AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Actually, we do have pretty extensive knowledge on how the Scratch works: Skaia simply changes around the destination of the meteors bearing the players (since the only thing it has power over is the defense portals), which spawns another version of its originating universe, though all instances spawned this way are still part of the same genesis frog.

It doesn't make another version, it completely rewrites the original universe. As far as the universe and the session is concerned, the Beta session never happened at all. That's why it was so vital for the kids to get out of there, because had they not, they would have ceased to exist entirely.

No, the old timelines and session still exist.
When the universe is scratched and the portals are switched the old session becomes a doomed timeline. Doomed timelines don't retroactively cease to exist (because if they did everything from them would also be destroyed) they just simply stop when their usefulness to the Alpha is up. If they hadn't left they would have gone the same way as Rose from Davesprite's timeline. Not dead, not removed from existence, simply vanished. It's also why Meenah had to kill herself and her friends before their scratch was done, so that they'd go to the dreambubbles instead of being dropped.
The earliest point of divergence from the alpha universe and the beta universe is when the frog temple (and thus GCAT/Bec) crashes down. Until then it's the same exact timeline.

Also if the old universe completely got removed from existence, we'd have a major paradox on our hands because then none of the kids would have been born at all.

Tttthat's what I said, minus the doomed timeline part. The conditions for the original session are no longer possible after The Scratch, it is, in the exact words of Doc Scratch, a hard reset of the entire timeline. Skaia switches the defense portals so different meteors land at different times. This switches the positions of the guardians/ancestors and the players.

This means the timeline is actively changed. A doomed timeline, as we generally know them, is simply the result of a decision that could have been made but shouldn't have been made. They continue essentially forever, but everyone in them is marked for death by paradox space itself.

This is more like the original doomed timeline we saw. The alpha timeline needed the fact that John would fly to the last gate, so in the alpha timeline he always would. It was necessary for Dave to travel back and make sure he reconsidered before he went through. Because Dave fixes it with time travel, the timeline he came from doesn't just end, it ceased to be a possibility. He's still around though, simply because he went back in time and wasn't in that timeline anymore, though he's still doomed because his timeline was doomed.

We've seen this with thousands of Aradias as well.

The Scratch is the same type of deal. The original session, and the original effects it had on the universe, could no longer possibly be. The events of the original session never happened and lost the possibility of happening.

The difference is it's not a doomed timeline. If it was a doomed timeline, they'd all be doomed. John, Jade, everyone would be doomed to die. Dave has enough time-sense to know when John actively changes the timeline, and he never mentions that they're doomed at all. It's still the alpha timeline, but they basically switch the portals and that makes the entire alpha timeline cease to exist the second it's done, and is replaced with a brand new one.

The Kids all survived because of the exact reason Davesprite did, once again, minus the doom. They just left before they were caught in the timeline switch.

Except it doesn't erase the old timeline. It has to still be there for the new one to exist at all. Without the original timeline being there and happening we wouldn't have meteors to switch in the first place.

Foreshadowing: The Update: The Movie: Based on the #1 bestseller: inspired by real events.

Terezi totally saw something. I refuse to believe she didn't.

I think the key to all of this is going to be for John to Either make sure Terezi doesn't end up with Gamzee, or in soe way help her keep her blindness. It could also have something to do with making sure Aranea doesn't fuck errthang up

The 2015 calendar is available on What Pumpkin.

I never knew how much I needed this piece of art in my life.

More evidence against this:
The original meteors and the ectobiology and session that spawned them.
Derse's Moon, and by extension the Green Sun
Jaspers' existence in Roxy's house
The bunny Jade gave to john for his birthday, and this letter.

It doesn't reset the whole universe, it just spawns a new timeline like the flipping of a coin.

Speaking of the Scratch, what happened to (Rose)Mom's bunny and Grandma's bunny on the other side? They had to have had them, since Dirk and Bro both had Cal.

So John will zappy thing over to this doomed timeline, where the only post-scratch dead characters will be Davesprite and John, making John no longer dead and making the timeline no longer doomed. John will also be armed with the knowledge he has of events still to come and, presumably with his mastery over the zappy thing, can prevent an metric fuckton of character death resulting from Aranea's scheme.

I'm cool with this. I'm also curious to see what happens when Roxy meets with Nix

THEORY TIME

John's deal with Typheus is two-fold. He can fix all the problems of the currently-doomed timeline he's in, and can gain some mastery over his zappy-powers, at the cost of himself from another timeline dying forcing Jade to be alone for three years. This is ultimately beneficial, because otherwise Jade would be dead, and she gets to meet Calliope from another timeline.

Now, why does that HAVE to happen?

Because John is the problem.

John has affected only a few key events recently. He stole the Ring of Life from Tavros, and he stuck his hand in the mystery thing and got his retcon powers. Everything else that he's done has been ultimately ineffectual and would not change the course of events much.

Meaning if he died before he reached the new session, not a whole lot would change at all. Jade would still go grimbark, she would still go after everyone, and ultimately events would play out exactly the same.

What would change is what probably doomed the timeline in the first place. Specifically, Araena getting the ring.

If John never took the ring from Tavros, then it never would have appeared in his session. Tavros would have it. Araena would never have learned that John had the ring and sought after it.

John now has the power to retcon entire events. If he can control where he zaps to, he could theoretically redo the entire course of the story from the beginning.

He has a universe where everything is the same, but he died post-scratch. He has the ability to go back into his own past and stop himself from making certain decisions, we've already seen this.

John's choice is, in order to create a new alpha timeline and save his friends, he has to erase an alternate self from existence, and take his place. He takes his entire planet, and maybe even Davesprite, and zaps into the new universe where he never made the critical choices that doomed the timeline. He has to live with making Jade suffer alone for three years, and whatever may come from his long absence.

As a side note, if he CAN prevent himself from getting the ring, then Tavros has it.

Tavros had one intention for it, and it's what has been somewhat hinted to be the ring's ultimate fate.

He gives it to Vriska.




All those things are outside the timeline. If you leave the timeline and it's boundaries, you're not affected by whatever happens to it. I brought that up specifically because it's a major critical plot point, the meteors get redirected to the scratch timeline and the rest is erased. The meteors completely leave the session and the post-scratch timeline and are not affected by the Scratch past where they end up. There's a period of time where it technically happened but paradox space doesn't care about what happens outside a timeline it erases. Jade and John leave it by going into an entirely different dimension, and Rose and Dave leave it by going out of the session and into the Void, where they end up eons in the past to create the Green Sun.

Terezi even points out how John's new powers do almost the same thing as the Scratch, he creates an entirely new Alpha timeline if he interacts with the old one, where the old one never happened to begin with. He can even reverse this onto himself, and stop himself from interacting with events after he already has memories of doing so.

The exact, stated reason that Meenah killed herself and all the other pre-scratch trolls, was because if she didn't they would be stuck in their session and cease to exist entirely.

I don't know where you got the idea that it just dooms the original timeline because nothing has even implied that.