#A Paradoxical Theory of Change

[punkrockmixtapes]

Listen/purchase: This Fucking Year by MakeWar

[aquarianlights]

How do you keep going when it looks like 99% of your country has joined a cult whose soul purpose is hatred of everything you & everyone you know & love are when all you're doing is existing just like everyone else?

[000marie198]

I don't know if anyone else has talked about this already but, oh well!

So anyway, let's talk about the Chaos Council. It's made up of five different versions of Eggman.

Now remember my theory on how all the alternates are basically shattered parts of the original? That they're the aspects of the main characters taken to the extreme? Well, I believe the presence of the Chaos Council proves that theory. Cuz when you notice, there are no alternates of Eggman anywhere else throughout the Shatterverses but there are alternates of everyone else. This means all the Eggman alternates are in one place, aka New Yoke, as part of the CC. Why does that serve to prove that the alternates are shattered parts of a whole? Well, for many reasons but I'm gonna talk about three major ones.

Firstly, something that Mister Dr. Eggman said struck a chord while I was rewatching the premiere episode. While introducing the Chaos Council to Sonic, he said,

"One makes five, five makes one."

This dialogue literally and very clearly hints at them being 5 parts of a whole. A major clue or a foreshadowing if you will.

Secondly, their personalities. They all clearly reflect a certain major trait of Eggman. Introduction wise, Dr. Done-It is an aged man who likes to yell orders and complain.

He is literally, as Sonic would put it, a grumpy old man. That's the part of Eggman which gets annoyed at all the failed plans and groans in agitation and yells at his creations and curses out Sonic. Also the part that keeps urging to get a move on.

Next, there's Dr. Deep.

If his name and mannerisms aren't hinting enough, that's the part of Eggman that sometimes comes up at the end of the adventure when he's standing alone somewhere. The philosophical part, the part that expressed his feelings on Gerald, the part that would sometimes save Sonic because it wouldn't be a victory unless he's the one defeating his opponent. But this is not all, Deep is also the part which holds all of Eggman's battle prowess and drip. In short, he's the right-brained part of Eggman.

As for Dr. Don't, the emo teenager.

This is the guy who points out a clear cut obvious answer instead of dawdling . And he controls some remote features of the headquarters. He's constantly playing videogames and answers questions without even looking up. His brain is probably in constant activity, figuring things out, forming deductions and conclusions. This is the scientist side of Eggman. The one that holds 300 IQ and internally goes, "I'm surrounded by idiots." The one which is unable to get along with anyone because no one can think on his motive and level.

And then there's Babble, aka the angry baby.

One would think why someone like Eggman would have a baby as a part of his personality, right? Well, this baby is the most like Eggman out of all of them. Hear me out! Dr. Babble represents the anger and ruthlessness in Eggman. Babble, out of all of them, is Eggman's evil side. Babble loves torturing his victims and enjoys it, he demands that they harm their opponents and is merciless. Babble represents the part of Eggman that... destroyed the moon (get out of my head Snapcube dubs), unleashed the Metal Virus, Roboticizes mobians, all the mean stuff. And finally, the baby whines, a lot. All of Eggman's whining is squeezed in this one tiny baby.

Finally, the main member, Mister Dr. Eggman.

In my opinion, this guy is the aspect of Eggman that gloats and showboats. The one who gets absolutely smug and giddy if the plans are working, the part of Eggman that lets out those loud evil cackles and monologues. The face, so to speak. He is the part that makes Eggman go overconfident or reveal his plans or manipulates or banters, the part that makes him put his face as a logo on everything, the part that makes him build showy mechs and aircrafts and stuff.

Now that these people are discussed as various aspects of Eggman, let's get to the third and final major reason which indicates why the alternates are aspects of the originals; the Prism shards. When the Paradox Prism broke, it was broken up into five shards; yellow, red, blue, green, purple. There are five shards and five Eggman alternates.

But wait.

Why are there five alternates of Eggman when we have only come across three for the rest of the characters? Why don't the numbers add up? Well, good question. And my theory is that since the Prism broke up into five shards, there should be five sets of everything! Five shards, five Shatterworlds, five sets of alternates. There are already five of Eggman. This means there are still two shards missing and two sets of alternates we haven't seen. We know the purple shard belongs to The Grim because its gateway was purple and its entrance was in the shape of the purple shard. And we haven't seen Rouge's main alternate like we've seen Nine, Thorn and Dread. That's going to be the world where the yellow shard resides.

But this all leaves another mystery. Five shards means five worlds and five sets of alternates, right? We already know about all five alternates of Eggman, we already know the colors of the five shards (Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Purple), and we know about four of the five worlds while the one associated with yellow shard hasn't been shown in the series yet. That world would contain its own set of alternates. That makes four sets of alternates. What about the fifth? Where are the alternates that, logically, should belong to The Grim? Where are they? Excluding yellow, what happened to the fifth world and its alternates? Where is the purple Shard that is associated with The Grim? What happened to this world and its inhabitants?

[transingthoseformers]

Oh this is really cool, ohhh this is most definitely time travel but super duper cool

[bluefuecoco]

anyway, if the dlc doesnt include more information on the time traveled pokemon and what their existence means in terms of pokemon evolution as a whole, i’m gonna be upset

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Why they're smearing Lina Khan

My god, they sure hate Lina Khan. This once-in-a-generation, groundbreaking, brilliant legal scholar and fighter for the public interest, the slayer of Reaganomics, has attracted more vitriol, mockery, and dismissal than any of her predecessors in living memory.

She sure must be doing something right, huh?

A quick refresher. In 2017, Khan — then a law student — published Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox in the Yale Law Journal. It was a brilliant, blistering analysis showing how the Reagan-era theory of antitrust (which celebrates monopolies as “efficient”) had failed on its own terms, using Amazon as Exhibit A of the ways in which post-Reagan antitrust had left Americans vulnerable to corporate abuse:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

The paper sent seismic shocks through both legal and economic circles, and goosed the neo-Brandeisian movement (sneeringly dismissed as “hipster antitrust”). This movement is a rebuke to Reaganomics, with its celebration of monopolies, trickle-down, offshoring, corporate dark money, revolving-door regulatory capture, and companies that are simultaneously too big to fail and too big to jail.

This movement has many proponents, of course — not just Khan — but Khan’s careful scholarship, combined with her encyclopedic knowledge of the long-dormant statutory powers that federal agencies had to make change, and a strategy for reviving those powers to protect Americans from corporate predators made her a powerful, inspirational figure.

When Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, he surprised everyone by appointing Khan to the FTC. It wasn’t just that she had such a radical vision — it was also that she lacked the usual corporate law experience that such an appointee would normally require (experience that would ensure that the FTC was helmed by people whose default view of the world is that it should be structured and regulated by powerful, wealthy people in corporate boardrooms).

Even more surprising was that Khan was made chair of the FTC, something that was only possible because a few Republican Senators broke with their party to support her candidacy:

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1171/vote_117_1_00233.htm

These Republicans saw in Khan an ally in their fight against “woke” Big Tech. For these senators, the problem wasn’t that tech had got too big and powerful — it was that there were a few limited instances in which tech leaders failed to wield that power in the ways they preferred.

The Republican project is a matter of getting turkeys to vote for Christmas by doing a lot of culture war bullshit, cruelly abusing disfavored sexual and racial minorities. This wins support from low-information voters who’ll vote against their class interests and support more monopolies, more tax cuts for the rich, and more cuts to the services they rely on.

But while tech leaders are 100% committed to the project of permanent oligarchic takeover of every sphere of American life, they are less full-throated in their support for hateful, cruel discrimination against disfavored minorities (in this regard, tech leaders resemble the corporate wing of the Democrats, which is where we get the “Silicon Valley is a Democratic Party stronghold” narrative).

This failure to unquestioningly and unstintingly back culture war bullshit put tech leaders in the GOP’s crosshairs. Some GOP politicians actually believe in the culture war bullshit, and are grossly offended that tech is “woke.” Others are smart enough not to get high on their own supply, but worry that any tech obstruction in the bullshit culture wars will make it harder to get sufficient turkey votes for a big fat Christmas surprise.

