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The Dresden Files => DF Spoilers => Topic started by: The_Sibelis on September 01, 2021, 08:44:26 AM
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So thinking about DR and how Merlin basically either went back to a single point from five possible timelines to create DR from a single point, or created it across five timelines at a single point in time(same difference?). The main significance to me has always been in relation to the pentacles five points and it being some sort of spell form. An I wonder if it's not even simpler in it's design then it appears. What if it's designed to trap spacetime, or the void between it on a thaumaturgical scale? So all of outside is snared at once in stasis? Idk, I actually had the idea rereading the devil's trap scene in the aquarium and thinking about it's similarities to DRs defenses. What if the reason outsiders come in imitating some form of reality is because they have to do a metaphor for what Harry's friends did on DR and disguise themselves as part of the Island/reality?
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(https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-70184/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/3940/10857/d12-dice-transparent-blue__65001.1625771442.jpg?c=2?imbypass=on)
Jim has mentioned before that he drew inspiration of pentagrams in multiple dimensions from one of these. At least, something along those lines. The D&D nerd is coming out in him.
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The figure is called a regular dodecagon. Draw a line from the center perpendicular to each face and you end up with 12 lines. Each face represents a pentagon with five sides of the same length. However Jim may have a counting problem. The figure has 12 radii and Jim says the prison has 13 aisles.
If you are interested in this kind of thing, what Merlin did can be represented by a helical spiral(a slinky). Walk down the spiral an each time you do one full revolution you are at the same place when looked at from above, but are one coil down. And if you stop after 12 revolutions and if your starting point was n(1) then you are at n(12)+1. Twelve revolutions plus 1 for n=1 to 12. Thirteen.
If you draw a pentagon on this structure the five vertexes will end up at different points vertically. So here's time travel. Travel down the spiral and each time you come to some n you have traveled back an n interval of time. If want to make things hard for the traveler make a rule that says you can only go in one direction on the spiral.
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The figure is called a regular dodecagon. Draw a line from the center perpendicular to each face and you end up with 12 lines. Each face represents a pentagon with five sides of the same length. However Jim may have a counting problem. The figure has 12 radii and Jim says the prison has 13 aisles.
If you are interested in this kind of thing, what Merlin did can be represented by a helical spiral(a slinky). Walk down the spiral an each time you do one full revolution you are at the same place when looked at from above, but are one coil down. And if you stop after 12 revolutions and if your starting point was n(1) then you are at n(12)+1. Twelve revolutions plus 1 for n=1 to 12. Thirteen.
If you draw a pentagon on this structure the five vertexes will end up at different points vertically. So here's time travel. Travel down the spiral and each time you come to some n you have traveled back an n interval of time. If want to make things hard for the traveler make a rule that says you can only go in one direction on the spiral.
Dodecahedron; dodecagons are flat with twelve sides. :)
The prison was created in five times simultaneously, not twelve times. Also, there's a bit of a discrepancy with 12 vs 13 aisles. In CD, Harry says there are eleven others besides the one that Alfred had just opened. Then in SG, Harry is parkouring in aisle 7 of 13. My guess is that he's counting the stairs to get out of the prison as number 13. It fits more nicely with the geometry that way.
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If you are interested in this kind of thing, what Merlin did can be represented by a helical spiral(a slinky).
The prison was created in five times simultaneously, not twelve times.
Ages ago I made an MS Paint drawing for this, but that was back when Photobucket was free and helpful.
The design was like a slinky, but instead of being five points directly above each other, they were spaced so that from above (or below) the slinky, the points were equidistant and formed a pentacle when connected.
Also the prison does have other ties to the number twelve. There were 1,728 steps, or twelve sections of twelve stairways of twelve steps.
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The prison was created in five times simultaneously, not twelve times.
Ages ago I made an MS Paint drawing for this, but that was back when Photobucket was free and helpful.
