#i mean he’s in a lightcone so i might as well

[ayatoscupid]

exciting seeing oomfs get hsr f/os. welcome to hell

[tearsofcalamity]

Irl electrical engineer/hobbyist roboticist here who is also down bad for the cyborg cowboy- The level of intimacy of mechanic!reader fixing his internal wiring is OFF THE CHARTS, like, reader having to gently untangle and toy with his wiring while arranging them properly?? All the testing of the sensors that it would take to make him be able to feel again? Reader might as well have to touch every inch of Boothill to make sure that his body is functioning properly. They would quite literally know him inside and out and that makes me FERAL

omfg we got a verifiable ENGINEER here?? everyone GET DOWN

no but fr thank you for this insight this means the world to me . you dont get it . even like non n/sfw wise thats so. LIKE THE LEVEL OF TRUST HE WOULD HAVE TO HAVE IN YOU TO GET IN THERE AND DO ALL THAT? THE LEVEL OF COMPLEXITY AND THE WAY HE'D HAVE TO BE FULLY VULNERABLE?

back to horny thoughts that also sets me off w boothill being so vulnerable when what we've seen from him so far is like cocky, devil-may-care attitude and probably puts that up as a facade (esp after seeing his lightcone poor guy) but him just lightly shaking and you can HEAR how loud he's whirring when you get inside (ha) and really work through his wiring. imagine he overheats and you're like WTF

the testing. The Testing. listen here. that's what really gets me. I can imagine him getting antsy even when you're just starting with his shoulders or his arms, but you move to his neck... his chest... a little lower and he's asking if you really need to touch his artificial dick just to test it out. it's like no, he could totally check himself, but am I gonna tell him that uhhh NO I'm gonna be all "nope absolutely necessary to check. something could go REAL wrong if it's off" make him fistfuck me until his insides are literally letting off steam. I NEED TO HEAR HIM WHIMPER AND SEE HIM CRY!!! sometimes I imagine him purring (like an engine, but hey, if catboys are your thing that too) cause his neck is mechanical too so...........

oh and I'm totally groping on his metal ass and rubbing all over it. im licking it. idc. I'm working doubletime to make his ass extra sensitive idc! I'm a robotfucker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mizu0xox0]

What do you mean I'm your baby?

[Self aware! Yanqing and Yunli and their reactions when reader calls them their kids]

Note:Might be OOC, strictly platonic

-Self aware! Yanqing who definitely at first feels kind of frustrating that you’re somewhat babying him even though he’s a kid he can definitely look after himself and doesn’t need to be babied by someone but overtime that changes as well Yanqing is still a kid at the end of the day

-Self aware! Yunli who doesn’t seem to think much of you treating her as a kid until you specifically say that she’s YOUR KID. Not anyone else’s but your kid is when she starts to prove she’s the “better” kid as compared to your other kids Yanqing you might see her doing much more damage then usual. Definitely hits her cries more even if you’re running auto and not paying attention

-Self aware! Yanqing and Yunli who if you put them in the same team well the rest of your team will most likely be hearing the two kiddos having small tantrum fights and the kids having a little competition on who can outdo the other or who can get more compliments from you when they do damage

-Self aware! Yanqing and Self aware! Yunli who both definitely try to out do the other such as during cutscenes when you talk about how cool the cutscene of them is

-Self aware! Yanqing and Yunli who have a well thought out out plan on if you were somehow thrown through your computer screen and into their world they know what and which spots in the Xianzhoun to bring you for food,fun,relaxation aka family time with your two children

-Self aware! Yanqing who has a slight advantage as a standard banner character as compared to Yunli however that does not stop her from coming home to your 50/50s even if Yanqing tries to stop her well just imagine Yanqing trying to block Yunli from getting onto the astral express train door

-Self aware! Yanqing who will definitely try to come home to you mostly on the standard banner so that you don’t get mad at him if you lose your 50/50

-Self aware! Yunli who will definitely be grateful if you saved up for her even if you couldn’t get her lightcone it doesn’t matter because she knows you did your best to get her

-Self aware! Yanqing and Yunli who have just a screen separating them from someone the two kid treasure hopefully they’ll be able to get through to be with their favorite person/parental figure even if you aren’t aware that their there

Thank you for reading and I apologize that I haven't been active and even though I said I'd return after my exams. I've just been quite stressed lately so I decided to write these hcs of my two precious kids in HSR. I'll try to write more and other stuff apart from HSR hcs.

