Homestuck speculations
First notice: The following may or may not make sense to anyone besides myself as I type this. I'll try to make it so that - if I read this later - it'll make sense to future-me. No guarantees. Everything here pertains to Homestuck.
June 9th: Okay, so the Scratch is a paradox-space approved way of time-travel to reset everything about the session. According to Doc Scratch, the kids can somehow link their minds in and continue to be the players. This will happen, because I don't think the total removal of the kids and the entry of totally new players would be accepted at this point. (11/11/11: I don't count the remixed-world "ancestors" as totally new players.) Jack/Bec Noir escaped through the scratch without being reset. He is now effectively a doomed future J/BN with nothing apparently capable of killing him. (10/25: False! Stable metatime loop!) The kids - forearmed with the knowledge (at least! Will their experience also be kept?) of their sort-of-previous Sburb session - are going to come in and power through the game, bypassing key mistakes made the first time through. Will there be more god-tier kids? Will they keep their respective guardians alive this time? How might this affect Doc Scratch's plans for L
rd English? Am I completely off-base here and be totally wrong in every respect for this particular speculation? We'll find out pretty soon, I'd bet (if I were a betting man, that is.)
May 18th: Jack/Slick of the MC related to dealings with Jack of Derse: probable. Is he the before- or after-version? Uncertain.
Brain-case: Jack of MC was Jack of the troll session. Duh and D'oh.
May 18th: The trolls built the human universe through their session in the Sgrub game. Certain bits of their culture showing up or referred to on earth, though as humans originate here it'd be hard to say for certain which bits were originally theirs story-wise. Seeing as they did, how much of their various personalities are a part of the makeup of society, seeing as they had no direct hand in that?
Also, several noticeable pieces of human things (or at least things from the kids' world) show up in the troll's world, before any of them even starts playing the game. (Rose's walkthrough/FAQ I'm ignoring here, because it's set up in the Medium space, which has been mentioned a number of times to be timeless - which is to say, it ignores time.)
May 18th: The kids session and the trolls session are linked by a scratch. Which may explain all the crossovers on both sides. It may have made a linked single session out of both sessions, the results of which I'm not yet certain of. (10/25: Nope. Skaian machinery can cross universe barriers, apparently.)
May 18th: The kids session may end up making the trolls universe, thus continuing the whole double-reach-around thing that's gone on previously.
May 18th: Hitting the big reset button may, due to the double-linking thing, reset both the kid's and the troll's universe to before any of them played. Friggin' -paradox space-/Medium ignoring all time messing-around setups. I need a blank ball-shaped object I can also turn inside-out to start drawing up a stable-ish timeline for this comic. Possibly a mobius-helix that wraps around a klein bottle. June 26th: Wait, no. The troll session is doomed and as-is. We started with twelve trolls (we didn't know about) and four kids, and we're going to end with - I suspect - eight dead and eight survivors. We have one survivor too many at the moment. I'd be voting out Gamzee, but it's not up to a vote.
May 18th: The trolls chat interface can not only reach into a different session (if the scratch does NOT link the two) but also into a different universe (the kids' home universe even before they started playing!) which is some mighty strange programming.
May 18th: Speaking of programming, that whole ~ATH language bit from Act 5 is not forgotten. A certain someone wrote that virus(?) that involved the deaths of two different universes. Or was it the death of one and the not-death of the other? Big surprise, given how linked they sure seem to be on a continuing basis. Certain programs tied to the death of the author were also made, presumably by captain cue-ball♣. When will these take place? Will all the trolls have to die along the way?
May 18th: Will the trolls' reset button be pushed? There's going to have to be some sort of reset/time-screwing done if there's going to be a happy ending (not guaranteed by any means) but who knows? (I forget the date: The troll session was already reset, this is the post-scratch session.)
May 18th: More god-tier ascensions or other prepared changes for the kids and trolls? They're probably going to need it to deal with unstoppable!Jack. Edit 10/25: Four god-tier kids, one god-tier troll, and one Prospitan with their own fully-prototyped Queen's Ring of Badass. Yeah, Jack's toast,
destroyed or not.
May 18th: Another probably obvious one. That super-bunny that Jade and ??? upgraded is so powerful even Jack is wary of it. Bring its weapons back, or give it new ones, and it becomes intensely dangerous on its own. This much is obvious to everyone. What a few may have forgotten: John has a bunnykind strife specibus. Edit 10/25: This Chekhov's Gun is still in effect.
