I can't complete a sentence, but truth be told I

Yeah, last night I guess I was bored at work or something, so in my distraction I ended up playing around with my own hypothetical Homsetuck universe, just for shits and giggles.

After getting home, I ended up having to spend three hours trying to figure out the mechanics behind what the hell I’d just conceived. It gave me a headache, but I think I mostly got it figured out. I was pretty determined.

Imagine that there are four different sessions, just like in Homestuck. Two universes, a beta of each and an alpha of each. Pre-scratch, post-scratch.

Now imagine that there are actually only two sessions, but there are still two universes, each with an alpha and a beta.

The idea is that the pre-scratch and post-scratch sessions actually occur in the same timeline. Essentially they scratch into themselves. Sort of.

The two sessions, for the sake of simplicity in this scenario, both have 12 players. In my design—because I felt like challenging myself for some dumb reason—I had thirteen. You’d be amazed at how complicated things get just by introducing an odd number.

Anyway, 12 players, yes, nice. So twelve humans and twelve let’s-just-say trolls. The twelve humans play together. The twelve trolls play together. Right? No. Six humans play with six trolls and the other six trolls play with the other six humans. And each of these 24 have a guardian/custodian to go along with them, right? Right.

In order to better explain what comes next, each player and guardian/custodian (ancestor) will receive a value to identify them.

The Earth-equivalent Players: E1, E2, E3, E4, E5, E6, E7, E8, E9, E10, E11, E12
The Alternia-Equivalent Players: A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, A9, A10, A11, A12
The Earth Guardians: G1, G2, G3, G4, G5, G6, G7, G8, G9, G10, G11, G12
The Alternia Custodians (Ancestors): C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, C7, C8, C9, C10, C11, C12

As you know if you’ve read Homestuck (if you haven’t you really shouldn’t be paying attention to any of this), the roles of the players and guardians reverse post-scratch. So how does this happen since we only have two sessions to represent all possibilities?

The idea is that the two sessions are both a beta and an alpha, with six of the players being a part of the beta arrangement and six a part of the alpha in each. The beta session for Earth is the same as the alpha session for Alternia, and the beta version for Alternia is the same as the alpha session for Earth.

E1-6 plays with A7-12.
E7-12 plays with A1-6.
E/A1-6 are beta players.
E/A7-12 are alpha players.

Incidentally, the universe created by the alpha session for Earth is the beta version for Alternia, and the universe created by the alpha session for Alternia is the beta version of Earth. Also incidentally, the beta and alpha versions are the exact same, as they take place within the same timeline.

We still have the matter of the pre-scratch and post-scratch players. How the fuck does that work? It gets even more ridiculous. The human players in the beta Earth/alpha Alternia session are the troll ancestors in the alpha Earth/beta Alternia session, and the troll players in the alpha Earth/beta Alternia session are the human guardians in the beta Earth/alpha Alternia session.

In other values:

E1=C12
E2=C11
E3=C10
E4=C9
E5=C8
E6=C7
E7=C6
E8=C5
E9=C4
E10=C3
E11=C2
E12=C1

A1=G12
A2=G11
A3=G10
A4=G9
A5=G8
A6=G7
A7=G6
A8=G5
A9=G4
A10=G3
A11=G2
A12=G1

Fun, right? Now for ectobiological matters. In this instance, the human-equivalent and the troll equivalent would actually pair off in this matter and create a resulting second pair of one human and one troll. Through, like, deus ex genetics or some shit. All things considered, it’s not that much of a stretch. Anyway:

G1+C12=E1/A12
G2+C11=E2/A11
G3+C10=E3/A10
G4+C9=E4/A9
G5+C8=E5/A8
G6+C7=E6/A7

G7+C6=E7/A6
G8+C5=E8/A5
G9+C4=E9/A4
G10+C3=E10/A3
G11+C2=E11/A2
G12+C1=E12/A1

Per Homestuck lore, the both heroes of time would have to be among the beta players, and both heroes of space would have to be in the alpha players.

And in case you can’t tell, unless you want to screw with the lore or employ some very iffy time/space fuckery, none of this would actually work. For the reason that the beta players are also the beta guardians/ancestors and the alpha players are also the alpha guardians/ancestors. This was even worse in mine where there were six beta players each and seven alpha players each.

It would however work if one session was exclusively beta and one was exclusively alpha, and the universe created in the beta session was to be preserved. As well, the pre-scratch and post-scratch sessions would occur in different universes (the humans scratch into the trolls and the trolls scratch into the humans), and one hero of space would be among the humans and one among the trolls.

Yeah, this shit gets pretty fucking convoluted, but I hope you can see what I was going for. If I were to write fanfiction, I’d say there’s a lot of potential here.

But I don’t write fanfiction.