me personally in regards to the question of “how could SBURB be so cruel doesnt it want people to succeed” is that nowhere in canon has the alpha timeline nor sburb as a game ever stated to be sentient or indeed anything more than a humble programmed disc. noras it ever been stated that it wants players to suceed or fail

its cold and calculating because its just a machine, it doesnt think. the programming just. generates a game based on the players. why else all the stuff about death? why else would dave get a planet secifically created it would seem to traumatize him? because the function of the game is personal growth and it throws the solution to your life problems at you like straightforwardly dunking you right into a pool to teach you how to swim. i mean. sburb never tells u or promises u anything good or bad it just auto generates an environment and npcs to play a game based on your psyche. thats all its ever been called is a game. why else would it be clearly stated that most sesions straight up fail. heck even the canon sessions had unkillable glitches dooming then and they all techically failed in some way. why would it let LE exist at all in the first place? who does that benefit other than LE?

the only aswer to me is that it doesnt let anything happen or not happen. it just is

and when you look at what it actually is from a programming point of view, everything really does make sense and is easily explained by core programming and computer functions

i dont think its really a stretch to view sburb as just a mindless programing pumping out commands as the game is played. and eerything else in homestuck is played straight when it comes to parts of realities being mere game constructs

i think its a far greater stretch to assume that the sburb game has any kind of sentience, even moreso a benevolent one when not a single line in canon suggests this and far more comments by hussie suggest that it really is just a game

YES

and that’s why breaking out of the game’s shitty “character arcs” was healthy and a victory. These kids don’t need to be ~their best self~ at 16, definitely not because the game chopped off everything else they could be. If they can brute force circumvent some challenges thrown at them (looking at you Terezi’s pre-retcon character arc) and get a better life out of it, THEY ARE ONLY RIGHT TO. The game doesn’t know better for them. The game has no moral right to decide for them. It’s just a fucking shitty game they got caught up in, and their objective is to win ONLY because that’s also the way to get out of it.

Now, granted, the writing of post-retcon was super rushed and how the fuck did Terezi end up in ANOTHER abusive relationship instead, but oh well

well I wouldn’t go quite this far, i feel this might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater a bit

obviously sburb’s methods won’t work perfectly for everyone, but it has the right idea of how to do things right, like what it tried to do for Dave was in fact what he later ended up doing on his own at his own pace on the meteor anyway, just the execution from the game’s side was lacking the necessary human subtlety that a machine just cant provide, but it doesn’t mean the whole thing was wrong and should be thrown away and discarded as if it had no value or was totally detrimental

the game does let you go through it at your own pace afterall, and its not like your stuck on your own planet once you get in the medium, the gates do exist

but i do agree at the end, the land quests and the god tiering process is better off being driven and motivated from a human side of things, (and I think there is where the spriteguides are supposed to come in? being the only game construct able to also provide a human perspective if prototyped right) sburb just kinda presents all the tools you need to do things and your meant to pick them up and use them how you please, sburb wont be like, angry if you decide not to god tier or not do your planet quest or confront your denizen or all that

like it can generate you a glass of water but it cant make you drink kinda thing and it wont care or do anything after that water has been generated

its not ALL bad and intentionally antagonistic is what im trying to say, it can be good and useful to do everything the way SBURB presents it, it just depends on the person

"it's not so bad," you say about the game that gets children's guardians killed because they need to learn how to be tough on their own

(in a softer version of the post-retcon, Jane's dad was just kidnapped instead. I bet it's because she was 16 and not 13 and didn't depend on him that much anyway - and she still got emotionally wrecked by that)

oh and also the part where your whole planet is destroyed, along with everyone you have ever known. ever played with neighbourhood kids? they were obliterated by your meteor. have fond memories of your classmates? yeah they are dead too. any extended family? from the side of the people who had adopted your parents? lol yeah no protection for them either

and then of course it throws its players into mind-breaking kill-or-be-killed situations, scares them out of their wits and demands that they step up and work towards winning.

"I jumped out of the way of a burning fucking tree" - Rose, after also having acquired the memories of a four-month drunken countdown to her own death

On the global scale, Sburb is morally neutral. It's a universe reproduction system, it's not sentient, it's not meant to be kind to the individual cells.

