#kill isosceles

[necromimetics]

This has caused great debate among my math friends so I think it needs tumblr's input

[ktsumu]

[2d-dreams]

one plus one equals none

lets die. side by side by side.

You and I,

unlovably acute.

lets die. angle in angle.

perimeters united and dismantled,

in irregular polygonal beauty.

You,

rebel.

and I,

servant.

in serving Them I failed both of us.

[kismetmoon]

couldn’t decide if i should post this with colour or without colour so imma post both. anyways, more characters ! this time it’s a bloke who does fuck all : (embarrassing first name) ‘Chief’ Circle Jr.

[ID: two digital drawings of an original, stylised Flatland character named Chief Jr on a cream background.

Chief is a circle who has a yellow crescent moon and navy shadow marking, black stick limbs with arms styled like shirt cuff-lets and feet styled like heeled shoes, a thin black tail with a flame-shaped tip and an eye in the centre of his body with beaded eyelashes and a brown pupil. He is also wearing a black crown.

He is posed with his hands behind him, but they are visible behind his legs. His feet are splayed outwards from one another and he is looking to the top right corner with an intrigued expression and a raised eyebrow.

Both images are the same, but the left image has colour and the right image is a monochrome version.

End ID.]

- Chief (a convenient nickname that he constantly goes by for obvious reasons), only child of the current ‘Topside’ Chief circle, is a strange being with a massive birthmark covering a good portion of his body. he’s very quiet on current political affairs, but big into petty gossip. is very academical, but isn’t very street smart. when you need him the most he’s never to be found, or is strangely locked inside his own quarters. worst of all, he seems a little too fond of his personal isosceles guard for his own good…

[ID: a black outline doodle of Chief on a white background. He is drawn with stick limbs and a sad but comical expression. There is writing in black above him that says “L Rizz” in all caps, with a black arrow pointed towards Chief. End ID.]

[rpfisfine]

mutuals discuss

[ckret2]

Time for chapter 7 of "Human Bill Attempts To Murder The Pines And Ends Up Their Prisoner/Involuntary House Guest," which will eventually get a title, I'm sure. Featuring: an explanatory flashback!!! And also—angst.

Chapters one, two, three, four, five, six.

Bill liked collecting prophecies about himself. Interdimensional historical records only lightly alluded to his presence, but that didn't matter. History was written by the winners about the losers. Prophecies were written by the losers about the winner.

He liked being so important—dangerous enough that people felt the need to write fairy tales about how to kill him.

And he liked the warnings about what threats to look out for.

The Axolotl's "redemption" wasn't a prophecy so much as an offer—although Bill had learned of it in the form of a prophecy, passed from Axolotl to prophet and from believer to believer until the divine gossip grapevine finally reached him. The stupid salamander never even had the guts to extend the offer to Bill personally. And as such, he knew little about the details—like whether it was a limited-time offer that had expired a million years back, or whether Bill could only accept the Axolotl's conditions voluntarily rather than under duress... or even whether it was true. 

Imprisoned in Stanley Pines's burning mind, stripped of every trick and spell he knew, reduced to a delicate two-dimensional shape on a collision path with a three-dimensional fist, he had called out to the Axolotl and desperately prayed it was true.

####

So the fact that he could remember all this was a good sign: he was alive, and he still had his memories.

The prophecy as he'd heard it said something about getting a full pardon by taking another shape in another time—he'd worried that might mean reincarnation, with no recollection of his former life. But no. He was still Bill Cipher. He could pick up where he left off.

Just as soon as he oriented himself.

It took a moment to figure out how to peel open his eyeballs. Two of them, he was pretty sure. He'd expected to be a square or something. Maybe isosceles. But—he rolled his eyes experimentally—he was some three-dimensional animal? His brain registered the sky above as a hazy something-blueish, but that didn't mean much until he knew what kind of color vision this species had. The sun made a long streak across the sky and burned to look at.

He was sure he'd worn one of these creatures before. On a hunch, he ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth—definitely human. His rib cage twitched as he laughed—a bitter hiss, the first time he'd used this body's voice. The Ax had a sick sense of humor, sticking Bill with the species that killed him. Well, fine. He knew more about humanity than humans themselves did, and he'd worn countless human bodies before. This was one of the easiest starts he could ask for.

Now that he knew what he was, the muscle memory came more easily. He sat up on the warm concrete ground to inspect his new prison. Four limbs with five mini-limbs each, no interesting mutations or deformities that he could see, yawn. And human skin came in such painfully boring neutral tones; he'd have to redecorate. He flexed his finger joints experimentally, imagining his hand encased in gold rings and bangles. He could live with that until he figured out how to recreate his real body. The skin was reasonably elastic, neck felt too narrow (he hated how goofy human necks looked), an impressive 20 for 20 arched fingerprints and toeprints (quirky, but Bill suspected the Ax wanted to ensure he'd stand out if he ever got his fingerprints in a police database), head line like a river, absolutely hideous heart line, so-so melanoma resistance, healthy-looking cellulite pattern...

While in the middle of trying to contort himself like a cat licking its butthole, from the corner of one of his eyeballs, he spied a mass of golden yellow filaments dangling from the top of his head. Several internal organs automatically convulsed and spasmed at the sight; white lights and awful gory memories and the room he'd died in flashed by his mind's eye; he felt the flesh on the inside of his throat struggle to thrash around, and had to seal a hand over his mouth to keep from regurgitating whatever was inside him. He closed his eyes to hide the awful filaments dangling down from his scalp but now he couldn't stop feeling them brush against his cheeks and shoulders. For a long moment he was paralyzed in place, heavy breaths whistling through his ridiculous little nose tubes, mentally battling his own body's attempt to revolt against him in his moment of weakness.

