User:Tepples/What Pinocchio eats

In the fictional universe of the game being designed by Cireclinlin members, the character Pino is a mass-produced autonomous puppet who refers to Pinocchio from Carlo Collodi's 1880s novel The Adventures of Pinocchio as his "prototype". This means clues to the physiology of autonomous puppets can be found there.

Questions with answers
Remember to answer from Collodi's novel, not any animated or live-action film adaptation.

What does Pinocchio eat?
"He ran about the room, dug in all the boxes and drawers, and even looked under the bed in search of a piece of bread, hard though it might be, or a cookie, or perhaps a bit of fish. A bone left by a dog would have tasted good to him! But he found nothing." (Chapter 4)

He wastes as little as a villager in Nintendo's Animal Crossing: "Pinocchio had eaten the three pears, or rather devoured them. [...] one after another, the skins and the cores disappeared." (Chapter 7)

At Red Lobster, Pinocchio "asked for a bite of bread and a few nuts and then hardly touched them" because he was preoccupied with Fox's Ponzi scheme. (Chapter 13)

Pinocchio's rush meter is empty after seven miles. (Chapter 14)

His system digests sugar, but he can smell a bitter compound in a medication. (Chapter 17) "The Marionette had always hated chick-peas. According to him, they had always made him sick; but that night he ate them with a relish." (Chapter 23) Supertaster much? "Chick-peas" may actually be vetches. I'm not sure what "relish" (strippapelle) means, but I'll assume it has nothing to do with pickle sauce. Pinocchio is black comedy, but it's not quite the punfest of Cyanide & Happiness.

He has gone at least 24 hours without food. (Chapter 24)

How agile is he?
Very soon after he was assembled, he was doing parkour. "In his wild flight, he leaped over brambles and bushes, and across brooks and ponds, as if he were a goat or a hare chased by hounds." (Chapter 4)

How tough is he?
His jaws are strong enough to hold onto coins despite being shaken during an assault. (Chapter 14)

He's not actually pine. Though pine is considered soft wood, "Pinocchio was made of very hard wood" hard enough to resist a knife to the back. (Chapter 15)

His neck is strong enough to hold him together for three hours when assailants incompetently attempt to hang him by tying a rope around his neck and raising it. (A real hanging includes a drop in order to snap the neck through deceleration.) Only when combined with stress from swinging in a strong wind does the neck give way enough to cause Pinocchio to black out. (Chapter 15) Given oxygen, he comes to. (Chapter 16)

How expressive is his face?
Pinocchio lacks pinnae (external ears). "The little old man wanted to pull Pinocchio's ears. Think how he felt when, upon searching for them, he discovered that he had forgotten to make them!" (Chapter 3)

Yet his mouth can widen, unlike that of a ventriloquist's dummy. "The only relief poor Pinocchio had was to yawn; and he certainly did yawn, such a big yawn that his mouth stretched out to the tips of his ears." (Chapter 5)

What makes the nose grow?
Not just lies, but apparently any serious stress. "Poor Pinocchio ran to the fireplace where the pot was boiling and stretched out his hand to take the cover off, but to his amazement the pot was only painted! Think how he felt! His long nose became at least two inches longer." (Chapter 5)

Later on, he lies about where he had hidden Fire-eater's money, presumably because he's so embarrassed that he had been swindled out of it. The nose stays long for hours afterward, but he doesn't writhe in pain as woodpeckers trim it down. (Chapter 18) And unlike in Pinocchio's Christmas, Emperor of the Night, and the 1996 film with Jonathan Taylor Thomas, there's no retraction upon telling the truth.

An article by Adnan Bey explains how even Walt Disney Pictures' 1940 animated adaptation agrees with this interpretation. In the cage scene, Pinocchio relates the story from his point of view: he had met "two monsters" (Fox and Fire-eater), one of whom confined him and threatened to chop him into firewood. None of this is clearly a lie, especially compared to the lie in the novel about the money. Yet his nose grows due to the stress of having to recall recent events. This is consistent with former FBI body language expert Joe Navarro's observation that tells in body language indicate not dishonesty as much as discomfort. Yet the Fairy tells Pinocchio that the tropism is instead caused specifically by dishonesty, making her the real liar in the scene.

How effectively can he be repaired?
"Geppetto stuck on the two feet with a bit of glue melted in an eggshell, doing his work so well that the joint could hardly be seen. As soon as the Marionette felt his new feet, he gave one leap from the table and started to skip and jump around, as if he had lost his head from very joy." (Chapter 8)

Are there others like him?
Other marionettes on the stage greet him. (Reread chapter 10 for how to play this. I was distracted by the appearance in the translation on English Wikisource of a Disney character's name that did not appear in the original in Italian Wikisource.)

What else was dug up?
Fire Eater sneezes when sad. (Chapter 11)

The Fairy's animal assistants can't feel a pulse in Pinocchio. (Chapter 16) Does this mean his blood, sap, or whatever flows continuously? Yet a fever can be felt on the head. (Chapter 17)

The cricket doesn't actually die in chapter 4. He reappears briefly in chapter 13, and by the time Pinocchio needs medical attention, the cricket claims to "have known him a long time!" (Chapter 16)

As in mammals, his eyes produce tears. (Chapter 16)

His shoes aren't painted on. He can remove them to water an alleged money tree. (Chapter 18)

Perhaps consistency isn't intended: "Pinocchio jumped on the Pigeon's back and [...] The Pigeon flew away" (Chapter 23) A pigeon can carry the weight of a 3-foot-tall marionette.


 * Continue rereading starting at chapter 24

Questions without answers
Some may be answered later in the reread


 * In Chapter 3, he talks even before being carved. What enables that?
 * In Chapter 10, how do the other marionettes (or, rather, Fire Eater as their puppeteer) already know Pinocchio's name?
 * How durable is he? I've seen a video of a rifle bullet going through soft wood.[citation needed from YouTube]