[Stage #1]: This is a weekly puzzle, there must be a trick to it. Of course they wouldn't give us metrics with a simple to obtain optimal solution, as that would result in a bunch of ties and thus unsatisfying competition results. There has to be a catch hidden somewhere that separates the bad submissions from the good ones
[Stage #2]: I just got 23 area, maybe there is no trick and that's the reason this is a weekly puzzle instead of a tournament one, as it wasn't good enough for a tournament? If only took me 15 years to get to 23 that must mean that dropping extra area is easy, right? Right? Obviously you need 19 area just for the input, output and glyphs, and an extra 2 area for arms, since 1 arm isn't enough to utilize animismus, bringing us to a theory min area of 21. This initial solve burns 2 area on the left because the bonder is placed up left of the mors so you're placing the input at an inefficient diagonal. Now, if you treat this as a height solve and slide it in from the right, then...
[Stage #3]: Maybe the trick is that burning 0 area is impossible. None of these layouts seem promising, there's always something going wrong. Its just that both bonder rotations (up-left and up-right) end up with an empty spaaace or two left of the bonder that you need to fill with SOMETHING and if you place the animismus there you need to place the second arm in a weird place and it doesn't work because every arm location comes with a million different problems
[Stage #4]: Screw that I just got it get bent i found the layout. I'm gonna get min primary, I'm gonna be happy and I'm going to get a good score on the leaderboard if I just code this in an efficient way and [Stage #5]: It doesn't work it doesn't work it doesn't work because the arm is in the place where you'd bond with the chonky earth and if you move it that breaks everything so you need an entirely different layout and this puzzle sucks everything sucks how the hell do you get to 21 area
[Stage #6]: If you place the bonder tilted left you could place the earth input on the left of the bonder and then use suppression to get that earth out of the way and this actually could work, maybe the trick that makes this a tournament puzzle is that you need suppression to get to the min primary and now that I've figured it out i just need to fix this current idea a little bit and ill have this metric in the bag
[Stage #7]: Whoever made this puzzle is evil who made this puzzle kazyan made it kazyan I hate you. Its been 4 days and all I have is a 15 year solve that burns 2 area I've spent hours on the puzzle and every layout I try turns out to have something wrong with it this puzzle is impossible.
[Stage #8]: You have to burn 1 area maybe that's the gimmick its what gives you extra wiggle room to make cycle optimization interesting. Getting to theory min looks more and more impossible by the second, maybe if i just accept that 21 is not possible and settle for 22 i could get a really good solve out with my remaining time and then be happy with it and if 21 turns out to be possible after all I'll be okay with that
[Stage#9]: 22 area is still really hard to find a solution for much less a hard one. I feel like I'm trying to solve curious lipstick again, where every layout I try is just slightly off and has 1 minor issue that ruins everything. 
[Stage #10]: Fuck this puzzle fuck everything this solve only has 1 arm instead of 2 or 3 so its a bad secondary but its good enough of a solve and I'm proud of it I'm gonna send it and get 13th place and that's fine

TL;DR: 10/10 puzzle, I wish good luck to everyone who took part this week and am excited to see the 9 faster 22 area solve and 6 21 area solves immediately after this one