#bootstrap paradox au

[amalgamorph]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/49337704/chapters/162468184

Next chapter is up! Woohoo!!!!

Sorry this took so long to get out. Life kinda got out of hand for a little bit, but things are finding a new normal now. Hopefully I'll be posting more this year!

[e-vay]

Why does Shadow call Aurora "Light"?

Shadow first meets Aurora when she travels back in time and to protect her identity, she goes by the alias "Light," so that's what he knows her as. He continues to call her that even when they meet "again" in the future and he learns her real identity.

But Aurora only uses the alias "Light" when she goes to the past because that's Shadow's nickname for her.

(It's the Bootstrap Paradox)

[nenoname]

me: oh i totally get it if some folks dont jive with same coin theory, plus it's strange to conceptualise at first--

me when i see people call it lame:

[zecroswe]

Self replicating and self annihilating, Mage Viktor, his goals, and Jayvik.

I have a lot of thoughts when It comes to Arcane as a show and I love season 2 a lot. One thing the show that I have been thinking about is Mage!Viktor and his true goal. You may wonder what I mean with this, after all his goal seems quite clear, 'prevent the Glorious Evolution/the end of the world and in the process break the timeloop/cycle Viktor and Jayce are trapped within'. And yes that is true, It is his goal! But if It was the only purpose of his actions, wouldn't the AU timeline Ekko ends up in be enough?

After all, that timeline has no Hextech and no Hexcore. The Glorious Evolution cannot take place in this timeline, so why did that timeline not break the cycle? Well let's first establish the nature of the timeloop/cycle.

Jayce and Viktor seems to be within a unstable multidimensional bootstrap paradox loop/cycle. I say unstable because the butterfly effect is very prominent in the show, so a small variable can change things significantly.

We don't know if there is a 'Original' timeline that started the cycle, so It seems safe to assume that the cycle is a bootstrap paradox with no clear origin point, something that in turn causes Jayce and Viktors partnership and the invention of Hextech to also be a Paradox. In this cycle there also seems to exist certain events that will more or less always happen, but not necessarily in the same way, or in other words, constants and variables within the timelines.

One of those constants seem to be that Jayce will always attempt to invent Hextech.

So if the goal was just to prevent the Glorious Evolution, the simple way to achieve It would just be to stop Jayce from inventing Hextech, but Mage!Viktor doesn't do this, because he can't do It, It would go against the true purpose of actions.

After a lot of thought and discussions with my older sister sense the show ended (also being insane about Jayvik), we came to a conclusion. Mage!Viktors goal is not just to prevent the Glorious Evolution or save Runeterra.

His goal is to save Jayce

To find a timeline were Jayce survives, with or without Viktor.

The reason to stop the Glorious Evolution is not only because It is the end of humanity and a world of dreamless solitude, but because It is a world without Jayce in It.

Suddenly a lot of the hoops Mage!Viktor goes through makes a lot more sense and also why the AU timeline Ekko ends up in doesn't achieve Mage!Viktors goal.

Jayce is most likely not alive in that timeline. According to Amanda, Jayce was exiled due to Vi dying in the explosion.

And well, we know what Jayce was about to do in the Main timeline when he *Only* got expelled and his research was ordered to be disposed of. It is very likely that Jayce in the AU timeline went through with taking his own life and AU Viktor most likely wouldn't be there to interrupt the attempt.

With this in mind and other key events in the show, finding a timeline were Jayce survives is actually really difficult! It is literally more likely that Jayce dies somehow than him living a full life time, I am not kidding. The amount of fail states that exist for this is honestly insane, so let's go through them shall we?

I will go through a few key events as examples and use certain scenarios to explain the potential chain reactions. Think of It like a flowchart, but without the chart. I can't take all variables into account, but I will show of some key examples to hopefully make sense of my point.

Exhibit A: The Blizzard

This is were the timeline spaghetti starts and were there is already multiple ways Mage!Viktors plan can go wrong.

Scenario 1: Mage!Viktor doesn't interfere

In this scenario two things could most likely happen. Either A: Jayce and Ximena die in the blizzard, or B: Jayce somehow survives the blizzard but Ximena still dies.

version A: Jayce is dead, Fail-state 1

Version B: Jayce is alive, but this will most likely lead to Jayce being exiled from Piltover due to Ximena not being around to speak up during the trial, and I am concred for Jayces mental state without a support network, the butterfly effect will most likely result in Jayce being dead somehow. Fail-state 2

Scenario 2: Mage!Viktor saves Jayce and Ximena but gives Jayce a Non-Acceleration rune or no rune at all

There is only one result of this. Jayce and Ximena both survive the blizzard.

