- mikeycp
- Nov 24, 2010
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I've changed a lot since I started hanging with Sonic, but I can't depend on him forever. I know I can do this by myself! Okay, Eggman! Bring it on!
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Good morning. Here's a gift.
If I do this for you, you owe me.
Here's my attempt.
The story opens with the main protagonist, John Egbert, getting ready to receive the SBURB beta, on April 13, 2009. SBURB is, in-fiction to the Homestuck universe, an MMO that revolves around a server player playing a combination Minecraft/Sims cooperative game with the session player, who plays an action-rpg. This is in real life, so the player goes around beating up bad guys, gaining levels, and getting materials he or she then gives to their server player, who crafts stuff out of it.
Complicating matters more fully is the fact that as soon as the first player enters their session, an apocalyptic, world-ending scenario begins due to the sburb "game" beginning. John and his three friends, Dave Strider, Jade Harley, and Rose Lalonde, then have to hurry (as the earth is being destroyed due to meteors) to get everyone into each session, but as aforementioned in order to enter the session one needs both a server player and the session player, meaning everyone has to serve as both session and server player to somebody else. In addition, it's heavily implied that it's impossible to be the session player to your own session player, so they have to come up with a chain of people entering their sessions in a specific order so all four get in.
In order to actually "enter" the session, a player needs to create a catalyst that, when destroyed, allows them to actually enter the session- the TRUE game they are playing. In order to do that, they need to create and prototype a sprite, which essentially serves as a guardian for the session player. The sprite can interact with and has a special relationship with the session player, so the four main kids prototype their sprite with the dead body of someone they are familiar with. John prototypes his grandma, Dave uses a bird he accidentally killed and feels shame over killing, Rose throws in her dead cat which she loves. Jade...tries to throw in the body of her dead grampa, but runs out of time, and her living dog Bec is then forced to prototype himself in order to save Jade's life. This is really bad, because Bec is an avatar of the Green Sun, basically the creator of the universe, and is thus essentially a god.
Anyways, the four kids- John, Dave, Jade, and Rose - all enter the session, which is in Skaia. Skaia is a battleground that resembles a chessboard, a planet of eternal conflict between two moons that circle overhead - Prospit and Derse. The races that inhabit either side are white or black pawns, chess pieces for each moon.
SBURB is revealed to not be a game, but actually a universe destruction/creation myth abstracted out via gameification. It chooses some number of participants, who all enter Skaia, triggering the session. The session culminates in the conflict between Prospit and Derse, which black always wins. If and when Derse wins, the universe is destroyed, and all the players lose. Thus, it's the intention of SBURB players to force a Prospit win. If they do that, then their universe is still destroyed, but instead they become creators of a new one- living gods.
To that end, all the players in the session have dreamselves. Half reside on Prospit, and the other half on Derse - light and dark, creation and destruction, blah blah blah. If players die in the game, in the session, the dreamselves act as a 1-UP, saving their lives and giving them a second chance. But that's not the power of the dreamself - if the player in question dies in a specific way, on their questbed, if the dreamself is still alive then it gives the typical 1-UP, but instead the player becomes god tier - and gains powers to match. Each god tier is good at one specific thing, and there's usually a creation/destruction duality to them - prospit god tiers create, derse god tiers typically destroy. Jade's dreamself is killed.
Players in the session need the god tiers, because the queens of each moon- Prospit and Derse - have rings, and those rings give them the power, when worn, to gain all the abilities of everything that had been prototyped up to that point. Because Jade had her god dog prototyped, this basically gives both of the queens the ability to shape reality, an unbeatable ability.
Jack Noir, a Derse pawn, eventually gets so fed up with his queen that he straight-up kills her, then wears her ring. This turns him into Bec Noir - in every version of SBURB there's a version of Jack Noir, and he always tries to kill the queen (whom he hates) and steals her ring. This is a problem, to be sure, but it's an expected one. Unfortunately, the addition of Bec to the prototyping is unique to the main session, and as a result Bec Noir becomes far more powerful than he should be far too early, utterly destroying all the other royalty and literally everyone else besides the main four kids.
While all this is going on, the four main kids are going through their own paths. They're all on separate worlds, so communicate with each other via IM clients, forum posts, and text - and along the way they're mercilessly trolled by a group of 12 assholes who insist they will fail at every step of the way. Each kid has one aspect that they're naturally good at- John's is Breath, Dave's is Time, Jade's is Space, and Rose's is Mind. To that end, Dave is then visited by his own future self, who comes from a doomed timeline where both John and Jade died. Future Dave then prototypes himself with present Dave's sprite (the sprites can prototype twice) and becomes Davesprite, and thus advises Dave on how to prevent the Dark future.
