Questions and theories about the Ultimate self

[thorondraco]

I mean they were right though I was getting pretty 'my dad works at nintendo' there, pretty annoying and cringe, so I will shut up about that. Sorry ^^;

Anyway. I'd certainly LIKE for all this Ultimate Self stuff to end up more consistent. I doubt I will find it personally satisfying, but that's my own problem, not everyone else's.

That's fair i should have not snipped to begin with.

I definitely think it will but it might not be everyone's taste.

[Joyfulldreams]

Okay here's another genuine question I do have on this topic and I'm curious to y'alls thoughts on it.

If gaining power over the narration is part of the whole Ultimate Self ascension thing, what's the deal with Alt Callie? HAS she 'ascended'? Why does she need to possess Jade? And also, how does this fall in line with Caliborn and Doc Scratch's ability to take over the comic? Doc Scratch maybe makes a little more sense, but CALIBORN?

We can maybe presume that he only gains this ability after he god tiers, because he only starts doing that after he god tiers, and up until that point he is stuck merely talking to Hussie through the command station. But he still doesn't have Lord English powers or anything, and he certainly hasn't actually ascended towards any of this ultimate self bullshit has he? It could be related to him god tiering, but it might also just be because he found the command terminal in the calhead and THAT somehow gave him the ability? Or was he able to figure out how to take over the story with the command station?

WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS MEAN!

[BrobyDDark]

Okay here's another genuine question I do have on this topic and I'm curious to y'alls thoughts on it.

If gaining power over the narration is part of the whole Ultimate Self ascension thing, what's the deal with Alt Callie? HAS she 'ascended'? Why does she need to possess Jade? And also, how does this fall in line with Caliborn and Doc Scratch's ability to take over the comic? Doc Scratch maybe makes a little more sense, but CALIBORN?

We can maybe presume that he only gains this ability after he god tiers, because he only starts doing that after he god tiers, and up until that point he is stuck merely talking to Hussie through the command station. But he still doesn't have Lord English powers or anything, and he certainly hasn't actually ascended towards any of this ultimate self bullshit has he? It could be related to him god tiering, but it might also just be because he found the command terminal in the calhead and THAT somehow gave him the ability? Or was he able to figure out how to take over the story with the command station?

WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS MEAN!

I'm pretty sure the powers Lord English have are related to the Retcon JuJu. He is "already here" because he is capabld of going anywhere at any-point within the narrative.

[JakeMorph]

Okay here's another genuine question I do have on this topic and I'm curious to y'alls thoughts on it.

If gaining power over the narration is part of the whole Ultimate Self ascension thing, what's the deal with Alt Callie? HAS she 'ascended'? Why does she need to possess Jade? And also, how does this fall in line with Caliborn and Doc Scratch's ability to take over the comic? Doc Scratch maybe makes a little more sense, but CALIBORN?

in the Epilogues at least, the Dead Cherub's deal is that she became an essential working part of paradox space the moment she created/became the black hole that encompasses the Candy world. i think there's also something to be said about cherub biology, though, and the fact that for a cherub 'absorbing one's alternate selves' is literally part of their natural life cycle. iirc it was left unclear whether Calliope managed to predominate by killing Caliborn's dream self the same way he did to her, or whether she absorbed his essence through puberty in the way that is normal for cherubs.

i think it's safe to say Caliborn is that way Because Hussie Wanted Him To Be, considering all the interacting the two did, but it's also worth noting that even within the comic, Homestuck exists as a literal comic on the internet that is written by someone. it's not like Caliborn literally manages to control the story at large; he becomes a narrator during certain Acts and Intermissions because he is writing and narrating his own comic on the internet, Homosuck, which has been accessible from in-comic computers since the Intermission. and then there's the command stations, which you mentioned.

I'm pretty sure the powers Lord English have are related to the Retcon JuJu. He is "already here" because he is capabld of going anywhere at any-point within the narrative.

i'm pretty sure this is... provably untrue? the ultimate weapon Caliborn got from Yaldabaoth is stated to change form and function after Caliborn gets to use it the one time, and the one time Caliborn uses it is to absorb the four heroes and trap them in a chest for a bajillion years. Lord English is able to be 'already here' because he can time travel. if he were able to appear anywhere in the narrative upon his own whim, he wouldn't need to go through all the hoops and cueballs he needed to go through with Beforus and Doc Scratch to appear in a universe in the first place.

[rookie1978]

Okay here's another genuine question I do have on this topic and I'm curious to y'alls thoughts on it.

