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.
As I mentioned a few days ago, given WhatPumpkin published the Aspect test last week, I had thought of making a Class test to go along with it! This one is 40 Questions long and will determine which one of the 14 Classes you’re more aligned towards! At the ending, you will be also able to see which other Classes you scored high on.
If you want to check the Classes and their descriptions individually, check these:
It’s pretty cool to see something like this happen, since it’s been years since the last Class test was made, and the most popular one includes fan classes. I hope this test proves enjoyable for you guys until What Pumpkin produces a canon one! This is an exciting time to be a Homestuck/Hiveswap fan :B
I hadn’t really gotten to Jude yet at all–he still seems like a Doom player, but now I’m more uncertain about all of them.
I have been reconsidering Joey as a Life player pretty heartily, actually, BUT…I think in the end, at least so far, it’s only left me more sure she’s a Light player.
But the reason why, I think, suggests some new infomation relevant to how the Classpect system works. I’m curious to know what you’ll think about it! And since I’m about to record this in video form and it’s pretty overwhelming and difficult to talk about, I think it’ll help to get my thoughts in order somewhat, so I think I’ll do some prep here.
My logic goes something like this:
Xefros is a Rage player. Looking back at Act 1, it’s actually all there in his Page behavior! While Xefros himself isn’t angry or upset, he does continually frustrate, anger, and confuse Joey, essentially giving/serving her Rage (in my reading of Knights/Pages, of course). What’s more, eventually Joey’s anger stops being directed at Xefros and starts being directed at Dammek and Alternia at large, on Xefros’ behalf.
In this reading, we can understand Dammek keeping Xefros away from the sopor slime as “training” to be a form of serving him Rage, too–the Sopor Slime just keeps trolls away from the chucklevoodos, and the chucklevoodos have already been equated to Rage before. Xefros has been given Rage, to his own benefit.
I had figured that, if Xefros was a Page of Time, he’d eventually gain a Warrior to defend/fight for him through his communion powers–Xultan filled the niche perfectly. Seemed like a solid way to get Xefros to a Brain Ghost Dirk-type power boost or whatever. But Joey is ALREADY one of Xefros’ champions at the end of Act 1, and Xefros got her there mainly through Rage. Pretty solid echo of how Jake won over Dirk initially, or how Tavros won over Vriska/Aradia/Terezi (obviously, all of these to varying degrees of success).
So yeah, Xefros as a Page of Rage checks out. One critical difference, though: Jake and Tavros were already inclined to think in terms of Hope/Breath respectively at 13. While Xefros apparently has a considerable Ragey influence on Joey, he doesn’t seem to be thinking in Rage terms much himself. In Act 1, Xefros’ conscious THOUGHTS center around…
Time. It’s not just him, either–Dammek has some pretty hefty Breath implications, especially once you consider that the hoverpad he took from Xefros is essentially an object of detachment and flight. But we know Dammek is a Blood player, as opposed to Breath.
The bottom line is, there’s just too much DRAMATICALLY CAPITALIZED TEXTUAL EVIDENCE linking Xefros to Time and Dammek to Breath to be outright ignored. We don’t know either way with Joey, but she certainly thinks lot about both Life and Light, and one of them presumably has to be her actual Aspect.
The way I see it, there’s two possibilities at play at this point. It’s totally possible, of course, that all of that stuff was just misdirection, or just stuff we weren’t meant to take seriously or read into.
But if that’s the case, I’m not sure the fandom can ever actually accurately deduce a character’s classpect based on canon clues. Xefros has some Rage behavior, but it wasn’t telegraphed nearly as strongly as the Time stuff.
So maaaybe WP doesn’t particularly care for this type of speculation? Maybe the Time stuff was just like, general writing, and we’re not really meant to dig into the lore here and try to pick out clues and Figure Shit Out, like I thought we were being invited to do?
That would suck for me, but I would accept it. Hiveswap still has a stellar narrative with plenty of background lore to dissect and explore, Classpect stuff to look through or no. I’d be cool with just waiting for the narrative to tell us what’s going on outright, too.
However, until we know for sure one way or the other what WP intends, I’d like to keep regarding the Classpects as a coherent system with rules that can be figured out and considered in assessing characters’ natures and potential character arcs.
And there’s still the other possibility:
Calliope told us player abilities can manifest “in defiance with their Aspects” under the right circumstances. We’ve seen this in Homestuck, most clearly with Rose, which a lot of the fandom (you included, if I remember right?) has parsed under inversion theory.
