#Cosmic Significance

[turiyatitta]

The Enigma of Nine

A Metaphysical Exploration into the Significance of a Singular Number In the vast expanse of numbers and their mathematical precision, there lies a mystical depth, a metaphysical dimension that transcends their apparent functionality and dives into realms of deeper significance. During our conversation with Steve James on Guru Viking, I ventured into the enigmatic world of the number nine,…

[fatherowlcoaching]

Taking our Time in Life to Connect with People

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overflow=”visible” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right”…

[omnificent-orion]

Waiting for...

[lady-raziel]

I want you all to know that fundamentally matpat giving the pope a copy of undertale was an important cosmic event because the game’s core messages of hope, kindness, humor, and determination are deeply resonant with the heart of what humanity could be if it used free will to choose so, and was presented so earnestly that it did actually stand out so much as an offering to the divine to the point that I truly believe the Hopes and Dreams and Save the World scores were incorporated into the fabric of reality itself

[qiu-yan]

soulmate AU

[warning: kind of depressing]

imagine a soulmate AU whose setting is pretty much the same as MDZS canon, except with three additions:

classic soulmate au setup: everyone's has a unique birthmark design. your heaven-mandated soulmate is the only other person in the world with the exact same birthmark. so if you find someone with the exact same birthmark as you (doesn't have to be in the same location on the body), then you know that person is your soulmate. everyone in the world is supposed to have exactly one soulmate birthmark.

your soulmate birthmark shows up with you're.....idk sometime in your teens.

currently, the law (idk how the MDZS worldbuilding works so let's just say that the emperor's decreed it be so or something lol) is that you are only allowed to marry your soulmate. and if your soulmate is identified, then you must marry them immediately. thus, if you don't want to marry your soulmate, then you have to keep the fact that you are soulmates hidden forever.

note that two people being soulmates does not guarantee that they are actually compatible. as it turns out, jiang fengmian and yu ziyuan are soulmates in this universe.....but their marriage is every bit as disastrous as it is in canon. because of this, both jiang cheng and jiang yanli are very pessimistic about how their future relationships with their soulmates will go; similarly, wei wuxian hates the concept of soulmates entirely.

now, wei wuxian's soulmate birthmark showed up during the cloud recesses arc. both he and jiang cheng saw this soulmark, so they both know the design. but wei wuxian has always hated the idea of soulmates, because he hates the idea of being forcibly tied to someone, so this is a miserable experience for him. he is very vocal about this being a miserable experience for him.

simultaneously, wei wuxian finds out that lan wangji does not have a soulmate birthmark. this isn't impossible, but is still unusual, given that almost everyone in their generation has had theirs show up already. so wei wuxian immediately latches onto lan wangji. 

jiang cheng refuses to show wei wuxian his soulmate birthmark. wei wuxian bothers and bothers jiang cheng about it, but against all odds, jiang cheng actually succeeds in hiding his soulmate birthmark from wei wuxian.

events play out as they do in canon: lotus pier falls, the golden core transfer happens (no influence on wei wuxian or jiang cheng's soulmate marks), the sunshot campaign happens, wei wuxian runs off with the wen remnants, wei wuxian becomes public enemy number one. during this time, the design of wei wuxian's soulmate birthmark becomes public knowledge; it also becomes public knowledge that no other person with this birthmark has been identified. naturally, people begin talking about how, because of his evil nature, wei wuxian has been cursed with a soulmate birthmark that no one else has, signifying that he's been doomed by the heavens to die alone. this does kind of get to wei wuxian, but he pretends it doesn’t. 

events continue to play out as they do in canon: wei wuxian kicks the bucket, wei wuxian comes back to life, jiggy gets his shit wrecked, wangxian swan off into the sunset together. notably, in all the time that passed, lan wangji never developed any soulmate birthmark at all. this is basically unheard of post-timeskip, as every adult lan wangji's age should have developed one already. somehow, the resurrected wei wuxian finds out about this before wangxian actually get together; this then makes lan wangji special in wei wuxian's eyes. to wei wuxian, lan wangji is the one person in the world who has escaped the curse of the soulmate birthmark. 

postcanon, wangxian want to get married, but are legally unable to because they aren't soulmates. wangxian decide Screw That, and set their minds on changing the law in this setting: they will find some way to have the law saying that [only soulmates can get married to each other] overturned, such that people can freely marry whoever tf they want. 

during this process, wei wuxian and jiang cheng mostly reconcile. thus, when wangxian begin (the ancient fantasy chinese equivalent of) the legal battle to overturn the soulmate decree, they have jiang cheng's full support. 

and eventually......wangxian succeed. 