Jayce is alive, but without the Acceleration rune, Ekko won't be able to invent the Z-drive and might be trapped in a AU timeline and as a result Arcane Herald Viktor will succeed with the Glorious Evolution, killing Jayce, Fail-state 3

Exhibit B: The Robbery

There is a lot of variance here and a few fail-states, but most of the fail-states are linked to the trial.

Scenario 1: Jayce doesn't get robbed

In this scenario Jayce would still keep his research a secret and most likely would not meet Viktor because his room is no longer a crime scene. This could would either lead to A: Jayces experiments with the crystals goes wrong and he blows himself up, B: Jayce doesn't succeed and is still stuck in his research or C: Jayce still gets put on trial somehow for having illegal contraband.

Version A: Jayce is dead, Fail-state 4

Version B: Jayce has no one to ask for help with his research and according to what Jayce wrote in his journal, his grades at the academy are dropping and might be at risk of expulsion.

Considering what Jayce almost did when he got expelled....Yea i think It is safe to call this a fail-state. Fail-state 5

Version C: Jayce would be put on trial and the nature of his research would come into question. He would still probably be expelled from the academy due to the illegal nature of his research. The main diffrence is that Viktor might not be at the trial this time and not be inspired by Jayce. Meaning that Viktor would probably not seek Jayce out, meaning that Jayce probably would go through with his attempt uninterrupted. Fail-state 6

Scenario 2: Jayce gets robbed

Well we got a example of a fail-state in the show for this but it is still worth mentioning. A: One of the kids dies in the explosion or B: Jayce dies in the explosion.

Version A: As mentioned earlier, Vi or any of the other kids dying in the explosion leads to Jayce getting exiled. Fail-state 7

Version B: Jayce is dead. Fail-state 8

Exhibit C: The Hexcore

Won't go into too much detail here because It would take waaaay to long, but the Hexcore is basically a exponential fail-state here. Considering what the Hexcore can do and what Jayce does with It in the show, the Hexcore basically means that any scenario Viktor dies a potential fail-state. Because one could argue that if Viktor dies at any point when the Hexcore is invented, Jayce will likely use It to do necromancy on Viktor, putting everything on track for the Glorious Evolution, or fail to do necromancy instead do something else insane that may or may not get him killed. The Hexcore is a temporal mine of fail-states, one that cannot really be prevented fully because Hextech + Viktor = Hexcore gets invented, and as established, No Hextech = No Jayce and No Viktor = No Jayce. Fail-state 99+

It is impossible for Mage!Viktor to stop the cycle before the Hexcore due to all the fail-states mentioned above. The only chance he has is if Jayce someone stops Arcane Herald Viktor before the Glorious Evolution starts. The Hexcore needs to be properly disarmed, or else It metaphorically explodes and Jayce dies.

Conclusion:

Mage!Viktor and Viktor in general is just as codependent for Jayce as Jayce is for Viktor. Both of them are fully willing to bend all of reality for each other. They both doom and save each other over and over and over again, just to stay together. The only way this cycle breaks is if they both make It out alive or both of them die together (I think they live but I digress). Mage!Viktor probably would not predict Jayce to stay with Viktor, It was not a requirement for his goals after all, but Jayce would never abandon Viktor and Viktor would never abandon Jayce.

In a way, Jayce and Viktors bond is the anomaly, self replicating and self annihilating, the beautiful intersection between order and chaos. Viktor replicates the cycle by trying to save Jayce and Jayce keeps self annihilating through his attempts to reach Viktor, knowingly or not, by inventing Hextech. They are soulmates by choice, the universe is trying to separate them any chance It gets and yet they keep fighting just to be together, and I think that is beautiful!

