she was talkin about cloistered jadebloods, i believe, basically jade nuns devoted to breeding duties most likely.
it seems likely some jadebloods are still allowed to go off-planet, where they can probably still contribute. also they’re still allowed to pail/contribute before reaching adulthood, which is fucked up but its alternia so what isnt
2) Implied panquadrant relationship, or blurring the lines between them? Nice. I’m here for it.
What this has me wondering about is whether having the same person in two quandrants is some kind of taboo? Like was Azdaja just embarassed that he slipped up, or was he worried about being judged?
It’s a kind of queerness, by Alternian standards. It’s
mocked in movies and the like and is heavily culturally discouraged,
maybe even outright legislated against for all we know. Karkat’s
character arc heavily deals in this.
i honestly havent been able to play it yet, but i saw at least one “break” or “destroy” reference in a screenshot and he seems based on like, your Light Yagami (Death Note) and Lelouch (Code Geass) types in anime, who tend to be Royal/Destruction classes. So I’m inclined to think Prince or Bard.
Again though, pure guess. My instinct is to consider the “service” motif Knight roleplay too–Terezi was one of Homestuck’s most intense roleplayers in her emulation of Mindfang, after all.
But I haven’t seen a teal blood seem to roleplay much outside Terezi! Tagora’s the most substantial one we’ve seen directly yet short of Terezi herself, as cool as Latula’s two versions are. Since I’m not really sure how the class system on alternia is delegated to the different blood castes, I’m not entirely sure thats whats going on.
More to come when I actually get to play it but I’m busy getting this last gamzee video done. Should be switching focus to Hiveswap for a while after that, though.
Named after two flightless things with wings, but he’s Derse and Mind. What’s this guy’s deal..?
The desire for flight parses to me as a Breath motif, which would be the Aspect all bronzebloods are drawn to by their caste if @wakraya ‘s Troll Sign Caste theory is correct.
Dammek himself exhibits some strong Breath imagery despite being Bloodbound–the hoverpad he steals from Xefros has a breath blue beam, for example.
Nope, he’s literally already there. Here’s the breakdown of LE’s influences per universe, NOTcounting cross-universe influence situations like Gamzee making the Jack Noir/Lil Cal dolls in John and Dave’s heads, because seriously we could be here all week.
Pre-Sburb :
Beta Earth | Setting of Hiveswap [B1]: No Lord English. Lil Cal and the Batterwitch are both present. The Batterwitch MAY have started a small Mirthful Messiah cult, which might be operating in Joey’s hometown.
Alpha Earth [B2]: No Lord English. Society is run into the ground and reduced to a nightmare waterworld dystopia by the Batterwitch, acting as a Witch on LE’s behalf. She employs a massive Mirthful Messiah cult that takes over the U.S. Government in this endeavor*.
Caliborn is present, but ignorant of his future as LE. AR acts for himself, not LE, but echoes many of Scratch’s traits and so evokes a weaker version of the controlling horror of LE. This is intentional, as AR’s cyber-omniscience is part of what makes LE/Scratch’s control so terrifyingly efficient.
*(Sorry 2 Guy Fieri and Juggalos, who get it rough from Homestuck, to put it mildly. Please remember that Homestuck is a work of fiction just poking fun at some random people, ok? Thanks. Also, to be fair, mind control is kind of a thing with the Batterwitch, so she might just be mindcontrolling them all during that whole thing.)
Beforus [A1]: No Lord English. Presumably no Lil Cal? Kurloz Makara acts forLord English. Meulin Leijon is mind controlled or manipulated by Kurloz into acting for Lord English.
It’s noted that while Beforus was matriarchal, most of its actual power of governance was held by Purplebloods and Violetbloods–male dominated castes that collectively embody different versions of LE’s patriarchal dominance.
The Purplebloodsin particular are probably Mirthful Messiah cultists, if Kurloz is anything to go by, but we don’t know for sure.
Alternia [A2]:
Doc Scratch acts for LE, manipulating trolls into being as cruel and vicious to each other as possible. At the end of the universe, Doc Scratch dies and his corpse hatches, giving birth to LE. LE can time travel, so having arrived at the end of the universe, he can now access any point in its timeline to consume or destroy whatever he chooses.
This was Scratch’s objective from the beginning, and had always already happened. LE takes custody of Damara, who becomes the Handmaid– LE’s loyal Time Witch, acting as a feared Demoness who stokes hostility and chaos wherever she appears.
With the exception of directing Damara, Scratch and LE rarely seem to directly involve themselves in the affairs of Trollkind. The three main groups of trolls they delegate governance to are:
The Empress, who he manipulates while keeping his and LE’s existence hidden.
The Violetbloods, who seem to be manipulated similarly.
The Purple Bloods, who worship Lord English and prophecize about the coming of his Vast Honk. Their intense commitment to this truth motivates their brutal subjugation of lowbloods.
This is not a simple belief, but a fact they are right to see coming. LE releases the Vast Honk as soon as he enters the universe, thus proving them right all along. Hence, the Vast Honk can be understood as “inviting destruction through Rage|Truth.”–the verbiage associated with Gamzee’s title, Bard of Rage.