This inspection was just a distraction. He couldn't ignore that he was stuck in a carcass made of meat, and even as his pulse pounded in his ears he was marching toward decay. He hated this body. He hated it.

Somebody was going to pay.

####

Bill saw the time police coming around the corner of a crumbling building several minutes before they would arrive. Of all the rotten luck— He contemplated running, considered how far he'd get in a fresh, uncalloused, nude body before a shard of glass ripped his bare feet open, and instead hurried to hide behind a pile of rubble.

As the officers drew closer to the moment Bill saw they would turn the corner, he heard one say: "Would you put that stupid thing away and focus? We're suppose to be on the lookout for Cipher."

Bill's heart leaped into his throat. (He was pretty sure it wasn't actually his heart, but it sure felt like that. Huh. That's one baffling English idiom explained.) They'd found him already? How? Had the Axolotl snitched on him to Time Baby? Was this "second chance" just a petty trick to get him locked up? Maybe it wasn't too late to run—

"But this is stupid," another voice grumbled. "Cipher won't show up here. This is worse than hover car crosswalk duty—"

"Listen," the first officer snapped. "Today is exactly one thousand years since Cipher's death and this is the exact place it happened. Time Intelligence is sure that if he finds a way to return, it'll be on some dramatic anniversary. Need I remind you we've got officers swarming Roadkill County for six months in both directions from his death—"

"I know, I know—"

"—and patrolling on every anniversary for the first century, every centennial anniversary for the first millennium, every millennial anniversary for the first—"

"I know, I know—"

"And if he's going to make a move, there's a high risk that the first millennial anniversary—"

"But the world is ending in less than four months! Why would he come here?"

"I don't know, maybe he wants to watch Time Baby's molecules reconstitute! Our only job is to find Cipher if he is here—Would you put that away!"

The world was ending. That made this 3012. The Ax probably thought he was cute, dropping Bill exactly a thousand years after his death. 

Even better: Time Baby and his goons didn't actually know Bill was here. He could still take them by surprise.

Best of all: what exactly had the Ax promised? Something something another time, another form—Bill never recalled hearing anything about another place. He was still in Gravity Falls.

And that gave him an idea.

Bill peeked over the rubble. The officers were so close to the moment they would turn the corner that Bill could see the irritation on one's face and the handheld game console in the other's hands; and he was also beginning to see the fuzzy shape of his own future self approaching them as a plan formed in his head. He ducked again. Only one shot at this. Would a human think he looked harmless and vulnerable? Those uniformed slabs of muscle were two feet taller than him, and he was naked. Check and check.

He waited until they turned the corner, then stepped out from behind the rubble pile, waving. "Oh, thank goodness, the police!" Probably the first and last time he was ever saying that. "I'm lost, confused, and can't seem to find my clothes. Can you he—" He tripped on a concrete chunk, yelped, and had to grab the officers for balance. "... help." Okay. That was good. Extra harmless-looking. He meant to do that. But he made a mental note to spend a few minutes on walking practice once he got away.

Grumpy Officer was looking toward the sky. "Oh." Gamer Officer was hiding his face behind his game console. "Oh dear." Grumpy Officer cleared his throat and said, "Of—of course. We're happy to help, Miss...?"

Heck. Think of a human name fast. "Tomato."

Gamer Officer said, "This entire decade is supposed to be evacuated, Ms. Tomato. Where and when did you come from?"

"I'm not sure, it's all such a blur! One minute it's August in 2912², the next it's... whatever this is!"

"I have family in 2912². Beautiful year," Gamer Officer said helpfully. Bill decided not to point out that, given how linear time works, he had family in every year.

Grumpy Officer said, "We'll get you to your contemporary authorities, ma'am. They'll help you get home." Still trying not to look directly at Bill, he detached his time tape from his belt, drew it out, and hesitated. He turned to Gamer Officer. "Hold on. Weren't Augusts abolished in squared years?" (Darn. Bill never could remember if it was Augusts or Julys.)

Both officers were desperately avoiding looking directly at Bill, one had his hands full with the game console, the other had his time tape extended inches in front of Bill—now. Bill flung his whole weight on Grumpy Officer's arm to wrench the tape away from him, pulled out a random length, and snapped out of 3012 before the officers could registered what happened.

####

The first jump was just to escape. The second jump took him to a ruined battlefield in the middle of the Time Baby War—Bill knew his human history—where Bill could dump this cheap police time tape riddled with temporal tracking technology and scavenge a military tape off a fallen soldier.

By the time he found a tape in good condition, his abdomen, eyes, and head had developed an assortment of overlapping aches. Nothing he couldn't ignore. But it was worth the effort: the military tape was less prone to overheating, more lax on permitting temporal doubles and time loops, and built with standard-issue paradox-cloaking stealth tech. Even if the time cops followed him this far they'd never know where he went next.

He was continuing where he'd left off.

He wanted to return to the moment he died and murder the Pines on the spot—or, better yet, warn himself ten minutes before it happened. But even the best time tape would struggle to target a temporal paradox as complicated as Weirdmageddon; and besides, Bill was self-aware enough to know if he tried to warn himself, he was at risk of being zapped before he convinced himself of his identity, and then he was really doomed. So he'd just have to focus on revenge.

He'd murder the Pines and anyone else in their stupid shack. He'd dig up the buried treasure Pine Tree and Shooting Star had buried in the woods and liquidate some of the gold. He'd fast-forward until the murder investigation was over and the shack was back on the market, buy it himself, repair the portal to the Nightmare Realm, and restart Weirdmageddon in his dead enemies' own home.

