#euclidian space

[pitch-and-moan]

Six Sides of Death

A sequel to Enter the Tetrahedron, in which the kumite between history's greatest geometers continues. This time, they fight both for honor, and to solve the unit distance problem.

[3-inch-doodles]

jerome introductions !!!!!

[bunnieswithknives]

What’s David planning to do when he graduates? The puppets are in his dorm aren’t they

David doesn't plan anything. Ever.

[sonic-adventure-3]

in tmosth, if the secret passage was used by espio earlier, why was there so much dust when barry and tails open it?

espio is so good at ninja-ing he can dodge dust and open a door without disturbing anything

espio planted the dust to cover his tracks

minor continuity error

it was just THAT dusty. old closets are just like that

[babycharmander]

(THE BOOK OF BILL SPOILERS!!)

Thinking about Bill’s appearance at the end of the book…

[ID: BIll when confronting the Axolotl. He is shown in white silhouette, hovering in space, hovering neutrally. Notably, he has a massive crack running through his body, splitting him into multiple pieces, some of which are coming apart. /end ID]

When confronting the Axolotl, Bill is broken. The Axolotl even notes this: "Shattered, broken, not yet dead."

(Which, side note, makes me think Bill might have been lying about having been "kicked out of Hell," if he didn't actually die in Stan's head.)

[ID: Three pictures of Bill in the Theraprism. The first one shows him holding his hand against the side of his head in a dazed expression, sitting in a chair in a white padded room between a wizard with a clock for a face and Saturn (taken directly from the painting Saturn Devouring His Son). The second is a camera recording of him wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in a cell, surrounded by arts and crafts tools, holding a pair of scissors, and beaming his thoughts frantically into a book. The third shows a mugshot of him staring blankly into the camera, his own name written on coded text below him. In all three images, he has a glowing scar where the cracks were, and is in one piece. /end ID]

When he's shown in the Theraprism, we see a glowing, static-y scar where the cracks were. The scar crosses his entire body (and even crosses to the other side of his eye without affecting it!), but he's actually whole, keeping himself together.

But then...

[ID: Two pictures of Bill from the last pages of the book. In the first one he is facing forward and holding up one finger, his eye reddened, his entire form glitching, and his crack is notably worse than prior, cracking through his eye, multiple smaller pieces drifting away. In the second one he is staring blankly at the viewer, his arms hanging limply, his eye wide and blank, the crack worse than the previous image, with more pieces floating away. /end ID]

In the last few pages, we see the scar is gone and the cracks are back, and even more of him is breaking away, including parts of his eye. It's especially bad in the last image, with even more pieces of him breaking away.

Also noteworthy is that the static texture behind him seems to be the same as the blood sample the US government took from him in the 1940s. He's bleeding.

We know from context that these images are meant to be taken somewhat chronologically. After dying (or nearly dying), Bill seeks out the Axolotl, who sends him to the Theraprism. While there, he writes the journal that he's beaming to us. The staff at the Theraprism catch onto this, and allow him to write out the last few pages, meaning those last few pages are chronologically the last of Bill we see.

This means that, after the events of the show, Bill was shattered... and then, upon entering the Theraprism, started to heal, his body coming together and scars forming... but at some point afterward, he started breaking apart again.

I'd made a post previously about Bill's development, how he views himself as a monster after the Euclidian Disaster, and how he continues to act monstrous afterward (and winds up agonizingly lonely as a result). I didn't really touch on this in the post, but I feel like after inadvertently destroying his home dimension...

Bill never left the denial phase of grief.

I could be wrong on this, but I get the feeling that part of his reason for acting monstrous toward just about everybody is because he sees himself as a monster, because "this is just how I am" is easier to accept than "I really really screwed up."

Bringing this back to his shattering... It's interesting to me that after entering the Theraprism, his body is scarring, which means it is healing. But then, at the end, as he's signing off the book, he's shattered again, and looking even worse than he did when talking to the Axolotl. When talking this over with a friend, they pointed out something that struck me:

Bill does not want to heal.

