Subject: Ah, Homestuck day
Author:
Posted on: 2014-04-15 10:36:00 UTC
One of the most joyous occasions. I spent a good portion of it re-watching a bunch of the flashes. I nearly forgot how fantastic Homestuck's music is.
I'm a Mage of Heart, which basically translates into the manipulation of feelings and motivations. I'm not quite sure what to make of that, really.
It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, is this young man's birthday. Though it was five years ago that the Homestuck webcomic began, it is only today that it will be celebrated on the PPC Board!
What will we do?
>Read Homestuck.
>Discuss the webcomic.
- - -
Happy 4/13 to everyone! Let's get a Homestuck thread started: feel free to discuss favourite characters, memorable scenes, speculate on the ending of the series, and just natter on about anything you like.
Don't forget to mention your God-tier title! Let's see if the Board can produce a viable Sburb session. Seeing as I'm a Mage of Void by this test, I guess I can substitute for a Space player if needs be. Since "one who guides themselves with nothing/lack of knowledge" is fairly useless, I can double as a Waste of Space.
So, I use the life force of the universe to improve myself, eh? Wobbles confirmed for Lung
My Land, because of course there's a test for that, is the Land of Tors and Briars. There are apparently lots of pastel-shaded rolling hills, presumably covered in thorn bushes and scrub because of the name, and a small number of highly-organized consorts. The quest? Tame the denizen's thorns.
I will likely fail, because not only am I a terrible game, I'm also fairly useless as a person. GLHF, guys.
I reevaluated myself with the canon-compliant test, and I wound up with Seer of Space. I actually think that fits me a lot better than Knight of "Keys"/Mind, since regardless of how awesome psionic powers would be, I would work much better in a passive class. Plus, the Space aspect combined with Seer would mean that my primary ability would be observation and analysis of the Medium, and processing the information that I collect for mutual benefit of the rest of the session. It would be equally useful in combat, detecting and assessing enemy encampments from far away, determining spawn patterns, and figuring out the layout of dungeons or other areas to prevent, ambush and find good places to hide. In between battles, I could locate plot-important areas and other zones of sweet loot for myself and various fellow Sburb players, which would help everyone with the all-important "completely breaking the game" aspect of any worthwhile Sburb session. Also, since I'm the Space player, you know what that means! Come on, everybody! Frog hunt on my planet!
Discussion time: let's see... let's start with the basics. Plot twists corner. Which did you like the best, and which did you dislike? For new Homestuck readers, these plot twists contain spoilers, surprisingly enough. My opinions will be a little influenced by the fact that I've been reading Homestuck for so long that most of the pre-Act Five elements don't really seem like plot twists any more, since they've been entwined in the story for so long I can't remember them not being important. So, all of these will come from Act Five or Act Six.
Favorites: I have two, which might be cheating a little, but they both cover similar ground, so I'm saying they both count. First, Becquerel's prototyping. With one quick action, not only were several theories about the stuff lying around Jade's house entirely debunked, the stakes were raised for the rest of the session. If there were any doubts that things just got escalated, the low-level enemy who sent Jade on a wild teleportation chase across all of the Medium cemented that yeah, their entire session is like this now. I almost wish we'd seen a dog-eared teleporting Giclops at some point, but we can't have everything.
I will willingly admit that I was part of the group that thought that the Becquerel-enhanced Jack Noir would eventually become Lord English, because if anyone was likely to become a multiverse-terrorizing monster of horrific might and ferocity, there's a good chance that it'd be the noted psychopath who has suddenly been gifted with the power to rend reality into tiny little chunks. But hey, him becoming the monster who blew up the trolls' session was a pretty awesome consolation prize. Wait, is that a third plot twist? I'd better move on to my other pick before I start describing entire character pathways.
Two: Aranea's sudden reveal as a villain. I have a hunch that this isn't a lot of people's favorite, but I absolutely loved it. Not only was it a culmination of several minor plot threads that gave numerous characters their own reasons to interact with her, and not only did it give an alternate-universe ancestor troll some role in the main story, but I just love Aranea's brand of villainy. Most of the other Homestuck villains were either near-mindless monsters, world-wrecking maniacs, or people who turned maniac due to something in their environment, but Aranea is just this incredibly cold and direct character, wrapped up in a case of warm friendliness. And the thing is, it's completely genuine. The helpful and somewhat desperate-seeming exposition fairy from half the act ago wasn't putting up a facade, and wasn't driven crazy by moral isolation or being taken off her sopor. I really like when a character doesn't go suddenly adopt the shape of the typical looming and overdramatic archlord when they go evil, and Aranea's outbreak of antagonism is a great improvement on the type. She's completely calm and even occasionally cheerful, even as she bursts in after millions of years of inactivity with a plan to rebuild time and stop a reality-threatening godling by literally cutting him off from his past. After all, being more traditionally antagonistic would be out of character. Also, her method of fulfilling her plan by mind-warping Jake and Gamzee(and maybe testing her mind-altering powers on Terezi, but that'd probably just be wishful thinking on my part to justify Terezi's angst) to act as facilitators both allows for her plan to start out surprisingly subtly(that bit falls apart after she mind-warps Jake, but that's mainly because nothing is subtle when it involves a sixty-foot orb of light hovering in the sky and screaming "Gadzooks!") and to distinguish her from her counterpart, Vriska, showing how far the other Mindfang's developed from her earlier callous self. Also, as I mentioned, all of those minor plot threads villain-Aranea brings together. Just the best. It's like she was driving the story specifically in her direction for half the act, and didn't want to show it because getting too directly involved would prevent things from getting where they needed to go.
