#I do not understand math or science above a very basic level | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chaewonplzbiteme · 1 year

Text

Lazy Evaluation {Kim Minji | JiU x Male Reader}

Tags: two ounces of mommy kink, one bowl of age play, two cups of heavenly chocolate, pinch of humor, lots of fluffy fluff-fluff, a plate of hearty cream pie, a single grain of femdom

TW: Math and computer science jokes, mindless smut

4.9k – Read it on AO3.

A/N: The science may not be correct. Please excuse me. Or maybe it is. Most jokes will fly over your head if you are not into mathematics and computer science. This is not a failure on my part, and I will never take full responsibility.

If it helps: It's part of the joke that you do not understand everything about monads... I'm just continueing the meme...

All ten fingers clawed at your own scalp, trying to soothe the tension between your temples. In a furious jumble they shuffled through the already disheveled hair, not only in a motion to squeeze more blood through the tiny pinch of grey matter that you were sure you had left somewhere, but also to shed with the frustration that had plagued you all week. It was your task to show what you had learned in computer science, explore new frontiers of knowledge, and write a dissertation, at the same time documenting your progress for the lecturer.

“So, a Monad does define two operations, but is not a type itself? How is that supposed to work?”

It was quite perplexing, learning about such abstract and high-level data structures in mathematics. All day you have been attempting your own explanation, and every single time you have produced a different answer. Frustratingly, none of them matched any of the myriad descriptions that could be found, be it from the study book both recommended and written by the professor himself, numerous instructional online sites which most likely copy from each other or even what the latest conversational artificial intelligence could synthesize up for you.

“You still didn’t finish with the abstract?” Your study partner asked in a bright and cheerful voice, as she returned with two hot mugs of mocha latte and set them on the table. Your mood changed instantly with the scent of chocolate that permeated through the room, with a strong note of her own essence. Before you could reach for a mug, she was already next to you and flicking through the study book looking for what she was about to explain. “It is actually quite simple, my dear. Think more abstract, a level of indirection above types. This is why we call them type classes.”

The ease of her words leaned cheerfully against a solid wall of the complicated concoctions that have been woven and tightened in your mind. You could only throw your head back, stretching yourself on the beanbag, hands returning to apply even more pressure on both sides. “Like an interface describing interfaces? Aarrgghh...”

“Interface to classes, if you go for programming terms,” she corrected your inaccuracy with a smirk, knowing your frustration was not going to subside so fast. She had seen the same troubles from fellow students. The wide frame of her glasses was not the only reason you had the impression that she was the more intelligent of the two of you. Her sharp mind complemented her neat appearance very well, neither ceasing to astonish you time after time. “A common error for beginners. My dear, nothing has been proven to be difficult in this field of math. You will be able to understand it once you internalize the basics.”

In practical terms, Minji basically lived here. The dormitories are small and cramped and not made for living, only sleeping. Those who wanted to keep their sanity would spend their time away from home, be it the library, a café or the clubs. She knew her way around your kitchen better than you knew your own desk. You woke up stumbling over her bag, her clothes interleaved in the forest of notes with the data structures and pens and your own all over the ground.

“And next you are going to tell me computer science is just applied mathematics… This is so much to learn,” you voiced out your exasperation. You caught yourself looking at her. Not like this was an issue, since Minji was used to you staring at her. In fact, she loved it when you admired her beautiful face, her fair and radiating skin and smooth cheeks. No spell had to be cast, yet you were possessed by her deep hazel eyes. She took a sip as if there was nothing troubling you, savoring the cocoa aroma and accidentally dipping her nose into the whipped cream. Your eyes were locked on nothing other than the spot dotting her nose as she put down her mug — she did notice you were following the white tip around. The smile she gave was a more effective balsam than your fingers had been. Your gaze remained fixed on her as she shuffled around behind your back, the smell of cocoa giving way to hers.

“Clear your head, my love,” said Minji with a very calm voice, turning your head forward. Her hands replaced yours as her fingers traced circles all around. The sense of clogged arteries started to dissipate at once. “Let Mommy-ji help you relax.”

Your mind followed her fingers around your scalp, feeling the pressure she applied and where it moved to. Your eyes lose the bind to any sense of perception, no track of focus, your brain only processing being grasped between her palms and her digits. The thoughts occupying your head dissolved just as the tension faded. Blood rushed from your head to other parts of your body, among others getting clogged in a certain appendage, building up pressure. You hope it will not be noticed by her, since you wanted to enjoy the moment with her undistracted.

The endearing name for her had been established for a long time already, a logical consequence given the dynamics of both your behavior. While your lazy bum was busy playing video games or otherwise slacking around, Minji was the one who took care of the house and your needs. She did the laundry and cooked for you just like your parents, even spoon-feeding you at times. Not every meal, of course, only some, but you appreciated those the most. One day you accidentally blurted it out and it stuck.

But the image of her captivating face lingered in your eyes, even though she was out of sight. Her sculpt combined an adorable and young face with the mature image of a grown woman. If you didn’t know better, the round shape of her face would have made you believe that she was younger than you. Long and well-groomed wavy black hair was just the icing on top of her enchanting face.

“Not the time to slack off, lazy boy,” she chuckled. Minji was right, this was a subject that needed to be learned and understood. No way around it. You needed to retort, to explain the break in your studies, albeit it happened at her instigation. Not that you would blame her, though.

“B-but mommy, I’m not procrastinating,” you managed to stammer out while you were under the spell of her fingers. “I’m just d-deferring the effort. You know, lazy evaluation.”

What a counter, Minji burst out in laughter. Holding off on work was a viable strategy in certain cases, being efficient by knowing what was needed, if at all, and in what quantity. But of course, not every part of you followed this idea.

“You may be a smart boy, but what you are clearly demonstrating is a stiff amount of premature optimization,” she whispered into your ear, her essence filling your nose completely and stunning you as she traced a hand down your body towards your crotch. “What a horny boy, forming a boner ahead-of-time.”

And she has not even teased you yet – the strong side-effect of her touch. You could not declare yourself to be pure in your function at all anymore. It was obvious every part of your body was thinking about her and her touch. “I-It’s warming up. For you.”

“For mommy? How nice~,” she said with a joyous voice while reaching out for the visible bulge in your pants. Her palm covered the manly mound in a cup, rubbing it, feeling it up. More blood flocked to her touch, its return to regular circulation clogged by its own formed tissue pouch. While it takes a mountain millions of years to rise, your tent was erected in mere minutes at full size.

“Please take a look, mommy,” you said, as she went down on you. “Watch how much your boy has grown.” You were happy with how your body reacted to her touch. The desire for Minji was burning strong, the steam driving your member boiling hot. The beacon of your passion is lit – your cock calls for its caretaker. She slowly removed your pants, watching your tent pole rise even higher as it was not being held back anymore.

Her hand traced the length up and down multiple times before wrapping her fingers around the shaft. “Always so excited to see me~.” It was like your cock throbbed in response, even though it was simply timing with her fingers. She moved up and down very slowly, for you to savor the feeling, moving blood and tissue around.

Minji barely sped up the pumping, instead opting for a regular rhythm at a steady pace. Like clockwork your mind settled into the flow, breathing in at the ebb and bracing yourself for the flow, when her hand reached the tip. Distant grumbling, thundering muttering from your mouth warned of the oncoming outbreak.

“My love, tell me what you are,” she asked, smirking in anticipation of your reply. Her hand went slower now. Thinking about what Minji wanted to hear, there could only be one answer. Not your name, nor that you are her fellow student and attended the same courses. Such returns would not yield an effect. And if your answer had no effect on her, the result might as well be useless. Slower and slower, slower towards the peak, even slower further away. Idle state. Tension.

“Mommy’sh cude liddle cum fountain,” is the reply you give. That is all what you will ever need to be for her.

“Yes, you are, baby boy~,” Minji approved of you. She dragged her fingers upwards in a slow manner, the tight embrace shifting higher and higher. The alternating grooves and creases of her hand slid across your shaft before leaving your cock, before turning around to cup the shaft and press it against her soft cheeks. Time was nigh’, she demanded your produce. “Cum. I want you to scream.”

At her command, the floodgates of release opened. With intense pressure prostrate launched the stream of ejaculate up into the air. It erupted out in a way more akin to a volcano than a fountain, each spurt leaving with a wave that traveled together with a guttural groan along the entire length of your cock. Minji felt every throb of your member against her cheeks, the hardness thumping against her tender face with each explosion.

“So hard and strong,” Minji praised both your cock and the force of your discharge. “Beating so hard for me~,” she added. The ropes of cum coated her forehead, some getting caught by her eyebrows. Her disheveled hair also showed some wet streaks, collateral damage from the powerful blasts. “Too bad I couldn’t taste any of it,” she demanded more, alluding to the uncertainty principle. To observe how far cum could travel, one could not taste it at the same time.

“Mommy, I want to taste you, too,” you said. The worship of each other’s bodies was a mutual thing, neither of you had the intention to freeload the other’s goodwill. What she gave to you, you better return it many times back. Sensual stimulation is a commutative operation, and it would be a shame if it were performed one-sided only. In other words, love making is better when it is perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

You held her high, pulled her up into a kiss, connected your lips, tongues making out. Your fingers fumbled with the buttons on her delicate sheer blouse. You were quick to pull down her inner top and unclasp her bra, too, revealing her well-developed chest. One of you tripped over – or did someone push? – and again you laid on the ground. It was hard to escape gravity when your soul was weighed down by this radiating beauty and her delectable womanly mounds. All things come to those who wait, but there was no rest for the wicked. You took in everything she had to offer, her smell, her taste, the texture of her skin and how her flesh felt.

Like with any other part of her body, she loved her breasts to be worshipped. Her low hums guided your mouth between her mounds, but your tongue dictated the rhythm of her mellow purrs. The sensation of your devotion to her caused a wave of content pleasure to flood through her body, the current of tingles emanated from her brain surged across her chest, causing sparks to fly through her stomach, and swashed against her core to be forked into separate ripples coasting along her legs, before hitting her toes and causing them to curl.

Your hands did not remain idle. Just like your tongue they moved back and forth all over her body, feeling her up just like you are tasting her breasts. Minji reciprocated your attention by pulling in her lower wings and extending them again, her splendid thighs and heavenly shaped calves were roaming your body. You felt her everywhere, she made sure you got everything from her.

She shifted around, taking away your favorite baby-soother in the process, but instead putting a favorite meal of yours in its place – welcome to your dream world. The musk was strong, a mix of Minji’s own odor mixed with the pungent smell of the dripping wet juices it was coated in. The flavor was both sweet and sour, with a trace of the same taste you experienced on her chest and in her kiss. With every lick on her core, she nudged closer to her destined place on your face. With every fraction of an inch that she moved, she was closer to smothering you completely.

The darkness slowly engulfed you, not that you minded being trapped in the dream – between her voluminous thighs – if it was a good way to bring her pleasure. Plowing through the dampness and exploring the cave before you would be the only way out. A deep dive into her hole brought back a tongue covered in copious amounts of juices, which you deposited in your own mouth before swallowing. You rang her doorbell, asking for a free refill, announcing your return, before entering the cave again.

Minji meanwhile rested on low hills and even shallower grooves, but there was a noticeable pole in front of her. It was hard as steel, yet it was bouncy to her touch. She knew despite its shape it had volcanic properties, being capable of shooting jets of hot ejaculate through its main vent, its solid remains forming a fertile seed for future growth. In fact, she had observed it erupt violently before. A reasonable onlooker would have been cautious in their handling of the erect mast, but Minji was on cloud nine. Her hand was reaching for your shaft. It was as if her brain ran on someone else’s computer.

Minji played with your cock despite the assault on her core by your tongue. It wormed its way inside of her vagina, wriggling around before tracing her lower lips up and down, and drawing a ring around her nub before repeating the procedure. The counterattack to reclaim Wall Maria involved her own tongue tracing your cock up and down, before circling over the bulbous head. Not only did the mast of steel twitch slightly, but the attack stumbled.

Her thick lips now engulfed your shaft. She was out to tame the horny creature beneath her. One would be the tortoise in this hunt to the peak, and the other the hare. Together they would race around the vicious cycle of pleasure, getting each other closer, coming head-to-head on the edge and pulling away again, before entering the next cycle. One was going faster; one was going slower. Because the hornier one would choke on its ambitions, eventually even the tortoise would catch up to the hare. Minji devoured the hare’s tail all the way down, choking on it and feeling it throb and wriggle at the back of her throat. The hare did not relent, however, and instead intensified its attack, its head circling around her nub, unafraid of the secretions her cavern produced in defense, but now even more determined to continue. There would be only one way to break out of this recurring loop – they would have to both lose themselves to pleasure simultaneously.

No matter how hard she worked on it, the pole would not let itself be defused. But without air, there can be no fire. Minji would have to drown the volcano’s air vent, cutting it off from its oxygen supply. You pulled on her thighs, groping her butt, pushing her core further into your face as tight as possible. It was hard to tell who was struggling more, whether she was convulsing more under your assault, or your cock was throbbing harder in her mouth. Small gushes from her walls announced her own impending eruption, telling you to brace yourself for what is to come. But you lose control of yourself when the storm hits you, a downpour of juices bringing you the bliss you were looking for by flooding your mouth and nose. The spit covering the hot rod was not enough to extinguish it, so your cum could fill her throat unhindered.

Minji was gagging on your little volcano as it erupted once more, payback for setting off such a dangerous object. You meanwhile were groaning and choking on her juices while getting drenched by her geyser, locked helpless between her strong thighs. Hips were spasming with their orgasms. Sweaty bodies rubbing against each other, both squirting their fluids into one another.

It took a moment for you both to settle down, to catch your breath. Minji just kept laying on top of you, rubbing your still-hard shaft and thighs and butt. You did the same to her while under her, enjoying the feeling of her.

“I hope your balls are not exhausted yet,” she said with a smile, voice slightly hoarse.

Your answer was to dive back in for a second serving. More of her was never enough. A lot of evenings had gone like this already, and yet you both came to each other for more. This was not the first time you had explored each other. And it won’t be the last time. Breath hitting the wet organs kept the heat in check. She gave you a series of hard squeezes trailing from your thighs to your groin, before getting up.

“I’ll be right back.” Minji went to get something from her bag and threw something on the table, something shiny and square and slightly convex, then she picked up a mug. “Come to me now, baby boy,” she said as she took a sip, but she did not swallow. Now it was her turn to pull you into a kiss. Your mouths connected once more, her tongue pushed through your lips, and you both got to taste the chocolate. Both your tongues danced and wrestled each other in the sweet bath, coating one another and cleansing it off again.

Your hands and arms battled with each other too, groping and guiding each other, pulling on clothes and undergarments to finally get rid of them, getting stuck on every nook and curve. The final piece of wear was her glasses, which she elevated into the air without destination before being catapulted towards the table without aim, bumping against one of the mugs. Another opportunity to trip and fall over, although this time it was you who landed on top of her, noses nearly bumping into each other.

“Minji, how can you be so beautiful,” you conjured up a smile on her face. You loved her beyond her appearance of course. The source of your affection for her was simple: Humans truly are most beautiful when they are just smiling and having fun. Minji could turn your mood around in seconds, and today was no different. Those mesmerizing hazel eyes of her could dissolve any stress you had. “Some days I do wonder why you spend so much time with me,” you whispered your thoughts.

“Midnight, close to you,” she said as she went through her own thoughts. Minji did not have to think a lot. It was easy.

“BEcause I love you.”

Minji launched herself high into another kiss, sucking out of your stomach what hundreds of butterflies had swirled up. It was clear that she appreciated you being there for her just as much as you felt empty without her. “I feel good around you,” she added. She was right. Not only did she spend a lot of time with you, but you went out of the way to be with her, to make her happy, to make her time with you worthwhile.

“I love you, too, mommy.”

Hearing and saying the three words lifted a lot off your mind. She embraced you tighter, your lips seeking out each other. The desire for each other burned strong. Moaning reverbed through each other's mouths. “Mommy, I want you so much,” you managed to say. Your cock was still standing proud, rubbing itself on her doorbell, waiting to be allowed inside.

