IDE/Theory Thread 23: The choicest of theories that money can buy

[Primal Zed]

Yup. I thought Davesprite/AR colors were slightly different from Dirk/Dave colors (respectively), but I guess I was wrong.
http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Colors

[Sir Screwloose]

All I'm gleaning from the color change is that Davesprite's on his way out the door.

Pretty sure the color change s so that we can tell which lines are Dirk's and which are the Auto's

Exactly. What I'm saying is Jaspers is also a failed paradox clone of Mutie. See where I'm going with this?

Ectobiology mobius double reacharound, huh? I like it!

[SubIgnition]

Shoosh! Your obvious explanation is disrupting my reading way too far into things!

[DenizenShipper]

His organization system...

How does it work???

[NullEntropy]

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His organization system...

How does it work???

It's inscrutable to everyone but him.

[bloodyEmissary]

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His organization system...

How does it work???

It's Complete Bullshit.

[thephilluminati]

I'm just wondering what the hottest theories down here are about how all these mysterious items ended up with the kids across timelines (Lil' Cal, mutie, the bunnies, etc...) Meteor duplication seems to be the term brought up the most often, but it's just not convoluted enough and way to convoluted to work believably. I'm not sure how popular the theory is that all the adult "guardian" versions of everybody across the scratch are the same characters all grown up, but I feel like that theory would explain a lot especially here. Remember Mom Roxy back in act 4 brought all those items together with dad and not dead grandpa jake so that they could leave on the meteors with the kids.

I dunno, guardians all did a bunch of mysterious things in the medium back in act 4.

[deathsbuddy]

Does Dirk even have a Denizen??

[The Mather1]

IDE: Complete Bullshit counts as a browser and is going to make for the sorriest excuse of a denizen ever.
By which of course I mean he's going to look like the icon and surrender the moment he sees Dirk.

[Sir Screwloose]

@Philluminati: Your idea doesn't work. We saw a glimpse of Nanna and Grandpa's childhood, and it definitely doesn't match Jane and Jake's.
Also, you just said the meteor dublication is too convoluted AND not convoluted enough? Huh?

[unbeliever536]

He's saying that meteor duplication is like Hussie Ms Paint, from this chart:

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It has been remarked many times that the chart is totally wrong.

[The Almighty 404]

Right click-Properties-Change icon IDE/Theory: Delirious Biznasty is actually Bro's browser, but he changed the icon and the name to fit better with his theme.

[unbeliever536]

IDE: Dirk's browser is actually one of the horses.

[thephilluminati]

@Philluminati: Your idea doesn't work. We saw a glimpse of Nanna and Grandpa's childhood, and it definitely doesn't match Jane and Jake's.
Also, you just said the meteor dublication is too convoluted AND not convoluted enough? Huh?

We got a glimpse into their childhood, but obviously not the whole story. I'm just saying all of the guardians back in act 4 did some mysterious bullshit that we're only now seeing the consequences of. We still don't even know how grandpa ended up in the medium in the first place, much less what he was actually doing there, and if we don't find out in act 6 it's either an important piece of how it all ties together, or never (and knowing hussie it's not gonna be never). At the very least, meteor duplication seems to undermine one of the most awesome twists in act 4 - that all of John's friends had gotten him the exact same bunny for his birthday through time shenanigans. Meteor duplication especially is too convoluted in how much shit you need to make up in a story that's already made up enough things to get it to work. I really can't imagine the comic going in any direction but that being the exact same bunny twisted through the fabric of spacetime to make sure john has the best 13th birthday ever.

A lot of this also depends on the nature of this glitch lord english causes in sessions, which Doc Scratch left frustratingly vague to the point where we don't even know if that's what we're dealing with now. but there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence against everybody still being themselves other than jane and jake's childhood with sassacre and betty crocker.

[gimmethegepgun]

IDE: Dirk's browser is actually the fancysanta.

Better? You be the judge!

