i dont think its particularly high? in homestuck we’ve got terezi and dirk mainly, maaybe kankri somewhat. I might talk about it more because im pathologically predisposed to talking about dirkjake and so i have the most experience talking about knights/pages nowadays, but there are other roleplay cases im interested in discussing and exploring, too.
it might be common among lowbloods in alternia because butlering is a particularly brutal and thankless version of “serving” jobs that invite that kind of behavior. I wouldn’t be surprised if rustblood girls got a lot of “Maid” roleplay in a similar vein.
It definitely seems to be some kind of social prerogative to Teals, though, like the caste in and of itself seems to be conditioned to value and glorify Service roles, whether its providing legal services or Serving justice to evildoers and whatnot.
This is Sollux Captor, he knows he’s gonna die. in fact he knows everyone’s gonna die, that’s a thing he talks about even before his introduction.
he knows that because he hears the voices of the soon to be dead (which really sucks btw) and he even knows why they’re all gonna die. it’s because of sgrub, a game he coded himself. but why would he code and want to play a game that will kill him and all his friends? because he thinks it’s gonna save the world and I guess to him the world, shitty death world Alternia, is more important than a dozen of asshole trolls. damn.
So Sollux is gonna die, not once but twice. gotta live up to his bifurcation motif, right? also he’s gonna go blind before he dies the second time. possibly the voices told him that? his own dying voice?
Since a dead Sollux cannot die again, Feferi gives him the kiss of life, waking up Sollux’s Derse dreamself to take original!Sollux’s place. I assume original!Sollux got to hang around the dream bubbles but we don’t ever see him again.
I’m taking this moment to mention that Sollux has two dreamselves, because he’s Sollux so of course he has two. some theories propose it’s a side-effect of being a Doom player and being more death-prone than the average player. I can’t really object to that.
it’s interesting to note that when Derse!Sollux wakes up he remembers Prospit too.
On the meteor Sollux does some tech support and is the only one to skip out of talking to the humans for some reason (a real shame if you ask me). In that time Prospit and Derse are destroyed by Bec Noir, likely killing Prospit!Sollux too. This probably doesn’t count as a death for his personal prophecy? Maybe his Prospit ghost hangs out with original!Sollux’s ghost in the dream bubbles now, wondering when his Derse ghost is gonna join them.
Now any Sollux fan who paid attention knows what him being blind means. it means his prophetized second death is coming and it’ll probably be final. Right?
Enters a Sollux who shows up next to the Green Sun, out of fucking nowhere, and he’s half-dead (and half-blind). This Sollux came to existance when the blind Sollux on the meteor burned himself out pushing said meteor to the green sun like a fucking hero. So he died. but his ghost, which showed up in the dream bubbles, was somehow half-alive? and that let him leave the dream bubbles like it’s not even a thing.
Half-dead Sollux is reunited briefly with his fully-dead corpse, and they fail to have a corpse party because Gamzee stole his body and probably hid it in a fridge somewhere.
Sollux may be 50% alive, but he’s 100% done with the adventure bullshit so he decides to go hang out in the dream bubbles where his dead friends are, despite the begging of his very alive best friend for him to stay on the meteor. I still begrudge him that choice to this day, he would have made a fine addition to the meteor crew.
(I also like to think he did catch up at some point with his friends on the meteor, even if he ultimately stayed with Aradia in the end)
Remember the fridged Sollux corpse? that’s still a thing that exists, because through shenanigans, Gamzee threw it at Jake’s kernelsprite, along with Eridan’s fridged corpse, thus creating Erisolsprite.
Now the creation of Erisolsprite is weird, because it sucks in Eridan’s ghost from the dream bubbles, and it sucks in Sollux’s ghost. But Sollux at that point is only half a ghost! Well that’s alright, because Sollux was always about bifurcation (even if he said he left his duality schtick behind) so he just gets split. His dead half goes into making Erisolsprite and his alive half, now fully blind again, can continue hanging around the dream bubbles with Aradia.
That’s where we find him again, with a new fetching pirate look. He somehow knows about Erisolsprite’s existance despite never having set foot in the Alpha session. One can speculate, is he only vaguely aware of where half of his soul is residing? or can he full on see through Erisolsprite’s eyes, being effectively in two places at once?
At this point one could think: Hussie is going through some sicknasty loops to keep Sollux alive! clearly there must be a purpose to that! Sollux must play a crucial part in the ending or something.
That’s when the retcon happen, going back and changing things enough to prevent the creation of Erisolsprite. Technically it’s possible Erisolsprite escaped to the new timeline along with the other sprites, but we never see him again so there’s no proof. (I believe in Erisolsprite, I do, I do)
With the changes made, alpha-timeline!Sollux should be back to being half-dead and half-blind, and we do get a couple glimpses of him supporting that!
But now shit is going down, there’s boss fights happening everywhere, and who’s there wondering wtf Karkat is doing jumping at Lord English like a suicidal idiot? Sollux motherfucking Captor with the eyepatches, proof that he’s fully blind, fully alive, and from the timeline that was retconned.
Does this Sollux remember an Erisolsprite that has never existed in this timeline? Probably. Does he remember friends who are slightly different than those from this new timeline he snuck up in? I think it’s very possible!
We never see Sollux again after this, but knowing all this, knowing all the ways he can cheat a death that was prophesized not once but twice, I believe he made it to the new universe alive, if blind.
@melodiousnonsense I always lose track of Sollux by the end because of All The Death – I thought you might find this interesting
seems likely other people have talked about it besides me, but i have certainly done a video or two on that subject since I literally don’t think theres any chance they’ll actually die permanently at all:
This is on how I think the likeliest scenario is that Hiveswap’s heroes will escape to Earth C in the end, probably bringing most or all of these doomed trolls with them.
