When you say you’re going on hiatus, that means you ramp up your posting massively, right? I was going to leave this by the wayside but I am, lucky for you guys, I’m still too sick to record.
Plus the Xefros and A.Claire posts are doing really well and frankly winning over the fandom is my best shot at long-term stability and things changed for the better for me in a big way recently, so I have the time to get out a couple more of the things I’ve really wanted to say before I start focusing on video–these will all be useful scripts for me soon anyway.
Let’s talk Jude Harley, who has already given us a likely Class and a definite Aspect. And who knows–maybe he’ll lead us to a bit of prophecy on the threats our heroes will face in Hauntswitch? Maybe, maybe not, but either way it’s clear I was doomed to make this post from the start.
So let’s dive right in, and let’s start with the side of Jude’s title I’m surest about: His affinity for the Aspect of Doom.
If Jude’s psyche is concerned with anything, then it’s concerned with death, risks, threats, and the rules you follow to avoid them. While not exactly cynical, Jude is certainly cautious and wary. Even his interest in aliens and cryptids frames them as mysterious threats to watch out for–his shirt isn’t depicting a simple alien, but an alien abduction.
He keeps a flare gun because the chance of a life-threatening emergency is a basically constant presence in his mind, and his interest in POGS is linked to his belief in their eventual post-apocalyptic value. Jude sees the worst in the world, and he prepares for it.
Apparently pretty well, too! I’m not AS sure that Jude is a Seer as I am that he’s a Doom player, but if this is a case of Class Roleplay, then it’s an oddly successful one. The big twist of the first half of Hiveswap is, of course, that Jude was right about basically everything–even if he muddled the execution a bit.
The Seer/Mage key verb–Know–is repeatedly linked to Jude’s biggest contributions, and it’s his foresight that keeps not just Joey but her beloved dog Tesseract safe.
All of this squares quite nicely with the verbiage we can extrapolate for a Seer:
One who knows Doom (or through Doom) for the benefit of others.
And we should stress that “for others” part, because where his plans stumble, Jude himself is the one to pay the price. For Joey’s benefit, but also for ours–the audience’s– as his tragedy give us the deepest glimpse into his psyche and character we get during Act 1.
As @curlicuecal ‘s excellent post on Jude tells us, Jude’s pigeons actually each reflect his relationship to one of his family members, and how he experiences the loss of each of them in turn. Of course we start off with Frohike, apparently Jude’s favorite. Jude is devastated by Frohike’s tragic death, but nothing about it necessarily links the bird to A.Claire except context.
Langly makes things far clearer. When Jude finds himself abandoned, his fury is outright vicious. He makes it clear that he regards this as both betrayal and abandonment, an act of cowardice. He also alludes to being unable to communicate his anger properly and needing to suppress the emotion in order to focus on the task at hand.
Given that we’re talking about Jude, who basically ALWAYS has a task at hand, this all reads as a clear analog for his feelings about Pa. Emotional repression is something of a hallmark of the Harley line–John, Jake, Jade and Jane are all known to dabble in it. If he’s this upset when a bird abandons him, how does he feel about his own father doing so?
All this loss had already gotten to him before the attack on the Harley manor–Joey refers to all of this stress on Jude growing bad enough that Roxy took him to a doctor.
And the losses of his birds leave Jude isolated and desperate–he begs Joey to protect Byers and refers to him as “all he has left”. Not long after, he begs Joey not to go near the portal, saying he can’t lose her, too.
Byers, of course, is the bird that represents Joey in Jude’s heart, and he leaves with her when she’s abducted. However things work out between him and Dammek, for the time being, Jude is now alone.
And maybe worst of all is that this always seems to have been the plan, because Jude is the victim of Act 1′s titular Kansas City Shuffle.
In order for a confidence game to be a “Kansas City Shuffle”, the mark must be aware that he is involved in a con, but also be wrong about how the con artist is planning to deceive him. The con artist will attempt to misdirect the mark in a way that leaves him with the impression that he has figured out the game and has the knowledge necessary to outsmart the con artist, but by attempting to retaliate, the mark unwittingly performs an action that helps the con artist to further the scheme.
