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intrinsicparable · 19 hours ago

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‘are you heariing that 2pooky me22age from the grave? iit ii2 from my abiiliity two giive a 2hiit’ who ii2 2ollux captor??

EB: oh man, you have a hacker?? EB: i bet he is THE BEST!!!! EB: hackers are always the best. (p.1633)

First mentioned in Act 4 as the trolls’ resident hacker, and presumably the character who put the trolls in contact with the kids in the first place, Sollux is arguably the most important troll of all. Without him there’d be no Sgrub to play in the first place, no teams fighting for success at the game. Sollux was a prominent character in early Hivebent, but during his long pre-entry nap the story cut away from him for some time, before circling back to round out the arc.

Using Sollux’s list of interests on page 2076 as well as information from most of Hivebent (p.1989-2519), here’s why Sollux is one of my favorite trolls despite his absence from a good chunk of the arc. About 5k words below the cut.

1. You are apeshit bananas at computers, and you know ALL THE CODES. All of them.

Sollux codes in ~ATH, a language known to be extremely difficult. Coding in ~ATH is ‘all about finding ways to trick it into doing what you want’ (p.2025), and Sollux gets pretty weird with it, using colored text, loops that open inside each other and close outside, and possibly code that’s meant to be viewed in 3D. To succeed in this language, he has to be creative and look for unexpected solutions, as well as highly technical. Sollux spreads his expertise around, coding viruses, at least one video game, tracing Doc Scratch’s message signal back to his moon typewriter, and maybe more. It’s possible he was involved in Trollian’s creation because he felt he could make something better than the previous chat client his friends used, or that he’s worked on other games prior to Sgrub. Many of Sollux’s codes also affect the physical world, such as the Mobius Double Reacharound virus that causes Karkat’s computer to explode.

It’s unclear how Sollux got into computers, but it’s definitely both his strongest skill and biggest interest, and something he ties his identity to. Even Doc Scratch, someone who generally has a low opinion of mortals, thinks Sollux is ‘clever’ (p.2256). Computing might help Sollux regulate his emotional issues, as it’s something concrete he can point to at his low moments where it’s fairly difficult to argue his skill level. Sollux’s brain responds in unpredictable ways, haunted by voices of the imminently deceased, but computers are the opposite. Sollux can be sure his codes will work in logical and reliable ways independent of his ‘mutant mind’.

Gordon (2010) claims that in popular culture, ‘hacking’ refers to circumventing digital security, while in computing communities it refers to people who enjoy understanding the inner workings of a system. Sollux straddles the line between these definitions. He’s the one who teaches his friends to operate advanced but ‘official’ Trollian features like the viewport and transtimeline bulletin boards, but he also tries to hack into Lord English’s pool ball virus to see what the program does. Incidentally, this is his one failure, which says more about that program’s strength than about Sollux’s skills. Sollux is capable of growing new game grubs from scratch, but is also willing to circumvent that process through piracy.

Sollux codes viruses as a hobby, but has no intention to use them to hurt others. Although he sends the Mobius Double Reacharound virus to Karkat, he tries to stop Karkat from actually running it and feels a lot of remorse when he does, going so far as to delete the other viruses he’s written to avoid similar events. Sollux likely codes as an intellectual exercise to challenge himself, believing that blowing up someone’s computer with a virus is cool in theory, but there’s no suggestion that he uses these codes to take over people’s computers or seriously impact the world. His technology stays on his computer and is rarely released to the wider world. In short, his ethics don’t govern what he makes, but they do govern how he uses the things he makes, which is an interesting line to draw.

Given his experience and openness to unorthodox practices, it’s believable that Sollux altered some Sgrub code to make the game more winnable for his friends. It’s unlikely that Sollux would see ‘adapting’ a game as a passive process or that he’d place all his trust in code from the ruins, plus the stakes of the game – survival of the troll species – are so important that it’s not worth taking risks. Sollux could have given himself two dream selves, nudged the Black Queen to remove her ring, or simply delayed meteor arrivals to give his friends time to enter. In addition, given that Sollux predicts his own death, he may have set some ~ATH programs to execute upon his death that give advantages to his friends outside the Sgrub code itself.