“Take me as yours then, my chemical hype boy.” Her cheek brushed against yours when smiling. “But first tell me: Would you rather treasure me like a cherished pet or milk me like cattle?” Your logic is screaming: Yes.

Noses hovering over each other, heavy breathing brushing on cheeks and lips, eyes staring into eyes, strong thighs pressing into stronger thighs, one pair spread and the other bent.

“The pole train runs on whole grain!” You screamed, like how bungee jumpers or parachutists exclaim when they plunge boots first into hell. Your cock was racing to be inside of her faster than your thoughts. Like with a perfect equation ready to be solved, you substituted the emptiness in her longing core with the feeling of you. A substitution with the force of a mountain, the heat of a volcano. Minji opened her mouth in shock but in silence, the feeling of your penis spearing itself inside overwhelming her. You were sure she wanted to say something, but no voice came out of her.

Her breathing was labored, sudden gasps with each thrust. Her walls were tight, the cavern had to give way to the intrusive pole forcing its way inside. A ripple, this time physical, traveled from her butt cheeks up her body each time your hip crashed into hers, a wave of pressure making its way to the outlet between her other cheeks before finally venting.

Her tits were squeezed between her body and your chest, but that did not stop them from shaking around with the ripple passing through. Every woman was built different, felt different, thought different. But Minji had made it clear to you that she loved to be overwhelmed.

She had her eyelids closed, letting the waves of bliss wash over her and throughout her body. Her little boy could reach far deeper than your tongue ever could. And it was way bigger, stretching her wider. But Minji enjoyed her time with both – after all, each had their merits. A tongue could not just worm itself into unexplored areas, but also move and rub and push unlike a penis. For now, she just enjoyed her walls being parted in rhythm.

But a question still lingered in your mind. Perhaps now you were more receptive to understanding the concept.

“Minji, tell me again, how do monads work?”

Not a very romantic question, and especially not suitable for intercourse, but she was used to your constant babbling, an indication that your head was free and unoccupied – better hope that we are not going down a rabbit hole. Not that you ever stopped making fun of everything. At the same time, you were not the only one capable of making jokes.

“A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what’s the problem?” she answered with a straight face. Your steady rhythm barely interrupted her voice, a strong display of her composure. You understood the words, but the sentence did not make any sense. Well, ok, maybe not even the words. You should admit that you did not understand anything.

“I could tell you a monad joke, but first... I would need to tell you jokes about functors and... applicatives,” she told another, smiling. Is this retribution for your own silly jokes? She was starting to pant between words. “What do you call... a verb that likes to apply... for jobs?” She was giggling. This one did not make any sense.

“Please, no, stop mommy,” you pleaded. She knew how to get you. You tried to muffle her with a kiss, but she managed to break free. “An applicative,” Minji laughed when telling you the answer. It was a pun, a word play, rather than a scientific joke. “I know some more~,” she chuckled.

“Let me come up with something, too.” It took you a moment, but an idea popped into your head. The missing piece to an equation that no one had been able to solve yet. You could just barely hold your laughter in anticipation. Let us start with the abstract: “Hey, mommy, let me ask you, what’s one plus one?”

Minji realized where this was going. This was simple math, albeit with an imaginary component. “Are you serious!? Three?”

“Well, let’s suppose, inside of your pussy. Penis goes in, penis and baby come out. Math does not check out, what’s missing?” Setting up the introduction for this joke with a central question, you tried to nudge an answer out of her. And the hint you gave Minji was to give her the mating press.

Minji growled. “Fucking sex-ed. That’s how biology works… silly boy.” She was not about to give in to the riddle you had posed. But the thrusts would not stop until the punchline had been served.

“Indeed, the female anatomy is something wonderful, creating new life from nothing more than a deftly deep dicking.” If only you were as smart with your studies instead of cracking terrible jokes. While this was not an exact science, the conclusion that making babies was a product made of thin air and the energy induced by the pounding is alluringly plausible, however inherently flawed.

“OMG fucking hurry up,” she shouted, having had enough of your nonsense. Slowly losing her composure, Minji tightened her embrace around you, closed her eyes, bit on her lips, pulling you in closer. She was close, you could hear it in how she alternated between moaning and squealing. It was also difficult for you to uphold the asymptotic behavior as your hammering approached the edge. It was clear that the limit was about to be reached.

“The most important secret sauce to make mommy a real mommy,” you panted. You were not far behind Minji in the race to the finish line, and you wanted to beat her. It only took you a few more thrusts until your hips began to buckle, starting to spasm – but not just yours. One last push would bring you both over the edge. Finally, content with the procedure so far, you proclaim the solution: “My cum!”

Once is happenstance. Twice is sincere lovemaking. Thrice is proving that Minji is going to get knocked up today. None of her attempts today to stop the volcano have borne any fruit. For one more time Mt. Priapus erupted with boiling hot fervor, sending a stream of molten cream blazing its way through the caverns behind mommy’s lavatory, leading into the chamber of secrets. A tide of secretion was launched against the current, it tried in vain to quench the heat. From the ashes of the hot liquid flooding her womb, a young new phoenix shall rise.

“Cum goes into the whole. Equation is complete. The sum of the ingredients is now empty. Q.E.D. Geddit?” Your cheeky joke was rewarded solely with your own laughter, and a pinch on the nose by her. In closing, this was nothing more than a silly mood booster. You stayed on top of a sweaty Minji, still embracing her tightly while she kept panting, smiling, showing her cheeks.

“What an astoundingly terrible scientific conclusion...” Minji did not know whether to groan or to laugh. Droplets of sweat were running down her face, body sticking to the floor, but she was visibly satisfied with what you had laid on the table. This is a contradiction with her reaction to your elaborate joke. “I think we should invite Yoo over for a peer review,” she suggested suggestively.

You tried to be respectful of her offer, but you were not ready yet. “I-I have barely anything written yet—” Another pinch on your nose cut you off. “I was talking about something else, innocent little—”

A sudden realization hit her. Did she forget something on the stove? Was Minji hatching a devious plan for your future endeavors? Were you too hasty? Would she be open to multiple inheritance with Yoo? The chocolate was getting cold. Glittering on the table. No, something was different this time. She put on a vicious smile that made you feel uneasy.

“Horny boy, when did I give you permission to not use protection?”

Given her question, the answer may be obvious. But we both know that this is an exercise left for the reader.

#dreamcatcher smut #jiu smut #male reader #mommy k!nk #dreamcatcher jiu smut #vanilla smut #fluff smut #dreamcatcher fluff #jiu fluff #dreamcatcher jiu fluff #kpop gg smut #kpop smut #kpop fanfic #kpop fluff

316 notes · View notes

capybaraonabicycle · 11 months

Note

Hi, i'm here with my blank page!

So it's not entirely blank, it's whole spread and i already did something on the left side (it's a movie ticket from when i went to see Twice Upon A Time in theater, with some packaging taped on top because i've noticed that the writing started rubbing off over the years, and the background is the inbetween bits from some stickers for some visual interest, because as a junkjournaller i don't throw anything away lol)

The prompt on top says "if a Time Lord is a sum of their memories, write down the equation" And there is this fun grid pattern with some numbers in the corner and another number in the other corner (hi Twelve). I feels like it wants something maths-related, but i'm hopeless in maths. I know that you like maths. Maybe you can help me, like with a smart math trick, and/or something related to Twelve, maybe a quote that might be fitting or just a nudge in a certain direction. It doesn't have to be an equation as the prompt says, but the main themes i'd like to reflect are memory, maths (science as poetry perhaps?) and Twelve's story/character to tie in with the ticket.

Any thoughts? No pressure to come up with anything big or deep tho, even just a hint might be helpful to figure it out

Firstly, thank you so much again for giving me this chance to talk about maths ❤ Also, I feel so honoured I get to contribute and spark ideas (hopefully?) for your beautiful, beautiful art project!!

Also, very sorry, but this will be very maths heavy, obviously. I'll try to put many pictures so you don't really have to understand anything; you can just go with the aesthetics.

That said, if you really do want to understand something, I will probably not put enough info here to do so. So, just ask, I can go in small steps and explain it from the start. Like, I love doing that. My mum regularily has to indulge me and let me explain higher mathematics until she (kinda) gets it.

But, I mean, most of these things I'm about to mention, you learn about after at least two semesters of intensive mathematics studies at uni, so...they're not that easy to understand.

Also, I will assume, that you only know high school maths, I hope that is alright? I don't actually know your level, please forgive me if you feel like I am treating you like a 5 yo. (I will basically explain this like I would for my family).

I'm gonna put this under the cut again :)

Sum Formula by Gauss

This is probably the simplest bit of maths that I am going to mention, so let's put it first.

'A timelord is a sum of their memories' obviously lets you think that you'll have to include a sum, somewhere. In mathematics, we normally use the greek letter Σ (capital sigma) to show that we are doing summation. All the things you want to sum are put after the letter and the start and finish are marked on top. Then

would be the sum of all (natural) numers 1 to n. If n=4, the above would read 1+2+3+4, f.ex.

Here, we want to sum over memories. So, obviously, we could find some sort of symbol or artistic interpretation of 'memory' and put it behind the sum, where the k is.

Or, what I would propose, we concentrate the 'memory' into the 'name' or rather number of the different regenerations. Because then, if the memories of the timelord 12 are the timelords Doctor 1 to 11, which would give us the above sum with n=11:

Here, I am just pretending, 'Timelord' is a function on natural numbers, defined by the sum on the right.

(Sidenote: A function is like a rule that takes some input and gives you an output, f(x)=x-1, for example would be a commonly known one or f(x)=x^2, or f(x)=sin(x). We often see them called f or g or something in school and make them work with numbers but technically they can work on any set and have any name and do anything. Quite cool :) )

The proper definition of the function would have to come first and could look something like this:

Which just means Timelord is a function that takes a natural number and gives you a result in the Universe. Which does not mean much mathematically, except for that you can plug only natural numbers into the function and get an element from the unknown set 'Universe'. Actually, the result would be another natural number, of course.

Now, there is a well-known formula for this specific sum, namely

that is all natural numbers 1 to n summed together gives n times n+1 divided by two. So, 1+2+3=3*4/2=6 for example. So you could definitely include that with like a little extra equation.

Also, you could obviously change this whole thing up a bit, because for now, we have not included the war doctor at all. Or the fugitive Doctor. Or any other forgotten Doctor or spin-off Doctor or or or - although admittedly, the Doctor IS missing those memories, so...?

But, there is one more neat thing with this formula, and that is that there exists a nice geometric visualisation:

So, here the idea is, that we want to add the numbers 1 to n and those are the green squares from top to bottom. See? there is one in the first row, then two in the second and so on and n in the bottom row.

And all together, the green squares are exactly half of the number of the squares in the right rectangle, which are n times (n+1) many.

Or, to see it another way: you could always add up two of the rows to get a full row of green squares. The top row with the last but one row and the second and third row. And then you always either have n+1/2 full rows (, i.e. n*(n+1)/2, like here) or n/2 full rows and one half row ((n/2)*n+n/2=(n/2)*(n+1)).

So, I think there are some themes and images here you could work with :)

Affine Transformations

Okay, so, this one is my favourite because of the WORDS :D (Also because I am taking discrete geometry right now and affine transformations are important there.)

So, first, let's have a little look at LINEAR transformations. Slightly simplified, those are functions between vectorspaces that fulfill certain properties.

What is a vectorspace? Some mathematical thing (Sidenote: also a very nice word, vectorSPACE :) ) where vectors live in. Vectors for our purposes look like numbers pressed between brackets, so for example:

would be three vectors. All from different vectorspaces because they have different lengths or as we like to say: DIMENSIONS :)

Vectors can also lie sideways like v=(1 , 2, 0, -3), but I am not a fan of that. And technically the difference is not big and unimportant for our purposes.

Okay, now the vectorspace we are interested in is called R^n, which is vectors of length n. So in the above picture, v is in R^2, w in R^4 and u is 'the origin' of R^3.

Then a linear transformation is a function from R^n to itself (it could go to another vectorspace, too but let's not overcomplicate that) which we write as:

And the linear transformation fulfills the rules:

(1) means, that if I look at the output of a function of the sum of two vectors, I get the same as if I take the sum of the output of both vectors on their own. So, L(3)=L(1)+L(2), for example.

(2) means if I look at the output of the function on the multiple of a vector, then that gives the multiple of the output of the function on the vector. So, L(2)=2*L(1), for example.

If the function fulfills this, we call it linear.

We often write linear functions as MATRICES. So, L could look like this:

which we often write more generically as

And then applying this function to a vector is a matrix-vector-multiplication, which again works with sums :D

Okay- this last bit is probably to much, sorry for that. The takeaway: We 'multiply' matrices and vectors with specific rules and then that fulfills rules (1) and (2) and gives us a LINEAR transformation.

If the matrix is INVERTIBLE - don't worry about what that implies - then we call the linear function BIJECTIVE.

Now, what is an affine transformation? It is a linear transformation with a fixed vector added and looks like this:

Look familiar? Yes, it's exactly the same as before, just with the vector w added! This actually comes from a linear transformation made simpler, where the linear transformation looks like this:

If you were to calculate this you would see that Lv with the little tilde thing really resulted in the thing in the brackets. Point is, if we forget the 1s, we get the affine transformation from before but like this we have one linear transformation again.

And now I am coming back to Doctor Who:

Affine transformations describe rotations, translations, scaling and like slight bending of the space.

And if the underlying linear trafo (gonna start using our neat little shortening from uni) is bijective, INVERTIBLE, you can retract it to where you started from.

And that sounds like memory? Like regeneration? We could assume L is an invertible transformation - regeneration or ourselves becoming different people throughout our lives? - so we could technically go back to who we were or that is still part of us and we can follow it back to the start, aslong as we retain the memory. BUT there is the affine part, too, that little vector w added. What if that was time? The part of the transformation that makes the trafo not linear anymore (at least unless we go to a higher plane of existence in R^(n+1)). What if that vector somehow prevented us from actually going back?

(That is not how it works in maths, I don't think, you could just subtract it, but let's imagine we can't)

Wouldn't that be some beautiful metaphor of changing and remembering and becoming something new? While moving through space and time? (You could technically also split that vector up into a space and a time vector if you liked :) )

Maybe you can do something with that?

Lie Geometry

My favourite part, because Geometry, but now we are entering the part of maths where I have to look stuff up as well. So, I'll try to keep it short and just give you some concepts and images.

Just, let me say that I love this because

Rule 1: The Doctor lies

This is all about spheres in ORIENTED CONTACT

Circles are 1-dim spheres, so CIRCULAR GALLIFREYAN?

Also they look funny, a little like hedgehogs:

So, ask me if you really want to know why but I'm not going to explain it here and I would have to look that up, too, but apparently we can represent 'normal' spheres (Möbius spheres to be precise) by their center c and radius r as the vectors

Don't worry about why the brackets suddenly are sharp, there is a meaning but it's not too important right now. It's still a vector. Then, c is a vector, too - giving us the n-dimensional point of the circles center - so this actually has more than 3 entries. (c,c) is the standard scalar product, just imagine this as the length of the vector c or how far away from the origin we are.

Takeaway here: Spheres are defined by their center and radius. Now that doesn't sound so bad, does it?

Now you may have noticed the radius r only appears as r^2. Lie spheres have an ORIENTATION however, that means they can have negative radius. Hence, we have to add an extra info (how long is our radius and does it go inward or outward?) as another coordinate:

If r>0 we will draw the arrows in the first picture outward, otherwise inward. Or the other way round. Honestly, that's just convention, it doesn't really matter. This is now a lie-sphere. They make up the points in the Lie quadric, defined by the Lie-scalar product. So they are all the points y fulfilling:

So we want that weird angly thing (Lie scalar product) on the left that translates to that rather long sum (yes, you could write this as a sum again, too) to sum up to 0.

This is all very difficult and confusing, I know. But pretty formulas?