Healing means having to actually think through what happened. It means having to confront his past, confront destroying his home dimension, confront the harm he caused to others, confront the fact that he did not have to be this way.

And he refuses to do that.

He refuses to heal.

[theconceptofkidney]

Once more our innerworld has become more challenging to draw into a 2-dimentional map...

[Context: so called "comms room" is now a "real place" anyone can go to by finding the stairwell in the void or going up Mt. Celeste. It has Sub,machine vibes]

[kartoonatic]

Yes Ford is a monster fucker and yes Bill is even more of a monster fucker but just how much more is like, hard to process.

Bill is fucking with a creature which, from his perspective, has:

Infinite sides (euclidians are basic geometry)

Infinite sides that branch off into smaller extremities (do you think he realized at first the difference between a neck and a finger)

Is made out of several unique compounds (like what's the difference between flesh and bone and spit to him)

And he convinced that thing to do exactly what he wanted for the better part of it's natural life span. At one point had that thing hanging on his every word. Like I kinda get the hubris. If I successfully convinced an existential horror like that to do my bidding you couldn't talk me down from that high. And he says he likes me. Maybe like-likes me. I kinda get it.

You can argue that Bill likely came into contact with much stranger shit than humans during the entire period between meeting Ford and destroying his own home world, and you'd be right. But also I think while manipulating/romancing horrible space creatures might not be a completely new experience I also don't see how you could get bored of it.

[patricia-taxxon]

thinking about how if you were floating in a hyperbolic space next to an infinite euclidian plane you could push away from it and watch the entire thing recede into the distance

[im-not-buying-it-ether]

Something I don’t see people mentioning that I might be over thinking is the other part of that lullaby for Bill

Like, yeah, all the chatter about his “strange eye” and how that definitely is about how he has it put in the center of his face and not to the sides like other Euclidian’s probably did to navigate a 2D space. But no one is mentioning the “Sharp angles and all” ??

To me at least, the sharp angles might be another oddity about Bill as he grew up. Maybe others had softer or more rounded edges? Maybe Bill was comparatively skinny or boney or didn’t look right? Maybe it was odd what angles he did have? Maybe being equilateral wasn’t normal and others had differing angles?

Idk, I’m just saying maybe it wasn’t just his eye

[thicctails]

Gravity Falls is finally popping off again, so naturally my obsession with it has been dragged out from deep within me and thrust to the front of my mind, so here's a collection of various au ideas i have.

Explanations below! Contains Book of Bill Spoilers!!

A different form, a different time: Due to a widescale time and space fuck up, both Bill Cipher and the Axolotl get reincarnated (temporarily?) as humans. Specifically as older teens/very young adults. Hot topic wannabe and pink gumball son of a bitch must learn to navigate the hell that is mortality and human puberty as they set out on a road trip to try and reach the only place they can think of to find answers: Gravity Falls.

Obligatory dragon au: exactly what it says on the tin.

Time Stuck... with a twist: Something goes horribly wrong with the Time tape, resulting in Mabel, Dipper, and a 12 year old Billy Cipher being sent to the 80's. Trapped in the past/future, depending on who you ask, the preteens end up on the run with a mullet-wearing grifter with a familiar face, and must learn to work together to set things right. However, having two Bills' will make things much harder than usual, especially since one absolutely adores his star-marked humans and their weird Larger Human, while the other wants nothing more than to watch them burn.

Monster Falls but they're both Unitaurs: Mabel and Dipper are twins, let them be the same monster you cowards.

Under the Falls: This is one of my older ones! Its a strange little mer! au, where a younger Stan and Ford must take in their niblings after a monster hunter slaughters the rest of their family. Baby mers cant disguise themselves, so they must stay in the nearby lake. Luckily, their cat-eyed deer friend is more than happy to keep them company, and take them on Non-Grunkle-Approved adventures.

