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

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.

I am now, yes! So you die at home? [ Aradia that's not something you just ask people ]

In a way. I'm only half of a whole person like this, but this world lets me live like this without consequence. In my world, this body has died and I no longer exist as "Vanitas".

Who do you exist as?

Ventus. You'll probably see him on the network at some point. He doesn't look or act like it, but he's who I come from.

Like an ancestor, then. In a way!

In a way, I guess? We used to be the same person.

Our ancestors look pretty much like we do, but...it's not the same.

Hm. I'm really not sure what else to say!

... Sorry. It's not really easy to explain. Thanks for telling me about all that though.

No, I understand what you're saying...I just don't know what else to ask about it, or how much you'd want to talk about it.

And I don't mind telling you about things.

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video; filtered; temporal shenanigans just came on..

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