Tag: ectobiology

atalana:

starship-one:

starship-one:

*does human transmutation with homestuck alchemy*

this post is not a joke i’ve been thinking about this for months and i’m POSITIVE sburb would, in theory let players do this.  in this panel, dave proves that players can create parts of themselves by trying to alchemize his own brain in a jar.  his only limitation is lack of grist.  also, the game clearly has no issue with resurrecting the dead (see: god tiers, life ring, aradia, dreamselves) or duplicates of characters (dreamselves again, dirk’s whole arc, (vriska)) or just straight up creating people (ectobiology) so i see no reason why you couldn’t bring back dead players this way, or even more upsetting, create a carbon copy of a living player.  youd just need the right combination of items and an insane amount of grist, and not only would it be possible, but thematically relevant to sburb itself

you know, looking through the comments on this, a lot of people are saying “yeah but it would be really expensive” or “no bc ectobiology blah blah blah”, but im leaning towards a different train of thought

bc ectobiology and alchemy are, not the same thing

ectobiology is the closest we get in sburb to actual reproduction science, that is, gaining a person’s dna from their ghost imprint and using it to either clone them or create their children (mutated or otherwise). it’s not cloning technology in the sense of perfectly reproducing a person as they are, its cloning technology in the sense of “we made this baby genetically identical to you”

alchemy, according to rose’s explanation, and also just sort of how we see it being used, is a lot closer to how a void player’s powers work. you’ve got to find the concepts that make up that thing. and we know roxy’s powers could be used to make something living – the matriorb (which i think is closer, really, to making a whole living person, than mapping someone’s brain and reproducing it, as both dave and dirk did to vastly different results). but rose found it impossible to create an apple, because it was so simple she couldn’t figure out the components for it

so, assuming there are limits on players just straight up captchaloguing themselves, or that the code wouldnt work (we never see anyone captchalogue any being of higher function than a consort, and dave’s captcharoid selfie doesn’t reproduce himself, but his brain), that would be your primary limitation – finding every concept that makes up a person

and, regardless of grist cost, i think you’re a lot more likely to end up with things like roxy’s mutant cats – this being looks like the right person, but has no higher brain function, or this being thinks along more or less the same lines, but doesn’t resemble them at all, or weird clones where you ended up with too much, and it’s like this person, but with half an extra brain or arm or whatever

if you got there eventually, i think sburb would allow it (though its rules on resurrecting the dead are really specific so it might not allow a loophole like this without consequence)

but along the way you’d end up with a lot of really horrifying attempts