|
I'm still wondering how the fact that the kids are two and a half years younger than the reset-guardian-kids is going to impact things. The trolls and kids were all peers, and the Guardians were distant figures who never spoke and were missing facial features. Will making these reset guardians older than the kids make them dismissive of the kids? Will the kids still be in some ways deferential to their authority? Ugh, I know we need a lot of setup, but I'm dying to see how these kids and the old kids all get along!
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2011 04:20
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 04:54 |
|
|
Since Davesprite's alive on the kids' battlefield, is it possible any Prospit or Derse soldiers somehow survived? There's no one we know by name left down there but it'd be funny to see a carapace person meet their doppleganger in a different session.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2011 19:23
|
|
|
I'm inclined to guess that Sollux will die propelling the lab to the green sun (that much is basically confirmed) but once they get there the "half-dead" Sollux that's hanging around with Aradia will just join the rest of the group like it's no big deal. Mainly, because a troll group that consists of Karkat, Gamzee, Terezi, Kanaya, and Aradia feels imbalanced. Casts come in even numbers! We all remember what happened when the White King tried to break the even-number rule! More seriously though, I'm not sure if Aradia's going to go with them. She's been an outsider this whole time, it'd be weird for her to fall in behind Karkat now. I'd guess she goes off to pursue more mystery objectives while Sollux rejoins the others and the troll group basically becomes Karkat and those closest to him (Moirail, Matesprit, and best friends) in a slight echo of the Sufferer's posse. Dolash fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Nov 14, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2011 21:24
|
|
|
Hm, interesting stuff. How does he have access to those weapons? Will he send the bunny and the weapons back from inside the game, or does he have the necessary Skaia tech in his home?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2011 01:26
|
|
|
There are some good points in the above posts about changing focus, though. During Hivebent, people did get frustrated that the focus had shifted on to the trolls and the act seemed to drag on a little. There was talk about how the kids were being forgotten and how even when we got back to the kids that they'd be sharing a lot of the stage with the trolls now. Then when Act 5 part 2 started and we had horrorstuck where the trolls were getting killed, there were also some complaints that after having a whole sub-act dedicated to the trolls the kid still weren't getting the attention they deserved, with the trolls collectively taking on the importance of main characters. Now however the troll cast has been trimmed down, and being physically close to the kids probably means their plot significance is also going to go down since the kids are more powerful and more central characters likely to overshadow the trolls in their scenes. And now we have a new set of characters being introduced much as we had with Act 5 part 1, so understandably if you liked the trolls it'd be worrying to think that the main kids are going to remain the main characters and the reset kid guardians are going to be the shiny new secondary character group, leaving the trolls on as background characters. Remember the exiles? They came in before the trolls, and were the more significant secondary character group after the kids for some time. The Troll act eclipsed them, however, and ultimately they dwindled in importance and screen-time. A similar thing might happen here.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2011 02:53
|
|
|
In my even lower opinion, you haven't had the full Homestuck experience if you haven't followed the whole thing after having followed Problem Sleuth as it happened - and now you never will!
