alphachronism | A discussion about Team Alphachronism

Good questions, thank you, miss Reeves!

I have a headcanon that Dirk actually believed he was a sociopath for a while. I'm tired and I talked about it recently so I've got some more details here and here. Dirk is my favourite Alpha kid. Actually he's my favourite character in all of Homestuck. I am madly in love with the alpha kids.

And yeah my shipping chart has already been revealed so I'll skip that part - hahhaha!

My OTP is actually Dirk/Jake. (And Vriska/Kanaya but that's not so relevant here.) I didn't join team Dirk/Jake though because I wasn't really comfortable with excluding the girls. I'm also really fascinated in the dynamics between Jake and Jane, and Dirk and Roxy, and I felt like if I joined Dirk/Jake I would miss them. So why not ship them all at once?!

I'm not sure if you guys noticed but one of the teams (I believe they're still unconfirmed) is Jane<3Jake<3Dirk. Originally I thought "Nooo! Why exclude Roxy!" But now I wonder if they're going to play them specifically as a messy love triangle. That could be fun.

Roxy, though. :(

ADDITIONALLY I'm not sure how I'll contribute. I may be busy, spread between managing this team, being an HSO mod, and working on original stuff. At the very least I hope to contribute art. And when the right prompt strikes, some writing as well.

I can't wait to get my hands dirty in the bonus rounds. Those are the most fun, I think.

Bonus rounds sound amazing. Especially the ones that force you to do things for other ships (because I love all the ships).

I didn't know you were a mod. Good luck. I can't believe you have the time to do anything right now.

YEAH Oh man the bonus rounds were so good. And most of them forced you to do other teams! I think that was a really good strategy to help eliminate a lot of rivalry and wank - by forcing you to pick up another team's ship for a bit. And every other ship you play with is sort of like a gift to that team.

Haha, thanks! Just forgive me later if I'm being more of a manager than a teammate. That's my worst fear. umu

I love your headcanon for Dirk. The whole sociopath thing (that was thwarted or at least lessened by falling for Jake and realizing that he can empathize with another human being). I also love how you describe how he shows love. It is so perfect. So. Perfect.

"I'm also really fascinated in the dynamics between Jake and Jane, and Dirk and Roxy, and I felt like if I joined Dirk/Jake I would miss them. So why not ship them all at once?!"

Yep. Yep times a million.

I love this headcanon because it gives an entirely new light to his "conflicted, incipient preteen episodes" concerning Jake, and all his friends really. AND I LOVE DIRK SUFFERING. So I will embrace anything that gives that suffering an interesting new flavour.

Do you have any particular headcanon for Dirk, Jake, Jane, or Roxy? Like having to do with their personality, sexuality, past, etc.

Dirk: I have slowly, but steadily been building a pretty elaborate headcanon for Dirk. The biggest thing is I think when everything is said and done and the game is over (and hopefully everyone is still alive and well and happy) he will have some issues with socializing. He had been completely alone all his life, and until Derse, he never had personal contact with any other being (human or otherwise) period. I can only imagine how difficult Derse was when he woke up and suddenly had was surrounded by large groups of Dersians (is that the term). I bet he was very excited at first, but then overwhelmed because of his lack of practice in social situations. He hides this well. I think Dirk does well with Roxy, Jake, and Jane since he has established a close relationship with each of them, but I feel like he might be a little overwhelmed and awkward around everyone else. Dirk will play it like he is being cool and aloof, but I think he will be mentally exhausted and need a mixture of alone time and support from the other alpha kids to re-energize. Post-game is when I ship the alpha OT4 the hardest, just because I'm not sure they will have time to form a romantic relationship in-game.

I am of the camp that Dirk is pan-sexual. However, I feel he leans a little more towards men sexually but is at the very least demi-sexual towards women (thus Jane and Roxy are a sexually viable option for him). However, I think Dirk has made his hate of labels about sexuality very clear, so he refuses to define himself and gets pissed when others try to do it for him. He thinks labels are archaic, and the rest of the alpha kids just don't bring it up with him. Well, except for Roxy, who just likes to push Dirk's buttons.

