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mybg3notebook · 4 years ago

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Astarion and Power - Part 1

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were made up to the game version v4.1.101.4425. As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information.

Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in (post)

The number between brackets [] represents the topic-block related to (this post), which gathers as much evidence as I could get.

Before talking about Power, Cazador, and other details, I would like to quickly gather what little we have about Astarion’s past.

Backstory: Mortal Astarion.

About his past we have little information, mostly given by Swen in interviews with game magazines or via his on-live demonstrations of the game early in 2020 before the release of EA. All this information is subjected to changes, of course, so we should take it with a pinch of salt.

As a mortal, Astarion was a corrupt magistrate who judged criminals he later sent to the local vampire coven of the Szarr family as food. After a while, his greed got the best of him and started to sell those criminals into slavery as well, having a double profit from this. This movement brought the fury of the Szarr family upon him.

From this short story we can infer that there was a high probability that his judgements were unfair, condemning criminals who needed a death sentence to lighter ones (this is related to his strange comment of “death is a harsh sentence” in Arabella’s scene, see the post Astarion's Standards and Manipulation) while condemning innocent ones; all with the goal of having a decent amount of living creatures to offer to the local vampire or to the slave traders.

We also know, by his own words in game, that when he was turned into a vampire, he had been the victim of an attack of thugs/Gurs (he says this information in different moments of the game, changing details. I don't know if this is on purpose to show Astarion’s manipulative nature depending on your reaction to Gandrel, or it’s a consequence of unpolished details during EA). What we know for sure is that these Gurs/thugs were angry because of a judgement he had previously made. It’s easy for us to infer, using the info above, two situations:

Astarion may have condemned some isolated Gur to an unfair trial who ended up in a slavery network, being discovered later by their Gur fellows who simply avenged them in Baldur’s Gate. This theory has been developed as a way to see fit the concept of Maiden Fel. If Gandrel dies and Astarion performs a Speak with Dead, he will reveal that Maiden Fel is the head of his tribe who asked him to return with Astarion “unblemished”. Digging for more details about who Maiden Fel is, Gandrel says she is the “reason even monsters have nightmares”. Walking on the speculation ground, there is a chance that Maiden Fel could be a nightmare Hag, since Gurs consider hags as “wise women'', and unlike the rest of the humans, they respect them a bit more than common folks.

Or the whole setting was done by Cazador, who plotted this ambush to make it look as an act of barbarism using furious Gurs (which attack could be seen as an obvious reaction since Gurs are despised everywhere due to their nomadic lifestyle and all the stigmas they carry) as a way to punish Astarion for trying to outsmart him.

Among the many conclusions that we can draw from here is that, if Astarion’s backstory is not retconned and rewritten later in the full game, we can be almost sure he was an Evil-aligned character as a mortal. We can’t say that vampirism twisted his morals; they were rather poor in the first place.

Astarion, the Vampire spawn

After the bite scene, Astarion presents himself as a vampire spawn, a creature lesser than a slave for his master, since Cazador’s commands are impossible to resist. He explicitly says that his body always reacts to Cazador’s word and for two hundred years he was tormented by him. Thanks to datamining information, we know that Cazador performed an infernal deal, and part of the contract is carved on his back.

Due to datamining information as well, we know that the first dream that Astarion experiences may not be the one related to the tadpole dreams mechanics since he dreams without having made use of the tadpole powers yet. I prefer to suppose that this dream is product of his own psychology, or even it could be an effect of Cazador’s power on him (maybe he can’t dream of anything but of his Sire, considering how possessive Cazador is)

As I said, this is not a dream of power and desire in the same way that the other companions or Tav have, and for this reason I’m inclined to say that the vampiric power of Cazador is the one making an effect instead of the tadpole (or simply Astarion’s trauma showing). This dream looks like a reminder, like a reiterative dream for Astarion about Cazador’s rule, which are:

rule 1: he will not drink from thinking creatures.

rule 2: he will obey him in all things.

rule 3: he will not leave Cazador’s side unless directed.

rule 4: he will know that he is Cazador’s proprietary.

Most options end up in the similar idea of: “Free? Lie to yourself, boy, but not to me. You are mine, forever.”

Cazador and Astarion

[Astarion has just related what Cazador made him eat] “Flies? What did you do to deserve that?”

“I existed, that was enough for him. He revelled in having power over me, because those with power can do whatever the hell they want.”

If we are going to talk about power with a character as Astarion in mind, we need to talk first about Cazador. Let’s start with the way Astarion describes him:

“The biggest threat to a vampire is another vampire. They're scheming, paranoid, power hungry beasts. So why would any vampire give up control over a spawn to create a competitor? Trust me, it doesn't happen.”

“Cazador Szarr is a vampire lord in Baldur’s Gate. The patriarch of his coven and a monster obsessed with power.(...) Not political power or military power. Power over people. The power to control them completely. (...) He turned me nearly two hundred years ago. I became his spawn and he became my tormentor.”

“He had me go out Baldur’s Gate to fetch him the most beautiful souls I could find. It was a fun little ritual of his—I’d bring them back and he’d ask if I wanted to dine with him. And if I said yes, he’d serve me a dead, putrid rat. Of course if I said no, he’d have me flayed. Hard to say which was worse.”

“Cazador liked to make them art, spent all night with a razor, drafting a sonnet on my back. (Puppy eyes) Apparently the more I screamed, the more mistakes he made. And the more editing was required.”

“It was a group of Gur/thugs that attacked me that night in Baldur’s Gate. I would have died had Cazador not appeared and saved me. (...) He chased them off and offered to save me. To give me eternal life. Given that my choices were “eternal life” or “bleed to death on the street”, I took him up on the offer. It was also afterwards I realised just how long “eternity” could be.”

“Cazador likes to toy with people. Let them think there was hope right until the end. Until he snatched it all away. Creatures like them don’t play games unless they know they’ll win.”

(About Raphael’s encounter) “All that 'take your time. I'll wait' nonsense? He's playing with us. It reminds me of Cazador, taunting his slaves with hope when he knew the game was rigged. "

Tav: “Would he send another Gur to capture?” / Ast: “Yes, he probably thought it was funny.”

(“We can kill him.”) “No, you don't understand. You don't know him. Just trust me when I say we need to be careful. He'll send more lackies – he has plenty of souls to command. We just have to be vigilant. Keep our wits about us. And kill any monster hunters on sight. We can probably make an exception with Wyll... Probably.”

>>So far we know that Cazador has a particular pleasure for control, especially the one related to people’s will. With the nightmare information, we know he has powers related to mind control. He has many slaves, and enjoys cruelty, humiliation, and torture. He enjoys making Astarion eat putrid animals, carving his back with an infernal contract, and playing psychologically with him. He also likes to give false hope, making his victims believe that there is hope, removing it right in front of them.

I want to highlight that this twisted way of giving hope just to offer a perverted solution to a person’s problem, and enjoying the pleasure caused by the break of the hope, can be seen in Astarion during EA: in the approval that Astarion gives to Tav when you revive Connor, and that pinch of hope in Mayrina turns into horror when she sees Undead!Connor. For Astarion this situation is “funny”. Similar can be said when he approves telling Arabella’s parents that she will be released after the end of the ritual, when she is in fact dead.

Astarion describes a bit more what power we should expect from a Lord Vampire:

Shapeshift: turning into mist.

Calling wolves to do his bidding.

Shrugging off blows.

He “could walk into our camp tonight and kill you with his bare hands.”

Astarion and Slavery

One of the characteristics that so far in EA has got my attention was how little conflict Astarion has with slavery, despite having been his former condition.