I Grow Maddened (From Grief): In the Book of Bill, we learn that Mabel and Dipper don't make it to 13 in pretty much every other timeline. Now, Bill 100% could be bullshitting, but i like to think thats its at least partially true: Dippers and Mabels don't tend to last in the Multiverse. But what about their Grunkles? Surely there are quite a few timelines where one set of twins is left to mourn the other.

This au follows a Ford that lost his Dipper and Mabel to a dangerous creature that escaped confinement while he was distracted by his work. It managed to also near fatally wound Stanley and nearly take one of Ford's eyes before he managed to kill it, leaving him with two dead family members and his twin on the brink. Consumed by guilt and refusal to live in a world without his beloved niblings, Ford set Stanley up on cryogenic life support and managed to lie his way into more time by convincing the twin's parents that both of them would be more successful under his tutelage.

Once everything was in place, he threw himself back into the multiverse (this time with a way back) and began hopping through other timelines, looking for the perfect replacements for his missing family. Man spirals hard, eventually deciding that the twins, when he gets them back, would not be leaving his and Stanley's sides again, because his twin is also not leaving. After all, their parents clearly dont value them like they should, and Ford knows that it will be easy to remove any memory of the twins all together.

Euclid + Scalene live (and get better children): Somehow spared from the genocide of their entire dimension, the deeply wounded Cipher parents eventually find themselves inexplicably drawn to a little backwater planet. The two find themselves becoming attached to a pair of twins that seem blessed by the Axolotl itself, and although their last child had caused violence on a previously unseen scale, both Euclidians find that they want to try again. The Ciphers become mostly unseen guardians to the little Pines, content to simply watch over them and bring them sweet dreams while they struggle to hold themselves together.

Then Bill shows up, and everything goes to shit.

[zooliminology]

Is there a map of the Far Plane? Geographical or otherwise? If not what are the documented regions or places?

As of now, there are not any formal maps of the Far Plane due to the nature of its space. The space of its plane of reality is not consistent with real-world laws of physics and utilizes dimensions beyond third, making a theoretical map of it very difficult to create and understand.

Essentially, areas are muddled in with each other and doors that stand right next to each other could lead to entirely different areas, even if it doesn't make sense space-wise, because the Far Plane is non-Euclidian.

To answer the next part, there are indeed documented and named. Many have shown up in photos posted here, however, we may list a few here:

The Far Plains The first area discovered by the Zooliminology Project, and usually the initial area you can clip into. Primarily is comprised of vast, open, green planes and rolling knolls that sometimes sport fences. The sky projects the impression of being around midday and usually have large clouds. The grass found here is not confirmed to be related to real-world poaceae. Several black prisms have been discovered here colloquially as "voids," the properties of which are still understudied due to our focus on zoological documentation. Home to striders and kytes.

Brutalia A large, geometric area of concrete that sprouts in random directions and does not truly superficially resemble any real-world architecture. The concrete gives way to many interiors and corridors that make it easy to get lost or separated from groups. The sky seems to be in a perpetual state of sunset. The only entities recorded here are longlegs.

Winter An exterior part of the Far Plane that is characterized by a constant state of snow and darkness. This area seems to closely resemble a real-world landscape, but the "plant" life here does not seem to grow or decay. The sky routinely shifts between being in either sunset or sunrise to being fully night. The area is covered in a constant mist that obscures faraway landmarks. This area houses fogwalkers and light mimics.

The Rain Lot An exterior area of the Far Plane is categorized by perpetual darkness and constant rain. The area, unlike Winter or the Far Plains, is almost completely flat, leading to light flooding in many areas. Natural light sources include clusters of floodlights. The only entities recorded here are ghosts.

Greenhouses A purely interior part of the Far Plane that houses an abundance of liminal flora. This area typically has an abundance of natural light sources compared to other interior areas. The flora inside of this area can vary, along with the style and size of rooms. Entities found here are golbos and another currently unnamed species.