TL;DR: Mage!Viktors primary motivation is to save Jayce and find a timeline where he doesn't die before or during the Glorious Evolution. This process is extremely complicated because the universe does not like Jayce Talis existing because according to the timloop/cycle paradox, his existence is a time-space anomaly. Jayce and Viktor are both insane and willing to break all laws of time and space to be with each other. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[magnuspanoptes]

the thing about archivist sasha is that. you gotta write jon out of existence for it to work. the web marked him specifically because it singled him out as the agent that would help fulfill its designs and jonah's primary reason for picking jon was also that he came pre-marked by the most dangerous, bothersome entity. bootstrap paradox type plot point. ergo in a universe where he isn't archivist, mr spider never happened, but mr spider is a defining character backstory moment for him. he would've never joined the magnus institute if he hadn't had that traumatic episode. so. to conceive an archivist sasha au a) you have to give sasha her own version of a guest for mr spider; b) jon isn't marked by the web and is a completely different person because of it and doesn't work at the institute. otherwise, to explain his presence there you have to give him a traumatic episode with some other entity (like tim and the stranger)

now you can just say wow what the hell this is fanfiction you can do whatever you want forever. thats true ✌️ unfortunately i have the overthinker's curse and cannot overlook this. also jon and elias's fates are entwined in every universe amen

[a-mel0n]

Okay, so I know we joke about the whole “Invisible String theory” thing a lot for Bucktommy, but this idea just hit me like a fucking train and I feel like I’m going to explode if I don’t write it down. So, hear me out:

A Bucktommy “Your Name” AU.

If you don’t know about Your Name (go watch it it’s a good movie), the basic synopsis is that two people keep switching bodies when they fall asleep. The switches are fairly common, but they’re random and not on a set schedule. When they “wake up,” they only have faint impressions of their time in the other person’s body— like it was a dream. To keep track of what the other person does in their body, the pair write small “diary entries” at the end of the day to inform the original owner of the body what happened, and to just talk to the other.

Throughout the film, the two people slowly fall in love with each other before the switches suddenly stop, and all memory of the experience fades, including the memos they wrote each other. All that’s left is the faint impression that they’re searching for something, for someone.

So. Here’s my idea. The switches can start at really any point in their lives, but my idea is that they start switching sometime in Season 6, at least from Buck’s perspective. For Tommy, the switches start when he’s still at the 118.

A crucial part of the swaps is that they’re not only switching places, they’re also switching through time, which prevents the pair from actually meeting, because any attempt to meet someplace would just get fucked over due to the time difference.

They write each other small reminders of things they set up while in the other’s body on the other’s phone or on their body; a small set of rules of things to NOT do while they’re swapped; the occasional back-and-forth; the whole nine yards. Maybe you could have a fun scene of Chimney showing up at the 118 for the first time while Buck is in Tommy’s body and he has to slam his mouth shut everytime he goes to instinctively call him “Chimney” instead of “Howard” or “Howie.”

(Maybe that’s how Chim got his nickname in this universe, a whole bootstrap paradox situation.)

The swaps continue all the way up until Buck gets struck by lightning while in his own body, and that three-minute-eleven-second period where he’s dead is enough to prevent the swaps from ever happening again. Once he wakes up from his coma dream, he’s lost all memory of the swaps, and all the little notes that Tommy wrote on his phone are gone.

Despite that, he can’t help but feel like he’s missing something, or… someone. Someone dear to him, someone he couldn’t have possibly forgotten. And yet, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t remember anything about them.

(Actually… maybe there is a moment where they can talk to each other. While Tommy is passed out due to the gas leak in that mall, Buck is still in his coma dream, and they actually speak face-to-face for the first time. Maybe they promise each other to meet up after they wake up. But, once they do— they’ve forgotten all about the other.)

Tommy continues to live his own life, with this faint feeling that he’s waiting for something. He transfers out of the 118 and over to Harbor in order to satisfy that feeling, and while it does provide some relief, that feeling doesn’t go away. When Howie calls him to help the 118 out with that residential fire, that feeling of “waiting waiting waiting searching” blazes to life again, pulling him towards the ground and the people running around beneath him. It recedes fairly quickly, though, in fact— as he’s flying away from that neighborhood after preforming the water drop.

Buck, on the other hand, is in that post-lightning-strike state. He’s got his super math powers and the newfound appreciation for life, yet the feeling that he’s looking for something (a feeling he’s had all his life, independent of the swaps), has gotten a whole lot stronger and he can’t pinpoint why.

Then the cruise disaster happens, and he has to push those thoughts out of his mind, for Bobby and Athena’s sake. And then… Chimney calls in an old friend for a favor.

(“You and I… haven’t we… haven’t I met you somewhere before?”)

[fae-cookie-run-madness]

I think your AUs caused me to have a weird dream that would work as an au

In the dream, the Beasts believed that the Ancients were the reincarnation of each of their past lovers from before the corruption and the Beasts were trying to get the Ancients to remember their past life. Each Ancient was with their own Beast and separate from the others.

