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The Striders really have terrible luck in regards to spawning habitable planets in the medium.
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Nov 13, 2012 02:15
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That's just for gameplay balance reasons. 
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Nov 13, 2012 02:19
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I'm curious that we only see Roxie+Jane/Jake+Dirk pairings. I'm wondering if there's been a falling out between them over Dirk's crazy manipulation kiss gambit.
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Nov 13, 2012 02:20
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team overhead smash posted:I'm curious that we only see Roxie+Jane/Jake+Dirk pairings. I'm wondering if there's been a falling out between them over Dirk's crazy manipulation kiss gambit. Roxy!  Roxie would be wait a minute... 
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Nov 13, 2012 02:29
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change my name posted:What's the point when everyone ends up being able to fly anyways? Not quite everyone, it seems to me like most players would generally remain earthbound(  ) until further into the game, where they would need to build up first to even get that far. And even the ones that can fly, would still need to have their homes built up so their allies coming through their portals who can't don't fall to their deaths or get stuck and unable to reach the next. Given how the trolls were swimming in grist after a while and building probably remained at it's early-game low pricing, there probably wasn't much reason NOT to spend some time building your houses, especially if you could phone it in with copy-paste. Given all the emphasis on building up within the game itself(as well as the trolls indoctrinated to do it as part of making them better at it), I'd imagine in most Sburb sessions flying usually didn't happen until later with dream selves and god tiers, except for rare edge cases with good or lucky alchemization. (The latter of which, along with outside help, explaining most of the flying capabilities the characters had up until all the God Tiering.)
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Nov 13, 2012 02:36
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Literally Sharks posted:I hope you realize that you seem to have inadvertently claimed that people can't die in Homestuck's alpha timeline! If somebody's death is required by the alpha timeline, then this person wasn't really important anymore. See: Nepeta.
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Nov 13, 2012 02:42
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Cat Mattress posted:If somebody's death is required by the alpha timeline, then this person wasn't really important anymore. See: Nepeta. I think you have the right idea but the wrong conclusion. Both Eridan and Vriska's deaths were absolutely required by the alpha timeline, because otherwise they would have directly caused the deaths of the people who are necessary. If Jack killed the rest of the trolls, Dave and Rose wouldn't be on the meteor because Jack would be there already and probably would have killed one of them. That isn't even counting if any of the meteor trolls are important. Yet both Eridan and Vriska were pretty drat important characters, the former giving Jade his ultimate weapon and the latter contributing directly to John's ultimate weapon. Nepeta on the other hand was, as much as I like her character, pretty much useless to the story/alpha timeline.
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Nov 13, 2012 03:04
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Being alive does not have any strong correlation, positive or negative, to being important. Let's not forget Aradia!
Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Nov 13, 2012 |
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Nov 13, 2012 03:07
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drat, I knew something looked familiar with Dirks new combat garb. [ANBU the elite ninja from Naruto.] Dirk has achieved maximum ninja.
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Nov 13, 2012 04:28
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Bongo Bill posted:Being alive does not have any strong correlation, positive or negative, to being important. Let's not forget Aradia! Or for that matter, Sollux, who's managed to be both. But yeah, I think Karkat's rant to himself is relevant here - the one where he rails against the fact that there's no predictable rhyme or reason to what constitutes the alpha timeline and what causes a beta. It's not success or failure, it's not believing in fate or fighting against it, it's not serving Lord English or Sburb or whatever, the events that make up the alpha timeline appear arbitrary except that they are unavoidable and collectively result in certain events like the creation of the green sun and the rise of Lord English. So, for that reason, it could've been a part of the alpha timeline that the four post-scratch kids end up entering their session on the deadly, toxic atmosphere planet, but for no particular reason it was not. It may yet be destiny that they all die at some point, or just some of them, or none of them, and it's not really clear who gets to decide that. The recent hinting at the possibility that Calliope might be influencing the timeline somehow is making the question of "whence comes the alpha timeline?" interesting again. If what is destined to be emanates from Lord English alone the heroes are pretty doomed, but two adversarial influences might give them the wiggle room they need to succeed. Puts me in mind of all the chess imagery.
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Nov 13, 2012 04:42
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The alpha timeline is nothing more or less than "what happens." Karkat's dilemma is existentialism in its purest form: Why does anything happen? Why does something exist rather than nothing, and why does it take the form it has taken? What is special about reality?
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Nov 13, 2012 04:53
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Bongo Bill posted:The alpha timeline is nothing more or less than "what happens." Karkat's dilemma is existentialism in its purest form: Why does anything happen? Why does something exist rather than nothing, and why does it take the form it has taken? What is special about reality? It's a little more complex than that when you take into account things like Davesprite.
