#and then we play sburb/sgrub

[g0ldenstar]

forgot i finished my trollsona omg ! here she is shes a lil nerd <3

#myart #homestuck #trollsona #i made a whole ass au w my friends and me playing hs #like my friend abby is human and shes online friends w me and my other buddies who r trolls #and then we play sburb/sgrub #and shes like #OH FUCK? ALIENS? #ya its dumb i am like never not thinking abt this webcomic so

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

CLASSES - a comprehensive guide

The first thing that needs to be said is that there is no such thing as a "bad" class. All of them have the potential to be a great detriment OR great boon to the rest of the team, depending on how far along the journey of self-actualization a party member is. Some may have steeper challenges, but this corresponds with greater rewards.

The second thing that needs to be said is that all players are part of a team, and all personal journeys and playstyles are interlinked. No class is truly "solo." Even the smallest viable session is still two people, and even the most suitable classes for solo play are stronger when they're in a party.

The last thing that needs to be said is that the game wants you to succeed. The game, inherently, wants every player to reach godhood, wants every player to self-actualize, wants every player to win. It respects free will and free choice, so it will allow for failures (and, indeed, doomed timelines are vital to the alpha one existing), but Skaia is ultimately optimistic, and tries at every turn to ensure that a golden ending is possible.

Because, after all, SBURB/SGRUB - and Homestuck itself - are about children growing up, maturing, and learning compassion for each other. About fixing their flaws and rejecting the negative aspects of the society they came from. It's about how it is our duty, our responsibility, to become kind, mature people who care about one another, because we will one day be responsible for creating a new society.

And so, without further ado:

ACTIVE (-) Classes and PASSIVE (+) Classes are described with the dichotomy of "powers working for the self" vs. "powers working for others," but I believe this to be an oversimplification of what the active and passive split is. Both active AND passive classes benefit from being in a party; however, an active class will gain fewer party benefits in exchange for being more suited for solo play, while a passive class will be less suited for solo play, but confer much greater benefits to party play.

This is reflected in their personal quests: while active classes and passive classes will both require intervention, empathy, and guidance from their teammates, the struggle of an active class is usually one of grappling with internal flaws, and the struggle of a passive class is one of grappling with interpersonal or societal relations. In other words, the personal quest of an active player will usually involve getting therapized, while the personal quest of a passive player will usually involve addressing a systemic societal issue. Often, both will be required, but whether a class is active or passive will indicate an area of focus.

KNIGHT - / MAID +

PARTY MANAGEMENT

one who wields [aspect] or leads with [aspect] / one who distributes [aspect] or manages with [aspect]

KNIGHTS (-) are a very flexible and versatile class; "wielding" their aspect does not necessarily mean they are skilled at DPS. It actually indicates the way a knight interacts with their aspect, a very straightforward relationship of tradesperson and tool, or soldier and weapon. Similarly, while a knight does not always take up the "leader" position in the party, they will be the "spearhead," a point behind which the other players rally, a beating heart keeping the party together.

This straightforward relationship between a knight and their aspect leads to knights finding little difficulty mastering their aspect once they've begun. Many knights are, in fact, instinctively drawn toward utilizing their aspect, in the same way that they are naturally drawn toward roles of importance or heroism.

Knights often struggle with their perceived place in society, as well as with their innate sense of self and self-worth, seeing themselves as outcasts, resenting the responsibility placed on their shoulders, and fearing vulnerability. Unaddressed, these issues will lead to knights who actively become a detriment to party success. For example, they can dismiss valid concerns, shirk their duties, and in the worst case scenario, actively lead the party down the wrong path, invoking their natural ability to lead for ill.

Therefore, a knight's journey is one of accepting themselves and accepting their duty to better the world. It is about coming to terms with their own insecurities and learning to rely on others. It is about learning to take responsibility, and accepting the banner of a just and glorious cause.

A fully realized knight will be the center of every charge, the guiding star behind which the other players rally. They can provide clarity and guidance to those still on their journeys, and peace and comfort to those who are struggling or in pain. Where the knight goes, the party will follow, as a unified and united front.

MAIDS (+), meanwhile, tend to be on the backlines. If the knight is the forward march, then the maid is the supply line, an incredibly vital role whose absence is disastrous, even if its presence is nearly invisible. Maids have a nearly infinite well of their aspect to distribute, and are uniquely talented at managerial duties - keeping players on task, patching up the holes in a plan, sourcing and supplying resources, so on and so forth.

This is not to say that maids are relegated to support roles - a maid is usually capable of holding their own in combat just fine, especially if they've been endowed with a more combat-suited aspect. Both knights and maids are extremely versatile. That being said, maids truly shine when they're able to take on these backline roles, and many maids are more noticeable by the devastating effects of their absence rather than the invisible touch of their presence.

However, they are the class that most often starts in subservient conditions - low status, strict duties enforced upon them, so on - and their personal journey is a constant struggle against the control of others. Maids whose parties fail to grapple with and undo these shackling forces will find their maids succumbing to the influence or control of malicious entities; in the worst-case scenario, a maid can become an actively hostile enemy or saboteur, invisibly pulling the party's strings and setting them up for failure.

Therefore, a maid's journey is about rejecting societal oppression and throwing off the chains that bind them. A successful maid rises to become the head of the household - nothing occurs within the game that does not first pass the maid's inspection, and their touch ensures that there is a place for everything, and everything is in its place.

A free maid, who belongs to themselves, incomparably increases a party's efficiency. Every communication line is clear, every distribution route is clean, every mystery is solvable, and every plan is airtight. A maid guarantees that nothing can ever go too wrong.

PAGE - / HEIR +

TEAM BONDING

one who must earn [aspect] or inherits the mantle of [aspect] / one who is beloved by [aspect] or awakens to [aspect]

PAGES (-) start the game with the fewest benefits from their aspects, but the greatest potential for growth. Theirs is a constant battle with the self; they are often cowardly and naive. They possess sensitive souls, and while it is incredibly easy to hurt a page, it's much more difficult to build them up. Because of the difficulty of raising this class, it's practically defined by its journey - a constant struggle against the self - rather than its destination, and the powers the class confers.

Pages, like heirs, are classes of inheritance. A page is promoted by trials and tribulations and comes to inherit a greater power than they begin with; in the same way, the class will one day come to embody its aspect, although the road will always be turbulent and long. Moreover, it is a journey without end; pages, being as sensitive as they are, are the most prone to backwards progress, even after reaching their peak.

They prone to staying weak throughout the entire game, never self-actualizing past being the party joke. They attract the obsession and ridicule of stronger-willed players, and their mistreatment can become extremely divisive. A page can easily become a party's albatross, the epicenter of massive interpersonal conflicts, which can tank an entire session.

Therefore, a page's journey is one of the most difficult of all - that of teaching others how to care about other people. Pages rely on great patience, kindness, and understanding. Their sensitive souls must be carefully nurtured and propagated with love and attention. In the same way that a page can tear a team apart, they can bring a team together, all in the name of compassion and empathy. A fully-realized page is the symbol of a party that has linked hands with one another.

Self-actualized pages, as a result of the difficulty inherent to the class, are incredibly powerful and versatile when fully realized. Inheriting the mantle of their aspect, they become pure embodiments of their aspect, capable of achieving impossible feats of raw, unfiltered power, and inspiring all those who gaze upon them.

HEIRS (+) begin the game very strong, but have a difficult time becoming stronger. This is because their usage of their aspect is very instinctual to them, even at times being entirely beyond their control, hence, "beloved by" in the class description. However, because of how naturally their aspect comes to them, it makes taking further command of their powers difficult.

An heir "awakens to" their aspect because their natural, intuitive control often renders them too comfortable to grasp the greater implications of their class. As an inheritance class, heirs can come to embody their aspect, transforming entirely into it. Their challenge lies in breaking out of their comfortable shell and learning how to utilize their powers in more active, intentional ways.

This is reflected in their personal quests. They are often set to inherit great privilege or wealth prior to entering the game, and are thus naive to the realities of the suffering and pain of others. Without a supportive party willing to challenge their views, heirs can perpetuate that pain by submitting to their place in the world, becoming a divisive force within the party, or, in the worst case, losing themselves to their inheritance, and submitting so wholly to their aspect that they become lost to the rest of the team.

Thus, an heir's journey is to question the stratification of the society they belong to, so that they can recognize and address its flaws. They must learn to interrogate their inheritance, separate it from themselves, and reconcile with it. Theirs is an arc of examination and understanding, descending from their position of privilege and peace to learn about the suffering of others, and deciding that they wish to do something about it.

With full command over their aspect, and a clear vision for how it ought to be distributed, the party gains a new and powerful ally - the aspect itself, which will come to embrace the entire party as family. A fully-realized heir connects the privileged and underprivileged, spreading their inheritance to all.

MAGE - / SEER +

GUIDANCE

one who invokes [aspect] or is drawn to [aspect] / one who comprehends [aspect] or is guided by [aspect]

MAGES (-) are a class of prophets, although saying they "see the future" is misleading. Rather, mages "invoke" the future, collapsing causality to align to their desires. Most mages remain unaware that they are doing so until well into their journey. While all players weigh on the scale of causality, affecting both past and future events, and which sequence of events is the "alpha" sequence, mages have the most direct effect.

Because of this ability to invoke future events, mages possess powerful buffing/debuffing abilities. Furthermore, as one of the two knowledge classes, a mage usually has a very deep understanding of their aspect, and an intuitive knowledge of how the flow of time and causality function. They are "drawn to" their aspects in this way, instinctively searching out points where their influence can affect the flow of events.

However, with great power comes great cost; the mage class is usually assigned to those who are stricken by tragedies and prone to negativity and self-loathing. Mages often begin the game as a detriment to the party, "prophesying" future events that leave the party - including themselves - at a disadvantage. In the worst case scenario, a mage can invoke certain doom for their party or themselves.

Therefore, it is vital that a mage address their tragedies and be given a chance to heal and grow. The ones most struck by tragedy, theirs is a journey of reclaiming lost joy and rediscovering lost hope. However, the transformation is powerful once completed - as the one who suffers tragedy and loss most intimately, a mage can also come to be one of the most empathetic and compassionate members of the team.

If a mage is uplifted, and capable of believing in a kinder and gentler world, then their ability to invoke the future - and the aspects of their aspect that they are drawn to - become kinder, as well. Pain and suffering still have their place, but the ending will be a happy one. With a fully empowered mage, the future will always be better than what came before.

SEERS (+) see multiple branching paths. A mage determines where a road will be built, but a seer tells you where a road CAN be built. They are also often gifted with knowledge of the game and its mechanics, and are especially uniquely gifted with understanding of their own abilities. In this way, they "comprehend" their aspect.

Seers themselves are not particularly gifted in combat through their classpect alone; however, in exchange, they often play a vital role in steering the party. They are the game's built-in guides, with an intuitive knowledge of the game's victory conditions, as well as an instinctive desire to lead others along their paths. Seers are, therefore, one of the most important classes in the game, when one is present.

However, the ability to see is a burden as well as a gift. Seers find themselves paralyzed by choice, and often doubt their own abilities to choose "correctly." They are prone to becoming mired in what-ifs, and struggle with political or ethical debates with no clear answers. In the worst-case scenario, a seer may feel so cursed by their sight that they self-destruct, and deliberately choose poor or incomprehensible answers, in an attempt to free themselves of their sight.

Thus, a seer's quest is, ironically, to see the world beyond the purview of their aspect. They must come to have a more comprehensive understanding of the world they live in, and what purpose they are trying to achieve, so that they can feel confident in the choices they make. A seer is often blind - their journey, therefore, is that of regaining their vision, by connecting with the world outside their inner sight.

A seer with a clear vision for the future will always know exactly which path to choose. A party with such a seer in it will never be stuck and never be lost. If there exists a path to self-actualization, the seer will know it. And if there exists a path to a breathless and perfect victory, a fully-realized seer will light the way.

