Questions and theories about the Ultimate self

[thorondraco]

Generally looking for input on what people think about the Ultimate self, and how it might work.

In my case i find it fascinating. As if its a force that prevents all the doomed incarnations from being irrelevant. That they are all splinters of one grander form. Non are lsot as the splinters will converge into a whole once more.

It reminds me of some concepts from Hindu religion. A supreme god creates incarnations of themselves in increasing specific ways to create a pantheon. Though in this case its almost like one being that ends up scattered across time and space. Godtiering seems to be a merger of two of these fragments. So 1 fragment equates to a mortal, while 2 fragments joining equates to a god?


It also reveals a darker side to paradox space. It seems as if the awakening here is meant to be lethal and lethal alone. Rose's visions about 12 withering and decaying to madness from knowledge, seems to imply that gaining the knowledge of the ultimate self is dangerous and self destructive. She nearly died from it and would have without Dirk's intervention.

The fact that the ultimate self is related in some way to narrative control bring up the question of the purpose of players. Everyone is a splinter of some grander form. Which would in a way explain why they are needed in sburb's cycle. They have a shard of narrative power, and that shard is taken advantage of by paradox space. Controlled and manipulated. And thus why its meant to be fatal. It would allow paradox space to lose control.

But it leaves many questions. For example, what happens to the soul when the awakening happens? It seems without a physical body you can't use narrative powers. The death even bypasses the credence of a just or heroic death. It also seems like a robotic body is nothing more than life support for them too.

Does the ultimate self equate to an increase of personal power? Like if a normal god tier is frieza levels, would a ultimate self be like super saiyan god levels? Or does it all remain in the whole narrative control aspect. Imagine an amount of physical power is part of it.

Does it require all incarnations of oneself to be dead for it to work completely? It almost seems like it is the case considering Dirk offs himself in candy almost immediately. Despite the worth it may have to keep an eye in the Candy timeline.

Do non paradox clones also have an ultimate self? We know they can god tier, but we don't know if they can also become an ultimate self too, or if that aspect belongs only to those born for sburb and or via ectobiology in general.

so many questions.

One last thing i wonder. Can Dirk be killed and die a just death? Or does he judge his own deaths now, as he is the one with narrative power? And what if that is how unconditional immortality actually works?

[Joyfulldreams]

HERE COMES AN EXTREMELY LONG NEARLY ESSAY LENGTH BULLSHIT THING FROM ME ON THE TOPIC I'M SOMEWHAT PASSIONATE ABOUT. IDK IF IT MAKES LITERALLY ANY SENSE.

---

I believed a whole lot of very great stuff about the Ultimate Self before the epilogues happened and made them *stupid*.

What I believed the Ultimate Self was originally meant to represent was a representation of a few different concepts that are all already embedded into Homestuck's DNA in one way or another. The first being that Homestuck borrows heavily from Gnosticism--the figures of Abraxas and Yaldabaoth as denizens are just a start--and in Gnosticism, there is a strong emphasis on the divide between the Material world, and the Unmaterial, also known as the World of Ideas. Gnosticism is sort of explicit in portraying the Material World as a bad thing, that to make ideas material is to inherently sully them in some way. Yaldabaoth creating the material world is portrayed as an almost evil act akin to like...prometheus stealing fire for man. He's called a demiurge, which means a figure who is sort of both a god and a devil. One who creates the world, and creates it to be wicked, kinda.

Homestuck plays around with the fact that the story is a *story*, by having everything in Homestuck literally be made of ideas. Through using 'grist' as a building material, which is a word typically meant to describe ideas that are useful in the construction of an argument, rather than in the construction of a...building. How much grist a particular object costs to make depends not on what physical atoms or whatever would be required to make it exist, but rather, how difficult it might be to successfully construct the accurate IDEA of the object and bring it into reality. The 12 aspects are a further extension of this, as they are basically the Gnostic "World of Ideas" personified. They are the essential building blocks of reality everything in homestuck gets distilled down to, and all things that exist in the matieral world are ideas and concepts that are created through some combination of those 12 aspects. As Alt!Callie calls them, they are ideological abstractions that weave the fabric of reality through how they interact with each other.

One of the more interesting ideas Homestuck also likes to play around with is the idea of the Self, explored through the aspects of Heart and Mind, and through characters like Terezi and Dirk respectively. Terezi posits that who we are, and the reality around us, is something we construct through our own mind and through each of our thoughts, decisions, and perceptions. "I think, therefor I am". And she isn't wrong, as we've previously stated, as literally everything that exists is actually just a conglomeration of ideas and thoughts made manifest, and they all must be perceived in order to be real in any meangingful way. How each individual perceives that which exists is going to be different, though, so the act of living and being oneself is to assert their perceptions ONTO reality through their choices. And who a person is, or who they become, has as many possibilities as there are choices to be made.

The opposite end of this idea is best exemplified through Dirk, though, and via the aspect of Heart, which is to say that reality has a fixed nature inherent to it, and so do people. In order for reality to make any sense or have any meaning there has to be SOMETHING about it that remains consistent and unchanging in order for living in it to be at all bearable. It can't all be changed just through sheer strength of will, otherwise there would be no meaningful framework in which to make any choices in the first place. And so too must there be something about a person that is unchanging and inherent to who they are, because a person can change over time to be almost completely different from who they used to be years and years ago, but there is SOMETHING essential to their individuality that makes them still THEM. "Despite everything, it's still you." If you don't remain essentially YOU no matter what changes you make, then there would be no sense in even having an identity in the first place, and nothing that sets you apart from everyone else that exists.