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Nov 13, 2012 04:54
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This flash was incredibly awesome and seeing the B2 kids adventuring around their incredibly hosed up sesion rekindled my desire to work out a Homestuck tabletop RPG system. I remember that some people were doing something similar via the internet a few months ago - doing some kind of Homestuck RPG - so does there exist some material there that I could use as a starting point? Obviously it would be preferable not to start from scratch on account of how drat...Homestucky it would have to be. If someone could help me out I would be eternally grateful!
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Nov 13, 2012 04:59
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Captain Oblivious posted:It's a little more complex than that when you take into account things like Davesprite. The consequences of time travel don't change the fundamental nature of the question. Beta timelines are things that prevent themselves from happening. The rules of causality are more complicated in Homestuck than in a linear universe, but ultimate causality is equally enigmatic.
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Nov 13, 2012 05:09
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Bongo Bill posted:The alpha timeline is nothing more or less than "what happens." Karkat's dilemma is existentialism in its purest form: Why does anything happen? Why does something exist rather than nothing, and why does it take the form it has taken? What is special about reality? I'm not sold on it being quite the same dilemma considering there are conscious agents with agendas bending it toward their own goals. When two time travellers with opposite goals exist causality is going to need some mechanic to determine whose goals dominate and become the alpha timeline, and there seems to be a very real hierarchy of whose powers trump whose, with Lord English at the top (Dave can travel back in time to save John and Jade but only because Lord English needs them alive for the alpha timeline to play out in a manner favourable to him). The real answer is that which happens in the story is that which the author needs to happen, but naked author fiat is generally considered really heavy-handed and clumsy so I've always hoped there's more going on behind the scenes to explain why time is working out this way. If they beat Lord English because it just happens to happen that it's part of the Alpha Timeline that they beat him without anyone doing anything to wrest control of causality from him, it's going to be a little anticlimactic.
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Nov 13, 2012 05:12
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Bongo Bill posted:The consequences of time travel don't change the fundamental nature of the question. Beta timelines are things that prevent themselves from happening. Beta timelines actually happened though, they're just doomed.
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Nov 13, 2012 05:13
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Dolash posted:When two time travellers with opposite goals exist causality is going to need some mechanic to determine whose goals dominate and become the alpha timeline, and there seems to be a very real hierarchy of whose powers trump whose, with Lord English at the top (Dave can travel back in time to save John and Jade but only because Lord English needs them alive for the alpha timeline to play out in a manner favourable to him). No, Dave can travel back in time to save John and Jade because if he doesn't save John, John never performs the ectobiology that produces John and Dave and Jade to begin with, which makes that timeline a beta timeline because it's self-preventing. Lord English doesn't have anything to do with it. There's no actual textual support for your idea of there being some kind of time traveller hierarchy of power.
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Nov 13, 2012 05:23
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Dolash posted:I'm not sold on it being quite the same dilemma considering there are conscious agents with agendas bending it toward their own goals. When two time travellers with opposite goals exist causality is going to need some mechanic to determine whose goals dominate and become the alpha timeline, and there seems to be a very real hierarchy of whose powers trump whose, with Lord English at the top (Dave can travel back in time to save John and Jade but only because Lord English needs them alive for the alpha timeline to play out in a manner favourable to him). Linear reality is also full of conscious agents with agendas bending it toward their own goals. The difference between the way Lord English influences reality and the way any other time traveler does is that he's very powerful and intelligent, not a qualitative difference. The rules describing whose time travel trumps whose are the rules of causality. He may have manipulated events to be as they are, but it's not as if he simply willed it and it was so; he sent his agents out to make it happen, with the benefit of foreknowledge. Comic posted:Beta timelines actually happened though, they're just doomed. Beta timelines cease to exist once they send back the time traveler who prevents them. Homestuck has three ontological states of existence, not two: things that happen (alpha), things that prevented themselves from happening (beta), and things that just plain never happened. It's clear that the beta timelines still exist in that big ugly mess called reality, because things can escape from beta timelines via time travel (escaping to the furthest ring, where time is nonlinear, is itself a form of time travel), but anything that doesn't escape a beta timeline exists in a less ontologically privileged state which Karkat rightly considers less real.
