lord/muse thoughts

[fleshprocessor]

you know, a lot of people struggle to characterize what a lord or muse is, and i think i finally can put my thoughts into words: the narrative. a lord or muse can only exist within sburb, and i think that's crucial to understanding their classpects.

take caliborn: every single part of his life, start and finish, is characterized by sburb. one could argue the same is the case with, say, jade, but jade crucially can exist outside of the narrative. she has a life that was heavily characterized by it, sure, but the cherubs are pointedly restrained as children- and every single thing they can have a tie to is something that the narrative allows them to. furthermore, jade can win the game in a sense more meaningful than that of caliborn's; she is capable of living on earth c and moving on- regardless as to whether how well she does at that in the epilogues, lol. the point is she had the chance.

caliborn and alt calliope, however, are the setting and plot. this means that they can only exist within the restraints they themselves put upon themselves. they live and die by the ultimate riddle- caliborn in his infinitely-recursive timeloop, and alt calliope by being shifted away from space together, seeing as she is in the dreambubbles. (of course, she becomes more relevant in the epilogues and hs^2, but we'll see where that goes- i have a strong theory she is going to tie back into the plot of hs proper). that being said, a lord and a muse simply... cannot exist outside of sburb. it's why alt calliope is the true muse of space and our calliope doesn't play sburb at all; she does not get to become the muse if she can live outside of sburb. (they? i never read the epilogues, and i have mixed feelings on making the green-skulled alien who chose to become a girl nonbinary).

anyway, basically, i think the ideas of other lords/muses are so fun, but everybody treats them as the literal masters of their classpect instead of becoming the story: caliborn being the plot and calliope being the setting. what would a lord of light/muse of void be like? would the lord be the lore, and the muse be the misdirections the characters give? who knows! there are so many ways to go about it, but i've never seen it done right.