He is apathetic to slavery in the best case, or even supporting it in the worse case. Proof of this can be found in the Myconid Colony, when interacting with a duergar slave. He speaks as if it were a totally useful tool that inspires little sympathy in him, since they don't have consciousness. However, he leaves a quite open question when finally adding “Or maybe not”.

But this “maybe not” is not left to speculation, we can see what Astarion truly feels with a non-Gur human slave in another part of the game: in the Zhentarim hideout. This can be checked with Oskar, the painter slave.

You can free Oskar using persuasion with his kidnapper (Astarion keeps neutral, he doesn’t approve the freeing). Now, if you can buy Oskar by paying the gold directly or by using intimidation to lower the price, it would keep Astarion neutral until the moment of the payment is stated, which he disapproves. At first I thought it was because he was truly against slavery of thinking creatures... but it was not. It was because you are paying a lot of money (we need to remember Astarion is greedy [1] as well, he wouldn’t be a vampire if it weren't for his greed).

Once bought, if you keep Oskar as a slave, and you demand him to keep silent because "you want your slaves silent unless they are spoken to", Oskar will think it's a joke, and you, again, can use the option "I don't joke with my slaves" and then Astarion will approve. None of these options is under any tag to make them believe they are part of a preformative act to prank Oskar. And this is key... this is not a joke. They are used as your real sentiments and intentions, and Astarion approves them.

These reactions are not random, they make sense with his—until this moment unchanged or retconned—backstory, where he had no problem trafficking with criminals as vampire food and later as slaves to have higher profits. So, these two aspects remain in his vampire nature unaltered: the most important thing is always to have profits, and his relationship with slavery is absolutely fine as much as it gives benefits, it’s useful or at least, gives him some entertainment.

The tadpole

We know the tadpole has a particular effect on Astarion. Unlike the other companions, Astarion doesn’t dream of a person who represents to him both desire and power. Power? undoubtedly, but desire? It’s hard to say. The implied, vague concept that Astarion has been sexually abused by Cazador is there (because we know these dreams are about “sensual” desire as well).

It’s maybe a consequence of the vampirism and, by extension, of Cazador’s power, that makes Astarion unable to dream of anything else but his master. From the datamining information about the non-tadpole dream of Astarion, in which Cazador lists four rules, we know that the fourth one is about never stopping to be Cazador’s propriety, unable to be free, not even in dreams. Maybe Cazador’s effect also applies to Astarion’s dreams as well (but this is a mere speculation, there is no real proof of it on EA or datamining info so far).

So when Astarion awakes in the beach and sees that some rules of his vampiric nature have been changed, he gets excited about the tadpole, and unlike the rest of the companions, he doesn’t want to get rid of it. He wants to master it, to have control of it. However, when the opportunity of controlling the tadpole appears with Raphael encounter, Astarion is one of the few companions who is completely against it at first.

“Raphael is playing with us; Cazador liked to toy with people too. Let them think there was hope right until the end. Until he snatched it all away. Creatures like them don't play games unless they know they'll win.”

In that moment, he claims he won’t change a vampiric master for an infernal one. However, when the first use of the Tadpole causes the first symptoms of transformation evident, Astarion falls in despair: he is scared and, calling for Raphael to take him from the camp, he says a curious phrase:

“I would choose servitude over oblivion any day”

So, after this moment, he is not completely convinced that Raphael is the true solution to his problem but he is more open to keep him as a plan B if anything else fails. Later he claims that it doesn't matter to be a servant of a devil, because he knows Cazador, and he wants to get rid of his power for good.

“I won't lie, it's tempting. If I keep the tadpole, I risk transforming into a grotesque monster. If I lose the tadpole, Cazador has control of me, body and soul, and I return to the shadows. It's grim either way, so why not sell what's left of my soul to a devil? Better he has it than cazador. Whatever it's coming we need to have our options open.”

Astarion’s process of seeing the potential of the power of the tadpole increases along the game. It gets higher and wilder. The first instances of the tadpole use are about Astarion discovering how much this tadpole gives him powers he can barely understand.

“The tadpoles are not so bad at all. (...) First I can walk in the sun, then make people dance like puppets? *laughs * I've certainly had worse days.”

He is not an idiot, he knows that, without control, they will end up turning into mind flayers, so he needs to find something powerful that can give him control over his tadpole. This is the reason why he encourages the use of the tadpole after knowing about the netherese magic containing the transformation via Omellun or Ethel.

Ethel explains that the tadpole had been tampered, so the dialogue goes:

Tav: “It's giving us more time, sounds good to me”.

Astarion: “Perhaps. And who's to say it can't be tampered with further?” (She said it was netherese magic) “it must be powerful magic to stop the parasite in its tracks, I wonder what else it could do?

At that point in the story, he knows that the netherese magic is powerful enough to contain the transformation: so he is now sure that there is more time to use it. So he will end up being the only companion in EA who encourages everyone to use the power:

“What's not to enjoy (with this tadpole)? I can walk in sunlight, trespass upon any home, manipulate minds – I'm the most powerful vampire in the realms. Granted, the looming doom is an issue, but why not enjoy the benefits while we can?

Despite the nightmares happening after every use of the tadpole powers, Astarion doesn’t want to stop. At this point, he is the only companion who doesn’t want to.

“The power to twist a mind to your will is worth some nightmares.”

By the end of the game, we are sure that Astarion wants this power without doubts. He revels in the power of mind-controlling people, ironically, despite having suffered so much of it under Cazador’s control. If we see all the situations where Astarion’s mind is controlled, or violated, his reactions will be extremely more aggressive than the other companions. He has suffered it a lot, but by the end of EA he is enjoying being on the other side of that power.

This post was written on April 2021. → For more Astarion: Analysis Series Index

#astarion #bg3 early access #bg3 meta

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voidendron · 5 years ago

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Deep Blue Sea: Ch. 16

Chapter 16: Abandoned Subnautica/JSE Egos Crossover

(( note: I haven’t played/watched gameplay for Below Zero yet, so please don’t spoil anything for me! Things from this fic might retcon stuff that happens in it, and I apologize if they do, but I don’t want to spoil any more of the game for myself than what already has been ‘til I can play the whole thing through myself ))

Warnings: Swearing Characters: Marvin the Magnificent, Jameson Jackson, Dr. Schneeplestein, Chase Brody, Jackieboy Man POV: Marvin the Magnificent

Silence.

Pale Faces.

Keen’s words hung in the air between them.

“…We need to help him.” Jackie’s voice startled the rest of them from their shocked trance.

Marvin swallowed. Shook his head. Oh, hell no. “Are you insane?!” He ran his hands through his hair with a shaky breath. “There’s somethin’ here! We need to get off this island!”

“I am not putting my life on the line for someone else,” the doctor growled.

Jameson signed something—Marvin had no idea what it was, but his frantic nodding had him figuring that the chef agreed with them.

“He’s in danger!” the security guard insisted. “The recording was recent—he could still be alive!”

“Jackie’s right.”

Marvin’s head whipped toward Chase when he agreed. “No. No, no, no. He’d been so damn calm in his other messages, and how he’s panicking! You really want to run into whatever made Keen panic?!”

Chase frowned. “It’s a small island. How bad could it be?”

Their three-against-two changed when Jameson ducked his head, then offered an agreeing nod. He was signing again—Marvin would really need to learn those, wouldn’t he?—and the other two so…hellbent on saving Keen sagged with relief.

“Really no other way to change your minds?” the entertainer asked.

“We’ve gotta find Keen,” Jackie repeated, “and hopefully Yu, too. There were only two of ‘em, there’s five of us.”

“Yeah!” Chase was tucking his flippers and Seaglide near some…ferns? was that what they were?