Biden’s ceding of antitrust policy to the left wing of the party, combined with disaffected GOP senators viewing Khan as their enemy’s enemy, led to Khan’s historic appointment as FTC Chair. In that position, she was joined by a slate of Biden trustbusters, including Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division, Tim Wu at the White House, and other important, skilled and principled fighters like Alvaro Bedoya (FTC), Rebecca Slaughter (FTC), Rohit Chopra (CFPB), and many others.

Crucially, these new appointees weren’t just principled, they were good at their jobs. In 2021, Tim Wu wrote an executive order for Biden that laid out 72 concrete ways in which the administration could act — with no further Congressional authorization — to blunt corporate power and insulate the American people from oligarchs’ abusive and extractive practices:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

Since then, the antitrust arm of the Biden administration have been fuckin’ ninjas, Getting Shit Done in ways large and small, working — for the first time since Reagan — to protect Americans from predatory businesses:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

This is in marked contrast to the corporate Dems’ champions in the administration. People like Pete Buttigieg are heralded as competent technocrats, “realists” who are too principled to peddle hopium to the base, writing checks they can’t cash. All this is cover for a King Log performance, in which Buttigieg’s far-reaching regulatory authority sits unused on a shelf while a million Americans are stranded over Christmas and whole towns are endangered by greedy, reckless rail barons straight out of the Gilded Age:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

The contrast between the Biden trustbusters and their counterparts from the corporate wing is stark. While the corporate wing insists that every pitch is outside of the zone, Khan and her allies are swinging for the stands. They’re trying to make life better for you and me, by declaring commercial surveillance to be an unfair business practice and thus illegal:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

And by declaring noncompete “agreements” that shackle good workers to shitty jobs to be illegal:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

And naturally, this has really pissed off all the right people: America’s billionaires and their cheerleaders in the press, government, and the hive of scum and villainy that is the Big Law/thinktank industrial-complex.

Take the WSJ: since Khan took office, they have published 67 vicious editorials attacking her and her policies. Khan is living rent-free in Rupert Murdoch’s head. Not only that, he’s given her the presidential suite! You love to see it.

These attacks are worth reading, if only to see how flimsy and frivolous they are. One major subgenre is that Khan shouldn’t be bringing any action against Amazon, because her groundbreaking scholarship about the company means she has a conflict of interest. Holy moly is this a stupid thing to say. The idea that the chair of an expert agency should recuse herself because she is an expert is what the physicists call not even wrong.

But these attacks are even more laughable due to who they’re coming from: people who have the most outrageous conflicts of interest imaginable, and who were conspicuously silent for years as the FTC’s revolving door admitted the a bestiary of swamp-creatures so conflicted it’s a wonder they managed to dress themselves in the morning.

Writing in The American Prospect, David Dayen runs the numbers:

Since the late 1990s, 31 out of 41 top FTC officials worked directly for a company that has business before the agency, with 26 of them related to the technology industry.

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-06-23-attacks-lina-khans-ethics-reveal-projection/

Take Christine Wilson, a GOP-appointed FTC Commissioner who quit the agency in a huff because Khan wanted to do things for the American people, and not their self-appointed oligarchic princelings. Wilson wrote an angry break-up letter to Khan that the WSJ published, presaging their concierge service for Samuel Alito:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-im-resigning-from-the-ftc-commissioner-ftc-lina-khan-regulation-rule-violation-antitrust-339f115d

For Wilson to question Khan’s ethics took galactic-scale chutzpah. Wilson, after all, is a commissioner who took cash money from Bristol-Myers Squibb, then voted to approve their merger with Celgene:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4365601-Wilson-Christine-Smith-final278.html

Or take Wilson’s GOP FTC predecessor Josh Wright, whose incestuous relationship with the companies he oversaw at the Commission are so intimate he’s practically got a Habsburg jaw. Wright went from Google to the US government and back again four times. He also lobbied the FTC on behalf of Qualcomm (a major donor to Wright’s employer, George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School) after working “personally and substantially” while serving at the FTC.

George Mason’s Scalia center practically owns the revolving door, counting fourteen FTC officials among its affliates:

https://campaignforaccountability.org/ttp-investigation-big-techs-backdoor-to-the-ftc/

Since the 1990s, 31 out of 41 top FTC officials — both GOP appointed and appointees backed by corporate Dems — “worked directly for a company that has business before the agency”:

https://www.citizen.org/article/ftc-big-tech-revolving-door-problem-report/

The majority of FTC and DoJ antitrust lawyers who served between 2014–21 left government service and went straight to work for a Big Law firm, serving the companies they’d regulated just a few months before:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/The-Revolving-Door-In-Federal-Antitrust-Enforcement.pdf

Take Deborah Feinstein, formerly the head of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where she’s represented General Electric, NBCUniversal, Unilever, and Pepsi and a whole medicine chest’s worth of pharma giants before her former subordinates at the FTC. Michael Moiseyev who was assistant manager of FTC Competition is now in charge of mergers at Weil Gotshal & Manges, working for Microsoft, Meta, and Eli Lilly.

There’s a whole bunch more, but Dayen reserves special notice for Andrew Smith, Trump’s FTC Consumer Protection boss. Before he was put on the public payroll, Smith represented 120 clients that had business before the Commission, including “nearly every major bank in America, drug industry lobbyist PhRMA, Uber, Equifax, Amazon, Facebook, Verizon, and a variety of payday lenders”:

https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/andrew_smith_foia_appeal_response_11_30.pdf

Before Khan, in other words, the FTC was a “conflict-of-interest assembly line, moving through corporate lawyers and industry hangers-on without resistance for decades.”

Khan is the first FTC head with no conflicts. This leaves her opponents in the sweaty, desperate position of inventing conflicts out of thin air.

For these corporate lickspittles, Khan’s “conflict” is that she has a point of view. Specifically, she thinks that the FTC should do its job.

This makes grifters like Jim Jordan furious. Yesterday, Jordan grilled Khan in a hearing where he accused her of violating an ethics official’s advice that she should recuse herself from Big Tech cases. This is a talking point that was created and promoted by Bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-16/ftc-rejected-ethics-advice-for-khan-recusal-on-meta-case

That ethics official, Lorielle Pankey, did not, in fact, make this recommendation. It’s simply untrue (she did say that Khan presiding over cases that she has made public statements about could be used as ammo against her, but did not say that it violated any ethical standard).

But there’s more to this story. Pankey herself has a gigantic conflict of interest in this case, including a stock portfolio with $15,001 and $50,000 in Meta stock (Meta is another company that has whined in print and in its briefs that it is a poor defenseless lamb being picked on by big, mean ole Lina Khan):

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ethics-official-owned-meta-stock-while-recommending-ftc-chair-recuse-herself-from-meta-case-8582a83b

Jordan called his hearing on the back of this fake scandal, and then proceeded to show his whole damned ass, even as his GOP colleagues got into a substantive and even informative dialog with Khan:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-07-14-jim-jordan-misfires-attacks-lina-khan/

Mostly what came out of that hearing was news about how Khan is doing her job, working on behalf of the American people. For example, she confirmed that she’s investigating OpenAI for nonconsensually harvesting a mountain of Americans’ personal information:

https://www.ft.com/content/8ce04d67-069b-4c9d-91bf-11649f5adc74

Other Republicans, including confirmed swamp creatures like Matt Gaetz, ended up agreeing with Khan that Amazon Ring is a privacy dumpster-fire. Nobodies like Rep TomM assie gave Khan an opening to discuss how her agency is protecting mom-and-pop grocers from giant, price-gouging, greedflation-drunk national chains. Jeff Van Drew gave her a chance to talk about the FTC’s war on robocalls. Lance Gooden let her talk about her fight against horse doping.

But Khan’s opponents did manage to repeat a lot of the smears against her, and not just the bogus conflict-of-interest story. They also accused her of being 0–4 in her actions to block mergers, ignoring the huge number of mergers that have been called off or not initiated because M&A professionals now understand they can no longer expect these mergers to be waved through. Indeed, just last night I spoke with a friend who owns a medium-sized tech company that Meta tried to buy out, only to withdraw from the deal because their lawyers told them it would get challenged at the FTC, with an uncertain outcome.

These talking points got picked up by people commenting on Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s ruling against the FTC in the Microsoft-Activision merger. The FTC was seeking an injunction against the merger, and Corley turned them down flat. The ruling was objectively very bad. Start with the fact that Corley’s son is a Microsoft employee who stands reap massive gains in his stock options if the merger goes through.