Jane: I think Jane is very sheltered. In fact, I think I disliked Jane as a character at first because she is literally me at fifteen. I see all my silly, judgmental, overly-innocent teenage, flaws in her. However, I see such potential for her to become an amazing character, and she is the character that has grown the most during the story thus far. This makes me really like her now. I think with some gentle encouragement she will be one of the most pivotal members of the alphakid ship.

Roxy: I have so many feels for Roxy. I believe she is even better at masking her true self than Dirk. My sister is a lot like Roxy. Silly and fun (minus Roxy's alcoholic thing). The thing is, I know from my sister and other really funny people I've been exposed to, that humor often masks pain and depression. I think Roxy is doing everything she can to hide her feelings, and it will take a lot of time and a lot of encouragement (and probably a lot of fighting with her partners) to get her to become an emotionally viable part of the OT4. Roxy will be open sexually right away, but she will be the last to admit her love, she will be the last to cry in front of the others, she will be the last to accept that she doesn't have to be strong, funny, or drunk.

Jake: Oh Jake, you are my bicycle. Everyone wants a ride and you don't have a clue. He is my least emotionally complex character. He does things to please himself, but he also wants to please others. He reveres kindness, because his grandmother was such a kind person to him. He also doesn't have a very good sense of physical boundaries. He likes to tussle, cuddle, spoon, and just be the center of all the love (which works, since he is the bicycle). I have the feeling that when Jake is older he would be the kind of person to take charge in bed and give pleasure to his partners (and therefore he would get worn out a lot in the OT4).

How do you ship the alpha kids?
They are all romantically and sexually attracted to each other. In a big pile. I do think that some of the kids feel stronger sexually toward each other than others. I hate to do this, but I think Jake and Jane will probably have a few slight hangups about sex with same-sex partners at first. I do think this will dissipate pretty fast. I only do this because both Jane and Jake have had moments in canon where they seem to worry over this (Jane's reaction to Dirk possibly liking Jake, and Jake hemming and hawing over whether he should pursue something with Dirk if Dirk pursues him). I feel that each of them has a strength and downfall when it comes to relationships, but they all compliment each other as a whole.

As stated above, I think Roxy will be the most emotionally distant. She is very clingy and gossipy and sexual, but true emotions are hard for her. I think this is evident with her hilarious bouts of alcoholism and her connection to the void. Dirk will also be distant at times, but I feel like he will except comfort. Jane will speak first and think later, which will probably cause a few issues and arguments, but she is very face-value in the foursome. What you see is what you get with Jane. She doesn't play games like Dirk or Roxy. Jake will be the person who is the peacemaker. He is the glue that holds the ship together, and he is very honest like Jane, but somehow has a knack to smooth things over more than ruffle them up.

Do you ship anything inside of the OT4?
I'm a Dirk<3Jake shipper. It is solidly in my top five OTPs of all time. I have immense feels for it that can only be rivaled by my love of Gaara/Naruto (Naruto), Kirk/McCoy (Star Trek), Destiel (Supernatural), and Maka/Soul (Soul Eater). I love these ships with all my heart, but I never have any problems with open relationships and adding partners into my OTP's. (Example:I really like partners tossed in with my Kirk/McCoy, especially in the reboot version). Please, if you see me favoring this ship within the OT4, please stop me. I like balance in my multiships, and balance is crucial to keeping a foursome relationship together.

Bonus Question: I'm not really sure. My strengths are really up the whims of my inner muse. Sometimes it is an art day. Sometimes it is a writing day. However, I haven't written anything I'm hugely proud of in a year or so, so I would say that I'm more rusty at writing and art is where my strength is. I'll probably want to submit both at some point in the HSO. I'm kind of bad at the team thing. My muse doesn't always work well with others, but I promise I will try my hardest to make sure I don't voice my opinions too loudly, and work with others on the prompts.

I'm definitely with you on Socially Awkward Dirk. And also Emotional Babbu Roxy. I think that their Alpha/Beta swap switched their emotional abilities as well. Dirk took on Rose's cold facade with an adoring interior while Roxy takes Dave's gooey emotional core beneath the drunk/coolkid. I think Dirk is very experienced in seeing through Roxy's walls though, and that she seems more inclined to let him through them since they're partners in waterworld dystopia who have probably known each other since they could use computers.

