#i think the shade of green my friend had was lower than what homestuck greens are

[thatlittledandere]

Man I dreamt I was Mickey Mouse trying to deliver Minnie something she forgot home while leaving for a friend's party, but when I got to the event venue it turned out to be this HUGE multi-storied building, like, the floor area was probably measured in kilometers, and it functioned as basically an authoritarian micronation with a strict, color-based social caste system. The most common way to identify someone's current standing was by wristbands or watches; upon entering I was given a white one, the lowest of them all and the only one permitted to visitors.

I had never even heard of this THING before and tried my hardest to piece together the laws and rules from the fragments of context clues I got from trying to talk to people, all the while also trying to hide the fact that I wasn't one of them (my initial entering caused quite a stir and I got the idea that turning up uninvited was frowned upon, to put it lightly.) For example I quickly learned that, while the biggest in numbers, white was technically below the ranking altogether, and its holders didn't enjoy the same rights as even the lowest of the castes. Whites were like interns to the society; they had to prove their piety to and knowledge of the customs before being fully admitted as citizens.

Minnie had left house carrying a purple hood so I assumed that to be her color, but when she eventually found me, it turned out to be fuchsia instead. And fuchsia was one of the higher castes, if not the highest. She told everyone in the room I was with her, and we started making our way to more private quarters somewhere in the upper floors. The floorplan was ridiculously convoluted; we passed SO many staircases, hallways, elevators, doors, and escalators. Minnie tried to catch me up to speed with what it was all about; turns out the community had been there functioning for over ten years, unknown to the outside world, most of its inhabitants living there full time in its many living quarters. The ones like Minnie who had a life in the outside too lived a double life, keeping the house a secret. The community was almost religious in how its residents treated it; it was basically a theocracy. I kept asking Minnie to please list the ranking order of the colors, as everything seemed to revolve around which caste you were, but she always had something that in her mind was more important to teach

Then we got separated. We had been moving in pairs in a group of about ten to be less conspicuous, and I couldn't see Minnie all the time with all the apparent hurry we were in. So when some of the people in the group started stuffing themselves into an elevator, I wasn't facing Minnie but figured that's where we were going. That was not where we were going. She didn't enter the elevator, having also lost sight of me. But the elevator took us back to the lobby we started from, so I started following our pervious footsteps to the best of my memory. Every time someone stopped or acknowledged me I told them I was a fuchsia's servant and had been summoned by her and had to get to the upper floors posthaste. I had no idea if higher ranks having personal servants in the lower ones was a thing, but people did let me through.

We also stopped being Mickie and Minnie Mouse at some point. You know how dreams go.

I found out the wristbands weren't the only way to express one's color; anything that stood out enough to serve the function was a go. At some point I stepped into an elevator only to come face-to-face with my brother, from real life, who was indigo, and it was apparent from the accents in his otherwise black outfit. I was happy to see a familiar face, even though I knew he was NOT thrilled to see me lol, and would absolutely not help me on my quest. He would much prefer not to be associated with an outsider. And as Minnie, who was no longer Minnie but just a nondescript friend I was looking for, hadn't explained the caste order to me, I didn't know where dark blue stood. But from the way he carried himself and how the other guy in the elevator reacted to him, I deduced it must have been closer to top than bottom, at least.

Another thing was that these color assignments CHANGED. They were frequently reshuffled, and you had to figure out a way to quickly switch to displaying your new color, and adjust to your new social standing in your behavior and relationships. When I finally found my friend, she had switched to green by quickly dying her hair with spray dye. As she was now one of the lower classes, she conducted herself with a certain shyness and shame, posture hunched and eyes withdrawn.

She showed me to a lounge for people of various lower castes, where I found another nondescript friend who is not a real person that I know, and two who are and who I've known since childhood but haven't been in touch with in YEARS. Talk about a happy reunion! We got to talking, some about this place and its culture, some just regular chitchat.

And that's when I brought Homestuck into it by mentioning there's a webcomic I read that also has a color-based caste system. One of my childhood friends was delighted to hear there was something else with a similar system. I used a word for the system that I don't think really exists; the other childhood friend thought it was too long and difficult to pronounce. So I suggested "How about hemospectrum instead? That one is shorter and easier to say." I note that the Finnish word would be hemospektri, which is shorter by one letter! Yahoo! My friend was pleased. I woke up happy to no longer be stuck in Hotel California for discount homestucks.

#my assumption is that their system had more than 12 colors in it but this is speculation. nobody ever told me shit #:/ #i think the shade of green my friend had was lower than what homestuck greens are #and i think there might have been one or two above fuchsia? #but. color based caste system. fuchsia and dark blue among the higher ones. green lower. #a color that is not considered a real color whose havers are technically outside the system and treated as pariahs #sigh. #it was heavy-handed the whole time but THEN I BROUGHT IT UP EXPLICITLY #the only thing missing would be homestuck characters popping up #... My brother DID look like equius and i only recognized him as my bride because it was a dream and that's how they go #while i was mickey mouse i was also aware that being mickey mouse was not my usual state of being #it was a bit like extra immersive roleplay. like those isekai anime where you actually embody your game avatar #sword art online ass mickey mouse dream. #i had the green pants and white polo from paul murry's comics and all #venlapost #dreams tag