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Your professor will not be happy with you if he says the Stanford Prison Experiment shows human nature and you say it shows the nature of white middle class college-aged boys.
Like he will not be happy at all.
For real though. That experiment. Scary shit.
This reminds me of a discussion that I read once which said Lord of the Flies would have turned out a hell of a lot differently if it was a private school of young girls (who are expected to be responsible and selfless instead), or a public school where the children weren’t all from an inherently entitled, emotionally stunted social class (studies have shown that people in lower socioeconomic classes show more compassion for others).
Or that the same premise with children raised in a different culture than the toxic and opressive British Empire and it’s emphasis on social hierarchy and personal wealth and status.
And that what we perceive as the unchangable truth deep inside humanity because of things like Lord of the Flies and the Stanford Prison Experiment, is just the base truths about what happens when you remove any accountabilty controlling one social group with an overwhelming sense of entitlement and an inability to feel compassion.
I will always reblog this.
I just wanna say that the Lord of the Flies was explicitly written about high-class private school boys to make this exact point. Golding wrote Lord of the Flies partially to refute an earlier novel about this same subject: The Coral Island by
R.M. Ballantyne. Golding thought it was absolutely absurd that a bunch of privileged little shits would set up some sort of utopia, so his book shows them NOT doing that.
This is also generally true about most psychological experiments.
There’s an experiment called “The Ultimatum Game”. It goes something like this.
Subject A is given an amount of money (Say, $100).
Subject A must offer Subject B some percentage of that money.
If Subject B accepts Subject A’s offer, both get the agreed upon amount of money. If Subject B refuses, no one gets any money.
The most common result was believed to be that people favored 50/50 splits. Anything too low was rejected; people wanted fairness. This was believed to be universal.
And then a researcher went to Peru to do the experiment with members of the indigenous Machiguenga population, and was baffled to find that the results were totally different.
Because, to the Machiguenga, refusing any amount of free money (even an unfair amount) was considered crazy.
So the researcher took his work on the road (to 14 other ‘small scale’ societies and tribes) , and to his shock found the results varied wildly depending on where the test was done.
In fact, the “universal” result? Was an outlier.
And that’s the problem. 96% percent of test subjects for psychological research come from 12% of the population. Stuff that we consider to be universal facts of human nature… even things like optical illusions, just… aren’t.
You can read an article about it here. But the crux of it is that psychology is plagued with confirmation bias, and people are shaped more by their environment than we realize.
THATS WHY CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY EXISTS PEOPLE. Yup.
I remember first learning that you can cry from any emotion, that emotions are chemical levels in your brain and your body is constantly trying to maintain equilibrium. so if one emotion sky rockets, that chemical becomes flagged and signals the tear duct to open as an exit to release that emotion packaged neatly within a tear. Everything made sense after learning that. That sudden stability of your emotions after crying. How crying is often accompanied by the inability to feel any other emotion in that precise moment. And it is especially beautiful knowing that it is even possible to experience so much beauty or love or happiness that your body literally can’t hold on to all of it. So what I’ve learned is that crying signifies that you are feeling as much as humanely possible and that is living to the fullest extent. So keep feeling and cry often and as much as needed
SHIT WHAT
Also let yourself cry. It really is a biochemical release valve to dump out all the chemicals that make you feel stuff.
I honestly think one reason men in western culture have so many problems is that we don’t let them cry, and literally their brains get stuffed with all this crap that doesn’t have a release valve. Men, please cry. You’ll feel better. It’s ok. You are not lesser for taking care of your health.
This is why tears from different emotions look different under an electron microscope. They’re literally made up of different things.
Happy tears are structurally different than sad tears than angry tears than overwhelmed tears etc.
I got my heart broken and I survived, I failed 3 courses in university and graduated, I got rejected in the very first job I applied for and got promoted yesterday, I went through hard times with my family but then two years later, we laughed our hearts out over lunch, The closest friends disappointed me several times but I made new friends and loved them with all my heart. I did it once, I can do it again.
