#but either way!! we will learn!

[nemaliwrites]

happened upon this article today, and damn if it didn't get me thinking

i've wondered a lot before about how the same story can be told through different mediums [which primarily can be seen through adaptations] but one thing i don't spend enough time thinking about is how the same story can be told through different word counts

i know people always are like 'a story is as long as it needs to be' but...is it?

i've technically run this experiment a few years ago, with Regrowth at exactly 100 words and Reduce, Reuse, Regrow at over 6000. honestly, it was kind of a fascinating experiment because....are they the same story? really? i guess at their core, you could argue that the plot is the exact same. tldr: giorno turns drug dealers into flowers. and that happens in both versions.

but there is no character in the drabble version, for the OCs and others. we don't get a sense of who giorno is in this story and why he's doing this - all we have to go off of is who he is in canon. we have no idea who tf marco [is that his name? i'm not rereading that to find out LOL] is - versus in the longer version we know about his connection to his family, his botanical garden, the plants he grows, etc. we know about his crush on Sofia. we know that mista saves him, which means giorno thinks he's someone worthy of being saved.

same thing for the police - they don't even get names in the drabble, compared to the names and personalities they're awarded in the longer version.

so...are they the same story?

i've been wondering [and by been wondering i mean i literally thought of this like an hour ago hehe] about how that can apply to other things as well, and this article is a terrific starting point. if you write your longfic as a oneshot, you have to pare down everything that 'doesn't matter' - which i'm using loosely, because as we've established, there are things important to a story that aren't just plot events. but you get such a clear distinction: what are the subplots vs the main plot? who are the side characters vs the main characters? if you have multiple antagonists, who is the one who drives the story primarily? without whom the story cannot exist any longer?

i wonder too if this, in a way, can kind of call back to the snowflake method - which i admittedly have never used but can see how it would be helpful. if you start small, let's say you write your story as a drabble. double it, and double it again. a few more times, and you have something short story length. then novella length. then novel length.

it could also be a way to literally build your story up piece by piece. okay, so you need a couple thousand more words. sure, you could just add a bunch of fluff or 'filler' - or, you could add in a subplot. you could add in a character that is integral to the story. and if you go the other way - from novel to drabble - and can't write a short story without that character, then you know how important they are.

in this way, you can kind of pare everything down to its barest bones, actually. character motivations, stakes, setting.....everything is tied together, which means changing one changes them all.

maybe at some point, you literally get to a point where you can't add anything else - and maybe that's where the story is as long as it needs to be. vice versa, too.

i will run this experiment a few more times and report back o7

[ryssbelle]

Drew a bunch of Marinettes in a bunch of different artists styles it was a lot of fun!!

Artists who's styles I mimicked: @buggachat @hamsternamedmarinette @ladybeug @sabertoothwalrus and @anna-scribbles all epic artists 🤟😎

[egophiliac]

Sorry, most likely my memory being poor, but I thought Malleus' mom (don't know how to spell her name and too lazy to check how to spell it) was already an adult when Lilia ""proposed""?? Like I was always under the assumption that it was like a one-sided child crush on somebody completely out of your league you tend to have as a kid 💀

I don't think they say how old she was? although it's entirely possible I just misunderstood; my Japanese is...shaky. :') the actual line is "幼い頃に私に求婚したのは偽りか?", which I read as "isn't it true that you proposed to me as a kid?", and took as her being older than him, but not necessarily an adult (like, I was thinking of Lilia as being not quite a preteen and Mel being preteen/young teen). although I don't know if there's a connotation or something I'm missing that implies a bigger age gap, if that makes sense!

(and of course, I might also just be forgetting some other line -- if someone else knows, then please correct me! I need to know which headcanons need adjusting 👀)

BUT YEAH in a canon-y sense, Malleus is 178 and around the third-years developmentally. which makes me think that even though dragons have a way longer lifespan, they go through childhood at about the same rate as most fae (or at least the kind that Lilia is) and just kinda...slow waaaaay down once they hit adulthood. so it makes sense in my brain that he and Meleanor could've basically grown up together!

