The Sylph's Rants

A side blog for a Sylph of Time to share theories and speculation, both on Homestuck proper and the workings of SBURB.

[sylphtheories]

Ariadne Lalonde

Today is storytime, so stay a while and listen. Yes, I promise this is relevant. Comfy? Good.

Today's story is about Kanaya Maryam.

Wait no.

Today's story is about Theseus and the Minotaur.

Once upon a time, in ancient Greece, Prince Theseus of Athens was one of fourteen youths picked to be shipped to the isle of Crete and fed to the Minotaur, a horrible beast that yeah okay you all should know what the fuck a minotaur is. It's a dude with the head of a bull that eats people and lives in a maze. That's what was pretty much going to happen to these Athenian youths: they get to Crete, they're thrown into the labyrinth, and the Minotaur hunts them down and eats them.

Theseus decided way back when he signed up to get eaten that he's going to fight the Minotaur and stop its Athenian-munching ways. He's got no idea how to go about this, however, until he meets the princess of Crete, Ariadne. Not only is Princess Ariadne a total babe, she's got brains, too. She gives Theseus a sword to kill the Minotaur with, and a ball of thread that he can use to navigate the labyrinth. Theseus then ties one end of the thread to the entrance of the labyrinth, and proceeds to take his sword, kill the Minotaur, and then successfully navigate his way out (in some versions of the tale, taking the other thirteen Athenians out of the labyrinth with him). Then Theseus sweeps Ariadne off her feet (yes romantically), and they sail away together (again, some versions have all the other Athenians in tow).

What the grubhumping FUCK does this have to do with Homestuck, you ask? First, humping grubs is gross, don't do it. Second, Rose's godtier echeladder has everything to do with it. Her current rung is, in fact, Ariadne's Threadspinner. With that in mind, let's just change some names around, and then look at the story again….

Once upon a time, there was a dashing (prince/jade blood) named (Theseus/Kanaya Maryam) who was determined to navigate (a labyrinth/SBURB) and kill (the Minotaur/the Black King), but didn't know how (he/she) was going to do it. That is, until (he/she) gets a (ball of string/GameFAQs walkthrough that was cast into the Furthest Ring) from the (princess of Crete/Seer of Light), (Ariadne/Rose Lalonde). Armed with the means to navigate the (literal/metaphorical) labyrinth, (Theseus/Kanaya) defeats (the Minotaur/the Black King) and then flees (Crete/the vicinity of the Green Sun) with (Ariadne/Rose) and the surviving (Athenians/trolls). Having successfully escaped with their lives, (Theseus/Kanaya) and (Ariadne/Rose) proceeded to make kissy faces at each other.

Holy bulgechafing fucknuggets, the story IS relevant, you say! Well, I told you so.

But wait. There's more to the story.

You see, after a few rounds of kissy-faces, Theseus leaves Ariadne behind on an island on the way back, sailing off without her. The justifications for this vary depending on the version of the myth (Theseus was a hero, people didn't want him to look bad!), but in all versions, she's left behind and doesn't get to go back to Athens with Theseus. Ariadne is then found wallowing in her despair by none other than the god Dionysus. Dionysus and Ariadne make kissy faces and then get married.

This is where things get interesting. Not only does this not bode well for Rosemary, but Dionysus is the god of wine.

Uh oh.

However, this is also the part where the myth kind of starts to fall apart on us. Rose's alcohol addiction is pretty clearly a Bad Thing, and she knows it, so I don't think she's going to marry booze in any way, shape, or form. Yes, alcohol is undoubtedly playing a role in the Rosemary ship sinking, but it's hardly a happily-ever-after.

So, if Rose is Ariadne, then who is Dionysus?

Here's where shit gets serious and I break out the Google-Fu to see what Dionysus was associated with other than getting shitfaced.

Here's the bullet list:

Also a god of fertility and harvest, as well as ritual madness and ecstacy, with some associations to freedom, and patron of the theatre. And yes, a few orgies. And rebirth after death, oddly enough.

Dionysus was kind of bipolar; one moment he would bring joy to all around him, the next he would do an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle and fly into untinking rage. Allegedly, this reflects the nature of wine: a good thing for chillaxing in moderation, but just asking for disaster if overused.

Many of his cults believed he arrived from some foreign region, and this "arriving outsider-god" thing was important to them.

The youngest of the Olympian gods, and also the only one with a mortal mother. Dionysus' mortal mother, Semele, was killed by Hera (well, indirectly) before Dionysus was born. Zeus then took the infant and stuffed him in his thigh, and carried the infant to term. So uh, yay for ancient Greeks inventing mpreg?

