davebarrack
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Grrl Power #1207 - Eighteen school busses
🕑 Added 2023-11-20 11:00:09 +0000 UTCThank you for the support! You guys are awesome!
I wouldn't normally call out "special" but it's such an uncommon use of the word that you might not even find it on a casual google. I couldn't. I asked around on twitter to make sure it really was a word. It just doesn't come up much in a layman's world. Of course, as soon as Earth learns of other intelligent life, you can bet "specist" will enter the common vocabulary. Because people are the worst.
Folks were asking how demons were so freely out and about. Well, it's because Deus is super smart and everything he does advances multiply layers of his many cascading plans, and definitely not because I'm a dummy and didn't think about it while I was writing the previous pages.
Dabbler is out as an alien. The type of alien she happens to be is "Demon," but Demon isn't simply a species of alien. It's somewhere between a Class and Phylum. Demon is such a broad term because there was a long period of their history when they were Genghis Khaning their way across the galaxy, both in the areas of conquest and ensuring that demonkind has a lot of direct descendants. Even if there's only a 1 in 1,000 chance of a demon "pillager" getting species X pregnant, in the last 30 or so millenia, there's been a buttload of chances for that roll. Even if the resultant offspring didn't have the same chance of passing on its DNA (or whatever demons use) the half-demon was usually still fertile with other members of its own clade. Demons have flexible chromosomes too. If a male demon impregnates a female whatsit, the offspring would be a demotsit, and if a female demon got pregnant by a male whatsit, the offspring would be a watsmon, kind of like the whole Tigon/Liger thing. So there are a lot of things that are considered "demons" even if they're hybrids of things from well outside the usual demon orders and classes.
I decided a long time ago that there aren't parallel planes of existence in the Grrl-verse. Demons are straight-up aliens. There's no dimension of Infernium or whatever. There are other planes, but it's stuff like the Astral plane, and physical objects can't exist there. You can't visit, because the laws of physics are wildly different. And not like, there's less gravity. That bugs me when you see it in shows, like everything's the same but you can jump higher. No, if there was less gravity, then stars would have to be proportionally larger to initiate fusion and it would affect their lifespans and what elements they could produce and the rate at which they went supernova and everything else about that universe would be different. Planes in the Grrl-verse like the Astral don't, for instance, have the Strong Electromagnetic Force, so there's no matter whatsoever, or at least no atoms, and the entire place is just two clouds of positively and negatively charged particles, each the size of half of all the matter in our universe if it was in nebula form, whipping around each other in storms that would make the troposphere of Jupiter look mild.
One thing that bugs me in fiction is the near-universal acceptance of the idea of parallel universes. Now, I'm not up on cutting-edge theoretical physics, but I'm pretty sure most fiction gets that wrong. The idea that every choice you make creates a new potential timeline where X happens instead of Y is... wildly egocentric. You're telling me that when I eat a grilled cheese for lunch instead of a Cup-o-Ramen, that decision somehow creates ENOUGH ENERGY to CAUSE A BIG BANG somewhere else 14 billion years ago, so that now there's a parallel universe that's perfectly synchronized with ours at the moment I made that decision? (Talk about a lack of free will for the 14 billion years leading up to my lunch since every single other decision and grain of sand and raindrop has to happen exactly the same as our universe.) Because if that's the case, we urgently need to recalculate the number of calories in a grilled cheese.
No, my understanding is that there are infinite potential futures due to quantum uncertainty. Any given quantum particle might spin this way or that way or go up or down or whatever, and there's no way to know that until it happens. That doesn't mean there is a whole universe for every single possible position and momentum state for every single quantum particle in our universe, and hundreds of millions of goo-gillions of universes are snuffed out as each particle resolves its state for every picosecond tick of the clock in our universe. It's not a place we can go, it's just... mathematically conceptual.
And yeah, there's some great sci-fi out there with mirror universes and whatnot. In fact it's kind of hard to find a lot of sci-fi that doesn't have a "meet ourselves but we're evil" tangent. Still, the idea that there are an infinite number of versions of the characters out there carrying on the struggle always made me feel like nothing they did mattered. Like, "Oh no, the Goa'uld invaded Earth." So? There's a million-billion-googillion Earths where that didn't happen. Then sometimes I would think that American media always has the good-guys win because we only see events from the universe where the good-guys won. Like the producers are filming actual events from different universes and if something bad happens that doesn't sufficiently provoke positive drama then they switch feeds to Universe 03840980384083-b.
