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Yeah, as far as I can tell blood caste has some kind of Aspect Influence. Possibly dreaming moon, too, since the “True Signs” are those that match the Homestuck trolls’ Aspect *and* dreaming moon.
I’ve been writing about that here on and off, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet that the Extended Zodiac itself suggests this might be the case:
This bit of text shows up for every True Sign, matching them to their corresponding Sign Class. So it seems that there’s some kind of relationship to them, indeed.
right now I’m looking to upload on the second and fourth saturdays of every month, so that’d be january 13th for the next one, though patrons get access to early viewing if I’m able to finish them soon enough.
Sorry for the wait, but my current living situation means even uploading that often is really hard for me! These things take a LOT of time and effort to edit together. Thanks for understanding!
Yeah, I mean, I think most of the Alternian trolls are coded as having some kind of mental illness. The kids too, but like, Alternian society itself is a dystopic wasteland. It’s basically designed to ensure these kids are disassociated, desensitized to violence (both literal and structural, from the system and others to them), and willing to hurt others. Most of these kids are probably not super healthy.
I pretty much started by…just starting. Specifically, by blogging/writing about Homestuck stuff that I felt was going underaddressed here on Tumblr. First I just wanted to change fandom perception of Dirkjake, and that desire expanded to include pretty much the entire narrative, particularly Classpects and the comics more obscure/implied thematic and narrative beats.
I’ve always been pretty at home with symbolism and metaphor as narrative tools, so I was never really in agreement with the common fandom mindset that Homestuck’s ending was bad, or that most things in the narrative weren’t clear enough.
And it became clear that if I wanted discussion about my views to happen, I was going to have to be the one to speak for them. So I started doing more serious research into Homestuck and the sources it tends to value, and the more I did, the more I wanted to talk about it and make these nuances and insights more widespread.
I haven’t stopped uncovering interesting stuff since, so here we are. Then I lost my job when Trump won the election, so I decided to borow from some of my favorite writers on games/fiction and take my approach to Youtube.
I didn’t know a thing about video editing, and it probably shows, but the more stuff I put out the more I learn and the better I get. I try to view the whole endeavor as an experiment and a learning opportunity, and I’ve improved my skills in pretty much every craft I’ve ever been interested in as I’ve gone on.
That’s pretty much the long and short of it.
As for what I might want to cover in the future, I keep a bit of a list of video ideas churning about in my head at any given time on my About page.
The first non-Homestuck thing I do will probably be on either Legend of Zelda or Persona 5, since those are the two most direct next-of-kin to Homestuck’s Classpect system, and Classpects will probably feature often whenever I talk about non Homestuck stuff.
blood caste is NOT the alternian equivalent of race… even if we ignore that canonically alternians DO have an equivalent of race (land and sea dwellers are referred to as the “two races”), every blood caste has its own COMPLETELY UNIQUE internal traits that make them better at one thing or better at another thing, which is nothing like what ethnicity is, unless you’re literally using a definition of race from like, the 17th bloody century, mate
racism is racism. caste is caste. if the hemospectrum was a racialist institution, equius would hate gamzee just as much as he hates lowbloods. but he doesn’t, because the castes represent pseudo-xeno-feudalist classes (and are referred to as classes many times in the comic and suplementary material!). racists don’t see race as a spectrum; the closest thing would be the spanish-european caste system introduced in the americas post-colonisation, and even that brings up an important point; you can be of mixed ethnicity, but you can’t be of mixed caste. because castes aren’t malleable, arbitrary distinctions like ethnic groups are; they are strictly enforced social classes.
also: castes exist in real life. for starters, the troll “castes” are probably named after “castes” in ant colonies: physically differentiated forms of ant who all have specific roles to play in a colony, just like troll castes in the alternian empire. and ant castes aren’t anything like “the ant equivalent of ethnicities”; they’re actually more like genders. so if you wanted to directly translate the troll blood castes to a near-western near-human setting, you’d more likely be dealing with 12 genders than 12 ethnic groups.
if you really need a direct human analogue to caste, you’re in luck and still don’t need to use ethnicity because there are human societies with caste systems that don’t depend on ethnic segregation. take the caste system of the Ethiopian Amhara people, for example;
The […] caste system consisted of: (1) endogamy, (2) hierarchical status, (3) restraints on commensality, (4) pollution concepts, (5) each caste has had a traditional occupation, and (6) inherited caste membership.
so there you go. didn’t mean to turn this into a whole arse essay but reading the alternian castes as a form of alien racial segregation not only lacks a whole lot of nuance but also just has a bunch of unfortunate implications. tune in next week
Hm. The “traditional, assigned roles” thing makes me feel way more confident in all the idea of the Castes all assigning some kind of Class behavior to its members, as well as the Aspect association. Interesting stuff, thank you!
biggest most gay power moment in homestuck. the second at which homestuck threw its first brick at stonewall was when kanaya was head over heels for vriska who was painfully hetcrushing on a sad loser boy so when she got the sudden opportunity to saw off his legs she took it and said this
Kanaya was never “head over heels” for Vriska. Her feelings were always complex (she tried to protect others from her, being her moirail), and by this point she had been spurned enough times by her that, if you talk to Kanaya as Vriska in this flash, Kanaya literally doesn’t want to talk to her after a bit because of how uncaring Vriska is:
It was pretty self-evident by this point that Vriska was fucking around with Tavros, and didn’t actually care for him, which is something Kanaya and Vriska literally talk about in this flash, too.
She sawed off Tavros’ legs to give him mechanical ones, which also happened weeks after this incident. Even the “impromputations” joke happens in a conversation with Karkat about not having any more “Impromptu Amputations”, since he fainted from seeing Kanaya amputate Tavros and only woke up hours later. They’re no evidence that she did it out of spite.
Hell, the idea that Kanaya did it to spite Tavros is a jab Vriska uses to get underneath Kanaya’s skin.
VRISKA: That was some pretty sweet chainsaw work earlier. Pretty 8rutal, really! Didn’t think you had it in you. VRISKA: Hey, you weren’t settling a score with him there 8y any chance? KANAYA: What VRISKA: I’ve got a pretty keen nose for revenge. Could it 8e that you had a thing for him and were upset when he went for me instead? Hmmmmmmmm? KANAYA: Did He Really Go For You KANAYA: Thats Not How I Remember It VRISKA: Yes, I think I must 8e on to something here! Anyway if that’s the case, sorry a8out the 8ad 8r8k! KANAYA: Could You Leave Me Alone
This part is about Vriska spiting Kanaya and Kanaya hating Vriska over hurting her friends and jilting her, not about Kanaya doing anything she can to be with Vriska.
Just to make my position clear, I’d say I disagree that Vriska was intentionally spiting Kanaya, and I think there’s a confused and misguided degree to which she cared about Tavros. I think Vriska’s likely TRYING to genuinely reach out here, she’s just terrible at it because she can’t really escape her own self-absorption.
But otherwise, I totally agree. Kanaya is canonically friendly towards Tavros, and selling that dynamic short lessens the complexity of every character involved. Tavros is an abuse victim, but he’s not really a passive one. He resists Vriska’s pressure and abuse at every turn, early on, and pretty much his most effective skill at doing so is in getting his other friends to want to help him.
Like, remember when Kanaya threatened to dump toilet water on Vriska to get her to stop bullying Tavros, because Tavros asked her to? Fucking with Tavros comes with severe backlash for Vriska pretty often, because most of his friends genuinely care about him.
Those are the symbols for Derse and Prospit themselves! They don’t come up often, but they’re like the royal seals of the kingdoms as far as I can tell.
Flying through Storytelling 