Jul 10, 2023
To:minatika
I think this is a fun question to overexplain, so I’m going to do it (apologies, apologies). Most ’physiological’ phenomena a Chain experiences are purely psychological (from eating to sleeping to sweating to breathing), and they’re drawn from the Chain’s personal experiences of what those phenomena feel like; that would include drunkenness. Which is to say… it massively depends whether or not a Chain can get drunk. For example, Layn can’t properly get drunk because he’s never been drunk before and doesn’t know what it’s like; this was only lightly implied in an earlier chapter, but he wasn’t quite at a legal drinking age yet in his original life, and neither was he the type to indulge in much underage drinking. At best, he may be able to subconciously induce a state mimicking what he imagines drunkenness to be like, but not the real thing. Selina, on the other hand, can get drunk, but she also has enough control over her body to eliminate that sensation if she wanted. Despite having lived nearly as long as a Chain as she did an ordinary human, she still instinctually feels a lot of natural phenonemon, but she can also quite literally cut off those sensations on command.
Alcohol itself (or, actually, anything they consume) isn’t properly processed like it would be for a human. Their bodies are very close to ordinary humans in appearance and how they experience the world from their perspective, but when it comes to internal workings, they just… don’t work, usually. Like, all of their organs might be in there, but most of them won’t do anything. All manifestations are based on familiarity, and while most people are very familiar with the outside of the body and what it feels like to be in one, the specific workings of the insides are a mystery to most people (I guess this means a doctor or something would have a more accurate internal body, but for 99% of Chains, this is how it would be). As for where food and drink goes… this requires a bit more suspension of disbelief for convenience, but I’m going to say the answer to that is something simple like their manifestation absorbs it because that’s how their concept of digestion operates. They’d still get the urge to use the bathroom, but it wouldn’t actually be necessary to survive (just like the eating).
I wrote this reply on mobile, so I have no idea exactky how astoundingly long it probably is. But overanalyzing questions I’d never get a chance to answer in-text? What a golden opportunity.
Oh, and I’m quite enjoying your novel so far! It’ll be relatively easy to keep up once I get caught up, so I’m going through it in short bursts. It’s witty, very well-paced, and I love how it’s structured, seeing Jun grow into a person deserving of this love life as he’s striving to create it. It’s very good 👍
