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Karkat doesn't really have anyone to talk to, honestly. That he's short-tempered is part of that, but he really does feel like the only character who's really thoughtful about things. Besides him, the only person that really starts to come close is Rose, and even she doesn't really seem like the type to discuss this kind of thing at length.
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Mar 13, 2012 04:44
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dumb brunette posted:Meeting up with Dirk is going to do a goddamn number on Dave's psyche. It's his bro, but he's only 16 years old, and still more cool and ironic than Dave could ever hope to be. Ouch. Dave will clearly prove to be the superior rapper with the skills to defeat Sawtooth. It'll work out.
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Mar 13, 2012 04:49
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Dave has only three years to invent the most transcendentally, soul-crushingly ironic Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff comic that Paradox Space could ever witness. Only then will he be crowned King Strider.
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Mar 13, 2012 04:51
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YggiDee posted:Dave has only three years to invent the most transcendentally, soul-crushingly ironic Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff comic that Paradox Space could ever witness. Only then will he be crowned King Strider. But how will he accomplish it without Davesprite there to help him?  Actually I wonder how different Dave and Davesprite are going to be after three years of hanging out with entirely different people.
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Mar 13, 2012 05:06
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How can this have only been ten minutes? How loving fast does Karkat type?YggiDee posted:Something I saw pointed out elsewhere: apparently all of Karkat's posters are for movies about a guy losing his girl to someone else. What are the names of all the movies? Bobulus posted:You know, I could see Dave changing the most from this journey. Almost 100% of his coolkid facade is due to living with his bro. Removed from that environment, forced to step out of Bro's shadow, and art-jamming with Terezi for three years, I could see him opening up a bit. Not all of Dave's personality is a facade. Mostly just the part that made him bury his head in the ground and act like he didn't care when Bro died.
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Mar 13, 2012 05:17
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I hope I'm not the only one that hopes there'll be a prototyped WV vs Troll Empress battle sometime. A cruel member of the royalty that bosses people (in Alternia and Derse) around? Sounds like someone that a Green Sun-powered WV needs to teach a lesson to about the power and rights of the people. 
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Mar 13, 2012 05:25
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I don't think Dave will be too upset about Dirk. Dirk is kinda...terrible at being a human being. He's undeniably "cool" but the "irons in the fire" puppetmaster thing is not good, and may just cause problems later. Dave is cool because he's Dave, he doesn't need to emulate his crazy brother.
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Mar 13, 2012 05:41
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Dolash posted:Agreeing with this, was my impression as well. Thanks for this post, I didn't put it together before but reading this made me finally realize that Karkat is the best character.
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Mar 13, 2012 05:47
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of bees posted:Actually I wonder how different Dave and Davesprite are going to be after three years of hanging out with entirely different people. I changed my mind. What I want most from 3 Years Later is for both Dave and Davesprite to have been working on SBaHJ for the entire time, but with different audiences / friends to get ideas from, for the comics to completely deviate from each other. Maybe they can parody two of the ways people appreciate Homestuck, the way UU and uu parody two kinds of Homestuck fans?
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Mar 13, 2012 05:56
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Acidophilus posted:I don't think Dave will be too upset about Dirk. Dirk is kinda...terrible at being a human being. He's undeniably "cool" but the "irons in the fire" puppetmaster thing is not good, and may just cause problems later. Dave is cool because he's Dave, he doesn't need to emulate his crazy brother. If anything, I think Dirk will be what finally causes Dave to realize his brother was sort of a tool and comes into his own.
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Mar 13, 2012 06:02
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I'm not particularly excited about seeing Eridan and Feferi, even if they are God-tiers, since they aren't the real Eridan and Feferi (I.E. the Alpha Trolls). I want to know how the dead alpha trolls are doing in their dream bubbles. At least Karkat (the best troll) is asking all the existential questions I want answered.
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Mar 13, 2012 06:03
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Acidophilus posted:I don't think Dave will be too upset about Dirk. Dirk is kinda...terrible at being a human being. He's undeniably "cool" but the "irons in the fire" puppetmaster thing is not good, and may just cause problems later. Dave is cool because he's Dave, he doesn't need to emulate his crazy brother. He's not actually manipulating anyone.
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Mar 13, 2012 06:16
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If anything Roxy's the closest thing to a manipulator of any of the four B2 kids. Because of her willingness to play the part of the friend and confidant to each of her other friends she's been able to nudge them in certain directions when necessary because her own feelings haven't gotten in the way. She's just completely loving drunk all the time, which gets in the way of this just a little bit.
