#escher sentences

[quintenrosenburgwrites]

I’m too proud of this joke to not share it with the world

[krakenartificer]

[Image Description: A screenshot of a tweet from Fermat's Library (@Fermatslibrary) reading

In linguistics, Escher sentences are sentences which initially seem acceptable but upon further reflection have no well-formed meaning.

Below that, in smaller text, is the sentence

"More people have been to Berlin than I have"

Below that is a famous MC Escher drawing of a set of 4 stairs, set in a square, all of which appear to be going up.]

this is making me hyperventilate

[diracsea]

til: comparative illusions or Escher sentences (yass Escher my man!!)

e.g. More people have been to Russia than I have.

[neuxue]

me: *slaps roof of sentence* this bad boy can fit so many subordinate clauses in it!

sentence in question: *collapses at the slightest touch like a fucking jenga tower, adverbs clattering down all over the floor, nouns lying broken and bleeding, impaled on verbs they were never meant to touch,*

[talentforlying]

WHAT ARE YOU THE GOD OF?

LABYRINTHS AND CONFUSION. a god for the lost souls. you can often find makeshift altars for you deep in forests, cave systems, and other uncharted territories. you guide those lost back onto the path. the souls of those who disrespect you are lost forever, trapped in a winding labyrinth, never to leave or see sunlight again.

tagged by: @undyingrogue ty!! tagging: you!

[informationatlas]

Escher Sentences

In linguistics, comparative illusions (CIs) or Escher sentences[a] are certain comparative sentences which initially seem to be acceptable but upon closer reflection have no well-formed, sensical meaning. The typical example sentence used to typify this phenomenon is More people have been to Russia than I have.

[povestotrischane]

you see, the problems begin with the fact that the ladies of the lake aren't humanoid anymore. they're ais, advanced ais, but not necessarily able to take care of a human child. they were originally developed to serve as water filtration and purification systems aboard passenger/carrier ships and space settlements outside earth. earth isn't really a thing anymore though. i mean it might be but it's so far away and the portion of space that actually matters lost contact with it so long ago that some ppl don't believe in its existence at all. don't worry about it. so now p much every water supply has an advanced ai taking care of it (unless it's particularly small/temporary or its lady has jumped networks). but. lancelot was still raised by the lady of the lake and i'm not changing that.

basically what happened was, after the overthrow of king ban, he and elaine (benoic) retreated and stumbled across a seemingly abandoned space station, with an intact and quite honestly impressive, all things considered, water supply, blah blah blah ban drops dead from grief, elaine (benoic) runs to him, leaving her baby near the water, in the process she trips an old security function which separates her from lancelot. the ai known as VIV-NE picks up on the fact that something is happening in this station and jumps back to her original network to find a seemingly abandoned baby. she's able to take control of p much every system aboard the station so she's p confident that she can take care of him through a combination of them, but she feels as if only having contact with ais while not being an ai himself will make him grow up lonely, so she basically plugs his mind into the network and he grows up like that, entirely disconnected from his physical body.

the thing is, this ends up having side effects. first of all, human minds aren't made like ais and thus, attempts to switch the function of the two ends poorly. specifically, every time a human or ai switches between a human body and a computer network, something is destroyed, either sections of a human brain, or chunks of code. luckily for lancelot, he's basically a newtype (magical autism that makes you good at piloting a gundam) so the switch only really shaves off the tiniest bit of his personality, memories etc. also luckily for lancelot, due to his natural affinity for technology thanks to. debatably Being technology himself, he's also able to upload his mind into other technology, like mechs, which is how he's So Good At Stabbing. unfortunately for lancelot, being wayyyy too good at stabbing is uhm. kinda what's expected of him, and even though his not!newtype abilities save him from doing significant damage each time, shaving off part of your brain on a regular basis is Uhm. bad.

n e ways. personality wise he's still the lancelot we know and love but the reasons behind why are different.

the thing about the round table mecha characters is that, since they're all directly ripped out of med lit, i don't really need to explain their basic backstory/personality while i'm talking about them casually on here bc every1 already knows them and it's easy enough to project a scifi aesthetic onto the original stories. lancelot is an outlier that shouldn't be counted but needs to be anyway bc he's a pretty fucking significant outlier.

[jules-is-a-wallflower]

There's been a logged audio recording posted.

"Audio signal heard at ten and two o'clock", declares the distinct mechanical voice of an NHP, "12-times enemy mechs, plus one-times approaching watercraft. Recommend you engage."

The sounds of general commotion erupt around the microphone, with a sleepy-sounding voice muttering a "What the fuck..?"

A sharp sound rings out, a single emphatic shot from a mech's gun. From further away, something explodes, and several heavy items splash into the water. The same sleepy voice interjects once again, a little louder this time. "PpffhTempest, what the FUCK?"

"Nice shot!" responds a gruff voice, immediately followed up with a more urgent-sounding "Oh! Shit!"