This more direct presence/involvement is the direct reason why Alternia is so much worse than the other universes, and a big part of why the Beta Trolls are so much crueler to each other than the Kids are.
the ghost stuff has definitely not been solved, per se–a lot of the legacy fandom would probably say hussie phoned it in there for various reasons, though I would definitely not agree.
To answer your questions:
Is the ghostrealm conditional to the universe that spawned it, or is it truly infinite?
The furthest ring–the black void surrounding all Sessions and Universes–is truly infinite. The eldritch horrorterrors that inhabit it are also infinite, since they’re part of Sburb’s design.
The dream bubbles, and the ghosts that inhabit them, however, are conditional to the universes that spawned them. The horrorterrors glub up those bubbles, but as far as we know, they don’t do so for every session.
They glub up the afterlife for our Heroes thanks to the influence of Feferi Peixes-the Witch of Life. She was actually raised by a horrorterror as her familiar, and is able to commune with the gods to request they establish the bubbles.
You could read this as Feferi changing the nature of Life in Homestuck, granting everyone who perishes a sort of second life in a weird limbo of half-existence.
Later parts of the story suggest that the horrorterrors were manipulating Feferi and all of the ghosts of the afterlife to protect themselves from Lord English, and to serve their mysterious goals by both A) Ensuring Lord English’s destruction and B) Enabling his creation in the first place.
Which brings us to…
is there a hypothetical alternate-alternate world where the conditions that rolled the troll-verse are different?
No, definitely not. That scenario is theoretically possible for other species elsewhere in PS, but not for trolls–or humans, for that matter.
We’re not sure what the limits are on variations of existence and choice in Paradox Space, but Aranea tells us there are some, and goes into some of the philosophical problems that come with the admittedly attractive idea that there might not be any:
But really, the problem is logistical. Having even potentially infinite variations of a particular universe isn’t necessarily impossible in Paradox Space, but it is impossible for the worlds and characters trapped in Homestuck. Because of Lord English.
Aranea gives us this little spiel about how the choices and possibilities available to everyone in Paradox Space are limited by the fact that PS itself is using the characters to propagate its own existence. Only choices and scenarios that allow reality to exist and continue to propagate are allowed to flourish.
And by the very nature of his existence, Lord English traps every universe and person we see in the comic in existential stasis. He’s a notable influence in the Alpha Trolls’ session through Kurloz, Damara and Cronus, and he’s THE reason Alternia exists as it does and the Beta trolls are who they are.
He made trolls what they are, so their reality can’t actually exist unless he exists, and if trolls existed in any other way they wouldn’t create and interact with the humans the way they do, meaning the humans wouldn’t eventually create LE, meaning trolls wouldn’t have existed in the first place.
It’s a grandfather paradox, but on a cosmic scale. Trollkind may be able to exist in varied ways from Earth C,’s Troll Kingdom onwards, which is now free of the influence of Lord English. But its origins–and those of humanity–are forever entangled with Lord English. Them’s the br8ks.
i HAVE to say something because this specific thing im seeing about lanque is driving me up the wall, simply because it makes it rly clear some of you just have no fucking clue what homestuck is about actually? like at all.
and thats this idea that lanque is bad because jadebloods are associated with motherhood, and subverting or complicating that thematic association is bad.
which…just… did these people just like, forget porrim? what happened to caring about the nuances and complexities of girls’ arcs lmao.
like yeah Porrim personally finds a middle ground she’s comfortable with, but the fact that her society coerced her into a role of motherhood and caregiving is still something she struggled with and its still! fucked! up! There is a larger point being made here!
Jadebloods’ motherhood themes arent about a tribe of Happy Mom Girls who all happen to be biologically born into a role they all love because jade bloods are just Like That.
Jadebloods have motherhood themes because Alternia is a dystopian LITERALLY GOD-DAMNED HELLSCAPE that forces trolls into extremely specific + isolating jobs based on their biology, no matter what they want.
As a caste, Jadebloods DO NOT have a choice, and odds are good most of them arent super fulfilled or happy doing the whole selfless mother of the fascist empire thing.
I’ll leave it to women/afab nonbinary folks/TRANS DUDES who have actually dealt with similar pressures right here on planet Earth to talk about how glorifying that dynamic is fucked up.
I just want it to be clear to anyone confused by these hot takes that this criticism isn’t even rooted in an accurate reading of Homestuck and Hiveswap’s actual canon, let alone any semblance of reality.
It frankly boggles my mind. How the hell is this a reading! Homestuck spends literally all of its time tearing biological essentialism the fuck down, whyyy why WHY would anyone expect anything different here.
Take it as a warning about falling too far down your echo-chambery fandom-slash-sjw “activist” rabbit hole. All of this nonsense is grounded in readings so far removed from the comic they may as well be writing their own story.
anyway i usually dont bother with this stuff but i had a moment of weakness, sleep-deprived tumblr blogging is a bad idea. relatedly: dont drink the discourse kool-aid, kids. it’ll fuck you up.
Yeah, I agree with you completely! A friend of mine actually voiced this idea to me in private and it won me over basically instantly. It plays into the crony capitalist/mob boss vibe LE and Scratch have going on.
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.
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!
Flying through Storytelling 