wangxian's success in changing the law is met with widespread acclaim, because as it turns out this law was already quite unpopular. people dont want to be forced to marry their "soulmates" just bc of some random birthmark, especially when the soulmate pairings aren't even compatible half the time (see the jiang parents). moreover, over the course of this (ancient fantasy chinese equivalent of a) legal battle, wangxian became symbols of this struggle in the public eye; the design of wei wuxian's soulmate birthmark in particular became a symbol of the tyrannies of the enforced soulmate system. 

thus, with the law changed, wangxian are able to legally get married. jiang cheng hosts the wangxian wedding and makes it an incredibly successful (and elaborate, and expensive) event. during the afterparty, though, jiang cheng gets absolutely sauced. 

one year later, wangxian decide they want an equally big party celebrating the one-year anniversary of their wedding. jiang cheng hosts this one too. and, once again, during the afterparty, jiang cheng gets absolutely sauced. 

for the last 15+ years, jiang cheng has been incredibly fastidious about wearing high collars and keeping everything in that area covered. this is because the scars left on him from his time getting tortured by the wens during the sunshot campaign crept up to almost the throat area, and he didn't want anyone to see them. now, though, as wei wuxian helps an absolutely piss-drunk jiang cheng back to the latter's rooms, wei wuxian pulls open the cross of jiang cheng's robes in order to help him breathe, and in doing so sees the other thing jiang cheng has been hiding for the last 15+ years: a soulmate birthmark, completely identical to the one branded upon wei wuxian's own skin. 

from jiang cheng's pov:

back in the cloud recesses arc, jiang cheng's soulmate birthmark manifested the day after wei wuxian's showed up. since jiang cheng had already seen wei wuxian's soulmate birthmark, jiang cheng immediately recognized his own as being identical to wei wuxian's, thus marking him and wei wuxian as soulmates.....however, wei wuxian had already spent the entire day yelling about how he despised the concept of soulmates and how how he hated the idea of being forcibly tied to someone, so jiang cheng decided to keep his mouth shut.

as time passed, wei wuxian's hatred for the soulmate system only grew; furthermore, wei wuxian became increasingly obsessed with lan wangji, who did not have a soulmate birthmark and therefore represented freedom in wei wuxian's eyes. so jiang cheng continued to keep his mouth shut: he could not reasonably expect wei wuxian to drop all of his doubts and dislikes of the soulmate system (which were entirely reasonable, in jiang cheng's eyes; after all, jiang cheng had also seen the trainwreck of his parents' marriage and his parents were actual soulmates) , just because wei wuxian's soulmate was actually jiang cheng. there was a certain element of Cope to this as well: jiang cheng fully expected that, if wei wuxian ever found out about jiang cheng being his soulmate, wei wuxian's reaction would be an immediate rejection plus a distancing of himself from jiang cheng. but if jiang cheng never told wei wuxian, then they could continue to be at least friends, and maybe jiang cheng could entertain himself with a fantasy once in a while of wei wuxian being happy about being jiang cheng's soulmate. 

then shit started hitting the fan with qishan wen's aggression and the sunshot campaign and all that, so there just wasn't a good time to bring the issue up. and then, after the sunshot campaign ended, jiang cheng legitimately considered telling wei wuxian the truth. but wei wuxian was still pulling away; he obviously had something going on but also clearly did not want to share. if jiang cheng revealed to wei wuxian that they were actually soulmates - moreover, if anyone else found out - then wei wuxian would be legally obligated to marry jiang cheng. however, from what jiang cheng could tell, wei wuxian did not want to be tied to jiang cheng. wei wuxian already hated the compulsory nature of the soulmate system; furthermore, wei wuxian didn't even seem to want to be tied to jiang cheng as first disciple of yunmeng jiang. so jiang cheng felt that forcibly tying wei wuxian to himself in this manner would be unacceptable, and would make him too similar to his mom.

then the shit with the wen remnants went down, confirming in jiang cheng's eyes all of the above.

and then, what was jiang cheng supposed to say? "well we're actually soulmates (which i never told you about), so please give up on all your moral convictions and come back"? "please, i beg you - don't leave me"? no way. then wei wuxian died, and well that was that. 

since by this point, the exact design of wei wuxian's soulmate birthmark had become public knowledge, jiang cheng also had political reasons to keep his matching soulmate birthmark hidden. jiang cheng was already catching shit from everyone else for being the yiling patriarch's former sect leader; if the public found out that he was also the yiling patriarch's soulmate on top of that, people would start holding him even more responsible for all the shit wei wuxian did. so jiang cheng continued to keep his soulmate birthmark secret. 

then wei wuxian came back....except wei wuxian continuously avoided him and instead ran around everywhere with lan wangji, so there was no way jiang cheng could bring it up then. 