This is exemplified through how almost every homestuck character has some, and often multiple, alternate versions of themselves who are both different in significant ways and then not different in even more significant ways. Showing how one's circumstances and choices might change you, but also showing the things that DON'T change despite everything.

Even deeper, though, on a more metatextual level, this brings up the fact that all of these characters are just that: Characters. They are not actually real people, and they too only exist as ideas in the mind of the author and in the readers. Seeing how they progress over time and how they might exist in different timelines serves to help us understand them better and paint a more vivid, clear picture of who they are in our heads.

Which leads into how Homestuck also plays around with the fact that how the ideas of these characters even formed was initially heavily influenced BY the thoughts and perceptions of the audience in the FIRST PLACE! Almost every character was named by the audience (at least at first), and though we were given an initial starting point for each character, they all evolved both based on direct user input and in response to common fandom perceptions of them. Homestuck and all of it's characters was something of a collaborative and transformative effort, and this transcient nature of the canon and the influence fans have over it is clearly something it wants to lean further and further into moving forward. "All ships are canon, everything is canon" etc etc.

Finally, I'll mention that the World of Ideas and the aspects are very much like Plato's theory of Platonic Ideas, something that Rose kind of goes on a tangeant about re: "how do you create the idea of an apple?". That everything that exists is merely a permutation of a pure, platonic, abstract idea of that thing which exists in the realm of god/world of ideas/abstract plane we can't perceive. All the different breeds of dogs are just variations on the platonic idea of a "dog" which is a thing with four legs and a tail and a snout that is a good boy and other essential dog-like things that make all dogs Dogs despite how different they all look. The same thing applies to a person's self. Dirk best exemplifies this through all of his splinters, how they are all somewhat imperfect permutations of the original dude who splinter off and become different based on the parameters of how they splintered off in the first place.

Taking all of this into account, I originally thought that what the "Ultimate Self" was meant to be was the Platonic Idea of a character. The abstract essence of what makes them who they are which we collaboratively constructed both through the writing of homestuck, and in our own minds through reading it, and that which we continue to both modify and draw from whenever we write fanfic or talk meta about them or draw them or WHATEVER. It is the representation of the entire breadth of that character's potentiality. Everything they ever have been and everything they ever could be, condensed down into one perfectly abstract thing.

It is something that by it's very nature as an abstraction you can't actually become. You can never make the Platonic Apple or the Platonic Dog because the whole point is that they are so abstract they CAN'T exist materially.

And then the epilogues happened and took all that and decided you know what? Nah. It's actually just mind memory merge from a bunch of timelines that gives you bullshit narrative powers for no discernible reason.

It's so FUCKING DUMB. All of those ideas I talked about are still technically there, kind of, but in the worst and most reductive and least interesting way possible. I guess the characters nearly die and go crazy because they are trying to become something which by it's very nature you literally can't become and still exist as an individual. Except for Dirk I guess! And somehow shoving your brain into a robot just MAGICALLY FIXES IT for everyone else, for no discernible fucking reason.

And also it doesn't actually include fandom at all and only involves the versions of characters we know about already so screw all my bullshit about it being a sort of celebration of and acknowledgement of fandom as well as about as literal a way to personify the idea of Death of the Author as you could make it, which would have been fascinating. (I.e. the idea that the Author does not exist, and the only people who actually write stories are the audience, who construct the narrative in their own mind as they read it--that stories only exist in any meaningful way in the mind of the reader, etc etc.) But nope. "ascending" gives you Author Powers, I guess. Why? What could that possibly mean on a more metatextual level? I genuinely do not fucking know. I think maybe they were going for something about the characters being the ones to construct their own reality on a more literal sense once they become more aware of it's nature i.e. the whole Mind/Terezi thing, but damn if this isn't the most uninspired and hamfisted way to do THAT!!!!

I just hate it. I hate it so much. They took something that had all the potential to be amazing and made it the stupidest possible version of it. Now we're stuck here talking about how many power levels Dirk and Rose have to get the most Author Power instead of about the collaborative nature of narrative. Fuck the epilogues, god.

[JakeMorph]

the Ultimate Self is definitely the 'Platonic Idea' of who a character is; that's why Davepetasprite^2 made leaps toward this by merging with a sprite, because a sprite is a tool that breaks an object down into the 'Idea' it represents and oh wow i just realised the ^2 in Homestuck^2 is probably a nod toward this concept. that's why Davepetasprite^2 takes on aspects of a dream self, visually: the dream self is a manifestation of the 'Idea' of a person that transcends timelines and iterations. this is also why Dave's 'self' is described as looking kind of like a sprite kernel when he transfers into Davebot. he's transferring the 'Idea' of Dave from one body into another. I've gone into this whole process in a little more depth on my blog.

i don't think the Ultimate Self absorbing all the memories of every iteration of a person necessarily makes any of the above no longer true or accurate. the fact is that a person becoming an Idea would probably not make for a very interesting story to read. i also don't think that Dirk absorbing every other splinter of his self is necessarily him 'becoming his Ultimate Self'. i think he thinks that's what he is, because he's ignorant and because as a Hero of Heart he's hardwired to see the self as a pile of pieces that need to be picked up and put together: but in reality this is probably just a stage in his metamorphosis. i don't think it would be in line with Homestuck's philosophy for the villain to be correct in his assumptions about how cool and unbeatable he is.

[Joyfulldreams]

the fact is that a person becoming an Idea would probably not make for a very interesting story to read.

You're right. The epilogues never needed to feature this sort of plot thread in the first place in order to explore that idea. Characters Ascending to these sorts of heights and in this exact manner is a plot thread that was entirely unnecessary, but the one that was chosen nonetheless, and in my opinion is by and large the least interesting possible way to go about it.

