rhythmic-idealist:

Is it weird if it just occurred to me that John went back to a previous save point.

Like. That’s the retcon. He can do that, because being Unstuck he’s no longer a part of the game, he’s outside it – as any player of any generic game should be.

Terezi – a Seer, like Rose, which is probably significant – wrote John a walkthrough. Which John then used to cheat his way through, as one does with game walkthroughs.

How the game mechanics work from here, though, is up for debate. Did he break the game? After all, what he did was go back and make choices the game didn’t present.

What’s more important to me, though, is that we’re all frustrated with John for the same reasons we get frustrated with “those gamers.”

For example, and one that makes me giggle: since this is technically an RPG, John was definitionally “godmodding.” He got to go outside his timeline, get info from other players later in time that literally wasn’t available to anyone before, and then go back and use it – or go back and pretend it was an option presented at the time. Nothing he changed could have been changed before then, because past!Terezi didn’t have that knowledge. He’s meta-gaming. That’s not fair, you can’t just do that!

In addition, one of the first things we learn about John is how incredibly bad he is at technology and basic coding. Remember the whole joke about his stack modus? So he’s this complete noob who pretty much gets through on luck, hits certain upgrades before he should, and suddenly becomes incredibly OP. His powers were drawn out by WV, who (”do the windy thing, do tHE WINDY THING DO THE WINDY THING-”) was basically yelling at John like any more experienced gamer would be at a friend who’s really terrible at the game. We’ve all done that, haven’t we? Oh my God, Larry, Mario needs to eat the mushroom- why did you just walk directly off a cliff, no stop it-

But despite fumbling his way through, John ends up way overpowered, has All The Abilities, and then uses a walkthrough to win the game without playing it through like you’re supposed to. Why do gamers like this exist, we wonder. Why does this happen. John, no, you can’t do that, Homestuck has a story!

But we all sigh and groan, as we watch our friend John end the game but not the way he was supposed to, darnit.