He could figure out how to get back in his real body and pop the stupid weirdness bubble around the town as he went. Minor details. For now, all he cared about was killing the two-faced twins who'd dared try to stop him.

And he couldn't wait to see the look in Stanford's eyes.

The cops said Time Baby had them patrolling Gravity Falls for six months after Bill's death. He set his time tape for February 25, 2013. He appeared in a suburban backyard, snatched a bedsheet drying on a clothesline and a couple safety pins from a nearby laundry basket, made himself a chiton tunic, and headed for the Mystery Shack.

####

In retrospect, he probably should have planned the murders a little more thoroughly.

####

June 2, 2013

Bill was put back in the cellar until the humans could Bill-proof the house—cutlery moved out of the kitchen, phones relocated where he couldn't reach them, dangerous chemicals locked away, etc. His cuffs and restraints were removed, he was handed a few granola bars and water bottles and awkwardly gifted a bucket that he received with an expression that suggested he wasn't quite sure what the humans expected him to use it for, and he was locked in.

And at last, everyone could get some sleep.

It was past five in the morning when Dipper and Mabel collapsed back in their beds. With time travel thrown in, they had been up for thirty hours with only an hour or two of napping. And yet, for all their exhaustion, when the first hint of morning grayness lightened the sky outside, both of them were still awake, staring at dust notes and the old wooden ceiling planks.

Mabel sighed heavily.

Dipper said, "You too?"

"Yeah. I guess it's the chocolate shake and pancakes. What's your excuse?"

"Bill ordered coffee for the table, and nobody told me I couldn't have it, so..."

Mabel laughed. "Evil chaos demon got you! You fell for his trap!"

"Oh nooo."

Neither of them needed to admit that it wasn't the caffeine keeping them awake.

"Hold on." Mabel got out of bed, scooted around Waddles—he took up more of the floor than he had last year—and trudged to her suitcase. She tossed half her clothes on the floor, and pulled out—

Dipper laughed weakly. "You brought those?"

"I thought we might need them. You know—being back here, reminded of everything."

Almost as soon as they'd gotten home last summer, Mabel had started knitting throw blankets depicting the anti-Bill zodiac that Ford had drawn. She gave the first to Dipper as his bar mitzvah gift. She kept the second herself. She mailed the other eight to the other members of the zodiac. (The therapist their parents made them see said self-expression through art was a great way to cope with difficult experiences.)

Ford had told them the zodiac drawing merely represented a list of people, like a chart with table seating arrangements. They knew the symbol itself didn't do anything. It held no magic, it couldn't protect them. Nevertheless, sleeping under his blanket had done more for Dipper's Bipper nightmares than any dream catcher ever could. Mabel thought wrapping up in it felt like a hug from their friends in Gravity Falls.

She handed Dipper a red blanket with the zodiac embroidered in dark green yarn, and pulled out her own rainbow blanket with black embroidery. Mabel wrapped hers around her head and shoulders like a huge hooded shawl and slid back in bed, her mind and dreams now properly shielded. Dipper stared at the face in the middle of the zodiac for a long moment, before he turned the blanket over so Bill's ever-watching eye could only see the dark surface of Dipper's bedsheet.

And then, at long last, they were safe enough to fall asleep.

####

Once the day's tourists were gone, Ford cracked open the cellar door, flung a wad of fabric down the stairs, and shut the door again. "All right," Stan shouted. "Solitary confinement's over. Put on some normal clothes and knock when you're done."

"It's about time!" Creaks and thuds drifted through the door as Bill climbed the stairs. "How long does it take to move a few knives to another room? I was starting to think you planned to leave me down here."

"We needed sleep! We were up all night!"

"How is that my problem? I never told you to sit up all night staring at me—"

After a few more minutes of back-and-forth grousing, Bill knocked on the cellar door to be unleashed. The shack household had scrounged together an XL yellow-beige pine tree t-shirt (surplus from the gift shop), a set of Soos's winter sweatpants (which Bill found too long and set aside), an elastic-waisted plain green skirt in case the sweats didn't fit (some old thing Abuelita never wore), a pair of old swim trunks (to compensate for the fact that nobody had the energy or motivation to go buy their prisoner underwear today), and mismatched flip-flops (from the Mystery Shack's lost-and-found).

The shack household had not scrounged together a broom to give to Bill, and yet when they opened the door, he was holding one, bristles pointed up, like a poorly-dressed witch waiting to go on an evening flight. The potential weapon was promptly confiscated, and Stan, Ford, and Soos escorted Bill around to the back of the shack. He stared out toward the woods as the door was opened for him, but it was impossible to tell whether he was looking for something specific or just getting one last glimpse of the sky before he was incarcerated indefinitely.

The moment Bill stepped inside, Abuelita was in front of him, shoving a hot plate of chicken and enchiladas in his chest. "Welcome. You are staying with us for a while, yes?"

Bill tried to take a step back, bumped into Soos, and automatically took the plate in both hands. He blinked at Abuelita, eyebrows raised in polite bafflement. "Yes?"

"Yes. Soos told me. You missed dinner." There was loose plastic wrap still half-covering the plate, which had been labeled in black marker: para Bill Cifra - NO TOCAR! "I saved you a plate."

"Oh yeah," Soos said, "Abuelita put that in the fridge for you before we ate last night. She's big on hospitality." 

"Well!" Bill beamed. "At least somebody around here has some manners. Does this come with silverware, or—?"

"Here." Abuelita offered him a plastic orange baby spoon. "Soos says you do not get the good silverware. So you cannot kill people."