I'm also more inclined toward Dirk/Jake, haha. But I think my weakness isn't going to be in prioritizing that ship... but I'm worried that all my work will be Dirk-centred. I love all of the Alpha kids but I find them to be the most fun (with my skillset, I suppose) when Dirk is the lynchpin. But I think you can look at the foursome with each character as the lynchpin. Jane is the leader. Jake is the bicycle. Roxy is the heart of the party. Dirk is the puppetmaster.

I agree with you on the Dirk-centered stuff. I did not expect to love Dirk as much as I do. I mean the kid is complete asshole and weirdo in ways that I cannot even begin to comprehend. So I'm not really sure why he is the thing that draws me to Homestuck.

Oh Dirk, he is just...*sigh*

I like the foursome because there is always shenanigans with each other. I don't think any single alpha kid could function without the others. I don't get that feeling from the original kids.

Oh boy, do we get to draw charts? I love drawing charts. Here's my general shipping chart for the entire Alpha universe (trolls, robots, kids, Cal) that's only half joking:

(Not pictured: The fact everyone but Jane has huge fucked up semi-sexual fixations on their deceased relatives.)

To sum it up? I just ship these guys as a fucking mess. I love messiness. I love people struggling to make all the pieces fit. I don't ship them as an exclusive foursome, clearly, but I can see them as each other's primary partners.

Breaking it down!

Jane: Of all the upcoming Alpha and Beta kid interactions I'm most excited to see Jane's with John and Jade. I know everyone is all up on the Dersecest angst, and that is great I'm not knocking it, but gosh I want more Prospit drama. And Dad! I want to know what the fuck is up with Dad. I probably have the fewest headcanons for Jane just because I'm so invested in what canon is going to do with her. There's just so much room for her to grow.

One aspect of her I'm terrible at writing myself and would like to see more of is her as a detective! A whole story about her investigating the tablets left behind by the Consorts and piecing together her own future with her friends would be amazing. Myststuck is easily my favorite flash of the entire comic.

Jake: What a weirdo. You folks are going to have to call me out on concentrating overly much on him because I just adore that kid. I'm certain something terrible is going to happen to him in the comic and I'm really excited for it! Also a world where Jake doesn't want to smooch his sexy young grandma is a world I don't want to live in.

Roxy: I think she would be the one most prone to jealousy, though she would have a hard time admitting to it. She has the biggest heart and is perhaps a bit too self sacrificing, to the point where she doesn't get her own needs met which leads to the jealousy.

Dirk: I do think he is at least partially object-sexual. I genuinely ship him with Cal, that part of the chart isn't a joke. I think that for the foursome to work the other kids are going to have to learn to relate to Cal in some manner.

(Also I'd love to see stuff dealing with Dirk and Jade, comparing their experiences having awake dreamselves pre-game. I'll make everything about Jade if no one stops me.)

Generally though my headcanons for them shift as is convenient to tell a cohesive story. My first Alpha OT4 fics were the ones with trans* Jake and Roxy. I wrote out my headcanons for that particular universe here. But that's just one of an infinite number of possibilities for how their relationship could shake out. I'm open to happy endings where they all fuck around on the internet together forever, but I'm also open to endings where Jane and Jake become evil overlords and keep their friends as pets.

In regards to shipping within the group I'm an opportunist. I'll ship whatever fits for the story. The only ones I really ship separate from the others is Beta universe Jane/Jake (aka Nanna/Grandpa), mostly for the sweet, sweet pseudo-incest. In the Alpha universe I'm all about the group smush.

Oh wow, that's all I can think of right now. I'll probably find more to ramble about tomorrow.

Bonus Question!
I'm planning to contribute fic mostly. My art mostly abstract so I don't think it's really what the challenge is looking for. I also make fanmixes sometimes! I made a mini Jake/Jane one that I'm working on expanding, I'd love to know what songs everyone else on the team associates with the Alpha kids.

Oh! Two additional things that might be relevant later:

1, I love text and flash games! I've played around with the different free programs that are out there to make them and would love to collab on one if other people are interested!

