Tag: hiveswap friendsim

it occured to me that lanque would make sense as one of the trolls for tomorrow’s friendsim!

ofc thats at least partly just me REALLY WANTING TO GET TO KNOW LANQUE, and I’m not particularly expecting to be right. but my logic goes roughly thusly;

We know that Vol 6 will be titled “Of Text and Envy, Green”

If we’re talking about green text, the likeliest option is Maxlol as the clearest 4chan representative. But what about the envy bit?

Well, we know Lanque’s a Life player, and that he craves eternal life.

As a Jadeblood, that gives us two sources he might be jealous of:

–Fuschiabloods, who live practically forever

–Rainbow drinkers, who…might? And who are considerably closer to home, as a phenomenon exclusive to Jadebloods.

I’ve also had friends suggest that envy might suggest Charun as a Ragebound, and that Rage might have some intrinsic links to envy and jealousy. Either would be pretty interesting to me!

But I favor Lanque over Charun by a very slim margin, so this is what I’m personally hoping for, for now.

Who knows how things will pan out, but I figured I’d throw the thought out here.
Happy friendsim day, however it pans out! ^_^

Here’s a compilation of screencaps of the Friendsim trolls who’s loose Aspect traits I included in the Dammek video.

The Friendsims are seriously underrated. Not only are we learning about how Alternia’s brutal systems affect trolls on the ground level all over the hemospectrum, but pretty much every troll so far has included links to both their True Sign aspect and the aspect associated with their Blood Caste.

So far, this seems to lends credence to @wakraya‘s theory of the Blood Caste-Aspect link, which is pretty exciting! It’s hard to say how this dual-Aspect tension is meant to resolve, but I definitely can’t wait to learn more in Act 2 and future Friendsims.

what do you think tagora’s class is after the friendsim? i personally see knight vibes from him

chelonianmobile:

revolutionaryduelist:

banavalope:

I’m so excited you asked me this because I’ve been itching to analyze Tagora and the shit we learned in his friendsim route.

So I’m with you, I’m leaning towards seeing him as a Knight but I think I can still make a case for a Thief still, too, so I kind of caught between the two. But Knight seems most likely.

The thing that stands out the most in tagora’s route is his desperate need for control made most obvious when we step into his pristine hivehold. He also insists on guiding the conversation at every point (telling the reader what to do, where to sign, when to shut up), if we still run with the assumption Tagora has some type of anxiety then him needing to be in absolute control of his space and surroundings makes total sense. It all assists in keeping up his act that he has his shit together which I think is more for his sake than it is his reputation’s. We can tell he isn’t as in control as much as he leads us to think he is – evident when the blueblood barges in, an unexpected event that seizes Tagora up and totally throws him off, giving the reader their first opportunity to take the lead in the conversation. Briefly also when he goes to give the Reader his card and notices we’re an alien, he’s the only friend so far to have that sort of a panicked,hesitated reaction requiring him to recollect himself.

Long point short, he’s definitely coming across as putting up a guard. I don’t think anything about his confidence is entirely fake, I DO think he’s more fragile than he lets on.

Space is about creation primarily and in all meanings of the word, so there’s no reason creating an identity wouldn’t fall in the realm of this ESPECIALLY for a Mind-influenced Spacebound, if you subscribe to the idea the true signs’ aspects of each caste have a bleed effect over all their extended cousins. He surrounds himself with the idea of perfection and he hides in it, when something knocks away that facade he can’t handle it and almost neurotically breaks down (like in bad end).

Another thing about space is it’s relation with the Setting, which Tagora is using too for a lot of the same reasons outlined: keeping his hive obsessively clean, his desire to enhance his reputation, I think also Tagora’s route is the first to take us to so many different locations? The general meeting spot of all the sims at least twice, his hive, his bathroom, another part of town, and he’s still the one in command of the Reader finding themselves in these places (this one might be a stretch though). It’s not being lead like a Seer or Mage would, nor is it being controlled and created in the way a Witch or a Maid might do so, despite all my references to him manipulating Space. He’s controlling the environment in relation to him specifically to positively effect himself in two ways I can see strongest: protect himself and benefit himself.