This one is on why I think its likely that Pa/Grandpa set things up to save Joey and Jude, or enable them to do…something? that would “Save the world”.
Simply put, I think the idea of Hiveswap having a tragic ending is antithetical to Homestuck and Hiveswap’s themes, and allowing them such a fate runs completely counter to Grandpa’s character. It’s easy to get lose it in the weeds because of what a shitty dad he is, but we’re still dealing with a genuine Hero, here, even if he’s a tragic one.
yep! Lil Hal was wrong about Dirk because he perceives Dirk as the same teenager he was at 13, who Lil Hal still was in some ways. Dirk proper has grown up since then.
I keep noticing how some artists have been silently leaving the fandom. Like, the kind of artist that’ll make casual posts and usually have an open and welcoming attitude about fellow fans and homestuck by itself.
While I’m sure they leave for their own reasons, I cant help but be aware that these artists may come and go sometimes because of either the stressful environment of the fandom, or get targeted/bullied enough for no real reason to the point that they wanna leave, and their traction on people’s dashes get replaced by other artists (or even just louder blogs in general) who instead make fun of others people’s art and like to passive aggressively critique the artistic expression of other’s in the fandom (from ships, to fave characters, to headcanons, to other things one would dub as cringe culture).
Like, unless some other’s want to shape up and stop being assholes, there’s nothing that can really be done, but I’m just a little sad that we’re left with less positive content creators to look up to around here and more that like putting others on blast and sneering at art habits that other homestuck artists have, all while wrapping themselves in this thin veil of woke purity.
Hey, positive Homestuck blogs, reblog this! I’m still here and I know I follow plenty of you that are still supportive, creative and welcoming. Spread this around for other people to find and follow, don’t let the loud assholes drown us out.
“Resigned to the fact that there’s no hope and all thats left in his life is exploitative labor until death” is not the same as “genuinely interested”.
He’s trying to learn about being a butler because the alternative is being murdered even faster. There is no consent from Xefros in this situation, he’s merely complying with that Alternia demands of him on pain of death. It matters that Xefros doesn’t like it, and it matters that not wanting to do it but being forced to leaves him feeling drained and miserable.
That’s why I view the role of the Knight-a mechanical metaphor for his role as a Butler-as a corrupting influence that will likely be discarded as Xefros finds his true self. I 100% guarantee you there’s no scenario where Hiveswap will suggest that Xefros lying down and embracing the role of Alternian butler is a good thing.
The music link was initially Dammek’s idea, yes, but in contrast to the Butler motif it is actually possible for Xefros to choose to embrace it in a healthier way, now that he’s free. So it might turn out to be an interest he develops on his own terms together with Joey–the wish granting implications of the cherub portal suggest that performance is in Joey’s future, after all.
Not enough of the fandom is interested in how Classpects may play into Hiveswap, I think. We’ve gotten lots of hints at the player’s potential Classpects, but there’s a lot of skepticism as to whether Classpects will even show up at all, given that the game doesn’t center around Sburb.
I’m here to argue that they’ll definitely feature in some way. And luckily for all of us, whether or not I’m right here will be incredibly easy to prove!
Our case study will be Xefros Tritoh. But before I explain how we’ll scrutinize Xefros to determine whether or not I’m full of shit, I’ll need to talk about three things:
In Homestuck, when characters are particularly inspired by or moved to imitate rolemodels, that tends to show up in their mechanical behavior as Heroes. What’s more, such acts of imitation tend to come with references to the specific Mythological Archetypes that inform the Class of the Role-Model figure.
The Troll Ancestors are essentially our introduction to this concept, and there is no clearer example than Vriska. For all of Act 5, Vriska strives to emulate Mindfang in all things–and at the same time, Vriska is consistently depicted and referenced as a Fairy. You can see one such reference above.
@revolutionaryduelist But Xefros isn’t “interested” in being a butler. He repeatedly makes statements proving he’s being forced into it and hates it – he daydreams about smashing his practice silverware to bits, complains about how it’s left him without enough time to do the sports he really wants to do, and says that he sucks at cooking and the cleaning equipment depresses him. Does that imply he’s something other than a serving class and is roleplaying at being one because of societal pressure?
I expanded on this subject in my Xefros Tritoh video:
Tl;dr the role of a Butler seems to correspond with “One who serves for others”, specifically, meaning Butler roleplay parses as Knight roleplay.
Page is also a Serve class, but they seem to parse as “One who invites service for themselves”. As such, they tend to find themselves surrounded by Butlers/Knights/Helpers/Servants, rather than playing the role themselves.
Xefros echoes a desire similar to this when he mentions he only really feels like himself playing Arena stickball, where he mentions being “defended by his brawler.”
If Xefros had a different True Class, I’d expect to see its archetype and verb referenced somewhere in his text-he’s got some loose Destroy mentions, but he doesn’t generally commit to them, and there are no mentions of Royalty or aristocracy as far as I can tell.
Haven’t found any references to the outlaw, prophet, magician, or fairy archetypes in his text, either. That said there’s a handy compilation of all of Hiveswap’s descriptions here, thanks to @everythinghiveswap :
so feel free to look through the text yourselves. its entirely possible i’ve missed stuff, just as its possible new symbolism will be introduced in later acts.
I took a break from music streams to do a Friendsim stream with @revolutionaryduelist, so he can educate me a bit on how the hell classpects work. At the end of first stream, this went down.
Happy Hivebent!!
this is surreal to look at but it was genuinely pretty damn fun
Flying through Storytelling 