Epithets include Adoneus ("ruler"), Briseus ("he who prevails"), Bromios ("Roaring" similar to wind or thunder), Eleutherios ("the liberator"), Lyaeus ("he who unties/releases from care and anxiety"), Pseudanor ("false man"), and "twice-born", the last epithet in reference to his weird birth.

One time, the city of Thebes refused to worship him, so he turned all the women of the town into new recruits for his Maenads (crazy cultist chicks that eat raw animal flesh and dance a lot), and then the new Maenads kill the local king.

Generally, looking down Wikipedia, there are several stories about Dionysus screwing over people who have either slighted him somehow (like trying to sell him into slavery) or just refused to worship him (which I guess was a big deal for the Greeks because Dionysus lived on Olympus?)

Another time, his tutor wandered off drunk, but was taken in by King Midas and treated hospitably until Dionysus could come pick the old man up. In exchange, Dionysus offered a choice of reward, and Midas asked for everything he touched to be turned to gold. After the whole "Midas Touch" debacle, there's at least one version of the myth where Dionysus tells Midas how to get rid of the golden touch.

Actually went down into the Underworld to get his mortal mother out. Some shepherd dude helped him get down there, and in exchange asked to be Dionysus' lover, except he then died before Dionysus could make good on that. So Dionysus buried the guy with a wooden dildo. Classy.

He went to the Underworld at least two other times, to get at least two other people out. One was a great playwright, and the other was...ARIADNE??

HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE.

ARIADNE DIES.

Thus, Rose's chance of kicking the bu…er…of dying have just gone up a zillionfold.

The good news is, her chances of being resurrected have ALSO gone up a zillionfold. And while I could spin my wheels all day about ways to resurrect players (I already did, actually), we can be 99.9% sure that whoever Dionysus turns out to be will have a big role in bringing back our Ariadne.

So, who IS Dionysus? We never answered that.

I have no idea!

…Okay, that is a lie, I DO have an idea. I also have no way of telling how tightly my shipping goggles are screwed on. I'll share if people are really interested, though. I GUESS.

[sylphtheories]

I did it. I did the editing thing.

[sylphtheories]

Stuff on resurrecting dead players is out of date. Gonna go fix that.

[sylphtheories]

Homosuck: The Speechbubbling

First of all, I'd like everyone in the upd8 tag to calm the fuck down.

Yes, John is saying things. No, those things are not in a pesterlog or dialoglog. They are actually in the image, speech bubble style. What a stylistic departure from, oh, just about everything else on the MSPA site!

Consider that we are dealing with JOHN EGBERT, and the "medium" he's currently in is HOMOSUCK.

First off, Homosuck. Caliborn is in charge here, and he's not letting us see any pesterlogs at all. He's in control of the interface. Were a character to say anything at all via pesterlog or dialoglog--especially criticism of how shitty Caliborn's work is, from a character Caliborn doesn't want in his story--we, the reader, would never get to see it. If we're going to see John talk at all, it's going to have to be through something else.

So, why doesn't John just silently make horrified faces at everything?

Being unstuck in canon probably has something to do with it.

Ever since he used that juju, John's been bending rules and evading limitations that pretty much every other character in the comic has to put up with. Zapping to different points in the comic, retconning things, actually leaving the comic once or twice...you get the picture.

Now, I could go off here about the Breath aspect, the Heir class, the actual powers of the juju, et cetera, but that's a topic for another day. But the point I'm trying to make here is, whatever theory you subscribe to, John is less restricted than the other characters. He's unstuck in canon, and progressively growing more aware of his power.

So if he wants to say something that's not contained in a pesterlog? Why the fuck not?

Now I want to see what happens when he demonstrates this power to his friends. That'll be so fun to watch, huehuehuehuehue....

[sylphtheories]

> Sylph: Wake

Sooooo I kind of disappeared for a few months there.

It's not like I stopped theorizing in that time, though. Even though it was a shitty summer and I was mostly playing Star Wars and there was a hiatus without much theory fodder and yeah excuses bluh bluh bluh.

Don't worry, all you...seven...followers. I'm throwing up some new theories in short order.

(god my time management sucks, you'd think i'd be better at my aspect but nooooooo)

[sylphtheories]

Blood Runs Red

Today, we're going to talk about a Type 1 (speculation based on canon) theory concerning the Blood aspect.

Take a moment to look at the aspect symbol here:

The aspect's emblem is pretty straightforward here: a gash or wound bleeding red blood.

