The Discordance and Language

From Fallen London Wiki

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE DISCORDANCE STORYLINE

I find it interesting that, despite already knowing that the Discordance's use of language is strange, the Tower is considered the bleakest ending, at least in how it's written in the summary. I guess this would be my counter to that, or at least a way to show that the summary written there is rather opinionated.

The Tower itself, in tarot readings, isn't representative of an end or an ultimate destruction. It represents destruction, yes, but it's destruction that ends in growth or something new being created. Putting it into that context makes me think that, although it appears bleak, the Discordant Future isn't actually as bad as it seems.

The Discordance is... weird, to put it lightly. If the Correspondence is esoteric and vague and hard to translate, the Discordance is as literal a definition of every word and character as you can get. It's definitive in its laws, and yet despite that those laws have weird loopholes and weirder applications. And at the same time... it's spoken from the perspective of the Is-Not. The Discordance, after all, does not exist. The Adulterine Castle is supposedly the castle that does not exist in a land that already does not exist, so trying to establish irreality in irreality is difficult.

But I interpret this, as well as the Discordance itself, not as destroying the Is but rather destroying the Is-Not... by making it into the Is. No thing shall exist. "No thing" is a thing in the Is-Not, it's the same weird logic the others go off of: the Discordance is the Is-Not affecting the Is, the exact opposite of the Correspondence being the Is defining the Is-Not. Going off of that, it's natural to presume the reason everything is fading away is because there's no way for you to *not* exist. You have no mouth, because no mouth is now a mouth.

Basically, the Discordance is really strange, and despite how literal it is in its language, it's very easy to interpret it in entirely different ways. It's what happens when you activate one of the Laws in the Hurlers. It leads to this strange analysis, essentially. I personally don't think it's a destruction of all existence, but others might. In the end, it's a matter of interpretation of a law.

TL;DR: The Discordance is REALLY weird, the Tower may not be the bleakest possible future.