I could be, and probably am wrong about how multiverse theory works, but I've never seen an explanation that addresses my Big Bang-generating food choices. The point is, all supernatural stuff in the Grrl-verse is either just an alien - usually an alien with some innate magical ability, or are native terrestrial entities, again with some magical traits.
Taxonomy would be a pain in the ass in a magical world. Consider that if elves are Fey and come originally from the Feywilds, and orcs come from Shadowfell and are descendents of whatever is the Fey equivalent that lives in there, (which may or may not be the case depending on the particulars of a fiction's lore - I know in LOTR both elves and orcs had Fey origins, but Sauron got his hands on a group of elves and gave them evil cooties or something.) But for the sake of argument, let's say that's how it is. Chances are, elves and orcs would never be able to interbreed. Half-elves and half-orcs, sure, but not Elcs or Orves. BUUUUT, in a world with magic, the laws of nature are really just suggestions. Some mad or just slightly lonely wizard is going to make it happen if he really wants it, so what do taxonomic charts look like in that world? Half-elves, Elcs, Half-giant/half-dwarf (don't think too hard about the logistics or the either very easy or almost definitely deadly delivery), Dwagons (half-dragon/half-dwarf, or possible half-dwarf/half-wagon), Koboltyughs (half-kobold/half-otyugh - don't think about how that one came about either), and that one guy who is half-gnome/half-gelatinous cube. A gelatinous gnome. No one knows how that happened.
And don't forget non-player character race mixes, like a Displacer Otyugh. I mean, that one makes sense. An Otyugh and a Displacer Beast meet each other and are like, "Hey, baby, nice tentacles you got there." The hard part would be lining up the mating apparatus. "No, dummy, I'm over here! You haven't even mounted me yet!" "Oh, thank god, I just thought you were super loose." "How dare you!" *fight fight fight/eventual devolvement of fighting into mating/kids*
My point is Taxonomy would be a right mess in a world like that.
Comments
Richard du Maine
Also, what's the story behind the demon general in the background losing their disguise? And is Lorlara reactivating it? Or playing with it...
Andrew Munn
So much discussion about multiple universes and no one asks the important question: Were the School Buses arranged parallel or serial when he jumped them?
akrasia
So, Dave's talking about getting species X pregnant, and a buttload of chances, and I can't help thinking that's not how it works...
eddi_TBH
He is playing his own game. And the moves are never what anybody considered possible.
Ron Jarrell
The universe theory i read is the 10 dimensional one where there are infinite containing every possible variation. Your grilled cheese decision did nothing but identify to a higher observer that you’re in one of infinite he ate grilled cheese universes and not the ramen universes or the went hungry universes or didn’t eat cause you died of sepsis from stepping on a rake collecting leaves. In some of those universes you didn’t pick Grilled cheese because it’s considered holy since jesus appeared on one. The grilled cheese universe can be further identified by whether in one in which you’re lactose intolerant and that was a bad idea. It’s along side countless universes where the starting conditions were slightly different and there are no angels because they’d be torn apart by your vast erring clouds of particles. Possibly some where that cloud forms a sort of brain and yhe choas leads to thought
Bryan Thompson
They are decisions he gets to make, for the simple reason that they can't stop him from making them.
DakkaDakkaWAAGH
The problem that immediately occurs to me is that you have just doubled the energy-cost issues; one for the cost of time travelling and another for universe creation. As the original argument for the reduction in universes was the perceived energy cost, wouldn't this just make it worse?
DakkaDakkaWAAGH
Parallel-universe creation could, however, be as simple as the ridiculous energies required ALREADY BEING THERE but only requiring a trigger event to kick off. We don't know what keyed our own Big Bang, for example, or where the energy for that came from, so why assume that we must be unique in this matter? Whether our 'Universe' is embedded within the cosmic quantum foam or some other handwavium 'Everything' (thank you Taylor Varga), I would suggest that whatever triggers the creation of universes (be they parallel or not) MUST be an extremely cheap energy-event if the concept is to work at all. Sure, the resulting Big Bangs are going to be insanely costly, but if you are already drawing on an infinite energy source, the limitations kind of disappear.
Gary Jordan
Personally, I prefer the multiverses created by Assiti Shards such as the 1632/Ring of Fire-verse, the Alexander Inheritance-verse, The Jurassic-verse, and now the Peterbilt Universe. New universes only happen when time travel alters the past.
