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That was some drat good [S].Ape Has Killed Ape posted:It probably doesn't bode well for Viskra that Aradia has come to watch. The army plan is going to end up like Kurukshetra and I'm going to love every minute of it.
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Jul 28, 2015 01:40
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This update brings to mind a question: Why do doomed timelines (or realities, now) exist? When the concept was first introduced, doomed timelines were the result of Time player meddling, i.e. Dave's time loops and Aradia's Aradiabots. However, as the story continued, Terezi's powers and the dream bubbles showed that other doomed timelines exist, the origins of which have nothing to do with time shenanigans. Why do they exist? Why is it that seemingly arbitrary decisions create doomed timelines? Are Terezi's Seer of Mind powers the cause? Do they grant a sort of look into a Schrodinger's box and actually create the doomed timelines they witness? If not, what does create them? Why was the timeline in which she murdered Vriska the doomed one, aside from the whims of Skaia? What differentiates a doomed timeline in a successful session vs. an alpha timeline in a failed session? (Doc Scratch's definition of the 'alpha timeline' no longer holds true due to John's retcons, mind, and was never very objective anyway.) Have we ever seen a doomed timeline that wasn't created from either time shenanigans or witnessed through Terezi's powers? Could other classes and aspects have the capability to create doomed timelines as part of their power set (i.e. a Doom player)? It's doubtful that the finale will give any insight to this, but all those billions of ghosts had to come from somewhere. If not Time or Mind powers, then how?
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Jul 28, 2015 01:47
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It's not complicated. Doomed timelines happen whenever what is supposed to happen in the alpha timeline doesn't happen. What dictates what is "supposed to happen" is unclear, presumably Lord English. John gained the ability to alter the alpha timeline without repercussion when he touched Caliborn's treasure. Basically every decision any character ever makes creates a doomed timeline if its not the decision the Alpha timeline wants.
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Jul 28, 2015 01:56
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I don't think Terezi's mind powers were actually showing something that happened with regards to killing Vriska, I think it was just a vision of a future that may be. We haven't seen any evidence of doomed timelines being created without time travel/ retcons. Upon rewatching it occurs to me that LE is putting a lot of cracks into the furthest ring now. Whatever's going to happen, it's going to happen soon.
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Jul 28, 2015 01:59
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They all came from Time powers plus the Retjohn, not Mind powers. Other than the just-made-evident Quest Bed ghosts, we've never seen a ghost from a doomed timeline that wasn't created by one of those two things (with one exception, Red Calliope, but the whole Denizen Choice thing seems like it could maybe be a loophole, especially since Echidna is the denizen in charge of the Scratch). People used to talk about the Vriska that went to fight Jack being out in the dream bubbles somewhere, but we've never seen her, and the suggestion to me is that Terezi's Mind powers didn't create a doomed timeline, they saw what would become one if she let things play out. Otherwise doomed timelines don't arise from potential actions, they arise from actual actions that were then corrected by some time travel-based game mechanism, usually the Time player going back and fixing things. The reason there are so many troll ghosts in the dreambubbles is because Aradia took a fire-and-forget attrition-based approach to time travel, and Damara was actively sabotaging her session, which presumably made her even worse on the dead torsos piling up front. This is also why there are only a handful of beta kids there, and why this update shows the first ghosts of alpha kids we've ever seen there.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:01
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A detail that confuses me: Why is Dirk lying dead beside the sendificator intact? Why isn't his head gone?