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Nov 13, 2012 05:25
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fatherdog posted:No, Dave can travel back in time to save John and Jade because if he doesn't save John, John never performs the ectobiology that produces John and Dave and Jade to begin with, which makes that timeline a beta timeline because it's self-preventing. Lord English doesn't have anything to do with it. Yeah, you're right about Dave. Still though, I'd just place that as Sburb having higher causal ability than Dave, where Sburb needs them to have a particular origin and makes it so, so Dave can't just travel back in time and prevent Sburb from being discovered in the first place thus preventing him and his friends from ever existing. Sburb's desires outweigh Dave's, while Lord English's outweigh Sburb (getting the first guardians made into Doc Scratch, ensuring the sessions get scratched or made null or void as he needs them to be). If there isn't any hierarchy of causal powers it sort of suggests that the alpha timeline, with all of its circular causations, plays out as it does because it just happens to. Caliborn becomes Lord English when time could've just as easily prevented him from becoming Lord English because, well, that's the story. Which feels sort of weak. I mean it's true of every story that it plays out the way it does because that's what the author wants, but the characters here are actively trying to mess with the time stream and who can and can't being determined entirely by author fiat feels very heavy-handed. Dave not being able to stop the Green Sun's creation from being a predetermined thing because LE is a Lord of Time while he's just a Knight seems more interesting than it being because Hussie decided it was so, even if they're fundamentally the same thing. This is why I've liked the stuff with Lord English killing Hussie and taking over writing the story, or the ideas that Calliope's fan-fiction indirectly influences the alpha and she and Caliborn are engaged in a sort of chess match for control of the timeline - it suggests there's some sort of reason why these circular causations exist in the story. I mean yeah I guess it's theory and speculation but I think there's something there worth thinking about. Dolash fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Nov 13, 2012 |
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Nov 13, 2012 05:56
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Dolash posted:Yeah, you're right about Dave. Still though, I'd just place that as Sburb having higher causal ability than Dave, where Sburb needs them to have a particular origin and makes it so It has nothing to do with "Sburb having a higher causal ability". Sburb doesn't "need" them to have that origin; they have that origin, so if Dave goes back and changes things so that origin never happens, he never existed to go back and make those changes, so that timeline is self-refuting and becomes a beta. Again, your idea about different things having "higher causal ability" is not supported by the text. The fact that you find a stated alternative narratively unsatisfying does not cause it to be so.
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Nov 13, 2012 06:08
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Lord English killing Andrew Hussie is far more likely to be of symbolic than causal significance on the events of the story.
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Nov 13, 2012 06:10
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fatherdog posted:It has nothing to do with "Sburb having a higher causal ability". Sburb doesn't "need" them to have that origin; they have that origin, so if Dave goes back and changes things so that origin never happens, he never existed to go back and make those changes, so that timeline is self-refuting and becomes a beta. True, but I wouldn't say it's ruled out by the text either. I think it's held so far, more or less, and may in some way be addressed by the story (again the Calliope/Caliborn chess thing feels relevant). I'd also like to suggest that it might be a fair criticism of the story itself if it turns out that the alpha timeline is purely arbitrary, as you say. Different interpretations of the text, I think I'd call it.
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Nov 13, 2012 06:12
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Bongo Bill posted:Lord English killing Andrew Hussie is far more likely to be of symbolic than causal significance on the events of the story. It is my theory that, ever since Andrew Hussie died, Andrew North has been producing Homestuck with consultation. It explains how Andrew has been able to sign so many prints and still update.
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Nov 13, 2012 06:12
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Jon Joe posted:Andrew North Ryan North's son whom Ryan named after Andrew?
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Nov 13, 2012 06:51
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Ariong posted:Ryan North's son whom Ryan named after Andrew? That would be Andrew Junior.
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Nov 13, 2012 06:53
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VocalizePlayerDeath posted:drat, I knew something looked familiar with Dirks new combat garb.
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Nov 13, 2012 06:56
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fatherdog posted:No, Dave can travel back in time to save John and Jade because if he doesn't save John, John never performs the ectobiology that produces John and Dave and Jade to begin with, which makes that timeline a beta timeline because it's self-preventing. Lord English doesn't have anything to do with it. This is pretty much it. It's just a solution to the grandfather paradox (if you go back in time to kill your grandpa, you just create an alternate timeline where your grandpa is dead) except with stable time loops thrown in to the mix (if Fry goes back in time and kills himself before he does the nasty in the pasty, he just creates an alternate timeline where I honestly have no loving clue).
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Nov 13, 2012 07:26
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The best part about the entire flash is that it's a way to simply tell someone what Homestuck is. And then they get the troll chats 
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Nov 13, 2012 07:26
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Oxxidation posted:Dirk's world is the only one where the gas is just a freefloating poison in the atmosphere, because Dirk is Hard Core. Actually, I think they're just exploring the inside of one of those enormous krypton-filled plasma globes. They're big enough to see from space, after all. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Nov 13, 2012 |
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Nov 13, 2012 07:36
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Wikipedia actually has a really good plot synopsis of Homestuck if you wanted to explain it to your friends before sending them off to deal with all that time travel bullshit.
