>>117968
>...Goddammit, being reminded of this twists the knife even more.
Good news! Life allowed Kronos to keep Xuv's other gift of being able to have children with non-Varkians! Beatrix still has a chance at existing! Along with that other child because Kronos was told that Bri was carrying twins! Kronos and Bri still have a chance at having their children!

.....now all we have to do is make sure Kronos keeps his pants on, otherwise he'll have a lot of half Varkian children all over the place!

You people retconned the fucking quest.
You fucking rebooted it.
Everything we did? POOF. Gone. Pointless.
Briannah? Gone. Sisah? Gone. Belseth? Gone. All of Kronos's friends? Gone. Eve the Kronos we knew is gone. This is effectively an entirely new character we're playing as.
And don't give me the "WE DID IT TO SAVE THE WORLD!!!" garbage.
We could have saved the world by choosing to save the future and not erasing everything we did.
I'm not angry at Kaktus. I'm angry at you people.
This is bullshit.

>>117970
It could be argued that everything we did was to change the past so there'd be a better future. ...But that just feels like a hollow argument. One that I didn't realize before I voted. And one I did realize before the vote closed, and I could have fixed if I didn't think and waffle on it until it was too late. And one I regret greatly now.

The Ass of Hat 2017/11/20(Mon)12:10 No. 117972 ID: 88bd6f
File 151120864242.gif - (973.39KB , 359x360 , salt duane.gif )

Can't win can you Kactus?

>>117970
You know what you could've done? You could've come onto the disthread and stated reasons for why everyone should vote for changing the future and not changing the past.

But you didn't do that, did you?

>>117973
Show of hands, how many people who voted actually changed their minds by reading something in the disthread?

>>117974
I did.

>>117968
>changing the timeline is tantamount to erasing people and replacing them
This is a world where souls exist, so that argument doesn't hold water. Also, since Life allowed Kronos to keep the hybridization blessing, that means there is continuity between the timelines.
We DID just prevent a lot of people from being born though... unless the newly-made timeline just delays their births instead of preventing them. We created more babies overall anyway, because the population was larger during those 20 years and people weren't discouraged by starvation and strife.

>>117970
Nah. A retcon would erase all evidence. The memories of what happened linger still.

We're all sad that the adventures we had with Kronos for the past two years are now retconned by our own actions. But this story wasn't going to have a happy ending, and now it can. That's quite the accomplishment, and a positive note in contrast to our world. Now we can screw around in the ending without feeling guilty about the deaths of millions.

... Also, I'm pretty sure most of the power in the "change the future" ending would have to be divested into the "stop the moons from colliding with each other and creating a meteor shower across the planet" thing. So there wouldn't be enough to make everything else happy.

Okay, had a break to calm down and get my thoughts together; Haven't gotten enough sleep for several days now and its left me frazzled. But after thinking even more on it, I stand by my conclusion that I, and we, changing the past was the wrong choice. But it's just because... Dammit, I wanted to stay with the Kronos and Briannah we spent two and a half bloody years with. Who we knew and guided though it all. I wanted those two broken people to finally have a much deserved happy future and a family together after all the shit they'd been through. That's a big part of why I put the effort in that I have on this quest. But no, at the eleventh fuckin' hour I had to choose what I thought was the responsible route and wipe it all the fuck away for some greater good! And while there's a Kronos and a Briannah in this timeline, they aren't the people I wanted and worked to have a future together. I'll still work to bring 'em together, but it won't be the same.

...Y'know, if Kaktus did a thread for the 'change the future' choice after this one, that'd cut out the salt about this. Could be non-canon, or Kaktus could choose which one is canon, or allow us to vote which one is. Ah, but I don't figure in the slightest it'll happen. Kaktus said he wanted to wrap up Strange Bedfellows so he could go on to other things.

>>117980
>This is a world where souls exist, so that argument doesn't hold water.
What? Why the hell not? What does that have to do with this at all? ...Do you know how souls work in this world? Once they pass beyond the Veil into Life's "garden" they are stripped of all personality and memory before flowing back to the world to enter any living thing. There is no reincarnation. No memory carried over.

And what I was saying is a person is made of their experiences, so change the past and the experiences of everyone in the world changes and all those in the previous timeline vanish. They cease to be as much as if they were killed.

And there's also the argument that changing the past is changing the minds of all those in the world, so it knowingly changed Bri's mind as much as if the power was used directly to change it. And that was something Kronos very much did not want to do to Bri.

