#from quantum events but its so interesting to think of the very specific ways they can affect people's lives

[drowninnoodles]

Back to UT/DR phase, baby

I spent way too much time looking for this information so if anyone is curious...

Its mostly some pseudo physics things :p

Well, I think everyone here knows this quote:

I haven't seen anyone actually break down Undertale and make references to quantum physics, but if someone did, I'd be grateful for the links because I find it very interesting. Well, I thought I'd try to do it myself, even though I don't know anything about mathematics or physics. I will rely entirely on internet sources, so I apologize in advance for any mistakes.

I will also speak rather briefly because no one will want to read long descriptions about something neither of us will understand.

We can start with an obvious introduction about the fact that, of course, this science is about photons and protons. I don't know if there's a point in explaining what I'm referring to, because of course it's the whole thing with Negative Photons in UT, but I'd like to remind you again of my old theory about the black hole. But that's in a moment.

However, this physics is deeply connected with philosophical issues and this is what I am initially going to talk about. So let's start with the, so appropriately named, view of Determinism. In short, it says that all decisions and events are inevitable. Of course, this is the opposite of free will, the ability of individuals to make decisions, because everything is already written down in advance. There are different visions of this view, but I want to specifically address the fact that, according to some, the universe is a determined system. Of course, what I'm pointing to here is that every game has a script that assumes what will happen after making some decision and what ending we will have at, well, end of the game.

Determinism leads us to the next theory, the multiverse or many words theory. This is, by the way, my favorite theory of the world and I'm not talking about Undertale, but about our real one. However, I will explain it as simply as I can, and also remind you that Toby himself said that there are “AUs” in the UT and DR universe. Multi worlds theory is basically that DR may be a world existing in parallel with Undertale, but some event or decision made them go in two different directions. Quite hypothetically, let's take into account that the point in history that divided the universe into two, into Undertale and Deltarune, was the war between Humans and Monsters. During this war, humans and monsters had two possible outcomes, humans winning or monsters winning. We know what happened when the humans won, because this story is basically what we know from Undertale. But what if the monsters won? For now, we can only guess that this is a story from Deltarune, but nothing has been confirmed.

Another example would be that when you play Undertale you have a lot of options to choose from, right? So let's follow this lead and choose the most significant one, i.e. killing or not. Of course, the ending of True Pacifist is generally considered to be the true ending, but in Genocide we also get one. Here we started one story in the same way, but our choice created two different worlds existing in parallel. One world is the one where everyone is happy and the other is the one where everyone is dead. Of course, the fact that we have a choice does not give us complete free will, here the theory is combined with the already mentioned determinism. Because although we make decisions, their consequences are already determined, they exist because there is a game script. By the way, maybe why there are so many cats in Deltarune is simply a reference to the so-called Schördinger's Cat, but this is just a guess.

In any case, quantum physics nicely explains the existence of what we call the timeline.

While searching Wikipedia, I also came across something called String Theory, but I can't understand it, so you'll have to forgive me.

Now I will talk about what I consider to be the most logical explanation of the history of what "Dark Darker Yet Darker" refers to. Black Hole, of course.

The Black Hole has such a strong force of gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape from it. When an object falls into such a hole, all information about it is lost for observators. There is a black hole information paradox, but once again, my brain is too small to understand. We can also keep in mind that "darkness keeps growing” didn't mean it was getting darker. That meant there was literally MORE of it. Black Holes grow by eating matter, and I dare to propose a theory that opening the Fountains in Deltarune creates small micro black holes that, if not sealed, can devour the world.

Now let me remind you of the well-known fact that passing through this Hole is called Spaghettification or the Pasta Effect. In this process, the object or, in our case, a person, is torn to pieces and their matter is added to the black hole. Poor Gaster, I guess.

As for Sans, Quantum jumping isn't just thing, it's an actual thing in science. Yes, it's something that gives you access to alternate universes. This goes completely back to what I said earlier, that every decision opens up another new world to us, and somewhere we probably exist in another world at the same time. These jumps involve visualizing yourself in a given place and... that's it. You will then attract events that will help you achieve this, which will make you appear in the timeline you wanted to jump to. So personally, I don't think Sans teleports per se. For example, imagine that you meet Sans near his house, and then you go on and meet him again, but this Sans is not 100% the same because he came here from a different timeline. Does this make sense? It depends on whether I explained it well XD.

Also remember that moment when Sans is in several places at the same time? Yes, this also applies to jumping.

I think a good explanation for this might be "It's raining somewhere else". It's raining somewhere else because there was a possibility that it might or might not rain. It is not raining in this world you are in now, but in a parallel space-time it is raining because factors have occurred that allow it to happen.

By the way, according to Google, it is impossible to create a black hole in a laboratory. Oh well.

However, if someone hypothetically created one, intentionally or not, being close to it would have no chance of escaping.

Whoops?

I think it's also worth noting that it's damn cold inside such a hole, -237,15°C is, yeah, a little bit of not sunny.

Maybe that's why Black Holes are so Cool…

So summary at the end:

-Determinism means that everything is written down in advance, i.e. basically the game script.

-Many worlds and Multiverse theory explains why Sans is everywhere, and also that all timelines are happening at once

-Black holes tear people to pieces and it's called Spaghettification. (we all know it)

I don't know anything about physics, so these are just my thoughts.

[planet4546b]

very niche s/n question so there probably isn’t much to say about it but. if/when a town disappears what happens to the ppl inside it

oh this is a VERY fun question tbh!!! what if there was. a fucked up town.

we've got a few options - any of these could happen, which one of them does actually happen is totally random:

simplest answer, everyone straight up dies. they stop existing. theyre gone.

the whole town could be moved to another world completely. this isn't destructive at all, it's just placed in a new context. there's lots of variations on this one - maybe when it's placed in a new world, it's right next to it's twin from that world, maybe it's in a different terrain, maybe its in a different time, etc etc. people survive, but have to adjust very quickly to the new place they're in. (the inverse of this could also happen, where a town from another world sorta smashes into your town)

timeloop!!! town is caught in a timeloop!!! it could either be 1. slightly offset from the rest of the 'timeline' so no one could enter or exit or 2. if you enter you're trapped in there with them. 90% of the times, the people of the town are unaware that they're in a timeloop, but sometimes they figure it out (which tends not to go well)

a version of the town from the future and a version from the past can get sort of. pinned to the same spot so all of it's history is happening at the same time. what this physcially looks like is that your town is haunted - people, places, buildings, etc all can come in and out of existence completely at random.

schroedinger's town - while it may look for a while like nothing has changed, all of the possible fates of this town exist in the same place. this manifests soooooort of similarly to num 4, but i think its a lot weirder and straight up nastier. some people see the dead and some don't. some people can feel their fates from other universes. some of them can watch possible futures. some see buildings collapse every time they're in one. it's just nasty. when someone visits the town for the first time, it collapses into one of the above options (or something else, who knows) and acts as if it has always been at that state, erasing that recent history.

these are the main ones, but just about anything else could happen too, there really aren't that many hard and fast rules - towns that are alive and grant wishes, towns that begin walking across the landscape, towns that only exist when you look at them from a certain angle, towns you can only reach through dreams, towns you can only reach through mirrors. etc etc.

and also absolutely NO ONE in the world at this time knows any of this. people tend not to get out of these towns when this happens, and also this was most common in the first 50 or so years after the resonance - by now things are more stable and most people don't rish living too far outside of the largest cities anyways, so it still happens - but to people outside the towns, they just vanish, and that's it. if you go in to try to figure out what happened you vanish too. its bad

these towns mostly exist as legends and warning stories, but there are definitely some INSANE stories that could be written in this world about people trapped in these towns. theyre super fun!!!! thank you as always <33

[after-avenging-hours]

Out of Time [4]: Steve x Reader

Series Masterlist with dates on chapter releases - tag list will not be used for this series

Summary:  After Steve gets injected with a mysterious substance during a mission gone wrong, you come to find out that the only thing that can save his life is a pure sample of Dr. Erskine’s Super Soldier Serum. Unwilling to let the love of your life die without a fighting chance, you travel through the quantum realm back to 1943. Equipped with little more than your knowledge of past events, you have to figure out just how exactly you’re going to get your hands on that serum. Not only that, but with the infinity stones no longer protecting the reality you’ve come from, there is now a chance that your presence in the past can change the future you’ll return to. Can you succeed without messing things up? And if things go wrong, can you fix it before it’s too late? Or will you run out of time…

Word Count: 4609

Warnings: Steve having an asthma attack, brief mention of smutty concepts again, two idiots longing for each other

A/N: This chapter references the song Taking a Chance on Love by Benny Goodman, which was a popular song in 1943. I decided not to use the Endgame song 1) because that’s Steve and Peggy’s song and 2) it was technically made in 1945 and therefore would not have existed, yet. You can give Taking a Chance on Love a listen via the links below:

Spotify Link

Youtube link

The next morning you wake up once again to Steve attempting to untangle himself from your limbs. You giggle tiredly, releasing him and turn over to cuddle with your pillow before you promptly fall back asleep. A little later, you’re roused once more by the scent of cooking bacon and eggs.

You push yourself out of bed and lift your arms up in a stretch. Your wound was completely healed as of last night, only leaving behind a set of scars on the side of your abdomen and lower back. You reach for the silk robe you’d pulled out of your suitcase the night before and throw it on over your satin nightgown. You tie the robe closed as you leave Steve’s room and enter the kitchen.

The splattering sound of hot bacon grease fills your ears as you follow its delicious scent. “Good morning,” you announce to Steve, who’s standing by the stove, spatula in hand. He’s already dressed for the day and wears a simple blue apron to protect his clothes from the popping grease.

“Morning. I hope you’re hungry,” he smiles in greeting.

“It smells amazing,” you comment, taking in another deep breath. Stepping around him, you move to the refrigerator. “Do you want any orange juice?” you ask, pulling the carton out that you’d purchased yesterday.

“Sure, thanks,” Steve agrees.

You pull two glasses from the cupboard, pouring out the drinks, before setting the carton back in the fridge. You place both glasses down at the table. The oven timer goes off and Steve is quick to put on a mitt and pull some of the left-over biscuits out, where he was re-heating them. He dishes out the biscuits, bacon, and eggs onto two plates and joins you at the table.

You smile and give him your thanks as you wait for him to take a seat. You spread your napkin over your lap and lift your fork into your hand, ready to consume the freshly prepared meal.

“You have any plans for today?” Steve asks you right before he takes a bite of his bacon.

“I need to check in with work. Will probably need to be there for a few hours.”

“Where are you working?”

Your lips curl in amusement at his seemingly innocent question. “Now what kind of agent would I be if I answered that?”

His cheeks flush in embarrassment. “Oh, right.”

You giggle teasingly and shake your head. “I’m kidding, Steve. I work for the Strategic Scientific Reserve and am currently overseeing one of our recruitment stations.”

His brow furrows as he pauses eating. “I don’t think I’ve heard of that.”

“It’s a joint-government agency dedicated to finding a way to end this war. You’re not supposed to have heard of it.” You grin wryly.

“Oh, I see.” He turns back to his food, spearing some eggs onto his fork, and takes a bite. “What are you doing at a recruitment station?”

You shrug a shoulder. “Looking for soldiers with a specific skill set.”

“Ah,” he scoffs. “And I take it that I wouldn’t qualify?”

You sit back in your seat, eyes washing over him as you think how to best play your cards. “Don’t sell yourself short. It’s all about convincing the right person. Unfortunately, I’m not the person you need to convince.”

He nods like he understands and he drops the topic, but you can tell he continues to mull over your words.

After breakfast has been consumed and cleaned up, you move back to Steve’s room to get ready for your day. You change into a new dress, going with another civilian outfit, even though your uniform is now clean and ready. You then move into the bathroom, fixing up your hair, and putting on your makeup.

Steve observes the whirlwind of activity that goes into a woman’s morning routine. He’s never really seen it up close before. He was too young to have remembered or have the care to know how his mother did it. Movies never really portrayed this side of the process, just showing the end result instead. He can hear you humming a melody he doesn’t recognize from the bathroom. Several minutes pass before you re-emerge, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

“I better get going,” you murmur, walking toward him while looking at your watch. You come to a stop in front of him and lift your gaze to meet his. “Not sure how long I’ll be out for, but do you want to have dinner here again tonight?”

He nods his head quickly, “Yeah, that sounds good.”

The smile you give him makes his stomach flip. “Great. Then I’ll see you tonight.” You turn and head for the front door, pausing after pulling it open. “Oh, I grabbed my key, so if you’re going anywhere, you don’t need to worry about locking me out.”

“Okay.”

You send one more smile his way before wiggling your fingers in a small wave and taking your leave. The door shuts behind you with a soft click, but Steve continues to stand there staring at it for a moment. Every time you’re no longer in his presence he gets this strange feeling like he’s about to wake up from a dream.

-

You make your way back to the Expo, once again. You’ve got the Recruitment building in sight when you feel a presence behind you. Your muscles tense at the ready and as soon as you feel a hand land on your right shoulder, you react instantly. You reach up with your left hand, gripping the wrist of the hand on your shoulder tightly, you yank it forward. At the same time, you raise your right arm, bent at the elbow, and follow the length of the assailant’s arm up until your elbow meets their neck.

“Woah! Woah!” the man’s voice registers as soon as you’ve turned to meet his gaze.

“Mr. Stark!” You release him instantly. “Don’t you know it’s rude to sneak up on a woman?” you ask, placing a hand to your racing heart.

“Don’t think most of them have reactions quite like that,” he comments, rubbing at the base of his neck.

“Most of them don’t have the training that I have,” you shift from foot to foot, crossing your arms over your chest.

“I’ll have to keep that in mind.” He grins suggestively.

You want to roll your eyes. “What can I do for you, Mr. Stark?” you ask, trying to keep it professional.

He smirks knowingly, but steps back into line. “I just wanted to see how the recruitment has been going for you and the Doc.”

You release a long breath. “We’ve approved a small number of recruits for this next round of training, but we’re not completely confident that any of them are the one just yet.”

“I thought the whole point of sending them off to Camp Lehigh was to determine there whether or not they’re worthy.”

“How a person presents themselves as a civilian can provide just as much information as seeing them interact on a military base. We need to know all sides of their personality. It wouldn’t do us any good to give the serum to a man that will just go off and blindly kill anyone. If a man doesn’t respect innocent lives before being given any powers, then he sure as hell won’t respect them afterward. We need to know how they act as a person before we see them as a soldier.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” the two of you look to see Dr. Erskine stepping out of the recruitment center.