...it makes it angstier that way, anyway. :)

[evilkaeya]

This panel actually breaks me because I don't think I've ever seen Kunikida look this relieved and peaceful. He's not frowning, he's not angry, he's not in agony. He knows that even without him, his ideals will live on. He'll live on. He has great students after all, he believes in them.

[grzybjek]

think. artists resemble their work the same way dogs resemble their owners

[coolnonsenseworld]

A little promo with my little obsession on the side...........

Reminder all items are shipped from Poland - for details on shipping times check out FAQ or send me a private message!

 mmezzy.bigcartel.com

[thefirstknife]

Let's chat

So, the Winnower. Right?

Today, they finally released the lore on one of the ships that you got if you purchased (pre-ordered?) the annual pass. The ship is called Nacre. As usual with names of things in Destiny, this means something, though I'm currently unsure about the significance of this name in relation to the text of the lore tab.

But the text of this lore tab will cause a billion discussions and people will fervently believe in one side or the other. You'll understand why the moment you start reading the lore tab (I'll go through it a bit later in the text) if you remember the style of Unveiling. It's written in the same style with many references to Unveiling and the author speaks to us post-Witness' defeat (most likely).

I think it's intended to make us discuss and argue, given the inherent unreliability and religiosity of the subject.

But let's go back a little bit. Why the Winnower? Well, the word "Winnower" was finally mentioned in-game by the Witness. When you finish the second encounter in the Salvation's Edge raid, you proceed towards the third, and at one point the Witness will speak (it speaks a lot during the raid):

The rest of the post below:

Many people, upon hearing this, have jumped to the conclusion that the "Winnower" is now confirmed as a real thing; including Byf who made a video about it and now everyone and their grandma believes this fully and is already constructing fanfics about the next big bad.

And it could be true! But to claim that this line specifically confirms the Winnower makes me question people's media literacy. This line is spoken by the Witness. The Witness has both the reason to lie to us, but also the reason to believe in the Winnower. This is unreliable narration 101: the Witness could believe that it serves something else, that the reason it destroyed its own and many other civilisations is because it is following something greater. Obviously the Witness would believe that it's "the first knife" of some godly entity. It's religion. The word of a religious person who believes in a deity is not the proof that the deity exists.

This does not mean that the Winnower is NOT real. We don't know if it is. This only means that we can't use this specific source as proof.

But this line is very interesting to me because of how it's phrased. Initially, I believed that the Witness spoke to us, the Guardians, because that's what it does throughout the raid. But after a few reads, this feels like it's at least partially aimed at the Traveler as well. The third line in particular is interesting: "Each child we save from the game, you again force to play." This feels like it's talking about the Traveler's growing/resurrecting powers, especially about how it resurrected Guardians. We were dead, but then we were forced to play again. It's also speaking about it like the "game" which can be a sort of 4th wall-breaking, but also it could clearly be referring to Unveiling which also calls it playing a game.

The last line is also interesting in this context: "Gods forged us both." Who is "us"? Obviously the Witness considers itself here, but which "gods" forged what else? Does the Witness consider the Traveler to be a god, forging the Guardians? The next line is also weird in this context, telling us that despite gods forging us, "they cannot tell the knife what shape to carve." Either the Witness still doesn't understand the Traveler or the Traveler is not considered as the god because that's the Traveler's whole philosophy: it creates things, but it doesn't tell those things what to do. It would never tell us what shape to carve. So if this is not referring to the Traveler forging Guardians, it might be referring to something else forging the Traveler. Possibly! I am very intrigued by these lines and the line of thinking the Witness uses here.

But let's go back to the Winnower. As I already said, this doesn't prove anything, it only proves that the Witness believes in it. We also know that the Witness believes in this because in the final mission it also told us that it is "the first knife, the edge that carved purpose into being." Later, after its defeat, Mara and Ikora discussed this phrase, which I covered in this post. This discussion also entertained the possibility that there's something else beyond the Witness, something that wielded it as a "knife." Mara and Ikora don't make any conclusions; they discuss the possibility, but they end it with "we don't know."