May 24: Given the metatimeline, and the way that in this storyverse the timeline is one that cannot be altered but only facilitated by time travel, the scratch has (already will be going to have) happened, we've had the pseudo-foreshadowing of this for quite some time by Dave's symbol of the broken/scratched record. Now for my speculation: Some other (single-session) group has gone through the game already and reset, setting up this double-reacharound series of events in two sessions in the first place. Manipulated by L
rd English?
CONFIRMED, ○ May 18th: Duh that John isn't dead for good. It wasn't a heroic or martyrish death, nor a just one. Also, we saw him in a later timeline just fine (and with a better computer equipped as well.) May 25th: CONFIRMED, ○
May 18th: Also, what the heck is the point of the games again? It can't feasibly be the continuation of the respective species, since all the players are - by playing the game at all, thanks to the metatimeline - direct descendant paradox clone "children" of their own paradox clone ancestors, none of whom (ancestors or players) were ever genetically combinated, born, hatched, whelped, or whatever by their "own" people in the first place. They may be close relatives on a genetic level, but it's not exactly the same thing. ...unless they're paradox clone copies of the potentially other selves of themselves, in a set-up simulated (or copied) side-universe specifically built for them to have been from and brought around to, in which case it's more a thing of collecting parts of societies or worlds, instead of "rescuing" them from annihilation.
Maybe it's for spreading the black and white carapace-people of Derse and Prospit across several universes?
I've either gotta think about this a lot less, or a lot more.
May 18th: Regarding troll romance/relationships: I think AH is correct that most humans can't properly understand the whole deal. Some can, but most are unequipped to do so by physiology and/or society. Those humans that could might be said to have issues, or remarkably open minds (depending on their other life circumstances.)
Now I inevitably bring myself into this mess as such and thusly: I suspect I could contruct a persona capable of emulating the full troll romance emotional spectrum. I've had lots of practice making nonhuman personas and methods of thinking. I don't like to do this, it's cruel to them. For one thing, they know (or very quickly find out) that they're stuck in an all-too human body. This, needless to say, causes problems. After not too long, they don't act as much like themselves as they would, partially because of the sharing bodyspace with others, and partly because of the not-theirs biology/chemistry/physiology/etc. If they last and survive through this process then they can, at best, help provide acting tips. Which don't often get used, sadly enough.
In the case of trolls, I could set up a troll persona in me. After not long, they realize sleep doesn't automatically come with nightmares anymore, even without sleeping in pods of sopor slime (not technically available locally.) Being stuck as an observer in a human body in a human society (since there's no way I'm letting a probably violent self in control - and I've had some **fun** ones in here, make no mistake [not to mention reconstructed personalities from brainwashing techniques and shattered-self troubles]) would be intolerable; they'd probably either go all sullen and unresponsive in some back corner, or else need containment and probably eventual disposal (always unpleasant and painful for them and for me, take it from one who's been through this more than a few times.)
In tl;dr, I could do it. I won't unless I'm going to spend weeks or more in a full-out trollish society.
!!!May 30: Regarding Jack/Bec Noir's difference in personality from the kids' session to the trolls' session: either he's that upset by the fact they used the big reset button (I doubt this is the reason he's mad) or else Jade was killed in front of him and he couldn't stop it. (Confirmed 10/25!)
June 1st: Didn't think about this until now, but 6/12 is nearly upon us. I suspect trouble. June 7th strikeout: You know, other than the likelihood that there's only two trolls alive now (Aradia and Vriska, the nigh-unkillable god-types. I think Aradia's immune, and I'm uncertain about Vriska. Sure, she's murdered Tavros, but isn't that...not-unusual in troll society? I'm pretty sure she's not done much to warrant a "heroic" death.) Okay, that bit was from a non-alpha timeline, according to Doc Scratch. Thinking about it, I give Vriska a 30-49% chance of survival here at best. Including the fact of her "ALL the luck. All of it." I'm still not completely convinced she's got a "just" death by her society's standards, but I must admit that given who stabbed her through, it's a good chance of just that. Even if she survives, then her temporary death (which takes time to recover from, just how long exactly we don't know) will set to hold her off long enough to accomplish something else, meaning Jack/Bec Noir won't be finding them so quick. EDIT:Confirmed dead...dead doesn't mean completely removed from play in this series, though.
Side note, I'd still like to see how that Noir vs Thief of Light grief plays out. It'd be pointless, sure, and I'm sure that there are fanfictions being written of of that and the after-events following even now, but...anyway, moving on.
June 26th: Character speculation: Karkat. He does know his troll romance, but he has no quadrants filled and no real prospects for any of them, other than possibly time-bent versions of himself for the caliginous. He's kinda desperate to get whatever he can, so he lashes out at everyone he knows in hopes of starting something. Then it becomes a habit. He's trying too hard. Other than that, he's not that bad a guy.
