20250220

it takes a very,

very,

very

long time

for a snail flying through space to actually land somewhere

long enough that in virtually all documented cases the snail will fully self-integrate within a new, gravity-free narrative, experiencing their eventual landing as less the end of a journey and more as a sudden home invasion.

---

"Should we help?"

It shrugged.

"You're welcome to try, but anything you send in that direction could take six days, three months, or fifteen yards to arrive."

---

the story is about a ranch that is struggling to get started

in the woods

just a couple of people who wanna try something ranchy

we discover later that the larger scene — outside the idyllic natural setting of their nascent ranching — is a capitalistic super-nation which evolved from an uncommunicated imbalance in duty within the ranch's staffing. time looped.

---

"It's broken!"

Alarms wailing.

She considered that she had never not heard alarms in this area. "... I don't think so."

---

The snail was the final (?) message-carrier in a long, overly ceremonial game of telephone, if the figurative telephone were red and for emergencies only.

---

no. not a time loop.

time fork.

the miscommunication incident took the ranch on a much longer path to create a much more complicated scene

but another version — the only other version — floated free, and found a place to rest within the more complicated scene

they eventually reconnected

the rancher wandered through the forest and found the city that they would have become

they establish trade

did you know some flowers bloom on several timescales at once?

---

Everyone you know is stuck — from your point of view — repeating the most recent decision you reduced them to in your mind.

Find the place where you reductively impaired their story. Re-inflate it with mystery. And watch.

A good character works on any number of dimensions — literally. You'll be able to feel the character in a 2D projection, or a 3D, or ... yeah, anything. 1D and ND included. But if you break the character by selectively flattening them out, like interpreting in them in 3D except for one part which you insist on seeing in 2D, then their 3D representation to you is stuck rotating around the flattened portion. It can't move.

You're surrounded by characters.

The ones who are stuck in ways you understand are waiting for you to release them back into mystery.

You only stand to gain by doing that, btw. :)

---

god I'm so freaked out lol

it makes so much more sense to describe experience in terms of quantum narrative

from this perspective, there are other characters, but they exist more as intelligent essence than in terms of uhhhhh stateful combinations of binding and loosening

makes each character look a bit like a rubik's cube, but with the row-clearing dynamics of tetris

you can't define the character — you can only release them, and see what they do next

solve the rubik's cube, and the NPC graduates to PC

it's like ... the opposite of the opposite of free will

everyone around me is stuck repeating the thing that I decided about them

when I loosen the knot, the behavior I observe changes immediately — and I can predict that it will change, but not what it will change into

nnnnnnnnnnnngg