Alternian technology is biological and insectoid. Sollux owns several beehouse mainframes composed of silicomb through which he engages in apiculture networking, keeping several hives’ worth of living bees inside his computer. Many of his video games are played via literal grubs that he grows from scratch and connects to wires, which make Sollux an amateur entomologist, and a zookeeper to a much greater extent than other trolls with their singular lusi. The use of biological lifeforms, with their high complexity, processing power, and ability to reproduce and heal themselves, might be behind Alternia being a more technologically advanced society than Earth.

In fiction, insects are often conflated with robots, surveillance devices, programming errors and security failures. Many people view insects as more mechanical and ‘less alive’ than other creatures, and studies of swarm intelligence find many similarities between insects, robots and algorithms (Haynes, 2019). As such, the idea that insects have ‘rights’ is much more controversial than the rights of pets, livestock and other mammals. For $200, anyone can purchase a RoboRoach from Backyard Brains, a kit that lets you implant living roaches with electrodes and remote control their movements. If operated correctly, roaches can fully recover from being implanted in this way, though there’s no oversight to guarantee correct use.

On Alternia these ideas are taken to extremes. Insects are grown and bred specifically to operate technology, more analogous to Earth animals being raised specifically for food and kept in poor conditions. Alternia is as callous with its similarly-insectoid troll lives as it is with its technology, so it’s not surprising that bug rights activism isn’t popular. Sollux, however, cares deeply about the lives of his friends and the future of the species as well as the wider impact of his computer programs on the world around him, but doesn’t extend that care to the smaller lifeforms he raises and uses for his own ends.

2. ...you SORT OF BEAT YOURSELF UP ABOUT [things] for NO VERY GOOD REASON during sporadic and debilitating BIPOLAR MOOD SWINGS.

Sollux’s mood swings are shown to cycle extremely rapidly, as he moves from mania to depression in a matter of minutes. This is a wild exaggeration of bipolar disorder on Earth, where diagnostic criteria and real people’s experiences both show that the ‘poles’ of mood can last for weeks or months at a time. Rarely, ‘ultraradian’ bipolar disorder features mood swings that occur in a single day, often on a predictable schedule. However, it doesn’t appear that Sollux’s mood swings are based in actual research – and even if they were, bipolar disorder is a term created by humans to describe some people’s experiences that fall outside of what’s seen as ‘normal’ functioning, not a natural truth of the universe. It’s highly unlikely that Alternia would categorize mental health in the same way. As such, I don’t think the term ‘bipolar’ is appropriate for Sollux specifically or Alternia generally, though if removed from that label, I do find Sollux’s rapid mood swings to be an interesting character trait.

Sollux’s emotions overtake him powerfully, and as such, he could be seen as an inverse counterpart to Aradia, whose emotions have vanished following her death, or Gamzee, whose emotions are dulled through his use of sopor slime. He gets furious with Aradia for withholding information about Sgrub and clearly has a strong emotional investment in the game (p.2085). Sollux’s mood swings primarily refer to his opinion of himself, seeing himself as ‘magnaniimou2 and chariitable’ (p.2027) and ‘dynamite lit in a box of hot shit’ (p.2073) while also regularly saying that he hates or despises himself. Even when he sees himself very positively, he doesn’t seem like he’s happy, enjoying his life, or feeling positive about the future, which is best explained by his chronic pain and knowledge of the planet’s doom.

Sollux’s friends know to expect this highly emotional behavior from him, and with Karkat especially, ‘out-hating’ each other appears to be a core part of their relationship. Sollux finds it near-impossible to control his emotional reactions, but is aware of his behavior, willing to acknowledge and apologize when he’s gotten angry. When Terezi accuses him of conflating the voices he hears with his emotional issues, Sollux says he’s ‘dealiing wiith that’ (p.2082) and although his reference to having a ‘breakthrough’ (p.2085) is sarcastic, his self-analysis suggests that he’s familiar with what passes for therapy speak on Alternia. After apologizing to Aradia and trying to reconcile, he almost immediately flies off the handle again, so it’s clear that these issues are genuinely debilitating for him, and are not him willfully not caring about others. Aradia being his ex-partner likely heightens his emotionality in this conversation, too.

