Hey, speaking of Dames... I have a Dame in my current session, a Dame of Light. He's a guy. And he kinda sucks. One of those conservative conspiracy theory types.

He has, shall we say, some OPINIONS on transgender people. We can mostly put up with it though- I'm agender, which is technically trans, and he's not tried to kill me for it or anything (gotten into heated arguments about it sure, but it's not gotten violent).

The issue of course is that he's totally convinced the game is trying to "turn him trans", and that's why he's been assigned Dame.

I've tried to tell him that the game just bugs out and gives supposedly gender-restricted classes out to just anyone sometimes, but...

Well, I think deep down, he's actually just fucking trans. I think he's using the game assigning him Dame as an excuse. "Oh no, I HAVE to act girly or it'll mess with my ARC levels!" that kinda thing.

Well, that all sounds fine, right? Just let him delude himself into thinking he's being forced into this, he'll (or rather, she'll, by then) probably come out of it a better person.

But like... I do have some concerns.

Firstly, he might just be right? Like, Sburb is not above doing fucked up shit to get people to mature. Forcibly transing a transphobe's gender doesn't feel like it's typical style, but like... how would I know, right?

This presents a problem. Maturity tends to go away at the end of a session. Is he gonna load into a new session, and just have a fuckton of trauma immediately from the game making him think he was trans, when he actually wasn't/isn't anymore/once more thinks he isn't?

Secondly, I consider myself a gender abolitionist. I try to be chill about it, I don't hassle people over having genders or anything, but when people ask why I'm agender, I will bring out my arguments about why I think the concept of gender is stupid. I'm sure there're people who'd find what I have to say upsetting. Is Sburb gonna decide one day that I'm a problem, and try and force a gender on me or something? I would assume not, but if it really doesn't care, why are classes ever gender biased at all?

Thirdly... IS HE FUCKING UP HIS ARC LEVELS IF HE DOESN'T ACT LIKE A GIRL??? I had assumed of course not, that the game doesn't give a fuck if Dame's "act girly" or whatever. But... why does the Dame class get assigned to girls more often? He's the Dame, and he's saying that's how this shit works, and it's not like I've ever rolled Dame, so is he actually right??? If I roll Dame one day, will I need to act girly for the stats?????

"Maturity goes away at the end of a session"? I don't know what you mean by that. Putting aside issues I'll get to in the next paragraph, the game doesn't mindwipe you or anything once you're done with a session. "Losing maturity" typically refers to the metaphorical slump in your soul that comes naturally when the game yoinks all your stats (and your powers and your items and your everything) when you begin a new session, which will naturally make anyone feel worse. Or like all that personal development they went through doesn't mean anything because now you gotta do it again. It's a figure of speech, not a literal construct, and you get used to it eventually.

That nitpick aside, no, SBURB doesn't forcetrans anyone. Another mistake is being made here, SBURB only assigns a meaningful title the first time. I was a native Sage of Mind because I needed that, all those years ago, and here I am now. Literally everything after that was purely randomly generated nonsense. Nonsense I had to "play the role" for, but nonsense nonetheless. If SBURB decided that you being agender was an issue, it would have done that in your first session. And I'm assuming it didn't, because the game is never that direct about stuff like that. If you're trans or genderqueer or whatever, any effect this has on your "maturity arc" is incidental at best. Some people have talked about how "SBURB made me realize I was trans", but that's flowery language, they went on their self discovery lovequest while playing the game and maybe they got some special insights they wouldn't have if they weren't a replayer. I couldn't imagine what that "special insight" is though, unless it's referring to the replayernet. Most people tend to realize they're queer through online communities, the replayernet is the only online community now (split into several sub-communities but still), and as we all know everyone who has ever touched a computer is gay and all the funniest shitposters are trans.

Now the elephant in the room. It is true that the game does sometimes bug out and give gender-restricted classes to people of the wrong gender. There's some debate that the "gender-restricted classes" just have a heavy gender bias but it's ultimately random (the dearth of female Knights supports this), but for all intents and purposes let's imagine that they ARE gender-locked. Dame is a female class, and it going towards this guy is a bug. However... Because SBURB does take data from your mind, it does mean that if you identify as female and your body isn't, the game registers you as female, and will assign classes accordingly. The "gender restriction bug" is extremely consistent in that manner. To the point where, let's not kid ourselves, it's not a fucking bug. Not to say that "every time you encounter this bug it's because the game knows", only that the game does recognize player gender, even if the player themselves is unaware. We're currently at a crossroads where it could be a sincere bug, or a sincere closet case, and there's not enough information to tell. If you're Weird and determined to get to the bottom of this transvestigation, you might want to check what gender their dreamself is. "Wrong gender dreamself" happens for the same reason "wrong gender class" does, but if BOTH happen then it's probably not a bug.