June 28th: Very theoretical theological bit? A comment on the forum made me wonder...if you were to find the Sburb game and intentionally gather a person or circle of people and cause the end of this world and (quite probably) everyone on it, just so you could play it and reach god-tier and live forever ruling (or whatever) on your new world as an immortal god-type being, would that itself count as a bad enough act to make any death you receive a just one, and thus permanent? I don't care to go through two years worth of threads to find out if that's on the forum, since the search function is not refined enough to make it an easy search (taking less than a week, say.)
June 28th: Also of note...Hussie has the reputation of a troll author (probably deservedly, I reserve judgement here) and I thought about that for a while. Then I decided to think of the worst way Homestuck could end. Nope, it's not everyone dying. It is this: The Scratch happens, resetting the Human universe, and the kids are linked in so they remember everything that went on...and then they decide not to play Sburb, and just continue on with their lives instead. Leaving the trolls in the lurch with Noir, whether
powered or not. Worst possible ending, right there. Could it be worse? Tell me!
July 3rd: It is becoming increasingly obvious that for Homestuck (like certain other MSPA works) dead does not equal gone. More stuck in the same psuedo-dreamland you get stuck with if your dreamself dies (or otherwise no longer have a dreamself,) the bubbles glubbed in the Farthest Ring. Interesting....this opens up a bunch of new pathways in possibility paradox-space. And greatly increases the likeliness of dealing with the 8 dead, 8 survivors thing. Unless it goes so far as to make it 12 dead, 4 survivors? ...nah. July 13th update: How many thousands of dead kids and trolls do we get to deal with?
July 13th: Okay, so all the kid's sprites are alive. Dead Vriska appears to have not been talking to the Sleeping John she knew, but to the "doomed-timeline" John that Terezi got killed by tricking him into rocketing (PCHOOOOO!) directly to the Seventh Gate. Which, really, I shouldn't have been too surprised about; we already knew the doomed timelines still happened, otherwise there wouldn't have been all those Aradiabots to help out during their Rex Duodecim Angelus big black king boss battle. Also several other things, but it'd take quite a while to collect and list all of them.
July 13th: Side note: I doubt the most important character is actually Gamzee. I think Gamzee is just the face we got to see during that bit of text.
August 16th: Ok I came back to way too much to figure out anything new. And at the current rate of things coming out, my bafflement continues, and it keeps happening.
August 18th: How much of what we've seen the last week or two might've been another AU mindscrew? Only AH knows.
2011 - 10/25: Ok. I've got to get this out while my brain is still fizzing and sparking from the freshness of this update, which I have seen three times in a row now, and I don't entirely have the full timeline in shape in my head fully coalesced yet.
First up: We now know what made Jack flip out and try to destroy all of everything: Jade's death. Did I call it, or not? (Hint: I did! See May 30th entry above. Next jump in my head: 4 godkids. I expected this kinda, but I expected it to happen after the scratch, not during or before. Also, holy crit! Not only is Jade god-tier, she's god-tier as not only a sprite, but also Bec-furry AND is therefore empowered by the
! And now PM is fully Four-Prototyped Ring powered as well, so we have THREE
powered people hanging around, not including Doc Scratch. (Also, John got the Savior of the Waking World song, and Jade got Savior of the Dreaming Dead. Amusement.) (My feelings: Jack was approximately an even match for maxed-luck God-Tier Light!Vriska. I say, not that it'll happen, he would not stand a chance against
Space-Goddess Jade. )
Troll-session-Jack's Red Miles ran into the whatever-many-names giant frog that became our universe, and successfully pierced through the whole thing to find our world. (Red Miles can span a universe. Dang man.) Why did he do this? Is he destroying our entire universe? (Yes.) If so, will this be part of how the scratch even happens? (Later note: hard to say.) We later see a sight of troll-session Skaia, and Mr. Bilious Slick - Universe Frog is nowhere to be found. And there's scattered universe-looking material around the place.
(Gotta hurry this up, my brain is slowing down on the fizzing.)
WK's appeariflower was purple and healthy. Jack's was diseased.
Why was Snowman's blood blue, when every other Dersite/Prospitan's was red? (Poetic metaphor, give that we'd been glimpsing it through that blue stuff from the TUMOR?) (Nope. Hussie talked about it, link below.)
It looks like Dream!Dave and Rose died on their Center-Of-Derse Quest Beds, since they showed up at the
in God-Tier. Or...is this Dave and Rose from after-the-Scratch, and more shenanigans will ensue? (Knight of Time has a slickly ironic-looking cape there.)
