#mageddondreams

[duckgetsstuck]

Intense though everything else going on in Homestuck at this point is, I was kind of expecting more reaction from you to getting a definition of what (and why) the alpha timeline really is.

1) I haven’t been sleeping very well. Last night I only got 4 hours of sleep, and I haven’t been doing much better for the past few weeks.

2) My brain has been much more tired after work for the past month. Ever since I got back from DragonCon, I went into cert test prep, then 2 weeks of software training, then a week of consulting. I did pass the test, but it’s been non-stop since. And I need to start another exam prep already.

3) I have been so inundated lately with spoilers that I haven’t felt like updating. It seems like after almost every post I make, I get asks containing spoilers. It’s as if I’ve stopped being able to “read Homestuck the right way,” if that makes sense.

[monstersdownthepath]

If you went to school in Ireland, "bhole" is clearly an Irish word pronounced "vole". Which makes taking them seriously difficult from a different angle.

“You’re tasked with clearing out the bhole that’s been plaguing our lands.”

“You need six 16th level adventurers for a field mouse?”

“I think you may have misheard me”

[nora-reads-homestuck]

For what it's worth, the "poppop in the attic" line is an Arrested Development reference, Hussie was still going as bit hogwild with being able to make post-April 2009 pop-culture references at that point.

brrrrrrrrd said to nora-reads-homestuck:

“Sometimes you tell dad you really want poppop in the attic. He says the mere fact you call it that tells him you’re not ready” is a reference to Arrested Development. I guess Hussie had it on the mind when writing this section since the blue mustachio’d man in the picture on Jane’s wall, the HALLWAY CERA, and this joke are all related to that show.

OH SHIIIIIIIIT, yeah, ok! That makes a lot more sense. *watches the clip* AHAHAHAHA. Oh, Cera.

[journeysintowebcomics]

Also, when you say it wouldn't fly with a professional editor, may I ask where you are coming from on that ? My wife is a novelist with a dozen books published, so I have met a few professional editors, and a thing that comes across clearly is that a lot of the "don't do X" advice they give starting writers is not because X is bad but because X is very difficult to do well; and if you are good enough to do it well they'd be more than happy to have it.

Haha, well, I suppose it’s something that varies from editor from editor, then. I know a couple professional editors too, and they are...quite picky regarding things like pacing, dialogue and other stuff. Maybe the book industry where I’m from has different opinions than where you’re from. Or maybe the standards vary in every publisher house. I don’t know, but the point is that I suppose the editor’s mileage may vary on this regard.

mageddondreams also says: And one more note, which I think might amuse you; the last full line of dialogue in Homestuck, on pages 9942-9943, answers the question at the end of the first page (1901).

Huh, neat! I see what you mean. It’s not the answer I had expected to the question about what John’s name would be, heh. Then again, Dirk spouting ‘John Egbert’ for no reason would have been kinda odd.

[mage-of-homestuck]

In re number of doomed timeline Aradias; somewhere in the Ministrife in the middle of one of those walls of text with all the trolls talking at once, I am pretty sure there is a reference by Equius to an Aradiabot with a number in six figures.

Oh yeah, didn’t he say Aradiabot #10025?

[lilietsblog]

What seems more likely to me than "Hussie just forgot to put the sprites in an animation he was working on for years" is "the sprites end up somewhere different or are game constructs that do not survive the game". But then I have very little ability to believe in anything left out of as big a project as Act 7 being an accident.

but uhit was a big project but not a big animationit only addressed the central thing that happenedit's not accidental that stuff got left out, it's natural bc homestuck is hugeit just means that someone is less relevant to the ending, not that something bad happened, i think?

i also have trust in the epilogue because Problem Sleuth I guess

[zenosanalytic]

With regard to the Vriska trapped in black hole take on Act 7 - my interpretation of the art was that we were meant to take the cracked region of paradox space specifically as collapsing into the black hole, at Alt Calliope's orchestration, and Vriska's confrontation with LE is surrounded by cracks above and below so her being sucked in there too makes sense to me even with paradox space in general surviving fine.

yeah see I’m fine with that. I was overstating things in that reply out of cantankerousness; it’s really more the certainty of how I’ve seen folks talking about it that bugs me. Like, there are certain things that are pretty heavily implied, like LE going in the pocket, but other stuff isn’t shown specifically to leave it ambiguous and up to the audience.

My reply to that from a “Vriska’s not dead” reading of this ambiguity would be:

the cracks during endgame are weird; they started off there in Collide creating a border LE and the Army fought across, then disappeared during the end of Collide only to show up again heading towards them in Act 7; they’re around her when she opens the box then not when the Cursor drops; the crack(same sort of crack or different?) made by the Cursor crosses an uncracked landscape, but the “sky” above her is filled with cracks

Vriska’s positioning is weird; leading into Act 7 she’s “close” to LE and the army’s nowhere to be seen, then she’s suddenly way back with the army marching toward him, then she’s suddenly really close to him again, which can make sense given space doesn’t work the same out there, but by the same token it also means getting away from him when(if) she wants to isn’t a difficulty

She’s standing right at the edge of the cracks(when they’re there), so it’d be easy to move off them even conventionally

Like Aradia she’s a God Tier, and A had no problem holding her flight position against the “blackhole’s” gravity at a much closer location

The Cursor had a door in it so she could have ducked in there after dropping it and

When the Ring shattered what was behind it? A place that looks very much like the White Space John accessed, so as long as she didn’t fall past the event horizon of the “blackhole” she’d have been fine even if the section of the Ring she was in collapsed under her.

[thesecondtimesthecharm]

Hi. As a new injector of your liveblog posts into my veins, I thought I'd answer one of your earlier open questions; I've been a professional database designer and programmer for a couple of decades, and to me every single page of sylladex fooling about is hysterically funny because Hussie really knows how data structures get unhelpful or buggy..

Oh my god Hussie fucking researched this. Is there a limit to this man.

I feel really bad for glossing over the Sylladex bullshit even if it saves me from developing a migraine.

I could imagine how, knowing firsthand how this data bullshit is agonisingly frustrating, this shit is hilarious.

[lifebloggery]

Happy slightly belated birthday birthday from an appreciative follower who is not online much of the weekend, and may your next year be excellent.

thank you v much!! i hope yours is too!! :D

[duckgetsstuck]

Do you have any theories as to why it might be necessary for the game for the forces of Prospit to lose to Derse on the battlefield without exception ? (Also, I am chuckling over you describing Rose as jaded, particularly as I think one could legitimately describe much of Jade's demeanour as looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses.) (I think I may have just sent you an earlier draft by accident, this is the correct one).

That’s a difficult question (but a good one!). 

For one, it could be some requirement in the code of the game. Like, there are some conditions that absolutely have to be met in a particular function or statement in order for things to progress, or else it gets stuck in a loop or just terminates. 

In other words, it’s possible that if a stalemate happens for an extended period of time during the Reckoning, maybe the meteors don’t fall quite so quickly, and the home planet of the players degrades in a much slower fashion, which could either cause the game to prematurely end, or it could cause people outside of the game to interfere. Or, if Prospit wins, it’s possible that the game breaks or just stops, and there’s no telling how that would affect the home planet.

But that’s just focusing on the code of the game. 

It’s also possible that the players find a way to go back to their home planet with all the powers that they’ve gained from the game, without their home planet being destroyed. I mean, players could become super heroes, or super villains, or just taken by the government to be “assets”. That kinda makes me thing of a series that Marvel did under their Marvel Max brand, where they changed some fundamental properties of DC heroes. What if Superman was taken by the US Government after he lands? What if Batman was black and his parents were killed in a hate crime? What if Wonder Woman wanted to conquer the planet? 

I’m not sure if I answered your question, but I really don’t know if I can answer the question. There are just too many variables for me. But that’s okay! Besides, it’s a really good question.

[monstersdownthepath]

Do you have any thoughts on how neothelids and their overlords might fit with conqueror worms in the same setting ?

You reminded me, I need to reblog some older worms!

But the bulky, powerful Neothelids and their Overlord versions dont quite make good minions of the much more subtle and insidious Conquerer Worms; Conquerers would much prefer ther minions incapable of harming them, or even meaningfully opposing them.

If you're wondering like, how they fit together, the Conquerers don't have a solid backstory as to where they came from. It may just be they're a different species of Neothelid--a different worm-child of a much more subtle alien god.

[monstersdownthepath]

Your Pepsi Man post reminds me of something thematically similar in Dragon ages ago, an ooze with powers like [i]Sugar Rush[/i] which was like a bull rush that briefly hasted the target and then left them a headache all day, that could bring new oozes into existence by a process called [i]Pepsi Generation[/i]. There were also stats for a slice of pizza left on the dungeon map with molten cheese and saw-edged pepperoni attacks and attendant violet fungi and anchovy-sharks. I think it was 3.5e.

hey @val-rayne i have an idea for a mission i wanna run by you...