THIEF - / ROGUE +

UTILITY

one who steals [aspect] from others or steals with [aspect] / one who steals [aspect] for others or steals from [aspect]

THIEVES (-) are a very difficult class to play. They start out with almost no passive abilities regarding their aspect, and their ability to actively use their aspect is contingent on their ability to first "steal" it from someone else. Thus, they are always playing a game of resource management, and there is always a chance for them to be left helpless after a heist gone wrong.

However, their gimmicky nature allows them to overtake other classes even in that class's specialty, if they can set up the exact right circumstances and manage their resources well. This makes them incredibly versatile, especially when a thief is working together with a party, and thus able to count their party among their potential resources. It takes great cunning to play the thief class well.

However, this also makes the thief a potentially dangerous element to the rest of the party. Thieves are often egotistical and self-serving, willing to see enemies and allies alike as resources and tools. Unaddressed, their reckless, selfish natures will earn their teammates' distrust and enmity. In the worst case scenario, a thief running rampant can severely harm the party, or earn so much ire that the party turns against them.

Thus, their journey is that of realizing that their selfishness and ego are flaws - the classic parable of "money doesn't bring happiness." Beneath their uncaring surface lurks genuine emotional distress; a thief must come to realize that their greed and selfishness is an active detriment not only to the people around them, but their own selves. Only then can they heal from their injured souls.

A thief that has undertaken this journey is one who has realized that they are stronger when they are working with others. Their versatility, creativity, and cunning are incredible assets once harnessed toward the will of the party. No situation will ever be inescapable, no safe uncrackable, and no problem unsolvable - not if the thief has anything to say about it.

ROGUES (+) are similarly difficult to play. Unlike the thieves, rogues do see passive benefits from their aspects. However, their active abilities are much less straightforward, and rogues often struggle with understanding them. A rogue's role is to redistribute wealth - thus, "stealing for the sake of others."

A rogue, being able to steal directly from their aspect, truly shines when given enough time to prepare. If a thief must fly by the seat of their pants, then a rogue is a heist planner - they have an infinite box of tools to pull from, if only they know what tools they'll need for the job. This makes them incomparably versatile, even if not necessarily in the heat of combat.

Rogues take on the mantle of challenging the status quo. They usually begin the game already in opposition to their society, seeking out better alternatives and considering unorthodox options. However, not every party is ready for a rogue's radical ideology, and not every rogue has considered the full consequences of their belief in change; in the worst case scenario, the rogue can become outcasted and disregarded, or cause an upheaval that proves disastrous, rioting for the sake of rioting.

It often requires the help of others for a rogue to understand how to use their powers. In the same way, it requires the party's honest communication and exchange of ideas to help a rogue grasp exactly what form their rebellion ought to take. A rogue knows instinctively that something must change; their journey is learning how they ought to go about it.

Once they do, a rogue - given enough time to prepare and plan - is the ultimate utility player, having the right tool for every possible situation. Their abilities are only magnified in a party setting, as their teammates become variables that unlock new possibilities. A party with a fully-prepped rogue always has a perfect plan, a way to solve any problem that they might face.

WITCH - / SYLPH +

AREA CONTROL

one who manipulates [aspect] or achieves dominion through [aspect] / one who nurtures [aspect] or creates a land of [aspect]

WITCHES (-) carry with them the winds of change. A witch manipulates, changing properties of their aspect and their aspect's effect on others, creating a "territory" over which they rule. They see few passive benefits of their aspects, in exchange for their active abilities being so all-encompassing and overwhelming.

Once their territory has been established, witches make the rules. Their changes can be permanent, temporary, massive, and miniscule. However, a witch "achieves dominion" with their aspect - this means that they must first struggle to create this domain, and it's difficult for their abilities to manifest until they do, often leaving younger witches weak and vulnerable.

Witches have strong feelings for how things should and should not be, but not necessarily grounded ideas for how to implement them, often due to some "outsider" status in society. Unfocused witches become dangerous for the party, as they are easily manipulated; in the worst-case scenario, they can fall in with malicious forces, who can sway a witch's turbulent heart and utilize them as a force for negative change, rather than good.

Thus, a witch's journey is that of interrogating right and wrong. A witch must struggle with morality and ethics, and come to clarify their own beliefs; only then can they know what sort of domain they wish to establish, and what sort of rules they wish to enforce. Once they know their own hearts, they can shake off the insidious whispers of malicious external influence.

As if a reward for their struggles for autonomy and independence, the witch is the one whose will is most imposed on the world that comes after them. Just as an evil witch putrefies the world around them, a fully-realized witch who has decided to use their influence for good can create a near-utopia.

SYLPHS (+) call to mind the images of fey folk who sprout plants where they walk. That is how a sylph "creates a land" of their aspect - merely by existing, the world around them becomes suffused by it. A sylph's mere presence nurtures, grows, and heals their aspect; unlike witches, who manipulate what is already there, sylphs can create something from nothing.

The establishment of their domain comes naturally to them. Those caught within it are on the receiving end of their aspect, whether they want to be or not. In exchange for such powerful passive abilities, a sylph's active abilities are weaker, and usually unsuited for solo combat, generally being of healing, buffing, or debuffing nature.

A sylph is prone to selfishness - to luxuriating within their own land, their own aspect, their own mind. They often have difficulty connecting with others and understanding why their own personal world may not be to the liking of the world outside of themselves. Often, they are aloof. An unrealized sylph can cause great harm to the world around them, their domain choking out and smothering their party; in the worst case, they can mire their party within it, leaving their party unable to proceed.

Thus, it often requires the outside world to breach their safe haven in order for a sylph to grow. They must be made uncomfortable, and then made to accept that uncomfortable things are also important - maybe even more important than comfort, at times. Growth often requires pruning; a sylph's journey is to come to understand that good intentions may lead to harm, and, vice versa, that harm can often lead to true growth.

Sylphs can provide the greatest compassion and emotional comfort within a party, encouraging - if not enabling - their teammates' growth in their personal journeys. Once a sylph understands when it is appropriate to encourage, and when it is appropriate to pull back, there is no refuge safer for the party than the sylph's domain.

PRINCE - / BARD +

OBSTACLE REMOVAL

one who destroys [aspect] or destroys with [aspect] / one who allows the destruction of [aspect] or allows destruction through [aspect]

PRINCES (-) possess the ability to annihilate, a destructive class not limited to physical or tangible objects. Princes also enjoy auxiliary benefits as befits their royal titles - many princes start the game with great talents, great status and wealth, or both. They are also endowed with royal presence; their very existence provokes strong emotions from those around them, for good or for ill.

One of the more straightforward classes in the game, a prince's ability to destroy most commonly manifests as DPS. However, their abilities encompass a greater scope than mere damage - the prince's ability to annihilate figurative or metaphysical concepts makes them capable of directly removing any obstacles that stand in their way. As if hungry to consume their aspect, they are naturally drawn towards where it congregates.

However, with great power comes great responsibility: princes are often the most psychologically maligned within the party, and their destructive talents can very easily become self-destructive instead. Usually the result of societal pressure, trauma, and suffering, a prince is prone to embodying the lack of their aspect, rather than its presence. In the worst-case scenario, a prince spreads this misfortune to the rest of their party, destroying the presence of their aspect from their session altogether, often taking themselves along with it.

A prince must be shown compassion. Though they are often viscerally unpleasant to engage with, turning a blind eye to foolishness, loneliness, and suffering - which a prince embodies - is one of the worst things that a party can do. Though the effort at times seems undeserved, to heal a prince requires a staunch belief that there is good to be gained if we are kind to each other. This kindness will be returned; once you are counted among a prince's "people," they will do anything to keep harm from befalling you.

A prince, once shown this grace, is incomparably powerful. To destroy their aspect or with their aspect is the ability to destroy nearly anything, including concepts such as despair, death, and doom. As if proclaiming a royal decree, a fully-realized prince can banish misfortune and ill tidings altogether, leaving nothing standing in the party's way.

BARDS (+) are a wildcard of a class, often responsible for a party's improbable victory, abject defeat, or both. Their abilities are not very well-understood, even by the bard themselves, and they often utilize both passive and active abilities intuitively, unaware that they are doing so. The morale of the party is deeply tied to the bard's own, and it's unclear which side is cause and which is effect.

The ability to allow the destruction of their aspect, or invite it through their aspect, is actually something of a debuff rather than DPS - the bard's ability is to break unbreakable shields, tear down unclimbable walls, and nullify unstoppable forces. Rather than dealing damage themselves, they allow for damage to be dealt that would otherwise have no effect - in other words, by nature, they make the impossible possible. This is the true source of their ability to evoke "miraculous" situations.

Bards are inextricably tied to society - after all, their tales only hold as much value as their relevance to the audience. This means those with the bard class are invariably molded by the worst aspects of the society they come from. They serve as living embodiments of the most unpleasant aspects of society, and living reminders that leaving these elements to fester only means they will multiply in severity. If these beliefs are allowed to go unexamined, bards will always steer a party towards ruin.

Therefore, a party must engage with the bard earnestly, compassionately, and openly, and help them see the errors of the past. A bard must be led, with gentle guidance and genuine openness, to discard their harmful beliefs, and sing a new, more beautiful tune.

A bard that has been brought back into the fold is a worker of miracles. When every other possible option has been exhausted - the knight and maid in disarray, the page and heir unable to keep the party together, the mage and seer blinded, the thief and rogue out of action, the witch and sylph with their territory lost, the prince no longer able to function - this is where a bard will step in, transmuting abject defeat into a perfect and breathless victory.

#homestuck #classpect #classpects #just my own opinions obviously #feel free to disagree #this is also more meant to examine the actual text of homestuck or serve as a reference for fanworks #i dont actually vibe that much with classpecting actual real people #because unlike fictional characters we contain multitudes #still i cant STOP you if thats what you want to do hahahah

[borzoilover69]

There's something interesting to be said about the page class in homestuck.

Of course, we have the title definiton of the page. Serving as an understudy to royalty to become great. But we could also take from Jake English’s introduction himself to consider what a page might particularly be:

There is a good SKULL at the heart of any mystery, haunting its EVERY PAGE.

A page, like an empty page in a book. Lacking in anything written on it, but by being a page, given the utmost to have anything, anything written on it. That page could be anything if you learn to harness a pen.

We could speculate that we see the potential of a page in the scratched versions, in this case The Summoner, or Grandpa Harley. This is presuming they carry the same aspects as Tavros and Jake English respectfully.

Grandpa Harley and The Summoner play incredibly influential and important roles on their respective planets by shaping the way their worlds were shaped. Grandpa Harley translated and prototyped the SBURB game for the Beta Kids, set up SKAIANET, which documented the meteors and created tech to bring SBURB to reality, as well as taking care of one of the meteor children and guiding her research to further reach their goal. The Summoners revolution against the condesce is so large, it leads to the exile of all adult trolls to outerspace and away from the planet, which shapes how the trolls that would play SGRUB think and react.

We never see it addressed all that directly other than passing, even though it plays a major part in the story because at the end of the day, a page is a medium for conveying thought, for conveying words, but a page is never the full front and center.

And really its sort of fitting how it comes back to the fact that pages,to quote caliborn, "HAVE TO PROVE THEY ARE WORTHY TO EXIST." Because what use is an empty page! Its just another piece of paper. You can coax and threaten all you like but the words will not appear magically on the page making it a masterpiece. A page draws its importance from whats written on it, like how a page draws its power through other people.

#homestuck meta #hom3stuck #homestuck #borzoi meta #classpect meta #jake english #tavros nitram #grandpa harley #the summoner

[hydro-city-zone]

ALTERFALL: 2024 Recap.

As of last post, ALTERFALL's entire cast of Beta Kids and Beta Trolls have been revealed! Before moving on to any further details such as auxiliary characters (Guardians, Exiles, etc.), Alpha session characters or in-depth looks into the Beta sessions, let's recap - for those who joined partway, or are only joining now!

