Twibrary Quest: Solstice

You’re already too late. Not much of the Twibrary remains. This drawblog isn't worth saving anymore. Do you still want to try? Then remember this. The blog knows you exist. The consequences are real. Saving Twilight may be impossible. And most importantly... you only have one shot.

[twibrary]

...

[twibrary]

I could just give her a happy ending. But, from where I'm sitting, it isn't just about her. It's about her and all of you. Tumblrpon, for me, has always been a shared, participatory journey, even when it was all one-off jokes like this Twilight's blog once was.

Twilight only knows one thing about her "Medium of Delivery," but it's the most important. She doesn't know about the sapient being or the electronic infrastructure. She doesn't know how it works or why. But she knows it's a connection to others outside of her world. That, through MODs, you and she can be in this together. And that goes both ways.

That's what this Quest is. There is an ending ahead of one kind or another, and you have a chance to help shape it. "Anon magic" is a powerful tool for doing so, but one I'm still not certain I should permit. But even that is part of the journey. Will you try to convince me? I don't know. What are you going to do with this chance?

You only have one shot.

What are you going to do with it?

[twibrary]

...

The idea that the end needn't come yet -- that it could be forestalled and there might be value in what is had by so doing -- makes a certain amount of sense to me. That stories yet to be finished (or even to be begun) still have a place.

But this Twilight, of all Twilights, never really had a story to share. She was, from her first appearance as a Tumblrpon, fundamentally reactionary. Reacting to the show, reacting to Trixie, and -- yes -- reacting to the fandom.

But now I'm told she brings hope? That the return of the Twibrary -- to the extent that any of this, with none of the Twibrary's old trappings or even its original purpose, can be called the Twibrary's return -- is a hopeful thing rather than a bleak reminder of all that has already been lost and all that still will be in time?

Perhaps it's the depression talking, but that’s hard for me to get my head around.

[twibrary]

Cute idea.

Should I really have it work, though?

What stands to be gained by it?

The show is over, Tumblrpon is all but dead, and both the Twibrary and her home blog were already past their glory days well before then.

Even if you believe that there’s anything worth saving here, what’s the benefit of having me show her the world she’s lost?

I know she asked if you could contact her world, and one of you eventually did, but why torment her with such things?

Why even torment her with this quest?

I’m only giving you this one shot because some of you seem to want to try. But you could just stop asking. You could just walk away. You could let it -- and her -- end.

You have it in your collective hands.

Tell me why.

[twibrary]

...

[twibrary]

Close call.

[twibrary]

...

[twibrary]

Now look what you’ve done. You’ve gone and given her hope again. The poor thing.

[twibrary]

I just thought that you might want to see more than her eyes.

[twibrary]

...

[twibrary]

Mea culpa.

Still, even with all the delays, it’s still like I said when this started: You have one shot.

No matter the interruptions, you have one shot.

But only one.

[twibrary]

What use a princess without her domain?

[twibrary]

Well that kind of thing has happened since as far back as eight relative years ago with the Vocational Death Cruise. Seven relative years ago a couple of events occurred that made it happen again. The event that happened around four relative months ago was only the most recent occurrence and even between all these events it continually happens on a much smaller scale every so often for various reasons.

“Now there’s a blast from the past. I was on that cruise, and that experience actually figured into the Twibrary’s study of the multiverse and the relationships between a world, a Medium Of Delivery and (to a less clear extent), a Follower.”“Still, I think we’re talking about different things.”

“It might just be that the MODs are dispersing our worlds, but we’ve observed that pattern before, and it isn’t consistent with my findings. Best I can tell, something changed a few months ago, before regaining access to whatever MOD enables this line of communication. And whatever it did, it changed everything somehow. Maybe only a little, but it’s there. And its left some of these doors not just locked, but sealed. Like there’s no door there at all anymore.”

[twibrary]

Not all of those worlds are gone, many of them are either stuck in chronostasis or their windows are malfunctioning too. Hard to tell the difference.

“Maybe. Maybe, I don’t know. Not enough of my instruments are still functioning. But I definitely detected a precipitous, near-simultaneous drop in readings from all doors at some point... maybe four months ago? It’s been difficult to track the passage of time. But I theorize that something changed or emerged, and it’s been destroying, unraveling, or consuming entire universes.”

[twibrary]

Hey! There was some kind of time dilation effect that broke communications when we tried to contact your native timeline, but it seems that we're synced up again.

“Might be the light bulb. I haven’t been able to get it back on. But that isn’t my primary worry, and that’s saying something.”

“A lot of the doors have stopped being doors. Knobs fell off, and they just magically sealed flat into their frames. I’ve tried running some tests, and it’s hard with so much of the equipment offline, but... I think maybe the worlds behind them have been winking out of existence.”

[twibrary]

Hello?

“Can anyone hear me?”

[twibrary]

“As far as I’m aware,” she muses sadly, “There’s no way for me to-”

“Wait.”

“As followers, would it be possible for you to make contact with their universes?”

A fraction of a second passes as the possible implications dawn on her.

“Could you contact mine?”