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Mar 13, 2012 06:29
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Tollymain posted:Man, that question about who is the real self and what not really has been rankling at me for some time. While never stated in the comic explicitly, there have been a few formspring posts where Hussie has gone into the idea of what makes the alpha timeline the alpha. It's about in-universe consistency. Given all the cross-time cross-universe interaction, doing anything other than what you're 'destined' to do is a paradox, because chances are you're already being shaped and influenced by the future implications of what you're about to do. Take the green sun: all of the actions of the kids and trolls combined to bring about the entities and conditions which have been leading them to eventually create the sun. That means anything anyone does that would not have led to that outcome would be the result of an outcome that now doesn't exist. Homestuck actually contains no time paradoxes. So Hussie once posted in response to a question about how Terezi could have killed John, since if John dies before getting Jade in the trolls will never know about the kids, so she won't be around to get him killed etc. His answer was "exactly", explaining that the generation of that paradox is the main reason deadjohn and davesprites beta timeline is a beta, and not just an alternative alpha. Here, we're seeing successful trolls. But think what would happen if the trolls were successful. They'd never contact the kids, never feel the need to make a plan to defeat Jack, and never create the green sun. With no green sun, there'd be no lord english and no handmaid and the whole of their racial history would be paradoxical. Things like that generate beta timelines, and they're objectively less valid than the alpha timeline. Hussie has written a universe where time is more or less eternalist, but his characters still have free will. The problem with free will and eternalism, especially once you permit time travel, is that you can generate paradoxes. Kill your grandfather etc. Here, the paradox is permitted, but only in an alternate universe which then 'dies' of the paradox. It's a pretty philosophically sophisticated way to write 'realistic' time travel without it being boring.
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Mar 13, 2012 06:34
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So in short, beta timelines are the ones that don't feed back as epicycles into the main time loop.
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Mar 13, 2012 06:46
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The quality of the alpha timeline, "as defined" by Doc Scratch but that's a weasel statement and so this is not necessarily the truth every time, is "that which boasts exclusive rights both to my birth and to my death." Or the birth and death of one of the "instances of him spawned in countless universes", I'd suppose. In other words considering what we know now about Scratch, universes that lead to the creation of Lord English. JT Jag fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Mar 13, 2012 |
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Mar 13, 2012 06:49
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JT Jag posted:The quality of the alpha timeline, "as defined" by Doc Scratch but that's a weasel statement and so this is not necessarily the truth every time, is "that which boasts exclusive rights both to my birth and to my death." Or the birth and death of one of the "instances of him spawned in countless universes", I'd suppose. So does that mean there are alternate alpha timelines? I can think of at least a couple of occasions where things can split while still leading to the creation of Lord English, principally the Vriska/Jack fight we were teased with, which happened so close to the critical moment that the trolls influence on the kids was unneeded at that point, they were gonna create the green sun anyway. EDIT: also, found this page while reading random pages. Gives new context to the use of the word "suckers", or, by it's own definition, context that was there all along.
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Mar 13, 2012 06:58
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SatansBestBuddy posted:So does that mean there are alternate alpha timelines? I can think of at least a couple of occasions where things can split while still leading to the creation of Lord English, principally the Vriska/Jack fight we were teased with, which happened so close to the critical moment that the trolls influence on the kids was unneeded at that point, they were gonna create the green sun anyway. It's conceivable. It might even be plot relevant at some point, if they need to dredge up some non-doomed backup.
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Mar 13, 2012 07:03
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SatansBestBuddy posted:So does that mean there are alternate alpha timelines? I can think of at least a couple of occasions where things can split while still leading to the creation of Lord English, principally the Vriska/Jack fight we were teased with, which happened so close to the critical moment that the trolls influence on the kids was unneeded at that point, they were gonna create the green sun anyway. You are not thinking forth dimensionally! Kinda looking at the trees, not the forest but: If Vriska had gone to face Jack, Sollux would have been killed, the veil meteor wouldn't have been able to go to the green sun, Dave Roxy and the remaining Trolls wouldn't have been able to enter the new session. Considering that we know the B2 session has influenced the B1 session at least (with Liv Tyler and such), if Dave, Rose or the other Trolls have any influence on events still to unfold in B2 that could affect B1 or the A universes in some way, then the green sun may not be created. A paradoxical, temporally inconsistent timeline, thus, beta.
