Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Bobulus
Jan 28, 2007

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Has somebody pointed out already that Lord English's coat is Vriskas, with a flashing border?



Yep. In fact, during the whole 'Skull Island Treasure Hunt' thing, so many people were pointing it out ('OMG, Lord English takes trophies from his victims, he's going to kill ghost-Vriska!!!!') that there's a weird little flash where Kurloz picks up the discarded coat, presumably to give it to Lord English.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Arsenic Lupin
Apr 12, 2012

This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.


I think, on Nth viewing of the flash and the stills, what hits me hardest is that there's forgiveness in the Homestuck afterlife. Eridan did terrible things, and yet there are Feferi, Sollux, and Aradia waiting to greet him, and that's *living* Sollux and Aradia, the trolls who were left alone to mourn.

A good poster
Jan 10, 2010

Arsenic Lupin posted:

I think, on Nth viewing of the flash and the stills, what hits me hardest is that there's forgiveness in the Homestuck afterlife. Eridan did terrible things, and yet there are Feferi, Sollux, and Aradia waiting to greet him, and that's *living* Sollux and Aradia, the trolls who were left alone to mourn.

There was no Kanaya there, though. Maybe Feferi's just particularly forgiving.

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013

really israel could slaughter all these children without our help, I just didn't want to miss out on the chance to participate

A good poster posted:

There was no Kanaya there, though. Maybe Feferi's just particularly forgiving.

We've seen no evidence that Kanaya has ever actually died, have we?

I mean, she must have - her dreamself killed by Jack, and in the alt timelines where all the trolls were slaughtered...

But we've never actually seen a Kanaya ghost.

NewMars
Mar 10, 2013

GlyphGryph posted:

We've seen no evidence that Kanaya has ever actually died, have we?

I mean, she must have - her dreamself killed by Jack, and in the alt timelines where all the trolls were slaughtered...

But we've never actually seen a Kanaya ghost.

Kanaya is secretly gamzee. :ssh:

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

GlyphGryph posted:

We've seen no evidence that Kanaya has ever actually died, have we?

I mean, she must have - her dreamself killed by Jack, and in the alt timelines where all the trolls were slaughtered...

But we've never actually seen a Kanaya ghost.

All those Kanayas actually came back as vampires.

Dolash
Oct 23, 2008

aNYWAY,
tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS,
tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT,
oF ME GETTING HURT,


Kanaya was vaporized in the pre-retcon timeline, although admittedly that would've been harder to draw here.

The forgiveness thing was definitely there. I think Eridan and Feferi, Equius and Nepeta, Dave and Jade, Jake and Jane, and of course Vriska and Terezi, they're all cases where two dead characters had unfinished business with each other, cases where one or both characters wanted to say they're sorry. We're left to imagine how those conversations went down and what became of those ghosts but it's definitely got a hopeful tone to it. I was sort of hoping Vriska and Terezi's meetup was going to end with all the other pre-retcon ghosts gathering in one spot (which would hopefully not then be immediately annihilated), and I'm holding out hope that there might be a follow-up to this Flash that at least hints at these ghost characters having happy endings.

It would've been nice to see Kanaya but I think showing her and pre-retcon Rose meeting in the afterlife might've taken away from Rosesprite feeling sad she didn't meet Kanaya after dying but before being sprited. It's already kind of weird showing Equius and Nepeta meeting, since both the pre and post retcon Nepetas and Equiuses don't appear to have met prior to ARquiusprite meeting Davepeta or Fefeta. Beta timeline? Lost dream-bubble memory?

Dolash fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Jul 28, 2015

Davinci
Feb 21, 2013
I've been hearing a lot of interesting words about how the pre-scratch troll session went down, but I don't remember any of that actually being in the comic. Can someone give a quick rundown on what we know actually happened in that session? It would be much appreciated.

Davinci fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Jul 28, 2015

Grouchio
Aug 31, 2014

So the Omega-pause has begun then huh?

:byewhore:

Ammat The Ankh
Sep 7, 2010

Now, attempt to defeat me!
And I shall become a living legend!
I have to admit Kid Vriska and Kidrezi were cute.