Anyway, the thing called 'oriented contact' works with that angly thing, too. It means that two spheres meet tangentially - in exactly one point - and they meet such that their arrows point in the same direction at the contact point:

Like this, those are in oriented contact! (Please ignore my inability to draw circles)

The mathematical condition for that is:

Okay, what was all that? So, first the definition for the lie scalar product works slightly differently for two different vectors, but it fits together with the version we saw earlier.

And then I did some math tricks (or rather my professor did). It all just says in the end: For oriented contact, we need that the distance between centers is the same as the difference between radii.

And the y, y' are defined as:

Idk. I am not expecting you to get super into Lie geometry and its theory now. Rather that you might want to draw some circles with arrows?

What is also interesting is that these circles are often seen as gears. Because the radius orientation can represent a wheel that can only turn one way and then the oriented contact means if the other wheel touches on the outside it has to turn the other way and if it touches from the inside they will turn the same direction.

This also has a relevance to the problem of Appollonius if you want to namedrop, but I won't go into that now.

Markov-Chains

You asked for quotes as well (so sorry, I'm not going to explain what Markov Chains actually are, just know: Stochastics) and I really liked this quote characterising Markov Chains in 'normal' language:

In relation to the present the future is independent of the past.

Or something along those lines. I unfortunately don't actually remember the exact quote. But the above was the spirit.

Other symbols

Imo it is always a good idea to randomly write 'Let Ɛ>0.' somewhere or put little arrows like ⇔ or ⇒ wherever. Or put the little lightning bolt contradiction thingy:

(funfact, my ao3 name is 'hvis-og-bare-hvis' because that means 'if-and-only-if' translated, a phrase we use SO MUCH in maths and that is often abbreviated to 'iff' or written as ⇔)

Conclusion

I know this is all very MATHS now and also I didn't really explain anything properly. Except for the first point maybe. Feel free to ask any question about any topic, I would love to elaborate. I just can't promise it won't take weeks again to answer.

But I had a blast and I feel so honoured I get to weigh in on your art book! Thank you so much!! I hope I could help you a little!

#marvellouspinecone #okay gonna post this now without reading it again #so I might come back to this tomorrow to correct stuff 😂#or add something #but maybe it doesn't have to be perfectly accurate #hope you like it anyway :)

5 notes · View notes

workforcesolution · 8 hours

Text

Modern Data Scientist: Technical and Soft Skills You Need to be successful

What skills are required to be a Data Scientist? OR Is strong mathematics background required to pursue a career as a data scientist? We at Rang Technologies see a lot of questions like this. It's hard when you're trying to break into the field to know exactly how much math & stats you need. Primarily, it depends on how a company is defining "data scientist." Some companies say "data scientist" but really mean "data engineer", which is much more focused on the software engineering side of things and strong with coding production systems, data storage and extraction, cluster management etc. The latter is less Math/Stats and more CS focused. Secondly it depends on how a company is dividing responsibilities. Some look for people who are either strong in programming or strong in mathematics/statistics, and then combine them in a team. Others look for "fully fledged" data scientists who have the deep insight in different models and when to apply which algorithms and can do all the implementation of the data. How the role you're looking at fits into these descriptions will affect how much math/stats you need to demonstrate. Given the variance, the trick is to carefully dissect the job posting and dig into the background of the current team. LinkedIn is a great place to do this. You can generally figure out the different roles (job titles) as well as see the skills/background people in these roles have. That said, there are a few mainstays that, irrespective of role, you should be demonstrating on your resume. Either through your academic courses/coursework, online courses you've taken, or project work you've completed (including write-ups that demonstrate your understanding). Specifically:

Linear algebra (and ideally basic multivariate calculus)

Regression ... linear regression and the things that violate the assumptions of linear models (e.g., autocorrelation in time series data, non-independent observations)

Probability theory ... especially Bayes' Law and Central Limit Theorem

Numerical analysis (e.g., time series analysis and forecasting)

Core machine learning methods (clustering, decision trees, k-NN)

How to take action now?

Compare this list of mainstays versus your resume. Which do you cover off? Which are you missing? Of those, which have you used or are proficient with? Time to make space to mention them - and if it is via project work, think about linking to a more detailed write-up (for example on GitHub) so you can highlight a deeper level of understanding. This is especially important for non-Math/Stats candidates, as the burden of proof is higher! If you've covered more than the above, great! Make sure the most relevant courses shine through and get you noticed. Technical Skills: Analytics Education - Data scientists are highly educated - 88% have at least a Master's degree and 46% have PhDs - and while there are notable exceptions, a very strong educational background is usually required to develop the depth of knowledge necessary to be a data scientist. Their most common fields of study are Mathematics and Statistics (32%), followed by Computer Science (19%) and Engineering (16%). SAS and/or R - In-depth knowledge of at least one of these analytical tools, for data science R is generally preferred. Skills Required are as below: Technical Skills: Computer Science Python Coding: Python is the most common coding language I typically see required in data science roles, along with Java, Perl, or C/C++. Hadoop Platform: Although this isn't always a requirement, it is heavily preferred in many cases. Having experience with Hive or Pig is also a strong selling point. Familiarity with cloud tools such as Amazon S3 can also be beneficial. SQL Database/Coding: Even though NoSQL and Hadoop have become a large component of data science, it is still expected that a candidate will be able to write and execute complex queries in SQL. Unstructured data: It is critical that a data scientist be able to work with unstructured data, whether it is from social media, video feeds or audio. About Rang Technologies: Headquartered in New Jersey, Rang Technologies has dedicated over a decade delivering innovative solutions and best talent to help businesses get the most out of the latest technologies in their digital transformation journey. Read More...

#data science #hr consultancy #workforce #talent acquisition #workforcesolutions

0 notes

bethestaryouareradio · 1 year

Text

Low Literacy and Voting

MIRACLE MOMENT®

Thanks for reading StarStyle® Empowerment ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

“With our thoughts, we make the world.” ~ Buddha

A MESSAGE FROM FOUNDER/EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CYNTHIA BRIAN

Halloween is almost over and we hope it was fun, safe, and spooky for all the kiddos! I love seeing all the costumes and the houses decorated for this very favorite holiday.

Now it’s time to get down to the importance of literacy and your vote.

According to U.S. Code §10508, any voter who requires assistance to vote because of blindness, disability, or inability to read or write may be assisted by a person of the voter’s choice, other than the voter’s employer or agent of that employer or officer or agent of the voter’s union. Yet with redistricting and the numerous new State laws targeting people of color and other minorities, voting for people who struggle to read is challenging. According to ProLiteracy, more than 35 million adults in the United States cannot read, write, or do basic math above a third-grade level. An estimated 63 million adults only read between a sixth and with grade level. Children of those parents have a 72% chance of being at the lowest reading levels themselves. Parents are our first teachers.

Understanding a ballot is difficult when one is a proficient reader as many of the statements are confusing. When a person has low or no literacy skills, knowledgeable voting is almost impossible. Some states have required those who need help to sign an affidavit explaining why they need assistance. Other states do not allow voters to bring sample ballots to the polls and some states limit the number of voters a volunteer may assist. Even when federal courts strike down these restrictions, states create more obstacles.

Voter suppression is real, yet voting is a right of all Americans. The cost of illiteracy to American taxpayers has climbed to $250 billion a year. When someone can’t read, they are excluded from innumerable activities that allow them to function as a human or to reach a level of success. Many are forced to live in poverty. Our prisons are filled with illiterate inmates.

The midterm elections are upon us. Carefully read the sample ballots and if you know someone who has difficulty reading, read the information to them.

Although our young children cannot vote, READ to them daily. Reading to kids early on can help to boost literacy rates over the long term. An estimated 77% of children who are read to are more likely to read or attempt to read on their own, versus 57% of kids who don't have regular story time at home. Growing up in a literacy-rich environment will one day enable them to be voters who understand what’s on the ballot.

In California, one proposition on the ballot that is not contested is Proposition 28 which will provide the arts to our students. As a mom, actor, author, artist, and coach, I’m asking you to Vote YES on California Proposition 28 on the November 8 ballot. If passed, Proposition 28 will funnel nearly $1 billion annually in new funding to arts and music education in our PreK-12 public schools. All without raising taxes!

A well-rounded education might start with language and math, science and history. But it is not complete without the arts, and on that score, too many California schoolchildren are getting shortchanged.

When the state budgets get tight, arts and music programs are often the first to go. As a result, barely 1 in 5 California elementary schools have full-time art and music program.

Children deserve an opportunity to discover and develop their creative talents. Plus, research shows that students in art classes tend to do better in other subjects and are less likely to miss school. Arts education also correlates to better mental and physical well-being.

For the adults reading this newsletter, remember your vote matters. The political environment has been especially hostile, negative, and violent this season. Study the reference guide to familiarize yourself with the ballot. Vote for the people, policies, and programs that will create a better environment for our nation, our states, and our communities, as well as for you.

READ and VOTE!

Have a SAFE and Happy Halloween!

With gratitude,

Cynthia Brian

Founder/Executive Director

Be the Star You Are!®

PO Box 376

Moraga, California 94556

[email protected]

https://www.BetheStarYouAre.org

http://www.BTSYA.org

DONATE: https://www.paypal.com/fundraiser/charity/1504

Cynthia on Points of Light Inspiration honor Roll: https://www.pointsoflight.org/inspiration-honor-roll/2022-2/

INSPIRE KINDNESS

by Karen Kitchel

This election season can create stress and division, but it also presents an opportunity to inspire kindness with our words and actions.

The Inspire Kindness organization captures many ideas to make the world a kinder place. They offer some good tips to inspire kindness in conversations.

Be kind today, tomorrow, and always!

Karen Kitchel who penned two chapters in the book, Be the Star You Are! Millennials to Boomers Celebrating Gifts of Positive Voices in a Changing Digital World, is the Kindness Coordinator volunteer with BTSYA. She serves meals to the homeless and is a volunteer teacher, writer, job coach, and mentor. www.scatteringkindness.com

#low literacy #voting #bekind #bethestaryouare #cynthiaBrian.

0 notes

theanimeview · 3 years

Text

My Nitpick Issue with Sherlock in Moriarty the Patriot

By: Peggy Sue Wood | @pswediting

It may surprise some of you to know that I have degrees in book reading and writing. While earning those degrees I studied one specific time period more than the others--that being British Literature from late-17th/18th century through the early 20th century. This is to say that it is a time period I know a little more about than you might think. And early 1900s is probably my favorite period out of that timeline, particularly England under Victoria’s rule.

And, perhaps, because of this strange obsession I have with the period, I presently have a small bone to pick over Moriarty the Patriot.

It’s not the minor inaccuracies of the clothes, nor the adaptation of character designs. It’s not even the adjustment to social tendencies depicted that are more Japanese than British-English of any period thus far either--because those kinds of things happen frequently in adaptations. And it's not Moriarty or his backstory too! Because, again, this is an adaptation, and liberties will be taken to fit the new story (besides, even in the original works by Doyle the man’s backstory was inconsistent).

My issue is with the character of Sherlock and his supposed “deductions.” Well, maybe more accurately it's with the writing of Sherlock.

You see, Sherlock is almost always introduced the same way in an adaptation. He makes a judgment about someone (usually about Watson or the Watson stand-in) and then proves it using his observational skills. This introduction is important because it clarifies that the world of the characters is one based on where common sense and science not only work but make sense. His deductions are logical and based on some semblance of rationality. Here is an excerpt from the original novel:

“I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, `Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.'

How does this prove we are in a world where common sense and logic works? Well, because he didn’t pull any of these deductions from thin air. He just used his eyes and common knowledge to make a quick judgment.

In the example above, everything that Sherlock assumes is true and based on reasonable assumptions about the time period and about what he can observe of the person before him.

The tan of Watson’s skin is something he notes because London is usually dark and wet around this season, so you’re unlikely to get a tan. The way the man walks and stands is also a thing he can observe, and fresh military men walk very differently from the average citizen or gentleman. These two observations, coupled with noticeable injury and limp could lead one to think that maybe he has just come back from the current war (the First Anglo-Afghan War). Of course, maybe he wasn’t injured in the war at all--maybe something else happened; however, you can make a pretty good guess that an abled bodied soldier would not be home and looking for a room in the middle of war-times if something hadn’t happened to him on the battlefield.

My point is that all of Sherlock’s deductions come from observing details, paying attention to the basics of the world (such as the ongoing war or understanding rigor mortis), and using your senses. Sure, there may be a few things the average person doesn’t know that Sherlock does, but that’s because Sherlock has studied different things and to a more serious degree. The level of understanding is different, but not impossible to achieve in one’s own time or effort. And, as another note, Sherlock is not perfectly observant all of the time. There are plenty of examples of him needing to take breaks, of him closing his eyes to block out distractions so he can better focus on what someone is saying, and of him smoking to zone out for a bit so that he can come back to a problem with fresh eyes at a later time.

It’s absolutely vital to Sherlock’s character, and the original story, that all of the deductions are based on the “possible,” which is why the introduction of Sherlock in Episode 6 of this adaptation immediately irritated me. Here is the scene:

Side note: I’m sorry it’s shown as a poorly made gif--I literally could not find a copy of the clip with English subtitles on YouTube so I could not include it as a video. If you want to look at it in the episode itself, it starts at about the 13:00 minute mark. EPISODE LINK)

Here is what bothers me so much. Why would a mathematician be checking to see if the staircase on a ship fits the golden ratio? More importantly, why would that in any way matter to Moriarty as a character? Based on what we’ve seen so far of this character, and we’ve had 6 and 1/2 episodes to define him so far, none of Sherlock’s statement makes sense here.

Like, at all. (And I know that this also happens in the manga--doesn’t make sense there either.)

You know what would make sense though? For the time period and the character development we’ve seen of Moriarty thus far? A pause to consider-- and maybe even compare--staircases on the ship between the main steps for passengers and the steps for commoners or staff.

Why would that make sense? Oh, thank you so much for asking. Time to get real nerdy here for a minute:

Class issues were a serious problem in Victorian England (as they are now, though in a different way). These issues were not necessarily the same as depicted in the show but it was still consistently present throughout the society as a whole. (A good, short read on the subject can be found here for those of you interested: Social Life in Victorian England.)

One way that this issue came out was in the very architecture of homes. In Victorian England, nobleman homes and estates were built with main staircases, where the residents and guests walked, and servent staircases, where the staff and other temporary employees walked. The difference in these stairs was huge, as the servant staircases were basically death traps.

In the late 1800s, a mathematician (and architect) named Peter Nickolson figured out the exact measurements that would generally ensure a comfortable and easy walk upstairs:

BTW: Here is a great video on the subject and how they were death traps: Staircases in Victorian England

However, Nickolson’s math and designs were not used regularly in the design of houses for years to come.

By the setting of the story, and given Moriarty’s interest in maths, his understanding of class issues, and beyond--this kind of knowledge would make far more sense than searching for the golden ratio in a man-made set of stairs.

Moreover, the golden ratio is generally interesting to mathematicians (to my understanding) because it can be seen in nature frequently. It is a pattern found everywhere, from the way that petals grow on flowers, to how seashells form, to freaking hurricane formations! So why on Earth would Moriarty be interested in an architect's choice to use such a ration when planning a staircase?

He wouldn’t, I believe. Nor would Sherlock generally be able to make that assumption based on his time gazing at the staircase, distance from said staircase, nor angle.

So what can he deduce, if not that? Well, he may be able to deduce that Moriarty is a nobleman based on his attire. He may also be able to deduce that the man is a student based on age, as in an earlier episode we were told he’s quite young to be teaching in university and appears close in age to his students. Maybe he’s a student of architecture? But, if he’s a nobleman--as we suspect he is based on his attire--then it's unlikely he works a labor-intensive job or one close to it. So, he must be in academia for academic reasons such as mathematics. Physics during that time, as an academic subject, focused more on lighting, heat, electricity, magnetism, and such. And, Sherlock notes that Moriarty is specifically looking at the stairs, not the lights of the ship.

So, BAM! I’ve deduced Moriarty is a young nobleman who is likely a student of mathematics. Perhaps he’s recently had a lesson on staircases or another algebraic concept that’s caused him to pause with momentary interest.

