Tag: worldbuilding

If I were a young teen in the Transcendence AU and I googled “Alcor the Dreambender” what kinds of articles and blogs and things would pop up?

It depends on when. TAU spans millenia. So does Alcor. Google…I’m not prepared to offer even an AU prediction on that.

If it’s way early on, you wouldn’t get many perfect matches before Google started returning things like “dream” on its own or stuff about the star or cyro companies with that name. Maybe there would be sites or blogs by people with a budding interest in the newly-discovered realm of demon summoning, listing known/discovered demons by names and titles. Lots of misinformation of course, and blatantly contradictory stuff. Maybe a news article or two if something really big happened and it was attributed to him, even tentatively. 

Go further, and you’ll have more demon enthusiast blogs and lists and first person accounts which may or may not be true. Possibly some memes, depending on what the collective consciousness of social media has grabbed onto in the meantime. More reports. Some PSA styled stuff about NOT summoning demons, especially these, and other posts by various individuals contradicting it with or without evidence. 

Get to and beyond the publishing and initial craze over Twin Souls, and good luck finding hits not related to that.

And on and on the rabbit hole goes, honestly. Fictional media, factually-styled stuff from various sources, memes and jokes and random chatter, occasional appearances of the name being used as a swear in some capacity, news reports, demonology research and publications, fanblogs, probably a thousand people online at any given time claiming to be the actual Dreambender (or just roleplaying)…

Are there Elves in the TAU? If so what are they like? Do they have a culture? Can they use magic?

There’s probably at least a handful of different species that might be called elves, each with their own cultures and stereotypes and so forth, and that may be a conservative guess!

There’s the Fay/Fey races, also known to some as Elves, who are tall and narrow and sharp as blades in both body and mind. They love beauty and music and dance and laughter, and for the most part they keep to themselves, which is perhaps for the best because they are not necessarily kind, though they are scrupulously true to their words. They tend to hang out in a border realm, caught between reality and dreamscape, organized in their courts and enjoying their lives in the twilight, though occasionally some may slip through into the mortal realm…or a mortal, in the wrong place at the wrong time and following the sound of music, might slip through into theirs. Their magic tends to be based on the power of dreams and sleep and enchantment, and is stronger in their own halfway realm than in ours.

There are races like Brownies and Leprechauns and other so-called “Small Folk,” distinct from fairies/pixies, who sometimes might be organized under “elves” as a collective name or category, depending on who’s speaking. Some of these resist that nomenclature, others embrace it, others don’t mind one way or another. They all have their own individual cultures and lifestyles and so on. Some have magic, some do not, and those that do vary in strengths and styles and so on.

I’m not sure the AU has explored the possibility of Tolkien-esque (or at least more human-like) elves that live among humans at this point. It’s a possibility, I suspect. Perhaps a few magic-induced minor mutations occur in humanity further down the line that result in certain features becoming prominent, or greater magical sensitivities, or other bits and pieces. 

Sci-fi TAU aspects

We discussed what the future of TAU would look like with aliens in the Discord.

  • Fantasy species with weapons in intergalactic wars, i.e. fae with lasers in space
  • Dipper getting summoned by scientists to help find life in space on other planets
  • Dipper internally freaking out when he first meets aliens
  • Dipper having to act as a translator between humans and aliens
  • Dipper being summoned by aliens
  • Dipper and the aliens being scared at first by each other
  • but then they are best friends
  • r!Henry as Groot (from Guardians of the Galaxy)
  • I AM WOODSMAN
  • A soul Dip knows being reincarnated as a human
  • Planets and aliens that summon different demons than what humans do
  • Alien Twin Souls
  • Some planets going through a similar phase as Transcendence
  • Alcor + aliens in general.

Repost: Henry’s soul apples are a healthy and (almost) cruelty free alternative to actual souls! It’s a little creepy but they get past it after the first couple of batches, and suddenly dipper can’t get enough of them. Even more so when the tree grows in the backyard. When they’re in season, he appears almost every summons, eating one. He’s a dream demon, but especially one of knowledge and guidance, so people assume it must be from the Tree of Knowledge. Pronat Christians call him “The Snake”

So on one hand, no actual souls are in Henry’s apples.

OTOH there is something… off about those apples, so yes this absolutely

beelieveinfandom:

Some old thing from the chat about superheros. 

The Weaver of Entrails-09/10/2017

random idea: what if, after the transcendence, an age of superheroes occurred, and Alcor decided to pretend to be a hero/villain or maybe in an alternate reality, superheroes and villains are a normal thing

BeelieveInBees-09/10/2017

Idea: after an Apocalypse Alcor grants random people super powers to encourage an age of superheros because he really really wants one.

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The Nature and Anatomy of the Soul

ii-thiscat-ii:

Mortals, with our limited point of view, have always strived to learn. We will peel away at the world until we uncover even the deepest secrets of the universe, and this is how we like it, but until recently, there was one mystery that still escaped us.

The soul.

It is only very recently that research has successfully been made into this field, and we are still learning new things every year.

This document is an illustrated attempt at summarizing what we know this far. It is the cumulated knowledge of hundreds of scientists, and yet it fills only a few pages. This, if nothing else, should be a good illustration of just how elusive the soul is.

Keep reading

Questions about souls: How does the preference for reincarnating into a single species work on an evolutionary time-frame? Are there just, way, way more souls then living organisms and they reincarnate in waves as a species they like develops and then go back to not incarnating as their species dies out? Do they stick with a species as it changes, and if so how do they decide which branch to follow (As in: did the souls that were incarnated into the first mammals decide that they were going to follow the path that would eventually be a cat or did they reincarnate aimlessly.)?

What happens when a species dies out suddenly? Do they reincarnate into similar species or just stop reincarnating all together? What if there is a mass extinction and there aren’t any similar species left?

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Hi Mod V here! I had been thinking about this for a bit but I think it comes back to sapience of a species. For instance, a human soul can get reincarnated as let’s say…a centaur or an elf. A soul doesn’t necessarily follow an evolution of the body as much of the mind.

When a soul goes to reincarnate it isn’t completely aware of what it is reincarnating as, and reincarnation can or can not happen for a number of reasons. Sometimes its just the luck of the draw. But more often than not, a soul will be sure to follow a path of similar sapience, so humans are more likely to follow a human-level of intellect line. cats and dogs for instance, will probably follow a reincarnation line of similar animals, be them mundane or magical. So if a species dies out that isn’t as much concern as long as there’ll always be creatures similar enough. It was mentioned before but, souls follow the path of least resistance so they will continue to follow paths they are familiar with. 

Evolution takes a LONG time to have any significant effects that completely change a species. Souls would be able to adapt to the changes as they form easily because they would take so long. If evolutionary paths diverge, it’s more just the luck of whatever souls were inhabiting the bodies go one way, and the others go the other way. But until really, really significant changes were seen, I don’t think it’d have that big of an effect on the reincarnation cycle. 

Of course, there’s never any binding rules. I do believe there was a Mizar that was a cat once. And there’s a higher chance that a soul will reincarnate into the same species more often than not. Things happen, nothing makes sense, sometimes people reincarnate as cats; but as a majority rule…I think that’s what’s more likely. 

((Also I have been a bit out of touch with my TAU lore so if I got something wrong pls tell me))