But yeah basically

Fister Roboto posted:

This is why I still read this dumb gay comic.

Rooreelooo
Sep 29, 2007

"Ask not what Spiral Mountain can do for you; ask what you can do for Spiral Mountain."
God Tiers are really hosed up. If the person who dies on their quest bed goes to the afterlife as a ghost, that makes god tiers these weird game constructs that inherit all the living memories of a dead character posthumously. To the god tier there is a seamless transition from one body to the next, but to the original character they have to look on from the afterlife and watch themselves get replaced by this superpowered doppelganger. It's like that teleporter conundrum about destroying and replacing yourself each time, except all the versions of yourself you destroy go to the afterlife and could potentially meet up as ghosts.

Makes it even weirder if the god tier also dies. Imagine meeting up with your own pre-god tier self in the afterlife and talking to them. "I guess committing suicide on this slab really wasn't worth it, huh?"

Cabbit
Jul 19, 2001

Is that everything you have?

A good poster posted:

There was no Kanaya there, though. Maybe Feferi's just particularly forgiving.

Kanaya already got closure with Eridan, in that she chainsawed him in half.

Grapplejack
Nov 27, 2007

I'm honestly just kind of surprised that Aradia showed back up. Has she come to watch Vriska get blown the gently caress out by Lord English? no, because vriska will win

Plom Bar
Jun 5, 2004

hardest time i ever done :(

Davinci posted:

I've been hearing a lot of interesting words about how the pre-scratch tell session went down, but I don't remember any of that actually being in the comic. Can someone give a quick rundown on what we know actually happened in that session? It would be much appreciated.

I'm in the process of compiling this and I'm going to warn you that this poo poo is LONG.

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

I cant believe that homestuck's been going long enough that by the time it finishes, Flash will be a dead medium.

paranoid randroid
Mar 4, 2007

SynthOrange posted:

I cant believe that homestuck's been going long enough that by the time it finishes, Flash will be a dead medium.

hail satan

Plom Bar
Jun 5, 2004

hardest time i ever done :(

Davinci posted:

I've been hearing a lot of interesting words about how the pre-scratch tell session went down, but I don't remember any of that actually being in the comic. Can someone give a quick rundown on what we know actually happened in that session? It would be much appreciated.

Okay here we go

All of this is gleaned from Aranea's exposition booth at the end of each installment of OpenBound, taking place in Act 6 Intermission 3.

The session was unsuccessful largely because most of the Beforan trolls were too wrapped up in their own drama to get down to business. Meenah attempted to galvanize everyone's aggression by stoking these interpersonal fires in the hopes of rallying them into something like a successful session. As part of this, she'd push Damara's buttons by rubbing her face in the fact that her matesprit Rufioh was secretly seeing Horuss on the side, to the point where Damara snapped completely, paralyzed Rufioh, and killed Meenah. Horuss constructed a robot horse body for Rufioh, and Aranea managed to get Meenah to her quest bed in time to allow her to Ascend. From that point on, Damara dedicated herself to using her time powers to sabotage what meager efforts the group managed, only aiding the group in preparing for the scratch. We know that by this time, she was an agent of Lord English.

Cronus was initially very enthusiastic about becoming a hero, creating a very Harry Potter-esque mythos about himself, featuring him as Harry and English as Voldemort. However, something knocked the wind out of his sails, and he became disillusioned with what he believed was his destiny (it is implied that Damara had something to do with this) so he became a full time creepy rear end in a top hat and eventually Human Otherkin. Meanwhile, Kurloz and Meulin were seeing each other and had fallen asleep together when the former had a nightmare so terrible that he screamed until Meulin went permanently deaf. Afterwards, he took an oath of silence, sewing his mouth shut and committing himself to the Mirthful Messiahs religion, ultimately making both himself and Meulin servants of English. Mituna was originally a powerful psychic that would warn the others of various impending dooms before they arrived, until one incident where he exerted his abilities so much that it left him mentally incapacitated. Whatever it was he did, it had something to do with Kurloz, who was the only one with him at the time.