It makes a heck of a lot more sense than finding a “golden ratio” in a man-planned and man-made staircase... don’t you think? And, maybe, we can even deduce that rather than a student he’s a professor who has just thought up an interesting lesson--though that would be a BIG jump from the data we’ve been provided here.

Deductions that come from major leaps in logic make it seem like Sherlock is doing magic... and he is--because it is magical that people find it impressive or believable. It’s not. And I would argue that the original character would find it insulting based on his comments to Watson regarding being compared to other fictional detectives.

Pay in mind, I have this feeling about several adaptations, so my judgment on Moriarty the Patriot isn’t technically exclusive. It just hit me so hard in my first viewing that I felt I needed to share because generally, this issue of deductions becoming magic rather than stemming from logic doesn’t happen in the first two minutes of meeting Sherlock Holmes.

So... yeah. Thanks for coming to my absurd history/lit lesson through Moriarty the Patriot. I appreciate you sticking with me to the end and hope it was enjoyable.

You can watch the series on Funimation.com right now at: https://www.funimation.com/shows/moriarty-the-patriot

Overall, it’s a pretty good series; although there was a lot more child-murder than I expected...

#Moriarty the Patriot #Yuukoku no Moriarty #funimation #analysis #character analysis #character #sherlock holmes #james moriarty

44 notes · View notes

revvnant · 2 years

Text

MICHAEL & WILLIAM: THE COMPLEXITIES OF FAMILIAL ABUSE.

basic presumptions: michael is the eldest sibling and the older brother, he is responsible for the bite of ‘83, his mother died before evan, and elizabeth died much later. william is not innocent, he is not well-intentioned, and michael was not aware of his crimes before being scooped.

i’m really truly thinking about william pulling an ‘i don’t have TIME to run the house, i have to work so we don’t all starve!’ ( which seems pretty prevalent in the fandom, like, GOOD ) and leaving michael to take care of most of it as the oldest child. like michael’s list of chores was unending - he took his younger siblings to and from school, he made sure they ate breakfast, that they had their homework done, he dropped them off and picked them up, he made them dinner, he told them to clean their rooms, he did their laundry, he mowed the lawn, he did the dishes – the only things he didn’t do were fix things around the house ( because william took pride in being so good with his hands ) and buy them clothes and school supplies. but there were many, many nights when dinner was frozen food or a pizza because he was just too tired to cook because he also had to do his homework and get ready for school.

his teachers marked him as ‘a remarkably smart kid, but just… with problems’. they didn’t know what was going on at home, but they didn’t need to to notice that something was wrong. getting involved, however, was beyond their purview. they mostly dealt with him starting fights with other students or not paying attention during class, and considered it a shame, because sometimes his papers were just fantastic, and he excelled in math and science and even seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself from time to time. one teacher did ask if he needed ‘help with anything’, to which he responded that he didn’t, because if word got back to william it would have been a huge mess ( ‘you’re exaggerating, you’re misrepresenting me because you feel like i’m not around enough, do you want them to involve child services and get your brother and sister taken away?’ ).

and he got in trouble. like, a lot a lot. he was punching kids and shoving them in lockers and pushing them down the stairs. he was cursing people out in the hall and snapping at teachers during class. he spent a lot of time in the office, which also got him shit, because it pulled william away from work. more than once, henry was sent in his stead ( again, i do not think michael and henry had a good relationship, but more on that some other time ). michael tried to abuse this to spend more time at freddy’s and away from his peers and the overstimulation of school, but william caught on and put a stop to it. ( ‘trust me, with grades like yours, you’ll be spending a lot of time waiting tables and ringing people up in your future.’ )

i think that he probably tried to shield his brother and sister from it at first, but ended up tanking so much damage that he started blaming them for any of it happening in the first place. he got tired of being their caretaker, and because he couldn’t lash out at william, he turned his anger on them instead. he tormented his brother pretty relentlessly, both in an attempt to vent and to understand what was going on with william when he did the same to michael, albeit usually in subtler, different ways, and he ruined his relationship with him and went from support to bully very quickly. he only stopped with elizabeth after the fredbear incident, because he was terrified of getting her killed in the same way.

essentially the above but delved into more on a psychological level, he learned at home to yell and argue; he didn't ‘just start doing that no matter’ what his parents said. both his mother and father pegged him as a ‘wild child’; he ran too much, he broke so many things in the house ( like william isn't knocking furniture over and throwing shit ). they treated michael like a problem and an outlier, and so he behaved like a problem and an outlier. if they didn’t take care of him at home, if they constantly criticized him, and if the only thing he seemed to be 'good for' was taking care of his siblings, he was inevitably going to grow to resent that. he's resented the fact that william just ignored evan but went after him. it's not evan's fault, of course. michael was not justified in bullying him. but this is the kind of environment their parents crafted, and mike couldn’t do anything to his mother and father -- he was reliant on them, he had no power over them. it is not unusual, in unstable or abusive households, for siblings to rip into each other.

he stopped spending as much time with his friends after the bite ( both of his own volition and because they didn’t want to ‘hang out with a murderer’ ) which had been a means of escaping the house, and basically dedicated himself to beth and the franchise full-time. he fought with william less, and was low on energy overall. after elizabeth ‘went missing’, he essentially gave up on struggling altogether, leaving him in the state we find him in in sister location: basically willing to do anything his father asked of him, no matter the red flags or potential harm to himself.

to turn our attention to michael and william specifically, though: there is a dichotomy of michael knowing william was abusive even in the moment, and of michael looking up to him and feeling important because of him. it's not quite that he put william on a pedestal; he couldn't with what was going on at home, he knew william was cracked at least on a very surface level. but also, he was a child, and not emotionally developed enough to take the next step to, ‘i see the bad behavior, this is not a man worth admiring at all.’ he wasn't stupid, he knew he was being hurt, he knew he was having parental responsibilities pushed off on him; but he also had a lot of the same interests, and wanted to ‘catch up to’ and impress william when it came to engineering.

and they very much touch on that ‘hero’-villain dynamic of ‘i wouldn’t be me without you, you give me a purpose’, with the added layer of a broken familial relationship. michael chases william for thirty years, out of guilt for the murders, and because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself -- his life and unlife especially revolve around william and his actions. mike being the manager in pizzeria simulator? hitting that horrible contradictory sweet spot of ‘i hate you, therefore i have to be you but better’ that some abused children fall into with their parents. he is trying to beat him at his own game, but the only way to win is to not play at all. however, mike really has no alternative. even if he could ‘just walk away’ ( he can’t, he is a rotting corpse ), he has no incentive to do so. maybe he would be physically distanced from the bullshit, but he would be alone, rotting, stewing, thinking himself into a frenzy. at least if he's still chasing william down. he's taking action, and isn't that better than being isolated and doing nothing? yes it is, abstractly, regarding his mental health and the prescribed steps to deal with it, the ‘better’ choice to up and leave, but it isn't feasible. because he would be jumping with nowhere to fall and no one to catch him. at least there is something in the burning building with him, so why risk the window knowing there's only a void outside.

and his feelings on william are not black and white; it can’t be summarized as ‘he hates him because he was abused’. even if it's futile and self-destructive, it’s hard not to sympathize with michael's conflicted feelings, and how he holds out some hope that there may be a turnaround -- that william will, out of some sort of affection for him, either apologize or at least lie down and die. everyone wants approval especially from their parents. and since there was nothing to fill that specific void and no one to step in to do so, it was entirely up to michael to drop the relationship of his own accord. and that he couldn't was not a moral failure. his pipe dream of william waking up and valuing him and acknowledging what he'd done as wrong is... normal. and he didn't let it stop him from blowing up the fright, but simultaneously he had to give up that dream to honor children who were already dead, in hopes that it would achieve some sort of karmic reconciliation. and even though running to your abuser and a known child murderer is not like a wise or moral thing to do, we can also acknowledge that michael was parting with something important to him, and was placing his desires ( childish as they may have been, but also deep and genuine ) as secondary to people who would never be around to acknowledge what he was doing, because they were dead. and he's ashamed to acknowledge it for what it was: a sacrifice. he's ashamed of his own desire for parental support and approval because... william is a serial killer and known bastard. but it doesn't actually matter what william is because he's what michael is stuck with. and yes michael can ‘bootstraps’ himself away from it but he shouldn't have to. it's not efficient and it's not healthy. there's being overly reliant upon / emotionally dependent on people to survive ( unhealthy ), and there's the fact that humans are social by nature and need support and need to see themselves reflected in others ( natural ). solely being powered by internal ‘self-worth’ is playing a losing game. there has to be a balance but michael doesn't have that he just has himself.

the testicular fortitude this man had to not go completely 100% bonkers with misery.

( i am not camp ‘kill your abuser’ outside of certain situations especially not with parental abuse because like that shit is complex. and i think making the standard for abuse victims that ‘kill your abuser’ mindset is so alienating for people for whom that is not and never will be an option. anger is not a one size fits all solution. for some it will do them so much good, and i'm not saying people have to forgive their abuser or even live with them or acknowledge them at all. but it just rubs me the wrong way that any other portrayal of an abusive relationship can be construed as ‘condoning abuse’ if the abused party doesn't violently triumph over the abuser. for michael killing william won't give him unequivocal personal closure. it's gonna come with a ton of baggage so i can't see that as a purely ‘good’ ending for him. even if william deserves to be reduced to a fine red mist. )

#W3. HEADCANONS #abuse cw #ptsd cw

5 notes · View notes

words-writ-in-starlight · 3 years

Note

for the ship headcanon meme: star trek pairing of choice, #16-#20?

Bet you thought I forgot about this ask meme, fuckers! And you’re right, I did, but the beauty of forgetting is that sometimes you remember. Anyway, as always, it’s Michael/Saru Hours, lads.

16) When the zombie apocalypse comes, how do they cope together?

This is not a headcanon, but I have this fragment of a fic idea in my head based on this question, and that fragment of a fic idea is like...some kind of case fic where Discovery finds a planet being ravaged by Basically A Zombie Apocalypse and Michael and Saru get stranded there. Ideally, for my personal enjoyment, I would want to slot it into the plot of s1 as early as possible, because the best/worst dynamic there would be Michael choking with guilt and yet still one of the finest scientific minds in Star Fleet, and Saru unable to keep himself from pressing on the fresh bruise of loss, unable to trust her, and the two of them still working together flawlessly.

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? Even when they can’t stand each other, they argue like a choreographed dance, and when the chips are down and they have to think on their feet, they still move like Georgiou’s trusted right and left hands.

Anyway. That, but make it zombies.

17) When they find a time machine, where do they go?

If Michael came into possession of a time machine that actually allowed her to reliably control where she went and let her come back, I think she would sit down and try to do the temporal math to figure out how to avert the war. I do not, however, believe that Michael and Saru, survivors of a fair amount of timeline hopping already, would actually risk going back in time. I think they would both talk about wanting to go back, specifically because they know the other will talk them out of it, but I don’t think they would do it.

That being said, I would love a lotus eater prison AU where Michael and Saru are trapped in an idyllic dream of a world where the Shenzhou was never destroyed, Michael was being prepared to be promoted off the ship as a captain, and Saru was preparing to take her place, ft a lot of sadness about Georgiou and Michael and Saru working together to find a way to wake up.

18) When they fight, how do they make up?

Michael wears Raised On Vulcan tattooed on her face, sometimes, and especially when she defensive or guilty--if she’s angry with Saru, she’ll tell him exactly what she thinks he’s doing wrong, to his face, and it takes her a long time to learn that she should pull that punch a little more with people she cares about. On the upside, that means that, when she feels like she’s been out of line and unnecessarily harsh, she’ll walk right up to Saru and tell him, blunt as anything, what she did, why she thinks it was wrong, and that she understands if he’s angry with her.

This was initially…a weird experience for Saru on several levels, if he’s being honest. A lot of his experience with people is colored heavily by the fact that very few people know how to deal with Kelpiens, and that means that he’s either handled like glass or he puts in the work to be treated like any of the other crew members. He’s not really sure how to deal with someone who handles him with exactly the same unemotional ruthlessness as everyone else, and it’s disorienting, and it makes him angry that it’s disorienting, because that’s what he wants, but also, Michael is sometimes an asshole. She’s the first person that he’s ever argued with on the regular—really argued, a push and counterpush, shoving each other away from the science console and pulling out ad hominem attacks in a way that visibly infuriates Michael’s Vulcan training. But quite frankly, they never felt like they needed to apologize for those early fights, under Georgiou. It was part of the ship dynamic, to have Burnham and Saru trying to take strips off each other in a very professional and scientific manner. As long as Saru never took a cheap shot over Michael’s upbringing and Michael resisted the impulse to go full xenoanthropologist on Saru’s species, they were very good at fighting.

(Personally I am of the belief that Michael only tried to pull the I understand where you’re coming from because of what your species makes you after the mutiny, after she was trying to be nice. Before then, she expected Saru to perform to her standards and fuck the details. Half the reason he’s so coldly furious with her over it is because he knows she’s trying to manipulate him, because if she wasn’t, she would never play that card, because no matter how nasty their fights were, she always fought with him as a person, not as a Kelpien.)

19) Where do they go on their first date?

There’s a fic that bounces around my brain every time I watch Discovery, and it’s about Michael and Saru having a first date (sort of) very late at night, when they’re both having trouble sleeping. It’s not an arranged date, they’re not even really friends even though they’ve gotten past the stage of Michael letting Saru flay her alive for her guilt, but Michael is having trouble sleeping and she’s not a prisoner anymore, so she wanders, and Saru, frankly, sleeps like hypervigilant garbage since the Binary Stars, so he has a preferred hiding spot on one of Discovery’s few observation decks. As Lorca likes to point out, they’re not a goddamn pleasure cruiser, but Star Fleet never built a ship without at least one view panel, not even their top-secret war machine.

Michael is avoiding people—she hates being asked why she’s awake, gets tangled up in her automatic shame over not being able to control her emotions. It’s the middle of the “night” by ship standards, but Discovery seethes with activity around the clock, especially since Stamets pulls regular all-nighters when he gets really entranced and often has to be peeled away from his work by Local Exasperated Doctor Hugh Culber. So she ducks into the parts of the ship that she usually doesn’t go, the places that are more for socializing and are empty at this hour, the places that aren’t often used, the places that are quiet.

She finds the observation deck dim and blessedly silent, with the stars spreading infinitely outside. The room is faintly lit by the nebula off to the starboard bow, the one they’re using to hide their signature while they run some necessary repairs. It’s a practical use, but it’s also beautiful, every window in the ship glowing with warm reds and golds, and Michael still finds the stars soothing after all this time, and so she drifts up to the glass with the vague plan of sitting down and spending an hour or two there in an attempt at meditation. She only sees Saru, leaning back against the edge of the viewing window, when she’s close enough to nearly trip over one of his long legs, stretched out in front of him.

Michael, of course, apologizes, and turns to leave. Saru never really does have a good answer, as to why he stops her. But he doesn’t ask any questions about why she’s awake and she doesn’t ask any questions about what he’s doing here, and instead they sit in relative quiet for a while before Saru sits up straighter and offers Michael, again, a small bowl of fruit. It’s not familiar to her, this time, but he says it won’t hurt her, that it’s sort of like a lychee, and she believes him. It leaves a bit of thin red juice on her fingers when she bites into the first one, and he recommends eating them whole to avoid it while she ruefully sucks the juice off her thumb. It’s good—less sweet than she expected. Saru settles next to her in the middle of the window and sets the bowl between them, and she asks how he always manages to have fresh fruit, and he admits that he can wring a lot more out of the replicators since he never gets meat. Somehow it turns into—talking.

Michael is startled to realize, around the hour mark of murmured conversation, that she might have literally never just talked to Saru before. It’s—nice.

(Because I’m physiologically incapable of letting things be nice, if I wrote this fic there would be an immediate sequel of Observation Deck Chats Redux, featuring them doing basically the same thing but after Michael gets back from the Mirrorverse. Michael leans against Saru’s shoulder in a way that she would never, if she hadn’t been awake with nightmares and grief for pushing three days, and she tells him about the Empire like she’s confessing her sins, and they talk quietly about the ghost haunting their ship in the shape of Empress Philippa Georgiou. It’s not nice, but not for lack of kindness.)