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Jul 28, 2015 02:08
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Zaggitz posted:What dictates what is "supposed to happen" is unclear, presumably Lord English. John gained the ability to alter the alpha timeline without repercussion when he touched Caliborn's treasure. Yeah it's all down to Time powers and the RetJohn, that's been covered, but I want to say that the alpha timeline is, by definition, what Lord English desires it to be. That's what being a Lord of Time means, he literally Rules over time itself. All opposition to him is rendered impossible because any timeline where he loses is not allowed to occur. That's why the RetJohn power is so important, it wasn't just coincidence that before he found it the result was the Game Over session, they were playing a fixed game. The house always wins.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:09
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King Cohort posted:Are Terezi's Seer of Mind powers the cause? Do they grant a sort of look into a Schrodinger's box and actually create the doomed timelines they witness? If not, what does create them? Why was the timeline in which she murdered Vriska the doomed one, aside from the whims of Skaia? What differentiates a doomed timeline in a successful session vs. an alpha timeline in a failed session? (Doc Scratch's definition of the 'alpha timeline' no longer holds true due to John's retcons, mind, and was never very objective anyway.) I don't know the answers to most of those questions, but in this case it's this: First, the doomed timeline was the one where Terezi didn't murder Vriska and the alpha was where she did (before John retconned things). So Terezi basically had a... fork, I guess? Maybe letting Vriska go (and then everyone else's deaths) could have been the alpha, but Terezi was able to look ahead and choose otherwise. It was doomed because she said it was doomed, essentially. The best definition of the alpha timeline I can give is one that resolves ALL outstanding timeloops and paradoxes. ie. if Dave from the future travels to the past and does X, then any timeline where Dave does not travel back to do X is doomed because it creates a paradox. As we're now seeing, the timeloops involved in the current situation are pretty far reaching- they have a hand in creating Lord English, whose influence stretches all over and around. As to why anything specific event being either doomed or not, I think it's kind of like... you have to start with an end point (which is really a beginning, there's no difference) and then work backwards, but also forwards, all at once. Like an equilibrium. Things happen because there is no other way they could happen. And for the most part the corrections are going to come from the players themselves, who look around and go "ah crap something's gone wrong" and then either use timetravel to fix it, or maybe Mind or Light powers or what have you to look ahead and choose and maybe sometimes they choose wrong? I don't know.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:10
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Arsenic Lupin posted:A detail that confuses me: Why is Dirk lying dead beside the sendificator intact? Why isn't his head gone? His body is made whole again, like Eridan's, as he wakes up in the dreambubbles. This is just his own memory of his death, so as he becomes cognizant of it, the memory begins to shift off-script. Like when a dream becomes lucid! Still messed up and a totally new detail to me that, while there's continuity of consciousness between dead dreamselves/realselves, they actually are individual entities that leave divergent ghosts when slain. Super messed up, really.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:11
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Arsenic Lupin posted:A detail that confuses me: Why is Dirk lying dead beside the sendificator intact? Why isn't his head gone? Likely we came in after his head rejoined his body in the Dream Bubbles, like how Eridan's lower half rejoined his upper half.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:12
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Everything that has ever actually been depicted has happened. The "alpha timeline" is the causally consistent and self-causing sequence of events. Beta timelines are those which influence the alpha timeline, but in so doing also prevent themselves from repeating. (The most basic example is how Dave discovering his own corpse from the future prevents him from walking into the room with the stab guy in it.) Strictly speaking, it isn't exclusively related to time. Time travel is obviously a powerful and common way to effect reverse causality, but it can also happen as a result of, for instance, clairvoyance, or getting spoilers directly from the narrator. Beings with even greater supernatural awareness can mess with causality in ways that seem impossible to mere mortals, who have to abide by the laws of physical reality (such as they are) by e.g. only time traveling along a timeline, or only being able to realize events that are psychologically plausible. For instance, Denizens and sprites are aware of all versions of themselves, and the Horrorterrors are able to preserve ghosts of that nobody alive can remember ever actually dying. Caliborn exerted total influence over the reality he found himself in by means of a subtle boon from Yaldabaoth, and John used the same thing to transport the last few refugees from that hosed-up reality into another one that had a chance of winning. Basically, though, it's all about alternate realities - regardless of what increasingly mystical means are used to create them. All alternate incarnations are equally valid, and victory for one is victory for all of them. Consider, for instance, Mario. Mario defeats Bowser and saves the princess, right? That's how it goes. But what about all the lives where he falls into a hole? What about the ones where you reload from a save file and lose progress? What about the copy of Mario that your friend plays and gives up before reaching the end? What about your other friend who uses an emulator with a rewind plugin and records speedrun videos? What if they ship a patch? What about unreleased development builds of the game that had crappy unfinished levels and glitchy physics? For god's sake, what about the difference between Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World? With all this confusion and contradiction, there is nevertheless still one clear idea: Mario defeats Bowser and saves the princess.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:15
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Beta timelines are created when you gently caress up and make an unstable timeline. Lord English has set things up so his existence in the universe is an essential part of that universe's creation, thus any timeline that does not result in his arrival is doomed. He's also set it up so that it takes a very, very specific sequence of events that lead to his arrival. Whenever the kids make a choice that doesn't follow this script, they end up creating a beta timeline and dooming themselves.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:16
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Android Blues posted:His body is made whole again, like Eridan's, as he wakes up in the dreambubbles. This is just his own memory of his death, so as he becomes cognizant of it, the memory begins to shift off-script. Like when a dream becomes lucid! Is that new? Dream Jade had her own afterlife funtimes, after all. Surely Jade would've had her own, too, had she died.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:20
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Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too, it's just weird to consider that all those god tier deaths left blameless ghosts as well as the dreamself deaths that happened in more straightforwardly tragic ways.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:28
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That was sweet except for the part where I expected them to both get owned by Lord English at the end, not sure why I was thinking that
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Jul 28, 2015 02:32
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Ariong posted:drat. I... I never realized how many sad stories were floating through the furthest ring. What really hit me was John, on his quest bed, when all of the various deaths were floating by in little squares. That was the alpha John, the one who followed the script laid out by paradox space perfectly. He just wasn't his dream self. That means that there aren't just 11 other sad ghosts for every dead troll, or 3 for every dead human. That means that there is yet another lost soul for every god tier player. I wonder what that's like, having to piece together what you did wrong. Even worse, how does it feel finding out that you did something right when you should have mucked it up? How can Hussie make death seem so meaningless, and still make every one tragic? Wasn't one of the ideas behind the comic "characters in a video game being aware of all their lost lives, and what happens to those lives when they die?"