A spell went off that was supposed get them to remember their past lives but actually sends each Ancient into the past to the Virtues period. Each of the Ancients thought they were the only one to be sent back in time, acrosses paths with their Virtue/past Beast, each Ancient goes by a fake name as they stay with their half and get to know them and fall in love.

The Ancients don't find out that the other Ancients are back in time too until there's a party for all of the Virtues and they bring along their partners. The Virtues were surprised that each of their significant other knows the others and were in an adventuring group together.

More years passed until the spell activated again and brought the ancients back to the present as if no time passed at all and the Beasts thinking the memory spell worked. While from the past Virtues' perspective, each of their S.O.s mysteriously disappeared so they each had their own assumptions/conclusions and their own spirals. The mysterious disappearances probably happened around the time things were getting tense on Earthbread and the grief and loss of support was the last push

So the Ancients experienced time travel and a bootstrap paradox and the Beasts (the older immortals) assuming reincarnation

Oooo that is an interesting take, assuming reincarnation and it just be fun time travel and paradox.

[nireey]

I was thinking about a bootstrap paradox AU in which Joowon travels back in time to save Lee Yu-Yeon just to give Dongsik his family back. The new time line result would be that Joowon and Dongsik never meet as police partners, therefore never get to know each other because with his family alive, Dongsik doesn't have a reason to become a police officer. It's a price Joowon is ready to pay just to see Dongsik living a happy life.

Twist: To Joowon's surprise, Dongsik still becomes a police officer because as the one-minute-older brother he wants to protect his sister from all kind of weirdos and creeps.

[originalcrime]

Thinking about a time traveler’s wife au except not exactly

But so Buck is the time traveler, from his perspective he meets Eddie as an adult in LA with a thirteen year old son

From Eddie’s perspective, Buck is the ‘imaginary friend’ that Chris has been talking about since he was five back to El Paso, that he feels like he knows even though he’s never met (because, thought he wasn’t real)

From Chris’s perspective, he first meets an older Buck as a five year old in El Paso, and later meets a slightly younger Buck when he’s thirteen in LA (we’re fudging the timelines because au)

And as Buck and Eddie hit it off in the present, and Eddie reckons with Chris’s imaginary friend who he’s sort of been half in love with from the way Chris talked about him being a real man who’s in some ways the same and in some completely different, Buck reaches the point in his life where he starts traveling back to Chris’s past and is falling in love with Eddie both through knowing him in the present and witnessing Chris’s love for him in the past

Anyway yayyy bootstrap paradox my beloved

[becauseiamarobot]

i'm not doing rigid AU worldbuilding for procurement pals since for practical purposes it takes place in a split idw1 timeline where everything is close enough to the original timeline in broad strokes but someone got me talking about the fate of THIS timeline's lost light and i think the points of divergence are:

(i'm gonna call the two timelines LL (for IDW1) and TSC (for the fic timeline) just for clarity. I'll also be using Jemworld for the post-apoc timeline that the alternate Stormer is from and that Megatron briefly visits in Universal Appeal)

tsc!rung was not a part of the lost light crew. (but he did have pre-existing relationships with a lot of people who wound up on the crew from his assignments on other ships, i.e. skids)

whether this was due to his personal preference or similar manipulations to LL!wheeljack keeping fireflight off the ship is anyone's guess

as a result of this when the sparkeater got loose tsc!rodimus can't use rung's spark as bait and had to do Some Dumb Bullshit to contain it and got himself killed like the on-course LL!rodimus

tsc!lost light promptly undergoes the same "drift sees no reason to hide the existence of overlord on the ship from mags -> they try to barter with the DJD -> everyone is fucking dead" spiral

without the lost light around as a "get megatron out of here" assignment then tsc!optimus is substantially more inclined to sign off on megatron's trial and imprisonment/execution

which means megatron isn't around to kill the DJD, so the tsc!DJD are likely the originals (tho megatron and slipstream have both floated the possibility of tarn being a successor wearing the mask.) whether the autobots eventually dealt with them is anyone's guess, but imo they've primarily been focused on rebuilding earth and new cybertron so a lot of the further afield worlds have been reconquered by the various neo-decepticon warlord fleets

optimus still seals himself in infraspace with unicron's creator, but the circumstances of it were possibly different. idk i haven't read that event in a while i dislike a lot of the 2016-2018 idw1 stuff

