So, wow. Looks like shit got real all of a sudden, huh? We suddenly understand jack shit.

This is what keeps me in Homestuck, god I love this stuff. Let’s talk bout Boldir a little bit–needless to say, spoilers for her path under the cut.

First things first: Yeah, I have no idea who this is, either. I suspect it might be Boldir herself, given that she suggests she has some knowledge of what happens when someone dies. “You’ll sleep when you’re dead”, “If only”.

The only other party who seems likely to have this kind of metatextual awareness is Doc Scratch, but this doesn’t really feel like him to me.
It could also be the MSPA Player themselves, I suppose?
We’ll see.

Onto Boldir! I agree with @banavalope​‘s opinion that she’s a Muse, and seeing someone else came to that conclusion independent of me and the crowd talking on my Discord made me feel that much more certain. But since I feel I have some stuff to add here, let me run through the evidence I’ve compiled for this view.

There are a couple of lines in her text that seem to echo Calliope; she speaks in a “stage whisper”, for starters, and whenever Stages and Theater references come up, they seem to feel associated with Caliborn, Calliope, or the Rage aspect via Gamzee.

Paradox Space itself is a Stage, and both Calliope and Caliborn find microcosms of that stage on their journeys, using it to tell and define parts of Homestuck.

From her Stage, Calliope invites Jane and Jade to tell us the story of John claiming ownership of his absolute power over Homestuck’s reality. From his Stage, Caliborn tells us the story of how John used that power to unintentionally make Caliborn’s wish to become Lord English come true.

Boldir’s also described as possessing “Serenity”, relative other trolls. That immediately reminded me of the firefly named Serenity that’s closely linked to Calliope in Homestuck–Calliope assumes her form directly when leading Roxy to her dream spiral, where she gives some of the most important exposition in all of Homestuck.

This section of text also reminded me heavily of the Childlike Empress from The Neverending Story, the uber-Passive ruler of the realm of Fantastica, who was described as reflective and somewhat unreadable/incomprehensible in the book.

To be fair, this has as much to do with Boldir’s nature as a Heart player as anything else–it’s very evocative of Dirk’s unreadable stoicism. But still, Boldir’s unreadable “essence” paints her as something like a mirror of the world around her–the garden, the sky, all of it. And that reminds me very much of Calliope, who was herself a mirror of her environment.

Alt!Calliope grows stoic and straightforward when surrounded by nothing but absence and purpose, and Alpha Calliope’s personality and nature is defined by her experience with Homestuck.

Both Callies, however, had a deep intrinsic understanding of the macrocosmic, metaphysical principles on which Paradox Space operates-and Boldir has that in spades.

She seems to have a sense of what happens after death, she’s  aware that “Fate” is a force being created by particular forces in Homestuck/Hiveswap, and that the MSPA Player has more leeway in the river of those powers than most.
This makes her a unique sort of threat to Lord English and Doc Scratch, who rule over fate on Alternia.

Like Calliope did for the Alpha kids, Boldir uses this awareness to at least partly clue the MSPA Player into their own role, pulling them towards some important part they must play.
What that’ll mean, we’ll find out later, but she’s told us some very interesting things.

1. The Friendsims are taking place within the context of a Paradox.
This
is important, because it means there’s at least one stable time loop
defining the narrative, just like there was in Homestuck.

That means the entire story exists diegetically, under temporal constrainment–we see
the events that we see because they’re the events that fulfill this time
loop. Much like in Homestuck, events that conflict with this loop probably cause doomed timelines due to the paradox failing to fulfill itself.

And if that’s true of the Friendsims, its also true of
Hiveswap. I already had reason to suspect this was true, but it’s nice
to see someone in the actual story talk about it.

This suggests that the MSPA Player, and by association Joey and our other heroes, are parts of an event of cosmic importance that must come to pass in order for them to ever have existed.

The importance of the plots of Hiveswap and apparently even the Hiveswap:Friendsim are similar in nature to that of Homestuck, which was necessary in order to create the world that these stories take place in.

2. Paradoxes are inherently irrelevant. This is honestly Boldir’s most interesting line to me, because Paradoxes define everything about Homestuck–but particularly, everything about Lord English and time travel. To say they’re irrelevant is to link them to Void by nature, isn’t it?

I’m honestly not entirely sure what the implications of that are, and if I were to ramble about it this would turn into a totally different essay, so I’ll talk about it later, but this is a very profound statement to make about the nature of reality in Paradox Space. I’m about to vibrate so hard my molecules come apart you guys.