2. On a less cheerful note, my health can be on the iffy side, but my sick spells usually come on slowly so generally I should be able to give people warning. I've been doing very well for a couple months, so I don't anticipate sudden cases of the vapors.

YES PLEASE TEXT GAMES and such. I was on team Vriska<>John last year and me made something like that. I LOVE GAMES. I LOVE STUFFING GAMES FULL OF AS MUCH DIALOGUE AND LITTLE STUFF AS POSSIBLE. I really wish I could write for video games. Gosh.

Oh excellent! How did you guys make your game last year? Did you have someone who could code it wholesale or did you use a program? I'm only familiar with Quest for text games and Ren'Py for visual novels. Quest is sort of a pain, so if someone knew of a better way to make text games I'd be interested.

I'm pretty familiar with Inform, which is friendly enough. If we aren't trying to make the next Anchorhead it should be usable by the amateur.

(including me, I am an amateur)

That looks really neat! Thanks for the link.

I'm sooooo down with games. It's such a great fit for them: they're all EXPLORERS!!! and massive nerds who don't have a lot of human contact otherwise and judging by Jane's detection, Roxy's experimentation, Jake's Collect Them All-iness, and Dirk's ... Dirkness, they're all the kind of completists who faced with 999/1000 points would stay up until five in the morning getting the last one.

I have no experience making them, but I love flash and text games as well. Perhaps a flash game or something similar like that would be a great idea for the collab project since it doesn't have a media limit. Plus, that final collab round has the longest time to be prepared (June 2nd until July 28th according to the chart in the HSO faq), so all of us could contribute some really awesome stuff.

Also, I love, love, love your shipping chart. It looks like a big disaster of ships, but all of them work and make sense. It is the most organized chaos I have ever had the pleasure of looking at.

(p.s. I could totally see Jake being attracted to Jade and being all kinds of upset by it, and Dirk being like, "Go for it." Because Dirk seems to have a more "ancestor" view of his relationships with Dave and Rose. I think Dirk would be very supportive of weird, ectobiological incest. Just one more thing that makes me wonder why he is my favorite character.

Hahaha, yep, Dirk is definitely the one being like "I don't get it."

GT: Its not right Dirk! Confound it a young man is supposed to believe that his grandmother is the delightful source of whatever it friggin is on the mainland. Cookies and mothballs I guess. Not a smokin hot babe with an excellent trigger finger!
TT: I can't decide what's fucking funnier here, the airquotes I know you're levering around "smokin' hot babe" or the fact that you think it matters who your genetic donor was.
GT: Well dont forget she did her fair share of raising me. Before she was murdered and cremated I mean.
TT: You might as well admit it now, Jake. You are passionately in the throes of sexual attraction for Jade Harley.
TT: You want to ram your meat sausage into her porcelain cave.
TT: Okay, that sentence backfired on me.
GT: I dont see you being so cavalier about makin the fancy dance with your brother!!
TT: That's because I want to put his head through a wall.
TT: What do you even think Rose and I have been doing during all our councils of war?
TT: The answer is fucking, Jake.
TT: The answer has always been fucking.
GT: ....oh!!!
GT: I get it!! This is all a funny joke! Hahahhaaa!! You really got me there chum!
TT: No.
TT: This is a literal statement of fact. I can see how you'd get the two confused.

Oh yes, it would be perfect for the big collab project if everyone was on board. I played some of the ones from last year's HSO and they are just completely charming and look like the team had a lot of fun. Plus, like everyone has pointed out, it really just works for the characters.

Thank you! Yes, chaos is so great. I think it would be sort of a natural result of these kids' entanglements. They're all up in each other's business all the time so they can't do anything without pulling everyone along with them.

I see Jake's thing for Jade forming before he meets her in-game, during the time when they're sending letters back and forth and he's confusing beta!Jade with his deceased grandma. For him Jade is much more immediate and real than Rose and Dave are for Roxy and Dirk. Not only does he have faint memories of her holding him he can talk to her, but only in little scraps because it takes so much energy to send letters back and forth. So I see him agonizing over every little detail he puts into his messages to her. We see him working himself to the bone trying to get the rabbit right and it's not even for her! It's for John! Jake things John must be the greatest because that's what Jade told him and Jade is always right because she's just the best! That birthday letter he sends to John is so awkward and heartbreaking because he wants to meet other people so badly. But yeah, he rips all the uranium out of all his stuff to make that stupid rabbit just because Jade tells him it's important. It's almost fatalistic how he's focused on that goal and willing to doom himself to get it, I can see why some people think that he misinterpreted Dirk's lecture about the future to think he was going to die on 11-11-11.

