The Void and Anti-Void, Science and Eldritch Reasoning
About a week ago, I was chatting with @sarcosticsarcomere about the Void and Anti-Void, and the potential science behind them as well as the mysticism of them, ie, something ostentatiously eldritch and Lovecraftian in nature. This is a ramble about it, and please feel free to add on! I'm gnawing at my enclosure trying to figure this out ;v; ESPECIALLY the Anti-Void good lord
Firstly, in terms of structure, the Voids and Anti-Voids overlap each other in a series of parallel dimensions where there are holes (think worm holes and other similar distortions in time) where Gasters or other beings trapped within could escape or travel between dimensions
If being trapped within the Anti-Void creates creatures like glitches and errors such as Geno and Blueberror and Error respectively, why can't the regular Void warp whatever material falls into it until they can't count as what they once were?
Both the Void and the Anti-Void exist as dimensions outside of reality, contradicting and breaking the rules each reality has previously enforced for itself and all that live in it.
But while the Void is an enclosed space open to anyone with the means to enter, the Anti-Void is an open space with limited access granted to very very few (This is why only Error could enter the place for a long while).
As far as I know, there is only one Anti-Void but there are multiple Voids, meaning there are more void walkers than errors out there. This is because the Anti-Void is connected to everything and nothing all at once, but each Void has its own timeline.
It's often considered that the Void is the absence of time and the Anti-Void is the absence of space, but there is nothing confirming that other than how its inhabitants felt from way too long in isolation.
Color and Geno watched time pass without them in their timelines, but Error and Blueberror had nothing of interest to explore in the Anti-Void, because there is nothing interesting in it. Both are complete absences of reality.
At least the Void hides things. The Anti-Void doesn't.
Because the Anti-Void is connected to nothing and everything at once, and each Void has its own timeline, Voids take up the majority of space (which the Anti-Void lacks) and the Anti-Void takes up the majority of Time.
Time being nebulous at best and circular at worst.
It's why Cross spent a decade in the Void and he and XChara suffered: trapped in the white Void of Xtale (not the Antivoid) because the AU paper still existed, and Cross was trapped inside of it.
[Note: IDK if Jakei ever confirmed exactly how long Cross was there but Im going to assume a decade bc of asthetics, what with Cross being the X-Event, Timeline X, X-Tale, all using the roman numeral X which is "ten." ]
Current HC but not entirely sure how plausible it is: Due to the destruction of Xtale and all the Code (space) of XTale removed, Cross accidentally created another Anti-Void. And since he wasn't alone the whole time (because of XChara, Ink, and because humans can't become errors), that's why he didn't become an error himself.
He would've become an error if it weren't for Ink's company. XChara sharing a body with him and making XTale become another part of the Anti-Void had it be familiar to Cross's Code, but it is still now a part of the Void/Anti-Void. If Ink hadn't befriended and frequently spent time with Cross, it would have only delayed the inevitable and turned him into a glitch
Reason why: In the Underverse pilot, Cross glitches when Classic teleports through the voids, right? I think that since Cross got upset with Ink when he realized Ink couldn't bring back his AU, this is further proof that Cross would've become an error without Ink's company. And since Ink had left, Cross was starting to become a glitch (when he glitches now and then. Yes it's a way to denote the switch of XChara and Cross, but still, it's glitching) until he'd stolen part of Classic's Soul
XChara's soul may also be a reason why Cross had a longer defense against turning, because humans cannot become errors. However, because XChara's Soul was trapped in Cross's body, Cross was still turning, albeit at a slower rate than most. Unless XChara took total control of their body then he would be immune, but Cross would resist that and XChara doesn't have the complete strength to maintain that hold. Then Error took their soul and the glitching started immediately afterwards.
Cross's Anti-Void and Error's Anti-Void must've merged at some point, which is how Error found him and XChara. Maybe their pocket dimensions were separate at first, because Error can keep most other people from entering his territory, but Cross didn't even know what his Anti-Void was supposed to be in absence of XTale, and that's why Ink, Core!Frisk, Nightmare, and Dream could enter it freely: the pocket dimension gradually expanded into the overarching Anti-Void
Similar to how the universe is constantly expanding, with galaxies away from Earth faster the farther away they are, Voids are constantly expanding (how the multiverse continues to grow with each additional AU; same case with different multiverses and whatnot)
How that relates to the Anti-Void is that, to account for the exponential growth of Voids, the Anti-Void slowly expands. This expansion could be the absorption of abandoned or destroyed AUs, and it happens at all because all matter cannot be created or destroyed.
All that excess needs to go somewhere; it's the Void and Anti-Voids way of maintaining themselves. Anyway, the expansion includes the Anti-Void of Ink's abandoned -----tale AU to Error's, then whatever other AUs were abandoned and forgotten (like maybe GZTale? Flowerfell? Just off the top of my head, correlating the fandom and Creators with the multiverses) and now more recently, XTale's Au/Anti-Void.