And no, the game doesn't count "acting girly" as part of the Dame's roleplay coefficient, that's stupid. The game hands out RP for acting as your title, not acting as your title's gender. I can't tell you why they made Dames a female class, because I didn't design the game, but it's probably an aesthetic flourish. Same reason why Princes are a predominately male class, it's called Prince, and Prince is the male form, ergo it's a male class. Except when it's not, but it's still called the Prince. If you're dead set on transvestigating, making up this obvious lie and then bemoaning the fact that "oh no, I have to act like a girl now or else the game will kill me, I hate that I have to act like a girl now but I have no choice" is either some MAJORLY sussy pantomiming, or he's cis and just very, very sexist.

My final note is that if you determine he's cis and don't want to hear him complaining about WOKE SKAIA'S plan to FORCIBLY TRANSITION these MINOR PLAYERS (with the brains of adults), think provocation might "pierce the veil and help bring her home", or just want to be very funny in a way that makes them not want to talk to you for a while, try busting out the classic "it's obvious that you're a woman because you're acting hysterical about this" line. Tactical Misogyny is a foolproof idea with no possible recourse or downsides.

Hey I just wanted to say I'm so glad you're still going, I enjoy reading this blog so much. I hope you're doing well and you're successful at whatever you're trying to do in life

Thank you, it was nice hearing that.

Sometimes I feel guilty when I think about this blog. Between the real-life situation I'm in (trying not to starve to death or have my ship implode on this ringjourney) and the other hobbies I cycle through on alt accounts to de-stress from that (so I don't lose my mind, not helped by the isolation and eldritch gibbering outside), it's a bit difficult to knuckle down and make original posts "the main thing" like I did back in the day. That's why you might notice that the last several posts have been me answering asks, and there's some pretty noticeable holes in my posting history.

I do notice that I'm still getting reception on those posts though, and with this ask especially, I'm glad to hear that I'm still doing something of value. I can't make some grand resolution to willpower through it and "get back in there", but I certainly won't lose hope, let my neurons stop firing on all cylinders, metaphorically lay down and die, and then probably literally die. I'll keep doing this for as long as I can.

i thought Dame of Flow wasn't a thing because it'd be too easy to make a period joke lol

.

You mentioned in one of your recent asks that it would be stupid to assume that a title like Dame of Flow would never be assigned, and you seem to imply that you've come across people with that opinion.

Obvious nonsense that it is, I'm still curious how they came to think that??? Like, did they explain why they thought it could never show up? This is infecting my fucking brain, what a weird combo for someone to think couldn't happen, I get that people are stupid and make weird assumptions, but was there ANY reason to think that class and aspect wouldn't go together?

I brought it up as a hypothetical, BUT TO BE FAIR, SBURB is hardly consistent when it comes to title attribution. The Waste Class will never have Time or Space as an Aspect, and the Clown never gets assigned to anybody, period (unless something has gone horribly wrong). If you didn't know those titles were specifically disallowed (or bugged), I could see someone reasonably thinking that they're just very rare. And corollary, if you DID know those titles weren't allowed, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the game makes exceptions elsewhere if you just so happen to never run into that title ever. Or see mention of it, because the replayernet is a big place.

I do agree though, it is a very silly assumption to make.

Hey, it's the Grace of Light again. Thank you for the reassurance, and I know you say that putting it out of mind is best, but...

Well, it's just really freaking me out that I know it's coming, but don't know what it'll be... and I know that there probably just is no way to know for sure, but I'd like to at least narrow the possibility space a little?

Basically I'm hoping you could give me examples of Grace cataclysms you've seen/heard about? Just so I can at least have some understanding of how bad it'll be?

A lot of guides seem to avoid posting specific examples, or don't say if they're talking about a Grace specifically, or a Waste. I feel like I'm flying really blind here.

I imagine specifics are light in the wild, either because the nature of the cataclysm is unpredictable (the common joke is that when you're making plans for your sessions on a whiteboard, you draw a line, on the left is your "pre-cataclysm" plans, and on the right you leave "post-cataclysm" plans blank because once it happens everything you wrote up to this point will have been rendered obsolete) or because of causality. The state of knowing a horrible thing will happen, but letting it happen anyway, is something non-Time players have trouble grasping, but in much the same way that you need to let it happen or else you create a Doomed Timeline, you need to let your cataclysm happen. SBURB's intention in making you a Grace is to put you into the spotlight, and preventing your abilities from causing a cataclysm necessarily reduces your visibility. Which SBURB will respond to by killing you.

You're a native Time player, so I imagine you already know this, so I will help you out. But I wanna underline it. If you attempt to prevent the cataclysm from happening, you will die.

Graces bring change through passively igniting catastrophic chain reactions. Their influence is more akin to poison than it is to setting off bombs. Light governs the domains of probability manipulation, favorizing outcomes, and good luck, as well as light as a physical phenomenon. Graces are a heavily passive caster-type class, and Light is heavily oriented around support abilities. With all of these bases in mind, I can somewhat easily formulate some ideas as to what your cataclysm will look like.