Also this comic breaks my heart. I like to think Jake saved at least a bit of her hair and made something out of it like the Victorians. I wonder if he had anything of hers survive the house exploding. Maybe Dirk and Roxy could steal some of her things and send it to him as a gift, just so he doesn't feel so lonely? They both seem to get that it's important to feel a physical connection to your guardian figure, especially Roxy with alpha!Rose's scarf, so I'd like to think that they'd do something like that for him.

On a happier note, I'm also fond of the idea of Jade and Dirk being great buddies. You like robots and yiffing too? We have so much to talk about!!!

Holy shit. I just looked at your chart and I had a sudden idea that I'm just going to drop here before I forget.

That is one elaborate chart, but the moment I laid my eyes on UU I thought WHAT IF

WHAT

IF

one of our entries is from her perspective, where she makes everyone kiss. Or it's a fic that she herself writes about the kids kissing. Or it's a shipping manifesto written by her.

Okay back to your regular programming.

I love UU a lot and I endorse this idea.

I also like the idea that UU and Roxy are both CotL fans and write fanfic that they share back and forth. Because that's adorable.

Oooooh yes. I love outsider POV fic! I actually had an idea for one from the consorts' point of views, telling legends about the kids. Maybe focusing on the last leader of the salamanders (who totally isn't just alpha!Casey, that would be silly) and her writing letters back and forth with the White Queen trying to make sense of the fact the heroes never came and saved them. I just really love the consorts and seeing them all dead makes me so sad.

But UU! She would write the best essays about the human romance. I wonder who she would get to human-pick them for her? Roxy would blab about them before they're even finished. What a terrible beta!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaah yes, perfect! I also love the consorts a lot.

UU carefully tries to decide her ships. Roxy keeps intercepting and shipping everyone with herself. It's mostly a joke, but in the end UU ships them all as a unit. Aw yeah.

UGH THESE IDEAS ARE GREAT??

Yes. Yes. Um, yes and then some more yes.

OMG perfect UU chart is perfect

what good ideas :>

These are good headcanons. I also really love your trans*Jake and Roxy fics! I've actually recc'ed them on occasion! I really love thoughtfully executed trans*fic.

I also really ship Mom/Dad/Bro in the Beta-verse now that we're talking about it. I'm also not against it in the Alpha-verse, because I'm awful.

I made this Dirk/Jake fanmix before we... really knew the kids at all, hahaha. I SHIPPED IT IMMEDIATELY. I generally consider Wires and Waves by Rilo Kiley my Alpha kid song. It's about... long-distance romance and being lonely. Yeahhh.

Precious babies.

I also really ship Dirk/Cal, unironically.

How come I can't edit my comments? I don't understand Dreamwidth.

This is a good team. A really good team.

I know. Not being able to edit comments is driving me batty. I lived on livejournal for years and I like Dreamwidth better now (stupid livejournal ruining livejournal), but there are some things that still just make me nuts about it.

Okay, here we go!

I'm pretty partial to the idea that Dirk is avoidant of large crowds and terrified of thunder and thunderstorms. Imagine living in the middle of the ocean on an oil rig and having no way to escape a storm if it hit you? Plus he has his whole complex about being in control of everything, so it would drive him up the wall doubly. Also, the smuppets aren't for show! He's pretty furry too! I'm waiting for the day someone has him say, "Wanna yiff?" unironically in a fic, and then they do.

I love Jane a lot. She's so determined and confused, and one of my favorite tropes is people realizing they haven't been thinking critically about society, and then proceeding to think critically about society. Jane's going to go on a fun arc of that in canon and I can't wait. I also sort of headcanon that being MADE OF LIFE means that you are basically invincible. If she dies, she will revive. If she takes damage, she will heal. If Dersites mow the four of them down with Tommy guns, she will resurrect and go into a berserker rage to slaughter the lot of them before kissing her friends alive again. This may pose a problem if she ever tries to go god tier.

