#SBURB tutorial

[homestuckreplay]

oooo did rereading act 1/2 feel different now that you've read problem sleuth???

yes, definitely! I have stopped looking at Act 1 as a complete beginning, and started seeing it as a continuation of something that was already ongoing (MSPA as a whole). like, when Homestuck started, a young man standing in his bedroom wasn’t logged as Homestuck page 1, it was MSPA page 1901, and the people reading it back then were almost exclusively Problem Sleuth fans.

I saw a post a while back (which I sadly cannot find again) saying something like ‘people who didn’t spend a year waiting for Problem Sleuth to escape his office building will never understand what it felt like to see John easily leave his house 10 days into Homestuck’ and I think that post is correct – that must have been a very strange and surprising reveal. Problem Sleuth is so based on video game logic that it’s often very literal, and its puzzles only have one solution. PS, AD and PI are trapped in their building, and need the Megaton Key to escape. in real life, if you were trapped in an office building, you’d have options. calling some sort of building manager or locksmith, leaving via an emergency back exit, smashing a window, finding a YouTube tutorial on how to pick locks, etc. but a video game can bar all but the ‘correct’ solution (aside from cheats, mods, etc), as can an author. Homestuck sticks to this in some ways – the alchemy sequence in Sburb’s tutorial level, for example – but overall it feels much more grounded in reality than Problem Sleuth does, and much more metaphorical (its title, for example). those things only feel weird now that I have PS as a comparison!

in popular culture and especially in music, people talk a lot about ‘second album syndrome’, where an artist whose first album was a big success really struggles with their followup. sometimes that’s about the massively increased pressure on them, but often it’s that they put all their good ideas into their first album and haven’t had time to develop any new ones. in my opinion disappointing followups usually fall into one of two categories – either they try to do the exact same thing as the first album and feel like an uninspired retread, or they purposefully try to make something as different as possible, and end up experimenting without a solid artistic vision behind it. conversely, the second albums I love tend to take the ideas of the first album and build upon them. the artist is still working in the space that really interests them, but is actively trying to learn and advance their craft. a well known modern example of this is Olivia Rodrigo’s second album GUTS (2023), which is primarily about the same breakup as her debut SOUR (2021), but written with two years of perspective on those feelings, reflecting on her own actions and on other people’s responses to her original songs about them.

I think early Homestuck is basically doing the same thing, taking the core ideas of Problem Sleuth such as applying video game logic, inventories and battle systems to reality, characters interacting with their own medium, and telling a high concept story through small, reader-influenced actions, and exploring those through a different lens. PS, AD and PI could enter cheat codes for their own game and re-enter saved states, but due to their 1920s setting, none of them played video games outside of the one they were part of, so the mechanics that governed their lives had no context to them. John and his friends do play video games, program computers, etc, and so they’re able to more consciously game the mechanics of their own lives. Homestuck’s inventory systems are more complex and variable than PS’ equivalents, giving readers far more options (and opportunities for jokes) with their commands. the beta kids are far more similar to the average MSPA reader in their experiences, interests and senses of humor than Team Sleuth were, so might on some level be based on the types of people who were already reading the site. so PS and HS have similar ideas, very different execution

(for what it’s worth I think if Hussie had made a full Midnight Crew adventure instead of making Homestuck, it would have been far more of a retread of PS’ ideas instead of an advancement, and probably would not have recaptured the magic that PS accidentally stumbled on. but that’s guesswork)

anyway something else is that John, Rose and Dave are all Problem Sleuth fans!! and that meant something more to me on this reread than it ever has before. John, for example, has a poster of Problem Sleuth acting all hardboiled in his office with his gun and candy corn. John tends to identify with main characters over side characters, and he believes the front that people put up, even when it’s pretty obvious to other people that they’re faking. Rose has posters of Fluthlu and other strange beasts from PS’ imaginary realm, because she’s interested in occult and esoteric ideas over humor and puzzles. She probably read/played PS for its universe-destroying monsters more than any investment in whether Team Sleuth escape their building. Dave already has merch for Midnight Crew and the Felt despite not being super into the new adventure. He’s someone who doesn’t tend to stick with things for too long, and is always trying to keep up with what’s new so that he can have an opinion on it – PS is over, so he’s moved on. having your new main characters be a fan of your existing work feels pretty self indulgent, but the way they each interact with that work is VERY true to the rest of their characterization.

obviously there’s also a bunch of small references, like when Dave is described as ‘starting to flip the fuck out’ (p.465), or when John is commanded to ‘Fondly regard cremation’ (p.52), or my personal favorite, ‘CD: Punch clocks in faces to establish chronology’ (p.1180). Homestuck is always referencing itself too, with its many variations on doing an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle or stating immutable facts for the record or friendship being an emotion - specific turns of phrase that are used over and over to give the work its very strong voice and linguistic identity, keeping it cohesive even as it goes through wild shifts in tone, setting and art style, but without a greater ‘meaning’. the same way that a meme can circulate through different communities, platforms, even time periods, which makes it feel like there’s a singular ‘internet culture’ even though this is a huge and disparate place. so these references recurring from PS show that this concept I’d already noticed in Homestuck exists throughout MSPA and links these stories that seem like they’re taking place in very different worlds. I’m not someone who tries to pick out every tiny example of self-reference but the general idea does work for me.

anyway in conclusion: Problem Sleuth is very good and I don’t think it’s necessary to read it to understand Homestuck, but it has definitely changed my perspective on the early acts and given me some valuable context, which is very worthwhile!

