#linear time dimension

[wheelercurse]

The Upside Down is a tesseract.

(time theory)

The writers tweeted a picture of the book Wrinkle in Time, which its title refers to a tesseract. You may ask, what's a tesseract? The basis is that a tesseract is a fifth dimension (the fourth dimension is time). Even in the book, to explain it, they use the same metaphor that they used in Stranger Things about the flea.

Here they're only using this concept to travel through dimensions. In ST, creating gates with so much power that tore space and time. And in the book, in a very similar way, to make a shortcut go to point A to point B.

We know that El has the power to create these gates, so Vecna is interested in her. And she also was the one who sent Henry to another dimension for the first time. But if you pay attention, this dimension didn't look like the Upside Down, so it makes me believe that these aren't the same place.

One is blue with spores and looks like Hawkins on November sixth, 1983, the day Willl disappeared (remember that the Duffers said this was important, and they will explain it in s5). And the other has warm colors and looks like a desert with many rocks.

My theory is that Will created the Upside Down while trying to hide from the Demogorgon. As in Wrinkle in Time, not everyone has the power of tesser. And Will manipulated time and space to create this fifth dimension.

We have seen how the Upside Down can affect the real world via the lights. They use light particles to communicate with others. A similar way that Interstellar uses the strings in the fifth dimension (also a tesseract). But in Stranger Things, they have only used it to communicate in the same period of time (the present), but what if there's a way to also communicate to other periods of time (the past)?

In Interstellar, the tesseract is an enormous structure used to communicate through gravity. Still, it's Copper's love for his daughter that allows him to see her in the past and communicate with her in this exact period. Because the premise of the movie is love transcends time and space.

ST also uses the trope of the power of love. So where I'm going with this? Our heroes will find a way to communicate with their past selves to try to prevent things, but I don't think they will be able to change the past even if they try.

My reason to believe that they will also play with time is that our villain literally has a clock motif and is obsessed with time. Also, there have been some references about time travel. And going back to season 1, the night Will disappeared, the lights in Mike's house were flickering. And the light in Will's bike also started to flicker, so he was able to notice the Demogorgon. Maybe it also was a warning. Still, if we continue with this theory, Vecna was living in the other dimension, not in the Upside Down, so he wasn't the one manipulating the lights because Will hadn't created it "yet." So who was behind the flickering? Our heroes in the future.

This isn't a new theory; I know this is the basis of flickergate. It's cute the idea that they were kissing in the Upside Down, but I think they were trying to prevent Will from leaving. Like in Interstellar, Cooper uses Morse code to send the message "STAY" But in both cases, they couldn't stop it.

Remember the iconic scene with Joyce and the Christmas lights, when she painted an alphabet, and someone warned her to RUN. Some people had questioned how Will was able to see the letters when the Upside Down was stuck on the day he disappeared. So, what if it wasn't the Will who was stuck in the UD and was someone from the future that was trying to save her (maybe Will but his future self).

There may be more examples of lights flickering, but these are the two that I remember right now.

Also, we know that Will could call his house via the phone. And in season 2, when they discovered that the way to defeat the Mindflayer was by closing the gate, the phone started to ring, so Will knew he was in the Byers' house. Maybe Vecna also will figure out how to use the Upside Down and try to intercept their plan, calling the house at that time.

Bonus: Arrival was in the s4 movie list inspiration. A movie that also plays with the concept that time is non-linear. The key to communicating with the aliens is understanding how they perceive time. You can read more about it in this analysis of the movie.

In conclusion: The Upside Down is a fifth dimension (a tesseract) where you can communicate with others dimensions, not only in the present.

[astraltrickster]

I love how it doesn't matter whether you were the "math is evil" kid or the "math is AWESOME" kid, no matter how different our approach or reasoning,

we all come together to agree that math is wild bullshit wizard shit

[thedragonagelesbian]

im not saying lou wilson cursed their dice by going on adventuring academy and saying dice superstition is bullshit but..............................

[asjjohnson]

I had a thought in October about what if, in the TUE episode, Danny returning to his time was more complicated than just finding Vlad.

I made a gif out of a little sketch story thing I've made based on that thought (it's part one, out of... two? three? I haven't finished it yet so I'm not sure. But I thought this was a good place to stop for the gif.)

The story starts during the episode, right after the older Vlad removes the fused time medallion. The basic thought is that Danny doesn't make it to Vlad soon enough (plus I have some fun with an idea that the medallions have different models).