>Nah. A retcon would erase all evidence. The memories of what happened linger still.
From the way they're apparently fading fast from the mind of this timeline's Kronos, they ain't gonna linger long.

>>117987
>... Also, I'm pretty sure most of the power in the "change the future" ending would have to be divested into the "stop the moons from colliding with each other and creating a meteor shower across the planet" thing. So there wouldn't be enough to make everything else happy.
...The moons were not gonna collide. One was just going to start passing in front of the other in its orbit from the viewpoint on the ground. That's what them "kissing" meant.

>>117974
In general? Yes, I've had my mind changed by good arguments from others. You have to leave yourself open to the possibility you might be wrong, that you haven't thought of everything, or that someone might have a better idea. Quests are collaborative, and in the best case that means relying on others to catch your mistakes or refine your ideas, or giving you ideas you can improve on.

This quest specifically? I haven't kept up with it so not as much.

>>117999
The souls are the same between timelines so they're the same "people", just having lived different experiences. Experience only works as a way to fully define someone if the soul does not exist.
Basically, the soul is what defines someone's core personality, and experiences further shape it.

Yes, things are different now. Do you really fear change that much?

>>118002
The possibility of suggesters changing their mind also presents the problem with using StrawPoll to tally the votes because you can't change your vote on StrawPoll after casting it. You could work around that by voting for the other choice twice, each from another IP address, to have the effective result that flipping your vote would have, but that's clunky.

>>117974
Not from the arguments presented in this quest by others that's for sure. I still proudly stand by the vote for the past option.

I'd just like to let you know Kaktus that among this sea of salt I am happy with the way things went.
I'm also happy that you didn't just go "and the past was change the end"

>>118040
...Upon reflection, I second this sentiment. You gave us a epilogue thread when you didn't have to, Kaktus, and also a unexpected choice to change the past or not. You could have just gone the 'change the future' route after Kronos rejected anyone becoming a god and wrote a epilogue and it'd have been good enough. You went above and beyond our expectations. And I apologize for my verbose whinging that changing the past was the wrong choice. And thank you, Kaktus, for running these quests.

>>118040
>>118051
This. This quest was a hell of a ride, thanks for seeing it to a full-fledged ending.

I don't comment much, but I think I have mentioned a few times that you are probably my favorite quest author and while I can't say I am ECSTATIC about how things turned out I enjoy reading what you do with our choices regardless :)

After seeing how Kronos' dad's picture has been a ? This whole time, it makes me wonder how much he's changed? Maybe he's healthier, isn't an alcoholic, and is fit instead of fat? Then again, I wonder how the rest of the family has changed?

We know Karas had a bit of a sweet tooth, so maybe without the war he was allowed to indulge in that candy he loved more than last time and now he's the fat guy in the family?

Krotos is alive, but what's he doing besides avoiding marriage?

And maybe Kira isn't barren anymore and she can have her own kid?

As for the new siblings, Kern and Karen, I'm looking forward to meeting them to see what they're like!

>>118125
Why not ask in-quest? Kronos remembers both his life and his other-self's, so he could compare his father and siblings and note the differences.

But my guess about Kronos' father, Helios, is that he has a bad temper in this timeline that was beaten down in the other timeline. That it was his bad temper erupting into burning rage over the death of his beloved wife that led Risavia into war. And then the terrible losses of the war and what he had done beat that bad temper out of him. But in this timeline, the war didn't happen, so Helios still has a bad temper. There's not really any evidence for this, it's just what I came up with in my head.

>We know Karas had a bit of a sweet tooth, so maybe without the war he was allowed to indulge in that candy he loved more than last time and now he's the fat guy in the family?
We don't know why Karas got a sweet tooth, though. Could have been a result of stress from the war, or from those Sakkilian orphans attacking him. And he had plenty of access to the candy he liked in the other timeline despite the war, so he could indulge in that timeline to.

>>118126
I know I could ask in-quest, but I'd rather see them in-quest instead of Kronos just remembering and describing them in-quest.

Okay, thumbnails are fixed now. I think. (Also make sure I know about the problem next time.)

The thumbnailer is exceptionally fussy. For a long time it already had an esoteric setting to make it work reliably on 32 bit png files. Then I turned on animated gifs, and they were terribly corrupted off the bat. To make gifs work I had to tell it to realign the frames, then deoptimize, then thumbnail, then reoptimize. It turns out that reoptimizing was... overly aggressive, and causing all sorts of corruption on certain files. So I have changed it from a general "optimize" to only do two *specific* optimizations that won't break everything. And then remade every gif/png thumbnail for the last four months.

