hivedent

[hivedent]

@habits-white-rabbit thank you for informing us! i thought better of it and changed it to coccoon shortly after i posted it but not before the original version got more traction 🥲

[hivedent]

https://spritersblock.itch.io/befriendus

A young game stands in its room, hot off the presses. BEFRIENDUS: A Beforus Befriending Adventure is available now! Thank you all so much for your patience, now go befriend some dancestors.

TUMBLR: https://befriendus.tumblr.com CURIOUSCAT: https://curiouscat.me/BefriendusGame DISCORD: https://discord.gg/3v4wBzy FAQ: https://befriendus.tumblr.com/faq

[hivedent]

That’s right folks, we’re approaching game time! Befriendus: A Beforus Befriending Adventure will be dropping its first upd8 on MAY 22!* Meet Meenah Peixes and Mituna Captor in the game’s initial release! Dancestors! Woo!!!!!!

*you know, unless something goes horribly wrong, but CHANCES ARE IT’LL BE MAY 22 BECAUSE HOPEFULLY WE DON’T DIE BEFORE THEN OR SOMETHING

[hivedent]

how could i have forgotten

there was going to be an entire b plot with certain prospitians and dersites

[hivedent]

on “operation blow us all the fuck up”

sources:

ARANEA: Ok then!  ARANEA: Has everyone settled down? Do I have everyone's attention?  MEENAH: attention huh  MEENAH: whoda thought  MEENAH: you would want any of THAT  ARANEA: Just stop. Please?  ARANEA: I know it's only 8een minutes since you died, and you pro8a8ly aren't thrilled to see me for any num8er of reasons.  ARANEA: 8ut for me it has 8een millenia! I have 8een waiting a long time to see you again, and orient you to the afterlife. 

ARANEA: However, I don't think much of it will make sense without some major contextualization.  ARANEA: There's really quite an amazing amount of nuance to the full sequence of events. Many different players, personalities, conflicting agendas, all interwoven together.  ARANEA: I'll need a little time to set the stage for everything to 8e comprehensi8le, if you all don't mind indulging me for a while.  ARANEA: You could say it all started during our darkest hour, when it 8ecame clear our failure was inevita8le. I took it upon myself to venture into the palace of my denizUMPH.

    please be aware that these were MY PERSONAL NOTES. theyre full of me deciding things and arguing with myself and putting ideas out there to see what sticks so i can come back and refine it when i can

 Aranea and Meenah meet up upon a large floating lily pad over what used to be their Battlefield before it was destroyed prematurely by the Reckoning. The time has come. It was made clear long ago that their session was bleak. There would be no winning for them. Aranea Serket headed directly to her denizen, Echidna, to ask what route should be taken. Echidna of course informs the Scorpio girl of a method called The Scratch, initiated only once a game has become unwinnable. Echidna continues to explain that the kids will cease to exist and will reincarnate as average people on a different planet. You know. The basic deal behind The Scratch.

Meanwhile, out in the Void, Meenah is communing with the Horrorterrors who are very adamant that Meenah use the Tumor to kill everyone just before the Scratch so that they will continue to live on in the dream bubbles (this is in part mostly to carry Horuss who is carrying Calliope over into continued existence). As one would expect, Meenah is thrilled with the idea of staying around and being immortal and in charge forever.

Now the logistics and details behind this are a bit shady, but it boils down to this. Aranea and Meenah have only just recently had a fight with each other that really shook their friendship. Aranea is skeptical that the Horrorterrors’ plan even works. Why should you trust a bunch of octogods anyway? Aside from that, an eternity of death doesn’t sound exceedingly pleasing, nor does the idea of a mass suicide to accomplish that.

The two set off to accomplish their goals. Aranea accompanies Damara to transport the Cardinal Movement to the Battlefield for their final goodbyes. During this time, Meenah has retrieved the Tumor and is ready to begin her part. Aranea and Meenah continue to have conflicted opinions on how to go about this. Aranea is excited for her new potential life!

Each of the girls have acquired half of their crew to debate what they should do. Aranea has accumulated Rufioh who claims that he couldn’t even manage to face death to reach god tier and the idea is just too gruesome for him and Horuss who says he would not want to keep on existing forever without his beloved. Cronus joins in as well, claiming that he finds it sexier when women aren’t trying to kill him. He also makes a passing comment that Aranea would give him favors for siding with her (which she did not. And if she did they were not sexual). Latula thinks that conceptually it’s not really a solid plan and there is nothing suggesting it is a good idea. The entire idea just sounds grody. Mituna joins her because DOOM.