In spite of what everyone including himself expects from him and assumes of him, Steven does not actually have romantic feelings for Connie and they’re eventually going to have to deal with that. That coming to some sort of head and complicating their relationship just feels like something that’d fit right in with SU’s overarching themes.
I dunno, it’s very much personal bias, but I just really want more stories about people wanting to be in love and expecting to be in love and then just, not being in love. Same with sexual attraction really. As an aroace who spent literally eight years trying to figure out how to find true love, that’s something that deeply resonates with me.
And Steven, well if you look closely Steven doesn’t seem to be quite as clearly into Connie romantically as Connie into Steven romantically. She’s the one who almost kisses him. She’s the one who leans into him when they dance, and while there are some fairly subtle blushes on his part here and there, Steven doesn’t really do stuff like that, near as I can tell. Though honestly Connie could be projecting too, given her infatuation with grand fantasy and its typical markers of such things.
I think the line that most seals me on it all, though, is “When Connie grows up and becomes president what is that gonna make me? First Boy?!” said by Steven when he’s worried he won’t grow up after realizing his body’s been kinda frozen in time for a couple years.
The assumption that they’ll be married is given equal weight with the assumption that Connie will literally become the President.
PS: Do note that none of this presumes Steven would have to be gay or aro or something for it to work. Not falling in love with this one girl =/= not falling in love with any girls at all. DS
So, hm, I guess it’s probably nothing since it was never really pointed out by anyone in the episode, but am I the only one who got a bit suspicious seeing those dead sunflowers? Specifically, seeing how few there were and how torn up they’d gotten. If kindergardens are supposed to be these lifeless places, then wouldn’t that just leave the same sunflowers, but wilted? Why were there so few of them, so very torn up. Like, the results were worse than what you’d expect if you uprooted the things and left them lying there.
Also there was an angry corrupted gem lying in rest right next to them, so, you know.
my night manager (who is a gay man) and i sometimes sit down and exchange stories and tidbits about our sexuality and our experiences in the queer cultural enclave. and tonight he and i were talking about the AIDS epidemic. he’s about 50 years old. talking to him about it really hit me hard. like, at one point i commented, “yeah, i’ve heard that every gay person who lived through the epidemic knew at least 2 or 3 people who died,” and he was like “2 or 3? if you went to any bar in manhattan from 1980 to 1990, you knew at least two or three dozen. and if you worked at gay men’s health crisis, you knew hundreds.” and he just listed off so many of his friends who died from it, people who he knew personally and for years. and he even said he has no idea how he made it out alive.
it was really interesting because he said before the aids epidemic, being gay was almost cool. like, it was really becoming accepted. but aids forced everyone back in the closet. it destroyed friendships, relationships, so many cultural centers closed down over it. it basically obliterated all of the progress that queer people had made in the past 50 years.
and like, it’s weird to me, and what i brought to the conversation (i really couldn’t say much though, i was speechless mostly) was like, it’s so weird to me that there’s no continuity in our history? like, aids literally destroyed an entire generation of queer people and our culture. and when you think about it, we are really the first generation of queer people after the aids epidemic. but like, when does anyone our age (16-28 i guess?) ever really talk about aids in terms of the history of queer people? like it’s almost totally forgotten. but it was so huge. imagine that. like, dozens of your friends just dropping dead around you, and you had no idea why, no idea how, and no idea if you would be the next person to die. and it wasn’t a quick death. you would waste away for months and become emaciated and then, eventually, die. and i know it’s kinda sophomoric to suggest this, but like, imagine that happening today with blogs and the internet? like people would just disappear off your tumblr, facebook, instagram, etc. and eventually you’d find out from someone “oh yeah, they and four of their friends died from aids.”
so idk. it was really moving to hear it from someone who experienced it firsthand. and that’s the outrageous thing - every queer person you meet over the age of, what, 40? has a story to tell about aids. every time you see a queer person over the age of 40, you know they had friends who died of aids. so idk, i feel like we as the first generation of queer people coming out of the epidemic really have a responsibility to do justice to the history of aids, and we haven’t been doing a very good job of it.