Kankri tried to unite everyone with his social justice blather, but because he's kind of an rear end in a top hat about it all, he was largely unsuccessful, though Porrim did what she could to keep him out of trouble. For her part, Porrim initially rejected the role of caretaker to the Mother Grub, but came around after the session had started, believing that there was some value in the work provided she chose it for herself. She eventually passed on her insights to Kanaya. And that leaves Latula, who lost her sense of smell, and also had weird unresolved romantic feelings for Kankri, which he shared, but they never went that deep into it because she committed herself to Mituna.

They were unsuccessful, so they initiated the scratch. At the advice of Echidna, Meenah arranged for everyone to die just before the Scratch took hold so that their souls could continue to exist in the furthest ring.

Aaaaaand I think that's the extent of what's known about the Beforan session.

NewMars
Mar 10, 2013

Rooreelooo posted:

God Tiers are really hosed up. If the person who dies on their quest bed goes to the afterlife as a ghost, that makes god tiers these weird game constructs that inherit all the living memories of a dead character posthumously. To the god tier there is a seamless transition from one body to the next, but to the original character they have to look on from the afterlife and watch themselves get replaced by this superpowered doppelganger. It's like that teleporter conundrum about destroying and replacing yourself each time, except all the versions of yourself you destroy go to the afterlife and could potentially meet up as ghosts.

Makes it even weirder if the god tier also dies. Imagine meeting up with your own pre-god tier self in the afterlife and talking to them. "I guess committing suicide on this slab really wasn't worth it, huh?"

It's worse then this. We see Karkat's dream self in the flash, so this is true of any dream self that dies as well.

Akett
Aug 6, 2012

Plom Bar posted:

Aaaaaand I think that's the extent of what's known about the Beforan session.

You forgot the throwaway mention that their Prospit moon vanished in ~*mysterious circumstances*~ which fans think was caused by Mituna, and would also mean there's a chance for the rest of the living trolls to god tier.

Android Blues
Nov 22, 2008

I feel like it's all but certain that Damara was repeatedly doubling back in time to throw a wrench in the works whenever her teammates started to get things right in the A1 session, which is super depressing when you think about it. Alternate timeline where, by some miracle of science or magic, Cronus isn't a toolbag? Rewrite that. Kankri becomes a half-decent leader? Ha ha, nope. Latula regains her sense of smell, thereby resolving all her personal issues instantly and forever? No way!

This isn't stated anywhere in the comic of course but, when you have the session's Time player actively working to gently caress things up and make everyone static and useless, I feel like that's how she would do it. Imagine being doomed to be a pointless douche because a time traveller keeps going back and erasing all your teachable moments. A cruel, gnostic fate.

Bell_
Sep 3, 2006

Tiny Baltimore
A billion light years away
A goon's posting the same thing
But he's already turned to dust
And the shitpost we read
Is a billion light-years old
A ghost just like the rest of us
I think Kankri pointed out to Latula privately that she was faking the lack of smell thing. Maybe I read into it wrong, but it fed well into what Karkat talked about with her cultivating a rad persona because she was unhappy with herself.

Android Blues
Nov 22, 2008

Nah, she was faking not being bothered by it, but he could tell that it really did bother her, is what went down. She really was anosmic! She just didn't feel like it should upset her because she was tough and cool and it was silly, but it actually did a little and Kankri recounts an anecdote about noticing this.

Davinci
Feb 21, 2013

Plom Bar posted:

Aaaaaand I think that's the extent of what's known about the Beforan session.

Man their session was all kinds of hosed up and I love it. Thanks a bunch for clearing all that up.

paranoid randroid
Mar 4, 2007

Android Blues posted:

Nah, she was faking not being bothered by it, but he could tell that it really did bother her, is what went down. She really was anosmic! She just didn't feel like it should upset her because she was tough and cool and it was silly, but it actually did a little and Kankri recounts an anecdote about noticing this.

i think porrim also suggests at one point that latulas BADICAL GAMER GRRL schtick is entirely bullshit. i guess pyropes are just congenitally incapable of copping to their feelings until its too late.

e. latula gets credit for H1T M3 UP TOP, P4YCH3CK! so i guess some good came of her at least.

Bobulus
Jan 28, 2007

Android Blues posted:

Imagine being doomed to be a pointless douche because a time traveller keeps going back and erasing all your teachable moments. A cruel, gnostic fate.