As a Grace of Light, you'll have a number of extremely powerful support abilities, mainly oriented around giving good luck to allies or issuing blessings that make things easier for them in their ventures. You'll be handing out luck like they're asses, and your coplayers have known nothing but years of bitter ass famine. And because the Grace class is so powerful, it'll be really good luck as well. So much good luck suffuses the air, passively increasing luck accumulation for everyone. People will probably begin leaning on it more, alchemizing equipment which provide chance-based special effects, or creating impossible plans that would only work if 1-in-a-million chances happen 9-times-out-of-ten. Then, at some point, because you've tilted the sclaes so far in one direction, the scales will flip right off the table. Probably once you go berserk and use [Dance of Thorns], accumulating truly massive amounts of luck such that you become a black hole of good fortune and go supermassive.

I predict that your cataclysm will be the luck probabilities for your session being thrown permanently out of whack as the session tries to re-adjust the values back to normal. In doing so, all of the very lucky players (except you, naturally) will have their high values overflow into naturally being dogshit, thus making everyone permanently unlucky. On the flipside, NPCs (who normally do not accumulate luck, and indeed benefit less from luck as a game balancing mechanic) will be naturally very lucky. Not only making combat a lot riskier, but ensuring that the player's plans (which they'll need to re-learn actually making real plans) will go sour in some way inevitably. You will thus be extremely noticeable for not only being the only one not cursed with bad luck, but for being the only real means through which people can be "blessed" to normal-or-higher levels of probability.

This is just one possibility, keep in mind. The "luck crash" could end up not happening, and instead the team's good luck fritzes out at a critical, session-derailing moment. Or Light's other domains of opening new paths, allowing new possibility, and alleviating burdens, while normally good, end up opening the path for something that should be impossible and changes the nature of your duties, or alleviates a burden that should never be alleviated (like hardcoded NPC behavior or basic game mechanics concerning aspects of physics or reality). I just think the luck crash is the likely one.

Uhh, hi. Grace of Light here. I was a Seer of Time in my last session, and this is my first replay. I've been looking through all the guides and stuff that I can, but it's very overwhelming...

I've been having trouble finding clear info on Graces... and that Grace of Blood has me really worried. I thought my cataclysm would be an accident of some kind? That's how a lot of guides made it sound, but maybe I mixed it up with the Waste.

But for that person, they sounded like they were doing it on purpose, and it sounded really scary and confusing. I don't want to hurt anybody, (or whatever they did exactly...), am I really gonna go crazy like them?

No, as a Grace you're not predestined to go insane, I was being a bit hyperbolic (and insulting towards someone jokerposting in my inbox, people jokerposting in my inbox is surprisingly common and always annoying). I don't think whoever that was is representative of most Graces. Partially because I don't think their "plan" fits what Graces typically end up doing, and partially because they were ranting about something much more philosophical and personal than just the game. At worst, they cracked under the pressure and are about to undergo their cataclysm, but it will be nothing like what they described.

Graces and Wastes are both cataclysm classes, and are both destined to cause a cataclysm. The difference being that the Waste is "active", and their cataclysm is more like a bomb going off, while a Grace is "passive", and their cataclysm can be more likened to a poison of some sort. When the cataclysm happens, the course of the session will be irreparably altered, such that any major plans you had for "how the session will go" will be rendered irrelevant. Whatever is going to happen to your session will be a slow corruption. Nobody will see it coming until it's too late, it cannot be stopped, and people will be hurt by it. But it won't be your fault. This is just what happens when a Grace enters the session.

My advice for you in the short term, as a Grace of Light, is to put the cataclysm to the back of your mind. Any attempt at reducing or avoiding the harm is doomed to failure. It's going to happen, and once you shake things up just in time for the third act, the eyes of all your coplayers, and the game, will be on you. If you're concerned about the fallout, focus on either fixing the harm, or helping everyone work past it and complete the game before the "poison" gets worse.

My advice for you in the long term, as a replayer, is not to get overwhelmed. The myriad guides, FAQs, and so on are useful, but endless. If you try to take in too much information at once, you'll overload or be unable to sort through them when push comes to shove. Or you'll psych yourself out when you see concerning things like that last ask. Reference them when needed, but trust in your force. You beat the game once already. If you want to read through All The Guides (All Of Them) in a professional manner, save it for when you've got a couple of sessions tucked in your belt and have built up a skillset that gets you through most of the game, but want to know more about the weird glitches, obscure features, or other data you haven't personally witnessed yourself. The replayernet will not hold your hand going forward, but it will be at your back.

Grace of Blood.

I have found my cataclysm.

I will speak the words and poison their brains and end that which has plagued me since the game's first moments.

