Hoofstuck

[Violet CLM]

Thoughts:

• If reading Homestuck is necessary, I'm doing something wrong, because the characters themselves certainly haven't read it. Sure, if you've read Homestuck, you may be curious that the frog temple has carvings other than code, but those seven panels (panels is the word I needed there; thank you mad speculator!) should have been obviously noteworthy regardless. That said, having read Homestuck means that certain things will make sense before they get explained (e.g. "Princess Rarity"), and some things will be more obviously noteworthy than they would otherwise (e.g. those eleven rectangles at the bottom of her dream portrait or whatever it is, or Fluttershy's MURDER MODE background if you want to take that as foreshadowing and not just a joke.) But we're almost certain to get at least the basics of the SBALE interface demonstrated visually. Heck, maybe you'll even decide to challenge me to assign meaning to the parts of the interface that Andrew never even showed getting used. *asks for trouble.* That said, I could certainly go back and add some more explanation to some of the earlier fetch modus/sylladex pages, if people feel that the inventory stuff is totally nonsensical without the prior background.
  
  On the other hand, as JapaneseTeeth said, I reference Homestuck in various ways that will simply make more sense if you've read it. "OH PSYCHE," for example, is a reference to the second(?) act of Homestuck, when we stop following a character who's already been introduced in order to introduce a third character. Here it was used somewhat in reverse, but it's still the same sort of thing and there's something horribly amusing about Lyra looking miserable. Or, heck, just Lyra in general. Similarly, certain lines will be quoted/paraphrased from Homestuck, e.g. Fluttershy captchaloguing Angel takes directly from the main character of Homestuck captchaloguing a salamander, and the black-and-white panels are references to an adventure preceding Homestuck as well as references to the ponyshrug image meme. I do this because Homestuck does it to itself.
  
  So yeah, it shouldn't be necessary if all goes well, but it'd help in recognizing things are foreshadowing, and it will explain certain things at greater length than I will because I do assume that many people have read Homestuck and spending too much time explaining something totally familiar to them seems a bad idea. There'll be more depth there, at least for certain subjects, is I guess what I'm saying. But let me know if, in avoiding depth, I end up leaving out what's actually necessary.
  
• "I'm completely ignorant of most of what's going on and how this all works so please correct any stupidity on my part. I thought that Violet will choose whatever action they think is best for the story. So it's best to try as many things as possible and see what interesting stuff pops out of Violet's head."
  
  It's a mix of what's best for the story and what people seem most attached to. Like, I had no real story-reason for going to the spa, but lots of people wanted to, and I felt bad about how scripted the flashback was in general, so we did that! And it ended up working out and was unintentionally incredibly symbolic, on two counts:
  
  • It broke the twelve frogs into two very convenient numbers: five, which comes up a couple times in the carvings, and seven, which is the main number associated with frog temples in general. (You'll notice there are seven lilypads leading across the bog to its entrance; the same holds true in Homestuck.)
  • The spa is run by two ponies, Aloe and Lotus. We only saw Lotus. Then we went into a frog temple with two time capsules, only one of which had a blooming lotus blossom. I can only wish that I had planned that. Trust me that whenever we see the blossom of the other one, it'll have been blue instead of pink.
  
  
  On the other hand, yes, sometimes I'll definitely go with something just because it's going to be useful.
  
  In this particular case, spamming different ideas could have been kind of destructive because in theory it looks like there are seven main possibilities for things to do next. If you behaved exactly like a random number generator, they'd just all end up getting suggested two or three times and that wouldn't help much. In reality, some things were more favored than others, and also there was an eighth possibility that got suggested, namely:
  
• Rarity deploying a cruxtruder: this is pretty popular, so I should explain why I don't think it's about to happen. Three reasons.
  • Rarity is not guaranteed to know how important cruxtruders are.
  • Even if she does, perhaps especially if she does, that would be an incredibly dick move on her part and it's not the sort of thing that should be done offscreen without at least getting to hear her motivation. It'd possibly be good for the plot, but horrible for her character.
  • Twilight is going to get some research done here, and a cruxtruder suddenly appearing behind her would shift her priorities tremendously.

Right! That's a lot of text and there've been more replies since I started. Update-not-featuring-Rarity-being-a-dick to come later.

Forgot to mention, I also really like the fanon involving pegasi and floating furniture, and the idea that the wagon has to "think" it's rolling! That has to be the most perfect proposition for the properties of passive pegasus prestidigitation I've heard yet.

Thanks! Pegasus magic is kind of ridiculous all round, so it's fun to play with. It's only getting worse in later episodes, too, as Rainbow Dash is able to create clouds just by flying and other flying animals can sit on top of clouds. In truth, shoving in the HUB logo was done mainly because I couldn't for the life of me find a good image of the entirety of the canon temple elevator, so I had to make something up, but the change might well end up becoming meaningful later on.