This was a great parallel between the Beforan and Alternian sessions. Damara reversed it whenever anyone did anything right, and Aradia reversed it whenever anyone did anything wrong. In both cases, it led to stagnated characters.

With the Alternians, as soon as this pressure was removed (Aradiabot explodes and stops fixing things) all their self-destructive, murderous, unexplored tendencies came out and half the team died.

With the Beforans, everyone died before this pressure was removed, so the characters stayed stagnant. Only an outside influence (the meteor crew) was about to jump start any changes.

Plom Bar
Jun 5, 2004

hardest time i ever done :(

Android Blues posted:

I feel like it's all but certain that Damara was repeatedly doubling back in time to throw a wrench in the works whenever her teammates started to get things right in the A1 session, which is super depressing when you think about it. Alternate timeline where, by some miracle of science or magic, Cronus isn't a toolbag? Rewrite that. Kankri becomes a half-decent leader? Ha ha, nope. Latula regains her sense of smell, thereby resolving all her personal issues instantly and forever? No way!

This isn't stated anywhere in the comic of course but, when you have the session's Time player actively working to gently caress things up and make everyone static and useless, I feel like that's how she would do it. Imagine being doomed to be a pointless douche because a time traveller keeps going back and erasing all your teachable moments. A cruel, gnostic fate.

That is literally what happened. It is spelled out in the narrative.

Oxyclean
Sep 23, 2007


It's a few updates back, but I don't recall seeing anyone bringing this up:

quote:

DIRK: For years thereafter, his followers would carve stone busts of him in his memory, capturing the piercing glare of his final expression.
(Regarding Ben Stiller)

That sounds oddly familiar...

Can't help wonder if there's an implication that Problem Sleuth & Co are infact some kind of carapacians living on some part of a post-scratch earth...all though most of that is flooded, so probably not. Maybe Problem Sleuth (the comic) is the result of a successful Sburb session? Wasn't the endgame/purpose of the exiles (onto of assisting a player) to rebuild their society on the seed planet?

(Honestly it's probably just a fun nod back to PS and little more. )

On a similar note, how come we never saw any other Prospit agents other then the original set? Did they just never really get off their asses before prospit got wrecked / got killed off screen by Derse agents?

Scale Model Giant
Jan 19, 2009

Rooreelooo posted:

God Tiers are really hosed up. If the person who dies on their quest bed goes to the afterlife as a ghost, that makes god tiers these weird game constructs that inherit all the living memories of a dead character posthumously. To the god tier there is a seamless transition from one body to the next, but to the original character they have to look on from the afterlife and watch themselves get replaced by this superpowered doppelganger. It's like that teleporter conundrum about destroying and replacing yourself each time, except all the versions of yourself you destroy go to the afterlife and could potentially meet up as ghosts.

Makes it even weirder if the god tier also dies. Imagine meeting up with your own pre-god tier self in the afterlife and talking to them. "I guess committing suicide on this slab really wasn't worth it, huh?"

The struggle of whether the current living Alpha version of a character deserves the title of the Real, Definitive Version of Me has really been brought to the forefront in the latest updates, but it's been a running theme from almost the beginning. Dave and Dirk have both spent a long time dealing with the fact that their current existence is heavily indebted to the legacy of other versions of themselves, and much of their personal growth as of late has been coming around to the idea that all those other you's, even if you don't remember being them, are still as much a part of what makes you you as what you do remember.

It's interesting though that their two most important alternate selves, AR and Davesprite, have moved on from living in the shadows on their Alphas and have dived headfirst into the opportunities of their fresh new identities. However I've believed for a while, and still do, that for most if not all characters any sense of final resolution will come from a (literal or figurative) convergence of all alternate/beta/splinter/etc. selves into a single identity, and an acceptance of what that means (i.e. owning up to the faults/shortcomings/consequences of everything you're responsible for in the whole of Paradox Space). I'm particularly interested to see how this would play out with Caliborn (who has put all his stock into an overpowered self-insert that he fully expects to become), Calliope (who has put all her stock into a version of herself she knows she'll never get to be), and Vriska (Vriska).

