Hi everyone. For some context ahead of my question, I'm a white male with fairly thick dark hair that gets messy when longer than about a #6 on clippers. For years I've been getting a mid skin fade every 2 weeks with a #4 or #5 on top depending on my mood.
This week I decided to do something I've been thinking about a while: try out a burst fade. It's a fairly low burst fade, and obviously it's in its early stages since my top is only about a #6. I have a feeling I'm going to love it. It already looks cool.
My concern though is that I have an office job where I work remotely, but I have to meet in person for a week each quarter.
In general, do I need to worry about this haircut being unprofessional? I don't think it will look like a traditional mohawk, but I've also never done this.
Thanks!

He asked for a number two but got a fade instead.. the bloke didn’t say anything until the end of the haircut then left after a little back and forth whilst refusing to pay!
Barbers are now arguing because apparently it’s not the first time he’s done this
Just sat here in amazement watching it all unfold - anyone else had any fun barber stories? Happy Friday

Hi guys, I am currently undergoing a hair transition, and my hair is a mix of growing pixie and mullet. I need to renew my haircut, but it's very difficult to find references to curvy hair in the goth scene, or any haircut that's a little more alternative. My hair is a little above my shoulders and I need to renew! Please send me references 🖤 thank u!

When you guys do a mullet do you have your fade behind the ears almost like a burst fade or do you do more of a taper (at the temples)

I currently live in Manchester UK and we have proper barbers. I'm heading back to the States for a couple months and need a decent place for a haircut. I haven't been downriver in ages... Maybe 10 years so I don't know if much has changed.
I'm talking a decent fade. I comb to the side with the left side faded high and tight and the right side faded to match up with the way I comb it.

My Pom (Urso) is almost 5 years old. For those 5 years I have always just got him trimmed. I have always wanted to do a fun haircut (my fiancé just sent me a pom with a mullet) and it would look so cute lol
But I have heard that some Poms, when you cut their hair short, it doesn’t come back the same? I have been told that it may grow back to look like the fur trim of a coat when you put it in the drier (if you can visualize that.)
I like his long luxurious locks, so I was wondering if anyone has done this and it came back normal or the opposite. Not sure how common it is. Thanks!!

Okay so I’m pretty new to acting. I’ve been taking classes for about six months. I’ve recently taken headshots and started applying for roles on actors access. No callbacks yet but it’s only been like two weeks so I’m not discouraged. However I recently have been seriously thinking about giving myself a makeover. I’m a light brown skinned African American male with pretty long dark hair. I’ve been thinking about cutting my hair short and dying it a brownish red color. I know it will look good because I’ve had that color before and it doesn’t look terribly unnatural because it’s a natural hair color anyways but I’m scared that it would maybe not be natural enough and therefore prevent me from being cast in different roles. I recently did background work on a period piece and they almost sent me home because of my haircut (it’s faded on the sides) so I know if I had a different hair color I may not have even been selected at all. So I guess I was just wanting some advice from other actors. Oh btw, I am aware that I would have to retake my headshots and I’m prepared to do that.

Picture this — you press the buy button and get yourself loaded up on some juicy-looking asset and half an hour later it starts to fall way below your purchase price.
Seem familiar? Congratulations, you’ve just joined the “I must be the worst trader in history” club!
But don’t fear. It happens to the best of us, and, yes, if you think you’ve taken a few bad haircuts that make a feathered mullet look positively groovy, it’s nothing compared to the losses that some massive trades realised — sometimes through bad luck — and occasionally because of fraud.
So, to make you feel better about your trading, we’re taking a look at some of the biggest financial smackdowns in history, and why they were so bad. Buckle up, it’s about to make you go “ouch”, but at least you’ll probably feel a bit better about your own underwater positions.

Black Scholes creators get rekt

John Meriwether’s hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), had some huge names on their board, including Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton, two of the three winners of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Economics for their part in developing the Black-Scholes model.
LTCM employed a number of interesting strategies, including convergence trading, where traders find a pair of bonds which generally have a predictable spread between their prices.
Sometimes this spread between the asset prices would widen, and so the strategy was to place a bet that the two prices would eventually converge back to their normal spread and in doing so the fund would pocket a tasty profit.
LTCM used this method to invest in a combination of high-yielding government bonds and low-yielding, short-term securities. This strategy worked fine for a while and made some great profits, but after a while, competing hedge funds started to get in on the action, and this had the effect of squeezing profitable opportunities for the company.
So, the hedge fund did what hedge funds do — they diversified, and their new investment strategy included getting leveraged up 100:1 on Russian bonds. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, obviously nothing — until the Russian government defaulted on its debt. This disrupted the entire market and caused the prices of the assets to diverge rather than converge and directly led to the fund realising massive losses — to the tune of $4.8 billion. Oopsie.
Meriwether might well have found himself in deep trouble, but luckily, being a Wall Street titan, the normal rules don’t often seem to apply. A group of Wall Street banks were strong-armed by the New York Fed to bail out the fund and save the economy. What an incredible turn of events.