As well as taking responsibility for how his issues affect other people, Sollux knows how to draw a line between friendly trash talking with Terezi and mutual trading of insults with Karkat versus saying things he regrets and later apologizes for after calming down. He has an edgy exterior, making jokes about sex offenders and other people’s religions, something often associated with online and gamer culture. While this is as much a part of him as anything else, I don’t think his humor reflects his moral beliefs or his behavior in personal relationships, and like with his insults and viruses he’s careful not to take things too far. That can’t be easy, given the probable lack of support for emotional issues on Alternia, so I think Sollux deserves a lot of credit for the work he puts into his relationships with others.

3. You have a penchant for BIFURCATION, in logic and in life.

Sollux’s bifurcation manifests in various ways, one of which is colors. His favorites are red and blue, though his shoes are black and white, and he posits to Terezi that he could switch to aubergine and turquoise – changing colors he can comprehend, but getting rid of the bifurcation is unthinkable. This shows up in his biology with his red and blue eyes and two sets of horns, and in his choices, like his recuperacoon, curtains, computer wires, glasses, shoes, typing quirk, and use of binary code. So this is something he was born with to an extent and has no choice about, but he chooses to lean hard into it, which lets him take some ownership of this trait.

Sollux’s mind itself appears to be bifurcated. If Prospit or Derse alignment comes from certain personality traits or ways of looking at the world, then Sollux’s rare dual dreamer glitch shows that he contains both of them. His experiences on the planets, with Derse being a lonely, quiet place while Prospit is full of life and friends, might give some insights as to how the planets are assigned. Vriska can only mind control Sollux ‘about half the time’ (p.2245), so it’s possible that half of Sollux’s mind is psychically protected while the other half is psychically susceptible. However, it’s also possible that Vriska’s ability to control Sollux depends more on his emotional state at the time she exerts that power.

Sollux’s bifurcation extends beyond himself to other things he’s close to. His lusus is a bicyclops with two heads, one of which has a red eye, the other a blue. Sollux’s lusus appears to be in similar pain to Sollux himself, as he can only be placated with mind honey. Instead of finding common ground and mutual compassion with a lusus who he shares some important traits with, Sollux keeps his bicyclops chained to the roof, only cultivating the honey to make his own life easier. This is another example of Sollux’s lack of care for non-troll life forms. If Sollux had no choice but to live in a communal hive stem with little space for his lusus, this would make his treatment of his lusus more understandable, but if Sollux chose to life here for his own convenience, that suggests he’s not holding up his end of that relationship.

Sollux takes part in a rare bifurcated Sburb session, where the players consist of two separate server/client chains and there are two frog temples seeded on the players’ home planet, but everything eventually links into a single session. Sollux’s role in developing the game likely led to this as he was the one who decided to set up two competing teams. It’s likely that he prefers competitive games in general, specifically two-person or two-team games, to fit with his bifurcation. The session on a large scale represents Sollux on an individual scale, especially a Sollux who is doing emotional work to bring the two sides of himself into greater alignment. As computing is his main interest, it feels appropriate that a computer game is the thing that best represents Sollux himself. It suggests that while bifurcation is extremely important to Sollux now, in time he might lose this trait and become a more unified individual.

4. Your mutant mind is hounded by the psychic screams of the IMMINENTLY DECEASED.

...unlike the typical sightless prophet of doom, you are gifted with VISION TWOFOLD. For now.

Sollux’s ‘mutant mind’, like his emotional issues, is common knowledge among his friends. He’s not the type of person to put on a brave face and hide his struggles, and is generally up front about having a difficult time of it. His pain is also literalized in his Sgrub planet, the Land of Brains and Fire – as his brain has always felt like it’s on fire – which again makes it both visible to outsiders and inescapable to Sollux himself. It’s fairly common for graphic fiction to depict mental illness as something ‘external’ to the character, like a shadow or monster, to suggest that it’s something preying on them instead of something truly a part of them (Kerckhaert 2024). That’s not the case with Sollux’s emotional issues, which aren’t visually depicted in Homestuck, but it is the case with how his psychic pain is externalized to his land.