Voxx
Jul 28, 2009

I'll give 'em a hold
and a break to breathe
And if they can't play nice
I won't play with 'em at all

Oxyclean posted:

(Regarding Ben Stiller)

It's also funny thinking how he probably pulled out a Blue Steel

Rohan Kishibe
Oct 29, 2011

Frankly, I don't like you
and I never have.

Voxx posted:

It's also funny thinking how he probably pulled out a Blue Steel

If he'd only managed a Magnum this whole situation could have been avoided.

The Sezza
Feb 18, 2007

Android Blues posted:

Nah, she was faking not being bothered by it, but he could tell that it really did bother her, is what went down. She really was anosmic! She just didn't feel like it should upset her because she was tough and cool and it was silly, but it actually did a little and Kankri recounts an anecdote about noticing this.

Is that seriously the reading you got from that? It seemed to me that she didn't actually feel bad about not smelling things, but Kankri insisted she must have so hard that she gave in. He bullied her into feeling bad about herself.

quote:

LATULA: h3y!
KANKRI: 9h, man, I'm s9rry. I c9mpletely f9rg9t that "stunk" was an a6leist slur. Please f9rgive my insensitivity t9ward y9ur disa6ility.
LATULA: 1tz ch1ll, 1 w4s only 4ct1ng off3nd3d to bug you.
KANKRI: N9, really, it was inexcusa6le 9f me. I sh9uld have at least preceded my call9us remark with a trigger warning.
KANKRI: I have n9 6usiness making light 9f y9ur impairment, thus failing t9 check my nasal privilege, and p9tentially 6ringing 6ack painful and devastatingly triggering mem9ries 9f the 9ld cycle 9f revenge 6etween y9u and s9me friends which resulted in the l9ss 9f y9ur 9lfact9ry sense. I have t9 admit, I was skeptical at first a69ut whether that really qualified as a true disa6ility warranting sensitivity and the pr9m9ti9n 9f awareness, 6ut 6eing cl9se t9 y9u as a friend and carefully examining my privilege has really 9pened my eyes. 99ps, that euphemism is slightly a6leist t9 the 6lind, what I meant was "6r9adened my h9riz9ns 9n the nature 9f disa6ility." S9rry.
LATULA: y34h! th4ts funny, c4us3 1t n3v3r would h4v3 occurr3d to m3 to t4k3 1t 4ll th4t s3r1ously 4s 4 h4nd1c4p w1thout you m4k1ng 4 f3d3r4l c4s3 out of 1t for so long on my b3h4lf. so, th4nkz k4nk!!!
KANKRI: My pleasure. Really, it is truly amazing that y9u have managed t9 triumph 9ver such adversity t9 6ec9me a great r9le m9del f9r 9thers, excellent at vide9 games, and a t9tally stellar skate69arding pers9n, all while 6eing a girl, n9 less.

Kankri's whole thing is that he sees and rants over problems that aren't there, to the detriment of actual bad things that he ignores (Porrim pointing out that troll culture was still misogynistic despite appearing 'matriarchal' on the surface, which Kankri dismisses in favour of "more glaring issues", Kankri calling Mituna 'problematic' for being visibly mentally disabled instead of defending him, etc). If you go back and play that Alterniabound, the anecdote you're talking about is at the end of a long period of him being creepy at Latula and venting his romantic frustrations under the guise of listing things he 'admires' about her that he might not have admired if they weren't platonic friends. Dude sucks.

The Sezza fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Jul 28, 2015

Bell_
Sep 3, 2006

Tiny Baltimore
A billion light years away
A goon's posting the same thing
But he's already turned to dust
And the shitpost we read
Is a billion light-years old
A ghost just like the rest of us

The Sezza posted:


(Porrim pointing out that troll culture was still misogynistic despite appearing 'matriarchal' on the surface, which Kankri dismisses in favour of "more glaring issues",
I was completely wrong about Latula's nose, but beyond Porrim's words what evidence was there Beforan troll culture was misogynistic?

Aranea chalked it up to her resenting Mother Grub duties, and if Feminism was as important to Porrim as she indicated in the dream bubbles, I would have expected it to figure more in the Dolorosa's character.