[The Mather1]

We got a glimpse into their childhood, but obviously not the whole story. I'm just saying all of the guardians back in act 4 did some mysterious bullshit that we're only now seeing the consequences of. We still don't even know how grandpa ended up in the medium in the first place, much less what he was actually doing there, and if we don't find out in act 6 it's either an important piece of how it all ties together, or never (and knowing hussie it's not gonna be never). At the very least, meteor duplication seems to undermine one of the most awesome twists in act 4 - that all of John's friends had gotten him the exact same bunny for his birthday through time shenanigans. Meteor duplication especially is too convoluted in how much shit you need to make up in a story that's already made up enough things to get it to work. I really can't imagine the comic going in any direction but that being the exact same bunny twisted through the fabric of spacetime to make sure john has the best 13th birthday ever.

A lot of this also depends on the nature of this glitch lord english causes in sessions, which Doc Scratch left frustratingly vague to the point where we don't even know if that's what we're dealing with now. but there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence against everybody still being themselves other than jane and jake's childhood with sassacre and betty crocker.

The glitch that was Lord English calling card was that the pre-scratch troll players were not born in their own session, when they then Scratched their session they summoned Doc Scratch as the first guardian of the reset universe.

I suggest you read the comic again if you had really forgotten that.


As for the rest of that, that's where Occam's razor comes in. Sure, it is possible to twist everything into the right sort of clusterfuck where Dirk and Roxy manage to force their way into the Beta universe as their own guardians' guardians, but it's about as far fetched as the "theory" that IRL, there only exists a single person, and upon death that person is reborn and sent to another time, eventually ending with that person having been every person in history.

[Unclever title]

At the very least, meteor duplication seems to undermine one of the most awesome twists in act 4 - that all of John's friends had gotten him the exact same bunny for his birthday through time shenanigans.

How is this undermined? That all still happened, and it was amazing. John still had the best 13th birthday ever (until his Dad died). Meteor Duplication doesn't negate that being a thing. If you're disappointed that Meteor Duplication means that the same thing won't happen again with Jane... well why should it happen again anyway? I mean it's not like there HAS to be a callback to a thing which was already a callback to other things. This could easily be one of the many differences between the universes pre and post scratch, and a potential major plot point to boot.

Meteor duplication especially is too convoluted in how much shit you need to make up in a story that's already made up enough things to get it to work. I really can't imagine the comic going in any direction but that being the exact same bunny twisted through the fabric of spacetime to make sure john has the best 13th birthday ever.

Meteor duplication only requires making up ONE thing. That ONE thing being that in the event of a scratch player meteors from a session on one side of the scratch get sent to both. They also get swapped, but we already knew this from the discussion of how the ancestors became heroes and the heroes ancestors in Scratch's Ancestor discussion. And it's TREMENDOUSLY LESS convoluted than the "exact same bunny twisted through the fabric of space-time to make sure john has the best 13th birthday ever" do I need to quote the diagram again?

A lot of this also depends on the nature of this glitch lord english causes in sessions, which Doc Scratch left frustratingly vague to the point where we don't even know if that's what we're dealing with now.

Yeah it does depend on that. What we know of the glitch is that in one universe/session the troll heroes of that session were not spawned by it, and that is the glitch that is a calling card for Lord English. That's for certain, Scratch confirmed it. (Too tired to go link hunting)

Meteor Duplication offers one explanation for that, that is indeed what it was originally made to explain, and then later applied to IDEs in the human post-scratch session.

but there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence against everybody still being themselves other than jane and jake's childhood with sassacre and betty crocker.

Likewise there's not a lot of evidence for it. I think the evidence fits MD better.

Too tired for this. Imma go bed.

[thephilluminati]

Okay, sure, what the glitch is is pretty clear, especially now that we have the guardian swap, but let's go over Doc Scratch's wording.

Though they could not recognize it for the bad omen it was, this session was not the one in which they had been spawned. Such is the symptom of a subtle glitch affecting certain sessions, an error designed to trigger an unfathomable cascade of misfortune throughout paradox space. This glitch is the calling card of the one I serve. It is the discreet, gentlemanly manner in which he reserves his place in a universe for later visitation.