The Void is supposed to contain each reality from blending into each other, not the other way around.
The Void is not just empty space. It's vast, boundless, and unknowable nothingness and all that is; an improbable paradox teeming with probability. It's the absence of life and time, the very concepts on which the fabric of reality itself hinges upon.
It Is and Is Not, constantly expanding, destroying and recreating, feeding and ending itself in a never ending cycle.
Encountering the Void strips away the comforting illusion that you have any importance, that your identity itself is lost in the unknowable seas of the cosmos. Lost in a vast, uncaring emptiness that stretches forever and continues to grow, you will drown for all eternity should you slip below its waves.
Anyone trapped in the Void or touched by it, would be subject to this sea of madness and drown.
Take Epic and his Eye, for example.
The laws of physics and logic Gester desperately attempts to assign to the creation he'd made as an avatar to this Unknowable power will never be fully within his grasp because it was never meant to be Known. Trying to control the Void is like trying to eat a dream, or provide reason to pure Chaos.
The Void is Limbo animated: it is death and the end of existence. Not only the absence of life, but the very erasure of meaning. In the Void, one Truth is made Known: for all the hubris of man, never could they be what the Other is; and so, Everything will fade into oblivion.
To control or enforce rules of reality upon the Void is madness. Nothing is as it is and everything is nothing as it was. Trust nothing. Not what you see, not what you hear, not even what you think.
Any mind no matter how brilliant would fracture under the strain of contemplating the unthinkable. How Epic endured is a sheer testament to his will.
The Void is emptiness. And yet, the emptiness itself is not devoid of conscious. Somethings are there. Watching. Listening. Speaking.
What have you seen? What have you heard? What do you feel crawling up your spine and consuming, becoming, you and all that you are and will be?
Stare long enough into the abyss, and it will stare back
Epic's Eye and the Void
*Because part of this whole equation is related to the Void, many unplanned results could happen because of that association and there is no monster magic or human science that can determine how something that exists just outside their range of logic can operate inside of it.
*In this manner of speaking, Gester is playing recklessly with fire, and that fire will strip itself out of all who wish to contain, control, and manage it.
**Gester may be intelligent and creative, but he lacks judgment and intuition, and as a result, his creation will become something beyond him.
***The chaos theory, antimatter, and dark energy all associated with the Void have a pattern of destruction inside reality, but outside of it they all find a semblance of peace and order, but Epic will suffer from that order. To sleep is to fight for his life in the Void, to encounter void walkers and phantoms whose own state of persons have been long since obliterated from their shells. They know something is missing and they wish to take it back, but the Eye is a protective measure as much as it is a malicious one.
*Chaos is âa state of utter confusion and disorder; a total lack of organization or order.â Chaos theory is defined as âa field of mathematics that includes other fields such as physics, economics, biology, and philosophy."
**Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions in what is now named "the butterfly effect", where everything exists in a cloud pf probability. Small differences in initial conditions yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.
***This substantial change in the final result is not expected. It is also totally unpredictable. Thus, we say that there is chaos manifested in this example.
****Gester created the Eye in hopes of containing the Chaos of the Void in a controlled system: the Eye being the gateway, Epic the vessel, and the Void the source of power
Because if he succeeded, if you could control Chaos itself, then all of Reality and the Beyond would be in your grasp. But ofc Chaos cannot be controlled. Epic is changed from a simple monster to an avatar of Chaos. But he is not native born, and so the the Void via the Eye both punishes what it deems to be a hubristic intruder playing God, while also granting Epic the chance to become Other.
Cleaner agent in sleep, returning with chills of fresh death upon waking. He may not be native to the Void, but the Void now has a claim on his power, its own hybrid. Whose mana is permanently changed, his very essence the ineffable cold, leylines filled with the icy waves of a cosmos of madness.
The Eye, like the Void, operates outside of reality, so of course that would explain why Epic still gets LV despite only killing creations of the Eye itself and only in his dreams.
But why would the Eye despise Epic and not Gester himself? Thatâs the whole reason it attempts to destroy Epic in the first place as explained in Epictale's prequel comic No Pain No Gain. Because it's stuck with him. It does hate Gester too, but Gester isn't its prison.
And during the Epictale comic, Gester is awake and fighting the entire time after acquiring the Eye from Epic and later Packs's . (So we canât confirm that Gester would suffer the same fate as Epic or not.)
Then with Packs, why would he not suffer from the Eye? Because Packs was never made to use his Eye, never made to open the gateway. (His Eye doesnât even have blasters, as I recall from an official ask) So his Eye was never âawakenedâ.
Each Eye is connected to the Void, and the Void hates Rules. It's not against doors being placed, but cannot stand them being open at Reality's leisure.