Plom Bar
Jun 5, 2004

hardest time i ever done :(

Bell_ posted:

I was completely wrong about Latula's nose, but beyond Porrim's words what evidence was there Beforan troll culture was misogynistic?

Aranea chalked it up to her resenting Mother Grub duties, and if Feminism was as important to Porrim as she indicated in the dream bubbles, I would have expected it to figure more in the Dolorosa's character.

You mean the Dolorosa who abandoned her duties to the Mother Grub and took part in a large-scale revolution alongside the Sufferer?

Rohan Kishibe
Oct 29, 2011

Frankly, I don't like you
and I never have.
That always seemed like more of a class struggle to me, though the Dolorosa probably kept that spark of awareness of real social ills, the same way that the Sufferer kept the outrage at all social injustice, but had a legitimate cause to champion in his time.

The impression I got was that the whole feminism angle of Beforan culture was to demonstrate that while Beforan culture seems, on the surface, to be a lot nicer and more utopic than Alternian culture, there actually were a bunch of underlying social issues there where the Alternians were better off, kind of, that showed that the society had pretty deep flaws. The feminism thing isn't just Porrim's deal, after all, Latula's whole "I can still be good at games even though I'm a girl!" is a big indicator, and I seem to recall there were some pretty big resentment bubbling beneath the surface of the whole idea of highbloods "taking care" of lowbloods.

Dolash
Oct 23, 2008

aNYWAY,
tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS,
tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT,
oF ME GETTING HURT,


I think Porrim's activism was portrayed slightly oddly, since when presented on its own (say in conversation with Meenah) it didn't seem very well-grounded but then when contrasted against Kankri her criticisms were more valid in service to making Kankri an rear end who ignores legitimate issues for pet causes.

It's tough to judge since we have very little information about Beforus itself, and while Feferi was a pretty flat character it's hard to imagine she would rule in an unfair or bigoted way, unless she's not a very competent administrator and things happen under her nose. I guess I can buy her being too coddling and adopting a condescending "Highblood's burden", although that'd be miles above the Condesce, but does she seem the type to enforce gender roles?

Honestly those are the characters I'd like to learn more about, the pre-Scratch ancestor versions of the original trolls. On the one hand, I'd like to believe they lived out the happier, more fulfilling versions of their life stories that they weren't able to in the scratched session, but on the other hand it's sad to imagine them then going through Armageddon.

Edit: I don't know if I'd say the Alternians were better off even if Beforus was less Utopic than it might've sounded at a glance. The soft bigotry of low expectations and a paternalistic/maternalistic aristocracy still beats freaky murder-empire. Maybe an equal number of Alternian boys and girls play video games but those video games are about the conquest of actual aliens and the bottom-ranked player on the ladder is ground up and turned into a paint set.

Dolash fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Jul 28, 2015

Nephthys
Mar 27, 2010

I think the idea was that there was some gender imbalance on Beforus but the thing's pointed out about it were fairly tame. And I think Porrim knew that and didn't make that big of a deal of it beyond pointing it out and defending her criticisms, compared to Kankri who take's nothing issues and blows them up to massive proportions and actively exacerbates people's personality issues.

Izzhov
Dec 6, 2013

My head hurts.

Scale Model Giant posted:

It's interesting though that their two most important alternate selves, AR and Davesprite, have moved on from living in the shadows on their Alphas and have dived headfirst into the opportunities of their fresh new identities. However I've believed for a while, and still do, that for most if not all characters any sense of final resolution will come from a (literal or figurative) convergence of all alternate/beta/splinter/etc. selves into a single identity, and an acceptance of what that means (i.e. owning up to the faults/shortcomings/consequences of everything you're responsible for in the whole of Paradox Space). I'm particularly interested to see how this would play out with Caliborn (who has put all his stock into an overpowered self-insert that he fully expects to become), Calliope (who has put all her stock into a version of herself she knows she'll never get to be), and Vriska (Vriska).

This is a neat idea, and in fact it's already happened to some extent with the squared sprites (Jasprose and Davepeta have both mentioned how they have access to the memories of every single doomed version of the people who comprise them). It also reminds me of the denizens, who have a shared consciousness across every reality, and makes me wonder if the squared sprites will be related to the denizens in some fashion.

