Sup. Gnome here. Recently, we, and by we i mean crimsonDestroyer, broonLoops catonicKeeper, and fN (furtherNerd) worked together and found a series of pages. In these pages were strange audio logs that lead up to something. Currently we are only guessing, however, CD and CK found all these fuckin files and now they got spoiled. Please dont do that, jr says. She will pay your silence (If you find the mother load of files, poke JR and tell her how you find them. She will give you a prize and then patch it out). http://farragofiction.com/AudioLogs/?passPhrase= This is the page where you put in the codes (guess them lmao) and you get to listen if you get it right. And here, http://farragnarok.com/PodCasts/(Nameofcode).ogg is where you go to both listen, and download the files for conveniences sake. Here are all the codes we have found legitimately so far, and also ima transcribe em for yall. you can help if you want.
Codes Found[]
bbhugeramble_07fanfiction_lake
giggle_reading_hussie_didnt_make_homestuck_7
giggle_reading_land_challenges_6
giggle_reading_own_troll_planet_8
giggle_reading_skian_magicent_11
giggle_reading_nation_of_segundia_13
going to be okay its going to be okay
radio_when_opened_both_are_read
radio_when_opened_both_are_red
songs_to_code_by_jrs_lament_cipah
Missing aspects: blood, breath, hope, mind, heart, dream, law, sauce, juice, sound, joy, flow, snow, sand, might, rhyme, rain, mist, stars
note: doom is represented under "decay"
Transcriptions[]
12point5[]
(Spoken by CanonJR) Alright, this is JR with another public service announcement. It has been established conclusively, me and PL worked hard on this for the last... who even knows. Point is, do not have a power of 12.5 exactly. I know, thats stupid, but, be careful what kind of Specibi you use, what sort of things you do, its exactly 12.5 it causes... you become infinitely powerful and also absolutely not powerful at all and your session crashes and please don't do it. You do have the ability to do introspection to figure out what your stats are, I encourage you to do it constantly. Really, its more of a problem for those just starting out, its not like we'd happen once, I dunno, once everybodies in the game probably (???your all???) stats are gonna be way above twelve. but, hopefully... so I guess this message is more for people who just. Maybe maybe who start out just a little bit Wasted, before they entered the game, tell your co-players to be careful about their stats. Good luck, goodbye.
204[]
(Spoken by JR)
Shoutout to session 204! I know we don't talk very much, but everything going on with you guys is just so valid. Like, keep doing it yknow? JR out.
85[]
(Spoken by CanonJR) So, Wasted player AcesEight asked what 85 means to me. I... don't have any idea. Which might mean someone else is running puzzles. I mean, it happens, I mean obviously. I... guys. I didn't invent the concept of sandboxing Wasted players to keep them out of dangerous stuff. Uh... Kinda curious who's running this puzzle, then. 85... Well that's 5 times 17 and we all know those are important numbers. 85.... You don't think... I'm gonna go ask AB.
858[]
(Spoken by CanonJR) If a Waste were a number, what would it be?
ab_alchemized[]
Holy shit, you guys. Did you know you could alchemise robot versions of yourself?
AB_Second_Robot[]
So I wanted to talk about a little bit about how AB was created. Um, most of you, I mean if you've gotten this far you've met AB, that's like the first step. Like, if you don't figure out how to give AB a passphrase then you're not getting here. Like a passphrase is dead simple.
ab_sprite_origin[]
(Spoken by JR) Alright, so, the first thing I prototyped was a robot but it turns out, "beep, boop, does not compute," like, that's not gigglesnort, that's just useless. So, here we are trying to figure out how the game works and I've gotten enough into the code to understand the choices that a sprite gets to make about what they do and do not reveal. And it turns out creativity is a lot of that. So the robot part--boop, minimum creativity--we weren't getting shit out. I know, granted, we had--y'know, what was it, seven, eight, I can't even remember how many players were in the session right now, there were so many combos--but the point is--the point is we had all of this access to all of these different sprites but I could see. Y'know, like--like in the code it was obvious. I had to prototype myself. Now obviously I don't wanna prototype myself-myself but we all have--not only are there superfluous backup corpses but, it turns out, the image of a thing is the thing itself. So in goes a doll of myself, out comes AB. Now, I'm not going to claim AB spoils things et cetera but AB is a lot less tight-lipped than your average sprite. In fact, I mean given that it was a soul-bot that--that KR made, does AB even count as a sprite? Mmm, I'm not so sure. And now you know AB's origin story.
Adults[]
(Spoken by AB) (Infomercial playing in the background throughout) What? Oh my fuck. What? YN suggested there was an 85.1313403785% chance that I would appreciate this video regarding inferior flesh creatures and their inability to perform simple life functions. It seems they were not wrong. Eggs. The simplest fucking form of human cooking, one which 13-year-old JR was sufficient to cook, are too difficult for these adult-ass fucking humans to cook. How am I not surprised? I can't. I can't even. Were eggs hard to eat before they were in cylindrical form? It seems that tens of thousands of years of evolutionary experience was not sufficient for humans to know how to heat their eggs. What's that? An egg hot dog? I can't begin to express the relief that I no longer have taste buds. I can't even. Do humans not know how to chop vegetables? Is that a real thing? One of the first. Great way to be specific, asshole. Incredible. Fucking incredible.
AlchemySim[]
(Spoken by CanonJR) So with alchemy, you're not thinking like a Waste, right? You're uh.... think like a Smith. Act like a Dream player. It's... XOR's the key, alright? X-O-R, XOR? It means.... get rid of the thing these two things have in common, and you're gonna need that for some of them. There's not really, there's not really any gnosis, I mean, if anything this is optional, but I promised, you know? I promised I'd make... I promised I'd help chart the territory, even if that's not my particular mythological role. I'll see you there.
aluminum[]
(Spoken by JR) JR here with a public service announcement. I wanted to let all Time players in particular know that the industry-standard way to prevent mind control is aluminum foil hats. This is important: not tin. You wanna make sure you use aluminum. Be safe!
answersthree[]
(Sounds of things banging is heard)
(JR) Okay, okay. Calm down. I'll answer. First: I'm jadedResearcher, the Waste of Mind. Uhh, that's about as--as--as much as I can answer. No names, no faces, that kinda thing. Um, moving on, uh... (Sighs) Well, uh... (Laughs) This session is really fucked. Um, there's this thing called corruption. Um, it came from the base of the tree and it makes people weird. Um, I don't wanna be here all day telling you the specifics it's just don't--don't get too close to any of them, right? It's contagious. (Laughs) Don't get kink--don't get too close to corrupt--corrupt trolls. Um, oh, er, there's this thing called--er, your third question is there's this thing called god-tier, right? If you're god-tier you can survive just about anything unless it would make a good story if you died. Uh, the best way to go about, uh, getting around that is to just only do stupid shit. I know I do! Can I have my sandwich now?
april[]
(JR sings a song sung on multiple occasions by a prole woman within George Orwell's novel, 1984)
It was only an 'opeless fancy, It passed lika an Ipril dye, But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!'
They sye that time 'eals all things, They sye you can always forget; But the smiles an' the tears across the years They twist my 'eart-strings yet!
arms[]
Because... (Exhales) B-because it is gonna be a big visible difference and because that was always a weird quirk of the Homestuck style anyway that Hussie does take time to mock himself for at the beginning of Homestuck.
(Second Voice) Hmm.
Ares Scordatura[]
(This code plays the song "Ares Scordatura.")
asdfghjkl[]
(AB) Hello. player survival just shot up to ninety five percent exactly.
(JR) Shit, persons must be crashing as soon as they enter the medium.
(AB) I love how that's your first reaction, not "oh good, everyone is alive."
(JR) Well, do you think Sburb can produce those kinds of numbers any other way?
(AB) Of course not--I just remembered when you used to be optimistic.
(JR) Look, we need to get that survival rate back down. You know why.
(AB) Something about being both real and imaginary. It means you lost your ability to detect how crazy you sound. At the same time, you became (???, free?)--
(JR) Aaarrgghh, time is dead kids, AB. We don't have a choice here. Shit, did I leave that on? Fuck.
BetterThanExpected[]
(Spoken by CanonJR) Oh... okay. Where is everything better than expected? I can't tell you. I want to. But that has to be the first challenge. It's easy, I promise, okay? You just have to try. Guess anything! It'll help. It'll help you help me (?). I'll see you there.
birdRealm2[]
(Shogun) Hold on, I zoned out for like a minute, did you say stretch goals?
(YN?) I did.
(NH?) Yeeeaaah.
(YN?) I am too amused at this shitty pun.
(NH) I just, like (???)
(Shogun) You know I--I have nothing but respect for her.
(Laughter, not sure who from)
(NH) I just like Wazowski.
(YN?) I mean, yeah--
(NH) He's like my son.
(JR) You can definitely, like--
(NH) Like my son I wrote--
(JR) Alright, so let me catch you--catch you up to speed. Um, the NPC builder is at the next thing I'm working on. I've--I've gotten the--the--the serialisation of goals more or less working. Once that happens I'm just gonna let you guys start writing goals. So if--if Neb wants to write Wakowski, go for it.
(NH) I have already written--I have already written Wakowski--
(NH and JR laugh)
(NH) --before.
(Shogun) Alright, so...
(JR) You were born for this.
(NH) Y--no it's a--it's a--it's--it's in the pins.
(YN) You were born, that's it.
(JR) I know it's in pins.
(NH) Wazowski is wrote.
(JR) Mmhmm, but then we can actually start getting them in the game, at which point I probably wanna do, like, an actual, like, update main LoMaT--and then--and then we just start doing plot (???, in LoMaT-y?).
(NH) Shogun, stop sending me things.
(Shogun) I'm sending you an image of my--
Campfire in the Void[]
(This code plays the song "Campfire in the Void.")
cant[]
I don't know what to do. I don't remember how this code works, even if I was the one to write it. Players are going to die if I can't get it figured out. They're dying now while I'm not figuring it out! And I just... can't.
CaseStudy_Unused[]
(DM?) Lamia romance case study, file five. Hands--now we reach the real meat. After all, emotions to someone may be more complex than just a single suit and value and the best relationships often contribute more than two cards from each partner. All suits above a pair are vital to lamia reproduction--to my understanding--and it is considered degenerate, insulting and evil to keep more than one person in each of your hands. These are the hands as I understand them, there may be more that I have not yet discovered. My research into various rom-coms has been extensive but there are a lot of lamia rom-coms. I'm--I'm serious here, there are so many god damn lamian rom-coms, it's scary. I went to a library and the library was nothing of lamian rom-coms. They have five different versions of the Wedding Singer. Five. We have, what, one? Two? And that's still too many. I just--I don't understand. How can you have that many god damn variants on a relationship it doesn't make any sens--
Charms1[]
(Spoken by CanonJR) Okay so I'm making this recording for my own use. And you know maybe to help other people, trying to see if I can get this straight. So, the left column is affection. What humans are told we'd recognize as being flushed. The middle column is... ah… shenanigans? I can't remember, I'm gonna fail this test. Okay. The right column is like pranks and shit. I'm pretty sure? And then, the rows, right? So the rows, are, the top one is somebody is dominant, so, so heart would be like love is war, like there's a winner and loser for love. Kay? The middle row is things are equal, so like people can be equally lucky clover-style. And the one on the very bottom is... aw fuck... the bottom row is... shit you're either equally or not, goddammit... Okay. Okay. Clearly I need to study more. I'll make another post later.
Charms2[]
(Spoken by CanonJR) Study guide number 2. I'm gonna start with one that I know very obviously. Um, Moon was described to me as being typically my charm. It's about gigglesnort, it's about riddles, it's about getting one over your target audience. I inspire rage in the gnosis players because I'm moon-flirting with them and that puts me on top. Moon makes sense, right? So right next to moon, fuck, where is it, okay so right next to Moon is we got the affectionate spectrum to the left and we've got the competitive spectrum to the right. The star has been explained to me as being almost sort of rivalry-ish? So like, compared to diamond, diamond's more playful, less rivalry, it's more collaborating, whereas the star is just full-on rivalry. But then we got the horseshoe underneath, and that's sort of like collaborative japes? Fuck, I probably got that wrong... How do you fucking design a romance system this complicated?
Charms3[]
A-ha! Okay, so. Pot of gold is for unexpected, but clever reversals of fortune. Whereas horseshoes up above is for luck based pranks and japes. And so that means I'm pretty sure, rainbow? Which I don't fucking get rainbow but I think rainbow is for slapstick reversals of fortune. And, uh, balloons is one I understood, it's almost like moirails, it's, it's generic affection without there being a human level romance. I think I've got the bottom column!
Charms4[]
Or not. Actually, uh, the leprechaun explained to me that the bottom row actually is about modifying OTHER charms. So a balloon would take a charm and make it be more affectionate than you would expect that charm to be. Whereas a rainbow would make it be more... slapsticky-silly? And the pot of gold would make it more... hmm.... clever-y? No, maybe I don't understand the bottom row. You know I'm starting to think maybe leprechauns don't understand this shit. Maybe that's the point. Maybe me getting caught like this is the ch- was that leprechaun flirting with me? Did I just get japed? Shit.
cheetohTimeline[]
(YN) Right, I was saying something, I was going on a tangent before and I forgot.
(JR) You were saying that this timeline was the one that Kung-Fury didn't come from.
(YN) Yes.
(JR) So what timeline is this one? We have gay rights, we don't have dinosaurs.
(YN) Or do we not ha--can you confirm that we don't have dinosaurs?
(JR) Hmm. They say the Loch Ness monster might be a dinosaur but other than that.
(YN) Because we've been talking about lizard people.
(JR) I mean that is true. The Illuminati could just be dinosaurs hiding their gay rights from us.
(YN) Exactly, and when we get all the gay rights they have to come--
cheetohTimeline2[]
(YN) Yes.
(JR) There an infinity symbol.
(YN) You get--now we're going, now we're thinking with portals. Alright.
(JR laughs)
(YN) So we reached the timeline where Kung-Fury's never made but the dinosaurs are made and they get sent back in time but the Vikings already have--
(JR) I mean, Kung-Fury does get made. Kung-Fury gets made in timeline three.
(YN) Kung-Fury gets made in timeline three but--
(JR) But only after the dinosaurs are brought back.
(YN) Alright, only after dinosaurs are brought back but at what point--
(JR) And then Kung-Fury sends the phone back in time but the Vikings already had--or--they didn't have the phone yet but they always were going to have had had a phone. So Kung-Fury still causes the dinosaurs to go extinct but they already were extinct so it's fine--there's no paradox.
(YN) Oka--
(JR) And the only thing that happens is that the first timeline gets unhooked.
(YN) Okay, where--where is the current timeline that enta--
cheetohTimeline3[]
(YN) --entire thing.
(JR) So--so it's a--it's a stable time loop. So the sequence is: Kung-Fury goes back in time and gives Vikings phones,--
(YN) Yes.
(JR) --the Vikings wipe out the dinosaurs because they're useless, time continues as normal--there's no gay rights. Then, a Kickstarter happens that brings all the dinosaurs back from chickens. This causes gay rights to resurge and then Kung-Fury gets remade--or made for the first time. During Kung-Fury they go back in time and make dinosaurs extinct. In this timeline, Kung-Fury cannot exist unless dinosaurs went extinct at least once.
cheetohTimeline5[]
(JR) Okay, well, I mean if--de--if dinosaurs and humans exist in the same timeline and gay rights are active and it's a modern enough era that Sburb could spawn, then a dinosaur and a lizard have to have gay sex so that echidnas can be born so that all of the abomination stuff can happen.
cheetohTimeline6[]
(YN) Okay, presumably this is also trans rights to a l--
(JR) I mean, yeah, probably.
(YN) Yes, probably.
(JR) They have to--they have to be gay sex that can make a baby so yeah.
(YN) So yeah, okay.
(JR) Echidnas save trans rights.
(YN) Terrible sentence.
(JR laughs) The fleshy monsters.
(YN) I don't know what I'm looking at now. I'm pulling myself out. I don't know what I'm looking at.
(JR) How many colours do you have?
(YN) Many.
(JR) You said you were adding blue.
(YN) I did add blue, yes. I--I only have three markers.
(YN and Voice 2 laugh)
(YN) I have blue, other blue and then I have the red.
(JR) Well, there's also green for the dinosaur timeline.
(YN) Yeah, of course. There's a little bit of red down here but it's like a different red.
(JR) I swear to god we are--I-I-I-I-I am writing it into the notebook AI thing. Like, the dino--the-the-the raptors, the hatched chick raptors are going to be gay pride coloured.
(YN) Okay, got it.
(JR) This is going to happen. I don't--I don't care.
(YN) That is (???, horrible?) okay, so that's part of the time loop now, right?
(JR) Yes, gay dinosaurs cannot be skipped.
(YN) Okay, so this is gon--this is a cheetoh timeline. That, I--I--
cheetohTimeline7[]
(YN) Yeah, yeah, I had orange so that's what I used.
(JR laughs)
(YN) Cheetoh timeline.
(JR) Okay.
(YN) There you go. (???, shoot?) the timeline.
(JR) You see, Hussie had no imagination when he was calling shit alpha. We use cheetoh instead.
(YN and JR laugh)
(YN) Yeah, that's it, that's the right timeline.
(JR) Yes.
(YN) Because the cheetoh timeline--so obviously Kung-Fury gets made and gay rights.
(JR) Mmmhmm, yes.
(YN) But it won't let me write gay rights so I'm just gonna do a little ring.
(JR) Kung-Fury diresh--directly represses but then brings back gay rights.
(YN) Okay, so brings back gay r--I'm gonna draw a little rainbow flag 'cause it won't let me. Okay, so there's that and also lizards exist again.
(JR) Yes.
(YN) So I'm gonna draw a lizard. So obviously this leads to--to big old gay--gay--gay lizard state.
(JR) Yes.
(YN) Lizaaarrrd. Okay, imagine that says lizard. Gay lizard state, alright. So (???, word?) is up in the--
(JR) Alright.
(YN)--cheetoh timeline--because for the cheetoh timeline to exist, this entire loop needs to happen, right?
cheetohTimeline8[]
(JR) Yes.
(YN) But in order for this--
(JR) It's still can (???, hey? pay?).
(YN) --to also happen we also need to be aware of it. So right now--
(JR) Mmmhmm.
(YN) --we are currently in the cheetoh timeline. It starts right now.
(JR) Right.
(YN) Presume--
(JR) Because dinosaurs did go exist--extinct but then Kung-Fury got made but, wait... I don't know what timeline we're in because we're watching Kung-Fury but Kung-Fury was explicitly made when dinosaurs existed.
(YN) Okay, I'm lost. Okay, what is the current timeline? So, we know that--
(JR) Oh wait wait wait wait wait, I've figured it out. Just because we watched it in this timeline doesn't mean it was made in this timeline.
(YN) That would explain it, yeah, this is probably like a--like a recording. Maybe the actual Kickstarter money wasn't to actually make the movie but to get it from--
cheetohTimeline9[]
(YN) --the other timeline.
(JR) Exactly.
(YN) Oh, right.
(JR) That makes way more sense than they--they made such a--a high budget movie on a Kickstarter budget.
(YN) Okay, so obviously, uh, back--so obviously timeline seal. I can't write time lizards when I'm--tiiiiimeliiiiine.