Among other things, Sollux’s powers let him put creatures to sleep and to emit dangerous blasts when under the influence of mind honey. As a powerful psionic, he is exempt from having to allocate his strife specibus, unique among characters so far. This is one of many traits that position Sollux as the ultimate gamer or hacker with mastery over technology. It’s possible that Sollux’s ‘vision twofold’ allows him to see gaming abstractions and beyond the fourth wall, as he also knows when he’s being introduced to the audience and gets to decide when it happens. He’s not completely unique with these things, but when they happen – like with Bro slashing Dave’s Strife option menu (p.836) or Jade writing a message to the player introducing her (p.765) it’s used to indicate that a character has potentially gamebreaking powers.

Although Sollux’s powers give him information and there are moments where they appear beneficial, it seems that they make his life worse overall. His conversations with Aradia suggest he’d prefer to be free of the voices, and while all trolls suffer from night terrors, Sollux’s psionic abilities mean his are significantly magnified. He’s susceptible to mind honey and to Gl’bgolyb’s Vast Glub, and his powers are inextricably linked to pain. His head is in a ‘cacophony of phy2iical paiin’ every day (p.2085), and other people are able to take advantage of him and use him to terrible ends – if Sollux knew he was used as the weapon of Aradia’s death he’d certainly be in a comparable amount of emotional pain. Sollux doesn’t need to allocate a weapon to his own specibus, but he can also be used as a weapon without being allocated to someone else’s – for every benefit of his powers there’s an even stronger drawback. In this case, he has no control over his actions and no memory of them, which could link back to his motivations to design computer programs (controllable things that exist outside his unreliable mind) and to gain more control over his emotional state (which may help him resist psychic influences).

Sollux may also be a puppet for forces greater than Vriska. He’s linked to the sightless prophets of doom, despite not yet being blind, and talks about angels and demons, mythical beings that ‘paradox 2pace u2e2 [...] two u2her iin the end’ (p.2082). He’s also a guardian of the virus used to summon Lord English, and it’s possible that his proximity to this virus and his efforts to hack both this and Scratch’s typewriter have heightened the psionic abilities that his brain is almost unable to contain. Sollux being overcome with his own powers when contacted by his exile visually resembles Doc Scratch being overcome when he learns that Vriska is using his orb, so Sollux may have inherited a small amount of First Guardian power which a regular mortal was never meant to have.

Sollux knows in advance that his planet will be destroyed, and has seen visions of his own and all his friends’ deaths. While he’s unhappy about many future developments, he sees things like his blindness as cosmically necessary, and takes a middle ground between passive acceptance of fate and belief that he can personally alter it. He accepts the inevitability of things, but refuses to be complicit in certain actions, shown by him attempting to call off the Sgrub session when Aradia reveals that it is the instrument of their species’ destruction – Sollux knows this won’t avert the apocalypse, he just refuses to be the one who causes it.

This could be seen as an act that makes Sollux feel better about himself while not actually changing anything, or as cowardice and refusal to get his hands dirty while he pushes responsibility onto others. However, given Sollux’s complete powerlessness over the situation, I prefer to see it as Sollux exerting a tiny amount of agency over otherwise unstoppable forces. He can’t stop the apocalypse, but he can make his opinion known, sending a message to paradox space that he won’t be controlled without putting up a fight – the same message he sends by frying Clubs Deuce’s command terminal. I see this as an act of bravery, because those are powerful forces to resist. With his near constant pain and voices of doom, Sollux has been dealt a rough hand, but he chooses to take a stand on principle even knowing that he’ll lose. If necessary, he’d probably try to take on the Black King himself after all his friends were dead, because he’s someone who refuses to give up no matter the odds.

5. You have developed a new game, adapted via CODE PARSED FROM THE RUNES AND GLYPHS IN AN ANCIENT UNDERGROUND TEMPLE. You believe this game to be THE SALVATION OF YOUR RACE, though you are not sure how yet.