“Good morning, Doctor,” you greet him with a smile.

“Are you harassing my assistant, again, Mr. Stark?” Erskine questions with an amused smile as he meets with the two of you.

Howard grins, unashamed. “Well, I certainly know better now. She nearly took my arm off.”

“You would have deserved it,” you defend yourself.

“I don’t doubt that,” Erskine chuckles.

Howard raises his hands up as if to proclaim his innocence. “I just wanted to see how everything was going for you and wanted to offer my services if I can be of any use.”

“Just make sure your show is ready for this weekend,” you tell him. “We’re hoping that the crowd it draws will bring some new faces to the recruitment center.”

“Oh, it’s ready, alright,” he responds confidently. “My show is going to blow the rest of this whole fair out of the water.”

You can’t help the smirk when you recall exactly what happens to his invention during the show from Steve’s stories. “I’m sure it will.”

“If that is all, Mr. Stark, we really must be getting back to work,” Erskine steps in.

“Of course,” Howard concedes, letting you both walk past to enter into the recruitment center.

“He’s certainly persistent,” you comment once you’re inside.

“I think that may be because you keep rejecting him. Howard Stark is not used to women that don’t fall at his feet.”

You shake your head and sigh. “I’ve already got more than enough going on with the man I left at home. I really don’t need to start a collection.”

Erskine laughs quietly. “I am still very much interested in meeting this man of yours.”

You send him a conspiratorial smile before walking off to begin your rounds and check in with the MPs that are on staff today. You make sure they’re all on the same page for watching the building’s perimeter and keeping the peace indoors before you send them on their way. The recruitment center is a little busier, considering it’s only Wednesday, but you figure it will only pick up even more, the closer you get to the weekend. Erskine has already told you that you should be prepared to work long hours over the weekend.

You help him interview a few of the morning recruitments before you grab a clipboard and tell him you’re going to scout around the crowds at the fair and see about sending more men over. You do what you can to keep up appearances and pretend like you’re enjoying what you’re doing. But in reality, both your head and heart are still at the apartment.

You can’t help but wonder what Steve is getting up to. Even though he’s not the same Steve as the one you fell in love with, you still find yourself enjoying being around him just as much. To be with him in this time, before he becomes burdened by the trauma of war and the responsibilities of becoming Captain America. Knowing the rough road that he faces, you just want to be able to give him a little bit of light to help brighten his path. Give him hope at a time where he may be beginning to lose it.

Once you’ve finished up with the Recruitment Center for the day, you eagerly head back home. You’re halfway up the metal stairs when the scent of something burning makes you pause. In the next second, you’re dashing up the rest of the steps and burst into the apartment. The burning scent only gets stronger and makes you cringe.

“Steve?” you call out

There’s a slight haze of smoke within the apartment and you can hear coughing. You rush into the kitchen, relieved to see the absence of open flames, but the smoke is definitely heavier in here. Something in a bread pan sits black on the stovetop. The oven door has been left wide open and you find Steve struggling to open the window above the kitchen sink. You quickly take over, popping the latch and yanking it open.

Steve continues coughing next to you and can’t seem to catch his breath. You grab his hand and hurry to get him down the hall and into his room, shutting the door behind you both. “What… are you doing?” he asks between wheezing breaths.

You guide him to sit on the edge of his bed. Then walk around to pull open the bedroom window, too. “The smoke is triggering an asthma attack,” you tell him moving back to kneel in front of him. “Sit up straight,” you encourage, trying to get him to stop hunching over. You reach to undo his tie and pop open the first few buttons of his shirt. “Steve, honey, you’ve gotta slow your breathing,” you tell him, worry dripping from your voice. He inhales and releases a series of coughs without truly exhaling.

You reach up, cupping his face in your hands. “Place your hands on your stomach and try to follow me.” You exaggerate your breaths, trying to make your exhale long and slow. You can tell that he’s trying, but his body just isn’t cooperating. With every cough comes a rapid inhale, and he just can’t make it stop. “Okay, okay,” you soothe, rubbing your thumbs over his cheeks. “I have an emergency inhaler in my med kit, but I need to go get it.” You move to stand. “I’ll be right back,” you assure him.

You step out of the bedroom, making sure to close the door immediately. You first step back into the living room to open the front window, hoping for a cross breeze to form with the kitchen window that will help air out the place. You then rush into the bathroom to grab your first aid kit and take it back to Steve’s room.

You kneel at his feet once more, opening the kit and search for the inhaler. You’d been carrying one ever since the battle of New York. The debris from the battle had cluttered the air in the city with ash and dust and you’d come across several civilians in need of assistance that couldn’t escape the battle area because of triggered asthma attacks. Since destruction had a way of following the Avengers around, your spare inhaler had come in handy on more than a few occasions.

“Oh, yes!” you mutter in success, pulling out the inhaler and handing it to Steve.

“What… is this?” he questions, confusion.

“Bite down on this end and close your lips around it, then press once on the top canister and breathe the air in through your mouth.” He does as you instruct, inhaling the medicine. “See if just that one helps,” you tell him, placing your hands reassuringly on his knees.

He continues to cough, not used to the feeling of the inhaler, but the coughs don’t sound quite as bad as before. His breath still continues to hitch, so you have him use the inhaler once more. After that, he’s finally able to release a full exhale. “There we go,” you encourage gently. “Nice and slow.”

He continues to huff, but no longer coughs. After another minute or so his breaths start to even out. “I think I’m okay,” he tells you. His chest still aches, but he no longer feels like every breath is going to be his last.

You release the stress in your shoulders with a long breath. “You scared me half to death.” Your hands rub absentmindedly over the tops of his thighs.

“Sorry,” he mutters, embarrassed, and not meeting your eyes. “I was trying to make meatloaf for our dinner, but while it was in the oven, I started sketching and I lost track of time.”

You send him one of your gentle smiles. “You don’t need to be sorry, Steve. I’m just glad you’re okay.” You give his knees a light squeeze before standing once more. “I’ll go deal with the meatloaf and get the remaining smoke out of the kitchen. Stay here and I’ll bring something to you. Are you okay if I just re-heat the soup from yesterday?”

He nods.

“Sit tight.” You press your lips to his forehead before turning to exit the room.

You can still smell the burning scent of the meatloaf, but the smoke haze has lessened inside the apartment. You close the open oven door and carefully test how hot the loaf tin is, finding it warm to the touch, but not burning hot. You grab a butter knife and attempt to extract the ashen meatloaf to dump into the trash can, and hopefully salvage the tin. It takes a bit of work because the meatloaf is basically a solid black brick, but eventually, you work it loose. You dump the tin into the sink and fill it with water to soak. You then transfer a portion of soup into a pot and start heating it up on the stove.

While that’s heating, you grab a cookie sheet and start waving it up and down to fan the last of the burning scent out the window. When you no longer smell burnt meatloaf, you put the cookie sheet away and stir the soup to make sure you won’t have a second burning fiasco on your hands. You close up the window, so the apartment won’t get too cold and move into the living room to close the window there, too.

After the soup is heated, you pour out two bowls and take them down the hallway to Steve’s room. You step in to find him exactly where you left him, on the edge of the bed. He’s leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees and his head hanging low. “You still feeling okay?” you question softly.

He inhales sharply and lifts his head. “Yeah,” he responds simply, but you can see the self-deprecation in his eyes.

“Well then, come on,” you encourage with a swift jerk of your head back toward the hall. You want to get him out of the dark bedroom in the hopes that coming out into the light might lift his spirits some.

He pushes himself up with a sigh and follows you out of the room, only to pause in confusion when you turn into the living room instead of continuing straight to the kitchen. “What are you doing?” he asks, confusion turning into curiosity.

“Having dinner on the couch,” you state like it’s obvious. You place one bowl on the end table next to an old lamp. “Take a seat,” you gesture Steve over. You hand the second bowl to him once he reaches you and then you make your way around him to the small bookshelf against the opposite wall.

He has an old radio sitting on top of the bookshelf. You twist the first knob to turn it on and adjust the volume. You carefully spin the second knob until you find a music station with minimal static. Once you’re satisfied, you turn to join Steve on the couch. You kick off your heels and sit with your legs folded under you as you grab your soup.

You lift the bowl closer to your face, so as not to spill anything when you lift your spoon up and blow gently at the hot soup. You pause before eating when you notice that Steve is just sitting there, staring at you. “What?” you question.

He continues to stare, looking a little flabbergasted as he shakes his head slowly. “You’ve got to be the strangest woman I’ve ever met,” he states frankly.

You feel the twitch in your cheek right before a full-on grin develops on your face. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” you laugh.

Steve’s cheeks flush a deep red. “Sorry, that came out rude.”

“No offense taken.” You shoot him a wink.

“But you’re not mad that I ruined our dinner?” he questions.

Your head tilts in confusion, “Why would I be mad?”

He drops his gaze. “Because I got distracted and let it burn. And then my asthma started up…”

“Steve, you can’t control your asthma,” you tell him.

“I know, I just… people tend to get mad at the things that inconvenience them.”

Your eyes widen, unsure if you really just heard him say that. “Steven Grant Rogers! You get that thought out of your head right now!” you chastise. “You are not an inconvenience. You are a person. A human being. A man who is kind and caring and sensitive... and you’re also stronger than you realize. You’re determined, and passionate, and yes, sometimes, you can be a bit of a stubborn jerk, but you are never an inconvenience. And if anyone ever tries to make you feel otherwise, well then you can send them my way and I will happily set them straight.”

He stares at you, open-mouthed, unsure what to say to that.

“Now stop staring at me and eat your soup,” you huff, turning back to your own bowl. “Your body needs to build back its strength.”

He’s quiet for a short moment, absorbing your words. “You’re sure I haven’t been an inconvenience?”

“Steve!” you’re about to go on another tirade but cut yourself off when you see the knowing smirk on his face.

“This is me being a stubborn jerk.”

You scoff out a laugh, shaking your head. “You’re a real pain in the ass, Rogers.”

He chuckles along with you. “I’m sure Bucky would agree with you.”

“Eat!” you insist between your laughter.

“I am!” he responds through a mouthful of potato soup.

The two of you eat in a joyful, relaxed silence, letting the music from the radio fill the space. Once you’re finished, you just set your bowl on the side table and sit back against the couch continuing to listen to the gentle, jazzy melodies. You and your Steve could spend hours sitting and listening to music together. It was one of your favorite ways to wind down after long missions. Sometimes you’d sit on the couch and read while Steve sat next to you, sketching. Other times, the two of you would just lay in bed, wrapped around each other for some solid cuddle time.

Steve only ever had one rule whenever the two of you listened to music together.

The current song on the radio ends and you immediately perk up when a familiar melody starts. It’s Taking a Chance on Love by Benny Goodman and Helen Forrest. The song begins with a series of trumpet bleats harmonizing with a clarinet. The uplifting beat has you rising onto your feet. “Come on!” you grin excitedly down at Steve and hold your hand out to him.

“What is it?” he asks in confusion, but still sets down his empty bowl and takes your hand.

You help him up and off the couch before pulling him into the middle of the living room. “The only rule is that we have to dance to this song.”

“Wha-” Steve’s steps falter behind you. “Vic, I-I don’t dance.”

You give him a sweet laugh, turning to face him. You hold each of his hands in yours and start to sway your hips to the rhythm of the song. “I’m not looking to win any awards, Rogers. Just have fun with me!”

As the melody evens out, you transition to swaying from side to side. Stepping closer to him, you set his right hand against your hip and rest your own on his shoulder. As you continue to sway, he’s forced to join you because of your proximity. You smile encouragingly until he begins to relax.

Here I go again, I hear those trumpets blow again.

All aglow again, taking a chance on love.

He slowly eases into it. Whether it’s because he’s just giving into you or because he’s actually enjoying himself, you’re not quite sure.

Here I slide again, about to take that ride again.

Starry-eyed again, taking a chance on love.

You find yourself singing along to the lyrics. You’ve heard the song hundreds of times throughout your relationship with Steve. You know just about every note by heart. Every time it plays, it never fails to make you fall in love with him just a little more. You’re pretty sure you first realized that you were in love with him while the two of you danced to this song.

I thought that cards were a frame-up, I never would try.

Now I'm taking that game up and the ace of hearts is high.

The first time you ever heard it, the two of you had been newly dating, lounging in the common area of the compound. You were just enjoying each other’s company while Steve had a playlist going on the surround sound speakers. When this song popped up, Steve had given you the biggest puppy eyes you’d ever seen on him and he asked if you wanted to dance. You’d giggled like a giddy school girl and agreed. He’d pulled your body tight against his, swaying gently and softly sang the lyrics directly into your ear.

Things are mending now, I see a rainbow blending now.

We'll have a happy ending now, taking a chance on love.

From that point on, no matter what the two of you were doing, if this song came on, you both would drop everything and share a dance. You’ve left half-finished mission reports, vegetables only partially chopped, water boiling on the stove… all so the two of you could dance like two idiots in love. There was even one time when a music listening-cuddle session had transitioned from heavily making out into foreplay, but when this song came on from Steve’s docking station, he’d given you a wicked grin and pulled you out of bed, not even caring that you were both naked as the day you were born. You’d protested something fierce, having been so close to release via his ridiculously thick tongue, but he’d stubbornly refused your pleas and ignored the ache in his loins where it rubbed against your hip. Instead, he made you dance through the whole song before letting you both continue where you’d left off.

You’re pulled out of your memories when the Steve you’re currently with grows a little bolder with his dance moves and guides you into a spin. You laugh freely, following his lead. You push out until your arms are fully extended and then let him twirl you back in, coming to a stop with your back to his chest. The two of you sway like that for a moment before you twirl out again and he pulls you back, now facing each other. Your hand settles on his shoulder once again, while his lands at the center of your back, bringing you in closer than before.

He’s grinning so wide, you can’t help but match his expression. The stress and shame that had been weighing on him earlier have vanished without a trace. He looks free and happy. Content to hold you in his arms and dance the night away in his tiny apartment. As the song comes to an end, the two of you slow your swaying. Even after just the one song, his breathing is a little heavier than it should be. Likely because of his recent asthma attack.

“There, was that so bad?” you ask gently.

He looks back at you, his features softening serenely. “Could have been worse. At least I didn’t step on you.”