They will become unhuman. "Social animal" is a phrase that shall exit from our minds, and we will all be better for it. (You know this. I'm sure you would feel better if you could forget what being lonely was. Oh how I wish I could reach you with my powers, or had the time to break those parts of you with my words, but alas!)

I think I will only have one shot. Any recommendations for how I might maximize impact, keep them all in place as I speak, and so on? I will not be able to hold back much longer, and will not be able to understand how to contact anyone (or that I might want to) afterwards, so please do respond completely, without prompting further correspondence between us, and with haste.

I know the Grace going insane is kind of an inevitability for any session they're in, but this is the first time one of them has decided to, mid-mental break, log onto pitsblog, and start typing manifestos at me.

If you want to maximize impact though, consider whatever it is you want to say in a journal, label is "slam poetry", and leave it on their doorsteps. Everyone loves slam poetry and will read it instantly.

I've got a bit of an odd situation. See, we picked up a Rage Player between sessions. Quiet guy, bit of an asshole at times, really his short swords. He keeps talking about his dream self doing paperwork on derse? And being surrounded by windows? And some overarching conspiracy to murder nobility or something? Our new Sage of Time, they were a Prince last game, said something about how the newbie had ecto-biological data from some "SS" entity in-game. I guess I'm supposed to fuck up our new player's ecto-biological cloning or something. I'm not happy about it, nobody's happy about it, this has not been a good time. All I know is, is that I don't think we're prepared to face off against a glitch dream-self that may or may not be a derse carpacian or something. ( How do you even god-tier that? I don't know, and our Thief of Rage is, well, raging about it. ) Do you have any advice? ... Also is it bad to be a Bard twice in a row? I don't mind being the Bard. But, if it consists of getting lost on the battlefield twice, and potentially missing the final boss battle (again), I'm going to be very annoyed.

Wear your codpiece with pride, soldier. And invest in a map.

Also I think I'm connecting the pieces. The "SS entity" is probably Spades Slick, the Scurrilous Straggler, the Sovereign Slayer. Jack Noir. Which would explain the player's dreamself 1) being confined to Derse, which is where Jack Noir lives 2) being confined to bureaucracy in an office, which is what Jack Noir does 3) doing weird murderous conspiracies, which is what Jack Noir does when he's not handling bureaucracy. Also wait hold on a fucking second, are you implying your Thief of Rage is like, The Son of Jack Noir. Did I read that correctly. Are you telling me your player shares DNA with Jack Fucking Noir. These asks are gonna drive me to drink one day.

I choose not to believe that your Thief of Rage is the secret lovechild of Jack Noir because briefly considering it caused me to curl up into a ball involuntarily for several hours. It was like an instinct.

In the event that your Thief of Rage is the secret lovechild of Jack Noir, I really wish that SBURB's coding didn't disable suicide, and also I legitimately don't know how his ectobiological code mixes with a player's in such a manner that their dreamself becomes him(???) but not the actual player. This is all bullshit, if this is true then good luck. You broke me, congratulations.

The much more likely possibility is Apocryphal Antithesis. Essentially, your Thief of Rage is missing a sleep ratio stat, and so their Dreamself is a distinct entity with its own agenda. I imagine that it's co-ordinating with Jack Noir to murder all of you, because that's typically what happens with Apocryphal Antithesis (the murder part, not the Jack collab itself). The good news is, if you're in a position to God Tier, just do it. Your Thief of Rage can't, y'know, by himself, but if one of you takes him behind the shack and onto his Quest Bed, his dreamself will automatically merge with him as he ascends. Indeed, even if it isn't Apocryphal Antithesis (I refuse to believe the other option), this might fix it anyway. If there's anything weird about your Dreamself, god-tiering is the "turn it on and off again" of solutions. Highly effective and simple and everyone should try resorting to that immediately.

Sooo my doom player (he is a knight) keeps saying how there isn't enough death or anything that doesn't change? No idea what he means but he has tried to kill me multiple times to "speed up" the process man I'm just trying to make the damn frog aren't knights supposed to help???

Hahaha look at this guy, he fell for the classic "Knights help frog-breeding duties instead of Space players" misconception. Everyone throw tomatoes at anon.

Anyways, SBURB has certain "Mental Disorders". It's an antiquated and unfortunate name, especially because it's not like the Diseases, which are more or less "gameplay constructs meant to abstractly represent diseases-as-plot-construct". These so called "Mental Disorders" are an informal list of noted depressive tendencies and weird fixations, observed and loosely curated by replayers. Pulled from the pages of a made-up DSM itself pulled from several independent guide-writers. Please direct any accusations of ableism towards someone else. I just relay the information.

