last time i did this my wish really came true. so im going to wish again
nothing to lose. :))
Let’s hope
Why not? 🙂
*crossing fingers*
pretty much^^^^
i got nothing to lose. (:
Last time i did this my wish came true.
Jesus Christ if my wish comes true I will piss
please work omg
looks fun lol
please
IT SERIOUSLY WORKED
Well, i got nothing to lose, might as well try it
This shall be interesting😌
I really need this.
Sorry 2 be That Guy but i just get…such intense Vriska Serket vibes…from Cio’s everything. I just had to make a post compiling my favorite pages from Cio’s arc because jesus fuck, i love this sad blue demon girl and how much she wants to be good. I’m fucked up. @arrghus has killed me with this webcomic and now I must gush.
One of my patrons found references to Lilith as a “blue butterfly demon” so honestly I’m starting to wonder if Vriska and Cio are drawing upon a common mythological image or something. Then again, from what I’ve heard, abaddon is at least a former homestuck and killsixbilliondemons started on the MSPA forums. So who knows.
I hope stuff like this isn’t rude to post, I know its kinda spoilers for a pretty complex and gorgeous comic, but frankly I just want people to know how good and worth their time this is so maybe putting this out there will interest some people.
Anyway. Kill 6 billion demons. It’s good and gay, pls read it.
Hope you like the next video 😉 I’m making a couple that sort of condense that article’s ideas into more compressed and evocative language.
That said, that essay was written way back during like, the Act 7 hype wave or so. It’s worth mentioning that the idea that LE made the Alpha Timeline is, in fact, not just a theory. It’s been decisively proven through Caliborn’s thematic link to his Denizen, Yaldabaoth.
I think reading Homestuck as a story designed by Lord English, an explicitly flawed work/world created by a flawed Demiurge figure, is basically Step 1 in having any sort of cohesive understanding of what it’s Going For on a thematic level.
I just wanted to say that I think there’s been evolution in that conversation since that essay, and if you enjoyed it you might find that stuff interesting, too.
Okay! This musing is my first writings on one of these more critical Homestuck theories I’ve written that doesn’t have to do with professional wrestling or OCs. Let’s make it a good one.
If you’re even a casual Homestuck fan, you’ve likely heard about the Trollcall. It is part of arguably the most significant paradigm shift in Homestuck’s history, the Extended Zodiac, and by extension Hiveswap as a whole. For the first time in AGES since the small crumbs given to us by Hussie or concept art of the game; we’re finally getting a look at the world of Alternia beyond the 12 central trolls. Fantroll fuel is in effect; theories have been jossed, created, enforced, everything we knew about the aspects shifted and we’re still accommodating these changes.
Naturally, this has brought about some resistance. As is the case whenever there’s a significant change to a field, there are those hesitant, if not outright hostile, to the ideas presented. An example of this can be the people who still don’t think that Karkat’s connection to the Limeblood caste is in some way not explicit. Like, god damn people, get your head out of the dirt. It’s right there with the other Lime signs.
I went off-topic there previously, but my general point here is that there are aspects to this paradigm shift that people have taken issues with. A particular area is the Trollcall; this being WhatPumpkin’s way to tide over the wait for Act 2 by drip-feeding us more and more nuggets of lore for Alternia in the fashion of introducing the background caste of the game. The issues people have taken with it is that most of the trolls are just facets of the 12 Beta trolls just exaggerated. The Tealbloods are a common caste to point fingers at where most if not all seem to have some connection to law and (in)justice in some way. Or we could look at the Goldbloods who seem to be bee-focused psionic machines with weird eyes and duality throughout them. This apparent lasseiz-faire attitude towards the castes goes on and on: feral/rural olives, artistic and verbose Indigos, yes, INDIGOS you plebs, fashionable Jadebloods, etc.
You hear it, “This troll is just X but Y!”, “This [motif] was meant to be for [beta troll], it doesn’t make SENSE that it’s applied to them all!”. Continually hearing this over and over and over, it’s maddening. Is WhatPumpkin lazy? Is this bad design? Were things better before Hussie ‘gave up’ and hired all these god damn SJWs? (This is me being facetious, naturally).
My goal with this likely-to-be large mass of writing is to dissuade, or at least explain why I don’t hold these views that the TrollCall trolls are a terrible thing or lazy design. Man, it’s easy to say these things when I’m in control of writing the complaints. Minus one point to this essay I guess. The way I’ll hopefully present my view on this ‘issue’ is by talking about an unexpected development of the Extended Zodiac, the ‘True Signs’, and how they can be used to explain away the issues that some may take with the apparent path WhatPumpkin is steering Alternian society and trolls as we know them down.
