#existential tw

There are these areas of the universe rightly known as voids

These are defined as spaces between large scale structures in the universe that contain little to no galaxies. Now, though these voids typically have some matter in them, to an outside observer, they look completely or nearly empty.

Voids are typically 30 to 300 million lightyears in diameter, however the ones that aren't are the most interesting and are sometimes called supervoids.

Here's a map of some galactic voids. Every dot on that map isn't a star by the way, it's a fucking galaxy. That's how unfathomably massive these supervoids are

Empty voids so large, our entire planet, our entire solar system, is like a speck of dust in comparison

One of the biggest of these, the Boötes Void, is about 330 million lightyears across, or what is approximately 0.27% of the observable universe. It's colloquially known as the Great Nothing and contains only about 60 galaxies in a space that normally would have over 2,000

According to astronomer Greg Aldering "If the milky way had been in the center of the Boötes void, we wouldn't have known about other galaxies until the 1960s"

Here's an artist's rendition of what it looks like

It's just... nothingness.

Empty space

To put it in a bit more perspective, a lightyear is 9.46 trillion kilometers or 5.88 trillion miles. This void is 330 million lightyears in diameter. I can't even imagine just how large this empty spot in space is, and that's fucking awesome

My brain gets caught up a lot in the statistics of it all. I guess it's somewhat of an existential crisis, but it comes around so often that it makes me consistently feel very unstable in things that, by this point, I've known about and should've been sure of for years, simply because "The math doesn't work--why am I the outlier and not the average?"

I wonder! I mean I'm not sure whether it falls under ipseity disturbance, but I definitely have been down this exact rabbit hole, and I can see how it can be a part of the tendency to get stuck in kind of endless or "meaningless" philosophical inquiry which is often attributed to the prodromal stage, but which I think can be a part of the general symptom picture as well. And it might also be related to ipseity disturbance because it kinda goes into the question of the boundary between your self and other selves - (why are you experiencing the world from the exact vantage point that you are and what does that mean?)

[Of all the disturbing things they’d seen in this crater, the sight of their own face reflected a million times over was perhaps the most disturbing.

This room was a strange one, massive and lined wall to wall with the crystals that grew everywhere in this wretched pit. It was brightly lit, but Trace couldn’t see from where, or what. It seemed like the only object in this room was a … machine? Some small structure in the room’s centre, stark and ominous against its iridescent surroundings.

Trace approached cautiously, curiosity overriding fear. The machine seemed inert, or biding its time.

Shaking hands overlaid the cold surface of the machine, then Trace pulled themselves over, peering into its centre. They squinted, examining the machination. Was that a spark?

Suddenly a rumbling, rushing sound filled Trace’s ears. They barely registered the machine coming to life, rising around them, before that tiny spark of life flashed into something brighter-

Filling their vision-

Filling their mind-

And then they saw-

everythingandeverythingthesuncollapsedtheearthcrumbledtoashthestarsbledanddiedtheuniversedecayedtobonebeforetheireyestheysawthelightfadefrombehindtheeyesoftheirbrothertheirparentstheirschoolmatestheysaweverythingendagainandagainineverywayforeverandeverandever-

took a couple days to answer this because I've been busy and wanted to give the question a good amount of thought, but I think that a lot of it depends LARGELY on how closely a meta-aware character would still have to stick to their script. would you be able to just freely move within the world as you chose? or would you be stuck having to spout the exact same lines and same actions, fully knowing that you're a character in a work of fiction, but unable to alter your situation at all? or somewhere on that sliding scale?

put more simply, knowing you're a fictional character would suck ass regardless, but if you had a high degree of agency within your medium, at least you'd be able to figure out something to make your existence more pleasant. conversely, I think any medium, no matter how light the genre you were placed in within the medium, could be hellish if you were completely denied autonomy outside of your preset "script."

all that said, assuming the same degree of autonomy across every single potential option, i would DEFINITELY pick cartoons as the most bearable place to be a self-aware character. it's already somewhat established in cartoons that characters can screw around with the fourth wall - bugs bunny does this frequently, for instance. there's a lot of fun and silly shit you could do in that medium, and since cartoons are frequently light in tone, you wouldn't be in too much danger of being stuck in a horror story. would probably still suck, obv, but you could at least have a little fun with it!

REBLOGS >>>>>

and in that I found someone I forgot

The Mii I created specifically to be the one I always used to send messages to friends

who also was full of existential despair at all times

This is Messenger, and these are some of their answered questions (some under the cut bc there’s a lot)