Younger than 40.
I’m 36. I came out in 1995, 20 years ago. My girlfriend and I started volunteering at the local AIDS support agency, basically just to meet gay adults and meet people who maybe had it together a little better than our classmates. The antiretrovirals were out by then, but all they were doing yet was slowing things down. AIDS was still a death sentence.
The agency had a bunch of different services, and we did a lot of things helping out there, from bagging up canned goods from a food drive to sorting condoms by expiration date to peer safer sex education. But we both sewed, so… we both ended up helping people with Quilt panels for their beloved dead.
Do the young queers coming up know about the Quilt? If you want history, my darlings, there it is. They started it in 1985. When someone died, his loved ones would get together and make a quilt panel, 3’x6’, the size of a grave. They were works of art, many of them. Even the simplest, just pieces of fabric with messages of loved scrawled in permanent ink, were so beautiful and so sad.
They sewed them together in groups of 8 to form a panel. By the 90s, huge chunks of it were traveling the country all the time. They’d get an exhibition hall or a gym or park or whatever in your area, and lay out the blocks, all over the ground with paths between them, so you could walk around and see them. And at all times, there was someone reading. Reading off the names of the dead. There was this huge long list, of people whose names were in the Quilt, and people would volunteer to just read them aloud in shifts.
HIV- people would come in to work on panels, too, of course, but most of the people we were helping were dying themselves. The first time someone I’d worked closely with died, it was my first semester away at college. I caught the Greyhound home for his funeral in the beautiful, tiny, old church in the old downtown, with the bells. I’d helped him with his partner’s panel. Before I went back to school, I left supplies to be used for his, since I couldn’t be there to sew a stitch. I lost track of a lot of the people I knew there, busy with college and then plunged into my first really serious depressive cycle. I have no idea who, of all the people I knew, lived for how long.
The Quilt, by the way, weighs more than 54 tons, and has over 96,000 names. At that, it represents maybe 20% of the people who died of AIDS in the US alone.
There were many trans women dying, too, btw. Don’t forget them. (Cis queer women did die of AIDS, too, but in far smaller numbers.) Life was and is incredibly hard for trans women, especially TWOC. Pushed out to live on the streets young, or unable to get legal work, they were (and are) often forced into sex work of the most dangerous kinds, a really good way to get HIV at the time. Those for whom life was not quite so bad often found homes in the gay community, if they were attracted to men, and identified as drag queens, often for years before transitioning. In that situation, they were at the same risk for the virus as cis gay men.
Cis queer women, while at a much lower risk on a sexual vector, were there, too. Helping. Most of the case workers at that agency and every agency I later encountered were queer women. Queer woman cooked and cleaned and cared for the dying, and for the survivors. We held hands with those waiting for their test results. Went out on the protests, helped friends who could barely move to lie down on the steps of the hospitals that would not take them in — those were the original Die-Ins, btw, people who were literally lying down to die rather than move, who meant to die right there out in public — marched, carted the Quilt panels from place to place. Whatever our friends and brothers needed. We did what we could.
OK, that’s it, that’s all I can write. I keep crying. Go read some history. Or watch it, there are several good documentaries out there. Don’t watch fictional movies, don’t read or watch anything done by straight people, fuck them anyway, they always made it about the tragedy and noble suffering. Fuck that. Learn about the terror and the anger and the radicalism and the raw, naked grief.
I was there, though, for a tiny piece of it. And even that tiny piece of it left its stamp on me. Deep.