due to a rupture in the Paracausal Limit of Time field distributed around the Lost Light when it materialized in the tsc timeline (colloquially referred to by Brainstorm as a "PLoT hole") several of the crew members have overlapping memories from their tsc!timeline selves or vice versa consistent to how time and dimensional travel affects memory in idw1. people remember things happening one way when they didn't. this has made it quite easy for ll!rodimus to cover up the fact that he used his matrix to restore the sparks of several dead crew members from the core. ratchet is very unhappy with his dishonesty at the start of procurement pals

the avengers probably still got killed by megatron. the guardians of the galaxy are fine tho

here are the points of divergence for jem:

jetta is actually english

tsc!emmett benton was given A Deal (experimental treatment for the disease that was killing him in exchange for details on some of the work he did on synergy) tsc!emmett doesn't take the deal. jemworld!emmett did.

there's a kind of bootstraps paradox to it, because the day he's offered that deal is the day that jerrica makes the call on perceptor's time phone while the holograms are aboard the lost light. he feels comfortable not making the deal because he knows the girls will grow up fine without him

similar to comics jemworld, emmett trading info on synergy leads to synergy being weaponized and the resulting dystopia

[professorscrooge]

This AU has stuffed my brain with enough Thoughts™ to finally make a Tumblr account.

So, thoughts, specifically, re: Mando archaeologists coming in to look at the statues, particularly thinking about the timescale this idea exists on and its implications:

I agree on all your points about a New Mando archaeologist being able to identify things just fine, but think I’d go a step further of anyone contemporary would identify the symbols better than any of their predecessors across the centuries, as they would be the closest to the actual timeframe they were painted in. Ancient symbols they wouldn't be able to identify would most likely be the ones that have fallen out of favour by the time of the Clone Wars and the Clones themselves painting them (before being Terracotta’d). The ones the Clones saw/replicated are most likely the most popular ones of the current era amongst the True Mandos, regardless of age, which likely makes them the most recognisable to a current New Mandalorian (which can be both a good and a bad thing depending upon their feeling about what might earn or reflect upon those symbols).

This leads me into my second thought, that being the incongruity of the statues' age vs the symbols they have on them. Star Wars has ridiculously long timeframes for the relative stagnancy its tech/culture has across the different eras, but we can still extrapolate reasonably that there would be cultural shifts over thousands of years – languages have changed or shifted, been created and lost over much shorter timeframes in the real world, nevermind cultural symbols and dress codes etc. especially on the military front, where uniforms can change multiple times throughout a singular conflict as the participants adapt. The Mandalorians are one of the few cultures where we see some of this change in their many appearances due to popularity and distinctiveness; Crusader armour to Neo Crusader, for example (which I bet annoys historians due to the emphasis on depersonalisation likely resulting in a loss in understanding of the armour designs that came before, but I digress). All this means, they might have symbols that are ‘only’ a few centuries or decades old, which then calls into question wtf are they doing on a statue that is seemingly far, far older.

e.g. "Those are Jaig Eyes, a memorial tradition stemming from Jaig's Last Stand at the 3rd Battle of Mimban."

 "Oh, interesting, interesting" excited/bored junior Jedi on archivist duty writes down "When was that?"

"730 years ago, which makes this statue utterly impossible."

 Logically, this then stems into two options for the archaeologist: either a) the statues are a far younger fraud, or b) the statues are the origin of the symbol as they predate the believed origin (as in potentially a very, very big historical/cultural discovery that probably throws a whole load of academic discourse into a tizzy).

 (Point b) could actually be evolved into a Bootstrap Paradox where that actually did legit happen on one of them from a previous expedition – can you imagine a shocked post-revival Ahsoka seeing her facial markings not just on many of the 501st around her like the Siege of Mandalore, but also on some random Mandalorian because, oops, accidentally inspired history, and maybe a conspiracy theory or two).

 This then also leads into; what do they actually make of them? (Yes, I have way too many thoughts about this, I’m so sorry). We generally have the vibe of the Clones have inherited lots of bits and pieces of Mando-ness, but that they also don’t necessarily understand all of what they do know. So, you have frustrations of “That’s a recognisable symbol of [Insert here] but it’s supposed to be painted on a vambrace, not on the helmet!” (he just thought it looked cool), “These three are apparently married, but they didn’t adapt the symbol into a triad??” (they just thought it was a symbol of closeness as batchmates, and had no idea it had further connotations or polyamorous adaptations), “That one’s just got Sandwich written on his head!!!” (it’s his name, yes he picked it). This seeming randomness that makes it even harder to glean the purpose of the symbols that are used correctly as they make assumptions, e.g. Jaig Eyes are something we know are a relatively big deal, and Rex is the only person there with them in all likelihood, and is obviously a commander of some sort – so, did he take ownership of those, give them to himself, and ban others from using them because they wanted to be important and unique? Or maybe he did earn them rightfully, and that’s why he’s a commander? And the Archaeologist just doesn’t know and has to second-guess things more than they should need to, because they’re not following the rules everywhere, they don't know what to make of it where they are.