Taz has written about the influence of the True Signs before. They write mainly in the context of how the True Signs explain what some may see as inconsistencies with Xefros having so many elements of a Time player despite actually being a Rage player. The general ethos is the same, the True Signs are subconscious ‘ideals’ for each caste, and each caste is under enough pressure to act to these ideals despite it not being their natural calling.
When people like Taz, Wak, or other theory blogs, prominent (them) or obscure (me), talk about the influence of the True Signs, they mainly approach it from a classpect perspective. That doesn’t quite help me in explaining the aesthetic similarities of the Troll calls to the beta trolls. What I’m going to focus on are the genetic and social ramifications of the True Sign’s influences. My main, and likely only point as my mind buzzes writing this, is that the True Signs play a far more considerable impact on their respective castes than we think.
The end goal of an SBURB-created universe, that is, a universe, is to create the next group of players for the following game. The trolls of Alternia were the race fated to play SBURB. Therefore it can be said that the ultimate end goal of Alternian society was to create the beta trolls and raise them to game-playing age.
With this in mind, along with the substantial influence of Doc Scratch on Alternia, it can be said that the True Signs, aspect and moon at least, are the ultimate archetypes of each caste to slowly evolve to create a player who fulfils all the requirements to play. The way I see it work is akin to a mould, or a filter.
We’ll look at the Goldbloods for this example. Sollux was the True Sign Goldblood fated to play the game for Alternia. Therefore every single Goldblood before him can be seen as various attempts to create him, or as evolutionary steps to eventually reach him. I’m not saying that there’s an overt effort to create Sollux Captor with every Goldblood, at least on Alternia’s part. To Alternia, the Gemini sign holds no actual significance. It’s a Goldblood sign for regular ass Goldbloods. Who cares?
SBURB cares is who. It’s said in the description of every True Sign that those who are a True Sign have a more significant connection to the caste than others. With this information in mind, it can be inferred that the True Signs are SBURB’s ‘model’ for the respective players. With sweeps and sweeps, generations and generations of this cosmic pressure on the caste, it makes sense that the caste as a whole would begin to exhibit traits and qualities of the last bearer of SBURB’s burden for his kind.
We can see in this in how Zebede is an ‘aspiring beekeeper, how Kuprum has a form of vision two-fold and acts as a battery-in-training, how Folykl… Well, Sollux isn’t born blind but considering that Kuprum embodies a role that Sollux takes up later in the story, it’s possible Folykl does as well with Sollux’ eventually blindness, another quirk of the True Sign influence. To loop back to genetics, we can easily see the influence of Sollux’s duality with the presence of two sets of horns on Goldbloods. The dual horns are a basic facet of Sollux and are an easily shown effect of True Sign influence. The fact that Zebede and presumably other goldbloods out there lack vision Two-Fold suggests that it’s not quite become a caste standard that dual horns have so far. You can carry on this pattern with every member of the Trollcall. This explanation may not satisfy you; you may even say “Well it’s still bad design on WP’s part!”
To respond to that, I merely have to point out that this is Alternia for chrissakes. The place has a genetically distinct caste system, which is grounds for stating that the Alternian government plays it’s part in enforcing this Darwinist approach to the True Signs, albeit unintentionally. If you really want to get a sense of overt manipulation, look no further than Doc Scratch. The 12 beta trolls are part of the long cycle of the creation of Lord English, who Doc Scratch is also the host of. Furthermore, two of the fragments of Lord English are the Alternian trolls themselves. Well, one-and-a-half of the fragments, Equius and half of Gamzee. Any deviation from these two designs wouldn’t lead to LE’s creation, and we can’t have that now, can we?
Scratch’s influence trickling down through Alternian powers can even be seen in how the Alternian government plays a part. By valuing beneficial mutations where they’d fit such as Vriska’s MC powers, Sollux’s vision two-fold and Equius’ STRONGNESS. They are unknowingly playing a part in their eventual demise by breeding and nurturing the right conditions to form the players who will wreck everything in the process of doing so, and that’s too perfectly poetic for me to not see as grounds for this stance.
If you have any responses, additions, or other such valuable contributions, feel free to reblog or message me! I can only promise that the responses will be at least sub-par.