(The only way I know to start the gif over is to refresh the page. Oh, but first try clicking on the gif.)

Under the cut are the still pictures, as well as a written version. (...I 've spent too much time on this.)

Here's the still pictures.

And here's a written form. (...I'm not good at only giving the words with basic description. It was nearly unreadable that way. So I tried storyifying it. Just a little bit. It includes actions that are implied in the images but not specifically shown.)

---

Within Vlad's cave, in the future, Danny Phantom asks, "It didn’t work?"

Several feet away from him, the older Vlad stares down at the time medallion—still in the palm of the gauntlet he'd used to pull it out of Danny.

The medallion has a central piece with an entwined letter 'C' and 'W'. Above this, in fine print, are the words 'Back' and 'Forward', with corresponding arrows pointing counterclockwise and clockwise. And, below the C/W logo, are the words '10yr model'.

"…Perhaps something had happened…" Vlad says, "causing you to no longer be recognized by your time."

"But Sam and Tucker made it back just fine!" Danny says in confusion.

However, Danny doesn't give Vlad time to come up with any theories. "My future self is in the past, trying to force this future to happen. I need to get back to my time before it’s too late."

Vlad gives Danny a pitying look. "My boy, it may already be too late."

"No. I can’t accept that." Danny walks over to Vlad, raising one hand, palm up. "Here, let me see the medallion." Vlad drops the medallion into Danny's awaiting palm.

Danny looks at the back side of the medallion, saying, "If he was able to use one to go to my time, then I can, too."

The back of the medallion is undesigned smooth metal, but it's engraved with instructions. It reads, "Time anchor and travel device combination. Single use. Up to ten years forward or back. Simply remove to return to own time." And, beneath that, "Please recycle."

Danny puts the medallion around his neck and twists the front face counterclockwise, saying to himself, "I better turn it as far as it will go."

Before he even lets go of the medallion's face, a swirling bubble encompasses him, and then the bubble fades away.

Danny turns to look at the scenery. He's still in the cave—he sees the same cave formations—but, while there used to be a large, desk-like computer console and some lab equipment, now there's only a blank cave wall, and no sign of Vlad. "I guess it worked," he says. Then he flies through the cave.

A while later, after flying all the way to Amity Park, Danny hovers in the air, over the place the Nasty Burger used to be. Now there is only a large scorchmark, and a bewildered-looking version of Danny Fenton sitting in the middle of it.

"Oh no, I didn’t get here in time."

Danny has gone exactly ten years into the past, along the timeline he had started from. (In the corresponding sketch, this information is given by a narration rectangle that reads, "Exactly 10 yrs earlier in original timeline." ...Although that's not exactly true because it was exactly ten years when he first appeared in the cave, and it took time to get from Wisconsin to Amity Park. But the point is that Danny hadn't traveled far enough back in time to reach the intersection of the two timelines.)

Danny flies away, saying, "There must be a way to go farther back!"

The version of Danny Fenton left sitting on the scorched ground thinks, "Maybe I should move in with Vlad."

Some time later, Danny is flying through the Ghost Zone.

"I have no idea what the outside of Clockwork’s lair looks like. I’ll just need to trust I’ll know it when I see it."

Around him are floating doors and swirling patterns, as well as some kind of gear-themed castle that Danny has already passed (it's Clockwork's lair).

Danny turns his head. He doesn't notice the Fenton Boomerang approaching from the other side.

The Boomerang hits him in the back of the head.

"Ow!" Danny grabs the Boomerang and rubs his head. He scolds it like a disobedient pet, saying, "I look away for one second."

"Look," Danny orders, and uses his other hand to reach into his pocket, pulling out Jazz's note and unfolding it with a jerk of his wrist, "I already have one."

He throws the Boomerang. "Go find past me—or the me in the future? Whatever."

The note slips out of his hand.

"No!" He spins around, reaching for it.

"What are you doing way out here, Baby Pop?"

Danny pauses on hearing the voice.

He turns toward the voice and sees a maliciously grinning Ember McClain. "Ember? I don’t have time for this!"

"Well, you better make time. How about some killer volume?" Ember strums her guitar, and a spiral of energy shoots toward Danny.

"I seriously don’t have time! But you want volume? Fine! How’s thiiis?!" He transitions into his Ghostly Wail.