Miscellaneous Other areas of the Far Plane exist, mostly including interiors, but have either not been explored enough to find their true scope or have not been confirmed to be their own area rather than a subarea of a larger expanse. These places are home to various other entities that have been recorded in prior photographs. Please note that these areas are categorized by researchers and are not a full list nor is it a hard-fast rule. Many areas blur into each other due to the nature of the Far Plane and categorizing areas is done for the purpose of ease of cataloging explored areas and found entities.

[stars-obsession-pit]

I know a shortcut!

As Amity Park and its residents have gotten more intertwined with the Ghost Zone, concepts like standard euclidian space have started to lose their meaning.

The residents are cool with it. Sure, it was a bit confusing at first, but it’s so helpful! Why would anyone walk across all of town if you can take a few funky turns and get there in a fraction of the time?

…although it does mean they can get lost shockingly easily in places that do conform to normal spacetime.

What do you mean this is the shortest route? Why can’t they just walk up the wall to get to their neighbor across the street? Why are everyone’s houses so… flat? How do those paths reach the same area when their turns were in a different order? Or what about this other sets of directions, surely they would converge at— what you mean they don’t??

[sanctus-ingenium]

Inver - relief map relative to the continent with otherworld territory marked, broad habitat map, detailed local landmarks map, and political map of the northeast atlantic peninsula as of 1862

i was just having map fun for two days lol. i make habitat maps a lot already but the difference with this one is that i can't just download a handy shapefile and do some GIS magic. this was hand drawn (but obviously. somewhat traced over the actual irl map)

for the outline of the north sea coast i used bathymetry data to figure out where the true coastline would occur. the north sea recedes but the atlantic doesn't (to the same extent). because this landmass was formed through some ancient Event, i felt pretty okay about changing the bedrock because like, whatever, we can't be fully realist all the time. so the northern half of inver is mainly limestone, the southern half is silicaceous - so we got the bog/marl divide there, though lough cánamac (in volume slightly larger than any of the north american great lakes) appears to be the remnant of the north sea, it is freshwater with a relatively low pH. the water of the lough is black to dark brown due to the run-off from the southern bogs and swamps.

in the north, the mountain ranges are calcareous. calcareous grassland, scrubland, heaths and fens dominate with a largely alkaline profile. limestone marl lakes which regularly flood due to groundwater input make the region pretty unsuitable for crops other than rice.

the ruad is the name for a stretch of otherworld territory which contains the lough, though generally used to refer to the forested area. it is completely uninhabitable throughout the majority of its range due to the non-euclidian structure of the land making it impossible to navigate consistently, and the strange and frequently hostile creatures living there. the ruad is faery territory and belongs to an entity known as the Red King, who uses the symbol of a stag. so although inver may look like a large country compared to its neighbours, it has a relatively small population concentrated on the west coast.

however, sailing across the lough is the quickest way to trade with countries in the east, far quicker than trekking through the forest and over land. the trade route through the ruad from invergorken to the cánamac town is one of the most valuable in the continent. it consists of an old road with regularly-spaced ranger safehouses and patrols, and a newer pair of railway lines which can cut through the supernatural aura of the ruad due to their iron rails. the first and older line is no longer in regular use. it was constructed before the development of wrought iron and before the build crews learned how to blast through rock, so it takes a very slow and winding route and required a lot of maintenance. safehouses were constructed to board the workers while the tracks were laid. but without this original track, the construction of the second, far more advanced wrought iron track would have been impossible. workers for the second track were able to commute and sleep on the first track's train, keeping them from harm. the second track can fit two trains side by side and is in constant use ferrying cargo and passengers between the two towns

the country of inver, once The Event wiped out all of its original inhabitants a couple thousand years ago, was settled by hibernians and vikings from the north moving south, and aquitanians from the south moving north (thus the place names). the ruad mostly blocked incursions from the east. there was a long history of dispute over who truly owned the land, and that remained sort of up in the air for most of its history until the 1400s when armorican warlords (like Olivier) decided to make it theirs for realsies and waged war against their old hibernian trade partners (like Finbarr) for control of the land. the hibernians lost because finbarr fucked it up at the last second, and this cemented a ruling class of werewolves in inver until the 1860s