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2011 07:01
|
|
|
Nate RFB posted:That is exactly what I was thinking. The implication that I got out of this conversation is that we are actually going to have two distinct sessions, one of the old and new kids, and one of apparently the trolls. If so, then I would have to believe it would be UU plus the trolls we already know. And that doesn't really work unless one bites it, and if one is going to die it will probably be Sollux. Thus UU should be Doom to have all 12 elements present. So we can't have two doom players, but we can have two time players? I don't think we're going to see Aradia die, although I suppose she might just not be going with the other trolls to wherever they're going. Also, drat, the male trolls got the short end of the stick. Karkat's the only one with some main-character screen-time and depth, all the others were just sort of plot devices and two-dimensional tools that got picked off. If Sollux dies and this new UU joins it's going to be four competent, depth-having female trolls, the one-dimensional murder-clown on a short leash, and poor dumb Karkat along for the ride.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2011 15:16
|
|
|
I wonder what John's going to make of the life his Scratched self led? Would he too look forward to becoming a huge cornball and starring in Night Court?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2011 02:24
|
|
|
I remember the wizardology and began to suspect it when I saw "loving commentary", but with Bro it really could go either way. My guess is either in this universe Dave's the unironic one and it's Bro who's trying to 'ironically' enjoy ponies like his brother does, or Dave's still ironic (only about ponies, not puppets) and Bro claims to also only like them ironically, when in fact he actually does. The only outcome I don't expect is that both reset-Dave and reset-Bro are ironic or unironic. There's got to be some conflict to how you see the world in a Strider household.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2011 06:47
|
|
|
Dude's 15, I doubt he'll have his own puppet - er, pony - porn empire this time around. Still, depending on which ways the irony trains are running he might be participating in something sufficiently creepy and unironic, or maybe this time it's Dave running Hornjobs.com for the discerning unicorn fancier.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2011 14:53
|
|
|
Eikre posted:IRONIC SHADES || THOUGHTWAVE TIARATOP = HOFMANN LENSES poo poo, 1,000? But that's all I've got left! What'll I do now?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2011 22:35
|
|
|
Fat_Cow posted:
It's not the fandom (although that's not great), it's Reregular. Check his rap sheet or post history, guy's a rereg (decent pun in his name I'll give him that) who's been probated a dozen times in the two weeks or so since he registered. Just ignore him and let's keep going. Is Hussie going to do Jake's panels next, or one of the two unrevealed reset guardians?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2011 22:45
|
|
Oh this fandom
|
Heyyy... wasn't Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff inspired by a conversation Dave had with Terezi? How did the Scratch Dave come to the same idea? It's not like the 'descendent' universes that are influenced by their creators, Scratches just reset and switch things up. So where'd he get the idea?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2011 04:23
|
|
|
So it looks like kidMom has her eye on Jake (and Jane's dad, but hey, teenagers). Think we'll need a new shipping diagram? Also I'm hoping all of their crazy experiences will have been enough for the kids to have had some genuine character development, so when they meet their kidGuardians they can be the wiser, more responsible characters. Dying to see Rose drop her passive-aggression and tear into kidMom for her drinking.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2011 14:37
|
|
|
Hamiltonian Bicycle posted:There are many reasons to believe that she does; and they're not related. Genetically they're John and Jade's parents. They're paradox clones of themselves, and the ectobiology machinery made John and Jade by mixing them. (That was, of course, in the pre-scratch session, but what we've seen so far strongly suggests that these guys somehow arrived on the same meteors from the old session rather than having been created at some point in their own upcoming session.) We seriously still don't know this. It could be that this session has its own ectobiology session where the same items are available and the order of ectobiology is reversed so that the guardians are products of the kids, not the other way around. I have only seen circumstantial, explainable evidence for this "one ecto-biology session for both game sessions" theory and while it's a live hypothesis we don't want to go assuming just yet. We won't know until we get some clearer confirmation disqualifying one of the possibilities. Although that'd certainly make the shipping grid more lively.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2011 15:25
|
|
|
Yeah, "space furry" seemed primarily like a Jade-wink to me. Not that they know who Jade is (well, the Jade we know) yet, just that that's what Hussie's winking at. To us. With his winking.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2011 06:16
|
|
|
of bees posted:Maybe PM will end up on the post-scratch planet before they start playing sburb and WV will get prototyped into a kernelsprite. I'm still betting he gets the ring off Jack as payoff for the "You're becoming the monster!" dream. What I hope though is that PM and WV (and/or Jack, I guess) get to meet their alternate selves in the new game, because it'd be neat to see if they have any conception of other copies of themselves existing.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2011 17:05
|
|
|
Let's just have Lord English himself erupt into this session through Jake's chest by the end of the week so we can have a round of "Okay, no way this is meaningful, too obvious, gotta be a trick." Then let's have it actually be a trick anyway because you never know with Hussie.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2011 04:45
|
|
|
It's hard to say what's good grounds to speculate in Homestuck. It's intentionally hard to predict, with a good mix of genuine, total surprises, clearly forecasted moves, and absolute red herrings. All this Lord English stuff around Jake, for example, might mean something really ominous about his connection to Lord English, or it might mean the opposite (artifacts of his defeat, or a sign that Jake is in a special position to defeat him), or it might mean nothing meaningful at all (basically a big coincidence). Hussie might do any of these things, and exploring the possibilities is what speculating about Homestuck is all about. You can't knock shotgun speculation if it's the only method with a chance of hitting anything!