"Between you and me, I'd be more likely to stick a fork in the microwave than try to kill someone with it—but hey, I'mnot the warden." He tossed the plastic wrap on the floor and attempted to saw off a chunk of enchilada with the soft edge of the spoon.

"All right, show me what you've done with this place since I last saw it!" He wove past the humans to duck into the kitchen. "I see you finally got rid of that second stove! Really frees up the space in here, doesn't it! Too bad you kept the gas one. I didn't wanna say anything about this last year, but fix that slow gas leak, would you? If you want to get haunted by carbon monoxide demons, that's your business, but I owe a tokoloshe money."

Stan blinked. "The slow what?"

Ignoring them, Bill went on, "You're gonna have to do something about all this." He waved his baby spoon at the fridge and cabinet doors. "You don't want me to come ask for help every single time I need to eat."

"Actually, that might be preferable," Ford said. "It would ensure you can't tamper with our food when we aren't looking."

"You'll get sick of it," Bill said confidently.

He finally freed up a spoonful of enchilada, stuffed it in his mouth, and tore off a chunk of chicken with his teeth—and then stopped, staring down at the plate in amazement. With his mouth still full, Bill said, "Oh wow, this is delicious! You know, I haven't had a home cooked meal in centuries! And that nutty aftertaste? Mm! You're a daring chef, lady. I love it."

He spat his mouthful back onto the plate. "But unfortunately, I think I'm allergic to one of your ingredients!" He held the plate out to Abuelita, grinning widely. "Would you mind giving me a portion with less cyanide?"

Everyone stared at Abuelita.

She shrugged placidly. "It was worth a try." She took back the plate.

Bill licked the last of the poisoned food off his teeth and spat it on the kitchen floor. "Mil gracias, señorita Silloncito."

She gave the floor a displeased look as she passed to wash off the dish in the sink, but merely said, "Un placer."

Dubiously, Ford murmured, "Silloncito isn't Mrs. Ramirez's first name, is it?"

"Nope." Stan grinned. "While you were busy studying the Odyssey, I was in South America learning Spanish—you know, a language people actually speak."

"What does 'silloncito' mean?"

"I dunno."

Soos had been gaping at his grandmother since Bill said the word "cyanide." He finally managed to work his jaw enough to say, "Abuelita, what...?"

"Do not worry about it, mijo," Abuelita said sweetly, pulling out a mop.

"Did you just try to...?"

"We can talk later." Abuelita gestured to the door, where Bill was meandering out of the kitchen. "I clean now. You go with the others."

As Bill left, he called back, "Next time, I'm making my own plate! Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..." He swept past the humans into the living room. "Hey, you finally got enough seating in here! This place is really starting to shed that 'lonely old bachelor' stench—ey, Stanley?"

"Watch it."

Where Stan's old recliner once sat, Abuelita had put her sofa with the pastel yellow floral print. Her blue armchair and Stan's recliner were lined up at a right angle to the sofa to form a seating area around the TV, which had been turned to face all the seats. Atop the decorative T-Rex skull sat a small vase with a few fresh flowers.

Soos dragged his distracted gaze away from the kitchen to point at the floral sofa. "You, uh... you can sleep on the sofa bed. It folds out. We're kind of out of other rooms. I'm in the master bedroom, Abuelita's in the study cuz she gets her own bathroom there, we made the parlor a guest room for the Pineses, the kids are in the attic... and that's pretty much all the bedrooms we've got, dude." Soos shrugged. "Me and Melody, we were talking about walling off the empty attic area to make a sick gaming room? I guess maybe we should think about making it another guest room—"

"Which Bill wouldn't be able to use," Ford said, "if it has a door. Besides, I doubt Bill will be here long enough for you to finish any large construction projects."

Airily, Bill said, "Think you'll figure out how to get rid of me that fast?" He didn't even look at Ford; he was busy taking off the sofa's cushions to inspect the foldout bed underneath. "Last time you tried it took you thirty years, and you're 0 for 4 murder attempts so far." Bill tried—unsuccessfully—to lift the folding bed out of the sofa.

Voice icy, Ford went on without acknowledging Bill. "And at any rate, I'd rather have him out in the open where we can all keep an eye on him."

Soos glanced back and forth between Ford and Bill as they shot verbal barbs at each other, his fingertips pressed together. "Oookay! So. Sofa bed it is. I like sofa beds! It feels kind of like camping, but without going outside."

"Bet I'm not allowed to start a campfire in the living room." Bill gave up on the sofa bed and looked around the room—and his face lit up like a child who'd just received a pirate ship-shaped birthday cake. "Hey! Is that me?" In his rush to cross the living room, he tripped over Abuelita's blue armchair, flopped flat on the floor, and got back up like nothing happened.

Where Ford had once hung his father's banner from the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel, Soos had put up a new decoration: a knit tapestry depicting Bill Cipher, framed in apocalyptic lightning and hovering over a sea of fire...

... and encircled by the zodiac prophesied to defeat him.

Bill's smile dimmed. "Ah."

"Oh, hey! That's the blanket Mabel made me." Soos stood next to Bill, admiring the zodiac blanket. "Yeah, she made us all blankets to commemorate our epic battle and everything? She called us up to ask how we wanted them customized and stuff. I suggested the flames and the lightning bolts! Thought they'd look rad. Heh. It's—it's pretty cool, right?"

Bill's gaze slowly traced the confining ring of symbols; and then met the gaze of his own, true, proper face. And he turned away to face Soos and forced his smile wider. "Question Mark, I like your sense of decor." 

"Ha—wait, seriously?"

"Heck, if I'd commissioned a portrait myself, I'd have requested the same! Remind me to show you a tapestry the Northwests have been keeping of me, I think you'd appreciate it!"