2011
A visual aid: this is the Quilt from the Names Project laid out on the Washington Mall
I was born (in Australia) at the time that the first AIDS cases began to surface in the US. While I was a witness after it finally became mainstream news (mid-85), I was also a child for much of it. For me there was never really a world Before. I’m 35 now and I wanted to know and understand what happened. I have some recommendations for sources from what I’ve been reading lately:
And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemicby Randy Shiltsis a seminal work on the history of HIV/AIDS. It’s chronological and gives an essential understanding of all the factors that contributed to the specific history of the virus’ spread through the US and the rest of the world, the political landscape into which it landed (almost the worst possible)*. Investigative journalism and eyewitness account. Shilts was himself an AIDS casualty in 1994.
Larry Kramer is a pretty polarising figure and he had issues with the sexual politics of gay New York to begin with (see: Faggots) but he’s polarising for a reason: he’s the epidemic’s Cassandra. Reports from the Holocaustcollects his writings on AIDS.
I don’t think I can actually bring myself to read memoirs for the same reason I can’t read about the Holocaust or Stalinist Russia any more. But I have a list:
Read or watchThe Normal Heart. Read or watch Angels in America. Read The Mayor of Castro Streetor watchMilk. Dallas Buyers Clubhas its issues but it’s also heartbreaking because the characters are exactly the politically unsavory people used to justify the lack of spending on research and treatment. It’s also an important look at the exercise of agency by those afflicted and abandoned by their government/s, how they found their own ways to survive. There’s a film of And the Band Played Onbut JFC it’s a mess. You need to have read the book.
Everyone should read about the history of the AIDS epidemic. Especially if you are American, especially if you are a gay American man. HIV/AIDS is not now the death sentence it once was but before antiretrovirals it was just that. It was long-incubating and a-symptomatic until, suddenly, it was not.
Read histories. Read them because reality is complex and histories attempt to elucidate that complexity. Read them because past is prologue and the past is always, in some form, present. We can’t understand here and now if we don’t know about then.
*there are just SO MANY people I want to punch in the throat.
They’ve recently digitized the Quilt as well with a map making software, I spent about three hours looking through it the other day and crying. There are parts of it that look like they were signed by someone’s peers in support and memoriam, and then you realize that the names were all written in the same writing.
That these were all names of over 20 dead people that someone knew, often it was people who’d all been members of a club or threatre group.
As well, there are numerous people who were buried in graves without headstones, having been disenfranchised from their families. I read this story the other day on that which went really in depth (I would warn that it highlights the efforts of a cishet woman throughout the crisis): http://arktimes.com/arkansas/ruth-coker-burks-the-cemetery-angel/Content?oid=3602959
I’ve had several conversations recently with younger guys for whom this part of our history isn’t well known. Here are some resources for y'all. Please, take care of one another.
this is so hard to read or even think about but… it’s so important. it’s so important to understand just the …overwhelming SCALE of this. how many people died while the government did NOTHING.
Reblogging for pride
Never forget your fallen. Your people were nearly annihilated in an epidemic. Never forget how lucky we are, never forget how they tried to let us die.
So I’ve been thinking about Hope as the strongest Aspect and how some people insist that surely it can’t bear that title alone because it and its counterpart Rage must be equal, among other things.
And I think I’ve hit on something interesting there. Because while Gamzee’s application of Rage is incredibly flexible (he can be almost anywhere at any time, have all the weird little odds and ends he wants, etc) it’s never very powerful. Like, one of his greatest feats in the story is owning a costume.
And yes, there’s the fight with the black king. But the key thing there, the thing I realized just now, is that the revelation that Gamzee was critical to that fight happened long after the fight was concluded. When Aradia talked about the fight, she mentions their weapons, her time-clones, and Vriska’s dice. Gamzee’s not there. This is the meta nature of Rage. Gamzee inserts himself into the fight only after it’s done, and tears up the narrative coherence of it in the process by kinda sorta contradicting Aradia’s account of it. Then he upsets his impending beatdown at Equius’ hands by playing to his weaknesses and kills Nepeta offscreen, before being unceremoniously papped down without actually changing his ways at all. This is the Rage of which Tex spoke, the ability to make stories “go wrong”, the power of “bullshit”.
