Saryel, God of War

Can you believe I've been trying to get a colour picture of Saryel with a full (ish) costume design for over 20 years?!

I finally got something passable, having only recently completed the costume design. I'm not sold on the colours yet either, but it will do!

Saryel, my God of War, in her vampiric glory!

Making the bootstrap paradox mine

I have a dislike of the bootstrap paradox. I find it's the one that I can visualise quite well, but as a result, I don't like what I see.I first saw a version of this in whichever Harry Potter movie it was and immediately didn't like it because it didn't make sense, because I saw a closed loop that had a discrete ending. And circles don't have endings. I left it at that, back then.I've probably encountered more through other shows and stories, but I only became conscious of the loop during the 11th Doctor, I think it was during the opening of the Pandorica when he encounters his dying self. Again, I didn't like it, but I accepted it because he is a time traveller and can handle these things appropriately.It wasn't until the 12th Doctor explicitly talks about the bootstrap paradox that I realised I need to write down my interpretation of how to manoeuvre this scenario to understand why I don't like it. Luckily, it's coincided with me thinking about which of my characters can cross their own timestreams and get away with it (well, there's always a consequence, but not as dire as shows make it out to be).So let's do this. I always saw this paradox as a loop. Definitely circular. I didn't mind that it had to have a beginning since the beginning can have a future aspect involved. I don't believe this breaks any logic. However, it's the exit that always bothered me. It's a loop, your future you changes your past you without meeting, and when you reach the same point again, the loop is closed, but at the point where the close happens should end everything; it's not a door, it's a circle. You shouldn't be able to just hop off this circle and continue on your merry way. But it's a common time travelling technique, so obviously it works.As a result, I've decided that this loop, while it looks like a circle from the side, is actually a loop-de-loop. From the front, it's not in a single plane - it's actually got an entry track and an exit track, just like a rollercoaster. The space between these points is intermediary, it's the stuff between two timelines/realities. Realities aren't discrete either, they can have varying amounts of overlap in places (not the same as interdimensional travel). These serve as paradox resolvers, I guess. As long as your selves never cross paths, you continue on a linear timestream upon the loop.To exit though, you have to change realities, because if you never entered the loop, then you wouldn't have been able to alter events to what they are now. So for you, it's the same reality because you're on the same line, but that line crosses realities so everything else is actually different. Essentially, you exit one reality in order to take another, as part of your normal progression in life/time/space etc. This presents the second issue - how far does this new reality extend?This is when we put some general relativity stuff in. You have a frame of reference, which is like your reality bubble. I could also call it the degree of temporal influence or something. Basically, if you have companions with you who are directly affected by the actions, they become part of your frame of reference (and timeline), so their futures are now dependent on the loop as well. They cross the reality threshold same as you. This matters because you have changed their future. However, other, completely unrelated people would not have crossed the threshold, they simply remain in the old reality and are duplicated by the new one. To be honest though, no one would know anything different, since to them they are also still on their linear timestream.Thus, when you invoke the paradox, you actually jump realities. It's like how Steins Gate described it with all the different possible future paths. Your one is still one track, but it changes lanes. What happens to the old lane? That one gets stuck in an infinite loop (remember what happens when you view it from the side?); it could never go anywhere since it always happened that way. The "other" paths would have all split at the point before the loop-de-loop. Does that mean there's only one possibility during the paradox? Nope. Because anything could go wrong during the event too. Then you can think of it like a slinky that breaks and exits early, late, etc.So there. I've reconciled what the paradox means. You drag a whole bunch of people along with you for a rollercoaster ride that rips them from their reality, forcing them temporarily into yours (well it's still theirs too but you have to treat the "single" loop as the sum of infinitesimally small parts that make the whole), and exit in a new reality which is still the same one you entered because for you it's linear. It doesn't break any of the rules in my head this way - as long as you have the power to manipulate both time and reality.Ugh. When I'm trying to convert science into magic instead of the other way around LOL.