And also, actually, I do sort of disagree that it would be boring, because (I guess spoilers for Act Omega) but I'm kind of going to do that in my OWN story and I'd like to think the way I'm doing it is quite UNboring actually. Hopefully. But maybe I'm wrong that's just my own personal feeling there....

i also don't think that Dirk absorbing every other splinter of his self is necessarily him 'becoming his Ultimate Self'. i think he thinks that's what he is, because he's ignorant and because as a Hero of Heart he's hardwired to see the self as a pile of pieces that need to be picked up and put together: but in reality this is probably just a stage in his metamorphosis. i don't think it would be in line with Homestuck's philosophy for the villain to be correct in his assumptions about how cool and unbeatable he is.

As far as I'm aware this isn't entirely wrong. But the whole "the author is unreliable/has an agenda/is evil" thing is one of the more badly executed (and kind of dumb) ideas from the original Homestuck, and it's even worse in the epilogues. There's only SO MANY levels of "the words written for this story can't be trusted/have an agenda/are evil/are wrong" that you can go down before it just becomes completely ridiculous, nonsensical, and meaningless. If literally all the words in this fucking story you wrote weren't meant to be taken seriously, WHY DID YOU SPEND SO MUCH TIME WRITING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE? It begins to just sound like an excuse for writing something that doesn't make sense, isn't internally consistent, and is kind of bad, and then slapping a "because meta!!" bandaid on it to insist it was genius all along.

So like. Yeah, you're right. It WOULDN'T be in line with Homestuck's philosophy for Dirk to be right. But the text of the epilogues themselves doesn't give us much reason to think otherwise, and certainly doesn't go out of it's way to actually COMMUNICATE that in any meaningful manner, so in my opinion the point is kind of moot. And anything relating to Homestuck^2 is, unfortunately, not going to change that. Because they are written by an almost completely different team of people, and any course-correction that gets done in HS2 will be in order to fill these egregious holes (at least in this particular area) they were saddled with and were not ever actually part of the initial plan in any meaningful way.

Even if HS2 is great, it will not somehow retroactively make the epilogues suck less. The epilogues, standing on their own as a piece of fiction, will always suck and have been badly written.

[Joyfulldreams]

Also, about the blog post you linked to: you write that you think it makes sense for the robots to fix the whole 'ascension' thing because another body being able to handle ascension better has been pre-established really doesn't hit the mark for me.

There should be no body that can handle such a change, because you can't make an idea physical, full stop. To actually condense the true platonic ideal of a character into some dumb robot body in a single timeline of a bad story is so patently ludicrous it demeans the premise of the Ultimate Self by it's very nature. I'm sorry, I don't WANT the collaborative platonic ideal of some of my beloved characters to exist as a robot villain in a shitty sequel, ideologically attempting to reduce down the full potentiality of that character to...being a villain in a shitty sequel, instead of the millions of other things it could be. I suppose you might say that they are only partially through this 'metamorphasis' too, as Dirk supposedly is. Which means that either:

A. The robot bodies ought to stop working and also break the further along they get in this transformation. Somehow I really, really doubt this, because that would be an actually good writing choice that I would like, and that means it will never happen in a million goddamn years.
B. None of these characters have ever actually reached their Ultimate Self and NEVER WILL, if the robot bodies don't stop working, in which case all of this bullshit talking about everyone ascending has been literally for nothing, a waste of time, and a lie, and probably won't ever actually be addressed, at all! And if it is, it will be the LEAST narratively satisfying way to execute it. Somehow I find this the most likely, given current trends! 8D
C. The Ultimate Self in the story ISN'T ACTUALLY the platonic ideal of the characters complete potentialities across both fandom and canon, and is, instead....just a dumb magic memory meld that gives you author powers and makes you an asshole. Whether that's the intention or not is irrelevant, because that is what it will end up being, effectively.

And that doesn't even get into the whole fact that it should be patently clear that BECOMING YOUR ULTIMATE SELF OUGHT TO BE A **BAD THING**. It's bad! It's not fun! If the Ultimate Self is in fact the thing we are hoping it is, then *becoming it* ought to be LITERALLY HORRIBLE. If the whole 'the author is evil' thing is consistent, then it makes you evil, crazy, and also makes you probably die and lose all your individuality or whatever? Who knows, whatever it is, it's bad! And should be bad! But I guess people turning into robots is badass and cool now I guess and some triumphant moment of character development or whatever. God, I don't even know. It's all just so awful.

Also NONE of this comes even close to explaining the Author Powers. The extremely ludicrous Author Powers.

[thorondraco]

the Ultimate Self is definitely the 'Platonic Idea' of who a character is; that's why Davepetasprite^2 made leaps toward this by merging with a sprite, because a sprite is a tool that breaks an object down into the 'Idea' it represents and oh wow i just realised the ^2 in Homestuck^2 is probably a nod toward this concept. that's why Davepetasprite^2 takes on aspects of a dream self, visually: the dream self is a manifestation of the 'Idea' of a person that transcends timelines and iterations. this is also why Dave's 'self' is described as looking kind of like a sprite kernel when he transfers into Davebot. he's transferring the 'Idea' of Dave from one body into another. I've gone into this whole process in a little more depth on my blog.

i don't think the Ultimate Self absorbing all the memories of every iteration of a person necessarily makes any of the above no longer true or accurate. the fact is that a person becoming an Idea would probably not make for a very interesting story to read. i also don't think that Dirk absorbing every other splinter of his self is necessarily him 'becoming his Ultimate Self'. i think he thinks that's what he is, because he's ignorant and because as a Hero of Heart he's hardwired to see the self as a pile of pieces that need to be picked up and put together: but in reality this is probably just a stage in his metamorphosis. i don't think it would be in line with Homestuck's philosophy for the villain to be correct in his assumptions about how cool and unbeatable he is.

