how am i just now realizing that feferi eridan equius and nepeta all died for good in late act five and then at the start of act six we just immediately got more life hope void and heart players

@moonward-bound NO KEEP TALKING

The universe is a frog, so it is probably the equivalent of stem cells replacing other cells. Or something.

…Huh. That is… huh.

the rules of The Game are simple: you can start playing at any time, and you win once you forget you're playing. I started playing quite some time ago, and I just now remembered that I had been playing, so that means I won The Game! highly recommend, much better than that other game people talk about sometimes

seems like you've misread the rules. you can't lose this game! it's very much a suffering free experience. and of course by nature of being a game it's something you can only play if you want to play it, so if you feel like it's "suffering" you don't have to participate! like can you imagine if there was a game that as part of its rules asserted that everyone is always playing it all the time? that wouldn't even conceptually make sense as something you could call a game!

like imagine for a moment, you've been told there's a rule you need to follow, as part of a "game" that everyone is secretly always playing. this rule is, seemingly by design, literally impossible for you to follow. if you break the rule, you "lose". everyone around you seems to agree that playing this game is a bad experience, but you're neurodivergent and also ten and can't tell if they're genuinely upset or just pretending to be upset as part of the game. maybe it's different depending on the person.

there's no way to win or even stop playing, it's just a rule that's really easy to break, and people Perform Anger every time they break it. you ask if you can stop playing and someone gets angry at you because asking this question breaks the game's rule.

now imagine several years later, once you're an adult, people are STILL "playing" this game. everyone's even more direct in saying that they agree that this game exists as a way to make themselves and others feel bad, and they even still expect You, who never agreed to play in the first place, to perform anger when you break the game's rule.

I mean that would suck right?

there's something about the idea of a game everyone's always playing that you're not allowed to think about that just feels like a metaphor for. something. the experience of growing up autistic, the gender binary, capitalism, some sort of intersection of these ideas. maybe if people actually did take the time to actually think about it more people would question why exactly they as an adult still get angry when they fail to perform an impossible task a bully asked them to do in elementary school as a prank

Some of you don't believe this is me, so I recorded a message for you as proof.

To Whom it may concern;

You have lost The Game

Oh so you’re just a bastard then?

Rainbows, Vampires, and Tooth Fairies

Something just occurred to me(and Im definitely not the first person to have this thought so there’s prob some similar headcanonry out there), but Jades being nearly as rare as Tyrians, AND being diurnal when all other Trolls are nocturnal&crepuscular: I feel like it’s VERY likely there are tooth-fairy-esque myths&legends about Jades. Which… puts a very interesting spin on Jades ALSO being susceptible to a vampirism-mutation :>

Tho: part of what The Game does is give its players the chance to manifest their desires&”dreams”/“Become the person they WANT to be”, and Kanaya dreamed of being a Rainbow-drinker, so I think it’s just as likely(as in: either theory could be true) that she and Porrim are the *only* Rainbowdrinkers, facilitated by The Game, and “rainbowdrinkers” are just as legendary on Alternia as vampires on Earth. This would make Kanaya’s “turning” similar to Jade’s transformation, Rose becoming a cool-ass warlock, Sollux losing the lisp&doom-prophesies he hates so much, Aradia’s resurrection, etc etc etc, that we see throughout Homestuck.

Another thing that just occurred to me about this: Vriska’s the same deal.

She WANTS to be central and Self-Driven and Important(rather than lonely and A Tool and Disposable, which is how she grew up), and she KNOWS what she’s done in the past is wrong, BUT she ALSO want’s to “8e the 8est” and “Save the Day”, hero or no, and The Game lets her achieve all of these things.

Cycles of Vengeance and violence are another aspect of this. Vriska knows violence, doesn’t know much else in terms of socializing, and is too afraid to give up control by letting other ppl set the pace of her interactions with them. So, her attempts at “redemption”/”repair” all take the form of allowing herself to be the target of violence.

This never works.

Letting Aradia beat her to death doesn’t repair the hatefriendship(Im actl pretty sure they were spades but that’s never made explicit) she destroyed by using Sollux to kill her.

Demanding Tavros “square” their relationship by killing her only alienates him further and ultimately leads to HER killing HIM.