inver consists of three large duchies which cover 70% of the population. Moya in the west is the heart of lycanthrope rule, everybody worships a faery known as the immortal hound and the ruad is far enough away that it is not a fact of life as it is for everyone else. Inver duchy covers the capital city and the south-western farmland, the main sites of production in the country. And Cánamac duchy covers the trade port in the lough and surrounding territories, where forest clearing has led to new farmland and a thriving population. There was a fourth duchy in the north, Aber, but it was historically somewhat isolated and cut off from the south of the country and had developed its own customs and traditions, and its own form of the country's currency. In the 1840s, the duchy of Aber was dissolved and reconstituted into the king's lands, and southern customs were enforced in the north to prevent any more divergence. the palaces of the ruling families in each territory are shown in the local map alongside the family names.

Due to The Event causing massive damage in this region of Europe, forbidding the development of britain and france etc as colonial empires, the last great Empire of this continent was the roman empire, and even that didn't manage to overcome the Ruad. technology is rudimentary in Inver and the people living there are largely considered to be weird backwards superstitious barbarians. aquitan has been threatening annexation for decades, led mainly by the church of suzette, which forbids interaction with otherworld entities. the church holds in disregard the nobility of inver and their cultish ways, and as a result has been banned from attempting to convert inver citizens. but the church is still allowed to make minor inroads into inver for one very important reason: penicillin and antibiotics are the sole creation of the church, and the secret of how they are made is unknown outside suzette. so for the sake of good, advanced healthcare, the church is allowed to set up clinics and hospitals, on the condition that nobody is converted, and members of the church are strictly banned from engaging in any business but importing and selling antibiotics

[bunnieswithknives]

Where do lesley and roy exist in the two of us au? does david just like, keep them in his basement or something?

The House itself looks basically the same, but if you mean like, where the house is, then it's a non-euclidian space that he just sorta shoved into his closet

[anthrotographer]

Review of 'The Time Machine' by H.G. Wells

The stories of H.G.Wells are rich and captivating worlds where he makes the unfathomable seem plausible. Wells uses concepts from the sciences readily in his writing as a base of reality. His protagonists tend to be inquisitive types that posit questions about the state of the world, often giving and testing their hypotheses along a surreal adventure. In The Time Machine our protagonist is simply and ambiguously labeled the Time Traveler. He has just transformed physics forever by creating a vehicle that can fold and traverse spacetime. Now he aims to demonstrate to his civilized friends his unbelievable achievement. In a way this demonstration is both a primer for them and a reassurance for himself that he is not in a fantasy.

“Can an instantaneous cube exist?”

This is a question the Time Traveler asks his dinner party audience in order to introduce the concept of Time as the 4th dimension. He claims you need “duration” for anything to truly exist. If a cube only exists for an imperceptible instant then did it really exist? It’s a question that provokes a bunch of thoughts. How long is an instant? If an instant is measurable then the cube did exist for a time, no? But without the evidence of creation or decay of the cube how can we be certain that it existed? This question is a seemingly untestable hypothetical. 

“But you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a civilized man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?"

The idea of memories being a way to time travel brings into thought a swell of philosophy. Is time really just a figment of consciousness. A way for humans to make sense of the world, to traverse it, to learn from it. Many scientists seem to think so (1). A mind altering realization that I can’t truly grasp fully. But what if in a way thinking of time as just a construct of the mind might reveal an ultimate interpretation of this extraordinary tale that’s being told. I’m sure it’s read that way by some.  

Also, ‘if ever a creature could figure out time travel it’s humans’, believes the Time Traveler. His distinction between “civilized” man and a “savage” is problematic to say the least, but we’ll revisit that later because it has major bearing on how our protagonist sees the world. 