20) Where do they go on holiday?

I think Saru and Michael would have two very distinct kinds of “holiday” and they have two destinations accordingly.

The first kind of holiday is Nerd Holiday, in which they find an unexplored planet and appoint themselves to the away team—everyone else on the away team is wryly aware that they are, essentially, third-wheeling a date, but Discovery has watched this whole situation unfold and honestly the popular opinion is that it would actually be easier to deal with a little bit of PDA than the current Very Professional Mutual Adoration Show. Local Red Shirt Absolutely Agonized By The Very Correct Ten Inches Of Space Between Her Captain And First Officer, Reports As They Come. Michael and Saru are pleasantly unaware of this and are having a great time arguing over whether they need another sample of that plant if it’s just a different color.

The second kind of holiday is actual fucking shore leave. They both prefer planets or stations with a large variety of species—Saru is uneasy with being the center of attention among strangers, and since he stands head and shoulders above a decent percentage of the Federation, it’s hard to avoid unless they’re in mixed company; Michael never quite recovered from the perpetual sense of disjoint when it comes to being around all humans or all Vulcans, so being in a place where everyone is different makes her feel less out of place. Neither of them like big crowds, so they’re the tourists who immediately leave the usual Tourist Area and find somewhere else to be, which has its ups and downs. The first time they get into trouble on a totally safe colony planet because they decided to go exploring, there’s a beat of them looking at each other and silently agreeing that they won’t be telling the crew about this, because there’s already a running ship joke about what trouble magnets they are and they do NOT need to feed anyone more material.

#star trek #star trek discovery #michael burnham #saru #michael x saru #i'm trying to think of more things to say but WOW my brain is full of fog today #i want to write that observation deck fic very badly #also you can't tell me that there weren't some WILD theories on the shenzhou about michael and saru #some helmsman goes to his friends and goes 'y'all are never going to believe it but saru TOUCHED burnham'#and all his friends go 'no one touches burnham she's got that vulcan nine-foot personal space thing going on'#and he's like 'yeah but they were arguing and he just like grabbed her elbow and MOVED HER'#'and she kept arguing with him and just came back and fully hip-checked him away from the console'#and there were probably some Theories is what i'm saying #michael is less obviously Touch Me Not on discovery of course #but once there start being some Theories on discovery for SURE one of the shenzhou survivors is like #'ah yes the eternal burnham and saru debate. you are like little babies. [lays out seven Y E A R S of gossip].'#a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #meri47 #asked and answered

25 notes · View notes

spookysanta · 3 years

Text

The TA. - one. (c.e, h.c.)

Summary: she just wants to make a good impression. clearly, she’s made more of an impression on the two of them.

Pairings: Professor!Chris Evans x Black!Reader, student!Henry Cavill x Black!Reader

WARNINGS: swearing

updates will be sporadic because it’s a wip, but here’s part one! enjoy! :)

UNEDITED

****

To Whom it May Concern:

Good morning. My name is Dr. Christopher R. Evans and I’ll be your supervising professor for section D346-0 of Chemistry class for the Fall semester. I’m sending you this e-mail to introduce myself as well as get to know you a bit before classes start next week. Would you be willing to meet me in my office (Franklin Hall, 3210) this Wednesday at around 3 p.m.? I’d like to go over the syllabus as well as your requirements as my TA.

Please let me know if that time works well for you.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards,

Dr. Christopher R. Evans, D. Sc.

(310) 555-3984

***

Professor Evans:

Good morning! It’s nice to hear from you. I was in the process of getting your contact information to introduce myself. Thank you for taking me on as your TA, also—I appreciate that you’re giving me a chance. I’ll avail myself on Wednesday to meet with you at 3 p.m., I don’t want to change your schedule on my behalf. I can also provide you with my class schedule if you’d like so that you have my availability when you need to meet with me.

I’m excited to be working with you this semester!.

Best,

(Y/N) (Y/L/N)

***

“Hi, my name’s (Y/N) (Y/L/N). Is Dr. Evans around?” She entered the lecture hall, approaching the podium where another professor was packing up her things. “I’m his new TA.”

“Yes, his office is through that door. Go in, make a left, and it should be the first door on your right.” The professor instructed, “He should be in there.”

“Okay. Thank you, ma’am!” she hurried across the room and pushed through the door, following the professor’s instructions and finding his classroom much easier than she had initially. She knocked on the door to his office. “Dr. Evans?”

“Come in.”

She opened the door slowly. She found him at his desk, typing on a computer. He paused for a moment, looking up toward the doorway with a small smile.

“Hi. You must be (Y/N).” he stood and crossed the small room stalking over to her and offering his hand for her to shake. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Great to meet you as well, Dr. Evans.” She shook his hand eagerly. This was her first professional job, and well…it’s helpful to have him as her boss.

Mainly to look at, but that’s beside the point.

“Oh, please. You can call me Chris.” He waved her off politely. “It’s just you and I here.”

She cleared her throat. “Okay.”

He made his way back to his seat behind the desk. “Please, have a seat.” He gestured to the chair that sat on the opposite side of the desk.

She sat down tightly with her hands flattened under her thighs—she’s a picker.

“What’s wrong?”

She shook her head tightly. “Nothing.”

He noticed that her face read differently than her words were saying. She looked almost uncomfortable, unsettled. “Are you sure?”

“This is just my first TA job so I’m a bit nervous,” She was almost hesitant to tell him the truth. She rushed out, “hopefully that doesn’t compromise my position.”

“Not at all! In fact, I think this is one of the easier classes to TA for, but maybe I’m biased.” He chuckled. “So, with that said, let’s go over your requirements. Hopefully I can put your mind at ease, okay?”

“Okay.” She smiled politely, trying to make herself relax but failing because Dr. Evans—Chris—was quite different that was she thought he would be. He was tall, built, and had the prettiest eyes she’d ever seen.

She’d assumed that he would look like Ebenezer Scrooge from the way her friends said he ran his class. By their record, he was a strict guy—very unwavering with deadlines and course policies, sticks to his syllabus schedule, assigns a ton of work, and has an even stricter attendance policy.

But they also said he was nice, which was hard to come by with professors in this field. They could tell he was a good person deep down and liked what he taught but he was a hard ass.

And by her analyzation, that was true.

His desk was quite neat and polished; it smelled of air freshener in the room; there weren’t any papers scattered about—which she was thankful for, because she cannot work with people who were unorganized—and, most notably, there weren’t any kind of photos hanging up. It was hard for her to determine whether he was a bachelor, or a married father that just kept things private.

Not that it mattered…but she wanted to know.

“So,” he turned one of his monitors to face her so that she could see his screen. “here’s the syllabus. It seems like a lot, but I swear, it isn’t.” he chuckled.

She hummed in response, beginning to read the lengthy document in her head as he spoke.

“Basically, your job will be to help me grade quizzes, labs, exams, and other assignments. You’ll also be required to proctor exams; I have another TA, Henry—he’s a graduate student—that will come in on exam days and proctor with you.”

She thought for a moment. “So, if I may ask, what will you do?”

“Teach the class.”

“Well, I know that. I just meant…it seems like a lot for me to do, and I’ve heard about some professors on campus having their TAs run the class.”

“Oh! Definitely not. Look, you seem great, and I have a feeling we’d get on well, but there’s a specific way I want my material taught so that’s not something you’d have to worry about.” He reassured her, noticing her body begin to relax. “What I will say, is there is a lot of content in my class, but the major graded assignments are few and far between, if that makes you feel better.”

She cocked an eyebrow.

“The class is mostly lab-based. You’ll be grading lab prep work, mostly—then comes the occasional homework or quiz, and exams.”

“Oh, okay. That makes more sense.”

He nodded. “Good.”

He scrolled down further into the document, showing his class policies.

“Now, these, I can’t break on.” He sighed. “I’m sure you’ve heard that I’m a strict guy.”

“What?” she replied incredulously. “No!”

He wanted to laugh. He could tell she was analyzing him, and she had to have heard something about him before the two of them met. “Well, it’s because a lot of the precautions are for the safety of us and the students.”

She scanned a random sentence on the page that read:

Students are required to be fully clothed on lab days—no t-shirts, ripped clothing, or closed-toed shoes.

10 points will be deducted for wearing clothing that does not meet the above dress requirement. More than one violation on the lab dress requirement will result in a deduction from the LAB grade.

Yikes, she thought, he’s not joking around.

She found it understandable nonetheless—she imagines it would be difficult to have a completely safe lab in a stuffy room while it’s still hot outside.

And she’s heard that a lot of the laboratories on his side of campus don’t have air conditioning, which was quite unfortunate this time of year.

“The dress policy is the most heavily enforced one.” He shrugged. “I can’t be held liable for students’ recklessness during labs.”

“Has the dress code been an issue previously?” she asked.

“Not for me, but I know it’s been one for the department, so I’m just tryin’ to keep my name off the “injury list”.”

She nodded in understanding.

“I think that’s pretty much it as far as the basics are concerned. I’ll send you a copy of my syllabus and calendar for the semester, as well as your contract.” He turned the monitor to face him again, typing quickly on his keyboard. “Oh! And I should send you Henry’s information, too.”

“Who’s Henry again?”

“Henry is a graduate TA. I’ve had him in my classes for a couple of years, and he’s a great student. I think he worked in the library over the summer, so you may know him.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

“Well, he’s a great person to know, not just for my class, but for your upper-level math and science classes.” He gushed. Clearly, he really liked having this “Henry” as an assistant.

“Okay, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

“Great. And if you have any questions, shoot me an e-mail or a text and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Alright.” She replied simply.

He stood, holding out his hand again. “I’m looking forward to working with you this semester, (Y/N).”

She took his hand, this time relishing in the softness of his skin and the firmness in his grip. “I am, too.”

Later that day, after she’d completed the last assignments for her summer math class, she checked her e-mail’s inbox and found two messages from Chris and another from Henry, the godsend of a grad student.

***

From: Dr. Christopher R. Evans, D. Sc.

Miss (Y/L/N)—

I hope this message finds you well.

Attached is my syllabus and class calendar, as well as your contract.

Please read through all of these. Sign the contract when you’re ready and e-mail it back to me at your earliest convenience.

Regards,

Chris

***

From: Dr. Christopher R. Evans, D. Sc

Miss (Y/L/N)—

I meant to send you Henry’s information as well:

Henry W. D. Cavill

Phone: 316-555-2015

E-mail: [email protected]

Please message him at your earliest convenience. Like I said, he’s a great person to know!

Regards,

Chris

She replied a quick “thank you” before continuing through her inbox.

***

From: Henry W. D. Cavill

Hi, (Y/N)! It’s nice to “meet” you, I’m Henry.

Chris has told me that you’re the new undergrad TA! That’s pretty impressive, honestly—you’re one of four undergraduate TAs in the entire Sciences department. Anyway, I just wanted to send you this e-mail to introduce myself and let you know that if you need anything, I’m always available. I worked in the school’s library over the summer so if you need me immediately, that’s usually where I spend my free time nowadays.

I’m excited to work with you this semester! Maybe we could grab coffee and get to know each other better before classes start next week? Let me know.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Best wishes,

Cav

“Cav?” she read aloud in disgust, “What the hell kind of a nickname is “Cav”?” She hoped that he didn’t expect her to call him that because that was stupid.

At any rate, she could tell that he was much more laid back than Chris, which she was bound to enjoy. As nice as Chris was, she could tell that he was a bit…uptight. Henry, on the other hand, seemed more laid back if she used “Cav” as a form of evidence.

She could tell that he was a bookworm, too, because no-one—no-one she knew, at least—stays in the library unless they had to, or just liked reading.

Clearly he was a different breed.

She opened a new message to send a quick reply to his.

To: Henry W.D. Cavill

Hi, Henry.

It’s nice to hear from you as well. I’ve heard nothing but good things about you!

I’m free tomorrow afternoon if you want to meet at The Bistro for coffee.

Let me know if that works for you.

Best,

(Y/N)

There. Sweet and simple.

Don’t be confused, either—she wanted this position. It would open some doors for her down the line, especially if she can get on Chris’ good side like Henry clearly has. She just hated formalities. The emails, the “talk to you soon! ”s, the “hope you’re well! ”s… it was too high-strung for her.

She is, though, determined to start everything on a good foot. So she’ll be polite, she’ll wish them well, whatever—she just wanted to ensure that her success as an undergrad student wouldn’t be hindered or jeopardized by her desire to be casual with who’s really her boss and co-worker.

The next day, she mustered up the courage to throw on clothes and meet Henry at The Bistro, a café in the main square of the campus. She decided to dress nice, not entirely sure who she was meeting and wanting to make a good impression. Because “Cav” seemed like a decent guy, but you never know.

Honestly, she wanted to cancel but she knew that wouldn’t look good.

She stepped through The Bistro’s doors, the cold air practically smacking her in the face. Normally she would despise the cold, especially on a day like this where it wasn’t too hot and not at all humid; but today, she was grateful for the cold air that enwrapped her frame that was dressed in a black blazer and matching slacks.

She sent a message to Henry letting her know that she was there and sat at a table by the window.

Then she waited.

Ten minutes, then twenty, then thirty.

After forty minutes passed, she gathered her tote, phone, and keys, and made her way to the front door.

Before she could get to the door, a figure bumped into her, her body colliding with his hard chest. “Oh, shit, sorry!” the mass of flesh exclaimed, “I’m running late for a meeting and I didn’t watch where I was going.”

Her eyes met his as she took a step back. He was tall. His long brown hair was brushed behind one ear, cheeks flushed and pale, brown eyes wide.

He was cute.

“Wait,” she replied, “are you Henry?”

“Yeah…so?”

“So?” she glared at him. “I’m (Y/N).”

His eyes widened even more, as if that were possible. “Oh! I’m so sorry I’m late. My car broke down and I ended up having to walk here.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But listen, if you’re still free, I’d love to still talk with you.”

She didn’t have anywhere to be, so why not? “Sure.”

He let out a breath. “Thank you.”

The two of them sat down at the table she picked, him slugging his shoulder bag off his body and onto the floor next to him. He folded his hands on the table and looked at her, watching as she fumbled through her bag for her planner and a pen.

“So,” he started, “it’s nice to finally meet you in person.”

“You, too.” She replied, her eyes not looking up.

“I’m usually the only TA in Chris’ class, so it’s really cool to have someone else around. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to be the only one proctoring an exam in a class of three-hundred people.”

“Three-hundred people?”

“Yeah. Sometimes it’s less, but that’s the average. It’s full of freshmen, too.”

She finally found her planner and a pen in the depths of her bag. “Are freshmen bad?”

He shook his head, “Not really, they’re just…odd.” He shrugged. “Some of them want to learn, some don’t, and you can tell right away. The ones that want to learn don’t want help—it’s always the procrastinators, the slackers, the ones that don’t care that need you.”

“How is that odd?”

“It’s strange to me, honestly. I didn’t really care either way my freshman year. I wanted to learn but I didn’t care enough to actually try.”

“So what changed? Chris made you seem like you were some mythical being.”

He laughed. She’ll admit, she was lost in his smile for a second. The glint in his eyes and the crinkle in his nose made her smile. “A mythical being?” he repeated. “I’m far from mythical. I think he gushes about me because I take over his office hours for him most days.”

That made her laugh. “Well, he seems to be appreciative of having you around. Hopefully I can be helpful.”

“I’m sure you can be,” he waved her off, “he probably told you that his class wasn’t that bad, but he’s totally lying. My first year helping him was rough—too much shit to do, and not enough time for it to get done.”

That sounded more accurate compared to what Chris told her yesterday. “I figured.”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s a great professor, and an awesome mentor to have—but sometimes he downplays stuff. He’ll say it’s “no big deal”, and it’ll be like Armageddon for us.”

She nodded slowly. “Any advice for getting on his good side?”