The Wail overpowers Ember's attack and blasts her through the air. She's pushed onto a chunk of floating ground.

The Wail ends, and Ember looks up in surprise and fear. There's a thin stream of ectoplasm leaking from the corner of her mouth. She puts a hand to her mouth and pulls it back to see ectoplasm on her palm.

Then she glares up at Danny. She coughs, and hoarsely says, "I won’t forget this."

Danny's just as horrified as she was. Wide-eyed, he subconsciously leans back, but also reaches a hand toward her in concern. "Wait, I didn’t mean to…"

But then he drops his hand and looks away, his expression hardening. "Never mind. Once I return to the right time, this will never have happened."

Assuming Jazz's note is a lost cause by now, he flies off, leaving Ember on the chunk of rock.

An unknown time later, Danny is in the Ghost Zone, hovering in place. He now has Jazz's headband tied to his belt, and he reaches a hand toward it, and rubs the material between his fingers. He says, "Jazz… Everyone… I’ll find my way back to you."

The camera moves upward until Danny's shoulder and half of his head is visible. His hair is a little longer now, and the shoulder part of his outfit is different. He continues, "No matter how long it takes."

[skitskatdacat63]

Christopher Nolan making movies: I'm gonna make a film that is so confusing and non-linear

[crypticmedici]

“It just hit me that this season of Starstruck is ending next week” moodboard

[atticcreationz]

For funzies! Here, DC stands for "how Difficult it is to beat how friggin Cool this season is" lol

[chucktaylorupset]

real question is. when am i going to get to play a dnd game when i am going to get to write letters in floral language when am i going to get to be dmed by aabria iyengar never that’s when in the pits of despair the unlikeliness of all these feels much the same

[actualnymph]

Schrödinger's cat is so funny bc it’s the exact same idea as the whole “if a tree falls in the forest but no one’s around to hear it does it make a sound 🤔” 🙄

[misskamelie]

Having troubles understanding n-dimensional spaces :((

[levmada]

AOT MANGA SPOILERS!

i think what Ymir Fritz was after her whole life (and afterlife) was true love. or at least proof of it.

(read ch122 for her full backstory (which is a masterclass in visual storytelling and storytelling in general) but...)

we don't learn a single thing about Ymir as a person beyond that she seems to long for love from the time she was a child.

also, she more than anyone (in the aot universe) knows endless, merciless suffering. from a very young age she knew the world was cruel.

that’s the reason in my mind that - after getting the power of the Titans - she didn’t rebel against the king. she didn’t run away. she did whatever the king asked of her because for once in her life she was wanted. even in this completely backwards and transactional way, all Ymir knows of love is this, even though it’s just slavery at its core.

so the king got married to her and she had her three daughters, who Ymir doesn't find love in either. it seems her children are more proof of her enslavement. Ymir doesn't even find that true love she wants in her own daughters. she's still miserable.

13 years after she got the power, there’s an attempt on the king’s life, without hesitation she protects him. she, effectively, is willing to face certain death to that end.

so we establish this. to Ymir, love = self-sacrifice.

i feel that Ymir finally reaches the end of her ability to "love" the king. this is her breaking point. her final misery among a thousand other miseries she's accepted from him.

she isn't loved. she was willing to give her life, and yet he doesn't love her.

after this rejection, she doesn’t heal herself. we know that in order to use the Titan powers, you have to have a goal (the way Eren learned to transform in The Spoon Incident and later, Reiner doing something similar to Ymir). but she was finished.

Ymir had the power to manufacture a dimension without life or death. the paths. and would spend 2,000 years there doing what she always did and obeying her “king” - the Eldian with the Founding Titan. she wouldn't serve her king directly anymore, but enslavement is Ymir's only definition of love, so that's what she will continue to do.

until she observes a true display of true love.

now (and this is interesting) this is where the concept of the Ackermans come in. i explain in this, this, and this post the Ackermans and the Ackerbond, which is important for understanding this post.

so first, why Mikasa? why would she specifically be the one to free Ymir?

at the time the chapter came out, people criticized Isayama and Eren not knowing how Mikasa was the key the giving Ymir peace. but think about it. Eren doesn't know the depths of Ymir's heart, true. he also got the same exact omnipotence Ymir had thanks to (1) possessing the Founding Titan and (2) effectively having royal blood thanks to the way he enslaved Zeke. Eren has the same exact knowledge that Uri or Frieda had.

but of course, Eren wasn’t BUILT to be god. he has no right to it. Grisha gave him the Founding Titan and he forced Zeke to use his royal blood. Eren says that he started experiencing the past, present, and future all at the same time. of course he wouldn’t know why it’s Mikasa.

what we do know is that the timeline of aot is linear, and can’t be changed. i talk more about that in my Eren character analysis.

the person to ultimately give Ymir peace was going to be Mikasa no matter what. how?

