MS Paint Adventures V: THIS IS STUPID

[Draconi Redfir]

I can't help but wonder if the troll Jake met was a Page and the one Roxy's meeting is a Rogue. Also, for all the trouble that the kids and trolls we know went through to survive a scratch, I'd find it very funny if a similar thing had been accomplished by the pre-scratch trolls simply by dying/dreambubbling before their scratch went off.

Could simply be that scratching just outright kills you.

Plus they are still dead, no real point in dodging the scratch if you are dead.

[Friv]

Allright, well unless Feferi has some kind of evil lovechild in the afterlife, i think we can rule out that previous troll being the daughter of john and vriska.

Wich means there are currently three groups of trolls in play here, the trolls we know, the dead pre-scratch ancestor trolls, and the trolls in UU's session.

I'm about 85% sure that the young troll woman there is actually the Condesce, but from the pre-scratch timeline. She has the same sort of smile from the Sleepwalk video, the same eyes, and her hair is starting to grow extremely long down her back. If so, the young woman Jake saw would have actually been Mindfang from the pre-scratch timeline as well.

Not sure where UU fits in with all of that, mind you.

[mp122984]

Could simply be that scratching just outright kills you.

Plus they are still dead, no real point in dodging the scratch if you are dead.

Well, based on things like this:

Since this timeline will undergo such a violent upheaval, such a merger of memory cannot happen.
You will be resigned to absolute oblivion.
Unless you can discover a way to preserve yourselves.
But it's not really my place to advise you on that.

It's more than just death. Assuming this is accurate, if they had been alive when the scratch went off, it should have wiped them out completely. No dreambubbles or anything. The fact that we see them at all here to me means either a) shenanigans or b) they died before the scratch went off, and in doing so dodged the scratch, although there's no way to tell yet if that was deliberate if that was the case.

Which reminds me: How is it that the pre-scratchers lost the game but still managed to succeed in scratching their session? I'm still curious about that, and if that ties somehow to them being dead now.

[Draconi Redfir]

Which reminds me: How is it that the pre-scratchers lost the game but still managed to succeed in scratching their session? I'm still curious about that, and if that ties somehow to them being dead now.

Same way the kids did it, The session was either infertile or Skia was being destroyed, so they got the item required for the scratch (probably grouping up for a final battle with the appropriate denizen, likely how Mindfang and Conny died, as well as a few others.) and traveled to the time player's planet to use the item on the required area (i.e. beat mesa.)

Way i see it, things could have gone like this.


Trolls weren't aggressive enough to defeat Derse in time to save Skia, likely either being too afraid to fight, or simply untrained.

Skia gets pelted to death by the reckoning, game's over, they are trapped.

A sprite or whatever tells them about and how to scratch (either before or after skia death)

Any trolls that aren't already dead go to the required land, zerg-rush the denizen, And likely loose a few of their number in the process.

The survivors go to the time-land, proceed to scratch the session, and their universe is reborn with their species being raised to be much more violent.

It's possible that Sufferer had managed to go god teir at some point and died a heroic death, thus explaining the god-kat we saw in the dreambubbles, however that could also be explained by doomed timeline shenanigans.

if it WAS the sufferer however, i believe that would count as evidence enough that the ancestors shared a title with their decedents rather then in the human session in which they are different. I believe this would be because the ancestors and decendents seem to be direct clones of one another rather then having biological parents like the beta-kids..

[JadedDM]

I'm about 85% sure that the young troll woman there is actually the Condesce, but from the pre-scratch timeline. She has the same sort of smile from the Sleepwalk video, the same eyes, and her hair is starting to grow extremely long down her back. If so, the young woman Jake saw would have actually been Mindfang from the pre-scratch timeline as well.

Not sure where UU fits in with all of that, mind you.

If that is so, then why was that other Mindfang wearing the symbol of the Sufferer, who was not a religious martyr in the pre-scratch timeline?

As for UU, I'm betting that she's in the universe that will be created by the Alpha kids' session.

[Calemyr]

I thought the reason the pre-scratch trolls needed to scratch their game was because none of them performed the required ectobiology needed to create them, and the game cannot allow you to exist without creating yourself (which Karkat's crew did post-scratch). I also thought Doc Scratch claimed credit for forcing the need for the scratch as a means to turn the trolls into the hateful little wrigglers they became (as a means to create the critical agents of Lord English - Condesce and the Handmaiden - out of the post-scratch ancestors).

That would also mean that, despite having already died, Doc Scratch is going to be part of events in some manner, because this is him from before his death.

[irenicObserver]

Which reminds me: How is it that the pre-scratchers lost the game but still managed to succeed in scratching their session? I'm still curious about that, and if that ties somehow to them being dead now.

