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homestuckreplay · 9 months ago

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John Egbert, The Chess Grand Master's Girlfriend

(page 422-423)

8/1/2009 Wheel Spin: Parent Bad :( (again) Verdict: STILL VERY INCORRECT

These pages introduce a whole bunch of new concepts, but make a lot more sense when read side by side with page 251, which has already hinted at these (making Act 2 feel really well planned out). A lot comes together this way so this is 1300 words of Lore Discussion.

The Seven Gates - These appear to be the seven blue spirographs we pass through in first person POV on page 422, and also the blue spirographs that appear above John's house on page 251. These look like some kind of stepping stones (in-game achievements?) on the path to Skaia.

The number seven hasn't appeared in Homestuck yet, but in Western culture it is seen as a lucky number, and in Christian numerology it symbolizes perfection and evokes the seven days of creation, as well as the seven deadly sins. There are seven notes in a musical scale, and we know the characters are musicians, seven colors in the spectrum of light, and color appears to be symbolically relevant, and seven is the average roll for two six-sided dice, which are very commonly used in board games and tabletop roleplaying games.

Skaia - A spherical blue place covered in clouds with a white spirograph/flower shape in the center - perhaps made of pure sky, due to the name and its transparency. Of course, Sburb was created by Skaianet Systems, so its designers have some ties to this place. Its associations with height, sky, light and potential clearly relate it to the Christian concept of heaven. However, it's also referred to as a 'dormant crucible,' with a crucible being a scientific or alchemical container that can withstand extreme heat, used in historical metalwork and modern laboratories. The science and religion dichotomy is here to stay.

Nannasprite refuses to say what the 'unlimited creative potential' of Skaia means, because she won't give spoilers, but I immediately think of creativity = art. All the characters have hobbies that relate to creating and consuming different types of art, but for the most part they're not very good at it and/or don't have great taste. Skaia being something that unlocks their artistic potential - but at the same time, being something they have to put in a lot of work to reach, just as getting good at art takes practice - is very cool to me. However this could also relate to biblical creation, similar to the seven gates = seven days.

Skaia is 'untouched by the flow of time' and has so I absolutely think that people at Skaianet Systems accessed the creative power of Skaia and used it to create a video game that went far beyond the standard capabilities of technology, and that this power is the secret to their success (and how an unknown company made such a smash hit game on their first try).

Forces of Light & Darkness - Sburb is a classic good vs evil narrative, represented by the black and white pieces on a chessboard. Again on page 251, we see the flashing white/black/blue kernelsprite divide into not two but three parts - a white part that ascends, a black part that descends, and a blue part that remains with John. It's possible that these three parts all share knowledge via the game engine, explaining how Nannasprite knows so much about what's going on overall. She then becomes the bridge between the good faction, the evil faction, and the player whose arrival changes the game.

Seeing Skaia as artistic creation is interesting here, because it's exclusively associated with the forces of light/good. In the real world it's definitely possible for art to be used for evil, to attempt to manipulate people and intentionally spread negative and harmful messages, or just to mistreat the people who create it. In Homestuck, forces of darkness 'covet the destruction' of creativity (according to Nannasprite), which is a closer parallel to arts in the real world being underfunded and undervalued, with capitalism forcing people to work long hours at jobs where they're not able to stretch their creative muscles and that don't leave any time or energy for creative hobbies. The metaphor definitely works, but I'm really curious on if Homestuck will explore the idea that art isn't necessarily a perfect universal good.

Curtains/Stage - The many layered red curtains in page 422's animation share a design with the red curtains on page 247, marking the end of act 1. This positions the curtains/acts as representing different locations - John's house on Earth, Skaia in the Medium, likely others, perhaps corresponding to scene changes on a stage that need to happen behind a curtain. Nannasprite also uses the word 'stage' to describe the setting of a duel between light and darkness, coding Homestuck and/or Sburb as a theater performance.

Chessboard - So there's a 1986 musical called Chess, and I think any parallels are probably coincidence, but it's still fun to think about just due to the chessboard on page 423. The story is a metaphor for the Cold War, represented by a US and Soviet chess champion (which from an American perspective at the time were the forces of light and dark, although in the modern day I do not personally share this assessment). A Hungarian/English woman dates both of these chess grand masters at separate times, who tries to calm their rivalry and is simultaneously manipulated by it.

At the time, musicals were not seen as an intellectual artistic medium, and creator Tim Rice was explicitly trying to create a more literary musical that would be taken more seriously, which is similar to how Homestuck is expanding the possibilities of a webcomic. Also notable from Wikipedia: the original set designer (who was replaced due to illness) 'had planned a "multimedia" show, with an elaborate tilting floor, banks of television monitors, and other technological touches.' I'm going to look for a recording of Chess and see if there's any further comparisons worth making.

John's Role - Yesterday, Nannasprite said that the Incipisphere came into being via John's computer, but also stands independently of it and always has. Today, Nannasprite says that the forces of light and dark have dueled forever in eternal stalemate until John showed up. This was confusing to me until I realized it's exactly how video game worlds work - they 'come into being' when a player installs them and begins playing, but at that point the characters and world already have extensive history. No matter the story, there's no way for any faction within the game to 'win' or for certain key things to happen until the player takes action. The player character's arrival into the game is typically the inciting incident that spawns a new chain of events, beginning to change the course of the narrative.

John's arrival changing everything doesn't necessarily mean that he specifically is a fated hero, just that he's the player character. He probably has a choice of paths to follow in the game, and can choose whether to ascend to Skaia and fight alongside the forces of light, or descend to the weird smoke below his house and fight alongside the forces of darkness, either way ending the stalemate if he succeeds. I wonder what the morality mechanics are in Sburb, and how they correspond to John's echeladder.

If I was to wildly theorize, I'd say that if John fights alongside the forces of light, reaches Skaia and beats the game, he'll be able to draw from that 'dormant crucible of unlimited creative potential' to not only undo the destruction of Earth, but also to create Homestuck itself, and release this work on the day his adventure originally began (as he's now outside the flow of linear time) instead of releasing the Sburb beta. This would bring a lot of meta elements of the story full circle, would help explain the multiple layers of commands and commentary in Homestuck, and would make our world's story and John's story into one consistent narrative. If done well, I think that could tie everything up very neatly.

#homestuck #reaction #hm. i know an internationally ranked chess player. i should prepare some questions for whenever i next see him #theory #chrono

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autisticsupervillain · 1 year ago

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It's Fictional Throwdown Friday!

This Week's Fighters...

Aradia Megido vs Darth Caedus!

Conditions:

God-Tier Aradia.

Scenario:

Jacen Solo's newly unlocked "flow walking" abilities get the attention of Aradia Megido, who worries that the Sith Lord's new time travel abilities could allow him to mess up the timeline. Darth Caedus refuses to let anyone, time goddess or not, stand in his way.

Analysis: Aradia

Time. The endless circle that drives all of creation forward. The primordial Aspect of inevitability and fate. Things are born. They live. They die. Time is a spirograph, made up of endless cycles. A complex machine that creates a spectacular explosion when its cycles are undone.

Aradia Megido was once a cog in this machine. A slave to inevitability. It's machniations changed her from a cheery girm with terrifying hobbies, into an apathetic servant. A Maid whose only interest was serving Time.

Aradia first died as a result of a gruesome cycle of revenge. After Vriska Serket tossed Aradia's close friend Tavros off of a cliff, Aradia got even by plaguing Serket with the ghosts of her pervious victims. In reply, Vriska mind controlled Aradia's boyfriend Sollux and had him vaporize her entirely.

This brutal demise, as well as the prophecies of an inevitable apocalypse that her ghost friends shared with her, evaporated Aradia's once cheery demeanor, turning her into a cold, emotionless cynic who soulless obeyed Time's every whim so that the timeline could be preserved. Her resurrection into a robot did little to help her disposition, especially since the guy that built the body tried to program her into falling in love with him, which soured any positive feelings she could have had for her new body.

When Aradia and all her friends were given the opportunity to become Gods of the new universe, thanks to a magically game called SGRUB, Time and Fate had to ruin that for her too, as Aradia had to actively keep her friends from becoming God-Tier and manipulate the whole game from the background just to keep the rules of fate from declaring her timeline void and wiping her from existence. There was an upside to this situation though, aside from the cool Time powers. Aradia was given an opportunity to hand Vriska her smug, manipulative ass, which was doubtlessly cathartic.

It wasn't until Aradia died... again, that she got given a new perspective on life. Because her dream self happened to die on her Quest Bed, Aradia was revived as a fully realized Maid of Time. A literal God of Time. She was done being Time's puppet and she was tired of bowing to Fate's whims. Aradia was free, truly alive for the first time in her life, and she was going to see just how much havoc she could wreak on the timeline.

Even before becoming a God, Aradia was easily one of the most powerful Players in the entire game. Capable of manipulating time to an extent, Aradiabot could summon hundreds of herself at will from all across the timeline, making her a giant walking army. Scaling off of Dave's capabilities, she should potentially be capable of creating billions of time clones, as Dave was able to create enough time clones to create and manage a planet wide corporation staffed entirely by himself. Even after becoming a God herself, Vriska freely admitted that she was no match for Aradiabot, which takes some doing on Serket's part, given her ego.