1: being an Ackerman means possessing Titan powers while being a human. would that not also mean that an Ackerman has a special connection to Ymir?

it's different from being a Titan shifter. the potential to awaken their Titan-like powers are their birthright.

2: I linked above my thoughts on the “Ackerbond”. but in a nutshell, Ackermans have the best of both worlds. made to be obedient “Titan-like” tools to protect the king. to be the strongest slaves. while also possessing the best trait of a human being, and that’s the ability to love (as Isayama conveys in aot). so a major trait in Ackermans, i think, is this enhanced ability and propensity to love one special person.

what’s so striking about this from what would be Ymir’s point of view is that, like her, Ackermans have the traits of a Titan like she did, but Ackermans CHOOSE who they are “enslaved” to. it’s not slavery at all. what a shock that must be to someone like Ymir, I mean right?

Levi and Mikasa have their respective moment of “a display of true love” towards their lieges in the series. i want to compare.

Erwin and Levi.

to be succinct, Levi shouldered the weight of Erwin’s sins. [i talk about it more here and in the second half of this post here]. Erwin puts not his life in Levi’s hands, but what comes after. someone putting their trust in their other even in the face of certain death, certain grief, is a major display of true love. (as Isayama conveys in aot that is.)

then, both despite and because of Levi’s love for Erwin, he was strong enough to end his suffering. to let him rest, even though he had the choice to bring him back. that is a major display of true love.

Erwin and Levi both sacrifice aspects of themselves for the other.

what do Levi’s and Mikasa’s moment both have in common?

the willingness to share the weight of their liege’s sins, their darkness, their shortcomings, their most vulnerable sides. that's unconditional love.

But Mikasa’s moment is even more special to Ymir.

Eren’s sins are obviously much more grievous and unforgivable than Erwin’s. that speaks more to how much value Mikasa’s “display of true love” has objectively. and, Mikasa wasn't able to "bring Eren back". (besides obvious plot reasons).

even though it was certain that Eren wasn’t going to be forgiven, that he would have to die, Mikasa’s love never wavered.

both despite and because of Mikasa’s love for Eren, she would be the one strong enough to end his suffering.

Mikasa and Eren both sacrifice aspects of themselves for the other.

Ymir had no one willing or strong enough to end her suffering.

Ymir believes true love is love enduring even in the face of certain grief through mutual sacrifice.

and that’s why she is seen smiling when Mikasa kills Eren. with that, Ymir is finally at peace.

[shepherds-of-haven]

Among the inner circle, who does Riel have the easiest->hardest time reading? I assume it's a pretty negligible difference at this point just because everyone interacts so regularly, but does Chase's chaos energy successfully throw him off?

It absolutely does! I would say it generally goes like this, though it may not be a super linear scale and resembles more of a scatterplot graph:

Shery (displays all of her emotions prominently)

Briony (ditto to Shery, though sometimes her motivations/backstory can add some complexities)

Red (easy for Riel to read his emotions, not as easy for him to read his strategies or logical lines of thought)

Ayla (pretty much the same as Briony, her emotions seem easy to read but the actual thoughts she's thinking behind them and the context/backstory she comes from make her a bit more opaque at times than expected)

Halek (his poker face makes it hard to gauge his actual emotions, but his behavior falls within enough of a pattern/predictable routine that Riel can still successfully "read" him or plan for what he's going to do or say without having to know his exact thoughts)

Trouble (similar to Red, where Riel can easily read his emotional state but not always his plans or actions: Trouble can be unpredictably really smart and level-headed or really impulsive at different times, so he consistently surprises Riel, who has a hard time predicting exactly what he's going to do next)

Lavinet (dependent on the situation; hardest to read when she's actively politicking. Court training makes her harder to read than the average person, but she's not a completely closed castle)

Blade (Riel needs more data on Ket facial expressions and body language, so he's not as confident with Blade as with most people, as the cultural differences can make a really big difference. He can't always read Blade's thoughts or feelings unless Blade is caught off-guard, but Blade's behavior is also governed by a rigid enough pattern that it can become easier for Riel to predict, except in areas where his skillset overtakes Riel's (for example, don't ask Riel to predict what Blade is going to do in battle))