I really want to write a story about Roxy growing up in a carapace slum! So much! Just the idea of a child raised by an alien society is the coolest thing. Also, she made mutated cats! That is awesome. I like the idea that she would be completely scientific about her clonings, too, keeping huge charts and spreadsheets of thing she'd tried and traits she wanted to accentuate, not to mention alternate sheets for her experiments with the windows. She's so driven by her experiments and that's really interesting to me. I like science Roxy. I also like video game nerd Roxy, and I adore the idea that while Dirk studied the past like a textbook, she plucked out enjoyment from it. She loves her mom's books. She has a video game and console collection. She kidnapped a cat and gave him a silly name.

I think my Jake headcanon is kind of convoluted because he is too? He seems to live with a million fantasies in his head, different splinters of existence that he's lived out and thought over a million times in his head because he is alone on an island with nowhere to go, and he just has that much time. He has fantasies for everything. He's dreamed up a romance with each of his friends, in detail, and he has no idea which of those dreams he wants to become real. Maybe all of them. When Jane said she didn't fancy him, it was a relief because it collapsed that one fantasy and left him with one less to worry about. Her just wanting to be friends fell into the other fantasies just fine. He's got a lot of irons in his mental fire. All the irons. But he's a go-with-the-flow kind of guy, so whatever comes his way, he is very much ready for. Life's an adventure after all.

How do I ship the OT4? Dang. I have a hard time imagining them not having incredibly large places in each other's lives? I'm really partial to Jane and Dirk's absolutely amazing friendship in canon. I am pretty much incoherent over how much I love them and I tend to carve out dumb little paragraphs of them interacting in anything alphaverse that I write. Moreso than I tend to for the other twosomes in the foursome. I also really like Jake/Roxy mostly because fandom seems to ignore it entirely, and thus isn't supplying me with fodder as to how they work together. Lately I've been less big on Dirk/Jake and Jane/Roxy simply because it's everywhere and I feel a bit overexposed. But that doesn't mean I love it any less. Jake and Jane give me all kinds of feelings and sometimes I sit and remember back before she blew it when they had cute flirty pesterlogs, and I sigh fondly. Dirk and Roxy are. Well, they are complicated and I ship them the least, because I guess I'm a bit uncomfortable that Roxy doesn't seem to respect his choice to not talk about his sexuality (a thing I'm touchy about IRL). But as friends, I have a thousand feels about them, and I think that if they sat down and finally ironed out their issues with each other, I would be all over that ship. Which is what AUs and fic are for.

I JUST THINK ALL THE ALPHAS SHOULD SIT IN A PILE AND CUDDLE AND KISS. That's basically how I ship it. I'm not good at this. I'm the patron saint of gen. Why am I on this team? D:

I will be writing for HSO. I'm way out of practice with art and don't have the patience for it anymore. My taste in music is rappelling off the side of "hipster," so any fanmixes I would put together would make little sense.

Lanta I love that OT4 Dirk Stormfic so much I can't even.

I love everything you do so much

I love you a lot

"I JUST THINK ALL THE ALPHAS SHOULD SIT IN A PILE AND CUDDLE AND KISS."

Kissing piles. They should be a thing. I could totally see Roxy lounging across everyone's laps with a martini with Jane inbetween Dirk and Jake where the two of them could make her blush while they take turns kissing her till she's dizzy. Then Roxy shows the boys how it's done. Oh yes. Kissing pile needs to be on the list of things we do.

Everyone overlooks Jane and Dirk's friendship. I adore it too. Dirk wants Jane to believe him so much, and to wake up and see the light like the rest of them. Jane is the one person that he seems the most genuine with. It is adorable and makes my heart just swoon.

Why does everyone overlook Jake/Roxy. The two of them would be a riot. When Dirk and Jane are being complete sticks in the mud, Jake and Roxy will go and light the world afire. I just know they would. (The hottest sex would be Jake and Roxy in my opinion).

I can't read Jane/Dirk pesterlogs without dissolving into a pile of feelings. It's embarrassing. But they are so much more honest and open with each other than they are with the other two, and I find that really sweet. Not to mention Pony Pals and Lil Seb. I can't wait until they talk again.