As a God-Tier, Aradia's powers are magnified greatly. Not only is she now able to stop time at her leisure, but she's capable of competing even with First Guardians, or those fused with them. These God-like, nigh-omniscient beings are tasked with protecting their assigned planet so that the Players who will be born on it can one day play SBURB and create the next universe. To this end, they are directly linked to the First Sun, providing them with an immeasurable amount of power.

Case in point, Doc Scratch was once caught between two exploding universes and was completely... unscrathed (ba-dum-tish)... well, not counting his severed leg, but that's from a prior injury, not the blast. Moreover, universes in Homestuck are noted to contain infinite timelines and possibilities within them, making them more akin to infinitely sized multiverses. And Aradia is shown to generally be comparable to such beings. Not only is she able to hold back Bec Noir with her time stop, but she should comparable to Dave Strider, a fellow Time Player God-Tier with several of the same abilities, who could hold off both Bec Noir and Peregrine Mendicant, albiet temporarily.

Hell, the fact that she can react to Bec at all speaks wonders for her spead. Scaling off of a God-Tiered Rose Lalonde, Bec should be fast enough to travel along the entire surface of the Green Sun, which is the size of several universes. Being able to traverse an infinite amount of distance like this in a finite amount of time would grant most God-Tiers an infinite amount of speed, but even discounting that, being able to move in the Furthest Ring like that at all is crazy. The Furthest Ring is a higher dimensional location where time and space function nonlinearly. In order to move through space, you must also move through time in that same direction. This is why Aradia was needed to push the meteor into the Furthest Ring, moving would be completely impossible in it otherwise. Imagine being so fast, you can move a certain direction through time. Imagine moving so fast, you win a race one second before it started. That's how fast Homestuck God-Tiers would have to be to move through the Furthest Ring at all.

This just makes Aradia's Time Stop more impressive by extension. She can Time Stop people who can move Faster Than Time. Well... kinda. Aradia herself admitted that she can't keep Bec frozen forever and that she would eventually die if she didn't get out of her predicament. So, she timed the moment she let Bec go just right so that she would collide with him the split second his body became a portal to the Green Sun. This shows that she has a keen tactical mind even without Fate pulling her strings.

At her absolute strongest, Aradia could even briefly harm and even time stop Lord English, the Lord of Time himself. A being so powerful, he threatened to destroy the entire 6 dimensional multiverse of Homestuck.

I'll say again. Aradia fought a being who had absolute control over all of time... and could freeze him in time.

And finally, she gets all the benefits that regular God-Tiers and Players do. Including a Hammerspace video game inventory, a leveling system that insures she gets stronger just by doing random things, and conditional immortality that protects her from aging and dying so long as her Death isn't Heroic or Just. Meaning, so long as she didn't die whilst doing something Heroic or something that means her death was justified, she will come back from anything short of complete existence erasure on the very conceptual level or if the clock meant to decide her fate is broken. She's also a master with the whip, but given everything else about her, she hardly needs it.

Time is the Aspect of inevitability. That's why it's inevitable that this Time Player will easily kick your fucking ass.

Analysis: Darth Caedus

If there is one thing that could possibly explain who Jacen Solo became when he grew up, it is war. Born to the legendary heroes of the Republic Han Solo and Leia Organa Solo. He'd spend much of his early years getting abducted by imperial remnants and enemy factions of all stripes as the New Republic struggled to pull itself together. As a thirteen year old, he'd begin his training at Luke Skywalker's new Jedi Praxeum, spending most of his time fighting off Dark Jedi and lingering Sith Remnants. Jacen Solo didn't have the privilege of a peaceful upbringing, but despite that, he found a way to prosper. It was during these young years he'd meet the woman he'd later marry, Princess Tenel Ka Djo. Becoming Luke Skywalker's apprentice at age fifteen, it seemed that Jacen's lofe, despite its rocky start, was shaping up to be a good one.

That all changed when the Yuuzhan Vong attacked.

A proud warrior race that used bio-organic technology and existed outside of the Force, the Vong invaded the galaxy brutally, attacking without mercy. Due to existing outside of the Force, the Vong were immune to any attack a Jedi might throw at them, allowing their conquest to render planets desolate and cost trillions of lives.

Jacen lost his younger brother Anakin on the front lines and was captured not long after. He spent a year in captivity, tortured in ways unimaginable for over a year. They called it the Embrace of Pain, a device that specifically read the synapses of its target to trigger their pain receptors in whatever way the target finds most unbearable. Most sentient life dies from shock within seconds of exposure. Jacen held out for months.

Ultimately, Jacen would save the galaxy from the Vong threat. He would fuse with the entirety of the Force, become one with it to become a living god, and use that power to destroy the puppet master behind the war once and for all. Like his parents before him, Jacen Solo would save the galaxy.

Despite his victory, despite being the shinning becon of hope for the galaxy, Jacen would be troubled the events of his childhood for the rest of his. He was going to be a father. He had a family now and a duty to protect the entire galaxy. Could he allow his daughter to grow up in a galaxy has fractured and war torn as he had? Leave her at risk to the criminals and fascists he had to fight as a teenager? Could he risk the galaxy being invaded again from nowhere so that his family could experience the same loss and pain that he had. No.

Jacen Solo had spent his developing years being kidnapped, tortured, and made to fight in wars. He had lost his closest friends and family to violence. He had lost his mind to torture. He would not allow that same fate to befall his children. His family. His galaxy. Not again.

He would unite the galaxy in an empire of love. Create a world where every sapient being would love each other so deeply as to be considered family to each other, never to be torn apart again and united against any outside threat. A time of peace under his careful eyes.

His family wouldn't see it his way, of course, so Jacen would need outside help. He'd go to the Dark Lady Lumiya to learn the ways of the Sith. And to prove to himself he would let nothing get in his way, he murdered his Aunt Mara Jade Skywalker and named himself Darth Caedus.

Driven by paranoia and trauma, Caedus ensured he'd be prepared for every situation before beginning his invasion. Beyond the standard Sith Saber, with slightly higher cutting power due to its synthetic crystals, Caedus carries poison dart launchers on his gloves, turning his victim's immune system against them to kill them in seconds, a vibro blade shiv, and a blaster pistol hidden beneath his armor. Caedus spent five years traveling the outskirts of the galaxy to learn even the most obscure pieces of force lore that he could. From such sources, Cadeus mastered practices that most would consider to be... unnatural.

Caedus had the standard range of lightning, telekinesis, and tekepathy, allowing him to dominate minds and communicate from across the galaxy. Caedus is capable of casting powerful illusions, receiving visions of the future mid combat as far as thousands of years in advance (only worsening his paranoia), and create fire from nothing by telekinetically moving air molecules. He's liable to throw star ships around from space mid combat or crush your organs directly as needed, down to causing permanent brain damage by rupturing an artery in the brain.

Slightly more esoteric abilities include erasing people's memories or forcing them to relieve them mid combat, making his aura so small he becomes nearly invisible, creating blinding flashes of light, paralyzing people by electrocuting their nerves, absorbing energy attacks on the level of starship canons, and the Shatterpoint ability. Shatterpoint allows him to see the fault lines in an enemy or object, allowing him strike where a target is most vulnerable, from shattering metals with light taps to kill people in one shot.

Caedus has even mastered powers that no one else has ever used before. With Sever Force, can surround a target in so much Dark Side energy that they're cut off from the force completely, effectively depowering them, potentially permanently if he keeps it up for a long time. He can understand any language he hears automatically, track people through the force by spraying them with his blood, teleport at will, can make himself radioactive to fool lie detectors(?), and can predict the weather(??). But, most impressively of all are his time travel abilities.

By entering a deep meditative state known as flow walking, Darth Caedus can travel back in time and manipulate the past to a minor degree. He wanted to watch Peepaw Vader dice up the younglings during Order 66. Yeah.

In a dual, Caedus is unmatched by all but the mightiest. He defeated Mara Jade by distracting her with a vision of her son before poisoning her, defeated Battlemaster Kyle "I beat dragons to death with my fists" Katarn alongside several other Jedi at once, and gave a very good fight against Grandmaster Luke himself. Even getting choped up by his sister Jaina Solo didn't slow him down much as he just got himself a prosthetic knee and... never actually did anything about his missing hand because he didn't want to be out of commission during a war. So he's just missing a hand now.

Darth Caedus is one of the strongest Sith Lords who ever lived. The fandom may shout heresy for saying it, but... he's possibly even stronger than Palpatine himself.

Palpatine at his strongest was powerful enough to create force storms that could potentially wipe out the universe and did severe damage to the fifth dimensional space known as Hyperspace, where starships travel to beat lightspeed.

Luke Skywalker back then was just a bit weaker than Palpatine and needed a boost from Leia to fully overpower him. Now, decades later, and Caedus himself is juuuuuuuust weaker than Luke after he'd gotten stronger than back then several times over. ...Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment to say Caedus beats Palpatine.

What's more, is that Luke by this point can access the Realm Beyond Shadows, a sixth dimensional space that transcends all of time, including in Hyperspace. In effect, Luke can fight six dimensional beings and move in a place where time does not exist and Caedus is only just weaker than him.

Despite being basically a force god, Caedus is at heart still a traumatized soldier acting out of irrational paranoia. He's been known to get quick to frustrate and violent when things go wrong, his actions have alienated himself from everyone he ever loved, and he can no longer become a physical god by becoming one with the Force.

In the end, Caedus would lose his life in a climactic final dual with Jaina. He had the opportunity to force a stalemate, cut Jaina down as he fell... but his family would die if he did not intervene. Using the last of his strength, Jacen Solo saved his wife and daughter as his sister cut him down.

No matter who he might've become later in life... Jacen Solo had once saved the galaxy.

....

...He's Legends Kylo Ren. lol

Throwdown Breakdown:

Oh, god, how to break this one down. Aradia's a time hax god but Caedus is just a fucking wall of it.

Both should be roughly even with slight strength advantage to Aradia. Both can fight faster than time, but Aradia can fight a full on six dimension buster rather than just a six dimension being.

Now, Aradia's ability to resist even Vriska's mind control abilities should make her about able to handle Caedus's mind hax, so he can't just wave his hands and make her forget he exists. He does however, have a fuck ton of powers that he can fuck her up with.

Shatterpoint and force crush are the big ones, allowing him to simply crush he organs with a thought, but even just his poison darts can be devastating. The issue is actually keeping Aradia dead. Due to the morally neutral conditions of the fight (doomed timeline would mean Aradia herself doesn't exist anymore, so selfish motivation there) and Aradia's complete lack of knowledge on Caedus, God-Tier immortality would kick in unless Caedus were to force her to act heroic or villainously in the fight somehow. While it's not impossible for this to happen on its own, without any knowledge of how God-Tier immortality works, Caedus would not know how to make this happen, forcing him to settle for incapacitation.

Luckily, Caedus has the means to do this, either by paralyzing lightning or by force crushing Aradia's spine, both of which are in character. The issue on that front is he'd have to do that to all of her, thanks to endless time clones.

Aradia can freely create or summon countless alternate versions of herself, leaving the Dark Lord fighting thousands of Aradias at once. With every Aradia he cripples, five more will take her place. Sever Force won't nullify Aradia's powers as while Caedus can cut people off from the Force, cutting people off from the Primordial Concept of Time is a bit of a harder sell. As for Flow Walking, Aradia's own time travel is far superior, as she can do it on command without meditation.

Caedus cannot counter time stop, but his insane endurance could allow him to tank up most of the damage he takes during it. He opened his final dual with Jaina after getting stabbed in the gut by her lightsaber and kept on swinging. Anyone who can survive the embrace of pain isn't going down to anything short of a decapitation.

The specific limitations of Aradia's time travel keep her from traveling back to prevent Jacen from becoming Caedus in the first place, as doing so would doom the timeline and erase her. No one has quick win options here. This is about who wears down first.

All that being said, I think Aradia has this. Jacen wins if he can cripple but not kill every single Aradia in the fight before she can makd more time clones, where Aradia wins just by killing or incapacitating Caedus at all. Time Stop gives her ample time to do this while Caedus will be fighting an uphill battle against an ever growing army as he wears down.

Make no mistake, Caedus's insane endurance, high skill level, and sheer wall of hax make him an uphill opponent regardless and he will not go down quickly. This will be a marathon fight as Caedus continues to demolish an ever regrowing army with every trick he had. When Darth Caedus falls, he'll land on top of a mountain of Aradia corpses, but he will fall regardless.

This Throwdown's Winner is...

Aradia Megido!

#fictional throwdown fridays #homestuck #star wars #aradia megido #darth caedus #jacen solo

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tenaciouschronicler · 6 months ago

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November 16 2024 2009

Welp. Lots happened in the past two weeks so this is gonna be longer to get through it all.

Nov 6

Finally we get to see Dave's strife animation. It wasnt what I expected but given all the context it makes sense. Dave is a bonafide fighter with 8 options with the new ones being:

Abuse - treat with cruelty

Accuse - claim someone commited offense

Assail - make a planned, violent attack

Assault - physical attack

Unfortunately, Bro slashes his options leaving Dave unable to us them. This is the first fight were we cannot do anything but watch Dave get beatdown by a puppet. Thats right, Bro isnt even seen beyond a few flashes. The main fight is with Lil Cal.

We switch over to Jade who is talking with Rose back before Rose loses power. Jade continues to be cryptic about her knowledge in the whole situation but its not too bad as weve already seen parts unfold.

We switch to Rose back in the mausoleum, grabbing Jaspers and decending into the secret passage Mom revealed.

We go back to Jade (lots of switching perspectives this day) whos finally decided to go downstairs.

Nov 8

But before she actually descends we get to see John! Very cool idea using the color reminders for transition.

John is in the middle of a fight loop with the two ogre halequins we saw scaling the platforms Rose created. There are some great movements as John powers up his pogo hammer to try and attack but unfortunately he gets beat back with the Sassacre book. From there hes flung around with the tire swing and deftly saved and healed by Nanna.

Nov 9

We jump to the far future with Peregrine Mendicant who is very surprised by the worm that appeared from the apple and vice versa. This worm decides the mailboxes are a great snack much to PMs disdain. They are fitted with a very nice black sword that does not bode well for the worm.

The gameFAQ page is updated by John. A twist but very welcome. I wonder when he had time to do so. I didnt get to fully explore the punch card code before the reveal of how it functions so I only figured out half of it (being that the code on the back was base64) while John figured out the binary part first to convert to the captcha code. For supposedly not knowing how structures work, John is surprisingly very knowledgable! Im gonna have to place John very firmly in my 'favorite characters' list. We have a lot in common honestly and Im curious on how the game will change him over time.

We are back with Rose after this who is now exploring the secret lab. Above the door is a SN logo (skaianet?) with and atom symbol on the top of the S and the spirograph on the bottom.

Nov 10-12

In the lab we find a giant HUBGRID of what I believe are server drives. The pattern of the layout is very familiar, a checkerboard devided into four parts glowing in pulsing green.

Back with Jade, we get to see some levels of the house filled with her Grandpas interests. The Harleys seem to like breaking established patterns as Grandpa does not have a single interests instead he has:

big game

valient knights

decrepit mummies

beautiful portraits of ladies bleached blue by the sun

Out of these I would be happiest if he stuck with knights. On the last level is a giant worm creature which looks very similar to Johns Typheus browser.

Before we get any further to the outdoors, one of those Trollslum people finds a way to pester Jade. New character unlock? (imagine this said in the most scathing polite southern church goer accent for maximum enjoyment) CarcinoGeneticist seems like *such* a pleasant fella, they have manners but bless, they dont say much.

Truly though, whoever this is seems inordinately angry over what is happening. Who is this and why does it matter to them? Apparently they know the world is ending, believe its Jades fault, believe it was going to be so, and then fail miserably to live up to the troll name. Just calling someone stupid isnt enought to really troll someone, friend.

Going back to Rose, we use the kiosk to see the grid better with the third hub encompasing 0288-0431 is unlocked. In the center of the hub is a transportalizer, though Rose doesnt know it. Rose shows she is just as bad at modi systems as everyone else, grabbing her laptop and transporting Jaspers to who knows where. After switching to leaf instead of root, Rose finds the unlocked hub (which after counting is #0413) and plugs in her laptop which leads to some of the coolest visuals of sylladex operations as the cable connects the two cards.

At the back is a countdown (Hussie really likes countdowns) that for us starts at 3 min and 14 sec until 'unestablishment'.

Nov 13

We jump to PM who has gone through the whole rigamaroll WV did to start the timer to also start a journey to, hopefully, where WV landed. The worm was beheaded, the 'apple' is sideways, and three more worm 'legs' appear to right it before takeoff.

---

(I wanna say again, thank yall for understanding me taking time away from this. I really wanted to at least read the updates but even that was hard. But Im back and better so lets see where this comic takes us!)

#homestuck #homestuck replay #hsrp liveblog #hsrp lore #chrono

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yayroos · 2 years ago

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I posted 2,052 times in 2022

That's 792 more posts than 2021!

112 posts created (5%)

1,940 posts reblogged (95%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@participlepotato

@an-absolute-nightmare

@jellyfishdirigible

@theyhoolikeowls

@captainswan618

I tagged 244 of my posts in 2022

#bird site burning - 11 posts

#unreality - 8 posts

#test it out with this tag - 2 posts

#mum i miss you - 2 posts

#fair wealth transformation <- so the socialist revolution then?? jk unless - 1 post

#but the bros on the outer edge can be right at the edge - 1 post

#universe like a big huge giant spirograph on a scale we can't even begin to comprehend - 1 post

#it's friday lmao - 1 post

#next: my chemical romance - 1 post

#last: yungblud - 1 post

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#and it was really really good for me to live with someone where we spoke the same kind of language in terms of slang and interests and stuff

My Top Posts in 2022:

sorry for reblogging that thing three times in a row but the behaviour of the tags is very interesting to me.

also the fact that the HTML encoded quote shows as a quote on the dash but as the encoded version in the notes view means they're not rendered the same way which is weird if you ask me.

8 notes - Posted July 31, 2022

there's something at the back of my mind that feels more than a little bit wrong when populations are classified as being 'voters' by the government or people speaking from the perspective of the government. I can't help but feel like it feeds into this thing where 'democracy' happens once every few years when you go vote, and winning over voters for that one day is more important than actually improving things I'm the country they're running.

I vote, I am a voter, but I don't want to be thought of in terms of my vote any more than I want to be seen in terms of my monetary contribution (i have a similar issue with 'taxpayers') or anything else. I am a person. Therefore I have value and governments should be working in my (generalised) best interests as a human being under their care. Categorising people as 'voters' lets politicians off the hook when it comes to kids, people convicted of crimes (in countries where that disqualifies you from voting), non citizen residents (undocumented people, international students, permanent residents, and many others in various legal categories around the world), and other disenfranchised groups (which vary from nation to nation). Similarly talking about 'taxpayers' lets governments ignore stay at home parents, pensioners, people on disability benefits, kids, carers, unemployed people, low income people etc.

Call them people. Call everyone people. Stop framing peoples contributions as the reason their interests should be taken into account.

8 notes - Posted August 9, 2022

i would like very much to be a very small lizard 🦎 sunning myself on a rock in a messy garden but instead i have tasks.

10 notes - Posted October 14, 2022

i love you glow in the dark stars i love you fairy lights i love you lava lamps i love you unashamedly making your space soft and inviting i love you finally getting the chance to make your space exactly how you like it i love you plushies i love you pile of cushions

15 notes - Posted July 12, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

technology education is CRUCIAL. if you're a parent and your kid is starting to use a phone/ipad/chromebook, give them some time to play around on a real computer as well, show them how to work files and folders and keyboard shortcuts and shit.

And if you're already a teen or in your twenties or older and you've missed out on learning that stuff, please get your hands on a real computer and figure out at least the basics. If you're unsure, ask someone (my messages are open, 0 judgement, and i know others will be willing to help too) or just try stuff and see what happens.

The best way to learn how to use a computer is to take one, set it up from factory, and then just click all the buttons and see what happens. If you haven't put any important information on it yet then there's nothing lost if you accidentally delete something. Get the office programs, open them up, and click all the buttons you can find in there. Then go looking at the things you've created in other places. Open in notepad (hint: right click > open with > notepad) and see if you can find any patterns! export it with a different file type and open that in notepad and see what's different! See how much of different kinds of data you need to get to a gigabyte!

166 notes - Posted August 14, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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29pageshomestuckeveryday · 2 years ago

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Homestuck, page 1,358

youtube

[S] ACT 4 ==>

walkthrough: http://readmspa.org/transcripts/readmspa-transcript-6_003258_John_explores_LOWAS_with_help_from_Nannasprite_transcript_and_walkthrough.html

Song used: Doctor by Buzinkai

song commentary:

Clark Powell:

Doctor was originally by Buzinkai and then a now non-active member Michael Vallejo added a few bits of percussion to it. I then put together a larger mix of the tune with shinier production and a glockenspiel tag, and this was the version Andrew used in the end.

Buzinkai:

Doctor was written before Homestuck, actually. The only thing I can really remember was that Super Smash Bros Brawl came out right before I finished it. The original loop (which is not the one specifically heard in the comic, but was included in the album release) was directly inspired by music from Cave Story, and I was trying to at the time musically embody how I felt at the time, I think. Though it never seems to come out exactly as I plan it, I enjoyed the results. I will say that I cannot truly believe how many people have remixed it.

The arpeggio part at the end goes between the left, both, and right speakers sequentially. I was too lazy to set the channel settings manually, so I did each note on a different instrument, which is set to each speaker channel. Not many people know that, and I think it actually made it a living hell for remixers who got a hold of the original file.

Author commentary:

Welcome to Book 3, which obviously starts with Act 4, which obviously starts with Gate 1. I mean…obviously? Glad that's obvious to everyone. What's also PAINFULLY obvious to anyone looking at this page, no matter who they are, is that this [used to be] a loading screen. Hot Flash Content is being piped directly into your [browser], right now, at the speed of bullshit. We're off to a great start here in the author notes section. Hey remember Flash loading screens? Those were the days. You needed SOMETHING to look at while untold KILOBYTES were crawling through your ethernet cables. In this case, I chose to dazzle you with a hypnotically morphing spirograph. You quickly went into a trance of fascination. The suspense built. Cue the music. and then…….magic.

>1: Okay, no magic here. No music or movement, because it's [not Flash]! All you get is my goofs. Sorry, sucker. Let's talk about this animation. It's pretty damn enchanting, really. We finally get to see what's under those gray clouds. It's a bunch of fireflies, and a blue landscape with phosphorescent flora and black oily rivers. Act 4 marks the official beginning of the scenery porn era of Homestuck.

>2: Or "LOWAS," as becomes the model for further nomenclature in reference to Homestuck's lands. These "lands," of course, are fairly small planets. Hard to say how big exactly. I don't think I ever really did any due diligence on the cosmological scale of these bodies. They're big enough to explore and get lost in but not so huge as to be hopelessly unchartable. I guess I always pictured them being like a small state in the US. Like if Rhode Island or Connecticut were wrapped around a sphere. Literally doing so would make for a fairly lackluster land, suitable for a pretty bland player of Sburb. (I suppose such as…every resident of those particular states? Why…why am I alienating these people already? It's only the fourth page. Oh well, forty-eight states to go, I guess.)

>3: OKAY LET'S CUT THE SHIT AND TALK ABOUT THIS FLASH! It's a playable game. That turned out to be a thing in HS. As a Flash loaded, readers would wonder…is this going to be a GAME? (Virtually always: no. But sometimes…sometimes, yes!) This one is similar in style to the game when John first enters the Medium and can wander around his house, but this time there's ACTUAL battle mechanics.. You can bonk imps with a hammer, collect grist and items—all rather pointlessly, I should add. But you can do it, is the point. Why? I really couldn't fucking tell you, to this day. I think I was legitimately insane? This, with perfectly brutal honesty, I must admit now strikes me as something a crazy person would do.

>4: I suppose the upshot of the game format is that it lets the player wander around this fantastical new land and discover its mysteries just like John is doing. Actually, YOU don't get to. You get to [click] through this [set of images] with your grubby fingers while I struggle through a borderline state of dementia, heroically trying to remember what I was thinking when I made this. But some people sure did get to do that. Anyway, this is what happens when you click that icon in the upper right. John gets to talk to Nanna, like…there's some sort of comm system back to his sprite? Sprites technically can't go far from the house after their player enters the Medium. That's the strict rule of Sburb. Until much, much later, when it stops being all that strict, for reasons that are unlikely ever to be explained, even by the WISEST of sprites.

>7: Here's a little taste of the gameplay. You click on a thing and a menu pops up, which includes what is…technically a text command that is being entered by…the player of Homestuck? (Who has at this point been revealed to be any given exile, operating the post-apocalypse Sburb station.) It's pretty esoteric. But you don't need to think about any of this to play the game, get a sense of John's rad land, meet some scurrilous foes in need of a bashing, and feel like a cool hero.

>18: The ghost gauntlets holding that ridiculous paisley hammer are just a fixture of the environment in this game. I didn't want them to be an item you could use, because that would have been complicated to implement. It was a little attention to detail on my part, by which I mean my inclination to consider how John could wield this huge hammer in his inventory. Specific items that are accrued by the players become a lot less relevant much later in the story. Because it stops being a thing about a Guy In A Game You Are "Playing," and starts being more about a bunch of Characters In A Story You Are Reading, Who Are Sad All The Time.

>20/23: Here we meet a "consort." Or, a salamander, in the case of John's planet. All planets have consorts, usually a different kind of amphibian or reptile for each. Why amphibians or reptiles? Didn't I cover this already in another book note? Oh. You don't remember either? Well, guess we're in the same boat then. (Consorts have very short life spans, which is the joke here.) And a parcel pyxis is like a pipe mailbox they throw shit in to send places. They have a whole pipe-based civilization, but the pipes are all clogged with oil, and… You know, I did a much better job with this worldbuilding stuff by letting you understand it all in the game through exploration and inference. Too bad you're not playing it now, so you get remedial lore for boneheads down here.

>29: This salamander laments the desecration of a glorious village frog idol. (Frogs are sacred. This fact will be as important as it is frequently repeated.) He talks about the underling swarm dedicated to destroying and oiling up such idols as a "recent" event, as if this village has existed for hundreds of years and only now have the underlings emerged to wreak mischief. This is in keeping with the strange paradox of planets in the Medium: the fact that they were just created instantly through booting up the game, and yet have always existed with entire smorgasbords of ready-made lore and quests for the players to engage with.

>36: Here this sassy salamander alludes to an alliance that John's denizen seems to have formed with the agents of Derse. Those are the "terrible guys" who commissioned the underlings. The denizens aren't really the bad guys of this game. They're more like ornery yet neutral gods of these planets, who can help or harm depending on the circumstances. Derse agents are the formal bad guys, whose designated role is to obstruct the progress of the heroes, vandalize frog statues, antagonize frog enthusiasts, and dislike frogs in general.

>37/38/40: Are you thrilled about sifting through layers of worldbuilding as conveyed through the expository bubblings of enthusiastic amphibians? Then this is the page for you. It's a pretty straightforward outline of John's formal quest on this planet. Wake the monster, kill the monster. Clean the pipes, release the Breeze. The Breeze clears the clouds, the fireflies go free. That's the goal. What does it all MEAN? That is for YOU, the reader, to boggle over, forever. It's worth nothing that when John actually gets around to doing all this, the meaning of completing this quest and the thing that it actually accomplishes are radically different than what the present stakes of the story are understood to be at this point. There is, throughout this tale, an ever-present tension between the hero's quest as presented at face value and the hero's True Quest—the mysterious journey overlaying and superseding the shallow journey described by consorts, sprites, et al—which the kids must come to grips with. >41/43: This is a pretty good procession of salamanders talking about important stuff, which perhaps makes you think it's all leading up to an encounter with some sort of regal presence in the village. Perhaps a tribal leader. But no, it's just this fool, farming all these goddamn mushrooms. The Mushroom Farmer is just notable enough of a salamander to be known to fandom as the Mushroom Farmer, and would probably be credited that way in the end credits if this were a movie. Same goes for the fellow below wearing the hat. He's known as Crumplehat. Trust me on this. >45: See? I told you his name was Crumplehat. Maybe try to fucking believe me next time I tell you stuff. >51: There are two reasons why John can only say no to this offer. First, I would have had to program an alternate path where he gives up the suit, as well as change the sprite to reflect that, and permanently introduce a fork in the story where John either sells the suit or doesn't. The second reason is it's just a straight-up dogshit offer. Giving someone a boondollar for something is like offering them a penny you found in the toilet.

>58: Salamanders are pretty good at trolling, actually. So are lots of figures in Homestuck. Like John's nanna, his dad, John himself, all his friends, and also all the characters who are literally called trolls. I guess there are a lot of characters who like to troll each other because that is my forte, you could say, as a storyteller? This could also explain why characters who are actual trolls entered the story. They simply manifested as an extension of the story's nature.

>65: Oh Christ, the Secret Wizard. I forgot about him. Yeah, him too. He's also a really big-deal salamander. (Just joking, he's actually a small deal.) He's a simple man. All he really wants you to do is behold his robes. That's it.

>67: John's bedsheet will show up again later as well. It makes quite a trip through the story, actually, and appears in a surprising number of panels. Specifically, every single panel that WV appears in. Surprised? No? Oh. Well, let's just say you are, and move on. (Okay, wait, before we move on I should clarify something. WV's shroud is actually the dream version of John's bedsheet. The Secret Wizard just keeps this oily, shitty one forever, and then starts some sort of cult. Okay, NOW we can move on.)

>70-72: So in other words, their entire mail system revolves around putting shit in the pipes, having it sent to completely random places, and whoever gets it gets it. This sounds pretty stupid, but I guess it's part of their religion or something. So you have to respect it.

>78-84: When you're playing through this game, I guess one of the more low-key, gradually unfolding jokes is how it slowly becomes apparent that all the garbage from John's house that he carelessly launched out windows and fumbled over cliffs ended up down here to be scavenged by a bunch of enterprising salamanders who try to pawn all the items back on him. Or just keep them as incredible new accessories.

>81: Five million boonies really isn't all that much, huh.

>84: I'm glad we dedicated an entire page to the choice John makes in refusing to buy back his own shitty clown statue from this guy. Look. This is my ART, people. It needs room to BREATH.

>87/88: Maybe one of the strangest traits of salamanders is how acerbically self-deprecating they are. Maybe they just hate themselves? They'd be far from the only ones in this tale. Also, here's a nice, snap game-design thing I thought of on the fly, when this game was being "developed" over a span of literally about forty-eight hours. Just put a damn bubble with a telescope in it hovering at exactly the place where the player needs to use the scope. That way, they use the scope, and they don't NOT use the scope. So you can see what's in the scope, over there. Incredible.

>90-93: Here's what's in the scope: a view of John's house up on a tall rock-spire plateau, way off in the distance. This view gives you a sense of how far John traveled by going through his gate, the relative proximity of his house, and the fact that the house is inaccessible for a while at least. It also reveals a little more about gate logic and the distances they can send you, and helps you start to imagine hopping all around this world via gates to complete your quest. Oh, and I guess this is kind of a cool shot? Sure.

>94-100: And here Nanna basically explains some stuff I just explained on the previous page. The point, obviously, is to browbeat you with explanations of Sburb game logic fundamentals until you start crying. Here's another thing I guess I haven't mentioned yet: walking through this game gives you a pretty good appreciation of the variety of imps, now that there's been another pre-entry prototyping. Remember Rose entering the game just as John goes through his gate? Now we get to observe all these imps in princess gear, or with tentacles, or cat parts, or some permutation of all three.

>100:And once again Nanna steals my thunder by explaining a thing I just explained. Damn it, Nanna. I feel your pain, John. She's absolutely brutal.

>107: More sass from one of these bastards. I feel like I'm getting fucking roasted every time they open their mouths. I'd look up at the sky and ask "Why, God?" But it's not that mysterious. I'm getting roasted by my past self and his snarkyass writing. If he wasn't trapped back in 2010 or so, I'd ask him why he wrote these damn lizards to be a bunch of wiseasses. "That's just all I know," he would probably say. Yeah, I feel you man. I mean, don't get me wrong, they're funny as hell. But, why? I don't… Oh, never mind. Now I sound like a person who is insane. I'll try to do better.

>111: Oh, here's the end of the game. That game was a single panel of Homestuck. And here we are, on…page 30? Thirty pages' worth of annotations just to cover the first panel of Act 4. I think I need to lie down.

#homestuck #video #walkaround page #Youtube

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sntechsupport · 6 years ago

Note

Error, players able to combine representations of the SkaiaNet™ brand Spirograph symbol (SkaiaNet Spirograph™) with assorted other items to create illicit Skaianet™ brand merchandise, including but not limitted to: t-shirts, shoes, firearms, beer, vodka, transfusable red cells, vibrating marital aids, computors, miniature refrigerators, specimens of species Canis lupus, chewable heroin tablets, guillotines, swords, lip balm, and soft drinks. All such products are of scandalously low quality.

Yeah, that’s not an error, we call that an ironic feature. On the flip side, check the stats on that shit in a strife specibi, they will scale to the basic weapon stats of your level, so consider it a baseline. On the flip side though, they won’t ever break in combat unless they are up against aspect or charge weapons.

Sincerely,

SN Tech Support (Clown)

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wordswithloveee · 9 months ago

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autisticsupervillain · 1 year ago

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It's Fictional Throwdown Friday!

This Week's Fighters....

Aradia Megido vs The Handmaiden!

Conditions:

No Restrictions. God-Tier Aradia.

Scenario:

While having fun breaking the multiverse with her newfound freedom, Aradia decides to see if she's become more powerful than her Ancestor.

Analysis: Aradia

Time is the Aspect of inevitability. That's why it's inevitable that this Time Player will easily kick your fucking ass.

Analysis: The Demoness

Death. The end that awaits us all. It is the invariable variable. It comes inevitably, but we never know at what moment. We can never know what day we will live and what day we will die.

If only one good thing could be said about Damara Megido's life, it's that she avoided this omnipresent uncertainty. She knew exactly when she would die.

Years after troll kind had been rendered extinct and the planet of Alternia had been reduced to a lifeless husk, a single meteor landed on its mysterious green moon. Alternia's First Guardian, Doc Scratch, had redirected the meteor to his doorstep, away from the dead world, and took in the girl riding it as his own daughter. In a different, slightly better life, this girl would be known to her friends as Damara Megido. In this life, she was known to Doc Scratch only as The Handmaiden.

Scratch informed her of her destiny. When the time came, the Handmaiden would die in combat at the hands of Her Imperious Condescension, the Empress of Trollkind, and her duties as Scratch's and Lord English's servant would be overtaken by the Empress. Until then, she would serve her masters loyally all her life and manipulate history to Scratch's will. Beaten into submission and cursed with immortality, she would have no choice but to obey.

Using her latent powers as the Witch of Time, the Handmaiden would manipulate key moments in Alternian history all her life, slowly turning the Troll species into a violent race of genocidal conquerors that would spread their legacy across the galaxy. She would manipulate time across key moments in Alternian, time traveling to wherever and whenever she was needed. For instance, it is implied that she monitored the MSPA Reader during their journeys across Alternia, rewinding time whenever they died or made a decision that would not forward Scratch's goals. She may have even been the one to keep the Soleil Twins trapped in their mansion, rewinding them back to before they left every time they entered the tall grass. For millions of years, the atrocities she would commit in her master's name would earn her the title of the Demoness, the herald of Death that corrupted Alternia into the hellscape it is now. Feared by all trollkind.

She carries two needles as weapons, the legends say, tied to string so they can slaughter from a distance like blades on a whip. Her mastery of time in the eyes of a mere mortal appeared absolute. It was enough to make her a threat to even the most powerful trolls. Including the Empress herself.