And it's not. From the point of view of an individual stuck in it, Sburb is cruel and merciless and absurd. It does not have the capacity to be compassionate or kind. It does not take care of its players, 13 year old children forced into a life or death situation.

Most sessions fail.

You make many good points here, but - for one, Jade's transformation into part-dog followed her own desires and values, in parallel to Kanaya's transformation into a rainbow drinker. The conjecture that a dog is a lower being that will bar her from ascension is purely spectulation on your part, we've seen no evidence of that in-story. For all that Hussie makes use of gnostic mythos, he's not following it verbatim.

And I don't see how you are drawing parallel between Bec and John re: ectobiological creation in one way and not another. Even if Bec were alchemized with the Green Sun itself (which he wasn't), would killing Jane also kill John? Or even erasing Jane from existence? John is his own whole separate being, he does not depend on her. Why doesn't the same apply to First Guardians?

this is the best metaphor for arguing i have seen in forever

Blooky did, at the end ^^

But Chara has their own defined personality. They are not the same as the player - who is free to choose the pacifist run. Chara is specifically the mass murderer - this is the aspect of their character acknowledged by the true pacifist run, in which the player is DEFINITELY not like them.

I'd say the player is the outside force that mediates the conflict between Frisk's and Chara's personalities, deciding who gets a say as they progress through the game - Frisk's canon personality being that of a true pacifist run, and Chara's being that of a murder run, and anything in-between being a compromise in their conflict.

I have not seen the full murder run yet, so I might be missing some info, but I did it up until meeting Undyne, and the game explicitly goes out of its way to define THIS as Chara, as opposed to Flowey just -mistakenly- calling Frisk that in the true pacifist run (and I think nothing of the sort coming up in the neutral run?)

lilietsblog replied to your post “twitch-lawliet replied to your post “whoah, now that you mentioned…”

Because first guardians are a creation specific to the green sun/paradox space, whereas as far as we’ve seen so far, SBURB is its own entity that can exist independently from anything that happens in the story of Homestuck

It’s a fully functioning game and a system with it’s own rules that are a broken a lot in Homestuck, and also Homestuck has its own stuff going on that changes the way SBURB is played that’s only relevant to the characters in Homestuck, first guardians being one of those.

I want to take the pieces of SBURB, untangle them from Homestuck’s plot and see what the fully functioning system looks like when it runs independently or on its own, away from any influence changing how it runs on its vanilla system so to speak

and I want to do that because reasons and SBURB is interesting to me lol :p

gotcha

i just really disagree on how much 'overall sburb' would be disconnected from the events of homestuck? it's sorta like... alternia no-sgrub aus, except alternia itself with its social order was made what it is because of sburb and unless you specifically replace that influence what you should get without sgrub is beforus? but people just go 'fuck it' and take alternia as is and ignore logic because it's just more fun

there are no first-guardian-less sburb instances that we know of just like there's no sgrub-less alternia in the homestuck multiverse and it's okay if you make them up but that's... not... canon?

in canon, yes, the kids played part in setting up the very setting that sburb offers for all sessions there ever were. yes theirs is a very unusual session, sburb-wide unusual

pretending it's all confined to a 'local' group of universes and there is sburb beyond that seems both disingenious and kinda... belittling of the plot, to me? yes it's grand, it's that grand. i don't particularly subscribe to bkew's green sun theory (as in, i actually think it's bullshit at this point and the theory doesn't have a leg to stand on this close to the ending) but the entirety of paradox space being created/destroyed as part of the plot? the entirety of the multiverse governed by sburb? that doesn't sound implausible to me

artificially separating sburb as a game from green sun and first guardians just sounds really fanon to me. not canon. we don't have a canon confirmation that it's possible for a planet with intelligent life destined to play sburb to NOT have a first guardian. we don't have a canon confirmation that there are universes not affected by green sun and i think occam's razor and taking canon at face value thus dictates there aren't any

idk if you are coming up with your own alternate sburb that doesn't have green sun and first guardians and whatever i'm not going to stop you but don't say it's canon because it's not

the choice of the martyr that alt!callie most likely choose was in part to “give up ambition (i think that’s what it said) and accept death (100% sure this part is accurate)” meaning that yes, alt!callie is dead, and yes, alt!callie is from a doomed timeline

right, but Caliborn’s choice as the conqueror meant he would go out and conquer, as he does as LE, meaning it would take a while for him to do that yknow? its not like and insta thing that he becomes, more like a promise of something he will do

I was wondering if Calliope was the same way, part of the choice was to accept death, but does that mean she died yet? or that she will die? Is the choice also like a promise to live out life a certain way? as in she made her choice, she will accept death, but just hasn’t quite yet. The same way that Caliborn chose the conqueror and thus solidly promises to live his life as the conqueror, not he just becomes a conqueror yknow what im getting at?