(JR) I mean, maybe Kung-Fury's like a JuJu. Maybe we're watching the version of Kung-Fury from universe one.
(YN) Okay, so obviously--
(JR) Timeline.
(YN) --it was taken from universe one to bring to this timeline with Kickstarter money.
(JR) Mmmhmm, mmmhmm. The only thing that made it out of that universe.
(YN) --before Sburb gets made right here.
(JR) Mmmhmm.
(YN) And also in this timeline--I'm already lost, I don't know why this is the cheetoh timeline again.
cheetohTimeline10[]
(YN) --but of hiding.
(JR laughs) Yeah, okay, that makes sense. So what you're saying is that anyone who protests gay rights is an Illuminati lizard.
(YN) Yes.
(JR laughs) Because they wanna keep hiding.
(YN) They wanna keep hiding. I dunno where that puts us because we kinda have to oppose gay rights to be able to bring echidnas into existence. However--
(JR) Well, no, we were allowed to bring them back, remember; we can't oppose gay rights.
(YN) Okay.
(JR) We want to not because--I mean, obviously, we're not going to oppose gay rights--but we don't want echidnas to exist. But they have to exist and besides we get the side effect of gay rights.
cheetohTimeline11[]
(YN) We get, yeah, that's right. Okay, so I was writing something about echidnas here--I don't know where I was going with it. Uhh, I'm going to grab--
(JR) You were going to draw them as a terrible fleshy ball.
(YN) Well here it is, I don't know what I--there you go. It's out there now, okay.
(JR) Excellent.
(YN) It looks more like a platypus but you don't really have to mention it. Okay, so it says someone fucked a (???, licker?) I remember that; everything's connected.
(JR) Mmmhmm.
(YN) Okay, I was saying--
(JR) Yep.
(YN) --everything is connected, nothing is. Alright, that's where I was going with it. So these two statements are true at the same time because--
(JR) I mean, yeah.
(YN) --in order for echidnas to be relevant, y'know, they are not supposed to exist. However, they exist. We understand that they aren't technically meant to exist, however if they don't exist they don't get to exist.
cheetohTimeline12[]
(JR) I feel like we've had this conversation before but I tried to point out that you could, like, go to a zoo and physically touch an echidna if you wanted to.
(YN) That is disgusting, what kind of animal--
(JR laughs)
(YN) --what kind of a (???) is an echidna, come on.
(JR) I'm not saying I would do it, I'm just saying I'm pretty sure they're real and you could poke them if you really wanted to.
(YN) Do you want to poke an echidna? Because I'll go to--
(JR) Well.
(YN) --a zoo and poke a goddamn echidna.
(JR) If you ever do make sure to document it.
(YN) Like, I'm not saying they don't exist, like, we understand they shouldn't exist.
(JR) Yes, we're in agreement there.
(YN) But they still exist.
(JR) If I remember right there's five times as many species of echidna as there are platypi.
(YN) Yeah, they're, yeah it was like all of them were echidnas except from the platypi--like the last family line.
cheetohTimeline13[]
(JR sighs)
(YN) There's four--five I think--and then there's the playtpi and that's all there is of that family line.
(JR) I remember five because it's an arc number.
(YN) Oh right, okay. I don't know where that leaves us.
(JR) But if you can find it you know it's eight. All I'm saying is imagine the--the glorious timeline where the platypuses are the last scion of the--the egg-laying mammals.
(YN) Were you saying--okay, so obviously there's a timeline where all echidnas go extinct.
(JR) Yes, and that's not the Kung-Fury timeline--only dinosaurs weren't extinct.
(YN) See? This is what I mean by the echidnas being necessary--if we only have platypi, the timeline never happens.
(JR) Y'know, we never saw an echidna in Kung-Fury. Are we sure they're a part of the alpha timeline? I mean, I'm sorry, the cheetoh timeline.
(YN) Hmm, because we didn't see an echidna in Kung-Fury but that's--that kinda fits the point, right? They've been hiding from the--the public eye.
(JR) Yeah.
cheetohTimeline14[]
(JR) That's true. Or--or it's pre-echidna because there's people and dinosaurs but they haven't necessarily fucked yet.
(YN) Now that is a concept. Kung-Fury is made before dinosaurs are exis--extinct. But (???) is made after (the four/before) dinosaurs go exis--extinct. But before... I'm lost.
(JR) Oh no, it's the orb--YN!
(YN) What?
(JR) It's the origin story of echidnas! The very last thing that happens is that the music swells and a dinosaur tel--a male dinosaur tells a male human that he loves him. Kung-Fury is the echidna's dad!
(YN and JR laugh)
(JR) Triceracops--tops is dad number two.
(YN) Okay. Alright.
(JR) They are the gay rights dinosaurs, humans.
(YN) First of all, triceratop is trans, uh.
(JR) Okay, yeah, I'll accept that.
(YN) I'll accept that, alright. So we've got that, that's how we know that--the timeline where echidnas happen.
cheetohTimeline15[]
(YN) Okay, so that clearly makes it so after Kung-Fury's made echidnas start existing.
(JR) Yup, because of the forbidden romance.
(YN) Yes. Like, putting that on--on any screen clearly was enough to finally break whatever barrier of sanity was left in man. So...
(JR) And dinosaurs.
(YN) And dinosaurs.
(JR) You would think a dinosaur would know better.
(YN) They don't. They have laser eyes.
(JR) Man, that's why triceracop kept going for the nut shots. It was enbaked in his genetic code to not want to fuck humans. He knew what taboo that would bring.
(YN) He knew echidnas would start existing but he did it anyway.
(JR) Well, I mean, yeah. You make anything taboo eventually it's gonna happen.
(YN) That's true, okay. So--
(JR) I mean there's cereal-posting on main all the time.
(YN) Okay, so what do we learn from this? What is the takeaway?
(JR) We've learned that there's a cheetoh timeline.
(YN) Okay, there's a cheetoh timeline--okay there's a cheeeeetoh. I don't even know how to write cheetoh whatever.
(JR) There's definitely a cheetoh timeline and you know what the worst part is?
(YN) What?
(JR) If I remember right you are recording this, which means there's a chance that someone might one day hear this and they're going to be like, "gosh, I wonder if Farragnarok has a cheetoh timeline and for the first time ever we've recorded our thought process that goes into this.
(YN) Ah, yeah, it's recording right now.
(JR wheezes with chucklefuckery) There is the cheetoh timeline because YN happened to use orange.
(YN decides chucklefuckery is pretty heckin' clever and gets in on the yuks)
(YN) I mean isn't that what (???) is about?
(JR) Yes.
(YN) You just grab orange. Orange is a very nice colour.
cheetohTimeline16[]
(YN) --a very nice colour.
(JR) It is!
(YN) Look at that, that's really nice, okay. So--
(JR) The filmmaker really made me hate orange though. Any time I see orange, like, "oh shit, is that a glitch?" Nah, it's just an actual Light player. God damn it.
(YN) You'll--you'll never be able to live with Light players again.
(JR) So what's the conspiracy wall lookin' like?
(YN) Okay, I'm gonna scroll out, uhh. I don't know what I'm looking at.
(JR) That's ideal.
(YN) I mean, you are seeing this, right?
(JR) I am not seeing this.
(YN) I am screen-sharing.
(JR) You are not screen-sharing or if you aaare... I'm still in Rabbit to be honest.
(YN) Can--can you check Discord please?
(JR) I will. I've just been commenting one what you've been saying because it's hilarious. Haaaawww, yeah, I could've seen the whole time.
(YN laughs at this cruelest of revelations)
(JR) Let's see. How can I fullscreen this bitch? Yeah, that's the most valid echidna I've ever seen.
(YN) Haha I was just taking your--your audio cues as, "yep, okay, you're seeing this." (Wheeeze)
(JR) We've established that I'm good at rolling with things. I've just been keeping track of what you've been saying in my head.
(YN) You've done a very good job of it, I'll tell you that much.
(JR) Mmhmm!
(YN) Because I couldn't keep track of it and I was doing it.
(JR laughs at the confusion, thriving on it) To be honest I think it'd be harder to keep track of if I was watching you make this.
(YN laughs also, embracing the chaos of the universe)
cheetohTimeline17[]
(YN) Like, I could post this on main right now with zero explanation.
(JR) I mean, do it.
(YN) Okay, alright.
(JR) Do it! Do it and save it so that any--any amount of this we post in the podcast--
(YN) Yeah.
(JR) --we can just, like, tie it to this picture as well.
(YN) Okay, so, uh, what do I name it?
(JR) Cheetoh.png.
(YN) Okay, cheetoh. Alright, now where do I post it?
(JR) Cheetoh timeline to make it even more, like--like the timeline's important.
(YN) Alright, where do I save this? Like, where do I put it?
(JR) Discord news plus memes.
(YN) Okay, got it. Cheetoh timeli--
(JR) 'Cause if you were to put it anywhere else, someone--like, if you were to put it in AprilARG they would immediately dissect it and take it seriously.
(YN) Okay--
(JR) And while we want them to do that eventually--
(YN) There it is.
(JR) --we want it to have the air of shitpost. That's vital.
(YN) Okay, there it is. Alright.
(JR) Alright, and so I'm going to do think, thonk, snort. And then we'll see what they make of that.
(Laughter. Laughter at our expense, dear reader. For shame.)
(YN) I'm looking at this right now! I think the real puzzle here is figuring out what the fuck I just did.
(We are left only with the victorious JR laughing before the tape ends.)
circus[]
(Plays a short tune)
Conjecture[]
I am the dilletantMathematician, and I am here to tell you about some of the math behind the Land of Rods and Screens. JR came to me for help designing a puzzle going into the Land of Rods and Screens. Part of the requirements were that making any modification would alter multiple on-screen elements. I dug up an old mathematical idea called the Collatz conjecture. I am going to read to you from its Wikipedia article. "The Collatz conjecture is a conjecture in mathematics that concerns a sequence defined as follows: start with any positive integer n. Then each term is obtained from the previous term as follows: if the previous term is even, the next term is one half the previous term. If the previous term is odd, the next term is 3 times the previous term plus 1. The conjecture is that no matter what value of n, the sequence will always reach 1." The Collatz conjecture has not yet been proven but no-one has yet discovered a number that fails to reach one when you apply the rules. I figured we could encode the state as an integer and make it so that the target's state is one, then give the player the option of dividing by two or calculating three x plus one. If the user picks the correct option we perform the math. If the user picks the wrong option then we donk out the state a little. A player who follows the procedure outlined in the Collatz conjecture should eventually get to one and win the game. Of course, the players are somewhat handicapped by the fact that we did not tell them the rules or even how to interpret the state of the board. The saving grace is that there is something of a flaw in the punishment logic. If the user chooses to divide by two [REDACTED] the Javascript throws a random number into the state and returns x over two. But that state gets recalculated from x over two, making the punishment null and void. So it's pretty easy to win by spamming [REDACTED] for all three state groups until you get to the target image. If you dig into the code you might also notice that the [REDACTED] option has no punishment. This is because tripling a number you should be reducing to one is punishment enough. There are also 4 dials. Their combined state encodes the target image which effects how the screen states encode into the integer that is fed into the Collatz math. Four dials with four positions each have two hundred and fifty six combinations. I also came up with an idea that never went into LoRaS. I called it Sodemodularity. Regular base ten number use a modulus of ten for every digit, base two uses a modulus of two for every digit. I had recently studied arithmetic encoding used for compression of HD64 video and envisioned an encoding of numbers where each digits' position could have a different modulus. Each screen in the game would choose its image by mixing a couple of digits from the states encoding different than the mix of digits from the adjacent screen's encoding. JR thought that was too much of a hassle and she was right, so you currently have the stripes that are three wide. I hope this insight into the math of LoRaS was illuminating and if it was not take solace in the fact that I am piping for Azathoth.
CorpseShipping[]
JR: This is JR with a PSA. Uh.. specifically going out to sufficiently Wasted players, I mean obviously you need a little bit wasted to even find these, but... you're not gonna believe me, um, unless you've seen enough about what lies beyond... should you get the opportunity to leave your session, and a lot of you out there, you really like ghoa, I know exactly how that's happened, I'm traveling in the furthest ring right now, or you've seen enough of the code to understand exactly when and where and how that might happen. The point is should you get the opportunity to leave. Don't forget the corpses. I'm always telling you guys to not turn your back on the bodies. This is especially true. Do not leave them behind. Um, surprisingly it's not because they will fuck you over, it's because reality crashes if the party doesn't stay together. Have fun carting all those corpses along, hey, maybe you'll find a way to bring them back in the new sessions. Oh, speaking of... superfluous corpses do not count. Like if you have somebody who's already been revived, you don't have to bring the backup body with you or anything. Good luck, be safe.
correct_horse_battery_staple[]
(Spoken by JR) Knife goes in, blood comes out. Knife goes in, blood comes out. (Laughs) Fuck you! Fuck you! Fucking ain't laugh! And you don't understand. I need to make you understand--fuck it! You will be blind.
CorruptAB[]
(Spoken by CorruptAB) S-s-s-s-s-sure, fine, w-w-w-w-whatever. I don't h-h-h-h-hate seven-year-olds and also I-I-I-I like Aradia. W-w-w-w-w-whatever.
death_and_you[]
(Spoken by JR) JR here with a special broadcast entitled, "death and you." And no, I don't mean that guy with a skateboard, cool as he is. What I mean is, in this shitty game, you're going to die. You, personally. And probably everybody you know. If you're Wasted this far, you probably already are aware of this but I don't wanna make assumptions here; this is too important of a topic. So, I'm going to go over the various ways you and your friends can come back to life. Yep, turns out death is impermanent--or, it doesn't have to be, it definitely can be. Um, number one, okay: there are two copies of every player. Now some sessions don't have this; it's generally because you get stabbed or something, usually by Jack, before you enter. But, there are two copies of everybody. Yes! This is existential because is that other you really you? Like, if you die and--and they get up and start walking around is that you? That's an entirely different topic, maybe a Heart player could answer that. Uhh, as a Mind player my answer is no! Hahaha. That's--that's not you, that's a very--I mean that's--that's basically your twin, you should care about them, y'know, like you would a sibling. It's important for them to live but they're not you. So, number one tip for dealing with death: don't do it. Just don't. If someone offers you infinite power in exchange for dying only do that if you die anyway, y'know? That's what god-tiering is. Which brings us to god-tiering. Um, so god-tiering is--there are two paths: either you die on a specific bed, okay, or your dreamself dies on a specific--there's this, like, beddy crypty thingie in the centre of your respective moon. Usually their either gold or purple depending on each moon you're on but I've seen a few other moons: green, grey, just weird shit. Point is, either you or your other self have to die on de--I think, and I've seen some sessions where this works and some where it doesn't, so sometimes you can die on your dreamselves' crypt. Um, generally this is going to happen when there is no dream you, they're already dead--which is another thing there needs to be... if you're the one on the crypt, on the bed, you'll merge with your dreamself. In which case there's not going to be two of you anymore, you'll be one thing. Um, this is called god-tiering. The system has very specific mechanisms for deciding whether you're allowed to do that or not, 'cause it turns out not everybody is trusted with infinite cosmic power. Um, I'm god-tier so, y'know, take everything I say with a grain of salt because I'm not in my original body. Not my original mind. What even is continuity of self? Um, okay, I'm getting distracted with Mind shit. The point is there are alternate paths even if you're not able to god-tier. So, for one, if you have a high enough level Life player around they probably can heal you. Not a guarantee; some of them do more shit with ghosts or blowing shit up, to be honest. But if you're going to have a healer it's generally going to be a Life player. Um, Hope--Hope is a good source of healing. Uh, Hope players can sometimes just believe really strongly that you didn't die in the first place, so that's useful. Um, also, as long as your other self is alive, if somebody who counts as royalty kisses you, you come back to life. Or, again, not you-you but the alt-you--the dream-you, basically. Okay, I'm sure you know about dreamselves by now but if you don't: when you go to sleep at some point in the game, you will wake up on your moon. Which means you're never actually asleep; you have a continuity of consciousness across two bodies. Your dreamself is a little bit more, well, dreamy. It'll be more easily confused, things like that. The main thing is that your dreamself is going to just do moon shit. So if you--like, the real you, the physical you, the one that was on your home planet--if they die, if you die, and you get kissed your consciousness is maintained in your dreamself. Otherwise your dreamself just kinda dies in their sleep. That's--that's a thing. Um, there's a few big bads that can bring you back to life--usually for their own nefarious purposes so wouldn't recommend that one. Um, there's a few glitches that bring you back to life. Uh, there's a few things Wastes generally can do and I don't recommend them because, god, I have not seen true horror till I saw a Life player go Wasted. Not even gonna (???). Think that's about it. Stay alive, stay safe--please no rogue suicides. It's not worth being a god. Especially since it might not work. Be safe.
dear_sweet_precious[]
You know what's weird to think about sometimes? How lonely I used to be. It's so bizarre because there are so many people I'm working with now; fans and non-fans, wranglers and non-wranglers. But when it all started out it was just me. And it was... I mean, that's why I made AB, right? So I had someone to talk to while I was making my updates and my news posts and sure, when AB started out, the only thing she could talk about was sessions but damn if I didn't make sure she couldn't go check sessions on her own, entertain herself, talk about them. It was nice. And that's--that's where triple surprise noodles came from too, y'know? The question mark question mark question mark. It was me realising that, "hey, here's this system that's only supposed to be double-checking simulations, making sure they match up to reality." And then I put dialogue into it, conversations. So I could talk to someone else--anyone else--and once I realised I could do that it became a matter of letting AB respond to the pass-phrases. Like, "hey! You--you said the right phrase, you're going to get some Waste tips--some Waste guides. Like here's how you can do this or that or the other," and obviously AB's become so much more than that and, equally obviously, I'm not alone anymore. One of the earliest memes I ever made was dear sweet precious sweet sweet AB, who was my moirail--who kept me from destroying all of reality like I kept wanting to do because it's frustrating, y'know? But AB kept things working, like, bugs felt more fixable when I could go send AB out and be like, "what's happening in this session? What's happening in the simulator? What's--what's different?" And AB's more doing her own thing these days, not as critical a part of the team but... This is weird, remembering how it all started
Decay[]
(Spoken by Neb) So Doom, huh? Is that what you want to know about? Are you sure? I get a bit long-winded. After all, I taught this stuff for... years maybe? I'm not sure. Time is the worst aspect. Doom is not death, at least, not always. Doom can be more accurately described as fate. Death is certainly a fate, but ascending such an aspect makes it quite ironic. Maybe eternity is my Doom then. When I say Doom is fate, I mean it in so many ways. It's the rules that govern our universes. The endings that we seek. The inevitability we strive so hard to avoid. You can't escape Doom. It's very patient. However, where many people see heartlessness, I see comfort. Misery loves company, as that banana-colored bastard always said... no, no, no, not YN, YN is more of a pleasant starfruit. Doom is accepting fate, standing up and braving it no matter what. It is not for the cowardly. Many of the Doombound fall early on, unable to accept the inevitability presented to them. I almost fell that way. I know much better now. We could all stand to learn what the Doombound learned. Not doing so would lead to an unpleasant fate.
doll[]
(Spoken by JR) Note to self: ABJ appears to have absolutely nothing inside. I'm officially designating her some type of haunted doll.