Now we know how Rose's promise of saving all the bosses along with themselves for/from the Scratch will happen. SuperSpace-Goddess!Jade is bringing all the planets along with her through that not-exactly-4th wall to the beginning.
No, wait...each planet's Quest Bed looked quite activated when Jade spacewarped them to herself in apparent mini-form. So that explains the God-tier blond-hairs.
Later: No wait again. Those aren't activated Quest Beds, those are the kids' dwellings, stacked up to the Gates. So...gah.
Beat Mesa is beaming something at Skaia? It's nearly time.
Sollux is not looking good, bleeding from his eyes and mouth. I'll bet it hurts like...powering an interstellar spaceship and being the engine for one.
Jack showed up and killed nearly all the exiles. The important bit: All this had already happened. Andrew Hussie had this thing planned out in general shape, if not the details. I can wrap my head around the timelines eventually, it's just not in here yet because it's still very new to me.
Ringed-PM brough along WV's body?
I sense that another favorite song from one of the albums will soon be making its appearance: Sburban Reset.
I also liked how Bec-PM showed up at exactly the right moment to distract Jack from the
dealings right behind him.
Minor things I noticed: Echidna's needle is so big, it had to be attached to another huge building/device so it could Scratch Beat Mesa.
You know, I was kind of looking forward to a certain fan-project that shows the epic(word used intentionally)/operatic boss-fight between the 12 trolls vs the 12-typed Black King at the end of their session, but honestly, it's going to be pretty anticlimactic after all this. (Still want to see it though. The music itself is amazing and tells the story well on its own, for music.)
Sudden unfortunate thought: What if that TUMOR-bomb isn't what destroys the
...but instead what created it? CORRECTION: It is pretty obvious a day later that this is exactly what happened. (Still want to slap whoever was it on the forum who first coined the phrase "Everyone is Lord English.")
This whole thing is making to be quite the impressive set-up for the entry of L
rd English. Will he be an end-boss kind of thing, will he turn out to be vital to survival? Where the heck did the many-copied Dersites and Prospitans originally come from, anyway? Was this "game" of Sburb/Sgrub/Whatev made for the purpose of saving their race(s), and not that of others? What was the purpose of bringing the book the White king was carrying (titled Complacency of the Journal, so Rose's)?
10/28:(To a certain extent I should pay more attention to the author.)
..ugh. If the
can be destroyed (and not just shrunk and put away somewhere) will it - as Doc Scratch said, if he can be trusted on this point - still weaken/kill the First Guardian types? It wouldn't affect Lord English, so it's probably not a real concern anymore, what with Jack being not the biggest badass around anymore... but if it did, and happens....Jade could count as a Heroic Sacrifice. Permadead Jade. Will be tricky, since they no longer have anything (other than possibly Jade herself) that could take out a star that masses two universes.
Also? That wolf head we see mounted as a trophy...Jack? ...nah.
All in all, this month-long wait on this Homestuck update? TOTALLY WORTH IT.
11/11/11: I really wish I could say I didn't see this coming. The details were a mystery of course (Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff: The Movie?!) but we knew that when the troll's sessions was scratched, the ancestors and players switched roles. It was expected here. This likely means, give the realities involved and the paradox-cloning, that John and Jade's DNA were mixed to make them the paradox-parents of Jane Crocker (pre-scratch Nana) and Jake English (pre-scratch Grandpa). Making all eight of the human players their own grandparents, without bothering with incest.
One side-question remains: Dad is still Dad. What will happen to him this time, and will he end up being important? I have my suspicions, but nothing solid enough to write down. Knowing Hussie - by which I mean his previous works - i'm not sure if he's going to be as side-character as the mustachioed gentlemen in Problem Sleuth, or some sort of anti-counterpart to Lord English/Big Cal.
More will follow as I think things up, that I don't see other people mention first. Given that I don't spend much time on that forum, there's a lot I don't see people say about it.
Finally, a quote from the MSPA forum:
Q: When has Homestuck ever made sense?
A: Always.
As I've been explaining to a friend, the 'confusing' things are simply plot points that haven't resolved yet; the difference between 'confusing' and 'elaborate' is forethought. A confusing story (i.e. Lost) throws out plot points simply to attract attention, and leaves the writers scrambling to resolve everything later. An elaborate story sets up all of its dominoes early on, setting up more and more and more until it finally tips one over and a great mural celebrating ethnic diversity spreads out before you in black and white.
