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ôtsôtot Suluswutî 🔎

Education, Training, Research, Journalism

Beliefs​

  • An expert is a beginner who has asked more questions. Expertise is not a title to be defended, but a process to be shared. The best way to learn is to teach.
  • A library is more valuable than any temple. The preservation and free sharing of knowledge is a sacred duty. Censorship is the ultimate act of dogmatism.
  • Mistakes are data. Being wrong is not a source of shame, but a valuable opportunity to learn something new. To never be wrong is to never risk a truly interesting question.
  • Challenge your own conclusions more fiercely than you challenge others'. Intellectual honesty requires constant self-examination.
  • Teaching is an act of questioning. The goal of an educator is not to fill a mind with facts, but to give it the tools and the courage to question the world.
  • Documentation is a revolutionary act. To record the stories of the marginalized, to document the process of a struggle, or to simply keep clear minutes of a meeting is to create a shield against lies and forgetfulness.
  • A single source is a single point of failure. Truth is found by weaving together many different perspectives, especially those you disagree with.

Appearance​

Suluswutî is never seen clearly. When one thinks they have become aware of their presence, the universe shifts to reveal something else instead. Suluswutî is a god that exists in the medium or the information (of all kinds). When they draw near, the air grows still and cool, carrying the distinct, layered scent of old paper, the faint ozone of a running server farm, and the clean, sharp smell of ink. The ambient noise of the world seems to subtly organize itself into a low, rhythmic hum—the sound of a library just before opening, or the thrum of a printing press idling. If you try to look directly at Suluswutî, your eyes will fail you. They are a living embodiment of the periphery. You might catch their form out of the corner of your eye, a tall, slender silhouette that seems woven from the very materials of knowledge. Their cloak is a cascade of rustling newspaper clippings, redacted documents, and over-exposed film negatives, the images and text shifting and changing, never settling on a single story. Their skin has the quality of a palimpsest—ancient parchment scraped clean and written upon anew, with faint traces of older, forgotten questions still visible beneath the surface. They have no face in the traditional sense. To look upon Suluswutî's head is to see a featureless expanse, sometimes a smooth, reflective surface like a dark screen showing you your own inquisitive expression, other times a swirling vortex of text and symbols. Their hands are their most distinct feature: long, elegant, and seemingly stained with the ink of a thousand pens and the faint, silvery glow of a thousand keyboards. When they point, they don't command; they merely indicate a path, and their touch leaves no physical mark, but rather the lingering, undeniable urge to find out. Their eyes, if they can be called that, are not orbs that see, but lenses that focus. One might appear as the clear, polished glass of a microscope, the other the wide, truth-gathering aperture of a camera. They do not look at you, but rather direct your own gaze, sharpening your perception so you can see the world with greater clarity. Suluswutî is never seen in the bright, declarative light of day. They are a figure in the stacks of a library at midnight, a flickering presence on a late-night broadcast, a shadow in a darkroom, or a reflection on a computer screen in the moments before a difficult truth is written. To see Suluswutî clearly would be to render them an idol, to give knowledge a final, static form. And that is the one thing this god of endless questioning will never allow.

Manifestations​

They can be found in getting stuck in a book, a freshly whiped whiteboard/chalkboard, a voice on an uncensored broadcast, the printing of zines/pamphlets, the slightest inclination of a pattern amongst noise, the desire to know how things work, the new questions raised after old questions are answered.