Buffett’s Blunder: How the world’s most famous investor lost billions

Warren Buffett is probably one of the most famous investors in history and a household name across the globe, building one of the largest fortunes ever through his legendary company Berkshire Hathaway.
But despite his almost deified persona in financial circles, Buffett isn’t immune to making some terrible trading losses.
One of his biggest screw-ups came when he invested heavily in ConocoPhillips (COP) between 2006 and 2008. Buffet bought around 84 million shares in COP with an average cost per share of about $80, and things were going well until the 2008 financial crisis led to a significant drop in oil prices.
As a result, ConocoPhillips’ stock price tanked, dropping to around 60% from its peak, and by 2009, Berkshire Hathaway was left with losses of around $3.7 billion.
But this wasn’t all. In 1990, Buffett was embroiled in a serious controversy involving his firm’s 12% stake in investment bank Salomon Brothers. This firm was regarded as one of the “fearless foursome” alongside Lehman Brothers, Blythe and Merril Lynch, and its aggressive CEO John Gutfreund was said to have told his employees that “a trader needs to wake up every morning ready to bite the ass of a bear”. This should provide some insight into the culture at Saloman Brothers, which was described in the book Liar’s Poker as having a “frat boy culture”.
Things were going well for Saloman until one of the company’s bond traders, Paul Mozer was discovered to have submitted fraudulent bids in U.S. Treasury auctions in the names of customers who hadn’t authorised them.
Before he was found out, this had the effect of increasing Saloman Brothers’ market share in Treasury auctions, but afterwards, the Treasury Department stripped the firm of its primary dealer status. But never fear, Buffett came to the rescue and intervened directly with the US Treasury Department to reverse the ban on Saloman Brothers ability to bid in government bond auctions. Nice when you have connections on high.
Interestingly, Mozer’s supervisor at the time was none other than… John Meriwether.

JP Morgan Chase’s massive trading loss a “tempest in a teapot”

In 2012, investment bank JPMorgan Chase made a $5.8 billion trading loss after complex derivatives trades involving Credit Default Swaps (CDS) executed by the bank’s London-based investment office went pear-shaped.
These were entered apparently as part of the bank’s “hedging strategy” with a trader called Bruno Iksil, who had the honorific nickname “the London Whale” accumulating huge CDS positions.
In 2012, Boaz Weinstein, a hedge fund manager, became aware that the CDS market was being affected by these anomalous and aggressive trading activities, which were moving the markets.
Weinstein recommended buying a credit derivative contract called Markit CDX North America Investment Grade Series 9 10-Year Index. Weinstein had noticed this was a cheap way to buy credit protection relative to other more liquid indices, and this was because JPM was shorting the index making these huge CDS trades, essentially betting that the credit markets would eventually strengthen.
JPMorgan’s position caused investors who followed Weinstein’s tip to initially perform poorly, however, just a few months later JPMorgan suffered huge losses in May due to concerns about the European financial crisis — and boom! Just like that, the house of cards fell down.
Of course, JPM’s chief executive and head Bitcoin basher Jamie Dimon tried to downplay the whole debacle, calling it “a tempest in a teapot” despite sitting on $2B losses that month alone.
JPMorgan Chase ultimately lost around $6.2 Billion in losses, including almost a billion dollars in fines, and the incident led to the resignation of several top executives at the firm. Now that’s a bad trade.
Surprisingly, Dimon is still the CEO, and JPM has been fined many dozens of times for various financial violations since this all happened. It just goes to show that having a great relationship with regulators and donating millions to lawmakers pays off well.

Britain’s Rogue Trader

The British are known for their incredible financial acumen and risk-averse view on life, but in the early 1990’s one British trader by the name of Nick Leeson managed to single-handedly bring down one of the oldest and most prestigious financial institutions in the UK, Barings Bank.
Leeson was working for the bank’s Singapore office and was a futures trader on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. He began making unauthorized highly speculative trades using the bank’s own money and initially made large profits which he hid from the bank by using a secret account known as the “88888” account.
However, as is generally the case, some of his trades started to go south and he tried covering up his losses by making bigger and even riskier bets, using his knowledge of Barings’ back-office systems to create false accounts in an attempt to hide his losses.
But it was too late, and soon, Leeson was trapped in a spiral, and rather than come clean, he doubled down and tried (unsuccessfully) to trade his way out of it like a gambler on tick.
Eventually, he was left with losses of over £800 million, an amount that was more than double the bank’s available capital and Barings Bank was forced into bankruptcy, ending an almost 250-year legacy literally overnight.