[spaceyprincely]

Boothill observations and theorys(?):

⚠️‼️Cw// leaks + possible 2.1 spoilers‼️⚠️

Hello tumblr I thought I’d share some observations I’ve made about boothill, an upcoming 5 star character. Particularly his name and how it relates to his cowboy aesthetic as well as his possible backstory. I also want to theorize his situation with Acheron as well. Well I’m not exactly an expert on theory’s so I doubt mine counts but I’ll share what interests me on boothill!

Boot Hill, Name origin:

First off, what is a “boothill”?

“Boothill” or “Boot Hill” are a type of cemetery most commonly referred to in western parts of the United States and America. What makes this cemetery unique is its association with cowboys, specifically ones that died in violent non natural fashion like shooting or hanging, “died with their boots on”.

How does this relate to Honkai star rail boothill.

- boothill is based of the typical western American cowboy , with the outfit, his accent , usage of guns, etc. so we have that connection .

- The HSR wiki says that he’s specifically a cyberborg. Cyborgs are typically depicted as robot human hybrid characters. Some cyborg characters like robocop and cyborg (dc comics) have backstories of becoming a cyborg by having had either died and came back to life through technology or damaged their human body greatly to the point they replace with artificial robot tech.

- Boothill in leaked eilodons shows his naked body. However you can quickly noticed his body is human. Not robotic like what we’ve been officially shown.

- Contrast this with his lightcone art, boothill has only part of his robot body. It looks like he’s being operated on.

- So how does this his name relate to his possible backstory

- As previously iterated, boothill is a name for cemetery of cowboys that died in violent ways. Pair this with how the leaked content having a human body which insinuates that he was at some point a human.

- So what I theorize: Most likely case is that boothill died/ got heavily injured, most likely due to a fight, so much that his only chance to survive was to make him a cyborg. The name boothill fits because he probably died in his boots (I’ll assume for now it happened on the job, maybe his job was the same before and after?).

- Interestingly There’s a leaked description of his lightcones. I’m not 100% sure about how true it is so I’ll have to take it with a grain of salt. However it details on him coming back to life after almost embracing death.

- - If boothill died, who killed him?

There isnt much to hint at who is to blame for cause of him becoming cyborg so far, given he’s a new character with little information.

At this moment, my best guess is the ipc which characters including topaz and aventurine are in. Boothill is revealed to not like the IPC as revealed in his introduction post. However there’s an interesting thing we need to observe.

- Notice how it states “the target of his revenge”, meaning the ipc most likely wronged him in some. I wonder if the ipc is the ones responsible for his death and transformation to being a cyberborg. But it’s likely it could be another reason for his distaste.

About Acheron

Cw/ this part gets into partial spoilers for 2.1 trailblazer main story quest

black swan receives a call from boothill. The call is immediately clear he is threatening Acheron with death.

- his tension with her seems very extreme to the point where hell even go after people affiliated with her when he threatened black swan under the impression she’s was working with her. And saying she shouldn’t exist.

do I think she was behind his death?

Unlike with the ipc one, I’m not really sure. I personally think that this possibility has less weight to it and there might be another reason for his dislike towards her. But it wouldn’t be surprising considering aventurine claims she brings death and finality.

- like aventurine, Boothill knows that Acheron isn’t an actual galaxy ranger however boothill himself is a galaxy ranger. Since Acheron is falsely claiming she’s a galaxy ranger, could this possibly cause tension with the actual galaxy rangers and her to be a target for them? I don’t really have much to theorize much more but would like to hear what others think

[fairykazu]

he may be a five star but you're a 10/10 bf ft. bf! scaramouche

masterlist | series mlist | previous

after scaramouche left with 51840 shards in your honkai star rail account, you might want to use it because he did give it to you willingly and lovingly. you stared at it blankly for a while and before redeeming half of the shards, you tried to reach for more apples, but you finished them already. sighing, you checked your pity and it's zero. despite doubting to get imbibitor lunae, you pulled anyway.