Wait. Red blood?

To us humans, with our naturally red blood, red blood for a Blood symbol only makes sense. But consider the TROLLS, an entire species with a wide variety of blood colors--none of which are the same color as human blood.

Except for THESE douchebags. The heroes of Blood. By troll standards, they're mutants; Karkat probably would've been culled based on his blood color, had he not been sucked into SGRUB. Their blood hue has no place in their caste system, and for all we know, thanks to ectobiological bullshit, they're the only two trolls in existence to have bright red blood.

Blood the same color as their aspect symbol.

Why do they have blood matching the color of the Blood symbol, instead of, you know, some other, non-mutant troll blood color? Why is the symbol for Blood red, instead of some other color?

If you look at all the races in Homestuck that we've seen the blood color of (humans, trolls, cherubs, prospitians, dersites, leprechauns/gnomes/frogmen/Felt), you notice that all of them, except trolls, have at least some members of their species that bleed BRIGHT. HUMAN. RED. (For examples: all humans, all prospitians/dersites, all Felt members, and Caliborn/Lord English).

It's one thing they all have in common. It's one thing that unites them.

Blood as an aspect deals in part with unity.

What's more, trolls, the only species that doesn't naturally have bright red blood, is divided by blood color into castes. They're hardly united at all, and the one guy who tried to change that? A post-Scratch Kankri, with bright red blood.

So the Blood symbol being red makes more sense now. But why do Karkat and Kankri have that human-red blood, instead of, say, Aradia's rust color?

Blood is the aspect of unity. Bright red blood is a uniting factor amongst the races of Homestuck. It only makes sense for the heroes of Blood to have that same blood color, and so the Game forces that mutation on them.

There's nothing wrong with Karkat and Kankri at all. Their blood color is just a mark of their aspect.

Now let's go a step further. Karkat and Kankri are the only two Heroes of Blood we've seen, and if their blood color was set by the Game instead of what's standard for their species, what if other Blood players, from species we've never seen or heard of, have the same mutation? That if bright red blood isn't natural for their species, an exception is shoehorned in by the Game in the form of a mutation?

We don't have any non-Vantas Blood players available for comparison, but if we did, I bet you they'd bleed bright candy red, regardless of species.

[sylphtheories]

How To Resurrect Your Dead Co-Player

This would fall under Type 2 theories, or "cool things that could happen". And since I happen to run a tabletop game based on Homestuck, this is a question I've put a lot of thought in to.

Say one of your players dies. Dead realself. Dead dreamself. Not dying, not half-dead, but really and truly dead. Permadead. Passed on. Shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to meet their dancestor. This is an ex-parrot ex-player.

What then?

Method 1: The One Ring

This one comes straight from canon. Should you be able to somehow fish up the fabled Ring of Life (and not its twin, the Ring of Void), you'll be able to pass it off to any ghost and get them revived. But there's a big IF here. Several, actually.

First of all, actually FINDING THE DAMN THING. It's a legendary treasure from out in the Furthest Ring (at least, we think so). You'll have to compete with plenty of ghosts for it, and there's only one of these.

Its ties to canon also complicate things: if we're talking a fan adventure, the Ring's very likely not available, because acquiring it might involve finding your way to the Post-Scratch Kid's session. If you actually DO take that route to the Ring, you're very likely dooming your timeline, theirs, or both. (If you DO bring the Ring into your fansession, be sure to tie its history back to how it was tossed around in canon.)

Furthermore, we don't know exactly how the ring works, other than "a ghost that wears it comes back to life". Do they remain alive when they take the ring off? If they take the Ring off in their session, and they die by doing so, do they just poof? Or does the ghost stay? What happens when a player revived by the Ring tries to godtier? Can a player be killed while they're wearing the Ring, or do they just immediately revive? Aranea swiping the ring for herself hasn't helped much, since she's never taken the thing off.

What if you got the Ring of Void instead? Sure, that's handy, but it doesn't resurrect people. You'd have to swap out. Which means, you'd have to LOSE THE RING AND THEN FIND IT AGAIN.

Complicating things even FURTHER: there's a theory going around that the Ring of Life and the Ring of Void are actually one and the same! That...actually, considering the theory about "it's just a ring that boosts your aspect" has been debunked with the Ring of Life resurrecting a Light player, whether or not they're the same ring really doesn't matter that much. Hell, it may UN-complicate things in some instances--certain fully-realized players might be able to switch the Ring between "Life" and "Void" modes.