He chuckled. “If he likes you, you’ll know. And if he likes you, he’ll help you out. He’s not at all unreasonable, either; so just tell him what’s up when you have a problem, or if you’re overwhelmed, and he’ll do what he can to help.”

“That’s not what I heard.” She mumbled.

“Well, his students from last year will say he’s a dick, but—and you can’t tell anyone I told you this—” he leaned in closer, whispering, “he went through a nasty divorce last fall.”

So he isn’t married.

“Oh, wow.”

“Yeah. He wasn’t in the best place, but I’ll admit he’s eased up quite a bit so you should be fine.”

“Okay, cool.”

“Anything else you want to know?”

She thought for a moment. “Not really, no.”

He smiled again, “Alright. Well it was great talking with you, and I’m sorry again for being late.”

She shrugged, “Shit happens.”

“You’re exactly right. The meter maids are probably having a field day giving me tickets.” He stood from the table, putting his bag over his shoulder that was covered in a dark green jacket, brushing his hair behind his ears and away from his face.

She stood shortly after he did. “Good luck with that.”

“Oh, trust me, it wouldn’t be anything new for me to have a ticket by now. I’ve gotten five since May.”

Her eyes widened this time. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. The parking on campus is shit, you get in where you can. Open parking spaces are scarce, especially by Franklin Hall…so sometimes I park on the street.”

Street parking is decal only. By the number of tickets he’d obtained, she deduced that he most likely had no decal. “Hence all the tickets.” She finalized.

“Yeah.”

“Criminal.” She shook her head jokingly.

“Guilty as charged.” He held out his wrists to her as if she was putting him in handcuffs. “See you around, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Then he turned and left, moving quickly down the pavement.

—

Tags (dm to be removed): @lady-x-red @justtwhst @lokisbitch27 @boundtomyfate @cyberdoshee @liquorlaughslove @heroine-of-color

#The Ta #henry cavill x black reader #chris evans x black reader #chris evans x black woman #henry cavill x black woman #the ta fic

81 notes · View notes

lokigodofaces · 3 years

Text

Okay people, time to talk about how Asgard makes no sense at all!

(I'm no astrophysicist or anything of the like, I just find all of that fascinating and therefore take the time to learn more about it. I can't go into the math or anything but I know the concepts of things).

Today we're talking about how gravity is so unbelievably inconsistent on Asgard and makes no sense!

Before we begin, let me define gravity. I know, you learned about it a million times in school, but there are things we forget about it. Gravity is a force that attracts objects with mass to each other. For example, the Earth has mass and therefore has a gravitational field pulling you to the core. You also have mass and have a gravitational field and are pulling the Earth towards you. But the Earth is much more massive than you, making your gravitational field basically negligible. Everything with mass has a gravitational field, and those interact with nearby objects. For example, there are gravitational interactions between you and the phone/computer/tablet you are reading this on.

The more mass something has, the stronger the gravitational field. That is why we stay on the surface, and why planets stay in orbit, and why black holes "suck" ("suck" is not a very good word to describe the process, but oh well) different objects in, and why galaxies hold together.

The center of gravity is created by two gravitational fields interacting. With you and the Earth, the center of gravity is almost exactly the exact center of the Earth. Not quite, but extremely close, because of how much more massive the Earth is. While objects with more similar mass have the center of gravity closer to the middle. For example, Charon, Pluto's moon, is about half the size or so of Pluto. The center of gravity between them is actually above the surface of Pluto. It's closer to Pluto than Charon, but their mass is so similar that they're actually both orbiting around a point in space.

Now that we have that out of the way, here we go under the cut because this is a massive post.

1) The planet's form makes absolutely no sense

Look at this!

What even is this? Asgard is a disk with an iceberg-esque part at the bottom and some land mass on the top. Which is problematic.

For one, gravity causes things to become spherical. Things, such as yourself, with lower mass don't have the gravity to become a sphere. This is why asteroids and some moons can have funky shapes.

Here are some asteroids. Ceres is the biggest asteroid and a dwarf planet, and it is almost spherical as you can see. The rest are a little funky. They don't have the mass, and therefore gravitational force, to be spherical.

Life evolves to live in the conditions it is in. We can't see ultraviolet light because our atmosphere blocks most of it. So why would we need that ability? Why would people that could see UV have a higher chance of surviving to reproduce? This is why we aren't ridiculously strong. We evolved to be able to work with what was needed. Which means we are suited for Earth's gravity. If it weren't for other factors like the suits, astronauts would be able to jump much higher on the moon because it is tiny compared to Earth, and our strength overcompensates.

If Asgard has low gravity, then it would make sense Asgardians would evolve for a low gravity environment. Which means they wouldn't become super strong. If anything, they could have serious spinal problems on Earth because of our gravity, assuming they didn't immediately collapse. And, um, that is not the case in Marvel. The opposite is true.

2) Inconsistent gravity is confusing

So, gravity is what keeps us on the ground, right? Well, that doesn't always seem to be the case on Asgard.

Not to mention the water constantly spilling off (also not astronomy related but where is that water coming from? And why does that water just disappear?).

Even if Loki was about as far as he could be from the center of gravity while being on the planet, even if Asgard has extremely low gravity and they showed it to us, this would still make no sense. Gravity should be strong enough to keep him on the planet.

And if it wasn't? Should've not been strong enough everywhere else on the planet. No one should be able to stay on the planet. It shouldn't be strong enough to have an atmosphere.

While with its shape Asgard would have unequal gravity, it shouldn't be this unequal. And, if gravity were weak enough for Loki to fall off, it should've been weak enough that he would've floated off rather than fallen off. Same with Thor. And Odin. And Heimdall. And literally everyone else to ever be on the bifrost. No one should be able to stand on the bifrost, everyone should float off into orbit. But that clearly doesn't happen because Asgard's gravity makes no sense.

3) 2+ nearby wormholes

There are at least two nearby natural wormholes.

We have a wormhole taking you from Asgard to Sanctuary and a wormhole taking you from Sakaar to Asgard. I am not including the bifrost, because while Selvig and Jane called it an Einstein-Rosen bridge (sciency way of saying wormhole), the bifrost is artificial, and not naturally occurring. Right now I am focusing on the naturally occurring wormholes. Also, we don't know if these are two way wormholes are blackhole whitehole pairs. Basically, the theory is that some wormholes could allow travel from both ends, kind of like the Nether Portal in Minecraft, and others are a one way ticket, with a blackhole on one end and whitehole (ejects mass instead of taking mass in) on the other. We've only seen these work one way, so they could be partially whiteholes.

So there are a few problems with all of this.

Blackholes distort light.

The top image is from Hubble. Do you see the circular-ness the photo is focused on? That is from a blackhole distorting light. The second is an illustration and not from Hubble so it's less reliable, but this is a more noticeable example. Basically, light has particles called photons, and blackholes absorb mass.

As you can see in the gif, stuff orbits around blackholes and slowly gets closer and closer to the event horizon. Once you get past the event horizon, there is no turning back. Light can't escape, which is why these are blackholes. Photons are distorted like this, which means that the light produced by nearby stars and reflected by nearby celestial objects is distorted, making them look off.

In other words, Asgard's light should be...interesting.

Another thing, Asgard should be orbiting around one of these blackholes to die eventually. Unless there's a bigger one, I would guess the Sakaarian wormhole if it were two way. If not, it'd orbit around the Sanctuary wormhole.

Having two next to each other would do crazy things to Asgard's gravity. The Sanctuary one would constantly be pulling Asgard towards it, and if the Sakaarian wasn't a whitehole, it would constantly be pulling Asgard and the Sanctuary wormhole towards it.

This is something I don't know as much about, but if the Sakaarian wormhole is a whitehole on Asgard's end, I would not be surprised if there were consequences. Lots of mass being ejected into the nearby space might have consequences, though this mass might be coming in subatomic forms and not be too harmful.

(Also Sakaar should've been torn apart by the wormhole leading to Asgard and possibly others. I'm just saying. This is an Asgard post but we gotta agree that Sakaar is also messed up).

Except that none of this is true apparently.

4) There is no way Loki should've survived.

When Loki fell into the wormhole he had two options: die a quick death or die a very quick death. Wormholes are awesome. Awesome in the biblical sense of the world. Which means they are utterly terrifying.

Quick Death: Loki should have been spaghettified (and also Asgard...and the Asgardians...but I'll let that slide since apparently Asgard has secret amazing gravity). Spaghettification happens as you get closer to a singularity and let me tell you, it is absolutely terrifying. It is my greatest irrational fear (irrational in that it will never happen to me). Basically the gravity of blackholes (and by extent wormholes) literally tears molecules apart. It starts with stretching the person/object out to make them long and thin, like spaghetti. A person would die during this first stage because our organs cannot handle this. And soon the body/object would fall apart on an atomic level.

Very Quick Death: Upon passing the event horizon (point of no return), Loki would go through a massive wall of fire, burning him to death and he would be spaghetiffied almost instantly.

So...yeah...how is he not dead?

5) Even if Loki could survive, he shouldn't have made it to Sanctuary

There are theories on how to make viable wormholes. I don't remember exactly how, but there are theories on how to allow someone to pass without being spaghetiffied or burnt to a crisp. But then there's the problem of it being impossible to reach the other side.

Basically the "pathway" between the two ends of a wormhole is infinitely small. In other words, Loki couldn't fit through it, and would therefore die. There are theories on how to counteract that problem, but the odds of a wormhole naturally forming like this are low. So, Loki should've died even if he got past the singularity on the way to Sanctuary.

6) Also there's the bifrost.

The bifrost is artificial. The problems about travelling through wormholes (spagettification, fire wall, infinitely small tunnel, etc) aren't there because Asgard built it as a way of travel. And since it was repaired by the Tesseract in between Avengers and Dark World, it might be a product of the Tesseract anyway.

With artificial devices explained by fictional science/technology/magic, I'm not as picky. It's science I don't understand because that's not science from this universe. But I do have questions about the bifrost. I don't fully understand how it could've destroyed Jotunheim. My thought was that it absorbed Jotunheim like a blackhole, but we don't see debris coming over to Asgard. How is it turned on and off? What consequences were there when it was destroyed? Is gravity all of the sudden strange when it turns on? I do like that it looks like people are pulled into the bifrost when it turns on, makes it more wormholey. But how did Hela knock Thor and Loki out of the bifrost?

I tend to forgive all of that because it's a fictional device. Just like how I forgive the gravity/blackhole bomb things the dark elves had. Those are clearly artificial and since we have theories on how those are possible I let it slide (though I find it interesting how the blackholes evaporate (that's the term for the death of a blackhole)). I actually headcanon the dark elves used gravitonium to create these devices. Gravitonium is an element introduced in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that has interesting gravitational abilities. It is 100% fictional, so I let a lot of it slide. But gravitonium is supposed to be a heavy element, meaning it wasn't created in the solar system, it was created by a supernova, so it has to exist elsewhere in the universe. Why not on Svartalfheim? But that's just me (there are actually lots of connections between TDW and AoS, specifically connections between Loki and AoS). But fictional devices are that: fictional. Whereas blackholes and wormholes are very real. Blackholes are confirmed to exist, and wormholes are theoretical with lots of evidence (Einstein created a list of formulas describing how the universe works, and wormholes work in these formulas. But that doesn't mean wormholes exist currently, have existed in the past, or ever will exist, we just know they're theoretically possible.). So I can be more picky about those.

Of course, I can watch these movies and still be entertained. I love these movies. But I'm a nerd that has to overanalyze everything and I specifically like space, and thus this post was born because Asgard makes no sense.

#asgard #thor (2011)#thor: the dark world (2013)#thor: ragnarok (2017)#black hole #white hole #wormhole #astronomy #loki laufeyson #agents of s.h.i.e.l.d. (2013-2020)#sorry for the extremely long post #but i was bored & i have thoughts

13 notes · View notes

inklingshadows · 3 years

Text

Is school really pointless? Why do we go to school at the first place?

I met a rural woman in my country once, middle aged but had passed only fifth grade. She was telling me how trees ‘hosted’ spirits late at night to learn the secrecy of growing fruits in daylight; and they did not like human beings to wander around them lest we would learn their secrets. She told me to never go near a tree at night or they will send over the spirits to suck the breath out of me so I feel pained enough to move away. Thanks to my ninth grade biology textbook, I already knew the real truth behind the mysterious attitude of the trees. But when I tried to explain photosynthesis to the woman, she refused to believe it and accused the modern generation of being possessed by devil boxes like television and mobile phones.

Many illiterate villagers in remote places of my country held superstitious beliefs like that. Most of the time, they were very silly. Don’t cut your nails and hair on Saturdays. Hang lemon and chill at the entrances of doors. But many times they were actually harmful. Children born with mental illnesses were punished by God, which means the parents must have committed a crime. You must be possessed by evil spirits if you suffer seizures from uncontrolled emotions - which is a superstitious belief for describing epilepsy but the villagers shunned out the people with diseases like this, making it worse for them to get well.

I thought of how as teenagers we complain about school so much. It’s not just too much pressure, too many assignments anymore, it’s also academics are so pointless, what do we need to learn so much math and science for, I ain’t going to university nowadays. These people I met weren’t so illiterate that they could not read a few texts and do basic math. Most of them completed primary school. But they dropped out before they accomplished the secondary level, and for the exact sole reason - academics are pointless. Too much math and science is unnecessary. Their parents felt like it was a waste of time and money. Jealous much? That your parents are not so ‘lenient’? These villagers are the first ones to drop everything and start worshipping the man walking barefoot on coals. Simple science but their minds would not understand. Many people deceive these innocent rural dwellers by showing them science tricks like the one I mentioned above and claim to have supernatural powers, so thus they are worthy of worship, give me some money if you want to have my blessings in your life. And they fall for it.

So this is what happens when you don’t have education. This is what would happen if school didn’t exist for us. We would not only be dumb about the simplest of things, but also easily manipulated and taken advantage of.

The British ruled India for almost two hundred years and during that time, the place had all sorts of barbaric practices. One example would be the practice of Sati, where Hindu women were burned or buried alive after being widowed. The colonial authorities were brutal and oppressive during their rulings but they did do a few good things, including demolishing these practices and providing education.

As a teen, I want to say this to other teens: don’t take education for granted.

True that the academics are too much pressure and the schooling system is far from perfect. But despite their negative sides, schools offer more positivity than we are aware of.

So instead of complaining, utilize it. Make the best out of it. And when you have made it all across, improve it for the future generation. You are educated. You are capable of more than you know.

5 notes · View notes

tori-beanie · 4 years

Text

PART TWO IS HERE!

You know that soulmark AU? Yeah? Well I made another chapter and I’m proud of it.

Let’s talk about some stuff first. I did not come up with these designs. Nope, that belongs to FanartFunart with this post here! I’ve been given permission to use the idea for fanfics, and I am very grateful for that. Make sure to give them some love!! https://fanartfunart.tumblr.com/post/184661279405/filed-under-aus-i-do-not-plan-on-actually-doing

Please also check out the last part of this I wrote, the first part of the ‘Soulmarked’ Series!

Without further ado, please enjoy,

The first Encounter

~~MORE~~

Logan was ten years old, and he still had four blackened marks on his forearm. Not a single one had gained color yet, and it was starting to drive him insane. He tried to distract himself with as much as possible with extra work and so many books. However they were his soulmates. He knew they would eventually meet. That didn’t make Logan’s life easier though. People accused him of faking the extra marks, and some were disgusted by the amount. Five people all going to be in a relationship? How was it even possible? Luckily Logan read. He read far above his grade level, even able to get his mother to buy him a book about people with multiple soulmates. It was one that he was working to memorize, one of the ten year olds most important things.

At the moment he was at school, bored. He had already finished the homework for his advanced math class. He had skipped a grade easily, so instead of being a fifth grader, he had moved up to sixth and took advanced classes. It was work that was a bit more his level. If he had to take basic fifth grade classes he really would go insane! They would be far too easy for Logan Foley! But even now he had worked ahead and now had nothing else to do. For now he would stare at the marks on his arm, and hope that one of them started changing color. At least then he would have something to focus on…

Patton Foster had been living in shades of white black and grey now for about five years. He honestly had trouble remembering what color things were. Obviously he knew the sky was blue and the grass was green, but what were blue and green? What did their pigments look like? They were both different shades of grey, but that didn’t really help him. All the nine year old could do was stare at a colored pencil or marker and hope he picked out the right one. Did hair come in purple? Who knew anymore. It was going to be purple this time.

