Mind if I share my stick figure death headcanon?
I don’t think stick figures/other animations can actually die naturally.
Hear me out: There’s two ‘parts’ that make up a normal uploaded stick - Green Life Energy and Blue Data/Code. We see in AvA11 that a stick’s data/code gets uploaded onto a host website (for Mitsi and CDG it was Newgrounds) where that host website seems to act as like, a storage place. A database, or a server. That’s where their data/code is stored, separate from their living bodies.
Because their bodies manifest from Green Life Energy, which seems to ‘read’ the uploaded data/code for a moment before it continues down to the Outernet. It’s reading how to put that stick figure together, completely. From every bit of their physical body to their personality and behavior. Like if God had a photocopy of your soul stuffed into a heavenly filing cabinet.
They’re two sides of the same coin, working in tandem. The Green Life Energy is what makes them alive, the blue data is what makes them them. Perhaps the GLE even ‘communicates’ with the stored file, updating it, like an auto save or backup.
So long as a stick’s uploaded file remains intact, I think they’re functionally immortal. If anything happens to kill them, say Victim accidentally ran Mitsi over with a tractor because he’s trash at driving, she would respawn.
Because their file is still there. The GLE can just go read it again and manifest them anew. It’s probably not the best experience, but like, they’re living programs at the end of the day. Programs can be relaunched if they crash.
The issue comes when sticks don’t have an uploaded file - Alan’s sticks, and the victims of the Newgrounds attack.
Because now, suddenly, for those that survived…they don’t have that backup failsafe. Their files are gone, there’s nothing for the GLE to work off of, the system has been broken.
Mitsi didn’t die ‘permanently’ because she was exploded, she died because her file was disconnected and erased from its host site storage spot. Her GLE still exists, it just can’t reform. The instructions to make her are missing. The same would happen with Agent if he were to die. The same happened with Purple’s mother.
Dead, ‘permanently’, from things they should have otherwise been able to come back from, because they can’t reform. That’s why the graveyard in Cherry Blossoms is so small, the Outernet isn’t used to dealing with dead sticks yet.
That adds an extra layer of atrocity to what TCO and TDL did, in my eyes. They didn’t just kill sticks and ruin countless lives and families, they ruined so many stick’s ability to respawn. They made so many sticks MORTAL. That’d be horrifying, to have your immortality stolen from you, to know that if something terrible happens, even on accident, it’s game over for you forever. They broke a fundamental system of their very own universe, arguably the most important one. Something like that had to of been considered sacred.
No wonder so many sticks showed up to the tryouts, I’d want to kick the ass of the guy who cursed me with mortality too!!!
(I say ‘permanently’ because, well, we now have two characters who can control the GLE and the blue data/code, and I will eat my laptop if that’s not a setup. They could’ve made the data/code any color of the rainbow. They made it blue, the same shade as Victim’s H4CK3R powers. And then they gave Victim those powers, that just so happen to coincide with the second essence that makes up stick figure life. If some reviving doesn’t happen, that will be the biggest fake out/dropped ball in the history of animation 8T)
Sorry this got long lol. I love your take on stick death, and god Pink’s death was soul crushing ;___;
omg i love your take o o 🍿 yours explains so much thing that i didnt even think of because i didnt find an idea
and it makes sense too, wow! ovo thank you so much for sharing!! >v<