They were too pacifistic to play the game through. They failed, made an agreement with Echidna to use one of her quills to scratch. Doc Scratch spelled it all out for us. Also a glitch made it so they were never ectobiologically born.

[Grytorm]

If that is so, then why was that other Mindfang wearing the symbol of the Sufferer, who was not a religious martyr in the pre-scratch timeline?

As for UU, I'm betting that she's in the universe that will be created by the Alpha kids' session.

Just because he wasn't a martyr. Perhaps Karkat was the ruler in the unscratched Trolline. Or something. He definitively seems important.

[Arrghus]

Well, based on things like this:


It's more than just death. Assuming this is accurate, if they had been alive when the scratch went off, it should have wiped them out completely. No dreambubbles or anything. The fact that we see them at all here to me means either a) shenanigans or b) they died before the scratch went off, and in doing so dodged the scratch, although there's no way to tell yet if that was deliberate if that was the case.

Which reminds me: How is it that the pre-scratchers lost the game but still managed to succeed in scratching their session? I'm still curious about that, and if that ties somehow to them being dead now.

Absolute oblivion... and then one appears in the Void between spaces. Curious.

They were too pacifistic to play the game through. They failed, made an agreement with Echidna to use one of her quills to scratch. Doc Scratch spelled it all out for us. Also a glitch made it so they were never ectobiologically born.

Never ectobiologically born in their session. When dealing with Scratch, pay attention to the weasel words.

[mp122984]

They were too pacifistic to play the game through. They failed, made an agreement with Echidna to use one of her quills to scratch. Doc Scratch spelled it all out for us. Also a glitch made it so they were never ectobiologically born.

That's what makes me curious. I kinda want to see how these pacifistic trolls managed to defend the Beat Mesa as the scratch was going on, just like John did. And then how they dodged the scratch, if they dodged it at all. I had thought that either shenanigans or their deaths allowed them to escape, but...

Absolute oblivion... and then one appears in the Void between spaces. Curious.

This. Was "Absolute oblivion" Doc Scratch's euphemism for the Furthest Ring all along?

[Draconi Redfir]

I thought the reason the pre-scratch trolls needed to scratch their game was because none of them performed the required ectobiology needed to create them, and the game cannot allow you to exist without creating yourself (which Karkat's crew did post-scratch).

Never ectobiologically born in their session. When dealing with Scratch, pay attention to the weasel words.

i'm pretty sure this was more of a side-cause rather then the primary cause itself. Most likely their Skia was infertile so they had to scratch, it was infertile because they did not create themselves yet because they had to scratch in order to do so.

[PrinceAquilaDei]

“How far until UU is revealed?”

The answer to any question like this is “probably months” because things take a long time to unfold and develop. I update frequently but by the standards of readers’ humongous appetites for more, the rate of progress is still glacial. There are things like animation time to factor in, drawing lots more new “plot advancing assets,” juggling a bunch of different story threads and so on. It’s a slow, steady creep, but it’s always going somewhere, and that destination has become reliably combustible.

But making decisions to accelerate your plans because people are impatient is the same thing as making bad decisions. To put everything in perspective, think of it this way. Cascade didn’t happen 4 months ago. It happened about an hour ago, or maybe less. Because that’s how long it takes to read what I’ve written since then. It’s almost nothing. No matter what doldrums we appear to progress through serially, or what elusive payoffs seem to perpetually hover in the distance, all of that is insignificant and easily endured in the archival readthrough by the wide eyed and uninitiated. One who watched Cascade an hour ago is propelled through succeeding material still spurred by the energy and curiosity generated by that explosive multi-threaded plot crescendo. And if Homestuck were finished, they’d just keep reading to the end without handwringing over who’s gonna be introduced when or wondering why teen drama has replaced “real plot advancement” or stuff like that, because they don’t have time to form those thoughts because there’s always another page to click on. All those things are quickly contextualized and paid off because you just keep clicking next, while all the entertainment value is heavily compactified, easily compensating for the kinds of lulls or buildup measures that can absolutely torment some serial readers and push them to the threshold of bizarre histrionics and irrational ragequit oaths.

Wait, I’ve wandered into the serial vs. archival reading issue again. This isn’t even all that pertinent to the question. But it’s a topic I seem to get into a lot because it’s important, maybe even THE most important consideration for how a story is perceived, i.e. the rate at which it’s absorbed. Few seem to understand this. And those who do often forget, and get caught up in kneejerk judgments that would never be made otherwise. It kind of blows my mind observing some of the reactionary dementia that crops up in a huge serial readership, which is a double edged sword: fun to watch the day-to-day excitement over developments, painful to behold the ubiquitous impatience and the corrupting influence that has on the judgment of content. In many respects it’s a very bad way to read a longform story, dribbled out in pages rather than in big chunks. Impatience among some generates toxicity over time, like they’re gradually, unwittingly developing a grudge against the story because of the pace they’re forced to read at. This then warps everything they see. As if a tainted a witness. If they crave swift advancement, then pages that do not accomplish this adequately like gags or character developing interactions become like personal affronts to them. Good material is like a slap in the face. And the irony is, the more they like the story, the more toxic the attitude can get, because they badly want to see it get somewhere fast, and they can feel let down or like the work is in decline because they’re forced to sit through its responsible, judicious development in realtime. But this is an almost nonexistent phenomenon with archival reading, which lends itself to a little more detachment and reservation as one cruises through the material at the speed of reading. Judgments are formed less at the atomic level of the story’s building blocks, a bit more holistically, and individual developments are never agonized over. They may ultimately not love the story, but at least the resentment complex that can fester in the space of the serial drip never had a chance to skew the result.