In his art class, Patton and the two other colorblind students were given passes on their art. And although he still tried to be accurate, sometimes he’d draw a red skinned person with blue hair and yellow eyes. The teacher told him it was okay, and Patton tried to believe it. He kept a smile on his face. He could be perfectly happy, even without color! He would get them back once he met his soulmate! Yes, Patton was still a bubbly bouncy fourth grader, just as he should be.

Roman… Roman O’Ryan was sick of hearing the same song over and over again. It seemed his soulmate favored playing one song on loop just to drive him crazy! However it was okay. It may be a weird song that he wouldn’t normally listen to, but Ro has memorized all the words. In fact, he memorized most of the songs his soulmate played. Although tastes seemed to shift around a lot. Once or twice he could have sworn that the songs overlapped as if more than one was playing at the same time. It was weird to think about. How could one soulmate listen to so much music!? Oh well. He’d deal with it later when they were able to meet.

It was nearly Romans tenth birthday, and he was really excited. He was a fifth grader at a school near the edge of town, and would be having the best party ever! His mother was bringing them all to a themed arcade for his double digits! Roman had been handing out invitations to anyone who looked like they were friendly, when he saw someone. The boy was covered in black swirls, like a pattern that the boy couldn’t memorize. As he moved forward towards him and held out an invitation, their eyes met. This boy had one green eye, and one that was a yellow tone. However both boys gasped when his left arm began to glow red and yellow through his clothes. Yes, this was interesting…

Declan was minding his own business. Honestly the sixth grader had been sulking about being in another new school. His parents moved frequently, which meant a lot of bouncing around schools. De had been rather annoyed, not looking very inviting when a boy stepped up to him. When he met the boys red eyes though, a warm pleasant heat began to swirl down his arm. De immediately looked at it, seeing a red filling up what had been a blank black flower, and yellows mixing together until there was a proper crown atop its petals. Both boys were utterly speechless.

What should they say first!? De took initiative and held out his hand, voice still a bit shaky from the shock of it all.

“Hey. I’m uh, Declan. Declan Shea.”

“Roman O’Ryan… Are you my soulmate?”

“No, my shoulder just flowed and colored itself in for no reason at all.”

He couldn’t help the sarcasm. De was a habitual liar, something that normally made people annoyed with him and got him in trouble. However Roman… He just laughed and grabbed De’s hand, pulling him up with a bright smile.

“Come with me! My mama is picking me up today! We’ve gotta show her this!”

Honestly Declan didn’t have it in him to object, a small half smile on his face as he was dragged along by a hyperactive boy.

Virgil was quiet. He had grown to be an average student, but he had a few problems. Mostly with anxiety when around other people. Due to that fact, he was homeschooled by his mother and father. Overall he was a happy boy though, learning to read and write at his level. However he excelled in science. More specifically, when it came to the human body. It was always fun to learn about it, and maybe then he would understand ‘Dark Blue.’ He had no names for the soulmates he knew existed, so he just called them after the color their words were written in. The dark blue one was written in long science speak, making it Virgil’s favorite to learn.

He would read all the phrases written on his body every day, smiling as each one was looked at. It was a bit anxiety inducing to think about how he had four soulmates waiting for him, and it was a lot of love to give, but he was still excited. Who wouldn’t be!? Although his favorite at the moment was the yellow one.

‘So you’re the little stormcloud!’

It was written across his neck, and he was happy to read it. In fact, it inspired the boy to learn to sew so he could put a storm cloud patch on his jacket. Maybe it would help his soulmate recognize him. Yes, maybe one day...

General Taglist: @midnight--fox @your-friendly-neighborhood-enby @heathers-dorkness-0923

Soulmarked Taglist: @fanartfunart

#ts patton #ts logan #Soulmarked #ts roman #ts deceit #ts virgil #ta fanfic #roceit #ts soulmate au

157 notes · View notes

birlcholtz · 4 years

Note

Okay, I'll bite. How and why did you learn to code?

HI LIN thanks for biting this is a story that tells you quite a lot about me as a person

so some background: my parents are both in compsci. they're the late 80s, early 90s silicon valley crowd, they've both had their fair share of established companies and startup-hopping, and my brother and i grew up here

my brother is about 5 years older than me and took to coding like a fish to water (like a duck to water??) which is to say he started programming on scratch at the tender age of.... i don't even know, honestly, maybe 9? too young for me to really remember, and he's been a compsci prodigy ever since

but then. then there was me.

now i do love scratch. when i was little i always copied my brother (not in like a cute way, in a 'if he can do that i can do it too' mindset that meant my third grade teacher REALLY struggled to find book recommendations for me that i hadn't already read. since my brother was above his grade's reading level, and i would read whatever my brother read. yeah that's the kind of kid i was/am)

so naturally i did what he did. i programmed on scratch, i did advanced math courses, i was in CHESS CLUB (i am so bad at chess by the way. i am not good at it. let's establish that. i think i beat my dad once and i genuinely don't know if he let me win or not. i never beat my brother so in that respect i failed. but i'm better than my mom so there's that)

HOWEVER. around fourth or fifth grade i was like hey. maybe i want to like... forge my own identity. and not just turn my life into 'do whatever elder brother does BUT BETTER.'

and thus began my campaign to NEVER DO ANY CODING EVER FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE AND WHILE I'M AT IT FUCK MATH

this gets long so there’s more under the cut sjflsghf

there are two problems with this. the first problem is my inherent pride and the fact that, despite my best efforts, i am actually decent at math and too proud to intentionally fuck it up. so i wound up in honors math. that made part 2 of my independence campaign a little difficult.

the second problem is that my parents were just as determined for me to learn to code as i was to avoid anything to do with coding for the rest of my life

(the third problem was actually a serious problem for this goal. and that was that in seventh grade, when i had a required compsci class where we learned basic, i found myself... enjoying it. HORROR OF HORRORS.)

so i was quite vocal about my anti-math stance and my determination to explore other avenues of life, to which my parents responded by listening with bat-ears whenever i talked about my compsci class and/or my love of spreadsheets so that they could jump on it and say 'YOU KNOW, COMPUTER PROGRAMMING IS JUST LIKE THAT, I THINK YOU WOULD REALLY ENJOY IT' whenever i said something remotely applicable

and to which i responded, of course, by plunging ever deeper into performing arts because fuck compsci, except when it's basic, because then i understand everything because of messing around w scratch when i was little and it's easy and i'm ahead of the rest of the class and can stare into space while the rest of them struggle with closing their parentheses (which is not to say i never messed up my parentheses. i totally did)

now, my brother, because he's a nerd, went to compsci summer camps where you'd spend a week or two learning some program or language. he did things like java and c++ and then would come home and use this knowledge for robotics club. like i said. nerd.

but my parents sensed a golden opportunity. namely, 'if we can get birl to go to these camps, she will actually learn programming things (not just being ahead of the class and spacing out in basic), and we'll probably get her to agree since it's only a week and she can do cost benefit analysis'

and, because i CAN do cost benefit analysis, i agreed to that deal. i'd go to a few of these camps, and then we'd agree that i was done with my parentally mandated computer science requirement. i learned some 3-d modeling, i learned to use unity (which involved some c+ as well), and i learned some java, and all was well. the camps were like 5 days long. we mostly worked on self-directed projects so i could do whatever the hell i wanted (and i made some pretty cool maze games if i do say so myself-- one of them in unity and one of them as a text-based game in java)

and.... horror of horrors....... i didn't hate it.

(of course i didn't want to go BACK any more than i had to but i also didn't hate every moment of those weeks)

so we were out of the woods right?

except no. we weren't.

because here's the thing. my high school ALSO had a computer science requirement. we had to take at least a semester. there were 3 levels offered: AP compsci, normal compsci, and then easy compsci (not its actual name) for the people who did not give a single shit

obviously i wanted to take the last one. my parents really wanted me to take AP but were willing to settle for normal. you will notice there was no overlap

i wrangled my way out of taking AP because that was a year-long course and i didn't have space in my schedule (my parents are wonderful in the sense that they didn't want to infringe on my actual interests to force me to do compsci which meant i had LEVERAGE)

but we literally wound up discussing it with the dean of students who was like 'well if you're capable of AP and just not taking it for schedule reasons then easy compsci would probably be boring for you!' which was an unhelpful take, thanks EVAN

but i did get my way by virtue of volunteering with a progressive tech organization in lieu of taking regular compsci, so i took easy compsci (in which i used scratch again, yay nostalgia, and also briefly flirted with html) and also wound up learning to use squarespace which is criminally easy but you can make it look like you're an expert

and all this while i was getting better and better with spreadsheets due to my own individual love for spreadsheets that near as i can tell, nobody in my family shares (my dad does have a lot of spreadsheets but his aren't as detailed as mine and he doesn't include data validation so HA)

all of which (plus my ap calc and stats classes) combines to mean that while i would not be able to just sit down and write you some code, if you give me access to stack overflow and tell me what language it's supposed to be in i can probably figure it out. especially now that i've become familiar with python by accident (well, more by my desire to write fic)

and because now i'm stuck in a rut, my current internship is with another civic tech company and that's probably what i'll wind up doing next summer as well. i don't actually work on software but i do comms which means i need to be able to have conversations with the engineers so i've been learning on the job. i know so much help

SO. with regards to my fic, my parents would both be thrilled because i taught myself some of a new programming language (python) and disappointed because i taught myself some of a new programming language with just stack overflow and some time and all i'm using it for is fic.

but near as i can tell we finished that battle long ago. it was a resounding victory for birl and i continue to expand my technical talents into areas like photo/video editing and CRM tools.

thank you very much *bows*

#birl talks #the-lincyclopedia

10 notes · View notes

theriteek · 3 years

Text

Email Marketing Tactics

EMAIL MARKETING

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is the highly effective digital marketing strategy of sending emails to prospects and customers. Effective marketing emails convert prospects into customers, and turn one-time buyers into loyal, raving fans.

Why Email Marketing?

There are many reasons you should make email marketing. Some of them are listed below:-

Email is the best communication channel. Above 90% people check their email in the daily basis.

Almost Everyone uses email. A Hubspot survey states that 91% of consumers use email.

It's Affordable. You can reach a large number of consumers for less than pennies per message.

How to start Email Marketing?

Here I am going to explain exactly how to start an email marketing campaign from scratch.

Step1-Get Permission

first, we’ll need to focus on building a sizable email list. There are many ways we can do this, of course.

I can’t tell you which is the right or wrong answer for your incentive, but I can tell you that it’s important to have a clear purpose when asking for an address.

Establish your credibility, explain what the emails are for, and get people interested in receiving them.

Simply posting “enter your email for updates” isn’t going to get anyone excited. Instead, consider sharing specifics.

By sharing a specific call to action or benefit to giving your email address, you can get more people to subscribe.

Some common ways to entice people to sign up include:

Email series

Free downloads

Free white papers or eBooks

Update lists, like new releases and product updates

Step2-Follow through with great content

The initial follow-up email should be sent immediately as a way to introduce yourself and detail what you plan on doing with your new subscriber’s email address.

It’s better to be long-winded and detailed than it is to be quick and unobtrusive, but if you can pull off quick and concise, then more power to you.

From here, it’s simply a matter of living up to their expectations.

Step3-Analytics and Segmentation

Now that you understand the basics behind an effective email campaign, let’s talk about how to take things to the next level.

Specifically, that involves using segmentation and analytics to start refining your broadcasts and generating even better results than you would with a basic campaign.

How to understand your email analytics

First, your open rate explains how many people open your emails. It’s based on a single invisible tracking pixel that loads when someone clicks on your message.

When looking at open rates, it’ll usually tell you how well you’ve built your relationship with readers. Ideally, people are excited to read your emails and open them quickly.

If your open rate is low, it usually means you have a lot of unengaged subscribers. You need to work harder on providing value and managing expectations.

Next, your click-through rate, or CTR, shows how many people clicked on a link (if any) in your email.

If your CTR is low, it means that your message is either not targeted enough, or simply not getting through. In this case, focus on improving your copy.

Finally, your unsubscribe rate tells you how many people have clicked the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of your email.

If your unsubscribe rate is high in relation to your opt-in rate, then you’ve passed the point of building value and writing good copy… you’ve got some serious work to do.

Essentially you’ve built a sieve and people that sign up eventually leave. If this is you, try to examine when people are leaving and take action based on those leaks.

If they’re leaving after a certain autoresponder email, then re-work it. If they’re leaving after marketing messages, then re-work the way you present offers.

If they’re leaving early on in your funnel, then you need to fix your original call to action so that it’s in harmony with what you’re sending.

Email analytics are critical in that if you’re paying attention, they’ll give you very specific clues as to what you’re doing wrong.

Of course, the key variable here is “paying attention.”

How to segment your list

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, segmentation is the practice of splitting up your email list into more targeted groups.

For example, the following are ways to segment a larger, more unified list:

Customer list (in comparison to leads who haven’t bought)

Newsletter subscribers

Daily email list (in comparison to weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc)

In dividing your list in this manner, you give yourself the ability to send more targeted communication.

For example, some customers want both product and sales updates, while others might only want to hear about new versions.

Plus, you can even send specific emails to buyers thanking them for their purchase.

If you don’t give them the chance to choose, you risk losing them altogether. Since customers are more likely to buy again, it’s fairly obvious why you want to keep them subscribed to your customer email list.

With segmentation, you can send a broadcast only to those that didn’t open your last message (ask them why), or to those that showed interest (a second pitch).

You can also split test messaging amongst different groups in order to refine your best practices.

As you can see, segmentation isn’t rocket science, but it is work, which is why most don’t take the time to do it right.

If you do, you’ll immediately separate yourself from the pack.

How much is your list worth?

Your email list is one of your most valuable resources, and if you learn how to treat it right, the cost of doing so will pay for itself.

Over time, you can start tracking how much money people on your list spend on average. This will tell you how much your list is worth.

If a list of 10,000 people usually spends $50,000 on a campaign, and you run two of those campaigns each year, you could average it out and say that each subscriber is worth $10 a year.

When you do the math like that, you can understand immediately how losing several hundred subscribers could be dangerous to your bottom line.

TOP 5 BEST EMAIL MARKETING TOOLS

Here is the 5 best Email Marketing tools you can use:

#1.GetResponse

GetResponse email marketing and online campaign management platform helps entrepreneurs build targeted subscriber lists and send high-impact newsletters, video emails, and follow-up campaigns.

Monthly payment plans are bracketed by list size, starting at $15 per month for unlimited messages to up to 1,000 subscribers.

#2.Aweber

Aweber is an email marketing app that allows you to: create a mailing list and capture data onto it. design newsletters that can be sent to the subscribers on your list. automate your emails marketing via use of 'autoresponders'

Our pricing is designed so that you can start your campaign for free. After the first 30 day free trial, the cost is $19 per month for up to 500 subscribers. You would only pay more when you're profiting from a growing subscriber base over 500 subscribers.

#3.LeadPage

Leadpages is a best-in-class website builder that enables entrepreneurs and marketers to easily publish web pages, confidently generate leads, and consistently transform clicks into customers. From landing pages to websites,

Leadpages helps you get in business and stay in business online. Leadpages pricing starts at $25.00 per month. They do not have a free version. Leadpages offers a free trial.

#4.Icontact

iContact is our email marketing platform for creating, sending, and tracking messages.

iContact Pro is the marketing automation platform for powerful multi-step campaigns and scalable solutions to track all digital marketing efforts across your website, landing pages, and social media sites.

iContact pricing begins at $15 per month for 500 subscribers or email contacts; signing up for an annual plan brings the price down to $12.75 per month in the Base plan.

#5.Hubspot

HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies to attract visitors, convert leads and close customers. It does this by bringing together a variety of functionalities and allowing marketing and sales departments to manage all their activities in one place.