For now, just ponder the question: Paradoxes defined literally the entire plot of Homestuck. If they aren’t relevant, then what is?

That said, also like Calliope, despite her immense and intimate wisdom with regards to the nature of reality, her understanding of its scope is such that she seems inclined to see herself as unimportant and irrelevant in the face of it.

I’m not sure I agree with Bana that she dabbles in every Class (though it does strike me as possible), but she certainly seems quite adept at playing a Rogue.

There’s a lot of Outlaw motifs surrounding Boldir; she lives outside, under a tree, she’s competent at Stealing and committing crime, and she’s pretty much as outside of the social order as you can get on Alternia without being a seadweller.

I’d expect Rogue roleplay from an Oliveblood, since I suspect that as a
Caste they’re mostly ignored by society, rendering them inclined to act
like Outlaws–and indeed, I’d say Polypa and Konyll both have shades of
it.

But in Boldir’s case that role is neatly compartmentalized–its clearly something she can psychologically put on and take off, not the core of her identity. A hat she wears, so to speak.

This line has a lot of people claiming Boldir’s got shades of Void. I’m not entirely sure that’s what’s going on, but I’ll readily admit I’m not sure what is. I suspect there’s something to uncover here about the conceptual connections between the Heart and Void aspects, which Arrghus wrote some stuff about recently, and so I do think there’s a connection here.

But The MSPA Player cites Boldir exuding a “sneaky aura”, so I see this as the very Muse-like passive nature of Boldir’s identity/heart/soul influencing the world around Boldir, in like with her current intent to stay outside of society’s sight, as the role of the Outlaw implies. Again, it reminds me of the Childlike Empress, and how nobody in Fantastica would think to hurt her.

Of course, somebody does hurt Boldir, and when she dies it seems to change or shift the world in some way. Again, Childlike Empress vibes–Fantastica literally relies on the Empress’ existence. If she dies, the world of Fantastica goes with her.

Now this whole time I’ve been sidestepping the most direct connection to Calliope, which is Boldir’s relationship to the Spiral. It’s fascinating, to be sure, but most of what there is to say about the connection has been said already, I think.

That said, a couple of people on the Discord–@wakraya, @gay4monsters and @grippingtraverse astutely realized two things:

1. If there’s a Muse character among our ranks, there may well be a Lord to match. Caliborn was linked to his own spiral, so we may assume such a link between Spirals and our hypothetical Lordling as well.

2. The spiral is represented in Boldir’s sign itself.

Meaning if there is a Lord, we might be able to find such a spiral in their sign, as well.

3. There’s a Purple Sign that seems to match this criteria–Capricen has a spiral in it’s design, which curls opposite to Lelo even. One sign is Prospit–matching Calliope. One sign is Derse–matching Caliborn.

So if there’s any merit to this stuff, Capricen just rocketed to the top of the charts as far as my guesses for the True Sign of the mysterious Marvus Xoloto.

I’d already kind of suspected Marvus might at least roleplay a Lord, by virtue of his role as circusmaster. Caliborn is described as a ringleader to his own dark carnival, and if Marvus “runs the shitshow”, its only in Lord English’s shadow, since he’s the one who truly runs the show, after all.

We’ve also got a theater reference in his Troll Call, to Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. To be fair, Marvus is a Purpleblood, and so has a certain connection to Rage and thus Theater, so this might not be indicative of Lordship. And Blood might be represented by the line “texting your sister”, since it’s the Aspect of relationships and social connections.

There’s not much else to connect Marvus to Blood, but it’s worth noting it would make a lot of sense for a hypothetical Lord character in Hiveswap to command the story to his whims through Blood.

Trizza and Dammek are both Bloodbound, and if one wanted to pull all the strings in this story, having power over both of them would be a good way to get there. Alternia’s a pretty damn Blood-heavy society in general, what with all the Suffering and social constrictions and interest in romantic entanglements.

All of which is to say, if this is true, Marvus would be quite fearsome indeed.

That’s all I’ve got for now, but damn, am I excited.
Lemme know what you all think!

Til next time,

Keep rising.

[Final Notes that didn’t fit in anywhere else: Boldir’s the only troll we’ve ever seen wear
white and without her identifying symbol at all–other than maybe  Doc
Scratch.

Ardata and Marvus hide their signs, but they’re also higher on the social ladder, so its an interesting bit of her design. Wonder how important that’ll turn out to be.]