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Jul 28, 2015 02:36
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gently caress you, Lord English.
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Arsenic Lupin posted:A detail that confuses me: Why is Dirk lying dead beside the sendificator intact? Why isn't his head gone? It seems that their wounds, no matter how grievous, heal. Even if it means reconnecting two body parts.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:37
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Color Printer posted:That was sweet except for the part where I expected them to both get owned by Lord English at the end, not sure why I was thinking that I actually thought this was gonna happen for a second too 
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Jul 28, 2015 02:45
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You know, thinking about it, leaving a ghost while god tiering means there's a Caliborn ghost out there somewhere. I hope that isn't used for one of his lovely twists.
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Jul 28, 2015 02:54
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Boneless Jogger posted:You know, thinking about it, leaving a ghost while god tiering means there's a Caliborn ghost out there somewhere. I hope that isn't used for one of his lovely twists. hmmm, but on the other hand, this is further, but not conclusive, evidence that Gamzee is not god tier
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Jul 28, 2015 02:56
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I don't really think that the concept of an alpha or beta timeline really makes sense anymore, the way people are using it. We're saying that the alpha timeline is the road that leads to LE's existence in a universe, thus preventing a universe's timeline from going off script. But actually, up until the end of Act 5, for the story's main characters this was directly tied to the Green Sun. LE's "necessity" in the trolls' universe is based on Doc Scratch serving as a host for him, and Doc Scratch's existence requires the Green Sun. The beta kids meanwhile were on a script leading to the Green Sun's creation, and anything that prevented this from happening was a beta timeline simply by the fact of Bec's existence: no Green Sun, no Bec, the events of the beta kids' lives as depicted are impossible, time paradox. But once (in "narrative time") they created the Green Sun, that time loop was closed. For the trolls, they escaped their session and their doomed universe. None of them should be bound by any time loop's completion, so what exactly prevents them from killing LE outside of his (pretty considerable) personal strength and abilities? They can't prevent him from existing for the same reasons I described, sure, but nothing about their existence depends on LE always existing forever, as far as I can tell. This is why, after Act 5, there haven't been any "normal" beta timelines. Dave never time traveled and there was nothing for him to undo on the meteor anyway, the alpha session was so dull that they never needed a time player to undo anything, and the battleship is a special case for the "special" reset John made happen. In this case, the narrative arc that ended in [S] Game Over wasn't a beta timeline like any other. People who died there became ghosts in the dream bubbles, but nothing about how it went down "necessitated" a reset. There was no paradox to resolve (again, as far as I can tell). Those events were mooted by John's choice to retcon the events of the story. This is fundamentally different from other beta timelines in that it was the result, not of the characters' hands being forced by fate, but of a character's agency as a protagonist to use his abilities to affect the course of the narrative. This is complicated and pretty tl;dr so idk maybe I am missing something.
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Jul 28, 2015 03:06
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I think that's mostly right, but as we've seen the kids are present at and have a hand in creating the amalgamated Lord English spirit- so literally everything in the comic, in universe A and B and all the sessions and the dream bubbles and all the alpha and beta timelines and blah blah blah is all leading up the that moment, which is the furthest in the "future" that we've "seen". but get this- that moment only happened because John had his retcon powers...
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Jul 28, 2015 03:27
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Mazerunner posted:hmmm, but on the other hand, this is further, but not conclusive, evidence that Gamzee is not god tier I figured being told several times "He didn't even actually God Tier, he just made those stupid pajamas" was conclusive proof?
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Jul 28, 2015 03:42
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sirtommygunn posted:Beta timelines are created when you gently caress up and make an unstable timeline. Lord English has set things up so his existence in the universe is an essential part of that universe's creation, thus any timeline that does not result in his arrival is doomed. He's also set it up so that it takes a very, very specific sequence of events that lead to his arrival. Whenever the kids make a choice that doesn't follow this script, they end up creating a beta timeline and dooming themselves. Echoing what someone in this thread said a while ago: I hope that if they do manage to destroy Lord English, doomed timelines cease to be a thing. Even if we never get to see the effects that would bring, a future where the characters don't have to worry about dooming countless versions of themselves would be a nice end.
