#and. of course. the most important similarity: both games feature a side character explaining homestuck to you. god bless. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tamaharu · 1 year

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vague chicory thoughts yayayayay

i loveeee greg lobanovs games!!!!! wandersong + chicory are so incredibly interesting. theyre pretty different in terms of story and gameplay but its really interesting to have played both and see the themes that carry out through both games.

i mean firstly. its a very interesting choice for a video games primary gameplay mechanic to involve singing/painting respectively. i love the incorporation of art into the way the story functions. just absolutely fantastic.

the themes of wandersong and chicory are an interesting comparison point, because theyre both circling the same point, more or less, wandersong is about persevering despite the lack of expectations people have for you, while chicory is about succeeding despite the amount of expectations people have for you. i think its a very interesting dichotomy! two sides of the same coin, and its a really intriguing point of analysis. it also deals heavily with connection and support towards/from other people, which i love.

chicory deals heavily and directly with artist burnout and depression/anxiety, which i thought was portrayed in really interesting ways. they cause you to doubt yourself, lash out at the people and world around you, give up. the way it literally leeched the color from the world is a fun bit of visual metaphor. and. idk :) i liked the dynamics our protagonist has with those around her, like her family and chicory. its nice. its supportive.

idk i just like what lobanov brings to the table with his stories so far. there bits i see consistency in in a way i enjoy. you can tell what his influences are (and its good i like those influences. iirc he was joined in development by some people who worked on celeste and night in the woods)

#and. of course. the most important similarity: both games feature a side character explaining homestuck to you. god bless.#wandersong is one of my favorite games and i really enjoyed this experience as well. even if maybe i blasted through the story a little too #fast lmao. oh well!!!!! it was cute and fun and interesting in terms of gameplay even if i am shit at puzzles #i keep playing platformers and puzzle games even though they piss me off!!!!! idk what my favorite game format is i guess.#all have their pros and cons.#ANYWAYS chicory is on the xbox game pass!!!!! thats how i played it. and it should be on the switch iirc!! steam‚ i think? play it!!!!

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theorynexus · 6 years

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The Validity of Art!Caliborn