Tallys (similar to Blade, Elven mannerisms and body language do differ enough that Riel is hesitant to say with confidence he knows exactly what Tallys is thinking/feeling, plus with her age, experience, and general composed personality, he finds her the most difficult person to read in the Shepherds, with one notable exception. He's well aware that his mortal experience is so vastly different from her own perspective that he won't act like he can know exactly how she thinks so lightly)

Chase (he hates the chaos man. he hates him. Chase's body language and topography make NO sense and can be so detached from his actual emotions that he's just impossible to read accurately. lackadaisical slouch when he's seethingly angry?? half-lidded smile and boneless draping over the couch when he's actually plotting Awful Things?? and let's not get started on his general unpredictability, off-the-cuff improvisation, and chaotic impulsiveness and complete lack of logic. he operates off of Vibes Only, except the Vibes are undetectable to anyone else but the ones plugged into the awful Chaos dimension. If Riel were tracking the linear flight patterns of, like, bumblebees moving from flower to flower, Chase is a dragonfly. oh he's going to land there--WHOOP he did a 98 degree turn at the last possible second and ZIPPED straight up into the sky for no discernible reason! Riel insists through gritted teeth that it's impossible to read someone's thoughts when there are no thoughts going on in their head at all. Even Chase can't explain how his mind works, so how are you expecting Riel to??

Most people's thoughts, to Riel:

Chase:

[santoschristos]

Torus

The Centre of the Torus is a Holographic Heart, meaning that this point or moment of space and time interconnects with every other point of space and time, where all parts are unified where all dimensions are interconnected.

This means that the old Einsteinian concept of travelling from one planet or star or dimension to another, in a linear fashion, from A to B no longer applies, (Einstein never understood what fractal meant), because the Holographic Heart suggests that we are already there at our destination, not by physical travelling but by folding time and space in an instant, as if you are folding paper effortlessly from one corner to another, a movement via consciousness. Remembering that the first human organ to form in the womb was not the brain, but the heart:

the still point the Higher Heart

the Torus Heart.

Thus an electro-magnetic field begins to envelop the embryo that You were, You became a magnet, an invitation for duality to set in, blanketing You with its counter-rotating fields:

electro is the principle of male energy, that which draws out, magneto is the principle of female energy, that which draws in, and the core is the Torus Heart it is the spark plug the lightning bolt that connects the Above to the Below. All Memory, which is vibrationally stored in Shape, in Crystal, and all Blood, which is DNA, must pass through its Gates. --Jain 108

[yourmoonie]

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑭𝑼𝑻𝑼𝑹𝑬 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒆 beacuse:

STOP WAITING and just BE

The future will never come because the FUTURE is NOW! So the future that we hope for is actually this exact same moment

So that's why living in the present moment is very important

✨️ Practice mindfulness

Remember this and relax in the knowing that you control your TIME

Time in this " dimension " is man-made and it's an illusion

Because when you experience your manifestation in an externalized form, it's not going to be the future for you, BUT the present moment

So stop beating yourself up over THE time and circumstances

There is NO past, present, or future; all that exists is the eternal NOW moment, where everything is happening at once. As a result, we are not moving through linear time; space-time is only a human invention to keep track of events and memories.

[ckret2]

i wish to know about how you characterize amorphous shape. amorphous needs more attention. (same with the other henchmaniacs without lines, but i prefer focusing on the character my brain has decided i am.)

I characterize them as approximately 14~19 separate individual shapes from Bill's home dimension that got combined together into one hive mind. That's why I refer to Morph as "they"—I'm not using "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun, I'm using it as a plural pronoun, they are literally multiple people.

How they got combined into one body will get explored later in the fic so I'm not gonna spoil it; but it happened during the destruction of the second dimension.

The polygon parts of them weren't all squares to start out with, but after a trillion years they found that most of the time it's easier for them to simplify themselves into a form that tessellates tidily. They can shapeshift and separate though, so they can return to their original shapes when they want, like:

(that's not literally the exact shapes they were, just concept art of what changing to their original shapes would look like.)

They're Bill's top scientists. Also, his only scientists. Not all of them were scientists, but when you've shared brains for a trillion years, you pick up each other's knowledge, and anyway over a dozen minds working on the same problem at the same time makes brainstorming faster. They're to blame for the interdimensional portal.