That seams a more apt thing for a denizen to do, to give you a Choice, and then once you choose you go out and do the thing, the Denizen doesn’t make you, that’s the whole point of calling it Your Choice

well we only see caliborn conquering when he is LE, but in the vines the representation of future-not-quite-LE!caliborn was kinda dominating on the alpha kids in the fight. And this would essentially be the dude who got his ass handed to him faster than a dude on butler island by John Egbert. You can argue that john con swole as much as you want but the fact remains if he was THAT strong he could probably take condy by himself. However we don’t know for sure and it could be that she and he are promising to do the thing later in their life, but it doesn’t feel that way to me, just personally.

true, and then someone else also mentioned Typheus boiling John that one time like it was no problm

idk I just feel like the Martyr choice should be a bit more special or dramatic, like a personal chosen sacrifice done on your own terms for something solid, rather than a vague, dying now will allow you do to a thing later maybe, i get thats the more passive option and more fitting, but i feel like more personal agency should be put into something like that. like the effect would be stronger if she knew exactly what she would be sacrificing herself for, instead of just trusting the denizen that your death will be cool for the universe, promise

more personal feelings than anything i guess tho lol

i just feel like the Martyr choice not being shitty would go against the themes of homestuck and what we know about the cherubs (alt!callie didn't predominate properly either)

i’m guessing alt timeline calliope speaks in red for the same reason caliborn speaks in green: because she defeated him and stole his colour as a sign of her own power (whether this bodes well or not is really up in the air)

#everyone and their mother caught this so yeah lol#def a sign that predomination for either of them isnt meant to be how things go down#this calliope is probably stunted in similar ways to how calibon was#ur not supposed to just cut out the bad parts of yourself!#your meant to integrate and accept them and direct their energy towards something constructive

yessss exactly what i was just going to write!

lilietsblog replied to your post:also totally forgot, wanted to make a note on…

This isn’t an issue because in both myths however you spin it, Abraxas and Sophia (or in homestuck’s case Echidna who is a mix of Echidna and Sophia) are greater and more powerful than Yaldabaoth, Yalda only falsely believes he is superior either out of malevolence or ignorance, he’s a flawed creature by nature (which makes him being Caliborn’s denizen very fitting)

so anything Yalda can do, Abraxas and Sophia/Echidna can do better

they can give the same conqueror or martyr choice that Yalda does to their players if they so choose effortlessly, so any form of Callie either Alt or Not, doesnt need Yalda to be a Martyr

but I dont think Alt Calliope would havechosen the martyr anyway, I think Alt Callie chose the conqueror, our Callie will be the one to choose the true martyr path from the true strongest being Abraxas, which is the being that Yaldabaoth in gnosticism originally believes that he is or tries to copy out of futile ignorance

I REALLY don't think our Callie will get the path of the Martyr, OR that it's a good choice period. "In short, it involves nothing". That's not really aligning with Homestuck's development themes. And it basically means devoting Calliope's entire existence to negating that of Caliborn, which is just... no. No, it's not a good thing. And it aligns perfectly with Yaldabaoth being the denizen of imperfection, the flawed one!

If Callie got a better denizen, she'd probably get a better Choice too.

Also, Alt!Calliope, for all her unsocialized alt-ness, is still the opposite of Caliborn. She's still the Good twin. Not to mention, she died! Do you think she'd lost at her challenge? That wouldn't align with anything thematically... like idk this has all been so very obvious??? it also matches her being the doomed one, mirroring the very first doomed!John... and it hasn't been spelled out explicitly, so there isn't exactly grounds for subversion

urrrgh really the path of the Martyr is the "doomed" path! It can't be one for the alpha Calliope, it's basically a dead end! ???