Otoger
well a more "realistic" Multiverse theory is one where not each desicion creates one but that there are infinite versions were the Rules of Physics/the Universe are minimally different each time, and not all are really viable but there can be a lot that are really different and some which are not really different
Doug Northcote
Quote: "I know in LOTR both elves and orcs had Fey origins, but Sauron got his hands on a group of elves and gave them evil cooties or something." Morgoth, aka Melkor, who was a God and eventually banished from the Universe. Not Sauron. Sauron was just a shitty lieutenant that still smells of being a shitty werewolf. Name in elvish was something like "That A-hole" vs calling himself "King Awesome" or "Awesome guy"
Jacob Bissey
My understanding of multiverse theory is that the infinite universes *already* exist concurrently, so it isn't so much that making the grilled cheese caused a new big bang to occur to spawn a new universe identical to the current one until you decided to make a grilled cheese sandwich instead of something else, so much as two universes already existed, that were spawned at the same time, and only diverge when you make the grilled cheese in one and Cup-o-Ramen in the other. Because I agree, if new universes were being created every single time then that sounds absurd.
Dave Barrack
No, see, Astra's world has parallel dimensions, not Sydney's. >cough< I guess Astra is from a planet in another of the 17 billion other galaxies out there and they just happen to call it Earth and coincidentally speak English? Look, I think the idea of parallel realities is overplayed, but I still like the idea of crossovers, so... magic?
DougO
So...the crossover with Astra is non-canon?
BJ
The golden rule, those who have the gold make the rules, and Deus has the gold. ALL of the gold.
The Fire Piper
I don't buy the infinate universes thing, nor the infinite singular universe (where there is so much universe, you can have an infinate amount of almost identical earths, because, its infinate...) Infinity is a useful mathmatical concept, but usually is just an excuse for "we dont know"
SantaTheHutt
I am definitely stealing Koboltyughs to use in my D&D campaign.
Philip Brown
but now the important stuff: what is happening in the background??
Stephen Gilberg
I've also seen "speciesist," which, while more cumbersome, is easier to understand. Real-world taxonomy is already a pain in the ass.
JasonAW3
Due to the James Webb Telescope's finding galaxies that appear to be older than the rest of what we can see of the universe...
Anton Schleef
Some of those theories even blame that for the Deja Vu feeling that people get at times. Sort of like how in The Matrix it's an indication that the machines semi-retroactively altered the environment.
Dave Barrack
Someone do a recount of the rings?
JasonAW3
Btw; there's now suspicion that the universe might be as old as 37 billion years old...
Town Crier
Let us just hope that he will be a benign dictator of Earth and surrounding environs. Benign to those of us who haven't been out sucking the money, joy, and power from everyone else, that is.
Town Crier
Well, this bodes well for all of the nerd version. Succubae for everyone!
Town Crier
School bussi?
fox5s
Was that an issue? I assumed that the reader was just 'seeing through the veil' and 'nerds' were having weird hypothetical conversations rather than you having totally forgotten about the veil. :P And I've been in those conversations before. It was totally believable. One could question the coincidence of so many Demons congregating during that exact conversation but it wasn't outside the realm of possibility or believablity.
JonPR
Ah, so he is going for uniting humanity for a xenogenocide campaign. That, or he is surprisingly bad at market evaluation.
Nicholas A Wagner
School Busses? School Busses? He would jump over helicopters!
Ampws
The number of universes may be infinite what with them splitting with every random quantum fluctuation. However I read a neat explanation that nigh identical universes can merge again as randomness makes them identical again. A spread of alternates that are nearly identical become identical, they are basically a collapsed waveform. Heck according to some explanations it happens all the time - you did not really lose your keys - you just put them down somewhere else in another universe. Now you have to find where your alternate put them down.
Czarzhan
With any time there is a mixing with an otyugh, you know shit went down.
Michael Obert
Deus, we demand that you stop it or there is a a strongly worded letter in your future! (This is what I see going through his mind during this rebuke)
Czarzhan
It's also the idea behind Larry Niven's short story "All The Myriad Ways"
Magraal
The 'if every choice spawns a new universe, then nothing truly matters' is basically the villain's motivation in the DCAU's Crisis on Two Earths, which is a great movie by the way.
Vysirez
I have to agree with Deus, he made that decision, then it happened, so clearly he is the one who gets to make that decision. Irrespective if he should be allowed to make that decision, in a literal sense he is.
Thomas Dorner
So that in the background is an example of "white gloves coming off" (and on again) ... ;-) Also about your text, don't forget the most classic example: the Owlbear
Justaguy
The fun thing would be if she was using the "Bring the Thunder" remote by mistake.