The design was like a slinky, but instead of being five points directly above each other, they were spaced so that from above (or below) the slinky, the points were equidistant and formed a pentacle when connected.
Also the prison does have other ties to the number twelve. There were 1,728 steps, or twelve sections of twelve stairways of twelve steps.
Might find this interesting. Found in on the web
The number 12 signifies perfection of government or rule. According to Bible scholars, 12 is the product of 3, which signifies the divine, and 4, which signifies the earthly. The heavenly bodies are also connected to the number 12 since the stars pass through the 12 signs of the zodiac in their heavenly procession. The number 12 has further significance, as it represents authority, appointment and completeness. The number 666 is used to represent the devil and hell, whereas 12, 12, 12 is believed to signify God and heaven. The number 12 is also associated with the government of the cosmos.
Perhaps the 12 sets of sections of 12 stairways and 12 steps in a clue about an Angel being involved with Demon Reach?
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A slinky is a circle when looked at along its axis or rotation and thus any figure that can be inscribed within will work. I wish this was an original idea but helical spirals fit the idea of time travel very well and I've seen it in the past somewhere. Maybe here.
Dodecahedron; dodecagons are flat with twelve sides. :)
The prison was created in five times simultaneously, not twelve times. Also, there's a bit of a discrepancy with 12 vs 13 aisles. In CD, Harry says there are eleven others besides the one that Alfred had just opened. Then in SG, Harry is parkouring in aisle 7 of 13. My guess is that he's counting the stairs to get out of the prison as number 13. It fits more nicely with the geometry that way.
I referred to the flat version. As I have stated to Mira, I don't guess when there is text and I suppose I am obsessive compulsive to that point. The text says 13.
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Might find this interesting. Found in on the web
The number 12 signifies perfection of government or rule. According to Bible scholars, 12 is the product of 3, which signifies the divine, and 4, which signifies the earthly. The heavenly bodies are also connected to the number 12 since the stars pass through the 12 signs of the zodiac in their heavenly procession. The number 12 has further significance, as it represents authority, appointment and completeness. The number 666 is used to represent the devil and hell, whereas 12, 12, 12 is believed to signify God and heaven. The number 12 is also associated with the government of the cosmos.
Perhaps the 12 sets of sections of 12 stairways and 12 steps in a clue about an Angel being involved with Demon Reach?
As opposed to Mac's Place where everything adds up to 13, and if we are all correct, Mac is an ex-angel if not an angel.
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As opposed to Mac's Place where everything adds up to 13, and if we are all correct, Mac is an ex-angel if not an angel.
I've had an odd theory or two on that 13th missing hall. Perhaps it represents a being that's elsewhere but not necessarily separate? 13 has alot of connotations towards death and entropy, and looking at possibilities I like the blackstaff, as it would tie into my DR/=MW theory, and that's the missing piece of her that's not tied down. An of course, nemesis. Not my favorite, but it's there.
*It parallels the grey council, twelve stood united and Harry's the loose cannon, even now. He's never formally met them or been to a meeting, but he's a part of it too.
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As opposed to Mac's Place where everything adds up to 13, and if we are all correct, Mac is an ex-angel if not an angel.
Maybe but according to Harry those things in Mac's place adding to 13 are a way of disrupting magic.
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Maybe but according to Harry those things in Mac's place adding to 13 are a way of disrupting magic.
I don't remember him saying that one way or the other, I was pointing out that in contrast at Mac's place everything adds up to the number 13..
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There are thirteen stools at the bar and thirteen
tables in the room. Thirteen windows, set up high
in the wall in order to be above ground level, let
some light from the street into the place. Thirteen
mirrors on the walls cast back reflections of the
patrons in dim detail, and give the illusion of more
space. Thirteen wooden columns, carved with
likenesses from folktales and legends of the Old
World, make it difficult to walk around the place
without weaving a circuitous route—they also quite
intentionally break up the flow of random energies,
dispelling to one degree or another the auras that
gather around broody, grumpy wizards and
keeping them from manifesting in unintentional
and colorful ways.