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John is contacted by an unusually helpful one of the trolls who tells him the exact way to kill his denizen (which is like, the miniboss of the world it really doesn't matter at all). He goes off and does that, but is prevented at the last minute by Davesprite, who basically warns him that this is how he's killed in the future. Naturally suspicious of the trolls, he then is informed by a different, self-centered one about how god tiers work and all that. He decides to trust this one anyways, and becomes the first one of the kids to go god tier. He then retrieves Jade's stuffed dreamself corpse (with his god tier powers now including flight) and prototypes it with the Bec sprite, thus creating Jadesprite.
Then Bec Noir basically destroys everything and everyone, as aforementioned. The act ends, and cuts away to a distant planet...
... Called Alternia. Here, it is revealed that the 12 assholes who were trolling the four main kids were actual literal trolls, from a totally different universe. The most important one, and deuteragonist of this story, is Karkat Vantas, who's basically John if he were a miserable rear end in a top hat. This is all a prequel to Homestuck (dubbed Hivebent), and the trolls- who all wear shirts with astrological signs on them - get a copy of the MMO SGRUB. It's SBURB, but with 12 players over 4. A whole bunch of bullshit happens, but basically the trolls do the whole "Trigger apocalypse, whatever" bit but, instead, they come from a warrior planet where the only known thing is conflict, so they're all unusually prepared for the actual session. Despite their prototypes being their lusus (which are their guardians, all enormously powerful beasts), and despite facing off against a twelve-prototyped endboss over a four-prototyped one, and despite that virtually no players from this session end up able to go god tier, they beat the black king and get ready to enter the universe they created, to rule it as gods. When they're about to finally reach the door...Bec Noir arrives, destroys the door, and forces them all to hide out in space. Bec Noir, with the power of the green sun, was able to jump universes and time to the exact moment when the trolls should've won their session and prevented it. As a result, the trolls aren't able to visit the universe they created.
Our own.
Yeah, the trolls from Hivebent created the universe of the main four kids, and the only evidence of their influence is the constellations that end up forming, and the subsequent astrological signs based off the same.
So, when they were trolling the kids they were doing so not just to be assholes, but from a desperate, knowingly ineffectual causative time loop. Creating the universe creates the kids, who create bec noir, who destroys the trolls' chance at a true victory.
Back to the kids. The kids, after realizing who and what the trolls are, decide to orchestrate a plan to have everyone - all 16 kids - meet up and reset the game. They can't win, because Bec Noir is too powerful - but what they can do is orchestrate a "scratch", which like a scratch on a record (or a disc, for, say, a video game) would "freeze" the session and allow them to reboot it. They can't win, so instead of losing what they'll do is basically punt it and hope for a better second try.
As an aside, there's this extremely long intermission where an alternate-universe jack noir (spades slick) and the members of his midnight crew (a gang) go off to kill the felt (a gang with a whole bunch of time powers modelled after pool balls). This isn't really relevant but the important thing is that the leader of the gang is Lord English, and the second-in-command is a sentient pool ball named Doc Scratch.
To extend out the pool analogy, Doc Scratch only can appear in universes that "scratch", that sink the pool ball into a pocket. That intentionally reset the universe like the kids are doing. Because the kids did that, Doc Scratch becomes able to summon his master, Lord English, who goes from universe to universe destroying them after he is summoned. He is the True Big Bad of Homestuck.
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Okay, back to the main four. John clones and sends back baby versions of the main four kids (thus creating another causative time loop) and, in addition, clones of John's grandma (Jane Crocker) Dave's brother (Dirk Strider), Rose's Mom (Roxy Lalonde) and Jade's grandfather (Jake English). The four other children - these alpha kids - are sent off to a different universe, which is the universe that the 16 main characters are escaping to.
Jade dies on her quest bed, and because her dreamself (as Jadesprite) is still alive it merges with herself, meaning Jade inherits the green sun powers that made Bec Noir. With those powers combined with her god tier, she basically becomes the most powerful player in the game and sends herself and her 15 friends, combined with copies of the beta kids' worlds and all of their inhabitants, on a ship that zooms to the end of the universe.
