February 2018

How come Vriska and Aranea can "Lucky Br8" the Judgement Clock?

The Judgement Clock has always been something very… Debatable. Whether it’s the physical thing that decides Just/Heroic or if it’s just a representation, whether Vriska and Jade’s outcomes were manipulated at all or not…

In my personal opinion? A “Lucky 8r8k” with the Judgement Clock is just. That. The issue with Jade’s Death is the Greyness of the situation, she’s possessed, corrupted, evil, if we go by the things she’s doing and saying, she’s Evil and deserves a Just Death- But if we look at the fact she’s being mind controlled, then things get fuzzy, because she doesn’t deserve to die, actually! BUT if allowed to continue, a being could corrupt a God Tier, and have a potentially immortal weapon that cannot die because their Death would never be Just or Heroic. In a case like this, the God Tier Judgement doesn’t know exactly what to do. Did it decide that Jade deserved to die in the end and Aranea was like “How lucky of me! :::;)”, or did she actively sway the Judgement, making the Judgement decide that, hey, yeah she can’t be allowed to continue?

Ask any number of people, and they will give you different answers to this question, whether Jade deserved to Die or Not, whether Vriska’s Death was truly Just or Not. This kind of ambiguity is what makes you, as a reader, think about what it TRULY means to die a ‘Just’ or a ‘Heroic’ Death. Just or Heroic… In whose eyes? How partial is Paradox Space to noble causes? What is truly Evil? What is truly Good? Aranea’s means are awful, but her objective is actually extremely noble and good for Paradox Space. In Aranea’s eyes, she’s the Heroine. In the Kids’ eyes, she’s a Villain. In Condy’s eyes, she’s a goddamn fucking nuisance. Paradox Space seems to suggest it leans towards inherent goodness- Respect for others’s agency and life, respect for people’s choice and well being. Fighting someone who disregards this and protecting others that need help makes you a Hero, disregarding others intentionally and knowingly makes you a Villain. And if you’re being corrupted? Well, you’re acting evil, so Paradox Space sure could be bribed…

Have you read Act Omega?

I haven’t read any of the “Post-Act-7″ Fanmade stories! I really don’t have much interest in checking them out, sadly.

If Calliope had underlings, would they have space-related powers? Like The Felt had time-related powers just like Lord English

I always imagined they’d be Space Leprechauns, yeah!

Is the inverse of a mage of hope a seer of rage?

If you’re switching Passive for Active, yes. If you want to go to the opposite side of the Class Scale, you’ve gotta look at the Heir of Rage instead.

Why is it so much easier to come up with time powers than it is to come up with space powers? is it because space is a real thing and we just made time up, so its more flexible?

I wouldn’t say coming up with Space Powers is harder to come up with things, but indeed- There’s different ways to pull off Time Travel and affect the flow of Time, but Space being Everything Physical, its powers have tangible effects. You could fuck around with the concept of predestination, altering the past or parallel realities for years and still come up with new ramifications such systems could have on Reality as a Whole, but if your power is Changing Something’s Size or Making Something Heavier, the effects are tangible, immediate, and we know way more about what would happen than we do with Time.

So mostly it’s the fact Space Powers are easier to imagine and predict than Time Powers?

Could Heir of Hope make a sadistic person that wants to kill him change his ways and be on his side passively or not?

Changing their beliefs, conception of others and overall ideas could help to make someone less… Rational become a pal, I’d imagine. Heir of Heart as well.

why is everyone so interested in hope

Hope is an interesting Aspect.

I don’t think just deaths are about whether a person deserved it - but if the death is justified. Jade was being used to do evil things and needed to be stopped, so her death, by whatever means or by how evil her killer was as well - was justified

That’s a way to see it, yeah. The very rules of the Just/Heroic conundrum are fuzzy, at best, given this is the only piece of information we really get about the issue.

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Do you think there are any more aspects or classes beyond the 12/14 we know?

Classes, it is possible, although not necessarily likely. But they’re easier to come up with. Aspects, not really that clear cute, since they seem to be tied to what makes up Paradox Space, the very Fabric of Reality, you cannot quite reduce Reality much more than the 12 Aspects, everything has a link to one or more of the Aspects.