10 pulls in and nothing but two copies of march 7th and one copy of serval. three four stars and one is even off banner, luck is coming you pray.

it's been 60 pulls and still no water dragon in sight, you feared this would happen... hard pity. 97 wishes left but you do have 25920 lefts in the bag so maybe you'll be fine. but gacha addiction is terrible when you have anxiety, so maybe you'll skip just once.

scaramouche heard you scream from the office, and he figured you either got the lunae guy or you lost again. he walked in as you were in tears. not sad but happy. so you did get him. well, did dan heng get you those shards? no! he did.

he leaned on your rolling chair, "did you get him?" he fiddled with the locs of your hair.

"yes!! i am going to relax now since i have him." you replied, leaning back, your eyes meeting his confused ones. "...what's wrong?"

"name, you have been raving about this guy to the point of neglecting me-"

"i didn't neglect you???" you made a face that was between confused and nearly laughing. what connection does dan heng and your boyfriend have???

"let me finish, you should c6 and r5 him or something because i bought those for you. not dan heng. i mean, because i spent money on you!" he replied, leaning towards your desk, grabbing your mouse.

you took the mouse out of his hands and placing it back on your desk, "scara, are you jealous of dan heng?" glancing at your boyfriend, his face fell before he could react to your question,

"name, that's a funny accusation! why would i be jealous over a fictional character?" he looked everywhere but you. there's his tell. he's lying.

"okay, scara, so if i tell you i read fanfiction of him would you get mad?"

"why would you read fanfiction of HIM when im-" he gestured to himself. "- real and your ACTUAL boyfriend..." then he connected the dots, "i think it's okay to read fanfiction but me personally i would cuddle my girlfriend while i play games."

"okay scara." you said, trying not to laugh.

he mimicked your tone, "'ok scara', do you want the e6 or not?"

then you looked the other way. he knew that look. you and scaramouche somehow developed the same tell when you were little kids. damn that tell! scaramouche thought as he sighed while he pulled his chair next to yours, pushing you to be next to him. you scooted yourself next to him, making the chairs collide just a little. you and he shared a knowing look just before you were on his lap and he exited out of the dan heng splash art.

you noticed that he deliberately ignored the ten and thousands of screenshots of lunae's splash art. you hid a laugh while he clicked on the 10 pull button. "do you want to skip or look through?"

"look through." he clicked through each wish. three stars lightcones, a copy of asta, a two copies of yukong and yanqing.

"i was hoping your boyfriend luck would come through."

"wait for it." he replied, still clicking through. "do you want to wait or skip?" he asked again. you mumbled the latter.

he skipped and boom! lunae on your screen. he's now e1. "that's only one copy. we have five more to go." he turned your head and asked, "do you want to continue?"

"okay."

"okay." his warmth of his hand disappears to go back to the mouse.

after pulling and redeeming shards again, your five-star version of dan heng is perfectly maxxed out in terms of level, skill and eidions. you were pretty content after that. your beloved character is loved and always used in your teams. scaramouche was just as content as you were since your attention was averted away from dan heng and was back on him as things should be.

although, the next morning you did notice that dan heng's lightcone changed from your alternative lightcone, on the fall of an aeon, to his signature, brighter than the sun and not to mention, it's r5. you really need to have an intervention about this with your boyfriend. you leaned back in your chair, noticing an uncomfortable object on your chair. you turned around and saw a post-it-note attached to a pochita plushie.

"to name, don't give me and another intervention about spending money. it is worth it to see you smile. from scara."

[littlekiara96]

hi! im also a gallagher=hanunue truther but i don't get why... he's also tiernan if we already know how both of them look like? hanunue is just straight up a furry (not really a werewolf since furries do exist in hsr universe) and tiernan is well...a human. plus tiernan was a nameless cowboy and hanunue was an interstellar criminal (well based on the fact that he was in prison) that later on fought against the ipc WITH the nameless. gallagher doesn't say that hanunue was one only that he was fighting along side them and i don't see the point of him lying twice (like... hiding the fact that he is hanunue and hanunue being nameless dhdbdjdbd). hope i don't come out as a mean "well actually" person just wanted to point out the inconsistencies in this theory.

oh and remember the voiceline where gallagher talks about the nameless? it hurts a lot more if he turns out to be hanunue cuz the insane amount of anger he must feel seeing his old friends didn't get the recognition they deserved... shows how much he cares about them...