To stand for the possibility of Knight first, Tagora DEFINITELY uses Space to improve and equip himself, as well as protect others (in a loose sense of the word) with it. I already discussed how he’s improving/equipping himself with space, and he does go about “protecting” the Reader with creativity (a Space thing) in offering his legislative services to “get the MC the justice he so craves (for a nominal fee of course)”, and in the good ending where he rolls with the rainbow drinker schtick then decides partnering with us is beneficial to both parties.

For the Thief spin, Tagora shows signs of taking creativity and the setting for himself. Literally he takes space from us in that he’s keeping us at a distance: he deters you – not in narrative but by reaction as a game player whether you had this reaction or not when playing – from wanting to talk with him because he’s charging per word & he doesn’t want you to touch him under any circumstance. He’s not willing to talk about himself unless you want to pay him for it, and he’s not going to tell you things like what his mantra is or how Alternian legal proceedings play out. Figuratively, he runs away with all of the Reader’s ideas, like in the good end like going along with the lie we fashion up about being a rainbow drinker (a clever response), the way he comes back to himself and puts himself into the bit alongside you is almost like he’s taking credit from that point for our ruse, and it all directly comes back towards him in a positive manner. He also wants All The Money, a common link between our two Thief examples in Homestuck.

Ultimately I think Tagora is most likely a Knight of Space but it’s hard for me to commit to it until I get more of his personality. The friendsim gave me huge Thief personality vibes, but the glimpse we get of Tagora potentially being heavily veiled under a persona he’s crafted makes me think Knight, too. Both of these classes have something to do with long roads of feeling comfortable with and accepting yourself for what you are (Meenah declaring that she’s just evil, Vriska as (Vriska) having personal revelations that change her at first until she confronts us with the idea that you don’t need to change in order to do the right thing or potentially even be seen as “good”, Dave and Latula both letting go of their cool guy guards and facing the trauma they experienced as just themselves with no armor ((well, Dave moreso in this regard than Latula))) more than any other class.

I’m not sure what to expect from Hiveswap, Act 2 or future friendsims and mini content, but if we’re gonna see any personal development for the individual characters I’d wager Tagora’s thing being about letting go of his guard and us seeing behind the sly little business boy act he’s got going on to whatever is genuinely underneath, be that just him accepting he’s really as clever as he makes us think he is and he just needs to let go of the act, or admitting that he’s actually much more anxious and overwhelmed and needs to feel like he’s in control of Space to make it through another day hinged.

this is fantastic analysis work that i think captures the two major sides of Tagora’s class behavior. Personally, I see him as an innate Thief, put into the position of roleplaying a Knight.

image

Legislacerators, as civil servants, seem to carry some inherently Knight-like connotation-much as Butlers do. Both are agents who “serve” others through intense labor and specific behaviors/skillsets.

Terezi, a Knight roleplayer, has her entire conflict revolve around her desire to understand her own Mind and its conflict with her perceived moral obligation to Serve Justice.

Interestingly, Tagora doesn’t seem as suffocated by his socially prescribed role as say, Xefros or Dammek (who also parses as a Thief forced into roleplaying a Knight to me). Rather, he seems to operate within the letter of the Knight’s confines, while pretty clearly espousing a Thief’s motivations.

Interesting stuff. There’s more to say, certainly, this is just a bit of a ramble on where I’m at right now.

His lusus tips the scale to Thief for me. Ferrets are so notorious for stealing small objects from their owners and rabbits and chickens from farmers that their very Latin name means “thief”. (”Mouse-killing smelly thief”, to be exact, though Tagora only smells of Lush products and we don’t know about the mice. Mustela putorius furo, if you’re curious.)

oh wow thats a neat detail i was unaware of! Interesting indeed. I was already pretty sold on him being a Thief (I guess there’s some room for Rogue depending on how he develops?) but this really cinches it for me! Sweet catch!

https://www.patreon.com/optimisticDuelist

Tetrarch Dammek is already one of Hiveswap’s most controversial characters, and he hasn’t even said a word yet. Lets see what we can learn about him using Classpects as a lens, and in the process explore how, and why, Alternia became the hellworld Joey comes to know.