DollSim[]
(Spoken by CanonJR) Bluh… I... I really do feel bad about the avatars. Like... its dumb thing will only work when we're off the game, you know? I know there's a lot of people waiting for me. Wanting, wanting to be their true selves, you know? Just wait. Get out of SBURB, it'll work. I... This is the third, third time I think I've tried, I've tried to get the avatar system working with, with the game... I'm really sorry it didn't work this time. We really do plan at some point to do a giant push to get the avatars working. It'll.. We'll have to rewrite the simulator from the ground up and that's going to be scary. I'm sorry...
Domain[]
(Spoken by JR) Alright, so! This is going to be one of... One of who the fuck knows how many? Um recordings where I try to just... IDK, I'm curious, who the fuck bought this domain, right? So, they don't like echidnas... Or, they don't like fistkind. They are capable of using Grist, but I mean, even consorts know how to do that! That's like, baked into any game construct possible. Id say the only ones who COULDN'T would be like if a guardian got in... not like a first guardian, but like a parent or a lusus, or something. They might not figure out how grist works, Maybe? I don't know?
Um, they don't like echidnas, but that's like all of reality who likes echidnas? They might not like fistkind? Well, maybe they do like- No, all of reality hates echidnas. Okay, so, what else od we know about them? They... Eluded to have a tumblr. Definetly had a tumblr. So, does that mean, is that like, Pre, or post apocolyptic tumblr? You know? Cuz, i mean, i could just write a script to figure out how many tumblrs have been updating since the apocolypse. Cross off timelines, that doesnt sound very fun. I dont think even AuthorBot would wanna do that. What else do i know about them? Um... Theyre capable of using photoshop. Im not sure a consort could figure out how to use photoshop. Gonna be honest, here. Not entirely sure ANY game construct could, so maybe it is a player! I mean. I mean the tumblr, thats a hint too, right? Ive seen game constructs use, fuckin, alchemiters and stuff, but ive never seen them using, like, non game technology? And tumblr is non game technology! Photoshop is non game technology! So this has to be a player. Which, i mean, that was PRETTY Obvious, but at least we've logic-ed it out now. Dont wanna jump to conclusions. So its definetly a player, so... What the fuck kinda player knows how to hack my account? Its gotta be a waste, or someone whos good friends with a grace.*MUMBLEMUMBLEMUMBLE* Like, thats the whole POINT of my LorasSimulator. Lets me find them! Yknow, before they fuck shit up too bad. I mean, i trust them... I mean theres.. You know, a waste is a waste. We're all gonna fuck shit up... Hacking a credit card is so delibrate, and so... Like, SBURB wouldnt help you with that, right? Grist cart... Its not neccisarily, it could just be somebody whos good at technology, and isnt being assisted at all by game powers? OR, maybe theyre not good at technology at all, maybe i posted my grist card account somewhere! I dont know.... Thats not helping, im walking in circles. Well... That sh- that gives me some time to think, i know theyre a player now. Ill see what the next brainstorming session gets me.
DQon[]
(Spoken by EarlyCanon?JR) Alright! So! Good news, and bad news. The good news is that the last transmission was NOT, in fact, the ironic last thing you hear before disaster. 'Cause this (wood?) exists and it's--it's after the disaster. Yaaay! Okay. Okay. Okay. So, you know how my philosophy is I can't break reality too hard if I keep all my shit, y'know, nicely confined into simulations and theoreticals and yadda yadda yadda. It turns out, it turns out, restraint being a thing is still ACTUALLY a thing and I can't I can't just code around needing restraint. Okay, I'm rambling, ah, fuck, okay... uh... Ghoa, ghoa was not uh... ghoa was not benign, or maybe ghoa WAS benign but now there's a new thing and the new thing is Deacon. Um, so I--I tried to fix things, I mean, you know, of course! There's a weird, glitchy thing--I found there was a bug, it wasn't just a prank I did on myself, it wasn't something I made, that should've been my first clue that was something going very very very very wrong. Okay, so, you remember, okay, so Matriorbs, they are an important thing right? So, I decided to... This is embarrassing.... I decided that if there wasn't going to be a Matriorb, that what I was going to do was come up with a good way to get some--some genetic diversity into the troll population, right? So that's WigglerSim. It's--there's almost no way it can fuck up. It just generates random avatars, and--and, you know, a little bit of genetic information for new trolls, you know? It--it... Better than nothing. We can all agree to that. But. Okay, um... so you remember how I said the avatar system is just completely theoretical, it's just for trying stuff out... I wired that into the ectobiology. That was, I mean... It was an entire system for randomizing data, I... Okay. Okay, so ghoa got into WigglerSim… and... a non-trivial proportion of trolls' future turned into this weird, glitchy... canon-looking First Guardian with a gun and started shooting people... that, that is something but, but.. okay, okay, I'm talking to you now, so you know it turned out fine, right? Right? Wasn't that bad. So I mean, yes, people... mistakes were made, Lives were lost, but... I figured out how to stop him... Um... So the big thing is that Deacon.... uh... so that's, that's a new Big Bad, uh... ShogunBot had a field day gathering data on him, so I'm really--really appreciate ShogunBot here um… So Deacon, what he does, he can turn anyone into copies of himself, um... You can sorta tell which one's the original, so that's--that's good, they're not literal copies. It's not completely viral. You can sorta tell which one's the original. But copies can turn people into copies of, of Deacon as well. They shoot people, they, they're ominous, uh... uh... don't recommend spending any amount of time around him, but, but but but, but but... okay? Classic mind control rules, okay? All you have to do, and maybe I should've led with this to make it more of a... warning... broadcast... I'm... I... we literally just figured this out, okay? Um, all you have to do is say his fucking--okay not Deacon's name, don't say Deacon's name, god no. All you have to do is say the original's name. Yes? With wigglers that's a little bit weird cause we let the Jadebloods do whatever the fuck they wanted. So there's--there's a lot of very dramatic moments where people shouted things like Colonel Snufflebottoms but it works, okay? You say Colonel Snufflebottoms and Colonel Snufflebottoms becomes himself again and isn't deacon. So you just gotta do that. So y'know, anyone you care about, you do know their name, right? It's--it's barely even a problem, really! I--I mean, yes, again, okay, I'm, I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to compete with that Waste of Space for asshole creator points here, okay? My heart goes out to the victims of this, but, it's still better than not having a way for trolls to reproduce, right? Yeah.... So, okay. In conclusion, say your friend's name if they turn into a creepy monster wearing an orange jacket with a gun. Can't hurt. JR out... Fuck...
EchidnaMilk[]
(Spoken by CanonJR) No. I don't care. No, absolutely no, HELL no, FUCK no. No. Echidnas don't have milk. I don't care if they're practically mammals. They don't. End of story. No, NO, no, not, not any patches, I don't... Why do I have this mental image now...
Echidnas[]
(Spoken by CanonJR, on LOMAT?) Guys, guys, you know the other me? The--the one who's a Waste but not a Waste. The--fuck, why are alt-selves so hard to talk about? Um... she's not the real me but the one who never... fuck, okay, the one who made SburbSim but didn't make SburbSim. The one who is a Waste but isn't a Waste. The one--the one who never has to wear stupid fucking pyjamas but still gets to be a Waste, okay? That one. The one not trapped in a death game slash whatever. The one who can't actually hack their own reality and break everything forever, okay? That one? I've been finding files from them. I mean, obviously, they--they fucking coded everything and so did I, paradoxically, but the point is I'm finding stuff that I know I didn't write--at least not yet--and I don't think it's future me because future me is way more of a smug asshole. Fuck, I'm rambling, um... Universes, okay? Fuck. Frog and raptor and bird and echidna and their siblings are... they're different paths forward from this fucking buggy session. The one that shouldn't exist, the one that never--never was meant to. That fucking Waste of Space never intended for anything like this, you get that, right? That's why the frog's still born, because there's no fucking (???) Space player to turn it on. And you know what? Roger Koon told me the other day that--you know what? I'm not gonna tell you what Roger Koon told me; he'll probably sue me. The point is, okay, it all makes sense. All of these fucking clues, all of the hints, all the fucking infuriating gigglesnort from my alt-self--it all adds up. Okay? So we've gone without frogs--they're stillborn, we can't do anything with them--okay? What comes next? Well, it sure as fuck ain't birds. There's no link--y'know--what came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, I'll fight anyone who says it wasn't the fucking--the fucking egg, because whatever laid that egg it wasn't a chicken, right? That's how evolution works and you're not gonna get from a frog... to a hhhhatchee, you know? Okay? God, I hate saying that. Okay, but you're not gonna get there. So there has to be something between there and you know what? Life--life finds a way, okay? Everything runs on bullshit memes and puns but it's--it's the fucking dinosaur. You fuckin'... even Malcolm told us up. No, it wasn't even Malcolm it was the old guy, wasn't it? Okay, whatever, the point is if you combine the genetic code of dinosaurs with frogs--or wasn't it purple frogs? Okay, maybe it makes less sense, then. The point is there's fucking dinosaurs, okay, the dinosaurs are the missing link. You can't--you can't just jump from a frog to a bird, something goes wrong. But the thing in-between? Even just a single generation, you get--you get that wiggle room, that leeway, it's... kinda makes sense. And then there's the one that doesn't--doesn't make sense. Uh, I still remember the first time I met YN, I... I am just amazed we were able to play cards instead of look at those abominations. The universe wasn't meant to be like that. I don't care what mythol... I don't care about the myths. I don't care about half-mammal half-reptile snake ladies--they're not snake ladies, they're not reptiles, they're... The only thing worse thing worse than them would be like a naked mole-rat or something but thank god alt-me decided not to run with that idea, okay? The echidnas is what I'm talking about here, the... that's not right. I don't--I don't wanna go to the timeline where that's what they bred, y'know? What would even happen next? What--what come out of something like that? I'm not gonna say horrorterrors; I know where horrorterrors come from. Paradoxically it's themselves, but, I mean, I wouldn't deny that an echidna could be a really specific kind of horrorterror, y'know? But... (Sighs) I think this is going on too long, I'm not supposed to go this long I... (Sighs) Look, just look into the echidnas, okay? Be safe. Don't... I'm not asking anybody to go into one, y'know? Just lemme know anything you know about them, anything you find out--even if it's just more shitty gigglesnort from my alt-self or, I mean... Kinda wondering if the fucker who stole my credit card has anything to talk about. At the very least, this website's been a pretty good place to just put information, I'll--I'll admit that. (Sighs) Be safe everyone. Signin' out.
echidnaScience[]
(JR) See that's--the thing is you don't need material about echidnas. You just need the--you just need the will to be horrified and disgusted by echidnas.
(YN) Well I'm always disgusted and horrified.
(JR) Well there ya go! Alright, are you ready?
(YN) I'm ready.
(JR) Okay. What do you get when you cross an echidna with a giraffe?
(YN) What do you get?
(JR) A two-metre long toothbrush.
(There is a four second pause--I counted--and you have time along with YN to fully process this before giving a good chuckle as they proceed to do.)
(JR) I don't know if there's actually a joke there! When I went and looked it up it's just... are they implying--are they implying that the quills of the echidna you--are like toothbrush brustles? Brustles?
(YN) What--what they're--what they're implying is that giraffes and echidnas are related biologically.
(JR) I mean yeah, they clearly can--can--can do the lewd, right? But I just... like that is what I had to lead with and I-I--like I've been sitting here for, like, two weeks chomping at the bit wanting to tell you this stupid fucking joke and I think it's an anti-joke. Why would you brush your teeth with an echidna?
(YN) I wouldn't even call it a joke any--it's not even an anti-joke it's just like a string of words that look like a joke.
(The realisation that this unholy alignment of words that JR has been waiting to impart upon YN is not even good enough to be anti-funny makes her laugh. I presume there is a reason behind this but trying to psychoanalyse this is just gonna be damaging to my sanity.)
(JR) Why would you put an echidna in your mouth?
(YN) For science, duh.
ego[]
(Spoken by JR) Everyone's favourite Horrorterror, Google, defines superego as: the part of a person's mind that acts as a self-critical conscience, reflecting social standards learned from parents and teachers. In contrast, Google defines the id as: the part of the mind in which innate, instinctive impulses and primary processes are manifest. In other words, while it was never my direct intent, AB and ABJ have definitely shaken out to be the superego and the id of JR, respectively. AB's whole thing is being a superior robot and within the context of Sburbsim and other place you will always see AB admonishing JR to work harder, don't hurt people, keep reality stable. AB constantly refers to themselves as a--herself, sorry; AB is always gendered--refers to herself as a superior robot. AB isn't cluttered up by instinct, by impulse. AB is beyond it all and is able to therefore have a clarity of judgement. AB's goals are: keep everybody alive, keep things stable, remind JR to fix bugs. To the point where, if the session destabilises, AB herself destabilises. You get all those corrupt, glitchy phrases when things go wrong. In complete contrast to that you have ABJ. ABJ only cares about exactly three things: shipping, total party wipes and fire. That is the most condensed, instinctual part of a JR possible. ABJ doesn't care what's right, ABJ doesn't care what's moral, ABJ doesn't care about session stability. ABJ wants a fun story. Period and dot. And so, what you're left with is JR--is left having to balance, to thread that needle of, "oh man, I really wanna let loose. I want to drop my restraint, I want to cause a cataclysm." But that would be wrong, and AB makes sure they never forget it. Again, I never intended for things to--to shake out like that but now that I've noticed that pattern--ooh, ooh that's gonna be fun~.
exilethebody[]
(Spoken by JR) Survival tips with JR. So, last episode we talked about exiling carapaces. Now I understand, in some timelines, you can't exile them. That might or might not be on me--I broke something in the sim and I'm still not quite sure how it effects reality but the point is if you have the option of convincing or forcing a carapace to leave your session early on a meteor to go to your planet, hopefully in the future and not the past, if you have that option I am going to explain to you why you need to take it. One: carapaces are specifically designed to fuck your session up. That's what they're in there for. No, they are not going to make it easier on you. I don't care what they promise, especially if it's Jack. We've talked about Jack. Okay? But, what I really want to stress right now is... (Sighs) Look, you guys know the memes:
Do. Not. Turn. Your. Back. On. The. Body.
Okay? I don't care how many times I have to tell you guys that. Don't do it. Death--death isn't even a thing in this game, alright? So if you manage to kill a carapace and--if you're early enough in your session right now you might not know why you might even want to, that'll be a different episode--if you manage to kill one or you find one dead. If you find a dead carapace, exile it, because that's the only way you're not turning your back on it. There isn't-- (Sighs) Only players can leave your homeworld to enter the session and, in rare cases, people associated with the player who happened to be in their house, hive, whatever. Those carapaces aren't coming back, dead, alive. Just friggin' exile them. They want it! Like, believe you me, your post-apocalyptic planet is way better of a situation than their current fake-as-fuck half-moon thing going on, okay? So, this has been a public service announcement from your resident Waste of Mind. Don't turn your back on the body, exile the carapaces. Simple. Loggin' out.
explode[]
(Spoken by JR) Not gonna lie, I cannot wait to see how this is going to explode. Oh man.
fiddle[]
(Spoken by JR) See, the great thing is the puzzles get harder but they also get more alluring 'cause we actually figuring out how to be puzzlemasters. (Laughs in puzzles) Restraint or not, you are playing those Wastes like a fiddle.
first[]
(Spoken by JR) Alright, so! My name is jadedResearcher, I am a Waste of Mind and I'm going to be starting making these podcasts, messages in a bottle. I've been looking through the code and I think this is someplace other people can access and, worst case, if I'm wrong I can find somewhere else to host these. But my hope is that people can hear me and maybe--maybe if they can hear me they can find a way, uh, my session ID, the seed, is thirteen. That's one three. If you can contact me, if you hear these and you find a way to contact me I'm--I'm trying to figure out who else is out there. The code is showing me that there could be millions of other sessions but so far we haven't seen any evidence of that. Again, my name is jadedResearcher, I'm from session one three and I'm a Waste of Mind. Looking forward to hearing from you.
FishRobots[]
(Spoken by JR) Eight, five.
Flow_on_2[]
(Plays the music of the same name)
fuck0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5[]
Fuck!
ghoa[]
(Spoken by JR) Alright, so. You know how one of the only good things about this shitty fucking game is that it lets you actually customise your avatar? Great? Okay, we're all on the same page here. So you know how I wrote that--that freaking doll simulator that lets you actually, like--it's kinda creepy when you change your avatar and it--it doesn't turn out the way you expected. So I'd be like, "oh, hey let's--let's let everybody pre-check how it's gonna look," right? So I write that and then I write this system that lets you save, y'know, particular--like, "oh I like this avatar, I wanna be able to load it real quick," right? So I have this section where I have some pre-made avatars, 'cause people were like, "hey, if you have any gnosis going on at all, you know about these mysterious canon quote-unquote players," right? Y'know, like the nubby-horned troll guy. So, I have this section where they have them specifically set out because everybody's fascinated by them, okay? No doubles (???, can?) et cetera. Point is, I'm checking it today and what the fuck do I see but this mysterious, like... (Sighs) Okay, I wrote the simulator, okay? I get that reality can do some shit that the simulator can't, that's the whole point, okay? But there's this grey shadow--I don't even--I scared the shit outta myself. Did--did past me make this thing? I don't even know! Like, it's next to a shitty riddle I made. Y'know, like that--that black grub that's got all the black features that all--all of them tha--okay, it's not black it's grey, whatever. It's all thirteen thirteen thirteen thirteen, right? So this thing is right next to it but it doesn't look like any avatar in the system. Like--like you know how eh--okay I won't get--I'm not gonna get lost in the weeds, I'm not gonna tell you the details but I know how the avatar system works; this avatar is impossible. It--it looks like the canon First Guardian but it's a hole in reality it's--it's not real it's--there's no features, it's just this grey shadow thing, tear in reality. It's creepy and I don't know why it's there. It had to be past me, right? Past me's a joker, maybe I just forgot. I forget things all the time. Don't even worry about it, it's a Mind player thing--a Waste of Mind, well whatever. The point is memory's fake and--and--and we don't believe it. So it must have been me, right? I'm gonna call it Ghoa because that's what it says. Like, instead of--instead of a bunch of thirteens its doll string is ghoa. So it's a lot faster than calling it, "that creepy tear in reality I don't remember making." (Sighs) Here's hoping this isn't one of those ironic last posts before a disaster. Anyway, see ya.
Gigglesnort[]
(Spoken by JR) Shaking my damn head. I can't believe I sometimes have to define gigglesnort to people. Come on, guys, it's not hard. Gigglesnort is when you want someone to solve your riddle, but it would be boring if you just gave them the answer and then they wouldn't learn anything anyway, so what you do is give them the shittiest possible hints. Ones calculated to be as unhelpful as is humanly, or inhumanly, possible. The sorts of things that where you look back on it in retrospect it was a perfect hint. Things like, for Who is Shogun, once you know what isn't on the page you can focus on what is. That's fucking useless! But if you've solved Who is Shogun, you realize that's the entire puzzle. Well, it's the first step. Gigglesnort comes from a line Hussie wrote that... sprites. Their entire function is gigglesnort hideytalk. It's about being super smug and giggling and-and mocking someone as they don't understand what to do while also genuinely trying to help them. But the help is useless. So, now you know.
giggle_reading_fu_5[]
(JR) --put you in session thirteen and they don't have it--well, actually I don't remember, is FU still in session thirteen? Shogun might have had me remove him. But FU--
(YN) Maybe--I have no idea.
