#shitpoststuck

so traditionally kernelsprite prototypings are something monstrous that gives the carapacians and underlings cool new characteristics, or dead friends or loved ones or pets, or both.

previously i said yami/atem would have a dreamself sleeping at the center of derse, but! from this perspective, yami is kind of the obvious choice for yugi's kernelsprite. in fact you could read atem as an obvious ecto-parent for yugi, being a variant of the same guy who lived a thousand years ago....... he is basically yugi's troll ancestor.

do any of the other candidates have dead loved ones? well, the mystery twins have stanford, he is not actually dead in canon but might well be so if the secrets of gravity falls are more sburb-flavored. bob belcher's mom is dead but that really only touches on his character, not tina's. calvin.......... it has been too long since i've read any calvin and hobbes collections but i don't recall any major posthumous characters. but! it's not just calvin, it's aged up calvin...... hobbes could be kind of a dead loved one, if calvin is trying to see himself as having outgrown childish things like hobbes, which possibility i allude to here.

but the traditional "dead loved one" angle isn't the only angle from which to approach kernelsprite prototypings. as an alternative: what kind of relationship does each player's sprite have to them?

in canon, john's sprite is a lovable but mysterious grandparent-mentor figure, which too mee is the default posture for sprites to adopt in vaugely-imagined sburbfics, but of course it's not the only one. dave's sprite is another dave who he just chills and does dave-type shit with; rose's sprite is her pet cat who also kind of adopts the role of her child, depending how you look at it. jade's sprite spends a few moments as beloved and loyal pet before it gets subsumed into her dreamself as reflecting parts of herself she sees as weaknesses.

so what kinds of relationships could the toonstuck kids' sprites have to them?

well, what if mabel's sprite were dipper! her twin accompanies her on her adventures, a loyal ally with access to helpful knowledge, but sometimes different priorities than her; in some ways dipper is mabel's kernelsprite already.

for tina, an angle that never gets explored in canon but is interesting to me is, what if someone tries to use the kernelsprite, not to resurrect a dead loved one, but to try to create a magical boyfriend. or girlfriend, ofc, but in tina's case presumably it'd be boyfriend. perhaps a magical boyfriend who is also a horse...?

as for yugi....... hmm. yugi might prototype himself. it's hard to articulate why i think this except that - even though there is the whole arc of yami teaching yugi self-confidence, yugi seems like a character whose relationships are oriented around how he changes the other person. he does the shonen bit of redeeming people by battling them...... and that seems like the sort of thing that's a bit more resonant with being a kernelsprite than having one.

so mabel & dippersprite

tina & magical-boyfriendsprite

yugi -> yugisprite

what i've been thinking lately is that - i don't think steven universe works as a setting to concatenate with gravity falls. i've thought about the crossover before and - i think they're just prohibitively different types of alternate earths. i think there's a sense in which gravity falls takes place in our earth plus nonsense and steven universe is like, a fully alternate history. there is no russia, there's that meta about how su-verse humans never domesticated cows, i personally rather suspect that the dewey's ancestor episode was meant to imply that the crystal gems successfully peacefully rebuffed all human attempts to settle in the americas until beach city was founded, b/c the americas were for whatever reason disproportionately full of monsters and corrupted gems.

so if we're going to cut out steven universe, it's going to be tina belcher, dipper and/or mabel pines, an aged-up calvin calvinandhobbes as discussed in the shitpoststuck tag, and - who?