I know I’ve been rather soft on him here, but let’s be clear: Dammek still really sucks for Xefros. Here’s hoping Xefros will learn to stand up for himself and Dammek will learn to treat his friends better during this adventure!

Today’s question: Do you think trolls who commit cruel deeds like Dammek, Trizza, Ardata and Zebruh are completely damned, even if they could never freely choose to be better?

Find the music on Bandcamp!:

https://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/… by Clark “Plazmataz” Powell, HS vol.8 https://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/… by Robert J! Lake, HS vol.8 https://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/… by Tyler Dever, HS vol.9 https://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/… by Thomas Ferkol, HS vol.9

any thoughts on zebruh’s class then?

tl;dr Knight of Doom roleplaying Page of Void, probably. 

more under the cut, this got predictably long.

I’m thinking his true Class is likely Knight, which I see as the Passive Serve Class.

Doom is the aspect of suffering, rules and limitations, and poverty in contrast to Life’s immense wealth. I think on some level his desire to help lowbloods-who’s suffering he would be keenly attuned to on some level–is genuine.

As “Ones who serve X, or serve through X, for the benefit of others”,
Knights tend to exploit/use their Aspect directly, but always in the service of other agents.

Redglare is a huge badass who parses quite Actively initially, but she is in the service of the Grand Highblood, and mostly exists to bring his will to pass-until she accidentally serves Mindfang a bunch of Minds to control on a silver platter, allowing her escape.

In the same way,
Zebruh perceives himself as being in the service of lowbloods, but ultimately serves only the agenda of wider Alternian culture.

He’s still serving another, but it matters who the other is.

They also seem happiest when they stop trying so hard and allow their innate desires to be receptive to their loved ones’ needs to guide them–Karkat is at his best passively helping others with their romance problems, Dave is happiest when he chills out and gives Karkat the companionship and time he craves so much, etc.

Zebruh perceives himself helping the Doomed, but ends up exploiting lowbloods and serving them Doom–placing them in states of poverty, limitation, and suffering–instead. Thing is, he genuinely perceives this as being to their benefit, somehow. If he chilled out and paid attention to how others actually feel like Karkat and Dave eventually do, he might actually be a pretty ok dude.

So what’s getting in the way?

Like every other Indigo Caste member so far, including Equius, Zebruh is an avid Page roleplayer. That is, “One who invites service through x, or invites the service of X, for their own benefit.”

Pages’ biggest talent early on is their likability and ability to get people to want to help them. (Though like Knights, they seem to reach their best when they embrace the verbiage that most closely matches their Active status-Jake is at his strongest actively exploiting/using Hope to kick Caliborn’s ass, for example.)

Equius tries to replicate this by commanding people to serve his purposes, with mixed results: Gamzee complies and voices enthusiasm at doing whatever it takes to make Equius smile, and eventually does so by, y’know, murdering him. For the most part it makes him really unpleasant and weird to talk to, though, so people want to avoid him.

Amisia makes a huge deal of getting the Reader to help her, serving her purposes by making them kill lowbloods and give her their blood and stuff. She mentions having Chahut help her previously, and the guards who bring her the Oliveblood are in her service as well.

And Zebruh literally keeps slaves devoted to serving him. Interestingly, he doesn’t seem able to perceive the dissonance between his words and deeds, and he often ends up outright ignoring what the Reader says–all of which reminds me a lot of Horruss serving himself Void to ignore Rufioh’s breakup request in particular.

Amisia and Zebruh both maintain their comfortable superiority through degrees of pretense, lies, material comforts, and confusion–all of which are linked to Void as the aspect of incomprehensibility, darkness, and physicality.

Hence why Amisia is a fake painter–her entire life is ruled by physical and social power, so she’s far away from a brain space that allows for imagination and creative expression.