To clear one thing up first: you're not coming off as a mean "hum actually", Anon!! I'm very happy someone is asking The Questions, so thank you already ♡

Now to explain some stuff...

If you think Hanu is literally a 1:1 physical copy of what Hanunue looked like... you're wrong. Otherwise, it would mean that the Watchmaker was a literal clockman, and we know that's not the case.

Hanu is a metaphorical representation of Hanunue, just like Clockie is for the Watchmaker. Thus, by default, we can consider that Hanunue was a "classic" human, until we are told otherwise. And that has yet to happen. That's also why we can both go "Gallagher is Hanunue", because Gallagher has everything dog and probably Hanunue was also very dog/wolf-like in some of his traits, and that's why he gets a cartoon character who looks like a werewolf/wolfman/dog (the exacts are inconsistent). (Either that or the fact Hanunue was potentially the first head of the Bloodhounds.)

Now, why would Gallagher omit that he's Hanunue or that Hanunue was a Nameless...

Let me ask another question first: Why didn't Firefly tell us she's a Stellaron Hunter?

Don't think about any lore explanation, because the actual answer is much more down-to-earth than anything the lore could say:

Because this is a work of fiction, with a story to tell.

If Firefly had told us she was a Stellaron Hunter, we would have easily come to the conclusion that she was Sam, because Sam was the last Stellaron Hunter on a certain wanted list. (Or that she was Elio. I guess that conclusion could have been made, too... Maybe.)

And that would have ruined the plot-twist that was intended.

So, for the sake of the story being told, Gallagher can't just say he's Hanunue. That would kill the next plot-twist Shaoji might have been trying to set up.

Now the qestion is: Could he have said that Hanunue was a Nameless? And not make the "connecting the dots" too easy for us?

I think the answer is no. The Watchmaker has been implied or at least theorized (in-game) to be a former Nameless. And that got pretty much confirmed with the new lightcone. So, if anyone said that Hanunue was also a Nameless at some point, it would then become very easy to put 3 and 3 together and conclude what I've concluded: Hanunue is Tiernan. Glaux is Razalina. Mikhail is Legwork.

Also, if we say that Hanunue couldn't be a Nameless because he was an IPC prisoner and only "worked" with some Nameless, while admitting Gallagher is Hanunue, then we can't say that "they" are a History Fictionologist either, because Hanunue teamed with those too. (I keep going on and off about that theory, simply because it's Sunday's. Literally. He probably has good arguments towards it. But he doesn't know they're all inside a narrative and his theory could be a red herring for us, the audience looking at the narrative.)

And on the "Hanunue was an IPC prisoner thus an interstellar criminal" thing:

You know... The IPC could put up a wanted poster for your head just because they have decided you are indebted to them. And if you can't pay what they have decided you owe them... *inhales* WELL... Good luck working for them for free, I guess. Ad vitam. Et aeternam. If they say so. (The IPC is the Shinra from FF7 of Star Rail. They are a corporation so big, they have their own military. It doesn't mean they are right and doing "good things" only. And it certainly doesn't mean they are the ones in charge of justice and judging people's actions.)

And last but not least about the potential drama of the situation if Gallagher turns out to be Hanunue turns out to be Tiernan...

It's a work of fiction. It would tell a story. It would show why Gallagher "seems to have a complicated past". It would be the plot-twist to Shaoji's "he's just a normal dude with npc vibes, y'know, nothing important about him, at all, that guy has no story :D".

That is the point.