“And if something does come after us?” Marvin challenged, gesturing harshly first at the doctor, then Jameson. “Doc’s ankle is fuckin’ shredded and James’s got broken ribs. They’d be picked off easy.”

“Anything attacks either of them—any of us—” Jackie hoisted up his broken flare in threat; he didn’t have to say any more than that.

Marvin and Henrik glanced at each other. For once, it seemed like they were both on the same page: They did not want to meet whatever had gone after Keen. Did the other three just not understand self-preservation? God…

He tossed his flippers near where the others were putting theirs. His air tank and Seaglide followed, but he was far more careful not to throw those down.

Seeing Henrik’s flippers actually laying with everyone else’s made him double-take. Marvin had always thought he had big feet. Definitely made sense why both of them had needed more materials than the original dive suit blueprint had called for.

Deep breath. The others were leaving the beach, leaving the two of them behind. Well, Marvin would much rather stick with the group than be left alone on the island.

“Come on,” he grumbled. He really wished they’d brought survival knives. He’d feel a little better if he could at least defend himself. “So!” he called ahead—both Chase and Jackie glanced back at him. “Any plan for what we’re gonna do if we find whatever went after them?”

“Depends on what it is, I guess.” Chase shrugged; he was walking backwards now.

Marvin just frowned and shook his head, watched the path ahead of them.

Wait.

…Path?

Henrik was eyeing it, too.

“Please tell me you’re thinking the same thing.”

“Something has traveled this same route for a long while, yes.”

They were following the path, and Marvin couldn’t help the unease settling into his gut. The feeling only amplified when they came across an old habitat and its overgrown garden.

Glances cast around, and Jackie was the first to approach the settlement.

It looked abandoned. Falling apart. Broken windows.

It had been there a long time.

“…I don’t think we’re the first to get stranded here,” Jackie said, voice soft.

Then, he was suddenly yelping; Marvin and the others jumped and scrambled away. From the way Marvin saw it, he was acting solely on instinct when he swung his flare and the little ankle-biter of a creature went flying.

When he blinked at it, Marvin actually found it in himself to snort. Was that thing some kind of…crab?

“Scared the hell outta me,” Jackie muttered, “but there’s no way that’s what had Keen panicked.”

“Unless he got swarmed?” Marvin suggested.

“Maybe..? I’m don’t know…”

Chase cleared his throat, pointing to the habitat. “They had to have made it off the planet, right?” Chase was inching forward, toward the multipurpose room’s shattered window. It looked like a mudslide had caused it. “I mean, it’s clearly been abandoned a long time.”

Marvin’s eyes were scanning the old habitat. He didn’t like this.

“Yo, check this thing out!”

When Chase tried bolting in through the broken window, Marvin grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him back. “That window’s broken. You really want to step on glass with bare feet?”

“But look!”

Marvin’s gaze followed his pointing finger. There was…something, in the room. Glowing. It didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen before. “What is that thing..?”

“I mean. It looks like the mud’s covered all the glass?”

When Marvin’s grip slackened, he must have taken that as a go-ahead and ran into the room. He was careful while climbing through the window not to cut himself on any of the glass that still remained, and when he came back he had something in each hand.

“There was a data log, too. Also, this thing’s surprisingly light? Like…what is it?”

He gave the data log to Jackie to put in his PDA, then set the glowing whatever-it-was on the ground between all of them.

“Is like a tablet,” Henrik said.

“Yeah,” Chase agreed, “but it doesn’t look human.”

It seemed Marvin and Henrik had the same idea when they both reached for their scanners. Marvin’s scan finished first, and everyone’s PDAs chirped as the data was transmitted to all of them. When he read the information, he only shook his head.

“I really doubt it’s human. Estimated to being abandoned here hundreds-to-thousands of years ago? Yeah, definitely not ours.”

“Alien technology?” Henrik winced as he knelt down to pick it up, ran his fingers over the glowing purple symbol. “What were these people doing with it?”

“Well, from the sounds of it,” Jackie said—another chirp as the data log transferred from his device to the rest of theirs, “—they found it, and also had no idea what it was.”

“They? How many?”

“I count four people in the recording. Three men and a woman, but I’m relying on the PDA translating for me ‘cause they’re definitely not speaking English.”

Marvin opened the new file on his own device, listened for a moment, then shut it off to read over the translation instead. “Sounds like they were from a Mongolian settlement. I don’t speak it, but I’ve performed for one a few times.”

Four people had lived in this now-abandoned habitat: Two Torgals (probably related, he figured), Sepse, Maida. Where had they gone..?

When Chase and Jackie explored the rest of the habitat and came back with a few more data logs, it looked like where they’d gone was deeper. Much, much, deeper.

Apparently they were part of Torgal Corporation—no wonder the names were familiar. Paul was the head of the company and had gone missing about ten years ago. It hadn’t been the same since.

…Ten years ago. God. They’d never made it off the planet, had they? Would that be their fate, too? He could feel his stomach twisting.

Bart was Paul’s son and heir to the company, Marguerit Maid a hired mercenary, and Antony Sepse a microbiologist.

He could see it in the pale faces of his comrades they all feared the same fate, and it was Chase to break their silence.

“I…I kinda doubt we’re in the mood now, but I see two more habitats.” He outstretched an arm, pointing. “There, and there.” Perched oh so precariously at the tops of two mountain peaks were, sure enough, two more habitats clear even through the fog that seemed to have lifted some. “C’mon. We can still try findin’ Keen and Yu. Who knows. Maybe we’ll have better luck than that group did.”

Marvin closed his eyes and took a slow, steadying breath. They’d find a way off the planet. They had to. But…did that really mean rescue never came for that group..? No, don’t think about it, he scolded himself. Instead, he offered a hand to help Henrik back to his feet, and the five of them started for one of the habitats.

What they found didn’t lift their spirits any. A PDA, not a data log, met them. Bart and Antony—the other two were dead?—regretting going down so far. Bart was ill in the recording. With the scientist’s help, they were trying to find a cure, but failing. One of them mentioned that Antony was wearing a special suit—some sort of hazmat diving suit—that had kept him from catching the same illness, and now left him needing to be extremely careful not to touch Bart with his bare hands.

Then it was over. Nothing more to the recording; just a dying man and one of his crew members trying to save him.

“I’m really startin’ to hate this planet,” Chase growled. “What do you think he had?”

Instead of an answer, Henrik pulled his scanner from his hip and ran a scan on himself. The answer had Marvin furrowing his brow.

“Performing self-scan. Vital signs normal. Detecting trace amounts of foreign bacteria. Continuing to monitor.”

He aimed it at Jameson. Same answer. Jackie: Same. Every one of them ended up with the same results. “Trace amounts of foreign bacteria” just kept looping in Marvin’s head. That couldn’t be good. Right? How the hell would they even have it? They didn’t even know that it was the same thing Bart had, but a part of Marvin very much was suspecting that it was.

“Could just be…I dunno, some sorta alien flu?” Chase shook his head and stood a little straighter. “We’ll keep an eye on it, okay? Don’t let it get to you, though. We’ll worry about it if we need to.”

If we need to, Marvin’s thoughts parroted. As if they hadn’t just listened to a man dying in a recording.

“…Do we really want to check that last habitat?” Marvin leaned out the door to peer across at it. “Things are just getting fuckin’ worse and worse on this island.”

Keen and Yu attacked by something. Survivors from ten years before who’d probably died long before rescue could even hope to find them. Some weird alien artifact that Henrik and Jameson were taking turns carrying. An alien sickness.

“Whatever is there can only be the cherry on top, yes?” Henrik grumbled. He was leaning against the wall, foot held off the ground. Jameson was sitting on the floor near him, eyes squeezed shut and hand pressed to his chest.