"Oh." Soos rubbed the back of his neck. "Huh. You know, I didn't think you'd think cool things are cool. Kinda."

"You kidding?! Fire and lightning! I love it! Like a party with natural pyrotechnics! It's nature's way of trying to unleash a bit of anarchy on this bleak little world!"

"Uh..." Soos quickly glanced toward the Pines in a silent plea for help with this conversation, then looked back at Bill. "Yeah, totally dude! It's like... got that boom factor, you know?"

"Boom factor! Ha! You're all right, Questiony." Bill turned his back on the zodiac. "So, what have you done with the rest of this dump!"

Soos stood rooted to the spot until Bill left the room.

He looked at Stan and Ford. "Do you think Bill, like... knows my name?"

Ford shrugged and made a so-so gesture.

Soos nodded. "Okay." He pulled out a chair at the living room table. "You guys wanna go ahead without me? I think I'm gonna... sit here. And process the fact that Abuelita is an attempted murderer."

####

On Bill's first proper night in the Mystery Shack, he woke in the middle of the night, gasping for air so loudly it sounded like a reverse scream.

Waking didn't improve things.

He was back in the room where he'd died, no light but the eerie blue of invisible flames licking up the walls, his vision framed by golden filaments spilling out of his head. He rolled over and heaved on the floor—and between his stomach's convulsions he made direct eye contact with an axolotl, cold, serene, staring dispassionately at him from an illuminated fish tank—and past the axolotl, he saw an image of himself trapped flat on the wall, surrounded by a ring of his enemies, fire lapping at his heels. And it was just like dying again, he was powerless, he could see his body coming apart in his peripheral vision, he couldn't even float, pinned to the ground by gravity—

He had to claw at his skin until this human body's uncomfortable alienness overrode the memory of his gold exoskeleton shattering.

The next morning, the household found no signs of Bill in the living room except for a puddle of dried puke.

The sofa bed's mattress had been dragged halfway up the stairs to the attic, and then abandoned at the landing where the stairs turned a right angle.

They found Bill in the attic, laying on the floor atop a makeshift bed he'd assembled out of sofa cushions. He was curled up facing the wall beneath the seating alcove where, just a few months ago, there had been a window of his face.

####

[irregularbillcipher]

The best example of how Flatland is a piece of fiction where A Square, the author, literally does not know what the hell he's talking about half the time is all the stuff about the Universal Color Bill, because as it is presented the segment on the Color Bill is one of the most biased and propaganda filled things I've ever seen spouted from a narrator who claims he Knows What's Up with the world he lives in.

Like ooooh, gee, so the only reason the Universal Color Bill got so widespread was because a Mean Traitorous Circle with an Irregularity that he should have been killed for but wasn't due to Circumstances that nobody actually knows or remembers (but in A's opinion was definitely pity because we all know how CHARITABLE the Circles are) came up with it, and used his tricky cunning Irregularity mind powers to make the Bill so foolproof and amazing that if it had gone through it would have toppled all of society and allowed all the icky women and disableds and lower classes to have something close to equal rights.

(And it had to have been an Irregular Circle because yes the Irregular Circle is also icky and cunning but at least he's a Circle and any Isosceles would have simply been too brain dead to have come up with such an evil cunning Bill and THIS is why eugenics are good, so those mean old disabled people that we allow to live don't stab us in the back for our charity.)

And wow, you're really telling me that right when the more upper-class women of Flatland, those who care about their standing and who are most supportive of eugenics because of the privilege they're afforded by their marriages and lineages, started to agree that this society-destroying Color Bill was a good idea, (because it would actually give them a bit of respect, authority and safety if they were regarded as being as precious as their husbands,) the Circles just happened to hear about this poor orphaned daughter of a Polygon who was accosted by a very very real and scary and uncouth lower class Shape and tricked so thoroughly into believing he was a higher class Shape by employing the very evil colors that these poor Lines were starting to come around to?

(Not to mention that even in the story itself the Isosceles is framed as both a vile, duplicitous mastermind tricking a poor innocent upper-class girl into marrying him, but also an idiot who "accidentally" dabbled in paints from a Tradesman he'd definitely just robbed, and either painted himself or coincidentally "caused himself to be painted" with the exact same color pattern as a Dodecagon. Because for this story to work, he has to be an absolute monstrous brute, an Isosceles of the "low sort" with hardly any brains, while also being cunning, clever and cruel enough to pull off a marriage ruse and take advantage of a poor orphaned maiden. Stupid enough to be looked down upon but smart enough to come up with this plan like the perfect boogeyman.)

And man, it sure is unfortunate that this marriage, which A Square admits only happened because of a wild amount of near impossible accidents and an "almost inconceivable" lack of research on the part of the bride's remaining family, in a society where lineage is checked thoroughly before marriage, just happened to be consummated despite all the odds being stacked against it. Did he pretend to be a member of a high ranking family? Did he make up a name and family history? If nobody can decide if he even painted himself on purpose, I doubt him creating a whole persona convincing enough to fool the daughter of a Polygon and any family members would be part of the story... that would frame him as far too intelligent for an Isosceles with a brain of four degrees, and we can't have anyone thinking that sort is intelligent.

So then are we to believe that the daughter and her remaining family were stupid enough to just accept a supposed Dodecagon with no family ties or history? That seems unlikely. With no family history, his sides may not even matter-- maybe he has an Irregularity in his line. Maybe he was disowned for failing his Sight Recognition exam. No respectable girl in her right mind would marry a Dodecagon with no family history! And it's so, so convenient that this woman, who already knew this Isosceles, because he had already tried to court her in the past, never recognized him once throughout their new courtship, until the marriage was consummated.