But beyond this (real, non-imaginary, not manufactured conflict of interest), Corley’s judgment and her remarks in court were inexcusably bad, as Matt Stoller writes:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-for-microsoft-mergers

In her ruling, Corley explained that she didn’t think Microsoft would abuse the market dominance they’d gain by merging their giant videogame platform and studio with one of its largest competitors. Why not? Because Microsoft’s execs pinky-swore that they wouldn’t abuse that power.

Corely’s deference to Microsoft’s corporate priorities goes deeper than trusting its execs, though. In denying the FTC’s motion, she stated that it would be unfair to put the merger on hold in order to have a full investigation into its competition implications because Microsoft and Activision had set a deadline of July 18 to conclude things, and Microsoft would have to pay a penalty if that deadline passed.

This is surreal: a judge ruled that a corporation’s radical, massive merger shouldn’t be subject to full investigation because that corporation itself set an arbitrary deadline to conclude the deal before such an investigation could be concluded. That’s pretty convenient for future mega-mergers — just set a short deadline and Judge Corely will tell regulators that the merger can’t be investigated because the deadline is looming.

And this is all about the future. As Stoller writes, Microsoft isn’t exactly subtle about why it wants this merger. Its own execs said that the reason they were spending “dump trucks” of money buying games studios was to “spend Sony out of business.”

Now, maybe you hate Sony. Maybe you hate Activision. There’s plenty of good reason to hate both — they’re run by creeps who do shitty things to gamers and to their employees. But if you think that Microsoft will be better once it eliminates its competition, then you have the attention span of a goldfish on Adderall.

Microsoft made exactly the same promises it made on Activision when it bought out another games studio, Zenimax — and it broke every one of those promises.

Microsoft has a long, long, long history of being a brutal, abusive monopolist. It is a convicted monopolist. And its bad conduct didn’t end with the browser wars. You remember how the lockdown turned all our homes into rent-free branch offices for our employers? Microsoft seized on that moment to offer our bosses keystroke-and-click level surveillance of our use of our own computers in our own homes, via its Office365 bossware product:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

If you think a company that gave your boss a tool to spy on their employees and rank them by “productivity” as a prelude to firing them or cutting their pay is going to treat gamers or game makers well once they have “spent the competition out of business,” you’re a credulous sucker and you are gonna be so disappointed.

The enshittification play is obvious: use investor cash to make things temporarily nice for customers and suppliers, lock both of them in — in this case, it’s with a subscription-based service similar to Netflix’s — and then claw all that value back until all that’s left is a big pile of shit.

The Microsoft case is about the future. Judge Corely doesn’t take the future seriously: as she said during the trial, “All of this is for a shooter videogame.” The reason Corely greenlit this merger isn’t because it won’t be harmful — it’s because she doesn’t think those harms matter.

But it does, and not just because games are an art form that generate billions of dollars, employ a vast workforce, and bring pleasure to millions. It also matters because this is yet another one of the Reaganomic precedents that tacitly endorses monopolies as efficient forces for good. As Stoller writes, Corley’s ruling means that “deal bankers are sharpening pencils and saying ‘Great, the government lost! We can get mergers through everywhere else.’ Basically, if you like your high medical prices, you should be cheering on Microsoft’s win today.”

Ronald Reagan’s antitrust has colonized our brains so thoroughly that commentators were surprised when, immediately after the ruling, the FTC filed an appeal. Don’t they know they’ve lost? the commentators said:

https://gizmodo.com/ftc-files-appeal-of-microsoft-activision-deal-ruling-1850640159

They echoed the smug words of insufferable Activision boss Mike Ybarra: “Your tax dollars at work.”

https://twitter.com/Qwik/status/1679277251337277440

But of course Khan is appealing. The only reason that’s surprising is that Khan is working for us, the American people, not the giant corporations the FTC is supposed to be defending us from. Sure, I get that this is a major change! But she needs our backing, not our cheap cynicism.

The business lobby and their pathetic Renfields have hoarded all the nice things and they don’t want us to have any. Khan and her trustbuster colleagues want the opposite. There is no measure so small that the corporate world won’t have a conniption over it. Take click to cancel, the FTC’s perfectly reasonable proposal that if you sign up for a recurring payment subscription with a single click, you should be able to cancel it with a single click.

The tooth-gnashing and garment-rending and scenery-chewing over this is wild. America’s biggest companies have wheeled out their biggest guns, claiming that if they make it too easy to unsubscribe, they will lose money. In other words, they are currently making money not because people want their products, but because it’s too hard to stop paying for them!

https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/12/ftc_cancel_subscriptions/

We shouldn’t have to tolerate this sleaze. And if we back Khan and her team, they’ll protect us from these scams. Don’t let them convince you to give up hope. This is the start of the fight, not the end. We’re trying to reverse 40 years’ worth of Reagonmics here. It won’t happen overnight. There will be setbacks. But keep your eyes on the prize — this is the most exciting moment for countering corporate power and giving it back to the people in my lifetime. We owe it to ourselves, our kids and our planet to fight one.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

[Image ID: A line drawing of pilgrims ducking a witch tied to a ducking stool. The pilgrims' clothes have been emblazoned with the logos for the WSJ, Microsoft, Activision and Blizzard. The witch's face has been replaced with that of FTC chair Lina M Khan.]

[cyberdragoninfinity]

I really truly still can't get over the Legends Z-A announcement. Everything about it. ULTIMATE Crazy ass moments in Pokemon history. We had Unova game vs. Johto game rumors and theories flying around for half a goddamn YEAR. People were pointing out paintings of Lugia and Ho-oh in Detective Pikachu 2, Kitakami's dex full of Johto 'mons, Indigo Disk's 32847872 Unova references, the Paradox Legendary Johto AND Unova Trios. The OFFICIAL POKEMON TWITTER was posting cryptic gifs of Reshiram and Zekrom in the weeks leading up to Pokemon Day. The day before the stream people were waving around 4chan "leaks" of Legends Celebi, ILCA BW remakes, Black & White 3. None of us went into that direct knowing what we were gonna get.

And then it was Pokemon Day and the Pokemon Presents premieres and it's start to finish full of Johto nods, Unowns bouncing around and Raikou in Pkmn Sleep and Silver in Masters. They slap THIS FUCKER up there seconds before the final teaser trailer of the stream.

And then we get that teaser.

And then we get hit with "Lumiose City"

And then It's not Johto. It's not Unova. It's the region we haven't seen in an actual literal decade.

And then a single letter changes everything.

AND THEN THE HITS JUST KEEP COMING ONE AFTER ANOTHER. Legends "Z-A." The A looks like the Ultimate Weapon. Releasing 2025. Not this year. For once in so, so long a Pokemon mainline game isn't coming this year. It's like exhaling a breath I didn't know I was holding. The screen goes black and every expectation we could have possible have has been flung out a Kalos-shaped window.

And then they give us one last little treat for the road

Just an absolutely unbelievable presentation. They played us like complete fiddles. They're sending our asses to FRANCE. And I can't help but smile so big just thinkin about it!! This is the first Pokemon announcement I've seen in YEARS where the majority of folks have been not just surprised but this joyful, EXHILARATED surprised, just absolutely going nuts over 10 years of memes and jokes and game wishes that are finally getting their due. And it's just infectious. There's something really magical in the comradery and shared excitement and I'm never gonna forget it. I love Pokemon. Welcome back and welcome home, Zygarde.

[lesbianjohnlennon]

It's queer! by Nelson Motta (O Pasquim)

"o pasquim" was a brazilian alternative weekly, known for its paradoxical and satirical nature, published between 1969 and 1991. it was recognized for its engagement with the brazilian counterculture scene of the 1960s and for its role in opposing the military regime. in 1970, the magazine published an article about john and paul (and brian) affair, written by nelson motta. here's the translation (with adicional notes) 👇

It’s queer! by Nelson Motta

Paul McCartney loved John Lennon, who loved Brian Epstein, who loved Paul McCartney. All the whole London music scene (1) knows this, and there, the famous suspicion about Paul's “death”, which originated with an American DJ, didn't catch on.