Dolash posted:

Maybe an equal number of Alternian boys and girls play video games

Actually, it's heavily implied that video games are considered primarily a girl's activity in Alternian society (see e.g. Karkat's "STOP PLAYING GAMES FOR GIRLS").

Rohan Kishibe
Oct 29, 2011

Frankly, I don't like you
and I never have.

Dolash posted:

Edit: I don't know if I'd say the Alternians were better off even if Beforus was less Utopic than it might've sounded at a glance. The soft bigotry of low expectations and a paternalistic/maternalistic aristocracy still beats freaky murder-empire. Maybe an equal number of Alternian boys and girls play video games but those video games are about the conquest of actual aliens and the bottom-ranked player on the ladder is ground up and turned into a paint set.

Yeah I probably didn't say that super clear. i more mean that... whatever problems Beforus had, Alternia didn't, those problems weren't an issue and that's nice. I mean, Alternia is also Hellmurder world where the weak are ground into dust as children and their entire civilisation is laser focused on subjugation of others, so...

Two other minor thoughts. I just realized that, you have an entirely female blood caste who, on, Alternia at least, spend their entire lives underground with only other members of that caste. The only two in the story are both lesbians, and trolls have no concept of homo/heterosexuality so Karkat's Troll romance fiction is really missing a trick with this.

Secondly, Dirk's Heart powers connect him with all the souls of the various splinters of himself. Seeing Terezi remember really makes me wish we had another Heart player who could maybe take all these alternate souls and distribute them to her allies, letting everyone get the full experience.

Rohan Kishibe fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Jul 28, 2015

Tollymain
Jul 9, 2010

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Android Blues posted:

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.

Rooreelooo posted:

God Tiers are really hosed up. If the person who dies on their quest bed goes to the afterlife as a ghost, that makes god tiers these weird game constructs that inherit all the living memories of a dead character posthumously. To the god tier there is a seamless transition from one body to the next, but to the original character they have to look on from the afterlife and watch themselves get replaced by this superpowered doppelganger. It's like that teleporter conundrum about destroying and replacing yourself each time, except all the versions of yourself you destroy go to the afterlife and could potentially meet up as ghosts.

Makes it even weirder if the god tier also dies. Imagine meeting up with your own pre-god tier self in the afterlife and talking to them. "I guess committing suicide on this slab really wasn't worth it, huh?"

from another point of view, you could think of the quest bed ghosts as snapshot copies of the character from that point in time. continuity of consciousness is a hard concept to pin down, and we give it up for 8 hours or so every day

but on the other hand is creating a version of you who is dead any less concerning than dying and creating a version of you who lives? hmmm

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

wuthering
Oct 31, 2012

Dolash posted:

It's tough to judge since we have very little information about Beforus itself, and while Feferi was a pretty flat character it's hard to imagine she would rule in an unfair or bigoted way, unless she's not a very competent administrator and things happen under her nose. I guess I can buy her being too coddling and adopting a condescending "Highblood's burden", although that'd be miles above the Condesce, but does she seem the type to enforce gender roles?

If you read Feferi's pesterlogs with Jade (particularly this one), she is actually quite rude to people despite being one of the nicest trolls, and spends most of the trolls' post-session meteor time not really giving a poo poo because she knows everything will work out. She's certainly got the attitude of a future empress, just none of the cruelty.

Actually, looking at her introduction page again, the whole paragraph about her redefinition of culling seems quite in line with Beforus ideals. Granted, she's thinking about silly wildlife veterinary roleplay of cuttlefish, but this is also Homestuck. This doesn't really do anything to explain where the gender aspects come from, but then there are plenty of places with female leaders who still have rather stereotypical expectations of gender that don't necessarily come from any specific targeted ideology. I guess Porrim just likes her intersectional feminist analysis, considering she also critiques Sburb game mechanics which also seemingly spring from nowhere.

Doesn't Hussie himself say in the last Openbound flash that Porrim is the good type of social justice, to contrast against Kankri? I imagine we're supposed to take Porrim's words at face value.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply