I forgot what page im on in this fucking book but ive been meaning to finish it.
tldr its like, that one book where you have to rotate it around to read but i kept getting mad at it because the main character was an absolute HORNDOG,
when i last picked it up it was admittedly starting to get interesting but i'm not holding my hopes up. but hopefully making this thread will motivate me to finish!
the ergodic reader heh
I wanna read it too eventually bc the concept intrigues me
If you want a light read in the same vein, but not strictly ergodic, I can recommend a short little novel by Mark Dunn called Ella Minnow Pea. It's a novel written in letter correspondence, between the main character Ella and her family and friends. She lives in the town of Nollop on an isolated east coast(?) island. The town is famous for being the home of Nevin Nollop, the fictional creator of the famous pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." There's a statue of him in town that proudly displays the phrase. One day a letter falls off, and the town council takes it as a grievous sign, and starts enforcing a censure and penalty regime: the missing letter is now forbidden to use, no longer part of the official alphabet. The mail correspondence is not affected much by the prohibition of one letter. But then another letter falls off the statue, and another... And the further into the book you get the more creative Ella and her people have to be when trying to communicate and solve this crisis. It's a book for people who love books and writing. It's about freedom of expression, and about resistance against oppression. It's a fun and creative little novel.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/86add88713397dd09dcf3aaac18b89e1/tumblr_mf22y8E5IC1qz6f9yo1_400.jpg)
lmao i mean i read homestuck, it doesn't really get more ergodic than that,
Quote from: AutoReiv on Feb 23, 2026, 03:08 PMIf you want a light read in the same vein, but not strictly ergodic, I can recommend a short little novel by Mark Dunn called Ella Minnow Pea
OOOOO that sounds so interesting and crazy(positive) i'll deff check it out. i love how like, nonsensical the reaction is. and the way that it spirals is kind of like, adjacent to cosmic horror. benign small-town-peer-pressure horror. i deffinitly have infinite love and respect for art that explores the actual structure of the artform to convey themes and stories (which is why i wanted to like house of leaves so much RARGHH)
the poem (?) u posted reminds me of this poem from r.d. langs knots that i really like, i found it on tumblr a while back and idk i just think it looks so cool(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/eqwAAOSwpFBmgKXW/s-l1200.jpg)
I will def have to get House of Leaves. I've been poking at it whenever I visit my local nerd book store.
I love this stuff. Especially when it just kinda falls apart. It also gives me the same kinda vibe as the baseline test from Blade Runner 2049. Interlinked. inerlinked
I have been meaning getting into
House of Leaves but I need a physical copy and it's too expensive here brand new.
I'm not even sure what it is about (and I try not to spoil myself) but I know it's the ur-example of ergodic/experimental fiction, so I feel like not having read it makes me a poseur as a self-proclaimed experimental fiction liker myself.
Ella Minnow Pea is another one I would like to read eventually. Funnily enough I wrote a story referencing it even though I have yet to read it, but then again it's also the ur-example of its own genre of lipogrammatic fiction.
Quote from: kringle on Feb 25, 2026, 09:00 PMlmao i mean i read homestuck, it doesn't really get more ergodic than that,
Real asf... the Venn diagram of Homestuck readers and experimental fiction likers is a circle :comfmonk:
Quote from: rolypolyphonic on Mar 01, 2026, 05:36 AMbut I need a physical copy and it's too expensive here brand new.
i heard the same thing but honestly if you are capable of juggling tabs and have access to a screen that rotates i think reading via pdf wouldn't degrade the experience that much. house of leaves has a surprisingly linear layout. while your eye deff does a bit of bouncing between footnotes and the maintext its always very intuitive where to start reading again next (perhaps,,, a bit TOO intuitive i'd argue) and a lot of the busiest pages are just that, busy. like the text version of an aggressively floral shirt. they are not actually narratively challenging.
honestly id say just find a pdf and go for it.Quote from: rolypolyphonic on Mar 01, 2026, 05:36 AMReal asf... the Venn diagram of Homestuck readers and experimental fiction likers is a circle :comfmonk:
LMAOOO ain't this the truth, honestly homestuck has left me with a hunger thats hard to satiate it ticks so many of my boxes how will i ever achive the same high of a story literally making my brain hurt due to complex timetravel combined with esoteric worldbuilding in a unique and fun format.
Quote from: kringle on Mar 01, 2026, 05:50 AM
honestly id say just find a pdf and go for it.
Honestly I just don't like reading on a screen because of eye strain; my day job requires working at a computer so I have no choice to to look at a screen a lot, so I try to reduce how often I do it when I don't 'need' to. I have an e-reader but its screen is too small for PDF's and it's only suitable for reflowable EPUBs which would mess with the formatting.（ ；´д｀）ゞ
I always read that the story itself was confusing too, but then again I wonder if that's just something people who aren't used to 'weird' stories think. Like whatever it is it can't be more confusing then uh [reads smudged handwriting on palm] Homed Suck.
Quote from: kringle on Mar 01, 2026, 05:50 AMLMAOOO ain't this the truth, honestly homestuck has left me with a hunger thats hard to satiate it ticks so many of my boxes how will i ever achive the same high of a story literally making my brain hurt due to complex timetravel combined with esoteric worldbuilding in a unique and fun format.
I always felt that 'Internet stories' (ie stories that can only exist on the Internet and can't be effectively adapted into another format) are surprisingly sparse all things considered. I guess video games are the closest thing to it but it's different to just a read a thing in da browser vs downloading a whole program.
Homestuck is my main inspiration just for its unique formatting alone, and regardless of its flaws, it really is one of a kind. :kirbart: