📖 Recent Quotes 📖

• There are other amnestic approaches-gas, injectable drugs, surgical techniques, occult rituals. These are safe, proven technologies for mass use on the general public and Organization staff alike, but they all operate on the same essential principle that the unwanted knowledge has already entered the mind and must now be removed or suppressed after the fact. Such procedures are imperfect.

  an excerpt from There is no Antimemetics Division, written by qntm in 2025

• Charlotte sat herself down against a tree's gawky roots and rummaged among its debris of leaves and twigs, odd spots of sunlight swinging about her head. She discovered acorns and took them from their cups but found when she tried to fit one back that it would not fit so well, though there seemed no difference in either the acorn or its cup.

  an excerpt from Charlotte Sometimes, written by Penelope Farmer in 1969

• [ A truly befuddling origin story for elephants ]
  A nymph Rucira ('Lovely') was fashioned by the Creator as he fashioned Speech, by collecting the beauties belonging to sprites, men, demons, and gods. But once she was cursed by Fate (Brahma) because of her evil pride. Hence she was born as a daughter of the (tribe of) Vasus, from Bhargava, and was named Gunavati. Her great curiosity led her once to the hermitage of Matanga.
  
  Thinking ' Nay, she has been sent by Indra to disturb my penance!' he cursed her, and she became an elephant cow. Then the sage, realizing that she was innocent, straightway said to her: 'Fair elephant cow, when from drinking the seed of the hermit Samagyana a son shall be born to you, then your curse shall come to an end. "
  
  A certain yaksi (female sprite) appeared to the hermit Samagayana in a dream. Then the noble hermit straightway went out from the hermitage and passed water. With the urine, seed came forth. That she drank when the hermit had rentered the house, and speedily the elephant cow conceived and brought forth a son, from her mouth.
  
  Giving her son with joy to the sage, she left the form of an elephant cow and quickly went to heaven, freed from her curse, in peace.

  an excerpt from Matanga-Lila (Elephant-Sport), written by Nilakantha in 500

📓 Recent Notes 📓

• Also this is very clearly rooted in the SCP universe - a collaborative fiction project where writers catalog Unknown Entities - which I'm not a reader of but NOW I sure want to. I didn't know that these were originally SCP entries but they all felt like what I'd seen there. But looking it up now, it's absolutely from SCP. Cool to see it get a big publishing arrangement!

  an note about There is no Antimemetics Division, written by qntm in 2025

• Memes are ideas that spread on their own. Antimemes are ideas that resist spreading: facts that are hard to think about, or remember. This is a novel-made-from-short-stories about The Organization's Antimemetics Division, which exists to catalog, research, and combat eldritch horrors with antimemetic properties. Maybe it's a monster that's hard to perceive, or a horrifying beast that makes you forget it exists. That's a tough job. Each vignette is about a specific encounter, which usually pulls a similar trick of asking at the climax: what are you forgetting? Are you sure everything you've noticed is true? What hav you been overlooking this whole time? Honestly it was fun, although more gore and horror than I expected.

  an note about There is no Antimemetics Division, written by qntm in 2025

• Fun to identify the resonances here that probably come from this book! It was very popular when it came out, but seems unknown now. In part two, we’ve got some plotty overlap with Connie Willis’ Blackout, where time travelers go back to WWII in England. And there's a crowd scene that I think one of the Hilda books is referencing!

  an note about Charlotte Sometimes, written by Penelope Farmer in 1969

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