I differ in that I parse it through Roleplay. It seemed to me that players attempting to act out a different Class, or being forced into acting as one, was always the source of these Aspect “shifts”.
So Rose manifests Void not because Witch is Seer’s natural opposite, but because Rose is interested in Magicians and wizards and wants to take an Active role in Changing the fate of the session.
But I wasn’t sure if we were dealing with Aspect inversion, ie: the player simply switching to the opposing Aspect, or if the Aspect side of the system was even more flexible and players could focus on any other Aspect in the spectrum, too.
This is the first clear indication I’ve seen for the latter interpretation. My current best guess for why Xefros has all this Time focus and Dammek has all this Breath focus is that the blood castes, on Alternia, are somewhat stereotyped in favor of their corresponding Aspects.
There’s a cultural bias predisposing members of each Caste to think in terms of the Caste’s True Sign Aspect. This is why Xefros implies all Indigos are super strong, but Equius’ introduction says he’s strong because he’s kind of a freak.
And it sort of makes sense, given Lord English nor Doc Scratch would care to figure out the nuances of every individual troll–the founders of the hemospectrum as it exists on Alternia only had the profiles of the twelve trolls Gamzee and Equius knew to work with, while guiding society’s development of the Caste system.
And this is a fascist, exploitative system, so I would’ve found it odd if it was actually good for the characters to begin with, to be honest?
So if each Sign in a Caste is linked to a different Aspect, but the Caste as a whole is stereotypically connected with or pushed into conforming to one particular Aspect…
Then we’re looking at a world where a lucky few would have the social advantage of being told about their own latent potential through their Aspect (not that they couldn’t confuse themselves perfectly fine, if they were so inclined), but the great many were kept confused by stereotypes, and the contrast between their inner worlds and their own biological powers.
This conflict would be different for everyone, and would become even worse factoring in the variety of roles further imposed by society–like Dammek and Xefros being forced into Butlering.
The end result? A society where almost nobody is given the time and space to figure out who they truly are, and where almost everyone is playing against their strengths in some regard. As a bonus, almost everyone is stressed out, because they’re not allowed to do what would naturally make them happy.
Sound like Alternia to you? It does to me. And fostering that kind of widespread societal confusion certainly sounds like something you’d want to do if you were Doc Scratch or the Empress. What better way to keep the threat of uprising at bay?
Hilariously, that means her Maid behavior might be roleplay instead of her actual Class, so I might be debunking myself here! But I’m a little more inclined to think her admiration is manifesting as an interest in the Life aspect in general.
The key thing for me here is that her interest in Life has a potential source, that we can put under scrutiny going forward. Her interest in Light has no such apparent source, other than her own nature. Hence why I’m still falling on Light as her innate Aspect, at least for now.
As for Jude–I don’t even know right now, there’s too much going on. I’ll have to revisit him once the dust settles and I have some answers I’m more confident about. He certainly seems like someone chosen to suffer in Act 1, though, man. Poor kid.
I might be reading too much into it, but it seems like a pretty solid way to use Classpects to tell us about the violent and cruel nature of Alternian society. Whether I’m right or wrong about any of this, though, Act 2 is going to be very interesting. We stand to learn a lot!
I just realised what it is and what it DOES. So ever since this panel happened, it’s been on the back of my mind, and now that the comic is over and I’ve done theories on the Metastuck and found the Apotheosis and Creation Myth theory which is to me the perfect explanation of all things Homestuck, THIS fucking thing still held the one plot thread I couldn’t explain with Alternate timelines, and that seemed a bit too Deus Ex Machina for me to actually enjoy much. “Oh, the last frog? Echidna just helped me remember it was not in the Medium! It was back at my island!” Why. Why would it be back at her island?