There are four products: Hubspot CRM is completely free. Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub are available via four plans, with varying features and add-ons: Free, Starter ($50/month), Professional ($400–$800) and Enterprise ($1200– $3200).

#digitalmarketing #emailmarketing #smallbusinessmarketing #emailmarketingtips #emailmarketingcampains #emailmarketingstrategy #emailmarketingcampaigns #emailmarketingpro #emailmarketingsoftware #emailmarketingsolutions #emailmarketingtarget #emailmarketingtime #emailmarketingtoronto

2 notes · View notes

alarajrogers · 4 years

Text

Black Holes and Revelations

I was having a discussion about a month ago about recent scientific thought that time and space dimensions reverse their places within a black hole, and I came up with this lengthy essay of plausible-sounding bullshit I intend to build stories around.

***

So here we go.

There’s evidence that within a black hole, the time coordinates and space coordinates switch. So “time” as you would understand it within a black hole is defined by distance from the center of the black hole. And “space” as you would understand it within a black hole is defined as the ability to move around in Cartesian coordinates that map, somehow, to “time” in our universe.

In our universe, space has three dimensions and time only one, and we can only move forward in it. In a black hole, you can only move one direction in a certain dimension, toward the center of the black hole. Does that mean that you can move in three potential dimensions that map to what we understand as “time”? Time and space might literally be the same thing, in that case.

Consider this. If time inside a black hole is distance from the center, then you’re falling at a constant rate toward the end of time, which is the singularity. Which is exactly how time works here, so how do we know we are not within the event horizon of a supermassive black hole that only exists in the time dimension(s?). We are falling forward through time toward the center of the “time sphere”. We can’t see the future because the center of the time sphere, like a black hole, is a place that light cannot escape from. Nothing can move away from the center of time; the draw is implacable. We can only go forward.

Or can we?

Velocity within space affects the speed of relative time, and I haven’t quite figured out how that relates to the model yet, but it’s all interconnected. We think of time as a very, very different dimension than the three of space. We can only move forward within it and while we can detect that it’s moving at different rates relativistically, we can only feel it moving forward for ourselves as fast as it goes, one second per second. But the math says that time and space are basically the same thing, just, we don’t perceive time the same way. When we go close to the speed of light, are we in essence outrunning time?

Anyway, picture this.

We are living within a gigantic black hole or something like it. It’s spherical or roughly so. Positioning within a sphere is not defined the same way as positioning on the surface of that sphere, like we do on the surface of the Earth. Inside a sphere, you most easily define your position by “latitude”, “longitude” and distance from center. You can interpret “latitude” as any set of lines dividing up the sphere in the (arbitrarily chosen) east-west direction, whether it’s how we do it on Earth where we have an even distance between concentric circles that get bigger at the equator and smaller at the poles, or do it the way we do longitude, where we have a variable distance between circles that are all the same size and meet at a center point (rather, at two center points.) “Longitude” works the same way – define it as the arbitrary north-south direction, which is perpendicular to the “east-west” direction, and it can either be like the longitude we have or function more like the latitude we have. On Earth, the way we do things makes sense because Earth rotates on an axis. Spinward and anti-spinward are real directions you can go on a spinning thing, but they don’t translate into center points – by definition spin goes all the way around. Whereas an axis intersects the sphere in two places, at the “top” and “bottom” if you define top and bottom as the dimension perpendicular to spinward/antispinward. That’s why we have a North and South pole, but not an East and West pole. And because we’re orbiting a star, we get very different things happening if we move spinward/antispinward or along the axis.

The time sphere may or may not rotate – we have no idea. Without rotation, defining “north”, “south”, “east” and “west” would be completely and utterly arbitrary, but we can’t even talk about things without applying some arbitrary definitions to this imaginary sphere we can’t see, so let’s assume the existence of north, south, east and west, and that they work more or less the same way the Earth does. Everything in the universe rotates unless it’s tidally locked, so why not assume the time sphere does too?

Imagine a sphere we can move freely within, rather than the outside of the sphere. Latitude and longitude are still valuable, but they can’t, by themselves, define your position. You also need distance from center. The only reason we don’t use distance from center here on Earth is that, being that we’re bound to the surface by gravity, the measurement of distance from center is almost always the same, or close enough anyway. (We do measure distance from sea level, which is interpreted as the average position of the surface of the Earth; we don’t care how far sea level is from the center of the Earth, though.) When we think of a cube, we think of the x, y and z coordinates – length, width and depth. A sphere, you could use x, y and z, but they’ll produce weird effects because everything’s curved, so you’re better off with the lat, long and distance-from-center dimensions. Let’s call them E (latitude, east-west), N (longitude, north-south) and D (distance from center); it makes a memorable acronym.

So. We’re on the time sphere and it is falling inward at a defined rate, and that rate is t, our symbol for time. The center of the time sphere is the end of time, and it’s similar to a black hole – nothing radiates outward from it. Everything in the universe, matter and energy alike, move only in the D direction at the rate of t and toward the center. They can’t move away from center, the “time gravity” is too strong. So we cannot see anything that exists within the future.

Notice that we cannot change our E and N on the time sphere. We don’t conceptualize those as dimensions that even exist, because we can’t move in them. We are in a fixed position on the time sphere, with no energy that we know of able to move us in the E or N directions.

Why do we then assume E and N even exist? Because within the event horizon of the black hole, time and space invert. r, the measurement of space, turns into the direction that entropy moves in, only one way forward, toward the center. t, the measurement of time, turns into the direction you can move in freely, so t must have two extra dimensions that we just can’t move in and cannot measure so we just never use it. Kind of like, on the surface of the Earth, we don’t measure our position from the center of the Earth. We can measure that, but why bother? The entire surface of the Earth falls within five miles; the distance to the center from sea level is about 4,000 miles. So the only useful part of the measurement of up and down is relative to sea level (if we’re talking about the whole surface; in a specific local area, we actually measure relative to the position of the ground. When someone talks about the third floor of a building in Denver, they don’t say it’s one mile and thirty feet high, even though Denver’s a mile above sea level. They just say 30 feet.)

(Why does t have to have two extra dimensions just so we can talk about moving around inside the event horizon of a black hole, when in fact no one could survive crossing the event horizon of a black hole? I am not a physicist, so in fact I have absolutely no idea if in reality we have to have two additional time dimensions. All of this is a hypothesis being built up for the purpose of being used in fiction. I am a science fiction writer, so basically, I am Making Shit Up, but it’s plausible-sounding shit. The part about r and t inverting inside a black hole is true as far as scientists know, but everything else, including the time sphere, is extrapolated.)

So. What if, when you cross the event horizon, your space dimension (r) gets squished into one direction and your time dimension (t) expands into three? Well, not much. No one can live inside a black hole because nothing could survive crossing the event horizon. If the spaghettification doesn’t get you, the energy piling up around the event horizon will.

But it turns out that it’s possible to mathematically demonstrate that if the gravity field of the black hole is toroidal, it might be possible for energy – not matter, but energy – to cross the gravity field at an angle, spiral downward, and hit the outside edge and get out before being pulled down toward the singularity. Which means, in theory, energy could possibly escape the event horizon.

What’s a toroid? It’s a donut shape. Spheres and toroids are the only stable configurations for a thing that has high gravity and rotates. (Yes, I totally want to write about a toroid planet one of these days.) So a black hole could be a toroid. More importantly, if it rotates, its gravitational field may be toroidal rather than spherical. By the way, everything in the universe rotates, including black holes. Also, we know that at least for small black holes, energy does escape.

Well, imagine energy entering the toroidal field that describes the event horizon at a sharp angle so that it’s going to shoot out the other side, and skip ever being pulled down into the actual singularity at the center. Except that the distance traversed translates to time in our dimension.

If there was only one spatial dimension and only one time dimension this would be useless information; the energy would exit exactly where it entered because it didn’t have the opportunity to move anywhere. Or it would never exit at all. But something has to happen when space collapses down to one dimension and then opens back up to three. Likewise time.

Postulate that there’s a mapping. If you move within the black hole’s event horizon, your distance toward center is time; your distance as you move away from center is time running backward.

What if, if you shot a beam into a toroidal black hole, at such an angle that it would come back out, space and time were conserved in some way? Also, mathematically, is it possible to enter a toroid with a line that is X distance from center, and then exit, where the exit position is X plus Y? That’s the part I’m not sure of. Does a line intersecting a toroid always have a symmetrical relationship to the center where as soon as you’re W distance from the edge of the toroid you must always be the same distance to the center, or can you manipulate that? Particularly given that you’re dealing with a spiral?

Here’s what I’m postulating. You can shoot a beam of energy into a black hole and have it come out before you sent it, because space and time are conserved such that your distance from the center of the black hole turns back into time when you get out.

So. At some point in the near future, humanity is exploring away from Earth, within say three light years, when we find an alien craft that reminds us of our own Voyager or other similar crafts – something sent by an alien race containing information. Except that, instead of trying to tell us about themselves, the aliens tell us about how to shoot a beam through a black hole so that it comes out at a time equivalent to the time it took to get to the black hole and the time it took to get from the black hole to the destination, times negative 1 – meaning, in the past, far back enough to compensate for the time it takes to go from you, to the black hole, to the planet you’re sending it to. And they give us the location of a nearby black hole and some relay destinations to try to send an information beam to, plus a protocol for encoding information in a laser beam of electromagnetic radiation.

We need to control the angle we’re shooting the black hole at, and we can’t do that from Earth – from earth there is only one line that can go through any given interstellar body. So we go out to a black hole maybe I dunno 65 light years away or something? And we build a relay station that orbits the black hole from a safe distance, and then we shoot it with our information beam, and the relay station sends it through the black hole at an angle where it will hit the destination we were given at approximately the same time that we sent it back on Earth.

And it turns out, there’s an entire network of these things, and aliens communicating with each other via this network. There’s an interstellar Internet, because no matter can go faster than light, but information can, because if you know the right tricks to massage a black hole into transmitting your information before you sent it, you can compensate for the speed of light and make everything show up at pretty much the same time you sent it. (There are Kerberos-style protocols that prevent you from using the interstellar Internet to bounce information back to yourself before you sent it in the first place; this isn’t time travel, not even time travel for information, but exploiting time travel to make interstellar distances into something with minutes of lag rather than hundreds of years.)

(A side tangent: we got to the near-node black hole via near-relativistic speeds with time dilation, but we didn’t send humans. Why not? Because we tested with simulated human minds, in a simulated universe, and found out that no matter how much 20-somethings declare that they’re fine with the idea of leaving home forever or never coming back until 200 years have passed on Earth, it turns out that after it happens, it’s not fine. Why do I bring this up? Because the simulated universe isn’t as sophisticated or complex as ours; no one would bother to try simulating the universe perfectly. Thus, there are simulated humans who are AIs, living in what is for all intents and purposes a video game. The story fodder that could provide! You, your friends and family, and a handful of people you interact with, are the only real people in the universe and everyone else is an NPC, not a simulated human mind. You have save files. You can die of old age, but otherwise, death is only a setback to your last save.)

And that is how I get from the physics fact “scientists now think that rather than time stops in a black hole, the time and space dimensions get switched” to an interstellar Internet (an idea my husband and I have had for over a decade now) and a story about AIs who think they’re human living in a reality that’s like a video game.

And another thing:

So this is a complicated thing but it comes out of the notion of the time sphere. What happens if you can change your E and N coordinates on the time sphere?

I started thinking about Rick and Morty, where Rick’s gone on record in canon by saying that time travel is bullshit and he doesn’t want to do it, but he’s constantly going to alternate universes, to the point where it’s made him a nihilist who thinks that nothing means anything because everything that can happen, did, somewhere. It seems to me that movement on the E and N coordinates keeps you in the same point in time, like the same date, but you’re traveling to a different timeplace – most likely an alternate universe.

So then I started thinking about, how do we justify the existence of alternate universes? How do they happen?

We could model this by saying that all the alternate universes that could possibly exist already do, and they’re all on the time sphere, but that’s… really deterministic for my tastes, and from a story perspective it doesn’t get me anywhere fresh. So I started thinking about “fate”, and what controls what happens in the universe.

In a universe without life, everything is absolutely pre-determined. The forces that control movement on the macroscale – the movement of planets and suns – can be predicted outward through billions of years, if you know all the things that are going into it, because the force in question is gravity and it’s pretty predictable. On the medium scale – the shit on a planet – we couldn’t necessarily predict weather with our current level of knowledge about it, but theoretically someone could. Tides are predictable. Earthquakes are theoretically predictable. Even the existence of chaos math, where we can’t predict exactly when a wave will break or how high it will rise, doesn’t invalidate the fact that individual waves mean very little, and the averages determine what the waves accomplish, for the most part. The quantum level is where unpredictable shit happens, but the micro level doesn’t really have much to do with anything big enough to care about.

As soon as life comes into the picture, though, then the quantum level is important. Then one photon of high-frequency electromagnetic radiation can hit a DNA molecule and cause it to lose a base pair, causing a mutation in the genes that causes the life to become some other form of life. Now you have genuine randomness, and with genuine randomness you can start having alternate universes.

The quantum level can affect the brain as well, once we get up to the level of sentient beings, but under what circumstance would that change be significant? Fiction typically postulates that the same people exist, but they made radically different decisions that changed the course of their lives. But how likely is that?

Most of the time, when we make decisions, those are the only reasonable decisions we could possibly make. We took everything into account, we thought things through, and we made the decision that seemed right, given everything we knew. For quantum randomness to affect our decision, the decision needs to be something where the available data could really go either way. And for that to spin off an alternate universe, it needs to be something where it was a significant change.

What’s going to fall into that category most of the time is going to be: time, and how it intersects with the movement of other people. Decide to leave your home three minutes later, and get into a car accident that kills you… or don’t. Decide to move to the left rather than the right while you’re at a party, and meet a person who you end up having children with… or don’t. You’re not going to go either way, flip a coin, on what you major in when you go to college, or what career you land in, but you may make very small decisions that affect who you meet and what children you have, and that is going to have an enormous impact. For that matter, the exact moment that a man achieves orgasm, which could be affected by the quantum level impacting a single neuron in his nervous system, affects which sperm in particular he releases at that moment. That could affect whether he has children at all, and it will certainly change what children he has if one is conceived.

A woman’s egg hangs around for several days, so a single quantum decision as to when to have sex isn’t going to affect her child-bearing from the egg side… but the quantum level is going to affect which eggs she has in the first place, and it may affect what egg is released for a given month.

So the thing about the alternate universe where you make a different decision and as a result a completely different life unfolds for you? That’s not how it happens. What happens is someone else is born. Because your parents weren’t born. Because your grandparents weren’t born. And it all tracks back to someone very long ago who either died without having children, or didn’t meet the mate they met in our universe, or just had different children entirely.

The decisions you’ve made that were significant to your life were made because of who you are, and what information you had available to you. Those aren’t affected by tiny quantum fluctuations. But whether you bumped into someone on the sidewalk or just barely slipped past them, whether you get in your car right now or daydream for a minute before getting in, those are decisions that can be. And who is born, and when, that’s affected by the quantum level. So those alternate universes you can get if you can figure out how to change your values of E and N on the time sphere? They almost certainly don’t have an alternate you with a different personality, or even an alternate you with a different career. A very, very tiny change in E and N might get you to a universe where you exist, but had different kids, or had kids if you don’t, or didn’t have kids if you do; and maybe there might be opportunities that arose by sheer luck that were affected by a quantum fluctuation in someone’s tiny decision, or a person didn’t exist who did in your universe and that resulted in you going in a different direction with your life. But the likelihood that you could find an alternate universe where everyone you know exists but there’s a completely different history? Nope. If the Nazis won World War II, there isn’t a version of you who’s a Nazi because everything would have changed significantly enough that most likely, you don’t exist.

Well. Now I’ve derived an interstellar internet, a simulated and simplified world where the characters have save files, and an entirely different paradigm to think about alternate universes, all based on the fact that someone told me that time and space switch places in a black hole.

#black holes #physics #time travel #alternate universes

4 notes · View notes