Not favorite: The secret treasure, a.k.a. that house-logo-shaped weapon and/or portal that John stuck his hand into. I have always loved how Homestuck can introduce a plot element, leave it somewhere in the background for years on end, and then bring it back into the main fold. It's been an extremely entertaining and very effective way of telling an intertwined story, especially one of Homestuck's complexity. The portal-house-weapon's effects retconned the image of John's arm, not only in that montage of arm-panels, but directly into the past scenes, and given how great Homestuck had been in the past with their story elements, just retconning in another plot thread and pushing it to a major position in a story already full of dozens of them just seems like cheating.
Also, in slightly pettier terms, I'd been working off of a primary image of how Homestuck's world works for a while, and managed to squeeze a measure of consistency out of its inner workings, but the portal-house-weapon immediately circumvents one of the few core rules of the setting, the time travel mechanic. That's petty largely because Homestuck has never been averse to defining some new elements of its universe because of or for the sake of a joke.
It did make for some entertaining scenes, but now the constant threat of "that thing you just saw never actually happened" is looming over the story. It was bad enough when Doc Scratch was doing it, and at least that guy was both established beforehand as unreliable and drawing from canonical-but-unimportant doomed timelines. Now I'm just concerned that John is going to go and redefine something important at the last second or something.
...In other news, I appear to have regained my sovereignty in the field of Typing A Whole Lot Of Words. Hooray! Maybe if I pull all of my walls of text together, I can build a mighty castle on my Incipisphere planet! Now, where did I put my towing cables?
Haven't known you for very long, but it sounds a lot like you, too.
Both those plot twists you mentioned took me completely off-guard. (I literally stared at my computer screen with my mouth hanging open for a full minute when Bec got prototyped.) As for Aranea's thing, I appreciated it a lot for the reasons you described, but more so perhaps because it advanced Vriska's character development. Vriska is probably my favorite character, partially because I kind of relate to the way she thinks (don't worry everybody, I don't kill people to feed my mom) and partially because she's grown so much as a character.
She hasn't changed a whole lot per se, but she's learned that she makes mistakes and is well on her way to recognizing them and eventually perhaps even to fixing them - actually fixing them, as opposed to being a jerk and blaming everyone else while claiming she's trying to help. As a person she's flawed and still unaware of a lot of the flaws, which I also appreciate (I know I'm unaware of the majority of my flaws). Seeing her ancestor making a mistake similar to her own helped Vriska grow a lot, and I love that about her. I certainly don't agree with most of her actions, but it's easy (for me) to understand how she thinks and why she thinks that way, and she displayed character development on an absolutely perfect level (in my arrogant opinion).
I understand your issue with the secret treasure and its effect on John. It threw me for a loop, and I'm still not sure whether or not I like it. (Although John ending up in Caliborn's "parody" made me laugh so hard I thought I was gonna suffocate.) But it seems to me that "all that stuff you just watched never really happened" has always sort of been in Homestuck. Take the doomed timeline where John went to fight his denizen too early, for instance. We got quite a bit of explanation on why that didn't happen, but then Vriska's duel with Jack (didn't) happen. I seriously thought Jack had killed Terezi and Karkat for a while, then suddenly, Just Kidding! She never even left the meteor. I guess I'm just saying it's not really new. I still don't know if I like it.
I don't think that John's sudden ability to time travel without consequences is supposed to make sense by the rules, though. I do agree with you that it would not be cool if he changed some things: for instance, what if he prevented SGrub from ever being invented? The whole thing would never even have happened.
I don't really know if I have a favorite plot twist. It's hard to choose, since the whole thing is, the way I see it, a gargantuan conglomeration of curling twists and turns and whatnot. There are just so darn many! But I guess Bec's prototyping was one of the best. Left me with a reaction akin to "Uh... Not good? Bad?"
Although I have to admit, I'm down with the Condescension taking over Alpha Earth. Which sounds so cold when I say it like that, but it took me totally by surprise. She's a bit stereotypical, but she is a great villain. I can't wait to see where her part in the story goes. I'm wondering if Karkat's blood is going to have something to do with it. (She is the same Empress from the time of the Signless, right?)
Anyway, not to change the subject so much as to gush, I'm just wondering what everybody ships? Personally, I was taken by surprise when I realized I ship Karkat and Terezi so hard it's not even funny. I've never shipped anything that hard before, not even Aragorn and Arwen. Especially since it's not exactly canon. So what does everyone else do?
Hehe... Can I borrow those towing cables when you're done?
Unfortunately, I don't have the best assessment of you yet, so I can't say how well your Rogue of Time title fits your personality. You do have another pretty awesome title, though! Especially if your "stealing" of time means that you'd be able to cut out the intermittent moments between actions. That's an incredibly useful power! By removing the transition time for motion, you can essentially teleport great distances in milliseconds, by removing waiting time, you can near-instantly complete a process that would otherwise take hours, and you could benefit your allies by shortening the charge times between their uses of super-powerful abilities. Of course, you wouldn't be able to do any of those on a game-breaking scale unless you hit God Tier, but even without it, that is a really great and versatile ability.
Yes, a fellow Vriska fan! To me, one of the best parts of the trolls' story is how central a few character interactions are to the entire process, and if it weren't for Vriska, the entire setting would have unfolded completely differently. Not only did she set off the cycles of spite and revenge that almost killed the whole session, she developed enough to realize how misguided those beginning actions were in the first place. I also love the character development stuff, most of what you already said. I think Vriska gets the best gradual development in the story. Most of the characters either experienced their development through building personality where there hadn't been a lot previously, or through reacting to specific and individual situations, but Vriska starts out as one person and ends up as someone completely different and more capable of handling themselves, largely through her own actions. That scene at the lip of the crater, where she has that speech about her own past life and her plans for her post-life? The best. Even though she starts getting uncertain about it later after Aranea breaks back into the waking world, I still love it.
