Koinu

It is a peculiar yet not unenjoyable experience to know a bit about a story going in, carrying expectations of a key plot point or two and trying the whole time to recognize them, only to much later realize that you’ve been reading/watching something very different, and that you’ve accidentally gifted yourself with a relatively unique experience of the story by seeing it through an unintended perspective.

The first time this happened to me was when I first saw The Matrix—I had seen the trailer for The Thirteenth Floor and thought it was going to be that. I still haven’t seen that.

Currently I’m ~3/4 of the way through Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds and it took me until a good third of the book until realized that I had started it instead of There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. (I’m enjoying Halcyon Years so far. Still haven’t started the book I meant to.)

Tired: ADHD
Wired: Brain Zoomies

Hello, yes, I will have _some_ bagel with my cream cheese. Thank you.

Petition Takis to sponsor a furcon like Monster Energy did back in the day.

I think I figured out a way to provide a spoiler warning for a discussion of the endings of two stories that seem so different that it’s a massive spoiler for either/both to put them together on a list of what I’d be spoiling.

What I think is safe to do is mention something about or from each story that is obfuscated but hopefully recognizable to someone who has finished (or gotten close) and immersed themselves in each story.

Things like:

* Ordering the species in this story by time and by how many eyes they have results in the same list.
* The point of view character gets caught in the smog after some aliens passing by roll spacetime coal on their way out.

(Those aren’t examples, by the way. If you know what each is referring to, you can probably make a very good guess about what it is I want to talk about.)

Then: “Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script.”

Now: “Don’t enshittify your SAAS or I will replace it with a vibe-coded GitHub Action.”

For all that’s wrong with the world, I see replacing toxicity towards people with pitting different kinds of corporate bullshit against each other as a win.

Is there a term for the practice of manipulating phrasing and/or word choice to make something clear and straightforward for listeners with the right context, but confusing/incomprehensible/biased towards being misinterpreted by people who don’t have exactly the right context?

An example would be me saying “I’m so not used to having hands while tripping.”

My new litmus test for bad VRChat game/puzzles/experience worlds is: Would I rather be playing a VR Remaster of Heavy Rain?

(I actually liked Heavy Rain. I got what is generally considered the worst ending and it felt right in a way that made me respect it.)