They discuss it in the context of Unveiling; this lore book is canonically available to read to characters in the game, which is neat! It's been discussed several times now in the lore, and it's discussed here as well. Mara and Ikora have read Unveiling, it's where they've read about "the first knife" concept and are wondering what it all means and if there's a way to figure out the truth in the allegories. Again, they don't know the answer. And neither do we!

However, we as players have more information than the characters. I'm pretty sure the delay on the lore for Nacre was on purpose, because it would've been confusing to read that before defeating the Witness. The lore tab itself has no clear author; the only way to tell is to speculate based on the style and phrases used. The style will immediately be reminiscent of Unveiling (and the one page in Books of Sorrow when something speaks to Oryx). It's casual and friendly, but persuasive.

Let's read it piece by piece:

Let's chat, shall we? One more nice sit-down for the books. Did you think you wouldn't hear from me again, after all this? You'd have missed me, I hope—and I would certainly have missed you. Have no fear. I'm not so easy to be rid of. Now, let me show you: my beloved. Oh, no, not my sedimentary necrolite, fossilized in time. You've seen that. I speak of that dear and distant expanse of the universe, miraculous in its fullness and its emptiness all at once. Are you surprised to hear of it? Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria. Besides, at the heart of it all, there was a gift. To me. That gift is the chance to speak with you. You, and a billion like you.

A few points right away. It's telling us that we should chat and that it hopes we didn't think we'd never hear from it again. If this is truthful and can be trusted, then it would be alluding to it speaking to us before, in Unveiling. But we've gone over the debate about Unveiling and who wrote it; most recent information was that it has to have been the Witness and the characters in-game believe so as well. So what's the truth now? I don't know! That's a full sentence. We simply don't know. There are far too many variables, allegories, metaphors and unreliable (and completely unknown) narrators.

Both options could also be true at the same time; if the Witness somehow managed to get a glimpse of the Winnower (in whatever form this entity exists), perhaps the Witness was given a speech of this nature which it could've adopted on purpose to further spread propaganda to others and to convince itself (and others) that it is a part of something greater. Again, we simply don't know.

The author continues telling us that it wants to show us its "beloved." It then goes into a bizarre description of something as "sedimentary necrolite, fossilised in time." I am not sure what this refers to, but it could be referring to the Witness? Because we've "seen that." A "necrolite" is an old term for a type of stinky minerals that form rocks which might be referring to the Witness' obsession to calcify and preserve things as they are; therefore, "fossilised in time." It could also mean something else. Really strange!

Either way, the author does not refer to that, whatever it is, it refers to the universe as a whole. The universe is its beloved. Then it continues and draws back from Unveiling directly. It tells us that it "never much cared for the change of the rules," the rules being the rules of the flower game and the change being the one the Gardener put in the game. It even jokes with "no use in crying over spilled radiolaria," a reference to the fact that previously, the winners of the game were always the Vex.

The interesting bit here is that, if the author was indeed talking about its disregard for the Witness, then the Witness claiming to be "the first knife" the Winnower wielded is not true. If this author is the Winnower, it does not really care about the Witness or its view of the final shape. Hell, the line about Winnower discovering the first knife in Unveiling would then not refer to the Witness at all, but despite that, the Witness believed itself to be that knife. This is why we can't use the Witness' words as any sort of proof, but also we can't use this narrator's words either.

To go back to the change in the rules, another intriguing thing is, in Unveiling, the Winnower appeared to be angry about the change. It's what made it "discover the first knife" and begin the fight with the Gardener. But here, it claims it didn't care about it after all.

I believe this is important to understand that what we're dealing here is not a clear cut truthful chat with a friend. The author of this text, and the author of Unveiling, does not have to tell us the truth and we simply have no clue which one of these statements is truth, if any. Or, it simply changed its mind; perhaps it was angry back then, but now it no longer is, because it realised that the change in rules gave it the ability to speak to us, something it appears to value greatly. And "us" does not just refer to us as Guardians or even humanity, it appears to be referring to all living creatures in the universe. It continues:

I am making this offer over and over again, in every tiniest cell and the vastest of civilizations. Let me in. Take what you need. Be at ease. You have no say in the degradation of your telomeres, but in all the interim, the whole world is your sweet silicate shellfish. You exist because you have been more suited to it than all the others. Steal what you require from another rather than spend the hours to build it yourself. Break foolish rules—why would you love regulation? It serves you to cross lines, and if others needed rules to protect them, then they were not after all worthy of that existence.