“Besides,” Marvin added, “those two clearly need a rest, and I am not resting on this island. Far as we know, whatever went after Keen and Yu could be, oh I don’t know, watching us?!”

Chase grimaced and gave Jackie a look.

“We, ah…” He ran a hand through his bleached hair, fingers catching the tangled curls. “What if we have them head back to the habitat? And…you can join ‘em?”

Jackie started nodding. “We can’t just abandon those two if they’re still alive. I’m not doin’ it.”

“And splitting up is probably the worst thing we can do,” Marvin muttered.

“We either split up, or all go to the next habitat together. I’m not leavin’ this damn island until we at least know what happened to them.” Chase crossed his arms, closing himself off for further debate. He’d made up his mind and there was no way Marvin was going to change it.

“Fine.” Marvin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine. I want them alive just as much as you do, but I’m not risking my life for them.”

Chase shouldered past him. “Then let’s get back to the damn beach so you can leave. Fuckin’ hell.”

Did Marvin feel guilty for it? Sure. Did he feel awful leaving just the two of them on the island while he took their injured comrades back to their habitat? Sure.

Was he going to risk his life for someone who sounded like they probably dead anyway? Hell no. Marvin knew his priorities, and that definitely wasn’t one of them. He felt bad for Keen and Yu, holped that whatever killed them hadn’t let them suffer, or that they had, by some miracle, survived—but he wasn’t going to stick his neck out for them.

He’d had enough near-death experiences these last few days to last a lifetime, thank you very much.

Flippers back on, air tanks attached to their masks, Jameson helped into the Seamoth, and they were off.

His only thoughts were “good luck” when he glanced over his shoulder, saw Chase and Jackie at the edge of the island now, watching for them to make sure they made it a safe distance away. Then the two of them disappeared into the brush.

Good luck, he thought. You’re gonna need it.

#fanfic #jacksepticeye #subnautica crossover #the septics #marvin the magnificent #chase brody #jackieboy man #dr. schneeplestein #jameson jackson #blitz indites #deep blue sea #dbs ch16 #swearing /

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the-roanoke-society · 6 years ago

Note

Tell us about a mission that our Golden Girl, Seraphim, failed

once upon a time, two old friends stood side-by-side, looking out from a window on a snowy new york city.

i—have no had a very good month. and a lot of that negativity got channeled into this. there are details of child death, explicit violence, gore, forced self-harm and gun violence below the cut. proceed with caution.

writing music sampler is over here if you’re curious.

seraphim glanced back over her shoulder in time to to see whiskey poking his head through the conference room door. the familiar smell of bourbon, polished wood and old paper hit him right in the face. “… oh.” she watched one of his arms drop, relaxed. “morgan, uh. hey.”

“were you going to attack me?” she sounded exhausted. if the rumors whiskey had heard were true, then he wasn’t surprised.

his lasso stayed faithfully coiled on his belt as he came in, closing the door behind him. “i didn’t think anyone was up here. especially not you. did ginger clear you already?”

seraphim had her arms crossed her chest. he could see cotton bandages still wrapped around her forearms as they dove under the sleeves of her white button-up, one pad taped up next to her left eye. but her hair was down, over—

“yeah. as soon as they were sure i wasn’t going to die and the gel had worked.”

“and they did the uh—the test?”

seraphim turned away from him, sighing. he stepped closer to her as she answered, softly: “yes. ging—had a picture of merlin and i. did the trick.” she laughed. it was a joyless sound. “better than doing the sound test with that sword, i guess. don’t get me wrong, still traumatizing even with the picture. but i guess traumatizing in a way that i was… better equipped to handle, at the time.”

“that was your first time with the gel. does the quartermaster know that—you—?”

“no.” whiskey was careful to keep his gaze forward as seraphim’s voice cracked. he knew her well enough. instead, he focused on the snow. it wasn’t the first one of the season, but it was the thickest they’d seen so far. the flakes were huge, falling from a sky that was a single shade of slate grey. “but i’ll have to eventually.”

but that was when she lifted her hair. there was a medium-sized scar, running behind her ear. ginger had shaved a portion of her head but left enough to cover it, like a sheet. the mark was still raw, red, angry. and he winced as he realized that there was a slight dent. they would’ve had to have reconstructed part of her skull. seraphim swallowed. she still didn’t look at him. “i don’t think i’ll be able to hide this.”

“jesus, morgan.”

“it’s—it’s fine. it’s fine.” a hand went to her mouth and he could hear her shaky inhales and exhales. “i’m okay.”

“you sure?”

“mhmm.”

“… morgan.”

“yes, jack.”

“… what happened.”

she let out a sob and he felt the blood leave his face. the regret was immediate and acute, but then, she began, “i—i lost someone. in the worst way. the youngest i ever have.”

“how ol—“

“ten months.”

whiskey breath out a sharp breath. okay. so the rumors weren’t true. the real story was much worse.

“look, i’m sure it wasn’t yo—“

“it was.” her answer was so firm it startled him, and when he looked at her, her expression was… there was just a sheer veneer over barely-contained grief. one tear escaped her eye and she rubbed it away roughly, her hand shaking.

“walk me through it, then. talk to me.”

for a moment, she said nothing, but then she nodded. “it—it was a normal resident call. normal as can be, anyway. something had gotten inside of the hensons’ daughter. her name—“ a cough covering up a much sadder sound. “—her name was olivia. olivia kate henson.”

whiskey could barely standing to listen to her speak. he knew seraphim’s field record wasn’t perfect—no agent could boast of a hundred percent success rate, not in roanoke, not in statesman, and not in kingsman. but when it was a roanoke-flavored failure, the consequences tended to be a bit more horrific.

“i… underestimated the entity that i was dealing with. it’s very, very unusual for people that young to become hosts. demons generally want a body that can y’know, walk. form complete sentences. all that shit. something they can use. so my initial impression was that it was just an low-class imp. something that maybe had done it on accident, even. so those were the tools i brought with me. that was… that was my mindset.”

seraphim opened her mouth to speak and then convulsed. he couldn’t tell if she’d choked back a cry or was trying not to be sick. whiskey reached out and put one hand on her shoulder, but he didn’t take a step closer. seraphim, likewise, stayed where she was.

that wasn’t who they were anymore.

the next part came slowly, measured. “it was a soldier demon. the ones that were john’s specialty.” she started shaking her head, her brows knit together, “we never see those in children, in babies, jack, not ever. this seemed like it was supposed to be part of a bigger trap or something. i’ll have a lot of research to do when i get—when i go home. something else was at play here.”

seraphim sniffed. “but that doesn’t take away the fact that that demon still had to be taken out and deported. that doesn't take away from the fact that i was unprepared, and so when i… when i had to…” hands in her hair. whiskey felt pops as she bent forward, her spine curving underneath an invisible weight. “… her body was too small.” that was all she said.

whiskey brushed his thumb in one reassuring stroke before taking his hand away. “you aren’t a medium. there was no way you could have known.”

she snorted. “… that should have been the end of it.” her tone was a resigned anger. “i should have simply done a circle there, sent that thing back into whatever dark pit it crawled out of. but instead.” she pursed her lips together, jaw clenching. “i was too busy being mortified, mrs. henson wouldn’t stop screaming, mr. henson had fainted in a corner, and before i had a chance to do anything actually useful—it manifested onto this plane.”

seraphim uncrossed her arms, lifting them. whiskey could see red flecks in jagged patterns. “it launched itself at me. tried to turn my forearms into spaghetti noodles. get me to bleed out while i was still standing. it would’ve been deserved.”