I hadn’t realized these design similarities had people complaining.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, haha. I like this post a lot! I agree pretty much completely, and it kinda makes me really happy to see other people picking up the same thread. So I’ve just got a few things to say:
1) It’s true that I’ve written about it a lot, but credit for starting the True Sign Caste-Influence theory rightfully goes to @wakraya. She’s the one who made the connections in the Extended Zodiac proper! I don’t think you implied otherwise or anything, I’ve just been meaning to say so because I’ve seen some people attribute the theory itself to me, when I just happen to think Wak nailed it.
2) You got into this later in the post, but personally, I put the emphasis much more on Lord English/Scratch caring about/being behind this particular means of producing the players than on Sburb having any particular agency/will behind it.
It’s worth mentioning that making this batch of players is what Scratch is on Alternia to do–LE arranged for this by glitching the Alpha Troll’s session and forcing them to Scratch in the first place.
LE has always been themed as a mob boss–Put another way, a crony capitalist with no regard for others’ lives. Conscripting all of Troll-kind into what is essentially a millenia-spanning, empire-wide factory line meant to produce a specific set of Correct™ trolls sounds about right, from that perspective.
By putting each troll Caste through whatever combination of genetic alteration and/or socioeconomic pressure is necessary to eventually produce the Players, Scratch can ensure their creation while minimizing his personal labor.
If that leads most trolls in history to be unhappier and less able to understand themselves, their true natures, and that of those around them–then that’s a nice bonus to LE, who would be cruel for fun even if he didn’t particularly have it out for trolls out of spite for Calliope.
3) Speaking of which, if this is true, it might go some ways to explaining why some trolls have more psychic power than others. Impossible to say for sure at this point, obviously, but when Act 2 drops I’ll be interested in seeing how trolls with different Aspects relate to their troll powers.
When Vriska Serket was young, far younger than her still very young age when we first encounter her, she faced a choice of monumental proportions, at an age so young many would not ascribe her any agency, any responsibility for her actions. Perhaps we might even call it a Choice, for it is similar in nature to the ultimatums presented by the Denizens.
The Choice was this: A: Start killing people, innocent or not, on an enormous, serial killer kind of scale. Dye your hands in blood for all futures to come. B: Die before you’ve ever had a chance to live.
The Vriska we encounter chose A. Obviously she did. If she hadn’t, we would never have met her because she would be dead. This is the reponsibility of Vriska Serket, that to even exist in the story, she had to be a person who chose A.
And that makes her evil. I mean that in a sense that to choose and to continue to choose your own life over that of countless innocent strangers is a horrible (albeit somewhat understandable) decision, but I also mean it in the sense that Vriska herself perceives and understands herself as a bad person.
She makes excuses for herself, certainly. She justifies her actions using troll morality, tries to pretend she doesn’t care, clings to arbitrary standards of “fairness”. None of it works, of course. Aranea makes that much clear, in that key conversation of hers with Terezi. It never works.
And with her repeated failures to find absolution, with guilt gnawing at her every step of the way, here is Vriska’s grand mistake, that she desires to be Good, more than she desires to be Well.
In this world I would be surprised to hear of anyone who does not know the consequences of prioritizing accomplishment over health.
A take on Vriska that actually mostly aligns with my own! Pretty rare.
I can’t resist the urge to mention that I see Vriska’s self-imposed selflessness as being the major identifying trait she borrows from Mindfang.
Thieves being an Active class with innately selfish tendencies and Sylphs being a Passive class with the opposite, I think the Mindfang persona itself is the major corrupting influence on Vriska’s psyche.
I’ve talked to Arrghus about this before I think, I just wanted to mention it here because not only do I think this reading is fairly accurate, I also think it’s grounded in the very mechanics of Classpects. And honestly I just think that’s hella neat, I’m never over it.
There are many things that cloud the minds of Homestuck’s protagonists. Many things they lean on, that they draw strength from, that they consider a positive influence in their lives, but that nevertheless serve to distract them and poison their hearts and minds. For John, it is innocence. For Karkat, it is the warrior ethos. And for Terezi, it is justice.
Justice drives many of Terezi’s actions and her understanding of the world. It’s how she justifies helping Vriska feed countless to her giant spider lusus during flarp, it’s how she justifies siccing Scratch on Vriska when flarp goes too far, it’s how she describes the nature of doomed timelines and those doomed individuals who originate in them. It’s the language she uses when psyching herself up to personally kill Vriska once and for all.
Justice, to Terezi, is about violence. Retributive violence, a punishment for evil action. It is a way to understand and interact with the world she inherited from Alternia, and it is riddled with the influence of that awful place, with its utter disregard for life, dignity, or any form of mercy. It is a means of justifying murder.