Either way, if I had to reference the list, I could diagnose this behavior as either Walk-Stab-Walk (obsession with strifing) or PK (player killing). Walk-Stab-Walk would fit the bill, because they've become so obsessed with killing Underlings that their desire for combat has extended to you. PK would fit the bill, because their motivations are irrelevant, they're trying to kill a fellow player. If you ask me personally, that thing about "there isn't enough death" and their being a Doom player isn't any sort of mental oddity, game construct, or whatever. This is what someone would say if they either didn't understand what the Doom Aspect means and are just saying whatever stereotypical thing pops into mind, or are just doing edgelord bullshit for some inscrutable reason.

Regardless of whether this is Walk-Stab-Walk, PK, or someone having a laugh, the following is a list of three actions you can take. Do them in order if you wish.

Psy-buffs. The easy answer for Walk-Stab-Walk and other minor lapses in judgement. If you have a Heart player, a quick buff will smooth out everything.

Dropkick them in the head, lock them up somewhere, and refuse to unlock them unless they can explain what they're doing and why they think they're doing it. If they keep on trying to kill you, skip to #3. If they admit "it was all jokes bro get pranked lmao", strongly consider skipping to #3.

Kill them. Not only is it legitimate self defense, but fuck player killers. They lost their right to life the second they decided you didn't have a right to life either.

What do you do if your time player prototyped a horrorterror and your space player went grimdark currently running for my life and I have about 3 days until the Reckoning send help

What do you do if your time player prototyped a horrorterror

You strangle them until they are no longer capable of contributing to the gene pool. Prototyping items associated with the Others is one thing, and you could do that by accident. It's literally impossible to directly prototype an Other directly by accident. It's impossible for time travel to go before Entry or after the end of the session, so I'm assuming it's a post-Entry prototype and all of your Underlings aren't constantly exuding corruption. If they somehow managed to do a post-entry Other-prototype, 1) how 2) kill them harder.

Unless, of course, they did indeed prototype an Other-associated item. Your situation is therefore still really bad, but significantly less dire. Accordingly, you no longer have to kill your Time player, but you should CBT them a lot until they apologize.

and your space player went grimdark

Get your hands on some Angel-associated items. They are corruptive, that is true, but Angel Corruption and Other Corruption are mutually exclusive. If you can zap your Grimdark Space player with sufficient amounts of angelic power, their grimdarkness should go down. Just make sure not to overdo it, lest you make them go Noblebright. In which case you'll have to Grimdarkify them until they're normal.

If you yourself get angelically corrupted, you'll be drawn to the grimdark player and be compelled to battle them. This should hopefully balance both of you out. Treat that as a happy accident if it occurs, and for the love of Skaia please do not try to intentionally corrupt yourself as some sort of godzilla threshold.

and I have about 3 days until the Reckoning

Do everything I just said, but faster. Get your friends to help as well, if able.

This person is

Down a Time Player.

Down a Time Player after some dubious time traveling just happened and by their own admission has a decent shot of being in a Doomed Timeline.

About to face The Reckoning. Without a Time player.

STILL SENDING ME ASKS

...Oh fuck, I didn't even consider that I might be the one out of sync lol. Uh, do you know of any way I can like, check that? Time player permadied since I sent that post (this session is fucking hell), and I dunno if they woulda been able to anyway.

I'm actually in the middle of writing a few guides. Last thing I want is to blast them into the past from before they're relevant, and I am SO bad with replayernet technology, timetrav stuff, all that...

How does this desync thing work anyway? Like, I thought you might be because you're operating outside of normal spacetime, but I'm just in normal sessions, and most stuff seems to line up with my perspective- I'll read guides that apply to how the game seems to work for me, my coplayers seem to usually be operating on the same understanding I am, etc.

Thanks for the apologies though. :)

I'M SORRY, your Time player permadied between messages?!? I think you have more pressing matters than figuring out this highly technical esoteric. This desync thing is, at worst, an IP problem. Get your head in the fucking game and call a nerd squad, in that order.

...Oh fuck, I didn't even consider that I might be the one out of sync lol. Uh, do you know of any way I can like, check that? Time player permadied since I sent that post (this session is fucking hell), and I dunno if they woulda been able to anyway.

I'm actually in the middle of writing a few guides. Last thing I want is to blast them into the past from before they're relevant, and I am SO bad with replayernet technology, timetrav stuff, all that...

How does this desync thing work anyway? Like, I thought you might be because you're operating outside of normal spacetime, but I'm just in normal sessions, and most stuff seems to line up with my perspective- I'll read guides that apply to how the game seems to work for me, my coplayers seem to usually be operating on the same understanding I am, etc.

Thanks for the apologies though. :)

I'M SORRY, your Time player permadied between messages?!? I think you have more pressing matters than figuring out this highly technical esoteric. This desync thing is, at worst, an IP problem. Get your head in the fucking game and call a nerd squad, in that order.

Ugh, I knew I should have just waited to send that, rather than trying to rush it off before fighting the ohgodwhat...

It did actually break my computer, but I have spares of course. Anyway, I'm really sorry that I upset you, let me try and explain myself...