If we look at his wording, it actually applies more to the current group of kids, since we already saw John's ectobiology session. But there's a LOT we don't know here - we don't know how often a scratch is usual procedure in a Sburb session and what its purpose is, and whether it's implicitly always related to Doc Scratch and Lord English. Andrew writes Doc Scratch obviously with a ton of attention to his specific wording, since what Doc Scratch is talking about and what he's choosing to say are often pretty different things even though he never strictly lies. I guess my theory is more that its simpler narratively for the answers to lie in the vagueries of stuff that hasn't been fully explained (the scratch, sburb, a lot of act 3 and 4) than in something new like meteor duplication. Also, the two theories might not be totally exclusive! I think it's obvious at this point that Jaspers' unfortunate stint as Frigglish was pretty important for GCat's eventual creation within Sburb, and roxy has both ectobiology equipment and apparently an appearifier/transmaterializer.
Actually, thinking back on it, Mom pretty much performed John's whole first ectobiology experiment herself. She cleared the way to the lab for Maplehoof/John, she made sure all the "meteor items" (asides from the bunnies) were in the room, and presumably she also set the coordinates that the screens themselves were locked on to perform the actual cloning - after all, everything was pretty much in there ready to go when john got there and both mom at Skaia labs and roxy as a hacker femme fatale presumably know more about ectobiology than him. Considering we know at least Grandpa was the source of the money and sburb code from the ruins, and Mom presumably produced and distributed it, obviously these all currently dead characters had some motives and prior knowledge we're not aware of (and we still don't know where in Granpda life his time in the medium falls). I guess I want to know from people who think meteor duplication is a thing - how exactly does that happen? Meteors with kids on them aren't amoebas, and while there's a number of devices that could do something similar in comic, I'm not really sure how it would end up happening.
I guess more relevantly than meteor duplication, does anybody have any theories about the guardians weird shit they do in act 3 and 4?

In closing, I personally admit a lot of my theory comes from the tear i get in my eye from this little pesterchum exchange which makes me 100% convinced that Roxy and Dirk need to be Bro and Mom:

TT: For what it's worth, I'm picturing them now. A boy and a girl.
TT: Two perfect little freaks of nature raised by people who've clearly got no business bringin' up anybody.

i love arguing on the internet

[gimmethegepgun]

The reason the pre-Scratch Troll session was a glitch was because they did not have an event that led to their own ectobiologizing unless they Scratched.
The post-Scratch Humanverse is NOT under this glitch, as they were spawned pre-Scratch.

[ardentApathy]

longpost

To the first part of the post, I just want to point out that the Condesce's presence on post-Scratch Earth makes it quite clear that Lord English is getting involved in that universe. I've also outlined a feasible means for him to travel to post-Scratch Earth without bothering with the formal summoning process (here), so maybe the glitch isn't present, if him being summoned is a precondition/postcondition of the glitch.

I will say that I like the "Alpha kids and guardians are the same" theory, but meteor duplication fits too well. And I don't see where you're getting that the bunny in the post-Scratch universe is a different bunny? I thought it was clear that it was the bunny from the Beta universe, just from later on in the bunny's timeline. Appearifiers and all that.

I guess I want to know from people who think meteor duplication is a thing - how exactly does that happen? Meteors with kids on them aren't amoebas, and while there's a number of devices that could do something similar in comic, I'm not really sure how it would end up happening.

Ok, my response to this just became WAY too fucking long, so I'm spoilering it for everyone's convenience.

REAL TL;DR - Meteor duplication creates two different meteors in the same sense that flipping a coin creates two different coins.

There, that's much better. Read the spoiler if you want my reasoning.

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I think what's happening here is that the meteors are, in essence, being sent to the same place - Earth, or more generally, our universe. We all treat the Alpha and Beta universes as separate and distinct, and for most intents and purposes they are; however, the mechanics of the Scratch state that they reset the universe to an indeterminate point in the past. What this means is that, prior to that point, they are exactly the same universe - but does resetting the universe from that point also create an entirely new universe? I say no - that would defeat the purpose of Sburb, breeding Bilious Slick and all that. Players could conceivably Scratch their sessions over and over again, and the game would stagnate forever. So they must still be the same universe, even after the reset. They're just different timelines branching from an unknown point in the past. But there can only be ONE Alpha timeline, which is, of course, the Alpha universe (this is probably why it was originally named that, and not because they're playing Sburb Alpha like I originally thought). Immediately after the Scratch, the Beta universe became a Doomed timeline, and I think it's no coincidence that it was destroyed in the very same flash in which the Scratch occurred - I think this is what's called circumstantial simultaneity, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that the "duplicates" are really just one meteor, getting sent to the same universe, and indeed to the same time - they're just getting sent to both branches of the timeline, the Alpha and the doomed Beta! Much as a coin, when flipped, becomes two separate coins in two separate timelines, one heads, one tails, the meteor becomes two separate meteors in two separate timelines, except in meteor duplication, "heads" and "tails" correspond to "kid" and "guardian". Of course, they're still technically the same coin/meteor, just in different states based on which branch of the timeline they are in. As to why the kids and guardians are in different places, that's explained by the other defined mechanic of the Scratch - the kids and guardians trade places, and not just in role. Literally, all that changes is their places: which meteor they're riding on when they go through the portal. All the Scratch does, as far as swapping roles is concerned, is it puts the kids on their guardians' meteors, and vice versa. From this, I'm willing to bet that Roxy's meteor wiped out all marine life in a lake, John was raised by Betty Crocker and Colonel Sassacre who was killed by Jade's meteor, and so on.

