on emotions (dissonant grid #6)
hi ppl!
if you solved the april fools puzzle, i apologize! if you missed it, it's not too late! it's aggressively hard but also pretty silly i think.
i made this month's puzzle to represent the complicated, beautiful, fucked-up fabric of human emotions. many of the clues feature solver entries to the survey i sent out in the previous post-- those are indicated with a star. many other clues feature my emotions, my realties. some clues feature potential emotions/realities that may or may not resonate with you. why are they put together this way? to indicate:
1) that many emotions, even, or especially, when seemingly "opposite," can be true at the same time.
2) that emotions are present and real and heavy and also completely fake and bizarre and contrived.
i'm also just interested in using this puzzle as a capsule for what people were feeling in the ~week i had the survey open. we live in uncertain times, and i'm interested in keeping this puzzle as a time capsule for our emotional realities.
furthermore, i'm interested in how different this puzzle would have been if i had made it on a different day! so much is determined by random moments, etc. the raw subjectivity of everything here is meta and i think kinda beautiful.
content warnings are, as always, available. be especially aware if you filled out the survey, since you may see your exact words, your exact experience, reflected back at you.
this puzzle was not test solved, because neither are emotions. you can tell me if you find a typo, but i don't really care on this one.
yours always,
owen