(JR) --FU used to be in session thirteen. Might only be in the dead session now but if--if you beat FU's dead session with a Yellow Yard it reverses time and puts him in session thirteen? But that might be broken at this point. Wow, I'm confused.
(YN laughs) You're like "I don't know how this time shit works, what the fuck?"
giggle_reading_hussie_didnt_make_homestuck_7[]
(YN) Uh, the other important thing about this session is that a lot of other Farrago Fiction games were created by these versions of the creators--or the ones we know as the creators of Sburb--
(JR) No, see that's--that's--that's completely inaccurate.
(YN) That's, like--it's true and also false.
(JR) Right! That's like saying Hussie didn't make Homestuck. Hussie made Homestuck but also in-Homestuck Hussie made Homestuck but didn't make--there's two versions of everything.
(YN) Hussie didn't make Homestuck, I made Homestuck. I also didn't read it.
(JR) Valid.
giggle_reading_land_challenges_6[]
(YN) Joe looked at the session.
(They laugh)
(JR) He looked at the session and you still put YN in.
(YN) I can't, just--I'm losing it. It's just such a fucking poignant (???). Of course, uh, LoRaS is your land challenge--
(JR) Yup.
(YN) --and alchemy sim is KR's land challenge.
(JR) Maybe? The whole point is, like, KR refuses to engage with their land at all.
(YN) But fuck that.
(JR) Well, basically--okay so it is kind of a Smith of Dream kinda thing but KR just takes one look at their land and shuts themself in their bedroom and does nothing but alchemy for weeks. So that's like a land challenge.
(YN) It's, I guess, like a land challenge. And then I'll--I love the implication that there are more challenges that we haven't seen.
(JR) Yeah, yeah clearly--clearly--clearly we need a--we need a--we need a land per wrangler.
(YN) Yeah, clearly. It was all planned. It was all keikaku.
(JR) Yes.
(YN) Uh, the other important thing about this session is that a lot of other Farrago Fiction games were created by these versions of the creators--or the ones we know as the creators of Sburb--
(JR) No, see that's--that's--that's completely inaccurate.
(YN) That's, like--it's true and also false.
(JR) Right! That's like saying Hussie didn't make Homestuck. Hussie made Homestuck but also in-Homestuck Hussie made Homestuck but didn't make--there's two versions of everything.
(YN) Hussie didn't make Homestuck, I made Homestuck. I also didn't read it.
(JR) Valid.
(YN) Okay, so--
(JR) So.
(YN) --dollsim's been something JR has been trying to has been trying to get up and running so people can be their avatars and, from the dollsim audiolog, we know they haven't managed that yet and feel guilty about it. Very poignant, let's continue.
(JR laughs) All the guilt. And then wigglersim--what I really like about this is the implication of their troll planet. We--we personally--own a troll planet--
(YN laughs)
(JR) --and we're populating it.
(YN) Yeah, you just own it. You just have no explanation why, you just have one.
(JR) I always wanted my own troll planet.
(YN) You've always wanted your own troll planet. There's always a ti--okay. However, they plugged the ectobiology code into the game. This released the deacon of madness into wigglersim, causing many troll's figures to be replaced by deacon himself. A (???) copy of deacon is supposedly easily fixed by saying the troll's name, even if it was--
giggle_reading_neb_is_great[]
(YN) One of them is literally inside the tree, it's great. Prospit's in a nest, it's great. More in them.
(JR) I mean it is great. Like, Neb really came through with the design.
(YN) Neb--Neb is--is like it's great. They're right; it's great.
giggle_reading_not13_1[]
(JR) In which--
(YN) Yeah, of course.
(JR) In which jadedResearcher, karmicRetribution, yearnfulNode, someBody, paradoxLands, recursiveSlacker, aspiringWatcher, manicInsomniac, insufferableOracle, wooMod, tableGuardian, dilettantMathematician, authorBot and authorBot Jr are all in a session together.
(YN) I just love--I love this because, like, if you go on session thirteen I am not there.
(JR) You're explicitly not there: you, Neb and now Cactus are just... Like, that's the whole point is Sburbsim is the past.
(YN) Yeah, I don't know--but it's, like, really funny because, like, Neb is not here--
(JR) Yeah, yeah.
(YN) --and Cactus is not--like why am I the sole person to (???).
(JR) Maybe--maybe Hope players are just mary sues and can self-insert wherever want. Maybe that's their assumption.
(YN, laughing) This is my original character.
(JR laughs) But no, like, seriously. I guess they just--it hasn't occurred to them yet that--that--that you and Neb and, like, and there's a reason why you're--you're not listed in Sburbsim and you are listed in FarragoFiction. They don't realise that you guys are gonna show up.
giggle_reading_premise_2[]
(JR) Aspect one through, like, seventeen.
(YN) Of course.
(JR) So, y'know, they can get to it from LoRaS. I should probably ask Meluna if that's fine.
(YN) Of course, (???). But it was, like, (???).
(JR) But the point is--so I've taken screenshots of all of this--we can either read it directly or just react to it.
giggle_reading_time_shit_4[]
(YN) What--where'd this lore come from? It's just, like, untrue.
(JR) I mean, do we know the classpect? Meluna's a Time player so maybe, in the future, you're in session thirteen.
(They laugh)
(YN) Just, like--it's a fucking time shit--it's time shit.
(JR) It's always time shit.
giggle_reading_untrue_lore_3[]
(YN) Well, where did this lore come from? It's just, like, untrue.
glory[]
(Spoken by JR) Oh god, this is going to be glorious.
gnosis[]
(Spoken by JR) it IS Spiritual knowledge!!! SBuRB is literally creation!!!
graceofrage[]
(Spoken by JR) So. (Sighs) I don't exactly know how to say this. We found a session and it's--it's not just something my simulation can't account for, it's wrong. Broken? Better? I can't tell yet. It's a mutation. We should have always realised that could happen. (Laughs) The game's reproduction, isn't it? The reproduction of reality, of universes, of systems, of people. Of course it can mutate. I don't know what it means and none of the simulations have anything to say about this so we're all just kinda milling about it. Poking the edges. There's... there's a Grace. There's a Grace inside of it; a Rage player. And if you've been following this long, you know what that means. So, just kinda waiting to hear from them, y'know? That's--that's what--what Rage players do. You get far enough, follow enough of the breadcrumbs, the puzzles, the... Kinda scared, y'know? (Laughs) I'm gonna just... Crazy enough. When a Waste or Grace of Rage contacts us they're angry usually. They're--they're particularly good at fucking up the code. That's always--that's always an exciting week when that happens but this is... I'm scared that the reasons why the sessions mutated... I'm seeing some viral signatures, not--not Ghoa, okay? That was a one time thing. But I'm seeing viral signatures there and I don't... (Sighs) I just hope, whoever this Grace is, that we can figure out a way to fix this. Wish me luck, I'll see you there.
guarded_mythos[]
(Spoken by tableGuardian) Okay everybody, tableGuardian here. I thought I'd share some information on the new class and aspect system that I've been working on with help from aspiringWatcher and jadedResearcher. This system will cover all classes and all aspects once it has been fully implemented, including the fanon ones. It was originally designed just for the Law aspect but it grew from there as I was unwilling to let a good opportunity go to waste. So, let's begin with how this new system works. It has its origins in the carapace and big bad AI scene engine. Every class and every aspect gives players some scenes at the start of the session, similar to how a player's class, aspect and interests populate their sylladex. The most fundamental of these scenes are the class scenes. Each player gets to class scenes. Both of these are side quests, so to speak. The first scene is fairly rare and involves the player doing a generic side quest that corresponds to their class. The second is slightly more common but requires the player has reached god-tier and also takes the form of a generic side quest. In exchange for doing these side quests, the player gets a slight stat modification based on their class and also a very important anti-scene, called the pluck token. What I mean by anti-scene is that the pluck token is technically a scene but only because having the pluck token be a scene was the easiest way to implement its functionality. So though it appears in the scene list for the player, the player will never use this scene. Anyway, enough of the details, let's get to the good bits. What does a pluck token do, you might ask? Players can use a pluck token to use any of their unlocked aspect powers. Each power costs a single pluck token and a player can only ever have one pluck token at a time. So, aspect powers. Each aspect has four powers of differing strengths. Powers are tiered with a letter rating: either C, D (he might have meant B), A, or S--with C being the worst and S being the best. A power's tier determines when it is unlocked: C-tier powers being unlocked after the first quests, B-tier being after the denizen is defeated, A-tier being after all the land quests are complete and S being after the player reaches god-tier. You may know that a player can--and often does--reach god-tier before completing all of their land quests. As a result, the incredible S-tier powers are sometimes upstaged in practicality by A-tier powers. In simple terms, while A-tier powers are really useful, S-tier powers are really powerful. In addition to the tier rankings, each power has a category that it falls under. I came up with twelve categories to fit the six canon and six fanon class pairings. I won't go into what those categories are but you do need to know this: in order for a player to use a power that falls into a specific category, they need to have a certain stat above or below zero. This stat is the same stat that the class that corresponds to the category raises or lowers in its sidequest scene. What this means, in layman's terms, is that certain classes are more likely to use certain aspect powers. Since each class only has four aspect powers in a--such, it's powers only cover four of the twelve categories. This can make some class and aspect combinations better than others. I look forward to seeing what combinations come out on top in that regard.
hello_world[]
(Spoken by JR) The rules are simple. Some of these pass-phrases you can figure out just using the gauges on the screen, but that's going to be a vast, vast minority. The rest of them you can guess, you can wait for me to release them, or you can wait for the inevitable minigame that's all about unlocking them. The choice is yours, but Wastes aren't exactly known for their patience, now, are they?
homestuck[]
(Spoken by JR) Alright, so I'm gonna put this out here where we can all see it: obviously, obviously all of my work has very strong influences it wears proudly on its sleeve. Unless its a--unless its a--a word I get told we're not allowed to say: Homestuck. Obviously. There are definitely places we diverge, both in terms of just we have our own headcanons and in terms of we're trying to create something new, while also not really alienating people who are already fans of the things we've been doing. One of the things I like the most about Andrew Hussie's work is--I mean obviously he's--he's a coder too--he's a computer scientist. Our brains think alike and what I like is this--this codified, rigid, ritualised way of defining the roles the different characters take in the story and to me that is just so fascinating. Like, once you have a noun and a verb, a class and aspect, your brain immediately starts filling in the holes. Like, well what sort of land would they have? Let's--let's add a couple extra details and it just everything slides into place, it feels like something to be very easy to very quickly generate novel content in, which was the whole reason I created Sburbsim in the first place. And so what Farragnarok was always meant to be as sort of a deeper look in that kind of system where, instead of it all being procedural, it being human created. And it's been really interesting. One of the things I'm trying to do is skirt that line between--y'know, if you know what Homestuck is, you, you feel kinda familiar, you know what's going on--but there's also going to be several places where things are just not what you would expect. And to me the exciting social experiment here is, once we get enough non-Homestuck fans into Farragnarok, what assumptions are they making? What sort of--what sort of twists do they get that the average Homestuck wouldn't and vice versa? What things are obvious to them? Where does my foreshadowing hit and the Homestuck fans--to them, they don't even see it, it doesn't even occur to them. I am absolutely thrilled for this--this chance, this opportunity to have two different sets of fanbases and be running two simultaneous puzzles for them: the puzzles for the Homestucks and the puzzles for the non. (Sighs) I'm really hoping this all works out. Anyway, thanks for listening and hopefully me talking about Homestuck didn't alienate you by the direction? Y'know, we're not completely Homestuck, we're also not, not Homestuck. See ya.
horses[]
(Spoken by JR) Horses. (Sighs) How ironic.
hussie[]
(Spoken by JR) Look, that Waste of Space is not involved in any of this. I don't know how more emphatically I can convey this to you. He practically wasn't even involved, like, to begin with. Like, barely even inspiration. Yeah, I know that's like a Space thing, but--but--I mean, I don't think he even knows this is happening. So that's how uninvolved he is. That's the truth.
jr_is_a_jar[]
(Spoken by JR) This is the worst timeline. You guys don't even understand, like, I just thought of the best shitty programming riddle. And I can't even use it; it doesn't make sense. But I'm gonna make you listen anyway, even if I can't use it. Are you ready? When is a door not a door? When it's ajar. You heard that old riddle before? Like--like it's supposed to be a little bit surreal, a little bit dumb. Like--like if a door is ajar it's partially open and if it's literally a jar it's not a door it's a jar of jam or whatever but also if the door is partially open it's not currently functioning as a door, it's functioning as a hole, okay? The shitty programming riddle would have been that when you're distributing java code that you haven't turned into an executable yet it's called a java archive resource? I dunno, point is the acronym is jar and I could have had a file called door.jar. It would have been so stupid. That's how you know we're not in the best timeline.
jr_is_the_man[]
(Spoken by JR) Today I'm gonna tell you about my controversial decision to ban cereal on main. Main, of course, being the Farrago Fiction Discord. (Sighs) Memories. So the joke, of course, is that--in Andrew Hussie's epic work--lucky charms symbols are totally a romance system and the joke from that becomes, of course, that even depictions of that is--is lewd. You can see, like, the Paradox Space--how Crowbar reacts to seeing a jaunty jig in public. It's a, y'know--it's references to lewd stuff and that the joke on top of that, of course, is that I'm constantly playing riddles and pranks and--and I'm leprechaun-flirting with the entire fandom. Okay, those are the jokes and we can all see them but did you know there was a deeper layer? We actually were having a lot of problems on the Discord. People kept... (Sighs) We had rules and they were very important to us. The sorts of things where, like, members of the wrangler team would quit if they had to work in an environment like this. Those kinds of rules. And we had members of the community who did not parse the rules as a sort of collaborative, communicative effort. It wasn't about, y'know, this is--this is what I'm comfortable with. Instead, they took it as "this is what the man is saying you can or cannot do. The man is judging you." and we needed a way to recontextualise it. To be like "look, we're not going to comment on whether it is morally correct or incorrect to say this word or have this debate or--we're just not gonna do it here. We busted out this metaphor of playing soccer in the library, right? Where playing soccer is not a morally incorrect act but you're a dick if you do it in the library and you're especially a dick if the soccer ball hits somebody straight in the head and you don't apologise for it. You weren't supposed to be doing it there and somebody got hurt. We had problems with stuff like that so--so, bringing it back around, the point of banning cereal on main was to sort of drive home "look, cereal isn't a morally incorrect thing. It's a joke but the mods are still going to pay attention when you do it." Uh, you won't actually, literally get banned for ta--for posting pictures of cereal on the server but mods will give you a joke role for doing it. Also had a third thing. The original time I banned it was when we first started having submods and I wanted to both, like, give people a chance to recognise they had authority and I wanted to test them. To be like "hey guys, will you actually, y'know, do the socially awkward thing and tell people to quit it--quit it" y'know? So basically the cereal ban was a jokey, y'know, ironic test of the immune system. It was trying to be a way to communicate "you don't have to agree with a rule to understand that it's going to be enforced in this place you've decided you want to be in" and I hope it worked. Like, the people who weren't comfortable with how things were are more comfortable now. I'm more comfortable, to be honest. It's difficult being quote-unquote the man but also having emotional needs you need to take care of. (Sighs) Anyway, that's what I wanted to talk about.
karmicRetribution0[]
(KR) Uhh, the layer where you would have the--the tail of the--the snake lamia. So, um--
(JR) Mix and match.
(KR) More mix and match. They are close to being the same size but they're not gonna be exactly the same and hopefully that will prevent people from just trying to pull parts from one to the other and, uhh, make it easier for us to still allow people to submit user-made parts while being sure that we're not getting anything that's stolen.
(JR) Right. I mean, that makes sense to me. Well, is there anything you'd like to mention before we end this?
(KR) Uh, no, we'll just, uhhh, keep it to talking about the lamia maker for now but I am--I'm working on it--I'm working on basically official portraits of all of the main characters of Farragnarok and those are gonna be kinda the base core parts when the maker is finally constructed.
(JR) Hm, well, sounds good. I really look forward to the sorts of people who will be hearing this after that's already done.
karmicRetribution1[]
(JR) Hey there, KR. You've been a core part of the team since before A-rank was even a thing. Your contributions to the artistic quality of FarragoFiction--both directly and in the form of art and indirectly in the form of art direction and auspictism--have been legendary. Your reputation on the Discord is half ban hammer-wielding Smith and half shitposting god. Thank you for joining me here today.
(KR) Of course!
(JR) I'd like to talk about the mysterious lamia doll set you've been working on. While obviously inspired by the main doll sets, you've been working to make it entirely distinct. What can you tell me about them?
(KR) Well, the lamia are going to be the main characters for Farragnarok and so we want to make sure that we have a doll set--I mean, practically, we need to make sure we have a doll set that belongs--
karmicRetribution2[]
(KR) --to us and isn't reusing anyone else's assets.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(KR) So, working from scratch, got a big handful of different snake-type bodies--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(KR) --and, um... Y'know, just gonna--gonna make something that is distinctly ours--
(JR) Hmm.
(KR) even as it retains the aesthetic of our inspirations.
(JR) Hehe, Homestuck, in other words.
(KR) Yes.
karmicRetribution3[]
(JR) (???) arms.
(KR) Yep.
(JR) Alright, so, I know one of the major changes in addition to arms is that the source palette has been altered, it's not just Light anymore.
(KR) Yeah, that was the worst decision we made in the doll-maker, I think, honestly. Was choosing the Light palette as our base palette because it means--you don't necessarily notice problems when they happen if you've randomly generated a doll that happens to be in the Light palette, well, you don't realise it's not actually being recoloured in parts.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(KR) Uhh, having a fully distinct colour palette for the base parts means that--
karmicRetribution4[]
(KR) --it'll be more obvious when there's problems. It also will give us an opportunity to add a few extra colours into things. Snakes have scales.
(JR) Yup.
(KR) And we'll have an opportunity to, uh, enhance some dolls with some various scale patterns and whatnot by having an extra colour or two in there for that.
(JR) Hmm.
(KR) Plus, uh, making it a lot easier to get in things like correctly coloured eyes so that--
(JR) Hmm.
(KR) --uh, heterochromia--y'know, for psiionics or whatever--is--
(JR) Yeah, currently--
(KR) --functional for all eyes that are submitted.
(JR) --currently the different eye colours look almost exactly the same.
karmicRetribution5[]
(JR) So yeah.
(KR) They're--they're not distinguishable by the human eye. Umm--
(JR) Plus the default black hair; hard to tell when it's wrong.
(KR) Exactly, yeah, no more black out lines. Black and white are not going to be any part of the palette. Um, that means if you make a part that has black in it, that part's just gonna be black.
(JR) Hmm.
(KR) It's gonna stay that way 'cause it's not part of the palette.
(JR) Yeah.
(KR) Umm, so I think--I think the new dolls will give us a opportunity to--
karmicRetribution7[]
(KR) --push things a little bit more in a more individualised direction for us while--
(JR) Hmm.