And hence why Zebruh is a fake social justice advocate–he’s too concerned about physical and social consequences to commit to the ideas he espouses, or connect those ideas to meaningful physical action.

And so both of them get caught up in meaningless performance and self-serving spectacle.

phew, this got pretty long. Anyway highbloods are interesting, I’m finding the indigobloods pretty compelling in particular. lemme know what you all think!

keep rising!

so zebruh is an absolute shitheel

mey51:

revolutionaryduelist:

oh my god, i’m floored and kinda delighted. its been a while since we met a character that frustrating and awful. that said im a bit weirded out that people are making him out to be irredeemable, as usual.

guys. homestuck and hiveswapdont really deal in irredeemable characters, or at least definitely not irredeemable teens (except maybe Caliborn).

zebruh’s shit, absolutely, but he isn’t meaningfully more shit than vriska, equius or eridan at the start of their narratives, and they all received varying levels of redemption in the eyes of homestuck’s narrative.

he’s also showing the same signs of corruption of identity as every other highblood thus far–his Blood Caste’s Aspect getting in the way of or messing with his true Aspect’s insight:

he sees the suffering of lowbloods on some level and obviously cares about it in some way, because he has genuinely convinced himself he wants to help (Doom), but his perception of the actual problem is obfuscated and confused (Void).

when it comes to how his physical actions contribute to the problem, his mind simply Voids it out. If he got past his Void influence and saw the suffering and doom for what it actually is, it stands to reason it would change his perspective. But Alternia is designed to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Zebruh is awful, but he’s also a subject of a system designed to make him that way. The same is true of Ardata. And Amisia. And Trizza. The sins of any one of these characters aren’t really as relevant as their capacity for change and redemption, because the actual enemy is the system that produced them all, and those responsible for putting it into place–LE and Doc Scratch.

I think it’s pretty likely all of these characters will be redeemed in Hiveswap–hell, it may be that one of the core puzzle mechanics involves using our insight into their thoughts to figure out how to get through to them and have them join the rebel camp, in a lot of cases.

thatsnot a hard prediction or anything, it just seems plausible. certainly moreso than thinking that the narrative that gave us Vriska is suddenly interested in providing a lot of one dimensional, irredeemable antagonists.

One thing I have a hard time forgiving is that Zebruh forces his way to others while not doing any concrete action. He is a coward who acts as if he is a rebel and a savior.

I mean, he’ve done WAAAY less horrible things than Trizza (who’s taking down a suburb for a selfie), but he claims to be a great lord when he’ll cowardly not helping any of the trolls he claims to care about while taking advantage of them for his own pride (most of it consisting of getting laid basically). That is what I can’t go over for his character.

He doesn’t even have the guts to fight his battle, or even going to the battlefront. He is a coward who haven’t even recognized it (unless Amisia or Ardata).

He is an insult to the bluebloods, a predator who thinks he is a shepherd.

The only thing I can offers him is that he doesn’t publicly mock and humiliate his lowbloods unlike most highbloods seems to do. That’s a VERY LOW bar.

Zebruh’s behavior is inexcusable and unforgivable. I’m not arguing against that.
I just don’t think it’s beyond redemption, provided Zebruh repents.

I disagree that he’s an insult to the bluebloods. In the context of Alternia he is not that far off from exactly what the Bluebloods are supposed to be. Really, he’s an exemplary member of his caste, even if he’d be furious to be told so. And that’s exactly what makes the hemospectrum’s systemic violence so insidious.

Zebruh only exists on a world deliberately designed to make him as awful as he is, by adults who knowingly wanted this and worse for trollkind.

Is Zebruh as responsible as Doc Scratch/LE?

Does Zebruh deserve the chance to exist somewhere other than Alternia, and could he be a better person in an environment that didn’t literally require malice of him?

Could he be a better person if confronted by the right stimuli (like say, Joey’s commitment to the truth), and then moved to fight for a truly better future as a result?

These are the questions I think we should be keeping an eye out for even with shitlords, because they were core to our understanding of the characters in Homestuck. Nobody in the comic was entirely beyond redemption except Caliborn and maybe Gamzee, jury’s still out there.