The lesson for all traders everywhere.

If you’re going to play at the big boy's table, it’s absolutely vital that you have a great hedging strategy — and ideally no rogue traders on your books.
It also helps to have friends in high places, mainly by making regular donations to whichever political party you think might wield some power and influence if you’re ever under investigation. This strategy has worked for some of those mentioned in this article, and most of the biggest contributors in the US during the 2022 political cycle happened to be huge funds such as Soros Fund Management, FTX (yes, that FTX), Citadel, and Susquehanna.
For the rest of us who don’t have such powerful allies, ensuring you don’t get Rekt in the market is very much more difficult, and most of the time, we have to absorb our own losses.
The problem for most retail investors is that risk management is pretty limited. Sure, you can buy Options, or set a stop loss, but both of these methods have their downsides.
That’s why we built Bumper, a completely unique risk management protocol for cryptocurrency users — Bumper protects the value of your holdings when the market bombs, but if it rips, well, you still get to enjoy the upside too! Who wouldn’t want that?
It’s simple, price efficient and fair, and has the potential to disrupt hedging altogether. Best of all, it’s Web3, so anyone can participate. Get to know more about Bumper here.

I’m biracial. I get a fade once a month. When I’m due for a haircut or need to trim my face my black friends or coworkers aren’t shy from letting me know. They will straight up tell me I look unkempt when I feel like I still look presentable and normal. My black friends seem to get “lined up” pretty often too. I would say bi weekly
Meanwhile my white friends never comment on my hair and they leave their’s medium length and don’t even style it and no one bats an eye. Even the more professional white guys seem to go months without a cut at times. What’s the deal?

I asked for a fucking low fade and bitch gave me a fucking high and tight. My sides weren’t even either, it’s the most fucked up haircut ever. I came out of the shop and people were looking at me weird. At this fucking point I’ll just shave my fucking head off

My daughter is 2.5 yo. She has very thin and straight hair. She has a "boyish" short hairstyle and never got the need for an haircut, I just trimmed once the baby mullet at the back of her neck. Her hair tends to tangle and break very easily. It has got better since I use a wet brush, wash her hair once or twice a week maximum, and use a lot of leave in moisturizer. She also has a very dry skin, and I've noticed her scalp becoming more dry recently.
Anyone else experiencing this? Any product and haircare advice is welcome

im 25 with slick back hair my hair wont grow any longer, the only part that does is the back of the head, mullet part? my sides hair are only about 2-3 inches long,ive not had my haircut in about 3 years. thanks

I am a male 26 yo and the only good hairstyle is when I cut them all off. I really need to have longer hair but I can’t even style them. My hair are always dry and can’t brush them. I tried everything oils and many shampoos. Why my barber cannot help me? My uncle yesterday told my mother “omg what an ugly haircut”, or even my friends and many girls comments about my bad hairstyle. My hair looks like an 80s hairstyle even when I do fade and can’t do anything about it. I also noticed that when I speak to a person he/she looks at my hair and not at my eyes and this makes me so nervous. This really got me really depressed I can’t even go outside and I skip many lessons at uni. Is the only solution to wear a hat? Do I have to change my barber? I do not trust barbers anymore, I changed about three barbershops.

The channel was run by a boy about 18-20 years old. He discussed Disney and Pixar and filmed videos in his bedroom painted a darker sky blue. He had brown hair and this haircut. He was also British and did comedy skits. I watched him about 2015-2017.
It is not SuperCarlinBrothers, I watch them frequently!!

Q mas Parceros?
I moved here recently and have been having trouble at the barber shop. I don’t know the terminology in Spanish I never have any idea how to ask for anything. I keep walking in to the barbershop for surprise haircuts.
In the US, I just ask for a “clean up”/“line up”/“tape” how would I ask for that?
What is a fade called?
A blowout?
Thank you so much for your help and time.

