Mia unua rakonto en Esperanto

Hallowink 2021 Masterpost

Here is where all the story segments for Tweedledraws' Hallowink will be placed, hopefully updated in as daily a manner as possible.

Chapter 2

Some thoughts on anecdote

The plural of anecdote is not data, it's perception.

Human knowledge of the natural world is generally acquired either by observation, or hearing about something from someone. The nature of this latter method comes in varied forms and has its pros and cons, owing to the fact that testimony of others is generally less reliable than the senses. Let's put a recounting of some historical event as an example, you can read about it in a book, or you can ask someone who lived through the event what it was like. Differing testimonies in various media will lead to variations in the story, and it's sometimes hard to know what is real as Ryunosuke Akutagawa has shown. 

Either way, your consumption of this second-hand information will affect how you perceive the event, and while you can hear more perspectives to assuage your opinion, it's impossible not to build your own opinion on such matters. The way the testimony is shown can also affect your perception, as you cannot impart information without a rhetoric.

In fact, let's get a bit recent, let's use the whole virus mess to show how stories of deaths and sickness are used to drive public opinion. One year into this thing, the general picture of mortalities is that of this sickness mostly killing elderly people with comorbidities, but earlier on in the frenzy, stories of children dying of the virus are plastered all over the news. Statistically this is a rare event, but the purpose of such stories is not to hype up an impossibility, it's to widen the age bracket of those who could die from the virus, no matter how weighted the chances are. A child died of the virus, so you're effectively deathly worried that your kid might also perish from it.

A selfsame summary of vaccine effects is taking place, with vaccine promoters hunting for people who declined vaccinations dying horrible deaths while those opposing them will cite someone who has gladly accepted the vaccination and then contracting either a terrible side-effect or death. Pervasive in all these anecdotes is the possibility of dying or mortal harm. Showing that not following measures results in death is a good sell not for the efficacy of the measures but for the moralizing effects of it; I have been spared of this harm because I am not irresponsible like them.

Anecdote has also been used to argue both for and against measures, for and against interventions, and whoever gets a hold of the narrative also get a hold of the anecdote. Ultimately, the goal of every anecdote is for the receiver to become personalized by it. Statistics rarely convince people, but personal stories do as stories—unlike numbers—are easier to relate to.

In the end, the use of anecdote is not to prove that something in the event foretold happened, but that since it has been purported to have happened, it can possibly happen again unless something is to be done.

Chapter 1

A quick piece for Tweedle's summer contest

I propose that instead of being part of a scam, countries are doubling down on restrictions as a denial reaction to being scammed.

Consider how China purported to have solved their outbreak by locking down. Other countries followed suit and didn't get the supposed reduction. Like a victim continuing to send money thinking he'll get the Nigerian prince's money, these countries are continuing restrictions even with the destruction it has caused hoping the spread will stop to their favor.

Even with those held up as proof that lockdowns work (AU, NZ) they must keep doing these or else they face a hit in their reputation for allowing the virus to affect them again. Their zero cases can only be attributed to lockdown and therefore a single case is a sign of weakness, notwithstanding the possible destruction these will cause, but those are mere inconveniences to the image of zero virus.

The whole Davos stuff is a whole different matter, pandemic or not nations will try to be part of the in crowd by joining international forum claptrap.

Still, rather than acknowledge the possibility of being scammed, politicos have ridden their reputations on being able to eradicate a virus, to glaring consequences they try to ignore.

A Primer on Stories of This Kind

The art of fiction deals with events that are not real, whether it be based on reality or purely fantastic. Generally this applies to situations where the statement "This event did not happen in this reality." is true, however you conjugate the verb "happen". The purpose of this essay is to set a framework of a fictional universe concept that will be the basis of some stories that I will write. Save for tagging the work for sorting purposes, the stories set in this universe will only be apparent by inference to save my breath every time. 

As we step away from fiction from the restraints of being set in the world we are in, sometimes minor alterations can cause heavy implications as to how the world will function, as a thought experiment on the butterfly effect. In the current state of affairs where the concept of there being multiple universes is tenable, the easiest way to visualize this is to imagine these different worlds in increments of small but visible differences from the current world, in each and every case we run the whole thing to its conlusion and watch, which becomes apparent before a plot even begins.

The idea is simple enough, this universe setting is a world where no one has a head from the very start. While the idea is simple enough, questions will be raised as to how I will work this concept. Obviously the first question is how these creatures will function, as we will get rid of the part of the body where most senses (and the brain) are. This is where I use the very risky power of the handwave and simply make it that somehow they can see and hear, and even let them function. In the simplest of terms, they will have a soul appropriate to their form that can allow them to do their tasks.

The following questions and topic will focus on the headless person and his society. Do not worry about any gore as in place of a head, the top of the neck is covered with a flat layer of skin. Now how does this neck look? As stated before the neck ends at a flat stump and this end is perpendicular to the height of the neck. This stump can have some thin hair growing but will not normally be hairy. 

As with regards to eating, drinking and other activities that the head usually does, the most certain manifestation I can give is an inability to speak. While they can vibrate their throats and cause some sound off their necks, this is not practical enough to be a language and so is not used as much. For food and drink we can assume they do enjoy a nice meal but how they do so is most preferably not to be thought about too much.

Now, I cannot in the life of me be able to fully enumerate every consequence of this alteration from then until now and will instead write these stories with a bunch of a priori concepts about the setting of a story, such as places and customs. Whether one can get to this point in time from headlessness is beyond my scope. Also, do not think that these stories are already connected to one another without a sure sign that they are.

And thus I explain the world in which the stories of people living life without a head reside. As with all fiction, I can only write what I would think would happen in such conditions, but rest assured that there will be as much realism as such setting gives.