To complete the analogy, the writer of a confusing story sets up small sections of dominoes; when he realizes that they're about to hit a dead end, he has to scramble to set up more, never showing a larger plan.
June 9th: Okay, so the Scratch is a paradox-space approved way of time-travel to reset everything about the session. According to Doc Scratch, the kids can somehow link their minds in and continue to be the players. This will happen, because I don't think the total removal of the kids and the entry of totally new players would be accepted at this point. (11/11/11: I don't count the remixed-world "ancestors" as totally new players.) Jack/Bec Noir escaped through the scratch without being reset. He is now effectively a doomed future J/BN with nothing apparently capable of killing him. (10/25: False! Stable metatime loop!) The kids - forearmed with the knowledge (at least! Will their experience also be kept?) of their sort-of-previous Sburb session - are going to come in and power through the game, bypassing key mistakes made the first time through. Will there be more god-tier kids? Will they keep their respective guardians alive this time? How might this affect Doc Scratch's plans for L
rd English? Am I completely off-base here and be totally wrong in every respect for this particular speculation? We'll find out pretty soon, I'd bet (if I were a betting man, that is.)
May 18th: Jack/Slick of the MC related to dealings with Jack of Derse: probable. Is he the before- or after-version? Uncertain.
Brain-case: Jack of MC was Jack of the troll session. Duh and D'oh.
May 18th: The trolls built the human universe through their session in the Sgrub game. Certain bits of their culture showing up or referred to on earth, though as humans originate here it'd be hard to say for certain which bits were originally theirs story-wise. Seeing as they did, how much of their various personalities are a part of the makeup of society, seeing as they had no direct hand in that?
Also, several noticeable pieces of human things (or at least things from the kids' world) show up in the troll's world, before any of them even starts playing the game. (Rose's walkthrough/FAQ I'm ignoring here, because it's set up in the Medium space, which has been mentioned a number of times to be timeless - which is to say, it ignores time.)
May 18th: The kids session and the trolls session are linked by a scratch. Which may explain all the crossovers on both sides. It may have made a linked single session out of both sessions, the results of which I'm not yet certain of. (10/25: Nope. Skaian machinery can cross universe barriers, apparently.)
May 18th: The kids session may end up making the trolls universe, thus continuing the whole double-reach-around thing that's gone on previously.
May 18th: Hitting the big reset button may, due to the double-linking thing, reset both the kid's and the troll's universe to before any of them played. Friggin' -paradox space-/Medium ignoring all time messing-around setups. I need a blank ball-shaped object I can also turn inside-out to start drawing up a stable-ish timeline for this comic. Possibly a mobius-helix that wraps around a klein bottle. June 26th: Wait, no. The troll session is doomed and as-is. We started with twelve trolls (we didn't know about) and four kids, and we're going to end with - I suspect - eight dead and eight survivors. We have one survivor too many at the moment. I'd be voting out Gamzee, but it's not up to a vote.
May 18th: The trolls chat interface can not only reach into a different session (if the scratch does NOT link the two) but also into a different universe (the kids' home universe even before they started playing!) which is some mighty strange programming.
May 18th: Speaking of programming, that whole ~ATH language bit from Act 5 is not forgotten. A certain someone wrote that virus(?) that involved the deaths of two different universes. Or was it the death of one and the not-death of the other? Big surprise, given how linked they sure seem to be on a continuing basis. Certain programs tied to the death of the author were also made, presumably by captain cue-ball♣. When will these take place? Will all the trolls have to die along the way?
May 18th: Will the trolls' reset button be pushed? There's going to have to be some sort of reset/time-screwing done if there's going to be a happy ending (not guaranteed by any means) but who knows? (I forget the date: The troll session was already reset, this is the post-scratch session.)
May 18th: More god-tier ascensions or other prepared changes for the kids and trolls? They're probably going to need it to deal with unstoppable!Jack. Edit 10/25: Four god-tier kids, one god-tier troll, and one Prospitan with their own fully-prototyped Queen's Ring of Badass. Yeah, Jack's toast,
destroyed or not.
May 18th: Another probably obvious one. That super-bunny that Jade and ??? upgraded is so powerful even Jack is wary of it. Bring its weapons back, or give it new ones, and it becomes intensely dangerous on its own. This much is obvious to everyone. What a few may have forgotten: John has a bunnykind strife specibus. Edit 10/25: This Chekhov's Gun is still in effect.
May 24: Given the metatimeline, and the way that in this storyverse the timeline is one that cannot be altered but only facilitated by time travel, the scratch has (already will be going to have) happened, we've had the pseudo-foreshadowing of this for quite some time by Dave's symbol of the broken/scratched record. Now for my speculation: Some other (single-session) group has gone through the game already and reset, setting up this double-reacharound series of events in two sessions in the first place. Manipulated by L
rd English?