[genesis-project-news]

could you implement a guide or tutoring mode? I'm wanting to play it with a friend but they have no idea how the game works and it can be hard to explain without causing frustration for both of us,

We have an in-game guide (SBURB Guide For Assholes) as well as a Steam tutorial linked in the game, and we are currently working on an official wiki! Otherwise, the #helpline channel in our Discord is always open!

[tehstripe]

im doing a homestuck reread because its feb break and its been so long since i last dived in that i feel like its worth going back to read and see what i get out of it this time.

anyways im sure that with the number of people doing homestuck textual analysis out there somebody's already noticed this and had more interesting things to say about it but i DO think its interesting that dave is essentially a tutorial character for john+the readers early on (this is a snippet from their second ever pesterlog)

like you have dave telling john how very basic aspects of his inventory system works. obviously this is narratively useful at this point to tell the readers (who were literally inputting commands for what to do next) how the systems work, and its also common to express world-building and explanation via character dialogue.

but its also interesting that dave later splits into davesprite, who is literally a game construct that comes with some tutorial information programmed in for the Literal in universe game of Sburb.

something something metatextual layers blah blah unintentional foreshadowing. idk what it means i just think is a neat lil parallel.

[sburbian-sage]

I really don't get why Time is a mandatory aspect. You don't need it for frog breeding, you can just use appearifiers or whatever. You don't always need to scratch the session, so you don't need their land construct. And unless you're in a weird situation, you shouldn't need to change stuff to adhere to the alpha timeline- the POINT of the alpha timeline is that it's "the way that things go", right? The only way you'd ever need a Time player keep you on track is if you were already under a Time player's influence, right???

But I guess I must be wrong, because I hear the opposite so often...

You could *THEORETICALLY* get away with just using Sendificators and Appearifiers to replicate Time Travel, but it's a lot like using the oven to boil water. Not to mention, Time Players are still useful-bordering-on-mandatory. Time Travel is borderline worthless if you aren't a Time Player because it's heavily unintuitive, the Whispers are your only in-game tutorial, and I'm pretty sure that unless you are a current or Native Time Player, the game actively obfuscates your practical knowledge concerning how to use it. So even if you know what you're doing, SBURB might just cloud your mind and make you perform a basic paradox through easily avoidable accident. It's why I don't like thinking about Time that much.

Like, I'm pretty sure that what you said is true, in that there can only be a Doomed Timeline if someone fucks with Time in the first place. But it might not be a desirable Alpha Timeline. Like maybe one of your players blows up their microwave and dies, and they end up breaking the Server/Client Entry Loop which leads to half of the other players dying, which damns the Session to failure. If that's the Alpha Timeline, then nothing can be done about it/shikata ga nai. But does that necessarily need to be the Alpha Timeline? Because if a Time Player is active (or will be active in the future), then they could step out of nowhere and reveal that the microwave exploding actually created a Doomed Timeline, and thus they "put it back on track" by making sure that player removes their fork from their microwavable noodles before cooking them. From your perspective, a Time Player just stole your fork for no reason, but from their perspective, a Doomed Timeline happened, and they averted it. As opposed to them not doing that, because they didn't exist, and so this Doomed Timeline becomes the Alpha Timeline? Surely you understand what I'm getting at.

It should also be noted, every Land is "broken" in same way on purpose, so the Player has a quest they can go on, so they have a reason to play the game (outside of "this is your life now, do it or die"). So in the same way that the current universe's Genesis Frog is dying, necessitating that the Space Player breed a new one so a new universe can be created, it's not unreasonable to assume that the timeline is innately flawed, and so a Time Player is needed to fix it. To say nothing of the fact that Space and Time are fundamental forces in any universe, and the Genesis Frog requires the efforts of both to be done. So basically, Time is a mandatory Aspect, because the game is fundamentally constructed in such a way that they are mandatory. There is no other way, it cannot be helped/shikata ga nai.

[dingodad]

I’ve never heard anyone mention this before, but would Alternian trolls even recognize a human video game as being a video game? Trolls hatch their games out of grubs. It’s biological. From what we see with FLARP, troll video games seem to work kinda similar to how sburb works, with the clouder being analogous to the server, and the player of both being at the whim of the “server”. Both games have abstractions and monsters that are spawned in real life. FLARP has a health bar like sburb, stats, and classes such as boy skylark. If you die it’s permanent. Troll video games don’t seem to use a computer aside from starting up the game, like sburb. And since trolls build their houses early on in life, would the trolls even think sgrub was that unusual aside from the meteors? Because up until they enter the medium, this would only be slightly different from an average troll video game. Of course this all makes sense, as another way Doc Scratch can prepare them for Sgrub is if the games they play are already very similar to sgrub. FLARP might as well be like the tutorial to sgrub. Alternia really is like sburb, there’s many connections. Lusii practically exist just so the trolls have some way to have guides in sburb. Good lord this is a lot of words, sorry

most of this is not really a question lol but yes all of this is on purpose. alternia and sburb are both stories with writers and purposes and therefore function in all the same ways as i have been discussing over the last few weeks

do trolls have conventional "video" games, i guess probably yes because karkat and john have that conversation about crash bandicoot? and hiveswap puts a gaming console complete with sports game in xefros' house. but considering in hiveswap the troll version of billiards is actually an arena sport i do think it's more fun to imagine all of their games are live action like flarp and fiduspawn and sburb are

[valle-de-sombra-de-muerte]

Homestuck Reread: Act 2, Part 3/3 (p. 615-759)

Read the previous post here. Read the next post here.