The "death" theory is well-constructed, but the true story (the one about their faggotry (2)) makes much more sense. And it's much spicier. I prove what I said (3):

Everything was going great in the John-Paul-Epstein triangle. Everyone loved each other, they adored jelly beans, everything was rosy, smoke and mirrors, etc. Ringo and George Harrison were always on a different page. The duo was Lennon and McCartney — they sang together, composed together, did everything together. Together with Brian Epstein, of course, who was openly queer and quite relaxed about it.

Everything was fine until Paul and John decided that two's company and three's a crowd, etc., and kicked Epstein out of the bed.

It's not proven, but many serious and well-informed people claim that Epstein committed suicide after a fight with Paul. Epstein supposedly gave Paul a very valuable gift, which Paul not only ignored but also hung up on Epstein, who, in despair, killed himself.

But John and Paul had many arguments, especially when Paul was still single and John was already tied down with the Japanese woman. The nippo, who is very wild and forward-thinking (4), didn't mind sharing John with Paul, but McCartney (that face never fooled Sérgio Cabral (5)) had jealousy issues. They fought and made up many times, even through music.

To "show the proof"(6) (I'm not sure why this phrase keeps coming up): Paul made up by composing Get Back (To Me) (7), and Lennon responded with a passionate interpretation of Oh Darling that everyone thought was "darling" (in the female sense) but was actually "darling" (in the male sense)(8). These are some of the great ambiguities of the English language.

But the Japanese woman really tied John Lennon down; no one knows exactly how. Or rather, everyone knows how.

The press started reporting that they were fighting a lot, and the explanations were always about "business and musical matters." Only a fool would believe that, since it's known that Apple was never in danger, none of the Beatles were at risk of starving, and the duo's musical production never suffered any drop in quality or sudden change in style.

After his last fight with John, Paul met Linda Eastman, who, through talks and things like that, convinced him to re-establish his heterosexuality (9). Probably out of revenge, Paul ended up marrying her to get back at John with a "for your information, I've already found someone else to replace you." (10)

The final result: John recording solo (Instant Karma is third on the American charts) while Paul is also making waves as a solo artist with Let It Be, first place on the American charts, and Paul's solo album has already been released.

Some clueless people might ask, "But how do Lennon & McCartney songs keep appearing?"

Elementary, my dear Jaguar (11): The duo has an exclusive contract with the music publisher Northern Songs until 1972, and everything one does will carry the other's name, at least nominally, as a partner. This practice is very common among songwriting duos where both contribute to the lyrics and music interchangeably.

You must admit that, at the very least, this is a respectable theory. I can't prove it because I've never been involved in this affair, which is absolutely not my specialty.

They’re the ones who are queer; let them figure it out.

notes:

(1) in the original, “patota musical de londres”. “patota” has a kind of pejorative meaning of a group of people. also means a group of friends or colleagues.

(2) in the original, “bichisse”, and it was the best way of translation that i could find.

(3) in the original, “mato a cobra e mostro o (the) pau”. again the best i could find.

(4) in the original, “superprafrentex”, which was a common slang in brazil in the 70s, used to describe someone who was modern and progressive.

(5) sérgio cabral was a famous journalist in brazil, and one of the founders of “o pasquim”.

(6) again, in the original, “mato a cobra e mostro o (the) pau”.

(7) in the original, “Get Back (Volta pra mim)”, which is funnier in portuguese and i tried to keep the tone.

(8) in Portuguese, every noun has a gender. darling can be translated to “querida” (feminine) or “querido” (masculine). 

(9) in the original, “restabelecer a mão única”. “mão única”, which literally translates to “one-way street”, makes a reference to paul’s sexuality, implying he was going (or into) on both “ways”, men and women.

(10) in the original, “pra teu governo já tenho outra em teu lugar”, another idiom. but works in english, anyway.

(11) in the original, “Elementar, meu caro Jaguar”, a playful reference to sherlock holmes’ line.

disclaimer: this was written in 1970, so is full of outdated expressions (and slurs) so read carefully!

[artigas]

I’m really happy that Black Sails is experiencing a bit of a renaissance, but (predictably) some of the takes I’m seeing online are so busted. It’s wild to me that anyone would complain about the fact that Anne Bonny kisses Jack after she’s developed this life-changing relationship with Max. It’s absolutely wild to see anyone roll their eyes or feel uncomfortable about the fact that Flint has sex with Miranda when he returns to her in season one or that Max is most likely a lesbian but actively has sex with men for pay and knows how to make that pleasurable. It’s crazy to me that some of the very audiences who claim to want queer representation feel so discomforted when they actually see the mess and seeming inconsistencies of queerness that they asked for.

The reality is that there are lesbians who have had (and will have!) meaningful, mutually-gratifying, and deeply sexual relationships with men. There are gay men who’ve enjoyed having sex with women, who are gay as the day is long and nevertheless feel sexually attracted to a woman or two and are nevertheless gay men, full stop. There are gay cis men who are happily married to trans women. There are femme dom tops and butch bottoms and there are mascs afab people who like femme boys. There are non-binary people and trans men who actively identify as lesbians. There are ace and aro people who enjoy thinking about and engaging with sex — sometimes in fiction and sometimes in real life. Queerness, in fiction and in reality, defies neat categorization. That is the beauty, power, and (perceived) unorthodoxy of queerness.

Now, I’ll say this — do I think the straight men behind Black Sails were actively thinking deeply and insightfully about the paradoxes and fuckery of queer identity when they wrote Black Sails? No! By their own admission, Steinberg and Levine have owned up to the fact that some of the writing of the show was really hinged on their own blind spots as people who are not (to my knowledge) members of the queer community. If I want to be generous, I think that the beautiful mess of Black Sails is that, in not feeling like experts enough to designate specific identity labels to any of their characters, the writers stumbled their way into more authentic representation of lived queer experience, which is to say that the notion that James Flint was actively thinking of himself as a gay man was anachronistic. As many lesbian archivists and theories have noted, the notion of a queer identity — as in, queerness is who you are, not what you do — was patently unthinkable for most cultures in the past. In other words, the idea that Anne Bonny operates in the eighteenth century as a lesbian and thus would not willingly engage in relationships with men is not only untrue of the series, but untrue of most recorded lesbian experiences in the real world. The notion that a lesbian would operate her entire life without engaging sexually or romantically with men, for instance, is a very new privilege that some of us are very lucky to enjoy, but it is not true for the vast majority of human history — hell, it’s not even true of our present world.

This is all to say that think that there’s something really funny about how we want queer characters to fit into neatly organized boxes. This isn’t a new problem, either. When the show was still airing, the BS fandom would get itself into tizzies about wether or not Flint is gay or bisexual, wether or not Anne Bonny is a lesbian, wether or not Silver is queer when his only canonical relationship is with Madi, etc etc. We’ve been having these discourses for years and I don’t know. I get that much of it is fueled by how badly some people want to see themselves represented in media, but . . . well. The siloing of queer characters and queer narratives into neat little boxes has never felt very authentic to me and nine times out of ten, it’s also just so damn boring.

[umbrellasareforever]

I don’t wanna sound like a Negative Narvin™️ but almost every theory I’ve seen about Ruby has her ending up being the daughter of either the Doctor or a companion of New Who significance (River, Rose, etc) and the absolute dread that fills in me at the thought of that being the twist is almost incalculable. The thought of it is just so boring and so uninteresting to me that if the final twist is something along those lines I will be so deflated.

Personally, I don’t have many theories yet but I stick with my original one and that is that Ruby is what I will call a Paradox Baby™️. This means that the woman dropping her off at the church, her “mother”, is actually herself and we never truly learn the origin of Ruby Sunday.

She doesn't trigger any sort of paradoxical effects by holding her infant self because she was always the one holding her infant self. The reason snow appears when they discuss Ruby’s origin is because reality can’t handle looking too closely at the paradox that is her existence. The Maestro was so unsettled by the (Christmas) song in Ruby because the song is representative of her paradox. It’s why the TARDIS makes strange noises around her every once in a while. Hell, it could be why the whole butterfly thing happened (regardless of what the Doctor said). She is able to exist because after Flux and everything with Swarm and Azure, time and space are nowhere as synchronous as they once were.