CONFIRMED, ○ May 18th: Duh that John isn't dead for good. It wasn't a heroic or martyrish death, nor a just one. Also, we saw him in a later timeline just fine (and with a better computer equipped as well.) May 25th: CONFIRMED, ○
May 18th: Also, what the heck is the point of the games again? It can't feasibly be the continuation of the respective species, since all the players are - by playing the game at all, thanks to the metatimeline - direct descendant paradox clone "children" of their own paradox clone ancestors, none of whom (ancestors or players) were ever genetically combinated, born, hatched, whelped, or whatever by their "own" people in the first place. They may be close relatives on a genetic level, but it's not exactly the same thing. ...unless they're paradox clone copies of the potentially other selves of themselves, in a set-up simulated (or copied) side-universe specifically built for them to have been from and brought around to, in which case it's more a thing of collecting parts of societies or worlds, instead of "rescuing" them from annihilation.
Maybe it's for spreading the black and white carapace-people of Derse and Prospit across several universes?
I've either gotta think about this a lot less, or a lot more.
May 18th: Regarding troll romance/relationships: I think AH is correct that most humans can't properly understand the whole deal. Some can, but most are unequipped to do so by physiology and/or society. Those humans that could might be said to have issues, or remarkably open minds (depending on their other life circumstances.)
Now I inevitably bring myself into this mess as such and thusly: I suspect I could contruct a persona capable of emulating the full troll romance emotional spectrum. I've had lots of practice making nonhuman personas and methods of thinking. I don't like to do this, it's cruel to them. For one thing, they know (or very quickly find out) that they're stuck in an all-too human body. This, needless to say, causes problems. After not too long, they don't act as much like themselves as they would, partially because of the sharing bodyspace with others, and partly because of the not-theirs biology/chemistry/physiology/etc. If they last and survive through this process then they can, at best, help provide acting tips. Which don't often get used, sadly enough.
In the case of trolls, I could set up a troll persona in me. After not long, they realize sleep doesn't automatically come with nightmares anymore, even without sleeping in pods of sopor slime (not technically available locally.) Being stuck as an observer in a human body in a human society (since there's no way I'm letting a probably violent self in control - and I've had some **fun** ones in here, make no mistake [not to mention reconstructed personalities from brainwashing techniques and shattered-self troubles]) would be intolerable; they'd probably either go all sullen and unresponsive in some back corner, or else need containment and probably eventual disposal (always unpleasant and painful for them and for me, take it from one who's been through this more than a few times.)
In tl;dr, I could do it. I won't unless I'm going to spend weeks or more in a full-out trollish society.
!!!May 30: Regarding Jack/Bec Noir's difference in personality from the kids' session to the trolls' session: either he's that upset by the fact they used the big reset button (I doubt this is the reason he's mad) or else Jade was killed in front of him and he couldn't stop it. (Confirmed 10/25!)
June 1st: Didn't think about this until now, but 6/12 is nearly upon us. I suspect trouble. June 7th strikeout: You know, other than the likelihood that there's only two trolls alive now (Aradia and Vriska, the nigh-unkillable god-types. I think Aradia's immune, and I'm uncertain about Vriska. Sure, she's murdered Tavros, but isn't that...not-unusual in troll society? I'm pretty sure she's not done much to warrant a "heroic" death.) Okay, that bit was from a non-alpha timeline, according to Doc Scratch. Thinking about it, I give Vriska a 30-49% chance of survival here at best. Including the fact of her "ALL the luck. All of it." I'm still not completely convinced she's got a "just" death by her society's standards, but I must admit that given who stabbed her through, it's a good chance of just that. Even if she survives, then her temporary death (which takes time to recover from, just how long exactly we don't know) will set to hold her off long enough to accomplish something else, meaning Jack/Bec Noir won't be finding them so quick. EDIT:Confirmed dead...dead doesn't mean completely removed from play in this series, though.
Side note, I'd still like to see how that Noir vs Thief of Light grief plays out. It'd be pointless, sure, and I'm sure that there are fanfictions being written of of that and the after-events following even now, but...anyway, moving on.
June 26th: Character speculation: Karkat. He does know his troll romance, but he has no quadrants filled and no real prospects for any of them, other than possibly time-bent versions of himself for the caliginous. He's kinda desperate to get whatever he can, so he lashes out at everyone he knows in hopes of starting something. Then it becomes a habit. He's trying too hard. Other than that, he's not that bad a guy.