On Meenah’s side she is accompanied by Kurloz who simply stares vacantly at everyone with a wide smile on his face and Damara who is only siding with her because she refused to be with “the cheaters” and who just wants to start the damn Scratch already and get it over with finally. Both are also interested in Lord English’s propagation. Kankri believes that he will be able to help spread social justice in the afterlife. Porrim claims she is obliged to go with him, not daring subject an afterlife to Kankri without her intervention. This is mostly joking as she also admits it might be fun to get to keep living so to speak and that SOMEONE has to protect the little guy too. There were a lot of things in her life she never felt were complete. Similarly, Meulin believes in the optimistic concept that there is much to do- even if all she gets to do is talk to Kurloz forever, it is something to do. Kurloz may have also convinced her to join him because Lord English.

The two begin to face off in whose plan should work, and who should be allowed to be Scratched if that is what they want. If nothing else even just half of them can blow up while the others leave to be Scratched. Either way, the numbers are tied and no conclusion can be reached.

Flashback time for explanations!

[calliopes soul is involved with this somehow, i mentioned this in a previous post]

(Meenah’s oven, Porrim’s mannequins, Latula’s coins, Rufioh/Damara’s egg timer, etc . Die’s voodoo doll does not count. He has had the doll since he joined. Then again so did Biscuits and Eggs. This is not important. Stop riding me.)

There is also the matter of a First Guardian. This Guardian is cool. And unlike Scratch they are neither creepy nor do they fuck up the entire planet. Though they do claim to have a great interest in watching and observing the story. This is mostly because the Guardian is stuck in a dimensional pocket. Something like the Void. They are incapable of acquiring power from the Green Sun. As such, they’re black. Fizzled out in the Void, powerless. Unlike Scratch’s lit-up white. This is in part because Horuss/Calliope’s soul was used to ectobiologically birth them. And because I fucking said so. This is similar to how Lil Cal embodying Caliborn’s soul created Doc Scratch. A puppet linked to Caliborn. Whereas this Guardian is enveloped in the Void housing an antithesis of Scratch, one who embodies Calliope. But she’s not going to explode from their head or anything like Athena or Lord English. They’re just. The antithesis. They will only acquire their First Guardian powers once they have been summoned into their universe proper.

For some reason or the other Aranea has Quarters’ quarters. Maybe from during her fling with Latula or maybe Latula gave them to team members for whom the numbers/colors fit. Also I’m not sure on the specifics of this but BASICALLY she is intent on flipping them. Specifically Snowman’s. Because it’s a double sided 8 coin. What more of this decision could I POSSIBLY answer. Now it could be a few things. Perhaps she knows what it does. And she intends on flipping it to summon-kill herself so that she may be Scratched and avoid the afterlife. With… her teammates somehow? Maybe she somehow wants to flip it to decide what they do. I do not know. Like I said. They were shaky and hazy. THE POINT IS: Aranea flips the stupid Eight Ball Snowman Coin. She uses her Luck powers to make a favorable outcome… whatever that might be considering both sides are the fucking same. Maybe she bet that the coin would land on its side and if it did Meenah wouldn’t blow everyone the fuck up.

Anyway, Damara’s sick of this. Probably Damara. Someone has to shoot. But Cronus doing it wouldn’t make much sense. So Damara shoots the coin midair. Presumably Aranea’s Luck only ends up affecting how Damara hits the coin. Because it goes straight through the center. It is now just a black circle with a hole through it. But do you know who else is associated with just a black empty circle? THE FIRST GUARDIANNNNN. So it lands and they appear in a flash, all green and white and flickerin and makin people pass out because that’s just too much.

Now their influence is only right then. They can’t just go back in history and have always BEEN ALREADY THERE. They just can’t. They don’t even really HAVE that time stuff. I guess. ITS’ NOT IMPORTANT. POINT IS. FIRST GUARDIAN SNATCHES UP ALL OF THE JUJU AND ON THE SCRATCH THROWS THEM INTO PARADOX SPACE WHERE THEY APPEARIFY WITH DOC SCRATCH. Doc Scratch then distributes them to the leprechauns before Caliborn even meets them. There. Now they have their stupid Juju. Idk, they probably do some other capricious plot-altering GARBAGE too.

