Welcome to Gaia! ::

FANCHARACTERS 101: Ectobiology, Strife Decks, and Sylladices
( Now with pictures! whee )

Since there was no questions, I'll just go on as planned.

There are things that'll apply to both Fantrolls and Fankids. This is a part where I talk about those things, because I feel like I need to because this is some serious stuff that sometimes is overlooked. This'll be split up into parts as well.

Both Strife Decks and Sylladices are the first game-like elements introduced to Homestuck, which is why I'm starting with them. Ectobiology is put here because it's a bit complicated and has to deal with your characters actually coming into existence.

Ectobiology-


Look at all these babies. All of these babies are made using a process called ectobiology.

Anyone who plays SBURB or any variant of it will have to be born via ectobiology. Ectobiology is also used to breed the Genesis frog (although I will touch on breeding the Genesis frog when I get into aspects and such, because Genesis frog breeding is more for just Space and Knight players).

To make an ectobaby, you first need to find an ectobiology lab. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, but the most common way is finding a transportilizer that will bring your character to the ectobiology lab. The two characters known for using ectobiology to make babies were John and Karkat, who both were the leader of their respective session and had something to do with biology or genetics in their handle (ectoBiologist, carcinoGeneticist). Just thought that needed to be said.

The next step is to make a paradox ghost imprint (the green slimy stuff), which will then be sucked into a tube. To make a paradox ghost imprint, your character will try to appearify something that would make a paradox if appearified, which would instead make a slimey ghost imprint of the the object trying to be appearified. The ghost slime is then used to make a baby version of your character. (Also, if the session is a scratched session, the babies made will double because you are making babies for the pre-scratch and scratched session)

The paradox baby characters will then be placed on meteors, which will then be sent to Skaia during the reckoning. The protective portals around Skaia will then send the babies to different places on their planet at different times (which are considered their birthdays). When the meteors hit, the babies will be insanely close to their guardian figure, who will then take them in and raise them as their own.

Then whatever happens to that baby will be up to you. But they're destined to play a variant of SBURB now.

Strife Specibi



Since there is a whole lot of strifing in SBURB sessions, Strife Specibi are really important if you don't want your character dying or getting seriously hurt.

A strife specibus can literally be anything, not just blades or guns or hammers. Look at the Kind Abstrata card above; one look and I can see aerosol, ladle, even iceskatekind. When picking a strife specibus for your character, make sure it actually makes sense with who your character is and how they grew up (most people don't grow up learning how to use throwing stars or ninja swords, do they?).

If a weapon with a strife specibus card gets damaged, the strife card will automatically change to whatever the weapon is now (Dave's 1/2 bladekind). Some weapons, such as Jane's spoon/forkkind or Kanaya's lipstick/chainsawkind can switch between two weapons. This only counts as one strife card, however. Sometimes, your character may have more than one strife specibus (Roxy's fistkind and riflekind). The strife card not being used will be placed in something called a strife portfolio, and will be swapped with the other card if used.

Sylladices



The sylladex is what pretty much holds all of your character's stuff so they don't have to carry a ton of things around all the time. At first this may be problematic to work with (some of the first few pages of Homestuck is John messing around with his sylladex). Most sylladices are picked because the characters found it to their liking or because it fits the character's personality in some way (Rose picked her sylladex because she found it 'elegant', Dirk's sylladex has to do with rapping, and Gamzee's sylladex is literally all about miracles).

Though it is not mandatory, John, Rose, and Dave have sylladices that refer to some type of data structure (queue, tree, and hashmap). Of the beta kids, Jade is the only one to not have a data structure-themed sylladex (her's have to do with popular board games). Depending on what your character has interests in, this may affect what kind of sylladex you would want to give them (as an example, a character who enjoys gaming might have a Minecraft-styled sylladex).

In each sylladex, there is a number of cards. Each card can hold an item, and depending on the sylladex, can hold an item of a certain size (John's Dad's wallet sylladex can hold the Tumor, ten TONS of shaving cream, and an entire car, while John's first sylladex couldn't hold a harlequin doll). Depending on the number of cards in a sylladex, your character can hold a certain number of objects (at first John only had four cards, so he could only hold four objects at a time). Living things can also be put into a sylladex (Casey/Viceroy Bubbles Von Salamancer).





TL;DR: Ectobiology makes your characters, Strife Specibi give them the ability to strife and defend themselves, and Sylladices hold things that wouldn't be able to be held in normal situations.

Any questions? I'd like to ask if you people have any questions about these things or if you want to request a certain thing (pertaining to fancharacters) be answered. Please understand I might not have the answers, but I'll certainly try. uwu

How do you determine a fancharacter's God Tier? I know (or at least I heard) obtaining it and mastering it is supposed to be a challenege that reflects a character's growth, so does that mean it is something to be determined after having your character develop?