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Jul 28, 2015 03:49
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Grapplejack posted:Hi im from the future here's what happens 2/3 so far.  Also i'm really glad Aradia is back, she's the best 
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Jul 28, 2015 03:51
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Prison Warden posted:The house always wins. Jesus christ.
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Jul 28, 2015 03:56
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Remem8er, even in death Terezi Owns.
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Jul 28, 2015 03:57
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Classtoise posted:I figured being told several times "He didn't even actually God Tier, he just made those stupid pajamas" was conclusive proof? Maybe that's how Bards ascend, since they can't die Wait a second does Gamzee have a dream self? If he does, where the gently caress is he in the Dream Bubbles? He would have died in the Jackattack
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Jul 28, 2015 03:58
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Zebia posted:Echoing what someone in this thread said a while ago: I hope that if they do manage to destroy Lord English, doomed timelines cease to be a thing. Even if we never get to see the effects that would bring, a future where the characters don't have to worry about dooming countless versions of themselves would be a nice end. So long as they avoided dicking around with time loops after that they would probably never have to worry about dooming themselves ever again. At least until their universe has a sburb session of its own. sirtommygunn fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jul 28, 2015 |
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Jul 28, 2015 04:05
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Burkion posted:Wait a second does Gamzee have a dream self? I'm starting to think that Gamzee is a Juju and there can only ever be one.
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Jul 28, 2015 04:07
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Android Blues posted:The reason there are so many troll ghosts in the dreambubbles is because Aradia took a fire-and-forget attrition-based approach to time travel, and Damara was actively sabotaging her session, which presumably made her even worse on the dead torsos piling up front. This is also why there are only a handful of beta kids there, and why this update shows the first ghosts of alpha kids we've ever seen there. Ah, thanks! Good point; it's easy to forget that every Aradiabot equals 11 more dead trolls. Not to mention the only time you see all the billions of troll ghosts together is in Ministrife. Guess it just didn't click.
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Jul 28, 2015 04:34
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That was pretty great
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Jul 28, 2015 04:50
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Okay, so, there a theory floating around that the cracks aren't glowing: There's something behind them that's producing colors and light. Lord English hasn't been trying to kill his sister, he's been trying to break through the void like an egg. This raises two very important questions: 1.) What is behind the void? 2.) What happens when the whole thing falls apart?
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Jul 28, 2015 05:10
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:1.) What is behind the void? 
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Jul 28, 2015 05:12
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I'm more inclined to believe that there is something behind the void, but that the uncovering of it is more of an accidental side effect of LE trying to kill his sister.
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Jul 28, 2015 05:13
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what's behind the void is an endless number of tangled, writhing squiddles and if he breaks through they will flood all known space, a tidal wave of colorful tentacles consuming all of space and time as they become tangle buddies with everything that is, was, and ever will be
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Jul 28, 2015 05:21
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The cracks in the furthest ring finally crumble, revealing a giant image depicting Oakland Raiders linebacker Bill Romanowski fending off a wild, flaming black steed, in a mystical snowcapped mountain setting. The cast fondly regards it for eternity.
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Jul 28, 2015 05:24
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Blackheart posted:I actually thought this was gonna happen for a second too Don't celebrate too early. I got the impression that them being trapped on that little fragment of Paradox Space as the screen whited out could be an ambiguous end for them - we could somewhat reasonably never see them again after this, and regardless of how the dream bubbles shake out at the end they might've just been eradicated. Regardless of what just happened to them though, it seems Terezi's mind powers mean their lives and the lessons they learned won't be lost entirely. She sounded very sad talking to Vriska there, hopefully knowing how they ended in another time will bring her closure. I don't find it surprising to see so many ghosts for all kinds of 'incidental' deaths, Dream Jade clearly laid out that the different selves have their own lives and afterlife. It's just surprising (and really satisfying) to see that acknowledged and closure at least hinted at, particularly for the characters of the pre-retcon timeline. As much as the post-retcon timeline characters have been having satisfying character advancement they still feel "off" compared to their original timeline versions, I think because we spent so much time with them. All the little differences and the terrible end they came to still felt unresolved, but this went a long way to assuage that feeling. We might not get to follow the stories of the pre-retcon characters or see what becomes of them, but Ikimaru's follow-up on tumblr will do: 
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Jul 28, 2015 05:59
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Has somebody pointed out already that Lord English's coat is Vriskas, with a flashing border?
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Jul 28, 2015 06:04
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Has somebody pointed out already that Lord English's coat is Vriskas, with a flashing border? Yeah, and we know Kurloz stole it awhile ago. So it's almost literally hers.
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Jul 28, 2015 06:09
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