i beg of you. learn to accept that a good character doesn’t have to be a good person. lots of lovable characters are completely terrible. Dammek being a big piece of shit is what makes him interesting.
if him being terrible is too much for you, you also don’t have to like him though. I never understand how people get so wrapped up into characters that liking or disliking one will like… destroy friendships and stuff. Sorry I got kinda into this cause I get like a thousand asks that are literally like pleading with me to reveal some weird overlooked subtext about Dammeks shitty personality that suddenly makes it OK that he is completely awful to everyone around him.
Not every character is going to be perfect, or even like… acceptable. Maybe I’m just like extremely old here but.. isn’t that more interesting?
Oh! Hm. Well I definitely think Lord English is involved by proxy–Hiveswap seems to be largely centered around Doc Scratch as an antagonistic influence, while Hauntswitch seems focused on the cult of the Mirthful Messiahs. Jude seems like he’s almost definitely a Doom player, probably a Seer, and his corresponding Two-color duality motif is Lord English’s main colors: Red and Green.
As for why Pa has been visiting Alternia or how he came to possess the portal: No idea! All I really have on Pa is a strong suspicion that he’s been setting up the plot of these games at least partly to save Jude and Joey, just as he set up Sburb to save as much of humanity as he could. Pa’s a shitty dad and I hope Joey gets to set him on fire, but I don’t think he’s evil and I do think he cares. He just sucks really hard at it.
As for the portal, well. I am pretty certain it’s not JUST a portal, and it’s not just a doomsday device, either. But you’ll be able to see my thoughts on it towards the end of Joey’s Classpect post (which I just finished!), so I’ll keep my thoughts there to myself for right now, if you don’t mind 🙂
Except by the time that Hiveswap is happening I’m pretty sure the Condesce has already dissapeared? I’m kinda rusty on my lore but since it’s a year before John would have been meteored down, that means that Nanna’s already had Dad Egbert, and I think we here her talking about how she was fighting against Betty when one day she dissapeared, so that’s why she settled down and had Dad E.
well remember though that the Condesces intentions for “Earth” were the same no matter which version she was on, we know she doesn’t end up succeeding on Beta earth, but she definitely succeeds on making her own alternia like culture on the Alpha kids Earth, through the help of the juggalo clown cult and the betty crocker empire
so what’s happening currently on Beta Earth, even if Condesce herself is no longer there, is that the juggalo/betty crocker cult she left behind still intends to follow through with whatever plans she left for them before she disappeared
which means in Hauntswitch Jude will save the planet from the evil Juggalo menace, which on this version of earth is currently a snake without a head, (unless Juggalo Guy Fieri or the ICP guys make an appearance???) giving him and Dammek a better chance of winning, which we know they apparently do
It’s really nice that someone picked up on this besides me!
I used to think the question was unanswerable and I didnt think Cal had much influence on Bro at all.
I don’t think Dirk really demonstrates his proclivities, but AR certainly does, and is a good example of what Dirk is like when isolated and unable to connect to his friends, so I thought the isolation and self-destruction was enough to explain Bro’s descent.
Dirk has no interest in SAW, like Bro exhibits. SAW has always been Caliborn’s thing. So I think Cal’s influence was substantial. Finding out the specifics about that is part of what I’m interested in seeing in Hauntswitch, assuming Bro shows up.
We’ve already got Lord English references all over the place, and LE has always had three main prongs of underlings so to speak:
Doc Scratch & Whoever he commands at any given moment–usually the Felt.
His Witch figure, IE: Handmaid/Condesce.
And the cult that worships him–the Subjugglators, Kurloz, Meulin & other acolytes in the bubbles, and Gamzee.
We’ve always known the Condesce was on B1 for years before disappearing for the Alpha universe, but nothing much came of her involvement in B1 in the comic. And we never learned too much about the cult’s specifics, either. Given that Scratch is already involved in Hiveswap, and that Joey already wondered if some of the kids at the school were evil (and referred to them as clowns), it makes sense to think Jude is right about the cult and they’ll be the primary opposition in Hauntswitch.