 They also despair over the armour itself, because it’s clearly mass-manufactured and militaristic in bent, which should narrow it down to a historical period (as more uniform styles seems to be less common across Mandalorian history than more individualistic ones, though we’re missing big periods and I’m gonna assume on some being for animation budget vs comic artist reasons), but it’s completely unknown. The advantage of mass-manufacturing is more examples are likely to survive to a modern era intact, but this is completely new, and not just the result of an artist reusing a base mould or something because every statue is unique. They can probably put together a ranking system based on some of the extra pieces Clones added to their armour (and things like Kama and Pauldrons will presumably be recognisable) but it doesn’t match any known organisation, and implies either very small delineations, or perhaps this being a small part of a very large group.

Basically, by the end of their examination, the archaeologist is absolutely tearing their hair/lekku/horns out and very much needs an offered cup of tea and someone to yell at because none of this makes any sense.

Finally, at the end of all this when they make their reports, is when Politics might get involved. Because there are various angles you can take for these statues to be Historically Significant to Mandalore. But they’re not on Mandalore, they’re in the Jedi Temple, and suddenly we’re at a British Museum situation of ownership (sorta). Neither the Jedi nor the Archaeologist want to move the statues due to the Vibes they give off, but would be very easy to write a politician/just a Mando with an axe to grind against the Republic (pick a reason, there’s loads – this is where you could insert Jaster or Jango, with added weirdness if this is post-Galidraan and this might bring the question of reparations on the table, idk, exact things I have no idea on) who finds out about them to launch a campaign of having them ‘returned’ (as we’ve seen what lengths they went to when retrieving the Darksaber, this would likely be a Thing). And the Jedi probably don’t have much control over something as big of a Political deal like that, it’s presumably up to the Senate; who I bet would first off send a dozen art valuators and insurers down there to try and value them, and then procrastinate and bureaucratise for half a century and be reluctant to give things up because it’s Mandalore, and the Republic is still kinda scared of them after the many centuries of warfare. (The valuers also get lost constantly on the way to the army because this is a Jedi Temple, and if it doesn’t want you to find your way, you won’t).

 Apologies, long post, and I have no idea if I’m butting in or necroposting or what etiquette here is really, just too many thoughts in a small brain. I have a half-written fic based on the previous posts of this AU and discovering this addition today got me thinking again.

Thought- in the terracotta warriors thing, you mentioned that the Jedi archeologists brought in a specialist in mando iconography to try and work out what’s going on with the 501sts symbols- what if that outside specialist is jaster mereel? Could be pre becoming the mand’alor, could be just his side job, but either way he spends a few years studying it all and getting used to being the only mando in a base camp full of Jedi, makes friends, has academic discussions and disagreements, steals someone’s holopad to try and use the link to the Jedi archives to read all the things on tarre visla, gets into an actual argument, reconciles with agreeing to help with a historical reenactment of a Jedi mandolorian war, gets Madame nu’s comm number, introduces his new son to his comm bff who argues historical nitpicks with him, brings jango to the next summer at the site, clones react to jango somehow and/or there’s a few tubies in there who look distractingly like jango and/or someone has their helmet off and jango has a breakdown over it looking like a family member? And so on and so on

Context: Sleeping Soldiers AU

See, I don't really subscribe to the "halfway to archaeologist!Jaster" fanon. I'm especially reticent to engage with the Jocasta ship, honestly.

But... okay, here's the thing. It does feel pretty incongruous with how I've written Jaster thus far. I can believe him having like. A 'classical' education. Not actually tutored like a noble, but that he sought out the same subjects as an adult to make sure he understood how to rule once he started having a proper political angle. He's a history nerd in the way that a particularly political/philosophical aristocrat of the 18th century would have been.

Military history, philosophical history, political and even some arts... but not actually in an archaeological sense.

(Also, it raises my hackles because it's one of those things that feels like it's heavily associated with the whole "True Mandos Were Best Mandos" crowd.)

