Talk: Time shenanigans

Karkat's Memos

Uh...shouldn't we include something here about Karkat's memos? That seems pretty WTS-tacular to me.

Oh but why would we add that information to the article when we could add notes to the discussion page about how someone should add that information to the article? Majutsukai 01:28, September 2, 2010 (UTC)

If you want to put it somewhere I suggest Trollian. Please include a signature in the future. Loverdesang 07:17, September 2, 2010 (UTC)

It's already been added to the Trollian page in the past. I added a single sentence about it to the Trolls section of this article as well. Figure we don't need more than that. Majutsukai 14:04, September 2, 2010 (UTC)

Ironic

I don't think the fact that a giant clock didn't have anything to do with weird time shit is ironic at all and that caption really annoys me.

A lot of people don't really understand irony but I'm pretty sure that's not it.

But I wanted to ask someone first before making an account just to make one change that I would probably get shouted at for. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.105.165.159 (talk)

Dave's journals

Okay,did anyone notice that Dave noticing that the journals were stolen, then traveling back in time to stop the Draconian Dignitary and getting killed,and noticing chronologically before he went back in time that he had already tried that and therefore not going back in time in the first place should have caused a time paradox? 67.165.31.75 11:45, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

That's how doomed timelines work, there is nothing new in that, that's also how we got Davesprite and an army of Aradiabot duplicates.

Dave was never supposed to confront DD, so when there was nothing stopping him from confronting him a doomed timeline split off from the alpha timeline, journal!Dave travelled back in time causing the doomed timeline to cease existing and got killed by DD which prompted alpha!Dave to not confront DD and thus maintain the integrity of the alpha timeline. Like I said, there was thing new about it, time has always worked that way in Homestuck. The Light6 (talk) 13:56, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

What's actually interesting about this event on the Alpha timeline is that, for the first time, we never saw the Dave in the "future" actually travel back in time to become journal!Dave, and it gives us a clear definition of how doomed timelines work. At some point between Rose burning the MEOW book and Dave chilling with Davesprite, Dave changed offscreen out of the Four Aces Suited into the Red Plush Puppet Tux, then traveled back in time to become journal!Dave and died. Because Alpha Dave then walked in on journal!Dave's corpse, the originating timeline of that corpse got doomed and stopped being the Alpha (because Alpha Dave was no longer going to perform the actions that led to the creation of journal!Dave), so his death didn't matter - it just added the Dave Corpse as matter to the Medium in the Alpha Timeline (which Dave foolishly tossed into the lava, instead of doing what I would have done: looting the corpse and shredding its equipment with a Gristwidget, and/or at least Captchaloguing journal!Dave, and proceeding to perform punch-card foolishness with the corpse!)

But anyway, being Alpha Dave (or any Alpha Time Player I guess?) is kind of like being a walking Auto-Save mechanic for the Alpha Timeline, while the process of becoming a Doomed Time Player is like soft-resetting and then loading from the Auto-Save. tachyonTrajectory (talk) 21:06, June 1, 2013 (UTC)

Davesprite is different in being caused by an inaction (from Dave's perspective) and not an action. 68.82.245.157 20:19, June 1, 2013 (UTC)

It's a bit more like Davesprite was just a Doomed Dave that stopped being a Time player by getting prototyped to become a Sprite, instead of dying the normal way. The Alpha Timeline then recovered from the Auto-Save when Alpha Dave heard Davesprite's advice; Alpha Dave still made a decision to avert the doomed timeline Davesprite was from, so it all pans out.

I'm not sure what you mean by "different", since none of the doomed Aradias became doomed due to the action of the Alpha Aradia, either. tachyonTrajectory (talk) 21:06, June 1, 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I was probably being stupid. 68.82.245.157 20:30, September 10, 2013 (UTC)

Time shenanigans?

I'm just wondering why we changed the name from "Weird Time Shit". I thought it was rather elegant. Aepokk Venset 01:27, December 19, 2012 (UTC)

To cut down on excessive cussing, possibly?EDIT: Vulgarity has a tendancy to repel editors. Per Ankh ED 01:38, December 19, 2012 (UTC)

Right, I forgot some people are bothered by that. I mean A) this is a wiki for HOMESTUCK, B) I'm not personally bothered on any level by cussing, and C) That word especially I don't consider to be that strong.