The Demoness knew she would die against the Condescension before the fight even began. But she still gave her a better fight then any mortal ever had before. The Condescension can hold her ground against multiple God-Tiers simultaneously, in both strength and speed. The fact that there was a contest at all speaks for her reputation as death incarnate among troll kind.

But, alas, death comes for us all. The Handmaiden died amd the Empress took her place as Lord English's newest servant. The tragedy of this Damara's life would be forgotten by all except for those who hurt her. She was, as so many Time bound are, doomed to her role in the cycle of inevitability.

Throwdown Theme:

youtube

Throwdown Breakdown:

Figuring this matchup out was very.... time consuming.

Eyyyyyy.

I will give post Scratch Damara her dues. Being able to contend in any extent with Her Imperious Condescension in a one on one fight would likely grant her a stat advantage in strength and speed. Aradia may be a God-Tier, but the HIC can fight off several of those simultaneously. And while Aradia has more screentime using her powers, Damara's subtle use of them keeping the Reader alive and on track implies both a high level of creativity and a use of Time abilities Aradia has not demonstrated. Namely, the Demoness can rewind time while Aradia seemingly can't.

That being said, Aradia has answers for this. Her ability to contend with Lord English, despite him being both laughably stronger and having a level of time manipulation that utterly dwarfs hers shows that Aradia can contend despite the Handmaiden's two big advantages.

It would be interesting to see how their specific time powers would bounce off each other. Both of them can time travel, but only Aradia has shown to do it to create an army of herself. The Handmaiden can rewind time to undo that, but Aradia can freeze her in time to prevent her from doing that. But, given the extent of the Handmaiden's own abilities and her nature as a *Witch* of Time, she may very well be able to replicate both those tricks regardless. However, I feel like that argument relies on the assumption that the Time powers of a mortal can match those of a fully realized God-Tier of the same Aspect. At best, Aradia has an edge for time stop keeping Damara in check while she overwhelms her with Time Clones. At worst, it's a tie due to them having the same powers.

I think Aradia's biggest advantage here is experience. Sure, the Handmaiden has been manipulating history for much longer, millions of years even, but she did so in a setting where only three people could ever potentially threaten her. And when she did fight one of those people, she died. Aradia has much more experience in actually fighting people her size and she's shown to employ clever tactics against them. For example, disappearing through the portal in Jack's body when Bec's powers briefly turn his body into one or riding Lord English around like a bull with her whip to keep him distracted and unable to crush her during the final battle.

It's tricky, because it's difficult to say whether Damara is getting hamstrung by her own limitations here or just her own lack of screen time, but I think there's enough here for me to confidently give my verdict.

While it can be argued that Damara could potentially match Aradia's Time powers with her own due to the way her Classpect functions (IE. Being a Witch of Time, one who changes time for themselves), Aradia actually being a full on God-Tier gives me reason to believe she'd likely have more and better time powers, even when accounting for implications and limited screen time. This, combined with Aradia's own superior combat experience, would likely allow her to overcome her Ancestor's stat advantage.

It's fitting that in a fight between Time Players, the next generation is the one that survives.

This Throwdown's Winner is...

Aradia Megido!

#fictional throwdown fridays #homestuck #aradia megido #the handmaiden #damara megido

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tenaciouschronicler · 11 months ago

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June 13 2024 2009

The glorious return!!

My wishes were granted so lets dive in.

On 6/09, a single page was uploaded of a future desert wasteland that someone is traversing. The sky is grey and building ruins are seen on the horizon.

A WAYWARD VAGABOND records a stuttering step in the sun-bleached dust.

This sentence links to more pages. Here we find our Vagabond as they stumble upon a familiar symbol.

Its unclear who they are or why these pages are seperate 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.

On 6/10 we officialy start Act 2 making the previous update more of an interlude. Here we see the GameFAQs webpage for SBURB.

Four walkthroughs are shown to us:

SanctuaryRemix on 4/10

winnie the poop 2 and ChaosDemon on 4/11

and our beloved tentacleTherapist on 4/13

Who knows how many more we Dont see.

Rose starts her walkthrough with the Wildest title of 'Caveats and Condolences'. A melodramatic piece of amazing writing that really highlights the best parts of her character.

I will "play the game", as much of it as there is to play, and record my findings here. If you want to live, you will do as I instruct.

My condolences.

~TT

What a way to set the mood, Rose.

6/11

The day we see John ALIVE!!!!

THE BEAUTIFUL BASTARD DID IT!!! HE ATE THE APPLE!!!

And as we pan around the home, the world goes dark as beings yet unknown peer from the void.

The craziest part of the flash however is the view of Johns home.

Everything Sburb touched is now here... wherever Here is. It begs the question, has it been transported elsewhere and now there is a massive crater in the neighborhood (and the neighbors yard for that matter since the PDA is present as well)? Or has everything except Johns home been destroyed in the meteor?

6/12s update gives us more idea of the scale of this harrowing precipice. Our beloathed Kernelsprite undergoes transformation, splitting in two. Half goes up, half goes down. There must be land down below the clouds but its not visible to us.

Conversely, above we see at least 2 spirographs that pulse and change. Many questions arise like how would you get up/down? What do the spirographs do? Theyre probably game mechanics but to what end? What was the purpose of the splitting?

What we have left is the Sprite portion of the Kernelsprite which looks like the ghost of the poor mutilated Harlequin.

Strangely, our next command is not a command at all simply the word 'BOY'. According to the text this is yet another new character/narrator.

For a moment you thought you heard someone say "BOY", as if whispered in the periphery of your awareness.

It was probably just your imagination though.

Not only that, this one is speaking TO John at least semi-directly. Unlike the commands which are more like thoughts John has that are (mostly) acted upon or the narrator that speaks about John and his machinations, this being is trying to communicate with John.

Its too early to tell what its motivations are or how its even able to do so.

In all theres a lot here that will likely be explored as we get further into the comic story. I just hope we havent lost communication with Johns friends in wherever he is.

Its looking like if we get another update it will be late tonight so I'll check the site again tomorrow.

#homestuck #homestuck replay #hsrp liveblog #chrono

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emilyloudwellmultiverse · 4 years ago

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Multiverse evaluation

There have been many challenges I've had to face in this project. This being the shortest project I've had to do (three weeks) I have struggled to produce outcomes that I'm happy with. In addition, it has been a challenge getting used to working from home without having an actual place to be. Usually the thing that would motivate me to get up and go to college was the fact I had an environment full of supportive people to go to. Now I get out of bed and walk 3 steps to my desk to be greeted with support through my laptop, it's not quite the same. On the contrary, I have been receiving all the help and advice I need through emails, information put onto google classroom and weekly online meetings. This has definitely helped me feel less stressed and much less alone. Even with these challenges I feel I can be proud of what I've achieved and the way I have worked off site considering the circumstances.

The theme of this project is multiverse. It's a MARS project so I had to make sure I was thinking about including math, art, religion and science into my work.

I began my project by focusing on researching my chosen words, as well as zines. I later moved on to researching artists and their processes that I hoped to use in my outcomes, for example Tony Orrico (a human spirograph artist), Kelsey Hammerton ( a pointillism artist) and Nick Taylor (a zine designer). Due to working offsite I have had to adapt what processes I can do at home without the proper equipment, so I went back through previous project sketchbooks and picked out a few techniques I enjoyed doing. These techniques included pointillism, two handed drawing, ink blotting and spirographs. After doing the research I needed I began planning and completing my outcomes. As a result of limited time I feel the outcomes I have produced aren't up to the standard of work I am capable of producing, and I had some very different initial ideas on where I wanted these outcomes to go. That being said I enjoyed using all the processes I had researched, plus I bought some snazzy new gouache paints!

The materials I used for this project were pretty simple as I didn't have access to college equipment. I decided early on in the project that I wanted to do this zine all hand based to give myself a short break from working digitally. I mainly used gouache paints, and I especially enjoyed using them to do my ink blot pieces. The particular reason they worked so well was because of their watercolour like personality, I could change the opacity of different colours to let other colours show through. An example of this is on the “space” pages, I chose to make the yellow opaque to allow the blues and pinks to come out from underneath. Alongside these paints I used uni-ball eye (black) and uni-ball signo (white) gel pens to outline and draw designs. I used the black pen for my pointillism pieces because it has a good ink flow and makes nice dots.

To make my zine I used good quality sketchbook paper and folded it in a common zine way. I made two of these and stuck them together to make a 12 page zine. It measures roughly 7.5 cm by 10 cm and I felt this is a good size because I wanted to make a small zine so I didn't give myself too much space to worry about filling. A preference of mine when creating is in miniature or smaller than average scale because having lots of space to fill on a page can be overwhelming, so this zine was a perfect size to get my context across to the viewer without having to fill large pages.

Conversely, my spirographs would have turned out better if they were on a slightly larger scale. This is because being on a smaller scale the design didn't quite match up geometrically, so when it came to fill in the design I struggled to find a common pattern. To make my spirographs I cut out a circle and a square from a very thick card. I then put a pin in one side/corner and drew round the shape, I would move it slightly clockwise and draw round it again. Each time I moved it I would keep the distance the same, this is where I think it went wrong because of the small scale I couldn't measure exactly how far I was rotating the shape each time.

