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

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.

So your session was made from a scratched session, and your session made a universe where those players then had to scratch their session?

Yes, exactly!!! [ This explanation is going a lot better than her other one. ] The current situation involves our teams being split into three various groups! Two of those groups are travelling towards the new session - one on the meteor and one on a ship - and the third group is everyone in the afterlife currently, which has further groups, but you don't really need to know about those.

Sollux and I are both in the third group, and we're the only living people who are! Although he doesn't remember that, so it's not really pertinent information.

Sounds like a hundred things are going on all at once. I guess all I can say is good luck, huh?

Well, I suppose you don't have to say it here, though. Unless this is another part of the game, but I don't believe so!

Yeah, I guess so. [He snorts quietly.]

To be frank, the circumstances here are generally more pleasant than those previous, although I don't think things are so hopeless as all that.

It's like that for my world, kind of. This place is better overall though. If I had the choice, I'd stay forever.

I'm not certain what I would choose. I think it depends on what happens if I were to make that choice! I assume given the timeline differences that we are either offshoots of the alpha timeline or are taken and returned without effecting the overall timeline. If that were not the case, however, then I would have to behave differently than I might otherwise.

You're still alive in your world, right? So it probably makes a difference if you're there or not. In mine, I pretty much.. cease to exist as I am here. So, living here is better in all cases.

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-

video; filtered;

video; filtered; MORE INSERT JOKE TIMES!!

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

video; filtered; 2/2

video; filtered;

video; filtered;

video; filtered;

video; filtered;

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??

video; filtered; yessss time players get the best shit, seriously

video; filtered; everyone else be jellin

video; filtered; totes, toootes

video; filtered;

video; filtered;

video; filtered;

video; filtered;

video; filtered;

video; filtered;