...is indistinguishable from magic!"- Sir Arthur C. Colt***Psychedelestia is Best Celestia***Told y'all I was writing a fic: [link] This is an illustration for it I kinda got carried away with (Don't worry, this is the only "serious" one):Narrator meets Celestia, who's laying down some exposition. Guy asks her what the deal with magic is. She's like, "Yo dog it's magic."He's like, "That don't explain shit. Fucking miracles, how do they work? Just what happens between you thinking something and them little atoms getting pushed around? What's different about you that you're magic and a banana slug isn't?"She's like, "You wouldn't understand even if I told you, my little homie."He's like, "Try me."And then she's all likeBWAAANG with this song [link] And lays it out like you see above, with some crazy concepts cobbled together to make it sound quasi-plausible.Then he's like, "It's magic, got it."The workings of the real universe are way more insane than anything we could make up, so I thought I'd borrow a little of that to give magic some freaky-ass "2001," "stoned Carl Sagan" vibes.Other stuff: The equation in her eyes is the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis, which is a part of Set Theory that has to do with the rules governing different "sizes" of infinities nested inside one another (The symbol that looks like an "N" is "aleph" and with the subscript denotes a specific "level" of infinity), and all the equations and such making up the texture are collaged from an exciting, maniacal new 500-page number theory paper by a guy named Shinichi Mochizuki, with the delightfully madness-inviting name of "Inter-Universal Teichmüller Theory." It's being combed for errors as we speak and I hope it holds up because it sounds pretty revolutionary.The composition/general idea is a definite nod to Max Tegmark and his awesome "Mathematical Universe Hypothesis," which is exactly what it sounds like. Plato is smiling up there in Ideal Space.The Feynman and Penrose diagrams and light cone things are just from GIS.The galaxy is a Hubble photo of NGC 1232, one of the largest known spirals.The fractals are 's and free to use - Go check them out!