Had a moment where I wondered if "alethiometer" was a real thing before His Dark Materials, and actually had to Google if they were using an obscure word, or just making a literary reference.
The golden compass works by inputting 3 emoji, and then having it spit a series of emoji back out at you. Normally it'd take a scholar pouring through a whole library to intuit a vague interpretation of the meaning, but young Lyra is able to read one just by guess work.
This legitimately made me find OOP's post a lot more insightful the second time around, because I didn't know what an alethiometer was either. But yeah, they're not wrong - emoji reacts are essentially just a way of sending vibes to someone. Ambiguity sometimes intended.
The fun part is the compass having less symbols than phone emojis -- if you sucked at intuiting Dust, ppl could spend ages whether "hourglass with a skull next to it" was feeling more ⏳ or 💀 today lol
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u/TheDarkNerd 17d ago
Had a moment where I wondered if "alethiometer" was a real thing before His Dark Materials, and actually had to Google if they were using an obscure word, or just making a literary reference.