>But my guess about Kronos' father, Helios, is that he has a bad temper in this timeline that was beaten down in the other timeline.

I doubt that, he had this sort of temper too in the old timeline but we didn't see it as often since we didn't see too many Kronos shenanigans that he'd be rightfully upset at.

Kaktus 2017/11/28(Tue)17:08 No. 118263 ID: 65a774
File 151191769610.png - (28.35KB , 686x526 , SALT.png )

>Okay, thumbnails are fixed now. I think.
Thank you, it does seem to work perfectly now.
>(Also make sure I know about the problem next time.)
As I am not one that visit the IRC channel often (or at all) or talk to the mods, I honestly thought someone else already brought it up to you guys. Sorry for that.

>SALT! ALL THE SALT!
BY THE FIVE, I’M DROWNING IN IT! On a serious note, though, I didn’t expect this kind of reaction… though the poll was very even most of the time…
>I'd just like to let you know Kaktus that among this sea of salt I am happy with the way things went.
Thank you. It’s nice being appreciated.
>I'm also happy that you didn't just go "and the past was change the end"
Honestly, I’m kind of glad I get a final chance to just be silly with these characters before the quest ends.

>Kaktus, if you don't mind me asking, which one would you have chosen if it was a tie?
*Shrug* coin flip?
>I wish I had "flipped" my vote yesterday by voting twice for 'change the future' from a couple free wi-fi spots like I was thinking of doing.
I really hope people haven’t been manipulating the voting in a way like that. It was very even after all…
>I'll blame myself at every point something was apparently lost or changed for the worse in this new timeline.
Hey, stop beating yourself up over my silly quest. I’m sure you have more important matters to worry about than what I make up from my deranged mind.

>We're all sad that the adventures we had with Kronos for the past two years are now retconned by our own actions. But this story wasn't going to have a happy ending, and now it can.
…did Kome just say something sane? Who are you and what have you done to the real Kome!?
But on that note, that is indeed kind of the tradeoff. This ending will be a bit less bittersweet… but the adventure didn’t happen in the way we played it.
>This is a world where souls exist, so that argument doesn't hold water.
First, souls in this universe don’t work like that.
Second, the siblings didn’t so much reverse time as they moved all the actors to a different stage with a slightly different manuscript to play after. Many characters are very similar to their old counterparts, even if the lack of war would have changed them more drastically. In fact, the biggest change is many of them have lost their flaws they got from the war.

>>118263
So that's why Zela got retconned from the memory of the first timeline? Both timelines use the same "actors" so if she didn't exist in one of them she couldn't exist in the other?
Well my other theory was that the Chronicler changed Kronos' memory of the timeline just so he wouldn't despair over having erased Zela.

Anyway how is that different from my interpretation of souls? The soul is the baseline personality, just like what you call "actors".

Kaktus, could you give your definitive "word of god" on the matter of Xuv's blessing allowing impregnation of males or not as well as across species. 3ce125 thinks it's possible, but I don't remember it that way and I can't find anywhere Xuv said it had that ability. Your word would settle it surely.

Why is everyone giving ip on Bri so easily? After everything we did to get Kronos together with her, everyone just wants to give up without even putting in some kind of effort to at least try to be with her! So I just want to know why everyone isn't at least trying to fight for her?

>>118468
I won't give up on her, I just haven't composed my post yet. As for everyone else... I dunno. Risk aversion? Don't want to rock the boat with Krotos? Don't want to leave anyone left out or unhappy? Pure utilitarian "this results in everyone getting with exactly one other person?"

Never mind Kronos will still feel a deep longing and sadness for Briannah and the children and family he could have had with her every time he sees her. Or that Belseth's feelings towards Kronos could shake out to have been much more lust than love and they'd end up breaking up. And those are just the two I can think of off the top of my head.

>>118468
The way I see it, we have three options:
1, go for some unstable love triangle thing. This leaves Belseth out in the cold unless we make it some kind of love square without even knowing if Krotos would be into Belseth.
2, beat Krotos in the game of love and take Briannah from him, which leaves both Krotos and Belseth out in the cold (though I wonder if Krotos would be into Belseth)
3, accept that since Krotos is alive again and had more of a history with Bri than Kronos, he has first dibs. I mean, Kronos only knew Briannah for like a week, while Krotos had been seeing her for far longer. That leaves Belseth for Kronos.