The hottest sex would definitely be Jake and Roxy. I mean, Dirk is the master of kink, but they are so unrestrained. It would be adorable.

I'm rolling around in delight at everything so far. What a good team.

Skipping the first three for now, except to say that I guess I'm the token Cotton Candy representative! But I mostly really don't ship them outside of the OT4; my headcanon for the kids is that they've been living in each others' pockets for so long that they can't develop a stable romantic relationship between any two or any three of the kids without the fourth there to balance things out, hence all the disastrous sixteen year old drama we've been watching so far.

I can't draw for beans so I'm here to write :) I can also songwrite and sing a bit, but I really make terrible recordings so any musical contributions will have to be covered by someone else, haha. I'm hoping you guys will be up for collabs!

OK I guess I should also say that the primary quadrant I ship them in is "revolution." Because I love that you have Leia and Luke, but Leia was actually raised to be Lady Vader, and Luke was totally abandoned on an island in the middle of nowhere, and then you've got, I guess, in this metaphor, Chewbacca the son of the original revolution and R2D2 the party robot who used to be a masterspy, and they're all sixteen. The powerfulness of their relationship is the only conceivable threat to the forces of Empire. In both universes, really! I mean, the beta kids are my darlings, but for different reasons--they wouldn't have stood a chance against Sburb without some serious parental assists due to their frequent and even post-mortem collaboration.

I ship them primarily as revolution too! Just, the whole alphaverse is set up for it. It's all political intrigue and this tiny punk group of four kids who somehow have to take down the game from the inside. Not to mention the Condesce is in charge of everything. She is so powerful and somehow they have to go up against her and win. It's fun.

Yes!! And they're sort of tailored to it--I mean her superpowers are technically unlimited, but we've got a hunter vs. her monsters, a mindgames expert vs. her psychic powers, an heiress vs. her access to human power structures, and a carapace ally vs. her access to Derse and Prospit. Kind of cool!

I love having a group of people to finally discuss this with. I have a lot of ideas that are on the cusp of being part of my headcanon, but I never can quite articulate them, and then you guys spell it out so well. Yes. I agree with this. That is why the dynamics of the alpha kids are so interesting. So much hinges on them, and they add in more political intrigue. Yep. Yep. Yep. I like this theory very much.

Eeek I'm super late with this, things have been super busy! I am like 175% behind all of thes fantastic headcanons in this thread, though! I'm not a fiction writer at all, but these are all great!

re: mediums--i am going to draw stuff! I plan on doing lots of bonus round stuff, and then either collabing with someone for a main round or two or three, or possibly doing a comic or something if no one is up for it. My comic skillz are p. nonexistant, but this is what I did for a main round last year. I still do not know how panels work lol.

within the ot4 my biggest ship is roxy<>dirk, but mostly i just ship lonely kids x lonely kids.

one thing--regarding the possibility doing a game for the collab round--cool! sounds like people are into it an that's great! i'll contribute however i can, but am not a gamer at all myself so if we do a game i'll need people to specifically tell me what to draw.

Also, I don't know if it would work, but if we end up doing a game that could also pass as a story, maybe we could try to swing having both versions available for accessibility purposes? I don't know of like, ~*~acutal medical accessibility problems~*~ with games but am personally too ADHD/impatient to tolerate most of the console-based RPGs like I saw a lot in last year's HSO. I'm prob. weird, but I get super frustrated by the slow information gain, annoying breaks in convo, stuff like that? IDK, I know Homestuck is essentially an Earthbound spoof so most fans probably love all games like this, but if anyone else in our voter pool is like me we might want to see about trying to hedge our bets with an alternate straight-text version...

Anyway, this team is badass, and I'm sure we are going to make a bunch of righteously awesome stuff for our fave alpha OT4! and, to steal taz's great advice from last year's John<3Karkat team:

EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION

.

Do you mind me asking more details about your video game problems? Was it mainly the text and flash games, where you have to try different things before getting the story to continue, or did the visual novels and choose your own adventure games where the choices are spelled out bother you as well? I think the second type would be the easiest to do transcription for, as well as the easiest to incorporate images if we do go the game route.