[duckgetsstuck]

you-are-the-law asked “If John's land would be abbreviated LOWAS and Rose's would be LOLAR,...”

mageddondreams asked “Did you notice the acronym for Nepeta's land ?”

... You have GOT to be kidding me.

LOLCAT.

I mean, it doesn’t exactly fall into the same format as the others.

But...

LOLCAT.

Well played, Nepeta.

[duckgetsstuck]

Building on mageddondreams's ask, what do you think would constitute a "victory" for either Prospit or Derse? What would it look like?

An “ideal” victory in the sense of black and white chess pieces on a board would be one side causing the other’s king to forfeit the battle and step down, and one side reigns over both kingdoms. 

But go with me on this one.

It seems to me that Prospit and Derse are pretty much identical. They have the same type of kingdom, the same kind of troops, the same ships, everything. And when two equally matched forces do battle with each other, if all things are equal, then there would be a stalemate. That stalemate is what’s been happening between the kingdoms before the Game begins.

So, why does Derse always win? In my opinion, once the Game starts, Derse has one variable that changes everything: 

Jack.

It’s my theory that Jack is the reason why Derse wins. If Prospit had a similar force, then there would be at least another stalemate. Then again, with a second variable in the equation, it’s entirely possible that Prospit would win.

But that still leaves the question: What would a “victory” look like?

Well, what happens when a game of chess is over? The chess board is reset for the next game. Going on that logic, I guess the Battlefield gets reset as well. The only way to reset the Battlefield to its original state would be to… reset the Game? And if the loser of a chess game picks what side to be for the next game, does that mean that Prospit becomes Derse and Derse becomes Prospit? So, the only way to win is to be the second one to move?

So many unanswered questions.

“Shall we play a game?”

“How about a nice game of chess?”

[duckgetsstuck]

"Now Kanaya is starting to make me a little sad. This last line here? That sounds like someone who has consigned her fate, that she knows she’s going to die eventually..." Are you sure that is what she means? I had always taken it to mean that there are plenty of other reasons she doesn't want to help him. She doesn't strike me as suicidal. Tho i admit I am bad at judging peoples emotions sometimes.

Here is @random2908 in another ask:

Hmm… I took Kanaya’s line as more being that assurances of her own preservation wouldn’t be sufficient to convince her to assist in the genocide of her species, because she’s not so extremely selfish that her own preservation would be her only concern. Rather than that she’s resigned to her own death.

And here is @mageddondreams in another:

i like the way you come up with new angles on things I had not thought of, but sometimes they make me a little sad: when you read "Speculate For A Moment That Self Preservation Might Not Be What Would Sway My Decision" as Kanaya being resigned to dying rather than 'you know, not everybody is self-centred to the exclusion of all else like you are" was one of those moments.

First off, I am sorry. I must be having a hard time clarifying my thoughts lately, because this isn’t the first time that this has happened. It wasn’t my intention to be morbid, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happened, and I apologize.

Second, you all have much better interpretations of what I was trying (and failing) to convey. My train of thought was that Kanaya sees the destruction of the planet as a certainty, and her death may happen because of it, and since she’s seen the destruction in the clouds, it’s not exactly something she can change. In fact, she knows that playing the game is integral to it, so she’s resigned to the fact that she’s going to have a hand in the destruction, and her death might be a possibility of it. CA’s stating that he wouldn’t kill her doesn’t phase her, because she knows the certainty of Alternia’s destruction. 

I don’t think she’s suicidal. I think she’s more concerned with the big picture. “Look, I don’t really care if you’re trying to kill me or not; we have bigger fish to fry, so why don’t we just get on with it?” 

But again, I am sorry for what I said.

[duckgetsstuck]

I read Karkat's STOP PLAYING GAMES FOR GIRLS, given the relative danger levels of female and male trolls we have seen, as a (too late) warning against Tavros getting in way over his head, though delivered with Karkat's usual charm.

Yeah, that’s fair. Less of a, “you shouldn’t play games for girls because hurr durr girls” and more of a, “Are you out of your mind, you have no idea who you’re dealing with, you’ll regret it” kind of thing.

And I think that’s a microcosm of the reactions I’ve been experiencing so far. The guys so far have been odd but mostly harmless. Karkat is an asshole, Tavros is a precious baby, Sollux needs a hug, Gamzee is just silly in a weird way, and CT is just creepy. But the women? Terezi, Aradia, AG, GA, even Nepeta? My initial reaction to all of them is fear.

Maybe that’s a good thing.