“morgan—“

“i fought with it through the house.” she continued. turning her hands over to look at her knuckles. they were bruised and scabbed. “and it shoved me through their front door and onto the street. at high noon. in a busy brownstone neighborhood.”

she laced her fingers together, putting them behind her head. “so of course i had a lovely message from lilith on my specs when ginger finally let me have them. how i’d come so close to compromising our organization, how they had to send a retcon group and warp the memories of over thirty people, half of which weren’t even fourteen yet.” a heavy sigh. she let her arms flop to her sides. “… she didn’t even mention the baby. not once.”

whiskey watched her step up closer to the window. she put one palm up against the glass, and a silhouette of fog blossomed around her fingers. “i forget how fragile it all is. you and i are standing right here, routinely between them—“ she tapped on the glass “—and everything they don’t know that wants to kill them. or control them. or some godawful third thing. the nature of our work is both necessary and damned to exist in the weird grey area of internet conspiracy material.”

“do you ever wish you could go back?” he asked gently. “y’know, take the blue pill?”

“… sometimes.” seraphim answered honestly. “but i don’t think i could now. after everything. could you?”

whiskey thought of jenny—then lauren. the blur of bullets, trauma and blood that had led him to where he was standing. it hadn’t been an easy path. but it’d been the one he walked. he’d never want those steps wasted. “… no. no i don’t think i could either.”

seraphim didn’t start when he went to move her hair, staring at her scar. “so a demon… did this?”

she leaned away from his touch. “no.” she smiled, brokenly. “i did.”

“… what?”

“as soon as i got some solid footing, i pinned it down in the middle of the street. i had it right where i wanted it. but it—it called out.”

“called out? like—in english?”

“no, it was more like a—not a distress call, more like it saw something else and was trying to call it closer. and seventh strike of the day—i glanced up to try to see if there was something else i needed to take care of.”

whiskey felt his mouth go dry. “when you turned back around…”

“i had my own gun pointing straight at my face.” she met his eyes. he’d never seen her look so haunted. “i tried to get out of the way, but—“ she wiped at her eyes, her nose. “it went off. i don’t—i don’t remember anything after that. the next thing i knew i was waking up in medical with ginger over me. said i’d been out for a solid day.” she tried to grin. “bet they worked that into the cover. some poor methed-out woman finally snapped and tried to blow her brains out in broad daylight where everyone could see…”

“morgan, i’m—“

“jack i killed someone’s daughter.”

“you are not a murderer.”

“i was a proxy.”

“look at me.” he grabbed her by the biceps, turning her. she didn’t fight him, and it dawned on him that if she was still recovering from a bullet to the brain, she probably wasn’t strong enough to do much.

and her face crumpled as he spoke. “you fucked up. and you know what that means? it means you’re a hundred percent, certified bonafide human. which means that you are always going to have the potential for mistakes, and for failure, and when it happens it sucks. it will always suck. and you can let it stop you, or you can learn from it. this is just—how it is. for the people like us.” his grip loosened. “our fuck-ups tend to be on a more viscous scale.”

he brushed her hair back, as he had before, long ago. but it was different now. her eyes dropped to the floor. “i know… i know. i sent a message to lilith, asking her to send lady to the henson house. not sure if it’ll actually do anything if i don’t have a job.”

“i think we both know that if lilith wanted to fire you—she wouldn’t have called us.”

“true.” seraphim shivered as whiskey let her go, bringing her arms up in an x over her chest. “she would’ve let me die.”

“look… things look a little bleak right now. just take it easy for a few days. ging’ll probably want to keep you around for at least a little bit, make sure you don’t have any side effects from the gel. and when you get home, then lilith, well—”

seraphim lifted a hand to press on a temple. “god, i don’t know how i’m going to handle this debriefing… i don’t know how i’m going to tell hamish…”

“he worked with recruits for kingsman, right? i don’t think you’ll be the first or last person that has to come to him with a mistake. he’ll understand.”

“i’m glad one of us is sure.”

“what, you think he’ll leave you when he finds out?”

she answered without skipping a beat. “i always think he’ll leave me.”

“well, that sounds healthy.”

seraphim lightly touched at the pink forming around her eyes. “i’m not a hundred percent sure you’re the right person i should be talking about this with, but i am a hundred percent sure i’ve heard you tell me multiple times that you don’t deserve lauren and if she had any sense she’d find someone better.”

whiskey—didn’t immediately have a response to that.

“that’s what i thought.” seraphim turned away from the window, walking up to the conference table. her eyes flickered to champ’s liquor and decanter once, but she left it. drinking so soon after being exposed to alpha-gel was probably not the best idea. she leaned back, letting the hard edge of the table press into her back. the pain was grounding.

seraphim buried her face in her hands. “… this wouldn’t have happened if john was there. he’d be so disappointed if he knew.”

“john can go eat satan’s dick for all i care.”

“don’t say things like that.“

“you’re telling me merlin didn’t have that same reaction when you talked to him about that son of a bitch?”

seraphim stayed silent. just looking at him. it took him a second, and then: “… he doesn’t know.”

“i—am working on it.”

whiskey opened his mouth, but when he saw her face all his anger left him.

this wasn’t the time.

instead, he strode over to the decanter, pouring two glasses of the statesman trademark bourbon. seraphim watched him. “i don’t know if ginger would want me to—“

“do you want to?”

her shoulders sagged. “… yeah.”

“alright then.”

seraphim took the glass he offered with a grip that was still a little unsteady, looking at the liquid amber. “should we toast? that’s what you’re supposed to do, right?”

“sure. always something to celebrate.” whiskey answered, lifting his drink. “to life after failure?”

and seraphim smiled. it was thin, but it was genuine. her voice was thick when she spoke again: “to olivia.”

clink.

once upon a time, two old friends stood side-by-side, looking out from a window on a snowy new york city.

“so—have you proposed yet?”

“… you could say i’m working on it.”

#agent seraphim #agent whiskey #(background lies & lessons.)#(and background hymns & holograms.)#the things we carry #once upon a time in new york

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betweengenesisfrogs · 8 years ago

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OFF THE CUFF HOMESTUCK THOUGHTS #3: THE SELF PILE DOESN’T STOP FROM GETTING TALLER OR: THE PROBLEM OF DEAD MARIOS

DISCLAIMER

IMPORTANT THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

[CHECK THE TAG FOR MORE THOUGHTS]

So, a long-ass time ago, Rose and Dave had a conversation like this:

TT: After you go, what do you think will happen to me? TT: Will I just cease to exist? TG: i dont know TG: i mean your whole timeline will TG: maybe TT: Maybe? TT: Is there a chance it'll continue to exist, and I'll just be here alone forever? TT: I'm not sure which outcome is more unsettling. TG: the thing with time travel is TG: you cant overthink it TG: just roll with it and see what happens TG: and above all try not to do anything retarded TT: What do you think I should do? TG: try going to sleep TG: our dream selves kind of operate outside the normal time continuum i think TG: so if part of you from this timelines going to persist thats probably the way to make it happen TT: Ok. TG: and hey you might even be able to help your past dream self wake up sooner without all that fuss you went through TT: I think the true purpose of this game is to see how many qualifiers we can get to precede the word "self" and still understand what we're talking about.

This is the most important sentence in Homestuck.

I am dead serious.

Well, OK, I mean, it’s pretty important for understanding some major Homestuck themes and shit or something like that.

Also, I totally should have said: Pre-Retcon Doomed Timeline Non-Dreamself Rose but ultimately about to become Dreamself Rose who semi-merged with Pre-Retcon Alpha Timeline Rose and Doomed Timeline Dave aka Davesprite AKA future Davepetasprite^2 or as we all call them around the office, Davepeta, had that conversation.