We don't know how Dirk even survived the process either. How his body is somehow able to handle the power.

It definitely could be a hybridization of concepts. Platonic ideal mixing with hinduism incarnations. Hussie mixes this stuff together so it is plausible.

There seems to be a chicken or the egg type scenario here. Is the ultimate self an entity that is divided into shards throughout paradox space's timespace, or is it an entity formed by the shards caused by paradox space's arbitrary doomed timline shit? Is it both at the same time?

There could be alternative methods to dealing with the ultimate self. For example partitioning it amongst multiple incarnations of yourself, clones. Or maybe you can do that just with every incarnation of you ever? We don't know what happens to souls after death/double death. More than likely its not just memories but the very souls converging onto the 'alpha self'. Maybe they all just coalesce together in some real afterlife plane, before converging onto the alpha.

Think there could be a theoretical trifecta based on three aspects of god here, albeit with the conditional label. Omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. In this case the condition of all three is based entirely on the individual of the ultimate self and their aspect. So you are only as strong as your collective selves and your omniscience is based on your aspect and your collective memories. If dirk never learned how to make pancakes in any incarnation, ult dirk doesn't know it.

I think we can confirm omnipotence and omniscience. Narrative power, and apparently becoming all but an aspect elemental if rose and dave's awakenings imply anything. And knowing all things of ever incarnation of your, or most, and of course comprehension of the narrative. Omnipresence no so much. It could apply to the splinter thing. But if they could, theoretically, manifest themselves in any incarnation of themselves in the past or alternate timelines?

No proof of that at all at this time, but if its a possibility it could allow both an alternative means of handling the ultimate self, and allow someone like Dirk to control the narrative from any point of the timeline where a Dirk was present. Which is a horrifying implication.
Narrative control is implied ot be behind the existence, in universe, of Hiveswap and the friendsims i think. And Dirk is the most likely candidate from the two beings we know about.

[thorondraco]

Also, about the blog post you linked to: you write that you think it makes sense for the robots to fix the whole 'ascension' thing because another body being able to handle ascension better has been pre-established really doesn't hit the mark for me.

There should be no body that can handle such a change, because you can't make an idea physical, full stop. To actually condense the true platonic ideal of a character into some dumb robot body in a single timeline of a bad story is so patently ludicrous it demeans the premise of the Ultimate Self by it's very nature. I suppose you might say that they are only partially through this 'metamorphasis' too, as Dirk supposedly is. Which means that either:

A. The robot bodies ought to stop working and also break the further along they get in this transformation. Somehow I really, really doubt this, because that would be an actually good writing choice that I would like, and that means it will never happen in a million goddamn years.
B. None of these characters have ever actually reached their Ultimate Self and NEVER WILL, if the robot bodies don't stop working, in which case all of this bullshit talking about everyone ascending has been literally for nothing, a waste of time, and a lie, and probably won't ever actually be addressed, at all!

And that doesn't even get into the whole fact that it should be patently clear that BECOMING YOUR ULTIMATE SELF OUGHT TO BE A **BAD THING**. It's bad! It's not fun! If the Ultimate Self is in fact the thing we are hoping it is, then *becoming it* ought to be LITERALLY HORRIBLE. If the whole 'the author is evil' thing is consistent, then it makes you evil, crazy, and also makes you probably die and lose all your individuality or whatever? Who knows, whatever it is, it's bad! And should be bad! But I guess people turning into robots is badass and cool now I guess and some triumphant moment of character development or whatever. God, I don't even know. It's all just so awful.

Also NONE of this comes even close to explaining the Author Powers. The extremely ludicrous Author Powers.

Dirk's abilities are nowhere near as powerful as Hussie's authorial control. But Hussie also had no other powers but that control and was easily dispatched. Dirk has power but his abilities are more limited. Likes of roxie being immune to it.

Also Rose underwent the awakening and she came out non the worse. In fact she retained her attachment to reality and, more importantly, to Kanaya. Whatever Dirk told her convinced her that she needed to go, but she still loved Kanaya dearly. Its possible that for Rose, she didn't have an incarnation that did anything too reprehensible. For dirk, even if the theory that he has memories from lord english and doc scratch are not true, he remembers Bro strider.
and its possible his motivations are beyond just that. I do think that they end up suffering from the fact that they know everyone around them are simply fragments of a truer version of themselves. Rose might want Kanaya to become her ultimate self, in her opinion the Real Kanaya.

Also Hussie was more a benign lunatic than evil. Guy's job was to tell a story. implications of an agenda came after lord english killed him.

The robots do not seem to let people truly utilize their powers. Rose is still beholden to Dirk's abilities and unaware of how extensive the control is. Its possible they simply act as life support and nothing more. You may need a flesh and blood body to truly use the power.

[Joyfulldreams]

Dirk's abilities being less than Hussie's still doesn't explain why Author Powers are an aspect of the Ultimate Self at all. Like, I still am failing to see what the possible reason for this could be other than "just because it would be cool" and "characters gone rogue!! wooo cool!!!"

And I'm not interested in a Watsonian reasoning. You can come up with a bunch of dumb magic reasons why this might be the case, not the least of which the characters literally becoming like Watson from the Sherlock Holmes books, except if Watson were able to mind-control all of the characters into doing and thinking what he wanted them to just by writing it in his diary.

Like. Doylistically. What purpose does the characters having Author Powers serve. What is them gaining this ability supposed to communicate to the reader. I know what they are using the EXECUTION of the ability to communicate--all that crap about the unreliability of narrators and agendas and such--but the FACT THAT THEY HAVE THIS ABILITY AT ALL. WHY?