Time to finally wrap up Act 2.

John builds a tent which Rose promptly tosses out the window. Umm... based???

This is Rose's polite way of saying that she's speeding things along since John has mostly been puttering around up to this point.

How many times can Hussie write "listless octoroon" before the NAACP is notified? Seriously, what's his obsession with that phrase? Is it because it sort of borders on being a racial slur without actually being one, so he can use it to his heart's delight and not worry about being called racist? This is the same dude who made Team Special Olympics so I'm not that surprised by his sense of humor.

I'm sure this spurious anecdote of Harry Anderson accidentally chopping off some dude's finger might be amusing for some. I'm not familiar at all with him though, so this does nothing for me.

John's lazy ass sure isn't taking this whole "saving the world" thing very seriously. This is like trying to get your Sim to do chores but they'd rather play video games instead. If only this really was The Sims and she made him drown in a pool or trapped him in a room with no doors.

Rose has honestly been holding his hand the entire way, building up the path to the gate, and even killing most of the imps herself. This is really Rose's game and John is a pawn she has to nudge along toward the goal. I should really accept at this point that John is not the protagonist this story deserves.

Jade's silhouette is briefly teased during this flash where John is asleep. Hussie really wants to keep hyping her up for some reason.

Jade's conversation with John plays out similarly to the one she had with Rose. However, while Rose casts suspicion on Jade's eerie precognition, John is a moron who just goes along with whatever she says. She's straight up gaslighting him here.

Rose and Dave throwing shade at Jade behind her back, combined with the fact that neither of them told her about Sburb, makes it seem like she's an outsider in her own friend group. The way she's able to manipulate John despite the caution expressed by his other friends makes me question again why exactly she wasn't cast as a villain. The pieces are all there!

You know, Nannasprite is also selective about the info she provides to John, but it's explained that the sprites are programmed to act that way. The game intends them to be helpful little tutorial NPCs that dispense info but not too much as to spoil the mysteries of the game. What's Jade's excuse, huh? Is she an NPC too?

And she immediately changes the subject and John rolls with it because he only has one brain cell. I cannot stress enough that Jade's pesterlogs are the most aggravating thing to read thus far.

These ogres have been tailing John for quite some time. We've been getting occasional shots of them getting closer and closer, leading up to this moment. It's some good tension and buildup to what should be John's first big challenge in the game.

But instead of following up with that we go back to Dave for his confrontation with Bro. Okay I guess? I didn't mention it before, but it's a cute detail that Bro makes a reference to Dave's comic in his note.

This is a really good flash, all things considered. Maybe we can execute both fights simultaneously and establish some parallels between how John and Dave overcome their respective adversaries.

The Strider fight is interrupted so we can turn our attention to... the Wayward Vagabond. Oh yeah, there's a brief moment in the flash where it seems like we're going to pivot to Jade's intro, before we turn to WV. I don't know why Hussie keeps pretending like it's going to be so huge when she's finally introduced when all it's going to amount to is a kick in the balls.

Up to this point, we only really got to know WV through his use of the command console. I really did not care for his little "conflict" with John during this time. It wasn't funny, it dragged the pace down while these two butted heads, and it felt like an unnecessary addition to how the storytelling works. What is there to be gained by introducing these command centers where third parties can interact with the characters? If WV can talk to John, who's talking to WV? We had an established third-person, omniscient "reader" that could interact with all the characters, so I suppose it's supposed to be them. But that whole mechanic has become all but obsolete by this point.

Once again, this is not Problem Sleuth. This command interface doesn't work since the reader doesn't have any control over these characters. Hussie clearly had aims to tell his own story without user influence, so this whole storytelling device really shouldn't have existed in the first place.

WV's love of democracy and his desire to be a mayor feels at odds with how bossy he was with John. He didn't try to foster a rapport with John at all, acting more like the tyrants he very much despises.

WV's character is very erratic. He has delusions of grandeur, wishes to be respected and taken seriously, and apparently has no patience for the antics of others. He hates it when John is screwing around and also voices his displeasure when the "reader" inputs a command he finds to be nonsensical.

Yet he is also quite prone to silly behavior and quickly becomes a source of comic relief. This kind of unpredictable behavior can be explained later when we learn of the trauma he suffered on the battlefield. But looking at these antics through that lens does suck a lot of the joy out of them. It's like watching your senile grandfather playing with toy soldiers and reenacting the battles he fought in.

Knowing his backstory and how much of a tragic character WV later turns out to be, it's a little disheartening to see how the fandom at large treats him as this quirky little mascot/pet for the other characters. I don't have anything else to add to that, I just think it sucks.

Anyway, I don't mind the WV stuff too much, but I have to question why we're taking time to focus on him when we could be focusing more on the other characters' plots. This whole section is 91 pages. Surely something more productive could've been used with those pages before the act's end. Why couldn't this have waited for the next act? It's jarring to have this random bout of comic relief at a point in the story where important conflicts should be resolved.

WV finds a stockpile of Tab and becomes enamored with the drink. I don't understand why it's constantly referred to as sugary. It's a zero-sugar soda, so is that part of the joke? Tab is a really dated brand to reference. I don't even remember being it widely available by the time Homestuck was being written. So how many readers would be able to catch that joke? I don't think Hussie knew just how young his audience was going to skew.

