[ID: A traditional drawing of A Sphere and A Square from Flatland the Film.
A Sphere has a large burn mark covering his left side, with scars extending downward to his left arm. His right arm is outstretched so that his right hand is underneath A Square, who is floating in front of him, and his left hand is positioned so it is partially covering A Square’s bottom corner. A Square has a shocked expression.
A Sphere’s right eye is noticeably more stylized, while his left eye looks more realistic. A Sphere is looking downwards towards A Square, with stylized tears coming from his left eye. There is a burst of light coming from the left of A Sphere, and there is a box of text to the right of him that reads, “So give me just one more chance, one more glance.”
End ID.]
doodle for a friend; lyrics from another believer
Abbott A. Sfär
A. Sphere design for Flatland The Musical 🎭
I think a lot of people haven't actually read Flatland so you may not realize A. What Bill's eye mutation means and B. What precisely Bill did to destroy his homeworld.
Bill's home isn't completely the same as Edwin Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (notably, women and men can be both polygons #feminism) but we can assume most of the mechanics are the same. The basic premise is that the world is 2D. Everyone perceives the world in a 1D way, along the plane. There's a part of Journal 3 that describes this pretty well.
Bill can see up to the stars because his eye is on the flat surface instead of on the side like everyone else, like this:
(He's also slightly 3D, as we can see in the show.)
But there's one more important Flatland detail. The denizens of Flatland (and therefore likely Euclydia) do still have organs "inside" their bodies. Since there is no depth, they're just on the inner radius of their bodies. The 2007 Ehlinger movie adaptation shows that:
If Bill wanted to "give his world a new perspective" and "show everyone what they were missing," he wanted to get everyone to look upward.
Meaning he probably tilted the entire world.
Meaning everyone not only slid off of the plane, but all of their organs spilled out and everyone died.
...Hence "so much blood."
(The only issue with this is that it doesn't account for the number of times Euclydia is referred to have been burned ("saw his own dimension burn / misses home and can't return", he only has ashes leftover), but I'm sure the act of turning an entire dimension upwards expends a lot of energy.)
A. Sphere! Some more shoddy ballpoint concept doodles on my lunchbreak. Thank yall for the kind words on A Square's design :'] he's really fun to draw
Nora doodles because I love her.
If ppl are fans of Jheselbraum and want her to have a backstory please read Flat Dreams.
Human design belongs to @doodledrawsthings
I WANT TO NOT FORGIVE YOU
RIGOR MORTIS, MOLD AND MILDEW
redraw of one of my favorite lines from le chat du rabbin that i think fits these two very well
og under the cut + explanation
“Je lui demande de me montrer une image de Dieu. Il me dit que Dieu, c’est une parole.”
R. Line justifies her neglect and disdain towards Trey, her own son, by using the Gospel of Three Dimensions, claiming that the Holy Sphere purposefully guided evolution to give Women larger brains than the Isosceles of the village. Women are inherently better, and are above the Isosceles: this is the structure set in stone. Trey, suffering daily under this dogma, questions their religion and the existence of the Holy Sphere. If the Sphere was real, he would have already saved them from the conditions of poverty and suffering their villages are put into. Because of R. Line's overbearing nature and refusal to accept any other point of view other than her own, Trey does not believe that the Third Dimension or an afterlife exist. R. Line is content with sending her son to his own death, under reassurance that their next life in a higher dimension is all that matters.
umm now some very choppy explanation of symbolism in this bc it's hard to put into words:
-The background is yellow to show the idea of the Sphere, specifically R. Line's ideal of the Sun as a holy object that is intertwined with the Holy Sphere: Only R. Line's beliefs are what matter, and are extremely overbearing and searing. R. Line is outlined in yellow, as well as the pupil of her eye being yellow to show this ideal is the lens she views the world through. Trey does not conform to the idea of a Holy Sphere, and has no yellow on him, but he is surrounded by it because it is forced onto him.
-Also relating to their pupil colors: In white, Trey is seeking out an answer grounded in reality and truth. In yellow, R. Line makes up her own answers, and justifies them through saying they are only what the Sphere would want. Similarly to this: Trey has a very solid outline because he wants direct answers that make logical sense and can be proven. R. Line's outline is blurry/indistinct because she is willing to lead her life using blind faith. Trey's limbs are fading because his limbs are the body part that have the most semblance to his mother (very angular + have spikes on the shoulders), and no matter what he does, he is still his mother's son. + it also shows how he does not have much time left before his death
-The black holes on the bottom represent the cross-sections of a Sphere, and the Sun in the back represents R. Line's pendant. These are not concepts that can be translated correctly into 2-Dimensions, and stick out as something that is really not true. These concepts are shadows displayed on a wall in an attempt to mimic the real thing, hence them being black and solid. It is an attempt for them to project the Sphere into their lives, but in the end, it is all false. The idea that R. Line dedicates herself to, an all-powerful and omnipotent Sphere that will bring salvation, is false. But she whole-heartedly believes in them, and willingly allows them to consume her life. It is also why she is fully black: Her life is only a vessel for her belief in the Sphere, and she has no real emotional connection to this plane of existence. This is also why blood is draining into the most prominent cross-section: She allows so much death and suffering, ruins the lives of all that get close to her, watches her son's death without lifting a finger to prevent it. All in the Sphere's name.
Kinda redesign them a little
some archived flatland-related stuff I dug up (or just strangers' rants from mid 2000s)
"flatland is a fairy tale? a story? or ... ?"
fusion of flatland and religion (as i see)
perfect song for christmas
"physicists probe the fifth dimension"
also the very first posts about flatland on tumblr but this can't upload in normal formm
Drama queen 🙄🤭
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Alt version without ciphers:
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comic idea from this post by @poppyloomaplanet
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