHD, including his reaction to calm down when taking amphetamine. Its surprising how much understanding the author has about drug effects, here and in the game.

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alb 3 points 2 months ago

but the book very much makes it clear to the reader, that the world is going down

Yeah, Revachol being nuked, and the pale consuming Vaasa really made the world seem grim and hopeless. Also would have been interesting to see what the Saint Ambrosius would do, whether he's a real innocence or another imposter, and how far would Mesque go in their war. I read somewhere online that there's a shivers check in the game where Harry can sense that Revachol would be destroyed in 20 years, I never found it personally.
Other than the war, the book seemed to end by setting up Khan and Zigi's missions. Felt like the whole book was just a prologue to their respective quests. Now I'm not sure who controls the IP of Elysium and whether Kurvitz' next game is even set in the same world or if they're creating a new setting.

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Wrufieotnak 2 points 2 months ago

I didn't get the Shivers check myself, but it is during the dance scene in the church.

Why do you think he is "another imposter"? I don't remember either the book or the game talking about successful innocent imposters.

I think all 3 boy protagonists would have their own journey in addition to Zigi.

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alb 2 points 2 months ago

Why do you think he is “another imposter”? I don’t remember either the book or the game talking about successful innocent imposters.

The glossary of the tauri translation of the book mentions that there have been 6 elected innocences but only 4 of them were legitimate. So I think it's possible for someone to claim to be an innocence but isn't. Maybe the word imposter isn't the right word to use here.

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Fuckfuckmyfuckingass 3 points 3 months ago

I wasn't aware about the fan translation, so thanks for the tip. I just finished reading it.

I found it to be a great read. A little hard to follow at times, but I managed. I only played through DE once a few years ago. I think I'll need to do another play through soon.

I think what happened with the girls isn't really important or the point of the story. They're more of a device to drive the plot, but also to highlight how time and space and history are fracturing. At one point that detective show Teezerjek a picture of the boys without the girls implying it was all a fantasy, but I think the pale changed the past. Like they had dropped out of the timeline even before they disappeared.

I'm a huge fan of the world and the writing style. I think it really captures something true about the nature of reality. Nothing matters and we're all going to die, but it's also the most beautiful thing there is, because it's all there is.

Wish I had more to discuss, I'm still digesting.

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Wrufieotnak 3 points 3 months ago

Oh they definitely know the pale is altering the past by removing things from reality altogether.

That was the reason why Khan was told to always think about the airship model to stop it from disappearing. As its a model of the real airship that vanished in the pale, it shouldn't exist at all and reality tries to remove it. Same thing that is happening to the girls: they refer to the hairband losing its smell, the picture not having them on it and also even the mother forgetting them. Its implied to me that only the strong connection that the 3 boys have and remember them is stopping them from completely disappearing like the airship. But as Khan gets told in his dreams: its painful to the girls to stay in this in between state.

I'm interested if you have more to discuss Later, I will get a notification here if you leave another comment.

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Fuckfuckmyfuckingass 3 points 3 months ago

Folks have a lot of interesting thoughts in this thread from the bad website:

https://www.reddit.com/...

I think I need to read the text again. People are talking about a lot of things that just glossed over me. I'm usually pretty good at following open ended stream of consciousness writing. Maybe it's the translation. There's just so many little details that seem like irrelevant fluff, but everything has meaning. I really hope that more is written in this universe.

On the point about the pale and why it would grow stronger even as people are dying.

I always kind of took the pale to be a metaphor for climate change. The way the Phasmid at the end of DE talks about it, made me think that.

The war is a product of the pale's expansion and the pale's expansion is a product of humanity's destructive urges. It's a feedback loop. Kind of like how as climate change gets worse, more conflict erupts, which makes more climate change.

I've had this thought for a while now about how perfectly an ecosystem, or any system at that scale, falls apart once the lynch-pin has been pulled. Like a house of cards or dominoes falling one after another. It's chaos and entropy, but it's perfect in its unraveling. Like a machine.

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