Maybe you begin to see what I’m going to talk about here.

One of the major frustrations a lot of people had with the retcon was that the characters we ended up with at the end weren’t the ones we’d come to love and know throughout the story. Was it even worth it, to lose the characters we loved to the tyranny of Game Over? The victorious kids, with the exception of John and Roxy, were other people, with other histories, other goals, and other choices.

Allow me to submit that that may be the whole point.

SBURB is cruel. We’ve known that for a long time. It’s cruel not as Caliborn is cruel, but as the cosmos is cruel, as a supernova is cruel. It wants what it wants, and doesn’t care about how that intersects with the needs of humanity. It wants to make universes through a complex game-playing method, and drags hapless, vulnerable adolescents along for the ride. And most of the time it doesn’t even succeed, leaving its champions to rot in a doomed timeline or similar! Skaia’s victory is an amoral creation myth where individual human beings are just the carved pieces on the chessboard. (I mean, the other ones. Not the carapacians.)

Again, let’s consider the theme of VIDEO GAMES vs. REAL LIFE.

Homestuck, let’s be real, is basically some postmodern horror timey-wimey Jumanji. For a generation way more familiar with pixels than cute little tokens It’s easy for teenagers and in fact, basically everyone, to fantasize about escaping their life and slipping into some game world forever, where they get to do awesome things and be a heroic person.

Homestuck makes that literal. Congratulations, everything you ever knew is dead. You will never see it again, except your internet friends, who turn out also to be your family and other important people. I mean, from a distance, SBURB sounds like an awesome game, right? You figure out who you are and get to wear a cool costume displaying that identity. You get to make anything you want and enjoy this hyperflexible mythology tailored to YOUR CHOICES. HS fans talk all the time about how cool it would be to play a real version of SBURB. That’s a big part of the appeal of SBURB fan adventures. They put you and your friends in the story. Or your favorite characters! It sounds like a fantasy come true.

The thing is, as fantastical as it is, it’s also really fucked up, and ultimately you and your friends are being used. By a giant frog to let it have its babies. By the universe. By a smug blue cloud thing that doesn’t care about you at all.

SBURB does not care about you at all.

The funny thing, SBURB features a mythology with so many layers and nuances and seemingly human motifs about growth and self that you might search for some grand ultimate meaning behind it, but it’s not even human enough to have a personality, to be something you can argue with or fight. It just is. It’s all the cruelty and power of a god without any of the dazzling personality. It’s empty. It just wants to make universes all day long, or fail trying. It is a great, weird tadpole-making machine that eats children.

One of the big ways it doesn’t care about you is its attitude toward the self. Humans and trolls and whatnot prefer not to be relentlessly duplicated. SBURB says, oh yeah, let’s make tons of copies of the player characters and use them for a lot of different purposes.

There’s the dreamself, an essential bifurcation of identity (you are now and were always the dream moon princex) that sometimes gets merged into god tier but sometimes doesn’t. There’s doomed timeline selves, who exist ultimately to augment an Alpha timeline whose Alphaness is decided very arbitrarily and frequently by Lord English. There’s the you who exists before a scratched session and the you who exists afterward, who are two different people but started as one baby in an act of ectobaby meteor duplication, your player self and your guardian self. Dead timeline yous fill up the dreambubbles made by the horrorterrors and get endlessly confused with each other. Any one of these could be the you experience being at any given moment, and which one it is entirely arbitrary. Don’t like being Dead Nepeta #47? Tough hoofbeast leavings, kiddo.

To top it all off, in Terezi: Remember, we learn that every single time we thought someone changed from one self to another, was resurrected or something like that, it was another act of duplication. For every time someone’s died, there’s another version of them waiting in the Dream Bubbles, surprised that they’re not the main character anymore. And we have no way of knowing which is which. Even John, good old everyman John, may or may not be the person who died three or four times. It’s really impossible to say whether we’ve been following the same person throughout our story, or just the illusion of the same person, like a horrifying cosmic flipbook.

The retcon is a return to this same theme. Ultimately, there’s very little new in the changes John makes to reality except that they drive the point home.

John’s friends all died. John and his friends won the game. These things are both true at the same time, except those things may not have happened to the same people. There was a happy ending. Hooray! For, um, some folks who may or may not be the ones we care about. In fact, it’s very confusing, because from Rose’s perspective, Roxy is dead but came back to life, and from Roxy’s perspective Rose is dead but came back to life, except also she came back to life as a weird tentacle catgirl of pure id and self –indulgence. So there’s that. Um. Which Rose are we rooting for again?

Or wait: is it none of them, because the first Rose died in a doomed timeline, hundreds of panels and a number of years ago?

There’s a tension here which one experiences between saying it’s okay because it’s still the same people, and saying it’s not okay, because it’s not the same people at all. This tension is exactly what we’re meant to wrestle with. To put it another way, Homestuck asks if identity can work in aggregate. Are all Johns John, all Roses Rose, and do they all share in what they accomplish? Or are the final victors only accidents created by the whims and needs of the frog baby machine?

What I’m saying, basically, is that the retcon, in the sense that it pointed out our confused relationship with these characters, was already here.

In interviews and questions put to him over the years, Hussie constantly compares HS and SBURB to other video games, particularly Mario, which he frequently returns to as a baseline of comparison that most of his readers will know. One answer, from a recent Hiveswap interview, is particularly revelatory. To the question of “Why do you kill off all your characters?” Hussie replies:

[…]HS is supposedly a story that is also a game. In games, the characters die all the time. How many times did you let Mario fall in the pit before he saved the princess? Who weeps for these Marios. In games your characters die, but you keep trying and trying and rebooting and resetting until finally they make it. When you play a game this process is all very impersonal. Once you finally win, when all is said and done those deaths didn’t “count”, only the linear path of the final victorious version of the character is considered “real”. Mario never actually died, did he? Except the omniscient player knows better. HS seems to combine all the meaningless deaths of a trial-and-error game journey with the way death is treated dramatically in other media, where unlike our oblivious Mario, the characters are aware and afraid of the many deaths they must experience before finally winning the game.

The big man hass the answer.

Homestuck is the story of those dead Marios.

Other works, like Undertale, have engaged with this topic as well. But one of the major differences between Undertale and Homestuck is that in Undertale, between “lives,” one’s consciousness is preserved. In Homestuck, it’s discontinuous, and the value of the overall trial-error process is called into question by the fact that you, the player, may not even get to experience the victory. What meaning does victory hold if that is the case?

So, to put it in a nice thesis format:

One of the central themes of Homestuck is the challenge of reconciling an arbitrary and destructive pattern of growth and victory with the death and suffering you experienced along the way. Homestuck asks: is victory worthwhile if you’re not you anymore? And would you be able to know?

What even is the self? Is there such a thing?

If you were left feeling somewhat disconcerted by our heroes’ tidy victory and departure to their cosmic prize, or by how which Rose gets the spotlight is so deeply, deeply arbitrary, there’s a good reason for that. You’re supposed to be.

The philosophical problem of Wacky Cat Rose is insignificant next to the bullshit of SBURB.

And don’t forget—John and Roxy’s denizens helped them achieve the retcon. Ultimately, the victory they achieved was mediated by the same amoral system of SBURB, and was a victory over an enemy, Caliborn, whose power was created, perpetuated, and ended by that same system.

Okay, so here’s where it gets contentious. There’s an argument to be made, which I’m not sure how I feel about, that some of the character development that could have been in post-retcon Act 6 was left out precisely to push this feeling and play up this tension. Note that this is not the same thing as saying that they were deliberately badly written, but that they’re deliberately written to make us uneasy.That Hussie deliberately played with the balance between making these retconned characters feel familiar and making them feel eerily different to leave us feeling uneasy with the result.