[S]After a great deal of contemplation, I have come to understand why we were wrong when predicting that the Caliborn we were watching-- the one which produced Homosuck and which focused so heavily upon art --was a Caliborn that would not become Lord English. This is because we did not realize certain very important things about Lord English, and the session that Caliborn went into as well. Firstly, we must realize that Caliborn himself did not take up art only after his sister was gone. He drew his first art piece to show his appreciation of Dirk, while Calliope was still alive, and thus his hobby could not have stemmed from his loneliness and desire to fill the void that Calliope’s removal left in him. The artwork that came about was crude and almost incapable of expressing what he was saying it was. However, this did represent an inner draw toward the Space aspect which would remain with him throughout the rest of his life, and into his existence as Lord English. All players have a connection to their opposite aspect. It is a healthy part of a player’s progression to experiment and try to understand it, which is necessary to their proper expression of their Classpect role. However, we believed that Caliborn was going too far with his exploration of Space, and that this meant that he was likely out of tune with his Lord of Time title. We believed this falsely. From the moment Caliborn arrived in the Incipisphere, he was left on the same planet: A place where he had an endless supply of free time on his hands and a wide expanse of barren space to deal with. He had no apparent quest, and the only way he might find one was the expenditure-- wasting --of his time in search for some sort of hidden order to the white noise of that empty world. In SBURB, every player’s planet begins in a plagued condition, generally caused by the denizen. In this case, it is arguably the reverse: The planet was already in this state when it got pulled into the black hole. Game Objects were already on Earth, and the Earth was already a dead Land. Because Yaldabaoth did nothing, the plague of the Earth is this: An over-abundance to both Time and Space, neither of which are mastered. They are chaotic, and without meaning, unless someone interferes and takes the reins of one to tame the other. Thus, before even meeting his Denizen and being sent on the Path of the Conqueror, Caliborn’s quest was clear: Use his command of time to conquer the space laid out before him. It was the same after that Choice, as well. You see, Caliborn was made to Play a Game with Yaldabaoth. A game where if he lost, the price would be his life. He was like one of the captives in the Saw franchise, and had even removed one of his own limbs to get to the point where he could become one. However, he did so willingly, and would later be able to challenge the great lion-headed ‘god’ for the title of King of Death Games. But before that, he had to play a game. A game of billiards. One thing that one must realize about the game of billiards in order to understand why this is so important is that it is all about geometry. Specifically, it deals with the use of vector geometry and impact angles to produce precise amounts of force and precise angles of attack which are necessary in order to bring a ball into a pocket. Generally, time has nothing to do with this game, save that time is necessary to see the balls go in motion and make movement to the pocket possible. It was nearly the same case with the planetary version of the game. Time only mattered for two reasons: It was the tool Caliborn would use to deliver the force: his time manipulating leprechauns allowed him to deliver the force necessary to launch each planet out of its stable position; secondly, Yaldabaoth imposed a time limit for each world, artificially increasing the pressure on Caliborn with each success, and thus forcing him to learn or die. And he WOULD learn! Specifically, he would learn to use time manipulations as a tool to effect a mastery of space. The irony of all of this is that his session was specifically designed to push him toward the embrace of Space as a Lord of Time. After all, what would Doctor Who be like if it only featured events from Earth’s speculative history? A proper time lord must be an adept in the usage and traversal of both Space AND Time. This is the reason he is able to travel through the great chaos in which live the HorrorTerrors. It is a place of time contingent on ever-changing factors in fluid space. However, a powerful, calculating mind (or someone with incredible luck) can traverse it freely, with careful plotting of their course. So, having been taught to embrace Space as a Lord of Time, which was indeed necessary for his survival, and therefore not something which he would hold with any distaste anymore, Caliborn is left with two things two do: Prepare himself in whatever way he can, and then confront Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge. In order to prepare himself, Caliborn does not seem to have created much in the way of items, but instead returns unlock all the secrets which were kept from him for lack of keys, earlier on in his game session (as any good gamer might, before facing the final boss). What does he discover behind these locks? More encouragement to hone his artistic skills now that he has a greater grasp of Space and its concepts (in the form of the How to Draw Manga book), and an indication that he would be taking over the role of a major figure who had the role of creating the world in which he lives. In essence, this is encouragement to not just DEFEAT Yaldabaoth, but to predominate over it and absorb its nature into his own, as he had not his sister. He had another giant snake monster as a replacement for the nonexistent snake monster that would have been a replacement for his missing sister if he had predominated properly (the screwy Freudian logic of Cherub mating cycles is screwy). Anyway, to be clear: After defeating Yaldabaoth, Caliborn would go on to do more than simply producing a Homosuck story that made crude representations of the Homestuck characters going on a nonsense quest which may represent the final showdown in [S] Collide. He would take up the role of the Demiurge, and would be responsible for the creation of countless corrupted universes throughout Paradox Space. Lord English would have ages to develop his mind, refine his arts, and slowly, carefully manipulate the timelines of everything in existence to produce the Alpha: The path toward his own creation, and therefore his victory-- the shattering of reality, the birth and death of the Green Sun. Though it took Forever, and required all his concentration and willpower, that old man with a peg leg was able to descend the stairs he built for himself without falling to the side or losing his foothold on reality. Thus, he was able to burst forth upon the omniversal stage and begin playing his zealous part in the destructive End. In the end, I hope I have made this theory retrospective post clear. In another attempt at writing this (which was lost because the page refreshed for no reason, and I could not copy the text, which may have been longer than this version), I had explained the extreme similarities between Caliborn and Yaldabaoth in much more detail. For example: Yaldabaoth creates in the material world images which are reflections of the spiritual ideas which exist in the heavenly realms, but which cannot actually embody them fully, because physical reality itself in gnostic belief takes away part of the essence of higher things. It is the same with Caliborn. He draws to represent ideas he has in his head, but something is always lost. His drawing of a circle is a round shape composed entirely of straight lines. We see that the lines certainly evoke the idea of a circle well enough. In fact, it seems near perfectly round. However, this is simply an illusion. It is not a real circle which is produced. However, in this version I chose to focus much more on the space and art links to this issue, which I think lay a bit closer to the heart of things. The simple truth is that Caliborn was always meant to be an artist. He was shown producing art almost immediately after we first see text from him. As a consequence of his lonely existence, the fact that making art seemed to give him a way to interact with the world and show off his role as the usurping narrator, and finally because he was encouraged to embrace Space in general, it was only natural for the Caliborn that became Lord English to embrace artistic creation, which flows naturally from the Space Aspect, and which was a perfect stepping stone to the manipulation of the world which would become integral to his future existence. If anything, a Caliborn which completely rejected art would be the doomed timeline alternative version. Yet that is what we believed Lord English must have been, since it seemed there were building inconsistencies between the Caliborn that made his Masterpiece and what must have actually happened to lead up to Lord English’s birth.

We made a mistake. Somehow, the Cherubs’ viewing capabilities and chat functions were linked over the retcon to the world on the other side of it, it seems, and all those mountains of evidence which seemed to point to Art!Caliborn’s differentiation from the one who would become Lord English were close to Red Herrings. (He is apparently the king of them, after all) We made this mistake because we forgot that Lord English was not just a power-mad monster seeking to destroy all reality, but was also a being whose will shaped the world to suit his desires and to confirm his own existence. He is in a very true sense, meant to be the Demiurge of the world in which all the Homestuck characters live, even if Hussie or his Self-Insert wrote most of it, and LE didn’t invent The Game. If you look up the meaning of the Greek word, “Demiourgos,” you will find that it does not only refer to the vile creator of the material world in gnostic lore, but that in its most basic sense, its meaning was this: “an artisan.”

#mage-of-homestuck #DahniWitchofLight #deliverusfromsburb #elendraug #Art!Caliborn #Yaldabaoth #Lord English #Gnosticism #Homestuck Theory Retrospective #Homestuck Lore #The Symbols hol dall the power.#sic.

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