Defeating BecNoir doesn’t “save” anyone and only happens in a doomed session.

All of this is futile. They’re Dramatic and Flashy and draw allot of attention&thought but, as others have pointed out, they don’t really accomplish much. These are all things Vriska WANTS, and The Game lets her get, but NONE OF THEM accomplish the TRANSFORMATIONS she wants(probably cuz she’s not really sure/able to clearly admit to herself what that is until she’s dead). This pattern repeats over and over and over again in her story, with Vriska destroying the very things she cares about most by trying to force them to be the way she wants them to be rather than meeting them on THEIR terms. This is why her eventual rejection of this in favor of understanding another(tho tbf: she takes that a bit too far at first, her rom with Meenah is pretty onesided: but thats OK! That’s a common mistake to make!!), tied into her rejection of the pursuit of ‘Importance’ is Vriska’s true “Good End”.

"this picture i got off google has been corrupted with photoshop drawings, your quest is to return it to its Platonic state by getting rid of all this shitty oil/rain/snow/whathave you" certainly has a simple elegance to its symbolism

8est 8itches!!!!!!!!

It's come to my attention that a good portion of the younger generation has not been made aware of one of the greatest and most hated PILLARS of millennial society.

So I apologize, but I must take on this task. A new hand must touch the beacon. The knowledge must be passed on. The chain can not be broken.

So.

The Game.

The following are the rules of The Game:

A "reset period" of roughly an hour or two before loss announcements is common in colloquial rules to allow yourself and those around you to properly temporarily "forget" about The Game, however that is not an official rule.

Go forth, you next generation, and I am sorry.

What have you done

once in high school someone managed to seize control of the intercom and announced, "Attention, all students, this is an announcement: you have just lost the Game," and i got to find out what it sounds like when an entire school shrieks in rage all at once.

Monster: Chicken of Being Perceived:

Any creature that sees this Chicken is automatically afflicted with "Has looked at the Chicken." A creature under the effects of this condition has looked at the Chicken.

How did I never get this before

For some reason I had the idea that SBURB will try to kill any extraneous people who get brought along into the game. Not supposed to be here, don’t need you messing around, die and get out of the way. Presumably this impression is from the beta session, but that was Bec Noir, and there is nothing normal about Bec Noir even by SBURB standards.

What SBURB tries to do with extraneous people is throw them in jail on Derse. Keep them out of the way, but offer them to the successful player as a bonus reward.

Now that I’ve thought of this it seems incredibly obvious.

If you’re old enough to remember it, you just lost The Game.

I have no idea what’s going on here

Back in the early aughts, when many millenials were in high school, before Facebook and Youtube, The Game began. No one knows who started it, but the moment we learned we were playing it, we began to lose. The goal of The Game is to forget you are playing The Game for as long as possible. The rules of The Game are as follows: Everyone is always playing The Game all the time; at school, during breakfast, at night when you are asleep, etc. The Game never ends. The moment you remember that you are playing The Game, you lose and must immediately announce to those around you, “I just lost The Game!” thus making them remember they are also playing The Game and causing them to lose as well. Upon losing, you begin The Game again. Sometimes players could go weeks or months without losing, sometimes only minutes. At the height of The Game’s popularity, it became common to see people at events such as Comic Con or midnight movie premieres, wearing t-shirts proclaiming “You just lost The Game!” Once they were noticed, groans and shouts of “Fuck you!” could be heard for miles. These people thrived on the chaos, taking great pleasure in the cries of their victims. Most people eventually grew bored of The Game, and many began to claim they won by choosing not to care about it anymore. Some rely on a particular XKCD comic strip or Tumblr post to lend a sense of legitimacy to their feeling of victory. They are fools. It is impossible to win The Game. There is only losing. Only a few diehards remain loyal to the rules. The drop in popularity has allowed many to keep from losing The Game for years at a time. The growth of social media has caused a minor resurgence, although without the satisfaction of real time auditory feedback when causing others to lose, The Game will likely fade back into obscurity once again. Someday when we are old and gray, our grandchildren will innocently ask us to play a game of checkers, and we will shriek and shout until the whole nursing home joins us in defeat. Death is the only release from The Game.