And it's so convenient for the Circles that her reaction upon discovering what was very clearly a near astronomical feat of deception was to kill herself, in a society where we already know the Circles are really cool with killing its citizens if it helps to maintain the status quo. But there really isn't anything suspicious about that, of course, because the only way that a daughter of a Polygon would ever wed a lowly Isosceles is if she were tricked into it, even if the process of being tricked was so lengthy and complex that it would be near impossible for anyone to pull off without either the bride or the bride's family being in on the deception, and the only reaction any decent girl would have upon realizing she'd been tricked would be suicide.

And the fact that she was orphaned and this man apparently tried to court her in "former days." So how former? And who was the one rejecting the marriages? How did she feel about this attempted courtship in "former days?" As a daughter of a Polygon, she surely had no say in who she married, so her opinions on this man are completely up in the air, and the idea that she would at no point during this new proposal, recognize this man who had tried to seek her affections before is... implausible, I would say. What the Circles would want you to think, of course, is that the Isosceles tried again once she was orphaned because she was vulnerable then. That's possible, of course, but got necessarily the given that it would seem like.

But the idea that a Line and an Isosceles may have come up with a plot using color to be allowed to be married despite their class differences is Absurd, of course! They're too stupid for that! And that the Circles may have picked up on what had happened and taken the woman out of the picture and then twisted the story to suit their needs is preposterous, of course, just ignore how often they twist history and kill citizens to keep the status quo. The fact that this specific version of the story is the exact type of thing that would tug at the heartstrings of upper-class women who love eugenics and classism and their own nebulous purity more than they actually love themselves, enough to literally militarize a great number of the more reactionary ladies? A coincidence, I'm sure, but one that was oh so good for crushing the Color Bill and using those scared, privileged women to help murder Chromatistes and the rest of the rebels in a political set up.

... And of course, all those holes in the story, all that propaganda even assumes it was a real story to begin with. Because it very well may be completely fabricated.

Before telling the story, A Square straight up admits that this is the perfect type of story for someone in power to make up to scare a portion of the populace, but he absolutely refuses to actually, legitimately entertain the prospect. Instead, he just barrels ahead and tells the story of the Evil, Cunning Irregular Circle, and the Poor Orphaned Polygonal Maiden and the Brutish, Tricky Isosceles and how that Completely True and Real Tragic occurrence definitely, positively happened, and also definitely happened exactly the way all the Circles said it did. The fact that this is all completely absurd and reads like literal propaganda and was literally used as propaganda to scare upper-class women into falling back in line does not matter to A, because this was the story he was told and he Understands The World He Lives In, and the Circles are always right except for the whole Third Dimension thing.

TL;DR: A Square is a stoodge who will fall for anything the Circles tell him, no matter how absurd, and every single thing he says that is not him literally laying out laws should be taken with ten bowls of salt, because he has no critical thinking skills.

[tethered-heartstrings]

you can find the other poll here!

[arthurdrakoni]

Flatland is an underrated classic that imagines life in a 2-D world. This is my review.

You’ll get a lot of answers when you ask when speculative fiction was born. Some will tell you that it began with Hugo Gernsback and the pulps. Others will say that it goes as far back as mythology and folklore. Personally, I go with those who say that it began with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, though I don’t discount earlier works such as Gulliver’s Travels or The Tempest. I say all of this because I’m taking us back to the 19th Century for today’s review. We’re going to review the classic novel Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott.

Imagine, if you will, a sheet of paper that is infinitely large and stretching to all sides. Now imagine that on this sheet of paper there are a series of geometric shapes, but instead of staying in place these shapes move about and have complex social lives. Welcome to Flatland, a world of only two dimensions. There is width and length, but there is no height or depth.

The book follows A. Square who is…well, he’s literally a two-dimensional square. He acts as our guide to the realm of Flatland and relates to use the ways of his countrymen and their doings. There are two main events that serve to completely change A. Square’s world view. The first is his contact with Lineland, a world of only one dimension, and the second is meeting a figure known as Lord Sphere. Lord Sphere claims to come from a strange world of three dimensions called Spaceland.

The book goes into great detail about how life works in a world with only two dimensions. For example, it is customary to meet someone by feeling them in order to determine their shape. It’s also considered polite to give directions to the way north when meeting a traveler on the road. Societal rank and job are determined by the number of sides that one has, with circles being at the top of things. Each successive generation gains an additional side, except for the low ranking isosceles triangles, though there are exceptions. Women, being incredibly sharp and pointy lines, have restrictions placed on them so that they can avoid constantly killing people by accident. We also learn much of the history of Flatland, such as why colors have been banned by the upper classes. There is some pretty great world building in this novel.

That having been said the fact the citizens of Flatland are all living geometric shapes does limit the amount of exploration that can go into their biology and physics. A. Square does hint at future explanations, but he decides that it will take up too much time and bore the reader. Or to put it another way, if you wonder how they eat and breathe and other science facts…well, I’m sure you all know the words to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme song. You’ll also notice that Flatland society bares more than a passing resemblance to the society of Victorian Britain. This is intentional, as Abbott intended for Flatland to be just as much a satire as a compelling story. For example, the class system of Flatland is rather absurd when given further scrutiny, but Abbott was making about about how the British class system was absurd and ultimately rather arbitrary.

Since it was written in 1884 Flatland has long since fallen into the Public Domain. As such, many other writer have tried their hand at tackling the subject matter Flatland is built upon. Usually they will focus on one particular aspect while ignoring the others. Admittedly I haven’t read any of these books, but of the ones I’ve heard of thanks to TV Tropes I’d say Planiverse sounds the most promising. It attempts to look at how biology, chemistry, physics and culture would function in a realistic 2-D world.