It also really depends on the era! Tarre makes more sense than Jaster, just because of the timescale! The soldiers are millennia buried by the time Jaster is born! That said, even Tarre is a few millennia late but... makes more sense than Jaster.

Most likely, there are historians and archaeologists coming by every few centuries, as new generations encounter the issue, and older analyses are lost in the depths of the archives. Frequency tapers off after a few millennia, but... by the time Jaster is around?

It's 100% a New Mandalorian with an art history doctorate. (With a military symbolism specialty, in this case.)

It's probably not a New Mando if it's an Early On moment, but it probably is a New Mando if the Jedi start getting Weird Vibes and investigating the soldiers in the decades leading up to the Prequels.

Would the New Mandalorians know more than the traditionalists? Not necessarily. Would they know less? Actually, no.

I firmly believe that the New Mandalorians are taught about their histories in a "German kids learn about WWII atrocities, going on field trips to historic sites of said horrors, so their teachers can stress that they don't repeat the mistakes of the past" kind of way. I imagine the New Mandos would have plenty of research and records in regards to actual history, with plenty of museums and such. Part of maintaining pacifism is ensuring that the coming generations understand what led them to pacifism in the first place.

Is this thousands of years in the past, and thus difficult to research? Yes, but the traditionalists would have that same problem.

More of them, even. If the New Mandos have been around for seven hundred years, like Legends claims, then the traditionalists have probably have lost a lot of history through various battles and bombings, while the New Mandalorians, while not entirely escaping large scale destruction and such attacks, are much more likely to have protected and maintained their sites, simply by not courting war as a matter of culture. The traditionalists, meanwhile, would have had a much stronger emotional and cultural attachment to legends and themes, though I'll admit those are probably prone to revisionism, much like real-world folklore and mythology.

As @atagotiak put it:

Ehhhh. The traditionalists do care about legends and history and stuff. Often in an idealized way, sure. But you could argue that they’d have more reason than new mandos to be into these stories. Which, to be clear, isn’t like, saying that Jaster is definitely a part-time historian or anything like that. It’s just I don’t think one side would have an advantage over another. (edited)

So the New Mandos and Trad Mandos are probably on an even playing ground, insofar as skill and resources and knowledge go.

But by Jaster's time, the Jedi would have more reason to think the New Mandos would cooperate. No real downside to asking them when it comes to knowledge/skill, and an upside in terms of 'not getting shot when asking.'

As Tia said:

And even if we assume Jaster is a big history nerd and would be receptive to the Jedi (and tbh there’s even less indication of the latter) there’s no reason to think the Jedi would know that.

So yeah, when the soldiers start having Vibes And The Force Becomes Suspiciously Active on that level... New Mando archaeologist, definitely.

[amalgamorph]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/49337704/chapters/166778962

Next chapter!!!! WEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

MK is fine. Why would you think otherwise? 🤭

[onestepbackwards]

I'm cracking up at the idea of where contests come from in the case of the Streamer AU. It reminds me a lot of the Song of Storms Paradox in the Zelda Ocarina of Time where in that game Windmill Man teaches adult Link the song because of his fury at the damage young Link brought by playing it. After traveling back in time, young Link uses that knowledge to cause the damage that led to the Windmill Man's fury. But in that case where did the Song of Storms come from to begin with? It's basically that, but with Pokémon Contests. For a bit of fun fact both 'Where did the song of storms come from' and 'Where did Pokémon contests come from' would probably be considered a Bootstrap Paradox since they both involve time travel and made it so there is no way discernible point of origin for contests/the song. I can see that becoming a running joke in the Pokémon world, and in the chat. The Contest Paradox becomes a thing now in the Pokémon world, and is a subject of debate online.

Gets even funnier to me if pictures of the Streamer existed in history books long before they got sent to Hisui because it makes it seem like at least part of the reason Arceus flung them into the past was just to make sure that Pokémon Contests would exist.

LITERALLY THOUGH

Ocarina of Time is literally what I had been thinking of when I wrote that! How funny it would be if it was one of those paradox things!

No one knows what really came first. Could one exist without the other? The thought has historians and scientists in a tizzy from the whole situation.

It becomes a hot debate topic in the future and in your chat. You even have people arguing in your donos, just so people can argue in text to speech. It ends up becoming a meme discussion in your chat.

Anytime you wanna change the subject, all you or your mods have to do is simply say: “Hey chat, which came first? Contests here in Hisui, or contests in the future? Would contests exist without me coming here and having hisui’s first contest?”