This is a collection of oddities, real world inspirations and possible clues that hint to the true purpose of Area Zero and other mysteries in Paldea. My intention was to compile this into one big Theory of Everything, but all of this has been sitting in a Google Doc for a month and a half and I don't see how I can tie it all together with the information we currently have. I figured that I might as well talk about the discoveries I have made because if I had not compiled all of this into a reddit post, it might never have happened. My hope is that it will open up some new discussions about the games, and that someone else may see something that I can not.
​
THE TWO METAL PLATES
Let's start with Area Zero. In the Scarlet/Violet books, the page discussing the strange symbol found in A0 has a few qualities that I have not seen discussed so far. It's titled "Mysterious Plates", plural, and even shows a second plate below the main plate containing the two intersecting triangles. This second plate is strangely never mentioned or shown again anywhere else. It appears to be longer in width and much shorter in height than the one we see in A0, and contains a long string of undecipherable text.
This mysterious second plate is not the only strange thing about this page of the book. The top image is drawn so that the symbol plate has its right side obscured behind rocks, but the bottom image gives you enough of a view to see that it doesn't contain anything to the right of the two zeroes. The map of Paldea and its accompanying text is strangely missing. The drawing is from the side and far away, so the plate is at an angle where it is difficult to make out certain details, but it certainly appears to not be wide enough to contain the mysterious symbol AND the map of Paldea.
That's not all about the metal plate, however. The entire thing, as seen when you yourself go into A0, seems to be based on the concept of a Kilometer Zero location marker. This is something that can be found in many countries across the world, which is why it seemed so strange to me that I have not seen any discussion about this. Regardless, the Kilometer Zero markers are typically placed in locations where multiple roads, railways or other routes of transportation come together in a central location. The marker was popularized by the Roman Empire, which is where the phrase "All roads lead to Rome" originates from. GameFreak makes this connection even clearer by having Hassel say almost that exact same line during one of the Art classes, "All roads lead to Area Zero".
Finally, if you look at the Kilometer Zero marker used in Spain it's clear that GameFreak took inspiration from this specific one for the metal plate of A0. It's located in the center of the country, in Madrid, and has an interesting history. The plaque was removed in 2002 in order for the town square to undergo renovations, and when the plaque was put back the construction crew accidentally put it in the ground upside down, so the north point was facing south and vice versa. This was fixed in 2007, but two years later in 2009 the plaque was removed and a new one was put in. Could this also be the history of the metal plate in A0? While I have yet to think of any implications of this, could it be possible that the A0 plate was found upside down and has been kept that way since Heath's expedition?
​
THE EIGHT TREASURES
GameFreak pulled from numerous parts of Chinese mythology/folklore when putting together Area Zero and the story around Paldea, as the Treasures of Ruin are inspired by the Four Perils and the Kitakami Legends are inspired by Momotaro. Once the DLC was revealed, specifically its logo, I was able to make another similar connection. A not very well known piece of Chinese folklore is that of the Eight Treasures, or the Eight Precious Things, which are eight auspicious symbols that signify good luck and fortune. They had a similar cultural role to the Eight Auspicious Symbols of Buddhism, but beyond that the similarities end.
What the Eight Treasures are exactly varies depending on the source, as the symbols are pulled from the Hundred Treasures of Chinese folklore. The more commonly used Treasures seem to correlate to the eight symbols found on the corners of both the SV logo and the DLC logo. I will point out what I believe to be the Treasure that inspired each symbol, and this is where you can find a more detailed analysis on the Treasure's symbolism.
Starting with the upper left corner of the Scarlet/Violet logo, the Metal Plate inscription is based on the Double Lozenge, representing two hearts joined together to act as one mind. The hexagon in the bottom left is the Jewel, sometimes depicted as a Pearl or Flaming Pearl, containing generative energy and the ability to grant wishes. The four circles in the top right seem to be the Double Coins and the spiral in the bottom right seems to be the Wish Granting Ingot. The symbols in the DLC logo are harder to identify, but I believe the top right is the Mirror Lozenge, the Blueberry academy logo (that looks like an '8') in the bottom left might be inspired by the Coral treasure, and finally the bottom right symbol is the Wish Granting Scepter that is associated with the wish granting ingot. The upper left DLC symbol is too obscure for me to make any direct connections. While I have not drawn any definite conclusions on what these inspirations indicate for the symbols, it certainly seems to indicate the true nature of the Tera jewels and what secret wish-granting powers they may have.
The last thing I'd like to mention about Area Zero is that it seems to be heavily inspired by the Taoist concept of "Grotto Heavens", are worlds believed to exist hidden within the crust of Earth, often times inside the hollow center of a mountain. They are said to receive no actual light from the stars, but rather from "the root of the essence of the sun... its light matches the sun of the outer world". A0, as many have noted, is always lit no matter the time of day.
