I honestly don't know if you can get it back, but I can screencap the whole thing for you and submit it to you so you can upload it as images I suppose. Or just write it all over again.
THIS IS NO NORMAL ASK, NOTABLE THEORIZING OCCURS!!
Right before I stopped posting again last time, zeunknown asked me a question about how I thought the gate system worked. I was a little surprised because nobody really asks me to help them figure stuff out about this comic, but I love trying to figure things out! Unfortunately, I accidentally answered privately without even finishing my answer. I completed my speculation now though! Thankfully zeunknown was able to send me back what I originally said. If interested, you can read it below the “keep reading” button.
If I missed something obvious that I should have already seen, I’m more than happy to have it pointed out! Hopefully I did okay given my level of knowledge, be nice. I tried to include enough pictures to make it interesting.
[Original question, exact phrasing lost due to tumblr’s poor messenging system … Basically “can you help explain how the gates might work?” ]
Hm … not really sure why you’d ask *me* questions about the story, but I’m glad you did! Keep in mind that virtually everyone reading this will have more context and information than I do. I’m probably wrong about some things, but this is the best layout I could make.
Let’s start with a basic image. I know that Jade will probably enter soon after we see the kids again, so that will make 4 planets with 7 gates above each (drawn with gates pointing outward for simplicity/readability, I know they really point inward to Skaia):
Now let’s start tracing out the hypothetical path of a player. In doing this, I made the assumption that paths would be symmetrical for each kid. This is where we will start getting gates that go on the planet, which have been left out so far.
John initially builds up to his first gate, which takes him down to his planet. Ignoring the return portal that Terezi makes him go through, the second gate is then found on his planet somewhere: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003588 As that page shows, he arrives at the second gate of Rose (his server player).
Time to scour for more information …
In Dave: Accelerate (http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003541) we see that a Gate 5 leads to an area on Dave’s planet. We also know that BEFORE Jade enters, John going to the 7th gate above his house will lead to his denizen. My ask screener James was kind enough to describe a little bit about how the players loop through the planets of their friends, building up more and more on each one, and I was able to come up with this:
Lines with arrows represent the paths that each kid may be intended to take in the game. Their planets are similarly colour coded.
Basically this would mean that every above-house gate connects to a on-planet gate in some fashion. I have no idea whether you could go backwards, if the same gate can take different people to different places, or any of a hundred other possible ways this could work …
It follows what Nanasprite said about having to descend before you can ascend each time (http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003329) but I have one glaring issue with it. Terezi tricks John to go through HIS seventh gate, which apparently leads to HIS denizen. However, this layout would have the 7th gate each player goes through lead to their client player’s planet somewhere rather than to their own denizen. I have some ideas about this though:
1) I am just plain wrong (likely in some way, regardless of any other factors) and this layout is not how it actually works at all.
2) When Jade had not yet entered the game, John’s 6th gate (on Dave’s planet) could skip Jade’s planet and go back to his own. This would make the next gate be the last gate above John’s house (#7 over John’s house would also be the 7th gate John goes through, taking him down to his denizen then).
3) Players bypass going to the actual land of their client (via 7th gate above client’s house), and the gate takes them directly to their denizen. ((This would mean that the only reason John went through house-gate 7 on his own planet to get to his own denizen was because Jade has not entered and that this is not normally how it would work.))
4) The gate system is not intended to be a single linear path (highly likely given the nature of Sburb and how easy it is to cheat the gate system). Instead, the main goal is to provide transportation between players. This could be useful, since you could easily get from one planet to the next by flying through low number gates (ie from John2–>Rose2–>Dave2–>Jade2 or going through gates that my diagram marks as being intended for use by other players).
5) My diagram is totally accurate and players are actually supposed to fight the denizen living on the planet of their client ((Highly disagree with this, since each planet clearly has a specific theme (fireflies/oily pipes, ocean/play rain) to it that is presented as a challenge to the player who hails from there. Not to mention the fact that the trolls literally seem to direct the humans to fight the denizen from their own planet …))
6) There are actually more than 7 gates that a player is intended to go through, but only 7 gates are located above their houses. For instance, we add another gate on each planet in my diagram to return players to their own planet. Potentially right to their house at ground level or something. From there, they go up to the 7th gate above their house. This takes them down to their own denizen as we have observed. This would require the 7th gates above their houses to act differently depending on which kid attempted to go through them (unless the final stop for a player on their client’s planet before returning to their own happens to be right near the denizen of that planet (which they leave alone for the player who the planet belongs to) but they instead go to a different gate to return them to their home planet.
For example: Gate #7 above John’s house leads down to John’s planet (LOWAS) near his denizen. When Rose goes through house-gate 7(John), she does not go to the denizen and instead finds her way to a different gate on LOWAS that leads back to her own planet. From here, she goes to her own house-gate 7(Rose) which leads to her denizen which she then fights. John would have gone through house-gate 7(Jade) ignored Jade’s denizen and found a portal back to LOWAS where he goes through house-gate 7(John) to face his own denizen, etc. This would mean that players go through more gates, but could work if it is necessary for players to go through the 7th gate above their house in order to reach their denizen. Added to my previous diagram in orange (and yellow for extra emphasis) for John only:
After traveling through house-gate 7 (Jade) and going through the corresponding on-planet portal, John could arrive back at his house on LOWAS. From there, he ascends to his own 7th gate (house-gate 7 (John)) which leads to his denizen.
I guess the key facet of this theory is that a the 7th gates take different players to different places. If it is above your planet, it takes you to your denizen and if it is above someone else’s planet it goes to some random spot on their world for you to complete a “regular” ascend/descend cycle.
Anyway, I’m sure most if not all of this bullshit will prove to be wrong in some ways. Particularly because I don’t even want to think about how this would have worked with 6 people for each of the troll sessions. I’m most certainly not far enough in the story to understand game mechanics to a degree at which this will make sense. For christ’s sake, I still haven’t seen a full group of players enter the game yet! This was fun to research and think about though.