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Mar 13, 2012 07:08
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SatansBestBuddy posted:So does that mean there are alternate alpha timelines? I can think of at least a couple of occasions where things can split while still leading to the creation of Lord English, principally the Vriska/Jack fight we were teased with, which happened so close to the critical moment that the trolls influence on the kids was unneeded at that point, they were gonna create the green sun anyway. The beta troll universe timeline would have been slated for destruction, as these things tend to work, long before Scratch would have died.
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Mar 13, 2012 07:08
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SatansBestBuddy posted:So does that mean there are alternate alpha timelines? I can think of at least a couple of occasions where things can split while still leading to the creation of Lord English, principally the Vriska/Jack fight we were teased with, which happened so close to the critical moment that the trolls influence on the kids was unneeded at that point, they were gonna create the green sun anyway. Perhaps there's something Karkat or Terezi still need to do that would facilitate LE arriving or doing something in the future? Scratch seemed to imply that Karkat and Terezi still need to be alive for something during his narration of the Vriska vs. Jack fight.
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Mar 13, 2012 07:09
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Fagtastic posted:No offense but I just meant like, what makes any of them a more valid "real self" than the others? It's just kind of existentially terrifying. I mean, if they did like this thing where they kind of absorbed into singular dream-bubble identities for each character that would be one thing, but they don't. So in a sense they all are different people. And it's just kind of troubling in a way I find hard to describe. I am not a good philosophy student.
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Mar 13, 2012 07:40
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Tollymain posted:I just meant like, what makes any of them a more valid "real self" than the others? It's just kind of existentially terrifying. I mean, if they did like this thing where they kind of absorbed into singular dream-bubble identities for each character that would be one thing, but they don't. So in a sense they all are different people. And it's just kind of troubling in a way I find hard to describe. I am not a good philosophy student. It should be troubling, if you think critically about it. They're living, breathing, sentient beings who are consigned to death for deviating from a plan the universe has set out for them. It's the worst kind of tyranny, a prison with no walls: "You are free to do anything you like, but if you don't do exactly what I want then you'll die." It's not a nice universe they live in.
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Mar 13, 2012 07:47
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Tollymain posted:I just meant like, what makes any of them a more valid "real self" than the others? It's just kind of existentially terrifying. I mean, if they did like this thing where they kind of absorbed into singular dream-bubble identities for each character that would be one thing, but they don't. So in a sense they all are different people. And it's just kind of troubling in a way I find hard to describe. I am not a good philosophy student. All versions of characters from all timelines get their own afterlife. The dead ones are all equal in death; we saw alpha Vriska's ghost interacting with a beta John's ghost, and while she might at first have thought he wasn't "real," that was more a matter of their lack of a shared past than the fact that she was alpha and he was beta. There is such a thing as "real" in this setting. There is also an established part of the setting - namely, the afterlife - in which the difference between real and not real becomes irrelevant. Death appears to be the great equalizer.
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Mar 13, 2012 07:58
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Cabbit posted:It should be troubling, if you think critically about it. They're living, breathing, sentient beings who are consigned to death for deviating from a plan the universe has set out for them. It's the worst kind of tyranny, a prison with no walls: "You are free to do anything you like, but if you don't do exactly what I want then you'll die." But there's also the other side of it: They'll die whether or not they follow the plan (just...you know, soon if they don't), and either way, they go to the same place, which seems, honestly, kind of a decent place. So Karkat is wrestling with the fact that it doesn't matter what he does in the universe, because no matter he does, some Karkat will do the thing that needs to be done, and all of them will meet the same (eventual) end anyway. Which can be freeing, but also depressing.
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Mar 13, 2012 08:00
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I think a better term than "real" would be "relevant". They are all clearly real, otherwise they wouldn't have a presence in death. They just don't matter.
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Mar 13, 2012 08:00
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Cabbit posted:I think a better term than "real" would be "relevant". They are all clearly real, otherwise they wouldn't have a presence in death. They just don't matter. Relevant to whom? To the audience? Because a Beta-Dave became Davesprite, and a Beta-John passed on (via Alpha-Vriska) some crucial plot info to us. To the other characters? Because they're interacting with all these Beta-characters now. Sure, they'll inevitably get left behind later, but now that they've met them, the possibility of Dream-Bubble-Parties with them exists. If you're looking for a reason for existing, this setup would be really frustrating. You can't turn to the religious (afterlife is known and same for everyone regardless of behavior / belief) and you can't turn to the moral (every outcome happens, and only the ones that universe wants 'counts') so your behavior can't impact anything useful. I guess you can take the Vriska route and try to be as awesome as possible (by inserting yourself into high-profile events), but that's a bit empty, too.
