HOUSETRAPPED - CLONING AND YOU

https://youtu.be/gfiwU2f-ts4

Shadok

Homestuck: The Baby is You Animated

https://youtu.be/gfiwU2f-ts4

Shadok

Homestuck: The Baby is You Animated

SO

Let's say, you're the main character your session. (edited)

Usually, but not always, but I'm fairly sure usually, a player on the blood/breath aspect spectrum.

And by main character I mean John Egbert equivalent.

So, like, Karkat and only karkat.

You will

At some point

Probably find or be led to a teleportation panel, or something

And find yourself to be in the Veil on a meteor

Face to face with a big ol fuckin machine!!!!

Welcome to, uh, the circumstances of your own birth. Yep. You're responsible for that now!

I hate homestuck too dw

And you might be wondering

What

?????

Homestuck introduced these concepts very slowly

Over the course of

Like

A while

But I'm gonna do it back to back and it's gonna be weird so just prep for that

Three big things: Guardians, Ectobiology, and Paradox Ghosts

These are all way less complicated than they sound

Guardians are

Basically, Hussie thought the phrase "parent or guardian" was funny

And that guardian sounded like a weird fated fantasy role thing

So he just

Made it. To be like that (edited)

Homestuck depicts human adults as how kids see them

Similar to Charlie Brown's "wah-wah"ing trumpets and off-screen hands, to the kids in Homestuck, the adults who raise them are utterly inscrutable enigmas

They don't have motives beyond whatever weird shit you see them do out of the corner of your eye and conflict is inevitable

This first animated cartoon "strife" sequence would be a format repeated down to the very last fight scene of the comic -- a bunch of kids in fighting game idle animations figuring out how to jerkily attack an adult way taller than them

But ofc Hussie couldn't leave enough alone and was like wait what if they did have, like, secret hidden motivations

And so every guardian became a secret agent of Skaia

Guiding the players of Sburb to their destinies, very often using methods that lead directly to their deaths

Broadly these guardians fit into archetypes -- Grandma, Dad, Mom, Older Brother, Weird Stuffed Corpse Of Grandpa

This holds true across universes, for some, reason,

I don't fuckin know either.

They don't need to be those archetypes but the parental gap is key to their characterization or lack thereof

A gap that Hussie fills in the entire fucking back half of the comic writing a guardianswap AU that is, admittedly, sometimes actually pretty good lol

BUT WHERE IS THE CLONING YOU MAY ASK

Okay so

Uh (edited)

There is a

Branch of, science,

In homestuck,

Called Ectobiology

And it is, just, an extended Slimer Ghostbusters joke

Because you thought, John Egbert's username ectoBiologist was a reference to Slimer Ghostbusters, y'know, the guy on his shirt and on his desktop wallpaper

But actually

it's

not

because,

fuck you!

are your expectations subverted yet

good hope not Hussie sucks moving on

The basic admittedly cool scifi premise behind ectocloning is

If you have a teleporter

That can teleport anything from anywhere and anytime to where you are, right now

How does that work without causing a paradox

Because you can't teleport like, George Washington's gun to yourself while he's using it

Homestuck uses mostly Bill and Ted logic, where whatever happened in the past, is what happened and it's not changeable

(and the question of what happens if you try to change it is for later)

This unchangeable timeline of events people places things is called the Alpha Timeline

And it's

Not really as important as HS makes it out to be

And that's mostly bc HS's main villain is a guy who embodies the aspect of time itself.

The alpha timeline as it exists in HS is set up only to guarantee the creation of Lord English

Which is

dumb.

But that's why it's a big topic of discussion there.

What it means for cloning is that, if you try and teleport something that was supposed to be somewhere

Instead of the object, you get Paradox Slime.

Here Roxy tries to teleport Rose to her, but Rose didn't teleport to her. That's not how things went.

The scarf did teleport to Roxy tho

Why?

Because

,

So anyway.

Once you've got that slime

Ectocloning machines are set up to suck it up

And put it in a lil vat

The Big Machine actually is preprogrammed for cloning -- all John or Karkat or whoever needs to do is press the "next" button a bunch

It'll try and clone the Guardians and obviously fail

And then it'll grab the paradox slime from each of them.

This is enough DNA for the machine to perfectly magically clone the Guardians.

And in fact

The babies it makes

are the guardians!!!

That's right fuckin time travel.

Hate it too.

Then it like

Bc the guardians are split genderwise

Mixes two parents to make two kids

And those, are, you!

That's right, your older brother was your dad all along, your grandma was your mom, and your best friend is your sister

It unfortunately

Is

So.

I am deleting that whole thing

Basically they use it to do a wow twist you kissed your sister shitty incest reveal because star wars did it too.

Hate this comic

Anyway

Long story short

Bam. Ez.

They're not home yet tho

gotta send them back in time to like

when they were born

each baby gets a single, usually stupid, gift, is teleported with that gift onto a meteor, and that meteor is activated by the black king, and redirected into a portal. Skaia determines where each meteor lands, thus guaranteeing the circumstances of your "birth" and your childhood will be such that you will be able to play Sburb.

And that's why

The meteors

Are important.

Your older brother is actually your dad, and he's a clone of himself, and he's not your dad in that he and a woman made you on purpose, he and a woman had their DNA copied and mixed by your best friend in the future, to make you.

So.

That's.

Cloning

Jesus dick

Also the chess ppl use these cloning labs to mass-produce themselves get it because cheap plastic chess sets.

I don't fucking.

I'm taking a break.

STILL TO DO

Exiles, sylladex, what the fuck does entry look like, Sburb general progression (will be very easy now that all the fucking terms are explained), relevant Homestuck memes explained

And what changes to this shit we're making

Because it is just

Way too fucking much.

As always if you're confused which you should be bc this shit sucks, just ask and I'll answer

I'll also say

I doubt we'll play with Guardians as such

The whole parent relationship theme isn't

Relevant.

And it's overcomplicated

And we can achieve a similar effect later.

Even Homestuck dispersed w it eventually -- the whole back half, that new session, guardians are barely relevant to the kids outside of, y'know, it being a guardianswap au

their guardians aren't relevant.

Haha

God

Scratching too

No no no no

Later.