Yes, WV's commands were a real waste of time. A rare moment of self-awareness by Hussie, even if I doubt that it registered with him.

It's worth noting that WV considers the green slime unappetizing, even though he previously ate chalk and uranium purely because they were colored green.

[S] WV: Ascend is the End of Act flash for Act 2. It's much grander than Act 1's flash in every way. Lots of great shots, and "Explore" is a really good track. It also goes to show how much more complex things have gotten since Act 1. While the previous flash was focused entirely on John, this one teases the cliffhangers for WV, Rose, Dad, and Dave's individual plots. This cast of characters is ballooning quickly and things are only going to get more convoluted from here.

Is it ever revealed who exactly built the frog temple when the meteor crashed on Earth? This was during the distant past when there wasn't even an ocean, so life didn't exist yet. Did it come into being on its own? I don't care for that.

Enter: Bro. Out of all the cliffhangers presented in this flash, this one is the most hype. Look at the imposing figure his silhouette cuts. You just know this fight is going to be big when we finally get to it.

Act 2 is a mixed bag. I appreciated Rose and Dave's segments, but John and WV's were a big letdown. The plot (or at least John's side of it) is moving along at a snail's pace when it really shouldn't have been. This should've been a big tonal shift where we leave reality and are plunged into the game's world, yet it's mostly trudging along at the same unhurried pace as the previous Act.

The Act should've been very straightforward. It presents us with a clear goal quite early on: John needs to get to the gate that's far out of reach. Okay, how is that accomplished? By John futzing around, arguing with WV, and occasionally fighting imps and collecting grist. Not exactly the most engaging means of solving this problem. And by the end of it, he hasn't even reached the gate! Nothing of note has been accomplished.

We learn about punch card alchemy and more about the cosmology of the Furthest Ring, but I honestly couldn't care less about this world building. It's all so expository and the story takes a great big halt whenever we have to read about it. Yeah Hussie, it sure is cool how you can craft items by combining their cards. It's also great how you made this chess society that's perpetually at war. I sure hope this has some payoff and isn't just window dressing to disguise how little the plot has actually progressed.

I was hoping this Act would lift my spirits and get me engaged with the comic, but all this meandering has left me discouraged. Maybe Act 3 will be better? Oh wait, that's the real Jade-heavy Act, isn't it? Oh fu-

[stareyed-prince]

Puzzlestuck #1

Start

* You begin the game with one Beta Human and one Beta Troll . You must complete the tutorial level and advance to level 10 with your human before your chosen troll will join your party .

Ascension

* When your character reaches max level , they will often ascend . This means becoming more powerful , gaining new abilities , et cetera . Most characters simply god tier , but sprites will advance in prototype stage .

Obtaining Characters

* All SBURB and SGRUB players can be obtained through the Dream Bubbles . Once you defeat a character , they will be available to add to your party . Ancestors , however , must be obtained on Alternia . You do not have to complete the gauntlet to win a character ; if you die , you obtain all characters you already beat .

Sprites and Guardians

* These characters are also unlocked in a special manner . To unlock a sprite , you must have the corresponding human in your party . Then you must win a strife on Earth that corresponds to that human . * Unlocking a guardian is the same process as a Sprite , but your human must be ascended first .

[shade-e-e-es]

Tell Me About Mumbo

Good god man maybe I shouldn’t have waited a year to post them????

So. Mumpar. He’s normal.

He’s aaa jade with an eye mutation that gives him Slight psionic capabilities. Not much. And he’s also a rainbow drinker. Not on his own accord. Blame Elyxel for reviving him and Merkur ./ (Elyxel is grian. Merkur is scar.)

He has a passion for terrorism and machines. He says it’s not terrorism but the trio of three have blown up a lot of shit because Mumpar really likes making bombs. He also posts tutorials online on how to make various bombs and other weapons like trapped doors.

Beyond making explosions hes literally pathetic he only drinks the blood of Elyxel (he’d drink Merkurs but it’s disgusting), he’s scared of everything, and he loves his friends and hates them at the same time cause they’re awful influences.

He’s also aaa. What was it Knight of Breath, Derse dreamer and his lusus is a potbellied pig named Mitzburry who’s been exploded and repaired by his son. Also Mumpar got so sad cause he missed taking care of babies and made a baby with Elyxel. Hashtag we love you Mumxel why did your dad prototype you in Sburb.

Don’t mind that last one that’s how he died (in quotes) so he could godtier

[cyvonix]

It's interesting how each act has almost felt like a tutorial for the next one. Like, each act introduces a bunch of crazy ass concepts and terminology and discusses all of them in great detail, and in the next act most of those things just become totally to be expected as we move onto the next big concept to learn.

Case in point; it's being taken full advantage of that we're now expected to know all the basic structures and mechanics of Sburb, so despite the fact that it's as complex as ever, it's now being brushed over to make room for all the even newer, troll-related stuff we have to learn. Wild

[tenaciouschronicler]

ACT 1 Reread: annotating past thoughts

A select few notes from my posts for the Act 1 span and the extra thoughts I have now with foresight. I stored some other notes to ponder and write on later.

Out of sympathy for John's perceived lack of arms, you pick up the CAKE for him and put it on his BED.