ETA: And then there was an entire page of discussion and suggestions. What have I gotten myself into.

[Donut64]

At first I had no idea what "Homestuck" was, then googled it, then realized I knew exactly what it was but got uninterested in it because it is like 150000 pages long and there is no frakking way I am going to read all of it.

This, however, I read.

Even if she does, perhaps especially if she does, that would be an incredibly dick move on her part and it's not the sort of thing that should be done offscreen without at least getting to hear her motivation. It'd possibly be for the plot, but horrible for her character.

But Rarity is a dick! Howabout >Rarity deploys something she (twilight) *thinks* is the Cruxtruder, which turns out to be very helpful to Twilight?

[Aranfan]

>Rarity: Have seen herself deploy the Cruxtruder in the clouds of Skaia, not realize that Twilight thinks it sets off the end of the world.

[Iyestorm]

I was about to say "Oh good, that means we can rediscover the joy of Sburb from a fresh perspective instead of skipping through it as though it's something everybody's seen before." I'm still going to say it and stand by it, but I'd forgotten that "Rarity is not guaranteed to know how important cruxtruders are." For all she knows, it's something completely unneccessary to the game and might even make them lose, which is something she definitely wants to avoid.

In taking joy in the lack of knowledge they all have, I forgot about the lack of knowledge they all have that I don't have. I am disappoint in me.

Well, even so, I was aiming for them to talk about it first so TS could *prevent* Rarity from deploying said Cruxtruder, maybe seeing how friendship specibi worked in the process.

>Rarity: Watch TS watching AJ&RD. Watch TS experiment. She's been doing her research, so anything she does is likely to be safe enough.

>Rarity: If you feel like it, speak with TS about whatever's on your mind. You'll agree to to avoid any Cruxtruders if it can be helped, but... Equestria isn't the only world at stake here--even if you can't really prove that. Maybe Twilight doesn't need to know that, but it *is* important to you that you play this game. Well, it's important to more than you--if it was just you, you'd have set the game down as soon as Twilight said that it could destroy the world. But now you're weighing the certain destruction of one world against the possible destruction of your own. Possibly.

...wait, Rarity wasn't in voice mode for that, was she? I just realized that. Technically Twilight's message hasn't reached her yet.

>Rarity: Twilight seemed to be engrossed in that book a lot, didn't she? Sure, it's Twilight and a book, but sometimes didn't it seem like it wasn't just a research tome? If nothing else, be a little curious about the book.

[KingTwelveSixteen]

I have thought up some further theory stuff regarding God-tier Celestia and Luna.

The first Cutie Marks appeared when they reached God-tier to show off their special powers. The marks appeared directly on them because Ponies don't normally wear clothes but the game still needed to show their fancy symbols to be symbolic and show their new God-tier-ness (fancy wavy hair is the pony version of the awesome hats that the God-tier kids get). They thought the marks were so cool that they included them for EVERYPONY in their new world. And thus, Cutie marks were born.

[pageturner1988]

Wow thanks for all the fantastic explanations that you've all written. Violet's thoughts were a particularly good read. I went through a bit of the beginning of Homestuck, up to the deluge of stuff shooting out of his captchalogue onto the lawn and into the wall. People said the first part of the story was slow and made them lose their interest, but seeing John stumble around while readers/suggesters are trying to figure out what commands work and how the writer gets their commands to flow into the story has actually been entertaining. I am a bit worried about going too far though, since I've really enjoyed these WTF moments, like with Princess Rarity and MURDERshy (awesomely hilarious), and actually being as confused about the game interface as everypony in the story. Of course, from all the creative elements I've seen already, I trust Violet isn't doing a one-to-one crossover and there will still be loads of surprises along the way. Whatever I choose, I'm excited to see where this story goes. I didn't think it would draw me in within the span of a single day like it did.

[kd7sov]

Ohmygoodness ohmygoodness.

WHAT IF

Angel was in the other time capsule? Maybe he wasn't the only thing in there, but it gives him plausible reason to be in the frog temple without being a First Guardian.

[Armok]

This is promising to become one of the deepest SBurb ventures ever.

[JapaneseTeeth]

@Pageturner: hoofstuck has already deviated quite a bit from Homestuck's plot already, so there's almost certainly no one-to-one correlation plotwise.

Also more suggestions (even though it's probably a bit late):

>Rainbow Dash: Captchalogue Applejack

>Rainbow Dash: Captchalogue Sburb Console

[banjo2E]

>Pinkie Pie/Lyra: Find out who just shouted "OH PSYCHE"

(Lyra's idea is really interesting: A character who knows what canon should be relative to the current setup, and *probably* isn't crazy like Pinkie? Hell yes.)

>Twilight: Deploy punch card and flask.