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Mar 13, 2012 08:06
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Bobulus posted:Relevant to whom? Relevant to the goals of the universe, such as they are. To the actions that make you Alpha. If you fail to engage in an alpha action, and become doomed, the universe has essentially deemed you irrelevant and cast you off to the furthest ring.
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Mar 13, 2012 08:06
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Cabbit posted:Relevant to the goals of the universe, such as they are. To the actions that make you Alpha. If you fail to engage in an alpha action, and become doomed, the universe has essentially deemed you irrelevant and cast you off to the furthest ring. I guess it then comes down to whether or not you care that the universe deems you irrelevant. Same outcome either way (just sooner or later) and the universe keeps moving.
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Mar 13, 2012 08:08
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You're alpha if you participate in creating yourself (where "self" refers not only to your existence but also your entire past, present, and future). Even if you're more successful or powerful than alpha, even if you get what you want, if it puts you in a situation that can't retroactively create itself, you're beta. Beta timelines do happen - they're not less "real" nor are they less "relevant," as proved by the fact that memories and ghosts can be salvaged from them - but only the alpha timeline is exposed to orthogonal timelines, and that is significant. Recall how in the beta timeline that began with John confronting Typheus, Dave stopped hearing from the trolls? That's because, when you're outside of a given timeline, only the alpha timeline is visible. If you know you're alpha, then all you know is that some action you can take will lead to ensuring that you are alpha. It does not follow that you specifically will do that, because any decision could cause you to become beta. In that regard it differs from predestination. If you know you're beta, then it does not follow that everything you do is pointless, because while it's impossible for you to become alpha again, it is still possible for you to influence the alpha timeline. If you don't know whether you're alpha or beta, then you have to assume that you're beta. If you're dead, then the only difference between being alpha and being beta is which timeline you have memories of. Conventional metaphysics may be inadequate to the task of explaining a universe in which time travel and self-causing effects are commonplace. But perhaps the fallacy in all of this is in assuming that alpha-ness corresponds to meaningfulness or relevance.
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Mar 13, 2012 08:39
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In any event, it's probably not a longshot that some sort of event or revelation will occur at some point down the line that throws the entire set of assumptions we're working under out the door. Personally, my money is still on the notion that the only thing stopping the dead from just walking around whole amongst the living is access to the correct door and an impetus. Someone is gonna bust open a 4th wall, the dead will just waltz right on through, and then the story will take a turn. I was pretty well convinced this is what was going to happen with Punkferi and Roxy.
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Mar 13, 2012 08:51
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Tollymain posted:I just meant like, what makes any of them a more valid "real self" than the others? It's just kind of existentially terrifying. I mean, if they did like this thing where they kind of absorbed into singular dream-bubble identities for each character that would be one thing, but they don't. So in a sense they all are different people. And it's just kind of troubling in a way I find hard to describe. I am not a good philosophy student. Don't look up the many worlds hypothesis then, because according to some actual serious physicists, the same thing is literally true of the real world. Sweet dreams mate!
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Mar 13, 2012 08:56
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To the person who said that Karkat's posters are all about protagonists who lose the girl to someone else, look up the plots. The only one like that is My Best Friend's Girl.Bobulus posted:I guess it then comes down to whether or not you care that the universe deems you irrelevant. Same outcome either way (just sooner or later) and the universe keeps moving. Most people probably do care about dying before they even reach adulthood. Edit: If the gods of the furthest ring consign beta timelines to death, and beta timelines are those that don't lead to English, doesn't that seem like the horrorterrors are working with English? That wouldn't make sense, since he's hunting them.
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Mar 13, 2012 09:05
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Glans posted:Edit: If the gods of the furthest ring consign beta timelines to death, and beta timelines are those that don't lead to English, doesn't that seem like the horrorterrors are working with English? That wouldn't make sense, since he's hunting them. Well, the Gods of the Furthest Ring are sinister and disreputable, the defining characteristic of the alpha timeline is not that it leads to the existence of Lord English, but that it leads to its own existence, along a critical path that includes the rise of Lord English.
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Mar 13, 2012 09:09
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Bobulus posted:If you're looking for a reason for existing, this setup would be really frustrating. You can't turn to the religious (afterlife is known and same for everyone regardless of behavior / belief) and you can't turn to the moral (every outcome happens, and only the ones that universe wants 'counts') so your behavior can't impact anything useful.