This also seems to be a continuation of its philosophy in Unveiling. About taking and breaking and destroying and whether or not someone is worthy of existence.

Caricatures of villainy are out of style, I hear. Yes. I am no cackling mastermind: I am serious when I say this. It was not the trick of standing upright that lifted you from the dust: it was the mastery of fire, the cooking of cold corpse-meat. That is not any unique faction's province, neither good nor evil. It is simply truth.

And this as well, continues with its claims that it is, essentially, neutral. It is not a villain, it's merely stating the truth that sometimes destructive forces can be good. This can also have a second meaning, telling us that it will not be our villain in the game. As in, we will not be fighting against this entity because it's not something that can be fought in the first place, nor does it care to fight. The final paragraph adds:

This great, beloved cosmos. Always decaying, always finding that same old lovely pattern, despite every candle-flame burning amid the flowers. A billion electrons taking the path of least resistance. In Darkness or in Light, someone is always making my choice. Be seeing you.

Some more references to Unveiling with "same old lovely pattern" and stuff about flowers. And then it ends with telling us that Darkness and Light don't really matter because either way "someone is always making my choice." We can assume this means the choice to violence. And that's true; Darkness and Light, as we've learned, are not moral forces. Many atrocities were committed by Lightbearers, and Darkness users have, throughout the universe, been benevolent.

The author concludes telling us that it will be seeing us.

What does it all mean? We don't know!

I think a lot of people will take this literally; this is the proof of the Winnower, this is the proof that it is preparing to be the next big bad, that we will see it eventually, etc.

I'm personally not sure if the literal reading makes sense, primarily because we have no way to verify anything it said or who sent it and how. But also, if we accept that it is written in the style of Unveiling (which seems fairly obvious), then we also have to accept that it's not entirely reliable or fully truthful. As in, there's a lot of metaphors and philosophy here, rather than facts. Some of it could be facts, but we can't tell which those are.

I also think a lot of people will immediately conclude that this proves the Winnower as a real entity that exists somewhere that will be relevant going forward. Personally, I don't know. I'm not inclined to believe either option just yet. If we knew more about the source of this (and I'm not taking into account the Witness' beliefs), then it would be easier to discuss it, but for me this is just something that remains a mystery for now, in the same way a religion would be. This is what makes it interesting to me.

A reading I'm partial to is that this is a really neat conclusion on that chapter of the story without telling us too many details and facts about a text that, genuinely, reads better if it remains unexplained. There's... something... out there. We can call it the Winnower for simplicity. But this entity is not some sort of big bad physical being that's scheming behind the scenes and directing its pieces around; it does not care. It did not care about the Witness and its final shape, despite the Witness believing, potentialy, that it is enacting exactly what the Winnower wanted, calling itself its "first knife."

This entity is not the way the Witness imagined it or believed in it. This entity does not need to involve itself or even be physical; its adherents are everywhere in the universe, all the time, because "someone is always making my choice." No matter where we go in the universe and how much we explore it, we will eventually find those that choose this. It cannot be removed or defeated. We defeated the Witness, yes, but someone else can always rise up to do something similar. The fight is never done and it's not tied to simply Light and Dark. Our choice is not over because we won here; we could always choose differently in the future.

It honestly feels like a setup for us going forward, but not for us meeting the Winnower or fighting it; instead, to tell us that if we plan on exploring more of the "beloved" universe, we will always find those we disagree with, those to fight, those who made the other choice. And if we're not careful, we may end up making that choice too. Whatever that entity is, the universe is making its argument for it and it will never truly be defeated. It can't be!

The Witness wanted to end the game. This entity states that the game has to play itself out.

Or it could mean something completely different. I'm not going to claim anything one way or the other and I think it's genuinely really baffling that anyone would try to do so. We all have our preferences for the story, but I don't think any of them are sufficiently backed up and I'm not going to hype myself up for a scenario that will probably never happen. Or we'll be hearing about "bad writing" and "retcons" in a few years time when the Winnower never shows up (or if it does).