I just wish the interplay with Terezi had gotten a proper resolution, though I suppose the lack of closure ties itself into Terezi's arc. Terezi never got to close out her own feud with Vriska before the latter died, and Terezi's still torn up about that, even though if she hadn't forced a resolution the way she did, Vriska would've fought Bec Noir and the rest of the trolls would've been wiped out. Yet, Terezi still struggled with the consequences of her decision, despite making the right one. I'm still not happy about her subsequent angst and shacking up with psycho-Gamzee, though. Just because it's a logical fallout from previous actions doesn't make it the best or most effective fallout, or in my opinion, it's not an entirely in-character one either. I know that despair can change people, and her choice to allow Aranea to restore her sight has given her regret at shedding what she formerly thought of as a symbol of her dead lusus and her former life that she hasn't yet worked through, but I sincerely doubt that the same troll who spent half of Hivebent laughing at the worst of situations, and remained upbeat even after her session had been blown to bits just prior to the moment of victory would spend the better part of a year soaking in juggalo juices because she made a couple of tough decisions.
While I'm on the subject of stuff that should/could have happened, I wish we'd have had some kind of character structure for Feferi. I mean, all we ever got was "she's the nice one, even though her unique caste means she doesn't have to be". Nice start, but it never really moved beyond that. All she did in the story was provide a springing point for Eridan and Sollux's arcs, and Eridan's arc got cut off after the Jack-attack left him in horrible crushing despair and he decided the best way out was to start killing everybody. Nothing really happened with Feferi; there were just too many characters around her squirming for attention, and we didn't see much outside of the main five trolls: Karkat, Terezi, Vriska, Kanaya, and Tavros. I guess Gamzee and Aradia could get honorary advancement, since they did technically develop, even though their developments consisted of having complete 180s for their personalities, and Sollux did get a little space to himself, but I wish Feferi'd at least gotten a framework of a personality like we'd gotten from the other non-central trolls. Heck, Nepeta proved you don't need to go all that far beyond framework to be entertaining. Nepeta's one of my favorites, and I was sad when the opportunity for her to have a spotlight moment post-moirail-death never came to be.
John ending up in Caliborn's parody was one of those entertaining scenes I mentioned. I'm not saying that it was all bad, I'm just not fond of the implications of the new powers. I mean, when Homestuck had its "this isn't really affecting the story" moments before, they were either obvious or revealed to be doomed timeline/jokes/PSYCHEs shortly after the fact. There was just never an undo button before, and I don't really enjoy the fact that there is one now. Even the Scratch had powerful consequences for future events, but if John mucks with space-time with his new house-powers, he'll be the only one who knows anything changed, if he even knows that there was a change at all. Yes, it's clear in-story that John's unstuck from reality, so it makes in-story sense that he doesn't have to follow the rules, but it's narratively problematic.
Wow, this turned into way more complaining than I thought it would. I suppose it could be considered the mark of a good fan to be able to tell where one's favorite stories could have been made even better, but I'm not going to commit to that statement, because it reeks of slippery-slope to me.
Yes, Betty Crocker is the same Condesce as the one that enslaved the Ψiioniic back in the Sufferer's day. Leader-class trolls apparently are nigh-on immortal until killed, or something like that. I was going to bring up a humorous little continuity error there by linking to Feferi's introduction page, where it said that Feferi was heir apparent because her blood was even more pure than that of the current empress, but I see Hussie's edited the page to replace it with a reference to Her Imperious Condescension. Pretty sneaky, Hussie. Dealing with continuity problems by wedging in later continuity. At least it's a more elegant solution to the problem than the one raised by Jane's "I feel so Caucasian!" The new page just seems forced now.
Well, I tend not to ship anything that's more than slightly canonical. Evidence takes all the fun out of it! My primary pairing for Homestuck is Eridan/Terezi, because those two psychopaths deserve each other, and I mean that in the best possible way.
An AU that a friend and I co-wrote contained the pairing as an ex-flushed relationship, but to be fair, we had Eridan in a lot of weird pairings there, and the AU was written to be deliberately preposterous. I can't even remember them all, since it was three years ago(and suddenly the passage of time smacks me right in the face), but I distinctly remember one of them involved Eridan self-identifying as Tavros and Vriska's auspistice, but neither of the other two knew about it. My friend was the only one who actually posted any of it online, and I've lost my files(I had a lot of ideas, but was too lazy at the time to actually adapt most of them, so this was bound to happen), so I don't know if any of the bits mentioning the Eridan/Terezi relationship are up anywhere. Or any of the bits that I was primary writer for, in fact. Well, Grocery Day, the founding stone of the AU, was something that I made the plot and basic outline for, but he adapted it, so about half of those jokes are his. It's been years, but I still feel inordinately proud of my joke-premise of the trolls' primary mode of transport being a bus that Nepeta unscrupulously bought on the Internet. The massive Walmart being patrolled by a specially trained platoon of pseudo-military order enforcers was all his idea, though. I think the original draft just had a handful of mall cops or something.
You know, I suddenly realized that if readers don't find the story funny, its entire premise is incredibly dumb. True, that's how it is for most comedies, but be warned that either the story behind that link might be kind of dumb or I've subjected myself to another wave of self-deprecation. Maybe both?
I don't know about lending you those cables; it looks like I'm going to be needing them again.
Ok, so I looked at the end of the last post and realized that I just paved the way for a horrendous pun. So... here goes...
Can I get some space from you, Outhra?
I apologize. I am so, so, so sorry. Really. What? This is my sorry face!
Okay, I really only had one other thing to say.
I'd heard that that page originally said "caucasian," but I'm not sure I believed it. On the topic of retroactive changes, does anyone know whether John's arm was originally in panels like
Ok, so I looked at the end of the last post and realized that I just paved the way for a horrendous pun. So... here goes...
