The shape of reality

For anyone interested, I made this illustration of the "reality" in which the universes of my fiction exist. Reality is actually shaped like an egg; this is a cross-section because I couldn't figure out how to do layers of multicolored stuff on a 3D sphere or elipse or whatever it is.

Each item labeled a "verse" is a universe. Universes exist within the larger shell of reality. Regions like heaven, the aether region, nether region, and hell are present and relevant to more than one universe, so they comprise the layers of the shell, or layers of reality. Hell, however, is less part of the shell than something that exists at the edges of reality, because ultimately hell will simply cease to be.

This is fiction, of course. I have no way of knowing what the nature of reality is, and I don't claim to. This model just happens to fit with what I need for my story. I'm also going to figure out how time operates within this framework, but that will be a separate diagram. I didn't want to blow anybody's brain up, including mine.

The icon says it all

I recently got a hold of Keith Urban's CD 1991 from a friend and finally checked it out yesterday. I didn't really like it. I've been a Keith Urban fan since his debut album and usually I find every song appealing both in terms of its musical style and the lyrics. I liked about half the songs on 1991 and I felt that the album as a whole didn't "fit" together the way Urban's previous releases had. I happened to give the album another listen tonight and I have totally changed my mind. I don't know what my problem was yesterday, but the album is quite enjoyable and cohesive. It's not my favorite Keith Urban album; I think he was experimenting musically or something, but it's not a bad sort of different. All I can say is, I guess I really shouldn't listen to country after playing Aruna's vids on Nightwish. ;)

More Worldbuilding Stuff

As the title says. Worldbuilding stuff.

These are both illustrations of the same moment in time, done to illustrate the way the timestream of Bloodkin's reality works.

The first is a close up picture of the timestream, showing how a single decision affects the timestream itself. The blue stuff in the middle area of the picture is the timestream. Time is fluid in Bloodkin; past, present and future co-exist in the stream. (Linear views of time are typical of humans, of course, since we can only see one moment at a time, but they're incomplete.) Present is the center part of the stream. Past and future are flowing around the sides, which means that there are multiple currents in the stream at once. It's very turbulent, hard to navigate, and hard to "see" through.

The top left represents the multiple avenues of decision and possibility that could lead to this particular moment (a point of divergence. Different possible outcomes of that decision are manifested in different universes. Not every universe is affected or has the relevant moment, depending on previous events.)

The bottom square of arrow things on the other side of the timestream represents the branching possibilites of future events resultant from this particular decision.

The blue stuff that stretches out from the timestream over the rest of the picture represents how time travel can occur. Those are probability currents. Travelling through time in your own universe means staying in a particular probability current, which is actually the easiest thing to do. Getting to alternate 'verses requires a way of moving from one probability current to another.

The picture gets darker as you move away from the stream because that's the more distant past or future, which is difficult to see/remember/travel to. Probability currents may not stretch that far, and if they do, they're weak.

The second picture is an overview of time as a whole, and it's shown affecting two possible realities. The timestream encircles reality, with tributaries and various flows of energy spreading from it into particular universes that are affected by this decisiosn.

There are three "layers" on the oval because I couldn't find another way of depicting the past present and future. Time moves clockwise outward from God and loops back to him, but this is not a cyclical time dynamic. It gets back to him when time is finished, not so that it can start repeating itself in funky new ways.

The event is pinpointed by the glowy stuff in the middle of the image. I'm not entirely satified with the way this wole picture looks, but it does get the point across, I think. So that's that.