Have you read Flatland? If so, what did you think?

Link to the full review on my blog: https://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2017/02/book-review-flatland-by-edwin-abbot.html?m=1

[rainbillcipher]

My Backstory

I wasn't born with power.

My existence started at the bottom of Flatland's caste system. Born the equilateral son of an isosceles triangle, I was given to a family of equilaterals.

If you've read Edward Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, then you know of my country and my dimension.

I chafed under the injustices of my country. I ran away when I was barely an adult. That's when the sphere found me.

Everyone lived in ignorance of the concept of three dimensions. I was chosen to remedy that.

They thought that if they chose one of the lowest but most numerous class, then there would be revolution.

When I returned to Flatland, the circles tries to have me killed, but I was smart. I created a following.

but my rebellion only created more deaths. Because of their ignorance, I lost many friends. But I gained a new purpose to prove them wrong.

I ascended to the fourth dimension and beyond. A moment of perfect clarity and power hit me.

My consciousness expanded. My body became energy. I thought I was a god.

I learned later how wrong I was...

I dealt justice to those who doubted and oppressed me.

I razed my dimension with my newfound power, tore reality apart, so nothing could live there.

Some Flatlanders that weren't on my side survived...barely.

I was feared across the realms! But so called "higher beings" saw my actions as criminal. So again I was fighting against oppressive regimes.

My followers and I hid in the space between realities--a lawless realm with no rules that didn't even obey physics!

MY REALM!

However, getting in was easier than getting out. I couldn’t escape. But I could enter dreams.

Ironically I fell back on my role as a tradesman. I made deals. Trades.

Tried tricks and convinced many to build me a portal. No one could do it…

...until Stanford Pines.

I'm not exactly sure when I returned to consciousness, but when I did, I was drifting in the mindscape again.

It wasn't good.

I didn't know where I was or WHO I was. I just remember turbulent emotions...

Fear...

Loneliness...

Then I heard that calling again.

I didn't remember if I had heard it before, but it felt familiar.

Without my memories, I've had to piece myself together brick-by-brick, so to speak.

My recent memories at Gravity Falls came flooding back when I watched your world during the Cipher Hunt.

I had slipped between worlds but still resided in the realm of dreams. I hated it. I couldn't touch anyone here.

Except one.

That's when I found Bex.

[kismetmoon]

whenever i listen to my embarrassingly gigantic playlist filled with just completely random songs that i like and have been thrown in there, it likes to play ‘Taurnado’ from Centaur World every time without missing a beat

and every time i hear it i immediately think about how the Nightmare Realm might just be built on top of Bill’s home dimension with all of the burnt second dimensional corpses

and what if they could manifest themselves (via ‘left-over’ Nightmare Realm madness magic whatever) into a giant ghost or spirit type creature (akin to the Taurnado) - all working together as one giant organism - to just fuck with Bill for killing them. roaming around the waste of a dimension or appearing during storms (if they even have those there) or just randomly to scare the shit outta ppl

[Plain text ID: two digital drawings of an original Gravity Falls / Flatland crossover character named The Mosaic.

In the first photo, The Mosaic is depicted in it’s ‘line form’. It is a humanoid creature made up from various, small, monochrome shapes and lines and has a large glowing red eye for a head with a point on top and no pupil. It is holding out two of it’s hands to each side, while it's legs hang down loosely as though suspended in the air. A small depiction of Bill Cipher, a yellow triangle with a black top hat, and Kryptos, a teal rhombus, can be seen above The Mosaic’s right hand. The background is a very dark grey with a white circle that contains a light grey hexagon, a dark grey upside down triangle and an even darker grey line behind The Mosaic.

In the second photo, The Mosaic is depicted in one of it’s various ‘shape forms’ - as an isosceles triangle creature with limbs and a large centre yellow glowing eye made from smaller and monochrome shapes and lines. They are holding one arm slightly raised and a tiny depiction of Bill Cipher can be seen between their loosely pinched claws. The background is dark grey with lighter grey swirling patterns.

End ID.]

[frau-line]

[ID: A drawing of two Flatlanders in the style of the 2007 Flatland film, with dark bodies, white outlines, and a round eye on one side. One is an isosceles triangle with a green eye, he other is an irregular trapezoid with a red eye. Both are looking at three white snowflakes. The bacground is a gradient from deep blue to slightly lighter blue. End ID.]

Random quick edit but something about how small flatlanders are (film wise lol), maybe they would be able to discern the edges of each unique snowflake. And perhaps such random, irregular patterns are not welcomed in a hegemony such as the Republic. Maybe the sight of something so beautiful led to their own split of north and south.

Given that they live in a giant lake, such snowflakes would melt immediately, ephemeral. Here for one moment, then killed by their own world. Someone couldn’t stand for that, and fought to liberate their people. Inspired by visions that fell from an unknown world, a clue to a higher plane of existence. The proof was always there; they just couldn’t make sense of it. It was a message too completely alien, and meaning was lost in the process. At least it inspired some change.

[rjalker]

"The Squares and Pentagons, however, remained neutral."

[ID: A simple MS Paint drawing of a hexagon surrounded by isosceles triangles, shouting in panic to a nearby square an pentagon, "Please help me, I'm begging you, they'll kill me". The square responds calmly with, "That seems like a personal problem to me". The Pentagon says, "L O L..." End ID.]

Chromatized version under the cut since it's a bit harder to see since I was feeling lazy.