Can I get some space from you, Outhra?
I apologize. I am so, so, so sorry. Really. What? This is my sorry face!
Okay, I really only had one other thing to say.
I'd heard that that page originally said "caucasian," but I'm not sure I believed it. On the topic of retroactive changes, does anyone know whether John's arm was originally in panels like
You mean like these? Because if so, yeah, that was a retcon. It's going to be mildly disappointing for me when I finally get around to rereading Homestuck from the beginning when I see those in the Flash animations. One of those was from [S] Wake, dang it! Why did [S] Wake need to be screwed around with? It was so great!
Oh, right, the pun. Let's see, according to social custom, I should insert the Sad Trombone here. There we go.
Though, to be fair, I can see why you'd be asking me for my space secrets. I can hold far more words per post than just that measly 840 that you had when you rain out of room! I fit 1,189 in my "I like my new mythological role" post on this very thread!(Microsoft Word counted the words, not me. I don't have that kind of patience.) However, I have no idea how I do it, as much as I would like to educate an heir for my twin fields of Self-Indulgence/Self-Deprecation and Writing Just So Many Words, Sweet Grob, Who Is Even Going To Read All Of These Words. Knowing how these things go, you will probably need to go on a several-chapter-long journey of self-discovery. I've got a few extra robots to spare if you need a wisecracking sidekick. I'll just have to put their vocal emitters back in.
Oh, no, the last one is probably going to be permanently down, if you mean whether there will be any more chapters of Road Trip. That was another one that was plotted and designed by me, and I've lost my notes and he's lost interest. It's a shame, too, because during the events that I remember from it alone, Tavros gets stuck in the middle of a trash island on a river, Feferi has a chance to drive the bus and sends it careening off of a bridge to avoid hitting a squirrel, and Eridan finds out that Terezi still keeps his gallbladder in a preservative tank back at her respiteblock. He had to have it surgically removed in a past story I wrote when I decided that the trolls should play havoc in a hospital. Terezi and Eridan's relationship was weird, as I've established.
Hey, then they're an even better set of powers, since they can facilitate personal growth! Just like my powers would, I suppose. I'd need to constantly fight off the urge to use my newfound near-omnipresence to go on some sort of crazy power trip. Never mind that any attempts that I would have to go on said power trip would be flawed to the point that they collapse in on themselves, because I am just the worst at leaving loose ends everywhere. Double personal growth!
I can do better than that in terms of Betty Crocker references. For a "make a commercial about a product" project in high school, two friends and I made a commercial about a Crockercorp product that was intended to help the character I played with... general tasks that were never elaborated on in any detail in the commercial itself, only to attack any humans nearby and turn them into drones. It was full of deliberate bad acting(and no costumes of any sort, and corny narration), and as a result is so embarrassing that I'm not going to post the link to it here. You can just imagine it. Unfortunately, I never got to add in the tagline: "Buy one now! Buy several now!" Pointlessly generic, check. Overwrought, check. Sounds like it was made at the last possible second, check. Commercial gold.
I cried when Kanaya died the first time. Not a lot, but I was sad all day. This is back before we had the ghosts and rainbow drinkers and B2 sprites and the half-dozen other ways to bring people back, so it looked like she was gone forever.
Hey, Vriska's a main character! Even if she doesn't end up striking any decisive final blows like she wanted to at the start of her arc, she's definitely going to do something significant in the last stretch of the story. She wouldn't let herself not be important.
No, you're fine to not worry. Jade is almost certainly going to be around in some form or another later. They had to cure her of her reality-warping rampage syndrome somehow, and two hundred tons of tower makes for a pretty good suppressant. As we've seen, not only did it cure her grimbark craziness, she's already found Calliope in the afterlife, and something's got to come of that.
We saw a dead alt-Feferi! Does that count as coming back? Wow, all of these points are in just the wrongest of orders. This is what happens when I reply to two posts at once.
Let's see here... according to the MSPA wiki's character list, it looks like, if we assume Wayward Vagabond was actually dead when alt-Feferi revived him and not just mostly dead, the only characters with any standing in the plot to have never died were Spades Slick, Terezi(her dream self died, but that doesn't really count as much), and the Peregrine Mendicant. There were some robots and other related inorganic entities there as well, but I excluded them for the sake of convenience, since they can usually be rebuilt or transferred into a new chassis after their destruction.
Drat, everything being out of order means there's no best opportunity to end this post. I'll just close this out with a link to Car Cat. Beep beep, meow!
The html to make a link appears to have randomly been replaced with the html to abruptly cut oneself off. Of course there's html for that. Makes perfect sense.
Anyway, time management, like I said. Took me about ten minutes to figure that poppycock out. Then my browser crashed. I was just trying to link to a panel from Act Two that had John's arm in it. Anyway... yeah.
The pun... I have brought everlasting shame on my entire family.
I may do that. The journey of self-discovery thing. And I shall make a note of your gracious offer to lend me a wisecracking robot. Though... perhaps you could leave the vocal emitters off?
I guess the dead Alt-Feferi counts. I was so engaged in the text that I missed the actual picture the first time I passed that. Oops. But yeah... I was kind of going overboard when I counted characters who died. I counted dream selves, and the doomed timelines we got to see - basically any time a mortal wound was dealt to any version of a character (including robots). If I counted correctly, Aradia is in first place, followed by Dave, then John (mainly because I was counting all the times Meenah stabbed him awake). But you're right, Spades Slick and PM never did die, did they? Still, the point remains. Death is not permanent. If for some reason it is, it has very little to do with a character's continued effect on the story.
Aren't gallbladders important?
Strange memorabilia. Sounds like something Terezi would do.
Beep, beep, meow! Yeah, Car Cat. And I'm just going to abruptly end this here, as it is past my bedtime anyway. Once again, please accept my sincerest apologies. Good night!