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2011 07:40
|
|
|
Bro doesn't really sound like he's anyone's friend, but it's nice to see some actual antagonism in an inter-kid relationship after the lovefest that was the original four and the hatefest that was the trolls. I did think it was interesting that he basically really was a little Bro though - his opening statements were basically a taunting test to see if Jake would go back on his sincere statement, he brusquely (good word) called out Jake's uranium needs, then explained to him that if it was a matter of pride there was some challenge he could do for more uranium. Then the auto-responder that is nothing but pure testing of the person responding. These kids feel a little more complex than our original heroes, although I guess that might just be because they're new and their various mysteries have yet to be unravelled. Does Bro look up to reset-Dave? What do Lalonde and Crocker think of Bro? Just what the heck is going on with these weird kids and what's to become of them? A lot to think about.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2011 15:21
|
|
|
I think Bro is basically the same Bro from the kids' universe - he's playing irony on such a high level that we can no longer tell if he's being serious or ironic, truly transcendental irony. He constantly tests his friends (as he previously tested Dave) and, in his own way, asserts superiority over them. You can really tell how Dave felt he was stuck in his Bro's shadow if he acted like this. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out the reset-Dave is considered insufficiently cool and ironic for reset Bro, looking down on reset-Dave rather than looking up. I'm hoping Dave shows up and slaps his poo poo around (probably verbally) to demonstrate character growth in how he's not going to take his Bro's poo poo and stand around in his shadow any more (symbolically, since this isn't the same Bro). It'd be neat to see, and could cut both ways if this Bro's built up as an inscrutable irony-ninja and someone who knows him better than he knows himself shows up to pierce the veil. Of course, that'd require Bro to keep getting the upper hand in his exchanges with others for a while, to build him up for Dave to knock down, but that could work. It'd also be an interesting way to differentiate this Bro from the pre-reset Guardian Bro, since Dave would remember his bro's sacrifice and be able to drop some sharp "You're not him" remarks. Just one possibility, of course. We don't have much to go on yet.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2011 03:22
|
|
|
Sockser posted:The entire problem with the Kids' session was that they spent hours dicking around trying to make laptop-headgear and loving up. That's why they lost. If the troll's session was any indication, pointless relationship bullshit is a necessary part of any 'successful' session, so they set the humans to stew in their own hormones for another two and a half years this time around. It would amuse me if the trolls and the reset guardians and just about everyone but the original kids were consumed with relationship shenanigans and the original kids remained firmly in "mocking the shipping diagram" territory.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2011 03:41
|
|
|
Man, I wonder if maybe Bro's dead and his robots are going to take his place?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2011 07:20
|
|
|
For what it's worth, I'm often curious how to do simple, quality image work like making gifs, resizing things correctly, avoiding jpg artifacts and so on. I've done some LP work and in the battle between file size and quality I always seem to end up with a bunch of artifacted-up images that look half as good as the originals. Making good avatars is a useful thing to know on SA.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2011 03:28
|
|
|
Plom Bar posted:Seriously, get on that poo poo. Pretty sure the whole series is on Netflix, and the DVDs are dirt cheap. I'm going to risk all of my carefully collected internet cred (none) and admit I did not enjoy Arrested Development at all. I found it way too cringe-inducing and the humour was far too reliant on the idea of a tolerant but flawed and put-upon family member having to put up with all of his family's crap when he should've ditched them ten minutes into the first episode. The whole thing was like a will-they-or-won't-they plot, only unlike those plots where there's some distant promise of movement, Arrested Development seemed trapped in a self-made family hell forever.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2011 21:53
|
|
|
So I guess when John grows up he's going to have a terrible mustache and look like a great big cornball? That's unfair of me, I suppose. Poppop Crocker is really more 'of his era'.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 24, 2011 04:59
|
|
|
I'm not accepting the "one ectobiology session created the kids and guardians for both sessions" theory until it's explicitly stated in the comic itself. It's a live theory, a possible interpretation, but by no means proven.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 24, 2011 18:59
|
|
|