The mythological locations of Mount Penglai and Mount Kunlun) share some similarities to Area Zero, both of which are believed to be Axis Mundi of the world (a celestial pole, like Yggdrasil from Norse mythology). Mount Penglai is also known as Horai, the name given to the mountain in a short story written by Lafcadio Hearn. It is said to be the home of a cabal of immortals known as the Eight Immortals, although Penglai is found on just one of the mythical islands the Eight Immortals are said to reside on.
Lafcadio Hearn does not share many similarities with what little we know of Heath from the Area Zero Expedition team, but the book Hearn published his many short stories in, including that of Mount Penglai, was titled "Kwaidan". This certainly sounds similar to Koraidon, but I must admit it is a loose connection.
Mount Kunlun, a separate mythical paradise, connects to Paldea through its western/southern river (the direction the river flows from varies) that is known as the "Scarlet RiveWater)". Beyond just the name, in the announcement trailer for Scarlet and Violet there are three globes that can be seen in the room. One is a regular globe of the Earth, one is a regular globe of the Moon, and then the third is a globe depicting the Earth with red colored water instead of blue. If the globes were placed there with thematic intent, I believe the red globe was meant to create the connection between Paldea/A0 and Mount Kunlun. Both Penglai and Kunlun share other similarities to Area Zero through generic paradise tropes that I will not go into here, as the Scarlet RiveRed Globe and Kwaidan/Koraidon felt the most significant and this post is already long enough.
​
THE CARDINAL COLORS
As Scarlet and Violet introduced us to the first open world in the series history, it is understandable that the cardinal directions (North, South, West, East) would receive a bit of attention. What stands out in GameFreaks inclusion of them, however, is the colors associated with each direction.
If you look at what colors different cultures associate with the cardinal directions, you will not find a single society in history that had the same associations as Paldea does. In all my research, I could only find two pieces of cultural or fictional media that shared the same Cardinal Colors. In Buddhism, the Mandala Of Avalokiteshvara (Compassion Buddha) and the Mandala of the Medicine Buddha are sometimes depicted with these Cardinal Colors, but these depictions are not easy to find.
For the second instance, the Land Of Oz from the books by L. Frank Baum see the same setup of Blue/Yellow being opposite one another, red representing the south (which itself is rare enough), with some depictions using purple to represent the North and others using green. This would not seem to connect to Pokemon if not for the fact that the games have actually referenced the Wizard of Oz before. In Generation 1, if the player clicks on the TV in their home the text box indicates that Stand By Me is currently playing, the plot of which seems to have inspired the final act of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, The Way Home. In the Gen1 remakes, FireRed and LeafGreen, the same reference is made as long as the player chose the male protagonist. Even Sun and Moon included the same Stand By Me reference as well. However, in FLG, a different film is referenced if the player chooses the female protagonist, The Wizard of Oz. Once again I admit this is a flimsy connection, but with one of these two films being an obvious inspiration for the story of Scarlet/Violet, it opens up the possibility that the Wizard of Oz might have also been used as inspiration.
That is all I could find on the inspiration for the choices made for the Cardinal Colors, however certain ways GameFreak utilized the Cardinal Colors of Paldea stood out to me, and I have not seen any discussion on this either. Here are two diagrams demonstrating some ways the Cardinal Colors may have more to do with the Legendary Pokemon of the games than we have realized. Specifically, the shrines encasing the Treasures of Ruin across Paldea are located in the four corners of the region, with their colors being a combination of the Cardinal Colors closest to them. The fire-type Chi-Yu is found in the NorthEast, so its shrine is a combination of blue and green, cyan. This is true of all four of the Treasures of Ruin. If you look at the four new Pokemon introduced in the DLC The Teal Mask, each Pokemon incorporates a Cardinal color in their design, with Ogerpon being the only outlier. Of course, we have barely seen Ogerpon's actual design without the mask, and even then in the image we do have it has a yellow-colored eye which is the only color not utilized by another Pokemon.
Then there is the Mesagoza Type Compass that sits in the center of the city, which has the types arranged in a seemingly random order. I tried to figure out if maybe these Cardinal Colors or the corner colors have something to do with the Type Compass, or the color wheel found in the Art Room, but so far I have had no luck. However the compass is odd in that it has 12 points rather than the 8 points or 16 points typically seen on compass roses, which supposedly is normal of a Japanese Compass Rose but I have yet to find a depiction like this outside of a single DeviantArt image. Beyond the colors, not much else seems relevant to the cardinal directions, although there is one part of A0 that sticks out to me.
While it is difficult to figure out which direction you are looking towards when you enter A0, it is possible to see the Zero Gate above the clouds where you land if you get high up enough along the sides of A0. A link to a screenshot of this is included near the end of the post. Based off of this, it would appear that each river in A0 is coming from a lake located on the cardinal ends of the area. While the North, West, and South rivers all flow down into the bottom of A0, the East river is the one that takes you to the cave with the four circles pointing towards the cardinal directions. This is the only river that does not flow into the crystalline depths below. Given that Part 1 of the DLC seems to take place in the Eastern area connected to Paldea, it makes me wonder if there is any relevance to this river being the only one to not connect with the others.