Justice, to Terezi, is a drug, and it is one she only manages to shake once she kills Vriska and finds that in the face of such enormous action its effects as a palliative are lacking. She relapses, of course, wrapping herself in the blindfolded visage of justice when seeking violent revenge on Gamzee, but this no longer brings her strength against his inexplicable juggalo pro-wrestling skills and begins a sequence shortly leading to her death in the Game Over.
Ultimately, Terezi chooses to shed justice entirely, choosing to use John to resurrect Vriska and, critically, to disrupt her initial pretend game of justice during her introduction, symbolically (and, to an extent, actually) freeing her from its curse.
The other big reference to justice that comes to mind: Aimless Renegade immediately prior to blowing some shit up and trying to kill people that end up being his friends.
I think I’m inclined to agree with seeing it as a corruptive influence. I should go through the text and see if it’s bad in every circumstance it shows up in, or if it’s toxic for Terezi in particular as linked to her Knight roleplay.
Either way, really solid point. I dig it!
I don’t know the answer to this but I do know that whatever it is Rose and Dirk argue bitterly over it
rose enjoys hunchback, even the fucking gargoyles. dirk cannot let this stand
theres no fucking way rose enjoys those fucking abominable gargoyles. that nonsensical tonally dissonant garbage goes strictly in the dave wheelhouse. I will fight you
I will concede but I will also propose: dave starts talking about how great they are and rose, seeing dirk starting to open his mouth in longwinded protest, immediately jumps on the bandwagon just to see how mad he gets
I literally think the second dave was like oh yeah those gargoyles I love those guys dirk would open his mouth and swallow his entire tongue while meekly saying oh …….. oh yeah ……. me ……… too ………………………………… because he wants dave to like him so fucking badly and of course rose overhears this and immediately saunters up, chin in hands, oh really? tell me more, father. tell me more about how you just love the delightful antics of the most jarring and out of place so-called “sidekick” characters in all of disneydom. educate me, please. I especially am interested to know what value you believe the gargoyle wanting to fuck the goat brought to the film. rewind it, dave. let’s see that again
this post has evolved to its final form
Maybe? I don’t really like jossing headcanons, but I’ve never really read a version of this idea that feels compelling to me, personally.
I think it’s more accurate to say Pages tend to either A) Attract the attention of others who mean well, but can be unpredictable in how they go about “helping” the Page, or B) Serve themselves their Aspects in very selfish ways.
I don’t think Jake in particular reads as “lacking” Hope. Understanding the impact Jake has on Dirk when they’re 13, specifically through the vector of his Hope, is instrumental to understanding both their characters, imo.
Well, I think that saying that Pages “lack” their aspect is very much oversimplifying it, and it’s worth noting that we never actually hear it stated this way in the text, not even from Calliope or anyone who gets info from Calliope. It is, however, present in patterns, just as it is for Princes – “lacking” the aspect is a signifier for them, too. Let’s review:
-Tavros is the simplest and most literal application of this signifier, and is probably where the concept originated because of it. He lacks freedom, both physical (due to his confinement in a wheelchair) and social/sexual (due to his constant victimization by Vriska). And this is not a failing on his part! Tavros is aware that freedom is something he does not have, and is not happy about it! Freedom sounds pretty good to him! Eventually, he gets it. Good for him.
-Jake, then, presents us with the other interpretation of this concept; that of having a bad relationship with one’s aspect, in which that part of one’s life is unhealthy. Taz can source this better than I can, but while Jake is very hopeful, he is naively so. Jake is a hopeless optimist, a person who thinks that if he just believes in something hard enough, it will eventually come true. If he believes that he’s a rugged, badass adventurer, he’ll become one! If he believes that his friends are all Good Pure People With No Issues who he can have Straightforward, Easy, Uncomplicated Relationships with, that’s what they’ll be! Everything will work out, you just gotta believe. Jake’s journey – one that as of Act 7 he has only just begun to make serious progress on – is that of understanding that hope is not enough, that in order to make the world the way you want it, you have to strive for it.
(Despite his other issues, I think we see the end of this road in Grandpa Harley – one does not become as accomplished in as many different fields as him by wishing in one hand and seeing how quickly it fills up!)