{So was this normal for John in any capacity or what? Are we, MSPAR, a character in this game? Is that who's playing? That's so fucked up to think about because then in essence we are responsible for these kids entering their game cycle.}

When your father gives her portrait a wistful glance now and then, you can tell it brings back painful memories. A tall bookshelf. A ladder. An unabridged COLONEL SASSACRE'S. He never wants to talk about it.

{God this hits different knowing exactly how Sassacre's killed Nanna. Absolutely crazy.}

Poor TT, sounds like this is par for the course when dealing with John. Shes gotta be older than John, at LEAST. You can almost hear the exasperated sigh.

{LMAO called it! Johns the baby which means Rose just has to live with him being like that sometimes.}

The whole sequence is very smooth in its panning zoom to the sky and the following narration is just … odd. It makes me inclined to say this is another character rather than Hussie just writing. Someone omniscient almost, speaking to us the reader but also to John even if he can’t hear it.

{Confirmed. That's what happens when you focus on tonal shifts I guess.}

To the right is your DAD’S ROOM. It is locked, and you are forbidden from ever entering. He has secrets. Concerning! I hope this is normal DAD secrets and not weird DAD secrets, iykyk.

{Yeah the secret is hes not all that into clowns which is actually very concerning.}

EB: i discovered a comet that is going to destroy the earth, and it was named after me. EB: now i am famous, and everyone wants to talk to me a lot.

{God I love dramatic irony}

The more John uses his sylladex the more I have to think all the mishaps are just human error of someone who doesn't know how a sylladex functions. Like the cake was at the top of the stack, John could have taken it out and then grabbed the razor. But no. Instead we get a beautiful boomerang launch into the toilet.

{Johno doesn’t read the manuals. Every instance of the ‘tutorial’ is just because boy does not learn traditionally or rationally.}

What wasn't mentioned is that John currently only has the Client side of SBURB. I'm unsure of what server it’s trying to connect to but it currently seems offline which is strange. If this game has been so highly anticipated wouldn’t the servers be up by now? Especially since John got the game late.

{Server side is a different player making this work like a LAN network. Adds another layer to the fact the trolls have made contact with the kids and Roses action with the Derse server. SBURB is supposed to be self contained sessions in closed network loops but her actions created a tunnel for communication that wasn't supposed to exist.}

{John cutting his hair with the razor is still super funny.}

The sky sure is getting a lot of focus, huh?

{Its the meteors, but also it does get focused on a lot.}

John. Buddy. My Guy. WHAT DOES YOUR DAD DO FOR WORK? Is he really a performer (PLEASE there's no other answer) or are you just blinded by his interests?

{Still don’t know what Dad does for work. As such he will forever be a clown in our hearts.}

At 5:25 we get the chance to talk with GG with the help of Dad’s PDA. A very bubbly person who has surprisingly NOT heard of SBURB.

{Maybe not SBURB but she isn't completely unknowing. And actually is this just that awake Jade doesn’t know because dream Jade told Rose there was a game that could bring Jaspers back. Her degrees of knowledge in either state are confusing.}

TT: The walkthroughs vaguely suggest an impending threat before they end. TT: The already poorly constructed sentences become even more curt and ambiguous. TT: As if written hastily and with a sense of alarm. TT: Actually, their dedication to updating the walkthrough under such circumstances is admirable. EB: wow, FASCINATING. EB: ??????

{Sassy John is great, why did I never notice before?}

Rose seems so much more aware to the narrator. For example, her face changes on page 219 and her reaction takes longer to become disgust almost like she is reading it. There's also two instances where we try to look more at the things she has to learn more about her. She notes things are ‘private’ or only done when others aren’t watching.

{This also hits different with Roses current actions. Shes always been more perceptive and forging her own path.}

TT: I’ve found no evidence that anyone has successfully created the item. This line kinda makes me wonder what happened to the other walkthrough posters.

{They died. Or again these guys are the outliers in creating a tunnel out of the LAN.}

And with that the curtain closes on Act One. …which leads to more questions on the nature of this comic and how we should be extrapolating information if everything is playing out like a play but I am not That much of a theater nerd so I’ll file this for later.

{LOL. Past me had no idea she’d get a role in a play and increase her THEATER NERD stat.}

Its unclear who they are or why these pages are separate from the main story. Not part of the narrative at the moment but likely to be soon if SBURB has any say in the matter. Where the ruins found lie is also a mystery.

{That's our exiled mayor, Wandering Vagabond! You’ll have so many feelings for this little guy its not even funny. But kudos for guessing he’d be in the story. Or really that he was already a part of the story. How long has WV been on Earth before finding the bunker? He’s had to have landed near the meteor crash site but then again time works different and everything is covered in sand.}

This act works well as a prologue to the story, getting us familiar to the mechanics and preparing us for the action we are about to dive into.

[out--bound]

Why the fuck does prototyping a second time prior to entering the Medium only empower the enemies further and serve no other function in the game

Why is SBURB so bad at explaining its own mechanics to the players

Do you guys see what I mean when I say the game itself is extremely flawed?? Like as a GAME it fails at things we expect from modern game design, like a goddamn tutorial !!

ESPECIALLY considering the stakes involved!!

NOT TO MENTION the fact that you're on a timer before you even start playing the game because of the time fuckery involved 🤬🤬🤬

[homestuckreplay]

I've just read the new pages of Homestuck, and a few things stuck out to me! Pages 17-19 follow up on some of yesterday's inventory based panels by showing us how items can be combined, used on other items, and how spaces in the room can be selected (in addition to items). These mechanics and the return of the big cursor really feel like a video game tutorial, but who for? John isn't playing a game (yet?) and neither are we, although I suppose if there was a way for us to enter the commands that link to the next pages then we would be?

