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Author Topic: MSPA Homestuck  (Read 5187759 times)

Cthulhu

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7395 on: September 01, 2010, 01:44:49 pm »

That means that when they show trolls kissing, it's showing explicit sexual intercourse.

And then MSPA was a porn comic.
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smjjames

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7396 on: September 01, 2010, 01:54:23 pm »

As far as the terminology stuff the trolls use, Karkat used nutrition plateau in one of his memos, which I guess is the tongue? He also uses some other references that might mean something like the bone bulge. I think roe hole is the most obvious one here.
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Soadreqm

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7397 on: September 01, 2010, 02:00:30 pm »

Is "Mother Grub's vestigial third oral sphincter" from the memos or from the forums? I can't remember where I read it and can't be arsed to read all those things again.
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smjjames

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7398 on: September 01, 2010, 02:08:43 pm »

I know its from the memos (first one I think) since I looked at them a couple min ago.
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Cthulhu

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7399 on: September 01, 2010, 02:23:55 pm »

As far as the terminology stuff the trolls use, Karkat used nutrition plateau in one of his memos, which I guess is the tongue? He also uses some other references that might mean something like the bone bulge. I think roe hole is the most obvious one here.

I thought nutrition plateau was a plate.

He asks if anyone has anything else they want to scrape off their bulges onto his clean nutrition plateau, meaning any other dumb relationship problems.
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Leafsnail

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7400 on: September 01, 2010, 03:18:47 pm »

I've finally caught the fuck up.  It's like that fuck got a stitch and I managed to

Oddly, this is quite a lot like how I imagine real timetravel would go.  I mean, wouldn't it be fun to drop in and annoy your past self (with the justification "You will be going to have done it to be").
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Aqizzar

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7401 on: September 01, 2010, 03:56:59 pm »

Well, I started this off just wanting to mention a few salient facts about the Troll's game, but it turned into a dissertation on the mechanics of Sbrub, and the fates of those who play it.  May be interesting, maybe not, but I enjoyed writing it.

Think for a moment about what Sburb is; it's a computer game, albeit a game that's physically interacted with because it physically exists, but it's still born from a definite plan and works by definite rules.  When the game starts, it forms it's own separate pocket universe, labeled "The Medium" by itself and a session by Karkat, which is correct.  Within that Medium-session are Skaia with the Battlefield at its center, the planets Prospit and Derse and their chained moons, the Veil full of labs and factories where the light and dark armies are made, and however many themed planets are created for the game's players to act in.  The Medium is populated by a stock cast of characters and all those standard elements, plus the planets whose content is generated with each session.  Different bandicoots and all that.  The actors are scripted to perform by certain motivations; differences are caused by the players and their guardians interfering with Sburb's stock plotline.  It's important to remember that this all exists in a universe removed from the planet that the players actually come from, and has its own laws of reality.  The Medium and (what we'll call) the homeworld are distinct places, that can interact with each other by way of Skaia's portals.

Where Sburb comes from is a complete mystery so far, but once activated, it functions a lot like how Lord English is described.  The Medium doesn't exist until a player joins the game and enters it.  But once created, it populates its own history backwards through time, and winds up effecting the homeworld's past in the process.  Technically it never existed before the game starts, and technically it always existed; players entering and generating elements are just a temporal formality.

Sburb is also responsible for creating the players themselves, their guardians, the First Guardian, and the exiles, and probably lots of other junk too like the Frog Temples.  It accomplishes this by generating all that stuff in the Veil (how, when, and why is still unclear for elements besides the people), then the Black Royalty hurl the Veil into Skaia, in the Reckoning.  Skaia tries to defend itself by sending most of the asteroids through portals to the only place it can open them, the players' homeworld.  Some are sent into the extremely distant past, planting the Temples and the First Guardian.  Some are sent to the relatively recent past, seeding the players and their guardians created by those in the session.  Some are sent into the future, seeding the exiles and the labs they will use to advise the players (see: Egg, Apple, and Bottle).  But most are sent concurrent to when the game is first started in the real-universe, usually demolishing the houses of the many players not part of the paradox-loop already seeded.  (Other important thing to remember, win or lose, the planet the players come from is slated to be toast by the end.)

These already offer a few different takes on the concept of fate.  On the one hand, the actions of the stock characters are hard to call Fate, as that implies alternate paths that could have happened.  They're as fated as any program is to follow it's prewritten instructions.  But the players are a special case.  Does Sburb choose the small circle of people who will survive to play it?  Or does whichever closed loop of players who happen to survive long enough to create and place their paradox clones retroactively guarantee that they will be the ones to play it?  The name of the game in Sburb is paradox loops - things that weren't guaranteed until they happened, but whose actions involve seeding their own impetus so they have to happen anyway.  Even the aftermath of the game seems to be set in programming - the big labs and interactions of the exiles seem way to obvious and detailed to be anything but intended by the game's instructions.

