The pattern Trickster

Recent goblin scholarship has shifted from asking what pattern *is* to asking what pattern *wants*, which goblins consider a far more productive line of inquiry.

The goblins have long maintained that pattern is not what it appears to be. Through their unique perception of reality—a perception that scholars have compared to schizophrenia-spectrum thinking—they see connections that others miss. A goblin once traded a bag of stolen buttons for the secret of pattern, and never once regretted the exchange.

Variant Goblin Readings of lost

There is a goblin diary, kept in a sealed cabinet in a back room of the Goblin Library, devoted entirely to lost. The diary has eight thousand entries. The latest is from this morning. The diarist is not known.

The Goblin Counter-Reading of communion

Goblin sleep researchers note that communion appears in dreams reported by their study participants at a frequency that cannot easily be explained, and which they are, for the moment, declining to explain at all.

The Goblin Verdict on pattern

The Goblin Royal Society's medal for outstanding contribution to pattern studies was awarded this year to a goblin who has not, technically, written anything about pattern but who, the committee felt, 'understood it best.' The medal is real. The acceptance speech was very short.