The reason why Space powers might be harder to come up with is that Space is about physics. So to come up with cool powers you need to know how laws work what they do and how. Understand the implications of laws. Maybe that's the case, at least that's what I think it is.

I mean, my reasoning is that it’s the opposite- We understand Space way better than Time, so we can apply imagination to Time a lot more. With Space you kind of know what you’re getting into.

Okay, but what sometimes I think about ethical implications of flashy powers. Like. When Time player dooms a timeline for some reason. Creating a new being and then treating it horribly. The indirect destruction the young would be gods might cause. Or the potential terrible things one might do, sometimes without noticing.

Yep. I mean it’s one of the reasons Dave doesn’t like Time Travelling, ‘Dead Daves are the enemy’. And Jade shows discomfort at the sheer amount of power she has. God Tier powers can be incredibly dangerous to Reality Itself.

I've complicated feeling for Gamzee. I think that a reason for his many rampages in multiple timeline stem from despair and the fact that having memories of everyone dying so many times have resulted in him not caring about bonds all that much. Despair from the nature of the alpha timeline - LE is already there, trolls can only success as much as they are allowed to. And what does Gamzee learn when he looks into Cal's eyes? That he is LE's part. This makes Gam a great tragic villain in my eyes.

Gamzee can be treated as quite the Tragic Villain because of the manipulative influence of LE over Troll Society and specifically, the Highblood Cult. However- Claiming for him to Despair at the nature of the Alpha Timeline and LE’s Existence is missing a huge part of his character.

He unapologetically follows Lord English, there’s shifts to his character, there’s the breaking of bonds and the whole deal with Karkat and Terezi in the meteor, but when it comes to his worship of Lord English and doing everything he can to bring forth the Upbringing and Creation of Lord English, there’s not a single moment of hesitation or regret, not even as he gets shot down into the ground multiple times by his young God. It’s not that he doesn’t care about his bonds that much- It’s that the Bond he cares about the most is between him and English. At least that’s how I always saw it.

I've always seen Aspects as sort of like having a symbiotic relationship with Passive players like an Heir for example. The Aspect is hosted in the Heir and uses itself to protect the Heir, therefor protecting itself

I mean, they do influence the Players, but I’m not quite sure about the Symbiotic part with the Aspect in return.

any ideas of a skill tree for a Mage of Space?

The first thing I can think of is a divide between being able to physically See in other locations, and Knowing about Space and Physics, but other than that, not too much comes to mind. Maybe a branch more dedicated to bending the laws of physics through the knowledge you have of them?

I mean, you are right. He literally worships the Big Guy and adores him and everything. But lack of hesistation seems to me to stem from the implication of the lack of the Gamzee ghosts - he has them all merged within one iteration. He remembers all the timelines and how did they fall and how did he murder everyone for some mysterious reasons (we only know that by the time he began rampaging something was already going off the rails) LE was God in his religion and he actually ruled their fates.

The lack of Gamzee ghosts is a thing I’ve gone at length with friends, and indeed the Timeline Merger is a possibility, although the system is fuzzy enough to not be 100% sure about this. Honestly? I’m heavily interested in Book 3 when it comes out just to read Hussie’s commentary about Rose going to sleep and her Dream Self’s consciousness mixing with the Alpha. Hell, I’m excited about every single thing beyond the Commentary we already know of from Act 1 and 2.

Please Viz Media, 4/13 can’t come soon enough this year.

And now I have an idea for a session where a time player and last other surviving player make a plan aka Dave and Rose - Time goes back to change things. While last player goes to sleep to preserve their memories. But things don't end there. The issue is to complicated and they fail to prevent the tragedy yet again so they repeat that event. And again and again. Eventualy that last player is not like themselves anymore. While Time can't even tell what's wrong since they weren't in doom!timelines

You all REALLY love suffering, guys, and I am the Doom player here.

Where can I find the book 1 and book 2?

Book 1 is already up on the Viz Media website, and also on Amazon!

Book 2 is only on Amazon for the time being.

Both are preorders, too, and I believe they’re mostly reprints of the already existing books, except for the Intermission which is new? Can’t quite remember.

Book 3 hasn’t even been announced, but we know they’re doing this for every Act so. Soon hopefully.

ALSO-

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>:3c

Would a Lord/Muse have a mish-mash of all the aspect's powers, or a single, supercharged power based on the aspect?