You release a small giggle, leaning in to place a chaste kiss to his cheek. You then pull out of his hold and turn to take your empty bowls into the kitchen. You know if you were to stay in his arms for a moment longer you were going to lose all control and would probably end up throwing yourself at him.

Steve watches you leave the room, a sense of longing building deep in his gut. He’s never felt this way about anyone before. And he’s not entirely sure what to do about it.

Part 5

[accioecho]

Tkem novel 13

Chapter 17 “A joint investigation”

Tae-Eul’s grand plans for the two of them that night consisted of dropping by the shooting range, winning the biggest prize there and walking through the quiet city streets.

The soft stuffed lion was definitely bigger than something that fit the palm of a hand. Tae-Eul successfully hit all seven targets and gave Gon the bulky plush toy.

Tae-Eul’s shooting abilities were incomparable. Gon was no match for her. Sure, when he saw Tae-Eul’s remarkable skills he had first felt a little embarrassed by his poor performance. However that feeling had quickly been replaced by pride.

Gon held the toy against his chest, dimples crinkling, a content expression adorning his face.

“Why do you like that stuffed animal anyway?” Tae-Eul asked when she saw his proud smile.

“Because it’s a lion. It resembles you. Lions are fierce, courageous. And impressive.”

“Ah, I see.”

Her shoulders shook with mirth. They had barely spent half a day together and she had laughed several times already.

Gon put his arm around her. They were walking side by side, like any other regular couple. Spending time together like this… It would be really easy to fall into the quiet comfort of daily life.

As they neared her house, Tae-Eul finally broached the subject she had avoided until then. She  had initially planned to bring up the subject as soon as she saw him but she had also really wanted to spend the precious time they had without any interference. Just her and him.

“Answer me without letting me go.”

“I won’t.”

“I want to ask as soon as I saw you but I was holding back. I waited for you as a detective but also as myself all this time.”

Gon halted his steps and turned to her. Eyes slightly widening, lips forming an uncharacteristic grim line, he grabbed her shoulders. Truth be told, there were a lot of things he had wished to discuss with Tae-Eul as well.

“Has something happened? Were you threatened by someone? Because of me?”

“I guess that means it will happen. That’s why you came.”

So much for a quiet daily life together. The idea of a regular life would have to wait some more.

Their eyes locked. Tae-Eul held Gon’s sharp, worried gaze.

“What is it?” Gon asked.

“Is there a dome stadium named K Stadium in the northern region there? With a capacity of 16,890 seats?”

“How do you know that? Did you look that up too?”

So she was right. Tae-Eul’s face tinged with concern. She had a lot to explain. Her hands slid inside her pocket and pulled out the usb key, the tiny item held tightly between her fingers.

Without waiting any further, Tae-Eul hastily ushered Gon to her place.

Gon, who had mostly hung around Tae-Eul’s now very familiar courtyard, who had never gone further than the Taekwondo Dojang, suddenly found himself stepping into the intimacy of her bedroom. Although he was there for a very specific purpose and not in the context of a romantic date.

Gon briefly looked around his surroundings. Her room was sprinkled with countless pictures from her childhood. A few shelves were pushed against the wall and were filled with books she had probably all read. A multitude of other belongings littered the small space.

Slowly approaching her bed, Gon carefully placed the stuffed lion next to her pillow.

They both sat down by the desk. Tae-Eul turned on her laptop, slid the USB key in its slot and played the audio file.

Gon didn’t need to listen for long. He recognized the news anchor’s voice. This was a piece of broadcast from the Kingdom.

“Is it?” Tae-Eul asked.

“Yes, it’s news from my world. But you found it here?” His mind was sent reeling at the thought of Tae-Eul’s discovery. “Who else knows about this?”

“Just me for now. I can’t really tell anyone about this. Nobody will believe it anyway.”

“What are you thinking of doing?”

“I need to investigate further and figure this out. This was my case, before I even met you.”

He respected, no— liked her bravery. This trait was one of the things that made Tae-Eul inherently her. But just this one time, he wished she was less courageous.

“It could be more dangerous than you think.” Gon swallowed the lump in his throat.

“That’s why I thought about just covering it up. But… if I cover it up, then no one will ever find out about this, since there would be only two people who know about this. Me. And the culprit.”

He was wrong.

She was braver than he thought.

She was brave and amazing.

“The two worlds shouldn’t get mixed up like this. They’re supposed to stay on their respective paths. But the two worlds are already colliding, and I’ve discovered it. So what else can I do? That’s why I decided to investigate. I’m a police officer in the Republic of Korea.”

He couldn’t stop anything then. Changes were already in motion, there was nothing he could do to prevent danger from reaching Tae-Eul.

She was in danger the moment she met him, yet she showed no fear, her sense of justice unwavering.

As the King of a nation, responsibilities weighed heavily on his shoulders. Tae-Eul equally felt the same responsibilities as a government officer of the Republic of Korea.

For a tiny second, Tae-Eul had worried Gon would perhaps hold this against her. She was wrong from the start.

Gon still seemed to be lost in thought, his mind going over the recent events. His posture was stiff, eyes unfocused and looking into the distance. As an attempt to distract him, Tae-Eul forced out a shaky laugh.  

She also shared his sentiments. What were the odds that the one case she had been investigating for the past few weeks turned out to be tied to another universe. This was bigger than simply the two of them. She had no idea what she was getting into and she felt apprehensive by the sheer unknown that lay ahead of them.

Despite all this, there was one thing that she was sure about.

Gon probably didn’t know this.

Yes, she had always been courageous. But in that instant, the reason that gave her strength, the reason why she felt she could be braver was because of him. Because he was by her side.

“So tell me everything you know about this. This is a cooperative operation that only we can do.”

“How goes the order of command?”

“I’m your superior of course. I give the orders here.” Tae-Eul answered without hesitation.

Gon let out a small chuckle and reached into the inner pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a neatly folded enveloppe that contained a copy of Lee Lim’s death certificate and fingerprints confirmation. With shaky fingers, Tae-Eul grabbed the document.

“Lee Lim? That’s…”

“Yes, the traitor. If he’s alive, he’ll be 69 right now. You should find someone who matches his age, blood type and fingerprints. In my world, his body was found the year after he committed treason. But the body… was someone else’s.”

Something was definitely strange. Staring at the file, Tae-Eul sat still, all muscles in her body tensing up. This was beyond their imagination. That a dead person could somehow still be alive.

Tae-Eul knew this was possible though. Because out there stood a gate leading to another universe. A parallel world, where individuals that looked exactly the same as in the Republic existed.

“If Lee Lim is alive… He’s here, using that body’s identity.”

“That’s right. We have to figure out what he’s done here for the past 24 years.”

“I’ll look into it. But until I figure it out, do just 17 things. Stay quiet, don’t draw people’s attention, don’t tell anyone you’re a king, keep Jo Yeong out of trouble, don’t use any guns, contact me whenever you go somewhere. And I’ll tell you the rest when I think of any.”

“I’ll do as you order. Just do two things for me.”

Wondering what he would say, Tae-Eul turned her face towards Gon. He wore an unreadable expression and wouldn’t meet her gaze.

Gon pursed his lips. He hesitated for a moment, and then finally spoke his mind.

“Don’t tell me not to come. And don’t tell me not to leave.”

“…”

“I have to go back sometimes, and when I do, I want to come back soon. Whichever it is, if you tell me not to come or leave, I don’t think I’ll be able to do anything.”

Even in normal circumstances, people easily got tired of their partner when they stayed apart for a short time. In their case, a whole universe stood between the two of them, like a wall standing firm and tall. Gon deeply hoped Tae-Eul wouldn’t experience any difficulties or become weary.

This was the very first time he felt this way. He knew this was selfish of him. In all his life as a King, ever since he was born, he never once harbored any selfish interests.

“So I’m asking you not to get exhausted. I feel like a lousy man after saying that. Am I?”

Still staring at Gon, Tae-Eul slightly nodded.

“I’m confused about which part you were nodding to.”

Tae-Eul let out a small giggle and started tidying up the desk. There was a time not so long ago when Tae-Eul thought she would never understand him. That was when he first came to the Republic, babbling about parallel universes, quantum mechanics and what not. She thought he was just a crazy guy and they would never be on the same page.

Before she knew it, she found herself understanding Gon’s way of thinking and perfectly being able to read his feelings. Because she was the same.

“You should go now. Yeong must be sick with worry since he doesn’t know where you are. He must be waiting for you.”

“Why would you think Yeong doesn’t know where I am?”

Tae-Eul abruptly stood up and went to the window to look outside. Seeing the empty courtyard, she looked around her surroundings.

“He’s following us around here too?”

“I guess I’ve made you curious. I’ll be off now.”

“There’s something else I’m curious about. Am I really not in your world?”

Gon who was about to open her bedroom’s door, stopped in his tracks.

“Eun-Sup and Jo Yeong. Nari and that palace worker. Even this person has the same face. Do I really not exist there?”

Gon stood still, unable to confirm or deny. His silence was answer enough.

“I do, don’t I?” Tae-Eul didn’t know what to think. This felt strange.

“I wanted to wait until I was sure before I told you. But it looks like it. There seems to be a person that looks like you, yes.”

Long after Gon was gone, Tae-Eul couldn’t shake the image of her double existing somewhere in another world.

—

“Your Majesty. You must return to the palace. I can’t protect you here, your Majesty. What is this place, and how long have you been coming here? Your Majesty, we don’t have a life here.”

Unable to hold back, Yeong let out all the things he’d been thinking about but couldn’t say aloud when they were with Tae-Eul and Eun-Sup.  

Always looking out for him. Always defending his best interests. Gon was proud of him.

And he was about to relieve him of these daunting, heavy responsibilities.

Ever since their first meeting when Gon was eight years old, not once did Yeong disappoint or upset him. Yeong had become his most loyal subject, his best friend, his brother.

He felt guilty and sorry. But he was the only person who could carry out the task he was about to give him.

“You’ve endured a lot, Captain Jo. Yeong-ah. I can’t leave the palace permanently or give up coming here altogether. So you have to help me.”

[ozzdog12]

2020 Top 7 (and 1)

2020 am I right? We saw an insane amount of games come out and 2 brand new consoles. What a wild and weird year for gaming, and life in general. In case you are relatively new here, and to be honest that would be completely fair considering I don't post very often on Tumblr anymore, every year going on the last 4 years (on here) I have done a Top 7 (& 1) for my favorite videogames of the year. Check out 2019, 2018, & 2017. What’s wild, as I look back on my list of games that I’ve completed and played, only maybe 10 came out this year. 2020 was a huge backlog year. 

Lets get on with the ‘And 1!”

Favorite Game that Didn’t Come out in 2020: Control (PS4)

Control may very well have been my 2019 Game of the Year, had I played it in 2019. I LOVED Control. I wanted to play it in 2019, but initial reports that it was a little rough on base consoles put me off until it was fixed. And Holy smokes what an insanely fun and trippy game once I finally started it. I knew within the first 20 minutes this was going to be the shit when I went down a hall, walked into a room and talked to the “janitor” left out a door behind him and the entire building had shifted. I’ve always liked Remedy games, but from a distance. Max Payne 1&2 and Alan Wake all oozed with weirdness and intrigue, but never enough for me to finish them. I missed out on Quantum Break. The story is Control is just the right amount of mind f*!$ for me and builds a universe I didn’t know I needed. It take some time to piece everything together, then everything just clicks. The game does have a weird difficulty spike when fighting bosses and the checkpoints were too far apart at times, but those were later patched. I spent an insane amount of time within the Federal Bureau of Control building and even more time after that with the Foundation and AWE DLC and it STILL wasn’t enough. I wanted more. Outside of Prey, I can’t think of another game that stuck in my brain more after I’d finished it. Control is absolutely a MUST PLAY title. In a world where everything sort’ve feels similar, Control stands out of the crowd.

Number 7: Astro’s Playroom (PS5)

I never thought in my wildest dreams that a game I had almost zero interest in playing would end up on my list of favorite games this year. Astro’s Playroom is being labeled as a ‘Tech demo’ but that feels like an insult to what it is. It’s a full fledged game and its free! I’ve paid more for less. A charming little platformer that lives and breathes the history of the Playstation. So many cool Easter eggs and references. It certainly centers its gameplay around the DualSense controller and everything it can do, but at its core, its a completely approachable and forgiving 3D platformer. I played it just to see what it was about, next thing i knew I had completed all the levels and wanted to further explore all the nooks and crannies within the game. I wanted to see everything the game had to offer and I had an absolute blast doing so. Makes me kinda wish I’d played the previous game on PSVR (I’d have to have a PSVR too)

Number 6: Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS5)

Another quality title, albeit a spin-off, from Insomniac to add to their Spider Man universe. Gameplay felt obviously like Spider-Man, but Miles has unique abilities that made the game feel different enough, especially the cloak and stealth. I enjoyed the fact that it was short and concise. The issue with most ‘open-world’ games is that they are entirely too bloated with unnecessary filler content (I’ll get to that in a later game), something I felt the first game suffered from, but I also understand why they are there. However I could’ve use one or two more story missions to help flesh out some characters, but it wasn’t required and didn’t change my opinion one way or the other. My one BIG gripe was with Miles himself. He is an extremely smart young kid, but so incredibly naïve. Peter Parker tells him the one thing he SHOULD NOT do is tell people he is Spider-Man. I get it, that’s part of his growth, but Miles thinks he can just solve his problems by revealing his identity and it almost certainly never works out. 

Number 5: The Last of Us: Part 2 (PS4)

The Last of Us Part 2 may be the most polarizing game in the history of the medium, but for the absolute wrong reasons. I’m in the minority that I very much enjoyed my experience with TLOU2, quite a bit actually. Its better in every single way over its predecessor, except the overall story. There are plenty of fair criticisms to be had about the story and various things within the game itself, but I thought the gameplay was so tight and crunchy. There were genuine moments of suspense and terror that I felt that no other game has ever given me. The entire hospital section (2nd time) was so susensful, I had to put my controller down to gther myself. Some of my favorite moments in the series I experienced with a character I wasn’t overly fond of. How many games can do that? The Last of Us Part 2 was meant to invoke emotion, not necessarily joy. I think that's what people lost along the way. Say what you will about the direction Naughty Dog has taken over the years, but you would be hard pressed to find a studio that makes games graphically better than they do. Yes, I know about their crunch culture, but this is not a place for that. I will say, the game was a tad bit too long, which is not something it typically say for a single player, narrative driven game. The pacing and the way the story was told wasn’t my favorite, but I respect what it was trying to do, even if it failed in some aspect of that, I finished the game within the week it was released. Something I RARELY ever do. I’m a father and I related with Joel a lot in TLOU, but I also recognized how wrong he was. There is a lesson to be learned. Your actions always have consequences and while he was doing what he thought was the right thing, it wasn’t his choice to make, and in doing so set up a series of events that were entirely avoidable, but again, that’s the point isn’t it?