Next there's this clip from the movie Con Air. At 1 minute and 21 seconds and on page 20 of this webcomic, it takes up a good percentage of the story so far, and it's really different in tone and content to what we've seen of John playing with his magic chest and inventory, which is jarring. It's followed up by a page on Deep Impact, and I guess this says something about John's character that he is into these movies (which might be more impactful if I'd seen them?) - but it seems weird to focus on other media properties so soon into a new one. Unless these are supposed to be influences and the story is going to take a sudden sharp turn in an action movie direction?

Most interesting of all is the 'beta version' of this comic, linked from page 22. The content is very similar but the vibe of it is completely different, mostly because of the art style. It's both smoother and more whimsical, which fit with the character being 10 instead of 13. I love how expressive John is in this beta, especially in the first panel when he looks up to the top left corner and frowns, and page 6 when he distinctly doesn't see the cursor being waved in front of his face.

The extra sound effects, zooms, and actual interactivity make it feel more like a game for the reader to play, so I wonder if that was the original intent and then the author switched to the new, less interactive version for some reason? Curious as well how the cursor is almost the same shape as the Sburb Beta poster on John's wall, definitely all signs are pointing to this game being important to the story.

[sburbian-mechanics]

SBURB Info: Prototyping

Picture this: You're trying to enter The Game and you pop open that weird machine your friend just deployed. A timer starts its countdown, while a strange colored light floats out and starts making noises.

What do you do?

If you are in this situation right now- don’t read the whole guide. You’re on a timelimit, and all you need to know is that you need to get the light to absorb at least one object, though it can go up to two. It prefers things of sentient form, so either images or dead things. It also likes things you are attached to deeply, or represent some sort of failure or fault in your life. Go get something that fits some of that criteria, and chuck it at it!

Still here? Great. That means you aren’t in any danger. Let’s talk about PROTOTYPING. We all know what prototyping is, kind of. It’s how the game makes your tutorial guide, and outfits the enemy’s with powers and thematics. That’s why it prioritizes something with sentience and or sapience, so you can talk to your guide. That’s also why it likes things you’re attached to- plus it makes for good thematics. And the failure/fault thing ties into fighting enemies themed off of that pretty easily. It has more Heart Energy in it than normal, meaning that it can be manipulated by high-level Heart players, but only in the late game.

But we are not here to talk about the simple stuff. (I mean technically I am but I like game theory for a reason goddammit!) Let’s get into some of the Mechanics!

First of all- how does prototyping sapient things work? If it's only one person, It's mostly fine. They will take on slight tendencies of the other thing prototyped, but it's fine. It's when you get two sapients in one sprite that things get Weird. You see, souls kinda hate being mixed together. Individuality is kind of Hearts whole thing, so the base unit of Heart is not going to tolerate being mixed with another unit unless one soul totally dominates. And that is kinda the antithesis of prototyping. So instead, SBURB does a tricky little thing, and uses Corruption states. Now, Corruption sounds bad, but the term comes from computer programing. What it really means is unintended changes to data, which in this case is the soul. So the soul is being changed in a odd way not accounted for by the rules of reality. Still pretty bad, but it is not necessarily negative. So what basically happens is that SBURB causes the sapients to undergo The Ultimate Self. (This is a stupid name btw, but for the layman's sake, I'll use it. Just know that Possilapse is way better!) This is important because it causes the souls to merge with other versions of itself, which is much easier than forcing them together. Once the two have completed the process, merging the two is much easier, because they have already tolerated being merged with near-infinite variations of itself, and thus individual will and survival instinct matters less. So the end result is a merge of two sapients, that have the Ultimate Self of two people, as well as the perspective of the other sapient on each other. It's similar to a mechanic from an Earth show called Fusion, in the show Steven Universe. Just with near-infinite knowledge. The resulting sprite is called a sprite squared, and cannot be further prototyped because even doing it once is risking it. It can still refuse and sprite-splode if they are too incompatable, leading to no sprite for you! However, these types of sprites are by far the most useful in any run of the game, so setting them up is worth it. They can even resist the Call of the Battlefield and hang out with you in your new universe!

Additionaly, how exactly does Prototyping affect the Royals? Turns out, It is actually the Ring/Scepter that they carry that gives them the prototyping. If stolen, it would give the wearer (as long as their Caripacian of course,) equivalent final boss powers and physical changes. This often leads to the phenomenon known as Urspers, which is when a Carapacian, often Jack Noir or one of his cohorts, (but not always!) becomes the new final/bonus boss due to having the Scepter/Ring. This can be really dangerous, due to them not having the proper ability to hold back their power, or the same programing that keeps them on the Battlefield or the Moon. This can easily lead to Session-wide haywire, and is actually the most encountered glitch in the game! However, it is typically not game-breaking, persay, and the Game Breakers have used it for some pretty knarly game-skips and glitches. Set-up is pretty easy too- if one of your prototypes is a frog, the Black Queen will refuse to wear her ring and it will be really open for interference. This is known as the Frog's Opening, and one of many openings and gambits in the Moon Political Game.

