On Ontological Anchors

The last (very small) update to the Truth Tectonics PDF added the reminder "Ontologically anchored entities cannot be revised" to the reality quake mechanics. What's that mean, in play? The vagueness of definition on these things is partly intentional, partly a matter of fitting words into the two-page spread. For those who want to dig a little deeper (🥁💥), here are some unStrict thoughts on the topic.

Define anchors clearly when they manifest. If a person gets anchored, is it their literal body that's fixed, with its particular history? Or is some object closely associated with them empowered to keep them safe from shifts? The latter can be stolen or handed off to someone else to protect them instead--the former, not so much!

An anchored entity cannot be the subject of a revision. By which I mean, when you're spelling out what happens in one of the six suggested quake effects, or one you've come up with yourself, an anchored entity can't be the topic or target. An anchored person can't be Subducted out of existence, nor Laterally Reincarnated, nor can some action they personally undertook undergo Temporal Shifting. If a nation is anchored by a mighty locus, Platonic Volcanism won't suddenly declare the nation to have been invaded and conquered by a foreign power.

The less connected to the anchor, the less protected. An anchored person's spouse can be Laterally Reincarnated, but if the partnership is important to the anchor's identity, the changes are likely to be superficial. A friend long out of contact, though, is barely protected if at all. Stay intimate, stay safe!

Shifts don't make value judgments, only comparisons of similarity and magnitude. It's not that tectonic time acknowledges it would be bad for you if you were Laterally Reincarnated into a new life of squalor and misery. But if you're pretty privileged and prosperous, that new timeline is substantially different and would likely require a global-level revision to produce. This is relevant to anchoring when you've got locus control and are trying to twist history in your favor: if you're anchored, you can't change yourself even if you want to!  You can lay your enemies low, maybe set events in motion that you can later in meta-time capitalize on, but the things you hold close and work with on a daily basis will stubbornly refuse to change.