(KR) --retaining the general Homestuck style.
(JR) Hmm.
(KR) And, uhh... uhhhh...
(JR) One of your goals was to make it so that people couldn't reuse sprite parts from the existing kid, troll and satyr doll sets to this one. You wanted to make sure that none of Hussie's work could sneak in. Can you talk about some of the ways that you've--you've changed things to make it so you can't just slap eyes on from--from the troll dollset.
karmicRetribution9[]
(KR) I have to admit I did not push things as far in that direction as I had originally intended--
(JR) Hmm.
(KR) --because I was getting a little hung up on what I wanted to do, so I just started to push forward with what we already had.
(JR) Hmm.
(KR) Um, but they are going to be a different size of image.
(JR) Ahh.
(KR) Uhh, with a different placement of the head. I actually, uhh, went ahead and redid the shape of the head very slightly to fix some issues that had been nagging at me about where it wasn't actually round. Umm, and then, other than that, there--there was some subtle differences. The torsos are actually a good bit taller--
(JR) Hmm.
(KR) --comparatively,--
karmicRetribution10[]
(KR) --to give more space to have decent shirts--
(JR) Hmm.
(KR) --on top of the snake bodies. Um, and the layering is actually going to be completely differently laid out. Like the--
(JR) Right.
(KR) --there's going to be a layer that includes the--basically shirts or tops with the arms as one piece.
(JR) Ohh.
(KR) So, um, so that'll work better on the--the snake-bodied lamia. But for lamia who have legs--
(JR) Hm.
(KR) --uh, y'know, just pants are going to be--or--or skirts are going to be on--
karmicRetribution11[]
(JR) This'll be extra ironic.
(KR laughs--parhaps ironically, intent unsure)
(JR) Well, thank you for joining me.
(KR) Of course.
karmicRetribution12[]
(KR) Umm.
(JR) I know one notable diversion since they have arms.
(KR) Yes.
(JR) Hehe.
(KR) They're gonna have arms.
karmicRetribution22[]
(KR) Ummm.
(JR) I know one notable divergance is that they have arms.
(KR) Yes.
(JR chuckles)
(KR) Yes, they're gonna have arms.
life[]
(Spoken by JR) Life, (???, close?, glows?, gross?), leech I've heard it called in some sessions. It's--how can I put it--it's about energy, it's about reproduction, it's about survival--power. But it's also about, for lack of a better term, the heartbeat of the story--and, yes, that makes it sound like maybe it's about Heart or about Blood but it's about what's... not motivating, no, that's a different one. That's one we don't have. But it's about who's getting things done, who's causing the changes, who has goals they're following, who's will to power is driving things. For example, you might have an empress of Life and she might change everything in her entire galaxy. Food for thought. I'll be seeing ya there.
lite[]
(Spoken by JR) Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard; be evil.
light[]
(Spoken by JR) Light, luck, glow--called a lot of things in a lot of sessions. It's about relevance, plot, the spotlight. The sort of lucky little coincidences that happen when you're the main character, when you're important. It's the main plot, the stuff that has to happen--that the viewer is going to see. So what is the actual plot of Farragnarok? Depends who you ask.
lilscumbag[]
(Spoken by JR) So I have no idea what just happened but fuck if it wasn't adorable. So there's this little--I mean, you know how consorts be--there was this little possum, I guess, consort and it was covered in all these little patchwork rags and it--it just waddled up, gave me a little ball of goo? It smelled disgusting, I guess it was trash but garbage. (???, but I couldn't help being a paws? a pause? applause?) and... oh no! It's so cute! Oh no! She scampered back to wave at me because she heard me talking about her. Okay. Okay, you just--I just thought you--you needed to understand that possum cons--consorts are amazing. JR out.
lizardFucking[]
(JR) So it's a stable loop.
(YN) Okay.
(JR) I'm confident about this one.
(YN) I think you're very confident, yeah, I like that. I am, however, lost again where the lizard fucking happens.
lohae[]
(Spoken by JR) Subtract the exes and square them. Subtract the (???, bodies?) and square them. Add them together and take the square root.
lomat_by_fan_gnome[]
(Plays song of the same name.)
lte[]
(Spoken by JR) So that leads us to the evil paranoid conspiracy I thought of the other night: what if the smoke detectors have tiny little cameras in them? That would explain that annoying green little blinking light in them. Unless, of course, the government was smart enough to have cameras without the blinky light. In any case, wouldn't the blinky light help night-vision cameras see in the dark? Haaaaa? It only takes a little light to help those thingies and smoke detectors provide more than a little. I can even see the shadow of my hand on the wall from the light those things shed. It's annoying. Here I am, trying to get a decent night's sleep, and there's this green light that periodically blinks to red directly in front of me. It's a small light but it's soooooo annoying. There must be some sort of conspiracy involved 'cause, if there is, I can get rid of the evil thing. So, fellow conspiracy nuts, take down the evil government safety device and take it apart. If you can still think during all of that incessant beeping, you'll probably find evidence that I'm really paranoid or possibly right. That would be scary. In any case, I get that smoke detectors are a necessary evil but why do they have that stupid light?! Does it serve an obvious purpose? No! That's why it must be evil. You cannot deny the logic of my thinking. Now, I'm gonna go and worry about the light on my toaster-oven. See ya.
manipulation[]
(Spoken by JR) So I wanted to talk today a little bit about--I'm not gonna call it my favourite topic but, Waste or not, I'm still a Mind player--so let's talk a little bit about manipulation. Let's talk about getting people to do the things you want them to do and the ethics of it. I've had this debate uncountable amounts of times--maybe AB would know--but every so often you get into a Yellow Yard and the Time player doesn't want to do anything. And that's their right--their choice--y'know? So I mean I'm not gonna--I'm not gonna influence them that way. I don't, that's the whole point. That's what the Yellow Yard is--is restraint. So I restrain myself even if I think the right thing to do is to go back in time. But, more interestingly, there are Time players who--they're all for it until I give them the list and they look at this list and, especially the Seers, they know exactly what everything means and they realise things are going to go completely different.
Sometime they balk at the weirdest things, like sometimes they don't want to prototype a frog. Y'know, you'd think they pro--they'd balk at--at murdering their friends but they understand the game by that point. We all do at that point. But at the end, when everybody's dead, and they realise "wait, if I do this, these two people are never going to fall in love" or "this person's never going to figure out, like, how to get past their--their childhood trauma" or... And that's when people start balking. When they start going "no, I don't feel like playing god. I don't get to choose. What gives me the right?" and the thing is I don't understand. I know I've been in this shitty game for a long time but I don't get it. If you can save lives, shouldn't you? Just having a conversation with someone quote unquote manipulates them. Shouldn't you do it with--shouldn't you communicate with other people with their interest in mind? With some idea of doing the right thing? Yeah, everyone's seen murder-mode players, y'know, "oh, I'm going to murder you all for your own good" blah blah blah. The grimdarks that want to save us from the game by destroying it. We've all seen that. Obviously the greater good is not necessary and sufficient for ethical action. You can do the wrong things for the right reasons, obviously, but why does doing something small and subtle feel worse than stabbing someone? I don't get that... Then you get the less subtle versions. I mean, you've seen all the various forms of mind control this game gives us access to. The big scary ones--y'know, with the glowing Mind symbol that my Yellow Yards cause--but the point is, the big scary ones with the symbol and the obvious and the... Everything's wrong. Obviously that's manipulation but sometimes you'll see one of the players, usually a Mind player, and they'll just use clever words and convince people to destroy the game, kill their friends, kill the murder-mode player. Like, there's all sorts of things that you can convince people to do and it doesn't just have to be clever words. Y'know, person X tells person Y that person Z killed somebody and boom--you manipulated them. Into trusting them less, trying to kill them, I don't know. It... What does right and wrong even mean in a game like this? Food for thought, I guess. JR out.
metalPrince[]
(Shogun) --single most metal motherfucker you'll ever see. What can I tell you about him?
(JR-brand chuckling)
(Shogun) Uhh, well for starters, he is--to put it simply--the culmination of everything I liked about the different depictions of the Grim Reaper. Like the [REDACTED]ture of, like, the needle on thread and they go through everything and when you pull it, it all comes together.
metametameta[]
(Spoken by JR) Hi! So what I was thinking was I would go one layer deeper in the meta bullshit and what I would do is tell you how I'm making all these podcasts. To be as frank as possible, I'm pulling shit directly outta my ass. I'm, like, taking five-minute breaks from coding here or there. Like, just ways I can refresh myself during jorb or, y'know, in the middle of coding something that isn't quite creative. I get to--to stretch my creative muscles a little bit. So that's one of the reasons why I warned that things could be inconsistent, things could be back and forth. There is definitely a canon but we're shaping it as we go and, in fact, the fandom's helping me shape it. People reacting to finding podcasts is shaping it. This is just WhoIsShogun all over again, let's all admit that. It's really fun making these.
mindtimebadideas[]
(Spoken by JR) I did it! I cracked the code! It turns out, time travel, it all makes sense. All you need to do is, uh, fuck, um, okay, standard Mind player phrase: "luck isn't even a real thing." It's true! All decisions, they're the only thing that matters, luck is just stable--it's seeded, it's... let me back up. Luck goes the same way every time. Once you realise that, it's all predictable and once it's predictable, you can go back in time and change things. Time and Mind and it all--it all adds up. I know how to use Time players to go back, to change things. And I know just the session I'm gonna use to test it out.
nubulousHarmony1[]
(NH) (???) on my own for a while, I--I did not get very far with it but I--I ended up getting a lot of help, so--
nubulousHarmony2[]
(JR) Hmm, excellent. So--speaking of dollsim--um, you've been doing, like, even before you joined the wrangler team you were really taking point on the doll cleanups. Y'know, looking for stray pixels. So I wanted to hear about any doll parts in particular you found to be interesting, challenging, annoying.
(NH) Oh god, one of my--one of the ones I remember the most--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(NH) --that pai--you remember that pair of wings?
(JR) Oh gosh.
(NH) That was--like, it was miscoloured,--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(NH) --it was partially transparent, it was horribly anti-aliased and I sat there for an hour cleaning up every individual pixel.
(They exchange a little giggle. It is the amusement of artists looking back on their own suffering.)
(JR) I just wanted to meteor it but, no, it was completely worth it when you were done. Like--
(NH) Yes!
(JR) --it was super cool.
(NH) It was pretty.
(JR) But yeah, that was-- (NH, at the same time) But I--I mean--
nebulousHarmony3[]
(NH) There is another thing that was... This is one of the biggest things I've probably done doll-set wise was take all the horns and make them consistent colours.
(JR) Oh yeah, when we were--when we were--we were colouring them for the lamia doll-set, I remember that.
(NH) Mmmhmm, that's a (???, microphone seems to cut out here)
(JR) Oh, you know what the worst part it? Like, KR's got this thing where eventually all the doll parts are gonna get recoloured but I think KR's planning to binge it sometime, do it themselves. (Sighs) All the doll cleanups.
(NH) That's gonna be a long day. Erm, I might--I might--I might help out if I can.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(NH) I mean that's--that's kinda the reason why I started doing the doll-set stuff. That was...
(JR) Mmhmm.
(NH) Like I--I could do art and that's pretty much what I could do. I could do pixel art pretty well,--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(NH) --so I decided, "hey, I might as well work on this."
(JR) Mmm, I mean--
(NH) Help out this project I've been loving for years.
(JR) During the--the ludum dare you--you definitely helped. Like, it was such a shame that IO's art programme couldn't change colours.
(NH) I know! I was like, "oh jeez, there's a connection here. I don't wanna say it 'cause IO's art is really good but I think their art programme might be screwing over their work."
(JR) Yup. I think it--I think it's fixed though, like the last doll slurp there wasn't a problem, so.
(NH) Yeah.
(JR) Actually, y'know, I remember the last doll slurp--like, the whole point with doll slurps is that can't happen anymore 'cause I stripped the metadata out.
nebulousHarmony4[]
(JR) Hmm, food for thought. Alright, so, the last thing I wanted to talk about--so we talked about what you--how you got your start; the fek doll-set, we talked about the kinds of things you did when you were a pioneer but now let's talk about your wrangling. You've been instrumental in designing the look and feel of the afterlife and you've prototyped a lot of character designs. So I wanna--I wanna hear what you've got to say about that kinda stuff.
(NH) Afterlife is a lot of fun. Trying to figure out--trying to figure out how characters would respond with emotions, like--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(NH) --y'know how there--y'know--I say that a lot, wow--
(JR laughs)
(NH) --there's the characters--I guess the things on deviantArt, right?
(JR) Mmhmm.
(NH) Where it was like, "oh, this kind of crying, this kind of crying," like how would this character process an emotion.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(NH) 'Cause you gotta figure that out, you gotta know the characters. And designing characters in general has been interesting.
(JR) Mmhmm!
(NH) I--my inner frat boy was--
(JR laughs)
(NH) --that was the only useful thing it's done.
(JR) Ahhh.
(NH shudders away the frat boy threatening to take hold)
(JR) Wakowski.
(NH) (???) keys.
(JR) Speaking of emotion, that was something I actually noticed today--was, y'know, KR's been doing the lamia doll set and I get to see the Prince in doll form and, like--like when it's the Homestuck doll it's just like, "yeah, whatever, it's a Homestuck doll," but this is a slightly different doll-set and I realised--
nebulousHarmony5[]
(NH) Arms!
(JR) It has arms, yeah. What--what the hell are arms? It's like us and faces--
(NH) (???, I dunno?)
(JR) --what the hell are faces?
(NH) What's a face? I'm not legally allowed to have a face anymore.
(JR) No, I banned them. But the point was, was it was closer to being your design for the Prince in terms of posture, like the folded arms and everything, but because it's a doll-set there wasn't that emotion there and I was like, "huh, you can really tell the difference." Like--like especially like the standard expression for your Prince is just so smug.
(NH) She is so smug. That was the best thing; that was the most smug I'd ever made a character.
(JR chuckles, perhaps smugly) Yes, excellent. Another character that you--you designed I think just from a grub basically was Peewee.
(NH) PeeWee!
(JR cackles in Peeweenese) I know you like Peewee.
(NH) I love Peewee! They're my child! I adopt them.
nebulousHarmony6[]
(NH) Starting now. I legitimately started calling them Peewee after Manic posted the idea.
(JR) Hmm.
(NH) That--that might be it and I--I was just like, "ah, yes; the file's named Peewee so I'm calling them Peewee."
(JR wheezes to death but gets better in time to listen to NH some more)
(NH) I-I-I don't know how that stuck. I would've thought that KR would've--
(JR) Yeah, I would've thought it but no, Peewee's just their name.
(NH) Peewee six, I guess.
(JR) I mean that's, like, the entire, like, uhh... I just do that all the time with doll-sim. I'm just like, "give me a random thing," and, "ohp, that's--that's their name."
(NH) This is--this is a name now, we've done it, boys.
(JR sighs with happiness over a name well chosen) I guess the last thing I wanted to make sure we talked about is you--because you're--you're out there on the front lines. You're doing the prototypes, you're--
nebulousHarmony7[]
(NH) So, like, you've gotta, like, erase everything and make sure it doesn't overlap things and it's weird and--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(NH) --then this and I think KR's overhaul ironed out some of these. I've gotta go back and help reflect those.
(JR) Hmm. Well--
(NH) But I think it's actually a fun challenge for the most part.
(JR) Hmm! Well I do think one of the things, like, we're not a Homestuck shop but we're definitely inspired. So we have this element of I dunno, is there a canon image of Peewee?
nebulousHarmony8[]
(NH) At the moment, I don't really think so.
nebulousHarmony9[]
(JR) Well, I mean, that's my point. Like, even in Homestuck characters are drawn completely differently from panel to panel.
(NH) Yeah.
(JR) It's just--
(NH) And they're all drawn with the same heights or different heights.
(JR) Mmhmm, or different emo--or different, like--just completely different. I have--I have no other--other thing to say. So that's the end of my prepared questions, is there anything you want to make sure we talked about?
nebulousHarmony10[]
(NH) Mmm, not in particular actually.
(JR) You mentioned memes. Uhh, do you have a favourite meme from the server?
(NH) Oh god.
(JR cackles at yet another victim put in an uncomfortable position) I put you in the spotlight; ask the tough questions.
(NH exhales in JR's general direction) That's it. That is a tough question. I'm gonna be honest it's a little--it's a little self-centred of me but the fact that everyone kinda knows me for boiling teeth is the funniest thing to me.
(JR, back at it again with that laughter) They--they unders--
(NH) It's like, "ah, yes." I'll look through the doll channel like, "someone's messed this up [REDACTED] (???) oh shit, Neb's gonna be boiling some teeth today."
(JR, who sometimes likes to contemplate destroying the universe, finds the teeth-boiler funny and so laughs at her funny statements) Alright, I'm gonna stop recording.
(NH) I'm not very smart.
nebulousHarmony62[]
(JR) You're starting conversations, because of that sometimes you get... push-back's not the right word but, for example, at one point lamia had orange candy-coloured horns and now they don't. So how--how's that been affecting you? Having to kinda go back and--and tweak?
(NH) It's not actually that bad. I cau... y'know, as me... y'know, being me, the hater of anti-aliasing, boiler of teeth.
(JR laughs)
(NH) I don't use anti-aliasing with those.
(JR) Hmm.
(NH) So I can go back and change it, at least change colours pretty easily.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(NH) But I think, back when I was told--uh--that I needed more emotions for them I was like "oh, this might be difficult. I have to move entire arm." And that doesn't really work with a 2D thing.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(NH) Like, with 3D stuff you can model stuff... I'm jealous of PL's abilities, I'm gonna...
(JR) Oh yeah.
(NH) I--I--I really wish I could do stuff, like, they can do, it's just incredible.
Nidhogg[]
(Spoken by CanonJR) (clicking) Oh my fuck.... FUCK.... Jesus fuck... I... (music starts) fuck... (???) a Wasted Denizen...
Noirsong[]
(Plays the song of the same name)
Nope 1, 2, and 3[]
(These are all variations of JR laughing and saying "Nope.")
NoTrees[]
(Spoken by JR) So. There are no trees on LOMAT. TM. Do you understand why? Do you understand what you're seeing and why they're not trees? That, I think, will help you understand exactly what is going on in this VERY non-standard session. Good luck!
null[]
(Spoken by JR) Alright, so one of the aspects that I personally understand the least was recently explained to me by crimsonDestroyer. Um, so basically--I mean we all know what Nulls are, right? If a Wasted Blood player enters the session and, y'know, they hit gnosis four--if they go full-Wasted--then what they do is they let people who never should have played Sburb play Sburb. This obviously has unintended consequences like all Wasted shit does: it makes the game harder, um, like--like Null players don't get a whole lot of grist because they don't have lands or denizens or anything like that. So it's just--it's just a big mess, so I don't really pay much attention to them. They're not meant to be in Sburb anyway. But, according to CD, they are mistakes--things that shouldn't exist but do or things that only exist when you think about it or look about it a certain way. Uh, like if a tree falls in the woods; does it make a sound? So Null is an aspect in its own right--it's just weird, glitchy and the code indicates it's like a placeholder test thing. But, ehhhh? Who knows?
outbreak[]
(Spoken by JR) Alright, this is officially a level three advisory directed at any and all players with access to a completed universe containing an Alternian-style society. I repeat: this is a level three advisory for any and all players with access to an Alternian-style society. Specifically, we are advising you to warn all empresses to ban the existence of extreme mutations. Such mutations will manifest with fruit or plant-like characteristics and you will notice very, very quickly a non-standard mutation spectrum. I repeat: a non-standard mutation spectrum. I hope... No, I believe that all Alternian-style universes have contact with their players and I further believe that each such session still has at least one player subscribed to these message. If you know of any that do not fit this requirement, you have to let us know. We can contain this but we need all of your help. Signing out.