I’m not sure I like that idea. It smacks a little too much of that “everything is perfect” thinking that comes sometimes from the far Metastuck camp. Some of the differences may also be the result of flawed writing. (See: Jane and Jake’s character arcs, which I might talk about later.) And I want to be able to critique those flaws. Ultimately, I think we still needed more time and development to figure out who these new people were—even if our goal was ultimately to compare them to their earlier selves. And again, more conscious acknowledgement of the problem from our heroes—especially John, the linchpin in this last and biggest act of duplication—might have helped drive this theme home.

Still, I think the Problem of Dead Marios is one of the most fundamental questions of Homestuck, maybe THE biggest question. It’s essential to understand it to understand what Hussie’s doing—or attempting to do— in the retcon and the ending.

I don’t know that Homestuck offers us a clear answer to that question. There are some confusions around the issue, too. Where do merged selves fit in, exactly? Clearly they’re a big part of the discussion, because Hussie spends some time in Act 6, especially near the end bringing the identity-merging powers of the Sprites to the forefront. (See also: the identity-merged nightmare that is Lord English.) Can we even come up with a clear answer to what it means when a dead Mario returns to life grotesquely fused with Toad? How does he beat the game? Does he tell himself that the princess is in another castle? Or what if he merges with Peach? Are they their own princess? How do they know if they’re in the right castle?

Um. Anyway—

Interestingly, it’s not all grotesque—spritesplosions suggest that personalities that are too different don’t stay together long, so a fusion might rely on some inherent compatibility between the two players. Erisol’s self-loathing, sure, but also Fefeta’s cheerfulness. Davepeta seems to be a way of bringing out the best in their players, a way of getting Davesprite past his angst and Nepeta past her fear. Honestly, I know a lot of people don’t like Davepeta as the ending of these two characters’ arcs, but I can’t help but love it. They’re the ultimate coolkid. Cool enough to know they don’t have to be cool. Regular Dave got there, too, of course. But was his retcon assist from John ultimately any different?

Then, of course, we come to Davepeta’s speech to Jade in one of the last few updates before Collide. Davepeta suggests that there is such a thing as an ultimate self beyond the many different selves one piles up throughout the cosmos. A set of principles that describes who you are that’s larger than any individual instance of you. Your inherent Mariohood. (Maybe this is comparable to your Classpect identity, which attempts to describe who you are?) Davepeta even tells Jade, strikingly, that one might learn to see beyond the barriers between selves. Be the ur-self, in practice, rather than theory. This would be incredible news for Jade, who wrestles with the issue of different selves perhaps more than any other character. (There’s a lot to say about Jade.)

Honestly, I wish this ur-self idea had been developed more, and I honestly expected it to be. It doesn’t fully come to fruition, I feel. (Same goes for Davepeta’s character. Ohhhh, ZING!) I’m not sure it entirely makes philosophical sense, especially with fusion—I mean, doesn’t Davepeta themself disprove it? Or at least complicate it? Like, are they part of the ur-Dave or the ur-Nepeta? They seem to imply they’re BOTH? Does that even work? Does that mean that Marieach is all the Peaches and Marios at once?

(In fact, Bowser/Peach/Mario are but the three manifestations of one eternal principle. Also, Bowser/Peach are the true power couple. Read my fanfiction plz.)

And what, say, of Dirk, who ultimately ends up rejecting aspects of his other selves? It feels like there’s a lot more you could say here, and I wonder if Hussie would have said more, if he’d had time. What’s weird is, none of our victorious kids never reach an ur-self (though to their descendants, they become archetypal to some degree), which one might have expected. They’re just individual selves who happened to get lucky. Does that make them representative of the whole? It feels like something’s missing here, or like something got dropped at the last minute.

Same goes for the idea of the Ultimate Riddle. You’d be forgiven for missing it, but there’s been this riddle in the background lore of SBURB that seems to have something to do with personal agency in this overwhelming, overarching system. Karkat called it predestination, saying something like “ANY HOPE YOU HAD OF DOING THINGS OTHERWISE WAS JUST A RUSE.” But others have interpreted it more positively. My favorite interpretation, from bladekindeyewear: the answer to the Riddle is that YOU shape the timeline through your existence, personality, and choices, even when it looks like it’s all predestination. Ultimately it’s your predestination, your set of events, based deeply on your nature, that you are creating. Someone like Caliborn can use his innate personality to achieve power; someone like John might be able to use it to achieve freedom.

I definitely expected something like that to be expressed more explicitly. Like, a big ah-ha moment that helps John or Jade or whoever understand how to escape Caliborn’s system. Something like that would have been very helpful for a lot of our heroes, actually, who’ve been pushed around by Skaia and SBURB together, in finding a cathartic ending. Once again, I wonder if something was dropped or rushed because there wasn’t time to put it all in. There’s places where you can see hints of that Answer being implied, maybe? But it’s kind of ambiguous.

You can see how the Answer to the Ultimate Riddle ties into some of Davepeta’s ideas. If your personality, the rules of your behavior are a fundamental archetype that goes beyond each individual self, then the answer to whether it matters if one self of yours makes it through to victory is an emphatic YES. You are all of those people, and by winning one round with Skaia, you’ve won the whole game, despite all the arbitrary challenges and deaths it heaps upon you along the way.

This may strike some as too positive for Skaia’s brutality, or again, some way of excusing flaws in many characters’ arcs, or unfair things that happen to them. To be fair, I don’t know that Davepeta’s necessarily meant to be taken as authoritative or the voice of Hussie. They may simply be offering a purrspective.

Hussie not choosing to come right out and engage with the Ultimate Riddle leaves the question of Dead Marios and what they mean for the victorious versions of our cast very open. I like that in some ways—let the reader decide—but I can’t help but wish we had more to work with in making that decision. Plus, it might have brought the thematic messages of Homestuck all the way home to tie them more closely to our characters and their experiences—character development being one of the things most people found most lacking in the ending.

NEXT TIME: All that wacky gnostic stuff probably

#homestuck #off the cuff homestuck thoughts extravaganza 2017 #homestuck meta #homestuck theory #homestuck analysis #The Ultimate Riddle #dead marios #ugh why is tumblr basically unusable #pictures and text can go together TUMBLR #GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER IT'S 2017 WE HAVE HYPERCOMICS #HOMESTUCK COULD TEACH YOU A THING OR TWO ABOUT COMBINING MEDIA

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comicteaparty · 6 years ago

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August 17th-August 23rd, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from August 17th, 2019 to August 23rd, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

How do you handle foreshadowing for future events/reveals in your story?

AntiBunny

In AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ I cheat a little on foreshadowing. Since stories tend to change as I develop them I can't always be sure that things will play out as planned. That's why I'm vague when I foreshadow things, so that they can be interpreted in multiple ways. On the one hand giving some foreshadowing forces me to keep the story from going too far off the rails, and on the other being vague enough gives me flexibility to change my mind. One particular example is between Nailbat (a prequel) and Gritty City Stories (the main story), two characters use the same phrase "you have such a linear view of history," for the big reveal at the end of Nailbat, that these two are actually the same person. I dropped additional foreshadowing mid way through Nailbat stating that the cloak of shadows is a mystical artifact, implying that one character is wearing something that's hiding his true identity.

Bits of foeshadowing that some people can probably piece together already, but hasn't totally paid off yet is the repeated references to 50 years ago. A more vague one that won't pay off for quite a long time is the phrase "my real enemies are still very far away."

When I did that first one I wasn't entirely sure I wanted these two to become the same character, but since I was running both stories side by side at the time, it was an easy reference to throw in. If I decided against it, it's just a nod to their similarities. Since I ran with that idea it paid off big.