Any time Bill attempts to conquer a new dimension, he's gotta try to persuade the people inside that dimension to make him a portal; and in order to do that, he's got to pass those people portal blueprints; and in order to do that, he needs portal blueprints that both, a) work correctly in the physics of the dimension he's contacting, and b) can be built using the technology, natural resources, and construction techniques available to the natives. He wouldn't send portal blueprints that only work correctly with linear forward-moving time to the do-over dimension where spontaneous time loops randomly form, and he wouldn't send a design that can only be powered by nuclear fission to a culture that's barely discovered coal.

For a long time, Amorphous Shape were the guys Bill turned to for all those portal blueprint modifications. Any time he found a promising new dimension with a sufficiently gullible-looking species, he'd go in with Amorphous Shape so they could study local physics and technology and adapt the blueprints to fit local conditions.

By now, Bill & company have made SO many blueprints for SO many universes with SO many kinds of technology that when they find a new universe, they can typically tweak a design they already made rather than start from scratch; and Bill's been studying the blueprints for so long that now he thoroughly understands the science behind them and can draft & modify them himself, so he doesn't need Morph's help so much. He mainly consults with them to double-check the math before tossing the blueprints at a dreamer or to assist on really strange cases like that one dimension with a form of physics based entirely on the letter M.

Right now, Morph's bigger long-term scientific concern is the slow degradation of the Nightmare Realm and finding ways to help Bill shore up the crumbling reality; and implementing emergency quick fixes whenever something small falls apart, like a black hole threatening to destabilize the fabric of reality around several nebulas or knots tangling in wormholes because the ends are fraying.

If Bill is like the self-appointed god of the Nightmare Realm, Morph are something in between a demigod and a high priest: they don't have any reality-altering power themselves, but they do understand and influence reality far beyond any mere mortal and their petitions to the god to do this or fix that keeps local reality functioning.

Talking to them is like talking to a committee or a mob. Most of the things they say are collectively agreed-upon by the members of the hive mind, and so tend to have the careful precision of a department issuing a public statement rather than a regular conversation; but when something happens to get a majority of them mad, they get mad together and egg on each other's anger, and tend to immediately snap into confrontation rather than sit back until they calm down

They don't have a lot of hobbies they all share, so they tend to dabble in and drop a wide variety of hobbies rather than get really deeply invested in any. More likely to spend their spare time seeing what the other Henchmaniacs are doing and tag along on that than try to decide what to do on their own. Bad habit of just going back to work when they're bored since at least they can all agree that's productive.

They haven't gone on a date in billions of years and are not happy about this. They don't even have all the same sexualities, much less the same types. They need to go on a date with like a minimum four people simultaneously to balance out the fact that they'll be variously attracted to/repelled by any one singular date. Finding four people who cover their separate tastes and are all willing to go on a single date with "the same person" is pretty hard, especially when you're workaholics living with the most hated person in the multiverse and don't get out much.

Zealously, desperately loyal to Bill. They've spent a trillion years telling themselves that Bill's gonna rescue his devotees from the Nightmare Realm and claim a new dimension for them. By now it's become easier to pretend he's a flawlessly honest leader who'd never lie to them (unless he has a very good reason) than to grapple with his massive failings as a person and consider that maybe they made a mistake older than universes in following him. Any time one of their components starts to mentally doubt one of Bill's decisions, they're shouted back into conformity by the rest who are ready to offer justifications and explanations for anything he does. Can't do deep thinking on a difficult topic if you don't even have privacy in your own head.

If Bill ever wants to screw with them he can say "Morph, you're four of my best friends" and leave them going crazy trying to figure out which of their components he likes and why he doesn't like the rest. But Bill doesn't mess with the shapes much. Only if it's, like, really funny.

There used to be more surviving shapes in Bill's social circle, but over the eons they left one by one, until now it's just down to Morph, Kryptos, Hectorgon, and Bill; each time the shapes lost another member, it became harder for the remainders to consider leaving. Morph are no more capable of contemplating lives without Bill, Kryptos, and Hectorgon than you are of contemplating a life without bones. The feeling is mutual all around.

The rest of the Henchmaniacs could get fucked as far as they care.