Distinguishing the 4th dimension of Time as another measure of existence (like the 3 Euclidian measures of height, length and width) is a way for the reader, and the dinner party audience, to conceptualize it as a plane that we can move along. Today scientists still haven’t cracked the code of time travel and some contest Time being the 4th dimension at all. (2)(3)

“The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered: I was, so to speak, attenuated— was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way: meant bringing my atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical reaction-possibly a far-reaching explosion-would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions into the Unknown. This possibility had occurred to me again and again while I was making the machine”

Here the Time Traveler is describing his first, future time warp. Imagine flying through time and seeing your home, and world as you knew it, vanish. It reads as an incredibly disorienting experience. And this possibility of stopping at the wrong time and fusing with some obstruction in his position seems like a massive red flag. The logic that Wells presents shows how deep he went in imagining what time travel would be like. He intuitively analyzed many of the potential pitfalls that could occur. 

“What might appear when that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness, a foul creature to be incontinently slain.”

And here begins the traveler’s speculative musings on the futurity of man. I enjoy this aspect of the story in particular because of my own fascination with humanity’s future. Here he contemplates what we might turn into. Projecting forward, knowing that our species has a long history of warring against each other, it would be a safe bet that that would continue. It has for some time. But is it intrinsic to what our species is? One read of this quote is that the Traveler thinks cruelty is currently uncommon, and that we might devolve into being cruel creatures. Wells and the Time Traveler are from England. They grew up as citizens of a colonial power, used to a culture of cruel conquest. They are also used to thinking that to maintain their civilization some other peoples need to be on the sacrificial end. This dichotomic mentality deems all other lives expendable on their route to control, and maybe this line of thinking from the Time Traveler is an example of that mentality bleeding over into his predictions. When I read that last sentence of the quote I couldn’t help but think about the British colonist’s warped rationale for incontinently slaying the indigenous peoples of Australia or N. America. A bit of projection maybe?

Now he’ll actually stop at a time, far different than his own. A moment in time where mother nature’s diversity has been restored, while humanity is “upon the wane.”

“You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children- asked me, in fact, if I had come from the sun in a thunderstorm! … A flow of disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine in vain.”

The anticipation of a progressive revolution speaks to his belief in humanity’s continued evolution (whatever that means). It can be coming from a societally egoistic perspective or a self-ego perspective, being that the Time Traveler can see himself as a revolutionary inventor. Thinking that we will always be progressing doesn’t take into account the pitfalls that come from our expansion.

I think that Wells actually does a nice job in creating this character that doesn’t get lost in himself too much, and tends to stick to ideas about the world. He rolls with the punches of having some of his hypotheses turn out wrong. He is human of course and does have brief episodes of existential dread, but the plot is more important than character to this story. In a way it is more captivating that way. The protagonist can be an amorphous entity for the reader to plop themselves into to experience the imaginary world of time travel. 

Meeting the Eloi people in this moment shatters the glass of that societal ego. Our traveler was so looking forward to ascertaining the future’s wisdom. My interpretation is that The Time Machine is unwittingly prophetic in distinct ways. And that the future’s wisdom is revealed. More to come.

“For the first time I began to realise an odd consequence of the social effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life-the true civilising process that makes life more and more secure-had gone steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and carried forward. And the harvest was what I saw!” “Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found them engaged in no toil. There were no signs of struggle, neither social nor economical struggle. The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all that commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone. It was natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of a social paradise.”