ALTERFALL is a Homestuck Kidswap/Bloodswap AU in which, due to a single in-universe change, many characters' upbringings are altered due to the landing locations of their meteors being switched. The in-universe event that changes the course of the story and the nature vs nurture approach to changing the characters in their new roles was inspired largely by Inverted Fate, which we definitely recommend to all UNDERTALE fans! Below the cut are some images detailing each character, and at the end a links will be provided to read more about them!

BETA KIDS

A group of four human teenagers who communicate online after meeting each other in a series of odd encounters. Together, they intend to play SBURB: a mysterious video game entrenched in conspiracies, hoping to dispel the wild rumors breeding in the depths of message boards, or at least to have some fun. Unbeknownst to them, the game truly is the catalyst for Earth's apocalypse, with the four of them being thrust into another world and given the task of creating a new universe.

BETA TROLLS

Twelve aliens and previous players of SBURB - or as it is known on their planet - SGRUB. Their gruesome home planet of Alternia has instilled within them all manner of quirks, prejudices and generally colorful personalities (for better or worse), but somehow, against all odds, they managed to succeed in their game and create the universe that birthed humanity. Despite this, these twelve have been trapped in their game session, unable to claim their prize of a new home and festering in their captivity. Connections have been established to the game session of the humans, however, and thus they have gained the ability to send messages to them... At any point in the timeline they so please.

POST LINKS:

Humans: John Jade Dave Rose God Tiers

Trolls: Patrons Aradia Gamzee Equius Tavros Eridan Feferi Sollux Nepeta

Misc: Correction Sprite Art Human Modus Descriptions

Chrono Tag

See you soon.

#alterfall #homestuck #rose egbert #john lalonde #june lalonde #dave harley #jade strider #gamzee megido #equius nitram #eridan captor #feferi leijon #terezi vantas #karkat pyrope #vriska maryam #kanaya serket #aradia makara #tavros zahhak #sollux ampora #nepeta peixes

[cannoliparty]

the knight class & its connotations

"the active exploit class, the knight’s job is to “protect their aspect or to protect with their aspect”. they will often end up protecting their allies who lack in the knights own aspect, and these protective tendencies are why they are often seen helping with frog breeding. typically, they are also protectors of the aspect itself, making sure it cant be destroyed in the session. all this protecting makes the knight's challenge learning other's capability in their aspect, growing to know that they are capable themselves."

knights arent as self-introspective as other active classes. lets compare it to a mage & a maid. aradia, maid of time, was busy visiting and "cleaning up" centuries worth of doomed timelines. as a play on words she was made of time, and very connected to her own aspect in that sense. sollux, mage of doom, knew a lot about sgrub (aka the game that would bring their doom) and although like a typical mage he had emotionally dealt with this dread, he still worked hard to split the trolls into teams and start their game, being very active and kind of confident in/with his abundant knowledge of his aspect.

another very strong contrast to a knight is a thief, one of the most self-serving active classes. vriska, thief of light, stole ideas and knowledge for herself. a thief's challenge is literally learning to share their aspect with others! overall, they are the most possesive of their own aspect and using it on/for themselves.

but when it comes to knights, they can be at a loss for how to use their own aspect on themselves. because like a real knight, they serve their aspect. this serving is done through harnessing their aspect as a weapon, and protecting allies either with that aspect or just protecting allies who lack in that aspect. because of all this self-righteousness and sense of protecting and serving, knights are at a loss for how to connect their aspect to themselves. after all, if you only weaponize your aspect how could you use a weapon on yourself?

a great example of a knight is karkat vantas, knight of blood. blood is representing of relationships, bonds, connections with other people, and sometimes just the blood in your body. physically, karkat is assumingly the weakest troll, a mutant in blood. but his vast knowledge in quadrants and overall with his servitude to his friendships, he protects the bonds he has with his friends and takes great care to them, keeping the group of trolls away from any heavy conflict in sgrub. this attitude to blood also makes him a great leader, able to easily rally even the most uncooperative of his friends and leading them to defeating the black king. but he wasnt very good at reflecting these bonds on himself. karkat often dealt with self-esteem issues and viewing himself as the most physically weak, and this is because of the very blood in his body. he hasn't accepted his own worth in his friendships or on the hemocaste of alternia. so as a result, he hides his blood color and his worth to his own aspect.

another example is dave strider, knight of time. he actively served through time, constantly going through and making stable time loops and overall increasing/exploiting the mechanical (time-related word!!) efficiency of sburb. but a negative aspect on time can be how dave used its "mechanical" attributes in other ways. this was through the emasculating but abusive outlook he was raised on. overall dave had a very rigid childhood, and tries to keep up an almost mechanical stoic outlook because of this.

one of the knights i really wish we got more of was latula pyrope, knight of mind. compared to the previous knights there's practically nothing we can take from her that isn't in the openbound segments. i assume she could have been strategically (mind-related word) helpful throughout the alpha trolls' session, serving the logic of her friend's and logic itself. but she also is seemingly concealing a deeper part of herself. this is shown when latula and porrim meet in openbound, and when porrim tells her to "drop the skater act", she immediately does and starts talking in a more relaxed way. it's obvious latula keeps this over-the-top front to somehow maintain a sort of strategy. overall i just really wish we got more of the alpha trolls somehow T_T!!!

thanks sm for reading!!

#cannoliblabbing #homestuck #classpect #classpecting #karkat vantas #dave strider #latula pyrope

[thewertsearch]

Objective: Survive.

I didn’t even see the Aradiabots at first. They literally look like bugs next to the Horrorterror King - who I’m not even going to bother scaling. He looks big enough to be visible from Prospit.

FAA: m0bilizing 0urselves in such numbers w0uld be required t0 neutralize the kings psychic attacks FAA: it w0uld take 0ur c0mbined c0ncentrati0n t0 dampen the abilities he inherited fr0m glbg0lyb

I’m interested in how, exactly, Gl’bgolyb was prototyped. She wouldn’t fit in Feferi’s house, so she’d have had to deliberately reach in and poke the kernel with a tentacle, or something. 

Did she want to be prototyped? We still have no idea what the Horrorterrors want - or even if what they want is comprehensible. 

FAA: with0ut the cumulative eff0rt 0f 0ur d00med reserves FAA: with0ut the heightened mental and physical endurance 0f 0ur r0b0tic vessels FAA: with0ut the untimely demise we all shared bef0re this began FAA: vict0ry w0uld n0t be p0ssible

Heightened physical endurance was a given, but it sounds like Aradia’s robotic body also got a psionics buff. No wonder she got the drop on Vriska.

I’m not sure how telekinesis could dampen the King’s psionics, though. Maybe, instead, it was her necromancy that kept her party members alive. 

They’re all assembled - even Gamzee, who probably doesn’t know what’s happening. I bet he’s just wondering why that thing in the crown looks a bit like his goatdad. 

I’m not going to talk about the frog. Yet. 

FAA: i d0nt kn0w if it was just bad luck FAA: 0r an extensi0n 0f the curse Karkat insists he br0ught 0n us

Even our most informed Player is stumped by Karkat’s virus. 

I think its influence on the session is meant to be ambiguous - and even if it is real, Karkat isn’t to blame for the session’s difficulty. Sgrub was always going to find some way to challenge the trolls, and the virus was just one of its many possible vectors of influence...

FAA: that lead t0 the incidental and unf0rtuit0us pr0t0typing 0f Feferi's p0werful lusus FAA: with0ut which the battle w0uld have p0sed little challenge

...that, plus the Horrorterror Underlings. 

I’m starting to wonder if it’s even possible to hack, exploit, or speedrun Sburb. It’ll foresee anything you try to do, and throw it back in your face before you’ve even conceived of it. 

I’d obviously still try to break it, though. This is me we’re talking about. 

FAA: i think FAA: it was m0re likely just an0ther inevitability FAA: a pr0duct 0f c0llusi0n between the disparate f0rces at play FAA: a bargain struck between what Skaia kn0ws already and what the g0ds demand up fr0nt FAA: t0gether they 0rchestrate trials sufficient t0 ensure FAA: that in 0verc0ming them we w0uld be pr0ven w0rthy

Skaia and the Gods - I assume she means the Horrorterrors - are colluding. They’re working together, to test your worthiness for the Ultimate Reward.

This implies that Skaia is conscious - but that’s not much of a surprise. This game is full of conscious beings - Consorts, Carapacians, and the like - and Skaia is essentially a god of creativity. Of course it would be conscious. 

It also seems to confirm that the Horrorterrors are not, in fact, a real part of the game. Skaia wouldn’t have to collude and bargain with them if they were game constructs. 

Speaking of which, that line about their bargain is incredibly loaded - but I’m struggling to interpret it. It sounds like Skaia knows some of what’s going to happen in the future, but not all of it - and the Horrorterrors desire this knowledge. Indeed, they demand it. Maybe the bargain, as presented by Skaia, is something like this: 

“Preserve the sessions, advise the Players, and help me orchestrate challenges to prove their worth. In return, I will grant you some of my clairvoyance, which may be whispered to the dreamers of Derse.”

That’s pretty much a shot in the dark, though. I don’t know anything about this bargain, and I’m just guessing. It’s all very vague, and I guess it will remain so...

FAA: 0f inheriting the ultimate reward

...until someone spills the god damn beans!

#2592 #homestuck liveblog #full liveblog #act 5 #s51

[autisticsupervillain]

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Stats Equalized!

The show where we equalize strength, speed, and durability to decide who would win a battle of hax, skill, and versatility.

This Month's Fighters...

Blitzo Buckzo vs Karkat Vantas!

Conditions:

No other restrictions.

Scenario:

After dying and being sent to Hell, Her Imperious Condescension hires IMP to assassinate Karkat out of spite.

Analysis: Karkat Vantas

Ask yourself one very important question. A question that has plagued nearly all of mankind since its very inception. What does God, our omnipotent creator, look like?

Stop thinking, because you're wrong. Our God is just an internet troll from another universe who wears a massive sweater, pulls his pants up to his chest, and has a love for dumb rom coms.

Meet Karkat Vantas, a mutant blooded alien troll from the distant planet of Alternia. Born as a mutant with bright red blood, Karkat had no place in Alternia's dystopic blood-based caste system and, as such, his very existence was a crime punishable by death. As such, Karkat has lived his entire life in constant fear and paranoia that one day his blood would be discovered and he would be killed. Growing up as a born outlaw in a murderous dystopia did not do well for Karkat's psyche, resulting in him growing up into an abrasive asshole who was fully convinced he would die at any moment.

Little did he know until his 13th birthday (or 6.5th birthday going off Alternia's time measurement system), he had inherited a destiny, regarding both the future of his race and the future of his very universe.

See, Karkat wasn't any mutant. He was a direct descendant of the Signless. A troll who, many centuries ago, had rebelled in the name of trolls of every caste, seeking to bring peace to the horrific, bloodthirsty dystopia. He was executed for his efforts, but not before his genetic information was copied.... by Karkat himself. Technically.

Karkat's other destiny was his destiny as a SBURB Player. He and all his friends were destined to play a video game called SGRUB, which would bring about the end of their world. The game, if played right, would allow Karkat and friends to become the gods of the new world, but in order for that to happen at all, the game had to allow Karkat to ensure his own existence through time traveling clone science fuckery. It's complicated.

This gave Karkat a golden opportunity to both escape his horrible situation and rule as the leader of a pantheon of gods over his own personal universe. Namely, our universe. He kindly assures us that it would've been a horrific and brutal regime, but it never really got off the ground, as Karkat's victory was stolen from him at the last second by an invincible time demon and Karkat would up having to work with the humans he had intended to enslave for the sake of survival.

This is because Karkat is not even half the conquer he wants to be. He isn't even really the leader of his team. Despite all his bluster of being a God born from a superior warrior race, Karkat is a loud mouthed weakling when measured up to nearly anyone else on his team. He has no special powers, he's physically the weakest out of everyone, and he isn't even an actual God.

What Karkat does have... is heart. Much to his chagrin, Karkat's special power is basically friendship. As a Blood Player, Karkat is supernaturally predisposed to being really good at making friends and maintaining friendships... which turned out to be the very thing he needed to succeed as well as he did.