50 years ago has been concrete in my plan from page 1 though, so no need to be vague there.

Ultimately I'd say my approach to foreshadowing is to be vague enough to not write yourself into a corner, but be willing to follow through on it. An obvious foreshadowing needs to pay off. By staying loose with it you can make changes and still get some pay off with it. Be specific only when you have a foregone conclusion and you want to make sure you can stick to it.

HiddenElephant

I suspect I don't do it well for The Wide Ocean. http://thewideocean.thecomicseries.com/ It's a bit of a writing problem that I have; I'm scared to give too much away and end up not saying enough. There are panels where I flat-out announce what's coming next. I can recall 1 specific panel about page 40 that flat-out said, there's zombies in the sand in the ocean, but other than that? You're going to need to pay attention. At least 1 person has figured out something major to one of the characters that I've not yet revealed (and don't know how to reveal).

authorloremipsum

http://signsofthreecomic.webcomic.ws/comics/ For Signs of Three, since the stories are mysteries, I have to make sure all the clues (aka the foreshadowing) are placed in plain view of the readers. I want them to figure it out, to make guesses and such before the reveal. A plot twist should surprise but not confuse or betray your reader.

But foreshadowing is one reason I see people with No outlines and get worried

snuffysam

So, here’s the thing. I write... weird. I start with the themes of my story, then write a synopsis of each book & any other major events I can think of. I spend my drawing time for each book writing out the script for the next book and making a detailed outline for the book after that. So as a result of that process, I have a lot of room to reference future events without worry that I’m writing myself into a corner. Some things I’d call more “teases” than foreshadowing. Like how there are minor or background characters in books 1 & 2 who become important in books 3-5. Or how the cover pages for book 2 spell out “NOTHING”. But there are other things I’d definitely put under the foreshadowing umbrella. Like all the hints in Book 1 towards the plague not being natural. Or this line from Lord Ro: http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/comics/301/ IMO, I think if your comic has any twists in it, you should make a habit of foreshadowing them ahead of time. It encourages re-reading, and helps keep your audience from feeling like you pulled the rug out from under them.

Respheal

In OSP's Trope Talks video on plot twists, they categorize plots twists as being either retroactive (revealing information that changes the story up to that point) and trajectory (moving the story in an unexpected direction). The majority of Galebound's (http://www.galebound.com/) reveals and twists are retroactive. To really make the retroactive twists work, I needed to know where the story is going so I could pepper in clues to future twists nice and early without needing to retcon things. I try to make every page either have something that either gives a little more information about the world or characters, OR something that once you know the truth changes. So basically everything is revealing the truth of the retroactive twists, or setting up for a new reveal that makes the retroactive twist work. It kinda turns into the cyclical beast of foreshadowing. Some early examples--Din and Pascals's mysterious obedience throughout the first three chapters is revealed in chapter four to be magical compulsion, which then changes the tone of the first three chapters a bit when you realize Din wasn't kidding when he said he had no choice. And then you learn Din is a straight up murderer, making his interactions with Conan more...understandable? I've also got stuff scattered in that won't pay off until the literal last page, but despite that last page being hundreds of pages away the seeds have been planted.

ErinPtah (Leif & Thorn | BICP)

In But I'm A Cat Person (http://bicatperson.com/), I either did too much foreshadowing, or the twists weren't bizarre enough...there are a few things I wanted to be a source of tension and mystery, where reader comments just went "oh, of course the answer is X" (and were right).

They didn't guess everything, but there were a few dramatic character-to-character reveals where I had to think "gotta make this look really cool, because the information isn't going to wow readers -- it's all on the presentation."

LadyLazuli

In Phantomarine (http://www.phantomarine.com/) I've already dropped a lot of hints as to where this story is going, but they're mixed in with some big, shiny red herrings to throw off my readers. I don't want to (and honestly can't) hide every secret from my audience (I want them to solve SOME things and have fun doing it!), so I'm allowing some details to show more clearly than others. For example, I'm not a fan of twist villains - the character I'm currently working with the most is definitely a villain, and I don't want to hide that. I want the audience to know it, and enjoy her villainy along the way! But the big question becomes WHY and HOW she's a villain. And that's a whole other onion layer to play with.

But amidst all the fun mini-secrets, there is a single secret in the story that I want no one to predict until the last moment. Not a soul. It will probably happen, just because I A) trust that my readers are smart! and B) I don't trust myself to hide it properly ... but I want to try and conceal it as much as possible. If my other secrets fail to be hidden, I want to put all the effort into concealing this one. All in all, my reveals are the driving reason I'm making this story. As soon as I imagine drawing them, my motivation increases tenfold!

The Q

That's the whole thing about stories online, right? You want a readership, you want them engaged, and you want them to try and figure out your twists! At the same time, you want to surprise them and make some amazing surprises for them! I think there's a few different ways of handling readers guessing your twists... LOST and Gravity Falls being good examples of two different approaches.

Desnik

I'm actually having a lot of trouble with http://ask-a-warlock.tumblr.com/ and foreshadowing, I guess because a lot of executive dysfunction in settling on one plot point or another. I usually don't notice until I bring the script in to my writing group. There's all this cool stuff I want to include but I have to admit that I'm prone to overloading with foreshadowing to the point that the plot seems to stop happening

Jonny Aleksey

I've done a lot of hinting at characters in J-Man. Particularly with the Big-Man and Mr. Stone (main villains), Unknown Man (who's helped him0, and Lady M (who'll be the main antagonist of the next issue). I put in some mysteries about J-Man's parents in the prequel comic I did a while back. I see myself more putting in mysteries then foreshadowing because it gives me a bit more freedom to change and mold things when I actually do get to them. Tho I do have solid ideas for how certain important things will play out.(edited)

Steph (@grandpaseawitch)

http://oldmanandtheseawitch.tumblr.com/ already has foreshadowing up the wazoo. Every chapter art is foreshadowing something or contains a secret. I hid secrets in almost every page. :>(edited)

The Q

Oh MAN, I gotta read this!

And for me; foreshadowing is everything. I work really hard to use every element of the story and have as little unused setups as possible. Working on an epic fantasy, as I do right now (and -can't wait- to show), it gets even trickier, and even more important, to try and streamline what you set up, vs what you pay off later in the story.

Jurinova

In my comic (https://tapas.io/series/hiadw) I try my best to foreshadow without making it too obvious. I drop hints or hide them in plain sight, so people can notice them if they pay attention but it's not something that instantly draws attention. For me good foreshadowing is something that makes people go "Oh, of course! That's what that was about!" when they reach the point that was foreshadowed and I think at least a few times I've succeeded so far. I also tend to do a lot of little visual cues that connect certain characters or plot points, for example two characters do the same thing when they get nervous or anxious. They are definitely quite subtle but when viewing the comic as a whole they become more obvious. Since I put a lot foreshadowing into the comic it's natural that some of them go unnoticed but I'm hopeful that if someone re-reads they might pick up on them. I mean I do have hints already in place for the final chapter, so it's gonna take a while for those to be noticed.

authorloremipsum

Coming back again, to comment on two things. 1. Chapter covers or story covers that have foreshadowing in them are my FAVORITE. if the symbolism tells us what will happen in the story before it's even begun, I get so excited. 2. My favorite kind of foreshadowing in normal books is when a specific detail is pointed out in the environment that comes into play later. Excuse the violent example, but one book specifically described a hotel having razors in the bathroom, which later turned out to be a very very bad thing. In a comic, you'd probably do this with a close up on some details in an environment.

The Q

I hadn't even thought about the chapter cover thing, but I LOVE THAT!

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