shadowdive | 38 // video

38 // video

Nhhhhhh!

[A medium pitched whine is what opens the feed up today, big yellow eyes frowning childishly into the screen. That is definitely Vanitas' face, but he's looking a little... off. While the face hogs the screen, there's a continuous sound of metal clashing on metal in the background, but Vanitas doesn't seem to be paying any attention to it. Instead, he's starting to make a few silly faces!

Crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue, then wiggling his eyebrows and blowing a raspberry, he's just amusing the hell out of himself, judging from the chittering chuckles. Jerking with a surprised yelp a moment later though, there's a large puff of smoke with the gear clattering on the ground.

Black and red streaks away before Vanitas is picking up the gear again with a very solid scowl.]

Little shit, using my face to look like an idiot...

[Oh was this thing on? Not anymore 8D]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Mastering time itself. [Color him a bit awed here.]

Well, I'm a time player! Dave is the humans' time player. Karkat's a blood player, by the way.

What can a blood player do?

Karkat hasn't really become a fully realized Knight of Blood yet.

So that means no one knows yet. [Curious about these titles, mhm.] It sounds dumb, but I wonder what I would have gotten had I been part of your world.

Yes and no! There are versions of him who did manage to go god tier, but how each person utilizes their talents can be different. Classes come into it, too; Dave's the other Knight from our two sessions.

[ And she shrugs. ] I don't think I know you well enough to say, yet!

Knights are protectors, usually. So for a Knight of Time, would he be a guardian of it?

[Blinks, he didn't think she'd take that seriously and snorts quietly, shaking his head.] It's fine, it just sounds like it's something that explains something neat about a person. [My vote is Thief of Void 8D]

The knight of time is a powerful warrior class which exploits the flow of time as a weapon!

[ It kind of does, although Aradia won't even begin to get into that nonsense. ] Anyway. The game that we played - "we" as in the trolls in this case, since the humans had a slightly different name for it - was Sgrub. While it it loaded as a computer game and you do utilize computers in your role as server player, it's...not really a computer game.

Offensively, rather than defensively? [He's trying to think of how it works is all; if he had time powers, he could dodge or redo just about any blow that was coming his way, and in a way, be pretty damn immortal. Can't die unless hit, right?]

What happens when you run it and finish being a server player?

He could use it either way, but on the whole tends to use it to defend the other players! [ From what she's seen, anyway. Besides, god tiers are pretty darn immortal anyway, so long as they're careful. ]

The first player in a chain has to be a client player, because to enter the game you need a server player running your game. We started out with two teams - or, rather, everyone else believed we started out with two teams. [ she was madam puppetmaster for half of the game, although she was also being directed by the dead, so. Yeah. ] A red team and a blue team. [ ...and there's a small smile there. ]

The first player for the red team was Karkat; for the blue team it was Equius. The server player - Terezi and myself, respectively - is responsible for deploying game-relevant items and building upwards towards the "gate", which takes you to the next level. The thing about the game is that it is, in essence, a way to save the lives of the players from meteor strikes - and, to skip a lot of plot, it is how we were all born!

So once you get someone into the game it is imperative you get into the game, or you'll, well, die. So each player is a server player to another player and a client to another player; it forms a chain.

Makes sense, if you and he can just jump back and move people to avoid attacks. [He quiets down to listen to the explanation though, and really, it sounds all sorts of ..... interesting, honestly. A game that literally starts destroying the world, except for the players who manage to get in.]

What's the purpose of the game that it destroys your world as it takes the players into it?

We created ourselves through the game. And a new universe.

I mean that quite literally. It was inevitable we would play, because we always were going to and always had done. Karkat got the job of sorting out our births.

A new universe, on top of ... what would it be, some sort of paradox loop to create yourselves? Fated to always repeat the same things?

How did he do that?

Yes and no! After all, we're not repeating it. It just had always been something that had and would happen.

Ectobiology.

Hm. [Really just rolling all this information together, working on just organizing it in his mind. Creating an entire universe, not just a world, and not with the use of Kingdom Hearts.]