and then, by the time wei wuxian and jiang cheng reconciled, wei wuxian was already up in arms about having the soulmate marriage law dissolved. and increasingly the movement to do so, symbolized by the wangxian relationship, gathered momentum. as it turned out, jiang cheng himself was fully in support of the movement to have the soulmate marriage law dissolved: there was a case during the timeskip in which two of jiang cheng's disciples, who were not soulmates, wanted to get married. jiang cheng actually supported their relationship and wanted to officiate their marriage - except, when he tried to do so, actual representatives from the emperor showed up and said that he couldn't do that because it went against the emperor's will. so jiang cheng also opposes this law, because how dare these assholes tell him what he can and cannot do in his own goddamn sect. 

and then the law was overturned and wangxian got married.....except, by then, wangxian had become symbols of the anti-soulmate movement in the eyes of the public. and even though the majority of the population supported the anti-soulmate movement, there was still a significant faction within the imperial court that sought to reinstate the soulmate marriage law - and, because of the symbolic importance wangxian held in the eyes of the public with regard to to this issue, said faction was only waiting for problems to arise within wangxian that they could use as ammo to argue that the soulmate marriage law was necessary. 

thus, even after the soulmate marriage law was overturned, jiang cheng continued to keep his own soulmate birthmark a secret.....until, one year later, wei wuxian found out about it. oops. 

[queriesntheories]

INDIE ANIMATON FANS, OVER HERE!!

ME AND MY FRIEND @midnightnautilus ARE DOIN A THING!!

We'd love to see you around for our next session, and we'll keep updating you on the next session's details in-server and via the tag #the indie dive :D

With the background of TAG's strikes in the previous year, AI 'art' creeping in, and being indie artists ourselves with an endless backlog of pilots and shows to look into, it made sense to share it with people and to give a spotlight to new talent.

If you want more shows like Digital Circus, Murder Drones, Gaslight District and so many others, this is a great way to support creatives so they can get to that stage!

Click me to join the server! See you soon! :)

Fonts: Quicksand, Spellie Fontacular, Glacial Indifference

Pilots featured in image 1: Tag Team (Team Egg Troop), DONUT CANYON (Hey It's Mojo), THE EVERYTHING IS OK SHOW (Studio Flimpo)

Emojis taken from Emoji Kitchen and Emojipedia

[widowshill]

the people aren't ready to hear this but angelique arbitrarily picking quentin to decide to be in love with out of nowhere, bewitching roger into marriage and then absolutely not wanting him to touch her, and constantly pursuing men's (chiefly barn's) attention only when it's clear he doesn't want her, is soooo comp het of her.

[whatudottu]

Honestly I’d love to see the Ben 10 fandom go more in-depth as to what the galactic audience’s thoughts regarding interspecies relationships and what dynamics formed between different species are like. Is dating To'kustars or Galvans when you’re not a To’kustar or Galvan frowned upon due to the severe height difference involved? Are there debates on whether it’s ethical to date a Vulpimancer or not? Is a Galvan dating a Galvanic Mechamorphs seen as a power imbalance? What would a romantic relationship between a Petrosapien and a Tetramand be like, or a queerplatonic one between an Ectonurite and a Lepidopterran be like, or even a platonic/familial one between a Kineceleran and a Pyronite?

Heheh, I really like thinking about the interplanetary community and it’s dynamics throughout the cosmos in the Ben 10 series, because I dunno it’s like rife with potential for worldbuilding and I guess political drama? Because apparently I like fictional political drama? I guess when it’s fictional it doesn’t affect anyone so it can be played around with in interesting ways.

Got some talking points down below hehe-

I have like SO MANY headcanons about how the interplanetary community treats vulpimancers, though to be fair I have like an unrefined list of notes about the chronology of Vulpin politics and ideologies that I haven’t neatened up yet, and one of those headcanons is the difficulties they face trying to prove themselves just as sapient as the other species; amongst all the bullshit that does bring, interspecies relationships are also affected by that bias. And the fact that you bring up the implied dynamic between creator (the galvan) and creation (galvanic mechamorphs) is interesting too because also, you can kinda also have debates about ‘is it ethical to date the first generation of a species’ especially in comparison to galvans who seem to have quite long lives, ‘is it ethical for a long living species to date a species by all means younger in their entirety than they are’ type questions-

It also isn’t just like the general interplanetary community though it’s also just the differing planetary communities (with their differing nations etc etc until we get to the individual) that also butt heads with each other- an ectonurite’s family really REALLY pushing for them to ‘get together’ with their queerplatonic lepidopterran partner before they have to host a funeral one day vs the lepidopterran having to explain to their hive that they’re happy with their ectonurite partner especially without the pressure of it being romantic there’s so many others that can and do *coughs into hand* ‘contribute’ to the hive population! Or or! The kineceleran not giving two shits about their pyronite sibling from another… pibling? Ah whatever- being so frickin’ slow because they can both bond over sports vs the pyronite wanting to share one of their thrill seeking traditions from back home with a race in their stunt car against their kineceleran cuz’ own personal wheels!

