#jake alassa

[thebigcjart]

Unlike the Khaos post, I'm going to be talking about Jake's land and quest primarily (extensively), as Soter doesn't have much metatextual significance outside of his direct impact on Jake's quest, which is the generally the case for the other denizens except for Kronos and Echidna. Everybody good? Good.

Let's get it:

Soter

Soter is the denizen of Jake Alassa's Land of Armor and Cliffs.

Soter doesn't have as much wacky behind-the-scenes stuff as Khaos, but like all denizens, is still crazy powerful. Also like Hemera and Nix, Soter's color scheme does not match his player's text color. They do have color significance to this session's Cherubs, though, but I'll cover them after I do all the players ;3

Greek/Roman(?) Origins

Not much is known about the Greek god/spirit Soter, or if there is, I have found very little. As far as my research goes, Soter is a god/spirit of safety, preservation, and deliverance from harm. He is commonly associated with Zeus in the Orphic Hymnns, and serves as an overseerer and savior, which suits the Light aspect. The two scarfrobes around him echo the two snakes in a caduceus, a symbol of Hermes/Mercury.

There is a solid chance that I'm making the following up, so please correct me if you know for certain that I'm wrong bc I'm operating off of memory here. I remember reading somewhere that the Roman empire had waystones along roads that looked like the head of a spirit/god of security, to bless travelers with safety and to show them the way. I'm like 60% sure that was the Roman equivalent of Soter? So that ties into the themes of deliverance and preservation that I'm going for. Take that with a pinch of salt, my research is infuriatingly vague there.

Hey, This Guy Isn't Cetus

Yeah, well.

Homestuck is inconsistent with whether denizens are tied to aspect. Sure, Vriska and Rose had Cetus, but that's because their planet was super watery (fit for a sea monster). Both Jake (English) and Karkat had Abraxas, and their aspects are just shy of being as far apart as possible. The only Denizen that is absolutely for certain tied to an aspect is Echidna, with Space. Alli Sharpe (this session's Space player) follows this trend. It's also only implied that Hephaestus is anywhere similar to Echidna. Aradia isn't explicitly stated to have Hephaestus as her denizen, and she is a time player. I go into more detail about why Kronos is a better fit for this session's time denizen in Mark's post, which I'll make later.

Also LOAAC doesn't really have any good places for a sea monster to dwell, now does it? (I suppose I'll compensate with a Kraken pun. Sea also: the Crackening)

There is some alchemical significance with the whole Jupiter/Tin thing, but I'll round all the session's alchemical stuff in one big superpost later. Let's get into the land and quest now.

Land of Armor and Cliffs

Jake's land, the Land of Armor and Cliffs, is an almost entirely level planet with huge cracks and holes running through it, revealing glowing streams of light deep underneath. These are not fjords, like would be found on Mark's land (the Land of Acid and Fjords), as they are not formed by glaciers, but instead through earthquakes in an event dubbed the Crackening. The clay that composes the plateaus is a bright purple, and lush neon pink vegetation lines most of the cracks.

Design

As I stated in the Khaos post, the players' lands in this session follow a specific naming scheme: Land of (Two syllable word dealing with the player's past) and (One syllable geographical feature).

The Cliffs refer to the sheer edges of the plateaus that drop all the way down to the narrow rivers of light that fill the empty space. All of the plant life is concentrated around these areas, though they were like that long before the Crackening (the worldwide tectonic event that split the earth). As such, almost all of the consort settlements are around and some divided by the ravines.

Speaking of, the Armor refers to the consorts, which are turtles. It also is with regard to the fact that the ground itself acts as plated armor for Soter's Lair. Jake's past has to deal with how his mother was a chronic gambler and gambled away all of the money they had instead of paying bills or for necessities. Jake's armor here is the fact that he relied on willful ignorance and pretended like everything was okay instead of confronting his mom. One day, his mom was dragged out of their home by loan sharks, leaving Jake homeless. As a Mage of Light, he experienced/suffered from misfortune and by failing to confront the truth, he lost his home and only family.

The way he as a Mage experiences, suffers, and understands his aspect is very similar to how a Knight might protect themselves from/with theirs. This is a big reason why Dean Casuco (this session's Knight of Rage) and he are able to bond and empathize with each other so easily, and why they have such big influence over each other. In fact, both players' lands and quest are the only ones in this session to deal with war of some kind, but they engage with it in very different ways.

Consorts

The consorts of LOAAC are Turtles. Jake likes turtles. Before the Crackening, the turtles established some pretty developed (and heavily fortified) settlements throughout the dense network of heavily forested... well, forests. This is all before the event, however. Nowadays there's all sorts of disarray. There are (heavily fortified) bridges between plateaus, but something about the light coming from the chasms degrades them quickly.

Quest (and lore drop, because I just couldn't stop typing, I guess)

Jake initially believes his quest is to find out who is planning to assassinate the turtle king and prevent it from happening. Jake spends almost all of his time in the (heavily fortified) Grand Library trying to research the geopolitical history of LOAAC, and must go out to retrieve specific books to put together leads on who it might be. This is where most of the combat happens, as all the different settlements and kingdoms are unwelcoming to all outsiders, which leads to underling buildup around their (heavily fortified) borders.

At this point in the story, Jake and Kane have started to form feelings towards each other. It's some messy combination of Flushed and Caliginous, but humans don't really recognize the latter as romantic anyway, so it's fine (*Laughs maliciously*). They talk a lot in the downtime between getting to their respective destinations, as both of them have a lot of travel involved. There is a lot of conflict between the two, as a result of their entirely conflicting classpects (Mage of Light and Heir of Void), but a big help towards mending these is Kane's alexithymia sort of ensuring honesty. Kane has no clue how they feel, and so emotions don't serve as much of a hinderance clouding their reasoning (or so they think), and Jake has a certain soft spot for reasoning. Kane is also sort of like a project to Jake. If that sounds kind of toxic, that's because it is, but they work it out eventually. Jake craves understanding, and Kane is the unknowable. Hijinks ensue.

Quite early on into this sequence, much earlier than anyone else in their quests, Jake stumbles upon a very rare (and heavily fortified) book that was assumed to be lost, and upon returning it to the Grand Library, it acts as a key, opening up the entrance to Soter's (heavily fortified) den deep within the earth.

Jake finds Soter already awake, when his research concluded that he should be asleep still. He discovers that Soter has been manipulating the world population since the Crackening to become isolated and to put up walls between each other, almost a cross between a helicopter parent and a 1984 "big brother" type entity.

You see, even though Jake confronted his denizen early, none of the denizens in the session are sleeping. In cannon, the denizens are commissioned by Derse to spread pollution and whatnot, then they go to sleep until the player shows up. Here, they all independently decide "screw that" and do things their own way, constantly meddling with their lands. The true enemy of the players' sessions in Homestuck was "always already here" but in this session, this enemy that I have so diabolically not shared with you yet takes a more... "always on the horizon" approach to such prophesied schemes. This empties out the narrative niche for an antagonist, so why not just use the antagonists given by the game itself? A lot. Very a lot.

Soter, the meddling overseer of LOAAC, presents Jake with

The Choice.

Embrace the "tyranny" in front of you. Take your place as this session's damned overseer; render all that is Void known and annihilate with your bonds, or

Let Freedom Reign.

Considering the weight of his options gets him seriously donked up. From there, the threat of assassination seems so small in comparison. Whatever Jake chose, it leads him to his true Quest. He himself begins to isolate from everyone else, and eventually leaves his planet for Skaia after one last lecture from Dean about "not putting up with his egghead denizen's rampant and malodorous bullshit."

The only way anyone learns about this is from the turtle king on LOAAC, who tells Kane that "The Mage is going on a holy pilgrimage to Skaia!" and "That's really all that he told us!" after Kane abandons their quest and reaches LOAAC through the gates. Kane gets more in tune with their powers the more that everyone else forgets about them. Kane is nearing the top of their echeladder, and starts to fade into Void. It gets to the point where Kane begins getting impressions of being elsewhere, nowhere even, sometimes getting bouts of amnesia. This is because they begin to start occupying the empty places around Jake.

Jake cuts off communication with everyone else, and brute forces his way through the other lands, Prospit, any crack or foothold in the session that will get him closer to Skaia; he has to get to Skaia. Throughout this, he starts seeing glimpses of Kane in his peripheral vision. A gap in a bookshelf. In a shadow beneath a tree. In the window of a building. The pause between sentences. He sees their face in a crowd of thousands. He reads their name in almost every empty page. But Jake is nearing the top of his echeladder, too. He starts noticing more, his perception focuses, his senses keener. And Kane starts to go away.

The last time they talked to each other, before all this Choice mess, it was about questions. Kane believes that a truly good question is ruined when it is answered, and Jake vehemently disagrees. Jake argued that everything has meaning; that everything has a purpose. Kane simply laughed and said, "I don't." Kane doesn't know why Jake even bothered with them in the first place, but Jake didn't have the heart to tell them that he was still searching for it. Maybe that's why his eyes hurt so much all the time. Is it because he spends too much time with them open, endlessly flipping through texts or scanning for leads, when any moment not looking for a way to Skaia is a moment wasted? Or is it because every time he closes his eyes, he thinks he sees Kane in that taunting darkness behind his eyelids, unable to speak to him, but forced to remember that he didn't say goodbye, blink after arduous blink. Another question without an answer. Those are getting rarer.

The more powerful that Jake gets, the larger his sphere of understanding grows. Kane has only ever found (lost) themself on the outside of that bubble, looking in. Kane is aimless. They spend a hell of a lot of time going nowhere, and even as quickly as they're going, it's not enough. Maybe that's what Khaos meant by "he might not be found," that Jake might find them first? Another wasteful search for meaning. Those are getting rarer. But what good would that do if Kane can't exist around him anyway? Kane knows better than to ruin that one with an answer. This leads Kane to head off and find an ectobiology lab floating away into the furthest ring via accidentally using their Void powers and clipping into Alli's peripheral vison this time during a zoomed out view of the medium. Y'know, because she's a Seer of Space and can do that. This lab was knocked out of the orbit comprising the Veil of this session's medium near the start of the session during one of Lono's (Lono Anakoni, the Sylph of Hope) Hope Surges she used on Alli when Alli first was hit with her Seer powers. But it had to happen in order for Kane to find it and make everyone's ectobiology clones, and Seers are all about what "has to happen". I'll cover that more in another post. Also I promise that this is relevant to Jake's issues. Anyway, Kane does the ectobiology, I'll cover the specific sequence of events in another another post. The only place left in range for them to get to, though, is Derse (as Derse is also technically in the Furthest Ring). On Derse, Kane meets up with Hiro's and Lono's dream selves, and they direct Kane to one of the transportalizers that would lead to a frog temple, if there was one in this session (more on that in another post). Because there's no valid destination, the destination of choice is like a perfectly generic location in the medium (a default coordinate of sorts). In the same vein of a perfectly generic object. This happens to be the very center of the medium, the core of the battlefield. As this session is not a Null Session, and further, the Green Sun already exists, there is no tumor. It seems that Kane's quest really was to crawl out from the center of a planet.

A Seer's expertise surrounds that which "has to happen," and Jake has learned that he simply does not have as easy access to that information as Alli does. What he does know is that the Mage deals with "what is happening" a whole lot easier, and what's happening right now is very bad. He spends almost all of his downtime looking up at Skaia from Prospit, and it's bad. Yeah, that whole "always on the horizon" guy I was talking about earlier (remember him?), well he's not quite on the horizon yet, but he's getting there, and it's not good. Jake has to get to Skaia. And it's not good enough to just fly up there as his dream self. It has to be his awake self. It has to. He gets impressions from the information around him, allowing him to glean entire books from skimming multiple at a time. His friends haven't stopped reaching out to him. They've actually pestered him more, recently. He can't talk to them. Not yet. Not when he could do something. So he does. His alchemizing equipment is back at his room on LOAAC, so he delves into a new realm of experimentation and research: His fetch modus. By selecting all empty data, he can load an empty card onto a card, then retrieve it, then turn it into storage space and partitions. He duplicates his storage space a lot this way, then he begins captchaloguing anything and everything he can get his hands on. By storing two items, then selecting a string of 8 digits from the middle of their agglutinated item codes to load onto a card, he can essentially design items bitwise. He deduces offhand that there are only 2^48 possibilities in terms of item codes, and there are many dud items that don't even render properly. It takes a lot of effort and fine-tuning, as the only patterns he can tell between items that vary by a single bit are long-winded and not elegant, to say the least. Along the way, he discovers [bixqbx!q], a code for a dual-sided fountain and ballpoint pen named "Riptiditpir" that could turn into a shortsword with a dagger on the other end. That might've come in handy, if he already couldn't see danger approaching a mile away. Literally. For transportation, he settles on [PCHOOOk] which is an-- oh, wait, no that's a violin stuffed with a potted plant, a cinderblock, and.. is that shaving cream? That doesn't fit at all. After a brisk and completely necessary reanalysis of the entire understood system of bitwise alchemy to accommodate the god damned shaving cream, he settles on [PCHOOOOO], which is a rocket pack. Good enough. One last nap though, just for good measure, while the night surrounds him like a cold, distant blanket.

Now that Kane and Jake's sequence of events are nearly lined up, let's smash them into each other like two action figures in a shitty embrace. But not like that at all, actually.

Ascent To God-Tier (Feat. Kane Mendoza)

Jake wakes up during the peak of noon on LOHAW. Again. Its sun burns, but it's a familiar feeling, and Jake has spent a long time this session heavily fortifying himself against the natural degradation that comes with continuous exposure to Light. He dons his rocket pack and shoots up into the sky. Whenever he passes by one of the gates, it's as if he can almost "see" where it goes... except for the seventh gate. Jake has a bad feeling of uncertainty surrounding that one. from there, it's a straight shot to Skaia. As he approaches the huge ball of sky, something is wrong. Are the clouds... darkening? A bunch of small red portals pop up around its atmosphere, almost like shields. Jake blitzes through the calculations in his head. There's not enough time to course correct. He knows how these portals operate. They'll smash him right into the Earth during the Reckoning.

Kane finally peels himself out of the battlefield. Who knew that increasing the complexity of a place exponentially seven times would thin it out some? Not Kane. Kane wouldn't even consider that in the first place. Something's off. Was this place always so... bright? A bunch of chess people fight to the death around them. As chess people do. They don't see Kane walking around, too focused on trying to not die to focus on some weird fleshy person and their cat vaguely drifting on the edge of their vision. Whatever,

Jake forces his eyes shut, hoping to see Kane again, to tell them goodbye. Kane hasn't been there for a long time, though, and Jake knows better than to let something be meaningless. He opens his eyes and faces whatever purpose Skaia has for him, head on and oh, no. he. he just... He just passed them. It was a tight squeeze, too. A shield blocked the gap he flew through maybe an instant after he passed it. A few instants, perhaps? Lucky shot, then. The chances of that... no, he was certain he'd crash. What was Skaia up to? The portals were gone, now. Why did it put up a barrier for him? Why did it let Jake through? Was it some kind of-- Jake crashed hard into a river, injuring himself in the process. --distraction.

No. No, no, nonono. Jake forces himself to stand, falling over on the bank of the river. He couldn't move his arm, his right eye was pooling with blood, and he was certain that he had punctured... something. This place is a chessboard, why are there rocks in the river? Why are there trees?! He has to keep going. He can't die here, he's not allowed to. He has to do this, to preserve this session.

Kane didn't plan this far ahead. Turtle guy said that Jake was going to Skaia. Here's Skaia. What now? Kane wanders around aimlessly. Something about this place wasn't too keen on letting them do any sort of Voidy thing, as if this whole damn planet was being watched. Kane didn't even have full control of it yet. So it probably wouldn't do much of anything. Kane walked for several minutes until they saw something that surprisingly wasn't white, black, or red. It was a yellow stone in the distance with four tall yellow pillars on its corners. Kane started to walk towards it.

Jake was panicking. Blood loss was setting in, and his already limited powers began weakening. Screams from the clashing armies turned to indistinct ringing in his ears, but he had to keep pushing forward. At the very edge of his shrinking field of focus was his destination: His quest bed. There was one on LOAAC too, somewhere, and dying on that would have transported him here by combining with his dream self. But he couldn't do that. That's not an option for him. The closer he got, the less he could see. The less he could know. His bubble...

Kane approached the structure, noticing a stone pillow and the symbol for the Light aspect on it. On the other side of the bed, Jake was dragging himself towards Kane. Kane called out, breaking out in a sprint, but Jake couldn't hear them. Kane reached the stone bed first, and went to hold their badly injured friend.

"Kane." Jake muttered, barely a whisper. "I get it now," He looked up with bloody tears in his eyes. "I finally see you. You're beautiful." Kane tried to help Jake lay down.

"Jake, I don't--" A long blade exited the back of Kane's body. Jake coughed up more blood. Kane looked down at the double-bladed weapon that connected the two of them. Jake had... Jake...? "Wh-Why?" Jake fell backwards onto the bed, bringing Kane with him and driving Riptiditpir deeper into the both of them.

"not everything needs a purpose." Jake sighed.

Kane's death would be meaningless, as it always had to be. And Jake learned better than to argue otherwise. With his last surge of life, Jake pulled Kane into a long, eternal kiss. This is how it was always going to end. The Mage of Light destroys the Heir of Void by revoking them of their nonexistence. This is what Jake saw in the clouds, after all. Jake saw himself kill Kane over and over and over again. This is how he would save this session. This was what he chose. Then again, there really wasn't another option. When matter and anti-matter meet, they cancel out; they annihilate. Jake died with purpose, as he always had to do. And Kane knew better than to argue otherwise.

When someone's awake self dies, their dream self can be utilized as an extra life of sorts, so long as another player kisses the corpse before the injuries have time to affect the dream self, killing them too. When this happens, the person's dead awake self becomes their dream self. This does not work if a player's dream self is dead. Not existing in the first place, mechanically speaking, is not dead.

From this, Kane is revived and becomes nothing. Kane becoming nothing is the Heir of Void moment of all time. Kane becomes a God.

From dying on his quest bed, Jake is revived and becomes a God.

There was a reason that Jake had to die on his battlefield quest bed instead of his LOAAC quest bed. Dying on his LOAAC bed would have caused his dream self to fade from Prospit and appear on this bed before waking up as the God-tiered player. That wouldn't do. Dying like this doesn't happen in cannon, but essentially what it does here is function as a sort of wrong warp. SBURB is a game, first and foremost, so it would stand to reason that it uses game mechanics to achieve its very wacky prophetic paradox bullshit. It takes the locations of the quest beds in an index (LOAAC is 1, Battlefield is 0), and when you die on one, it warps your dream self to the next one in the index by subtracting 1. Following the item codes, it is likely that SBURB operates in base-64. So the location of the "quest bed" that Jake's dream-god self is transported to is the next one after 0. This is called an integer underflow error, and it causes the index to read whatever "location" is at the base-64 8-bit integer limit, which is position 281,474,976,710,656 in the index. Yeesh. Luckily, this happens to be 3 feet to the left. So he doesn't clip into Kane.

God-tier Mage of Light Jake is revived and instantly teleported off of the bed and falls on his God-tier butt. Unfortunately, Kane becoming nothing causes them to have disappeared completely, meaning that this whole scheme would have been utterly pointless if it wasn't fated to happen by wacky prophetic paradox bullshit. Point, Kane. For the rest of their conditional immortalities, Jake and Kane will continue to engage in this game of metaphysical-ontological one-upmanship with meaning/meaninglessness and bicker like an old married couple until the sun explodes.

Jake's "revealment bubble" causes God-tier Heir of Void Kane to stop not existing in front of Jake and they proceed to kiss the shit out of him. Let's give these two lovebirds some space, then, shall we?

[thebigcjart]

Fansession Character Songs

I know I’m not done yet with outlining all the characters for my Homestuck Fansession, but I was so compelled to make this post talking about what music I think fits the characters the best.

Kane Mendoza - Heir of Void

Main Song:

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7LL5Jv3cAZoqs4wnzTUWl3?si=Ilriw6lRQ5W158IoeI3LEA

Jake Alassa - Mage of Light

Main Song:

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ub5u3F79jawu18fGJYr9o?si=eBF1fxxkSWOYqCoAHAR_0w&pi=u-lXp2ygnkSYma

Alli Sharpe - Seer of Space

Main Song:

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6hvQa9S1BdFVHRxXjNl2LU?si=NkZxNAncReWUfOrAFqh5Dg&pi=u-GPlqGdMXTy-N

Mark Striker - Prince of Time

Main Song:

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6lZWWcK7saOUc3bgjCp4nU?si=2aL13dqzQxOHyIWgby5qRA&pi=u-QE4_8O0gTuGr

Hiro Hitoshi - Page of Heart

Main Song:

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5wmIZfOb4mJYv2badJtSL9?si=g1miMxnNRX2sx_7D6TNH7Q&pi=u-jWnJCAfQTn-J

Lono Anakoni - Sylph of Hope

Main Song:

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0cxdOHGwFWrhjnuTFUsWvs?si=GxmWSq0QSYylP5L1fKLPTA&pi=u-nB8wEwIrSISF

Dean Casuco - Knight of Rage

Main Song:

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/49vEee1VY9SAYkBJ6Tdj3O?si=wc3RnFDbQt-RLc-fQW5Kug&pi=u-SRw3_w9fTMif

Honorable mentions:

Jakane (Jake x Kane ship)

Alternate Mark main song

Session Theme

[thebigcjart]

—cryptoGenesis [CG] began pestering phrostedPhalanx [PP] at 14:19–

CG: i have to go get a throne

PP: A what

CG: a throne

PP: THATS your quest?

PP: Going to get a chair.

CG: thats what theyre telling me

PP: No fair!!!

PP: I have to go kill a guy

CG: thats not too bad

PP: Yes it is!!!

PP: He’s super powerful and is the reason for all the gunk in everyone’s business!!!

CG: you have gunk on your planet?

PP: Mostly in all the places I want to go

CG: so libraries computer labs and the like

PP: All these books are gunked :(

CG: thats a sad thing?

PP: Very sad.

CG: :(

PP: So what else do you have to do for your quest?

CG: get the throne and bring it to the surface

PP: The throne?

PP: Not just any throne?

CG: yup

PP: Well?

CG: well what

PP: What’s the throne called?

CG: what do you mean

PP: It’s a “the” so it has to have some deeper title

CG: i dont think it has to

PP: Oh not this again

PP: Does it or does it not have a name?

CG: how should i know

PP: Can you maybe ask then???

CG: ugh

CG: puta actitud

PP: Well?

CG: they call it khaoss throne

PP: Khaoss throne?

CG: well no its underlined khaos has an apostrophe and throne is capitalized

PP: Khaos’s Throne?

CG: yup

PP: Why didn’t you just say that???

CG: oh i just dont care

PP: Then WHY did you bother correcting me???

CG: because i know that you care?

PP: oh

CG: anyway i got a chair to get

CG: bye

PP: bye then

—cryptoGenesis [CG] stopped pestering phrostedPhalanx [PP]—

[thebigcjart]

Here are some extra bits on Jake!

Again, I'm trying to focus on getting this stuff out of my brain and onto the screen, and not so much an all the little details. I'll get a stick up my butt and do those in a hyperfocus overdrive somewhere down the line.

Infodump under the cut, as per the uzh

Strife Specibus

Jake's strife specibus is penkind, because he read once that the pen is mightier than the sword, and even though Dean (Dean Casuco, another member of the group home, I'll talk more about him later) has proven him wrong on several occasions, he has read too many political dramas to ignore the HARD FACTS (despite the blatant amount of empires that have fallen via brawn).

Fetch Modus

The Mage of Light is predisposed for information processing, so what better for him than to just give him all the data at once? Whenever Jake captchalogues something, the item's code is stored in the current position of the pointer (in base 64, to account for the 64 possible characters that could occupy each position: 0-9, a-z, A-Z, ?, and !), if the data at the pointer reads [00000000], otherwise it'll just bounce out. The boundaries between one item code and another item code are arbitrary, so [...11111111,00000000...] would be stored identically to [...1111,11110000,0000...], and the only difference is what string of 8 digits Jake selects to load onto a card.

When Jake needs an item, he takes an empty card and moves the pointer to select a string of 8 digits. These 8 digits of data correspond to the item's code that you might find on the back of a card containing it. Jake needs to be careful when interpreting and interacting with the wrong data, as being even one position off can result in a completely different object and "Seriously donk up the whole organization!" as Jake might put it. Loading the item onto the card sets the selected 8 digits to [00000000] in his sylladex's memory, and turns the card into a physical object until stored back in memory off of the card. Jake can load up to 4 cards at any given time and can add more storage by turning a blank card into 8 positions of memory.

On the back of his fetch modus, there are two buttons that allow him to completely format his entire sylladex's memory to either all 0s or all !s.

Internet Browser (and Denizen)

Unlike Kane's denizen, Khaos, Soter is pretty straight forward with any symbolism and game role. I'll cover Jake's quest in another post, though.

So, the browser is heavily inspired by Brave, featuring a gray bar on the top and bottom and an orange middle with some branding. The branding is a watermark that appears on every single webpage, and Jake sometimes feels as though it's... watching him.

Jake has spent many years mastering this browser, and can access every feature through hotkey shortcuts, and has not used the mouse in a long time.

Soter (the browser) has an annoying habit of flagging many totally innocent websites and links as "potentially hazardous," which Jake treats with the same amount of caution as those guys feeding some lizard named veno-moose a banana and scratching its chin. The entire world's knowledge is on the internet, and nothing is going to stop Jake from accessing it. Many will try, though, and Jake's browser of choice is leading the charge.

Soter (the denizen) is similar to Hemera and Nix with the swoopy scarfrobes, but Soter has scarfrobes going in both directions. The cross on his upper chest, then swirl behind him, before covering his feet. One is a dark red and the other is a dark grey. I originally wanted to have him be a tiny head in an obnoxiously large suit of armor, but I also want to match the style of the denizens actually shown in cannon.

Soter, much like Jake's ties to Jupiter/Tin, is a preserver god in greek mythology, and provides protection and salvation for many. Hense the protective themes.