How it affects imps is pretty facsinating too. Did you know that the Prototyping powers are not hardcoded into the game? The powers the enemies actually recieve are entirely based on how your subconcious thinks your Prototyping would give out powers. This is why they can be refrences, or not directly the logical result of the object you leave in. It can even lead to certain memories tied to the object being renacted! That's not entirely a good thing though. I mean, it is representative of your mistakes.

Attempts to find the "ideal prototyping" has so far been unsucessful. The Unborn Sprite will refuse any forced prototyping such as a used tissue, and memory manipulation can also lead to giving the object more subconcious importance, and thus more in-game power, than necessary. There are, however, unideal prototypings found, which are mostly common sense stuff like bombs or weapons. Theoretically, the most unideal prototyping would be a First Guardian, but in this point of subjective time, no one has had a strong enough connection or acess to one to actually prototype it. Thank Frog for that!

And that's pretty much that, I suppose. Prototyping is really complicated, but poorly understood. We know way more about Sprites than we do about Prototyping, and attempts to crack it have so far been unsuccessful, for the most part. However, there is testing going on using Heart players, which looks promising! I'll tell you if any interesting happens on that front. Next time, we will be talking about Sprites! Don't be afraid to ask questions in the meantime- my ask box is currently empty. That's all for now! GG out!

----------<I>----------

Hmm...I could probably help a lot if I signed up for those experiments. But do I waaaannt to? I have a literal immortal life to fill. And the Game Breakers are a little annoying to keep up with. I could join in a century or two. It's not like I'm a part of them anyway! Yeah, I think I'll hang back for this one.

...Talking to Old Gods is scary.

[the-mspfa-200-favourites-project]

SBURB TAS in 8:41:53.06

Hey remember how SBURB DONE QUICK was made this year, 2020? Well, something as good as that has bound to be influential in SOME department, and henceforth we have another take on the idea of a “Speedrunned SBURB game,” SBURB TAS in 8:41:53.06. This one’s got an entire AUTOPSY ABOUT THE MAKING OF IT that goes alongside it, which I think is pretty much practically required viewing for thinking about Fanadventures through an academic lens if only because it’s pretty much the ONLY “I made a Fanadventure and here’s how I did it” video out there, at least to my knowledge. It’s also really fascinating from like, a historical perspective, because apparently the author of this particular webcomic we’re about to look at wanted to know why everybody said Homestuck was…bad. Which is not the perveiling stance on Homestuck back in 2012, let me tell you (or at least, that’s what I heard, I wasn’t in the Fandom until, again, 2019). Also, it’s not my prevailing stance NOW, all those years later.

The comic itself is. Fine? I guess? It plays around with the idea of SBURB being a video game more so than a lot of other Fanadventures, which makes it stand out. To be perfectly honest, I think the reason why I think this is an interesting comic to talk about is more so because of that video I previously mentioned, rather than anything in the comic itself. Like, yeah, they skip the typical Act 1 segment, because nobody wants to go through Act 1, and I think I agree with that…but I think you can’t really get away from Act 1? Like, to me, the structure of Act 1 is a madcap birthday party where everything goes wrong. It’s the tutorial, it’s the foundations of all the patterns that will come later on the story, and therefore Act 2 being where the prose and all that jazz truly starts doesn’t mean that it’s an “act 2.” Act 2s to me are like. Building on what was set forth in Act 1, but changing the atmosphere to be more…darker, more mysterious. That’s just my take on it, at least.

But I am *happy* about there being a take that I can refute, think about, internalize, take apart from the author in the first place. This note/review isn’t really about the comic itself, I guess, but I think that’s because I’m not too interested in the idea of SBURB as a purely mechanical space? But this comic *is* interesting to check out, if maybe only because of that associated video. I think I’m going in circles now so yeah I’m going to end this here.

[sburbian-sage]

Quick update because i saw your post and while ive got the time

Immediately tried teleporting into their ship, definitely a no-go, very nearly scattered myself across the void trying, either i outright cant teleport in or i need to be able to visualize where im going

Already tried talking to the others and they refuse to "take action against their caretakers"???(They all said a lot of different things but this was the loudest word i could hear) no clue what that means but whatever fuck em

Best bet is to keep running and hit the astroids and see if i cant find a doorway into the fuckin magicant

Got a message from one of my coplayers but clearly they have been scrambled cause they're talking about a veritable utopia and how great it would be for me to join them and how i should stop being stubborn

Shits starting to look really fucking grim

I know I keep harping on this, but you DID acknowledge that I would be skeptical, but "the Others share an allegiance with spacefaring plant people" is really escalating this tale to new heights of "I'm highly fascinated in this fake story". I feel like I'm kind of ruining the gravitas of this all, in that this could be some internet ARG story like Alan Tutorial, except it's being platformed by an unlikeable fuck who keeps picking apart all the logical flaws and outlandishness of the story.

Unironically, you know people have published their own original fiction online, right? They did this in the old pre-SBURB universes, of course, but even in the age of the Replayernet, it's not just discussion forums and FAQ writers, there's legit authors out there. We even have unique genres now, like Plausible Fiction (kind of like Historical Fiction, this is a fictional account of a Session that could have happened), Fantastic Sessions (you're basically contributing to this one right now), or Speculative Post-SBURB, which envisions what life and society might look like if the Door wasn't broken. There was this one really cool web serial which was imagined a Post-SBURB world, but one that's experienced centuries of history and decay and eventually it becomes this gonzo sword & sorcery story. Like imagine Conan or Elric, but he's a Troll fighting a Basilisk with a fell sword empowered by Doom. It was cash.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah, you're currently being ganked by an alien armada. The Skaian Magicant would be the best place to lay low. I don't imagine they would know how to look for one of those things, and you can't easily be tracked while inside one. As for your next plan of action, I'm assuming the Others blocked you from fucking off into The Furthest Ring, so there's really only three options.