Finally, it all lines up with her line from the trailer, “It’s taken me all this time to realize what I’m meant to do. I’m going to save the world.”

Realizing that she has no past to speak of beyond that Christmas on Ruby Road, she needs to look forward to her future, her purpose.

And in a way this all sort of parallels the Doctor’s story with his past. He’s an “adopted” child with no idea of where he’s really from, but that just means all he can do is look forward to the future and what he’s going to do with it.

Hell, not to get too conspiracy theory, but it would also explain the music choice in the primary trailer. Changes by David Bowie is about how you can’t change time but time changes you.

That’s my working theory, at least.

[mysticstronomy]

WHAT IS 'NEGATIVE TIME'??

Blog#443

Wednesday, October 9th, 2024.

Welcome back,

Negative time may sound like the last committee meeting you attended that should have been an email, but researchers from the University of Toronto and Griffith University have reported that photons — particles of light — can spend a “negative” amount of time exciting atoms as they pass through a medium. Published in the pre-print server arXiv, the researchers report this strange phenomenon, confirmed by experiments and theory, challenges traditional views of light-matter interaction and sheds new light on the concept of negative time in quantum systems.

The study, which investigates the group delay experienced by photons, also suggests that this negative time has more physical meaning than previously thought and could have implications for quantum technology, such as quantum computing.

At the heart of the research is the concept of group delay. When light passes through a material, its speed is affected, causing a delay in how long it takes to travel from one point to another. Normally, this delay is positive, meaning that the light slows down as it interacts with the atoms in the material. However, in certain cases, especially when the light is tuned to specific frequencies near the material’s atomic resonance, something strange happens: the group delay becomes negative.

This means the light appears to exit the material before it should, creating a paradox that has puzzled physicists. Essentially, it’s as if the photon caused an effect, like making the atom excited, before it even arrived — something that can happen in the quantum world but doesn’t make sense in our everyday experience of time. (Welcome to the weird, wonderful world of quantum mechanics.)

To better understand this phenomenon, the research team set out to answer a fundamental question: Does this negative group delay correspond to the time photons spend as atomic excitations? The answer, as it turns out, is yes. By using a method called the cross-Kerr effect, the researchers were able to probe the degree of atomic excitation caused by transmitted photons, even when the group delay was negative.

The results showed that the time spent by the photons as atomic excitations was directly related to the group delay, suggesting that the negative time observed in the group delay has real physical significance.

Another fundamental question the researchers sought to answer was: how much time do atoms spend in an excited state when a photon is transmitted through a medium?

“We define the average time that the atoms spend in the excited state (τ0), or average atomic excitation time, as the time integral of the expectation value of the number of atoms in the excited state,” the researchers write.

They further explored the quantum nature of this interaction, asking how this time changes when photons are transmitted rather than scattered.

The idea that photons can cause atomic excitations for a negative amount of time may seem counterintuitive, but it fits within the framework of quantum mechanics. In classical physics, time is always positive—a particle moves forward in time as it travels. However, in the quantum world, time can behave differently. When the researchers tuned their light pulses to specific frequencies close to the atomic resonance of rubidium-85 atoms, they observed that the group delay of the transmitted photons became negative. This implies that the peak of the light pulse exited the medium before it logically should have, based on when it entered.

To explain this, the team used quantum theory and the concept of “weak values,” a formalism that allows certain measurements in quantum mechanics to take on values outside the normal expected range. In this case, the weak value of the atomic excitation time was found to be negative, corresponding to the negative group delay observed. Essentially, the photons were interacting with the atoms in such a way that the atoms were excited before the light even arrived—at least, from the perspective of the group delay measurement.

This strange behavior was measured using the cross-Kerr effect, which allowed the team to detect tiny phase shifts in a secondary beam of light (the probe) caused by the atomic excitations from the transmitted photons. By carefully synchronizing their measurements and using post-selection techniques to focus only on the transmitted photons, the researchers were able to directly measure the atomic excitation time and compare it to the group delay.

Originally published on https://thequantuminsider.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, October 12th, 2024)

"DO MICRO BLACK HOLES EXIST??"

[jackdraw-spwrite]

Frigid, Chapter 2

Words: 1586 Characters: Danny Warnings: None

For Ectoberhaunt 2024, Day 01 - Past

Clockwork was acting weird. 

Well. 

Clockwork usually acted weird, Danny amended. But Clockwork was acting weird for Clockwork.

Not hostile or anything. He wasn't even being rude. Just…weird. 

Danny was visiting him again today as part of his continuing efforts to not freeze Amity solid before Frostbite figured out what was wrong with him, and Clockwork kept going quiet and looking at Danny. And between Clockwork's blank eyes and age shifting and the whole all-knowing thing he liked to play at, it was hard for Danny to figure out anything more than that.

It was making him nervous.

Read the rest on AO3 or below the readmore:

Clockwork probably knew what was wrong with Danny. He probably just wasn't telling him to preserve the time stream or whatever. Danny could deal with that. If Clockwork wasn’t telling him, it meant whatever this was wouldn't kill him or turn him evil. 

Probably. 

Clockwork liked him, right?

Not for the first time, Danny wondered. He opened his mouth to ask, but. But. He shook his head like he was clearing an etch a sketch. No. He’d learned his lesson. He had. 

Right? 

He could keep from asking about it. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. And it would be fine. But then what was with the looks? Was Danny going to die soon? Was he going to fall into some kind of crack in reality and never be seen again? Clockwork had mentioned that could happen…

Danny shuddered. Clockwork's theories on what happened if you did had been thorough, thoroughly unpleasant, and thoroughly enough for Danny to stay far, far away from anything like them if he had any choice in the matter.

At least Clockwork continued to have stuff for Danny to do. 

“So,” asked Danny. “What can I do today?”

Clockwork turned his head just enough for Danny to see a sliver of his eye. “Have you ever heard of the snowball earth theory?”

“No?”

Clockwork hummed, tapping one finger against his staff. “It doesn't matter.”

Maybe it didn't. It still felt like he’d failed a pop quiz. “What is it?”

“Oh, an explanation for some irregularities in your geological record. Drastic changes in ocean oxygenation and biodiversity loss. What matters is that it gets cold.”

“And...I? Need to cool it down?”

“Not really. It will become cold enough without your intervention,” said Clockwork. “But I do have something else for you to do while you're there, and you'll be able to let off as much cold as you want without harming anything or anyone, where I'll be sending you.”

“Oh,” Danny blinked. “Okay.”

“You must not turn human while in this era.”

“Because humans didn't exist yet and it'll cause a paradox and I and the rest of the human race will explode?”

“Yes,” said Clockwork. “After a fashion. Don't do it.”

“What–” He'd been joking! But he didn't get an opportunity to ask more questions because Clockwork took that moment to shove Danny through the portal.

He stumbled through, icy panic settling along his skin. And then he looked up.

Oh. Maybe it wasn't panic at all.

It looked like the Arctic. Maybe it was the Arctic. It was white. It was certainly cold. It was…

It was flat. 

Very flat. 

Huh. 

Danny floated up off the ground, hoping that the height would let him get a look at whatever cool (pun very intended) animals existed in this part of Earth's history, but the ice extended to the horizon in every direction. The surface rippled in spots, and in a very few places he could see smudges of shadow barely visible against the glare off the ice. 

Disappointed but not really surprised– Clockwork had said it would be fine to let off his cold here, so nothing too interesting could be happening–Danny set about the task that had brought him here. There was a good spot…everywhere, probably. Or Clockwork would have told him somewhere specific.

He let himself fall back to earth.

Next, he lit a ghost ray and pointed it down, directly into the ice. The green lit the ice like a lantern as it drilled deeper and deeper, and steam boiled out of the hole. 

“One Mississippi, two Mississippi…”

Danny counted to forty three (Clockwork had been specific) and stopped.

He pulled a plastic baggie from his pocket and awkwardly tugged it open from the sides without touching its lips. The little pebbles inside looked for all the world like fish food, but probably weren't.

He emptied the bag into the hole, and pocketed the bag once it was empty. Clockwork had been insistent on not littering, like he hadn't already lectured Danny on it every time he’d been more than a few centuries in the past. That done, he released his hold on the cold that had built up in his core, just enough for it to sink to the ground and drain into the hole like mist. With the practice he'd gotten over the past several months, he was now good enough to feel his way around with it a little bit. Once it got a few hundred feet down he let a little bit more power leak into the mist.