See, all of Karkat's friends have a very deep, bloody history. As in, "these people are personally responsible for the most traumatic and horrifying events in my life. Events that shape who I am as a person to this day" deep. They've killed each other before and they would again. However, thanks to Karkat's influence, they're able to not only work together but actually almost get along. Karkat had a genocidal highblood supremacist counting him as one of his best friends, that's how potent this guy's friendship power inexplicably is.

A lot of this can be chalked up to the Blood Aspect, sure, but a lot of it can also be chalked up to who Karkat is under all the paranoia and anger. He gets people, he understands their character flaws, their failings, their fears, and he sympathizes with them. He gets, probably better than anyone else, that everyone around him is effectively a terrified kid with boatloads of trauma. That's the real reason he could never by the bloodthirsty tyrant he dreamed of. It's not who he is, at his foundation. It just took a long time and a lot of bonding with the humans he supposedly despised for him to realize that.

That said, Karkat is only physically unimpressive by the standards of the literal gods that surround him. He's still a SBURB Player and he still grew up on an inhospitable hell planet. As such, he is much stronger than your ordinary human.

Notably, he should powerscale to the same kind of meteor trip that Rose survived, as all SBURB Players arrive on their home planets this way and all the Players are capable of surviving their meteor trips. Unless you want to suggest that Rose is thousands of time stronger than Karkat as an infant, Karkat should be roughly comparable.

From this point, Karkat has been getting stronger all of his life. Everyone and everything in Homestuck has an Echeladder, a video game style leveling system that continues to make them stronger as they accomplish random things throughout their life, ranging from opening a fridge to winning a fight.

On top of this, Karkat is certainly a much more skilled fighter than your average human being. His team was able to take in the armies of the Kingdom of Derse, which has been warring with its opposite Kingdom of Prospite for as long as its home reality has existed. Despite that, Karkat found himself being flat out disappointed by how easy they were to fight against, with only the King proving to be enough of a challenge to rally the whole team.

As with all Homestuck characters, Karkat also has a sylladex, a hammerspace inventory system where he can store objects much too big to carry on his person, allowing him to pull out his handy twin sickles whenever he needs them. Really, the fact that most of his friends can knock him out cold with a love tap says more about them than it does about him.

Despite that though, Karkat is still not a fighter and he possesses bad luck to a literally superhuman degree. In fact, his luck is so horrible that it completely counters out luck based superpowers, allowing him to beat Clover, whose luck is so supernaturally good that it made him completely untouchable to everyone else on the battlefield except for Karkat. Turning all your negatives into a positive. If that isn't just Karkat's entire character arc.

Karkat is not the conquerer he so desperately wanted to be. But he is a leader and he is a friend, and in the hands of a Blood Player, those two titles are far more powerful than a warrior ever could be.

Analysis: Blitzo

Hell. The eternal punishment awaiting every sinner and heathen at the end of their life. Whether you be a cruel mad scientist who tortures the poor or a murderous, cannibalistic matriarch. Your chance for redemption was the life you had before and your punishment is this. But, for some people, being born an imp in Hell can be worse than being a sinner sent down to it.

Blitzo Buckzo was a circus clown working for his abusive father Cash down in the Greed ring of Hell. Blitzo was never as popular as his coworker Fizzarolli, who would eventually go on to do better things, but despite that he was mostly happy with his life. Until the day he accidentally ruined it.

On the day of Fizzarolli's birthday, Blitzo was working his way up to confessing his romantic feelings for his coworker, but he chickened out at the last second, accidentally knocking over Fizz's birthday cake. This started a fire that completely destroyed the circus. Blitzo's mother was killed, Fizzarolli was crippled for life, and Blitzo's sister now hated him for life. Physically and mentally scared by the accident, Blitzo's life was destroyed as everyone he cared about either abandoned him or died. The O in his name is silent now. He doesn't want to be reminded of it.

Turning to the world of professional killing to make a living, Blitzo would found the Immediate Murder Professionals. Using his... "relationship" with Stolas, a royal demon of the powerful Goetia family, to gain access to the human world, Blitzo would loan his services to sinners who wanted revenge on the living to make a profit. A terrifying prospect, seeings how he's one of the most dangerous killers in Hell.

Blitzo always carries a sniper rifle and two flint locks with him into every fight and he's an expert marksman with both. He's headshot moving targets out of the air on more than one occasion and gone up against some of the toughest customers in Hell. He's defeated a group of Cherubs from Heaven alongside IMP, fought Striker, the most dangerous outlaw the Wrath ring has ever seen, and, alongside Fizzarolli, defeated the entirety of the Knolastname Mafia in a single massive fire fight.

As an Imp from Hell, Blitzo is extra resilient. He's immune to earthly fire, survived building sized explosions of Hellfire on multiple occasions, and is durable to shrug off getting shot. His agility certainly hasn't gotten any worse since his circus days, as he's fast enough to run on walls, nimble enough to dodge arrows and bullets, and skilled enough to catch himself falling out of the sky with just his tail.

But, most impressively, Blitzo seems to have turned his bad luck into some sort of superpower. He's made falling pianos suddenly change course mid-flight, fooled humans with realistically impossible human disguises, and once tricked an entire gang into slaughtering each other so that he didn't have to fight any of them.

If Blitzo can be said to have any weaknesses, it's his own personality. Ruining his own life and the abuse he's suffered from his own father has given him a self loathing streak, turning him into a massive jackass who mistreats and pushes away his own friends. He fails to notice Stolas's genuine romantic interest in him because he can't comprehend anyone actually wanting him around and he fails to realize how he's improved the lives of anyone around him. Even burying the hatchet with Fizzarolli and giving his adopted daughter Loona a loving home hasn't dissuaded him of this. He's a self destructive mess.

But, no matter how he gets in his own way, he knows what he's good at. Guns, knives, and murder. So, he'll keep killing and keep racking in that murder money until all of his problems go away. So, you want so vengeance, loathsome sinner of Hell? Then call the Immediate Murder Professionals!

Throwdown Theme:

Throwdown Breakdown:

This fight boils down entirely to a comparison of skill feats. There really aren't many other factors to consider here. Karkat's bad luck has completely nullified the luck powers of other fighters before, making that a non factor, and stuff like Blitzo's fire resistance just isn't relevant here.

Unless Karkat can breathe fire, in which case, he's been holding out on us.

Honestly, these two match each other in a lot of ways. Even with the stats equalized, I can see Karkat being fast enough to dodge Blitzo's bullets. Not only does he have comparable feats in canon, but Blitzo himself can keep up with people who can dodge his fire arms, so Karkat would be equalized to his level regardless.

Both of them have had really shit lives growing up in horrible hell worlds. Or in literal hell as the case might be. The difference here is the sheer scope of the opposition they faced. It's easy to dismiss Karkat as a terrible fighter, but that's when placed alongside his friends. IE. gods, chainsaw wielding space vampires, and telepaths so powerful they can push continent sized meteors around.

Blitzo is one of the best professional killers in hell. There's no question there. And the only character who can reliably match him one on one is Striker, who himself is so badass that circle of Wrath sings his name whenever he passes by. Striker said it best himself, Blitzo could be killing overlords if he really wanted to.

But, Karkat grew up and survived on a planet where his very existence was made illegal. He was a crime punishable by death. And this is ontop of making the Kingdom of Derse look like a joke. Even Karkat, the weakest member of his own team, was disappointed by how easily he could slice through Derse's armies and imps, even after they were Prototyped with the eldritch monstrosity Gl'bgolyb. Derse, for the record, is a Kingdom that had been locked in an eternal war for its entire existence, so it wasn't like they couldn't back themselves up on that.

Mranwhile, Blitzo's best showing was against a building full of literal D.H.O.R.K.S. Government agents that the rest of the world saw as quacks who only used weapons from Japan's Edo period instead of, say, guns. And even with I.M.P. backing him up, he still needed to bailing out by the end.

That isn't to knock Blitzo out of the running completely however. I do believe he's more agile and certainly has better aim. Karkat's not bad in that department himself, literally front flipping up cliffs at points, but Blitzo has just been doing similar for a lot longer. But, by that token, Karkat's sylladex would catch him off guard, resulting in him either getting crushed by a safe or having his guns taken away. Karkat can use his own sylladex to create cover for himself, nullifying Blitzo's range advantage.

You can argue for Blitzo using Stolas's grimoire for similar effect, but the problem is he doesn't usually take that with him on missions. He leaves it with Loona, so she csn portal him out afterwards, so he's unlikely to have it here. And even if he did, Karkat could toss it into his own sylladex like he could with the guns, leaving Blitzo with no way to access them.

Overall, I think Karkat is, if not superior in fighting skill, at least comparable enough to break out his real secret weapon: Friendship.

Karkat's Charisma is outright supernatural. As a Blood Player, he's literally bound to it by fate, msking undyingly loyal friends even against his own will. It's not even troll specific, as the Jack Noir of his session can attest to. Karkat's response to this random asshole stabbing him was to basically declare them friends on the spot. And it worked.

Blitzo, meanwhile, is honestly the exact kind of person that it would work on. Blitzo's life is the exact kind of tragically romantic soap opera that Karkat's romantic little heart would love and Blitzo doesn't care enough about his clients to kill someone he's grown to like. He's just flat out said "fuck my clients" when it serves his own purposes.

In the end, Karkat's unironically a better fighter and his own unique tricks would let him win out in a close fight more often then not, with Karkat's Blood Player status allowing him to talk the fight down to a nonviolent conclusion if he needs to. Blitzo's marksmanship could end the fight before that happens and he has enough of his own advantages to win almost as often as he losses, but I'm putting my money on Mr. Adorabloodthirsty more often than not.

I might be biased to hell and back because I love both these characters, but, well, it's my blog, so.....

This Throwdown's Winner is...

Karkat Vantas!

#fictional throwdown fridays #stats equalized #homestuck #helluva boss #karkat vantas #blitzo buckzo #Youtube

[tranquilspot]

[S] STRIFE!

Ha ah! Halloween season jumpscare~ You thought you'd seen the last of me (and this liveblog)!

This 'fight' is funny and laughable. It isn't really to be taken seriously. DAD lighting the candles on the cake can be seen as threatening (and dangerous!) if you was none the wiser that is. It's the boy's birthday, and his dad is aggressively celebrating it. Makes me wonder if strifing really is a custom in Homestuck, or if it's specific for the universes that will play SBURB/SGRUB. Whichever is the case, it's a mock battle is this situation. Or perhaps ageing IS threatening to John. Adulthood (or rather adolescence here) is a scary thing.

Colors, logic, art appreciation

I can't stop appreciating the art style and the dedication to its scarce (for now) details.

Like here, the very moment the candles are lit the flames go bworh! (damn and all at once?)

That's a transition frame, right? So neat. The nuance between the predominant black and white style and the colors is well-done. Less is more. The 'STRIFE!' logo thingy appears (two colors, kinda echoing to the candles. Flames = threat; but also Rochefoucault's quote from earlier?! hmm thoughts for later) and we have a brand new concept shown to us: Strife options. Aggrieve and abjure. By the way neon green and sky blue goes well together, it almost hints at John's and Jade's exchanged colors duality. Color theory is great once you get the hang of it! Aggrieving is offending someone. Rather than a physical attack, it suggest an emotional one. "I don't want your overwhelming love dad, or your stupid cake". Something among those lines. Also, he's such a dork making those movements with his hands. It looks like pseudo kung fu moves. He attacks and a lot more green appears on screen. Freakin' love the flash game effect on the background, and the simplified Slimer looming behind John, as if it was his familiar/symbolic beast having his back. Comical and kinda scary, with his ridiculous small eyes and large mouth. So he strikes, and is auto-pastried which is a pun on Auto-parry, a term and running gag from its predecessor Problem Sleuth. Still on my color observations (what can I say, I'm an artist that love art) this AUTO-PASTRY! is magenta kinda (but not really) close to the batterwitch's fuchsia. Guess I was too eager with that one. However it's nice to see there's different hue of the same color

The flashing dual color thing will also be used later for kernelsprites and ^2 sprites (this duo is Jasperosesprite^2's). The joker magnet echoes to the 'auto-pastry!' text, emphasizing the fact that the cake has comical properties.