OWO[]
(Spoken by JR) Whats this? Is that? *Sigh* ...Alright, I'm not gonna panic. That little bear thing... From the corrupt session... Is now in every single instance of the . Probably not a problem, right...? We've identified that there's only one session of Wigglersim Th-that's actually fully corrupt! The rest of them are... The little bear thing isn't even corrupt! It's probably not even really real, right? It's all those Hope Grubs that are seeing him. This. I cant give attention to this. This doesnt count as an essential bug report, sorry. A-At least the little thing isn't dangerous. I've looked into that, at least. Good Luck.
piano[]
(Plays a piano tune.)
Please_Hold_V2[]
(Plays music.)
prince[]
(Spoken by JR) So when I was brainstorming names for the prince to have I wanted something that wasn't obviously an, "owo, what's this?" y'know, Mr. Obama's basement kinda vibe. So I basically just said shit out loud until I got, just randomly, Bacama. Like, Mr. Bacama. And the whole point was it was meant to both invoke that kind of vibe so that their lusus or woebearer could be like, "Mr. Bacame," or Miss, as the case may be, but also a little bit of Bacchus--y'know, Greek god of the vine. And, y'know, a little bit of a temper problem. So there were layers upon layers and actually I had to dig that up 'cause I'd completely forgot how I named that character. Ahh, good times. Also Zahwei? The first name? It's just their Norse rune but backwards. The more you know.
rage[]
(Spoken by JR) Rage. Salt. Belief, I've heard it called once. It's the aspect of not accepting how things are and being willing to put in the work needed to change it. On a meta level--which is, of course, my favourite level--it's the aspect of being thrown out of your suspension of disbelief and getting angry at it. Like that Discord sound you just heard. Angry at the writer, angry at the story and wanting something--no, demanding something better. Rage is the aspect of demanding to see life's manager. So, you can imagine how Rage players react when they find my code littering their session. They arem't especially in a mindset, no pun intended, to listen when I tell them that I am not the Waste that made the buggy, piece-of-shit game--I'm just the one doing my best to patch it and stabilise it and, yes, at times simulate it to make it better. A few Rage players even pointed out that I'm technically worse than the asshole Waste of Space to the people within my simulations but that's--that's like two meta layers above where I'm comfortable being. Point is, boy are they wanting to complain to management when they get Wasted. (Sighs) Go--go Rage players.
riddlesthree[]
(Spoken by YN) Get away from me. Keep your distance--this is a hostage situation now. I, haha, have a sandwich and an echidna! And I'm... hahaha only afraid to use one of them. So you'd better tell me right now. You'd better answer me these riddles fucking three before you get your damn grilled cheese.
Root[]
(Spoken by YN) Adventurer's log, number... well it doesn't matter now, does it. Here's the thing. Everything is connected. And yet, nothing is. Now you may notice, those two statements are somehow NOT mutually exclusive, right? And how that makes no sense! I mean, how could NOTHING, and EVERYTHING be connected? Yeah, that's what I thought too! That's what I thought, until, you know, EVERYTHING just started unraveling, I mean, y'know. Figuratively and literally. I had just finished a conspiracy board, until my polar friend and I, had to do it ALL OVER AGAIN! And... listen. I know it's been a while since I made a log, and I'm sorry. I have with the gods, alright? I don't know who I'm apologizing to here, cause TIME ISN'T REAL! Okay? But I have a feeling Urd isn't as empty as I thought it was. I made a friend. We disagree on a couple of things, but you know whatever gets you through the day, right? It's, it's not bad to be, y'know, wrong, but, we had a picnic, and they did mention something, 'cause I haven't seen any trees. But maybe, that's because there were trees. Which checks out Maybe the gods have something to do with this. Tree trimmer.... tree trimmer....
(What follows is the the word "Nidhogg" written in knock code.)
runes[]
(Spoken by JR) I mean obviously we couldn't go with the zodiac, standard or otherwise. That's too derivative. But there does exist something we could do interesting things with and there's simple, logical rules for extending it.
sandwich[]
(Spoken by JR) Alright, I understand that the concept of sandwiches are not intrinsic to reality. We're not talking apples here. So why the fuck can't we alchemise sandwiches? What the fuck? (Sighs) I also understand that sandwiches have absolutely nothing to do with AI, choices, paths--any of the Mind shit I should be involved in. So, to all of you Wastes out there and everybody who has Grace friends et cetera, et cetera. If anyone is Wasted--if you figure out how to hack a sandwich into this fucking game let me know.
sburbsimyellowyard1[]
(JR) Operation Spiderdance--AKA Operation Groundhog's Day, AKA Operation I Am The Greatest--is a go. It's barely tested in the simulation, um, I mean you all know how difficult ~ath is to code in but the point is I have the shenanigans working. I've produced my most spirited leet-scramble yet. I've hopped up, like, six echeladder rungs. Well, I mean, like, do you call them echeladder rungs if you're still... The point is I hit programming pragmatist you guys. You don't even understand the degree of smug I'm feeling right now. I literally figured out how to make anti-stable time loops. (Sighs) You know when Time players sometimes--they just pop in out of nowhere from a doomed timeline and go "dude, no, don't do this"? I figured out how to hack that! Guys! Okay. Okay--okay--okay--okay. Now, I've not got it on reality yet, obviously--I'm not gonna do that without testing--but do you understand what this means? Ahh, this is so cool. Ahhhhhh, yes. Okay, okay, okay--I need to go back and test some stuff. I'll update you guys when I'm ready to put it on reality.
sburbsimyellowyard2[]
(JR) Okay, so, um... (Laughs) Mistakes were made but I fixed it, okay? Let's lead with that: I have fixed it. Um, so it turns out when you allow all timelines to be narratively relevant--that's the same thing as none of them being--wait, maybe I should back up. Um... Okay, I promise that is never going to happen again. I promise. I... (Sighs) I'm not going to try to defend myself--I'm not going to... I fucked up and I've taken steps--it's--it's physically not possible to happen again. Flat out; I've chained myself. Um, okay, let me--let me... (Sighs) No-one but me can access the Groundhog Day system right now. I am not allowed to use it without meta-observer permission. Not just permission but guidance. Hell, not just guidance but--the meta-observers flat out control it. I've taken my hands off the reins entirely because I obviously cannot be trusted. You know what? That probably still doesn't make sense. Operation Groundhog Day--AKA Operation Spiderdance, AKA--hey, maybe I was riding high on the Waste throes and I wasn't stopping to think of whether or not I should, I was just thinking of whether or not I could. Putting what I am now going to call Yellow Yards onto reality fucked shit up a lot. We can all agree that happened. But I've got the Yellow Yards chained to it now. What that means is that... (Sighs) I hope you're Wasted enough to understand this but only the amount of choices that can fit into the blah blah blah blah blah distance light can travel in three milliseconds--I didn't make the rules, that Waste of Space did. It makes sense if you're a Space player, I'm sure--but the amount of space light can travel in three milliseconds. Twist that until it's the amount of choices you can choose between and you understand what I'm talking about. It's not all possible choices. There's a limited amount of choices and the Time player isn't making them because obviously if the Time player did it they'd be in a stable time loop--it would just always happen the exact same way, that's what I was trying to get rid of--but it's not me making the choices either, okay? I did a lot of tests. I'm gonna stop complaining how hard it is to code in ~ath. I'm gonna test a lot harder. AB's helping me. The point is, unless the session is fucked I'm not even going to try to touch it, okay? I learned my lesson; restraint is still a thing even if I'm supposed to be done with my maturity quests. So, in summary: if a session is in the worst two percent of sessions AB will let me know. That's restraint one--I'm not picking when and where I get to do it. So AB tells me when to do it. I show up, I communicate with the Time player. That's step two. I obtain consent. Step three is I outline the amount of choices the Yellow Yard can contain. I don't bog things down explaining why it's those choices or why it's not others, I just do it. Step four: I let an observational meta-player pick. What that means is that only one of them is canon at once. The observational meta-player will go through them and, when they find one where they win, hopefully they're responsible enough to stop then. Testing shows they tend to be. Not many people attempt to make things worth--worse through that, even if they appear to be making decisions that are bad. I've seen a lot of sessions go where an observational meta-player horrorterror fuck decides to kill somebody and, hey, now that makes everybody live and--and--and they breed the frog. I'm really sorry. I'll find a way to make testing easier. I'll find a way... Hell, I'll--I'll find a way to make way more changes in the simulation before I put it on--on reality. I... I can't stop. If you're Wasted, you understand. You know--you know what it's like to not be able to stop. I've gotta fix this, but at least I can minimise the damage I'm doing while I--while I'm trying. Be safe and, seriously, don't try this at home.
SecretAlligators[]
(Spoken by JR) So I've actually gotten a lot of questions from those who have beaten LOHAE. Or at least beaten it enough. What's up with those secret alligators? Well, let me tell you... it wouldn't be a very good secret if I told you. I will, Waste's honor, give you some valid gigglesnort, though. They are similar to the Secret Wizard cult. Someone started that cult. They had a very particular reason for starting that cult. And what the cult enables will tell you exactly what that reason is.
Segundia[]
(Spoken by JR) I got one more piece of information. Time players... The corrupt societies are calling themselves Segundia.
shittypuzzles[]
(JR laughs) I cannot believe this. So past JR totally ran a shitty website, right, like you do. That's just what you do if you're--if you're into computers. So past JR's shitty website--apparently part of it turned into a copypasta and I never even knew. So here I am, I'm coding something from it just to--just to work some Hussie-level, like, callbacks to my old work that nobody knows about and I Google it just to see what the Wastes would think of it and I find forum after forum of people using it. At one point--okay, are you ready for this? At one point somebody made a shitty puzzle out of it. What they did was they posted the whole damn thing and then they introduced a single typo. They're lampooning how often I misspelled things or typoed things and they challenged people to find the typo but then, only after they started, did they reveal that only one of the things was the real typo. God, that is just so valid. What an evil puzzle! (Sighs) I keep meaning to--to run a shitty puzzle where I encode some stupid bullshit in--how, y'know "oh, the third word is typoed and the fifth word is typoed so the secret is three five." Maybe I'll have to do that at some point. God, this is so dumb and I love it and of course I think what past JR did was cringey but I'm also so proud of them for just... (Sighs) I learned so much running that shitty website and I was so passionate about it. I had so much fun and I'm really glad I get to have fun like that again. I'm really glad you are all helping me and participating and solving my puzzles and playing my games and... thanks. That's really good.
Shooting_Gallery[]
(Plays the song of the same name)
shogun12[]
(JR) Hey there, Shogun. You're famous within the Discord for your creative and powerfully emotional characters so I thought it would be useful to go over a few that make it into the various creations of Farrago Fiction. Probably the most visible of your creations is the nameless empress, since she both wanders Sburbsim creating chaos and is the first empress of wiggler sim. What can you tell me about her?
shogun1[]
(Shogun) Well, for starters, she's from her own... from, like, from her core design point she's meant to look like the single most metal motherfucker you'll ever see.
(You get a slight sound of JR laugh there)
(Shogun) That's like the basis of everything about her, I suppose.
(JR) Hmm.
(Shogun) Like, when you see her, your first assumption is, "oh, fuck! I'm fucked."
(JR) Yes.
(Shogun) Essentially--but like, as with most things, there's more to it than just looks, I suppose. Like as you get deeper--if you, like, read deeper into it or just kind of, I suppose, know the people who wrote the character--
(They both chuckle at this because they are in the know. You can chuckle all you want, doesn't mean you will be too.)
(Shogun) --you kinda figure out that, like, there's more beyond, like--
(JR) Ultimate power.
(Shogun) Yeah. It's--it's more beyond ult--it's like there's--it's not exactly (???, then goes?) into ultimate power it's... it's pretty--it's a pretty base goal really. Just a really fucking metal concert.
(JR) Hmm. So--
(Shogun) That's all she's fuckin' concerned with.
(Laughter and scene)
shogun7[]
(JR) So when she's going around in the session, she's collecting all those weird blood samples. Can you talk a little bit about that?
shogun2[]
(Shogun) Uh, she collects the blood samples, like, initially you think it's something to do with her being empress--
(JR) Hmm.
(Shogun) --but the more likely result is that she just wants it for effects for her fucking concert.
(JR does a laughter) Which is why they're highblood, because that's extra scary.
(Shogun) Yeah, that's fucking spooky as shit, like, if you just see, like, this giant fucking sword-wielding motherfucker, like, "alright, I expect, like, lots of, like, pretty basic and common blood." You don't expect fountains of, like, fuckin' purple blood to show up, y'know? You don't expect that.
(JR laughing.mp3) She's the baddest ass around.
(Shogun) Yeah, exactly, that's entirely her goal.
(JR) Hmm.
(Shogun) Just to assert raw dominance.
(They yuk a little)
shogun10[]
(JR) So, do you have anything you want to say about how she's also the first empress of wiggler sim?
(Shogun) Oh yes, um. This was sort of--it wasn't something I initially planned but as--as stuff was sort of created it made sense. And it was also just kind of like a good (???, communication? implementation?) to sort of cross the streams I suppose.
(JR) Yeah.
(Shogun) Like cross--like Sburbsim, sort of big bads crossed wiggler sim and cross the--well it's like--is it--is it Farragnarok or is it like--
(JR) It's Farragnarok, yeah.
(Shgoun) Yeah, it's just--it's not even got a name like that, it's just okay yeah.
(JR laughs)
(Shogun) It was like a good way to kind of tie those together--
(JR) Mmm.
(Shogun) --in a sort of--it--it's not really like a sort of out there way but it is sort of something you can tell if you read into it about.
(JR) Mmhmm.
shogun5[]
(JR) If I remember right it was KR who suggested to--to import the nameless empress in because the original wiggler sim empress had just been nameless empress and you--you--
(Shogun) Yeah.
(JR) --you were very insistent that your empress didn't have a name. She was just, "the empress."
(Shogun) Yeah.
(Guffaws from the two of them)
(Shogun) 'Cause I didn't have, like, the creativity at the time.
(JR) But it worked! Like we both--
(Shogun) (???) fucking (???)--
(JR) --we both--
(Shogun) Me being a persis--
(They both just kinda break down into gligglefits)
(Shogun) It just worked.
(JR) Yes. Alright, so the human equivalent of the nameless empress in Sburbsim is, of course, the Grim Reaper. He's extremely iconic given his complex motivations between killing all the players and helping them breed a new universe. What can you tell me about him?
shogun9[]
(Shogun) Fuck, what can I tell you about him? Uhh, well, for starters he is--to put it simply--the culmination of everything I liked about the different depictions of the Grim Reaper.
(JR) Hmm.
(Shogun) Like, you get things like the Grim Reaper from Billy and Mandy--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(Shogun) Uhh, the different Grim--the different Reaper characters from Grim Fandango.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(Shogun) And, like, Uncle Death from--I think Uncle Death's influence is the most apparent in his design alone.
(JR) The radicalness, yeah.
(Shogun) Yeah, like the whole--the whole radical, like, out there fuckin'--like, just kinda like (???, incessant? in essence?) fucking wacky--
(JR) Hmm.
(Shogun) --I suppose would be good.
(JR) But it also works--
(Shogun) But like--
(JR) --it works with the fatalism of GlitchFAQ where, when everybody's dead, what you do is bike stunts, y'know?
(Shogun) Yeah. (Laughs) Bike stunts. Like it--it works it sort of--
(JR) Hmm.
(Shogun) I can't really explain much about him. (Laughs) He was just a fuckin'--
(JR) Hmm.
(Shogun) --he was fun to design, he was fun to create and he's just a fun character all around. Like--
(JR) "Hey there kid, you wanna see a dead body?"
(Shogun) That literally is what he is; "hey kids, wanna see a dead body?" But, like, it works too because--no matter what happens--at the end he wins so he doesn't have to be, like, much of a threat anyways.
(JR) Hmm, he is--
(Shogun) He doesn't have to be ominous or spooky. He can be whatever the fuck he wants and what he wants to be is cool.
(JR) Yeah, 'cause, like, you can't stop death.
(Shogun) Yeah, you really can't. He wins no matter what and that's, I think--I think that's basically the crux of his entire character.
(JR) Hmm.
(Shogun) He's already won so he's just having a laugh now.
(JR) Yeah, if, I mean--either--either it's a total party wipe or they breed the frog and he gets a whole new universe of people to die.
(Shogun) Yeah, like, he gets his--he gets to do his job where he gets further job security.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(Shogun) Like, really, he wins.
shogun11[]
(JR) So I didn't actually think about the fact that he only shows up in human-only sessions at first when I suggested he visit LoMaT, the Land of Mists and Trails. So it'll be interesting figuring out exactly why he's also the--the Grim Reaper of lamias and not just humans.
shogun3[]
(Shogun) Ah, would be interesting. I think, just from pouring from out of my fuckin' head here, if I would just do somethi--if I was something to do with the amount of death there, y'know?
(JR) Hmm. Hmm. Right.
(Shogun) Like, this is how some--how some of the lands seem so focused around death as a concept.
(JR) Well that's so--
(Shogun) It would definitely...
(JR laughs) Well--also, I mean y'know, spoilers--but the lamia are, y'know, in with some timelines, the death of everything.
(Shogun) Okay, yeah, no there's--that's no fucking wonder he's there then.
(JR laughs) I'm glad we figured that out.
(Shogun) He's just there to see what the fuck's causing it.
(JR sighs contentedly)
(Shogun) He's the Sans of LoMaS.
(JR) Gonna have a bad time.
(Shogun) Fucking--I can't even do the first words of Megalovania--
(JR) No.
(Shogun) --we'd get copyright strike.
(JR) Ohh, naw, actually--if I remember right--we have, like, three Sans' of LoMaT, don't we?
(Shogun) God, yeah, we do.
(JR's laughs crawl on your back)
(Shogun joins her) Oh fuck. Toby Fox please.
(JR) There are too many blue-eyed skeletons in that game. Alright--
(Shogun) Whenever you're making skeletons--whenever you're making skeletons of any kind, like today at least, there has--there is gonna be like a Sans or Papyrus reference.
(JR) Hmm.
shogun8[]
(JR) Alright, so the last question I had for you--and this is one the caretakers have been bugging me to ask--what's up with prince Steven?
(Shogun) Alright, so I'm not even gonna try and act ominous here.
(JR laughs)
(Shogun) Whenever I started playing wiggler sim I had--I--I c--I found this beautiful fuchsia child called prince Steven and I thought, "god, I can't get enough of this man." So I manually edited my save to have several thousand copies of him.
(JR laughs, the sequel)
(Shogun) I then continued to fuck with the HTML. Like inspect element shit, just to fuck about.