Regardless of which option we choose, children are still on the table since even if Belseth can't be impregnated (or he doesn't want to be, which is understandable) and/or Kronos isn't married to Briannah, Bri can act as a surrogate mother. I don't think Krotos will care too much about having a threesome to get her pregnant.

>>118471
Could you point out exactly where the heck you got the idea that Xuv's blessing allows for Mpreg, with a link? Because I don't remember that, and when I went looking I couldn't find it. I wrote what I did find in-quest in response to your post, so read that then post there or here or both, wherever you'd prefer.

>>118468
>Why is everyone giving ip on Bri so easily?
Because most of these people don't give a shit about the narrative or the characters in it. It sucks, but it's the only answer I can come up with.

>After everything we did to get Kronos together with her, everyone just wants to give up without even putting in some kind of effort to at least try to be with her!
Another thing we could blame: shippers. Personally, I blame the Belseth/Kronos shippers.

>So I just want to know why everyone isn't at least trying to fight for her?
I'm outraged and I want to try, but I know I'll be lost beneath a tidal wave of meme lords, shippers, and people who just don't care. It creates a very hopeless environment.

>>118489
>>/quest/849832
Still not either of those things. Those definitions don't apply to what happened. It's time travel. Not a reboot, not a retcon. Everything happened, now something new is happening and the two backstories are merged. I mean, did you watch Run Lola Run and go "wow most of that movie was completely pointless because of all the things Lola did right in the end"?

Also, if I didn't care, I wouldn't be suggesting. It doesn't matter what you think or what you wanted. Deal with it.

>hopeless
Have you been paying attention at all to how Kaktus runs quests? Almost every suggestion is included in some way. EVERY SUGGESTION COUNTS.

>>118493
>It doesn't matter what you think or what you wanted. Deal with it.
The thought process that lead to our current state of affairs, ladies and gentlemen.

>>118494
You should probably at least try to keep your story straight. You're starting to look like a troll.

>>118489
>>118494
Personally, I agree with your sentiment: it does feel like everything we worked for got undone by a poorly thought out decision. I've read in this thread that quite a few posters would go back and change their vote if they could, so at least some people are sorry for this mess.

Instead of whining and complaining about having to start over, everyone should instead focus on figuring out how to get Kronos and Bri back together. Because anything worth having needs to have some effort put into getting it.

If everything was just handed to us on a silver platter, then we would've stopped the Nightmare Six early, before they got so fucking close to winning and we'd still be in the original timeline!

I feel like the more suggesters fight for getting Kronos and Bri back together, the worse the fallout is going to be. The writing is on the wall.

>>118493
>It's time travel.
But it wasn't time travel, as Kaktus said at the bottom of his post, >>118263. I took what Kaktus wrote to mean that the world was reformed and those in it changed, often in body and all in mind. That many souls were restored who had perished in the last world, while others remained dead, only the way and when of their death altered in memory and record. And a whole generation was unmade, another created in its place from different souls, different personalities, different possibilities. All to match the pattern of a world from a very carefully chosen path of Dreamer's dream that started from a branch not taken twenty and a bit years ago. One that lead to a world with people very similar to their old world versions. And when it was all done, all that remains of the old world are the memories of a very few injected into their new world counterparts and a book by Chronicler.

In the end, the Siblings did not use that power to change the past, they used it to change the present into what the past might have become. For there is no way to change the past, no matter how much power you have. This I recognize from Kaktus' previous quests. That true, change-the-past time travel is impossible has been a common element through them whenever the matter comes up.

Knowing now what it really entailed, it's rather sad that Kronos, in the mental guise of his mirror-self, advocated for changing the past when he was also adamantly against using the power to alter Briannah's mind. He ended up choosing the way which did just that to not just his beloved but to everyone else in the world. I'm left wondering if he, and we, would have chosen that way if he had known what it really meant.

Also, in thinking of that no-time-travel commonality between Kaktus' quests, I remembered that there's something even more solid connecting them. Kaktus mentioned in the second Will We Dream discussion thread, at >>/questdis/112801, that all his quests, except for Boldly Coming, are in the same universe in some way. This I figure includes Strange Bedfellows. If true, it'd mean it is somewhere and -when in the same universe as Will We Dream, Rust, Unbroken, Numb, Transmachina, and Pixel Adventure 1 and 2. My suspicion is it's something akin to the Precursor game world, but it could be plenty of other things.