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TL;DR - Meteor "duplication" isn't really duplication at all, but a logical extension of the effects of the Scratch. From the definition provided in-comic, the Alpha and Beta universes are one in the same, merely different branching timelines - one Alpha, one Doomed (Beta). Meteor duplication simply states that the meteors always go to the same place and time - in BOTH timelines. The kid swapping is purely a mechanic of the Scratch, by which the kids and guardians trade meteors when they go through the portal.
***

To be honest, meteor duplication never really made sense to me until I typed it all out like that, but now it almost seems... elegant. I'll probably come back to your question about the guardians in Acts 3 and 4, I just need to take a break from IDE/Theorizing.



EDIT: Made a clarification in the second-to-last paragraph about the kid swapping. Gels better with the whole "the meteors always go to the same place and time" bit.

EDIT x2: Added a TL;DR that sums up my take on meteor duplication nicely.

EDIT x3: OK THIS IS THE LAST EDIT FOR NOW I SWEAR. I just want to note that, from this theory, the Scratch does three things, and three things ONLY. Everything else simply follows from these three things:
1) It changes some unknown event in the universe's past, spawning two timelines. The original, now doomed timeline is eliminated by the mysterious workings of paradox space, as are all doomed timelines. In the example we've seen, the Genesis Frog containing our universe was killed by Bec Noir, who has been described as the cancer within that very same Frog. This will also most likely wipe out the Alpha timeline universe, but not for another 411 years by Earth's reckoning. It seems from this that sessions that are destined to be Scratched are also likely to be spawned from a Genesis Frog with cancer, or more accurately, that a universe with cancer is more likely to spawn Scratched sessions. Thinking about it, the troll's universe was also killed by Jack Noir (aka Spades Slick), so perhaps their progenitor had cancer as well.
(And before anyone says anything, everything past that first sentence was aftereffects of the Scratch, caused by that single changed event, based upon what we know about the nature of paradox space and Sburb, namely how they deal with doomed timelines)
2) It changes which meteor each baby is riding upon when they pass through the portal to Earth. Remember that, since the Alpha and Beta universes are really just different branches of the same universe, each meteor is just going to the same point on both branches.
3) It erases the Scratched session from existence. This is likely where most of the energy of the Scratch goes to, as the other two effects are relatively minor.

Really, only the first two effects are relevant to meteor duplication theory.

Just one more thing, in case you think I'm talking out my ass:

I guess my theory is more that its simpler narratively for the answers to lie in the vagueries of stuff that hasn't been fully explained (the scratch, sburb, a lot of act 3 and 4) than in something new like meteor duplication.

I basically just explained meteor duplication using ONLY things we already know about the Scratch, Sburb, and paradox space. QED, bitches.

i love arguing on the internet

I hate arguing, but I LOVE theorizing.

[Vanymstorm]

Exactly. What I'm saying is Jaspers is also a failed paradox clone of Mutie. See where I'm going with this?

Well GCat is probably cloned from one of them, and as a first guardian he logically has to have "a unique, circuitous origin through the knots of paradox space." I'd say that works.

edit:
Theory: GCat was cloned from both of them. For no good reason.

[ardentApathy]

Well GCat is probably cloned from one of them, and as a first guardian he logically has to have "a unique, circuitous origin through the knots of paradox space." I'd say that works.

Ooh, I forgot about that! But then what about Halley? He needs a mobius double reacharound origin too, by that logic.