Ask your Denizen for help. You're kind of fucked up a creek right now, and they almost assuredly know what to do. Equally assured is the fact that your Denizen hasn't been scooped up in a flying saucer, considering the death-lasers they can blast out of their eyes.

Scratch your Session. Take those fuckers with you. Especially so I don't have to deal with them, or anyone else for that matter.

I know I keep harping on about the germ thing, but for real. At the VERY LEAST, alchemize yourself some weed-killer for if worst comes to worst.

[homestuckdailyweekly]

Homestuck Daily - Week 10 - 6/23/2024

Look, I might have a problem with procrastination. I know that about myself but it's been real bad with this project. I don't have as much defense for being a day late this week as I have in the past, nor do I have a Homestuck-related recommendation to blame on my lateness. Well, I have something kinda Homestucky, in the loosest sense of the term. I'll get to that later maybe. For now, the Engine that is Homestuck is getting started, and I should talk about that.

This week of Homestuck begins with John being given the task of retrieving his father's PDA with the help of Rose as the server-player. This goes surprisingly well all things considered, even with the mysterious voice in his head rudely commanding him forward, including one attempt to get John to jump from the platform he's standing on onto his dad's car below, across a gap that'd drop John to his certain doom. Since this update came out on Father's Day for me, I will note that I realized Dad Egbert's Serious Business account name is Pipefan413, which I assume Dad putting his kid's birthday into his online handle. I think that is sweet. After John refuses to jump the dangerous gap to his dad's car, the narrator questions who the person commanding John in place of the audience even is. It is then that we simultaneously flash back to a few minutes ago and flash forward to years in the future, but not many, where the WAYWARD VAGABOND we saw in the desert at the begining of the act has climbed down the Sburb hatch and has found a strange bunker containing a mysterious computer shaped as an iconographic house, split in 4 with each quarter being its own monitor. 3 of those monitors are currently blank, but one of them shows John, as he was when he first appeared this act. The WAYWARD VAGABOND begins typing commands into the interface, realizing the mysterious voice commanding John so far this act was him the whole time.

We are then given another snippet of Rose's Sburb FAQ, detailing the tutorial John went through at the end of Act 1 with the 3 Sburb machines. We then switch to seeing Rose herself, standing in her observatory as she sees the wildfire caused by the rain of meteorites striking the Earth. The power in her house is still out (since the earth is ending), her laptop battery is close to dying, and her last hope for power is the small BACKUP GENERATOR out behind the MAUSOLEUM. Since that is both outside during a storm, and much closer to the roaring wildfire, that is an option of last resort. Right now, Rose has to rely on John starting up his own Server copy of SBURB and hosting Rose, allowing her to escape this apocalypse in the same way John had. We also see that Rose's commands are unaffected by WV, perhaps because what we can presume is her monitor is still blank. In any case, it is time to progress the game, which for sake of hopefully creating a helpful NPC, means fully prototyping the Sprite. Rose first attempts to prototype Betty Crocker cake mix into the Jestersprite, but the Sprite is simply too nimble. WV suggests the potted plant, only for the Narrator to chide them, because it's "Rose's decision, not yours!". Rose then attempts to use the Colonel Sassacre Book instead of the Betty Crocker cake mix, but the Jestersprite escapes the kitchen before she has a chance to drop the book into it. This, however, has an unintended consequence of the large book causing the house to shake, knocking over John's grandmother's urn into Jestersprite. This, in time, we will learn created Nannasprite. In the meantime, John and Rose's next task is to get the SBURB Beta locked within John's Dad's car, with one major problem in the form of a few large problems: the Cruxtruder is still blocking the front door, and John/Rose is out of Buildgrist, which means they can't move the Cruxtruder or make a new door. Rose has a plan though, and instructs John to head upstairs. On the way he unknowingly encounters Nannasprite, although does not get a chance to properly meet her. Then, John gets a Pesterchum message from TG, who wants to tell John about his new rap. John explains the world is ending and he's stuck in another world and doesn't have time to read TG's bad rap about the movie Armageddon. This does not stop TG from rapping about the movie Armageddon. Finally, John gets back to the balcony, and learns Rose's plan: She'll lift the car up to the roof, where John will break the window and retrieve the beta before Rose sets it back down in its original spot. The plan nearly works, but then Rose's connection is cut (This time likely due to power), and the car drops into the inky clouds below as John looks on in horror. I think Homestuck was pretty fun this week. We're getting into the meat of Act 2, introducing mysteries of whats up with WV, setting up the stakes of Rose getting through the game tutorial, only to make the possibility of her doing so infinitely more complicated. Oh, and before I go, to partially explain why I've been busy this week and partially to recommend something I've been enjoying a lot: I've been playing a Play by Post game of Digidice, by Claire Mulkerin. It's Homestucky in the sense both Digimon and Homestuck are about a group of kids transported to another world to complete a Heroic Destiny. And as a adjacent recommendation, if you are a fan of Digimon and actualplay podcasts, Binary Break is a fantastic actualplay of Digidice, ran by Claire.

-EV