Thanks again for the ask, Anon! :D I hope I have at least cleared some things up, if I didn't convince you. ^^

[nameless-will]

[ cú ] A wide smile adorned the Galaxy Ranger’s face when he entered the hospital’s room. He was holding a bag with a sandwich and a few fruits in one hand, a small ‘get better soon’ gift for Marquez he prepared in a rush after hearing what happened from March. “So, how are you doing now? I heard that you went all out in the last battle against the fragmentum. Sounds like it was fun, a shame I wasn’t around to participate.” Actually, reckless was the word Natasha used to describe the event, but that was beside the point at the moment.

Once he was standing next to the hospital bed, he placed the bag of food on the other’s chest. “Food in the Underworld seems pretty interesting and creative to me, but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, so I got you this. Get better soon, will you? They might start charging you rent if you occupy this bed for too long.”

"Cú?"

"Ayeee~! Good lookin' out," Marquez sat up, almost like he wasn't missing a chunk out of his side.

Marquez gleefully accepted the goods from Cú, basically ripping the bag open for something solid after the past few weeks of nothing but bland inoffensive chicken and peas. It was... enough but his tastes aligned with the extremes of a flavor. Part of that was why he was able to vibe with Himeko's coffee, but part of that was also the fact that he liked a challenge.

The Trailblazer removed his mask made out of cloth provided by the staff to get ready to eat. They didn't know what it was gonna be used for, but it made him feel better for the most part. Now that he thought about it, this would probably be Cú's first time even seeing his face without a mask or goggles on.

"Trust me, I've participated in enough of the food competitions at Turner's Food Stall to know that it'd be leagues better than anything this place is offering! March and Dan Heng came clutch with some snacks to hold me over but I'm surprised they let you even let you bring this in!"

"As for the fight, well, I doubt it'd have been as much fun if you were there. We wouldn't have even had to sweat just between us two," Marquez countered playfully while gassing the both of them up simultaneously.

"You shoulda seen me when I got in, though. I was a mess. Blood on the stretcher and my hair half out. Thankfully Himeko came through and was able to get me a retwist once I was stable. Well, that and a lecture, but I think it just made her more comfortable to get that out her system more than anything..."

"So what had happened was, I was stylin'. I had the Moles Welcome You Lightcone on me, and was trynna means test it! Turns out, the description is a goddamn lie! What it says is that it grants the wearer a stack of Mischievous when they use their basic attack, skill, or ultimate to attack enemies. So you'd think with each hit that it would increase by 12%, to 16%, to 18% and so forth! But nah, that would make too much sense. So all it does is give 1 stack max for every type of hit you do. So like 3, if you got it like that. I was hurt emotionally, and then hurt physically."

"It's aight though. I'mma just ride it out and hope this Blessing from Qlipoth means I get to heal up quicker."

[florescentcannibal]

The onset of the day fell in sequence with the jumpstart of Aves’ existences. 

Red. Blue. Green. 

Maybe it’s all just microwaves? The possibilities weren’t quite infinite but they sure didn’t fit inside his head, even if we all spent all afternoon stuffing, compressing, encoding and sealing. If he started on the wrong note, he could lose several drives of data. That wouldn’t do. To chase and be left behind, he might as well run while lying down. 

The ringing doesn’t stop. 

“Hurry, we don’t have much time. He doesn’t like it when we’re late, you don’t want him to be mad do you?” 

“No, no, no sorry…. We’ll come back here, right?”

But there’s no answer. Or at least he never remembers if there is. It’s always here that it ends and begins.

He pops into reality like the reboot of a device called him at the demand of the moment. The voices hop frequencies crescendoing far off from the poster plastered walls to the cupboards all the way out to the horizons of the universe where the sphere of thought folds in on itself.

Sparks fly through his nervous system, commanding his heart to pump blood to his brain, his lungs to breathe, his consciousness to become an ego, and lastly the sum of all those parts evolve into the human he is for that moment. In the race between mitosis and conditioning, plasticity might encourage regression. 

Spoilt milk is in a state between milk and yogurt. The idea comes in as fast as it comes out. Whether the boundaries of inside and out can be delineated is a bit much for him this morning. But practically speaking, we can just pretend to be separate, agree to disagree? An expiration date is a suggestion.

Sometimes the break isn’t so haphazard, he might recall an experience squeezed into the tiniest most defining second. That so important exam that he woke up too late for. That he shouldn’t be sleeping on his side. Or that he may have crushed his glasses from sleeping too late. 