Then he slides back into his previous position, simple and efficient (battle and artistic choice wise). If Aggrieve was an offensive and active tactic, Abjure is its opposite.

But before he reacts, it's DAD's turn to attack with a RPG naming system, like the Final Fantasy series (probably a tribute). 'Guardian Rubric: Coddlebrand'. Rubric is a title, but can also be a rule or a explanatory note (school). Is 'guardian' here a category or is he actually grading John on the spot? Perhaps the remaining word will shed some light.

Coddle is overprotecting, so that's what John could rejecting. Brand is a label, so is it a category or insincere 'marketing'. Depends on the point of view we position ourselves: Dad's or John's.

But here's a succinct (even subliminal) text that appears during the cake attack: 'Dotesmite!' What does it could mean? *do some research* Ooooh I see. Crushed by fatherly affection. Smite is hit, but according to world reference there's also a biblical meaning: kill/strike down. John in itself is a biblical name, but I don't see Dad Egbert being cruel to his son. He ain't Abraham. From there there's not much left to do in this flash. I'll just note that the movement effect during the Abjuring is reminiscent of John's windy powers, the blue and yellow colors coincident with his future God Tier outfit. Harmonious improvisation on Hussie part, for sure. Welp! We're done with this first Strife flash. It's writing was very laborious for unknown reasons and I'm very very sorry for 2 months of inactivity. Thank you for your patience, and I'll see you soon for the rest of Act 1. —> Coming soon

#homestuck #act 1 #homestuck reread #reread blog #john egbert #dad egbert #I live! #color theory #ms paint animation #christianity #but like real quick

[hskinhome]

BA: okay sorry i know i JUST did an ask 8u7 i want to do a call now 83c4u53 im startin to remember stuff

so. im polvya, dont remember my last name. im a teal 8l00d. my moirail is a violet 8l00d called maypur, we have him in the sys. and i was pitch with a fuschia 8l00d called eespie (pronounced ee-ess-pey).

i had other friends. maybe around 8 of us?? im really not sure. i just remember a lot of em. i cant remember if we played sgrub/sburb or not 8u7 i do remember us 831ng on some sort of ship /space voyage thing.

eespie was... strange. him and i were grubhood 8357 friends. and i felt flush for him, 8u7 he started 831ng not very nice 8u7 i didnt wanna leave him so he 83c4m3 my kismesis at some point. he loved making technology stuff and i love 8337l35. so he made a robo 8337l3 thing for me which he named "8ug" it had a camera in it though, in fact he had a lot of cameras on me and thought i didnt know 8u7 i did and was fine with it. when we were on the ship sometimes hed take control of the speakers? and play classical music. this was usually a warning that he was about to randomly decide to fight someone or if people were already fighting lol.

i think i remember a girl? maybe an olive 8l00d 8u7 im really unsure. if literally any of this sounds familiar please respond, preferably 16+ interactions 8u7 im kinda desperate and will accept anything

Without typing quirk:

"BA: okay sorry i know i JUST did an ask but i want to do a call now because im startin to remember stuff

so. im polvya, dont remember my last name. im a teal blood. my moirail is a violet blood called maypur, we have him in the sys. and i was pitch with a fuschia blood called eespie (pronounced ee-ess-pey).

i had other friends. maybe around 8 of us?? im really not sure. i just remember a lot of em. i cant remember if we played sgrub/sburb or not but i do remember us being on some sort of ship /space voyage thing.

eespie was... strange. him and i were grubhood best friends. and i felt flush for him, but he started being not very nice but i didnt wanna leave him so he became my kismesis at some point. he loved making technology stuff and i love beetles. so he made a robo beetle thing for me which he named "bug" it had a camera in it though, in fact he had a lot of cameras on me and thought i didnt know but i did and was fine with it. when we were on the ship sometimes hed take control of the speakers? and play classical music. this was usually a warning that he was about to randomly decide to fight someone or if people were already fighting lol.

i think i remember a girl? maybe an olive blood but im really unsure. if literally any of this sounds familiar please respond, preferably 16+ interactions but im kinda desperate and will accept anything also i have a tq usually, replacing any words beginning with b with leetspeak, when i get excited tho sometimes ill replace vowels in all caps words with 8 as well"

Go message them if this sounds familiar!

-Mod Nepeta

#homestuck #homestuck kin #canon call #polvya fictive #noncanon troll fictive #noncanon tealblood fictive #maypur fictive #noncanon violetblood fictive #eespie fictive #noncanon fuschiablood fictive #noncanon oliveblood fictive #noncanon fuschiablood kin #eespie kin #noncanon troll kin #mod nepeta

[davekat-sucks]

One of the things about the NU-fandom I find sad is that they always tend to forget or ignore the dynamics of characters not really shown in detail like Condy and the Helmsmen or the awful life of the dolorosa and everyone she ended up with like Mindfang. instead focusing on trying to make the Trolls just Grey humans and taking away the wrong lesson from the (D)ANCESTORS, like Signless and his Disciple's relationship isnt supposed to be something trolls can just do like humans can, or that Beforus is still much like Alternia just under more altruistic leadership since its still a fundamentally caste based society (I believe this is due the ignoring of troll biology and just wanting to make them human. The entire basis of relationships is biological, and a strong argument can be made that family/smaller scale social structures inform larger societal structures as whole.) Trolls were once cool bug aliens with a cool and alien society and social structure and history that people see as problematic.

The nu-fandom wants to believe the problematic elements did not happen for the sake of projecting their ideals. So forget about Condy technically sexually assaulting the Helmsmen as his energy gets sucked dry to power her ship for many years and she extends his life past when he was supposed to die without his say. Or the fact that Dualscar trapped the Dolorosa on his ship before being mindraped by Mindfang to kiss another stranger and getting killed by the same man who locked her freedom in the first place. Or even that the Signless and the Disciple being a one true monogamy relationship at a planet that puts full emphasis that everyone needs multiple partners because the trolls themselves are unstable without one individual needing to fuck and another stranger needing to tame their bad habits and the auspiticism is bullshit but it is need to finish the quadrant. It can't be done by one person, according to what Alternia and Beforus say. But The Signless and the Disciple TRUST each other to help the other. That's what's was revolutionary about their relationship. It's not just a red rom matespriteship, but one that they can support each other that fills the roles of all the quadrants. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what Karkat had wanted in Terezi too. Which would have made the parallels of his ancestor stronger before that idea was dropped! They also forget that it was Feferi's rule of coddling that lead to Meenah bullying the shit out of Damara, Damara losing her mind to work for the big bad, Cronus using humansona to get away from his own shitty attitude, Kankri's SJW thinking towards the wrong people, and Meenah having to kill everyone with that damn bomb to create a new set of trolls! The ones that we are most familiar with! It proves that even with Feferi trying to push equality and trying to fix the ill and unfit, it didn't work or caused more issues than what the Condesce did with iron reign! No one tries to talk about what would be a better balance between the two! Or if playing parallels like with Sburb/Sgrub of how it's basically a fight between the two Kingdoms, GET RID OF KINGDOMS AS A WHOLE and everything can be democratic. That's what Wayward Vagabond had been fighting for. He hated Kings and monarch ruling, so he started a group to go against it! It might have been like this for the Signless, just with Jesus slapped onto him for more flair.

#Homestuck #Homestuck fandom #HS ancestors #Dancestors #Beforus #Alternia

[bloodswapkinfessions]

HEY I'm the Beforus mint-blood-mutant Karkat Ampora who was talked about by the anon...

My SGRUB timeline was crazy. We were adults when we played. I was culled by Feferi Makara, who was a movie star but also a religious preacher. I think her religious preaching made people hate her movies or something, so she took a mutant (me) to cull to get sympathy from the Beforan masses.

She basically put me on artificial lungs and gills WAY longer than supposed to... I could've gotten a lung- and gill-transplant but she kept stopping me from getting it. Until one day I managed to do it in secret, right? I got on the waitlist. Like, I only gotta wait a week or something.

but then my group chat was "Hey Karkat! Time to play SBURB! Cool game, right?!" and everything was was DESTROYED BY METEORS and I was like, "HELLO??? I NEED MY ORGAN TRANSPLANT SURGERY???"

I didn't get the surgery because the world ended. During the game, I had to carry my own artificial lungs and gills, thinning my own blood, and otherwise doing my own maintenance because Feferi no longer saw the point in culling me since her planet is gone. And then the others kept hounding me for "not doing anything to make progress". 10/10

so i answered the "i forgot to add the warnings to my post" with a smiley face and i am not smiley facing any more girl holy shit.

but also Yeah i get it sometimes the Memories are evil to you

hugs

#beforan culling #ableism #karkat ampora #swapped from: karkat #swapped to: ampora #alphabeta swap #queue

[memurfevur]

Alternia and Beforus

I played with the idea before, but I'm going to make it official to my lore now. Alternia and Beforus exist at the same time, belong to the same Empire, and are close enough within distance that inhabitants can go to and fro as long as they have a permit and are qualified to.

Beforus is still, compared to Alternia, relatively more peaceful and far less strict. They do still have a different culling system, where the lower you are on the spectrum the more coddled you get (and the can of worms that opens up). They do not readily seek to solve conflicts with violence, and despite the alliance between them and Alternia, considers Alternia to be full of "feral barbarians." Alternia likewise thinks Beforans are soft and weak cowards.

Where Alternia is known for rearing warriors and soldiers, Beforus is known for its diplomats and navigating complex relations with the rest of the Empire's alliances and inter-planet relationships. They tend to be good negotiators and often send resources to other planets in times of struggle. Rebellious activity is low here, but still exists as people call for an up-rise against the culling system, sexism, war propaganda, and other issues that can be comparable to Earth's own. The rest of the Empire barely bats an eye at Beforus compared to Alternia, where the threat is more prominent when everyone's trained to be a warrior, but this does not stop the people of Beforus from trying.

While before Beforus and Alternia could not visit the other, a new deal has passed called the "Hiveswap" program. This means Cullers on Beforus can send their unwanted mutants to Alternia to "provide better resources and care to their cullees, and open their minds to other lifestyles" when in reality it's basically sending a lamb to slaughter. Beforus said "we have too many Mutants to take care of so we're making it your problem" and Alternia said "okay but we're killing them and you're paying us" and Beforus said "make it cheap and you have a deal." Not a pretty situation. Most citizens outside of the Culling culture do not know this is occurring, and Cullers who do enter the program receive negative credit which can harm their chances of getting a new cullee. But because of this "Hiveswap" program it has opened up interplanetary travel, which has helped either planet's economy through tourism-- which unfortunately is the guise the Hiveswap program disguises itself as.

Because of how I headcanon Troll biology and the bucket system to work, a single bloodline can also be present at the same time on two planets. But because of relations between the planets, and the Empire's general focus on mass producing soldiers and workers, reproductive material and DNA can be traded between each other. This gives me an excuse to make my Dancestors being here and existing with my Alternian Trolls make sense without time-space shenanigans* or making ALL my Ancestors go to Beforus before they die. Essentially, I'm cutting out the fact that canonically Dancestors are alternate-universe Ancestors.

*Time-space shenanigans can still occur. Sgrub/Sburb is still canon in my lore though it's not prevalent nor often too important. Any character I have on the blog that's related to Sgrub simply does not remember it. Tumblr-verse canon was essentially their "reward" for winning their respective sessions, and thus were entered in an alternate universe. The only character Sgrub stuff is important to is Julian and consequentially Dharmast who is a narrator.