And yesterday when I talked to a friend about the ending, I realised. It’s Game Design. Now hear me, I quote from the comic itself:
PCG: WHAT. ?GG: oh right ?GG: where the last frog is! ?GG: or was… ?GG: the thing is ?GG: the frog we need is nowhere to be found in the medium ?GG: it was on earth! ?GG: but only very briefly ?GG: it was when i was young ?GG: before i woke up on prospit ?GG: i had begun sleep walking ?GG: both on the island and on the moon ?GG: and in my dream it was very bright ?GG: i saw something in the light ?GG: i couldnt tell what it was so i got closer
[…]
?GG: later my grandpa made a robot for me to help me with my sleep walking ?GG: it could do all the walking while i stayed safe in bed! ?GG: it could also record my dreams ?GG: i am sure he always knew my dreams were going to be special ?GG: i suspect he knew it before i was even born
That’s it. the hint has been there all along. This was when Jade started sleepwalking, and that is not just a coincidence. This is the thing that caused the Sleepwalking in the first place. The ‘Seed’ shape glowing in the middle of Prospit, that bright light, has always symbolised a Game Construct, something the game does. Be it the place from which the Temple emerges, the lily time capsule storing people and items within, that’s the main symbol of SBURB that says it’s a mechanic of the game. Now, to explain this I have to take Kanaya, the other Space Player, as an example:
GA: I Woke Up A Long Time Ago GA: I Had Trouble Sleeping When I Was Young GA: The Sunlight Was Unnaturally Invigorating To Me I Guess GA: My Lusus Could Do Nothing To Help GA: And When I Was Supposed To Be In My Cocoon I Would Often Wander Out To The Desert GA: Where One Day I Was Visited By A Stranger Who Dressed And Spoke In White GA: He Put Me To Sleep And I Awoke On Prospit GA: Where I Have Dreamed Ever Since GA: He Said He Was My Guardian GA: And Though He Visited Rarely I Did Regard Him As That GA: Then Later He Stopped Coming GA: In Time I Began To Believe He Was A Figment Of My Mind GA: Like An Imaginary Friend To Give Me Reassurance When I Needed It GA: But Then While Playing Our Game I Learned He Was Real GA: He Had Spoken To Others From Our Party GA: And Had Been Manipulating Us All To Advance His Schemes GA: It Was Saddening To Learn My Fortuitous Awakening Had Been The Product Of A Nefarious Ploy GA: Youre Lucky That Your Awakening Probably Had No Such Entanglements GG: jeez, i hope not… GA: But I Guess Its Only A Minor Contamination Of Something Otherwise Great GA: I Was Allowed To See What Skaia Would Show Me GA: And To Prepare For Dangers Ahead And Try To Protect People
Of course, one could argue it was Bec who allowed Jade to wake up in Prospit, but she spent her entire life with her dog, and it was only after the Frog Event and Jadebot’s construction that she actually woke up there. So everything hints to the fact that the Final Frog is the Trigger that wakes up Space Players in Prospit. Kanaya didn’t need it, because Doc Scratch woke her up. Doc Scratch manipulated others to his whims, so the fact he only visited her a few times and then disappears means he had little interest in what he could get from Kanaya. Which bid the question to me, what did he want from her in such short time?
The Frog is what he wanted. He zapped himself on Alternia, and woke Kanaya up, thus making sure she didn’t wake up the proper way. He became the trigger of her awakening, making it so that Kanaya never saw this Final Frog in the past, and didn’t remember in the future, causing the Universe to be incomplete, cancerous.
In a normal SBURB Session, SBURB will ensure retroactively the Last Frog needed is sent to the past, near the Space Player, as a means of making them interact with a Game Construct and wake up in Prospit. Getting the Final Frog to make the Universe adds the need to search through Time as well as through Space. Doc Scratch preemptively woke Kanaya up in Prospit, saying he was her Guardian, with the explicit purpose of sabotaging the creation of a healthy Frog, and causing a chain reaction that ended in the combined Session that spawned a new Universe Frog, from which Lord English himself would be born.
Fucking. Hell.
oh god I’m glad someone actually wrote this so i didnt have to
by the way this serves another obvious purpose–by tying the Frog to the Space Player’s choice directly, a failsafe is established where the Space player can’t successfully create a Frog without getting permission from Echidna directly.
That instills a clear limit onto the hyperflexible frog creation system from the get go, ensuring that Echidna is a required step. It’s game design.
So, with Hiveswap on the horizon and a couple of asks I’ve gotten lately, I have been thinking more and more about the story of the game, and wondered if what we’ve seen already may be enough to find some interesting things out about the overall story! I decided to give it a shot and go through all we know about Hiveswap and see if I can predict some stuff.
Thanks to @revolutionaryduelist for inspiring me to make this post! You should totally check him out, he’s got some amazing stuff.
This is an amazing breakdown of what we know about Hiveswap so far so it’s a great resource if you wanna get up to speed on what people have pieced together and what the speculation line is!
Flying through Storytelling 