Command is the verb we use around here, but by the mere nature of Commanding, there’s some obvious overlap with other Classes. How much overlap, however, is up to your specific definition of the Master Classes.

What exactly do you think wood happen if you tried to prototype SBURB disk, after alchemising one in the future and going back in time?

Do you need to keep the disc in the tray to keep SBURB open? Maybe you can just pull it out and toss it into the Sprite once you’re connected, with no need for Time Shenanigans. If the Kernelsprite even allows this, it may get weird or even glitchy… Alternatively, it just takes the overall shape of the CD and does nothing else. Remember the discs are the code to link with the Session, rather than actually SBURB itself.

me headcanon that you are the daughter of a Horrorterror, born from its mind like how Athena was born from Zeus

Well you’re wrong, anon! I was born out of Paradox Slime like everyone else, duh.

In a session, does the overall "charge" (Active and passive classes) have to equal 0?

Neither Beta nor Alpha Kids have an equal charge of 0, so no.

Have you ever covered anything on the seer of rage?

As a matter of fact I have!

if the alpha and beta kids merged as godtiers each one merging with their counterpart (ex Dave and Dirk merge) who would potentially be the strongest and what powers do you think they would have?

JadeJake, do you know how OP a First Guardian Witch of Space combined with a Page of Hope would be?! Imagine the overlap of the Hope Field and Grimbark Jade’s First Guardian Power Up. Jesus Christ.

Have you ever noticed that the Virgo sign and the Scorpio sign are similar?

I mean, yes but I mean it’s not like Hussie had anything to do with that.

As far as we know.

Are there any classpects that are speed-based?

Breath and Space are the two most closely tied to Speed. Light possibly as well.

If you speed your own time up as Witch of Time you can also be really fast, like that one felt guy

That’s. True for sure, but it’s also sort of cheating the system, it’s not that you’re going fast, is that everything else moves slow from your perspective. My, my, a Maid of Time may be Made of Time, but it’d seem the Witch of Time is… 

「Made in Heaven」

I refuse.

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Why am I so goddamn impatient? My blog has only been up for three days, of course I'm not going to get any asks!

You also need to promote yourself around a bit on the tags to get some traction going. Having friends to poke you to entice others to send you asks as well works.

That was actually a Jojos reference too. You failed. Please hand in your weeb badge.

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would a jadeblood's ideal aspect be blood, if they were rasing grubs? what class would that fit?

Classes, I don’t know. Aspect though, I think it’d be Space actually. See- I believe that Castes are bound to the Aspect of their True Sign. Socially they’re sort of forced into roles and stereotyped in ways relating to the True Signs, making the 12 Trolls basically the ‘ideal’ sort of Troll for the caste. As such, being isolated from the rest of the Castes, taking on a Caretaker role, Jades do seem to tie well with Jadebloods.

Just Imagine this, a Lord of Hope with indestructibility like Caliborn, First Guardian powers, and omniscience. What have we created?

Sounds like Lord English, but Hopey instead of Timey, really. Which is still awful but, yeah.

I'm stuck between Witch and Heir, help please

Are you more focused on your own Well Being or on others’ Well Being?

My well being

Witch it is!

So how would a Thief and Rogue work with the Doom aspect?

I believe I’ve argued about being able to prevent disasters through self-sacrifice- By taking the Doom themselves. Alternatively, redirecting pain and destruction is always a fun power to have. You could also argue Stealing Through Doom and having them be pillagers or post-apocalyptic scavengers. There’s a lot of fun ways to interpret combos like these.

help! i cantg choose between a Knight of Rage and Rogue of Rage

Well, one Takes and the other Gives, these aren’t even really that similar.

why do u think knights r passive

Active/Passive Spectrum as Selfishness vs Selflessness makes Knights painfully obviously Passive.

Asriel vs Lord English and Sans vs The Condesce. who would win????

