sorry for the even worse delay
It does often do this. But the times "story" is used during Karako's dialogue are as follows:
- "There are many such metaphorical cosmic meta-river levels in this particular instantiation of the Story. Thus, even if you row with utmost power to change your course on the river you are navigating — the river you can see — the other meta-rivers continue to sweep you on as before, without regard for any tiny adjustments you may make down at your level."
- "Or knowing these things, do you instead choose to ply your vessel in the waters of your own world, remaining the person life has made you? Remaining a key yet unknowing piece in the towering stack of universes, influencing your own destiny on the corporeal river, swept to destinations beyond your understanding in fulfillment of the larger Story??"
If we assume the hierarchy of creators and these meta-river levels are one and the same, neither of these indicate that the idea of "the Story" is a single layer of this hierarchy, but instead that the hierarchy is encompassed within it. The reason that's an issue is something I've already brought up, and will again address
below.
i don't recall "the story" being considered a single layer in my argument though, the "larger story" that karako is referring to is indeed supposed to be a layer above the hierachy, my point was that given those creators are the metafictional kind that control lower ones like stories, then the layers of the hierachy would be referring to lower narratives as well, i mean they even call it "the larger story", implying that there are lower stories, which given the entire cosmological structure he's referring to, seems to imply it would be it, that each layer is a smaller story controlling smaller stories
even if we assume that this only means like, the baseline universe is the smaller story and the larger story is the one containing the hierachy, it just doesn't really make sense for me that said hierachy is creators, which are in turn implied to be the author kind, aren't also narrative-based but rather just, generic higher dimensional ones.
With the current interpretation listed on the pages, every character in Homestuck that has demonstrated actual R>F transcendence scales above this hierarchy. The problem with that is then that there is nothing that supports the hierarchy being one of complete qualitative superiority in the first place, instead of simply one of quantitative superiority.
If the hierarchy is fully within "this particular instantiation of the Story" and we assume the Director's words aren't meant to reflect she's actually within the hierarchy, then characters like her, Ultimate Dirk, Hussie, etc. all scale above it. Which means none of the creators within said hierarchy are even shown, nor are their degrees of transcendence elaborated upon. The most we get from Karako is the following:
- The higher levels of this hierarchy are referred to as "unimaginably vaster" and "infinitely greater."
- The term "meta" is repeatedly used to describe them and other things in Karako's speech, which he also claims are "metaphorical" representations of the truth.
- There are greater creators beyond the creator of this world, stacking indefinitely or potentially infinitely.
- The way they move the beings below them is compared to moving pieces on a chessboard, though Karako also says, "if the chess pieces grow wise enough, they may move the movers!!"
- These powers are "unimaginably large" while Feferi and MSPA Reader are "unimaginably small", but they and their world are indispensable and compared to "a key piece at the bottom of an infinitely tall Jenga tower."
The issue here is obvious. While statements like beings existing on an "infinitely greater" scale are enough to provide a jumps all the way up to High 1-B if this is truly an infinite regress, nothing here is actually enough to prove this is a R>F hierarchy. There are, to my knowledge, no direct statements within the story likening the levels of transcendence in this hierarchy to fiction/illusions/anything truly insubstantial, and no one has brought them up if there actually are. This is the most explanation this hierarchy gets.
Why then is it treated as an endless R>F hierarchy, without proper evidence? We need something far more substantial to link on pages than the mere possibility that it could be, but we don't seem to have that. We don't even seem to have any example of members of this hierarchy even a single layer up, meaning we can't use them to figure out what type of transcendence they possess. All of it is based on what Karako says, but nothing in his speech warrants R>F, let alone infinite layers of it, without proper support.