But anyway. If you're not in the Homestuck webcomic proper, you're probably best off forgetting about the Ring.

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Method 2: We Can Rebuild Him

Another way to bring a dead player back into things is to construct a soulbot. This technique has been used effectively in canon (recall Aradiabot) without any of the weird timeline restrictions that a legendary artifact come with. Another advantage is that you can build more than one. Three players die in the last hour? You have reserves! (you'd better if three players die in an hour)

That being said, there are restrictions on this method, too. Consider the fact that you have to BUILD AN ENTIRE ROBOTIC LIKENESS OF THE PLAYER. Unless your name is Dirk Strider, I sincerely doubt you can pull a robot out your ass. (If your name is Dirk Strider, I question the practicality of keeping a robot up your ass.) Building a robot is going to take a lot of hard work.

Also consider that building a robot that's acceptable for a ghost to inhabit takes time and skill. You can't just throw something together when the player drops dead, you have to build it beforehand. Aradia was an exception in canon because her ghost led a rather stable existance on Alternia pre-game, instead of poofing off to the dreambubbles. Otherwise, you'd better have that robot ready.

There's also the issue of getting the ghost/consciousness of the deceased to go into the soulbot. Does it happen automatically? Do you have to lure it there? Do you have to drag it from the dreambubbles via some kind of dark majyyks? Is it different for each ghost?

Long story short, if you have someone who builds robots, and you want to give dead players soulbots, you'd better build them in advance.

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Method 3: Prototyping

If one of your sprites hasn't been Tier 2 prototyped yet, you could always just chuck your dead player in there. Then they come back with SPRITE POWERS!

However, you should be sure to only revive players using this method after you've entered the Medium (if your players are dying before you enter the Medium, either it's going to be a rough session, or you're heading for a doomed timeline). Also, there's the issue of having a single-prototyped sprite available. If a sprite's only been prototyped once, it'll probably be next to useless--recall John's sprite before his Nanna's ashes fell into it.

And is a sprite still valid as a player? Can a sprite still god tier (without the original player also being alive), complete their world quest, etc? Davesprite seemed to be able to interact with Dave's denizen just fine, but for all we know, that's just beause Hephastus is one of the more sociable denizens and/or that meeting was essential to the timeline. Also, expect them to retain features of the other prototyping, should you succeed in resurrecting them for real (JADE HARLEY).

--

One note here about Aradia in general: Aradia is a weird case. She continued existing as a ghost before the Game, at which point she became a sprite that then possessed a soulbot, before her stasis'd dreamself godtiered and the soulbot exploded.

Aradia is weird.

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Now we're going to get in to less canon and more speculative ways to bring your dead pals back.

Method 4: Ectoresurrection

Who knows what ectobiology is really capable of? Should you come across an ectobiology station with certain specialized equipment, guard that shit with your life. All your lives. It may be a Get Out Of Death Free card.

Suppose it's possible to recreate a dead player's body using ectobiology. Then you're in a similar situation with the soulbot, except with an actual living body instead of a robot. Therefore the biggest hurdle is making sure you're not just cloning the dead player, but actually bringing them back to life. How do you make sure your player's ghost--and the RIGHT ghost--is on track for that new body you just cranked out?

There's also the issue of how, exactly, you can recreate this body. Does it actually take a special ectoresurrection station? Or can you do it just about anywhere you have ectobiology equipment?

(I'd like to give credit to this idea to a Homestuck homebrew tabletop RPG project I dug up. Thanks, guys!)

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Method 5: By Your Powers Combined

Maybe none of the above are what you're looking for. Maybe all you have is a stone-cold corpse, and the only reason it hasn't rotted yet is because it's sitting in your sylladex. So aside from alchemetizing various paraphernalia with uncanny resemblances to your deceased teammate, what can you do?

If you have certain players, with certain powers, the corpse might be all you need.

Certain aspects lend themselves, at least in theory, to revival and healing. If one or more players--especially godtiered ones--work together, it may be entirely possible to breathe life back into an old body.

So, who would you need? At the bare minimum, you'd need a Life player. Because you're trying to restore the body to LIFE. More magical classes will be better, as will passive ones. A Sylph of Life is guaranteed to resurrect someone or something at some point (or a Maid, if it turns out Maids are also a "repairing" class. If that's the case, Jane arguably already pulled this. On herself. (EDIT: SHE ALSO PULLED THIS ON KARKAT. I REPEAT, MAIDS CAN RESURRECT PLAYERS)). Princes of Life can probably sit this one out, unless they're resurrecting their player for a very clear-cut destructive end.