If it were about them exerting their will on the fabric of reality more directly ALA Mind, wow, it would be super swell if they actually communicated that even a little more clearly in the text. Also there's still something about that which doesn't sit quite right with me. If it were about them literally becoming part of the fabric of reality ala their aspects and thus being able to affect it, why does it specifically manifest in them taking over the narration of the story, and nothing else, for each of them, even though they all have really different aspects? Shouldn't it be, i dunno, different for each of them in a slightly more significant way??? I literally cannot wrap my brain around this.

[JakeMorph]

You're right. The epilogues never needed to feature this sort of plot thread in the first place in order to explore that idea. Characters Ascending to these sorts of heights and in this exact manner is a plot thread that was entirely unnecessary, but the one that was chosen nonetheless, and in my opinion is by and large the least interesting possible way to go about it.

And also, actually, I do sort of disagree that it would be boring, because (I guess spoilers for Act Omega) but I'm kind of going to do that in my OWN story and I'd like to think the way I'm doing it is quite UNboring actually. Hopefully. But maybe I'm wrong that's just my own personal feeling there....

even if they don't align with yours 1:1 i have my own long list of gripes with the Epilogues, so I'm not going to try to argue that they're perfect or even correct to any degree, but I'm not sure where your conception that the Ultimate Self "has to be one thing or else it sucks" comes from?

though Homestuck is a story where Platonic philosophy plays a major role, that doesn't mean everything that happens within it is Literally Governed By Platonic Laws. i don't think Plato was of the opinion that if a statue of a wizard represents the idea of a magic man it could therefore could be used to create magic items, or that since a ventriloquist's doll represents the idea of a puppet, a ghost imbued with the essence of that doll would be able to shoot beams of puppets: but that's how it's been in Homestuck since early acts. these ancient philosophies are used not literally, but in a way that makes an engaging comic book.

a comparable example of this from within MSPA would be the way science is bent within Problem Sleuth. Hawking Radiation does not literally split everything that goes into a black hole into a positive and antipositive copy of itself; but for the sake of creating the Angel/Antiangel pairs as a means to escape a black hole, the concept was worth referencing.

As far as I'm aware this isn't entirely wrong. But the whole "the author is unreliable/has an agenda/is evil" thing is one of the more badly executed (and kind of dumb) ideas from the original Homestuck, and it's even worse in the epilogues. There's only SO MANY levels of "the words written for this story can't be trusted/have an agenda/are evil/are wrong" that you can go down before it just becomes completely ridiculous, nonsensical, and meaningless. If literally all the words in this fucking story you wrote weren't meant to be taken seriously, WHY DID YOU SPEND SO MUCH TIME WRITING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE? It begins to just sound like an excuse for writing something that doesn't make sense, isn't internally consistent, and is kind of bad, and then slapping a "because meta!!" bandaid on it to insist it was genius all along.

don't get me wrong i totally agree that it would suck if Dirk was just Flat Out Wrong about everything he'd said so far, but that's not what I mean to imply when I say 'maybe Dirk doesn't know the whole story of what he's talking about'. Homestuck frequently has situations where characters claim to know things that they are then proven misguided about, but that doesn't make what they said useless writing. take the stuff about the Lord of Angels and the Rift that was becoming prominent toward the end of Act 5. Jack Noir never was a Lord of Angels, and "the Rift" as it was described by the trolls was never a thing. but the stuff they actually said about it gave us material to work off when we were introduced to Lord English, the Scratch, and related concepts. it was information given to us about one thing under the GUISE of being about another thing.

that's what I think Dirk's shit about the Ultimate Self is. he's describing something that DOES exist, and he's describing it ACCURATELY, and we can tell because we're watching it happen to him and his family. but what he's describing is not the ultimate culmination of the Platonic Self. that's something that will come later, and fingers crossed, more subtley.

i'm not going to go into depth addressing your rebuttals to my ghost/frog/robot/fairy meta because I think it's fair to say we're in fundamental disagreement over whether Homestuck is "A Platonic Story" or "A Comic Book Where The Characters' Powers Are Tied To Platonic Themes", but I will try to give you hope on one point:

A. The robot bodies ought to stop working and also break the further along they get in this transformation. Somehow I really, really doubt this, because that would be an actually good writing choice that I would like, and that means it will never happen in a million goddamn years.

i am personally pretty confident that this is actually what the story is pointing towards. i'm pretty sure Dirk states outright that Rose's robot body is just an interrim vessel for her Self while he figures out / works on the next step, and even if he doesn't (and i am not going to trudge through all of the fucking Epilogues to prove myself wrong or right here because I would not rereard any of that in a million years -_-), Rose does have her old living body with her on the Theseus. i would put money on the robot body NOT being the final form any of the Ultimate Self characters will take, and I intended to make that very clear in my post by comparing the metamorphosis to Aradia's progression from robot to god.

EDIT: and while i could easily apply the comic book argument to explain why Dirk has author powers now, i think it's worth keeping in mind that above being an extension of Platonic philosophy, Gnosticism is a religion, and the core tenet of that religion is that through knowledge one can reach the level of God. if the Author is God, it is fully within Gnostic reasoning for a character who has achieved total spiritual knowledge to attain similar power to that of the Author.

[calamityCons]

As far as I'm aware this isn't entirely wrong. But the whole "the author is unreliable/has an agenda/is evil" thing is one of the more badly executed (and kind of dumb) ideas from the original Homestuck, and it's even worse in the epilogues. There's only SO MANY levels of "the words written for this story can't be trusted/have an agenda/are evil/are wrong" that you can go down before it just becomes completely ridiculous, nonsensical, and meaningless. If literally all the words in this fucking story you wrote weren't meant to be taken seriously, WHY DID YOU SPEND SO MUCH TIME WRITING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE? It begins to just sound like an excuse for writing something that doesn't make sense, isn't internally consistent, and is kind of bad, and then slapping a "because meta!!" bandaid on it to insist it was genius all along.