Hence, we’ll learn about the Guardians and the Cult in one fell swoop.
The other game thatll come out after Hiveswap, set on Earth with Dammek as the protagonist instead of Joey. We’ll play as Dammek and Jude and presumably deal with the cult Jude’s been tracking, which is probably the mirthful messiah cult from Homestuck.
Grandpa was always kind of a neglectful piece of shit–he let Jade play with loaded guns. To be clear, I think its likely Grandpa very much does care for Joey and Jude, and he probably maneuvered the portal and other events to ensure they’d somehow escape their certain doom on earth. Let’s not forget this man is preparing for what he knows full well is the apocalypse, as is MOM.
Which isn’t to say that Joey’s anger isnt justified. Pa is still a shitty guardian. But that isn’t news, and it doesnt mean that Grandpa is now unambiguously terrible in all things. He’s probably responsible for saving vast swathes of humanity through sburb, and he orchestrated the salvation of the Beta kids at the very least. Odds are, he’s done the same for Jude and Joey.
But there’s a measure of truth in your idea, especially about the Alphas–l felt the same about the Betas until literally today when I had a conversation that made me reconsider a bit, so I’m mulling them over.
But like. The Beta Guardians have always demonstrated how much the Alpha kids love and need each other. They are terrible, non-functional, broken people by themselves. The only SORT OF exception is Jane/Nanna, but even she lives a life that leaves her unfulfilled and unsatisfied by her own choice to limit her impact and potential, which is why Nanna is so moved to know about Alpha Jane’s potential.
Except for possibly Bro, who has been corrupted by Cal to some extent so I’m not sure what his state of mind is exactly, the Guardians and Alpha Kids all have an recurring motif of caring and loving desperately intensely, and none of their care and love helps them be good people to those they care about, because love only goes so far if you don’t learn to communicate and do the hard work of connecting.
The Guardians show us the miserable, tragic extremes that those self-destructive habits lead them to. The Alpha Kids manage to rise above them and grow and improve as people through their connections to each other. That’s what matters to me.
So I guess what I’m saying is I kinda agree but I really don’t want us to swing to regarding Grandpa as like, Basically Evil now. It’s not that simple. Joey’s anger is righteous and I ate it up forever and she deserves her bitterness, but her perspective is also limited. We’ll probably learn more about Grandpa along Hiveswap and Hauntswitch along those lines, which’ll be an interesting ride.
I don’t really like seeing misinformation about Hiveswap spread, so I figured I’d post this for @moonpaw because, while it’s kinda lousy that Hiveswap backers don’t get Hauntswitch, it’s important to note that Hiveswap is not and has never been planned to be half a story.
This is from the October 30th, 2014 kickstarter update where the plan for both games was outlined:
“Way back when I thought of the idea for this game, sort of in tandem with the plan to fund it through KS, I started thinking a little further beyond the KS and release of the game. Such as, what if it was funded well beyond the goal (it was), and what if upon release, the game was successful and well received? (Maybe it will be! I hope so.) Does it make sense to extend the series beyond one game? My verdict was an emphatic “PERHAPS”. So as a result, from the start I conceived of a story that revolved around the idea of there eventually being two games, but without committing to any concrete plans to develop the second.”
…
[More on Hiveswap]
This is the title of the first game. Like I said, the hook the two games share is that early on, the two main characters will trade places. So this means a human girl will have an adventure on Alternia (the troll planet), and a troll boy will have an adventure on Earth. Their objective (well, among others) is to get home. The first game follows the girl on Alternia, who’s trying to get back to Earth.The stories of the two games won’t have much to do with each other, except for sharing the device responsible for the swap, and the two heroes meeting each other’s respective group of friends.
So yeah. Hauntswitch is not half of Hiveswap, and Hiveswap is not half a game. Their relationship will, according to WP, be more akin to each game’s relationship to Homestuck: Correlated, but not codependent.
Hopefully this will alleviate some concern if this is something people are worried about. I don’t see why it should be.
Flying through Storytelling 