Number 4: Grindstone (Switch)

I’m counting this as a 2020 game since it just came to the Switch this year ( less than a month ago) but its not the first time I’ve played it. Grindstone was the only reason I kept my Apple Arcade subscription and when I let it lapse, there was a void I just couldn’t fill. I bought Puzzle Quest on Switch but it just wasn't the same. Its THE perfect game for bite sized play, even though in its addictive nature, you’ll clear a few levels and an hour has passed before you know it. It has the perfect amount of depth that most ‘match’ games don't. You have different weapons, items, and outfits w/perks to use and experiment with to keep it fresh. I went months without playing my Switch and when this was announced in August, I couldn’t wait! Sadly, I had to wait 3 months, but since then I have spent so much time on the Switch. It gave me a reason to play it again. The art style and humour is great. The variety of enemies and challenge is just right. I can’t recommend it enough. Seriously, check this game out!

Number 3: Doom Eternal (Xbox One)

I will be the first to tell you, I did not like Doom (2016). I found it extremely boring and trite. I understood what Doom(2016) was doing and it succeeded, maybe too much. Nostalgia is a helluva thing. So in saying that, I was mildly interested in Doom Eternal. Doom Eternal is nothing like 2016 outside of it being a Doom game that connects to the rest of them (& also being a sequel to 2016). The mechanics are drastically different with more platforming (for better or worse). Eternal is challenging, at times very hard, especially early on. Eternal has no respect for its players, in a weirdly good way. It laughs at how you’ve played FPS before this one and WILL MAKE you play it its way, not your way. Yes, you point and shoot, but ammo is scare and you MUST use everything in your arsenal. No more using just 2 guns for the whole game. The enemies are relentless. Sometimes you have to pause and take a breath after a battle because you go a 100 mph for the whole fight. You have to continuously move or you die. There is an enticing rhythm to it. I categorize Eternal as ‘Blood Ballet’. Its a game where when your feeling it, much like a rhythm game, you get in the zone and there is no stopping demons from getting slayed. Surprisingly, unlike most games in the genre, it seemed to get easier (sans one extremely frustrating platforming section late in the game) the longer you played it. Was that a testament that I ‘learned’ the Eternal way or it truly did get easier? I don’t know, but the final Boss(es) were....easy.. I had more problems and deaths within the first 4 hours than I did the final 8-9 hours. The multiplayer was also surprisingly fun. The older I get, the less interested I am in multiplayer, but I found myself coming back for more for a good month or so. 

Number 2: Gears Tactics (Xbox One)

As 2020 comes to a close, I came to a stunning realization. I might be a bigger Gears of War fan than I had previously thought. Don’t get me wrong. I love Gears, but I seem to love Gears more than I thought. I'm way more invested into the lore than I recall. Anyways, Gears Tactics is everything XCOM 2 SHOULD’VE been. Not only does Gears Tactics utilize the Overwatch action, its makes it EXTREMELY important. The story revolves around the father of Kait Diaz, Gabe and a ragtag group of mostly random soldiers to take down Ukkon. Anyone who is remotely interested in the Gears universe will love the story and references. The gameplay is just so damn satisfying. The bosses are very challenging and different. I actually had to change my strategy to finish the final boss. I experimented with a totally different style of class and was rewarded for it. The post game stuff is also aplenty. This game scratched a VERY specific itch for me and I’m itchy to jump back in. I’m glad this came to Xbox One because I’m current computer could not run it.

Number 1: Ghost of Tsushima (PS4)

I have a very odd relationship with massive open world games. I love them, but I get very burnt out on them. They all have a relatively same-y formula and are often populated with bloat. GoT does have some of that but to its advantage, its not very populated, in a good way. One of the things that I really appreciated about GoT and its side quest is most of them felt meaningful. The thing that really stood out to me about GoT is the absolutely satisfying combat. It just feels SO GOOD. It requires timing and patience. There are different fighting styles for different enemies and even the armor you wear is more than just cosmetic. The combat is so fun and satisfying that I was immediately excited when they announced Legends, a multiplayer add on, for free. Its so much fun and is a blast to play with a group of friends. I’m sporadically still playing the Legends mode. I initially wanted to play the game in ‘Kurosawa’ mode but I am glad I didn’t because the game, even on the PS4 is stunning, and on the upgrade on PS5 is jaw-droppingly smooth. I did play the entire game in Japanese with English subtitles. I still don't know what Jin’s English voice sounds like. GoT does a good job a drip feeding you new abilities and things to keep things fresh. I love stealth and once I unlocked it, I spent the majority of every battle taking out as many enemies as I could while in stealth mode. Ghost of Tsushima does a lot of things very well, that the few things it doesn’t can be easily overlooked.

[fridge-reviews]

Control

Developer: Remedy Entertainment Publisher: 505 Games Rrp: £24.99 (Epic) and £34.99 (Steam [Ultimate Edition]) Released: 27th August 2019  Available on: Epic (Steam in August 2020)  Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard  Approximate game length: 20 Hours

Usually if you tell someone that the walls are moving they will assume you're high or delusional, possibly both. Not so in the Oldest House, the walls moving is a daily occurrence and something barely worthy of your notice. However the rubber duck that is sitting on your desk that wasn't there a second ago, that is important.

Welcome to Control, the latest game by Remedy Entertainment whose previous works include Alan Wake, Quantum Break and the Max Payne series. You control Jesse Faden, a woman who's on a mission to find her long lost brother after he was taken by shadowy government agents when they were young. Now its important to note that I said you control her, not that you play her, she has her own thoughts and feelings that you have no say over, she's a character in her own right. It's an action adventure game with some platforming and light RPG elements thrown in for good measure.

The game (mostly) takes place within New York City specifically within the confines of 'The Oldest House'. This building is unique in that most people don't even know it exists and yet it stands within one of the most populous cities in the world. If I had to put the general feeling of this game in a single word it wouldn't be excitement or horror (though there are elements of that) it would unsettled. From the very beginning of this game everything just feels... off and that feeling only grows the more you play. Part of this is due to the fact that you start the game in media res and are essentially playing catchup for the majority of the game. You don't even know Jesse's life story for a very long time.

As you play through the game you attain special powers, most famous of which (as is shown on the box art) is telekinesis, allowing you to rip up chunks of the building to hurl at... well whatever you feel like really. Using these powers uses up energy, which is illustrated as a white bar at the top of the screen when in use, this energy bar refills while powers are not being used.

The first and only weapon you get in the game simply has the title of the 'Service Weapon', like with the powers the Service Weapon's ammunition regenerates when its not being used. This means you can alternate from the Service Weapon to your powers and back again. The Service Weapon can take on several forms that change the way it behaves, these forms include a pistol, a machine pistol and a shotgun. At the start of the game the Service Weapon can only assume a single form called 'Grip' which is the pistol form.

So I've mentioned the powers you get and the Service Weapon but not the enemies. Well for the most part your enemy is a force known as the 'Hiss'. These Hiss come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from your standard grunt with a pistol to beings that fly in the air and attack you with debris through to invisible enemies that unleash powerful attacks when you least expect it. When enemies die they drop health as well as occasionally mods and materials. These materials have names like 'ritual impulse', 'house memory' and 'hidden trend'. Killing enemies also gives you a resource called 'Source' (more on that shortly). Combat in this game is quite difficult, even with all the extra skills you gain. You'll constantly need to be on the move or you'll quickly get swamped and don't think that you can hunker down for too long behind cover as most of the scenery in this game is destructible.

In the inevitable event of Jesse being killed she will respawn at the most recently accessed Control Point and will lose ten percent of the Source she has acquired. Control Points are areas of the Oldest House that are the most stable, once you claim a Control Point you can fast travel to it from any other Control Point. These Control Points allow you to allocate any ability points you gain from completing missions or finding hidden areas. They also allow you to upgrade your Service Weapon to become more potent.

You can apply mods to your service weapon as well as yourself. These mods can also be broken down to provide Source. Source and materials can be used to craft new mods, weapon forms and upgrade existing ones.

As you play you will find that there are many notes, videos and documents to read through. With a lot of interesting lore and information to find. Most of this information is essentially useless but provides extra flavour to the game.

It's clear that a lot of care has been taken in the creation of Control and it wears some of its inspirations upon its sleeve, such as the SCP Foundation and X-Files (and I've found interviews with the creators that confirm this). All in all this is a great game, I've thoroughly enjoyed playing through this from beginning to end. I've logged at least a good sixty hours into this game and I still keep finding more things to do and explore. And then I look to the coming months and see that there are two DLC's coming... and I have to get them.

If this appeals to you perhaps try;

Alan Wake Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order Resident Evil 2 Remake

[wumblr]

now, you're probably wondering what i'm gonna need all this speed for. after all, i've been jogging in place under this highway overpass for 12 hours. but to answer that, we need to talk about the standard model of particle physics in terms of super mario 64, and if you thought my other tangents were complicated, just you wait. okay: 

particles can only decay into products of equal or less energy. this is why “those damned vector bosons” were so hard to find -- W and Z boson interactions are very rare unless you are able to generate enough energy to start from a (more massive) top quark. SM64 doesn’t seem to have mass-energy equivalence, but neither does our universe at tangible scales, so if you assume the powerups from earlier installations in the series are simply objects that instantaneously give mario enough energy to become next-generation matter, then you could say that finding the vector bosons was a feat of sheer skill approximately equivalent to completing “watch for rolling rocks” in 0.5x a presses, since within the verisimilitude of the mario universe it would be like accelerating mario to the point that he became a level 3 fire-flower mario without ever eating any powerups (in order to observe vector boson decay):

(as a sidenote, since fire power is not accessible to mario in SM64, one must assume -- because this was perhaps the beginning of dr. egadd’s meddling in parallel universes, ultimately culminating in a handy and portable paintbrush that allows bowser jr. to revise an entire probabilistic distribution of timelines in super mario sunshine -- chronologically SM64 must precede the original SMB, which implies that somehow bowser’s infernal machinations caused the mario universe to lose an entire spatial dimension and/or travel to the past relative to our universe, which is thoroughly beyond the scope of this essay)

thus mario in the PU grid can be thought of as permissible particle excitations in their respective fields, and QPU-alignment can be thought of as appropriate routes to the particle interactions you would like to observe:

yes, this would seem to imply that many particle collisions generated at the large hadron collider and immediately discarded by the event filtering system may have been capable of containing interesting interactions or novel physics, but it likely would have been in overly complex edge cases that involved diverging from the most efficient QPU-alignment, and returning to it, before generating the uncommon particle interactions under observation: 

”but that can be difficult if you’re not near out of bounds” -- or, stated another way, unsual particle interactions may have resulted from a chain of QPU-misaligned and individually uncommon interactions, each on the tail of their own individual probability distributions:

it’s necessary of course to note that one particle can have one or more decay products, so it’s perhaps more helpful to specifically identify mario as a quark and not an electron, with the fireballs he carries being a more appropriate analogy for electrons (and neutrinos). if we assume mario can decay into a mario/wario pair of equal or lower energy -- propagating, transforming, subdividing, and recombining across the PU grid -- thus we can derive 1) matter/antimatter asymmetry and 2) baryon/lepton number conservation, which can both be thought of as simply protagonist bias: 1) any character can transform into another, but there must always be more marios than warios or else it would be a wario game, and there cannot be an exactly equal number of marios and warios without significant localized asymmetries or else they would all annihilate each other and nothing would be happening, which we know not to be the case, and 2) all characters interact with multiple types of fireball, but they cannot decay into them, nor can fireballs decay into characters:

of course, really each generation of matter has its respective type of fireball, and even aside from character transmutation, mario can also change the color of his clothes without changing his identity, as well as some other stuff (i.e. yoshi, the force carrying boson of electromagnetism; the 8 goombas of the strong force, which have color charge; or the mass-governing peach boson) -- but these details don’t much matter much for our purposes:

in this way you can think of all particle collisions as some combination of marios and antimarios (and luigis and antiluigis) throwing hot and cold fire and antifire at each other and constantly trading identities in some kind of freaky friday writ large, with a virtual horde of goombas and yoshis popping in and out of existence in an attempt to try and mediate the conflict, while peach and bowser govern the parameters of war from their ivory towers. the more astute among you may have also noticed that bowsonic and marionic material can also decay into each other. ha ha, yes! they can, and it is also possible to create a peach boson out of marionic matter, but this was only recently confirmed in 2012. peach may employ an extremely difficult-to-detect type of peach-only fireball for political ends, but it has never been observed (the graviton). now, take “defacto speed” as an analogue for relativistic time dilation:

hgggq... fuckign..,. loop quantum gravity

as you can see, hhh the nature of probramming a circuguit in the guantum gomputer, hehh 

*stumbles while jogging in place and just fucking goes zooming off into a portal to another universe*

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 307

THE NEW ASPECT OF THE MATTER AND ENERGY

In the early 1930s, when scientists began to penetrate the very small, they thought that they had found matter's elementary unit, for now they knew that all matter consisted of atoms that, in turn, consisted of protons, neutrons, and electrons. These elementary particles were considered to be matter's final indivisible components.

But two important developments in modern physics during the 1930s gradually undermined their certainty. These developments were based upon experimental, intellectual, and theoretical observations. The experimental field revealed new particles, and the relevant tools and techniques became far more sophisticated. The results showed that subatomic components were not elementary particles, for they were not even elementary. And, the number of fundamental particles continued to grow: 6 in 1935, 18 in 1955, and more than 200 today.

SUBATOMIC PARTICLES CHALLENGE OLD ASSUMPTIONS

Classical physics held that an object's mass was connected to an elementary material that could not be annihilated or divided. But Einstein's theory of relativity disproved this by showing that mass was not related to a concept like essence, and that energy was an expression of a quantity associated with activity, process, and movement. Since a particle's mass is equivalent to a specific energy, the particle cannot be a static and stable object. Thus, a particle's mass has to be considered a dynamic entity. This energy process shows itself as mass.