The hole froze solid.

With a feeling like tugging his foot from mud he tugged his presence from the ice, and then Clockwork’s odd job of the day was finished. He could go home now, if he wanted.

But Danny didn't force the cold back under his skin. With the hole sealed, whatever lay beneath the ice was safe from what he was about to do.

He exhaled.

And he kept exhaling, mist falling from his lips in a great cascade. The chill in his bones and his core woke, unwound from him in a sigh that lasted for minutes. The mist billowed out, gathering into a bank of fog that blurred the distant clouds. In the half-light, ice crystals feathered up from the ground like ferns, pulling water from the air until, finally, the fog vanished.

There was no longer enough moisture in the air for fog. It was too cold. Even the mist was gone from Danny's lips.

He stood in a meadow of white as vast as the eye could see, and more. The icy ferns that had grown in the fog sparkled in the evening sun, knifing shards of color into Danny's eyes.

Danny paid it no mind. Clockwork had said here would be safe, after all. Instead, he slumped in relief and let himself fall backwards into the ground with a faint crunch from the ice crystals beneath him. 

He sighed again, this time purely in relief, and decided to lay there as long as he wanted. It was nearly impossible to relax, these days, so this was a rare treat.

The sun grew lower in the sky. The icy ferns covering the ice stretched long shadows that feathered up Danny's cheek and brushed his nose. He scrunched his nose, scratched an itch, and daydreamed.

He was waiting for night.

The sun set in thin bands of color, and finally, the real treat he'd been waiting for appeared: the stars flickered into view. 

Danny didn't recognize them.

The huge band of the Milky Way was there, at least, but none of his favorites were anywhere to be seen, or even anything from the southern hemisphere. 

It was to be expected–Clockwork had made it sound like this was really far back, and constellations only looked the way they did because of Earth's position relative to the stars that made the constellations up. Move a few dozen light years in any direction, and they were going to distort with the distance. Move a few thousand years in either direction, and the sun would move that far. It made sense. He didn't need to get excited.

Didn't need to.

As if. Danny let out a delighted laugh and leapt into the air. Maybe it was Earth. But the strange sky still made him feel like he was on an alien planet, exploring, and excitement sparkled along his every nerve at the idea.

He spent one hour, then two picking out chains of stars to be constellations and then naming them, coming up with stories. 

There was Dorathea, completely different from Draco, and The Portal. Here was The Sword, and Vlad's Stupid Hair, and a few different Ecto-Guns. A small zig-zag on the western side of the sky reminded Danny of Clockwork's scar.

…

He only knew it was west because that was the direction the stars were setting in. Polaris wasn't anywhere to be found. 

He spent a while wondering what that meant, if Polaris was just in a different enough position to be hidden behind the horizon, or if it hadn't formed yet. Polaris was a young star, after all. He'd just never expected to see a day where that mattered. 

Or night!

Danny smiled at his own joke, but the expression faded, forgotten. 

Could he check? If he flew high enough, would he be able to spot Polaris over the horizon? Excitement fluttered under his ribs at the idea of really seeing what the planet looked like right now. 

Clockwork had called it a snowball, right?

Danny started evaluating how long he'd take to get there–

–and a circle of cyan flared into existence in the dark.

His time was up.

“Aw man,” he said, but stepped through anyway. He couldn't help but take one last glance at the ice and the sky as he did.

Another time, then.

[theplotmage]

Hi, I was wondering if you could so some sort of rule set for time travel? I'm finding it hard to describe, and what rules there are on the subject.

Thanks!

Hello, I'm also writing a time traveling sci-fi fiction with a fantasy blend to it and here are some things that I find that could help us out!

Rule Set for Creating Believable Time-Traveling Fiction

1. Time Travel Mechanics

Mechanism Description

- Clearly explain how time travel works in your story. Is it a machine, a natural phenomenon, a magical object, or an innate ability?

Scientific Basis

- Incorporate real scientific theories, such as Einstein’s theory of relativity, wormholes, or quantum mechanics, to ground your story in plausible science.

Limitations and Costs

- Define the limitations of time travel, such as distance in time, frequency, energy requirements, or physical toll on the traveler.

2. World-Building

Historical Accuracy

- Research and accurately depict the time periods your characters travel to. Include cultural norms, language, technology, and major events of those eras.

Parallel Worlds and Timelines

- Decide if time travel in your story creates alternate timelines or if it follows a single, mutable timeline. Consistency is key.

Temporal Organization

- Consider the existence of a governing body or organization that regulates time travel. Define its structure, rules, and purpose.

3. Language and Communication

Temporal Dialects

- Characters from different time periods should speak differently. Use historical dialects, slang, and accents appropriate to each era.

Temporal Jargon

- Create specific terms and jargon for time travelers and the technology they use, such as “temporal jump,” “chrononaut,” or “time anchor.”

Code of Conduct

- Develop a code of conduct or set of guidelines that time travelers must follow, including how they communicate with each other and with people from different eras.

4. Character Development

Motivations and Goals

- Clearly define why characters want to time travel. Is it for adventure, to change a personal event, or for scientific exploration?

Personal Growth

- Show how time travel affects characters emotionally and psychologically. Do they struggle with the ethics of their actions or the loneliness of being out of their time?

Conflict and Tension

- Use the potential for paradoxes, rival time travelers, and moral dilemmas to create conflict and tension.

5. Ethical and Moral Implications

Paradox Prevention

- Address how your story handles paradoxes, such as the grandfather paradox. Use concepts like self-healing timelines or fixed points in time to explain inconsistencies.

Ethical Dilemmas

- Explore the moral implications of time travel. Should characters intervene in historical events? What are the consequences of changing the past Responsibility

- Emphasize the responsibility that comes with the power to alter time. Characters should consider the broader implications of their actions.

6. Plot Structure

Non-Linear Narrative

- Use non-linear storytelling techniques to enhance complexity and intrigue. Flashbacks, flash-forwards, and parallel timelines can create a rich narrative.

Foreshadowing and Payoff

- Plant clues and foreshadowing that pay off later in the story. Ensure that all plot threads are resolved by the end.

Multiple Perspectives

- Consider telling the story from multiple viewpoints to show the impact of time travel from different angles.

7. Integrating Science Fiction and Fantasy Elements

Scientific Plausibility

- Ground your time travel mechanics in plausible science, even if you incorporate fantastical elements. Use pseudo-scientific explanations to bridge the gap.

Imaginative Enhancements

- Blend scientific theories with imaginative elements, such as ancient artifacts, alien technology, or supernatural forces.

Explanatory Dialogue

- Use character dialogue to explain complex concepts in an accessible way without overwhelming the reader with technical details.

8. World-Building Consistency

Timeline Integrity

- Map out key events in your story’s timeline to avoid inconsistencies and plot holes.

Cultural and Societal Impact

- Consider how time travel affects society. Is it a well-known and regulated practice, or a secret known only to a few?

Technological and Historical Changes

- Explore how changes in the past affect technology and history in the present and future. Ensure these changes are logically consistent.

9. Avoiding Common Pitfalls

Avoid Overcomplication

- Keep the rules of time travel simple enough for readers to follow without getting bogged down in excessive technical detail.

Plot Holes

- Be vigilant about potential plot holes and inconsistencies that can arise from complex time travel mechanics.

Exposition Balance

- Balance the need to explain time travel mechanics with maintaining the story’s pace and engagement. Avoid info-dumping.

Rules for Time Traveling

1. One-Way Trips Only

Restriction

- Time travelers can only move forward or backward in time once without the possibility of a return journey.

Explanation

- This rule ensures that the timeline remains linear and prevents paradoxes caused by multiple interactions with the same time period.

Effect

- Limits interference with historical events and reduces the chance of creating alternate realities.

2. The Observer Effect

Restriction

- Time travelers cannot interact with their past selves or directly influence their previous actions.

Explanation

- Direct interaction with one’s past self could create paradoxes, such as the “grandfather paradox,” where altering past events prevents the traveler’s existence.

Effect

- Maintains the integrity of the timeline and ensures personal history remains consistent.