Lowkey I kinda made at least a concept for a tetramand/petrosapien couple which I based on a pseudo sumo wrestling match I saw at school once where one of the participants was slammed into the ground but they quickly switched their positions to roll the person on top so fast the crowd thought THEY were the one to win and not the person they flipped who won first- I mean! In my sphere of headcanons about petrosapiens and Petropia is that they barely got much chance to interact with the universe at large (being cracked open by the fulmini before Plumber intervention set them off plus doing something similar but… a little MORE to what they did on Revonnah) and so modern interplanetary discussions about any petrosapien relationship is ‘i thought they were extinct?’ and especially with tetramands intense courtship it may even skip straight to ‘oh they might as well be extinct’. Not exactly pleasant to hear, compounded by the rare potential someone happens to know - to put it in gross terms - a ‘suitable mate’ with the opposite sex of the petrosapien they’re pestering. At that point you’d better hope it wasn’t the tetramand/petrosapien pair because if the petrosapien doesn’t stab you over the offence, the tetramand would put you in your place, as legally able to as they’d can just to piss them off :P

Do you think if a galvan and a to’kustar were dating it’d be considered a ‘long distance relationship’ :P?

[soracities]

What is your stance on the insignificance of man versus the cosmos? Fear or solace?

the cosmos and i are not at war so i don't believe in "versus". it is and so i am. that is all. the thread is not separate from the tapestry etc.

[quibbs126]

You know it’s kind of funny how Cyberverse Season 1 dedicated a whole episode to Cosmic Rust and how it destroyed Velocitron, only for it and the events of the episode to basically never be addressed again

Like I think the most important thing to come from that episode was that it properly introduced Hot Rod, who later became a main character. But like, Hot Rod could have been introduced to us any other way, the Rust was not necessary

Was it something they planned to reuse but just never found a place for or weren’t allowed to use? Like why was it here and why did it get its own entire episode, genuinely

[trashiiplant]

oh right, I've got an iterator sona now!

he doesn't really do much lore wise. bros just some sleepy space loving guy bc that's what I am LMAO

mostly made them so I can draw shit like this

[gemkun]

trying to work out veritas' actual name is so funny like one second it's aurelius then next it's bob. what do you guys think his real name is ?

[zahri-melitor]

So everything in Swamp Thing #76 is excitingly messed up but on top of it all Rick Veitch is having a whale of a time implying multiple things at once.

Abby and Alec are conceiving Tefé in this issue. For various complicated plot reasons, they’re doing this via Swamp Thing using Constantine as a meat puppet. (It’s not consensual possession either)

I think that Constantine…enjoyed this kind of thing.

(Constantine depicted with a right side earring)

“Constantine was supposed to be a ladies’ man. In fact, if you believe half the stories, he was a regular Barnacle Bill the Sailor! If he was really that promiscuous, what if he was exposed to AIDS?”

(The tatt on Constantine’s arse looking like a ship…or an arrow)

[hetchdrive]

I wish I could articulate my earnest and sincere feelings about the usage of "I'll Be Seeing You" in Deadpool and Wolverine but unfortunately I can't take myself seriously long enough to string my thoughts together.

[krafterwrites]

I wonder if the music for Act 2 of the ARK will use a different track instead of remixing Final Rush again

[no1ryomafan]

The getter emperor having several faces on it (at least in vehicle mode) reminds me of manuscript demons. These demons had many faces on them as a visual metaphor of sorts to indicate that evil has many faces and is endless/all consuming/ever changing.I'm sure the faces on the getter emperor is more to indicate that it's made from many more smaller getter machines primarily and the emperor is displayed as a neutral if incredibly and horrifyingly destructive force but I can't help but notice.

I can’t give solid input on this because I just got up but I remember one time me and my friend generally discuss one that the forms of the getter despite having each their own designated pilot are not actually a different person but rather the same entity with 3 different faces, so I could see this absolutely tying back to emperor and having a deeper meaning. Not sure about the evil part since emperor is in a bit of a grey area for me-despite the whole universal conquer stuff, I don’t think it’s truly evil and there could be a outcome where emperor actually does protect humanity without twisting it, we just never saw it-but i can see their maybe being some Buddhist thing tied to it.