Yes, to borrow Roxy's words: The Robin Hood of Time! Pretty sure it doesn't get cooler than that. At least for me. Those are some pretty cool powers. Sounds like the sort of thing designed to challenge me, though, as I'm terrible with time management.
That speech was pretty cool. But yeah, I know what you mean. She's very 3-dimensional as a character. Actually, I've met a couple of people now who refer to her as "the spiderb*tch" and it makes me so mad! Yeah, she wasn't the greatest person ever and did a lot of bad things, but you can't just slap the word b*tch on it and leave it at that! There's so much more to her than that. And like you said, her character development is probably the best, so gradual we hardly notice it. I kinda hope she gets to have another chance at affecting the story, but I won't be too upset if she doesn't, because she's influenced so much of it already.
I was kind of left wanting more about her relationship with Terezi too. Which is unusual; generally a decisive stab makes for pretty good closure. I suppose that was what was used to facilitate her spending the better part of a year soaking in juggalo juices. But I'll try to reserve judgement until her arc is over. At the moment, I'm just a little more concerned about her continued survival... Although I don't suppose it should bug me. After all, I think the only character who has died and not come back (yet?) is Doc Scratch. (Is it bad of me to admit that I'm actually not all that worried about Jade being dead?)
I read the bit where Terezi killed Vriska right before going to bed and then cried myself to sleep. I haven't done that since I read Martin the Warrior, which was when I was twelve. It really struck me that I could completely support Terezi in her actions and yet still be incredibly sad that Vriska died.
Yeh... Feferi. I like her, but I think it might be primarily because she's just that girl everybody likes. I do think more could have been done with her, but all we really get besides some initial exposition is her breaking up with Eridan and then being friends with Sollux. We haven't really seen her since she died, too, so I'm wondering if she'll come back or not. Unfortunately probably not.
Nepeta's awesome. She looks like that cute little girl who is so sweet and just loves cute little puppies and kitty cats, but bear in mind that she is one of three characters to have successfully landed a blow on Gamzee, and the only one to do it while he was sober/otherwise in possession of his mental faculties. It was really very awesome, but I expect the fight just didn't last much longer after that.
I found a box of Betty Crocker food coloring in one of my church's cupboards yesterday. Holding the cupboard door open, I turned to the person closest to me and asked, "Why are we supporting the Batterwich?"
She kinda looked at me funny and said, "What?"
"Nothing," I said, and then I closed the cupboard door.
... Yeah, I'm probably the only one who finds that funny.
That story... was actually incredibly funny. The basic concept is ridiculous, but hey, I've seen stupider. The bus was actually pretty funny. I read the whole series and I'm currently wondering how it still runs. (Given the premise of the last one, that will probably change soon.) But... yeah. My AU "parody" idea was to get a bunch of the characters stuck in a hotel room with three laptops and a sticky note that says "Don't read the fanfic." As I was "plotting" this out in my head, I realized that it would degrade into a cacophony of Karkat swearing up a storm within the first four pages and there were only so many times I could dredge humor out of Terezi licking fan art. So I dropped it, because I don't think I would read that. But things like that always seem worse to the writer, y'know? I liked your idea.
As for Eridan's romances in the story, the only one I noticed was the one where he decided to be Tavros and Vriska's auspistice. Which was... weird. (Although I am perfectly capable of subconsciously blinding myself to romance I don't like, so there might have been other things going on I didn't notice.) Is there a good way for people to be psychopaths?
Oh, wait... Heh, I can't believe I just typed that.
And I'm feeling the urge once again to add loosely related self-indulgent comments. You can probably skip this bit if you want. So I got my brother into Homestuck. I actually got to say, "Let me tell you about Homestuck." It was awesome. Actually, no, it was stupid. But it was also fun.
Hang on, I appear to have run out of space.
... I'm basically Professor X, it would seem.
Basically, I'm one of the Galadhrim.
Or something like that.
Hoo hoo.
Without the non-canon classes and aspects, you might get a different result with this version, and then we won't have an uncanonical class in here maybe you would be able to fill in one of the slots we're missing. We have three Light players now, since Neshomeh's been confirmed as Heir of Light. Hey, leave some luck for everybody else, guys!
Since firemagic already called Maid of Light, I'll go with Page of Light. God help us all if I ever realize the full potential of my aspect... but I probably won't. Too much procrastination, too much distraction, not enough ambition. I'll just stick to muddling through my projects as slowly as possible and editing the wiki for obscure little details that nobody else really cares about. {= )
~Neshomeh
At least, if it isn't it's one of those classes like the Rogue, where there can be a player outside the standard, but the class usually leans to one over the other. Then again, Word of Hussie recently stated that there can be a female Prince, so the gender restrictions might be a little more flexible than current impressions would suggest.
To find out for sure, have some mythological role tests! Neither of them are perfect, because that first one has a lot of psychological quizzes you need to do before you can determine your results and the test skips over the confirmed male/female restrictions(then again, the only confirmation came from Calliope, who might not have all the answers), and the second is not canon-compliant. I wouldn't have even posted the second one, but it's the most well-known test in the fandom, and I think most of the others here got their mythological roles from it. I tested on it myself at first, but I'm going to run through the canon-compliant one soon, because the other one said I was Knight of "Keys". Never mind that it's one of the aspects that a friend and I fan-expanded to full size a while back, not only is a fan-expansion not really a basis for much, but a Knight of Keys would be practically worthless.
Once I run through the other tests sometime later tonight, I'll post my updated results back on this thread. Also, since there doesn't seem to be as much discussion of the comic as I thought there would be, I'll try to start discussing something at the same time. I almost guarantee that fangushing will be imminent.