3. Fixed Points in Time

Restriction

- Certain historical events, known as fixed points, cannot be changed or altered in any way.

Explanation

- These events are crucial for the stability of the timeline and the universe’s structure.

Effect

- Prevents catastrophic changes to reality, ensuring key moments in history remain intact.

4. Memory Corruption

Restriction

- Excessive time travel can lead to memory corruption, where the traveler starts forgetting crucial details of their original timeline.

Explanation

- The brain struggles to handle multiple versions of events, leading to cognitive dissonance and memory loss.

Effect

- Ensures travelers use time travel sparingly and only when absolutely necessary.

5. Temporal Anchor

Restriction

- Time travelers must establish a temporal anchor, a fixed point in time to which they can return or stabilize themselves.

Explanation

- This anchor serves as a safeguard against getting lost in time or drifting uncontrollably through different periods.

Effect

- Provides a safety net for travelers, ensuring they have a way back to their original timeline or a stable reference point.

6. Butterfly Effect

Restriction

- Minor changes in the past can have significant, unforeseen consequences in the future.

Explanation

- The butterfly effect illustrates how small actions can ripple through time, drastically altering future events.

Effect

- Encourages travelers to be cautious and minimize their impact on past events to avoid unintended consequences.

7. Temporal Energy Consumption

Restriction

- Time travel requires a significant amount of energy, often depleting the traveler’s resources or affecting the environment.

Explanation

- The energy needed to manipulate time is immense, and its usage can lead to resource shortages or environmental damage.

Effect

- Ensures time travel is not undertaken lightly and that travelers consider the environmental and resource costs.

8. Chrono-Sickness

Restriction

- Prolonged exposure to different time periods can cause physical and mental ailments, known as chrono-sickness.

Explanation

- The human body and mind are not designed to handle the stress of moving through time, leading to disorientation, nausea, and psychological effects.

Effect

- Limits the duration and frequency of time travel, encouraging travelers to minimize their trips.

9. Temporal Interference

Restriction

- Time travelers must avoid interfering with major historical figures or events.

Explanation

- Interfering with significant events or individuals can drastically alter the course of history, leading to unpredictable outcomes.

Effect

- Preserves the natural flow of history and ensures major events occur as intended.

10. Temporal Paradoxes

Restriction

- Travelers must avoid creating paradoxes, situations where actions in the past contradict the present or future.

Explanation

- Paradoxes can destabilize the timeline, potentially leading to its collapse or the creation of alternate realities.

Effect

- Ensures travelers act responsibly and with caution, preventing actions that could lead to paradoxical situations.

***

Hello, I’m Kali The Plot Mage!

I am a STEM college student who's a writer at heart, I’ve found a unique way to support my creative journey and myself at the same time-- I create and sell writer templates on Etsy, designed to help fellow writers like you bring your stories to life.

I’m excited to share my latest Writer Template, which has already received stellar 5-star reviews from satisfied users. This template is a labor of love, crafted to assist writers in every stage of their creative process. It includes:

- Worldbuilding Worksheets: Includes political, cultural, historical, and economic aspects of your world.

- Series Support: Ideal for authors working on multi-book sagas.

- Lifetime Use: Buy it once, and you’ll have it forever.

- Easy Navigation: Designed with a user-friendly interface for a seamless workflow.

- In-Depth Character Sheets: Develop complex and unforgettable characters.

- Information Hub: Centralize all your worldbuilding details in one place.

- Writer Tool Repository: Access the best writing tools from around the web.

- Guided Writer Tasks: From idea generation to book publishing, we’ve got you covered.

I believe in the power of storytelling and the magic of creating worlds that captivate readers. If you’re looking to enhance your writing process and bring your stories to life, I invite you to check out my template which you can find here.

For a limited time, I’m offering a 75% off coupon, so don’t miss out on this opportunity! Click the link to discover more and take your writing to the next level.

Experience the joy of writing with a tool designed to inspire and support you every step of the way. Build your world. Inspire your readers.

Thank you for your support, and happy writing! 😊

[drawnfamiliarfaces]

I’ve been wondering, how do you think that First died? Do you think it was natural causes (i.e. old age or sickness)? Or maybe died while fighting a monster? Or something else?

Oh, I always was a great fan of the whole 'First was absorbed/hosted by Nomicon' theory aka First didn't die die, but his mortal body and soul became a founding/essential part of Nomicon and he joined with it, sorta like what we see happen to Plop Plop, but more epic!

Many people seem to believe that First's spirit being in Nomicon happened because Randy changed the future (at least according to wikias it seem to be a leading theory for many), and that before Randy intervened, First just wiped his memory like it was implied/used as demonstration in Ninja Identity/Supremacy and just continued his life without his memory as a Ninja, but that kinda doesn't make sense to me at all???

First was born into Ninja Clan, his Clan created the mask, heck his Clan (seemed to have) founded Norrisville all the way away from Japan and on Americas continent! - did he just wipe his whole life and stumbled around confused how people knew him??

Amnesiac/Mind wiped First is an interesting thought (damn, it actually would make such a cool angsty AU lol) but its personally not my favorite headcanon for First.

Though of course we can argue that First did get mind wiped but it doesn't stick. So there would be a copy of First's memories in Ninjanomicon and First with his memories but like...without his mask and title? Which also doesnt' make much sense to me?? Does he just.... continues on without his mask but still fighting? (Likely - but also ??? why not just continue it in the mask??) Does he just grows older and watches as the new ninja bounces around? (Less likely - So in that case what's the point of giving NinjaNomicon to Messenger if he is still around???) It seems to me as a sad sort of end to his legacy.

(Would make a banger sad and angsty Retired!AU too tho lol)

I feel like First is too passionate/determined to end that sort of way. So to me it would make much more sense that he would try to keep fighting/protecting in any way possible and leaving his spirit behind would be one of the most sure ways. Also makes sense to me that to create NinjaNomicon a sort of 'sacrifice' was needed, and since First is the, well, First - he is the building block upon which the Ninjanomicon started to grow and "live". (and yes i am completely ignoring the whole time paradox with Nomicon because I love it as a funy haha episode joke but absolutely hate it for lore and it gives me a headache xD).

So, my personal headcanon is that after defeating/capturing the Sorcerer, First spent at least a decade meticulously writing down his Clan's history and all the knowledge they ever possesed (and basically pouring his soul into Nomicon thru writing ;) ), settling his affairs and making insurances/plans/backups and etc. all the while also still keeping Norrisville safe, before he finally handed over the Nomicon to the Messenger, stepped into it for one last Ultimate Lesson and just went poof. And no one ever saw him again.

[pastorfutureletthembe]

Trapped between time and space

Today, I'm going to walk you through my new theory, which is about Cheng Xiaoshi going through the same ordeal than Lu Guang, except for longer, through more repeats.

I brushed the topic over my Curve Theory meta, stating that there was probably a sort of parallel universe or original unchangeable node around Lu Guang's death instead of Cheng Xiaoshi's.

The number of repeats from CXS' perspective is unknown for now, but my bet is on 10; X. 8 is also a repeated number in some official artworks, but never in the XIII format, so I'm ruling the hypothesis that it is related to time/timelines. (My guess is on the number of people with powers, because there are 8 seats on the promotional poster for season 2 and in the THE TIDES)

X marks the spot

Okay, one more time: this poster is a treasure hunt on its own. Beside the V clue, you'll notice 10 clocks. Cheng Xiaoshi underlights the biggest V with his silhouette but his entire body covers X on the smallest clock, while both hands point to X.

On both pictures, you'll find 10 candles on chandeliers (2 more candles are smaller but brighter than others). 8 glasses are on the spooky table while 10 glasses (8 wine glasses + 2 champagne glasses) are used for celebration on the second poster. I'm not the only one, someone else noticed the number 10.

X is often present, either in the background or near CXS specifically:

And I'm probably reading too much into this one but it's too perfect not to mention, since The Tides is mostly empty of clues to explore for now:

5+3 windows on the first floor (Lu Guang's perspective)

10 windows upstairs (Cheng Xiaoshi's perspective).

Anyway, what could it mean? As I argued before, Cheng Xiaoshi could be living through timelines where Lu Guang is dying while Lu Guang was diving from one picture to another to save Cheng Xiaoshi's life, except in two different universes; not inside the same Curve.