But a Life player being able to resurrect other dead players (especially godtiered ones) on their own might be a bit much (EDIT: UNLESS YOU ARE JANE CROCKER), especially if the dead player's been like that a while. Who else would you need to be sure the resurrection goes smoothly, and your pal doesn't Come Back Wrong (as per the trope)?

Let's go down the list:

Breath: The "Breath of Life" much? Breath is associated not only with wind and, well, breathing, but according to popular fan theory, movement and direction. So Breath players could get a body breathing and moving again, especially if working in tandem with others.

Light: Depending on class, your Light player could be planning the ritual, or just making whoever's performing it a bit more lucky.

Space: While Space often has some associations with life, due to their breeding of the Genesis Frog, I really have no idea how their powers would contribute directly to a resurrection ritual. Their contribution might be more indirect, such as finding out about the ritual in the first place.

Time: Possibly, for certain classes. Their function would be to "rewind" time on the corpse in question, reverting it to a state where it's not fucking gushing blood everywhere.

Void: Possibly, reaching into the Void with their powers to lure the ghost of the departed player back to their newly repaired body.

Heart: A bit of a stretch, but these guys are associated with the soul and the self, so maybe their role would be to unite the ghost with the body. Actually, that'd be useful with a cloned body or a soulbot, too (which makes Dirk, a robot-building Heart player, suddenly really valuable when it comes to player resurrection).

Hope: If the ritual takes more than one person, "hoping for a miracle" could be a vital part of it.

Blood: If Blood is unity, a Blood player could be a nice power amplifier for the ritualists. Or a more literal interpretation of the aspect could get the corpse's circulatory system working. Or you may just get a vampire/rainbow drinker or something, that totally counts as successful resurrection.

Mind: These guys would probably be more important in setting up the ritual than making it take place, seeing as their aspect is more logic and decision.

Doom: The aspect of Death and Sacrifice would be most useful here in the hands of a destroyer class. If you destroy death, that's a pretty big step toward life. Otherwise, they could sacrifice themselves or part of themselves to revive another guy, but unless you were reviving a player that could more directly help in resurrection, you're just swapping one dead guy for another.

Rage: Another guy who'd be more helpful setting up the ritual than actually resurrecting a dead player. Rage could get the other players pissed and/or crazy enough to try.

If this is indeed a valid means of resurrection, the biggest advantage is its viability late-game. If your soulbots are spent, your sprites are prototyped, your ectobiological equipment is damaged or lacking certain parts, and no way in hell are you hunting for that Ring, get your godtiered players together. With enough of the right Class/Aspect combos working together, you might not even need a Life player.

The downside is that the described method requires a body. It could be pulverized to meat and tubes, but there still needs to BE one (unless, maybe a powerful Void player could summon/steal/guide a ghost from the dreambubbles into the session and you do the resurrection thing on the ghost instead of the body?). And if some of your players are unavailable (possibly because they're also dead), then this is a no-go.

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I think that's enough for now. As always, every session is different! There may be plenty more ways to resurrect a player, some unique to one or a handful of sessions.

Don't turn your back on the body!

[sylphtheories]

Introduction

Hello everyone! This is your friendly neighborhood Sylph of Time (or one of them (could be more than one person with my title (in which case HI))).

So, what does a Sylph of Time do?

It's strongly implied by canon that a sylph is a healer class. Therefore, a Sylph of Time heals time, or heals with time. This blog could be an extension of the "heals time" capacity: picking up on where a timeline needs to be repaired, such as incomplete or unstable time loops, or plotholes (like there are plotholes in homestuck, ha ha (aside from casey not aging)).

There will be two kinds of speculation on this blog. The first will be looking at what's happened, where things are currently, and what's been implied, and drawing conclusions based on what would make sense, or at least a consistent timeline. The second is basically me saying, "Hey, x would be cool," where x is a cool thing that could happen. I then proceed to find a way to weave x as simply and elegantly as possible into the current plot or universe rules. If a sylph is a healer, then type 1 speculation is a sort of timeline diagnosis, while type 2 speculation is cloning some bizarre mutant appendage and stitching it on to some Frankenstein's monster-esque creation (wow that's a terrifying analogy).

Why don't I just post this on my main blog? Because then my theories get lost in the hubbub about tabletop games, Star Wars, and John aggressively ironing pants. Also to separate serious theories and analysis (I had a nice one about Rose's god tier echeladder titles) from silly ones ("Can Town is the secret to defeating Lord English!").

So welcome again, and enjoy the read!