Andrew Hussie (yes, the creator of this comic) places the fourth wall of the beta kids' universe and the fourth wall of the alpha kids' universe three feet away from each other. Spurred on by Jade's powers, the ship bursts through the fourth wall of the universe and travels to the fourth wall of the alphas' universe. This process takes roughly three years of time.
Bec Noir decides to follow the kids. A female Prospit pawn, named PM, gets the white queen's ring (remember, there's two of them and they both have the exact powers), puts it on, and becomes Bec White. She chases down and attempts to kill Bec Noir, which is what prevents him from being able to destroy the ship the kids are escaping on.
In the interim, a whole bunch of trolls are killed off by one who goes insane and believes himself to be a prophet for the coming destruction of the universe, led by Lord English. OF the ones that remain, one (Kanaya) begins a romantic relationship with Rose, despite the former being a vampire. Kanaya has a special task, being given an egg that can reproduce the troll race. Unfortunately, it's destroyed by the insane guy. Terezi (the female troll who accidentally killed John in a doomed timeline by luring him to face his denizen too early) and Dave begin dating. This pisses Karkat, who's a weird self-involved and neurotic piece of poo poo with bad rage and self-esteem issues, off, because he always had a crush on Terezi and can't stand Dave. Dave and Karkat begin bickering. Vriska (who's the self-involved female troll who told John about god tiers) kills off a troll she liked because she's a self-involved rear end in a top hat and that's what she does. This, combined with the crazy dude who goes insane, causes Terezi to mistakenly believe that Vriska has, in fact, killed off everyone else when she only killed off the one dude. Terezi and Vriska confront each other, with Vriska revealing that she, in fact, was one of only two trolls to go god tier - the other of which being Aradia, who's completely loving pointless to the story. God tiers are special, in that they can't die under any conventional circumstances - the death has to be either just or heroic, any other death doesn't take. Unless they're fighting Lord English, in which case he ignores that rule anyways.
Vriska taunts Terezi, insisting that she can't kill her. Terezi does.
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The alpha kids' session begins. The alpha kids, in direct contrast to their beta counterparts, are prone to infighting and end up entering a session where nobody's sprites get prototyped. As a result, Skaia never exists, and as a result there is no Prospit or Derse. Without a Prospit or Derse, there's no conflict, and therefore the alpha kids can't win. They can't lose, either, but they can't win. The alpha kids are a bunch of miserable hateful assholes and nothing of relevance happens for literally thousands of pages until they all experience emotional catharsis by admitting how much of worthless assholes they are. Seriously, I'm not joking.
The beta kids and the remaining alive trolls enter the alpha kids' session and set up shop, chased close behind by both Becs, Noir and White. The audience learns that there was a beta troll session as well, with basically all the twelve trolls recreating a Jesus parable with Karkat at the center. It really, really, REALLY doesn't matter, but the supreme leader of the troll race ends up revealing herself to be Her Imperial Condesce, who wants to dominate the new universe that the beta kids escaped to because her old one was destroyed by the twelve trolls playing SGRUB. Again, none of this loving matters, but the Condesce follows the kids to this alpha session and sets up shop ready to kill everyone and start anew.
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The trolls encounter dreambubbles, which are false or hypothetical realities where things went differently. They were all unsuccessful, and everyone in them is dead - they're ghosts, essentially, of alternate reality versions of themselves. Them meet the ancestor trolls, as dead teens (again, none of this loving matters, but that's twelve brand-new characters to introduce). Most importantly, the leader of the ancestor trolls is a female troll named Meenah, the kid version of HIC. She's a total rear end in a top hat but actually kind of awesome. The troll ancestor version of Vriska is also there, named Aranea. She's a full-of-herself bloviating idiot, and her and Meenah decide to try and help the beta kids/alpha trolls if possible.
The alpha kids are helped by their own trolls, two who both end up using the same thirteenth, aprocyphal astrological sign of Ophiuchus. One is a hateful, misogynistic, idiotic male troll and the other is a sweet and polite and helpful female troll. they're both boring idiots though, the male being a totally pointless loser and the female being really boring and generically "nice". She reveals her name to eventually be Calliope, with his being Calliborn. She ends up revealing that neither she nor her brother are in fact trolls - they're cherub, which is a third alien race where two minds inhabit the same body at birth. One dominates the other, killing the sibling, with that personality then controlling the body permanently (over a time-share thing where one mind is dominant while the order is dormant). Calliborn, who desperately wants to kill his sister, eventually does so via a literally Saw parody with attendant music. In the process he cuts his own leg off - Lord English, for reference, has a stump leg.