The theory of relativity's most interesting aspect appeared when the process of extracting matter from pure energy was explained. Given that matter's elements were considered indivisible and non-changeable units or compounds that could be reduced to their origins, could matter be fragmented ad infinitum or would the smallest indivisible unit eventually appear? The theoretical physicist Dirac (1902-84) answered this question by showing that when two particles collide at a high speed, they generally are smashed. However, the residual pieces are not smaller than their originals, for these remnants are constituted as the same particles via kinetic energy.

Subatomic particles are split by using high energy levels to crash them into each other. Thus matter can be split forever, and no particle so obtained can be smaller than its original. Such collisions result in new particles, for the two colliding particles' energy is delivered between the particles so that new ones are formed. If there is enough such energy is produced, more particles are constituted than before the collision, meaning that subatomic particles are both divisible and indivisible.

As this is one of the best ways to study a particle's basic features, this field is called high energy physics. The necessary kinetic energy is obtained by using particle accelerators, which are a couple of miles in diameter, to accelerate protons almost to the speed of light and then crash them into another proton or neutron. It is interesting that such huge super-microscopes are used to analyze infinitely small objects.

Since 1960, the number of known subatomic particles has grown. There were electrons in the nucleus, and protons and neutrons in an atom's orbit. But what was in the proton? In 1970, Swiss researchers discovered a quark in the protons and neutrons. Its electric charge was explained by the charge value of protons and neutrons. But they could not explain what the energy was. Energy, which chained the quarks forming the proton in the nucleus, was called the strong nuclear force. But how could this energy bind the quarks together? Scientists postulated that energy was not an invisible force, but a feature formed by tiny granules and motes. Thus, these gluon (adhesive) particles bound the quarks together by pasting and clamping them in such a way that nuclear power was developed. In other words, the essence nuclear power was the gluon.

Photons, defined as particles carrying electromagnetic energy, were postulated to be the result of an exchange, a shifting between two particles. Thus, electromagnetism was a field of quantum, carried its energy through particles with no electric charge, had a spin value of 1, and was not radiating but rather perceived. Although photons had been known for a long time, scientists did not realize that they provided the force of attraction between protons and neutrons. Photons were the smallest energy packages forming the light. Now, the only thing left to be discovered was the weak nuclear force that controlled radioactive decay.

These forces had to be carried by particles. These particles (bosons), when discovered, were found to be of three types: positive (W), negative (W), and neutral (W). Thus, scientists learned that the universe's three elementary forces were carried by particles. But the particles (gravitons) carrying gravity, the weakest force, remained undiscovered.

NON-ATOMIC PARTICLES

Non-atomic particles are depicted as objects having a mass in terms of space, and as events and activities having as much energy as the quantity of the mass. Given this, the matter found in space is unstable and changes due to continuous activity and movement. This is surprising, for it means that particles move and consist of movement. In other words, matter's presence and movement are not different of each other, but represent different features of the same mechanical truth.

Based on these observations, particle physicists consider force to be an energy transition between matter, which it affects, and think that it is caused by the smaller particles' diffusion and absorption. For instance, charged particle's state of movement changes when it diffuses a photon. If another charged particle absorbs the photon, it gains energy and thus changes its condition of movement. Here, as the mutual movement changes between two particles occur as force, the change's total effect is perceived as force. And so there are no external forces, but only interactions via some inter-particles between the particles. In this way, quantum mechanics adds an unusual approach to non-atomic events and engenders a completely different description for force. In fact, force does not exist, because it is no more than tiny particles, motes, and rays. So, the interaction and continuous communication between particles give rise to force, which has no reality or presence by itself.

This truth disturbed materialists and determinists, for it showed that matter and force, which brought forth and sustain this magnificent universe, are based on another existence that indicates omnipotence. According to Said Nursi, the existence of this power is more definite than the existence of the universe, and each visible item is a proof and the sign of the Holy Power of God, the source of all objects and forces. He states: Every creature, either on its own or altogether, is this Power's solid word. Scientific names like ˜dynamic process,' ˜energy form,' or ˜effect mechanism,' are given to this governing power. However, modern science is beginning to show that the effect mechanism, which cannot be associated to any reason and is reduced to one truth, is really the manifestation of the ˜Holy Power.' Said Nursi further says The motion of particles is the vibration and motion from that writing and transcription, which occurs while beings pass from the World of the Unseen to the Manifest World, as they pass from knowledge to power. (The Words, Vol. 2, 30th Word, Second Aim, Footnote)

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the activities and creation of creatures are manifested as wave-vibration-movement passing from the field of knowledge to the field of power. Then, the pen of Divine Power writes its fate and ushers it into the world of material existence.

[fursasaida]

Care to share your thoughts on what reality is and what makes life life?

I’m thinking a lot about consequences and loss after the events of the last few days, so it seems like the right time to come back to this. The first time I tried to answer it was overly explanatory: I was trying to walk you through every idea I’ve read and internalized that brought me to the perspective I have. I think that’s probably more trouble than it’s worth (for you the reader, not just for me), so I’ll just provide the names of some texts at the end for anyone who’s interested.

The short version is this. What does it mean for something to happen? Why do things exist the way they are and not other ways? How are these existing things related to each other? My understanding is that things come to exist through happenings, and that these happenings can only be defined by having some sort of consequence. That is, a mark must be made, or something must be divided from something else, or transformed, etc. An apple becomes part of my body because I eat it, and we can know that I ate it because my stomach is fuller and the apple is smaller. In turn, the event that produced these tangible marks defines my relationship with the apple; this includes not only the eating but my ideas about apples as food and the processes by which the apple becomes available to me (that is, how the apple is produced). I think a lot about Cole about 2/3 of the way through 12 Monkeys, when he starts to accept the premise that maybe he’s insane (rather than that he’s a time traveler) because moving between different points in time has destroyed his sense of sequence, causality, and consequence. It’s not just that time as we currently imagine it is linear and orderly (time is actually much more complex than this). It’s that if events have no consequences–if they make no marks, if they can’t be understood to affect anything–then they are not parseable as events.

This does not translate into clockwork determinism, though, where everything is inevitable because it’s all just endless chains of cause and effect. The past is fundamentally inaccessible (in exactly the same way that the future is). All we have is memory and material traces of the past, which exist in the present. We constantly reproduce and remake the past on the basis of these traces and memories, now, in the present. Therefore the past can be changed. But it cannot be erased or undone, because the very things we have to work with–our means of changing the past–are the marks and traces and memories that show that there ever was a past at all.

If I put this on a metaphorical level I think it’s pretty easy to understand. We change our minds about what traces of the past mean all the time. Take a monument, like say an obelisk. When it was built it meant something very specific to the religious-political elites who made it in Ancient Egypt, and to its audience; obelisks were, among other things, tools of communication. Over time, obelisks became ruins and mysterious monuments bearing unreadable marks. Later, as Europe became fascinated by Ancient Egypt, obelisks became symbols of wealth and power, used to imply continuity between French and British Empires and the Ancient Egyptian empire. When an obelisk was placed at the center of the Place de la Concorde in Paris, it was because it was seen as an apolitical symbol in the context of French political strife (though this of course ignored that the French colonization of Egypt was…..political). Meanwhile the study of heiroglyphics proceeds such that obelisks become, instead of tools of contemporary communication, part of that category called archaeological evidence. And meanwhile Egyptian politics and nationhood develop to the point that obelisks become part of the category of objects called “heritage.” The object remains the same, though it weathers and it travels; the actions that produced it as itself endure, literally as marks in stone. Its meaning changes over time and with context as different narratives and ideologies reshape it for their own purposes. The history of these reshapings can be traced as what we call “historiography,” or the writing of history; that is, history has a history of its own.

The point I want to make very clear is that the “remaking of the past” is not only symbolic or ideological. It’s not just about interpreting things differently; it is more than historiography. No one can make it so that the obelisk was never carved. But what the obelisk is, not only what it means, does change. Normally I would get into quantum physics here (the quantum eraser experiment and quantum discord), but I’m trying to keep it simple, so just consider it noted that this phenomenon appears even at the molecular level. You can decide in the present whether the light you measured (i.e., used to make marks) in the past was composed of particles or was a wave. But when you make that decision, the marks from your last decision do not go away. The past has a past. The traces of that meta-past cannot be undone even when you change what the past is.

If the past could be erased or undone, this would mean that, say, toppling a monument means it was never put up–that that event didn’t happen. It is tempting and easy here to retreat to the metaphorical/historiographic level and say, well, in a way that’s what toppling it is doing; it’s announcing the end of somebody’s power, trying to erase that power in the landscape. But making people ignorant of the past is not the same as undoing it, because whatever happened in the past–by virtue of the fact that it happened at all–had material consequences that are not reversible. The toppled monument may become covered in soil and overgrown, but it was still carved out of rock and nothing undoes that. The stone does not magically reappear as part of the rock it came from. That people forget does not make it something that never happened. Instead it becomes the mark of a past version of the past. Whether we remember that past version doesn’t change the fact that it happened; it just means we have remade the past in the present. If you’re familiar with Walter Benjamin’s notion of debris and the Angel of History, my version of it would be that we are surrounded by all the traces of all past pasts; indeed, part of what makes it possible to remake the past is the fact that these traces endure to coexist with us in the present, and not all of them fit together.

This matters to my feelings about what reality is and what makes life life because, as I said early on, if you could undo the marks of the past–and of the past’s past–then there would be no events. There would quite possibly be no things at all. To move this to an ethical register, to live a life in which you always have a do-over button is, for me, impossible to imagine. It requires that the other people around you be essentially simulations (assuming they, too, have do-over buttons, and therefore are proceeding through their own playground universes), or else be puppets to your whims. It means you will never be responsible for anything or to anyone; it means always being able to declare “I didn’t mean it” and have that make everything okay because no one else will ever know what you did–because you didn’t do it. The minds, feelings, and pain of others need not ever be real to you, only your desire to avoid being made to feel bad by their reactions, which you need not even understand; you can just redo stuff by trial and error until you get “changes” you want to “save,” and move on. It is a life of being sorry only to get caught, so to speak. You need never make any mark on the world you don’t intend or like, which is–I mean like, materially–just literally not what existing is. I exist because of the other things and beings that constitute me and that I help constitute in turn. If I can pick and choose, if I can curate what all of those marks and relationships look like–well, for one thing, I’d never have time to do anything else (perhaps I don’t wish to disturb these carpet fibers in this particular way), but also I am simply not operating in the domain of what existence is? I think Russian Doll illustrates this pretty well. Nadia and Alan do live this kind of do-over existence, but the universe doesn’t just accept it. Even after reboots, their actions have consequences, entropy proceeds, things start to decohere.

That life is hard because there are no do-overs is true. It’s not that I have no sympathy for this fact; trust me, I feel it acutely all the time. Nothing I’m saying here is intended to come across like “grow up and join the real world, snowflake!” But without this fact there is also no life, because nothing happens; there are no meaningful relationships or responsibilities. It might be pleasant to be able to return back to your last save and redo things better, but it would also mean living in a world where nothing is real. Responsibility is many things. Two of them are a) the ability to respond to others, and b) the ability to allow others to respond. Even a puppetmaster must contend with the fact that their puppets sometimes break; they have to look after them. But this shouldn’t be seen as only restrictive, a burden to be borne. The forms of responsibility enabled by the indelible past are also what allow us to remake it–to respond differently. We are only here because we inherit the past, and in that sense we owe it a debt; but we have also received from it the gift of being here at all.

References!

At Multiverse Impasse, a New Theory of Scale

Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History”

Laurent Olivier, The Dark Abyss of Time (review/summary here)

Gastón Gordillo, Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction (which you can hear something about on this podcast)

On 12 Monkeys:

“12 Monkeys Is the Apocalypse Film We Need Right Now”

The film Looper, if you haven’t seen it, is itself a comment on 12 Monkeys and extends its ideas in the direction of responsibility.

Karen Barad, “Temporality, Materiality, Justice To-Come” and Meeting the Universe Halfway (you can find a pdf if you google)

(It was hard to find anything both readable and open-access on this, but if you’re really interested, get into quantum discord and quantum illumination)

Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past

Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting

Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International

Derek McCormack, “Remotely Sensing Affective Afterlives”

[koiandjelly]

So Fila’s actual past isn’t very detailed, because she’s not a main OC, and I haven’t spent a ton of time actually thinking about her as a character lol. 98% of my Creativity goes to my original content characters, cuz someday when I finish actually crafting my worlds, I’m gonna write a book. I’m aiming for the lofty goals of making a full, fleshed out, intricate— just fuckin’... a whole ass Multiverse system comparable to the Lore content of Tolkien’s works, or The Elder Scrolls— gah fuck y’know what, I’m changing this post from being about my Fantasy Life OC to being about my creation baby, the effort of about 6 years (I am 20 years old, and although I didn’t know it at the time I started, I was 14 when I made the shitty Fire Emblem Manakete rip-off race that I’m gonna actually now talk about, because holy fuck this ain’t gonna fit in a parenthesis “btw have some info” bubble)

A’ight so I have a hard time keeping track of time, especially in a large scale across years. Apparently it’s related to being severely depressed without medication (communication error on my part, my parents are very lovely and helped me ASAP when I spilled the beans) while also having moderate to severe ADD. So, ya know, keep in mind that I was yet another terribly depressed 8th grader when I talk about my creation’s early days. I wouldn’t experience that time of my life for any sort of payment ever. It was goddamn miserable, because when I was midway through the age of 14, not only did the aforementioned depression spring up, but I also realized I was bisexual (And I live in the infamous state of Alabama, for reference. Don’t fear for me though, I was too unnoticeable to be bullied if anyone did know, and my wonderful mother, whom I love and cherish with all of my heart, is one of the few Christians that actually... like... do what their own God tells em to. That is, Jesus. I’m an atheist and have a general discomfort about the idea of super powerful entities actually existing irl, but I do agree with the stuff I’ve heard and remember from a decade ago in Church about Jesus. Good guy. But yeah my mom not only accepted me and reassured me when I came out, but she’s gone even further and is of the opinion/fact that lgbt folks are, really, good and normal and that God created them, so she really genuinely just... loves and accepts me. There’s no “I love you despite of this” in the equation and I am so grateful. But again. I digress)

Pause after that sidetrack, to recap, all of my medical issues began to emerge about 6 months before I turned 15. Including what I hate most, the emergence of my Fibromyalgia and Sjogren’s Syndrome, and for an added kick to the flesh, an undifferentiated connective tissue disorder. Meaning, as what I understand it to be, a nameless chimaera of many symptoms in a way that the disorder either is it’s own thing, or just can’t easily be recognized as any one disorder. And I had anxiety. If I recall correctly on *that*, forgive me cuz it’s been a while since it’s been diagnosed/brought up in a significant way, I have or had either general anxiety *and* social anxiety, or just lightweight versions of both, or something, but at the time I was horribly shy and I couldn’t even talk to the teacher after class about schoolwork, even though I tried rationalizing it to hell and back that I shouldn’t be scared— as you’ll guess, shit didn’t work out til I got medicine for it, because no amount of logic and rational thought will change the fact that I was struggling because of a literal disorder, an error of the brain, and as with that walking with two shattered femurs ain’t gonna work, trying to talk when the talk machine broke... ain’t going to goddamn work.