He finds a world where the small population of Eloi are thought to be our last descendants. There is very little modern architecture left, and even less not fully claimed back by vegetation. Wondering why there are so few people left and why no one is doing any work, he speculates that it might be the logical order of a fully realized civilized world. A utopia of sorts where life is so easy that we have adjusted to a life of physical and mental sloth. The idea of the exponentially increasing civilizing process is a prevalent idea in present day thought. First it assumes that civility = collective good, when practically speaking only a subset of our population benefits from this modernity while the other part either toils to maintain it or gets excluded from it. Which brings up another variable when projecting forward, which is; what happens to class and human exploitation. The trend of modernity, industrialization, civilization or whatever you want to call it hasn’t necessarily been in effort to make life easier in those respects. Some technologies and medicines have of course had positive effects, but toil and hardship has stayed steadfast (4). You can even argue that there were many ‘primitive’ societies that lived more sustainably and with less toil than us (5). What I’m ultimately saying is that “ameliorating the conditions of life” can be helped of course by developments in our understanding about the world (such as in medical science and tech), but that one of those developments has to be an egalitarian and democratic society. At least if we want to shoot for utopia. 

Anyway, this timeline of history doesn’t entirely hold up as the Time Traveler searches for more clues.

“Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough—as most wrong theories are!"

We cannot fully affirm the Time Traveler’s conjecture anymore because he has proven himself fallible. Yet he does make some convincing arguments for certain aspects of the changed world. These must be considered. I like that he’s not an all knowing narrator. He is trying his best to have educated hypotheses about this confusing new age.

“Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary to survival, are a constant source of failure. Physical courage and the love of battle, for instance, are no great help—may even be hindrances—to a civilised man.”

Here I agree with him that our proclivity for battle is a negative. I feel linking “physical courage and the love of battle” either doesn’t translate well to today (and I’m not understanding) or they are distinctly separate tendencies. You can be courageous and put your body on the line for the greater good of humanity; hence it wouldn’t be a hinderance. That can be through battle or it can be through other means like protest. And once again the Time Traveler makes a distinction here between civilized man and humanity in general. His use of vocabulary like “savage” and “civilized” throughout the novella depict a man who sees himself as a distinct version of humanity or an entirely different being in general. One that’s superior to other peoples. This thinking is in line with 19th century European views and informs their creation of the defunct classification of race (6).

“The Time Machine was gone! At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of losing my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new world.”

After a day getting acquainted with his surroundings he gets this heart stopper. Coming to the conclusion that his invention must have been moved deliberately, he begins his search for the culprit. It couldn’t have been the “indolent” Eloi. He befriends one of them that he names Weena and she joins the traveler on his explorations.

“But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that Man had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct animals: that my graceful children of the Upper World were not the sole descendants of our generation, but that this bleached, ob-scene, nocturnal Thing, which had flashed before me, was also heir to all the ages.”

His first encounter with the Morlocks, the Eloi’s underground counterparts. 

“At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present merely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer, was the key to the whole position.”

I had to stop and think about this one. Could it be possible for a class divide of peoples that stretches on for millennia to actually produce distinct creatures? I think 800,000 years is long enough for a species to evolve some changed features, especially moving down into a subterranean environment. Still, the people that lived there would have to have been forced to live there by the upper worlders. In a Capitalist vs laborer dynamic we know from history that uprisings would likely occur amongst the subjugated class which would make it difficult for the dynamic to stay so divided. Especially if the Eloi ancestors were dependent on the labor that the Morlock ancestors were producing, as the traveler hypothesizes. As long as humans have been organizing together there have been some who selfishly try to extract a bigger piece of the pie at the expense of others; at the expense of equality. I think Wells recognizes an existing class divide and extrapolates out from there to create a semi-logical science fiction future. From a capitalist’s perspective having a labor force trapped underground, unable to complain or taint the image of your exclusive eden, seems ideal. This imagery is extremely reminiscent of another classic short story called The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin (7). Wells’ conceives of many possible variables that might’ve shaped his world, but leaves room for a reader to interpret. I want to take some of his prophetic descriptions and offer up my own reading after the following quote.

“I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather of this Golden Age. I cannot account for it. It may be that the sun was hotter, or the earth nearer the sun.”