Anyway, for some godforsaken reason Aranea and the crew agree to not get Scratched and Meenah’s like yessssssssssssssssssssssss. Maybe because of the First Guardian being summoned being taken as a sign. Maybe Meenah does it without consulting them. I don’t know. So Damara starts the Scratch, and Meenah gets the Tumor at the ready for just the prime moment. I don’t really get what’s going on. Basically everyone agrees with Meenah but Meenah and Aranea are still kind of bitter and feuding. However Aranea gets scared and like what if this is the last time they ever even see each other? So she begins to apologize to Meenah and

SYSTEM ERROR: MEENAH PEIXES BLEW YOUR SESSION THE FUCK UP

SYSTEM REBOOT INITIATED. SCRATCH COMMENCING.

[hivedent]

i promised first guardian chat and here it is

so cats are often seen as the opposite to dogs even though thats due to completely arbitrary reasons

but because of this id decided to try the same with the troll first guardian assuming they had one. assuming you can even have a session without a guardian

anyway

i looked at doc scratch and i said “whats a fitting opposite to that then”

and i had the result of the opposite to “creepy adult who meddles with EVERYTHING” is “irrelevant child who has 0 influence on the world” (effectively making them a null first guardian like they didnt even have one to begin with)

the first guardian, who would bear a strong resemblance to “truth” from fullmetal alchemist would reside in a black pocket dimension and kind of observe things without interfering. which is doubly fitting imo because scratch is to caliborn as “truth” would be to calliope

but “truth” wouldnt have any first guardian abilities. so theyd be stuck in their home pocket dimension (wonk)

thus all things first guardian related would also be powerless like the cue ball

itd be black and hollow as if its “light” were turned off (think fenestrated plane being unplugged etc)

itd later be revealed that the pocket dimension is somewhat related to other first guardians

like where jack stored all his trophies. basically what im saying is more ultimately they would find lil cal at some point while in there

anyway

they would be created from (as i remember) a powerless cueball and horuss or perhaps some sort of horuss soulbot or something

but it wouldnt be a direct relative of horuss, thats not what im getting at. though it would still be fitting considering equius became a component of lord english who is also a component of doc scratch

it would be the combination of the “void” inside him (to deprive “truth” of powers) as well as calliopes soul that was symbolically inside him

thus. an opposite to doc scratch in almost every way. a little rude but not malicious, an observer who doesnt know all the facts, an inability to interact with the world, and a result of calliopes soul

 i mentioned earlier that the felt jujus would be made via... eridan? lil cal? SOME kinda how? and theyd be used by the alpha trolls throughout their session

well aranea comes into possession of quarters’s coins

aranea mentions the last time she and meenah saw each other they had been having a fight

i decided this was about the afterlife

meenah received information from [UNNAMED SQUIDDLE 3;)] about the tumor. but aranea didnt trust this information and thought it was better to just scratch it. theres more to this but its in my notes and this isnt about that

(but ps i also decided the placements of the trolls on the lillypad decided who they sided with in the argument. ill post my file about those events later)

basically meenah and aranea are tied and cant choose. they decide on a coin toss. aranea flips sn0wmans coin because HAHAHAHA SPIDERSSSS

someone, likely cronus, is annoyed and shoots the coin mid toss with... a gun? a wand? whatever, its in part a reference to wizardy herberts short patience and blah blah blah

anyway he shoots it right through the center. so it is a black coin... with a hole in it

this summons “truth”

doc scratch was present since the early evolution of trolls but only ever was in the felt manor or RARELY places on alternia. he was present throughout all TIME but not all SPACE.

“truth” on the other hand would not be capable of being “ALREADY HERE” and thus would only exist for a single moment, almost no TIME at all, but exist nearly everywhere AT that time, thus all SPACE

while meenah prepares to blow them up anyway, the powerful force of being ripped from the first guardian teleportation dimension shoots “truth” super fast

they zap around the whole session collecting things (namely the felts’ jujus. u could argue they always envied them bc they could use it all as furniture in their pocket dimension to make a proper house)

at just the final moment when theyve collected them all, the scratch finalizes and with their last bit of energy, tosses them into the dimension. which maybe lets say in that last second connects scratch and “truth” by mutual guardianship and it all gets spit out into his foyer and voila now the felt have juus except they always seemed to have them so I DUNNO