Ohhhhohohohoho HELL yeah that is EXACTLY HOW I FEEL. Like, jesus christ, when Doc Scratch was an unreliable piece of shit who manipulated everything and everyone he ever encountered to his own nefarious ends, lying by omission and being creepy and unnerving from his politeness and his endearing quirk of playing games and his completely incongruous childlike laugh [Haa haa. Hee hee. Hoo hoo.] and everything about him made him not only an entertaining character, but a meaningful character whom we had to pay very close attention to because he could be misleading us with every word he says.

Aaaaand then Dirk comes along and tries to steal Doc's thunder but in the most hamfisted, unappealing, and condescending manner that has no stakes and no engagement because we don't know what Dirk is lying about, and based on what others who are fans of Dirk have told me about him, it comes completely out of fucking nowhere and is bizarre leaning on complete farce that Dirk would do this sort of thing.

Honestly the only unreliable narrator in Homestuck that I know of and appreciate is Doc Scratch because hot DAMN that guy was written well. The rest don't hold a candle to that guy.

[Joyfulldreams]

I'm not sure where your conception that the Ultimate Self "has to be one thing or else it sucks" comes from?

I dunno if that's how i've been coming across, but I don't think it has to be one thing in particular or else it sucks. I just think that this PARTICULAR execution of the idea is reductive and is very close to the least interesting way they could have gone about it. Everything up to the epilogues regarding the ultimate self was potentially kind of funny, cute, relatively entertaining, and overall fairly subtle in how it slowly introduced and developed the concept. And then it just kinda gets slammed down like a hammer in the epilogues and the mess goes just EVERYWHERE.


All your other points are great and I don't really have a good argument against them. Except for the fact that you have far more faith in the writing team than I do. Which is saying something, because I know many of those writers personally, as talented and overall kind people, and one if them is literally my best friend. I've heard quite a lot of things about the plans for HS2 which I'm understandably not able to disclose and 80% of it does not indicate to me that things will go in the direction you think they will. There is 10-15% of it that I was actually very happy to hear about, but so much of...literally all of the things I heard are in the early "maybe maybe maybe" stages for like two or even three years down the line, and don't even have a guarantee of happening at all either, so. (And then there's the other 5% which....just.......I don't wanna sound foreboding but man. I literally just can't take anything that happens in HS2 too seriously, knowing some of this, let alone somehow retrofitting it to the epilogues.)

Honestly the only unreliable narrator in Homestuck that I know of and appreciate is Doc Scratch because hot DAMN that guy was written well. The rest don't hold a candle to that guy.

You are so correct. You are valid. You have rights.

Though. I guess it does retroactively strike me as me being stupid. Maybe Dirk having author powers literally is just because part of him is Doc Scratch who also had those same powers. Or something. Still feels kinda dumb to me and also unsatisfying but I honestly don't know what explanation WOULD satisfy me on this particular point so IDK.

[JakeMorph]

i'd call it less faith and more confidence. and less in "the writers" and more in "my ability to be right". and less confidence and more overconfidence.

if your opinions on the potential direction/s of the story are informed by a more intimate knowledge of the machine putting the story out then that's another beast entirely. i won't deny i'd probably be more than a little disappointed if h2 does end up going in the direction you think it's going. i can only speak in defense (?) of the very little that the majority of us have already seen.

[thorondraco]

You're right. The epilogues never needed to feature this sort of plot thread in the first place in order to explore that idea. Characters Ascending to these sorts of heights and in this exact manner is a plot thread that was entirely unnecessary, but the one that was chosen nonetheless, and in my opinion is by and large the least interesting possible way to go about it.

And also, actually, I do sort of disagree that it would be boring, because (I guess spoilers for Act Omega) but I'm kind of going to do that in my OWN story and I'd like to think the way I'm doing it is quite UNboring actually. Hopefully. But maybe I'm wrong that's just my own personal feeling there....

even if they don't align with yours 1:1 i have my own long list of gripes with the Epilogues, so I'm not going to try to argue that they're perfect or even correct to any degree, but I'm not sure where your conception that the Ultimate Self "has to be one thing or else it sucks" comes from?

though Homestuck is a story where Platonic philosophy plays a major role, that doesn't mean everything that happens within it is Literally Governed By Platonic Laws. i don't think Plato was of the opinion that if a statue of a wizard represents the idea of a magic man it could therefore could be used to create magic items, or that since a ventriloquist's doll represents the idea of a puppet, a ghost imbued with the essence of that doll would be able to shoot beams of puppets: but that's how it's been in Homestuck since early acts. these ancient philosophies are used not literally, but in a way that makes an engaging comic book.

a comparable example of this from within MSPA would be the way science is bent within Problem Sleuth. Hawking Radiation does not literally split everything that goes into a black hole into a positive and antipositive copy of itself; but for the sake of creating the Angel/Antiangel pairs as a means to escape a black hole, the concept was worth referencing.