​
THE LUNAR THEORY
There are a number of strange things throughout the story that seem to connect to the moon, specifically its strange orbit that is scarcely commented on anywhere. While most of the observations in this post are just that, observations, I feel strongly that the moon plays a role in the overall plot of Scarlet and Violet, and will be a focal point of the DLC.
When developing a video game, nothing is particularly easy to implement. The easiest thing to do in game development is doing something again. Taking a feature you have already developed, and copy and pasting it to something else in the game. Knowing this, I would like to discuss the strange behavior of the moon as opposed to the typical behavior of the sun.
Imagine you are standing idly in Paldea while facing the Northeast at night, you watch as the sun rises in the East like it does in the real world. You can watch as it crosses the sky over the course of the day, eventually arriving in the West where it disappears over the horizon. Once the sun has set, you look back over at the Northeast direction expecting to see the moon rise over the horizon. The stars start to appear and the sky darkens, and yet you see no moon. If you were to then look back over at the Northwest direction, if you do so quick enough, you can see the Moon suddenly just appear in the West. Not only that, if you watch it over the course of the night you can see it go from West to East, the opposite direction it would normally travel, and then disappear by fading into the sky as the sun starts to rise once again. The sun has a proper orbit, it rises and sets in the correct locations and arcs across the sky. The moon on the other hand does not rise, it does not set, and it moves across the sky in a straight line. Most may chalk this up to a development bug, but I see an intended behavior. Like I said, once you've implemented something once, here being a circle in the sky rising and setting over the horizon, it's not very difficult to copy and paste it to another giant circle. I believe that this has to have been intentional, especially given that it was not fixed in the latest patch.
That's not all though. Of the four symbols on the Scarlet/Violet logo, one of them seems to lack any sort of context behind its relevance. This would be the bottom right spiral found in the Poco Lab. Even the metal plate inscription has some sort of commentary attributed to it, so that players can at least wonder what its relevance may be. The spiral, however, is left mostly unexplained. That is, if you don't pay attention to the other diagrams on the whiteboard. While the specifics of these equations are a little lost on me, it would seem the two circles found on the Poco Lab whiteboard are depicting calculations relating to the horizon of the Earth, possibly the light refraction of a celestial object. The top diagram appears to either calculate the influence of a satellite on the planets gravity, or a calculation of the true altitude of the satellite. That one could be a number of things, but I believe the bottom one to be a calculation of the true position of the moon based on the principle of the moon illusion. While I can't be certain what the spiral symbol represents, I wonder if it is depicting the strange orbit of the moon that is causing it to appear and disappear in the middle of the sky. Could the "moon's" refraction of light rays) be the relevance of ultraviolet and infrared light wavelengths, which many have theorized to have something to do with Scarlet/Violet?
Based on what we know of the Professor, the last time they left Poco Lab was the final time they set foot outside of Area Zero. These diagrams would have been the last thing they wrote on the whiteboard before going to Zero Lab, where a dozen more strange diagrams can be found on the whiteboards there. If you look at what the diagrams are depicting, each one shows a single circle following a path and/or existing within a strange 3D geometric shape. If I am correct that the Poco Lab whiteboard is the Professor discovering that something is off about the moon's orbit, the whiteboards in Zero Lab might be their attempts at finding out what exactly the orbit is. Could this be why they become more of a hermit, locking themselves in the lab and creating more security protocols to keep other people out? Is it possible they discovered some sort of conspiracy and became the target of those upholding the conspiracy?
​
THE TURTLE THAT CARRIED THE WORLD
While I have already rambled long enough about the suspicious nature of the moon, there's one final observation I would like to make. If you look at the page in the Scarlet/Violet where Heath drew the Disk Pokemon, which we now know is Terapagos, there's still a number of unexplained aspects of the image. The giant disk Terapagos is resting on, the fact that its fur turns into an ocean with ships atop it, the clouds to the left of Terapagos that are completely disconnected from the Pokemon, and the many planets that can be seen in the background. It has already been pointed out that if you flip the image upside down, the black parts of the image actually appear to be crystals encircling the large disk, but there's something else about the image that has yet to be mentioned. The shading of the large disk is strange, familiar even. This image depicts the view of the Earth from the surface of the moon. It is the same exact shading. Looking at the Disk as a large celestial object from the upside down perspective, suddenly makes its appear as if the artist is looking up into the sky, past the Tera crystals of Area Zero, seeing a large object very far away. After all, it's common knowledge that Terapagos might be inspired by the many myths of a World Turtle that carries the Earth on its back. Looking at the drawing upside down, it almost appears as if that were the case here.