CURRENT BEFORANS ON MY BLOG

Persef Lankro [currently on Alternia]

Farlow Faurux [culled; currently on Beforus]

#lore #Beforus #Beforan #Alternia #Alternian

[kozzax]

Dancestors and Their Implications on Classpecting

For many of Homestuck's readers, the Dancestors aren't exactly fond memories. While there is a good chunk of the fanbase who loves them for what's under the surface, myself included, I would argue the majority of the fanbase sees the Dancestors as what they were likely intended to be: bad-faith mockeries of Tumblr and the Homestuck fanbase at the time.

They are not well-written characters, for the most part. Oh, there are glimpses of interesting characterization and deeper story for all of them, but none of them beyond perhaps Aranea and Meenah live up to their potential. Many of them are uncomfortable at best and downright harmful at worst.

I do not want to talk about their characterization directly here, though. No, I would instead like to discuss the impact that the Dancestors have on a far more widely beloved part of Homestuck: the classpect system.

As we all know, the classpect system has two parts: the Class, such as 'Heir', and the Aspect, such as 'Breath'. Every sburb and sgrub player has a defined classpect, and every player we see in the comic has their classpect revealed at some point in time.

For the humans, every human has a unique class and a unique aspect. There are only eight of them who play sburb, so it makes sense for each of them to get one of the twelve options, as a shorthand for character differentiation. The Strilondes may be ectobiologically related, but each of the four has their own unique class and aspect.

For the trolls, though, there's something a little different that happens. Because there are only twelve aspects and fourteen classes, and because the master classes are only seen in-comic with the cherubs, there has to be overlap between the core twelve trolls and their Dancestors. Every class and aspect is used twice, in different combinations so that every troll has their own title.

What's interesting about the Dancestors' classpects, though, is that every Dancestor's aspect lines up with their respective core troll. The Captors, for example, are both Doom players, while the Vantases are both Blood players. They have different classes, but their aspect stays the same between the two of them.

Where this gets even more interesting is in the way the relationship between Dancestor and core troll works. Troll genetics is... hard to understand at best, and complicated even further when ectobiology is pulled into the mix, but we know that they have a concept of ancestors who provide the majority of their genetic code. We also know that each of the Dancestors is ectobiologically the ancestor of their respective core troll. The Dancestor Aranea Serket, for example, is genetically the same as Alternia's Mindfang; much in the same way that Jane Crocker is genetically the same as Nanna.

While we cannot say that the ancestry rules are the same for the sgrub players as they are for the rest of Trollkind, I believe that it is more informative and interesting to read the text in that way, because when we do there is a clear and incredibly useful correlation to be found. Because we do not see the trolls' ectobiology in action, I think it is reasonable to make the assumption that ectobiology machines tend to reflect the genetic combination practices of the species playing, and so would create a mother grub-like condition for the trolls as opposed to the parent-like condition that Jegbert had.

Assuming this to be true, then, and that the Dancestors share a large part of their genetic code with their respective core trolls, let's look back at the aspect connection.

Why are their aspects the same, but their classes different?

I believe it is a matter of nature vs nurture, where aspects are determined by nature and classes are determined by nurture.

The biggest difference between the trolls and their Dancestors is the world they were brought up in. The Dancestors lived in a world much more similar to our own, with many social issues being bureaucratic and political in nature; where the core trolls grew up in a much more violent and war-focused world. This is very clear in the canon of Homestuck, and established regularly throughout openbound.

This would, inevitably, lead to the Dancestors being raised and nurtured to implement their aspects in different ways from the core trolls. In turn, this brings them to have different classes.

Let's also look at what the basic setup of classpecting: classes have verbs (eg: bards and princes destroy) and are either passive or active (eg: bards destroy [aspect] while princes are destroyed by [aspect]), and aspects are the elemental forces affected by those verbs. From the Expanded Zodiac, we can further interpret aspects as a person's core values, and extrapolate that classes are how they interact with those core values.

This, too, lines up with the nature vs nurture interpretation of the classpect system. Both Karkat and Kankri are Blood players, and we can see that at their core both of them very heavily value the bonds between people. Those bonds are, for the Vantases, the most important parts of their lives. What's different between them is how they act on that belief: Karkat, as a Knight, helps (or, more properly, serves) the people he's bonded with and make sure they're happy and prospering, and is regularly the guy any of them go to for emotional advice; where Kankri, as a Seer, knows the connections between people and knows how to work with those connections to try and minimize conflict.

Karkat grew up in a world where he was marked for death from the day he was hatched, and the only way he would survive would be to serve powerful people and hope to impress them. He was nurtured into a role where helping people he's grown a bond with was useful and practical to keep himself alive and moving forward in the world.

Kankri grew up in a world where he was effectively a highblood's pet, and the only way he could further his place in society was to understand the connections between people and the complexities of a political bureaucracy. He was nurtured into a role where understanding the bonds between people was useful and practical to keep himself moving forward in the world.

Both of them, though, are still Blood players at their core.

While it is clearest and easiest to see this connection in the Vantases, it is, to my knowledge, true for all of the troll pairs.

This interpretation of classpecting, where classes are determined by nurture and aspects are determined by nature, may seem somewhat less than useful on the surface, but I believe that it is actually a GREATLY useful reference point for writing and developing characters, both in AUs and in original works.

Let's say you wanted to write a high school AU, but you were struggling to keep Karkat in character because of his more aggressive tendancies. Knowing that his Blood aspect is determined by nature would help to identify exactly what core values should be carried over, where having Knight be determined by nurture would help identify what might change or shift in this new version. Perhaps he's still a Knight, and he was still raised in a situation that led him to be knight-like, but it now takes the form of Karkat demanding that his friends have study groups together and ensuring that they're all ready for tests and quizzes.

It's flexible, of course, and should never be used as the single point of a character's personality, but I think that using the classpecting system to identify how a character's environments affect how they interact with their core belief is a really interesting and useful usage of the system.

TL;DR: I believe that the Dancestors' aspects being the same as their core troll counterparts while their classes differ indicates that classpecting is determined, in part, by the nature and nurture factors on a person's personality. Aspects are determined by nature and genetics, where classes are determined by nurture and environment. I think that this interpretation of the classpecting system is particularly interesting when creating characters and useful in analyzing characters both within and outside of Homestuck, as a way to identify how the way a character is raised leads them to interact with their core beliefs and values.

#homestuck #classpect #homestuck analysis #classpect analysis #dancestors #my analysis #<- I hope those are all the right tags #i think about this CONSTANTLY #it's just always sitting there in the back of my mind #and. i finally got around to writing a post about it! woo hoo! #i hope this is comprehensible i have no clue if anyone else can understand what i'm saying here #i could just be writing nonsense #but. i think it's interesting ok #i think its really interesting #i WANTED to use sollux and mituna an example but sollux is a mage of doom #and there isnt really a lot of clear information in canon about mages #which sucks because i want to talk about mituna so bad #but that'll have to happen another day #also for the record. i specifically didnt use aranea or meenah #because if i talk about aranea i have to talk about vriska and im not touching that bag of worms #and i like meenah but i dont feel comfortable talking on her because i dont remember a lot of what she did super well #the other dancestors are in similar boats but to a lesser degree because there isnt much there for them

[eyelessrabbit]

Have a personal headcanon that unless you are a player of SBURB/SGRUB you do not have a class, just your aspect. Classes basically describe your narrative role, however unless you are a part of the narrative (aka, SBURB) why would you have a narrative role.

This is my belief of why we know the aspects of every hiveswap and friendsim character but not their classes. This also goes onto the Guardians + Ancestors- they won't ever play the game, so they just have their aspects, that's all, although very minor echoes of their class when they are players bleed through.

#homestuck #sburb #aspects #classpect

[pesterloglog]

Andrew Hussie

Act 5, page 3238

After Act 4, we began Act 5 Act 1, otherwise known as Hivebent. We were introduced to 12 trolls from a planet called Alternia, which resides in another universe. We followed these trolls as they played their own 12 player session of Sburb (or to them, Sgrub) to completion. A whole bunch of stuff happened along the way. In completing the game, they created a universe - our universe, home to Earth and our four heroes. But they were denied entry into the new universe due to an encounter with an indestructible demon. This demon was the four-times-prototyped Jack Noir from the kids' session, forced into the trolls' session due to a spacetime rift the kids would later cause, called a scratch. The trolls fled to the veil, discovered the existence of the kids, and began trolling them.

Then Act 5 Act 2 started.

Through a Trollian viewport, we see John moments before the scratch is initiated, wearing his god tier Heir of Breath suit, in the Land of Heat and Clockwork (LOHAC), about to put in motion a plan he, the other kids, and the trolls all helped orchestrate to cause the scratch. This is the first conversation Karkat ever has with John, and the last John has with Karkat, pre-scratch. Karkat proceeds to troll John backwards through his timeline. John knows increasingly little, while Karkat gradually begins to understand more.

EVENTS FROM KARKAT'S PERSPECTIVE

10:25 (10 hours, 25 minutes) before some CRITICAL MOMENT, Jack arrives and destroys the gateway to the new universe. Aradia transports all the trolls to the veil to hide. Her army of doomed duplicates takes on Jack. They are all destroyed. The trolls find a computer lab in the veil, and stay there for most of the time remaining before the CRITICAL MOMENT, to occur at 00:00.

06:12 before CRITICAL MOMENT, Jack destroys Prospit. Shortly before this, Kanaya chainsawed off Tavros's legs to replace them with robotic legs supplied by Equius. At the sight of this, Karkat faints, and for the first time, his dream self wakes up on Prospit. He is awake for only a moment before he sees Jack, and finally recognizes him as Jack Noir, rather than the heretofore unidentified demon. Jack then kills him and all the other Prospit dreamers in the process of destroying the planet.

Karkat remains asleep for an hour, until 05:12:30 before CRITICAL MOMENT, exactly half way through countdown. While sleeping post-dream death, he dreams of horrorterrors in the Furthest Ring, an experience anyone will have if sleeping after dream death. On waking up, he orders everyone not to sleep. He also wakes up to news that the humans were discovered. Neither he nor the other trolls understand the significance of the humans right away. They were discovered when Terezi was wired 413 boonbonds from Dave, on her future instruction. She urges Karkat to take a closer look at them. He dismisses them as irrelevant.

It's not until later he makes the connection between the Jack Noir in the kids' session, and the one hunting them down, recognizing them to be the same Jack, therefore placing the kids at fault for the current predicament. He then conceives of the plan to troll the humans, as a futile form of payback, and urges his team to follow suit with a compelling speech. He isolates John as the primary target of his hatred after watching him grow up. He is sure John is fated to be his kismesis, a romantic partner specific to troll culture, centered around rivalry and loathing. In his first conversation with John in the Heir suit on LOHAC, he professes these feelings clumsily. John cannot reciprocate. The awkward exchange causes Karkat to trap himself into continuing backwards on John's timeline, and the trolling continues in reverse fashion until John's first conversation with Karkat. By then, Karkat has explained many things to John along his journey, things about the game, about his role as an ectobiologist, and about their shared chief adversary, Jack Noir. In John's first conversation with Karkat, Karkat needs to get in touch with Jade. It's at this point on Karkat's timeline he has finally understood enough that he knows he must begin making plans with the kids for their mutual benefit.

Karkat attempts to get in touch with Jade, who continues to ignore him in a particular timeframe due to his persistent previous harassment of her in years prior. He leaves a message to her months in the past, telling her she needs to get in touch with him when her robot explodes. Her robot later finally does explode when her dream self is killed in the impact of Prospit's moon on the battlefield. When she wakes up, she remembers the message, and contacts him. But she contacts him at a point in his timeline where he is not yet interested in hearing from her. He argues with her, and is interrupted by his future self in a memo, from a time where he is trying to contact her. He and his future self argue, and Jade mediates between the two and becomes angry and frustrated, and ceases the correspondence.

By this point, the biggest meteor yet is approaching quickly, and she must enter the medium to escape. She requires John's assistance. He must recover the server disc, install it, and rescue her.