I believe that's also male-only, but my highest Ne/Ni Se/Si score was Si at 75% (the others were Ne 40%, Ni 55%, and Se 25%; no contest), and the other options in that bracket are Bard and, interestingly, my original choice of Page. Unless Bards can be girls, I don't have a female Class option according to this test, so there ya go.
For the record, I'm clearly an analytical intelligence with a score of 90. My creative and practical scores were nearly tied at 71 and 70.
Here's the handy link to my Light Aspect result.
~Neshomeh, definitely not a Bard.
Hooray! We have twelve players! Oddly enough, we only have seven aspects filled. I was expecting to at least see a Hope or Blood player by now.
There are a lot of situations where a real person is not going to follow the rules of a fictional world. A guy could be a Witch or Maid, if that was the class that fit. A woman could be a Page or...other male-only class. Point is, it works in the fictional world because it is written to work. Real people are even more complicated that Homestuck, strange as that is to say.
-Phobos
I think your interpretation is a little off. It isn't "one who guides themselves with nothing/lack of knowledge". Instead, I would think about it aa "one who guides themselves with knowledge of things that are hidden or that don't exist."
You would probably be able to read the book that Gamzee redacted with Equius' blood (using his inherent Void powers). You could probably find Callie pretty easily. You function very much like an Heir of Light (something called a Secondary/Complementary Role). You intrinsically change what is known by knowing that which is hidden.
That seems very useful, indeed.
-Phobos, Homestuck Theorist
Incidentally, the primary reason I haven't been around is Homestuck. Read the entire thing, then started again at the beginning, drew fan art, scouted out the internet communities related to it, wrote fanfic, drew fan art, scouted out the fanfic for it, drew fan art, looked at fan art, checked out fan vids, made a study of Rose's clothing for possible cosplaying, drew fan art, got a friend into it. Drew fan art.
Anyway, I got a Spark of Time by a test, but the first time I took it I tied for something, but didn't remember what. Took the test again and got a Rouge of Time. I'm not sure what exactly I would do, but hey, it sounds cool. It sounds like we have most of the players we'd need for a viable session.
And I've felt the need to throw this out there ever since I thought of it: When the kids first got in the game, the whole goal was to beat the game, maybe defeat the denizens. Then the black king and queen raised the scene, then Jack made his appearance. For a while I was wondering if Doc Scratch was going to turn out to be the demon mentioned in one of Sollux's viruses. Then Lord English and the Condese showed up. This whole thing keeps on getting bigger and bigger, and it seems at the moment that Lord English is going to be the "final boss" so to speak. But there seems to be something similar to the Ironic Overpower and the Narrative Laws of Comedy at work in the Homestuck continuum, and at one point Vriska went on at length about how Lord English was definitely the final boss. Personally, I'm expecting a sudden twist in which he is in fact working for or being manipulated by someone else.
I think it's probably Gamzee.
Homestuck has made a shipper out of me. Here's a cool song about Rose while she was fighting Jack Noir. :)
That means you'd steal time (both in the metaphorical and literal sense) from the enemy to benefit your team. Before God-Tier, I think that you'd be able to "steal" time through actions that somehow delay the Reckoning or hinder assassination attempts made by enemies on key targets that are fated to fall (the White King comes to mind). Post God-Tier, you'd be able to make time behave in ways that hinder enemies and boost allies: create slow-time fields around monsters and make your allies move like the Flash, for example. Maybe you could freeze time entirely if you were skilled enough, essentially robbing an entire area of Time itself...
Speaking of final bosses, I've also got my own crackpot theory on how Dave will be able to harm Lord English: if Calliope is a key element in his defeat, then she needs to be brought back to the waking world. One way to do that is by using the Ring of Life, but it's already in someone else's hands at the moment.
The other way is to change the past.
Every session of Sburb must have a Time player and a Space player. If there's a Time player, then they must have a planet. If they have a planet, then logically there must also be a Scratch construct on it as well...
I'm calling it right now: Dave will somehow venture into the Cherub session and set off a Scratch so that he creates a timeline where Calliope dominates Caliborn. That way, Calliope will be able to be brought back to B2 and ready to fight Lord English.
That's a good theory. It makes a lot of sense, actually. I'll be very impressed if that's what actually happens. But I expect it will be something nobody will see coming.
Sounds like my racket's really cool! As for yours, it sounds like your power might be something to the effect of someone who doesn't need to be told things or has some sort of instinct. Which sounds ridiculously overpowered, but hey, it would make me overconfident. (I don't really know, though, I'm not an expert on these things.) Or you could be a Space player if you want, since we don't seem to have one. (I could probably also be a Space player, but it looks like we don't have another Time player either, so...)
Were you thinking of having an RP if we could do a session? That'd be fun.
The class and aspect combination that I usually get is Thief of Mind. Depending on the test I might get Bard, but it is usually Thief.
What would that be like? One who steals the choices and memories of others, to use for their own use? That could be fun.
-Phobos
I can see a Thief of Mind acting as a saboteur/assassin, actively denying enemy movements or sowing confusion among their ranks. They wouldn't seem to be very useful in a direct battle-- Thieves are stereotypically more renowned for their cunning-- but they'd be able to support their teams by killing high ranking Mooks (denial of decision), manipulating the environment, local infrastructure or material resources to force a specific outcome (denial of choice), and destroying information pertaining to their team or important events (denial of memories).
A Bard of Mind "allows the destruction of [choices/thoughts]" or "invites destruction through [choices/thoughts]". It seems to me that they're a classpect specifically designed to sow chaos in the session.
As an avid player of Diplomacy and a trap-centric D&D GM, I can tell you that I am often sewing chaos among my enemies and getting people to make their own decisions, which somehow benefit my ends.
Sounds more like I am leaning toward Bard, honestly.