As far as I'm aware this isn't entirely wrong. But the whole "the author is unreliable/has an agenda/is evil" thing is one of the more badly executed (and kind of dumb) ideas from the original Homestuck, and it's even worse in the epilogues. There's only SO MANY levels of "the words written for this story can't be trusted/have an agenda/are evil/are wrong" that you can go down before it just becomes completely ridiculous, nonsensical, and meaningless. If literally all the words in this fucking story you wrote weren't meant to be taken seriously, WHY DID YOU SPEND SO MUCH TIME WRITING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE? It begins to just sound like an excuse for writing something that doesn't make sense, isn't internally consistent, and is kind of bad, and then slapping a "because meta!!" bandaid on it to insist it was genius all along.

don't get me wrong i totally agree that it would suck if Dirk was just Flat Out Wrong about everything he'd said so far, but that's not what I mean to imply when I say 'maybe Dirk doesn't know the whole story of what he's talking about'. Homestuck frequently has situations where characters claim to know things that they are then proven misguided about, but that doesn't make what they said useless writing. take the stuff about the Lord of Angels and the Rift that was becoming prominent toward the end of Act 5. Jack Noir never was a Lord of Angels, and "the Rift" as it was described by the trolls was never a thing. but the stuff they actually said about it gave us material to work off when we were introduced to Lord English, the Scratch, and related concepts. it was information given to us about one thing under the GUISE of being about another thing.

that's what I think Dirk's shit about the Ultimate Self is. he's describing something that DOES exist, and he's describing it ACCURATELY, and we can tell because we're watching it happen to him and his family. but what he's describing is not the ultimate culmination of the Platonic Self. that's something that will come later, and fingers crossed, more subtley.

i'm not going to go into depth addressing your rebuttals to my ghost/frog/robot/fairy meta because I think it's fair to say we're in fundamental disagreement over whether Homestuck is "A Platonic Story" or "A Comic Book Where The Characters' Powers Are Tied To Platonic Themes", but I will try to give you hope on one point:

A. The robot bodies ought to stop working and also break the further along they get in this transformation. Somehow I really, really doubt this, because that would be an actually good writing choice that I would like, and that means it will never happen in a million goddamn years.

i am personally pretty confident that this is actually what the story is pointing towards. i'm pretty sure Dirk states outright that Rose's robot body is just an interrim vessel for her Self while he figures out / works on the next step, and even if he doesn't (and i am not going to trudge through all of the fucking Epilogues to prove myself wrong or right here because I would not rereard any of that in a million years -_-), Rose does have her old living body with her on the Theseus. i would put money on the robot body NOT being the final form any of the Ultimate Self characters will take, and I intended to make that very clear in my post by comparing the metamorphosis to Aradia's progression from robot to god.

EDIT: and while i could easily apply the comic book argument to explain why Dirk has author powers now, i think it's worth keeping in mind that above being an extension of Platonic philosophy, Gnosticism is a religion, and the core tenet of that religion is that through knowledge one can reach the level of God. if the Author is God, it is fully within Gnostic reasoning for a character who has achieved total spiritual knowledge to attain similar power to that of the Author.

it was during the final chapter of candy/meat where rose vaguely mentions that they could either reutrn rose to her living body, or get her a new one maybe? Very vague implications and she was unsure about its validity.

I also paranoid suspect that maybe ARadia has been an ultimate self all this time >_> <_<
Basically she mentions about using her robot brain ti figure out something so random Paradox space wouldn't know what to do.. And it was non other than herself who coaxed John's hand into the juju, wasn't it?

OR at the very least she did coax his hand into it, ultimate self or not.

Regardless yea, the robot body is either life support or a cocoon of sorts, if not both. It may be only with a living body can one wield narrative powers. It may be why it seems like ,in universe, Hussie's control over the story eroded. Cause he dead.

[thorondraco]

I'm not sure where your conception that the Ultimate Self "has to be one thing or else it sucks" comes from?

I dunno if that's how i've been coming across, but I don't think it has to be one thing in particular or else it sucks. I just think that this PARTICULAR execution of the idea is reductive and is very close to the least interesting way they could have gone about it. Everything up to the epilogues regarding the ultimate self was potentially kind of funny, cute, relatively entertaining, and overall fairly subtle in how it slowly introduced and developed the concept. And then it just kinda gets slammed down like a hammer in the epilogues and the mess goes just EVERYWHERE.


All your other points are great and I don't really have a good argument against them. Except for the fact that you have far more faith in the writing team than I do. Which is saying something, because I know many of those writers personally, as talented and overall kind people, and one if them is literally my best friend. I've heard quite a lot of things about the plans for HS2 which I'm understandably not able to disclose and 80% of it does not indicate to me that things will go in the direction you think they will. There is 10-15% of it that I was actually very happy to hear about, but so much of...literally all of the things I heard are in the early "maybe maybe maybe" stages for like two or even three years down the line, and don't even have a guarantee of happening at all either, so. (And then there's the other 5% which....just.......I don't wanna sound foreboding but man. I literally just can't take anything that happens in HS2 too seriously, knowing some of this, let alone somehow retrofitting it to the epilogues.)

Honestly the only unreliable narrator in Homestuck that I know of and appreciate is Doc Scratch because hot DAMN that guy was written well. The rest don't hold a candle to that guy.

You are so correct. You are valid. You have rights.

Though. I guess it does retroactively strike me as me being stupid. Maybe Dirk having author powers literally is just because part of him is Doc Scratch who also had those same powers. Or something. Still feels kinda dumb to me and also unsatisfying but I honestly don't know what explanation WOULD satisfy me on this particular point so IDK.

the ultimate self as implid by davepeta and jasprose was from three good nature individuals. Dirk is an example of what happens if it awakes in someone who has a lot of baggage and done terrible things in prior lives.
And or is litreally part of lord english.

and it was positive for Rose. she sitll loved Kanaya.

[Joyfulldreams]

if your opinions on the potential direction/s of the story are informed by a more intimate knowledge of the machine putting the story out then that's another beast entirely. i won't deny i'd probably be more than a little disappointed if h2 does end up going in the direction you think it's going. i can only speak in defense (?) of the very little that the majority of us have already seen.

