#meenah is used to this .

[roenais]

does anyone following me keep up with homestuck. no? too bad. look at my girlfriend.

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

KANKRI: Hey, are you 9ffended 6y the w9rd "6itch"? I'm g9ing t9 send y9u a hate an9n, 6ut I saw that y9u g9 6y she / her and I respect w9men.

MEENAH: dont let anyfin stop you from bein a hater king

KANKRI: S9rry, this is my first time sending a hate message s9 I'm a little nerv9us. Thank y9u f9r 6eing supp9rtive.

MEENAH: take ya time

[audieaudieaudie]

[poorlydrawndamara]

i'll pay you 5 dollars to kick cronus down a flight of stairs.

[hey babe, vwhats hap-]

[VWOAH!]

[OOF! OWV! FUCK! SHIT!]

[Damara, we may all 6e dead 6ut that d9es n9t give you the right t9 just-]

[SHUT UP.]

[E-excuse me?]

[I SAID...]

[SHUT. UP.]

[beach how tf?!]

[The only way to do that is-!]

[No........]

[AHEM.]

[FUCK YOU.]

[FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.]

[YOURE COOL.]

[AND FUCK YOU,]

[IM OUT.]

[homestuckconfession]

the concept of the slur replacement project feels a bit like historical revisionism? especially considering how much i see people recommend it as the recommended way of reading homestuck. it's sanitizing down the more unpalatable bits of homestuck to make it seem more friendly and wholesome (which seems incredibly common among homestuck fans in general, especially among those who like to pretend the epilogues never happened, which is a whole other discussion i won't get into rn), and that just feels weird. not to mention the execution of it is very poor in general. the "future arachnids grip" joke is funny actually, and the change they made to make it "later arachnids grip" not only makes it a weaker joke (as it was initially a play on how the concept of gayness isn't really a thing to trolls), but also introduces an inconsistency in the writing, as it only does this change for vriska, drawing more attention to it. there's also a fucking... random bit where iirc for one line they replace a mention of bill cosby with... gnomeo and juliet? i think? which is not only a baffling decision that they don't, but is technically introducing an anachronism because that movie didn't come out until 2011. the writing they used to replace things in general just doesn't feel very homestuck-y, and it always feels clunky and awkward.

.

[gelarshiesprofruitboarder]

get fucking uh…… tv girled…. yeah…

[forgetful-river]

More Namilia SS24 lewks

[enzymedevice]

Haven’t posted art in so long because I’ve had the most terrible art block and am failing at commission work so hard that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to upload stuff without anxiety, oops. Anyway, homed stuck

[landoffreaksandfrogs]

the sylph of light has been waiting a very very long time to meet you.

[dingodad]

someone mentioned forum.homestuck.xyz so i went back to reread the thread about whether or not alternia's worldbuilding sucks for like the tenth time to make sure i was still right. pleased to announce that yes, 4 years later i was still right

[birchbow]

ah hello stranger, i didn't see you come in, I was deep in contemplation of the nine-year saga of my 430,000+ word alien bug clown erotica doorstopper hey where are you going

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

MEENAH: bye N---ERDS

KANKRI, MITUNA, and CRONUS: [Turn to respond]

MEENAH: oh you all turned around. wow

[axlestuck]

Could you make aranea <3 meenah shipping edit please?

Here they are!

[crowsapprentice]

A handful of dancestor sprites, since the wiki's versions were WEBPs that scaled themselves up when I converted them to PNG's and they turned all blurry.

Please let me know if these sprites do anything funky when you try to use them.

[whack-patty]

And now for more kid doodles, sing 2 edition! I drew these Busters and so they requested the movie. Shenanigans ensued

Ash was their bigtime favorite but they also liked Meenah, Clay, and "the nice monkey"

Clay that one of them was VERY EXCITED ABOUT and "draw another Ash" "okay, here you go" "they can be brother and sister"

These specific drawings don't have commentaries attached!

some fantastic thoughts by the girls include:

"What's her name?" "That's Rosita!" "I can say that! R...ose-ah-deet-ah."

[Nooshy comes on screen] "(SIGH...) I want to be JUST like her when I grow up. I'll know how to ((she starts listing tons of dance moves that I'm fairly certain are made up. The only one I remember is something about bounce spinning on her butt)) and YOU can be my student, and I'll treat you nice." "Thanks :^)"

[The space stage comes on screen] "If my parents would only let me, I would buy two rockets and have a clubhouse in space." "Oh yeah?" "Yeah. and you could come with me if you want."

"How did Clay Calloway's wife die?" (((they say his full name every time just like in the movie lol))) "I dunno! I think she was sick." "No. it was a big fight with guns and bad guys and (starts making shooting fighting explosion noises) and the bad guy SHOT HER AND SHE DIED"

"How old is he? ((points at Clay))" "I dunno! Maybe in his-" "I would say one hundred years old. Yeah, I would say one hundred. Because his hair is so white. His tea has peanut butter in it."

[kozzax]

Dancestors and Their Implications on Classpecting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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