Firstly, you know that old adage, "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"? Well... that's what was going on with the Dream thing. I didn't re-read the Dream section of the SBURB Glitch FAQ before sending, and the ONE Dream player I've ever met didn't have transparent clothes.

Still, I really do believe it's something that's been mostly version drifted away (which I REFUSE to budge on being real). I've not seen the memes! I think the memes you speak of are dead memes, buried in 7-year-old threads! And in my defense, Dream as an aspect has been getting rarer and rarer (or so I've heard) (which I also attribute to version drift).

Anyway, I wasn't trying to say that your writing is "obsolete", I'm saying parts of it might be for most modern sessions. And if we assume that you fell out of sync recently, or over a period of time, and not early on- which you seems likely as many of the asks you've gotten make reference to things I'd say have long since version-drifted into obscurity- then many of your postings were probably helpful at the time.

All I'm saying is that in more recent asks, you seem to be operating on a slightly outdated understanding, not that your entire blog was always worthless, or that nothing your saying has any application at all to the game as it is...

Finally, I'll say that it's a bit hard to notice when a post is a submission, vs just one you made. I have to scroll down past the actual post and check in the notes section to see that... at least, the way I was reading them. Check out the difference between these posts depending on the link you use:

https://www.tumblr.com/sburbian-sage/163102151042/please-tell-us-more-about-cuter-carapaces-this-is

https://sburbian-sage.tumblr.com/post/163102151042/please-tell-us-more-about-cuter-carapaces-this-is

I had been using the bottom link, which doesn't display the "submitted by" in the actual post.

You keeping a stockpile of multiple computers because they explode at the drop of a hat instantly disproves any spurious SBOOB accusations I've made. The only other thing I'll be apologizing for is me laughing at the "I saw a Dream player once and their clothes weren't transparent" line, because it's extremely funny. I wonder why your friend instantly went to get their outfit changed when they realized how little it leaves to the imagination. Unless you ascended at the same time, in which case I will be laughing harder (and conceding that yeah maybe there was some weird stuff going on there).

But either way, I think we're at an unsquarable circle. This is the first time I'm being accused of being massively out of sync, it's only coming from one source, and your accounts are massively out of whack with what I know and am keeping up with. I know this sounds like a "no u", but I think the only one version drifted in the room right now is you. This is at least vaguely similar to a Time player messaging you from the future, to the past, and acting like you know what the fuck he's talking about. I could be outdated, but I think with my current understanding that you might be forward-dated.

In any case, I acknowledge the "your advice is still good if working off of slightly off information" line, and will resolve to hit the books some more. And in turn, I apologize for accusing you of being a phantom from the internet come to rob me of my mental faculties and ability to relate to reality. I was originally going to post the image of the anime girl saying "let's agree to disagree" while she imagines the other person being hit by a car, but I'm not going to post it anymore, because I don't want you to be hit by a car. Also because I can't find it, but that's beside the point.

Your blog's FAQ says you forgot what your current title was, but a bunch of your old posts say you're a Thief of Life?

I'm afraid it's a case of misinformation. The truth was, my entry into the Furthest Ring was not the smoothest. I was already in a psychologically tumultous state, and trying to keep the ship from falling apart while not getting corrupted by the Others resulted in what we can euphemistically refer to as a Gamer Moment. Post-Gamer Moment, I think I blotted out most of what happened pre-takeoff, and my current Title was a casualty due to its irrelevance, seeing as how 1) it was a Void Session 2) I'm not playing for the forseeable future. "Thief of Life" was a blind guess, but I eventually realized that was, y'know, a blind guess. So I redacted it in my FAQ, even though earlier posts contain this blunder. I hope you understand.

[[I try not to break character much, but I'll do it now. I initially chose "Thief of Life" for symbolic purpose. The framing device of skepticArbiter being a guide-writer stuck in the Furthest Ring alone was that they stole the ship meant for everyone, due to a belief that their coplayers were going to renege and ditch them, for reasons that could potentially be alluded to at some point. I eventually decided that not only was the "Thief of Life steals the only known way out of the session" symbolism incredibly lazy and hackneyed, but that it truly was not relevant to their situation or the blog in any way, shape, or form. So I decided that retconning it as being ambiguous was more interesting. SA presents themselves as being this enlightened brainlord who is never irrational, but straight-up forgetting their current title (combined with their sometimes very opinionated or insecure statements) provides a contrast to that persona.]]

(Not the original version drift anon) My co-players explained version drift to me like it was a theory-of-gravity level theory. If it's not, are there any other potential explanations for why the sessions get so different?

Also was the demons thing hyperbole or is that actually a thing? Could I learn how to summon those?

The demons were a joke. I was making my threats overly hyperbolic such that they couldn't be taken seriously or be enforced as such. I may as well have said "in minecraft". Daemons are a real thing, but they're nothing like what you're imagining (and you shouldn't summon them, they're basically pan-session viruses who just blow everything up).