I’m sorry Undertale, but LE and Condy would win by a LONG shot. Sans vs Condy, I mean, as terrifying as Chara is, let’s remember that they are simply a Human Kid that manifests as the powergaming Murderous Completionist Intent. Their only actual power is that of Determination so Heavy they can Reload again and again and try again and again, until they’ve consumed the Timeline- In a story facing them against Monster who are inherently not as Determined as Humans (Most of them), and physically weaker (Generally). Which means, as powerful as Sans is, he’s still fighting a Human Child, and struggling to keep up, as well as being defeated in one shot. Gaster Blasters? Condy has Psionic Eye Blasts. The Blue Heart gravity? Condy has telekinesis. Not to say, do you know how many people Condy must have conquered, how many civilizations she has exterminated, the extent of her Tyranny. Chara got to level 20 killing a bunch of Monsters. Condy has destroyed Galaxies’ worth of people. Even within the parameters of Undertale, her LOVE would be so high her stats would make her nigh-invincible.

And Lord English vs Asriel is even MORE One-Sided. Hyperdeath God Asriel trying to reset the Timeline, destroy everything and go back to 0, is nothing against the Lord of Time who Commands said Timeline, and reds Reality itself with his Rainbow Barf. We’ve even SEEN Lord English in Undertale Form, and that poolball attack he has fills the screen with not a single space for you to avoid. At least Asriel’s attacks are possible to avoid and block. LE’s are a straight up fuck you.

Hullo! A long time ago you classified me as a sylph but I just took your class quiz and got mage. Which one should I choose? (I'm male if that affects anything)

Which of the two’s description do you identify with the most?

Hello! I need help deciding if I’m a Knight of Breath or an Heir of Breath, I can exploit freedom and weasel out of responsibilities but I also really like doing my own thing and being alone. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

This is a difficult one, because the Breath Aspect inherently covers the ‘doing your own thing and being alone’ thing, by being Detached. So, without that as a factor, what’s your call?

You know how in virtual simulations like The matrix and Sword art online, if you die in the game you die for real? Do you think a mage of mind would be able to resist that? And do you think any other godteir would be able to?

I mean, if you were God Tier I feel you could just resurrect because bullshit Virtual Simulation death doesn’t sound too Heroic or Just. The issue with the examples you’re giving- At least SAO, I don’t recall about the Matrix, is that the thing that kills you if you die in the game is physical. I don’t watch SAO but I think I read the headset is literally programmed to fry your brain if you die in the game or someone tries to remove your Headset, so it’s like… The issue isn’t your ‘Game Death’ manifesting on your body, as much as it is your brain being microwaved, which doesn’t sound too survivable under any God Tier.

I mean maybe if you’re a Void Player you could go intangible or teleport away as a Space Player to avoid this?

Straw Hat Pirates vs The aCondesce

Fuck, thanks for reminding me I need to catch up with like, a thousand manga volumes of One Piece.

You've mentioned that the Horrorterrors are a fundament of the game along with Skaia, but there appears to be a clear scene in the Credits where a ghost player is becoming a Horrorterror. To me this makes sense and the Horrorterrors are created when the Paradox Space of the Furthest Ring is destroyed; they're part of the main loop and partly responsible for their own creation. They're the fragmented and recombined memories of all the dead players of every possible timeline. Thoughts?

Horrorterrors are the ‘Eldritch Forces outside of the Universe, bent on preventing the Birth of a new Universe’ to Skaia’s ‘Unfathomable Force of Light that wishes to aid in the Birth of a new Universe’, they’re not as much of a Fundament of the ‘Game’ as they are an important part of Paradox Space. However, ‘a clear scene in the Credits where a ghost player is becoming a Horrorterror’ is simply not true. It may subjectively look like that to you, but I couldn’t find anything that even remotely resembled that, let alone ‘clearly’, with the most I could imagine being what seemed like either a God Tier John ghost or a God Tier Equius Ghost, maybe Mituna, with the long hood being dragged back and towards the Black Hole. There’s a big headcanon going around about God Tiers in Doomed Sessions just getting weirder and more Eldritch and becoming new God Tiers, but for this to happen to the ghosts while everything is Collapsing seems a tad weird and kind of… Looking more into it? Not that it couldn’t happen, just that I don’t see it from the snaps we get on the Credits at all.

There’s an interesting distinction to be made here about Paradox Space and the Furthest Ring, too- And that is, unless the nature of Paradox Space truly is circular, and the Black Hole leaves a blank slate behind from which Paradox Space can be born once again, and cycle back to the very beginning of Time (Which could happen), this is the Ending. As in, the end of the road for the Furthest Ring and Paradox Space. There’s only going forward now, not backwards, because the Cracks in Paradox Space stabilize the flow of Space and Time through the Furthest Ring. They make it less Non-Euclidean. So unless, as I said, Paradox Space is cyclical, and the stuff that’s there now could become the stuff that was there at the very Beginning, ironically enough, everything Collapsing means that things are the most stable they’ve ever been, and there’s not quite a way to ‘go back’ to a point before what’s happening right now.

Golly, the Ending sure is Weird! I do love talking about the Ending though, and the implications of everything. Say what you want but personally, Act 7 and the Credits are my favorite part of the Puzzle Homestuck is, and I adore trying to unravel everything about it.

A ghost player becoming a horrorterror? That happened?

Not as far as I could tell, but people do Headcanon Horrorterrors are just corrupted God Tiers having spent millennia unable to die. Gruesome, but still just a Headcanon.

So, what do you think would happen if Caliborn and Calliope met eachother in person, with calliope wearing the ring of life and all?

Caliborn would start a Monologue about being a misunderstood, passionate artist and fate, and how his horrid sister has finally shown herself, before Calliope interrupts him half-way like, stabbing him in the eye with her wand and flipping him off as she walks backwards into the Sunset. “fUck you”, she says, while Caliborn curls up having another Breakdown.

Is Caliborn's Masterpiece simply Homestuck itself? The kids being "stuck" in the juju can be a metaphor for their position in the enlarged timeline Caliborn creates when he partially commandeers the story from AH.

The symbolic themes of the Masterpiece certainly imply this, but there’s also the Literal aspect of the story, which could have deeper ramifications during the Epilogue. Still, that is a totally valid take on the Masterpiece.

what could be seen as the base capabilities of a thief of life ? I know that god tier powers are based around ones own interception, but what do you think a thief of life can do ( beside the whole stealing health thing ) I would love to hear your opinion

Look no further than Condy. She Steals Agency from others- As a Tyrant, she imposes her rules over Troll and Human Civilization, and as a Master Manipulator, she corrupts Jade and Jane, definitely limiting their will and agency for her purposes! She also experiments with herself to get access to all the Troll Psychic Powers, effectively Stealing the powers of her own Species, through knowledge of Biology. Condy can also extend people’s lifespans- Which could tie in to how Rogues also ‘distribute what they steal’, which would imply Thieves do that too, but only when it benefits them.

Meenah is similar, she is the one with the plan to make the Ghost Army, and she basically uses their lives as Bait, it’s through her idea that Vriska and Aranea steal the Ghosts’ Agencies in her behalf. Similarly, she Stole her Friends’ Lives by detonating the Tumor. There’s quite a lot to the Thief of Life.

The Bard of Breath is a very easy person to control. By passively allowing Breath to be destroyed, they find it hard to be independent and are very easily pulled into unhealthy or even toxic relationships because of their desire to have others there with them, mistakenly destroying their freedom.

That’s a nice take for a Bard of Breath. I always love hearing this kind of interpretation because, while not every Bard of Breath would be like that, just through the concept of a ‘Bard of Breath’, or any Classpect combo, you can get a good amount of depth as a base for a character’s personality.

I've seen debates about this on MXRP/MSPARP recently (probably the same people) but Davepetasprite. Confused on what Pronouns to go, right? Didn't Davepetasprite settle on using they/them pronouns?

There’s really no confusion or discussion about it. They go explicitly by They/Them pronouns. Precious Nonbinary Pumpkin Child.

How do you prefer to give definition to the differences between the Thief and Rogue classes? That a Thief takes for themself while a Rogue takes for others? Or that a Thief takes when it benefits themself vs a Rogue taking for the benefit of another? A little bit of one and the other? Both at once or even some other way entirely? I personally like the "how and who it benefits" interpretation myself in the case of this question.

The how and who it benefits is a good answer because of the passive/active dichotomy, but it isn’t ALWAYS that easy, such as Roxy becoming invisible herself. It does work most of the time, though, it’s a tendency- Rogues are Robin Hood-esque by nature, where Thieves are way more focused on their goals.

Do you like The Condesce?

I love Condy. Honestly I don’t think there’s a single character in Homestuck I dislike. All of them have something I love, even if it’s just how awful they are.