Elite coder that he is, Sollux has singlehandedly developed a game that would take a huge team at a major studio sweeps to create. Although the name ‘Sgrub’ isn’t great, the game itself is completely functional, and actually appears to have fewer glitches than the kids’ game, which did have a full team behind it. Sollux chose to share the game as a digital download instead of a physical grub, so that his friends could begin playing as soon as the game was ready and maximize their chances of success. He also chose to keep it between his close friends instead of releasing it to everyone on Alternia, suggesting that he either has complete faith in his friends to win the game and save the species, or he already has some suspicions that the game itself is dangerous and thinks that letting other people to play might be the riskier choice.

Aradia ‘convinced’ or ‘tricked’ Sollux to adapt Sgrub (p.2134), which suggests he was originally unwilling to do so. Aradia controls some of Sollux’s information about Sgrub and purposefully withholds more, while Skaia likely controls even more by determining what Sollux sees in his visions. Once again, he’s being used as a puppet and a facilitator for something much bigger, and his wariness of this is probably why he was reluctant to work on Sgrub in the first place. His choice to make Sgrub a competitive game and his selection of himself and Terezi as the team leaders are some ways – potentially among many – that he tries to exert a small amount of control over the game, and even those things are taken from him, as Aradia puts him to sleep so he can’t lead the game.

Assigning Terezi as red team leader, Sollux allows her to choose her own teammates. At this point, Sollux wants to play Sgrub and believes the game is important, but he doesn’t mind who he plays with and is willing to take the ‘leftovers’. Right before the session begins, Sollux claims that ‘toniight2 not about fun, thii2 ii2 2eriiou2’ (p.2082). Part of this might be Sollux’s attitude towards gaming in general, as it’s very important to him and something he does take seriously. He also engages in some brief trash talking with Terezi, so his regular gamer persona is still in action. However, as he’s so aware of the stakes of this game, his Sgrub gameplay style is likely very different than when he plays games for fun.

As the developer of the game and the final player to enter in the 12-player chain, I see Sollux as the ultimate server player. Although he originally planned to lead the charge as the first client player to enter for the blue team, Sollux is put to sleep before entering and has dreams that ‘would prove essential in support of [his] teammates’ (p.2150). He’s instrumental to the game, but his whole job is facilitating his friends’ adventures instead of having his own. Despite it being a close call, he’s successful in his ‘standard’ server player role, getting Feferi into the Medium just in time even while he’s in extreme pain bleeding out as he does so. Clearly, he falls into the server player role naturally and easily succeeds in it. In contrast, as a client player he fails to enter before the Vast Glub, meaning that his waking self never actually gets to take on that role and his dream self has to take over. Living in a communal hive stem, a young Sollux must not have had the hive customization opportunities that all his friends had, which mirrors him not having the same opportunities as a Sgrub client that the other players have. Even once he enters, his land is inhospitable and unpleasant to adventure in. The game is sending a clear signal that being a client is not the role he’s meant for, and is one the game will make difficult for him. Being a server player, on both a small and large scale, is the role he was born to play.

6. Your trolltag is twinArmageddons and you tend two 2peak wiith a biit of a lii2p.

‘twinArmageddons’ literally means ‘the end of two worlds’, and obviously relates to his bifurcation gimmick and to his knowledge of the impending apocalypse. This could refer to his ~ATH coding style, where he bifurcates the universe for the purpose of executing programs, creating two ends of the world from what should be one. Other possible references include the war within Sgrub as well as outside of it, the extinction of trolls galaxywide via the Glub as well as the end of life on Alternia via meteors, or the destruction of the kids’ world as well as the trolls’. However, Sollux would have no reason to know about these things unless he was compelled by greater forces to pick this username. It’s also possible that Sollux isn’t linking these concepts, but sees his bifurcation gimmick and his voices foretelling the end of the world as the two things that define him above all others and chose a username that blends them. Either way, it’s very sad that he’s forced to think about the eventual destruction of his society even while just talking to his friends.

During Hivebent, Sollux talks to Karkat, Terezi and Aradia. Gamzee refers to Sollux as Karkat’s best friend and Vriska refers to him as Aradia’s boyfriend, while his rapport with Terezi feels very natural, so I see these three as Sollux’s good friends among the group who he’s known to be close with. He’s not a central member of the friend group, and the conversations he initiates are mostly about setting up the Sgrub teams. In all his conversations, he snaps at people, gets easily offended and riled up, and comes across as though he doesn’t enjoy talking and only does it when it’s absolutely necessary.