If gaining power over the narration is part of the whole Ultimate Self ascension thing, what's the deal with Alt Callie? HAS she 'ascended'? Why does she need to possess Jade? And also, how does this fall in line with Caliborn and Doc Scratch's ability to take over the comic? Doc Scratch maybe makes a little more sense, but CALIBORN?

We can maybe presume that he only gains this ability after he god tiers, because he only starts doing that after he god tiers, and up until that point he is stuck merely talking to Hussie through the command station. But he still doesn't have Lord English powers or anything, and he certainly hasn't actually ascended towards any of this ultimate self bullshit has he? It could be related to him god tiering, but it might also just be because he found the command terminal in the calhead and THAT somehow gave him the ability? Or was he able to figure out how to take over the story with the command station?

WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS MEAN!

None of it meant anything until the epilogue's canon discussion. Before, it was just fun meta stuff. We aren't looking back and thinking trickster mode hijacks the narrative because the site colors got changed, right?

[thorondraco]

Okay here's another genuine question I do have on this topic and I'm curious to y'alls thoughts on it.

If gaining power over the narration is part of the whole Ultimate Self ascension thing, what's the deal with Alt Callie? HAS she 'ascended'? Why does she need to possess Jade? And also, how does this fall in line with Caliborn and Doc Scratch's ability to take over the comic? Doc Scratch maybe makes a little more sense, but CALIBORN?

We can maybe presume that he only gains this ability after he god tiers, because he only starts doing that after he god tiers, and up until that point he is stuck merely talking to Hussie through the command station. But he still doesn't have Lord English powers or anything, and he certainly hasn't actually ascended towards any of this ultimate self bullshit has he? It could be related to him god tiering, but it might also just be because he found the command terminal in the calhead and THAT somehow gave him the ability? Or was he able to figure out how to take over the story with the command station?

WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS MEAN!

None of it meant anything until the epilogue's canon discussion. Before, it was just fun meta stuff. We aren't looking back and thinking trickster mode hijacks the narrative because the site colors got changed, right?

Love or hate the epilogues, in either the 'you don't like or not; way or the 'i hate it so much i want to fuck it' kinda way, the entire idea of the Ultimate self and all this really put a lot of past homestuck in a very different light once we learned ti can do narrative shit like this.

[burnt2ashleys]

I explained this to a handful of acquaintances some months ago. Turns out that a Philosophy teacher that has a master's degree teaches more!

So, Plato. Greek guy, thought a lot, wrote a bunch. He thought so hard that he theorized that everything that exists is an imperfect copy of some ideal original. Every single human is an imperfect copy of an ideal human counterpart hiding somewhere in this wacky abstract "World of Ideas", so on and so forth for every conceivable thing. Does that mean there's an ideal me out there? Technically? It's likely. However, that is not analogous to the Ultimate Self that Homestuck employs (nor is it your ultimate self, the best person you can be at any given moment). The Ultimate Self is a mechanic of possibly(?) SBURB wherein god-tier players who have succeeded and are growing into their roles as gods start to get merged with every other self that they inhabit, à la Rose from the Davesprite timeline being subsumed into the Alpha timeline Rose. Since it's every self, this explains why Dirk, for example, became "evil" when the phenomenon affected him, the amount of "good" Dirks out there was not as large as the amount of "evil" Dirks, so he averaged out at "evil".
Now, this would imply many things, including "Wouldn't this destroy the player?" / "Wouldn't this make an already-powerful god even more powerful?" / "Wouldn't this make them unpunishable by the clock?", to which I'd conjecture that this is for a greater manner of control over the variables (players) from Skaia. From the get-go, god-tiers are less a gift, and more a job. You can do anything you want! But if you step out of line to kill or die for something, you will be removed from the equation. Rebelling against Skaia (*ahem*) would earn you a Just death, and dying for someone or something else would earn you a Heroic death. Either way, lives whosoever gets by without really making an impact. You play your part, you get to live. Autonomy and dissent earn you naught but death. Add to this Skaia's most likely motivation, self-replication, and you get that the Ultimate Self is but one of many tools used by Skaia to control its variables in any given situation so as to continue existing and seeding copies of itself, ad infinitum. As to why this isn't addressed narratively, one can wager that it's because the narration changed hands to Dirk, someone who has already achieved his Ultimate Self and whose motivations are wholly in line with Skaia's (he wants to keep existing, he wants to keep "the story" going, and so he'll set out to create another SBURB session! How convenient for Skaia). The situation is grim if you take Rose's old self's perspective here.