Alicornutopia

Some of the pealed Bells seem to be doing less than they could, and I’m not always sure why. In some cases, like Juliet, Cam, and Sarion, it’s obvious (too politically difficult, too dangerous, and having been broken, respectively). But why is Rose apparently only working fairly locally? And even with a cotton-candy world, including good hereditary monarchies, Glass seems like she could be doing more to help; so far she is focussing almost all of her effort on a single country which is almost impossible to get into if you’re trying, unlike the other ruling Bells who take immigrants relatively freely. Why isn’t she trying to help more people too?

On a different notes, do any of the empire-founding Bells have flags? I like the semi-official Flag of Mars, although some of the symbolism assumes a different method of terraforming and Stella’s empire will ideally extend beyond a single planet at some point.

...I have definitely referred to Rose turning up on other continents and doing things. And her apprentice lives in Vague Egypt. She just has a residence in which she primarily raises her offspring. Glass is moving conservatively because Chronicle contains a lot of really finicky magic all layered on top of other things and she has to do more checking before making any given change than a standard Bell.

I haven't been going into flags.

Perhaps such references were insufficiently obvious. I know I have missed some fairly critical references in places and been confused later. For example, the thing with Minus and sunnyvampired-Juliet.

One of the Vague Places Rose visited was going to help the Haudenosaunee, which is Vague Iroquois. I remember having Pen have trouble pronouncing it.

Isn't that the actual name that they had for themselves though?

All the Vague Things are named by going to the Wikipedia page and finding an alternate or etymological name, so... yes?

I knew her apprentice generally lived elsewhere, but I missed her turning up on other continents. That still seems relatively small compared to Eos, but I guess it makes sense because Stella was still using a lot of existing infrastructure to get Mars to the masses.

Ah, there’s the mention of Haudenosaunee. You only mention it once, and I was a bit distracted at the time with the rest of the meeting. If you’ve mentioned other excursions, I’ve missed those too.

I've been rereading Aether's terrible science-free world, and as a mathematician I find myself wondering if my career exists. I know you can't apply logic to the world, but can you do abstract logic? Does modus ponens hold reliably? Does the pigeonhole principle? Does a mathematical proof that doesn't refer to any real-world principles work okay? Can you do non-Euclidean geometry but get all messed up if you try to do Euclidean with a compass and straight-edge?

I think math qua math behaves in Materia. You only sometimes get five when adding two and two if you are interacting with physical objects and it would inconvenience you to have five and the universe is mad. (Trying to do geometry on physical objects is not advised. Some of them don't geometry and the ones that do might stop.)

By “trying to do geometry on physical objects”, do you mean applying the principles to physical objects, or drawing abstract geometry diagrams on pieces of paper? It seems like only the former might annoy the universe, but I’m not sure you’d agree.

Also, it seems worth mentioning because I’ve seen several comments which don’t seem to realize this: Materia is not an Effulgence-original setting. It comes from Tales of Mu, which I recommend you check out iff you dislike your free time and want it to disappear for a while.

I am pretty sure math qua math does work in canon, but I can’t recall anybody actually trying it. Also even though I can imagine a world which doesn’t run on Science, and we actually live in one where Euclidean geometry doesn’t actually quite hold, I find the idea of a world where math itself fails literally inconceivable. As far as I can tell, “If you assume the Peano axioms and these definitions for numbers and ‘plus’, then two plus two equals four” is just plain true. Materia might intervene by saying “No, the Peano axioms do not describe what you’re doing” or “Plus actually means divided by this time” or “STOP ADDING NUMBERS HERE BE ON FIRE”, but I don’t see how it could stop the theoretical addition from working that way.

Not that I would say the last paragraph where Materia were listening. It would take it as a challenge, and even if it failed it would become annoyed with me.