I looked around the room for a moment, with its
annoying combination of low ceilings and lazily
spinning fans, its thirteen carved wooden columns
and its thirteen windows, plus thirteen tables
arranged haphazardly to defray and scatter the
residual magical effects that sometimes
surrounded hungry (in other words, angry)
wizards.
The bar has thirteen stools at it. There were
thirteen columns of dark wood, each one hand-
carved with swirling leaves and images of beings
of tale and fantasy. Thirteen tables had been
spaced out around the room in an irregular pattern,
and like the columns and bar stools, they had been
intentionally placed that way in order to deflect
and scatter random magical energies.
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Thanks, but if that is so, would Merlin have wanted the same protections on Demonreach?
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Thanks, but if that is so, would Merlin have wanted the same protections on Demonreach?
I could see him wanting to disrupt the power of the prisoners if possible. But I don't think it'd be necessary.
I also think the thirteenth tunnel thing was a typo.
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A slinky is a circle when looked at along its axis or rotation and thus any figure that can be inscribed within will work. I wish this was an original idea but helical spirals fit the idea of time travel very well and I've seen it in the past somewhere. Maybe here.
I referred to the flat version. As I have stated to Mira, I don't guess when there is text and I suppose I am obsessive compulsive to that point. The text says 13.
Check out covering spaces in topology if you want to see more about the idea of a helix projecting onto a circle mathematically. That kind of thing inspired Ms Duck's pancake theory of reality years ago.
The text says 12 before it says 13. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Either way, I doubt it'll be relevant story-wise.
As opposed to Mac's Place where everything adds up to 13, and if we are all correct, Mac is an ex-angel if not an angel.
That's a good point. No reason that the 13 can't be significant for multiple reasons. Non-angelic + magically dispersive.
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My math days are over. It's a visualization aid, no more or less.
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My math days are over. It's a visualization aid, no more or less.
You are not alone, you will notice other than the bit about the meaning of "12" verses "13" I haven't said much on the matter.. I did read the bit in Cold Days when Bob was trying explain using cinematic visual aids, Merlin in the guise of Gandalf to Harry, Alfred's explanation as to how the prison was formed in all it's dimensions, the only "visual" I get in my head is a star on top of a Christmas tree and I know that cannot be right.. The other take away is it cannot be an accident that the shape Merlin is making over and over again at the same time in four or more dimensions is a pentacle and that is what Harry wears around his neck. Just a WAG, but there has got to be a connection there beyond what Harry as always said, a symbol of magic/faith.
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It really doesn't matter how he proposes to do the mechanics of time travel, He's said he is going to do it. But he isn't going to do it in any time frame that means anything to me. So for my personal finish I borrowed from Heinlein.
Heinlein did time travel in a book called The Door Into Summer. The title is about a cat that makes his owner go to every door in a house to be let out in the winter, looking for a door into summer. Heinlein evidently wanted to avoid the bootstrap paradox where cause and effect just get thrown out.
He has his protagonist go into the future in cold sleep only to discover that he has been screwed over and lost everything. He then goes to the past to set up the outcome he wants in the future and then goes into cold sleep again to get back to the future. Everything that that he went back to set up was there when he woke the first time, but he had to get back to make sure it happened.
This is one of the thousand or so time travel stories I've read and I imagined how the story might end using this device if Jim ever got there. There's token support for the idea in Cold Days. There is a one possible time travel device for going into the past introduced in Changes. However this shouldn't be dignified as even a WAG.
From the book A Door Into SummerPhilosophically, just one line of ink can make a different universe as surely as having the continent of Europe missing. Is the old “branching time streams” and “multiple universes” notion correct? Did I bounce into a different universe, different because I had monkeyed with the setup? Even though I found Ricky and Pete in it? Is there another universe somewhere (or somewhen) in which Pete yowled until he despaired, then wandered off to fend for himself, deserted? And in which Ricky never managed to flee with her grandmother but had to suffer the vindictive wrath of Belle?
