THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE AND YOU
"This is overcomplicated and gatekept, I don't even know where to begin.
My expertise is in making sandwiches, not reading science papers!"
- woman #1
"Why the fuck do I need a PhD to write something fun?!"
- woman #2
As you might see by above comments, we, as much as it pains me to say, appear to have quite a lot of uneducated "people" in our midst. As is the age old tradition, it falls onto a man's shoulders to raise them up from the mud they are crawling around in and try and stuff some knowledge in their empty skulls. Welcome, I'm Professor C and in the next few paragraphs I will explain some very simple terms in even simpler words.
Today's topic is the UNIVERSE and where (you), the little shit that you are, exist in it.
THE PHYSICAL REALM
If you paid any attention in science class, this catagory will be very simple and easy, since it should all already be known to you, at least somewhat. If you didn't pay attention though or, and may Allah forgive me for uttering this word, you are American... I pity you. Really. Honestly, do yourself a favour and binge this channel. It even has cute ducks. You know what, binge it regardless, it's a really good channel. But enough about that, let's get right into it, with the smallest thingy on our scale.
The Thread
As stated in the last sentence, this is the smallest thing on our scale. I figured it would be good to start out from here and move up onto bigger structures. Just trust me on this, it's gonna be fine.
So what is a thread? Well, a thread is, in the most simple terms(which is what we are doing here) anything and everything behind your border on Vitubia(which is the planet in the original setting in case you forgot) or whichever planets you claimed in the space setting. It's the mud and dirt, the people, the cities, the wastelands, forests, rivers, everything.
The Catalog
Now you might think I will say Vitubia here(as in the planet of the OG setting) but YOU'D BE WRONG, KID! So put your hand down, you ain't getting any extra points here.
So if it's not that, what is the Catalog you might ask? Well... it's the universe. That's it. That's all, it's just the universe. It's big, it's empty and it's cold. And somewhere in it, (you) unfortunately exist. It contains ALL of the alternate settings, of which we have a total of two. The Era After and 40k Space settings.
The Internet
So where do we go from here, you will now ask me. We already have our universe, what's left? Well, you braindead troglodyte, of course this is where we introduce our MULTIVERSE!!
Ok, so this is basically a collection of universes, like our very own Catalog (The full name of which is the /vt/ Catalog) and anything else that you might think of. Any way a chuuba can interact with (you) is contained in this multiverse. Think of it like a bag of marbles that has all the different Youtube chats, Twitch chats, 4chan boards, Discords, TikToks, OnlyFans, pigeon mail, etc. in it. If a Chuuba can use it to interact with their fans, it can exist in here. We don't really care about anything beside our catalog, the /vt/ one, for the most part, but just knowing that other universes exist does give writers options.
THE SPIRITUAL REALM
Hooo boy, here is where the real shit starts. The physical part was simple and easy, here you might actually have to use your head a litte. But worry not, I will be attaching the most SOVLful of images to it to help you along. I will also mention here that when talking about the Spiritual Realm, many terms can be used, chief of which is CONCEPTS. Just remember that whenever someone is talking about conceptual this, conceptual that, they are talking about things happening in the Spiritual Realm.
So what are we gonna be talking about here? Well, the Spiritual Realm is essentially where your soul resides, as you might imagine from the name alone. It is separated from the Physical Realm in that your body can't go there, and you can't really see it. You can feel it though. Yeaaa.... This is where we do the whole magicky part.
The Soul and Concepts
Ok, so we are once again starting with the smallest piece in this puzzle. The soul(and concepts). What are they? Well, just think of them as little blotches of color, that float around and mix and create all the wonderful things. Once you are born, you get your own spot in the Spiritual Realm and that is where your soul just kinda floats around. Now this soul, right, is made up of a variety of different concepts, or smaller blobs of color if you will. Are you really greedy? Then the concept of greed will make up your soul. Are you war-like? Then the concept of conflict will make it up. And so on and so forth. There is hardly any limit to how many concepts you can have in your soul, it's all a giant mess in there. Just like you :)
The Thread
Now what do you get when a lot of souls with similar concepts are around each other? Well, they attract each other and kinda clump together, like magnets! That's basically it, they just make up little concentrated spots in the catalog where similar concepts float about. An example of this would be how the /rrat/ blob would have a lot of "mating press" concept flying in it.