Throughout this project I have been analysing what I've been doing each week and what I plan on doing the following week. This combined with having a cork board above my desk with the project plan and checklists has helped me to organise my time to get all the tasks done on time. I have managed my time well and I feel, even with one not-so-great week, I have been able to hit each assessment criteria.

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elfstuck · 7 years ago

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War in the Chessfields

I have realized that, no matter how busy my life gets (guys, guuuuuyzzz, it’s Night of the Nocturne right now and I could be searching for Strange Chests that might contain the new Smirch gene!), I really need to get farther along in Homestuck because it’s starting to creep into mainstream politics. (He was told about Homestuck, and then he started reading it.) Also, Chibipaw says there is “good stuff’ coming up soon (that’s as much detail as my anti-spoiler policy allows) and I need to hurry up and get to it.

So... where did I leave off? Oh yeah. NinjaJade had taken out the wearer of my future cosplay project, but had missed PM sailing off into the sunset (moonset? Prospitset? Do they even have a sun on these planet-things?), so she’ll have to get the ring back to her later. To expediate that, Jade marries herself.

Oh wait. The four dots. Agh. I mean, aside from being equally spaced in a way that would make them endlessly annoying to wear, they... they may signify the four fingers. Homestuckians have four-fingered hands. I’m not sure if I’ve noticed this before.

Jade is immediately overwhelmed with the Spirit of the Ring: she gains wings, a tri-pointy hat with horns, tentacles, and a fake through-the-body sword. So... an amalgam of all the sprite encodings so far.

Next panel, turns out she was only thinking that happened. It doesn’t work that way on humans.

Elsewhere (dammit, I should’ve stuck with the last post a few more panels so the POV shift happened at the beginning) we have yet another WV. This one is WARWEARY VILLEIN who is either an animated stick-man, or is waving a stick on a banner: crossed beams, ragged red-and-purple robes and a white sash. He/it has a bucket on its head with the familiar Sburb spirograph.

Next up (aagh) is something with flash and sound. This is probably the Cool Thing Coming Up Soon that Chibi told me about. eep. Flash takes forever.

WV is being told to “Rise Up,” which is probably not supposed to make me think of Hamilton as this was written several years ago. But those words are gonna be attached to that song for a long time.

I click to the next screen. I am faced with this:

And I remember two things: (1) Firefox always thinks Flash is out of date, because every time Firefox updates ANYTHING, it decides Flash is out of date. My Firefox is a couple of editions behind (I’m not “updating” to Quantum that will kill several of my beloved extensions), so I’m going to see this A LOT. Sigh.

And (2) aaaaagh my laptop does not have a “print screen” button. It had a “print screen” macro that stopped working. (I have an Alienware laptop. WHODAFUK decided that a gaming laptop didn’t need a “print screen” button? Like, is that now an obscure and rare function? I STILL HAVE A CAPSLOCK BUTTON. I DO NOT NEED A CAPSLOCK BUTTON; CAN I REPLACE IT WITH PRTSCRN? (I typed that without using the capslock button, because remembering to un-capslock is always worse than just holding the shift button with my left pinky and using the wrong finger for “A”, and I guess “q” and “z” but those don’t come up as often.)

Quick check to the Alien “TactX” command center... huh. Print Screen is working now. It wasn’t last week. Yay, I guess? (Someday, I will once again have a boyfriend who speaks fluent Linux, and this time, I will get him to TEACH IT TO ME and I will defenestrate my laptop.) Anyway. Here we go.

3x3 chessboard; the kings move a bit, and then run into each other and the whole thing turns white silhouette. This means this is a meta-story-thing, related to the previous Grand Chessboard event, which I have mostly forgotten. (I have the link saved, though, so I can watch it again anytime. It’s on my schedule. “1. Run out of Stucky and Stony fanfic. 2. Rewatch Homestuck chess scene.” Blame dsudis for the delay.)

Clownsprite image appears. Chess pieces keep moving in the background. I have to screencap several times to get a good picture of the chess pieces (sometimes there’s only one visible) and the sprite with the pretty shade of aqua in the middle instead of white. I’m sure you’re all thrilled that I’m focused on the important parts of the story.

Next, he flickers and I fail to s’cap the transition between that and the full-layout chess set.

Please, someone tell me that someone makes these chess sets. That several people make these chess sets. Tell me the are sold with the label, “This Is A Chess Set, Not A Collection Of Marital Aids. We Promise.”

Birdsprite appears. (At least, I think that’s birdsprite.) Oh wait, no, that’s catsprite in the princess outfit. It is lavender, Rose’s color. Or one of them. Does that mean the davesprite will be red? (Do I really need to screencap all of these? Probably not, but this is as much for my entertainment as anything else. Also, I want to be able to reread them and figure out what I was thinking.) I considered re-trying to catch one with a darker purple circle or other higher contrast, and decided not to bother.

The music seems nice enough, what I can hear of it before I hit stop so I can screencap. (If you’re new - various suggestions have been made on how to deal with the Flash bits in ways that aren’t “stop & screengrab every couple of seconds.” I have nixed all of them. I enjoy doing this one fragmented piece at a time.)

And then the scene changes: the board is replaced with a WHOLE PLANET BOARD.

Rose and John’s sprites are in the upper corners, starting with top right and moving widdershins. Widdershins is a destructive direction; they are unmaking the world. (Erm. As obscure as Hussie gets sometimes, I have doubts that that particular bit of symbolism applies here.)

Aaaand here comes the davebirdswordsprite. Orange, not red.

Davesprite tucks away into the bottom left corner, continuing widdershins, and the cubeworld backs off or is replaced by a round world, very bright and faint, with VERY BRIGHT FLASHING blue lines around it. (Same blue lines as above. They just got brighter.) Then the planet darkens (this is what happens when you stop the Flash every second or two; you wind up giving far too much import to transition scenes.)

Imma make a prediction: Jadesprite is due to make an appearance. (Does Jade have a sprite yet? Something with a pumpkin?)

BUT NO! The world gets bigger, moves closer, until it FILLS THE WHOLE SCREEN! Then it fades out to white, and gradually (well, gradually if you’re stopping every time something moves or flickers), we get a new scene:

Aww, the rolling hills of Chesslandia, with its famed pixeltrees. We float over the landscape until we reach the castle. (Or maybe, “a castle.” I dunno. Maybe there are hundreds of castles in Chesslandia.) The pixelgrass fields bring color to the landscape, and a couple of pixelfolk play hide-and-seek in the tall grass near the aqua river.

Well, it’s got a turret and banners, and that kinda says “castle,” along with the whole, y’know, chess kings & queens motif, but that looks kinda small for a castle. Also rather isolated. Why build a castle if there’s nothing near it to defend? I see that there are people, but no town. Is the castle all that remains? Am I looking upon the desolate post-apocalyptic wasteland of Chesslandia?

We pass the people and zoom in, seeing the yellow banner waving madly in the gale-force breezes near the castle turret. This is, apparently, to introduce the army of Chesslandia, because the scene whites out again, and then switches to the marching hordes.

I am probably not supposed to think their little ± symbol reminds me of a leviathan cross, a.k.a. the Satanic cross. (Hey, if I make a CD cosplay outfit, can I have a purple banner with a pentagonal ± symbol on it? Or is he not part of this army?)

Then we pull back to see the huge crowd of them, and they fade, and a different banner fades in: this one is purple - and behind it is a yellow-clad army.

AAAH! The yellow flag is for Prospit, and that’s the Dersian army marching on it. And the purple banner here is Derse, and the Prospit army - complete with the same ± symbol - is marching. Here, have some Prospit army:

This isn’t because you need the picture, but because I captured the flash at that point so I can watch them marching and waving weapons, with the sky flickering in the background. It’s very soothing. Wish I could capture it as a gif.

And then... FIGHT! Armies meet on the battlefield! Sparks fly from their blades, which are apparently made from different metals. They both wear stripey shirts and chessboard tabards, of different color combos.

Guys. Gals. Whatever. Readers. I have been cheated. I thought Homestuck cosplay was limited to “t-shirts with a zodiac symbol + horns & weird sunglasses,” or “one of these four kids (also t-shirt with symbol).” There is AWESOME cosplay opportunities in this series. Nobody told me.

I mean, they told me about the tentibulges, because my friends know where my interests lie (or squirm, as the case may be), but even the friends who knew I’d done 6+ years of RenFaire didn’t bother telling me, “omg you should see the amazing costume options, and also, they wouldn’t be impossible to make!”

(I mean, I’ve looked into WV’s costume, but it looks difficult and too hot to wear at most conventions.) (See how I focus on the important parts of the story?)

Spaceship takedown attempt. Or maybe this is a drop ship. Looks like there are many such ships. Anyway, we see battles, and it pulls back to show the larger scene, and the horrors of war:

Well, the horrors of neon, purple-vs-yellow war. ... Is that a giant horse shadow with tentacles on its back?

Why, yes it is. Knight vs... King? Queen? We’re back to the chessboard, with only a tiny hint of a pixeltree in the corner to let you know this is the large-scale war happening above the ground. Then we get this:

I’m not sure what’s going on here, but they’re too cute to pass up. There are 9 little fellows, so they’re not “pawns.” Then a giant black chesspiece stomps into the center of them and they fall aside, scattering (I didn’t catch that picture), and then... the WV banner thingie is raised again.