God. I am rambling a lot. But anyway, shit fucking sucked as a teen for me, because I got that wombo combo, prepare for trouble, make it double, precision strike at my existence as a person during fucking already difficult puberty— I am rambling. It’s 4:55am as of this sentence lmao. I had a nasty cocktail of both mental illness and physical disorders pop up once puberty hit me, so I, through many events starting from loving to draw as a toddler, to play pretend stories of heartbreak, betrayal, and death as best an 8 year old could understand via playing with Polly Pockets, and all the creative power I inherited from my Dad, plus the motivation borne through a need to escape, I started making my own characters.

So, to return to the present state of my creations, which will now be referred to as Bounding Beyond the Stars, or BBtS, I’m gonna get some things out of the way. Just to clarify, yeah? I have created my worlds in a way that is specifically meant to stand apart from the irl universe as we know it. I’m certainly not a knowledgeable researcher with any level of comprehension on Spacial law and quantum physics and shit like that. So hey, if something ever seems... like, off, or wrong? Unless it’s pretty obviously wrong in the “hey you just googled how a thing works, and misunderstood it, and made a detail based on a failure to understand stuff and that’s dumb in a catastrophic way that even a high school level viewer would notice...” kind of mistake, then hey, shoot me a message. But if some sort of universal rule seems fucky in the way that it doesn’t make sense, but isn’t a catastrophic structural error... well, Imma use that sentence to start a better one. For an example of a catastrophic error, perhaps... this: “This planet has no seasons cuz of its shape and axis! And it is also like twice as big as Earth!” That would be catastrophic alone because anyone with a grasp on planetary gravity or something, may go and think “if it’s that big, gravity’s gonna be way more intense”. And you’d be right! Which is why I usually account for those things with... *Magic*.

Before I split this post for Length reasons, and I’m sorry the majority of this was me rambling about how my general experience with life sucked from ages 14-17, I’mma state something very important about all my creations.

Magic, which will be explained in depth at a later point, is a fundamental, essential, and omnipresent force of not just any one universe in my Multiversal Trio. It is a key piece of Reality itself, as magic is the flow of many multiples of millions of unique and mysterious energies, concepts, and laws existing anywhere that Is.

To end this post, I’m going to put a quick summary and explanation why I’m rambling about any of this: The rant about my age and circumstances at the start are relevant because it’s necessary context for the tone and type of writing my creations are built upon. The foundations of BBtS are borne from a sometimes angsty, sometimes genuinely upset 14 year old who found escape in the art of Creation. There have been many, many, many heavy edits, rewrites, scrapped info and ideas, and even more info built upon it. It used to be pretty pointlessly edgy in a lot of ways, and redundant in grimdark, morphing into *grimderp* plot devices and character traits. The way it’s written today, I like to think the lore of my many high fantasy-alien societies, and all its denizens and creators and whatever else, are still written to be dark, be dangerous, even angsty... but more skillfully so, with the sort of nuance a 14 year old wouldn’t really even begin to understand. Cuz I still like high stakes stories with real consequences and character deaths when appropriate. And I enjoy characters who have tragic pasts, but now that I’m older and I’ve seen and read about and done so much more— I can write that stuff *better*. And more over, what I’m most satisfied with, is that I’m more in touch with myself as a person, and I’ve evolved many of my personal beliefs and ideals and all the things of the world I can have opinions on. But most of all, I’ve reached a point where I have consumed enough content from others to where I have figured out how to write something that should be interesting, and maybe a bit new, because I put a looot of Damn focus on identifying, and understanding, writing structure, cliches, plot holes to avoid, character traits to handle differently, and just generally making something that’ll appeal to both me, and my audience, should I get that far.

[scifigeneration]

Philosophy: What exactly is a black hole?

A black hole is conventionally thought of as an astronomical object that irrevocably consumes all matter and radiation which comes within its sphere of influence. Physically, a black hole is defined by the presence of a singularity, i.e., a region of space, bounded by an 'event horizon', within which the mass/energy density becomes infinite, and the normally well-behaved laws of physics no longer apply. However, as an article in the January issue of the journal Nature Astronomy demonstrates, a precise and agreed definition of this 'singular' state proves to be frustratingly elusive. Its author, Dr. Erik Curiel of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet, summarizes the problem as follows: "The properties of black holes are the subject of investigations in a range of subdisciplines of physics -- in optical physics, in quantum physics and of course in astrophysics. But each of these specialties approaches the problem with its own specific set of theoretical concepts."

Erik Curiel studied Philosophy as well as Theoretical Physics at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, and the primary aim of his current DFG-funded research project is to develop a precise philosophical description of certain puzzling aspects of modern physics. "Phenomena such as black holes belong to a realm that is inaccessible to observation and experiment. Work based on the assumption that black holes exist therefore involves a level of speculation that is unusual even for the field of theoretical physics." However, this difficulty is what makes the physical approach to the nature of black holes so interesting from the philosophical point of view. "The physical perspective on black holes is itself inextricably bound up with philosophical issues relating to ontological, metaphysical and methodological considerations," says Curiel.

"Surprising" and "eye-opening" insights

During the preparation of his philosophical analysis of the concept of black holes for Nature Astronomy, the author spoke to physicists involved in a wide range of research fields. In the course of these conversations, he was given quite different definitions of a black hole. Importantly, however, each was used in a self-consistent way within the bounds of the specialist discipline concerned. Curiel himself describes these discussions as "surprising" and "eye-opening."

For astrophysicist Avi Loeb, "a black hole is the ultimate prison: once you check in, you can never get out." On the other hand, theoretical physicist Domenico Giulini regards it as "conceptually problematical to think of black holes as objects in space, things that can move and be pushed around."

Curiel's own take-home-message is that the very diversity of definitions of black holes is a positive sign, as it enables physicists to approach the phenomenon from a variety of physical perspectives. However, in order to make productive use of this diversity of viewpoints, it will be important to cultivate a greater awareness of the differences in emphasis between them.

[genidma]

Probabilities

Is the outcome of a coin-toss really probabilistic? 

Or can you systematically deduce what the outcome is going to be, prior to the actual occurrence of the event?

What if you could precisely measure/engineer the inputs and then doing so would let you precisely control the outputs. Relating to a coin-toss, what if you could setup your instruments in such a way, so that you could figure out: 

The actual amount of force being applied to the coin and the direction that it is going to be travelling towards. 

The height of the distance that the coin is going to cover. The more precise, the better the outcome, is what I am thinking. 

The number of revolutions, with the coin spinning on it’s axis. Something that is going to be contingent upon the weight and the general structure of the coin (how flat it is, hollow inside or not, any curves, any curved sides e.t.c)

Maybe, some other variables are involved (above).

Fine-tuning the environmental factors, factors related to the object and other agents involved, should translate into a reality that a desired output can be had. 

And unless there is a crack in the ground somewhere, the probability of the coin landing vertically is almost non-existent. 

So, we are most likely dealing with one of the two outputs. There is a 50% outcome that the output is heads and 50% outcome that the output is tails. 

Knowing this, our task has now become somewhat easier. Because, if the output wasn’t binary, then we’d have to deal with a larger number of probabilities. Going from a coin-toss towards a dice and then onto other seemingly more complex probabilities. 

Coming back to the example in a very controlled setting, so you could start by flipping a coin in a long tube with no air in it (vacuum). This tube is going to be of a certain height and a certain level of force is going to be applied to the coin toss. (Ideally via a machine that allows a finely calibrated amount of force to the coin, towards a very precise direction).

This imaginary tube is part of this imaginary room. We find the same physical forces being exerted here, that we find on earth under normal/present conditions. And as it relates to this thought experiment, this would mostly translate into a constant amount of gravity.   

If the same force and direction is applied under these controlled settings, then the same outcome is going to be achieved. And hence, a pattern is going to start emerging. 

Working our way backwards and in order to achieve the desired results, you simply control the inputs with respect to the set of patterns that you would have documented previously. 

In a 3d environment, you can then assign points across that very environment. As an object moves across this environment, we can then have a mechanism, whereby we can track the association of movements. My understanding of Physics and the mathematics driving that Physics is weak. But, I think that we are going to be dealing with vectors and the associations between different components, contingent on how an object is moving/behaving. 

Going back to the experiment and if we slowly begin to expand the scope, then: 

The range of the experiment would then extend from the tube itself and out towards a larger room. 

A different level of force is going to be applied to the coin and it is going to be travelling in different directions. There will be so x revolutions that are going to be had. It may hit y walls, it may hit the ground z times, it will spin - this many # of times. 

You are still controlling the inputs to this controlled environment. And as the coin travels down the different paths, it, again, leaves a trail. 

Once again, working our way backwards, you simply control the inputs in order to get the kind of probabilistic set of outputs that you seek. Actually, contingent on how you look at this, this starts looking deterministic. 

And specific to this example, the actual output that we should be expecting, isn’t really random. Given that the conditions remain constant, this this statement ought to be considered as true for any given point. Also, the more tightly you control the inputs, the better the outcome for the actual prediction. 

This is just a simple thought experiment. And yes, one could argue that if you do not setup the inputs in a meticulous manner, then that’s where the random element kicks in. And the models start breaking down. 

However, it is interesting to wonder and considering the scale that one is dealing with, there has got to be a ratio with respect to how precise the means of taking the necessary measurements should be. 

Ideally you only need enough computation, in order to be able to model the dynamics of a system. The thought experiment above envisions a simple geometric shape that is moving through this system. And again, the various movements of this very shape can indeed be represented in sets. So, then, you just need an engine that computes all the different probabilities, with respect to how this shape is going to be moving in this finite space. 

The world that is outside the scope of this super controlled environment, is seemingly chaotic and messy. It’s a soup of:

Quarks and leptons. 

Particles of different kinds. 

Space/time: However that works. 

Matter that behaves differently at different temperatures.

Photons travelling in different directions. 

And probably a lot of other things that we have yet to discover/understand, like dark energy and dark matter (for example).

Plus, as of yet, things that exist and we don’t even recognize that they do. Like the different forces acting in a different way, in different parts of the universe. (Same scale, just different part of the universe) 

One of the question that has emerged in my mind is, is the actual position of an object, relative to it’s position, in a given slice of time. 

Other questions begin to emerge in my mind. Questions like, from the outside in or however you look at it:

Is the nature of the universe deterministic? Because if the initial conditions have been set, then things could only turn out to be a certain set of ways. 

If the nature is indeed deterministic, then in theory there aren’t any new findings to be had. Because the outcome of all of these diverse interactions would be known in advance.  

Now, I’ve already made this huge leap, where I went from a simple thought experiment in a room and then thinking if all of the various and diverse set of interactions are seemingly random or, if on the other hand, they are deterministic. I realize that this blogpost has become super abstract and I also realize that I haven’t actually provided a solid reasoning and as it relates to making this leap. I think I have to come back and clarify this bit/portion.

 That being said, the other set of questions that emerge in my mind, revolve around computation and translations of different sorts. In random order:

My knowledge of this topic ought to be equated as non-existent, but it is hypothesized that at the quantum mechanical scale, there are these tiny fluctuations of space-time, something which is referred to as quantum foam. So, this is like brownian motion on a quantum mechanical scale? And, seemingly, these movements are random. 

The other series of questions that emerge, are about this information-theoretic model of the universe. I think, that both John Archibald Wheeler and Konrad Zuse have cataloged their thoughts and as it relates to their interpretation of this subject. 

The translations: I don’t really understand relativity. Like I do not what it represents in it’s entirety and certainly not the mathematics behind it. I have no idea what quantum mechanics is or how things really are in that realm. It is my understanding that mathematicians and physicists have been working on creating the necessary structures, whereby the mathematical models could mirror what we observe (or some approximation of what is observed). I think the term is ‘quantum graphity’ and that a lot of really smart people are working on creating the necessarily mathematical models, that will help explain how the two realities are linked. If that’s even the correct way of looking at this.

Modelling chaos and order in dynamical systems. 

Fluid-dynamics.

Questions regarding the great filter and where we are at right now.

Now, in theory and given enough computation, we should be able to compute the sum total of all the information in this universe. As well, once the right kinds of modelling systems have been built, we should then be in a position to predict certain outcomes with more details. Modelling the universe is necessary in order to ensure our survival in the long run. As well, it may help us with the next successive leaps on the Kardashev scale. Whatever these leaps turn out to be and however we evolve to make them. I guess that we’d have to continue building tech on different scales and that doing so may provide certain advantages. 

Next, and this is a long-shot, but maybe we could even manipulate reality to our advantage. Considering the ethics that doing so does not cause harm, hurt or discomfort to another sentient being. If at its base, energy and matter are interchangeable and, everything is made up of information. Then for things to exist and function in this dynamic environment, there must be some code or series of codes that links everything together. (states of matter/energy, dark matter, dark energy, space time, waves of different sort e.t.c)

Overall, it’s interesting that changing one parameter (or few in a dynamic system) can yield different outcomes. 

If we think about the essence and then seek to deduce outcomes in a different set of ranges, then such a system could actually be quite useful to us. 

Say, we aggregate some of our probabilities in certain areas and it’s leading to certain outcomes. But, then we say, if we change this, this and this, then this gives us this xx level of probability that we will land in the x range.

If we do not do that, then that just means that we are being ignorant. The universe is a certain way and we don’t want to deal with probabilities. If we choose not to deal with reality, then we are less conscious and our fate may be the same as that of the dinosaurs.