June 28th: Very theoretical theological bit? A comment on the forum made me wonder...if you were to find the Sburb game and intentionally gather a person or circle of people and cause the end of this world and (quite probably) everyone on it, just so you could play it and reach god-tier and live forever ruling (or whatever) on your new world as an immortal god-type being, would that itself count as a bad enough act to make any death you receive a just one, and thus permanent? I don't care to go through two years worth of threads to find out if that's on the forum, since the search function is not refined enough to make it an easy search (taking less than a week, say.)
June 28th: Also of note...Hussie has the reputation of a troll author (probably deservedly, I reserve judgement here) and I thought about that for a while. Then I decided to think of the worst way Homestuck could end. Nope, it's not everyone dying. It is this: The Scratch happens, resetting the Human universe, and the kids are linked in so they remember everything that went on...and then they decide not to play Sburb, and just continue on with their lives instead. Leaving the trolls in the lurch with Noir, whether
powered or not. Worst possible ending, right there. Could it be worse? Tell me!
July 3rd: It is becoming increasingly obvious that for Homestuck (like certain other MSPA works) dead does not equal gone. More stuck in the same psuedo-dreamland you get stuck with if your dreamself dies (or otherwise no longer have a dreamself,) the bubbles glubbed in the Farthest Ring. Interesting....this opens up a bunch of new pathways in possibility paradox-space. And greatly increases the likeliness of dealing with the 8 dead, 8 survivors thing. Unless it goes so far as to make it 12 dead, 4 survivors? ...nah. July 13th update: How many thousands of dead kids and trolls do we get to deal with?
July 13th: Okay, so all the kid's sprites are alive. Dead Vriska appears to have not been talking to the Sleeping John she knew, but to the "doomed-timeline" John that Terezi got killed by tricking him into rocketing (PCHOOOOO!) directly to the Seventh Gate. Which, really, I shouldn't have been too surprised about; we already knew the doomed timelines still happened, otherwise there wouldn't have been all those Aradiabots to help out during their Rex Duodecim Angelus big black king boss battle. Also several other things, but it'd take quite a while to collect and list all of them.
July 13th: Side note: I doubt the most important character is actually Gamzee. I think Gamzee is just the face we got to see during that bit of text.
August 16th: Ok I came back to way too much to figure out anything new. And at the current rate of things coming out, my bafflement continues, and it keeps happening.
August 18th: How much of what we've seen the last week or two might've been another AU mindscrew? Only AH knows.
2011 - 10/25: Ok. I've got to get this out while my brain is still fizzing and sparking from the freshness of this update, which I have seen three times in a row now, and I don't entirely have the full timeline in shape in my head fully coalesced yet.
First up: We now know what made Jack flip out and try to destroy all of everything: Jade's death. Did I call it, or not? (Hint: I did! See May 30th entry above. Next jump in my head: 4 godkids. I expected this kinda, but I expected it to happen after the scratch, not during or before. Also, holy crit! Not only is Jade god-tier, she's god-tier as not only a sprite, but also Bec-furry AND is therefore empowered by the
! And now PM is fully Four-Prototyped Ring powered as well, so we have THREE
powered people hanging around, not including Doc Scratch. (Also, John got the Savior of the Waking World song, and Jade got Savior of the Dreaming Dead. Amusement.) (My feelings: Jack was approximately an even match for maxed-luck God-Tier Light!Vriska. I say, not that it'll happen, he would not stand a chance against
Space-Goddess Jade. )
Troll-session-Jack's Red Miles ran into the whatever-many-names giant frog that became our universe, and successfully pierced through the whole thing to find our world. (Red Miles can span a universe. Dang man.) Why did he do this? Is he destroying our entire universe? (Yes.) If so, will this be part of how the scratch even happens? (Later note: hard to say.) We later see a sight of troll-session Skaia, and Mr. Bilious Slick - Universe Frog is nowhere to be found. And there's scattered universe-looking material around the place.
(Gotta hurry this up, my brain is slowing down on the fizzing.)
WK's appeariflower was purple and healthy. Jack's was diseased.
Why was Snowman's blood blue, when every other Dersite/Prospitan's was red? (Poetic metaphor, give that we'd been glimpsing it through that blue stuff from the TUMOR?) (Nope. Hussie talked about it, link below.)
It looks like Dream!Dave and Rose died on their Center-Of-Derse Quest Beds, since they showed up at the
in God-Tier. Or...is this Dave and Rose from after-the-Scratch, and more shenanigans will ensue? (Knight of Time has a slickly ironic-looking cape there.)