In contrast, almost everything Jake does is heavily foreshadowed and shrouded in layer upon layer of myth and reference. His biggest actions are momentuous fullfilments of seeming hundreds of little seeds sown thousands of pages in advance. Here is where I contradict taz a little, because when Jake is powered up by Aranea? I don’t think he could have done anything in that position. I don’t think that at all. Hope is among other things the power of creativity, of “good storytelling”, and in accordance with the rules of “good storytelling” at such a momentuous occasion it can accomplish only what has been built up in advance. Jake is strong here because his strength has been built up, and he can make Brain Ghost Dirk (and only Brain Ghost Dirk) real specifically on account of Brain Ghost Dirk having been established in advance as a facet of Jake’s own nature and ability. And he can do so in part because, yes, that’s a Princess Bride reference, and mythological parallels are again “good storytelling”.
This is why, on a meta level, Hope is strong but somewhat inflexible, while Rage is weak but versatile.
This is how Eridan operates as well. His genocide complex, his fascination with magic, all of these things are set up well in advance. His emotional theatrics and dumb antics with the angels undercut this, “destroying” the foreshadowing as it were, but everything he does is set up in advance and returned to repeatedly before it happens. By contrast, Gamzee’s foreshadowing consists of what, stating that typing in all lowercase feels unnatural and mentioning that he wants to make Equius happy?
The path a Hero of Doom treads is bleak and pessimistic, following a nearly constant downward arc with little exception. They are beset on all sides by disasters, and their attempts at rectifying these carry heavy costs. Nearly everything Sollux does is an attempt at averting disaster, and these attempts often carry heavy costs. He creates and plays the game in an attempt to save his species from extinction, he saves Feferi from meteors (losing his life in the process), he fights Eridan to stop him from joining Noir (losing his sight), and he sacrifices his life again in Cascade to get the meteor to the Sun (and away from Noir). At this point Sollux bows out, removing himself from any significant role for the rest of the story (though a splinter of him is later brought back in Erisolsprite). Given how his story had gone up to this point and how little he had left to lose, this was probably for the best. Perhaps, as a Mage, a knower, knowing this was why he chose to do so.
Mituna’s part in the story is smaller, but he too is beset by loss and disaster. As the Ψiionic, he faces loss, being enslaved by the Condescension and reduced into a ship’s engine. As Mituna, he faces disaster, as (according to Aranea) he had his multitudinous prophecies of doom ignored entirely, and ultimately sacrificed his powers and much of his sanity.
One thing I like about the classpect system is its flexibility, the way it means subtly (or not so subtly) different things to different people.
So when Rose interacts with the Light Aspect, there’s a lot of focus on deep truth and unearthed secrets there, with a bit of Gnostic “the physical world is a lie” on the side. Rose applies her abilities to discover mysteries, to find paths to victory, and to break down the illusions her physical reality presents her with (“my personal quest is necessary for my growth as a person” being a big one).
And, like, Vriska does a lot of that, too, but Vriska goes whole hog on this completely different, hitherto undisclosed interpretation of the Light Aspect, that of fortune. Vriska’s a gambler and a cheat, and she creates this mythology of luck around herself, that it can be coaxed and manipulated through 8-balls or curses or whatever. Ultimately, she learns to control luck in a more direct fashion, in what seems a fairly overt interpretation of the Ultimate Answer, that reality unfolds in accord with the desires and actions of its agents, and grasps the reins of fate itself tight.
And then there’s Aranea, who talks a lot, and claims excessive exposition itself as part of her Aspect (which does fit with how previous heroes of Light have acted), but also plays the therapist, making an effort to give others peace of mind and clarity of purpose. And, yeah, there are shades of that in Rose, and if you squint you can see perhaps a smidge of it in post-retcon Vriska, but it’s still a very Aranea thing to do. Notably, her most overt application of the luck interpretation of Light, the death of Grimbark Jade, comes at a time when she seems to be very heavily channeling Vriska and her methodologies.