Of course, then there's the whole problem with how Area Zero could possibly be on the moon and/or some other satellite object, and then why Earth has the weird hexagonal shapes covering its visible portion. This could always be attributed to simple Human error with the artist not fully comprehending what they were seeing, but that certainly would not be a satisfying answer. Another theory I hope to discuss more of one day is that the clouds seen inside the Great Crater are teleporting anyone who enters to Area Zero, and vice versa, but I'm still working on how exactly that would fit with what we know about A0 and Terapagos so far.
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LINGBAO DAOISM
One final piece of folklore I'd like to mention is the beliefs of a Daoist school from 400 C.E, known as both the School of the Numinous Treasure and the School of the Sacred Jewel (also known simply as the Lingbao School). While I'm not sure if this actually a source of inspiration for these games, I certainly found some of the aspects and beliefs of this Daoist sect interesting. It's also another piece of spiritual beliefs that have connected to the old Chinese story Journey to the West. This story has had connections to many things I have already talked about, like the Grotto Heavens and Axis Mountains I mentioned earlier. Frankly, anything I found in Chinese mythology that seemed like it might have been inspiration for these games had some sort of connection to that tale, and so as a result it may have been a bigger piece of inspiration that I realized.
Lingbao cosmology is based around the idea of a mountain known as the Jade Capital being the center of the heavens, the Axis Mundi housing the Celestial Worthy (creator god). There are three subsequent deities, the Lord of Celestial Treasure, Lord of Sacred Treasure and the Lord of Divine Treasure. Each deity also resides within its own Grotto Heaven. It was believed by Lingbaoists that time was divided into cosmic cycles, and at the end of each era a deity related to the color associated with that era would descend to Earth provide Humanity a piece of Cosmic teaching. Two types of eras/cycles can occur, one ending with the moon causing a flood that resets the universe, and the other ending in total apocalypse. Before the apocalypse a select few of those who were given the Cosmic teaching, those that actually correctly learned the teaching, would be gathered up by the Queen Mother of the West (A central character of Journey to the West), and taken to a land of bliss not impacted by the apocalypse.
After reading through much of the Journey to the West, I believe that Geeta was inspired by the Queen Mother of the West and plans to take those who follow her to Area Zero when an apocalypse is eventually started, either by her or by natural forces/a Pokemon. This is mostly because I hope that they do something interesting with her character, but partly because it just seems very much like a story GameFreak would tell, especially given the writing of villains in Pokemon games and how recently they have represented big corporate powers.
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I hope that many of these topics fuel the theorizing parts of your brains, as I know that they have for me. Of course this post is formatted the way it is because I have not been able to come up with a cohesive theory that utilizes all of these oddities, as well as the bullet points below, but maybe one day it will click for someone.
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(*MANY) ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS
- If you get on top of the Academy using the Cyclizar Paradox, you can access the outside of the conservatory-like structure. The Academy exit connected to it is the color red, as well as the door used to enter the treehouse-like structure. As far as I can tell, based off of the intro sequence of Violet I found on YouTube, the doors appear to be red no matter the version. Also, the doors to the conservatory have what might be the second metal plate sitting above it with the text blurred, I imagine intentionally so that anyone like me climbs up to them, we don't discover any secrets.
- The hexagonal symbol in the bottom left of the logo may be depicting the six satellite dishes found around Area Zero, rather than the time machine or the Tera jewel/crystal itself.
- Student IDs are only mentioned two times, both mentions are by the AI Professor. First is when the Professor says the player's ID, 805C393. 805 because that's how many years since the Academy was founded, I presume 'C' is the semester (A is spring, B is summer, C is fall), and 393 because we joined the Academy late in the semester. Penny is 803B121, which tracks with that logic as a year and a half before was when she formed Team Star. Strangely, Nemona is 805C001. This means she registered with the school at the beginning of the current semester, and was the first to do so. This does not line up with what Giacomo says about Nemona taking over Student Council president a year and a half before the events of the game. Also - the previous Director mentions that his assistant tried to coverup the Team Star incident by destroying "digital records", no mention of physical records. We assumed this coverup caused the pages to be ripped out of the Student Registry book found in the Academy Library, but this does not track. Was someone trying to hide Nemona's previous ID? This might explain why the Professor felt it was necessary to create the Pokeball Locking security system, as it has to do with ID numbers. Nemona would be able to use Pokeballs with a new ID, up until the final battle where the AI Professor locks ALL ID's other than their own.
- Zero Gate is not the only thing that can be seen above the clouds in Area Zero. On top of the fact that the ledge it rests on looks nothing like the ledge seen in Paldea, the ridges seen above the Area Zero clouds are a completely different shape than the walls of the Great Create of Paldea, appearing more like a mountain range than a crater. Here some screenshots I took.
