#idk it's interesting. think there's maybe a generational thing going on.

[senadimell]

over here loving the asexual lifestyle

[puppyeared]

Been LOVING your lil magician folks recently please continue they're beautiful and very cute and cool and also very well-designed!! 🥺❤️

thank you for the kind words !!! im not much of a writer, but i do have some sort of story in mind for them.. theyre bitter rivals who end up as roommates bc of their scatterbrained elderly landlord lol

[mortysmith]

doubt ill ever finish this, but ghost and mosca yayyy

[duck-in-a-spaceship]

Black Holes and the Pale

OKAY so. Black holes, pale, I don't think it's hard to see the similarities that could be drawn there. The pale is consuming reality. It is expanding. No one knows what lies at its heart and so many unanswered questions surround it. Famously, the same is true of black holes. Really, they're the closest thing we have to the pale; a destructive, consuming, unknowable force. And Disco Elysium does NOT shy away from drawing these parallels.

The first comparison is easy: both black holes and the pale are big, and can't be seen. Without the help of an accretion dick (matter and energy surrounding a black hole. hang tight, we'll get there) the only way they can be observed is by watching how they warp light. And they sure can be massive, with the largest one we've found so far having a mass of about 1 billion suns. They are the densest thing in are universe. Denser than anything.

Get closer, and we make it to the accretion disk, sitting outside the event horizon of our black hole. These are simply all of the matter and energy orbiting the black hole, often on an eventual path towards singularity. In the way that a porch collapse shows matter "rising into the pale", the accretion disk represents that same boundary. It is everything being pulled into the black hole, and it makes an incredible spectacle as it goes. Particles churn at appreciable fractions of the speed of light, glowing with energy as they do so. This "uproar of matter" that Joyce describes mimics that great boundary, the final moment of unrest and chaos before nothingness.

And now, the event horizon, that road you cannot come back from. This is my absolute favorite parallel, because it is exactly how black holes work. Once you pass the event horizon, any direction you move in will only bring you closer to singularity. That's how warped space and time are. Not only is there no hope at escape, but any attempt to struggle only dooms you faster.

But information doesn't just get taken into the pale, it's also spat back out. Bits of conversation travel across time and space. Kim listens to old ghosts on his radio. Strange voices talk through electronic doorbells. A police officer forgets who he is.

Black holes, despite being famously inescapable, actually have to let one thing out: information.

The information paradox was a problem scientists had with black holes for a while. Basically, information isn't supposed to be able to be destroyed, but since black holes slowly disappear through Hawking radiation, it seemed like their information would go along with them. Very not allowed.

The physics here gets very theoretical, but it's generally agreed on that black holes HAVE to release information back into the universe. (Likely through mechanics similar to Hawking radiation.) Newer theories claim that as a black hole nears the end of its life, it would spit out all of the information it's gathered in its lifetime.

Another thing both this quote AND the last one bring to attention is how both the pale and black holes warp time. The pale, as we all know, does a lot of weird shit to time. It brings old memories to resurface, lets them mingle with the future, makes that the burden of the present. Black holes, with their immense gravity, also warp and bend time.

If you stumbled into a black hole, you could watch the universe speed up as you fell, time rushing by. But from an outsider's perspective, you would never even make it in. Once you reached the event horizon, you would freeze and then slowly fade out from view, never actually appearing to cross the boundary.

Black holes don't just grow forever; they also die. They release Hawking radiation, losing energy and mass at INCREDIBLY slow rates. And it seems like a similar thing will happen to the pale. After swallowing all of humanity, all of its fuel, the Pale will leech its energy back out into space. Elysium, in whatever state it's in after that, will be uncovered and given the chance to regrow, start anew.

The main question, really, becomes what will remain?

It's theorized that when black holes die, they release a final burst of incredible energy, a massive explosion tearing through the universe. Does the same fate wait for Elysium? If Revachol can avoid being torn apart by an atomic device, does it meet the same fate in atomic nature?

After the world, the pale; after the pale -- the world again.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Lord of the Empty Isles

sci-fi/fantasy

set on a supposedly utopian planet recovering from a climate crisis, where bonds between people are able to be seen and manipulated (by some people)

follows a young man whose brother was cursed and killed by an infamous outlaw 5 years ago, and he’s finally able to curse him back - but it rebounds, as he’s somehow fatebound to the outlaw

to find a cure and save them both they have to team up, and he quickly finds out that the resources the outlaw is stealing go to the thousands of people neglected on prison planets, and he has to go against what he thought was right to help them

no romance, aroace MC, focus on platonic relationships

arc from netgalley, out june 6

[marsbotz]

not going to lie i do find it quite upsetting that so many ppl think that animals that arent immediately relatable to humans are completely incapable of thought or feeling. and thats the only thing that matters when it comes to animal rights arguments a lot of the time

[icewindandboringhorror]

There's always a slight yearning in the back of my mind wishing I had been born in the right place, time, family situation, income level, etc. to have just lived in one single house for my entire life. Imagine being born in a place that still suits you, even through all of your personal evolutions and etc. The idea of deep familiarity with an area because you've lived and explored it for 40+ years, being encased in a web of memories and connections. Being able to clean out your old childhood bedroom and find personal artifacts, to dig in the yard and remember. I know those lives can still be plenty imperfect, but there's just something so seemingly solid and stable and Grounding about it that I sometimes wish I could have.. (At least from my outside perspective as someone who's moved around a bit geographically and even within the same area, never lives in the same house/ apartment /etc. for more than a few years usually.) Like... having a place that is printed upon, fully your own, rather than chronically a visitor, every thought of a space always tempered with the notion that one day soon you'll have to pack it all up again, etc. There's something peaceful about the permanence.

[chrisbangs]

hello... (and bye ig 👋)

[misspickman]

My unpopular bg3 opinion is they tried way too hard to make some of these characters mean and flippant which is meant to make the player more interested in them and clearly this has worked on many (good for you !) but personally i could not care less. If 80% of what a character has to say to me is bitchy i will simply leave them at camp for most of the game

[rexscanonwife]

Grrggh...good morning everypony = w = I rewatched the episode of the ppg reboot where Utonium gets a girlfriend...

[todayisafridaynight]

would it be okay if u told me why u like aoki😭/gen😭😭😭😭BEEN TRYNA LIKE HIM FOR SO LONG I JUST CANTT but i love ur art so much so i still consume it otherwise lol

i liked tohru adachi in high school and tbh i think that alone is enough of an explanation for why i ended up liking aoki

[aparticularbandit]

I think the scene I'm going to add to Monday's chapter - not the one I kept thinking about over my trip because I cannot remember what it was, but one I've been thinking about for far, far longer - is the Kyoko Kirigiri Is Ace And So Is Virgin Junko Enoshima But They Are Different Flavors conversation.

So that will be. fun.

[whenthegoldrays]

sigh

[nostalgia-tblr]

just realised - i enjoy it when blorbos feel guilt. even about things i reckon could be justified to some extent, and things where i'd do the same myself in their shoes. i like making them sit about feeling bad for things they did, even (god, ESPECIALLY!) when they're the hero of the story. i enjoy their moral angst and their endless suffering.

what the fuck's that about then, eh?

[bunnyb34r]

Having a "this is fine (:" moment, trying to not have a panic attack bc my allergist doesn't take my new insurance (I dont think he does)

I mean I can afford to pay out of pocket for my shots and for my appts... I just don't want to have to

And they take the insurance plan I was initially going to get (: yay...

[caruliaa]

i must surely not be your only starkid guy. if i am then i must SURELY not be your only taylur swift guy. surely not ?? am i ??