This largely seems to come from the fact that these unseen "creators" are being treated as though their transcendence comparable to Hussie or whoever else operates on his level, but then also treating Hussie and anyone else in that league as fundamentally beyond this creator hierarchy entirely, which gives no reason for these other creators to possess true R>F transcendence, at all.
yeah i see the issue now, that without the director or hussie being members of the hierachy, their transcendence can't be compared to them
however, i gotta mention that on director's dialogue, she links the fact that the story happened but also didn't actually happen to the "creators all the way down" analogue, which, given the only creators we learn of in the game is of the hierachy, would imply that they are still the "authorial" kind of creators, like, she is basically putting the infinite regress thing with creators, and considering we only have 3 author characters in the game (her, dirk and hussie), it would be weird to only refer to them as "story-controlling creators" only to say there are infinite ones as well
and i don't think this would contradict her being out of the hierachy since her full form is regarded as outside of the game, which in turn contains the hirachy and such (and maybe the larger story)
admitedly i don't recall another information about "creators" in the game beyond what we have discussed, so if that's not enough, i wouldn't be opposed to downgrading the cosmology
We are specifically discussing R>F transcendence, which is the entire reason Homestuck currently is where it is. Such physical transcendence isn't a requirement if there's overwhelming evidence to their qualitative superiority anyway, which there isn't. It's less so that things like this are deal-breakers on their own and more so that it's just one of many things that makes them having infinite R>F transcendence based on a largely unexplored hierarchy more and more unlikely.
i'm not actually sure what this point is about tbh, i was talking about how horroterrors don't contradict the transcendence thing since their deal is creating realities and such rather than transcending them, as well as the fact that we don't know if all horrorterrors do that or if only the unknown "omnipotent" ones do so, it is implied that any of them can do so tho but at the same time, they only create dream bubbles, we don't have evidence of them having anything to do with the hierachy or such, and even the noble circle is featless, in fact, if the issue is them scaling to the furthest ring, i actually totally agree that they shouldn't, there is no known evidence of them scaling to the furthest ring or transcending universes or anything, frankly i only didn't change their scaling in my overhaul blog because i can't touch that yet
and i'm confused on why them not scaling to the transcendence is a issue for the furthest ring (since it was mentioned in the very beginning of the reply i made that point to), cuz like, they are only inhabitants there, they may share some aspects like the whole void and acausality things, but they don't scale or affect the furthest ring at all
so all in all, if the final evidence i brought isn't enough to link those creators to the authorial kind, even if they are below the actual authors we have, then i have no issue downgrading the cosmology
also for Deonment's reply
I mean, the issue here is that existence and AP for 1-A and up are the same thing, they have 1-A AP because their existence is literally more real, if you don't have the existence you don't have the AP (unless you have hax on a higher level, ie, someone in a CN commanding a 1-A Dao)
but that's exactly the case, Lord English scales because of the damage his attacks can cause on reality and such (and other things we can add there) and his existence scales above paradox space which, as we talked about before, doesn't really make much sense to scale to his AP, just his omnipresence, hax, stuff like that
the lord english that fist fights and such scales lower than his hax and such, since they are tied to his metafictional existence rather than his physical form, but that doesn't mean he can't be 1-A and such, it just means that he punches and explodes with that AP and that it is not as high as his hax
it should kinda look like this: Lord English AP (dowscale to furthest ring/paradox space), Hax, omnipresence, invincibility, etc (scale above paradox space probably)
i also didn't wanna talk about scaling rn since it is a cosmology thread and that's another can of worms, but i agree that MSPAReader scaling above Alt calliope is weird, the only evidence i'm aware of is that his earth is earth C since John brings his friends to it to formulate their plan like he did in the epilogues, but the issues are:
1. that happens in meat, which isn't contained on calliope's black hole, so he doesn't need to transcend it
2. existing beyond earth c is something even ultimate selves already do, calliope is not contained to it
3. using that means you are considering him above "the epilogues" basically, like, the entire story in the epilogues, which sounds like a stretch
i think he should only at best scale to them? one thing i can think of is that his story includes him absorbing the green sun, which obviously couldn't have happened since calliope did that, so maybe you can argue that the timeline he locked out of causality and that he exists in and out of includes the furthest ring and such, and maaaybe that could extend to the black hole
yeah i dunno, at best i think he either scales to paradox space, or maybe he scales to the "true forms" of ultimate selves and calliope's black hole
seriously once we finish this thread, we need to finish the overhaul one, the damn scaling needs an analyse 
) like please elaborate.