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The alpha and beta kids eventually team up, both Becs come along, the Condesce arrives. The insane troll who killed all the other trolls escapes and tries to summon Lord English. Spades Slick shows up via a convoluted series of events that really, truly, doesn't loving matter. Everyone gets ready to fight, only for Aranea to arrive and mind-control Jane (whose special power is to bring people back to life no matter what) and has Jane revive her. Aranea ruins everything, mind-controls Jake, who kills Jade under her command, and basically everyone gets killed off except John, Roxy, and a (dying) Terezi.
Terezi comes up with a final plan - have John go back in time (thus going back to the pre-scratch universe, it's a special power that only John has) and change several significant events within them, thus retconning them permanently. Chiefly, he prevents Terezi from ever entering into a relationship with Dave (which prevents him and Karkat's conflict), Terezi from ever thinking that Vriska actually committed the murders she thought Vriska did (preventing Terezi from killing her, and Vriska then prevents Aranea from loving everything up), and...I think that's it? I honestly don't remember. Kanaya never dies and thus becomes a vampire, and she never loses the egg because instead of Terezi thinking Vriska did everything they capture and tie up the insane troll who actually committed almost all the murders. In this retconned world Vriska and Terezi become best friends again, working to resolve issues, Karkat and Dave end up dating and entering a serious relationship, and Rose doesn't fall into alcoholism (oh, yeah, pre-retcon she's an alcoholic).
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Dead Vriska, from pre-retcon, enters into a relationship with Meenah, becoming (Vriska). (Vriska) is actualized and relatively happy, having abandoned a need to prove herself that dominates her living form. Vriska, the alive and post-retcon one, arrives and convinces Meenah to assemble an army of the millions of alternate versions of the trolls that all died, creating a ghost army to fight Lord English first-hand. Meenah and (Vriska) break up and (Vriska), heartbroken, wanders aimlessly. Eventually, she meets pre-retcon dead Terezi, or (Terezi), and the two of them make peace with each other after death.
Vriska and Terezi team up and plan an attack to kill off the like, fifteen threats currently in existence. It's needlessly convoluted but basically relies on each of them splitting up into groups of three to four and dealing with each disparate problem as they arrive. Calliborn creates his "masterpiece", which is him breaking the fourth wall and taking agency away from Andrew Hussie as narrator to explain that at some point the alpha and beta kids fight him as Lord English (who he eventually becomes), he wins against them, and eventually imprisons the beta kids in a chest. Why does this work and what does it mean? I don't loving know!
A future, alternate-universe Calliope arrives, one where she dominated Calliborn and won and became I guess "Lady" English instead. She leaves to go to the green sun and with her insane deus ex machina powers stop Lord English or whatever.
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In the final couple hundred pages Hussies introduces a bunch of double-prototyped sprites, who are totally pointless and worthless and not necessary. One of them is Davesprite merged with one of the female trolls, Nepeta, who makes Davepetapsrite, who explains in increasingly desperate tones that actually all versions of a being are, in fact, centrally connected to each other despite none of that making any loving sense and directly contradictory to a bunch of previous plot elements. But whatever, now for the finale battle
The kids fight according to plan and it goes absolutely perfectly, except Dave (who has hangups with his brother, Bro, who was an emotionally and physically abusive piece of poo poo as evidenced by the total garbageness of his clone, Dirk) has to behead Dirk in a moment of massive catharsis for Dave...except it's undone as it's happening, because future Daves come back to save Dirk and Jane revives him literally five pages later. All the threats who aren't Lord English are beaten or killed. PM (formerly Bec White) grabs hold of both rings and destroys them. Vriska retrieves the chest that imprisoned the beta kids and opens it, thus beating Lord English. I don't know how, and I don't know why or even what the chest did, because this all happens offscreen.
The kids birth a new universe, and enter it, having won. Or maybe they didn't, considering that Lord English imprisoned them and it's unknown if they actually beat him or he killed them. Or if the new universe is in fact a dreambubble (a function previously established to be illusory and so realistic as to be near-impossible to tell). Nobody receives any actual resolution to their arcs or anything besides, arguably, Terezi and Roxy, and that was done hundreds of pages and at least a year previously. Nothing is resolved, nothing is explained, none of the myriad plot points introduced get addressed, skipping from "Vriska is about to confront Lord English with the ghost army" to "they either won or didn't and either way here's an idyllic scene of some of the main characters playing frisbee".
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Jan 20, 2017 03:56