Thoughts on Healthy Possible Somewhat New Ships

oh man, you know what this update made me so happy with the happy music and all with all of the potentially healthy developments for the characters that I feel like making a little shipping list and why I think they’d be good for each other in that way. This is purely just character stuff though, not much plot stuff lol

Keep reading

Decided to pop into the DaveKat tag to see how was the fandom and literally every couple of posts is someone adamantly going “alright guys its totally cool what you all do, but DaveKat is totally (Pale/Red) and totally not the other one”

and every post is like ‘It’s moirails’ and ‘it’s flush!’

but it’s all very polite what Iv’e seen so far, everyone is firmly on one side or another LOL and idk it all just reminds me of that Oreo ad whisper fight where they were all quietly fighting about the best part of the Oreo haha

okay but has anyone considered that they might be really close friends. not palerom. not redrom. no rom at all. friends. like yeah i get that representation erasure etc but “two characters like to spend time together = ROMANCE” is also erasive as fuck idk just food for thought throwing it out there

it was mostly because of the how they were portrayed in the update. They were very clearly set and paralleled besides the other romantic relationships developing (regardless of what they were actually doing togther), the whole update seemed to focus on the romantic implications of everything tbh, Vriska <3< Terezi instead of Gamzee <3< Terezi, Vriska getting inbetween Rosemary somehow, either to <3 on Kanaya or <> on Rose or just get inbetween in general, and then there was a similar huge focus on Dave and Karkat doing things, while even Vriska and Terezi looked on and watched them, first confused and then giggling, like the were spying on people going on a date

If they were just friends or bros again, I don’t think theyd have such a huge focus on them like that alongside the other romantic happenings, theyre making it very clear something about them is different this time around, and well, it looks very romantic kind of different in some way

I get people just see them cuddling together and think “well i platonically do that all the time whats the big deal” (i do that too lol im a huge aroace cuddler) but we forget that whats normal for ourselves isnt necessarily whats normal for Dave and Karkat. This behaviour is definitely just not Dave just being friends

plus theres also that Hussie tweeted that THIS was the “Gay Singularity” that he was talking about when someone got excited over DaveKat being canon, so it seems pretty confirmed that theyre at least in a quadrant at this point, or just human dating. I prefer to think its just regular old human dating after thinking about it for awhile lol

…okay first of all I cuddle with my friend who is bi all the time and it seems just as normal for her???? it’s a thing normal people do

but parallels and gay singularity are all valid arguments, I concede my point. I guess I just have reverse shipper goggles: you really need to hit me in the face with it like a dead smelly fish for me to agree that it’s really there

props to Hussie for gay singularity tho. Looking forward to more of aro ace John and definitely at least aromantic Jake

right that whats i meant lol just because its normal for me or you or your friend to view cuddling as a platonic behavior, a lot of people view it as a very romantic behavior. (hence why a lot of my friendly cuddles often gets mistaken for flirting >.>) And I just happen to see Dave as one of those people, I can’t imagine Dave cuddling platonically is what I’m saying lol Karkat maybe, but not Dave. Dave doesn’t strike me as someone who’s okay with even casual touching with friends anyway, and in this update he’s the one cuddling up to Karkat, so it strikes me as something that Dave would only consider doing if he felt in a comfortable enough romantic sort of way

Are you seriously fighting about Dave and karkat cuddling and what it means

I don’t think we’re fighting about anything lol

Talking about cuddling yes because why not lol

we just have different views of Dave is all lol

Yeah I'm not fighting with anyone either LOL

actually SBURB’s reproductive cycle, if at the end of the last one Calliope does end up creating the original CD/s, would make SBURB like a plant with a metagenesis reproductive system (or ‘alteration of generations’)

weird plant biology under the cut

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Your version, however, requires that there be a lot of SBURB-less universes to distribute CDs to. Making this a reproductive cycle not of universes but of SBURB, parasite that thrives on them. With universes requiring a different separate one that makes more of them all the time, to make up for losses due to SBURB.

For this to be a reproductive system of universes, Calliope would need to make a lot of new /universes/. Which is actually bkew's the theory about creating paradox space...