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Nov 13, 2012 07:58
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See that spoils a lot of stuff, though. Part of the fun is the way the scope just spirals out like crazy as the story progresses. I just go with the time tested "A boy and his friends play a game."
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Nov 13, 2012 08:06
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I figure that Act 1 is fair game, since it's so short. "A group of internet friends play a computer game that turns out to destroy the world. The situation continues to escalate." Then, if they know about the trolls by osmosis, I add, "Along the way they meet some aliens." If they need encouragement, I like to say "Somewhere in Homestuck is a page that will make you love it, but it's impossible to know which one it is until you reach it." A few spoiler-light pages include Dave versus Tavros, [S] WV?: Rise Up, and Calliope surveying the landscape.
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Nov 13, 2012 08:18
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I've had some success with the first part of the Striderbros strife. Nothing else, just that link.
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Nov 13, 2012 08:24
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Out of all the friends I've recommended Homestuck to, only one has actually started reading it. But unfortunately, he doesn't have reliable internet access, and can only read it sporadically. And I got him into it by showing a selection of some of the better moments, which ended up triggering a slew of questions about the plot, so now I've been railroaded into explaining half the drat minutiae of Troll culture and timeline shenanigans to him, while trying to keep things as spoiler-free as possible. It's a difficult balance to maintain.
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Nov 13, 2012 10:43
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This will never ever stop being one of my favourite pesterlogs. These lines alone:quote:TG: im your 300 pound matronly freight-train get me every damned time. I've used variations of this zinger in real life to great effect.
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Nov 13, 2012 11:26
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Here's my take on the timeline thing: Time loops in Homestuck make (kind of) sense if you imagine a constantly branching causal chain where the ultimate goal is to fulfill the conditions that make it possible in the first place. It's a process whereby thousands and thousands of offshoot timelines are created where conditions were not right for the loop to exist in the first place. The alpha timeline is just the version where everything went right. It's not fate in the same way evolution doesn't work towards a single predetermined goal. Humans exist because one of the branches of our ancestry had just the right conditions to cause us, not because evolution was trying to get humans right. Continuing that analogy, neanderthals would be "beta" versions of us, who died off because the conditions weren't right for their continued existence. The timelines work the same way, but instead of humans it's stable time loops and instead of environmental factors you have the free will of individual characters constantly making decisions that shape the timeline. That will isn't necessarily controlled by an outside being, it's just a process of elimination down to a single chain of events. These decisions are branching off points in both the timeline and the narrative. The "canon" storyline is still going because the characters made the right decisions for it to do so, not because it was orchestrated as part of some grand design. Even characters who actually orchestrate events may appear to have predetermined fates, but that's because they're still characters in the same story undergoing the same process of causal pruning to get to a single sequence of events. Basically, it's called "Paradox Space" because free will and fate are the exact same thing.
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Nov 13, 2012 12:33
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Actually, I think the Alpha and Beta timelines have to do with stable time loops. Specifically, if anything is done to break a stable time loop (IE when John died before he did the ecto-biology which created all the players), then that timeline becomes a beta timeline. Time players are more aware of these time loops, and it's their job to keep everyone on track so they don't break any time loops. Also I think paradox space only factors in time loops that are currently 'left open' at any given time. So like, Eridan had to be alive for some time, because he was the one who gave Jade a specific weapon, and he had to be alive to actually do it. But once that was completed he was alright to die without causing a beta timeline, since he had already closed that stable time loop and wasn't involved in any other ones. I also think that the alpha timeline isn't 100% set in stone. It's more that there's a certain amount of events have to happen, because the results of those events have already been seen in the past, and besides that the players have a little wiggle room to do whatever they need to. That's how Lord English is making himself seemingly immortal: he's opening and closing thousands of time loops, and because of that nobody can kill him without breaking at least one time loop and making a beta timeline. The kids and trolls are going to have to find a moment when he's closed all of his time loops and hasn't opened another one in order to kill him.
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Nov 13, 2012 12:53
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What if you can close someone else's timeloop by masquerading as him? For example, what if Rose puts on a skull mask, and use grimdark energies to burst a dream bubble full of ghost trolls? If she convincingly looks like Lord English while doing so, then Lord English himself doesn't causally need to do that, which means he can safely be dead.
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Nov 13, 2012 16:57
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Cat Mattress posted:What if you can close someone else's timeloop by masquerading as him? Well, it worked in Doctor Who, so it must be true!
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Nov 13, 2012 19:07
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In case you missed it, because maybe you cant afford a GameBro subscription. The second chapter of the Hoopz Barkley Saga has been announced. http://www.talesofgames.com/
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Nov 13, 2012 22:43
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