[ninelivesstealer]

>TS: Explore Atheneum.

[williamcll]

Aaaand my hypothesis is correct, mlp indeed brought in more mspa readers

[It Was A ...]

Fun. I'm looking forward to this. (And good stuff so far.)

TS: Ponder the Select, Revise, and Deploy Icons. Are they supposed to be stylized hooves?

[Triangle Man]

Aaaand my hypothesis is correct, mlp indeed brought in more mspa readers

My response to this possibility is to offer a healthy glass of 'What The Hell Just Happened Here'?

Eh, the more the merrier, I suppose.

[williamcll]

Aaaand my hypothesis is correct, mlp indeed brought in more mspa readers

My response to this possibility is to offer a healthy glass of 'What The Hell Just Happened Here'?

Eh, the more the merrier, I suppose.

off course

[Violet CLM]

>TS: Explore Atheneum.

The Atheneum appears to be quite empty! That was easy. You make a note on your MENTAL NOTELIST to at some point create a PHYSICAL CHECKLIST so that you can check off exploring the Atheneum.

>TS: Ponder the Select, Revise, and Deploy Icons. Are they supposed to be stylized hooves?

You don't think so. They look more like pink silhouettes of Sugarcube Corner, Pinkie's workplace. Going by the name, you would think that pink bales of hay would be more appropriate, but you must admit that bales of hay do not have especially distinctive shapes. You're not quite sure why Sugarcube Corner is divided into several pieces in each of the icons, but there's probably some bizarre reason for it.

Speaking of those icons, you think you'll try deploying something, so that you have a better understanding of how deployment works in order to avoid doing it with the wrong thing. (The wrong thing is the cruxtruder.) From what you remember of "Lodestar," you need to open the Phernalia Registry in order to deploy anything...

>TS: Check out registry.

The Phernalia Registry, unlike the barren Atheneum, is populated with three items, all of which you recall reading about in "Lodestar": a CRUXTRUDER, a TOTEM LATHE, and an ALCHEMITER. Arbitrarily, you decide to deploy the alchemiter.

Calling the device an "alchemiter," and the entire process in which it is involved "alchemy," rubs you the wrong way, but you're not sure what to do about that. Your old classmate Moondancer recently published a very cohesive work, part literature review and part field research, denouncing the idea of alchemy entirely. She researched or visited unicorns from practically every part of Equestria, as well as some other magic-using species, such as zebras, and was unable to find any evidence that alchemy has in fact ever been practiced.

And yet, you know only too well that there are phenomena that lie even outside the range of conventional magic. You mean this as no slight to Moondancer, who is an excellent scholar; you mean only that Pinkie Pie has defied explanation since the day you first met her. You don't know how her Pinkie Sense works, but she did force you to admit that it does, and maybe this will turn out the same way. And possibly, if you study this "SBALE" enough, you may even be able to understand how she does the things she does?

...that's kind of a worrisome prospect, actually.

===>

You deploy the alchemiter. Unlike the bland-looking icon in the phernalia registry, the real thing seems to be tied to Rainbow Dash's color scheme. Curious!

[gingerale]

SCIENCE TIME!

> TS: Try using an apple with the alchemiter

[forkinyoureye]

>R Say that, while awesome, that alchemiter is nothing compared to you.

friggin' emoticons
you know what I mean

[Biosheep]

TS: Try to figure out what you can do with the alchemiter.

[mrfatcat]

...is anybody else laughing at Dash's face while Applejack is pointing at the bucket with suggestive eyes?

[NeonProdigy]

...is anybody else laughing at Dash's face while Applejack is pointing at the bucket with suggestive eyes?

I wasn't until you pointed it out.

Man, the people from Equestria Daily will definitely not get that one...

> Rainbow Dash: Is that Alchemiter cool enough for you?

[Donut64]

>TS: Ask Rainbow Dash to step on the Alchemiter's platform (through the SBALE).

[OnBackorder]

The alchemitizer is fairly useless without the Totem Lathe, and that won't work without the Cruxtruder

> TS: Produce several generic objects.

> TS: Check Griest Cache.

> Rainbow: Deploy Apple Jack's Alchemitizer to show her how lame her's looks by comparison.

> Apple Jack: Buck trees, get apples.

[It Was A ...]

TS: Worry that deploying anything was a mistake. Worry you might have taken the first (or second) step in dooming Equestria. Check on Spike and make sure he stays close.

Spike: Twilight has not had anything fall on her head yet. I'm afraid this running gag depends on you.

Spike: Thanks.

[gingerale]

The alchemitizer is fairly useless without the Totem Lathe, and that won't work without the Cruxtruder

But did Twilight read that part from the book yet? Science is more fun when you get to experiment!

Or what the heck,

> TS: Deploy Totem Lathe and get experimenting!