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Mar 13, 2012 09:15
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This question is pretty much the Ultimate Riddle, as has been pointed out in and out of comic* so I'm sure we'll get an answer to it by the end of the comic. * Here's one occasion out of comic where Andrew referred to it if you are curious. Andrew posted:
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Mar 13, 2012 09:20
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The Sezza posted:Does anyone know what the deal is with John, Dave and Rose's shirts in the Topatoco store? They're all listed as 'last chance', are they being removed from the store? This was asked a bit back, but the answer is Andrew wants to put up some new shirts in the store, and was told if he wanted to he had to close out some of his other shirts, since hey there's a finite amount of space in the Topatoco warehouse. Since the record/ghost/squiddle already have alternate, updated versions of their shirts, he decided on those three to finish off. So yeah, if you want those shirts, get them now because they'll be gone after this batch.
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Mar 13, 2012 09:42
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GLOSS posted:This was asked a bit back, but the answer is Andrew wants to put up some new shirts in the store, and was told if he wanted to he had to close out some of his other shirts, since hey there's a finite amount of space in the Topatoco warehouse. Since the record/ghost/squiddle already have alternate, updated versions of their shirts, he decided on those three to finish off. So yeah, if you want those shirts, get them now because they'll be gone after this batch. Okay, thank you for the answer.
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Mar 13, 2012 10:37
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I'm enjoying this alpha-beta dream bubble chat, since when dream bubbles first appeared they scared my poo poo and I tried to get some talk going about their existentially dubious qualities, with limited success. There are a lot of little issues that go from "possible" to "pressing" with what we've learned about the dream bubbles. One of them is that since the dead from all time-lines can be found in the dream-bubbles, ideas like reviving the dead players sort of lose their steam. Back when Tavros being dead meant just Tavros was dead, it was pretty coherent to say "I sort of hope Tavros comes back, I'd like a happy ending." Now we learn there are innumerable dead Tavroses throughout the dream bubbles. If you're Karkat, can you really think of bringing 'your' Tavros back? Mourning 'your' Tavros, if you could easily lose track of him amongst a sea of such dead trolls? It's hard enough accepting losing friends, particularly as a self-appointed leader, but it becomes harder when you discover your loss is nebulous and intangible like it is here. There are other concerns too. The dream bubbles don't seem to be the natural afterlife. Feferi mentions having to ask the horror-terrors to glub them up, meaning while they probably captured all instances of dead players across all timelines, this isn't where the dead players were supposed to end up and it's probably not permanent. Somebody's killing the horror-terrors, after all, and it's not unlikely they'll die by the end of the comic. What's going to happen to all these lost souls? That's not even the end of it! There's even thematic concerns to consider. Homestuck is a coming of age story. It's about growth, developing, growing up, the origins of gods and universes. Any fate which keeps you trapped in the past, in your memories, unable to grow up, is a Bad End. Karkat speculates a little on this, wondering if life is nothing more than a journey to collect the memories that'll provide your backdrop in the afterlife. Life has to be more than this in order to avoid nihilism, so the dream bubbles cannot be a good thing. This only increases the desire to see the dead characters escape/transcend them in some way, a desire further complicated by how packed the bubbles are now. So much to consider! Edit - going to add that Karkat's a little late to muse on how unfair it is that there's no way to know what's part of the alpha timeline, meaning at any moment you might accidentally do the wrong thing and become a beta timeline and be fated to die. That was a horrific prospect back when a thousand Aradias showed up to fight the Black King. Now though, I'm pretty sure the arrival of the Green Sun signals the end of beta timeline splinters breaking off of the whole (it was the critical path event that was required of the alpha-timeline) so it shouldn't be the same sort of issue any more. Dolash fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Mar 13, 2012 |
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Mar 13, 2012 15:53
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There's also the matter that only session players seem to get dream bubbles. They dream on Prospit or Derse if their dream self is alive, or, if not, they dream in the Furthest Ring. We've seen one other character dreaming (WV), and it seemed to be a conventional dream, because of course he has no dream self and never did. If the dream bubbles are only possible because the Gods of the Furthest Ring are coughing them up, then I think that still means that this is the normal afterlife (at least for session players), because all the time bullshit associated with the Furthest Ring means that they've probably always been blowing dream bubbles for humans and trolls to hang out in. On the other hand, if whatever's threatening them (Lord English) is defeated and they stop because they no longer need to furnish the heroes with a means of reviewing the past and the beta timelines, that would be a satisfying entry on the list of things that their victory will set right. I must admit I hadn't caught on to the thematic value of this depiction of the afterlife. You're right: in a coming-of-age story, not only is the only failure that matters the failure to look forward, but death itself means being stuck in the past forever, or, in other words, there's no difference between being stuck in the past and dying.
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Mar 13, 2012 16:11
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