Also, I'm glad I don't have to keep editing that goddamn behemoth anymore, and can post this on a separate post:

One slight flaw I noticed with my take on meteor duplication: If the meteors that carry the heroes carry over to both timelines, then surely every other meteor should as well. It's the kids on the meteors that are affected by the Scratch, not the meteors themselves. But we know for a fact that the Alpha session will have a Reckoning, unless Nanna was lying when she said that White will always lose, without exception. So surely those meteors must also be bombarding both Alpha and Beta Earth. And that's just the kids' sessions! There are literally hundreds, perhaps THOUSANDS of sessions on the Skaianet terminal in the lab on Beta Earth, and at least some of them must have progressed far enough to create their own Incipispheres, all with their own Veil and their own Reckoning. If ALL these sessions were throwing meteors at both Earths, then surely there'd be no Earth left for the exiles! It's possible our heroes were the only kids to spawn an Incipisphere, but even then, there'd be close to twice as many meteors hitting both Earths (depending on when/if the Alpha session Reckoning stops).

One way to remedy this is to assume that Earth is much larger than Skaia, and so can withstand much more punishment (which is backed up by the scales of John, Jade, Prospit's Moon, and the Battlefield in [S] Descend, plus other sources I'm sure). That's probably the soundest answer, but it's also BOOOORING. SO LET'S IDE!

We know that certain features of the Incipisphere remain constant among sessions, namely the Battlefield, Skaia, Prospit, Derse, and the Veil. But what if not just the Veil is constant, but each meteor within the Veil? Of course, Andrew isn't going to copy every meteor exactly between sessions, but there's no reason to think there wouldn't be the same number of meteors in every session. So what I'm suggesting is that each meteor corresponds to another meteor in every session, much like every Skaia, Battlefield, Derse, and Prospit. Now, we're venturing firmly into speculation territory, but what if every defense portal is constant as well? And for every session spawned by a given universe, each meteor will always enter the same defense portal, and end up in the same place and time? IF that were the case, then meteor duplication theory would actually PREVENT meteors from duplicating! I think that alone makes this a great theory, although it's a bit too speculative to put into my original post.

[Sir Screwloose]

@ArdentApathy: slight hiccup in your theory: non-alpha timelines are cut off from communication with other universes. If the first earth session all took place in a doomed timeline, the trolls would have never been able to talk to them.

[simon.clarkstone]

No but what they're saying is that mathematics is above the physical world. It's a system of logic that does not have to correspond with reality at all. The relationship is the other way around i.e. reality has to follow mathematical laws.

Yes. That was what I meant. Universes can have different laws made from mathematics, but not different laws of mathematics. A related example is that curved-space geometries do not use a different pi, they use pi differently; pi is still four times that alternating sum of the odd reciprocals, but the formulas describing curved space use it differently than those describing flat space.

A Universe where the laws of mathematics are different make about as much sense as a colour where the order of the alphabet is different.

[Unclever title]

Thanks, AA, that's a much better way of explaining it. "Duplication" is really a misnomer.

@ArdentApathy: slight hiccup in your theory: non-alpha timelines are cut off from communication with other universes. If the first earth session all took place in a doomed timeline, the trolls would have never been able to talk to them.

I still don't think that's actually a rule. In the doomed timeline shown in [S] Dave: Accelerate, Rose and Dave just never heard from the trolls, why? Because there was no way that the trolls could contact them, not because they were in a doomed timeline but because they were in a different timeline than the one the trolls were already viewing. Trollian is designed to look at one timeline at a time. The trolls couldn't contact the kids at all until Dave contacted them (in reply to Terezi's future contact) and Sollux backtraced the signal. It's possible that Rose and Dave from the doomed timeline never bothered actually contacting the trolls, but simply took note of their apparent silence as victory for having screwed them over. Therefore having never been contacted from the doomed timeline the trolls never knew of its metatemporary existence. Trollian tries to keep time shit simple by not showing you what you don't need to see when you need not to see it.

Even if that is actually a rule IDE:

Then the trolls were able to talk with the kids up until the scratch, if Trollian can only connect alpha timelines then the kid's session and universe were indeed Alpha up until the scratch, then they became beta and had to be wiped, violently. Thus a scratch changes the alpha status of a universe and session pair to beta.