(ps: meenah’s oven, rufioh’s egg timer (for games), kurloz’s voodoo doll, damara/mituna/or latulas crowbar? for cosplay or because of half life? idr. horuss’s gloves for cans?? etc)

anyway i read some stuff later about how it was probably a rabbit tho

because dogs were associated with jade, cats were associated with rose and puppets were associated with dave (and they all were prototyped as their sprites at one point or another) leaving either rabbits or jesters for john

so that could have been like. created from the corpse of lil sebastian or liv taylor or something and continued the... very weird and abrupt alice in wonderland themes hussie had going for like a dozen pages

and usagi-chan would be associated with damara bc witch affinities with first guardian related creatures (jade with bec, fef with scratchs gift glbgoylb)

but i hadnt really gotten to plan that much stuff out for that version of the first guardian if it would even be that different

[hivedent]

gog and jegus were gonna be referenced as real beforan religions

think:

MEULIN: ~(^òmó^) < GOGDAMMIT!!!!!!

KANKRI: Meulin, I will thank y9u n9t t9 take the name of the "L9rg" in vain. While I am n9t a f9ll9wer 9f that specific sect y9ur 6lasphem9us 9utcries may pr9ve upsetting t9 9thers.

PORRIM: It's a ho+rseshit religio+n anyway, + I'm no+t sure anyo+ne even fo+llo+ws it no+n-iro+nically.

MEULIN: (<._.< )~ < IT WAS A TYPO....

CRONUS: yeah ivwe been thinking abou

[hivedent]

i realized i never talked about the first guardian like i said i would so ill do that soon when im not typing on my phone

t~3ut

[hivedent]

kankri was going to be a fan of musicals because the american musical often tackled social and political issues

it was also going to be a meta reference to the popularity of broadway karkat

[hivedent]

i still have the code i accidentally made that turns every picture on your blog into mituna flipping you off

[hivedent]

thats about everything for now

i still have little tidbits like latulas roleplaying incident and stuff like that but nothing major i can think of

i actually have a lot of the first act scripted out so maybe ill post it to ao3 and link it here

[hivedent]

gamzee is a little bitch and he dresses like a jester

[hivedent]

i didnt really write much for kanaya except that she rebels possibly culls nepeta and maybe accidentally kills vriska BUT something of note is that her title is the gaudium

which is basically “joy” to the dolorosas “sorrow” and has “gaudy” in it

while the dolorosa seemed themed around the sorrows of the virgin mary kanaya is themed around the joys of the virgin mary

one of which being christs resurrection so?

i dunno? maybe karkat goes god tier?

[hivedent]

i didnt really write anything for nepeta except that she gets culled because her lusus died and she wears her pelt like a cloak which i thought was cool

[hivedent]

eridan had a job opposite to dualscar

he was in charge of culling trolls for the empress

any trolls in waiting to be culled stayed with him at an orphanage boarding school kind of deal

he ends up dying after they revolt because hes a douchebag

it sucks but its a reference to complacency of the learned wherein he is zazzerpan the learned so at least he gets to have that

edit: i wanted to give him a name that matched dualscar but i couldnt find anything that fit the letter requirement. “grape stripe” “violet streak”

[hivedent]

also cronus wears this loathsome piece of shit at some point

[hivedent]

speaking of the “fucked up government” from karkats section

recuperacoons are still a thing. because the higher a trolls blood, the more prone to violence they are. see: fuschias being incapable of being near each other without wanting to go apeshit. or at least meenah.

because of her fear of her own latent violence feferi forces ALL trolls to sleep in sopor slime so everyone is sedated and non-violent even though most of the lower bloods probably dont need it

theres chucklevoodoos incorporated there too. in part corruption, in part feferi doing it to make sure everyone sleeps in them so theyre too subdued to be violent

on the topic, aranea and vriska didnt have the same problems with spidermom as alternian vriska did because of the highblood obligation to help trolls lower than themselves

the indigos violets and empress always supplied their lusii with enough food to sate them so vriska didnt become... like That

in fact, aranea follows her ancestors footsteps who is something like a... meddling and nosy therapist slash fortune teller. though a lot of it is a sham. she can tell your immediate future by reading your mind (thus determining what youre likely to do) and consulting her Oracle Orb

but she also uses her powers to empathize with others and help them. its not selfless, though. a serket is a serket, after all. she does it so that she alone is responsible for the happiness and good fortune of others