I don't want to like, say that I have any kind of intimate knowledge. All I have heard is snippets from one person on like a 10-person democratic team, and all of those snippets have been somewhat paraphrased and simplified to the point where perhaps details that would be relevant to this discussion were either left out or simplified to the point where I could have easily interpreted it incorrectly. And all of the snippets I heard were about the POSSIBILITY of a plot point happening which isn't guaranteed, either.

So like. I don't want to like sit here and go "ho hum I know better than you because I have all of this cool Insider Knowledge" because in reality I only know slightly more than the average person. I do, however, have the ability to...just literally ask my friend about what his particular thoughts are on the plans for this aspect of the meta, in order to assuage my considerable angst. Which I might. I dunno. And even if I did I couldn't say what I learned here for very obvious reasons. And given how our conversations about that typically go, it probably wouldn't be anything particularly conclusive anyway, and just a whole lot of nerd rambling, because we're nerds.

[thorondraco]

if your opinions on the potential direction/s of the story are informed by a more intimate knowledge of the machine putting the story out then that's another beast entirely. i won't deny i'd probably be more than a little disappointed if h2 does end up going in the direction you think it's going. i can only speak in defense (?) of the very little that the majority of us have already seen.

I don't want to like, say that I have any kind of intimate knowledge. All I have heard is snippets from one person on like a 10-person democratic team, and all of those snippets have been somewhat paraphrased and simplified to the point where perhaps details that would be relevant to this discussion were either left out or simplified to the point where I could have easily interpreted it incorrectly. And all of the snippets I heard were about the POSSIBILITY of a plot point happening which isn't guaranteed, either.

So like. I don't want to like sit here and go "ho hum I know better than you because I have all of this cool Insider Knowledge" because in reality I only know slightly more than the average person. I do, however, have the ability to...just literally ask my friend about what his particular thoughts are on the plans for this aspect of the meta, in order to assuage my considerable angst. Which I might. I dunno. And even if I did I couldn't say what I learned here for very obvious reasons. And given how our conversations about that typically go, it probably wouldn't be anything particularly conclusive anyway, and just a whole lot of nerd rambling, because we're nerds.

So you literally know nothing at all, just some tiny tidbits that were all your friend could probably tell you without getting fired. Cause Hussie may be a cool dude but he isn't gonna tolerate peeps leaking out major information. Even if its what ifs. Not unless it done through an extremely confusing filter.
And you obviously have an already negative impression about the epilogues so thus you will likely take any information in a negative light. And honestly its easy to take even positive things negatively. People are weird.

Though you kinda just gave off a 'my dad works at nintendo' vibe there. Imma give you the benefit of the doubt but i highly doubt there is some ominous 5% thing and more think you heard the tiny tidbits your friend gave you negatively. But i really don't think he can tell your shit cause, well, you are not part of the project and he likely had an NDA. Perhaps a lot more minor than normal, just a 'don't tell this or your fired' type of thing, but he is likely contracted here. Hussie is obvs a cool dude but i don't think he would tolerate people leaking information. OR coming upwith super mangled stories. He gave them control, but he can take it away too. He is their employer.

I think a lot of people forget that Hussie hired them. He has contorl.....
Its possible though that what you heard is also a simplified version of something Hussie had planned. Probably every bit as complex as the gnoticism.

Also the epilogues do not, in fact, contradict how the ultimate self is described initially. Kinda factually.
Rose described it as 'multiple versions of herself converging onto her mind'. When she awoke she did this whole light plus void show so obviously its not just memory.
In Candy jade, maybe cause she has Calliope jacked into two versions of herself now, said that Each incarnation of a person is like a crack of light exposing a greater being, an ultimate self. And it does not contradict it either. Cause each and every one of those cracks, the doomed selves, would have their own experiences. So its possible the ultimate self is like, divided into pieces, or it simply has all the memories and souls of the alternates collectively.

To tap into speculation a bit. Its possible that its like a 4th dimensional being attempting to exist in a 3rd dimensional space. The 3rd dimensional form of itself can't handle its presence. And it can't exist in the 3rd dimension on its own at all, maybe it can't survive? Like a whale trying to live on dry land, it would be crushed by a more material reality.

So its possible that Dirk somehow managed to hold the 4th dimensional presence inside of himself without dying. And likely that will be a plot point.

I think i sorta tapped into the whole chtulu mythos there basically. Though in this case its that everyone is a manifestation of their own chtulu or something like that.

As to why Dirk can control reality, its harder to say. Maybe having his chtulu soul inside of him allows him to control the Aspect of Heart to such a degree that, through it, he can control the narrative, and thus reality? But only through heart.

Hussie is primarily an indirect force though and could write htings form his own little Hussiespace. Then he made the mistake of coming into paradox space and dies.. Maybe the primary purpose of the Author is to be an indirect party. Cause of course the players would take it personally and would cause nonsense if they ascended. So someone detached is would allow things to run smoothly.

Yea it does get a little tiring trying to unwind everything Hussie writes and having narrators with their own plans and ambitions.

[classpectanon]

Remember to keep things civil, folks, you can disagree with people without getting rude about it.

[JakeMorph]

i didn't think anyone was being rude ??

[thorondraco]

i didn't think anyone was being rude ??

Got a bit snippy when talking to Joyfulldreams.

[Joyfulldreams]

I mean they were right though I was getting pretty 'my dad works at nintendo' there, pretty annoying and cringe, so I will shut up about that. Sorry ^^;

Anyway. I'd certainly LIKE for all this Ultimate Self stuff to end up more consistent. I doubt I will find it personally satisfying, but that's my own problem, not everyone else's.