-Phobos
Was obsessed with this and then got my computer taken, so I lost my place. Will start back up tonight
THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME
One of the most joyous occasions. I spent a good portion of it re-watching a bunch of the flashes. I nearly forgot how fantastic Homestuck's music is.
I'm a Mage of Heart, which basically translates into the manipulation of feelings and motivations. I'm not quite sure what to make of that, really.
...to see that she's really in touch with emotions-- be it hers or others'. If I recall correctly, she drew shipping charts and was hailed as a skilled matchmaker.
On a more practical basis, one can also interpret Heart as "Soul". Being guided by/manipulating Soul is actually a very dangerous power, since you'd have a working knowledge of what makes other people tick and all the ways to manipulate them. As a Mage, you have a full understanding of the intricacies of your aspect, allowing you to utilize it to its fullest potential. On the other hand, some fan theorists believe that Mages tend to suffer the negatives of their aspect. For example, consider Sollux and his repeated deaths (Doom) and Meulin and her tormented romantic life (Heart). Personally, I don't buy it: the population sample is much too small to generalize.
The title that I use most often is Maid of Light - one who protects or utilizes knowledge (which is, IIRC, one of the valid non-luck ways to see Light.)
Whereas you can provide good fortune and wisdom to the team, I... don't do much? I won't lie to you, getting the most obscure classpect sucks. The best I can do is-- if somehow informed of the B1 megacancer and the dream self starting on Derse-- try to get the pick on Jack Noir before he can do too much damage to the session. The dream self will most likely die in the process, but it's a good trade in the long run: the main form of the Cancer will have been neutralized.
Afterwards, it's a matter of completing the planet quest as fast as possible, not being a chicken and God-Tiering when appropriate, and level grinding before the Reckoning.
Hussie has started a new webcomic: http://www.paradoxspace.com/you-have-a-feeling-it-s-going-to-be-a-long-day/1
Read his comment near the bottom to learn what it's going to be about (i'll give you a hint: its awesome)
also my title is Maid of Heart
I really like the fact that Hussie is going the extra distance for his fans. It really shows how much he cares for the community. I'll be sure to keep my eye on this thing...
Ah, a Heart player! With your classpect, our session's mental health is in good hands. We can move forward without having to fear one player succumbing to Grimdarkness.
As I recall correctly, Outhra is a Knight of Mind and Snowy is a non-canon class Time player (though in the event the Heir class is not male-exclusive, it would be the closest canonical analogue). We just need a real Space player and we can start the end of the world get this show on the road.
On the plus side, we have a Space player now! And practically speaking, I think my new title fits my personality better than my old one.
Let's see, list of players so far... We've actually got a lot more repeated aspects and classes than a viable session would have, and I was going to break this into multiple groups to keep from having redundancy, but the only arrangement I could find would leave SeaTurtle separate from the main body, due in part to IntelligentAirhead's title making this arrangement very difficult, and that wouldn't be fair, since he started the idea.
Session:
SeaTurtle, Mage of Void
Outhra, Seer of Space
Snowy the Sane Fangirl, Rogue of Time
wobblestheclown, Knight of Life
Phobos, Bard of Mind
123bugsy, Maid of Heart
Lily Winterwood, Monk(non-canon title) of Light
IntelligentAirhead, Mage of Heart
Elcalion, Seer of Mind
firemagic, Maid of Light
Other:
Neshomeh: Unconfirmed "something or other" of Light
I'm pretty sure someone has been left out, since I rearranged this list about three times when I was still trying to make two sessions out of it. Feel free to indignantly storm in and sticky-note your name to the list, hypothetical Boarder.
Agent Linda
Home continuum: Pokémon (anime)
Age: 18
Birthday: March 6th
Department: DF
Leagues: Sinnoh (was not in any of the tops in the Lily of the Valley Conference), Johto (top 48 in the Silver Conference), and was unable to compete in the Kalos Conference (joining the PPC being the reason) but did get all eight badges
(Note: did not compete alongside Ash Ketchum, they competed after him)
Personality: Linda is an energetic, social, and bold young lady with a love of adventure and discovery. She tends to forget her own strength, so she can give pretty hard high-fives and back slaps unintentionally. She loves to be around people and hates to judge new people when she first meets them, this leads her to being a very easy person to get along with. It also leads her into being a bit gullible and though she has a strong moral compass, like she wouldn’t smoke just because everyone around her is smoking, she tends to give in to peer pressure, like if everyone says that a certain movie is terrible she will then agree with that popular opinion.
Instating facts:
She loves to draw, so it’s not uncommon to see her doodling in her sketch book form time to time
Her preferred Bleeprin product is Bleepnerds
Linda loves to skateboard
She’s a lot better cook then her bother
Backstory: Linda and Dean were just your average Pokémon trainers, until they got sucked into a plothole. Lucky for them they were sucked straight into the PPC. After some explaining, Linda was instantly hooked on the idea of joining the PPC and became an agent alongside her bother.
Skills: Linda is an expert when it comes to parings (shipping) she even has an art book dedicated to keeping track of not only her OTPs but her brothers, canon parings, popular fan parings, and popular crack parings. Linda has an extraordinary amount of patience, gained from her helping/dealing with her younger cousins. She prefers hand-to-hand combat over long-ranged (mostly due to being a very bad shot) but after receiving a battlespork of zillywut, she has been learning how to wield it properly.