Where I was trying to get from the beginning though is the eventual state of the players' homeworld.  It's clear that Sburb can effect the homeworld with gates, but it's not clear whether the players can ever choose to do this.  Pretty much everything says they can't, that once each player enters the Medium, they can kiss their world goodbye.  There are possibilities; hitching a ride on a Reckoning meteor could work, as it does for the exiles, but their particular client-server sessions having already started, it's hard to say how they could get back into the Medium if desired.  There's also whatever Grandpa Harley did, who just sailed to Earth, as did the White Queen in the kids' session.

And now I'll get to the point.  Karkat believes his universe is coming to an end, from the glowing graph of doom, probably very soon.  We already know that Alternia itself is still around centuries in the future, and Snowman narratively comments that she possesses all the time in the world, whatever that means.  Remember my posit, that the Medium is a universe completely separate from the real-space of wherever the players' come from.  Perhaps that is Lord English's purpose, not destroying the universe, but entering and destroying the game universes.  There's the further complication of the Distant Servers where Lord English's program (and probably the Walkthrough and presumably the Horrorterrors) reside.  Theses are all good hints that the Trolls may be able to escape from their Medium, either to another universe or back to the wasted husk of Alternia.

Whaddaya know, I'm a professor of Skaia paradox physics now.  Maybe I'll finish my research dissertation on what happens when a player goes through their second gate to a planet whose owning player hasn't entered the game yet (as Dave does at the end of Descend), or whether players in the Medium need to eat (alien biology aside, the Trolls were there for most of a month), and earn my Doctorate of Skaian Physics.
« Last Edit: September 01, 2010, 04:01:08 pm by Aqizzar »
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Josephus

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7402 on: September 01, 2010, 04:15:05 pm »

I'm still wondering about Dad, though. Skaia had no direct hand in his creation that we know of, so he's the wild card.

Maybe if he just pulls a Sepulchritude on Jack Noir, he could end the bug.
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Jim Groovester

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7403 on: September 01, 2010, 04:27:16 pm »

Whaddaya know, I'm a professor of Skaia paradox physics now.  Maybe I'll finish my research dissertation on what happens when a player goes through their second gate to a planet whose owning player hasn't entered the game yet (as Dave does at the end of Descend), or whether players in the Medium need to eat (alien biology aside, the Trolls were there for most of a month), and earn by Doctorate of Skaian Physics.

Allow me to correct you on one point; Dave enters his first gate at the end of Descend, not his second. I don't have a foggy clue how Dave managed to run around to get to Gate 5 on Dave: Accelerate. If I understand how the gates work (and I don't really), that would require he ran around all four of the kids' planets once and ended up back on LOHAC.

And now I'll get to the point.  Karkat believes his universe is coming to an end, from the glowing graph of doom, probably very soon.  We already know that Alternia itself is still around centuries in the future, and Snowman narratively comments that she possesses all the time in the world, whatever that means.  Remember my posit, that the Medium is a universe completely separate from the real-space of wherever the players' come from.  Perhaps that is Lord English's purpose, not destroying the universe, but entering and destroying the game universes.  There's the further complication of the Distant Servers where Lord English's program (and probably the Walkthrough and presumably the Horrorterrors) reside.  Theses are all good hints that the Trolls may be able to escape from their Medium, either to another universe or back to the wasted husk of Alternia.

Lord English is a demon marked for predation, so if there's a universe he wants to pick apart he would probably want an enormous one instead of a tiny one created by a game. This does not explain why he has his agents affecting the outcome of the trolls' session in the least; perhaps instead of Lord English devouring the game universe, he enters the game universe when it is destroyed, and then moseys his way on over to the fuller, more complete universe that the players originally inhabited to gobble that up over the slow course of time.

It would thus be critical for his agents to engineer a way for game sessions to begin but ultimately fail completely. This seems to make sense; Doc Scratch manipulates Vriska to crippling her friends, Snowman commands Vriska and Terezi to destroy a ring that might give Spades Slick a critical advantage in fighting Lord English, and so on.

As for how the trolls escape their fate, and perhaps more physically, the meteor they're on, why can't they just hitch a ride on Tavros' rocket chair and fly through one of the Skaia defense portals? There has to be some sort of explanation for why they're completely and totally doomed despite all of their wicked cool equipment and skills. Is it void on the other side of the portal? Are all the portals closed? I don't know, but I think we're getting closer to some sort of explanation of just exactly what went wrong.
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Dragooble

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7404 on: September 01, 2010, 04:29:42 pm »

Well thank you for that aqizzar, i plan on eventually making a thread on the MSPA forums detailing Sburb game mechanics. If i end up doing that may i post your post there?
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Leafsnail

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7405 on: September 01, 2010, 04:31:42 pm »

So, the real question is "Why does Sburb run at all?"  I guess it has to be in Lord English's interests somehow.
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Soadreqm

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7406 on: September 01, 2010, 04:33:21 pm »

I'm still wondering about Dad, though. Skaia had no direct hand in his creation that we know of, so he's the wild card.
You're saying that John's dad is a joker?

Aqizzar: A most fine essay. As for the eating, they can just make food with alchemy. If the players were stuck in the Medium with no starting food or a way to ghost-captchalogue any, they might have some problems, but I don't think that happens very often. And if any player gets any edible plants or wildlife on her planet, they can make infinite copies of those. In the most gruesome worst-case scenario where every player gets some variant of the Land of Ash and Famine, they'd have to dupe pieces cut off from themselves. Eating nothing but Tavros' legs for a month might not be most people's idea of a good time, but as long as there's grist, nobody in this game is going to starve.
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Duke 2.0

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7407 on: September 01, 2010, 04:34:53 pm »

 And remember the very first bit of information given about Skaia, as a source of unlimited creative potential. And the the following bit on how the point of the game is to solve the Ultimate Riddle. The Riddle in question may have already been answered, but whatever. That answer doesn't really provide much for us to go on anyway. But we still need to remember what Nana said about sburb. It almost seems like Andrew forgot she said anything of what she said with all this concentration around Jack and Lord English and Mr. Scratch and stuff.
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Josephus

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7408 on: September 01, 2010, 04:37:13 pm »

So, the real question is "Why does Sburb run at all?"  I guess it has to be in Lord English's interests somehow.

Yes, I've been working under the assumption that successfully playing Sgrub/Sburb is in fact essential to Lord English's plans.
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Aqizzar

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Re: MSPA: Your Love Could Be Explained With Memos
« Reply #7409 on: September 01, 2010, 04:47:18 pm »

I think we're all wondering just where the Hell Sburb came from.  Not just where the game discs came from or Sollux's codes, but the game itself.  What is its origin?  That may be the real Ultimate Riddle - figuring out why and where Sburb exists, so the players can destroy it once and for all, and save the entire unlimited cosmo (or all intelligent civilization anyway) from methodical destruction at the hands of a buggy beta-test.

And remember the very first bit of information given about Skaia, as a source of unlimited creative potential. And the the following bit on how the point of the game is to solve the Ultimate Riddle. The Riddle in question may have already been answered, but whatever. That answer doesn't really provide much for us to go on anyway. But we still need to remember what Nana said about sburb. It almost seems like Andrew forgot she said anything of what she said with all this concentration around Jack and Lord English and Mr. Scratch and stuff.

Well, it doesn't seem so much like he forgot it, as just chooses to take it more interpretively, and ignore some details.  I was thinking about the Kernel splitting and the dark half going down.  There's no reason for it to go there if it's on it's way to Derse, and that process isn't seen on any other kid's planet.  It was just a cool idea Hussie had and then decided against when he had another one.  I somehow doubt that page is really the answer to the ultimate riddle, but if it's a veiled message that the key to the whole game is learning the values of friendship and self-determination, it wouldn't exactly surprise me.  It will just be dressed up in a lot more ironic comedy when we get there.

Well thank you for that aqizzar, i plan on eventually making a thread on the MSPA forums detailing Sburb game mechanics. If i end up doing that may i post your post there?
Knock yourself out.  I'll probably never even go there myself.

I'm still wondering about Dad, though. Skaia had no direct hand in his creation that we know of, so he's the wild card.
You're saying that John's dad is a joker?
I had some misgivings about the idea of Dad Saves the World before, but now you've clinched it.  That's the plan.  Son of a bitch, it's so obvious now, and I bet Hussie would say the same.

Aqizzar: A most fine essay. As for the eating, they can just make food with alchemy. If the players were stuck in the Medium with no starting food or a way to ghost-captchalogue any, they might have some problems, but I don't think that happens very often. And if any player gets any edible plants or wildlife on her planet, they can make infinite copies of those. In the most gruesome worst-case scenario where every player gets some variant of the Land of Ash and Famine, they'd have to dupe pieces cut off from themselves. Eating nothing but Tavros' legs for a month might not be most people's idea of a good time, but as long as there's grist, nobody in this game is going to starve.

You may have put more thought into this that I have.  But yeah, we have seen edible food in some worlds, but not all of them.  Rose's world is confirmed barren, and Dave's is the Magma Factory.  The answer to the question is whether Dave (and Rose) were able to move between worlds in their aborted timeline, and we just happened to catch up with Dave while he was back on LOHAC.
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