Paradox: is LEAVE possible?

Could there be more than two curves? Well, I think it's absolutely possible that the House of the Hothead, as the fandom call them, as a whole or individually, on purpose or by accident, could try and succeed to create yet another one; I'll mark them with VI (Liu Xiao is showing it to us in the artwork above).

I do believe that the Lu Guang we know and the stuck Cheng Xiaoshi are from the same timeline, originally, and keep "missing" each other somehow. They basically created a paradox, fracturing time in two intertwined curves.

Now, what did I say? Cheng Xiaoshi is stuck? Not dead? That's one interpretation of the signs, yes. What is interesting in this fandom is that clues are numbered. Cheng Xiaoshi, the original, is out of time right now, while we're witnesses to Lu Guang's struggles. And we know this... how?

First, LA!Lu Guang has different sets of rules than donghua!LG. It could be narrative error, or it could very much be on purpose. Supposely, the live action is the original timeline and the dongua is the 5th timeline of our Lu Guang's journey. Mistakes were made and rules changed accordingly. Lu Guang appears in the dongua as very composed, except when the timeline he's living in changes from what he knows had to happen.

Canon states: Cheng Xiaoshi keeps not listening to him, risking Lu Guang's hard work. This is what is stressing Lu Guang out the most. He is already changing things, but he needs Cheng Xiaoshi not to touch anything while he's diving. Why? Beside the obvious, if CXS erases one important node, there might be a rupture between then and now, making it impossible for Cheng Xiaoshi to return.

The original Cheng Xiaoshi could be lost in time. This meta suggests as much anyway: CXS's has no hands on some of his clocks, while LG's turn anticlockwise. Lu Guang is going back but Cheng Xiaoshi broke time and is stuck.

Beside clocks, Lu Guang's symbol is the hourglass and Cheng Xiaoshi's is cogs. A hourglass only stops when there is no time left, it's only a pause until it's turned over. Cogs stops when the mechanism stops working altogether. If truly broken, it won't work again. And most of all, one cog is part of a machine, can't function on its own, alone.

BREAK! could refer to Lu Guang's godlike nature and his goal to break CXS free:

I saw my fate flash through my own eyes Waitin' and watchin' for the sign Take control of all the timelines Lost in the dark, Lost in the rush

Go click the parallel line Fate's in control Play your role You ain't just a tool Clock's ticking though

Lu Guang is also pictured steady on a chair, against concrete, or as an safe anchor in the openings/endings.

While Cheng Xiaoshi is not anchored in his surroundings, though, except when holding frames or cameras. The things in contact with him hurts him.

In the Tides, he only interacts with a frame and the red cloth on the table, and with dust; arguably a proof of time, a way to print his presence in a place forgotten by time itself, it seems.

There's the mirror thematic, which might as well be called a glass prison. It shows Lu Guang on the other side, Cheng Xiaoshi seeming to be on "our" side, the side where the story we're following is unfolding. And that's true. Lu Guang is the addition in this universe we are witnessing, he's from outside of the current universe.

However, in Lu Guang's perspective, Cheng Xiaoshi is the one unknowingly prisonner. The artworks are still in Lu Guang's perspective though, his watch is purposely hidden from our view to keep us uncertain on the matter of which side is the "real" one.

Going full circle, I'd say this also can reflects two intertwined curves; never meeting. It wouldn't be about one of them diving in the past to save the other, it would be about both of them trying to find each other again.

Cheng Xiaoshi's and Lu Guang's are happening simultaneously, mirroring each other, trying to respect the timelines as much as possible except for the death of their best friend.

>>> In conclusion, there is actually three sides of a story: Lu Guang's, Cheng Xiaoshi's and the truth. I have no doubt the whole show is making the biggest diversion in history of tvshows by serving us everything but the actual plotline. Some "memory of the week" in season 1, then season 2 told us two can play this game of playing with fate, and now yingdu chapter is going to prepare us for the truth. What is amusing is that each season gives us a set of new "rules" for this universe. (I'll try to make a detailed post about it at some point, after some summer re-watch.) Each rule is usually a forshadowing on what happens next.

Liu Xiao's character is also a very interesting one. Some people suggested that he could be Cheng Xiaoshi or Lu Guang from the future. But he could be from another curve, with a different kind of unchangeable node. He could be a version a Cheng Xiaoshi who never met Lu Guang for example. His goal seems to melt everything into One True Timeline, I think? That alone rises some questions.

~

That's everything for today! I would like to dive even deeper about all the different timeline according to colors but it will probably be a whole other meta.

[libraincarnate]

astrology notes: 2 🌱

quick note: i'm absolutely not an astrologer. these are just a culmination of some observations, thoughts, theories, and personal experience. with that being said, i'm still learning along the way & i may come back to edit this post to make corrections. above all this is just for fun. lastly, keep in mind that i’m not reading your birth chart and i know nothing about you. these are just some possibilities that may or may not apply to you. enjoy!

🕊 gemini in the 1st house:

curious about yourself and wanting to understand yourself. you like learning about yourself and may enjoy self-improvement. wanting to know why you like/do this and that. quick to notice something new about yourself like a new interest, hobby, desire, style, physical change, habit, and personality trait.

scorpio in the 1st house:

there is no point in hiding from yourself. the pain, traumas, things of the past, your dark side, fears, all these things are brought to the surface so that you can see and deal with them. this is needed to bring about the transformation. to shed the old skin.

capricorn in the 1st house:

confronting yourself. your flaws, your bad traits, the choices you made, what areas you lack discipline, being hard on yourself, being aware of your strengths and weaknesses. it causes you to be honest with yourself. to reflect on yourself, to be and do better. 

^ having one of the 3 placements above can make someone very self aware and introspection can one of their strengths.

🕊 positive aspects between asteroid kiss (8267) and venus: being a good kisser, you love kissing, probably kiss your lover a lot, and you’ve been told you’re a good kisser.

🕊 2nd or 8th house stellium: money being a prominent factor in your life whether it be due to inheritance, marrying someone wealthy, having a job involving finance or managing money, or people giving you money just because.

🕊 capricorn in the 5th house: may initially feel like you aren’t creative but later you start to see that you actually are. someone who takes their talents seriously. might struggle with finding a balance between work & play. you can feel guilty and lazy for having too much fun, guilty when you’re not working which makes it hard to relax and enjoy your hobbies.

🕊 mars/pluto in 6th house: you’re light headed and about to throw up why are you still forcing yourself to work? you might need to pay attention/listen to your body more. learn to balance the energy you put into your work and health. if you work too hard you can get sick, and if you’re sick it’s hard to be productive which leaves you miserable. you are human, respect your limits. learn how to take a break.

🕊 aries moon men have the prettiest eyes.

🕊 having a lot of opposite aspects: can make you feel split, half & half, or like a walking paradox. you’re this but you’re also that, you are the synonym and the antonym, you’re both night and day, gray because you're both black and white. this can mean you have an interesting personality yet some confusion when it comes to understanding yourself and others understanding you.

🕊 lilith/venus in the 11th: your friends tend to have a crush on you or flirt with you. but lilith here might make your friends more hesitant to flirt or pursue you romantically. you could have a beloved/alluring/powerful presence on social media, easily attracting followers and building some kind of a presence because there is “something” about you.

🕊 taurus: when it comes to taurus & food (hear me out lol), the emphasis is usually on gluttony. this can be true but wait, there’s more!

food brings comfort (might be emotional eaters), cooking might make them feel beautiful and sensual, cooking for themselves is a form of self care and self love and cooking for others can be a love language. sharing a meal can create a bond and connection with others. their creativity may be used & seen in the recipes they create.

taurus is also associated with the mouth/throat and venus (taurus’ ruling planet) & venus is associated with pleasure so it makes sense why they like to eat.

furthermore, they could be farmers, gardeners, or be interested/knowledgeable in gastronomy, agriculture, or herbs/plants.

🕊 uranus-moon aspects: struggling with emotional stability which may lead to rebellion or acting out of order. may not be able to rely on your mom, and instead could find comfort in your friends. philanthropic deeds or making a contribution to society can be cathartic and liberating.

if you read this until the end I hope you enjoyed it & thank you so much for reading. ♥︎♥︎♥︎, those hearts are for you.