There's always the option, if someone has webspace, the we could just build a choose you own adventure game using linked pages rather than having people download a visual novel. It would allow us to put a lot of text on one page rather than having people click through a conversation bit by bit on a smaller game screen.

Ahh I don't mind at all! I'm sorry to be making any sort of deal out of this??? Seriously I'll draw for whatevs. :>

Re: your question, though--my gaming vocab is SUPER LIMITED so please bear with this fumbling explanation, haha. Like, I don't really know "types of games"--I quite literally do not know the difference between a text game, flash game, visual novel, or a "choose your own adventure" game, sorry.

Maybe examples would help? Like, from last years HSO, my fave entries were usually fic/art or fanadventures, because I usually need to be sold on a pairing, and those kind of straightforward narratives seemed to be best at making me feel emotionally involved. I think part of this might be inherent in the media--with fic/art and fanadventures, if there's a part that really hits you hard, you can spend more time on it, and revisit it, and dwell on it, while skimming any boring stuff. I do think some of the fanadventures I really liked probably were "visual novels", I'm just kind of fuzzy on the definitions there, sorry!

However, with all the games I remember from last year's HSO, you were smoothly conveyor-belted along at a pace that was usually slow, but also might have kept you from settling on any really tasty parts. IDK OPINION SOUP.

As far as games from last year--mostly just remember being really irritated at this one? It was gratingly slow and my browser crashed at some point during the dang thing and I had to start from the beginning. IDK I guess I just really want us to avoid pitfalls like this one had. I do remember thinking that the "skip" functions on this game were handy, and being kind of charmed by this one, but being ambivalent about this one.

I know that this is probably not even a passable explanation about I'm carrying on about, haha. Sorry! Let's just make sure that if we do a game (which will be super excellent and would be supremely badass!) we don't miss the forest for the trees in regard to our media vs. our content. It would be a shame to focus a lot of effort on planning/programming a game and accidentally scrimp on the important stuff, which is--excellent characterization, interesting plot, and great images located where they have the most impact. In short, emotional manipulation of the reader/viewer. Anyway, we're kickass and are going to win at sportz! Sorry to go on and on! :>

No, don't be sorry. This is actually really interesting and informative. Please allow me to get my nerd on for a moment.

Most of those examples seem to be some form of visual novels. Visual novels are a Japanese kind of video game, or at least they're most popular in Japan. They're pretty much a fancy Choose You Own Adventure novel. You click along, reading a story, and eventually get to a choice. Then whichever you choose takes you on a different branch of the story and eventually you get a different ending. There's more complicated versions but that's the basic idea. The most popular ones are dating sims, where your choices lead you to wooing different characters. Japanese ones are famous for having "Bad Ends" where if you choose the wrong thing you or your love interest gets horrifically killed. So yeah, dating sim/visual novel/choose your own adventure game are all kind of a same thing. They can be pretty flashy with sound and pictures while still being simple to play, so I can see why they were popular choices last year.

Visual novels are pretty easy to transcribe, which would be one advantage if we wanted to make something that was also accessible to people who didn't want to play the game itself for whatever reason. You can just write out the whole branch of the story on a page and have links to the next bits. For example, you would write the whole chapter and then instead of saying "turn to page five to head home" and "turn to page twenty to continue along the road" you would have hyperlinked choices that take you to a new webpage with the next chapter depending on the branch you took.

I get what you're saying about straightforwardness. Some of the games from last year didn't really need to be games. The Dave/Jade one in particular struck me as something that would have worked just as well in text with illustrations throughout. But again, that's true for a lot of the mini flash games in Homestuck itself.

It's a matter of taste I suppose? I like the idea that we could make a game about a mystery, so the player gets to be Jane playing detective, but for everyone who likes that there would be someone who found it too tricky and annoying. We would probably want to include a walkthrough if we did one like that.

On a silly personal note, I like the idea of a visual novel/choose your own adventure thing because we could throw in bad ends. I just love ridiculous over the top bad ends.

A discussion about Team Alphachronism

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

thatreevesgirl's headcanon

Re: thatreevesgirl's headcanon

Re: thatreevesgirl's headcanon

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject