mage-of-homestuck

[mage-of-homestuck]

Could've been that, but one theory I saw recently speculated that he may have helped her awaken on Prospit earlier, to find the final frog like Jade did or something.

why did doc scratch even care about manipulating kanaya is it because he needed to make sure she'd mend cal

[mage-of-homestuck]

This aged so poorly and I loved being wrong about it

@God please tier 2 Nepetasprite with something harmless and less sentient than her as soon as possible

[mage-of-homestuck]

Have you ever thought of doing a post about sylladexes and what they tell us about each characters psychology (especially when they change?)

Can't say I have, if only because I just have partial accounts of a handful of characters... I'll try throwing together what I've got later though

[mage-of-homestuck]

Tumblr's format for submitted posts has never been intuitive but I'll try to edit that last post to make it clearer. The indented part is the submission I was sent, and the links after the image

[mage-of-homestuck]

Right so I just got another note on this after years and I'm kind of baffled that I failed to think of the most crucial counterpoint here.

This is basically a collage album made up Entirely of independently created fan tracks. It's pretty much literally not remotely possible that such a large group of disparate contributions could "purposefully" sync with an entire existing album.

I'm like even more amazed at the boldness of the claims here now.

The Homestuck x Pink Floyd Theory

Through experimenting I discovered serendipitously that the Dark Side of the Moon album by Pink Floyd syncs perfectly with the entire side A of coloUrs of mayhem Universe A. One of the songs in The Dark Side of the Moon is interestingly called Any Colour You Like, and the album covers are both black backgrounds with rainbow colors on them. The first word ‘colour’ on the album cover of coloUrs of mayhem, actually happens to have every color displayed coming from the pyramid on the album cover The Dark Side of the Moon. Other interesting Homestuck parallels in the songs titles includes ‘Speak To Me/Breathe’ and ‘Time’. I have yet to test if this album syncs up with the second half of this album, or if it syncs up with Universe B but I’ll be testing this, and if it does I’ll post it. I encourage research on if Pink Floyd has any other parallels to Homestuck as this is a very interesting tidbit, because the music is perfectly synced to a point it had to have been done on purpose. A notable parallel is how The Wizard of Oz is referenced in Homestuck I believe multiple times, and The Dark Side of the Moon is infamous for synchronizing with the beginning of The Wizard of Oz.

Link to the video of both albums combined together here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ImlaQYayXw

[mage-of-homestuck]

Hey so i'm 10 years later to the party but why did jadesprite flip out?

We’re getting to that conversation very soon (today?), but she basically goes on to explain that she was traumatized over Prospit falling, assumes John to be dead, and had spent years in the Furthest Ring making new friends and moving on from the trauma of Sburb.

So, to be clear, this is specifically Dream Jade’s ghost. Let’s also remember that time works differently in the Furthest Ring, which explains how she spent years making friends in just. The last few hours....* And she’s upset with Jade for ripping her away from her peaceful afterlife and right back into the thick of the game!

*Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe we could think of this as years passing from the perspective of like. Grandpa Harley having that stuffed dead dream Jade in his study for literally at least 10 years, if not 13.

[mage-of-homestuck]

The raise of the conductor’s baton heralds destruction in Homestuck.

From Rose raising her wand when she destroys her gate, to Hussie raising the wand right before being shot, to Lord English raising the wand when he destroys the first dream bubble in [S] Caliborn: Enter, to Alternate Calliope conducting the creation of the black hole…

What element of a performance is a conductor chiefly concerned with? Pacing; tempo; when a player should begin playing. Time.

Which aspect is most often connected to music, whether through Dave’s timetables or Aradia’s music boxes? Time.

And what is one of the key things that the Time aspect signifies?

Death and destruction.

[mage-of-homestuck]

I find the way Homestuck characters tend to attack themselves via proxies very interesting. 

[mage-of-homestuck]

Equius and Dave both have a thing about being emasculated - Equius through deliberately trying to be dominated, and Dave through the trauma associated with his Bro’s macho guy training - and the symbolism behind both of these characters wielding ‘broken weapons’ is obvious.

I think Equius tries to appeal to Dave’s sense of masculinity because he feels that since they were raised under similar toxic conditions - Equius on Alternia, and Dave by his Bro - they have shared experiences and common ground between them.

And their brief rap battle indicates that thanks to their respective upbringings they DO have some similarities, but when Equius tries to tell Dave they both break weapons because they’re ‘strong,’ Dave rebukes him: “I don’t break things because I’m strong…”

TG: im not that strong ok TG: just cause i broke a cheap ass sword doesnt make me the fucking hulk

“…I break them because I’m fucked up.”

This difference in outlook between the two is made very clear by this exchange between them just a bit earlier in the same conversation:

CT: D –> The adult human who trained you CT: D –> And taught you the ways of being STRONG CT: D –> Remember TG: you mean the guy who spent years beating my ass down with a puppet TG: yeah i remember

Dave is well aware that Bro’s training did him more harm than good. He’s just very lowkey about it until it’s addressed directly.

[mage-of-homestuck]

Equius seems to be using ‘STRENGTH’ in this case to allude to nobility, rank and leadership, which makes sense because it’s kind of his thing; society is controlled by the strong in his eyes and in the Alternian mind in general.

When Dave denies being strong, he denies that he’s the King Arthur figure that SBURB wants him to be, which is why John shares the Heir class with Equius and Dave has a serving class instead. Davesprite even alludes to this directly in the very next conversation:

DAVESPRITE: maybe if john was to try with his pure heart and shit it woulda popped out like a champagne cork and fuckin hero confetti woulda blasted him in the face DAVESPRITE: but you DAVESPRITE: we DAVESPRITE: we had to break it

What broken weapons have to do with being King, though, I’m not quite sure.

[mage-of-homestuck]

homestuck uses seemingly random things/concepts – the zodiac, a deck of cards, billiards, the magic 8 ball – as thematic elements so fucking cleverly it’s almost infuriating

[mage-of-homestuck]

the Heir is a hero who reviles what he reveres. an Heir in fairy tales is one who wants nothing more than to attain his father’s station, but hates his father for not giving it to him; or one who loves the privileges of his rank but hates its responsibilities, wishing for the freedom of a commoner.

Equius wants to be dominated by what he hates, and loves what is beneath him when he should be exercising dominance over it. he hates meat - implying to Nepeta that he doesn’t eat it - but values his own “meat” or flesh over his spirit. Alternia’s indigo caste - its Heir class - is entirely a caste of walking contradictions. they treat the planet’s musclebeasts as creatures “meant to be 100ked upon with adoration“, but treat another race of man-beasts as inferior, fit only for the role of being part of a “butler genus”. though they exist to serve those above them, they reject the sea dwellers for being “EVEN PURPLIER“ than the subjugglators, in fact considering themselves “obligated to be at odds”. it’s only fitting that Equius is the one to discuss the difference between friends and enemies with his superior only a page after we’re told that “in troll language, the word for friend is exactly the same as the word for enemy.”

naturally this makes the Heir a class closely tied with the concept of masculinity, because the complex dual nature of masculinity is such a strong theme in Homestuck. the indigoblood’s power comes not just from his position on the hemospectrum but his position in a patriarchal society, and when Equius starts to lose his grip on the saddle of his high horse it’s not only for a lowblood, but for a lowblooded woman.

the successful Heir is a hero who successfully overcomes masculinity’s trappings and, like all heroes ultimately must, reconciles the contradicting aspects of the masculine and the feminine. John matures as an Heir by overcoming the side effects of being brought up in an all male household, under a father who valued his strength of the flesh above all else, and mastering the spirit and the feminine - represented by spirit arms and the feminine blue slime of his ghostly mentor. Equius’ fate is instead to succumb to masculinity altogether, allowing the male superior in his life to cut off his connection to breath entirely.

[mage-of-homestuck]

I’m fairly certain that Hiveswap absolutely takes place pre-limeblood genocide! Along with Fozzer’s statement of 12 subtypes, I’ve been thoroughly scouring the art asset rips from Friendsim as I played through the routes. After color picking tons of those images in Photoshop I’m excited to confirm that I found two distinct instances of the blood color objectively being used, in Bronya and Chahut’s routes.

I’ve since added them to the wiki’s Lime Caste page. In addition to this, Hussie once replied to someone on twitter asking excitedly about limebloods that “they will be addressed more in the game than in HS”

I’m having trouble finding a screencap of this since-deleted tweet, but I’ve seen it firsthand countless times before it was. If anyone has it saved, feel free to add it here.

Hiveswap Friendsim Theory/Speculation??? SPOILER WARNING

Ok, so oh boy was this Friendsim was a doozy. 

However, to isolate one thing to talk about, Fozzer has one particular line that’s pretty peculiar. 

12? 12. 12 subtypes. This brings up quite the predicament; as there should technically only be 11. We know that at some point there was a limeblood genocide, and that mutants, like Karkat and The Sufferer have shown up, but the MSPA reader hasn’t encountered any of them. As far as the Reader knows, there’s only twelve. 

I may be wrong, but I don’t remember limebloods even being mentioned. The Sufferer was, but it would make little sense to include them as a subtype as to the Reader’s knowledge there’s only ever been one troll with that mutation.

So, that brings into question; when does this take place? Is is pre or post limeblood genocide? I wish I could formulate a more cohesive theory, but really the only “evidence” of this being pre-limeblood genocide is the possible lime looking substance on one of the body pillows (which may, in fact, be sopor slime). ((There’s also the issue with this being only loosely cannonical)) I suppose, however, we’ll have to wait for more info, as the absence of limebloods or any mention thereof would hint that this is post-genocide.

So, for now, I believe this may be possibly either:

1. Pre-Limeblood Genocide

2. Some sort of weird omniscience as seen in Boldir’s ending or in one of Marvus’ Bad Endings.

3. Simply an error

4. I’m looking way too deep into this

Anyways, I just thought this was a really interesting line, and I kinda wanted to touch on it.

[mage-of-homestuck]

Limeblood theories!

[mage-of-homestuck]

Hiveswap Theory: Marvus

Ok.

So.

Marvus Xoloto.

The (in my opinion) most anticipated sim in all of troll call comes out and he’s…

His quirk is distressing to look at, his route was somewhat uncomfortably horny (which translated to me not talking about it with my sister too much to bounce ideas off), his horns are backwards, and regardless of how much it may or may not have contributed to the chaos, there was definitely some level or form of mind control at play.

The more I thought about his quirk, though, specifically the largely phonetic facets and the fact he “clarifies” slang terms with other, equally indecipherable slang terms, the more I realized,

Fuck, who am I to talk; I say shit like “D’ya’ve” and put contractions where they’re not really supposed to be when I’m texting/talking, and I am most certainly guilty of the failure in defining slang terms.

And he’s really hot, cunning, and Above All seems to be genuinely nice.

This Mettaton-posing magnificent bastard is beautiful and infuriating, so ya know what? Fuck it.

♠

But on to the Actual Fucking Theory

I still think Marvus is a Lime-blood.

One of the first things I noticed about him was that this:

struck me as the exact inverse of this:

The idea that comes to mind is some sort of perception manipulation, specifically in regards to attention.

 And the similarities don’t stop there. 

These two know what’s going on. Boldir’s more subtle about it, she appears to know that it’s all a game.

Marvus outright tells us he knows it’s extra-canonical

They both know how timelines work, even if they react to them differently. Boldir accepts it and makes the most of what she can; Marvus fights it even though he knows he can’t win. If you look at these attitudes through the scope of them being Lime-bloods, then the castes they choose to impersonate make sense.

Boldir picked what was practical. She only has two horns and isn’t a psionic, so she couldn’t pretend to be a gold-blood, and on top of that picked the caste that matched her aspect.

Marvus said fuck that. Became a fucking clown. Entered and won “Slam or Get Culled.” Hid in plain sight. Fuck predilection, both fate and so-called “biology.” 

Additionally, if my previous theory has any accuracy and his true sign is in fact Canra, then with his meta knowledge it makes sense that he wouldn’t display the purple equivalent as there is already a Caprira in the game.

Back to comparing Marvus and Boldir, their routes follow the same structure:

First bad route: You just simply decide not to meet them at all.

Good route: You meet, pull a deceptive move together and you become friends.

Second bad route: You make the “wrong” decision, become friends anyway and talk about timelines, and reality conspires to screw you over before beginning to fall apart.

I feel it should also be noted that when they sustain injuries they both get injured in ways that cause discoloration (poisoning and burns) so we don’t actually get to see their blood color.

Away from Boldir, some hints that Marvus specifically be a Lime-blood:

He takes you to a Green Room. Yes, I know what a green room is. This one is more of a subtle hint; I only mention it because he does Not take you to his dressing room. 

He’s described as being of most height and is small enough for you to drag his body into the clown church. This suggests he’s somewhat smaller than purples tend to be. (Karako gets a free pass because he’s super young)

This little speech

reads very interestingly if you consider it being said by a Lime masquerading as a purple as it could be a hint at why Lime-bloods were eradicated, especially if they had/have perception/focus altering powers.

As for why he doesn’t just tell us these things?

This is what he’s willing to say on camera. This guy has to watch his tongue. He can’t outright say he objects to the system, but he can let you know why he does, and he can give “hypotheticals” to get you thinking.

[mage-of-homestuck]

I'm curious who that leaves muse with, then... I suppose Maid? Which I could definitely see. But it depends whou you ask! Ten years in and we still don't have a clear idea of Class alignments

Unlikely theory of the day: Lords may be the active counterparts of Heirs, rather than being paired with Muses as we were lead to believe. This would make sense under the the thematic framework of class pairs, as well as still support the idea that the Lord (and Heir) are the control/command pair. Whereas Caliborn’s quest was extremely challenging and difficult, John was provided everything necessary to accomplish his goals. While a lord is the ruler, and heir is one who is destined to supplant them; much like how John is the protagonist of the story, and Calliborn/Lord English is the BBEG he must defeat.

This would also mean that class pairs aren’t equidistant, leaving some flexibility in arrangement, though a suspect some pattern would still exist.

Idk, like I said, unlikely.

[mage-of-homestuck]

In the most recent update alt!Calliope said something about witches being closer to Muses than Sylphs. I don’t know if you can answer, but the community doesn’t have the full picture on the class spectrum. What did she mean by this?

listen all i do is write this comic. hell if i know what it means. that’s for you people to work out.

ok, obligatory joke answer aside, it’s an interesting question. i am not convinced we have the necessary information to answer it. let’s go over what we know about classes: everyone who plays sburb has a class, of which we know 14. according to calliope and various other sources, the classes can be ranked according to their “activeness” or “passiveness”, a trait which is pretty loosely defined. on this scale, we know that there are two classes which act as extrema: the LORD class is most active, and the MUSE class is most passive. other than that we have speculative assignments for some of the other classes. we don’t have this information for sylphs, but witches are said to be ‘highly active’. (oh and just an aside, but you can ignore all the stuff about classes being gender-exclusive. it turns out that this is a dumb idea, and calliope was probably smoking some real weird shit when she came up with it.)

going by what is available to us, then, it’s hard to see what calliope means when she says that “a sylph’s specializations lie on a different end of the spectrum from my own”. i can think of two possible reasons for this, although there may be more. one potential reason is that we simply don’t have a good enough grasp of the active/passive distinction and its nuances. somehow i think this is unlikely. a more interesting possibility is that calliope is talking about something else. i notice that you refer to *the* class spectrum, implying that there is only one way to sort the classes – i.e, according to their active/passiveness. but here, it’s not entirely clear what spectrum callie is talking about. she says “a” different end. could it be that there are other ways of measuring classes against each other, other axes of specialization, which place witches and muses closer together than muses and sylphs? it’s interesting to think about. 

but like i said, hell if i know.