Now we know how Rose's promise of saving all the bosses along with themselves for/from the Scratch will happen. SuperSpace-Goddess!Jade is bringing all the planets along with her through that not-exactly-4th wall to the beginning.
No, wait...each planet's Quest Bed looked quite activated when Jade spacewarped them to herself in apparent mini-form. So that explains the God-tier blond-hairs.
Later: No wait again. Those aren't activated Quest Beds, those are the kids' dwellings, stacked up to the Gates. So...gah.
Beat Mesa is beaming something at Skaia? It's nearly time.
Sollux is not looking good, bleeding from his eyes and mouth. I'll bet it hurts like...powering an interstellar spaceship and being the engine for one.
Jack showed up and killed nearly all the exiles. The important bit: All this had already happened. Andrew Hussie had this thing planned out in general shape, if not the details. I can wrap my head around the timelines eventually, it's just not in here yet because it's still very new to me.
Ringed-PM brough along WV's body?
I sense that another favorite song from one of the albums will soon be making its appearance: Sburban Reset.
I also liked how Bec-PM showed up at exactly the right moment to distract Jack from the
dealings right behind him.
Minor things I noticed: Echidna's needle is so big, it had to be attached to another huge building/device so it could Scratch Beat Mesa.
You know, I was kind of looking forward to a certain fan-project that shows the epic(word used intentionally)/operatic boss-fight between the 12 trolls vs the 12-typed Black King at the end of their session, but honestly, it's going to be pretty anticlimactic after all this. (Still want to see it though. The music itself is amazing and tells the story well on its own, for music.)
Sudden unfortunate thought: What if that TUMOR-bomb isn't what destroys the
...but instead what created it? CORRECTION: It is pretty obvious a day later that this is exactly what happened. (Still want to slap whoever was it on the forum who first coined the phrase "Everyone is Lord English.")
This whole thing is making to be quite the impressive set-up for the entry of L
rd English. Will he be an end-boss kind of thing, will he turn out to be vital to survival? Where the heck did the many-copied Dersites and Prospitans originally come from, anyway? Was this "game" of Sburb/Sgrub/Whatev made for the purpose of saving their race(s), and not that of others? What was the purpose of bringing the book the White king was carrying (titled Complacency of the Journal, so Rose's)?
10/28:(To a certain extent I should pay more attention to the author.)
..ugh. If the
can be destroyed (and not just shrunk and put away somewhere) will it - as Doc Scratch said, if he can be trusted on this point - still weaken/kill the First Guardian types? It wouldn't affect Lord English, so it's probably not a real concern anymore, what with Jack being not the biggest badass around anymore... but if it did, and happens....Jade could count as a Heroic Sacrifice. Permadead Jade. Will be tricky, since they no longer have anything (other than possibly Jade herself) that could take out a star that masses two universes.
Also? That wolf head we see mounted as a trophy...Jack? ...nah.
All in all, this month-long wait on this Homestuck update? TOTALLY WORTH IT.
11/11/11: I really wish I could say I didn't see this coming. The details were a mystery of course (Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff: The Movie?!) but we knew that when the troll's sessions was scratched, the ancestors and players switched roles. It was expected here. This likely means, give the realities involved and the paradox-cloning, that John and Jade's DNA were mixed to make them the paradox-parents of Jane Crocker (pre-scratch Nana) and Jake English (pre-scratch Grandpa). Making all eight of the human players their own grandparents, without bothering with incest.
One side-question remains: Dad is still Dad. What will happen to him this time, and will he end up being important? I have my suspicions, but nothing solid enough to write down. Knowing Hussie - by which I mean his previous works - i'm not sure if he's going to be as side-character as the mustachioed gentlemen in Problem Sleuth, or some sort of anti-counterpart to Lord English/Big Cal.
More will follow as I think things up, that I don't see other people mention first. Given that I don't spend much time on that forum, there's a lot I don't see people say about it.
Finally, a quote from the MSPA forum:
Q: When has Homestuck ever made sense?
A: Always.
As I've been explaining to a friend, the 'confusing' things are simply plot points that haven't resolved yet; the difference between 'confusing' and 'elaborate' is forethought. A confusing story (i.e. Lost) throws out plot points simply to attract attention, and leaves the writers scrambling to resolve everything later. An elaborate story sets up all of its dominoes early on, setting up more and more and more until it finally tips one over and a great mural celebrating ethnic diversity spreads out before you in black and white.
To complete the analogy, the writer of a confusing story sets up small sections of dominoes; when he realizes that they're about to hit a dead end, he has to scramble to set up more, never showing a larger plan.