The concept holds up pretty well with the Princes, too – Eridan has hopes and dreams, but they all get smashed to pieces and his moment of greatest power and greatest impact on the story comes at his moment of utter hopelessness. Dirk certainly has a soul, he has emotions (indeed, Dirk’s biggest problem is arguably that he can’t stop feeling way too much, all the time, forever) – but, like his counterpart Rose, he’s very bad at dealing with them and processing them, and he’s constantly held back by difficulties placed in his way by his Self or versions of his Self (such as Hal) and by his own literal Self-hatred. Kurloz we don’t see too much of, but he’s a Rage player (anger, chaos, doubt, purifying truth) who is always 100% calm and collected, and dedicates himself to a god who cares nothing for him – hardly a righteous or truthful faith.
So there’s my counterpoint – I would say that yes, Pages do lack their aspect at the beginning of their journey, but that’s only one way that their difficulties can manifest, and interpreting that too literally is limiting and inaccurate. It might be better to say that early on Pages (and Princes) have a weakness corresponding to their aspect.
A solid add-on! I think I could still make an argument that Tavros’ issues stem from an unhealthy relationship with his Aspect, or a fundamental misunderstanding linked to it. But I agree on the broad points, and I think this is a pretty solid way of conceptualizing the parallels.
ok lets see if i cant run through this real quick
We’ve gotta start with the fact that as the third Hope player, Jake is subject to a magical prophecy passed down from Cronus. All three Hope players roleplay Magicians at some point.
Eridan and Jake both use Hope to force an enormous amount of emotional labor out of a Life player. And both Eridan and Jake piss their respective Life players off so much they revoke a symbol of mutual friendship. Eridan does this by using willful ignorance to keep his belief in a legacy of destruction, and then selfishly choosing to destroy Hope to save his own skin.
Jake is more complicated. He actually foreshadows his own behavior when he tells John about his Grandma in his letter, back in Act 4. It’s telling that tells John he likes to be honest, because he’s anything but for the first half of Act 6.
Jake uses willful ignorance to get what he wants without having to be honest about it. In so doing, he ends up keeping secrets–not just from all his friends, but even from himself. Only the part of his brain that takes the form of Brain Ghost Dirk is fully honest about Jake’s true awareness of his surroundings.
Secrecy comes fairly naturally to a Witch. Jade’s plan in its entirety is shared with no one until the end, Damara is secretive and cryptic about her actions, the Batterwitch is noted for her secrets, Feferi doesn’t fill anyone in on the nature of her bargain with the Horrorterrors until after she’s already Dead…so on.
This seems to be an element of his Grandmother’s Jake emulates, but it doesn’t come naturally to him. He mentions that secrecy wears on him and leaves him feeling jaded, which is exactly how he ends up feeling about his relationship with Dirk.
Oh, and speaking of Dirk.
If you recall, I’ve argued that Witches all have a Familiar figure, and that the imagery follows most characters who commit hard enough to Witch roleplay.
The familiar always represents the Witch’s Aspect.
A short list would look like:
Jade: Becquerel (Space)
Damara: Lord English (Time)
Feferi, The Batterwitch: Gl’bolyb (Life)
Rose: The Horrorterrors (Void), Doc Scratch (Light)
The interesting thing is, the relationship between a Witch and her Familiar always seems to be described in terms of Service. Serve is the verb inherent to Knight/Page, with Knights often Serving for the benefit of others, and Pages often benefiting from the service of others.
It’s from Dirk that we get the best description of Witches’ Familiars, as he describes the relationship between Gl’bolyb and the Batterwitch.
And as it happens, it’s also an excellent description of the sum total of Jake’s experience of Dirk, himself. Which is fitting, because Dirk is also an intense roleplayer–one who roleplays a Knight.
Brain Ghost Dirk is the manifestation of Jake’s faith in Dirk as both his personal bodyguard and his secret weapon–a window into how Jake sees Dirk at his best. Here he parallels Bec saving Jade from the meteor or from imps. While Bec is powered by Space and Dirk by Hope, the image is of a devoted, hypercompetent protector.
Jake’s faith also has a hand in creating AR, however, and Hal becomes the interpretation of Familiars as foreboding and controlling figures. This Dirk most reflects Gl’bolyb imposing its will onto the Condesce’s desires, or Lord English imposing his onto Damara’s.
The Brobot under Hal’s control is even referenced as enigmatic, which definitely fits Jake’s perception of Dirk as generally hyper-mysterious, and AR as a cyber-omniscient puppetmaster responsible for Unite Synchronize.
ok so i totally failed at making that quick or short but that’s the loose gist of it. I could write a lot more but i really need to learn how to make these points concisely so i am hoping this is short and concise enough to get the point across.
let me know what you think!
Flying through Storytelling 