"Escher! Kodiak!" calls a third voice, intense and confident, who must be Tempest. "I need you two dealing with these ones up close! My guns'll just make us all go up in smoke from this range!"

Two sets of heavy mechanical footsteps clunk across the ground, and a lighter gun fires rapidly nearby for several seconds. Then, there's a pause for the gruff-sounding voice to speak from a few paces away. "Eh? The bastards are droppin' like flies! Escher, you doin' this?"

"Hmf... yeah, easy when you just turn off their EVA modules..." mumbles Escher, the sentence immediately followed up by a yawn.

"...I think we got 'em all. Shit, that was a quick ambush..." Tempest's voice comes closer, accompanying the sounds of a large mech's footsteps.

From the other direction, Kodiak's shoes hit the floor, then Escher sighs and climbs out of their mech.

"Escher..." Kodiak's voice, a bit gentler, speaks close by. "You're, ah... not lookin' too hot. Maybe this'll help?"

"How... do you have coffee, just... on you?"

"..Legion was holdin' onto it for me."

"How did it not... spill?"

"Y'want it or not?"

A short pause, then Escher sighs. "Thanks."

There's a minute or so of peace- before a click of a mech's hatch opening, the crack of a rifle hitting a close range target, and an unfamiliar voice's groan of pain.

"Damn good shot, they had a dagger on 'em!"

[thermodynamic-comedian]

describe your ocs the way you describe your gender.

rovin is bruised knees pressing against dirt and rocks in a barely audible prayer that includes several cursewords. he's autotheism in the literal sense, where the worshipper and the deity are one and the same. he's delusion and understanding, knowing so much that reality becomes debatable at best. he's a sentence that doesn't go anywhere, but must've started as something.

n/a is devotion, not to oneself nor to another person, but to the collective and the cause. they're a chant that turns into a cry towards the end. they're sonder and arrogance, "i'm right and i'm sorry that you aren't but there's nothing we can do about that now." they're a scared child and a scarred adult, they've seen too much to close their eyes now and they've done too much to close their door.

lithium is the sort of sharp pain that only makes you want to push harder. he's a broken streetlight that refuses to stop flickering. he's stumbling and not falling down. he's staring up at the sky and seeing only how big the world is, instead of how small you are. he's hope in a distressing way, like a song you love being played far too loud for far too long.

lead is taking and inflicting damage in equal parts. he's the difference between an order and a request, especially when the difference doesn't matter and intentions don't matter and survival is all that matters. he's dried blood that probably should've been cleaned ages ago, and now it'll never be truly gone. he's pressing a knife to a wound every day to make sure it never heals.

juno is looking at your friend and laughing at the worst times possible. she's the kind of comfort that you shouldn't find in anything. she's a black button-up with every button open. she's a pentagram sketched onto every surface with whatever sharp object you can find. she's lace covered in blood. she's a heart that keeps beating after being impaled with a dagger.

escher is something you wouldn't understand even if i explained it to you. a reference you don't get. an inside joke that formed when you weren't there. out of place and out of context. something that shouldn't be sentient, but life doesn't wait for permission to be, and death doesn't wait for permission to take. a dot at the end of a sentence that should end with a questionmark. something that simply is, even when it shouldn't.

[anarchic-jerboa]

Also note escher sentences:

“More people have been to Berlin than I have.”

It sounds like it should make sense, but it really doesn’t.

Just learned about garden path sentences.

They’re basically a literary prank– the sentence starts out in such a way that you think you know where it’s going, but the way it ends completely changes the meaning while still being a complete and logical sentence. Usually it deals with double meanings, or with words that can be multiple parts of speech, like nouns and verbs or nouns and adjectives.

So we get gems like

The old man the boat. (The old people are manning the boat)

The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. (The apartment complex is home to both married and single soldiers, plus their families)

The prime number few. (People who are excellent are few in number.)

The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississipi. (The cotton that clothing is made of)

The man who hunts ducks out on weekends. (As in he ducks out of his responsibilities)

We painted the wall with cracks. (The cracked wall is the one that was pained.)

[johannacantsing]

six sentence sunday-23 feb 2025

brooooooo it's been a rough fucking february i gotta be real:

i've been pretty nauseated lately which is a fun little escher piece in my body bc my nausea makes me not want to eat which makes me more nauseated and then bc i haven't eaten my teeth start to hurt (i don't know science-that's just what happens) and bc my body's all out of whack, i got an insane eczema flair up, which makes everything else really inflamed including the acid reflux, nausea, and tooth pain ;-;

good news-i've been lost in the nonfiction sauce again lately: i read king leopold's ghost (wish it had more of the effects, ie the ghost but still good) and am almost done with chernobyl: the history of a nuclear disaster (basically the only thing i learned at school was "communism bad=chernobyl" which is insane considering three mile island [another book i need to get from the library lol]) and i have like two other nonfictions read to go in the library app (barracoon and the lumumba plot)

i came up with an idea for another book (kinda short novel/novella length, high-concept litfic), so that's cool

i'm getting close to finishing the first draft of my first book and there's so many structural things i need to fix that i can already tell but that's not my problem rn and also trying to fix it now would be stupid as hell bc there's gonna be things i don't even know about bc i don't have fresh eyes lol

this part will need to be reworked bc it's kinda clunky, but it gets the job done for a first draft lol. main character collapsed from blood loss and one of his little brothers is watching him fall apart:

Pain shot and splintered through my skull. I let out an involuntary, pained noise, like a prey animal with three broken legs. 