[thebigcjart]

Fansession Masterpost

Kane Mendoza - Heir of Void

Kane misc info

Land of Hollows and Wastes - Kane's quest

Jake Alassa - Mage of Light

Jake misc info

Land of Armor and Cliffs - Jake's quest

Alli Sharpe - Seer of Space

Alli misc info

Land of Cities and Paths - Alli's quest

Mark Striker - Prince of Time

Mark misc info

Land of Acid and Fjords - Mark's quest

Hiro Hitoshi - Page of Heart

Hiro misc info

Land of Dungeons and Steppe - Hiro's quest

Lono Anakoni - Sylph of Hope

Lono misc info

Land of Luster and Mire - Lono's quest

Dean Casuco - Knight of Rage

Dean misc info

Land of Barracks and Plains

Outcome of the session

The Cherubs

Land of Gravity and Mantle

Land of Prophecy and Stormclouds

[thebigcjart]

Finally got this guy out onto the page lol.

"This poorly closeted gentleman is named JAKE ALASSA. Behind his consistently furrowed brow is a CURIOUS SOUL, who is only barely better at talking to BOOKS than people. Jake cares deeply about his FAMILY, new and old, to the point where he would take on THE CITY (and lose) to protect the GROUP HOME. Said family makes fun of his UNFORTUNATELY CRASS naming tendencies, but he loves said family anyway. Jake was found by his now big sister LONO ANAKONI after being GENTLY KICKED OUT of a local library for staying overnight. He always wants to help in supporting the group home, but is always told no because he has LEGENDARILY BAD LUCK when it comes to holding a job and cannot afford to even chip in. To compensate, he GROUPHOMESCHOOLS the younger members of the group home and also KANE MENDOZA. Jake is deeply, deeply fascinated by Kane. Jake had unknowingly interacted with them on several occasions, even FALLING ASLEEP on Kane before convincing them to follow him into the DINGY BASEMENT of a LOCAL BAR. Oh, did he not mention that the basement is also the group home? Sorry, he forgets that people don’t know the full context for a lot of the things he says. Kane, famously, DIDN’T CARE about being homeless, but Jake, famously, CARED A LOT, so he EXPERTLY PERSUADED Kane to leave the streets and move in. Kane’s CONDITION had caused some SOCIAL CONFLICTS in the group home when they moved in, but now Jake is trying to teach them EMOTIONS 101, and he prays that maybe HIRO HITOSHI will start taking notes from watching Kane’s progress. No luck so far."

I ran out of spoons partway through the design process, so I only sprited up his head, symbol, and shorts before needing to tie it all up for posting. Assume he has a lose flannel over his undershirt. I might redo this in more detail at a later point in time but idk. Might just keep the next few really simple and easy until I'm more juiced up to get back into the hard stuff. Also might switch over to GIMP, as MS Paint is sort of draining my motivation hardcore. It's got the charm I like but I have more freedom with GIMP. Expect things to change a little in the near future.

Jake was born in America, but his last name comes from "Alasa" which I forget entirely what language/region I got it from, but it means "shield". This is also where the phalanx in his chumhandle comes from.

Speaking of, his "UNFORTUNATELY CRASS naming tendencies" lead his shortened chumhandle in pesterlogs to be "PP" along with his surname featuring "ass" right in the middle. He does not recognize these little slip ups, for he is far too interested in the denotations of words rather than their connotations.

Their symbol is derivative of the alchemical symbol of Jupiter/Tin, which you can kind of see by the contour of the parchment edge and the quill. To the ancient world, Tin was the perserver, also representing Zeus/Jupiter, who oversaw the entire land from the sky, sending down concentrated bolts of Light. This echoes Jake's overprotective nature and need for understanding and knowledge as a Mage of Light. Tin was also used in rituals to promote prosperity, abundance, and stimulation. Which further reinforces the ties that the aspect of Light has to fortune, as well as knowledge.

Jake acts very passively with his Aspect for a long time, trying to play the role of a Seer rather than a Mage before the session begins, but this is a misuse of his skillset, and leads to him neglecting his own needs and desires. This also causes some minor contention with Alli, the Seer of Space, as they both kind of compete for the "team helper" position under Lono, the real leader of the team and group home. Of course, both Jake's and Alli's quests aim to resolve this (albeit kind of weak) beef by separating their roles in the grand scheme of the session.

I'll cover the lands and denizens and quests and junk after I get all the members of the group home drawn up, as they are the players of my fansession, but Jake's quest requires him to break out of his role of the preserver to understand how to use the Light to benefit himself, for once.

[thebigcjart]

SO HAPPY TO FINALLY SHARE MY BLORBOS love them sm

"This young adult is named chose the name KANE MENDOZA. Kane is the kind of person who finds most things GENERALLY DISINTERESTING. Not for a lack of trying, but as a symptom of their ALEXITHYMIA. They don’t mind it, which is its own punchline. Kane woke up one day at the ripe old age of SIXTEEN, and cannot remember anything before that point. They are always maybe probably tired (unconfirmed) due to some nasty SLEEPING PROBLEMS. They do not like to sleep because they do not know if they will wake up again. They do not dream. It is only darkness. They have A VERY HANDSOME CAT named CAZADOR to occupy them during the latearly hours of the dawn instead of sleeping. They think they like GARDENING and PARKOUR, and are apparently VERY SKILLED at those two things in particular? At least, that’s what the other members of the GROUP HOME remind them they appear to like, and that’s good enough for Kane. The group home in question is an ILLEGALLY OCCUPIED basement belonging to a VERY UNDERSTANDING bar; though, technically being homeless, anywhere they occupy is considered illegally so by THE CITY. Kane was most likely perfectly indifferent towards being homeless, but JAKE ALASSA, a member of the group home, was most likely DEFINITELY NOT and scooped them up into their current SUBTERRANIAN SUBTERRANEAN LIVING ARRANGEMENT. Kane finds Jake... Interesting, maybe?"

Kane is likely Venezuelan judging from the dialect of Spanish they were speaking before they re-learned English (they most likely knew it as a young kid but for some unknown reason stopped speaking it for several years).

Their symbol is the alchemical symbol of gold, modified to look like the thing it represents, the sun. A black sun is a symbol commonly associated with Nigredo, an alchemical component said to represent emptiness and the first of many steps to obtaining the Philosopher's Stone.

I'll cover the lands and denizens and quests and junk after I get all the members of the group home drawn up, as they are the players of my fansession, but Mendoza as a surname generally means "Cold Mountain" in most translations, but the Basque root "mendi" suggests that the name means "Son of the mountain dweller" which is pertinent for lore reasons :)))

Time to cover the elephant in the room, Kane does not have a Dream Self. They probably (tho not certainly) would have been Derse, but they were straight up born without one. Speaking of...

"They were born???" I hear you inquire at great volumes in advance. And yes, they were born. To those of you not so well versed in Homestuck Lore, the convention is that the players are either Paradox Clones of themselves or Paradox Offspring of other Paradox Clones through Ectobiology. The paradox being that they don't really start anywhere, they are their own parent/descendant, etc etc. However, Kane actually has biological parents. Or, at least their past life did. No one has tried to reach out to them since they awoke. I might go into this topic later on when I infodump about their quest as this session's ectobiologist. All I'll say on the matter now is that their Chumhandle is related to this discrepancy in the status quo.

AND SPEAKING OF DISCREPENCIES IN THE STATUS QUO, y'all just wait until I get to the cherubs...

Ohh this is going to be great, just you wait.

Just the sprite in case u wanted it :3

Look at them

Look at my pal

[thebigcj]

I love my tragic yaoi ocs

—cryptoGenesis [CG] began pestering phrostedPhalanx [PP] at 14:19–

CG: i have to go get a throne

PP: A what

CG: a throne

PP: THATS your quest?

PP: Going to get a chair.

CG: thats what theyre telling me

PP: No fair!!!

PP: I have to go kill a guy

CG: thats not too bad

PP: Yes it is!!!

PP: He’s super powerful and is the reason for all the gunk in everyone’s business!!!

CG: you have gunk on your planet?

PP: Mostly in all the places I want to go

CG: so libraries computer labs and the like

PP: All these books are gunked :(

CG: thats a sad thing?

PP: Very sad.

CG: :(

PP: So what else do you have to do for your quest?

CG: get the throne and bring it to the surface

PP: The throne?

PP: Not just any throne?

CG: yup

PP: Well?

CG: well what

PP: What’s the throne called?

CG: what do you mean

PP: It’s a “the” so it has to have some deeper title

CG: i dont think it has to

PP: Oh not this again

PP: Does it or does it not have a name?

CG: how should i know

PP: Can you maybe ask then???

CG: ugh

CG: puta actitud

PP: Well?

CG: they call it khaoss throne

PP: Khaoss throne?

CG: well no its underlined khaos has an apostrophe and throne is capitalized

PP: <u>Khaos’s Throne</u>?

CG: yup

PP: Why didn’t you just say that???

CG: oh i just dont care

PP: Then WHY did you bother correcting me???

CG: because i know that you care?

PP: oh

CG: anyway i got a chair to get

CG: bye

PP: bye then

—cryptoGenesis [CG] stopped pestering phrostedPhalanx [PP]—