But that's not to say I don't see your point. I understand your reasoning and accept it, not to mention that a quick search (through all the acts and even the other three adventures!) revealed that unlike Weird Puzzle Shit and Weird Plot Shit, Weird Time Shit as a phrase does not appear even once (unless it did in a walkaround, but I highly doubt that). Aepokk Venset 01:46, December 19, 2012 (UTC)

I mean I dunno, I didn't really pay attention to the change. Or I wasn't around when it did. Per Ankh ED 06:08, December 19, 2012 (UTC)

I always figured it was because it was a common canon phrase like this? _☮__ƒelinoel___ 17:59, December 21, 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm guessing "weird time shit" was intended as a placeholder name, following the pattern of Problem Sleuth's weird puzzle shit (which is an official term). "Time shenanignans" is used twice in the Felt intermission, and two more times in Act 5, making it the closest thing we have to an official term for this sort of thing. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 06:28, July 1, 2013 (UTC)

Prophecies?

Should we cover various prophecies here or elsewhere? Stuff like the demise of the tyrant less an arm and an eye, Sollux's prophecy that all the trolls would die and he'd be blinded and die twice, Doc Scratch's comments about unfathomable destruction and a silver lining or Rose's various predictions. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 09:18, July 26, 2013 (UTC)

I'm personally in support of the idea. Aepokk Venset 21:18, July 26, 2013 (UTC)

How do the exiles exist?

Assuming the exiles are on the same timeline as the kids how are they still on Earth? Last I checked Earth was decimated along with the rest of the universe. The2ndplayer (talk) 01:47, March 21, 2014 (UTC)

I... what? I'm gonna need way more context than that, which universe are we talking about and which exiles? Bec and PM and WV are all outside of their native universe, and they left Earth ages ago. Aepokk Venset 02:56, March 21, 2014 (UTC)

Let me explain. The exiles live on pre-scratch Earth post sburb if I'm not mistaken. But the kids sburb session was scratched. Therefore Earth shouldn't exist for them to live on. The2ndplayer (talk) 03:06, March 21, 2014 (UTC)

The exiles were on Earth before the universe was destroyed. - The Light6 (talk) 03:50, March 21, 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. The2ndplayer (talk) 22:20, March 21, 2014 (UTC)

Terezi and Her Coin Flips

I came to this page hoping to find some information on the time shenanigans that took place when Terezi decided things by coin flips the two times she does it. The first being when she has Dave call Heads or Tails to try to become godtier and the other when deciding if Vriska will go or not. The first, a Dead Dave appeared in the Alpha Timeline, while just a doomed timeline appeared for the other.

I mostly don't really understand how they happened. Terezi isn't a Time player and someone from the doomed timelines didn't go back and fix what caused it to become doomed, it just... split because ??? as far as I can tell. But maybe I'm missing something, which is why I'm asking here. Zapdos23590 (talk) 18:03, April 28, 2016 (UTC)

The first flip did create actual branched timelines, one for each of Dave's choices. One Dave time travelled back in time on Terezi's instruction, thus inserting himself back into the alpha timeline (but dooming himself in the process). Pretty straightforward.

The second of the two flips was a test for Vriska, which she failed – challenging her to not be selfish and self-important, a challenge that she would have passed by letting the coin fall fairly. Vriska being Vriska, she stole the luck and forced the result, and failed. So, the result was that Vriska would "go". Terezi was therefore forced to kill her due to having foreseen what would happen if she didn't. Assuming there even was a timeline where Vriska chose not to force the result (and let's face it, there may not have been one, because Vriska), the story doesn't bother to show it, due to it not being relevant. As to Terezi's foresight of what would happen if she let Vriska leave without killing her... whether that is an actual doomed timeline (that didn't affect the alpha), or just a theoretical projection, is less clear.

The key to the whole thing is that, no, Terezi isn't a Time player. But she is a Mind player, and Mind is the aspect of choices and their outcomes. And as a Seer of Mind, she has the ability to manipulate timelines to a certain extent by exploiting choices. Like with the first coinflip, where she deliberately set up a choice – and not even a meaningful one! The choice itself isn't the important thing, the fact that she made the choice exist is! – to split a timeline in two, then directed one of the branches to reinsert into the alpha in order to have an influence. If she hadn't directed the other Dave to travel back and reinsert, the timeline resulting from that outcome would still have happened, but it would have been irrelevant, and we would never have seen it in the story.

The tl;dr of all of this is that, very strictly speaking, Terezi didn't actually mess with Time at all. There weren't really any time shenanigans in the Vriska case, and in the Dave case, she gave him both sets of instructions before he carried them out, so the splitting was purely due to the two versions of the choice he made as to the coinflip's meaning – the time shenanigans there mostly just come from Dave himself travelling back and reinserting into the alpha. Indeed, all choices cause timeline splits (although the deviations might be small in the majority of cases), and it's only when those other branches feed back into the alpha that they "matter" to the story* and are actually shown in the comic.

All that said, this is my own understanding of the two situations. I might be wrong :P -- Sorceror Nobody, 01:58, April 29, 2016 (UTC)