>>118613
>This I recognize from Kaktus' previous quests. That true, change-the-past time travel is impossible has been a common element through them whenever the matter comes up.
And I somehow completely forgot about our time jumping between Rust, Unbroken and Numb, nor Kaktus saying that there was a slim chance in Rust we could save Prince Eliraz from dying and being turned into a ghoul if we could come up with a sufficiently compelling way to do so. I blame lack of sleep for how I forgot something that was so important a mechanic of those quests. So this means it's not a common element across Kaktus' previous quests.

Ok, Kaktus, as funny as this is, I think you're going just a little overboard with random people bursting into the room. Can we please get everyone out of the room so that Kronos, Bri, and Krotos can get dressed?

Karas' mustache is really bothering me. Is it made of hair? Is it made of feathers? Does it grow out of his beak? Does he glue it on?

While I admit I am sad we didn't choose Belseth that was a pretty nice ending. I look forward to seeing whatever your new quest will be!

That was a very nice epilogue and ending, Kaktus. While before I expressed regret at choosing to change the past, after reading this I now believe that overall it was the better choice and I feel good about how it all turned out. That Briannah gets to be with both her loves and them her, to have a life and family together (of Vark-Sakkilian hybrids,) they all free of scars mental and physical, is what makes me the most happy about this ending. So thank you, Kaktus, and bravo for a quest well done!

>>118793
>I look forward to seeing whatever your new quest will be!
As do I. There's even a obvious plot hook for a sequel quest right in the ending text of this one, with Kern. But I have a feeling that Kaktus will continue with either Will We Dream or Boldly Coming for a thread before starting a new quest.

>>118811
>But I have a feeling that Kaktus will continue with either Will We Dream or Boldly Coming for a thread before starting a new quest.
You serious? I think Kaktus is going to focus on completing one or both of those before even considering starting a new quest!

I'm waiting for RUST(or whatever the true name of that quest series is) to start back up

>>118812
Yeah, you're probably right.

>>118814
That group of interconnected quests was named RUNE (Rust, Unbroken, Numb, Entropy, the last of which we never got to.) But, if I remember correctly, Kaktus decided to put it on indefinite hiatus, if not outright gave up on it, because it got to be way more than he could handle. It's been so long that if he does decide to restart it, it's gonna be tough since the previous suggesters will have forgotten things and newcomers would have to read back through multiple threads.

purpose 2017/12/14(Thu)06:44 No. 118825 ID: 54dec8

I actually asked about Rust prior in this thread somewhere and he said that he has no plans to continue Rust due to it being way too over complicated

>Even more updates!
It's like a Marvel movie. Just when you think it's over, something else pops up!

>It's like a Marvel movie. Just when you think it's over, something else pops up!
Have the end credits actually even rolled by yet? Nah, just kidding, it’s over now.
>So thank you, Kaktus, and bravo for a quest well done!
And thank you for sticking with me until the end.

>Karas' mustache is really bothering me. Is it made of hair? Is it made of feathers? Does it grow out of his beak? Does he glue it on?
It’s actually a really bad case of nose hair... or alternative I just took some artistic liberties and drew him with a mustache because I felt like it.
>But did everyone else who was down in the crypt remember the dream?
Probably.
>Did they ever explain the dream to anyone?
Yes.
>Did Kronos hug his mother and cry?
Yes and no.
>Did Kronos get to take Thalias, Belseths and/or Sisahs cock?
My sources say… chances are high.
>DID THEY HAVE KIDS?
Yes.
…
…and no, you won’t get to see them…
…
…yet.

>That's just the endcap where they advertise other books from the publisher.
“If you liked this story, you might like ‘Boldly coming’ or ‘Will we dream’ as well. Additionally, be on the lookout for the thrilling sequel to strange bedfellows, ‘A feast of souls’”
>There's even an obvious plot hook for a sequel quest right in the ending text of this one…
There are actually several sequel hooks towards the end of the quest. See if you can spot them all!
>I look forward to seeing whatever your new quest will be!
I’m probably going to focus on my other quest for a while first. Might even try to finish Boldly coming, as it’s probably half way done already.
>I'm waiting for RUST(or whatever the true name of that quest series is) to start back up
The Rune sage, which rust was part of, will not be coming back. It simply became too big to fast and crushed itself… and it’s been years so…

>So... GolementalQuest?
Vrrr…
>Steal all the tools!
*Purr*!
>Consume them all, little stone man.
Vrr?

The Ass of Hat 2017/12/16(Sat)12:36 No. 118927 ID: 74f87e
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>chances are high
Ooooh my!

>Rune is dead
Aaaaah fuck!