Given that we know that Scratch was expecting Joey, and that he is involved in the events that have put her here, we know for a fact that the swap between her and Dammek was always the plan.
Jude assumed the cult wanted the Cherub Portal for themselves, and that may well be true, but it’s his very defense of the thing that leads Joey right to it–and so, right into Scratch’s plans.
In this regard, Jude’s fears have come fully to fruition, as his knowledge of Doom helped the aliens who abducted his sister in the first place. Jude’s shirt is not just a mark of interest, but a prophecy of the fate Jude himself was doomed to witness, and Joey to experience.
And here is where it gets interesting (and somewhat speculative), because Jude’s Classpect is only half as relevant to his family as it is to his relationship with the source of all their troubles, the true antagonistic force behind both Hiveswap and Hauntswitch.
Homestuck’s Doom players were always marked by a duality motif, largely centered on Red and Blue. This was fitting for the trolls, as everything that Beforus and Alternia were doomed to was ultimately linked to the Red/Blue bomb that would eventually lead to the creation of the Green Sun.
Notice how once the sun is created, Sollux’s red/blue motif expires, and reaching the sun is basically the end of his relevance to the plot.
But even then he maintains a focus on Black/White duality. As is fitting of a Doom player, because Duality seems to be one of the biggest fundamental principles of Paradox Space. Everything in Homestuck comes in pairs:
Aspects, Classes, Class Verbs, Players–all of it.
Duality is the rule, the boundary–just as death is a rule we all must follow, just as some fates are unavoidable. And so Jude, like the Captors, is similarly marked by a motif of duality. Only instead of the Red/Blue that the Captors are bound by, Jude is marked by the Red/Green color contrast linked to all Cherubs and, specifically, the cherub responsible for these games’ events:
Lord English.
Jude’s Red/Green motif directly references Lord English at least once, when the red and green marbles are used as the Lion’s eyes. Yaldabaoth–the evil, flawed creator God that Lord English is partly based on–is commonly depicted as a serpent with a lion’s head. And this lion has its gaze planted firmly on a globe of Alternia, reflecting Lord English’s indomitable control over the planet.
It goes further.
Whether or not the Cherub portal is a literal doomsday device, as has been hypothesized, it’s undeniable that every member of the cast is doomed.
Both Alternia and Earth are doomed by Sburb in a matter of decades,
so Jude, Joey, Xefros and Dammek are all on borrowed time.
Hell, this even extends to Trizza, who must inevitably be ousted or killed as Heiress in order to make way for Feferi’s short-lived reign. And on both sides of the Portal, the fates the characters are being led to are tied to agents of the
Lord of Time himself.
Because while Joey and Xefros seem to be dealing with the nefarious influence of Doc Scratch, Jude still has his Cultists to deal with–and they’re likely more linked to Lord English than it initially seems.
After all, The Condesce spent time on Earth before her dissapearance–perhaps enough to craft the perfect Heiress, but almost definitely enough to continue her habit of empowering clown-themed cults to carry out her agendas for her, just as she did on Alternia through Subjugglators and as she will on Alpha Earth through the juggalo presidents.
And while we never learned about the cult of the Mirthful Messiahs in too much detail in the comic, they are described as being spread across the cosmos.
It makes sense to think they may be a smaller operation on the Beta Earth, where the Condesce spent relatively little time. But it is still altogether likely that they are already here.
And if so, Jude and his friends seem to be the only ones watching.
I’m really overwhelmed and grateful by the support so many have shown me, and excited to take posts like the one I did on Joey and this one to Youtube, where more of the fandom can engage with classpects in an accessible way!
You can also feel free to drop by and chat about this and other interesting Hiveswap and Homestuck topics in the r/Hiveswap discord!
Hope to see you soon, and until then–
Keep Rising!
Flying through Storytelling 