I'm still of the opinion that even if Lord English were to be extricated like the evil growth he is from the whole Sburb process, the 'need' for the game to destroy the homeworld and species of each session's champions makes it a sort of antagonist, maybe even evil depending on what manner of intelligence is behind the whole thing. As such, if the game is implied to continue to happen but isn't "fixed" to avoid destroying planets, and none of the characters see this as some sort of issue, I'm going to be pretty bothered by it. I've stood by the idea that the story is going to end with the kids saving the Earth no matter how many hard parodoxes are in the way (that's what heroes do - they save the Earth - and John's much too earnest a fan of Armageddon to be anything less). The universe reproduction system is weird but sort of understandable, but there's no practical reason to have to destroy a planet when the portals could be aimed to cause the asteroids to float harmlessly into the sun while only the paradoxically necessary ones touch down on the planet. Considering the extreme level of control over fate and destiny the game appears to exert, there's no way this wouldn't be possible, it's just a matter of making the game work that way. Basically, Lord English is just half the problem.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2011 02:58
|
|
|
I think what Fagtastic was trying to say is that grist, boondollars, and the various gaming abstractions were meant to set the scene at an earlier part of the story. The story was still gaining momentum and we were still being introduced to the actual plot, so these jokes and gaming stuff gave us something to focus on for a while. As the plot becomes more important they recede into the background - they're still 'important' in the sense that the players are using them, but they're not 'important' in the sense that they're a limiter on the plot or the characters. They made all the grist and boondollars they'd ever need, in part just so that those elements could be quasi-written out. They were really only played straight with John, anyway, who's on the typical hero's journey by the rules as it is. When we followed the trolls we hardly even touched on the basic game mechanics, except to add flavour and background to scenes. At this late stage in the story it's a background detail that's assumed that they'll have whatever game-mechanic resources they need for a game purpose on hand, unless the plot says otherwise. We'll probably see elements of these things return with the reset kid guardians, but I wouldn't expect them to be nearly as important, closely tracked, or focused on as when John first encountered them. We'll probably skip over their futzing about with game stuff material quite a lot, or they'll find some shortcut through it all early on. The one game element that seems particularly important (which seemed like a background detail when they were first introduced) are the titles, since they seem to grant special powers and hold some secret meaning about the characters' development and plot purpose. God-tiers, too, since they're portrayed as the end point of the great arcing journey of the games' players and as such have a certain story weight.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2011 02:29
|
|
|
Rhinoceraptor posted:Calling it now, Mom Lalonde writes SBaHJ in this universe, only unironically, and drunk. Tragically, Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff are already super-popular in this universe as evidenced by the movie poster, so this is unlikely. I'm kind of amused that apparently three of A2 kids are entangled with Jake in some way. My guess with Bro though is that he's operating on such a high irony level that nobody can honestly tell if he's sincere or not. I actually kind of bought Bro's irony act in the last universe. Not that he was operating on what Dave called "level one irony", but that there were so many irony levels on top of each other that the end result is you honestly can't tell what is meant any more. The auto-responder gave those vibes really strongly. Does Bro have some interest in Jake? No clue, but the uncertainty about it is akin to performance art. The dynamics are really different with this bunch and it's really interesting to see that about them. They're their own kids while also sort of telling us more about the original four in their own way, by contrast.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2011 03:08
|
|
|
Welp looks like it's time for a perspective shift. Although I'd be oddly amused if three of the four kids died and the one survivor (Jane?) would enter the game, hence the one-box Sburb logo in this universe.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2011 07:19
|
|
|
Ketzal posted:Where's the one-box logo? The one in Jane's room is the same as the kids', except it's red and has the window box on the other side. Whoops, you're right. I have no clue why I thought I saw a logo with just the one box. I guess the troll appears to be using an exile station with just one window, so that's a bit odd, but that might just be a misunderstanding on my part or be otherwise meaningless. Yeah they're probably fine.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2011 15:59
|
|
|
Neither Tavros nor anything Tavros related is ever allowed to be happy.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2011 00:07
|
|
|
The contrast between funny and serious can throw a lot of people. On the one hand you can be overly concerned and a little too sensitive about things like death in the story, in which case the note of comedy is meant to remind you that this isn't really a grim comic. On the other hand, if you just flick through pages for pretty images and skim the logs for the best jokes and ignore everything else, you probably are missing something of worth in the plot that's actually worth taking at least a little seriously. The reader has to strike a balance as much as Hussie has to. Try not to get bent out of shape about even the 'saddest' deaths (Bec Noir standing around the corpses of mom and dad) but try not to discount the entire story as 'wacky' and not worth taking seriously at all.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2011 01:01