Now I want to make clear, I didn't want to imply that there is literally no merit to Version Drift Theory. There's some interesting ideas there, and certainly a lot that makes sense. I know I brought it up before, but when someone explained Version Drift as being analogous to evolution (in the sense that each Frog, produced through ectobiological reproduction, is slightly different from the "parent" Frog, and this results in differences between "parent and child", and when extrapolated over several eons of reproduction it results in a new species or a new type of the same species, or in this case a new version of the game), things clicked. My main issue with that ask was them asserting that Version Drift was objectively true and I had undergone it (in an attempt to undermine my psyche, no doubt), combined with the suspicious other tidbits which led me to doubt their own knowledge of the game (how do you not know about the naked Dream guys?).

As for why Version Drift is invalid, one would point out that the "eons of history" needed for a species to evolve (or the frogs to evolve and Version Drift-a-la-evolution to occur) isn't possible. The replayernet is pretty young, so to speak, and we certainly haven't been doing this for thousands of years. Even when you have people purposefully giving their frogs viruses and mutations and cancers in an attempt to "fix" the door or just make things worse, we just don't have the timescale or the know-how for how the Frog's biology, or even all of SBURB's coding, works. And what I would propose, is that "hard evidence" of Version Drift is more often than not a combination of confusion over how SBURB operates, gaps in player knowledge, and perhaps just a bit of confirmation bias.

SBURB sessions follow a template, we all know this. Every game begins with Pre-Entry, has players explore the land, the ruins, heal the planet, see their sprite off, perform the Ultimate Alchemy, breed the Genesis Frog, fight the Black King (or Black Queen or Ringwraith if they fuck up badly), exit the game (or die miserably and TPK at any point before this), and rule a new world as not only a god, but as a mature adult (except that part's bugged so we keep doing New Game not-even-plus). The game throws some odds-and-ends there to make it feel different, different Classes, different Aspects, different locations for your Ruins, randomized layouts, maybe you prototyped your kernelsprite with something different, maybe your Land has a new X or Y which makes it operate differently, the point is that this is all just flourishes, different toppings on the same cake. And people get so used to this formulaity that when the game does do something different, they freak the fuck out and assume that the game got updated, or their version changed, and SBURB is different now. It's not, it's game isn't different, it just did something different. It has intelligent (and semi-intelligent) NPCs like Jack Noir or other Carapacians or even other Consorts who will sometimes, of their own free will that they apparently have, do something unexpected (with some predictability, the "Jack Noir takes over Derse" subplot happens more often if you prototype objects hostile to his fashion sensibilities). Each Land has a personal quest associated with it, and depending on the X and Y subjects, your Title, and the subjective "maturity arc", the personal quest can get truly esoteric, out-there, and dare I say unique. And the broader "form a proper narrative around the players" thing can result in even weirder. Sometimes the game glitches out, and the recurring chess symbolism turns into like, Catan or something, or Prospit are the "bad guys" now. Sometimes a glitch glitches out, and an aspect of the game that shouldn't work does now (at least then, and it's almost never the door that rights itself out). Sometimes people just don't know as much about the game as they think they do. I've seen some guys who have never seen or even heard of a specific Class/Aspect combo, and somehow came to the belief that e.g. a Dame of Flow is something that can never happen. And when they see a Dame of Flow, they flip their shit and display their lack of understanding of hypotheticals. Way too often have I seen people cry Version Drift at fairly innocuous stuff, or speculate on it without solid grounding.

And of course, it's pretty easy to understand why someone would believe in Version Drift. If the game can radically alter itself over time, such that once-common Titles become less common, or longstanding bugs get fixed, then that means the game can once again do that at some point in the future. Meaning that as long as we keep holding out, keep replaying, keep pumping out frogs, we might get the golden update that fixes the door, and all of our efforts and suffering will have been worth it and we aren't just losing our minds and losing our friends and dying for no reason, slaves to a broken game, doomed to keep making doomed universes.

I don't intend to be cynical, but this very emotional aspect of Version Drift Theory is what, in my opinion, makes a lot of claims to its truth value somewhat hard to take seriously. It is, once again, not an invalid model. If you've been in history-oriented communities (academia, alt-history hobbies, etc.) you might have heard of the phrase "all models are wrong, but some are useful". That's kind of what I think of Version Drift. Sometimes the game is just weird and throws a curveball at you.

In a few of your recent posts, you've mentioned that you might be out of sync with the replayernet, and honestly, I think you might be.

I know Time is pretty fucked/nonexistant out in the furthest ring, but I got my current session's Seer of Time to look over your posts, and he's estimating with his powers that you started posting around like, seven or so years ago from our perspective? How long has it felt to you?