We just met Zebruh, so i just think thats worth keeping in mind.

that said,

Absolutely, goddamn he blows

so zebruh is an absolute shitheel

oh my god, i’m floored and kinda delighted. its been a while since we met a character that frustrating and awful. that said im a bit weirded out that people are making him out to be irredeemable, as usual.

guys. homestuck and hiveswapdont really deal in irredeemable characters, or at least definitely not irredeemable teens (except maybe Caliborn).

zebruh’s shit, absolutely, but he isn’t meaningfully more shit than vriska, equius or eridan at the start of their narratives, and they all received varying levels of redemption in the eyes of homestuck’s narrative.

he’s also showing the same signs of corruption of identity as every other highblood thus far–his Blood Caste’s Aspect getting in the way of or messing with his true Aspect’s insight:

he sees the suffering of lowbloods on some level and obviously cares about it in some way, because he has genuinely convinced himself he wants to help (Doom), but his perception of the actual problem is obfuscated and confused (Void).

when it comes to how his physical actions contribute to the problem, his mind simply Voids it out. If he got past his Void influence and saw the suffering and doom for what it actually is, it stands to reason it would change his perspective. But Alternia is designed to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Zebruh is awful, but he’s also a subject of a system designed to make him that way. The same is true of Ardata. And Amisia. And Trizza. The sins of any one of these characters aren’t really as relevant as their capacity for change and redemption, because the actual enemy is the system that produced them all, and those responsible for putting it into place–LE and Doc Scratch.

I think it’s pretty likely all of these characters will be redeemed in Hiveswap–hell, it may be that one of the core puzzle mechanics involves using our insight into their thoughts to figure out how to get through to them and have them join the rebel camp, in a lot of cases.

thatsnot a hard prediction or anything, it just seems plausible. certainly moreso than thinking that the narrative that gave us Vriska is suddenly interested in providing a lot of one dimensional, irredeemable antagonists.

hey! have you thought about streaming friendsim? I know for sure I’d watch!!!

I have but time when im available to stream is kinda hard to come by for me and i want to make videos on the friendsims, plus i kinda like to chill and take them in at my own pace when i do

that said I did cohost with @casejackal when they streamed the first two friendsim volumes and we had a lot of fun! we ended up reading part of the comic together too lol it was neat. we’re planning to do it again so keep an eye out for that

what do you think tagora’s class is after the friendsim? i personally see knight vibes from him

banavalope:

I’m so excited you asked me this because I’ve been itching to analyze Tagora and the shit we learned in his friendsim route.

So I’m with you, I’m leaning towards seeing him as a Knight but I think I can still make a case for a Thief still, too, so I kind of caught between the two. But Knight seems most likely.

The thing that stands out the most in tagora’s route is his desperate need for control made most obvious when we step into his pristine hivehold. He also insists on guiding the conversation at every point (telling the reader what to do, where to sign, when to shut up), if we still run with the assumption Tagora has some type of anxiety then him needing to be in absolute control of his space and surroundings makes total sense. It all assists in keeping up his act that he has his shit together which I think is more for his sake than it is his reputation’s. We can tell he isn’t as in control as much as he leads us to think he is – evident when the blueblood barges in, an unexpected event that seizes Tagora up and totally throws him off, giving the reader their first opportunity to take the lead in the conversation. Briefly also when he goes to give the Reader his card and notices we’re an alien, he’s the only friend so far to have that sort of a panicked,hesitated reaction requiring him to recollect himself.

Long point short, he’s definitely coming across as putting up a guard. I don’t think anything about his confidence is entirely fake, I DO think he’s more fragile than he lets on.

Space is about creation primarily and in all meanings of the word, so there’s no reason creating an identity wouldn’t fall in the realm of this ESPECIALLY for a Mind-influenced Spacebound, if you subscribe to the idea the true signs’ aspects of each caste have a bleed effect over all their extended cousins. He surrounds himself with the idea of perfection and he hides in it, when something knocks away that facade he can’t handle it and almost neurotically breaks down (like in bad end).