- Another reason for why I assume the cardinal directions are the way they are in Area Zero, despite the minimap not functioning from within the area, is because of this promotional artwork GameFreak released prior to Scarlet/Violet hitting the shelves. You can see that to the right of the Zero Gate is a waterfall, and the distance between the two appears to be the same as the distance from where you spawn in Area Zero and the closest waterfall to your left. What's most interesting about this image, though, is that the waterfall depicted in the image is not present in the final game. This would have been the only think linking the Crater above the clouds to the grotto below the clouds, and for whatever reason they decided to remove it in the three months between releasing the image and releasing the games.
- The Kitakami Legends each seem to each have a European heraldic charge) depicted on their design. Given that the Koraidon/Miraidon designs on the front of the Scarlet/Violet books are based on how lions and other animals are depicted in heraldry, this seems like a safe assumption. Okidogi has two crescents#/media/File:BlasonJean_Leliwa(selonGelre).svg) underneath its eyes, and the shape on its chest seems to be the shape of the heraldry shield#/media/File:Swiss_Escutcheon.svg) itself. Munkidori has a maltese cross#/media/File:Maltese_cross.svg) on its stomach. Fezandipiti has a cross moline#/media/File:Cross-Moline-Heraldry.svg) at the end of its tail. Ogerpon is yet another outlier here, just like with the cardinal colors, but one could argue the five pointed star on its chest is its charge, which is called a mullet#/media/File:Blason_de_la_ville_de_Deh%C3%A9ries(59)_Nord-France.svg). Also - on the left side of the top floor of the Entrance Hall you can find a strange shape hanging from a light fixture. It appears to be the water-bouget charge.
- Mount Penglai is the home of the Eight Immortals. The Adventure into Area Zero page in the Scarlet/Violet book depicts seven individuals descending into Area Zero, and we can assume that Heath or whoever illustrated the page was not depicted. Was the Expedition team made up of only eight people? With the prevalence of the number '8' in the games and DLC (Blueberry Academy logo), could this have any significance?
- AI Professor mentions that the energy of the Tera Crystals can "alter the organic functions of living things". The future Paradox Pokemon seem to be actual living Pokemon despite being made of machinery. If "Dream Theory" ends up being partially true, then I wonder if the Tera function that 'created' them (summoned, resurrected, there are many possibilities) possibly healed the Professor by turning them into a cyborg. The research journals suggest the assistant mentioned is the AI Professor, but certain discrepancies in them and the AI Professor's dialogue suggests that is not the case.
- In the Scarlet/Violet book the Director depicted to be shaking Heath's hand has a little piece of hair on his forehead that looks like a crescent moon. The two founders of the Academies depicted by the busts on the top floor of the entrance hall have hair that looks like Grapes and Oranges depending on the version, so theres a precedent for hair shapes of Academy figureheads having double meanings. This is the reachiest reach in this entire post, but I thought I'd include it.
- A pet theory I have had since the release of the games is that Geeta runs a secret society in Paldea that is orchestrating events from the shadows. The compass logo of the Elite Four is reminiscent of an all-seeing-eye, which is largely where this notion came from (The 'eye' portion of the logo is also identical to the marking on Lusamine-Nihilego's legs). If this is truly the case, then I imagine its based on the mythical La Garduna secret society of Spain, which historians are unsure ever actually existed. Secret Societies are also a common trope of Academies and Universities. A real world example that the games may be hinting at with the Paldean Pokemon Gimmighoul is a collegiate secret society at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, called the Order of Gimghoul.
- Every time the Professor summons a Paradox Pokemon from the time machine, the Pokemon falls from the machine in a Master Ball - seemingly just having been caught. In multiple locations within Paldea, including the Player's bedroom and Arven/Penny's dorm rooms, there are scattered boxes with a company logo depicting Tauros. Inside of the Zero Lab, however, the Professor has a large amount of boxes with the Delibird company logo. Most of the settlements in Paldea, like Medali outside of Zero Gate and Levincia where the real estate company is, have warehouses with the Delibird company logo. Is this the company that is providing the Professor with such a large amount of Master Balls? Does this mean that the Delibird company is a subsidiary of Silph Co., or some other Pokeball-manufacturer?
- Penny mentions that Nemona's dad is on the board of the Rotom Phone company. Nemona then mentions how her sister will "take over the family business". Does Nemona's family own a separate corporation from the Rotom Phone company, as 'take over' suggests ownership of the business rather than simply being a part of an executive team. On top of that, we know that the company producing Rotom Phones - or at least the cellphones that the Rotom possesses - is Macro Cosmos, based off of this concept art from Sword and Shield where you can see their logo on the unpossessed phone.
- If you start in the United States and dug a hole straight through the earth, you would end up in China, as the classic saying goes. This is called an "Antipodal Point". The Antipodal point of Madrid, give or take a few dozen miles, is a large isolated mountain in New Zealand with a lake named "Crater Lake" sitting at its peak. If Area Zero's clouds are in fact a portal to multiple locations, and the inscribed symbol was inspired by the Double Lozenge (two hearts joined as one), then could this location in North New Zealand be the other location connected to A0?