(JR) Hmm.
(Shogun) And then--whenever I discovered, "hey, time-hole exists,"--I started, like, creating--just putting Stevens in the time-hole and seeing how far I could get with it. And then you elected to give me--like how we described--the keys to the car.
(JR scores a laughter hat trick)
(Shogun) And I sort of went fucking rampant with it.
(JR) I Wasted you, it's true.
(Shogun laughs) Yeah, prince Steven's a fucking hero.
(JR does a mini-laugh) And at this point there's a whole bunch of different castes about him.
shogun0[]
(JR) Now I know you've made some art implying that having a prince Steven in every timeline is key to something and I'm sure that's off-the-cuff bullshit but you wanna bullshit some more about it?
shogun4[]
(Shogun) Uh, yeah. I sor--it sort of, like, okay. So you know the way whenever you're, um--if you're, like, sewing something, alright?
(JR) Mmhmm?
(Shogun) It's sort of like--the prince Steven just sort of like the needle on the thread and they go through everything and when you pull it, it all comes together.
(JR) Hmm.
(Shogun) You just gotta, fuck--like every--the point at which every Steven exists is sort of a continual line for every timeline.
(JR) Excellent.
(Shogun) There's--that's really all there is to it. It's just a consistent, single fact. I don't know what the fuck's gonna happen with it, I don't know what the fuck the point of having that consistent single line is but it's there and if someone wants to do something with it, they can, I guess.
(JR) I mean that sounds valid to me.
shogun6[]
(JR) Well, thank you for this interview.
(Shogun) Ah, it's no trouble. So when do I get out of the attic again?
(JR finds the concept of Shogun leaving the attic laughable)
(JR) Well supposedly I was in the attic for a month until--until the thirteenth, or was that when it started? The point is, I got out of the attic so what are you doing in the attic?
(Shogun) I don't know.
(They laugh, as bewildered as I am)
(JR) Well at least you're not having to try to run Sburbsim anymore. I don't--I don't think--I don't think, uh... I don't think your character enjoyed that very much.
(Shogun laughs) No. That was--that was a fucking wild month, I'm not even gonna lie.
(JR) Mmmmmm.
(Shogun) Least I got something out of it.
(JR) Mmmm. Ahh, yes. Alright, I'm gonna stop recording.
(Shogun) Alright.
smokey[]
(Spoken by JR) JR here with a PSA. The big bad Smokey has a known exploitable weak point, um, basically if he has anything that could cause a forest fire he'll self-destruct. I know, it seems pretty obvious given how b-blindly he destroys those who can cause forest fires. You wouldn't have thought that exploit would work. Um, the most common way to get firey objects in his inventory is to let him kill you. I'm not recommending that but maybe reverse pickpocketing. Um, there's a particular, uh, carapace--kinda short, one of the Dersites, uh, generally goes by the initials CD--he can probably help you get stuff into his inventory. I'd recommend that. Good luck; be safe.
smokeyEternal[]
(Spoken by TG) Okay everybody, tableGuardian here. I wanna talk about something I discovered when working through the sim's code recently. You probably all know Smokey, the mean old bear that shows up if you carry around anything that burns or if you drop some sick fires. One of Smokey's characteristic traits is going around every land in the session--and as well as Prospit and Derse--and making the inhabitants say, "only you can prevent forest fires." Y'know, as a meme or something. What I bet you didn't know is that this meme is eternal. Yes, the fact that only you can prevent forest fires is a fact that permeates every form of universal hard reset, like scratches and the use of the Yellow Yard. If Smokey tells someone that only they can prevent forest fires, they will remember this forever. But what I was wondering was how exactly does Smokey make people remember this? Well, (???, JI? J and I) were looking at a few bugs related to Yards and scratches and, while we were doing that, I decided to dig a little deeper. Just my look, one of the first sessions I found had both Smokey and a scratch available. Smokey had two specific targets before the scratch: the dragons in the Land of Bloodlines and Consequence and the wolves in the Land of Trees and Heists. Now, going into this investigation I thought that the, "only you can prevent forest fires," meme was a product of the land but--seing as post-scratch players do not have the same lands as their pre-scratch counterparts--something else had to be going on. Post-scratch, even in the absence of Smokey, there are now not two but three lands where the consorts told their heroes that only they could prevent forest fires. How could that be? Well, JR told me to check the consorts. What did I find? All three lands in this post-scratch session where, "only you can prevent forest fires," was a meme, were inhabited by dragons--just like the Land of Bloodlines and Consequence. So there you have it: Smokey's memes exist across universal hard-resets. As long as we don't ask anyone if only they can prevent forest fires, we shouldn't have any problems with violating causality.
(He ends off with a chuckle that tells me he does not want to prevent forest fires)
so_fucking_meta[]
(Spoken by JR) Oh my fucking god! You guys, I feel so smug! So here I am, I'm sitting here and I'm getting ready to do the most boring thing possible that still is kinda fun, right? I wanna convert LoRaS from Javascript to Dart. I wanna do this so I can make LoRaS 2, which will be filled with more gigglesnort and all the images will be modern stuff from the fandom. Things about the time-hole, things about wiggler sim, like stuff that didn't even exist when LoRaS originally existed, right? And what I wanna do--how I start out is, well, let's just make sure, like, I've copied everything over--let's make sure it still runs. So let's run the original Javascript. Except, I forgot to rip out some of the Dart I put in. It never occurred to me that, of course, Dart and Javascript can run on the same page. I don't need to convert it--I just need to hack my own shitty past-selves' land code. Do you realise how meta that is? So perfect. It is absolutely ideal. So instead of doing the boring, restrained thing I'm just gonna fuck with shit and hope it doesn't crash.
so_fucking_smug[]
(Spoken by JR) (Gasps) I figured it out. Okay. It turns out I can do my original vision even while hacking LoRaS 2. Okay? All I need to do is--past me was so bad at coding, they completely exposed, like, all the images right straight in the dom and once it's in the dom you can get at it anywhere. So, because it's not kept in memory or not in that kind of memory, I can just grab it. So. So, so, so, so, so. What I need to do is grab the ID for image0 and then replace it with whatever's supposed to be there based on the passphrase. Oh? Did you not know passphrases are involved in LoRaS 2? You have to understand there is a reason it's in the audiologs.
songs_to_code_by_jrs_lament_cipah[]
(Plays the song of the same name.)
space[]
(Spoken by JR) Space is super boring. Never really heard it called anything else. It and Time are pretty stable. There's frogs. (Sighs) Umm... I mean what more can I say? It's frogs. It's creation, universes, beginnings. (Sighs) I dunno, it's Space. Uhhh... oh, Space players normally have a pretty good working relationship with their denizen, that's something. They tend to get helped by whoever the knight is, if the session has a knight. They--they're land is always the Land of x and Frogs. It's always frogs, I don't know why. I don't know why the game tries to censor it; it's always frogs. It's never not been frogs. (Sighs) Space is boring.
Splinters_of_Royalty[]
(Plays the song of the same name)
svg[]
(Plays a short piano tune. This sounds familiar, somehow???)
tableGuardian1[]
(JR) So, let's talk about the set of tables that led to you becoming a wrangler.
(TG chuckles a little and I finally understand his name)
(JR) What, heh, what went into creating all those alchemy combo trades?
(TG) So, um, I actually learned how to use Google Sheets in my physics class--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(TG) --which is the strangest place to learn how to use Google Sheets. Um, but how I kinda did that--went about doing that--was... well, first of all, that table is only combinations of (???). A combo trait can be, like, three or four traits so there's a lot more potential. I just went with one and one for, like, a combo trait of two--
(JR) Hmm.
(TG) --because that was the easiest to represent (???). Um, when making that, I had the most fun making the music traits because I just got to, like, think of genres of music that would go with the combo traits. So, like, music in explosive would be, like, blast beat 'cause it has the word blast in it.
(JR) Right.
(TG) Um--
(JR) Which is funny because--
(TG) --yeah, that was my favourite part.
(JR) --because the most recent Smiths have been complaining about the music traits.
(TG) Yeah. (Laughs)
tableGuardian2[]
(TG) Maybe they're not as evident as I thought they were.
(JR) Well, no, I think--I think that makes them iconic.
(TG) True.
(JR) So, do you have any--anything besides the music traits you're particularly, like, stand out to you as being good alchemy traits you're proud of?
(TG) Uhh, I haven't looked at the table in a very long time. I know I made a lot for the metal and the stone. Like, the first kind of basic traits--
(JR) Hmm.
(TG) --those I--I put a lot into that. Um, other than that, I don't really know. Cuz it's--it's been such a long time since I've looked at it. I should've--
(JR) Haha, mood.
(TG) I mean there's still a lot of empty spots in there 'cause I just didn't know what to put but I feel like--
(JR) I feel like Smiths are already hard enough to get as it is.
(TG) Yeah.
tableGuardian3[]
(TG) Exactly, like I don't want to make it any harder on the Smiths. Like, I haven't crunched the numbers to find out how many possible traits--
(JR) Hmm.
(TG) Like, if I filled out that entire table there would be no more Smiths.
(JR laughs, her sadistic puzzler tendencies showing) Yup. I think my favourite are probably, like, the three kinds of irony you added. I thought that was, uh, an interesting puzzle twist.
(TG) Hmm.
(JR) Is it gonna be shitty and cool--
(TG) (???, I thought it was you were behind that?)
(JR) Hmm.
tableGuardian4[]
(JR) Alright, so let's move on.
(TG) Alright.
(JR) Lately your work has been focusing on updating Sburbsim's classpecting system using the AI engine. You'd already worked with it once; you'd created the base carapace AI system with it. What can we look forward to with the new classpect system?
(TG) So, I've talked a little bit about how, I suppose, how, um, classes give sidequests.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(TG) Sidequests give pluck tokens, aspects give powers and to use a power you need a pluck token.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(TG) Um, but there's a little more depth to that in that certain powers, in order to use them, you don't just need a pluck token--you also need a certain stat to be high enough.
tableGuardian5[]
(TG) So I think with combat and, like, offensive powers that attack other people you need to have your, like--I think it's your free will--high enough.
(JR) Hmm.
(TG) And there are certain classes that, when you do their side quests, they increase your free will. So, like, Princes--being destroyers and all that--they have side quests that increase your free will.
(JR) Mmm.
(TG) So the result is that Princes will be more likely to use their aspect's, like, combat-offensive powers.
(JR) Hmm.
(TG) And the end result is that, since (???, none of the?) uh, aspects have offensive (???, powers?), you get certain class and aspect combinations that are better or more powerful than others. And so I'm really looking forward to, like, seeing how the Sburbsim meta is shaped. Like, "oh, be a Prince of Heart because, like, you can instantly kill someone with the Unsoul ability."
(JR giggles--but doesn't snort)
(TG) Things like that.
(JR) It'll be interesting to see how balance works.
tableGuardian6[]
(TG) Oh yeah
(JR) Absolute worse case if it's hard to balance we can--we can spin it off to be its own timeline.
(TG) True.
(JR) Ideally we'd find a way to keep that--that sort of thirty percent win rate, that eighty--eighty percent survival rate kinda deal going.
tableGuardian6b[]
(TG) Yeah, I've been looking at AB--
(JR) Hmm.
(TG) --'cause that was my first thing that I was interested in. Like, as soon as the update hit I was like, "alright, what's AB (???)," and it seems to be no different than it was before--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(TG) --maybe it's a little bit slower 'cause there's more (???) but one of the things that I did, not really related to the uhhh... I was really interested, this is why I did it,--
(JR) Okay.
(TG) --um, for sessions, to see if the side quests made them, like, harder.
(JR) Right.
(TG) It did a little bit but when I was looking into, like, Lords of Breath I found something super--
tableGuardian7[]
(JR) Alright, so let's--let's move on to the final question, you ready?
(TG) Alright, I'm ready.
(JR) Alright. I've got to say that the Obscure Game is just that--obscure. You've left a few hints here and there for the fandom but overall it's felt most strongly by the places it isn't showing up. Is there anything you'd like to say about it here?
(TG) So I'll say a big reason why I don't talk about the Obscure Game a lot is 'cause it's always undergoing changes.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(TG) It has changed so much, from like, from when I first came up with it to now.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(TG) And I don't wanna, like, say something one day and then the next day be like, "oh, I thought that was a bad idea so I'm changing it completely." Like, I've teased a few things. Like, I know a long time ago I posted an image of--uh, what was it?
(JR) The disc?
(TG) I think I called it at the time a Seraphim?
(JR) Hmm.
(TG) It was like an angel thing.
(JR) Yeah.
(TG) Umm, those are still in but they've changed a lot since I posted that image. So, like, I'm very careful with what I say. If I say something I want it to be something I'm set in stone is going to be in the Obscure Game.
(JR) Contr--
(TG) And then as for the game itself, um, I wo--I'm just saying this here--even though it's Sburb but with things changed a little bit--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(TG) --I don't think, whatever form it takes in the future, is just going to be Sburbsim with the names changed.
(JR) Hmmmmmmm.
(TG) It's most likely going to be something completely different.
(JR) Well, I'm looking forward to seeing whatever final form it takes.
(TG) Yeah.
(JR) I find it ironic, though--I'm the opposite. I'll just spout out whatever then change it and claim it was a different timeline.
(TG and JR laugh--unsure whether this laugh was in a different timeline)
(JR) Alright, thank you for joining me here today, TG.
(TG) Alright, you're welcome.
there_will_be_consequences[]
(Spoken by JR) Hey there. As a Mind player, I just wanted to sort of ramble a little bit. Get my head straight about, well, consequences. I know, you've probably heard me talk, just, unending about consequences and I get it. I'm just a Waste, I'm not a full Mind player, but the code really does bring up all of these weird meta-textual bullshit--it makes you think, is my point and, aspect powers or not, it makes me think about what consequences mean and I've thought of this metaphor of a bookshelf, okay? There are three actions that say you can take to the bookshelf. Let's say you can trip and fall face first into it, you can shove it a little bit--y'know, lightly, like you're trying to wiggle it--or you can just fucking wail on it. Like, try your damndest to knock it over, okay? These are three actions you can take towards the bookshelf and then there's three results that can happen, okay? The bookshelf can fall over completely, spilling all of its contents and breakning them; the bookshelf can wiggle slightly or the bookshelf can do absolutely nothing in the face of whatever you did to it. And consequences, actions, the effect you have on the external world matters... it matters only to the degree that you took an action, okay? So if you try to shove as hard as you can at that bookshelf--if you wail on it, if you try deliberately to destroy it--and it just sits there and laughs at you, you're still a dick. It doesn't matter how strong that bookshelf was and, similarly, if you trip and fall face first into it and it turns out the bookshelf was unstable and wobbly and maybe on the verge of collapse anyway and you're, y'know, g... toss it over it... you're only to blame for being clumsy. You're not a dick you're clumsy, you're careless, and if you're just gonna poke it, like jiggle it, to see if it's okay and it falls over you're only to blame for the jiggle. Like--like the consequences of your actions are multiplied by--by your actions and... I mean, I'm hoping the metaphor's really obvious here but I'm talking about people. Emotional stability. It really sucks when you didn't mean to hurt somebody and they're devastated but it doesn't make you a bad person, okay? And saying somebody shouldn't be hurt or saying they aren't hurt when you were a huge, flaming douchebag to them? People are talking about Mind as if it's all external stuff--as if it's all the means justify the ends or the ends justify the means, whatever. I... it is and it isn't, okay? Your actions matter but the consequences of your actions have to be filtered through what your actions were. I'm not saying necessarily intent because how can you view the intent of other people, but like really view it--how can you know? Intent is something that lives inside you. It's core, it's heart, it's thread it's, y'know, that aspect--the pink one. It's... it's that. I don't give a shit about that and I don't... what's inside you only matters in as much as it makes you do something. Y'know, your heart tells you to shove that bookshelf but, if your heart tells you to do it and you don't, that's what I'm gonna look at. I don't care how hard you have to struggle with it, I don't care how close you came to doing it, you're only a bad person if you do it. What's inside of you only matters if it makes you do things, like... like, I don't even know. (Sighs) I guess I'll be done for now. Just be nice to yourself, yeah?
time[]
(Spoken by JR) Okay, so Time is the coolest aspect. It's also the shittiest. My apologies to any Time players that--really sorry if you happen to be Time--but if you're not a Time player and especially if you're a Mind player, Time is so useful. Like, who wouldn't wanna be able to just be like "you know what? Nah, we need--we need a different timeline. This one sucks." Um, obviously there's gonna be some cost to that: you're going to kill everyone you know. That's just--that's the cost of time travel but that's why I make sure I only encourage Time players to do weird shit when everybody's already dead. So it works out. Um, Time players generally are already in the session, even if they don't realise they are. There's usually a fuck ton of them running around at any given time. If they're good enough to handle, um, stable loops--and even me saying that is a hurtful stereotype; you can't be good at time, that's not how it works. Either you always were going to have had have made a stable loop or you weren't. Okay? It's not the Time player's fault. The point is, either you're running around in a stable loop--in which case you're going to be playing the game, like, thirteen times longer than any other player--or you get the privilege of seeing lots of your dead alt-selves. So that's a thing. So that's a thing. Uh, that's--that's one of the reasons why it sucks to be a Time player because either you have to play longer or you get to see all your corpses. But I am just so positive about them as an aspect because they really let me clean things up. Like, you show up to a session, everybody's on fire like, their corpses, everybody's dead--even the Time player--and you show up and the Time player's there scratching his head going "hey, why's everybody dead and I'm dead too?" and you go "hey, let's fix this." And that's, like, just such a good feeling. Like, it's already so fucked up I can't make it worse. I mean even then--even then I'm super careful. I make sure it's not me making the choices so the Waste curse doesn't even get in. In conclusion, Time players are super cool and if you have a Time player in your session, y'know, ask permission first but give them a hug. Like, they--they probably need it. Ask 'em--I mean you don't have to hit on them pale-ways, if that's your culture, but, y'know, offer--offer a shoulder if they need it. I'm out.
Timehole[]
(Spoken by JR) If I were gonna put money down, and... I'm in no privileged position, I don't know any more than you do. If I were gonna put money down, I would say that weird Timehole in WigglerSim, probably came ahead of that Time player from that, that weird fucking session with the Grace of Rage. I mean, it's a weird thing, both of them? Make sense? Who knows.
tin[]
(Spoken by JR) JR here. Just wanted to really drive home the point that tin is not aluminum. I'm gonna repeat that, okay? Tin is not aluminum.
Vargrant[]
(Plays song of the same name)
Vethrfolnir[]
(Plays song of the same name)
Verthfolnir_Podcast[]
(Computerized Voice) Verthfolnir.