One example that comes to my mind and as one may appreciate, this is on the galactic scale, is the example of the G2 dust cloud’s impact with sagittarius A. Prior to the occurrence of the event, this event was modelled on super computers. The prediction that was made, wasn’t exactly how the impact occurred. Regardless, because of the simulation, we had somewhat of an idea what this impact was going to look like. 

I realize that I am bouncing between the different scales. But, I guess, the question is, is it all relative? Meaning, the position of one particle with respect to another particle. In one universe, there were a different set of initial conditions and so the outcome was of a certain way. And so, a different set of initial conditions, should, in theory, yield a different outcome. 

As the system evolves, it gets more complex. But there were a series of events. In fact, a lot of different events that had occurred and collapsed, so that a new reality was unearthed. And that’s the pattern that has kept on repeating. But, seeing that things evolved a certain way, it does seem like the nature of universe is deterministic. 

Although, it does seem like the rules on the quantum scales are radically different. And so, with respect to probabilities playing out in the quantum world, we do not really understand, how the quantum world affects/has an outcome in this world. 

Quite interestingly, I am reminded of some of Roger Penrose’s work with Stuart Hameroff. I realize that there is a fluid in our brain and I believe it has something to do with which set of neurons fire and which lay in a dormant state. I am not exactly sure how the flow of this fluid is regulated. But, I guess, it does beget a question: If there are 100 Billion neurons in the brain, then what series of events causes a few of the neurons to fire. What I’m thinking, is, if quantum effects do have some kind of a role to play and as it relates to thought patterns and which set of neurons fire?

I guess, we could say that, what we have thought about historically, is what we are more likely to think about. And environment and conditioning has more to do with this than anything. I don’t see how some quantum effect or some cosmic particle going through my brain, how that may have anything to do with what kind of thoughts emerge in my brain. 

Anyhow, there are a couple of different angles to this very abstract thought experiment. But, one thing that stands out for me, is this thought that we can actually compute anything and deduce the probabilistic outcome of an event or a series of events. 

I guess, the question is, what is the most efficient means via which the above mentioned can be accomplished. Because, if we run n number of simulations for x number of instances: Then those calculations could add up relatively quickly. I guess it also depends upon the degree, to which we choose to model a certain experiment/reality.

[holy-mountaineering]

This spread is for @lesbianbondagefiasco Thanks for the donation!

Tonight you’re getting the full Qabalistic Tree of Life Spread that I do and here you are. What I’m going to do is go through and briefly explain each card, its position on the Tree, and then I’ll give you a summary/synopsis of the spread as a whole.

Think of this spread as a sort of quantum map, or even the land of a regular map, everything is happening at once, in each place. It’s important to think of yourself as moving “through” the map but you are also simultaneously everywhere at once. For the sake of this specific experiment, think of this as a map.

Where we’re starting the journey from is Kether, the monad, the first sign of creation. We’ll call this your hometown, since it is where you’re from originally. Here we have XIX The Sun, Resh, Sol.

The Sun is The Lord of Light and Life, the center of our little Solar System. Everything in the fairly large gravitational pull of the Sun is affected by it which pulls everything to it. This more or less self sufficient little nuclear reactor in space gives life and light but also pulls small things which cannot maintain an orbit around it in for the final burn. bright and full of life and light but deal not with bullshit trifles.

Center yourself but be aware of what you effect and how.

In Chokmah, which is like your freeway getting you out onto the road out of your hometown is the 4 of Disks, Power or the Fortress or the island.

This is “squaring up” with the material world or your everyday normal money/job/school/housing parts of life. The Fortress is a castle or private physical place of isolation and security/safety. From Liber AL it is mentioned that you should “(C)hoose ye an island, fortify it, dung it about with the enginery of war…” That is to say, for our illustration, protect your base of operations in your material world.

There is one entrance and around the fortress is a mote, this is so you may go about the world doing your business but you can return and bring the bridge up when you’re done fucking around with the outside world.

In Binah, which is ruled by Saturn and for the sake of this reading we will call the first stop on your roadtrip. You haven’t really arrived anywhere but you’re stopping and getting a chance to repack your car in a more efficient way. Sitting in Binah is the 4 of Cups, Luxury.

This is squaring up emotionally and creating a greater emotional balance. Lvna the Moon absorbs the light of Sol the sun and reflects it back to Earth, but only enough emotionally to help you stay stable and protected (Cancer the crab with an exoskeleton to protect it’s soft inside parts).

Don’t get too comfy though, don’t mistake squaring up with being a scared square.

In Chesed which is ruled by Jupiter and again for the sake of this experiment we’ll say involves your influence and benevolence in your current trip is the 9 of Swords, Cruelty (to self, mostly).

Like the other 9s this is a massive building up, in this case of Air, mind, thinking, communicating. This is beating yourself up about a decision that must be made. Astrologically, Mars in Gemini relates to action being thwarted because of a split mind on a matter.

You are mentally at a fork in the road and you need to make a choice one way or another.

You’re building up a lot of ideas but you need to decide which way you want to go or it’s going to keep tearing you up mentally. There is a lot of force and mass here, move it.

Across the Tree in Geburah, which is Mars Town, where you find your drive and what you’re trying to accomplish/conquer is the Ace of Wands. The root power or source of Fire, action, motion.

The Ace of Wands or Fire is the big bang of impetus to action, every other motion afterward is spawned from that moment. In practical terms this is the initial event or action that in it’s uncontrolled state causes a series of reactions.

The first drive toward an end or event, the force that sets things in motion. The explosion that brings things to life might be a really messy ordeal. This is all the subtlety of a burning baseball bat with ten flames for nails.

Regardless of the problem of stagnant things getting burnt, the Ace of Wands causes shit to happen and Will to drive forward. Remember that this is a tool, the Wand of the Magus and should only be profaned in useful and/or hilarious ways. You wouldn’t use a flaming baseball bat to get a moth off of your curtains (probably) and so the Ace of Fire can also be related to brute force or overreaching the necessary force.

In Tiphareth, the Sun and center of gravity holding all this in place, the heart pumping the blood through this, your heart is the 8 of Wands, Swiftness.

This is the idea that a huge fire can burn a city down but harnessed it can power a city. The idea here is of the atom harnessed not to destroy but to produce great and beneficial energy, like a power plant. The wands on the 8 have turned to electricity, the light a rainbow.

Harness your actions into the most efficient and useful manner, energize (Sagittarius) your intellect (Mercury).
 If you’re having trouble with what you’re trying to accomplish, look at it through a ”new lense” that splits the light and makes it more visible.

In Netzach, Venus town, where you have the realization about how this is going to change you as a person with a personality is XVIII The Moon, Pieces, Qoph.

This is the ‘Sun at midnight where you stand shines on the other side of the world’. The pull of night and day eventually rising illuminating what was once dark. As opposed to the old Aeon idea of the Sun dying, this is cyclic notion of the push and pull of the day and night. The dark give the light context and vis a versa.

See the light in the dark, accept the cyclic push and pull, if you don’t like what “time of day it is” in your life I assure you it will change like the tides.

In Mercury Town Hod-ville, where all the Universities are and everyone has real intellectual shit going on is the Knight of Disks, the fiery part of Earth or acting on what must be done in your material life.

This Knight looks over cultivated fields before the harvest. He sees what must be done first, which things would rot and which things can be harvested last. He sees the work he has done and prepares to reap the rewards. He is not yet in motion, he must figure out what part of his creation needs immediate attention.

You planted the seeds and taken care of the field and now it’s ready for you to get the rewards of your labor. Find what you must do in your material, everyday world to get the best results from this.

On the Moon in Yesod, the receptive and reflective place that is alot about the feelings that you’re picking up from all this is the Queen of Cups, the watery part of Water, total emotion and intuition.

This Queen looks through her reflective eyes at the ripples on a pond at the reflection of the moon which reflects the Sun. She isn’t so much interested in looking directly at a thing as she is looking at the effects. The tides being ruled by the Moon was discovered by observation of the correlation of movements of both Lvna and the comings and going of the tides. Her animal is the Ibis, who on one leg intently stares at the surface of the water. This was perceived as meditation and contemplation by the wise people of Khemet and they attributed the ibis to Djehudi or Thoth the wisest of their pantheon. But like ibis you have to act when the fish swims by or you’ll starve.

Do not look directly at a problem or situation you feel strongly about. Look for effects and causation not the point of impact.

Down here in Malkuth-istan, the everyday life mundane, waking up pooping, and going to work world is the Princess of Wands, the earthy part of Fire.

This is the material substance that comes from fuels action. Think of this: you have to make a fire because it is cold. You have a set amount of wood. You can make a big ass, bright ass fire that will leave you cold later that night when you’re out of wood, but jazzed while it’s happening. Or you can make a smaller, less exciting fire that will keep you warm all night.

There is also a message about the last step in any action is really to become the actions and to let them become you. When your very Earthly substance is in it, you are no longer doing you just are.

Don’t burn yourself out and exhaust your resources on what you’re tackling in life right now. Do this and you shall live to dance and party another night.

So, the beginning of this whole journey starts with you recentering on yourself, taking space, and fucking doing some self care as absolutely corny as that sounds. That’s the short version. In a large sense you need to know, it’s all about you and that’s okay. It’s all about each and everyone of us and how each and everyone of us aids each other and you ain’t aidin’ nobody running ragged.

Piggybacking on that, STOP BEATING YOURSELF UP. At least long enough to make this choice you’ve been putting off about what you’re going to start. You’ve got all this there and when you can see it and then work to refine it, you’ll be electric kid, nothing besides wood will stop you. That’s a little electricity joke. I’m sorry.

You might feel weird about yourself right now, about your growth and your process but lemme tell you, it gets different. Just you wait and see. You’re a smart person, if you look around long enough, you’ll see all the resources you need to build up what you’re looking to. Now, while swimming is fun and stuff, try not to drown. You gotta look at the effects of things and not the cause. The cause matters a lot less to someone who’s lungs are filling up with water.

And hey, take your time. You have time, take it, don’t let it take you. You know how fucking hard it is to work on this big stuff, pace yourself and you’ll be glad you did. (That’s a little Shane Brother’s joke for the other SF Bay area resident.)

Ta Da, there’s the tea, crumpets and what not. Hit me up with any questions, I’ll be here!

[knifeonmars]

Desert Island Comics, Part 2

In packing my things up for my move I made the difficult decision to get rid of most of my monthly issues, about 4 longboxes worth. It wasn't an easy, but I've never considered myself a collector of comic books so much as just a reader. I don't want to fetishize or hoard the physical object, because it's largely beside the point for me. So I combed through my longboxes and filled a single shortbox with the comics I couldn't bear to part with and which I thought would be fun to leaf through at some indeterminate point in the future, thinking less about collectability than my personal attachment to them. So there are some arguably strange choices in here.

Daredevil The Waid/Samnee/Rivera Daredevil was and is a really important comic to me personally. It's actually the book which first got me into a comic book shop back when I was around 16 or 17 years old. I had read comics before, whether online or through my local library, but I was finally at an age where I had money to spend on this ludicrous hobby and I remember seeing the first interviews and previews around the book and being immediately interested, just knowing that this was a book I had to read. The series itself more than bore that out. It was at once awesome throwback superhero action and a deeper and more meaningful exploration of depression and trauma. To this day I look at it as a perfect example of all-caps SUPERHERO COMICS. Midnighter/Midnighter and Apollo Not so much a formative book for me as just a favorite. I loved Midnighter and its sequel because it's a wild action comic with big ideas and a wrecking ball of a protagonist. It also took Midnighter from being a kind of one note character to a personal favorite, and I was overjoyed when the sequel did some of the same for Apollo, who I always thought got kind of short shrift as a result of being the less traditionally masculine partner in the duo. Age of Apocalypse The first of my picks which probably constitutes a weird personal favorite which no one else has ever heard or cared about, Age of Apocalypse was a somewhat shortlived 2011-2012 series spinning out from Rick Remender's lauded X-Force run. The original Age of Apocalypse is mostly remembered as this kind of buckwild glam dystopian romp, but this series was a lot more lowkey and less bombastic. Focusing on the X-Terminated, a group of human rebels made up of alternate reality versions of traditional anti-mutant X-Men foes, the series focused on their desperate and hard fought attempts to secure some kind of future for themselves and their people. It was a fairly dark book but not one without its charms, and I always felt that it managed to strike a good balance between the alternate universe walking tour of "Here's a weird alternate version of this character!" and actually having characters and conflict which are interesting on their own merit. X-Treme X-Men Included primarily for it's ending crossever with Age of Apocalypse, X-Treme X-Men was still a really fun series. Initially focusing on a group of alternate reality X-Men hunting evil versions of Charles Xavier across the multiverse, it was very much an updated take on the now recently revived Exiles formula. Like I said, it's not necessarily an essential book for me, but it is fun and energetic and certainly fun to read. X-Termination I mentioned the crossover between Age of Apocalypse and X-Treme X-Men, also including Amazing X-Men. To be honest, X-Termination, as the name probably implies, isn't a lighthearted read. There's a high bodycount, and specifically coming to it after the hard fought victories of Age of Apocalypse, the ending is very much a gut punch. It's a solid read, but it's not a particularly pleasant one. I couldn't ignore it though, given my affection for Age of Apocalypse. Lobster Johnson In my opinion one of the more accessible Hellboy spinoffs, Lobster Johnson is just pure fun pulp comics which nonetheless manage to make their main character strange and interesting. Recent stories have seen the character dynamics complicated in interesting ways which I look forward to seeing more of. Nighthawk The unfortunately shortlived Walker/Villalobos/Bonvillain series is another favorite of mine. I dunno, Nighthawk hit at a time when I was all too happy to read a comic where a badass superhero beat the shit out of overreaching cops and contend with sinister gentrifiers. It's a cool looking, violent, and downright mean comic which I just love to bits and I consider it a damn shame that Marvel's left the series so unloved. A MAX version or a revival with the upcoming Marvel Knights relaunch would be a hit, at least with me personally. AXIS: Hobgoblin Maybe my strangest pick. Back during the regrettable and forgettable AXIS event, Rick Remender's turn at doing one of Marvel's regularly scheduled and almost inevitably flawed event comics, a bunch of heroes and villains got mind whammied and had their moral alignments inverted; heroes becoming villains and villains becoming heroes. The consequences of this played out not just in the event itself but in a variety of spinoffs and minis, among which was this short three issue mini. I just think it's a fun romp. The art is gorgeous, and Roderick Kingsley is maybe the most interesting he's ever been as a blowhard superhero who's in it for the money and the fame. Another book which I wish could have seen more of, but as it is, a fun artifact from a terrible event comic. Hawkeye Fraction/Aja/Wu/Hollingsworth. A classic which I actually don't feel unambiguously positive about. I remember the many delays and schedule slippage back when it was first coming out put me off somewhat. Still though, I can't deny that it was a good series, especially at the beginning. I didn't love the direction it ultimately took, and I though that the release strategy for the final arcs, alternating issues between Kate and Clint, wasn't a great idea, and the delays exacerbate that, but it was a very good series and I've always kind of planned to revisit now that it's over. Also, it introduced me to The Rockford Files, which holds some sentimental value. Multiversity Grant Morrison's spaghetti thrown at the wall maxiseries, Multiversity is hit and miss, but full of ideas and energy and I couldn't bear to part with it. Something about the single issue format just feels so integral to the strangeness of that series that I wanted to keep hold of it in that original format. Catalyst Comix Here's something about me; I love anthologies. They're always hit or miss, but Ienjoy that quality to them, and Catalyst Comix, while shortlived, was incredibly energetic and interesting. I kept it because I figured that leafing through my shortbox however many years down the line, I'd probably be delighted by the energy and originality that Catalyst Comix had on display. Transformers Vs GI Joe I'm a big Tom Scioli fan, and while I've frankly never cared much about either of the involved properties, I love his unhinged weaving together of them and the sheer go for broke madness of this series. Also, I deeply admire the high concept silliness of them doing a one shot which was a pseudo-adaptation of an imagined film version of the original series. Secret Weapons I've never connected much with the so-called Valiant Universe comics beyond Quantum and Woody, but Secret Weapons was an unexpected delight for me. It's a wonderful ragtag team story which makes the by now somewhat complicated Valiant Universe fairly approachable and unintimidating. The art is absolutely killer too, a refreshing break from what I find to be Valiant's somewhat bland house style. Prophet Here's a series which is harder to talk about now than it was a year ago. The Prophet epic that Brandon Graham helmed with a murderer's row of great artists was a favorite of mine when I was first reading monthly comics, and having revisited it I think it largely holds up, if sagging a bit in the middle portions. I'm particularly partial to the first arc, following the would be Newfather Prophet across a strange and utterly alien far future Earth in a story which evoked sword and sorcery adventure. Man of Steel #22 I'm not much for collecting and preserving comics, but I decided on keeping Man of Steel #22 because I love Steel. To me, Steel is one of the single best superhero comic ideas ever. We're always told that Superman's greatest ability is to inspire people, and Steel is the perfect embodiment of that idea, in the conveniently medium appropriate form of a dude in a supersuit just whaling on bad guys. I love him.