What's ectobiology? [After a beat, he scratches his chin.] ... Sorry for all the questions. I just never can get Karkat to talk about his world much.

[ ...huh, will Karkat get annoyed that she talked about all of this stuff...? ]

[ Well, it's not like he gave a gag order, and if he'd wanted to, he's had time to do so. ]

It's a type of science that allows cloning and the like through appearification. An appearifier takes an item from a specific point in time; if it's going to cause a paradox by taking it, you get slime instead. To create a person - say, me! - you need slime from more than one source. To create a clone, you just need slime from one source.

[Paying attention like a good student! He really does suck in information like a child, if only because he mentally still is one.]

So he had to get paradox slime from each of you in past points of time to create you all?

I believe so? He never really talked about it. Or wanted to. [ SO YOU SHOULD PROBABLY AVOID BRINGING IT UP. ]

Hm. Actually, we're the clones, while our dancestors are technically our genetic descendants, since our session was actually the product of a scratch. I'm not sure which dancestors belong to which trolls genetically speaking, though, beyond the obvious.

[ it takes two to tango when it comes to ghostslime! ]

Dancestors? Is that some merging of the word ancestors and descendants? [He'll at least pick up on the hint of not asking Karkat about paradoxslimegrubs.]

-- Wait, was one called Signless? I remember meeting him. [Throwing him down because Vani thought he was Karkat and tried to sneak up on him. Yeah. It was a bad idea. Thinking about it makes his back ache a bit.]

It is! And that has to do with the scratch. Which I've tried to explain to someone else, but they got lost - so, I'll try again?

[ Oh but wait she'll just. Blink. For a few minutes. ] ...Ah, that would be one of the ancestors, not our dancestors. I mean - well, technically they're the same people. He's Karkat's ancestor, though.

Scratch? I guess fire away; given enough time, I can understand most things.

Looks just like him, mostly how I ran into him in the first place. [Idly going to rub a shoulder.] Thought he was Karkat, just older. My idea of a surprise landed me flat on my back. So the ancestors are not the same as the dancestors.

When a game session can't be won any longer, there is a chance to reset it. Do you remember what I said about creating ourselves through the game? In the same way we also created our ancestors!

A "dancestor" is someone who is a descendant on one side of the scratch and an ancestor on the other side. Essentially when you create a scratch your universe is reset with one difference: the birth order of yourself and your ancestor.

So, the session before ours failed. In that session, Karkat was one of the ancestors of Kankri - after the scratch, Kankri became the Signless, and was the ancestor of Karkat.

[ she's just going to stick with Karkat as an example because yeah ]

... It sounds really complicated. [Karkat is indeed the best example. Still, it sounds complex and kind of ridiculously so.]

It can be, especially because there are two scratches that are relevant: the one that spawned our session, and then the one that happened in the universe we created. Rose, Dave, Jade and John are all from one side of that scratch; Jake, Jane and Roxy are from the other.

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video; filtered; good question vani, no one really knows yet

video; filtered; karkat mostly flips his shit about whatever is happening does that count

video; filtered; nope 8( also disney joke can you find it

video; filtered; man i love ariel

video;filtered; i half ship her with riku just cause both were like NEW WORLDS LETS GO

video;filtered; ...stop giving me new ships

video; filtered; I COULDN'T HELP IT, I ALWAYS WONDERED IF THEY MET, THEY'D HIT IT OFF WELL FOR THAT

video; filtered; is there fic for this

video; filtered; maybe, i never found any when i looked though baw

video; filtered; SAD

video; filtered; quick go write some-

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video; filtered; MORE INSERT JOKE TIMES!!

video; filtered; 1/2 YOU'RE LUCKY I PLAYED THE GAMES

video; filtered; 2/2

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video; filtered; temporal shenanigans just came on..

video; filtered; my favourite aradia song!!!

video; filtered; /o/ favorite too

video; filtered; because it is the best one! i also like the time player general one??