EVENTS FROM JOHN'S PERSPECTIVE

John sleeps on bro's rocket board, flying along with the meteors of the reckoning. He lands back on his planet, the Land of Wind and Shade (LOWAS). His dream self had awoken after dream Jade pushed him to safety from the blast of Prospit's moon. His dream self now exists on the battlefield, awake whenever John sleeps. He wanders the battlefield with his robot bunny, who he would later name Liv Tyler. He sees his dad and Rose's mom, and runs to meet them. But he wakes up before reaching them, and his dream self disappears. The ring he was carrying falls into a ravine below, later to be recovered by WV?, before his exile to post apocalypse Earth.

Vriska was responsible for waking him up. Upon discovering John, she takes an interest in his advancement, and uses her abilities to help him progress and set up critical events along his timeline. The only effect her abilities have on humans is to wake them up or put them to sleep. In this case, she woke him up so he would be able to receive the server disc about to come out of a parcel pyxis. The disc had been deposited into the pipeline by PM some time ago. She and John continue to converse, and he befriends her, oblivious to the true nature of her schemes. She functions as his "patron troll", a troll who is particularly focused on helping one of the kids, like Terezi is with Dave, and Kanaya is with Rose.

John returns to his house, and installs the server. But not before touching base with Rose, who is committed to cracking open the secrets of the game through dark magic, and Dave who is from the future, having time traveled extensively over the course of the 24 hour reckoning period. John also encounters nanna, who gives him a pendant granting him the ability to summon her. She conjures a ghost bed for him, and cooks for him with a ghost oven. He floats on his bed high above LOWAS while he connects to Jade.

Jade, who had woken up in her bed at the foot of the hill, returns to her house to find John setting up the equipment. John deploys the alchemiter and lathe in her greenhouse, and the cruxtruder in front of her fireplace. He opens the cruxtruder and discovers there are 10 minutes and 25 seconds until impact. They discuss what to prototype with, if anything. Rose warns him of the danger of failing to prototype, which would not allow the battlefield to heal, evolve to its final form, and grow the Tumor inside, which is critical to her plan to destroy the Green Sun.

John resolves to prototype with the blue doll, missing an arm and an eye, to deliberately disable Jack. But Vriska puts him to sleep before he can. Becquerel then prototypes himself to destroy the meteor and save Jade.

As he sleeps, John's ghost bed crashes into an oil ocean below. He loses his computer with the server disc in it, and nanna's pendant. He hops to a small island. He notices the ocean is on fire over the horizon, and the fire is approaching. He talks to Rose, who informs him Jade entered while he slept, and is safe. She tells him about a quest he'll need to go on later, to recover the Tumor from the battlefield and bring it to her. He then talks to Karkat, who is speaking to him for only the second time from Karkat's perspective. Karkat explains exactly what the kids did that made him decide to troll them. He blames Jade for prototyping Bec, creating Bec Noir who is now terrorizing the trolls' session, while blaming John for allowing it to happen.

Meanwhile, the fire is approaching his island, and has turned green due to Bec Noir's transformation, taking place during a duel with bro and Davesprite elsewhere on LOWAS. John is contacted by Vriska, who admits to putting him in this position to challenge him, to realize his potential as the Heir of Breath. She also admits to deliberately playing a role in the creation of Bec Noir, wanting to be involved in his rise just as she also plans to be the one to kill him. She explains that regardless of her actions leading to his rise, his existence in the troll session is immutable. Due to the nature of paradox space, that outcome could not be changed with different actions. The only consequence of different actions would be an offshoot timeline, in which all participants would be doomed.

As the fire surrounds him, she encourages him to use his abilities, and with some coaxing from WV who commands him from his station, he does the Windy Thing. The Breeze surrounds LOWAS and puts out the fire completely, and blows John to a larger landmass, just outside a village. The Breeze also clears the clouds from the sky, but they return shortly, as the spell over the planet must be broken by other means. By unlocking this ability, he reaches the top of the echeladder and becomes the Heir Transparent. Vriska then informs him the only thing left to do is reach the god tier, which is done by sleeping on his Quest Bed which is nearby. She tells him to ask the locals about it. He does, and finds the Quest Bed beyond the village. He sits in the bed but isn't tired. Vriska gives him the choice of whether he would like her to put him to sleep. He agrees. While he sleeps, Jack Noir finds him and stabs him through the chest, killing him.

WV watches his death on the monitor and commands him to rise up. WV sees nothing except fireflies gather around John's body, while the Quest Bed glows. After the spectacle, there is no change. John's body remains motionless, and the monitor shuts off. WV believes John has died. And he is right.

But on the battlefield, his dream self appears lying on a corresponding Quest Bed. His dream self slowly takes on the signs of the wound inflicted on his real self, as it rises. His dream self then takes over as his real self, with all wounds healed, as the fully realized Heir of Breath. WV?, pre-exile, watches this happen on the battlefield. He remembers this moment long after his exile, without understanding what transpired. But on Earth, WV believes he has just witnessed the end of John's quest. WV is still in possession of the ring, and has accidentally locked himself in the station, and there is not enough power to unlock it. The only source of power is a lump of uranium which he ate hours ago. So he waits.

John now wanders the battlefield, poised to complete the objective he was given by Rose.

EVENTS FROM ROSE'S PERSPECTIVE

Rose uses her dark magic to search for ways to subvert the usual course of the game and overcome the futility of the situation, with assistance from her patron troll Kanaya, counsel from the gods of the Furthest Ring, and information provided by Doc Scratch.

Kanaya begins trolling Rose suspecting her to be the author of the GameFAQ guide she read on Alternia, a figure she grew up idolizing. But she becomes disappointed with her due to a series of miscues resulting from her sporadic, nonlinear trolling. She continues conversing with her nonlinearly, engaging in a feud of snarky one-upmanship, gradually befriending her. She eventually realizes Rose is the true author of the guide when she watches her destroy the gate above her house with magic. She then continues helping her in a more linear fashion, uncovering the secrets of the game, and sharing her own extensive knowledge of the game with her. Ultimately, as Kanaya begins to understand the true nature of Rose's plan, she becomes afraid Rose is dangerous. She is especially unnerved by the fact that soon on Rose's timeline, her viewport goes dark, and she can no longer be monitored. But she acknowledges she can do nothing to stop her. So she trains Eridan to become a powerful white wizard of hope to challenge her, as a joke.

A particular target of Rose's investigation is the Green Sun. She rips apart underground ruins to retrieve information on it, and is further informed by Doc Scratch on the subject. The Green Sun is a huge star nearly twice the mass of the universe. It resides somewhere in the Furthest Ring, and serves as the power source to all first guardians. Bec was Earth's first guardian, and when he became prototyped, Jack inherited all his powers, which are supplied by the Green Sun. Doc Scratch is the first guardian of Alternia.

Doc Scratch, like Bec, is a virtually omnipotent being, with all the same powers. Unlike Bec, he is an intelligent host to those powers, and is therefore also omniscient. His job is to pave the way for the arrival of his employer, an indestructible time traveling demon called Lord English. Lord English can only enter a universe upon its death, at which point he travels back in time to an earlier point in the universe's lifespan to assume leadership of his gang of mobsters called The Felt. His machinations, like Scratch's, are in part designed to bring about his own future entrance. Before the trolls began their session, Scratch took measures to both pave the way for English to arrive, as well as contribute to his own creation. First guardians have circuitous self-fulfilling origins, much like the players of Sburb. Bec was created in a lab through ectobiology by merging the ghost slime image of grandpa's dog Harley with Rose's MEOW code. Scratch had a similar but yet unknown origin. Scratch manipulated several members of the trolls' party into playing Sburb (Sgrub) in the first place. Notably, he manipulated Vriska into killing Aradia, who as a ghost became the primary orchestrator of the session. He was also used as something of a pawn himself, by Terezi, in exacting revenge against Vriska, causing her to lose an eye and an arm. This was another key moment in a critical cycle of revenge, leading to Terezi's blindness and awakening, Vriska's eventual death by Aradia's retaliation, and then Vriska's resurrection to the god tier as the Thief of Light.

Having done everything he needs to do, Scratch tells Rose he wishes to die. Thus the destruction of the Green Sun is to their mutual benefit, and Rose forms a plan. While she gave the short version of the plan to John, telling him he'd need to recover the Tumor, she tells the full plan to Dave. The Tumor at the center of the battlefield is in fact a very powerful bomb, capable of destroying the Green Sun. She will go to sleep, and John will bring it to her dream self. Meanwhile, Dave is to go to sleep and listen to the gods, who will tell him how to find the sun. He will make a map, and Rose will plot a course there and destroy the Green Sun in a suicide mission. Ideally, this will negate all of Jack's powers, reducing him to mortal status again.

EVENTS FROM DAVE'S PERSPECTIVE

After entering the gate above his apartment, Dave begins exploring LOHAC under the guidance of his patron troll, Terezi. Her fascination with him was prompted by the money wire from his future self, which alerted her to the existence of the humans in the first place. She watched him grow up with his bro, and made some observations about humanity through his upbringing. She then committed to helping him, in part due to her rivalry with Vriska, who sought to make sure the human she favored, John, would outpace Dave.

Over the course of the adventures she coordinates for him, Dave experiences about 3 days chronologically due to looping through time, and fulfilling the requirements of various time loops. The key objective is to make enough money for him to be able to wire it to her in the first place, completing the time loop that started it all. The sum of money vastly exceeds what is typically gathered in a session, and it must be accumulated by manipulating the LOHAC Stock Exchange using time travel.

Along the way, Dave and Terezi befriend each other, trading comics and perpetrating financial capers. In the early going, Terezi leads him into a pot of soup prepared by his crocodile consorts, for no particular reason other than it needed to happen on his timeline. Doubtful of the need for her help, he nearly quit, but received assurance from his future self, and continued exploring.

He goes underground and discovers gold ruins. Before entering, he's interrupted by Karkat who uses a memo to warn both him and John about their involvement with Terezi and Vriska, telling them the scourge sisters are partaking in a dangerous game of rivalry fueled flirtation which has gotten both him and John killed at least once each. Karkat speaks from a time in which he's aware of a plan developing which may lead to the kids and trolls meeting each other, and does not look forward to the results of the gathering if these trends continue. John and Dave disregard his advice. Dave proceeds into the ruins and finds a legendary sword, Caledfwlch, lodged in a block of gold. He breaks it to retrieve it, and is told by Davesprite that the sword is critical to his personal quest as the Knight of Time. Terezi then tells him he is about to fall asleep, without knowing Vriska was behind this nap as well. Dave goes to sleep, and Davesprite defends him from a horde of powerful monsters. Before Dave wakes up, Davesprite leaves to find bro. He does, and joins him in battle against Jack. When Jade enters, Jack transforms into Bec Noir and defeats both of them. Bro is slain by his own sword, and the body is discovered by Dave later, who can't bring himself to retrieve the sword.

While sleeping in the ruins, Dave's dream self wakes up again on Derse's moon. Following Rose's advice, he looks into the sky and takes off his shades. He gets his first glimpse of the gods. He then wakes up from hearing a gunshot fired by Jade as she battles an imp and quickly teleports away, the first of three times he sees her in this manner. He sees her again in the LOHACSE, and again while visiting Jade's planet.

He then goes on to make all the money needed, to buy all the fraymotifs, which are powerful battle techniques purchased from consorts, and to reach the top of his echeladder. But he still wanted to know why he would never be able to reach John's level.

To satisfy his curiosity, Terezi gives him a choice somewhere in the middle of his timeline, a choice to be decided by a coin flip. He could assign the outcome of the flip to mean he would either be shown now, or later. The outcome of the flip, which Terezi did not even look at, was a constant. Two realities are created by his two possible decisions. The decision to be shown now creates a doomed reality, wherein Dave becomes doomed. The decision to wait simply continues the alpha reality, and Dave remains the alpha Dave. Doomed Dave follows Terezi's instructions, given to him before the flip. He is to go back in time, leaving his doomed timeline, and sleep on his Quest Bed, and if he has what it takes to reach his god tier, he will. Alpha Dave, after waiting some time, was instructed to go to the bed to find sleeping Dave, and kill him, thus allowing him to face the true gravity of the decision.