It’s possible that Sollux’s frequent emotional outbursts make him careful when socializing. He knows he’s likely to say hurtful things by mistake that he’ll later have to walk back, so he might avoid hanging out with people like Tavros, Eridan and Feferi who are more likely to be upset by this, and chooses thicker-skinned friends who are tolerant of his problems – he and Karkat have similar emotional outbursts so can understand each other. But Sollux also doesn’t reach out to people like Kanaya or Gamzee, whose demeanors might help regulate his own. Working on his emotional issues is a private matter for him, and like with his ethics, he sets boundaries between the parts of his life he wants to involve his friends in and the parts he doesn’t. He wants them to know about his issues, but it’s his job to overcome them alone. However, Sollux also mentions a need for privacy in some cases like having private discussions with Aradia about Sgrub development. So, even with improved emotional regulation, I think Sollux has a quieter and more reclusive nature which would be part of him under any circumstances.

I’d guess that even pre-Sgrub, Sollux’s role in the group is focused around gaming. He grows games, knows how to pirate, reads Game Grub, and can provide hookups and recommendations for all the latest games. He might prefer socializing by doing a shared activity instead of just talking, and playing goal-oriented games that demand attention and don’t allow for distractions probably helps him focus on something outside of the pain in his mind. Even if he doesn’t get along with all the other trolls as people, gaming allows them to have mutually beneficial relationships: he gives them access to games and they give him somebody to play those games with. Even among players who don’t know that Sgrub is linked to the end of the world, such as Gamzee, the game’s release is highly anticipated. I think that when everyone heard Sollux was developing his own game, they were immediately excited to play just based on his existing reputation as a games expert. Opinion of him tends positive, despite his prickly exterior.

On Nepeta’s shipping wall, Sollux is only paired with pre-death Aradia, first as moirails and later as matesprits. Despite their closeness it’s hard to imagine Karkat and Sollux as moirails, because they seem to anger instead of pacify each other, although they reconcile eventually. I can see Sollux attempting to auspisticize between Karkat and one of the many people Karkat hates. An auspistice can probably be compared to a server player, facilitating a relationship for others instead of having their own, and Sollux’s care for the people around him means he’d work hard at the role even if it didn’t come naturally to him.

Sollux defers to Aradia and allows her to manage his progress with Sgrub to some extent, and even after their breakup, he retains a lot of respect for her. He agrees with Terezi that Aradia is difficult to talk to since her accident, but still works to maintain that friendship and appreciates it when she says she wants him to be happy. Like most of the trolls he appears unaware that Aradia is dead, meaning that someone Sollux was very close to suddenly began acting extremely different for no apparent reason. So on top of Sollux’s everyday struggles with chronic pain and mood swings, he’s had to cope with losing a relationship. His decision to maintain a friendship with this new version of Aradia instead of trying to force her to be her old self or cutting her out entirely shows a fair bit of emotional maturity. Clearly, he’s willing to extend the same grace to others that they give to him, and once he’s close to somebody he wants to keep them in his life even if it means putting his own desires aside to meet their needs.

Final thoughts

In his introduction, Sollux has some surface-level parallels with Dave – they’re both cool dudes with cool names that they probably wouldn’t just tell you, they both wear glasses, both have rooms filled with technology and wires trailing across their floors, and are both associated with the phrase ‘flying off the handle’. However, I don’t see them as having much in common beyond the surface parallels. Sollux is much more self-aware than Dave – really, more so than any of the kids – with a good understanding of his own strengths and weaknesses despite the factors working against him. He’s also an example of how self-awareness and recognizing problems is only one step towards fixing them, not a solution in itself.

To me, Sollux is a fascinating character because he’s already done the most important thing he’ll ever do, which is to develop Sburb and set up the trolls’ session. Having accomplished this, he could be left adrift without a clear goal to pursue next. Once he goes blind, as prophesized, he’ll also lose a key part of the bifurcation that he defines himself with. Assuming he survives whatever fate awaits the trolls soon, it’ll be interesting to see what new identity and purpose Sollux fashions for himself.

#omfg #partners tag #world tag #dont agree w all of this but rlly good nonetheless

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