“You’re alive! Grayson!” Noah had been fumbling for my pulse and slammed his panicked hand into my broken nose.

I heaved and heaved and rolled to the side of Noah and vomited everywhere. My nose was still broken, still blocked. Spitting the remnant acid onto the sidewalk, my cheek burned and itched. My shaky hand came away bloody.

“You got road rash. When you collapsed. Grayson,” Noah’s voice wobbled like a little kid, “What the fuck is going on?”

[maksimlustiger]

O Uniwersum.......

Wierzyć w słowo spisana notorycznie bez uwięzi strapionego czasu. Z wolą ułańskiej wyobraźni.Jak w zaklętej bańce co nie boi się nieistnienia.Może powyżej górnego pułapu zniewolenia przez własne myśli.Niemożliwe staje się dotykalne. W zacnym obcowaniu chwil , co zdają się zastygać w przestrzeni wyimaginowanych miast.......możliwych w oszukańczej perspektywie pięter Eschera.Lubię chadzać tymi korytarzami. Do utraty racjonalności. Wiąże mnie jedynie bezczas oraz bezkres.

Wówczas Nic mi nie doskwiera.

Zaś w obliczu uczuć obumieram. Nieprzytomnym oczekiwaniem podwiędłej oblubienicy, która zamienia się w oblubieńca.........Jak maskulinizujące na Dachach Świata.

Zgoda jest Przymusem Istnienia.

On i.......Ja.......wolimy nie Być. By ustrzec się obumierających Zegarów.

Wsteczność linearna jest ponoć niemożliwa.Choć w Filozofii Uniwersalizmu Czaso - Przestrzennego upiera się przy możliwości egzystencji równoległej lub równoleżnej. Jakoby czas stanowił strukturę kołową lub sferyczną niczym umykająca piłka.

Zatem jako bękart tego świata pozwalam sobie na frywolne podrzucanie zalążka Bytu ......który w hierarchii Uniwersum jest leciutkim skrzywieniem ....jakowąś anomalią Istnienia.

Zaledwie Moją........już Niczyją...........bo ta sentencja Staffa nabiera znaczenia nieśmiertelnego.

"Universumm......"

Still believer........when the time goes by..........often and always.

With waterloo soldier in imagination stand. Inside of glasses baloon.....or nothing.Up and over the mind in your own vision.

What seems unreality now is possibility.

In secret community of memory about passing cities.......Not possibility?........Enough......but almost possibility in Escher's perspective.......Not reality?.........

It's pleasure to walking during enigmatic corridors.....to loose consciousness..........tethered only by timelessness and endlessness.

In that's moment nothing bite me.

In my emotional circle I almost dieing.........Unconsciousness waiting for romantic pleasure......like a bride...........which changing in bridegroom........like masculinized creatures on The Roof of The World..........

Compromise is rule of existence.

He.....and Me........can't imitation of Reality........to ignore the death of clocktables.

Returning in the line Time is probably impossibility.....but In Philosphy of linear's Time is easier to understand Theory of Time and Space.....to wiser show of wheel or idea of sphericity ....like a cosmic ball.

So......I let me throw up this ball like a nasty child ....which plays grain of Being........in the hierarchy of The universumm just only a little bit of irregular.......like anomaly of the Life.

Delicate of mine ....or of nobody........because this sentence of Leopold Staff means realy immortality.

[launch-cronch]

thinking about that one Escher sentence post going around about how these so-called sentences look fine on first glance but make no actual sense and the comments are split between, “i dunno, this makes sense to me? they’re talking about how many times they’ve gone to berlin compared to the people they’re talking with in the room. i speak like this casually?” or “the speaker possesses a quantity of people in their basement so it makes sense!” or “this make no sense im scared” and also “stop pretending it makes sense, you dumb-dumbs simply lack reading comprehension!” meanwhile I’m sitting here going “wow half these people are such geniuses at communication that they can supply context to a sentence that has NONE. we should study their brains so we can make better language translation AI, because there are languages that LOVE to omit prepositions, quantifiers, and context.”

[suffer-for-supper]

I misinterpreted the "ranking average height" as "Croatians are the 7th most average height" which on top of being an Escher sentence, is just kind of funny. An extra medium, perhaps

Just found my mom's surprise purchase

[twinkdrama]

i dont love it but i dont like it either