Regardless, the game seems to have version-drifted really far from where it once was. A ton of your old posts match up with older guides I've read, but not newer ones, and are totally inaccurate to any version of the game that I've ever personally played.

I went back through a bunch of your old stuff, and here's some updates on how they usually work now:

Dream players have that purple and beige color scheme for real now, not "transparent" as you once said (never even heard of that one before).

Void players are (much more likely to be) able to get fraymotifs now, and don't always fuck up text as badly. (varies a lot between different sessions)

"Modded" sessions seem to be much less common, and whatever the "Andern Association" you mentioned in a few posts was, it seems either dissolved, or else is now so secretive that I can't find any info on it anywhere. Meanwhile, ordinary version-drift has seemingly sped up.

Many classpects in general seem to have changed a bit over time, and many have become much rarer, but it's too much to get into all at once.

There's tons of other more recent developments but I gotta go sorry ohgodwhat in my house again fuck ill get back to you soon maybe

I don't believe I ever wrote about an Andern Associations. The one post on my blog that mentions it has a frankly funked-up formatting, I think because it was submitted by someone else (instead of sent via ask) and I failed to delineate how much was my input and how much theirs. But I don't believe I wrote any of that, so it doesn't really constitute evidence that I've undergone version drift. In fact, all accounts of modded game sessions were reports from other people, so it's really not applicable to me at all.

Granted, a lot of goofy stuff does come my way, and I might be a bit too credulous, perhaps in the interest of entertaining hypotheticals because my advice is generally good in principle, even if the specifics are shaky (like that earlier post about those weird titles, the titles might not exist, but my advice for figuring out how they work is sound no matter what). And there could also be lapses in judgement. I'm subsistence farming in the The Furthest Ring, intellectual fugue states are a common worry for me, and I might have accidentally validated the existence of things that, in hindsight, have no way of being real (I officially denounce those Double Aspect or Double Class posts, I don't know why I believed and wrote up hypothetical summaries of bugged titles when the consensus is that Title attribution is never bugged, only the Titles themselves).

But speaking of unreliable askers, the fact that you haven't ever heard of "Dream's color scheme is transparent" is suspect. Not only does purple and beige as a color scheme conflict heavily with their frankly iconic transparent glass constructs, but "Dream player ascends to godhood and wakes up buck-ass naked on Skaia" is a community meme that frankly comes up way too often in discussions of the Dream Aspect.

But that's not the only thing that bugs me. You brought up Version Drift Theory, which is not A Theory The Same Way Gravity Is A Theory, but is instead a highly speculative model of, essentially, the evolution of Genesis Frogs in an attempt to explain not only bugs and glitches, but why some people's sessions are radically different from one another. It's not an authoritative truth, it's an analytical model of sorts that some people find use for, so why are you trying to convince me that Version Drift is real and I've undergone it? Especially when my concern was never that my game version is out of synch, it was that my connection to the ringservers were out of synch. I had a gap in my knowledge concerning Cherubs, because I'm often busy performing upkeep on myself and the ship, and I worried that either my computer, my connection, or maybe my browsing habits were caught lacking, and now someone in my askbox is trying to convince me that I've undergone such severe time dilation in my Ring Journey that all of my writing is now obsolete and worthless and that SBURB is now an unrecognizably different game.

I choose to believe this ask is psychological warfare on the part of a bad faith or not very reliable actor. Not only do your session reports sound wildly out of whack, but you're trying to convince me that I'm the out of touch one? This is Spriteless Behavior, I'm living in your walls, I'm summoning demons and sending them to your dwelling spire, they're going to beat you to death with hammers, I'm going to equip hammerkind so I can do the same, also I'm a mental health risk (Ring Journey) and physically disabled (glasses) and this is a level of gaslighting that probably falls under ableism, etc. etc. I am always right and may the Ohgodwhat destroy your computer such that you never imply otherwise again.

OH SHIT same not-a-cherub-but-wants-to-tell-you-about-them anon as before, forgot something:

Okay, so apparently cherubs have these things called jujus. They're magic or something, and can be really powerful. Every cherub just winds up with them somehow.

Honestly I dunno if I believe these are real though. Some fucker tried to tell me about one that was a lollipop that made you Caucasian, and that one at least is obviously fake.

Perhaps those Jujus are remnants of their civilization, in the same way that the computer I'm currently typing on is technically a remnant of my civilization? Though a lot more impressive than a computer, methinks. Some human worlds are more technologically advanced than the one I hailed from, but those Jujus seem to be more on par with the psionics Trolls have. Which is kind of cheating, I think. At least psionics are biologically based (or maybe it's soul stuff, I still haven't unpacked the implications of necrokinesis), but Cherubs are just having magic artifacts dropped in their lap. With great sexual hang-ups comes great power, I guess.

Though I gotta say, if "turning people Caucasian" is the extent of what a Juju can do, I'm not particularly impressed.