It never fails to make your chat speed up and debate each other.

[mindfogger]

mind's 2022 reading round up recs... pt. 1

featuring bad coping skills and over 1000 hours of reading

January: 1,979,541 words read, 132 hours

Most Memorable Read: 

With A Conquering Air by Inexplicfics

Featuring Geralt/Jaskier.

Slow burn romance with a political twist. The whole series is a treat!

Honorable Mentions: 

Pizza And A Movie (Suits, Harvey/Mike, Different First Meeting AU) by Closer

Boiling Point (MCYT, Dark SBI, Sickfic) by SilverWing15

February: 997,938 words read, 67 hours

Most Memorable Fic:

Butterfly Reign by SilentTeyz

Featuring SBI & DSMP Character

Dark and unhealthy family dynamics with a royal flavor. Literally had me up till 4 a.m. crying.

Honorable Mentions:

history has its eyes on you (Naruto, Gen, Reincarnation & Whump) by tasalmalin

you wait and you wonder who’ll take on your odds (Queen’s Gambit, Beth/Benny, Marriage of Convenience AU) by paperclipbitch

March: 1,485,471 words read, 99 hours

Most Memorable Read: 

how fast the evening passes by meridies

Featuring SBI and college dropout Tommy

This just holds a special place in my heart. The family dynamics hit really well and I felt like it was portrayed really realistically and lowkey relatable for me.

Honorable Mentions:

By Wire Wood And Stake (Emerald Duo, Fantasy & Hurt/Comfort) by SilverWing15

from ice to water series [blanket me in snow specifically] (MCYT, Gen, Figure Skating/Olympics AU) by Drhair76 and Plantform

April: 1,770,795 words read, 118 hours

Most Memorable Read:

I’m A Healer, But… by yellowleader

Featuring Dark SBI and baby badass Tommy

I think I’ve read this about 3 or 4 more times since I first read it back in April. The way that Tommy and SBI interact in this and the fact that they have actual animosity and fights between them makes it really good. The twist also hits so good on re-reads.

Honorable Mentions:

By Your Ancient Names (Featuring God!Technoblade and Religious Themes) by Charnel

sleep deprived (SBI, Zombie Apocalypse AU) by micah_is_haunting

May: 1,250,854 words read, 83 hours

Most Memorable Read:

devoted by loosingletters

Star Wars Canon AU with Obikin featuring Religious Themes

I really loved the world building and the angst in this… It all worked together so well. Warning for temp. character death though

Honorable Mentions:

come to the jedi temple in the next ten minutes if you want an asskicking (Star War, Obikin, Canon Divergence) by destiny919

Complication With Optimistic Outcome (The Social Network, Eduardo/Mark, Time Travel) by yagyuzue

June: 1,283,408 words read, 86 hours

Most Memorable Read:

A Hell of His Making by obsidienne

Star Trek, Post-Canon AOS Kirk/Spock

I love all Vulcan culture focused fic and Spock's angst and Jim's insistence is so good in this. I also like the smart!Jim hints in this, it's so good.

Honorable Mentions:

The Bootstrap Paradox(Tenet, Neil/The Protagonist, post-canon... technically) by Vulcanodon

Sigh No More (Skyfall, James Bond/Q, Hurt/Comfort) by dhampir72

[asterism343]

Homestuck AU wherein everything is the same except for in the post-scratch timeline, the adult version of Dave makes the Goncharov movie in real life. And then Roxy pirates it in the future and sends a copy back in time to Jake and it becomes one of his favorite movies (because every movie is one of his favorite movies)

Maybe this could be like, a bootstrap paradox of sorts, where older dave comes across a partial and/or corrupted version of the movie and decides to shamelessly copy it because of course he would

Also since hussie said that every fantroll is canon that means that Troll Goncharov canonically exsts in homestuck

[finalfantasyxivwritings]

I can’t believe I’m having to refresh my knowledge of the Infinite Hotel Paradox in order to explain how the hell my Future Past AU works within the confines of time travel within a series of infinite parallel universes of FFXIV (because fuck what canon says about there being only a single timeline Except For That One Time)

Forgive the scribble as I did this on lunch, but assuming that there are an infinite number of timelines, with the WoL traveling back to the past of another and triggering the events leading to the present, then that means that the Elpis Gang of Gremlins can travel to the future of a separate timeline without any chronological issues. No bootstraps paradoxes here!

Or, well, maybe a little