i’m usually pretty averse to posting quotes from wp staff, but i figure they’ve said inversion theory is fake often enough that it’s more helpful to spread the word than to bite my tongue on it.
It’s a really cool idea, and for years I thought it was the best way to understand Classpects. Nowadays I think of Aspect Duality is its own separate concept, and what BKEW explains through Class inversion, I think is more clearly and accurately described as Class Roleplay. That is, of course, just me. I’m not 100% sure I’m right about the Class roleplay stuff even now, though I expect Hiveswap will make me feel more certain one way or the other. All I do know is that inversion, as posited here, is extra-canonically debunked. But it’s a good concept to understand to contextualize fandom history. And it’s cool.
1. the “employee” who said that was hussie’s actual girlfriend, but other things she has said over the years prove that she doesn’t have any special insight on what andrew was planning at any given time
2. even if i did accept it as “word of god”, the author is dead.
3. also yeah its fun. i just hate people who completely dismiss it as a theory
just a note re 1): Her being debunked about other things may be true, I honestly don’t look at WP statements much so i wouldn’t know. but in that specific situation she said she’d talked to Hussie about this and was speaking from “a position of privilege”. I can dig up the particular comment if you’re interested but its just something that stuck out in my memory.
You’re right though, Word of God is no reason to simply discard a thing peeps have fun with. I don’t really like using inversion theory to try to understand the comic, but I like the concept of it a lot.
Yeah!! One of the biggest strengths of Homestuck’s cast is, imo, their degree of flexibility. I wouldn’t really want to shortchange that, because it lets characters function as sort of quantum rep for different groups–like Gay vs. Bi Rose, for example–but without changing their fundamental character dynamics and relationships.
IE: You can read Rose as gay or bi, but she’s still with Kanaya in the end so it doesn’t matter much outside of how you personally relate to her. I think it’s cool that both gay and bi girls have that close reading available to them in that way, if that makes sense? Ditto Jake.
Yeah, I do think that’s the implication. I like it honestly because it renders Gamzee in a WAY darker light as a villain, and really contextualizes WHY he’s so irredeemable to an extent beyond that of Vriska, or even Eridan. There -can be- different versions of those two, ones who aren’t so committed to their personas and willful destruction.
Not so for Gamzee. Like Caliborn, he’s committed to the Alpha Timeline through and through.
I got one reblog on that post that also sort of presented me as like “shutting down” that post or whatever, and I honestly wasn’t sure what to do about it, but seeing as OP blocked me and I’m getting anons about it I want to say this:
This stuff you’re saying might be true, but it also might not be. I don’t know this person and you’re on anon, so I have no way to know. Either way though, I wasn’t particularly out to disprove or call out creative-classpect, and I’m more than a little uncomfortable being framed that contentiously, no offense? .
I learned that there were Aranea and Meenah ghosts in the bubbles like, maybe a month and a half ago. And it blew my mind when I did! I was mostly just excited to share that tidbit of info.
Homestuck is dense. Really, really, really dense. I don’t think there is any chance on earth a single person could ever like “Break Down” all of Homestuck and Figure It Out by themselves entirely, so I view this as a collaborative effort the entire fandom can and should undertake together. It’s a matter of discovering and then holding to facts about the story, since that makes for better analysis for what the story is up to.
But an elitist approach on my part, or an idea that I’m in “competition” with anyone who DARES step into the holy domain of Talking About A Webcomic, is like. Actively harmful to my approach in that regard? I don’t think anyone should be shamed for being wrong about something like that–again, Homestuck is complicated. We’re all gonna miss stuff. And I certainly don’t think I’m some “Master Theorist” or better than anyone.
If my writing on Homestuck seems good to anyone, well–I owe that to heavy and fair scrutiny from lots of friends I’ve disagreed with on all sorts of Homestuck stuff for ages, as well as to the tons of friends I’ve made also working on Homestuck analysis and thinking about the comic! There have been plenty of times when I’ve presented counterpoints to their views, and times when they’ve dazzled me with some marvelous insight into the comic I hadn’t at all picked up on. @betweengenesisfrogs pointing out that Lord English’s cueball can be seen as a Cosmic Egg is a perfect example.
My point is I guess that I just don’t really want to be framed as being “in competition” with anyone on this stuff, and I don’t particularly like people upholding me as someone who’s like, an Authority on the True Homestuck Facts, because I’m not. I think the story is coherent, and I’m willing to write embarrassing amounts of text explaining why. I’m also willing to hear out a lot of different people’s thoughts, and freely incorporate them into my own when I think they’re right and enrich the story.
That’s about the extent of my skillset. I’d really rather that instead of dedicated “”theorists”” competing against one another, we all try to work to understand Homestuck better, together. That might be naive, but it’s how I feel.
So on my patron server we were talking about a lack of Serket ghosts. There are pretty much 0 alternates, with only 1 Aranea and 2 Vriskas (both are plot relevant)
I chalked Vriska up to Meta Thief of Light. Like how she took up waaay too much time in canon and everyone sweeps it under the rug as Thief of Light. That’s a meta use of them, how they effect a story and narrative.
It’s like how Gamzee destroyed falshoods, pretense, lies, and harsh realities. He was able to do the impossible. It was literally impossible for him to have the hammer of zillywho It was literally impossible for him to get to Jane’s planet Etc etc His nature as a Bard of Rage is a force in the Meta, in the plot
Jujus are LITERALLY plot devices
So with all of that we (us being me and @dheavenlymango ) figured out that there are no alternates of Aranea for this same reason
Ghost alternates exist because they are irrelevant. They don’t matter. They are the epitome of Stopped Actually Mattering Aranea has been in the dreambubbles waaaaay longer than everyone else We think she got rid of her alternates. In a Meta attempt to matter, she tried healing her other selves, but they went from being ghosts to straight up not existing. She became the only one, thereby repairing her importance
But, with that came a cost. This One True Aranea was her long shot. By trying to become relevant and absorbing her alternates, she learned the only way to truly matter was to be alive. She scrapped together all her other selves (thereby having a memory so vast that she felt like she has been there forever) and puts all her eggs into one Importance Basket. With only one Aranea, all her alternates are taken away and thus, she gains the power of Singular Importance
But, even with all of this, importance only means anything if you are living. Ghosts are supposed to be inherently worthless
That’s why she wanted the Ring of Life so bad and went so far with her schemes
It wasn’t just One Aranea acting out It was the entire concept of Aranea has a meta force on plot to actually, truly mater and leave an impact
She bet everything on black All her cards we down Every single version of her was leading up to this Alpha Aranea to matter enough and be important enough to save the day
This is an interesting concept, but I’m sorry to say it’s undercut by canon. There are other Araneas in the bubbles.
Your explanation for Aranea is actually pretty close to how I’d describe Gamzee’s quantum existence, though. Seems to me he manages to live to the end of almost every timeline and then go to sleep, so he can merge with Alpha Gamzee’s dreamself, the same way Dream Rose does.
That would explain how he never dies in any timeline, and why he has no ghosts.
I think Aranea does something similar, but only through virtue of being “lucky” and “kind of boring”, meaning she’s probably likely to live to the end of her timeline by virtue of not getting involved in many fights. So she has fewer ghosts, and her alpha self had quite a lot of collected knowledge, but that’s about it.
Vriska’s an open question for me right now, but I like your description for her.
Flying through Storytelling 