Dave doesn't go through with it, and decides to end his collaboration with Terezi for the time being. Later, doomed Dave wakes up, gets out of bed, and is immediately killed by Jack. 03:14 before the CRITICAL MOMENT, Terezi watches, and is upset by her involvement in his death. She runs off deeper into the lab.

Dave travels to Jade's planet, the Land of Frost and Frogs (LOFAF). While standing in the snow, he sees Jade appear briefly while fighting an imp, just as he did before in the ruins. He contacts her, and she mentions she has lost track of John. Dave tells her John's busy, without mentioning he was in the process of rising to the god tier. He says John can no longer be her server player, and they would have to make other plans.

Dave tells her to deploy the intellibeam laserstation in his apartment. The device allows very complex captcha codes for certain items, like a Sburb disc, to be read which couldn't otherwise be read by the human eye. He then creates a copy of his own server disc, and uses it to connect as Jade's server player. He becomes the server player for both Rose and Jade, though past Dave would stay concerned with Rose's connection, while he, as future Dave, would concern himself with Jade's connection. He deploys a new alchemiter and helps her upgrade it. With his massive reserve of grist accumulated in his travels and his more advanced torrenting capabilities, he allows Jade to alchemize some sophisticated equipment right away.

A bit later, she contacts him again after learning of his dead bro, and dead doomed self. He assured her the dead Dave was just a doomed copy, and he would be fine. She decides Jack needs to be stopped, and they should come up with a better plan than Rose's suicide mission to stop him. He suggests the idea is futile, but lets her know she'd come to her own decision regardless, and he'd be available to talk later if needed.

EVENTS FROM JADE'S PERSPECTIVE

When Jade's dream self is killed, her robot explodes, destroying her room, causing her to fall. Bec transports her bed to break her fall. She falls asleep. Now dream dead, she has a dream in a bubble blown by a god in the Furthest Ring, and meets Feferi there. Feferi, a Derse dreamer, went to sleep to convince the gods to establish dream bubbles where they can meet while asleep, as long as their dream selves are dead. While she is asleep, 04:13 before the CRITICAL MOMENT, Jack destroys the trolls' Derse, killing her and all the Derse dreamers. She, along with all the other trolls and Jade, would then only dream in the Furthest Ring, where she met Jade and attempted to show her the gods were harmless. But Jade sees through the bubble and catches a glimpse of the gods. She wakes up with a headache, scared of what she saw, and resolves to stay awake. Feferi messages her, and introduces herself as the one from the dream. It is the second time they have spoken. The first time was long ago, from Jade's perspective.

Jade realizes her robot has exploded, causing her to remember that was her cue to message Karkat. She does, and the aforementioned confusion takes place in the memo with past and future Karkat. Past Karkat berates her, while future Karkat defends her. She reprimands both of them for arguing with each other, who are the same person separated by only 3 hours. Dave enters the memo and mocks future Karkat for his flirtation with Jade after the lecture he gave to John and Dave on the subject. Jade ends the conversation, and is in no particular hurry to get back to him about the important matter he wanted to discuss.

The meteor impact is imminent. John connects with her, and helps her prepare for entry. She makes her entry item from the pre-punched card. A tree sprouts from the alchemiter, and a green Bec-shaped pinata dangles from a branch. A green blindfold appears over her eyes, which she cannot remove. She attempts to strike the pinata with the butt of the rifle, which does no damage. Instead it releases a burst of energy, causing the greenhouse to explode, and Jade to fly out and fall. While falling, she takes a shot in the dark with her rifle. By this point, Bec has prototyped himself to become Becsprite, and has destroyed the meteor with a massive green energy blast, releasing a huge shockwave spreading over the surface of the Earth, destroying much of what hadn't been already by the meteor storm of the reckoning. Becsprite then appears in front of her bullet, and redirects it into the head of the pinata, destroying it. Jade, her house, and a large part of her island including the volcano, are all transported into the medium, on LOFAF.

She falls through the snow of LOFAF, now unblindfolded. Becsprite again breaks her fall with a bed, and again she falls asleep. She has a recollection of sitting on her bed back on Earth some time ago, working on John's present. It's then that Feferi contacts her the first time. Jade believes she is trolling her like the others, but she only means to reassure her what happened wasn't her fault, as well as inform her of her plan to establish the dream bubbles. But soon, both realize this is not a memory, but a dream they are currently sharing, with the memory as a stage. Feferi meets Jade in her room and compliments her on her work on the bunny. Feferi also claims to be dead. Jade wakes up again, just as agitated as the first time she woke up.

She gets out of bed and realizes her lunchtop is still in the destroyed greenhouse. She begins her ascent, but is interrupted by an encounter with an imp, which takes her on a trans-incipisphere journey, visiting many locations and passing by three instances of Dave, including a future Dave who ends up helping her later. The imp is finally killed by Becsprite. PM from post-apocalypse Earth, just after discovering her station and en route to the frog ruins, tries to issue commands to Jade through the terminal. Becsprite is alert to these commands, and protectively destroys PM's terminal.

Jade returns and finds her computer undamaged. Future Dave contacts her after seeing her out in the snow. He then becomes her server player, and sets up her equipment after most of it was destroyed/transported before entry. As she prepares to alchemize new items, she is contacted by her "fairy god troll", a distinction which does not necessarily have anything to do with being a kid's patron troll. Tavros seeks permission from her to commune with Bec again. The first time he did it was when she was very young, and playing with her grandpa's flintlock pistols. She accidentally fired the gun at her self. Tavros communed with Bec to get him to transport the gun and the bullet away from her, and toward her grandpa who was picnicking with the blue doll, killing him. Tavros mistook him for an intruder, but regardless, Jade is upset by the revelation. He digs himself into a deeper hole by professing flushed feelings for her awkwardly, while making bold claims of high self esteem and confidence granted from his new robot legs. Put off by this, she is not particularly receptive to his plan to commune with Becsprite to take on Jack Noir, and ends the conversation.

Vriska, who was reading the conversation, mocks Tavros for his false show of confidence. She continues to take jabs at him, calling him a coward, unable to do the one thing she asked which would have given him real confidence. She refers to the incident preceding her resurrection to the god tier. After she was nearly beaten to death by Aradia, Tavros finds her, believing her to be dead. He attempts to bring her back to life with a kiss. But having woken up on Prospit after the beating, Vriska's dream self is able to control his mind. She makes him choke himself, simply to prevent the kiss to avoid the standard resurrection process, which would prohibit god tier ascension. She does not wish to control him completely, intending to leave the following decisions to him, to make him stronger. Instead, she merely controls his hand to write messages to himself using her blood. She instructs him to take her to her Quest Cocoon, and to kill her on the sacrificial slab before she bleeds to death. He hesitates, and she continues to insist, while her dream self gradually takes on the same wounds inflicted on her real self, causing her demands to become more desperate. The more desperate she gets, the more terrified Tavros he becomes, and he finally flees without killing her. She eventually dies, and is resurrected on the battlefield as the Thief of Light.

Still holding this against him, she berates him for his newfound attitude, and regards his plan to influence the kids' timeline as a cheap imitation of her tactics. She brags about the ways she has manipulated events on their timeline so far, by practicing her abilities on Jade repeatedly, causing her to fall asleep frequently. She describes ways in which she has inserted her agenda into existing events, tipping off agents to the whereabouts of the MEOW code book, and other such incidents which contributed to the rise of Jack Noir, so she could claim responsibility for his existence, before taking him on herself. Tavros becomes angry with her incessant mockery and the extent of her treachery, and decides to seek her out to challenge her. She waits for him somewhere in the lab.

After the conversation with Tavros, Jade alchemizes a number of items. One of which is a legendary rifle, Ahab's Crosshairs, supplied by Eridan. Eridan, now believing himself to be a powerful wizard, feels he's surpassed the need for the weapon, and gives it to Jade to fuel the rivalry he mistakenly assumes she has with Rose, as payback for Rose's early dismissal of his black advances. Jade recognizes it as one of the weapons she included with the bunny for John. The weapons were provided by her penpal, who she accidentally revealed to be her grandson from the future. The pen pal swore her to secrecy on the matter, so she did the same with Eridan, though he admitted this would be the last time he talked to any human regardless. Realizing the new rifle would serve as a sort of heirloom to her grandson, she decided to discard it outside her house, and allow it to reach her grandson eventually however it may. Eridan then blew up her Johnnytop.

Another item she created was a pair of junior compu-sooth spectagoggles, allowing her to see anything in the incipisphere at the present moment. She saw John as the Heir of Breath on the battlefield, Rose on LOHAC talking to Doc Scratch, Davesprite's pendant covered in blood nearby bro's dead body, and a slain doomed Dave. She contacts Dave to make sure he's alright. She then comes up with a plan to take on Jack Noir.

She contacts Tavros again to talk about the plan he proposed, but he has left to take on Vriska. She has only one idea left. She goes up to her grandpa's lab, summons Becsprite, and tosses in her dead dream self, which her grandpa had retrieved from the battlefield and stuffed many years ago. Becsprite becomes Jadesprite. But dream Jade is not pleased by the transformation. She freaks out, and releases the typical first guardian pyrotechnics. The lab plummets, crushing the column and greenhouse below. It bounces away from the house, rolling into large snowball, and settling near a green stump. The two Jades sit in a state of dismay amidst the rubble of the lab, in the glow of a damaged 4th wall.

As the clock ticks down to the CRITICAL EVENT, the most important character in Homestuck sits and watches this pandemonium ensue.

And then, the second most important character in Homestuck positions a shitty drawing of himself in front of a typewriter and writes this recap.

I think this typewriter is running out of ribbon ink.

Thank God, that white ink is such a pain in the ass to read.

Almost as much as these recaps are to write.

#homestuck #andrew hussie #homestuck act 5 #page 3238 #homestuck act 5 act 2

[findingtheperfectcharacter]

Okay, okay, Classpecting mode entered-

So I fucking love how they’re Archetypes- like it’s arguable that if your character plays their version of Sburb as written, they’ll go through a very barebones heroes journey and walk out different but in a very… Cookie Cutter Arc. Anyway, new way of describing Classes dropped into my brain.

Page Arc: I chose Page first because theirs is almost bluntly stated. They’re the underdogs that need to rise up to the challenges the world throws at them.

Heirs: Okay so if Page’s are the Zero To Hero archetype, Heirs are the closer to Superheroes- specifically like… A Peter Parker type. They have all the powers they need from book one, they can use them subconsciously but need to figure out how to actually wield it. (Outside of the direct quest… That’s kinda just John anyway. She’s kinda just walks ass backwards into doing what needs to happen half the time- that’s not a bag on them I just noticed it when they got retcon powers.)

Seer: … Seers are interesting. They’re not active wielders of their aspect, they use what’s already there to their advantage. Like, Terezi doesn’t control others thoughts, she just takes what she does know and uses it to make plans and decisions. Arguably that combined with ‘play the rain’ as Rose’s quest suggests a Seer’s arc is… Learning that what you have is enough and working with it.

Which is hilarious when it comes to my personal Blorbo- Kankri is ignoring the shit out of the arc Sgrub 2 tries to put on him Godbless… I think the most solid versions of this arc are ‘be careful what you wish for’ stories and ‘it’s a wonderful life’ type deals…

Theif: My biggest take is that a thief’s arc is a classic want vs need arc. Like okay, Vriska is a treasure hunter, her planet? Full of treasure to steal all the time forever… I also don’t think the treasure’s worth anything. I don’t think it’s even mentioned. A thief’s planet is abundant yet dull, reminding them that all the stuff seems cool at first but they really need personal connections. Weirdly I think Meenah and Vriska found that out mostly but their personal connections were… Engaging in harassment and bullying.

Anyway we barely know Jack about shit about the other arcs- shit Thief was me making a leap just based on lack of info. But also also I don’t have the current stamina to look at the others rn… Part 2 possible but feel free to make notes

#Classpecting #I know this isn’t a unique notion but also walk with me about it. Talk with me about it.