An interesting thing that happens because of this clumping together is something we call "Thread spirit". Think of it like glue that helps hold everything together even more, in case an outside force would want to break the ball of souls apart. While souls are small tiny magnets, the Thread spirit is one huge ass magnet you don't wanna mess with.
The Catalog
The layer of Heavenly Realm where the Threads float about. Think of it as a Natto where the beans are the Threads and the goo is the Catalog. Simple, right?
Catalog is a pretty violent place, as you might imagine, and it constantly presses on Threads and wants to crush them, often succeeding with many of the smaller threads that pop up (bait/schizo/random threads). With bigger threads this struggle is manifested in the form of small cracks that try to penetrate the Thread. And the aforementioned Thread spirit mends those cracks and keeps the Thread from falling apart. See, that wasn't just a random thing we made up, it actually has a purpose!
The Heavenly Realm
This is everything outside the Threads. Catalog is a small part of it, and is sorta like a coat around the Threads themselves. Outside of this cloak is a endless field of pure magic energy, where the highest Vitubium Entities like Chuubas and Staff/corporations, exist.
(YOU) IN THE SPIRITUAL REALM
Alrighty, two thirds done, just a bit more and you can go back to being a lazy little shit!
Here we're gonna talk about where a person's soul would exist in the Heavenly Realm depending on what kind of entity they are. We only really have 3 that are somewhat important to writers, normal person, a Catalognaut and a Janitor(Janny for short), but I will also throw in the Chuubas, /here/ and not, so we have everything cataloged.
Normal Person
You're just a normal dude. Just a little guy. Your soul blinked into existence and resides in the safe embrace of the Thread. Ain't nothing much else to say, really. Since you don't have a direct connection to the Heavenly Realm you need special substances to use magic, so called Chuubanite.
Catalognaut
You're not just a normal dude. Not just a little guy. No, you were born special, in that the Catalog has a direct connection to your soul. Congrats! You can now channel the magic energies of the Heavenly Realm without the need for Chuubanite, as you yourself ARE Chuubanite!
So how did that come to be? Well, remember how we mentioned that Catalog constantly attacks Threads and how that results in cracks? Yea? Great, for once in your life you're listening!
Alright, so usually those cracks are fixed right up by the Thread spirit. On extremely rare occasions though, they will bump into a brand new soul as they are digging through the thread, and a very special thing will occur. In a moment, the crack will bind to the new soul, creating a stable connection. Since the crack and the soul are now one and the same, the Thread spirit recognizes the entirety of the crack as part of (you) and will no longer try to fix it up. That is how that soul is then able to access Catalog energy whenever it wants.
Janitor
Congrats, you became a Janitor! You are a pure Catalog entity now, existing in the endless sea of bait, schizo whispers and nameless beings trying to chew on your dwindling soul. But how did you get here? Well, by either being a Catalognaut that ascended or by being an entity from the outer Heavenly Realm that for some godforsaken reason decided it wants to come down here. You made a mistake either way.
The Descent is pretty easy to understand, as it only entails an entity from the outer Heavenly Realm entering the Catalog from the outside. Very simple, very easy.
The Ascension on the other hand is a little more interesting. On extremely rare occasions, most commonly through the excessive use of their powers, the channel connecting the soul to the Catalog will begin to widen. This puts heavy strain on the Thread spirit around it. You can think of this as an infested wound, and the Thread spirit does exactly the same. Once the pressure becomes too much, at which point the soul is almost completely exposed to the Catalog, the Thread Spirit will push it out and heal the Thread behind it. Cutting off the infected area and all that. After this the soul will either dissolve in the Catalog, or rarely form into a completely new entity. A Janitor.
Janitors, while mostly existing in the Catalog, can force their way into Threads, and more notably, can force their Spiritual Realm form into the Physical Realm, essentially making their soul solid. So they can either be a ghost you can't touch or an actual person you can fight, depending on what they want in the moment.
Chuuba
Wooo! You're a chuuba now! First of all, stop reading this and go make some fucking content, you WHORE. You done that? Good. Now we can talk about what you are.
You're god.
/here/ Chuuba
You're god with a little more input on what happens.