That makes it seem like we’re wrapping up this storything, because that’s the image that we started on. It slowly pulls back to show an empty Chesslandia with a flower stand, waving a red banner.

The pixelgrass has return to the fields, although the pixeltrees have not. Or maybe they just don’t grow here.

AAuugghhh nooo... that was a picture of the past. Now, the lovely flowerstand is in ruins; fire everywhere, and a lone derseling wanders the war-ravaged fields of Chesslandia. :( We pull in tight to his grief-stricken, bleak expression (don’t ask how I can identify that from two white dots on a black circle; I just can) and then he (or she) oversees the huge battle on the fields below.

Woe. Woe has come to Chesslandia. Woe, and fire. Woe, and fire, and pixels.

Zir face is shadowed by woe and fire and pixels.

Zie is not looking nearly as woeful in this image. Hrrm. Then we see the Black Queen rise...

Then we zoom in again, this time to the scepter, which is full of clouds and the spirography thing:

This is all getting a little too “Men in Black,” with the world in a marble and all that. Are we going to zoom into the scepter again, to the center of the spirography symbol, and find ourselves moving into John’s balcony?

Well, no. We do zoom in, into the world and the cubeworld and such, but we get a black-and-white image of something shadowy flying over Chesslandia.

We zoom in again, and we see... not Spades Slick, despite the cut on the eye. That other character with the same appearance.

It flies with malice (don’t ask me how I can identify malice from that), but is faced with a lone Dersian defender:

We cut back to the war on the ground, the clashing swords and all that, but the combatants move aside. And this had better wrap up pretty quickly, because my printscreen macro just stopped working. (WTF? If anyone knows how to give advice on this, plz contact me.) Anyway. They move aside, and then snap into line.

Our lone Dersite with the tattered red banner leads them through the pixeltrees toward a set of checkered ruins.

Elsewhere, PM lands, and notices the missing ring. White Queen is not happy. There’s another huge scepter waving. White Queen flashes white all over, and shrinks - and hands the scepter to PM.

Looks like PM is in line to be the new WQ. However, the handoff is spotted by someone who is Definitely Not A Member Of The Midnight Crew.

Meanwhile, the Dersite hordes march to confront the Black Queen. Our purple-robed hero(ine) glares, and then looks upward, sees the flying not-a-bird person overhead. The Spadesy-person waves a swords and slices through the black scepter.

(I think I figured out the screencap problem. It won’t work if I have the Flash selected. Which is stupid. Really stupid.)

Black queen, missing her scepter and its four spinny baubles, also shrinks.

Heartsy spy leaps out and attacks the new white queen. (Gonna knock her into next week. This is a problem, because next week is a massive international holiday and it’ll be hard to find time to liveblog.) White scepter goes flying over a waterfall.

We see, inside the white scepter, the purple-robed defender, and it pulls back to see the world, and then the scepter itself, which lands by the banks of the aqua river surrounded by pixelgrass.

(That picture’s superfluous; it’s not relevant to the story. It’s here becaue I think it’s pretty.)

Aaand now I should watch it again and get a sense of the whole story instead of stopping every two seconds to ponder the meaning of each cut scene.

***

Two minutes and 15 seconds of flash that takes me an hour and a half to write about, all the while worrying that Tumblr��s going to have some weird hiccup and lose the whole thing.

So: back queen dead; white queen deposed by losing her marbles; new manager of each; war possibly stopped at the moment. White scepter maybe recoverable and could be combined with Jade’s ring to fix it. Black scepter broken; would need something else to fix. (Superglue?)

Jade has not yet entered the chessgame at the macro level. Jade needs to install Sburb and get into the game.

#homestuck #homestuck liveblog #prospit v derse #white queen #black queen #elf meets trolls #act 4

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ownerzero · 6 years ago

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Showing: Revok – “depersonalization-derealization” @ Library Street Collective

Last weekend in Detroit, Revok opened his latest solo show at Library Street Collective featuring selections from three distinctive bodies of work – his Instrument Exercises, Tape Loop Paintings, and Spirographs – along with some self portraits. Entitled depersonalization-derealization, the exhibition makes use of his graffiti roots but repurposed, oftentimes with custom tools for creating large scale abstract canvases. […]

The post Showing: Revok – “depersonalization-derealization” @ Library Street Collective appeared first on AWorkstation.com.

source https://aworkstation.com/showing-revok-depersonalization-derealization-library-street-collective/

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aerospace-agenda · 8 years ago

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large scale art installation: a solar system where the precession of the orbits of the planets (and moons) forms a spirograph.

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feralsarah · 8 years ago

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Tips for Staying Inspired!

It happens to the best of us. It’s a sometimes terrifying feeling, convincing us that we may never get it back. What will I do without it?

What am I talking about? INSPIRATION. Or, lack of it. Also known as a creative block. It’s actually happened to me so often that I’ve started to notice the signs, and take measures to keep inspiration coming. And, now, it’s also not so terrifying anymore.

A blank page

So, what’s the fix for lacking creative juice or inspiration? I have a few ideas to share with you! Try them out, even if you’re rich in inspiration already! If you’re not a Zentangle artist, this post can still apply to you! And, I highly recommend trying Zentangle to help keep your own inspiration flowing!

If you’ve never learned Zentangle® from a Certified Zentangle Teacher, or at all, please check out my upcoming classes! I am currently teaching in the Portland, Oregon area and on Skillshare. I’ll be adding more classes to Skillshare very soon, and if you’re in a neighboring state to Oregon and want to learn Zentangle, reach out to me and we can set something up!

1. Be Open To New Ideas… ALWAYS

Whether it’s a new tangle pattern that shows up in your feed but is a little intimidating or some crazy Pinterest project, try it out! I’ve recently been playing with a new spirograph and with the Echo Lines concept by Eni Oken. Before I got Eni’s book, I had been playing with auras a lot, so I was happy to add another tangleation to my repetoire. I have a tendency to hoard collect books and lessons from other Certified Zentangle Teachers and artists, so that when I run out of inspiration, I can whip out a lesson and learn something new!

Shameless plug here… Last year I joined Skillshare, initially to help me learn Photoshop and other graphic design software. Then, I branched and started learning other forms or art and techniques. It’s pretty amazing! I even starting teaching for them! Check it out here. Learning new skills, even if not directly related to Zentangle®, help keep that inspiration fresh!

I also love the Travelling Tangles Project. It’s like pen pals for tangling! Check out the Facebook Group here, or start your own art-sharing group!

2. Change Your Environment

If you’re always creating at home, your studio, or even your office, try some place different. I love to go to bars, cafes, parks, even libraries to get some fresh scenery. A bonus to changing your environment is that you won’t be distracted by the normal everyday things! Instead, you’ll get to see new people, new plants, new patterns and architecture…the list is long! Getting out of your comfort zone is a great way to refresh your inspiration.

I recently went to the worst place on Earth laundromat. Instead of reading old editions of donated magazines, I took my kit and sketchbook with me! I had so much fun, even though I was doing a chore I normally dislike!

Tanglin’ at the ‘mat

I also went to my favorite donut and chai shop (Seriously, if you’re in Portland GO HERE). And lo and behold! I was inspired by their dishware and carboholic delights donuts! I’d been here many times before, but I happened to have my kit with me and my brain was open for inspiration! Tangle away, I did!

Made-fresh mini donuts with a Meyer Lemon and Pear butter? YES PLEASE! And that design is so simple, but so eye catching!

3. Pick a favorite, add a twist

When I’m feeling stumped or out of inspiration, this is something I’ll often do. Pick a favorite or often-used tangle pattern, color, or activity. Do it over and over and over again, adding embellishments, playing with scale and overlap, making little tweaks. See where this takes you. I’ll often find myself coming up with other ideas while doing this, and I’ll store them in my mental inspiration bank for later!

Printemps, printemps, printemps!

4. Change your tunes

I love to listen to music or audiobooks while I’m creating. It helps me stay focused on what I’m doing, instead of letting my mind wander to all the other things I could/should be doing (like those stupid chores!). I love apps like Spotify and Amazon Music, they make it super easy to find new music. Try a new genre or a new artist. I like to go for really obscure stuff when I’m looking for new music, it awakens the inspiration nicely!

New-to-me music, weekly!

5. Join the art/creative community

I may be a little over-zealous when it comes to social media. I’m on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Mosaic, and Twitter. Instagram happens to be my favorite. Not only do I share my art and promote myself there, I get to build relationships with other artists, see what they are creating, and talk about new/old/fun techniques. You’re not plagiarizing if you happen to be inspired by something someone else is doing.

I’ve started doing some live videos on Instagram myself (check out the social media buttons on the right side bar to follow me), and actually doing the videos gave me inspiration. There’s a little bit of pressure to keep tangling, so it puts my inspiration reserves in overdrive, which is exhilarating!

Comment below and let me know how these tips worked for you, or add some tips of your own!

Cheers!

Sarah, Zen & Zin

Some tangling I did while live on Instagram last weekend

from Tips for Staying Inspired!

#Tips for Staying Inspired!

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