In some cases, I guess so. But I don’t really give Kanaya’s line about that that much weight, because I see the Classpects as just being descriptions of who the characters really are already. The characters are going to face challenges because there are challenges in life, and health and unhealthy ways to use their latent power.
Being kids, the characters often don’t know how to use that power in a way good for themselves or others. Learning how to use their power goes hand in hand in learning how to construct their own identities in a way that works for them.
Honestly, I’m not super sure what you’re referring to. Are you referring to which Aspects are complementary/paired? Because if so, the pairs are the exact same, nothing much changed about my views there.
The Zodiac had some interesting focuses for each Aspect that led me to change some terms associated with them around, for Rage and Hope in particular. And it seems to imply that the Aspects *next* to an Aspect are also important, along with the one across/complementary from it, which is really interesting but the narrative implications of which I haven’t really felt like I understand yet.
One of those things I’m hoping to understand better through Hiveswap. Does this answer your question at all?
He bottles up his emotions/feelings/self-expression, good or bad, to protect other people from his power. Then his power builds up through emotion and explodes in massive, usually highly destructive blasts of power. Inviting destruction through Heart/Emotion/Self/Soul/Being, or inviting destruction of Heart/Emotion/Self/Soul/Being, for others. Either effectively describes Mob, I think.
Fwiw, I’ve only watched the anime, so if more of that comes out or I eventually read the manga my view might change eventually. And with all of this stuff there’s always a possibility there’s a better/more precise reading. I’d be interested in seeing the case for Mob as a Page–I can see that too, honestly!
Let’s be clear here: I barely know anything about Gnosticism. It’s a spiritual tradition that as far as I can tell has been mostly dead for ages, and it’s roots are tangled with Christianity, so the history we’re dealing here is massive, complex, and often contradictory.
I learned about Gnosticism simply by taking note of thoroughly Modern works that play with its symbols and ideas, and not always in a completely sincere way, or at least not an overtly religious/spiritual one. It’s compelling imagery for worldcrafting! Useful for fiction writing.
And Japan in particular seems to like making God the bad guy in some video games–a suitable threat level for a long campaign, I guess–so a lot of my understanding comes from comparing these modern works and seeing how they use the same symbols the same way, or very very very VERY similarly.
Some of those works are:
-Homestuck
-Mother 3, the sequel to Homestuck’s namesake, Earthbound (and to a lesser extent, Earthbound itself)
-Revolutionary Girl Utena
-The Dark Souls series
-Angel’s Egg (anime movie; it good)
-Persona 5, and generally the Persona series through its Jungian themes.
But when I say Homestuck is a Gnostic work, I don’t mean it’s literally to be understood solely through that particular spiritual doctrine. I just mean it draws from Gnosticism in crafting itself, and deliberately plays off Gnostic themes. Homestuck draws just as much from Greek, Egyptian, and potentially even Judaic myth.
And with most of these works, there’s a lot more going on than just those themes. My other big source here is Carl Jung, a psychoanalyst who was quite influential in the field and in pop culture, too.
RGU, Homestuck, and Persona all explicitly work his ideas into their worldbuilding, and though Jung himself was known to be a Gnostic, he had more to offer than just regurgitating Gnostic ideas per se. He’s probably the biggest source of Gnostic inspiration for modern writing, though. You can find a free compilation of some of his Gnostic writing here.
You might also want to check out Herman Hesse’s Demian, a novel I’ve read (its good) explicitly dealing with Gnosticism set just before the beginning of WWI. It’s a well-known influence on Utena in particular, and reading it illuminated some of the prominent symbolism across all of the works I just mentioned, too.
Hope you have fun with this! I’d probably reccomend engaging with any or all of the more modern works and seeing what comparisons you can draw to Homestuck, rather than trying to force yourself to read relatively dry ancient literature without context. This is all for fun!
I’d say just go with whichever one you like more/the one that makes you feel best and most inspired about yourself and your own potential. if you change your mind later thats ok too. it’s for fun, so have fun with it! 🙂
The Masterpiece takes place after the end of Homestuck–it’s probably circumstantially simultaneous with the final defeat of LE. Caliborn is taunting John in the credits to entice him to come fight him, since Caliborn knows the kid’s challenge will be the moment he becomes Lord English.
At some point in Earth C’s future, the kids go fight LE. The Epilogue will probably cover the Masterpiece in more detail, along with the moment the kids are released from the Juju they’re trapped in.
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 think he’s a prince of heart roleplaying a knight in imitation of Dave, just like Dirk, since…he’s a Dirk. He destroys Heart (forcing Dirk’s suicide in Unite Synchronize) to serve his Self to Jake (offering Jake Dirk’s head/his own self, encased in the glasses).
His roleplay may be intense/unhealthy enough that he echoes Mind (and/or maybe Time, during Unite Synchronize? since he does mention managing temporal logistics) but that doesn’t mean he’s not a Heart player.
And I don’t feel confident enough in my understanding of either Mind/Heart symbolism or of how, exactly, roleplay/Aspect shifting work to say for sure right now. Maybe Hiveswap will lead us to know more, but “Prince of Heart roleplaying Knight” is as specific as I’m willing to get.
I think AR’s existence as Scratch backs up that reading. Knights’ serving of others gets them likened to Butlers, and Scratch is basically the best butler of all. Scratch easily parses as any combination of Prince/Knight and Light/Space, imbued as he is with First Guardian abilities and cueball omniscience. And that’s before we take into account the other souls he’s linked to, of course–but still, AR’s Class predilections seem to be there.
Flying through Storytelling 