|
|
|
'comeuppance' is a silly word which is associated with the feeling of audience revenge, a bad thing to run a story on, although there is actually a more reasonable question that's getting lost there. Namely, "why are the other trolls okay with his murder spree?" There's lots of possible answers (troll culture means even Karkat accepts it as a part of his personality, and their conception of justice is actually alien to us/the remaining trolls don't think they could take him in a fight so this is a path of least resistance/everyone's just so worn out and PTSD'd that at this point they want to just get on with things and so long as Gamzee's not killing them any more they'll accept it/etc). Hussie isn't really interested in exploring which one it is, though, so we're left to fill it in ourselves, and other readers are probably not going to be particularly generous if you don't get that it's something that can be resolved in the background. His answer that it's a joke is more a matter that it isn't going to get screen time than it is a suggestion that the whole cast are a bunch of cutouts who forget things as soon as the authour stops showing them.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2011 04:28
|
|
|
Nilbop posted:This guy gets it. Eh. All the kids and several of the trolls dying and coming back to life at times served narrative purposes when it was appropriate. Making act 5 part 2 have weight is a good narrative purpose for keeping them dead, I wouldn't be against them coming back to life for some more worthwhile purpose that helped complete arcs or otherwise makes sense in the future we can't yet see. If Hussie goes for an extra-happy ending, for example, he might have all the players come out of it alive and better people for it. Or if a 'final battle' requires the cooperation of everyone, maybe, in an effort to make absolutely everything seem meaningful. I don't pretend to be as good a writer as Hussie but I assume there might be valid reasons for bringing the dead back that surpass the narrative value of the finality of their deaths. Besides, I think if anything's held true about Homestuck, it's that Hussie's not afraid to take something that seemed clear cut and meaningful in a certain way at the time and turn it on its head later. Don't ever bank on something having to go a certain way or following a certain logic to be meaningful, he'll surprise you. It could turn out everything we've seen so far was just the prequel for Nepetaquest 2012 and I'd still probably assume he knew what he was doing. Edit: figured I might want to provide a quick example. I was sure back near the start of the story that the Guardians as we knew them were story critical, and simply couldn't die without big and clear-cut character development scenes for the main kids. Then they all ended up being dead and I was left confused about what the meaning had been. Now we're seeing a weird mirror universe where the guardians are back and their relations to the kids are relevant again - something I'd never have predicted when I previously thought they couldn't die without tying up issues related to them. So basically, never say never. Dolash fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Nov 30, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2011 06:03
|
|
|
Assuming it isn't explained further, my guess was that Karkat saw Gamzee's murders as his fault for not taking charge and moirailing him sooner, so he doesn't really blame him as much as he blames himself. The other trolls are just sort of uneasily glad the situation is resolved and with things as hosed as they are have settled for "Well he's probably not going to kill us and Karkat has him under control, at least this way the crazy killer clown's an asset." Basically, they're probably not happy about it per se, but we don't have to go straight to "aliens love it when they get murdered". Humans in the same position might've drawn the same conclusions.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2011 15:08
|
|
|
I'm still pretty sure Bro's gay signals are just another level of his waist-deep irony mind games. Dave does the ironic gay joke thing from time to time, but it's obvious. Bro's one level above him, though, so his gay joke can be confused for actual sincerity.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2011 22:49
|
|
|
But that's the thing - can you know for sure? I posit that you cannot, which is what makes Bro great. You just never know. In fact that he puts so much effort into striking this uncertain balance seems like the only evidence that his only motive is irony.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2011 00:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 04:54 |
|
|
These three panels of zoom-out kind of feel out of place, but a wider look at the island is nice. A thought - Jake's going to need to prototype his Sprite. Does he have something appropriately dead lying around, or might he use the recently-deceased Tinkerbull? No special reason why he'd use the Tinkerbull, he just needs something dead.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2011 05:20
|
|