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be late. I was trying to find a star. 

Time is always a mystery for him; never ready for the next period of existence unless he obsesses over it like hands on a new toy. The colors may flow over the individual pieces but the film as a whole remains sketched. Does this lightcone ruin my dress?

If he were to author himself, it would be a life’s work of waste. Is that a contradiction or a tautology? 

Dreams pointed out crucial decisions he had to make to fall in line with themes. And in some ways the rhythm of life beat more exquisitely in that wispy alien world of sleep. A cat writes a dissertation on the intricacies of why ants are able to overcome their constitutions. Squid falls from the sky to prevent human conflict. A girl carries on his day with only four fingers on their left hand. The fork in the road runs narrow making the choice ultimately meaningless.

A walk in the park could follow media beginning with opportunity and ending with the turning of the moon and the strike of the midnight watchtower. Yet the contagion of yesterday’s moments, or the homeless man lying on the road across the bed of carnations, or even the weakness of the body and its betrayal to chemical addiction whispering sweet nothings all vacuum the experience of our magical fiction. 

Laying in his natural filth, the clothes sticking to his misformed body like yesterday’s glue, his body felt as alien to him as the day ahead of him. He medicated himself, physicalities, emotions and thoughts in that order. Top down he re-ignites each lever, polishes each spindle, and straightens each cable, breathing in the acidities necessary to drive out the unwanted impurities. His eyes open clearer and the world spreads into him with a slight fluorescent flavor. The hum of the engine settles deep within making room for the opaque chorus. 

He turns left and right, in search of direction, this cycle settling the slightest little bit more to the right. Then he shifts his body down and his spirit up, and finally the frame falls short of the horizon. He’s looking in your direction, though not at you. A slight twitch in his shoulder or the lip gives away the frailty. Can he see you in the same way that you can see him? 

His obsession and reliance on these sort of correcting workflows were a great burden on him. A fundamental inability to exist without the drug. 

[geopolicraticus]

The Lucky Earth Hypothesis

Yet Another Response to the Fermi Paradox

Responses to the Fermi paradox seem to be multiplying like mice in a barn, which is not necessarily a bad thing, because it demonstrates that an apparently simply question (what I recently called a deceptively simple question) has countless aspects not immediately obvious, so that the more we think about the Fermi paradox, the more interesting and complex it becomes. So here is yet another response to the Fermi paradox, and by calling this a “response” rather than a “solution” I am saying that I in no way consider any one response to be definitive, least of all what follows. 

This past summer in Spacefaring Civilizations in Cosmic Voids I discussed the possibility of civilizations that appear within largely empty, starless regions such as the Boötes void. The Boötes void is a spatial void, but what if a civilization appeared in a temporal void instead? A temporal void would mean that Earth and human beings are completely free to develop in our own way, without any outside interference or influence, so that our civilization is a product of splendid isolation, not under any threat from a malign presence, and not subject to being derailed by a well-meaning beneficent presence that might come to Earth and “help” us, saving us from ourselves, but also denying us our unique opportunity to become what we are. 

Perhaps the history of the universe is filled with intelligence, technology, and advanced civilizations, many of which flourished before us, and many of which will flourish after us, but we happened, merely by happenstance, to appear at a time and a place that our lightcone is empty of technosignatures, or very nearly empty. Thus we appear to be alone in the cosmos, and find only the Great Silence when we listen for others like ourselves, but this could be just an artifact of the timing of our civilization.

The timing of terrestrial civilization could be construed narrowly or broadly. Narrowly, there would only need to be a temporal void comprising no detectable technosignatures during the period of time when human beings have possessed sufficient scientific and technological resources to identify and recognize technosignatures. This narrow temporal void would only need to be about a hundred years, or two hundred years at most, by which I mean that the temporal void would have to minimally extend one to two hundred years into the past, and it could end any time (like today or tomorrow).

This narrow conception of a temporal void does not address why Earth has not been repeatedly visited in the past, which would potentially leave traces that could be detected over a longer temporal horizon. Again, we can make a distinction between and narrow and a broad conception of archaeological traces of past ETI visitation of Earth. ETI visitation of Earth, if infrequent and brief, would have left very little trace of itself, and the geological activity of Earth would relatively quickly erase all traces. On the other hand, repeated frequent visitation, or ETI visitation that was enduring and significant, would not be easily erased. Moreover, ETI visitation could involve traces of visitation off Earth where alien artifacts would be preserved by the conditions of space.

A thin layer in the geological record of artificial materials such as radionuclides, plastics, industrial pollution, etc., would go unnoticed at a level of lower scientific and technological sophistication, and would only be discovered when we had the means to engage in a scientifically sophisticated geology. Our present level of sophistication in science, and our present scientific instrumentation, would allow us to detect a thin layer of prior ETI habitation, assuming that that period of habitation had not been purposefully expunged from the historical record (for example, another civilization visiting Earth millions of years ago, if it had some law like the Prime Directive in Star Trek, might be obligated to wipe away all traces of its temporary domicile prior to departure).

A spatial void would contribute to a temporal void in so far as crossing a spatial void would potentially create a temporal void for entry-level interstellar technologies, but for advanced interstellar technologies, being in a spatial void wouldn’t greatly isolate a civilization. However, if the Great Silence is explained by a Great Filter at levels of technological attainment at or near the human present, then civilizations would cluster at the level of development represented by entry-level interstellar technologies (like that of solar sails, now being actively developed by terrestrial civilization; cf. Beyond the SETI Paradigm). In this latter case, a spatial void would be tightly-coupled with a temporal void. This suggests a formulation of a response to the Fermi paradox that employs both a temporal void and a definite limit on the development of interstellar technologies.

A broad conception of a temporal void in the cosmos would have to reach back a minimum of millions of years into history. From the perspective of the history of the Stelliferous Era, a few million years is not much, and still maintains us in what I would call the cosmological present. Tens of millions of years, or hundreds of millions of years on a geologically active planet would be sufficient to erase most or all traces of ETI visitation or habitation, though, as noted above, it would not address the absence of alien artifacts in our solar system.

If a broad conception of a temporal void begins to reach back into billions of years before present, the nature of the explanation of the Great Silence changes a bit, as if there is a temporal void from early in the history of the universe up to the emergence of human civilization as a cosmological actor (by which I mean a species that is visible over interstellar distances because of our technosignatures), then this is rather the response to the Fermi paradox that we are first, rather than that we are lucky. At some point, then, between a narrow temporal void of 100-200 years into the past (which is nothing by cosmological time scales) and a broad (or deep) temporal void extending billions of years into the past, there is a explanatory limit for the Lucky Earth Hypothesis. 

The idea that Earth is a lucky planet, i.e., a lucky exception to the usual conditions for planets, has been given exposition in Lucky Planet: Why Earth is Exceptional—and What That Means for Life in the Universe by David Waltham. Being a “lucky planet” in this sense coincides more-or-less with the Rare Earth Hypothesis (rarity could be construed as a form of luck, specifically if it is a fortunate rarity), which is its own response to the Fermi paradox, distinct from being “lucky” in the sense of happening to appear at a time in cosmic history in which our civilization essentially appears on a blank cosmic slate.

One might plausibly argue that, if we are situated in a temporal void, that this is not lucky, but rather it is unlucky. Our sense of cosmic loneliness is a longing that cannot be fulfilled within a temporal void, and it is possible (though we can only speculate) that civilizations emerging in a cosmological context of multiple peer civilizations advance more rapidly and provide more opportunities and a higher standard of living to the beings that compose them. This would be fortunate, but it is in no way guaranteed by a busy cosmic neighborhood. Such a neighborhood could also mean conflict, war, crime, and attractive nuisances. 

These ideas came out of my ongoing correspondence with Erik Nelson, who wrote to me: “We have neither armor nor camo nor the slightest expectations of privacy or primacy. Maybe we're lucky. Maybe it's been our lucky 10 myr. out in the wide open.” After he wrote this, I pointed out that this could be considered another response to the Fermi paradox, which I then called the Lucky Earth Hypothesis.