Well Wells, maybe it was hotter because of human induced climate change. There are plenty of anecdotes in the story that describe humanity as the main arbiter of earth’s future changes. We all tend to acknowledge that as a matter of fact. The agricultural and industrial revolutions proved that we, more than any other species, shape the landscape of the world. But having the hindsight of 21st century knowledge really informs how I see The Time Machine. In the story humanity has decreased in numbers drastically, has devolved in its intellectual capacity, and our infrastructures have collapsed. Humans no longer are “progressing” in the modern sense where progress gets unnecessarily linked with expansion, extraction, and exploitation. Perhaps they are just living sustainably like any other creature. I know a small mention about the climate being hotter doesn’t explicitly point to climate change being the culprit for the Eloi’s reality. Still, could it be that the big existential crisis of our time was never remedied and this led to mass degradation of human society? Some of our smartest minds tend to think this is what’s coming for us (8). Maybe the forces of change ran half of humanity underground and that’s what birthed the Morlocks. Maybe traversing time in The Time Machine was in effort to glimpse into our unassured future.

“However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation and their Fear.”

A great example of the simplistic inclination we have to sympathize with who/what-ever looks most like us. It’s not to say it’s not practical because instinctually we gravitate towards our families who of course resemble us the most. But to overlook the science in favor of habit and familiarity has put humanity at odds with itself and the ecosystem. No matter the race, nationality, or however we choose to divide, the science says that we are all practically the same, with the same basic needs and desires. The same is true of us and the rest of the biosphere full of carbon based life forms. Disassociating ourselves from that collective has given us the illusion of invincibility. The repercussions will be severe.  

“I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible death of little Weena. It seemed an overwhelming calamity. Now, in this old familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an actual loss.”

Finally after many dramatic happenings (that I can keep listing but I genuinely recommend you read) the Time Traveler has found his machine and is able to return to a more familiar time. Recounting his experience is almost like thinking on a dream. His friends will hardly believe the tale and maybe some part of himself doesn’t either. Remember, if time is truly a construction of a conscious mind then maybe the time machine was merely a device that allowed the traveler to explore their own minds imagination of a prospective future. An experience akin to a deep psychedelic trip or lucid dreaming. In that case he might have thought that progress was inevitable but subconsciously knew that civilization “must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end.” Surely some will think he’s just mad. I choose to believe the traveler’s account and take the revelation as what’s possibly to come on our current path.

“No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie—or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?"

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-time-an-illusion/ 

https://medium.com/@imshub13/why-time-is-not-the-fourth-dimension-c520161ea6d9 

https://phys.org/news/2012-04-physicists-abolish-fourth-dimension-space.html 

https://books.google.com/books?id=eHT43wfyw-sC&lpg=PA1&ots=edPFq4SIKR&dq=ancient%20hours%20working%20lives&lr&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q=ancient%20hours%20working%20lives&f=false 

https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4326670/

https://www.ceremade.dauphine.fr/~ekeland/lectures/Mathematical%20Models%20in%20Social%20Sciences/ursula-k-le-guin-the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas.pdf

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/climate-change-predictions-2070

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[funishment-time]

Kaito for the ask thing^^

kay ee toes

Sexuality Headcanon: Kaito is gay af. look at him and his non-Euclidian hair. straight people can't do that

Gender Headcanon: this here space man can fit so much Cis in it

A ship I have with said character: i don't really hardcore ship him with too many folks, but i can't help but see him as Shuichi's other half a lot (even though i personally also headcanon Shuichi as mostly ace and aro. i have a lot of variations of a character going at once, Generally Speaking)

A BROTP I have with said character: see below - i really prefer him and Maki being best buds. i also love his one scene he has with Hina in Summer Camp where they pump each other up and i think they'd be adorable friends

A NOTP I have with said character: you are all going to hate me for this but i don't like the idea of him with Maki. they seem more like MLM WLW Solidarity Bros to me. but i'm also not done with v3 so i may change my mind by the end of it. i also don't mind making memes where she has a Crush on him because it's easy shorthand that the whole fandom would understand

A random headcanon: dude loves him some Sonic the Hedgehog butt rock

General Opinion over said character: 10/10 would curse Komatsuzaki while trying to model his hair in Blender