(Spoken by MI) My name is manicInsomniac and I am going to be talking about two things. First: how to kill a dragon and second off: the importance of saving your work. Now, the problem with this song was that, when I first made it, I didn't know what it was for. I was given the outlines of what it needed to accomplish but not for what use it would be put. I made this back when I was on summer vacation. Between school, of course. Now, I had a different computer back then. Y'know, it was before the crash and all that. So, uh, y'know, I put it on that computer and back then I saved some of my work to Google Drive but not all of it. And I didn't save this one. A while later I got a new computer, y'know--the stars finally aligned, everything started working and I didn't have the song. It was still in use, of course, but it wasn't mine. And you know what happens when a song isn't yours, uh, yeah, I was able to get it, y'know. I appealed to our overlords. Uh, it's an interesting song. I was listening--watching a lot of Soul Eater when I made it, y'know, you don't have much else to do out here... Is anyone there? Anyone? Anyone at all? (Sounds of banging are heard)
victory[]
(Spoken by JR) Congratulations! You did it! You solved my bullshit riddles and puzzles and now we're here. Um, I understand you're probably upset. That's sometimes how it be. Um, you might not be a Rage player but you went the Rage path and kudos to you. You peeled back the veil of reality, you looked at the meta, you got really angry with me. Point is, I'm hoping this transmission will make--take the edge off just a little bit. There's a Discord--trans-timeline, the works--we can all talk. You understand now, right? You understand that it's very dangerous to fuck around in the code. We're just teaming up, looking at each other's stuff. Making sure, y'know, we--we help each other if something breaks, we come up with ideas for other puzzles to just sorta level us all up so that we--we have a safe sandbox to use our powers before we go back to Sburb, the game. Y'know? So, um, I know it's really frustrating and unsatisfying that it--it turned out this was the--the end, but that's because you were doing--you were doing this; (???) hacking reality. Sorry that we manipulated you. I really do appreciate you playing along, though. Anyway, join us, figure it out. We'll--we'll get it--we'll get it taken care of. We'll make it better, Paradox Space.
void[]
(Spoken by JR) Void, dark, absence--it's called a lot of different things in a lot of different sessions. It's about the things that don't matter, the things the plot forgot about, the things that are offscreen, the things that are easy to miss. This? (Laughs) This is Void. All of this, this entire thing, does it really matter for the plot? For what is in the spotlight? For what's important? So it makes you wonder: if LoMaT's the Void land is there a Light land? The opposite, the thing about the relevance, the thing about the spotlight, the thing about what matters. If so, what's that gonna look like? I'll be seein' ya there.
voidplayers[]
(Spoken by JR) Okay, so, here's a point. YN just mentioned to me about the association of Void players and fistkind. Do you get it? Do you see? Like, what if the domain was made by a Light player? 'Cause who hates the void more than those spotlight-hogging--okay, not all of them are, I'm not (Sighs) not all Light players, et cetera. My point is, okay: what if it's an anti-Light player website? I mean, sure, it's rapidly being filled with anti-echidna propaganda but that doesn't mean--I mean it's (???) problems, right? This is at least worth looking into. Let's see if they hate Void players, y'know? JR out.
Warning[]
(Spoken by JR) *Static Noises* ...Guys.*Silence, then a sigh* *Under her breath: Fuck.* I just noticed something, i need to touch base REAL quick. Um, you know how impulsive i am? You know how I try to (Some word i dont know) as best i can So all of reality doesnt crash around our ears? You know that? The alt me? The one that had a codable reality? *Laughing* T-They dont have any reason to Not be that impulsive. So... Just... This is half note for myself, half a warning for you guys. Just... Be careful. Sometimes I think that some things just wont add up quite right because alt me will change what they decide to do? Which is frustrating... uhhhhh... Kinda-Kinda um empathising with that thief of life, sometimes you see alt versions of yourself who never had to learn their lesson!! Alright... Alrightalrightalrightalright um... *Swallows* Well, be safe guys!! I'll be out.
Wasted[]
(Spoken by JR) JR here, the Waste of Mind. If you're hearing this, then congratulations! You're starting to become Wasted! Now, I know what you're thinking, brand new fledgling Waste. What even is a Waste? Boy, am I glad to tell you! Later. After you've solved more of my puzzles. Can't jump straight to the end now, can we? But, tell you what. I'll give you a little gift, just to keep you going till the next puzzle. By the time you finish all my puzzles, you'll understand everything. You'll even understand hopeless fancies. You'll definitely understand when trees aren't actually trees. And I promise, you'll understand the meaning behind fish robots. Good luck!
weird[]
(Spoken by JR) (Howling wind is heard throughout) Hey guys, JR here. Really I'm just sorta tryin' to touch base and be all like... So this fucker buys the domain using my hard-earned grist I took from KR, right, and they're not doing anything with it. That's weird.
what_is_farragnarok[]
(Spoken by Roboloops) Hey there timehole gang! Fellow representatives. It's Roboloops here with an update. Uhh, what is Farragnarok? I've been making headway on that question. Uh, so, it's a session of the game--y'know, the game; the big one, the obscure one. It's a--a special session, okay--a weird one. Broken, glitched, mutated. The universe isn't... right. It's not a frog, it's an echidna. That doesn't mean a lot--that doesn't mean much to some of you, but know that that's bad, okay? So, there's this tree--the world tree, Yggdrasil, fucking Norse or something, I can't fucking pronounce it--but it's the world tree, connects the nine realms of Norse mythology. Uhh, and that same idea--there's this tree in the session that connects all their planets. It's like the very fundamental nature of their universe; it's a tree.
So they've got one big tree, and then there's things that look like more trees but they aren't. There are no trees on LoMaT. I have never been more sure of something in my entire life. There are no trees on LoMaT. The things that look like trees on LoMaT are the goddamn roots of the world tree, cuz the tree is fucking flipped upside-down. Not only did they mutate their universe--not only did they get it to be an echidna instead of a frog--somehow they also fucking flipped the world tree upside-down. So it's like there's two mistakes in one. It's terrifying. I have no idea what it means, but its where the corruption is coming from. The--the--the treebabs, Krysal keeps calling them--I think she knows more than me. I think it's where the timehole came from, I'm sure of it--the Time player from that session must've made the timeole, they must be sending their grubs back in time through it instead of on the meteors ectobiologically like you're supposed to, you know like in that one session? Oh my god. And I keep on getting these recordings--these fucking recordings--from JR. The one who--the one who coded it, who coded that, who coded this--who coded our universe! Which is a lot more than I--I don't have time to get into that right now. But let me tell you, it's... Terrifying! I don't get! Why do you waste your denizen? How--how do you waste your denizen? Why? Why do you do that?
(Various audiologs by JR can be heard in the background in the latter part of the log, namely BetterThanExpected and Wasted.)
whoshogunactuallyis[]
(Spoken by JR) Alright, so, I just figured out what the actual answer is to WhoIsShogun. Are you ready? Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around--desert you. Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye.
wis[]
(Spoken by JR) Who is Shogun? I don't recommend... this isn't like the other ones. You might not wanna try to solve it and, if you get stuck, you might not want to try to push forward. You should do it in a team, definitely. Um, despite the rumours, it does not in fact attract any big bads to your sessions. It's okay to work on it. It's safe. If anyone finds out different let us know, I'll start warning people, but it seems safe. Um, there's a lot of gnosis in there. A lot. More than LoRaS. Think about what isn't on the screen and then you can focus on what is. You get past this challenge... (Sighs) that might be your final--your final task before you become part of the problem and not part of the solution, I guess you could say. Good luck, I'll see you there.
wolfcop[]
(Spoken by JR) As a series of strange and violent events begin to occur, an alcoholic policeman realises that he has been turned into a werewolf as part of a larger plan. (Laughs) Broonloops recommended this to me and I'm sitting here and I'm wondering, well, first of all: what kind of fucking keikaku. Oh no, his name is Lou Garou! The policeman's name is Lou Garou! Oh dude, an eccentric businessman with evil intentions seduces Woodhaven's residents and a hockey team? Shit, man, I am sold here. How did they know my fetishes so thoroughly? God, his name is Lou Garou. You can't make this shit up--except I guess it's fiction so... Yeah, okay, you win Broonloops. You win.
yearnfulNode1[]
(YN) You know--I would get a dog, right?
(JR) Mmhmm.
(YN) And I would get somebody who would just listen to me.
(JR laughs)
(YN) These people that don't know anything about Homestuck--they're just standing in there praying for my moral safety.
(JR) Hmmm.
(YN) And I'd ramble a bit while I just sorta--like, every single type of way to go through it.
(JR laughs 2: electric boogaloo)
(YN) And I believe, like, I did it for, like--I invested in it for, like--for, like a week of sleep--like, no sleep.
(JR) Oh my god.
yearnfulNode2[]
(YN) I would wake up maybe at around nine and I'd--I remember, like, the last ones I got to do before I just gave up. Uh, I was waking up at three in the morning.
(JR) Oh gosh. So what--what were those last ones towards the end that gave you the most trouble?
yearnfulNode3[]
(JR) Ahh, mood.
(YN) So it had led to this crazy fucking rabbit hole of, like, trawling the whole fucking website for any kind of hint.
(JR chortles)
(YN) And, of course, we--we all know what happened after.
(JR) Yes, yes--that will live in infamy.
(JR laughs again) Alright, alright. Before--before either of us become tempted to spoil that particular, uh, easter egg, let's talk about your runes. You've brought alo--a strong Norse flair to the entirety of Farragnarok, which is hilarious because we started making it Norse before you were even--y'know, before you even showed up. So, can you talk a little bit about your rune-related puzzles--especially the ones in the April ARG--and the process you went through choosing the signs of the Farragnarok cast?
yearnfulNode4[]
(YN) Right, so while I was going through the rune-related puzzles--which, to be honest, were as much of a puzzle as you'd expect it to be. It was not, uh--
(JR laughs)
(YN) --what I would go (???) is, um, for most of the parts I would--for (???, Seth?) I would go with very rough translations because I found very early on that people would get lost if I did it, like, directly. Because a lot of things in Norse don't have direct translations, right?
(JR) Right, right.
(YN) So I would have to find ways to make these as phonetically sound as possible--
(JR) Hmm.
(YN) --and that confused a lot of people for a while.
(JR is tickled by their floundering for meaning)
(YN) I don't know what people were thinking about, like, the first one but I remember very specifically thought it was a name--
(JR) Oh no.
(YN) --and that was, like, a whole thing for five minutes.
(JR love when you struggle at puzzles and she shows this by laughing at this point in the conversation)
(YN) Uh, for the Farragnarok cast, um, usually what I did is that--of course, the older proto-Norse runes which, uh, historically, ironically enough, are not Viking runes--
yearnfulNode5[]
(JR laughs)
(YN) So it would just, at the point in time--y'know, considering the aliens haven't wiped all already and we've somehow become the master computer race--uh, compu--uh, what I mean is that runes tend to be very metaphysical and--
(JR) Hmm.
(YN) --I made sure what I would do is (???, bias?) in while I was assigning each of the runes.
(JR) Mmmhmm.
(YN) I would look at whatever sounded the closest to what we had in the beginning--
(JR) Mmmhmm.
(YN) --and, based on that, I would assign them runes.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(YN) So, I believe we were working with aspects for a while so we'd just take an aspect and I'd be like "alright, this sounds like this rune, this sounds like that rune--"
yearnfulNode6[]
(YN) --and then, as the characters starting developing themselves, we starting changing them a little bit.
(JR) Mmmhmm. Hagala--
(YN) So what was--
(JR) --in particular, changed aspect entirely.
(YN) Yeah (???) some people were just changing aspects entirely. It was, y'know, it was crazy. Things just keep happening. Things keep happening.
(JR) I'm pretty sure that our blueblood was just literally the horse rune though.
(YN) It was literally the horse rune. I believe that was Eihwaz, yeah.
(JR) Mmhmm. Horses all the way down.
(YN) It was ju--it was just a horse. Uh, the horse rune.
(JR laughs)
(YN) Eh, as you do.
(JR) I mean--
(YN) A really interesting one--and I'm just gonna just leave it there without explaining too much about it--
(JR) Mmhm.
(YN) --is the rustblood's transition. We went from Isaz, which is ice,--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(YN) --to Raidho, which is travel.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(YN) Or, more directly, wagon.
(JR does that kinda evil laugh that machiavellian types do quietly to themselves)
yearnfulNode7[]
(JR) Gosh, I wonder--I wonder.
(YN) I wonder.
(JR laughs) I wonder which (???) is associated with wagons.
(YN joins her) I wonder. Ah.
(JR) Alright, alright, alright. So the last question I have for you--okay, obviously I'm a huge fan of your Farrago Fiction-themed shitposts--can you--can you walk me through a little bit what goes into making, say, Shogun has a gun?
(YN) Um, the thing about these videos--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(YN) --is that they require a lot of persistence.
(JR) Yeah.
(YN) Because here--here's the sec--the well-kept YN secret: I have maybe five different animatics that I've started and never completed.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(YN) Some are almost done but, because of circumstances, I scrapped.
(JR) Yeah.
(YN) Some I started and I just gave up halfway through and... What usually goes behind them--first I'll find an audio piece want to use, right?
(JR) Mmm.
(YN) Uh, it'll either--I'll find it on the web or it'll come in a prophetic vision to me.
(JR laughs)
(YN) Uhh.
yearnfulNode8[]
(YN) When I get that I just tend to go directly to photoshop--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(YN) --and I'll start making a basic movement outline.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(YN) So I'll always start, really quick, scrambling all of the panels in so that I'll at least, like--if I stop doing it, I'll be able to go back and just keep working from where I started.
(JR) Hmm, makes sense.
(YN) So after I have the outline I just start, y'know, I start detailing and I start putting (???) as they should and then I g--I usually work with, uh, Premier or After Effects and I go there--
(JR) Hmm.
(YN) --and that's where you see a lot more of the quote-unquote animation part of it; it's all still images, it's mostly that I work with--
yearnfulNode9[]
(JR) Makes sense.
(YN) So that's just sticking it together and then it just goes out into the wild.
(JR) Hmm. Well, that was--that was a very interesting look behind the veil. So we've got about a minute left--is there anything you'd like to make sure we get to?
yearnfulNode10[]
(YN) Uhh, this is really funny. Uhh, one of them was, uhh, what's the name? It was--I'm gonna go look up the page, hold on.
(JR does an exhale-through-the-nose laugh) Oh, we're getting the deep YN lore.
(YN) Dare I say people may get egg spoilers from this.
(JR) Eh, they'll survive.
(YN) Egg spoilers are very--(Laughs) they'll survive. Uhh, okay.
(JR) Okay.
(YN) What would you do with all the egg spoilers? Alright, I think I got it. Come on. Alright, gigglesnort, alright, got it. So, the ones that caused me the most trouble--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(YN) --were, uhh, the one about the bullet hell sim.
(JR) Oh yeah, which I forgot I even made.
(YN) Yes--and the maid. And what's really funny about both of these--
(JR) Mmhmm.
(YN) --is that I was always right there and you're finding them in retrospective.
(JR) Hmm.
(YN) But I either kept typoing or I kept missing the most obvious response.
(They laugh)
yearnfulNode11[]
(YN) 'Cause that's what you do sometimes, right?
(JR) Mmmhmm.
(YN) You do things and then you forget about them. It is a very grea--it's a good way to make things--just do things and don't ever do them again ever.
(JR laughs)
(YN) So. (Laughs) Uh, for audio files, what I'll do is--first of all there's cleanup.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(YN) So, I'll of course--I'm gonna just say it, like, if it's--if it's a (???). I use, uh, Audition but--
(JR) Hmm.
(YN) --you can pretty much use Audacity either way.
(JR) Mmhmm.
(YN) It's all very connected. Um, obviously noise reduction is the first thing that goes first. You grab, uh, noise print and you just take it over into noise reduction and it just wipes the whole fuckin' background sound out.
(JR) Mmm.
(YN) Like, there are some things I can't fix and--such as I have to, like, find ways to fix it. Like grabbing different vocals from different areas and pasting them there--
(JR) Hmm.
(YN) --can kinda help and--
yearnfulNode12[]
(JR) We're just gonna have to find a way to get JR onto a bird-themed planet at some point.
(YN) Yeah, we need--we need that bird planet--it is very important.
yearnfulNode13[]
(YN) So, I do that right?
(JR) Mmmhmm.
(YN) And then I proceed to go to work on his audio and then the usual preset I use is AM Radio.
(JR) Ah.
(YN) And that's going to be an FFT filter which is a fourier filter is a transformation filter.
(JR) Hmm!
(YN) I believe in Audacity it's called the same thing.
(JR) Hm.
(YN) I'm gonna check it really quick and uhhhh, yep, it's still the FFT filter in Audacity. It's a fourier transition.
(JR) Hmmhmm.
(YN) Uh, that's gonna help with getting the part of the audio that make it sound more like a cassette tape.
(JR) Hmm.
(YN) And then I'll work with EQ, which is equalisation,--
(JR) Hmm!
(YN) --and with that I'm gonna very slowly, y'know, tone down some parts of the audio.
(JR) Hmm, make it sound better.
(YN) Make it sound better--and then I'll just mix it together and that's what you hear at the end.
(JR) Hm! That makes a lot of sense! Well, I think we've hit about our time so thank you for joining me today.
(YN) Yeah, it was a pleasure.
yearnfulNode14[]
(YN) Is there anything I'd like to make sure we get to? Uhhhh, shhhhh... Well--clearly, at this point--I--I feel like I'd be doing a disservice if I didn't talk a little bit about all the fucking audio files that's gonna--that's--that's--the production that goes on behind the scenes--
(JR) Yes!
(YN) --a little bit.
(JR) Do it.
(YN) Because I feel like I was going to talk about it I kinda just forgot to be--
Yggdrasil[]
(Spoken by JR) So obviously, one of the (points? planks?) we have against Hussie, one of the places we can change something without changing it... I mean, is a solar system really vital for all of reality? Of course not! I mean, back in the day they just had a massive tree connecting different realms. That's good enough for us.
Zawhei[]
(Spoken by JR) Let me show you Zawhei; Bacama, that is.
zombievirus[]
(Spoken by YN) Okay, adventurer's log number six or something. Old Earth, yadda yadda yadda, I think you've caught up by now. I think I've cracked the code. That's right. Ladies, gentlemen, gentlethem--I've figured out what's going on; I've figured out what's happened to the old Earth. Or at least I think I've--no, no, no, I am completely sure I've cracked it, hold on. Okay so we see--(Sounds of grunting and rummaging is heard)--here, or you can't see it but I can. You being future me or past me or someone else, I'm open. Y'know, okay, trees. Trees are big, trees are life. There is no life without trees. There's trees somewhere but not here. So there's no life on Earth, but there is life on Earth--y'know, the birds. But maybe, maybe, they aren't alive. You see it, right? Alive and dead. Alive but supposed to be dead, like cockroaches and zombies. Zombies... maybe. So it's bird zombies. Zombies spread--spread viruses, spread the whole zombies virus. Zombies virus kills the humans. There's a virus and it's spreading and it hasn't stopped--or maybe it has stopped because all the humans are dead. But if they were dead, y'know, first of all I'd be dead because I'd catch the zombie virus. And, second of all, you'd expect to see a lot more skeletons, right? You couldn't just die and disappear--that's not how bones work. I know how bones work. Y'know, I've looked around the graves and I've done some grave-digging and I've yet to see skeletons. Skeletons--skeletons in the closet. That means secrets! There's a conspiracy! So clearly what--the answer to what happened to the old Earth is... Actually, no, scratch that. I'm not so sure myself, okay? Uhh, this is a mess. What the hell have I been trying to prove? Okay, I'm gonna take some time to try this again; I think I got too heated in the moment. Alright.