Probably some people think it’s weird that I put emphasis on long term archival pacing when I produce a thing serially, page by page. I do think that is the only way to make something good in the long term. But aside from that, consider that by now the vast majority of the readership began reading relatively recently. Most current readers have experienced most of the story by catching up through the archives, so any attention I put on pacing that out with patience and discipline has directly benefited, it turns out: MOST READERS! This trend will probably continue as more pile on in the future and HS approaches its end. But then the funny thing is those people who catch up then dive into the huge serial mosh pit, and immediately assume the psychology and habits of serial readers, most of the time without even being aware of how radically this will alter their perception of all events that follow, better or worse. It’s kind of a strange mill of human perception I’m running here. A weird factory where droves enter curious, proceed fascinated, and exit frenzied. But while that process for them is quick, they should try to remember the factory took three years to build, and its construction is ongoing at the same slow pace it always has been.

Are you trying to tell me something Andrew?

[SlyGuyMcFly]

I admit I chuckled.

[Das Platyvark]

Act 6 up to today: This is boring. I want my psycho trolls back.
INTRODuCTION OF undyingUmbrage: HUSSIE, MY FAITH IN YOU IS RESTORED

[JadedDM]

So...UU (both of them) is basically the fandom, right? One is writing romantic fanfiction and drawing fanart, and the other is constantly bitching about how much Homestuck sucks.

[Oracle_Hunter]

So...UU (both of them) is basically the fandom, right? One is writing romantic fanfiction and drawing fanart, and the other is constantly bitching about how much Homestuck sucks.

The Trolls were originally fandom/Internet archetypes so yeah

[JadedDM]

The Trolls were originally fandom/Internet archetypes so yeah

Right, I remember reading about that. But...I suspect that the two UUs are supposed to be representations of the Homestuck fandom, specifically.

[TinyMushroom]

I remember UU mentioning a brother. I wonder if this is him...

[irenicObserver]

It probably is, his pestercolor being the difference between Karkat and UU's. The red in his symbol has the same HEX as Karkat's blood.

He is like the hatedom of Homestuck, not the fandom, as he is pestered by UU to watch the story but does not get it and dislikes the speed of the story.

Also, reference to this. (NSFW)

[Oracle_Hunter]

Also, reference to this. (NSFW)

Why is Hussie so terrifying?

[Draconi Redfir]

Why is Hussie so terrifying?

I think you awnsered your own question there

[irenicObserver]

Guys, guys, GUYS. Look at this :-p and this, this, this, and this.

[thegurullamen]

this.

I know it's juvenile, but the first thing I noticed was Gamzee and the Handmaiden.

Now, re: Jigsaw:

What in God's name is wrong with the Homestuck community??????????

[memnarch]

I know it's juvenile, but the first thing I noticed was Gamzee and the Handmaiden.

Now, re: Jigsaw:

What in God's name is wrong with the Homestuck community??????????

It's huge, and with a sample-size like that of the population, you'll end up getting crazy people as well.

[irenicObserver]

I know it's juvenile, but the first thing I noticed was Gamzee and the Handmaiden.

honkHONKhonkHONKhonkHONK!!

also, in response did you not see the assault by the fandom on Normal People HQ?

[Derjuin]

I assume it's the intent of the character, but I really cannot stand uu. After just two (has it only been two?) chatlogs I already am glossing over his lines.

[Shadow of the Sun]

>.>

I still like him more than I like Eridan?

[Barefoot Monkey]

Now, re: Jigsaw:

What in God's name is wrong with the Homestuck community??????????

That actually predates Homestuck. You can see that it was an inspiration, especially for Bro's apartment.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

I assume it's the intent of the character, but I really cannot stand uu. After just two (has it only been two?) chatlogs I already am glossing over his lines.

He's a twit, but at least he's a legible twit. Unlike some other trolls I could mention...

[Barefoot Monkey]

He's a twit, but at least he's a legible twit. Unlike some other trolls I could mention...

:33 D--> Ww8, Ww)(4T M-EWw YoU M-E4N By T)(4t,