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Or in the manner of the Time Lord Himself, DR Who, he travels through time, space, other planets, and dimensions as well in his TARDIS. There are rules he cannot break, and there are rules he severely bends..
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Or in the manner of the Time Lord Himself, DR Who, he travels through time, space, other planets, and dimensions as well in his TARDIS. There are rules he cannot break, and there are rules he severely bends..
can you elaborate on those rules and how he bends which of them? I've never had the pleasure to get into Dr Who properly.
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I think the easiest hand wave for the Dresdenverse will be for time to be a woven cord or tapestry. Butcher can relate it to the Fates, and introduce the idea of a time traveler making a loop of their thread into a point earlier in the cord/tapestry.
There's only so much time that can pass before the weave becomes too tight to be manipulated, so Harry can't just leap centuries into the past. Maybe a quick jaunt back a few years at most.
And Merlin doing his Demonreach thing would take Major Power to enable him to effectively cut a small segment of his thread, leaving a thin stand at the original time and then taking four pieces and inserting them into other times. Possibly all in the future of his own time, just floating out there until the time comes for them to be inserted.
But that's predominantly a method to explain a singular timeline, and not one with common branches.
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Idk, I've always likened what I see in time travel to a tree. Merlin I think entwined the original trunk of timelines and they branch from there, specifically, when someone steps of the tracks of their fate and makes a free will choice. There are a few allusions to it, the mother's about new future's unfolding, Uriel and co enabling choice.
That's important, they're not preserving choice, they specifically enable it. Promoting new future's. Mmm, in a way, that makes the KotC vs Denarians battle about tilling the metaphorical soil and planting new seeds new possibilities.
I like the idea of a B2tF timeline where you have to go back to before the choice in order to effect it, taking Odin saying the effects of TT are twinned universes it makes sense combined with the multiversal precepts in place.
The current timeline very likely being one already having time travel effects.. but, it also seems to be very closed loopish, with things fluctuating in the story based on his memory of the event changing. That's an indicator to me to, if it's a past tense first person narrative then he has to be away of the changes of in some way have his memory buffered from it. The Occam's razor to me, is it's because he's directly involved in it in some way.
@griff, perhaps he wouldn't have to cut? I'm not on top of my weaving methods but I think crotchet for instance maybe? I was thinking, it's more like five already slightly different versions of Merlin went back on the timeline to some point before their divergence and tied them together, like crocheting a dreamcatcher, using tension from the different angles to give it structure.
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can you elaborate on those rules and how he bends which of them? I've never had the pleasure to get into Dr Who properly.
If you can stream Britbox you can catch up on the episodes it is one of the most successful science fiction series in the history of television..
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https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/cult/a870656/doctor-who-time-travel-rules-explained-changing-history/
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Interesting.. reminds me of the new what if episode.. though, that actually reminded me of The time Machine itself. Can't change what makes you need to make the journey. In the DF you can change the details of that journey still though? Mmm, that would seem to imply whatever is the catalyst for Harry going back, unless you subscribe to the he did it cause he always did it which I don't think matches the given themes so far.
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Whatever Harry might change, it must justify the book that it happens in. He also must know that he has to do it.
Heinlein did this by having the traveler find evidence that he had done something in the past that he hadn't done yet in his present. In the story he discovers a patent in his name for a machine he had thought about but hadn't yet built.
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Whatever Harry might change, it must justify the book that it happens in. He also must know that he has to do it.
Heinlein did this by having the traveler find evidence that he had done something in the past that he hadn't done yet in his present. In the story he discovers a patent in his name for a machine he had thought about but hadn't yet built.
That is where Dr Who is different, the Doctor travels through time in his TARDIS, but most of the time it isn't personal. He travels to study and learn, though yeah, in the end he does change things, that is what got him into trouble in the first place. Though from time to time he is given a mission, like finding the Key to Time...