Another thing about space is it’s relation with the Setting, which Tagora is using too for a lot of the same reasons outlined: keeping his hive obsessively clean, his desire to enhance his reputation, I think also Tagora’s route is the first to take us to so many different locations? The general meeting spot of all the sims at least twice, his hive, his bathroom, another part of town, and he’s still the one in command of the Reader finding themselves in these places (this one might be a stretch though). It’s not being lead like a Seer or Mage would, nor is it being controlled and created in the way a Witch or a Maid might do so, despite all my references to him manipulating Space. He’s controlling the environment in relation to him specifically to positively effect himself in two ways I can see strongest: protect himself and benefit himself.

To stand for the possibility of Knight first, Tagora DEFINITELY uses Space to improve and equip himself, as well as protect others (in a loose sense of the word) with it. I already discussed how he’s improving/equipping himself with space, and he does go about “protecting” the Reader with creativity (a Space thing) in offering his legislative services to “get the MC the justice he so craves (for a nominal fee of course)”, and in the good ending where he rolls with the rainbow drinker schtick then decides partnering with us is beneficial to both parties.

For the Thief spin, Tagora shows signs of taking creativity and the setting for himself. Literally he takes space from us in that he’s keeping us at a distance: he deters you – not in narrative but by reaction as a game player whether you had this reaction or not when playing – from wanting to talk with him because he’s charging per word & he doesn’t want you to touch him under any circumstance. He’s not willing to talk about himself unless you want to pay him for it, and he’s not going to tell you things like what his mantra is or how Alternian legal proceedings play out. Figuratively, he runs away with all of the Reader’s ideas, like in the good end like going along with the lie we fashion up about being a rainbow drinker (a clever response), the way he comes back to himself and puts himself into the bit alongside you is almost like he’s taking credit from that point for our ruse, and it all directly comes back towards him in a positive manner. He also wants All The Money, a common link between our two Thief examples in Homestuck.

Ultimately I think Tagora is most likely a Knight of Space but it’s hard for me to commit to it until I get more of his personality. The friendsim gave me huge Thief personality vibes, but the glimpse we get of Tagora potentially being heavily veiled under a persona he’s crafted makes me think Knight, too. Both of these classes have something to do with long roads of feeling comfortable with and accepting yourself for what you are (Meenah declaring that she’s just evil, Vriska as (Vriska) having personal revelations that change her at first until she confronts us with the idea that you don’t need to change in order to do the right thing or potentially even be seen as “good”, Dave and Latula both letting go of their cool guy guards and facing the trauma they experienced as just themselves with no armor ((well, Dave moreso in this regard than Latula))) more than any other class.

I’m not sure what to expect from Hiveswap, Act 2 or future friendsims and mini content, but if we’re gonna see any personal development for the individual characters I’d wager Tagora’s thing being about letting go of his guard and us seeing behind the sly little business boy act he’s got going on to whatever is genuinely underneath, be that just him accepting he’s really as clever as he makes us think he is and he just needs to let go of the act, or admitting that he’s actually much more anxious and overwhelmed and needs to feel like he’s in control of Space to make it through another day hinged.

this is fantastic analysis work that i think captures the two major sides of Tagora’s class behavior. Personally, I see him as an innate Thief, put into the position of roleplaying a Knight.

image

Legislacerators, as civil servants, seem to carry some inherently Knight-like connotation-much as Butlers do. Both are agents who “serve” others through intense labor and specific behaviors/skillsets.

Terezi, a Knight roleplayer, has her entire conflict revolve around her desire to understand her own Mind and its conflict with her perceived moral obligation to Serve Justice.

Interestingly, Tagora doesn’t seem as suffocated by his socially prescribed role as say, Xefros or Dammek (who also parses as a Thief forced into roleplaying a Knight to me). Rather, he seems to operate within the letter of the Knight’s confines, while pretty clearly espousing a Thief’s motivations.

Interesting stuff. There’s more to say, certainly, this is just a bit of a ramble on where I’m at right now.