[danwhobrowses]

Beyond the Spider-Verse Theory: The Hidden Villain

So I've left it a few days after watching Across the Spider-Verse to gather my thoughts. And while you can see my review here it's time for some theory crafting for the next movie: Beyond the Spider-Verse

This theory will discuss the existence of another villain behind the scenes

Spoilers for Across the Spider-Verse

So as we know, the main crux of the Spider Society's storyline is that the Web of Life and Destiny (aka the Spider-Verse) apparently hinges on the concept of 'Canon Events', whereby each Spider has to undergo intersecting moments in each mythos. Miguel O'Hara enforces this pattern via the Spider Society, after his attempts to 'break canon' caused the universe he inhabited, taking over from another dead Miguel's life, to die - along with his alternative universe daughter. We also learn that anomalies like this will cause the web to collapse, and thus Miles - having been bitten by another universe's spider to get spider powers, allegedly robbing the powers from another potential spider - and Spot are walking anomalies and their prolonged time in another universe may cause another collapse.

But something doesn't quite add up.

First of all, if Miles and Spot are anomalies, why is their universe still intact? Same can be said for the Earth-42 spider still in a jar. Additionally, why did Miguel's universe collapse if he had the watch that keeps his atoms good in the universe? Isn't he doing exactly what he alleges Miles is doing, taking over another Spider-person who died in this Universe? Also it's highly unlikely that every Spider is subject to the same canon events; Ben Reilly is a clone and Miguel had his DNA mixed with a spider's so surely that disrupts the OG Canon Event of the Spider-bite right? Miguel never had an Uncle Ben or a Captain Stacy moment in his mythos (unless we're suddenly counting the alt!Daughter as the former), plus in Into the Spider-Verse Gwen already said she saved her dad from dying so wouldn't that have disrupted a Canon Event? Do captains even exist for Peter Parked Car or Spidersaurus Rex?

And finally, how can you say Spot and Miles are anomalies and shouldn't be in the universe when Pravitr's Canon Event is only caused by Spot interfering with his universe?

Like I said, it doesn't add up.

So, how do we establish that the idea of 'Canon Events' are not as strict as they seem, that Miles and Spot aren't reality-threatening anomalies, but also explain what happened to the universe that traumatized Miguel - with Peter B. also as witness to verify the story?

Perhaps, someone is manipulating the web behind the scenes.

In the comics, the Web of Life and Destiny is maintained by the 'Master Weaver', a character key to Morlun and his Inheritors, and while I don't think we're going to see the Weaver in Beyond the Spider-Verse I do feel like somebody could be filling that kind of a role. So ask yourself, who do we know in the Spider-Verse who has a unique interest in other dimensions, has the mind to test and tinker, but also has a fascination slash vendetta against the spiders...

Dr. Olivia Octavius was a highlight of the first movie, but her sudden exit after being hit by a truck was considered an abrupt and unsatisfying end for her. So what if she survived? And when the collider closed she was sucked into the Web of Life and Destiny? An inquisitive mind such as herself would have a wealth of time (well, not literally, given that Miles got a glimpse of the future and Spider Society HQ is in 2099 we can assume that the web exists outside of linear time) to test things, seeing the paths and intersections of other Spiders. Liv however does have one particular Spider she seems drawn to in a negative manner though, Peter B. Parker, so what if Miguel's incident in the universe collapsing was instead an attempted hit towards Peter B., Liv attempting to wipe him out of time by wiping the universe he was in?

It does go deeper, we've seen from the Spot that in his flashback scenes he's always adjacent to Liv, they both identified the Earth-42 spider, and she was the leading scientist on the Collider, so she would have the skills to know this, and if she became able to expand her abilities by being a villainous Master Weaver (like Superior Spider-Man attempted to be by killing the Master Weaver to change his fate), she may also be responsible for directing other Spiders' paths along the same route to manipulate Miguel into his current uncharacteristic way of thinking, she may also be manipulating her colleague Spot to encourage more suffering to the Spiders.

If true, it'll at least give Miguel closure and open the door for him to be apologetic and much less of a dick, but it'd also explain how Miles could become able to divert the idea of Canon Events without destroying his or other universes, liberating each Spider to exist in their own story without having to follow the same pattern. Adding to a much bigger role for Octavius (we did see a lot of variant Doc Ocks in ATSV) would provide a cyclic conclusion to Miles' journey since his other 'first villains' Kingpin and Prowler have been defeated.

But, this is just a theory, there's much room to go other directions, but it was a thought.