It’s the day of the moon today.  By which I am not referring to Doctor Who, series 6, episode 2 (the second part of a two-parter) which was called The Day of the Moon, if memory serves.  That was a good episode, and it tied into a long arc of a storyline that Stephen Moffat had put into motion in series 4, when he wasn’t even the show runner yet.  But it has nothing to do with my first sentence, today.

No, I am simply referring to the fact that this is Monday, the weekday named (in English and some other languages) for the moon.  It’s also the last day of August in 2026.

I occasionally wonder, what if Tsukino Usagi, AKA Sailor Moon, recognized that her name was associated with the first day of the work week (and of the school week).  I wonder this because Usagi is notoriously not fond of having to go to school.  She’s also something of a crybaby, and I can just imagine her lamenting the fact that her Sailor Senshi name is linked to the start of the work week.  I can also imagine her being jealous of Sailor Venus, since in Spanish at least, that is associated with Friday (Viernes).  Sailor Venus probably wouldn’t care.

And it also only just occurred to me to wonder what had happened to Sailor Pluto once Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet*.  I mean, if she’s really more associated with the God of the Underworld than with the now-dwarf planet, as does seem to be the case in the manga and anime, then I guess it’s fine.

Perhaps Sailor Pluto wryly smiled and shook her head indulgently upon learning that the humans had named a very small, very icy object among countless other similar objects, with a highly eccentric orbit that isn’t even in the same plane as that of the planets, after her namesake.  And she might indulgently shrug upon hearing of the more recent reclassification.  She probably didn’t care much, but she might well have known.  She was one of the Sailor Senshi who never seemed really to revert to a truly mortal form nor to have been reincarnated as a normal human.

Okay, well, that was a weird little discursion that handily demonstrates some aspects of my rather niche nerd status.  I went from Doctor Who right over to Sailor Moon (while making passing references to planetary astronomy).  That’s fine, though.  I really like both…series, sagas, stories?  I’m not sure the best word to use to encompass them both.  Perhaps “universes” is good.

It does annoy me that we now use the word “universe” when referring to things that might be merely one of many, of perhaps infinite, things, when “uni” means one**, with the implication that it is the only one.  I wish we could find a better term, so we could go back to using Universe, with the inherent capital “U”, to refer to whatever encompasses everything.

I had intended to use the term “metaverse” in my own stories, such as The Dark Fairy and the Desperado, that dealt with many planes and subsections of existence, but then Fuckerberg stole the term.  And I did start thinking about it and using it way before he arrogated it to his pathetic little virtual empire.  Then I had to switch to “Omniverse”, which may actually be a more accurate term than Metaverse, but it doesn’t sound as good in my opinion.

So, yeah, now (even in legitimate physics) there is the general use of (small u) universes, which is almost inherently contradictory.  Many Worlds may be better, but its a little nonspecific.  There are, many worlds, many worlds just in our solar system.

Maybe the term “polyverse” might work?  Perhaps “facets”?  I don’t know.  I suppose it doesn’t matter much.  It’s just me dwelling on and being bothered by things that don’t really even register to most other people.  Thoughts unlike those of my brethren, indeed.

I hope you have a great day.

*I was resistant to the notion when I first heard about it, from my kids as it turns out.  But I looked into it, and I heard the arguments‒perhaps most accessibly addressed by Neil DeGrasse Tyson‒and I was convinced.  It turns out that the international astronomical community doesn’t lightly go and change the designation of something, knowing there will be many pissed off Boomers and Gen-Xers (Hello!), but does so only with very well thought-out reasons.

**Though, to refer to cartoons again, Uni was also the name of the little unicorn on which the barbarian character doted in the cartoon Dungeons and Dragons from way back when.