The point is that this is a very intriguing piece of lore that fits perfectly with the mystery and religiosity of Unveiling. It's not some huge epic reveal, though it could always be something more in the future. However, we would have to get a lot more information to be able to make that conclusion. Something spoke to us in this lore tab, but we have no way of knowing who or how or why exactly now. We have no way to verify it either; is the author legitimate or is this a scheme from someone else pretending to be it? And even if the author is legitimately some other entity, is it truthful? Can we trust it? Should we? Does it even matter? Is this information important for us to understand our enemies or is this just insight into the philosophy and metaphysics of the setting?

Is the Winnower real? We don't know.

Is Unveiling still an allegorical mystery with some truths that we can't really tell apart from the metaphors? Pretty much yeah.

Is there going to be a lot to discuss about this going forward? Absolutely. It's why I wanted to write about it immediately because it's fascinating and I can't wait to see all the ways people will interpret it. I highly recommend that everyone reads it themselves and compare to Unveiling (and the last two pages of Inspiral).

I just don't want people to subscribe too hard to a single narrative and then get incredibly disappointed if it doesn't happen. There is not a single narrative being promised by this lore tab and we have no confirmed facts. But I'm super excited to see where this goes in the following years. Even if it goes "nowhere" as in this does not end up being setup for some big antagonist 5 years from now, I find it incredible that this was part of the setting. Weird space religions and bizarre entities from beyond the universe are some of my favourite parts of scifi so this whole thing, no matter how it ends, is a 10/10 story for me.

[reverse-mermaid]

former gifted kids sound off in the comments lmao

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

An aspect of Hilda the series that I feel isn’t talked about enough is the colonizer’s guilt and how it affects the main character.

What made me write this was watching the third episode of the new season, but honestly, it’s something we see throughout the whole series. Starting out with the elves in the northern counties, and moving on to trolls and now giants. Every season that came out gave us a chance to see Hilda deal with the feelings that arise from living in a society she knows is built on the occupation of another people’s native land and the oppression of those inhabitants.

She knows it’s not her fault, she knows she’s not the colonizer, but she’s well aware that she’s in the privileged side of her society. Seeing her grapple with the fact that her very existence in these spaces is only possible because someone else is getting the short end of the stick, to me at least, makes her that much more interesting of a character.

Because it’s not a matter of fixing what she’s done, but the privilege is still there and not even well hidden when she sees the day to day life of the people whose land has been occupied by humans/trolbergians. So whenever we see her rush to aid them, her borderline desperation to fix what’s been broken, it’s even more captivating because it’s not just the usual “I love helping people and having adventures” gist, there’s always this undertone of guilt for something she hasn’t personally done but still knows has to be held accountable for.

Hilda knows the type of oppression that people like her get away with. And she wants no part in it.

[spriteofmushrooms]

The interesting thing about Jiang Cheng is that he refuses to be his mother's golden child to Wei Wuxian's scapegoat; he actively chooses Wei Wuxian again and again. He defends Wei Wuxian from her until she dies. It's unusual.

This doesn't mean that Wei Wuxian's experience was any less fraught--being hated by a caretaker is awful even if everyone else loves you. But it was an interesting choice by MXTX.

[blue-eli]

Ink October day 11: Firebreak

A strip of land that has been cleared, plowed, or planted with fire-resistant vegetation to prevent a fire from spreading.

[normalbrothers]

TOMMY: It's about he told told me why he wanted to do it. Now if I tell you I can't take the knowledge back. Better off without it.

[triumviiirate]

i spend a lot of time thinking about the empty space between jim and bones at spock's funeral

[roboyomo]

anyways. hai uhm. this was mostly experimental but please consider my racing miku sonic 💥💥

[runefactorynonsense]

Melotober - Day 23 - Honey

I wonder where the kids have gone...

[3-aem]

formulating thoughts on how gojo tries very hard on two separate instances to save yuji and yuta from the d34th sentence and if that is in any way related to how he didn’t do anything to stop getou

like especially for yuta the way he ties himself to the situation proclaiming that he would risk his own life to deal with rika if it came to it. is it simply because he couldn’t/didn’t say the same for getou.