Agent Dean
Home continuum: Pokémon (anime)
Age: 20
Birthday: Dec. 29th
Department: DF
Leagues: Hoenn (top 20 in the Ever Grande Conference), Sinnoh (winner of the Lily of the Valley Conference, also hall of famer), Johto (top 14 in the Silver Conference), and was unable to compete in the Kalos Conference (joining the PPC being the reason) but did get all eight badges
(Note: did not compete alongside Ash Ketchum, competed after him)
Personality: On the outside, Dean is a kind, relaxed, and intelligent person but is seems to be very quiet and prefers to be either alone or with Linda. If you able to get through to his inner self you would find a talkative, adorkable, prankster with a lot more energy than you would expect when you first meet him. He is also a major gossiper so be careful with special information when you see him close by (though don’t expect him to give up any of this special information, at least without buttering him up a little). Sometimes when he gets extremely focused on something, he forgets everything else around him, Linda at times has to get him get going or else he would completely lose track of time.
Instating facts:
Dean can be seen writing in his notebook (his new infinite notebook to be precise) a lot, mostly random ideas he has at the time (and sometimes things he hears while listening on/to others)
His preferred Bleeprin product is NM&NMs
He enjoys sewing and is very good at it
He also good at the guitar
Backstory: Dean and Linda were just your average Pokémon trainers, until they got sucked into a plothole. Lucky for them they were sucked straight into the PPC. After some explaining, Linda was instantly hooked on the idea of joining the PPC, Dean on the other hand was very unsure (to say the least). After some taught he joined with his sister as his partner.
Skills: He is a little far sighted and there for needs glasses, this is not a huge set back as he mostly just needs them for reading. Dean’s preference in combat is his whip, his father was in the tamer class so was able to teach him how to properly use one, and since joining the PPC he has obtained a different one with a metal spike for a tip. He also owns a mega pin which he wears on his hat.
Extra info:
Pokémon Trainer*
The tamer class (http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Tamer(Trainerclass))
Just to clarify, Linda may still get a mega item of some kind. I was planning on finding a Mary sue fic in which she has a mega item and taking that one for Linda (hey, it’s not like that sue will be using it any time after that) but that won’t be for a while. Dean still got a mega item because I thought it would be odd for a hall of famer to not at least be offered one.
As usually tell me what needs fixing and/or what needs to be added and I’ll fix it as soon as I can. :)
Nickname-gender-Pokemon-type(s)
Mega: Yes/No
Teams: Dean
Hoenn:
Sugar- female- Blaziken- Fire/Fighting
Mega: no
Enoch- male- Ludicolo- Water/Grass
Zacharie- male- Sableye- Dark/Ghost
Elsen- female- Manectric- Electric
Mega: No
Queen- female- Grumpig- Psychic
Batter- male- Salamence- Dragon/Flying
Sinnoh:
Mikasa- female- Empoleon- Water/Steel
Armin- male- Alakazam- Psychic
Mega: yes
Annie- female- Garchomp- Dragon/Ground
Mega: yes
Eren- male- Houndoom- Dark/Fire
Mega: yes
Carnivine- Grass
Sasha- female- Froslass- Ice/Ghost
Johto:
Harry- male- Typhlosion- Fire
James- male- Victreebel- Grass/Poison
Heather- female- Ampharos- Electric
Mega: yes
Cybil- female- Sandslash- Ground
Angela- female- Poliwrath- Water/Fighting
Vincent- male- Xatu- Psychic/Flying
Kalos:
Kaernk- female- Greninja- Water/Dark
Alexander- male- Talonflame- Fire/Flying
Daniel- male- Meowstic- Psychic
Justine- female- Mawile- Steel/Fairy
Mega: yes
Grunt- male- Tyrantrum- Rock/Dragon
Edwin- male- Trevenant- Ghost/Grass
Teams: Linda
Sinnoh:
Tavros- male- Torterra- Grass/Ground
Nepeta- female- Luxray- Electric
Eridan- male- Floatzel- Water
Kanaya- female- Gardevoir- Psychic (/Fairy)
Mega: yes
Aradia- female- Toxicroak- Poison/Fighting
Karkat- male- Absol- Dark
Mega: yes
Johto:
John- male- Feraligatr- Water
Dave- male- Noctowl- Normal/Flying
Serenity- female- Ledian- Bug/Flying
Jade- female- Golem- Rock/Ground
Rose- female- Ninetales- Fire
Hussie- male- Electrode- Electric
Kalos:
Roxy- female- Delphox- Fire/Psychic
Dirk- male- Lucario- Fighting/Steel
Mega: yes
Halley- female- Sylveon- Fairy
Jane- female- Lapras- Water/Ice
Jake- male- Goodra- Dragon
Pumpkin- male- Gourgeist- Ghost/Grass
Extra info:
The reason Sugar and Elsen can’t mega evolve is because tough I got the event Torchic I traded it to Candy for safe keeping when I was organizing my game files (aka deleting save files) but I have yet to get it back so I don’t count as actually having that mega stone. Dean’s game file is in Y and you cannot obtain the mega stone for Manectric in that game so I also don’t’ count it that one either. Also if people would like to borrow them for mission in the Pokémon continuum you just have to ask. The reason I’m offering this is because since Linda and Dean come from the anime continuum, which seems to allow the ability to let others borrow Pokémon without needing to trade them. Plus I think it would be useful option to have there. Also when Linda needs to mega evolve her Pokemon she just borrows Dean's mega pin, but if Dean has any mega Pokemon at that moment but still gives her the pin the Pokemon will devolve and vice-versa. Both can also only have one mega Pokemon out at a time.
As usually tell me what needs fixing and/or what needs to be added and I’ll fix it as soon as I can. :)
to quote my sister:
"My little sister was watching Ouran Highschool Host Club, and then she suddenly actually got a nose bleed when Kyoya came on screen… She couldn’t stop laughing LOL"
To quote me:
"OMG! really? Is she ok, at least? Also thats just plain cute :3"
And to quote her again:
"Pfft yeah she’s fine. It’s just funny, she was like, “Does this mean I’m a perverted anime character now?” and we were both laughing. It was just seriously timed just right, like wow XD"
yeah, just a funny thing that happened yesterday :)