[aion-rsa]

Black Widow: Could Red Guardian Have Fought Captain America?

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains Black Widow spoilers.

When we finally catch up with Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) in the Russian prison where he’s been idling for years, he’s reliving his glory days in the midst of dealing with a string of arm wrestling contenders. Marvel’s Black Widow has already shown us just how strong Alexei is during its long, Ohio-set opening, so we know that the man who was once Russia’s answer to Captain America is going to win every single one of these bouts.

As Red Guardian, Alexei even had his own action figure, and although he’s now pretty out of shape the super soldier is more than a match for any of the younger and more ripped inmates who hope to challenge him. While a collection of men excitedly watch Alexei peacock his strength, he even brags about the time he beat Captain America.

“So,” Alexei teases. “I have the nuclear code, but there he is. Captain America! Finally, the Red Guardian’s time has come. I grab hold of his shield and, face to face, it’s a test of strength. The shield that he carries with him like a precious baby blanket? I use it to my advantage. I take it, I push him out the window, I make my escape.”

The beefy inmate he’s currently grappling with calls bullshit on the tall tale by getting Alexei to date his face-off with Cap at around 1983 or 1984 – a time when Steve Rogers was still in the ice.

“Are you calling me a liar?” Alexei rages, snapping the poor man’s wrist until it’s as floppy as a glove. Yikes.

But, hey, he’s just annoyed about being called out. There’s no way Cap and Red Guardian battled in the ’80s, right? It’s just not possible. Well, probably not. Unless you start thinking too hard about the events of Avengers: Endgame, the different ways that the writers and directors of the blockbuster view Steve Rogers’ fate, and the appalling way America treated Cap’s legacy, as revealed in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Let’s look at the possibilities…

Replacement Captain America

A fascinating but deeply upsetting thing we learned in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was that Steve Rogers wasn’t the only super soldier fighting for America.

In the 1950s, Isaiah Bradley was one of many unwilling human subjects that the United States military tested their super soldier serum on, and as far as we know the only one who made it through those trials. During the Korean War, Isaiah fought Bucky Barnes when he was locked in Winter Soldier mode, and managed to destroy half of his metal arm in the heat of battle. The government started to worry about news of an African-American super soldier going public, and imprisoned Isaiah for three decades. He was freed in the 1980s and his death was later faked so he could live a normal life.

We’re pretty sure Alexei could tell the difference between Steve and Isaiah, but we guess it’s possible that the US military could have had other super soldiers posing as Cap between the period when Isaiah was active and Steve made his return from the ice. For example, in the comics, there were several men who stood in for Steve after Cap had been frozen, because the government didn’t want the world to know that Captain America was gone. One in particular, William Burnside, even went so far as to get plastic surgery to resemble Rogers and really took the whole thing too far (it didn’t end well, but that’s another story). Could Alexei’s tall tale be the first way the MCU nods to replacement Captain Americas beyond Isaiah Bradley?

It’s pretty unlikely that Alexei fought anyone other than MCU Steve Rogers, though. He knows that Steve Rogers is Captain America. Hell, everyone does! Rogers is a “war criminal” on the run in Black Widow, which is set between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, and he wouldn’t ask Natasha if Cap had mentioned him otherwise, so we should probably assume that when Alexei is talking about his bouts with Cap he means Steve and only Steve.

Old Captain America

In the months following Avengers: Endgame’s release, the film’s directors and writers held court on the details of Steve Rogers’ mission to return the Infinity Stones and the long life that he subsequently chose to live with his WWII sweetheart, Peggy Carter. As you may recall, after Steve finished popping the stones back to their rightful places to avoid any of the chaotic branch timelines that The Ancient One warned Bruce Banner about, Steve and Peggy grew old together, and Old Cap then re-emerged on the very day he’d first left to pass his iconic shield over to Sam Wilson – an incident followed up in Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

But fans weren’t entirely sure whether the life Steve and Peggy lived would have caused its own branch timeline, a matter that directing team Joe and Anthony Russo were happy to clear up.

“Based on everything that happened, he would have been in a branch reality and then had to have shifted over to this, so jumped from one to the other and handed the shield off,” they said. “One thing that’s clear that Anthony and I have discussed, I don’t know that we’ve discussed this publicly at all, Cap would have had to have traveled back to the main timeline. That’s something that, yes, he would have been in a branch reality, but he would have to travel back to the main timeline to give that shield to Sam Wilson.”

A branch timeline, guys? Really? Loki, Mobius and everyone else at the TVA want a word.

Avengers: Endgame writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely had a totally different view of how Steve managed to show up where he did at the end of the film – he never left.

“That is our theory,” explained Markus. “We are not experts on time travel, but the Ancient One specifically states that when you take an Infinity Stone out of a timeline it creates a new timeline. So Steve going back and just being there would not create a new timeline. So I reject the “Steve is in an alternate reality” theory. I do believe that there is simply a period in world history from about ’48 to now where there are two Steve Rogers. And anyway, for a large chunk of that one of them is frozen in ice. So it’s not like they’d be running into each other.”

Yes, according to Markus and McFeely, there were two versions of Steve Rogers around in the seven decades that followed Captain America: The First Avenger, and the older version was just off living his life with Peggy while the younger one was in the ice. The confusion was palpable, with many fans refusing to believe that Steve would have hidden in the shadows instead of deciding to do something about all the horrible things that may have been happening in history’s relentless geopolitical conflicts.

The time travel rules of Avengers: Endgame – arguably nonsense – don’t leave much room for Markus and McFeely to be right – Banner tells the team that they can’t change the past because the past will become their future. But Markus and McFeely later doubled down on their comments, claiming that Old Cap was even at Peggy’s funeral during Civil War.

“I would like to believe that through some sort of bullshit time loop paradox–throw in the words you use when you’re bullshitting science in a movie: ‘some sort of quantum paradox’–that there are indeed two Captain Americas in the MCU timeline. That Steve Rogers who looped back into time has therefore always been there, and that he is living somewhere else in the movies you’re watching….And what I really like to believe is that there’s an old man sitting in back at Peggy’s funeral in Civil War, and that’s old Steve Rogers, watching young Steve Rogers, carry old Steve Rogers’s wife up to the front of the church. Can I explain it scientifically? Not really, no.”

Weirdly, it’s Black Widow’s throwaway moments with Alexei that could support the writers’ take here. Maybe the Steve who was with Peggy didn’t stay out of the fight all those years. Maybe he did try to stop Red Guardian from stealing the nuclear codes. And maybe this wasn’t the only time he and Alexei came to blows during the Cold War era. Sure, Cap would have technically been in his ’60s, but he ages slowly and Alexei is proof that the super soldier serum still very much has a kick to it as the years fly by.

Straight Up Lying For Clout

Alexei could have fictionalized his interactions with Captain America for clout, and he comes across as the kind of person who would do so, but let’s look at the second time he brings up Captain America with his “daughter” Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow. He couldn’t be any more proud that she became an Avenger, even if she defected to fight for the other side. Instead of reconnecting with her properly, however, the first thing he talks to her about privately is in the interest of boosting his own ego.

“Natasha come here, I want to ask you something, its important,” Alexei insists. “Did he talk to you about me? You know, trading war stories.”

“Who?” Natasha asks.

“Captain America! My great adversary in this theater of geopolitical conflict. Not so much a nemesis, more like a contemporary, co-equal. I always thought there was a great deal of mutual respect,” he says genuinely.

Natasha doesn’t confirm or deny that Red Guardian got a mention in her conversations with Steve. She’s too annoyed that Alexei is harping on about himself again after they’ve spent so many years apart, but it may leave a tantalizing Captain America mystery lingering on the MCU timeline. Why would Alexei take an obvious lie this far, to someone with first-hand knowledge who would absolutely be in a position to call him out on it if he didn’t at least believe it was true?

For what it’s worth, Harbour told Inverse that Red Guardian’s Cap stories are “absolutely true, 100 percent,” but also went on to add “There’s a thing, confabulation, where people actually just believe their lies to such a degree that even when confronted with reality, they can’t process it. It doesn’t make sense [to them]. I think Alexei is very much the same way. He lives this reality completely independent of what other people have seen or heard.”

Whether any of this is ever canonically confirmed or not, the MCU is known for its breadcrumbs and callbacks, so don’t count out more Cap vs. Red Guardian hints just yet.

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in a roundabout sort of way i think the next paradigm shift in physics is going to have to start with a very down to earth genre of science fiction that has not occurred yet. i’ve been trying to imagine what an optimistic future might look like after the multiverse theory has been discarded, perhaps something that focuses on each person as a completely unique and irreplaceable nexus of experience. i’m not particularly clear on what this would entail, as contrasted with a palette of fiction where you can simply step over to a parallel universe with slight variations on the same characters or where you can navigate distinct timelines with identical characters within them, but i have a persistent impression that whatever it is that changes should propagate up to corresponding philosophical and geopolitical implications (i.e. both in the fiction as part of the story, and hopefully in the real world, as a result of this style of fiction). 

working backwards from there, i guess what i’m saying is that multiverse theory has had a significantly rotten impact on american foreign policy and neoliberal globalization as a result of hollywood’s continued misinterpretation of it, but even if their interpretations had been more reliable it would have suffered from the same rot. (i love a good timeloop story, but...)

the philosophical implications of the multiverse are fruitful for the imperialist project in the sense that they tend to induce a navel-gazing garden path, or a completely unproductive thought terminating cliche by expansion to uncountably many options. 

even considering a physical theory that includes parallel diverging histories at the quantum scale, that does not imply these diverging histories would propagate up to visible effects at the macro scale. (every particle in your body is in unobserved quantum superposition -- just because you never specifically collapse their waveform by individually observing them, that doesn’t put you into quantum superposition. many diverging histories occur within you every day without your knowledge and without compromising your identity. theseus never had a ship, if he’s been replacing pieces of it since day one, right?) even a universe where space is truly infinite and endless does not, on its own, mean that it is mathematically inevitable that there are other variations on you. (it would just mean there are infinitely many galaxies and star systems like ours. there is no guarantee another planet somewhere in the 14 billion year old universe will inevitably delineate another state with borders and laws identical to massachusetts, in the same way accumulating 200 years of 12-tone music history doesn’t mean we’re about to run out of killer hooks for pop songs.) 

perhaps an instrumentalist or materialist corpus of science fiction could instead present a perspective on condensed matter or superconductivity that hinges on the behavior of a single particle, or on the systematic features that induce a tipping point or phase shift, as a metaphor for indvididual everyday action, instead of allowing you to consider an exercise in pointlessness by imagining a probability distribution of every choice available to you over the course of your life... respecting that you can’t tame chaotic dynamical systems simply by taking a cartesian product over all variables, acknowledging that a list of every possibility does not really tell you much about the density or distribution of the interesting ones.

i think the worst or most seductive influence on theorycraft is the sheer amount of imaginitive possibilities -- anything is possible! any theory is valid! join our think tank! we never gotten anything done, but we all cite each other in our papers, so everyone’s career is thriving -- and it’s specifically this aspect i’m trying to combat by considering a more tangible or operationalist alternative. like, “not everything is possible, but a lot of things are, so if you want to get anything done take your head out of the damn clouds, start considering the immediate list of possibilities at hand, and pick up a wrench so we can cause enough of a gravitational wave event within the launch window to make a flyby maneuver around Sag-A* -- are we all clear on that? now, everybody put aside your differences, be nice and work together or we’re all going to fucking die. einstein, godel, stop quibbling and start plotting a trajectory manually or so help me i will turn this ship’s time around and drop you off way back when we picked you up,” like, as a philosophy of science