[ID: A simple MS Paint drawing of a hexagon surrounded by purple, black, and orange isosceles triangles, shouting in panic to a nearby square an pentagon, "Please help me, I'm begging you, they'll kill me". The square responds calmly with, "That seems like a personal problem to me". The slightly smaller Pentagon says, "L O L..." The square is purple, blue, orange, and burnt red. The pentagon is ice blue, green, pink, purple, and pale gold. End ID.]

[i-am-thedragon]

The social hierarchies of Spaceland

So in the original ‘Flatland’ story the social hierarchy is very linear and straightforward. Isosceles triangles are the lowest class, but those with wider angles are viewed more favourably to those with narrow angles. From equilateral triangles onwards, the more sides to the polygon the higher the class, with circles being at the top of the order. Women, all being ‘lines’, are considered inherently of a lower class than polygonal men. Any ‘irregular’ shape is either reconfigured into regularity in infancy (a process that can often kill the infant), killed, or kept hidden from society for their entire life.

However, in my interpretation of Flatland, this specific strict social order is true in some but not all nations of Flatland. Other nations are more lenient, having a wider threshold of what they consider to be ‘regular’ and thus allowed to exist in society. These semi-uniform polygons and other shapes do not exactly fit within the hierarchy of uniform polygons, but rather in their own parallel hierarchy. I have written more about these Flatlanders in a couple of earlier posts. [1] [2]

In three-dimensional Spaceland, things get even more complex.

A three dimensional shape is made up of multiple two-dimensional shapes as its surface, for example the cube, being made up of six squares. The thing with three dimensional shapes is that there are a LOT of them, with several different ways to class or divide them. For example one could distinguish based on ‘type’, for example prisms being separate from pyramids, from Archimedean solids, from platonic solids, from bipyramids, Johnson solids, zonohedra, etc... But even then there are some overlap between these groups, with the tetrahedron being both a platonic solid and a pyramid, a cube being a platonic solid and a prism, and the icosahedron being both a platonic solid and a gyroelongated bipyramid.

The type of division described above is the most common in Spaceland, though the exact social order can vary between regions. Generally, platonic solids are highly regarded, followed by Archimedean solids, while prisms and pyramids are held in low regard. ‘less common’ solids, such as Johnson solids, frustums, or bipyramids, are typically held in the same or lower regard as pyramids and prisms. Frustums and certain Johnson solids particularly have been considered irregular in some regions throughout history.

Within particular groups of polyhedra lies a secondary, more linear, hierarchy. Where applicable, a higher number of sides is held in higher regard. Within pyramids and and prisms, cones and cylinders tend to have more privileges than those of of a lower face count. A complication comes about, however, with the overlap with platonic solids. The tetrahedron, though being of the lowest possible face count for a pyramid, gets a social advantage over some other pyramids of a low face count due to being a platonic solid, provided all their faces are equilateral triangles. Likewise, the cube is only one rank higher than the triangular pyramid, yet also has the advantage of being a platonic solid. This gets particularly interesting in the case of cubes and rectangular prisms, who both share the same number of edges and vertices, and the same angles. Yet due to their equal length edges, cubes fall into category of platonic solids. This exact dynamic played a notable role in the differences between how Barnaby and his older brother Box were treated growing up.

Zonohedra are a strange case, because their high face count and visual similarity to spheres should rank them higher in the social hierarchy, however their faces are made of of skewed, elongated or irregular polygons. This lands them in different amounts of privilege depending who you ask. Some consider them sphere-adjacent, while others consider them untrustworthy and irregular-adjacent.

Unsurprisingly, the most privileged shape of them all is the sphere. The face, edge, and vertex count of the sphere are incalculable, and they have held great power throughout history. With this great power and privilege, however, has come a whole lot of destruction and oppression of other human beings. That is of course, not to say that every sphere in the modern day behaves this way or finds their place at the top of the social hierarchy to be fair.

The socio-political state of Spaceland is pretty much analogous to that of real-life Earth. In 2050, the social hierarchy of three dimensional shapes does not play nearly as much of a role in how humans are allowed to live their lives in many regions, though of course shape-based discrimination and biases absolutely still exist. Even back in 2000, the year of the third contact with Flatland, Spaceland found itself to be much more societally progressive than its two-dimensional counterpart.

[irregularbillcipher]

another one of those "a square is an ignorant tool" moments to me is the way he describes isosceles adoptions. like specifically, how he says that the parents are all "proud yet sorrowing" but all willingly give up their child to be adopted by equilaterals if said son has 60 degree angles, because absolutely not. i'm not saying there aren't any isosceles couples who bought into circle propaganda, or even ones who knew this was wrong but figured that their child would be given a better life if they let the board take them, but that cannot have been all parents. there have to have been isosceles parents who realized their children were technically equilaterals and tried to hide it, tried to run away with their newborn baby, or tried to make some sort of stand. there had to have been isosceles families who kicked and fought and bit and screamed to be able to keep their infants, who were probably jailed or killed for doing it, but who wanted to keep their baby and did everything they could to keep their family together. and a square doesn't even think about that possibility, because he cannot conceive of someone who would love their baby more than they would love the laws of configuration

[ravenkane]

Okay okay. So like, I'm gonna Mary the isosceles. She's tall, outgoing, and and has two longer sides. The kind of girl I'd take to the non existent parents place. I'd kill the equilateral cause it's a conformist. Trying to appeal to the overall triangle world and just making passing seem like the goal. But damn that scalene? I'd fuck the shit outta that scalene. She's freaky, she's the kinda girl where you feel dirtier after. She's the girl that'll leave scars in the sexy way. Shes using you just as much as you are her, and she gets off on it. You're gonna have 5 new kinks and 3 new traumas when you're done. She's gonna hurt you good.