Aspects mean different things to different people. Not in an absolute way, not completely different things really, but still different.
As the Aspect of coming unpleasantness, Doom has a heavy connection to prophecy, to rules, and to consumptive flames. Few things in Homestuck symbolize these things as well as The Tumor, the great bomb which waits at the end of the troll and human universes and uses the energy from their twin destructions to create the mother of all explosions, and the red and blue of which marks Sollux’ personal iconography.
Oh, and it marks him in another way, same as it marks the entirety of Act 5.
This code was created by Sollux. This code, when run, causes an explosion, and lays a curse. This code describes with precision the behavior of the Tumor.
The Tumor causes an explosion when run, and in creating the Green Sun can certainly be said to lay a curse.
The text of the code itself? It separates the program into two halves, one red and one blue, associates the termination of each half with a universe (the red Earthly universe is marked U1, the blue Alternian universe is marked !U2, or “not U2”, an early reference to the fact that the Alternian universe is the result of a scratch). Upon the simultaneous termination of both these universes, the code vaguely resolves itself, and the Tumor explodes.
In other words, and this is where I delve into straight up technobabble, by the act of resembling the structure of the Tumor, Sollux’ little piece of code becomes notionally entangled with the Tumor, such that the running of the code is circumstantially simultaneous with the exploding of the tumor. Since the code is thus essentially a lesser echo of the Tumor, it gains its properties, and causes explosions and misery in what can only be described as an act of sympathetic magic.
Oh, and I mentioned something about the Tumor marking the entirety of Act 5? Take a look at the Homestuck map http://mspaintadventures.com/?viewmap=6 and scroll down to Act 5. “import universe U1”, “import Universe U2”, and right by the link to Cascade, the flash in which the tumor itself detonates, “[THIS, THIS].DIE();”
So the Time Aspect connects a lot to death. That’s a fairly widespread notion. Specifically, Time connects to death to a large extent because the Alpha timeline is an incredibly brutal construct, hurting both those who follow it and those who choose to deviate from it. But the Alpha timeline is a construct of Lord English.
So Lord English, the Lord of Time, has redefined the Aspect of Time to suit his needs. Huh. Has Calliope, his equal and opposite, perhaps done something similar?
Now, I don’t have much evidence of my theory, I’m not even sure evidence is all that possible to accrue for such a thing, but, well, in the Gnostic origins that Homestuck draws upon, the physical matter of the world is often disparaged, seen as the flawed design of Yaldabaoth, devoid of meaning. We see this reflected in the Aspects, Void, the Aspect of irrelevance, confers great physical ability on its heroes, as does Rage, the Aspect of misery and meaninglessness.
Yet Space, the most physical Aspect of them all, is heavily associated with art and beauty? Beautiful clothes, fascinating sciences, even the Vast Croak, described as the most wondruous thing of all. Clearly, then, the physical world is not entirely lost. It can be filled with meaning, with glory. It has potential, even in a story so heavily centered on the internet and the exploration of ideas.
Certainly, Calliope loves the world. Certainly, she loves to draw its inhabitants, to speculate upon its mechanics. Certainly, she dresses herself in the trappings of its peoples, and speaks endlessly of their glories. Certainly, she acts to inspire the alphas to love the world with her in her communications with them.
Certainly, the last command of her alternate self was to partake of reality, to enjoy the fruits of hers and everyone’s labor. To “have fun”.
Certainly, Calliope in her symbolic sense embodies the audience, with their arts and their theories and their cosplays. Certainly, the story of Homestuck, without its audience, would be a lesser, stranger thing, not to mention mostly unwritten, given how much Hussie inspiration Hussie has at times implied he takes from his audience.
There is an outline here, in the certainties. An outline of a theory. A suggestion of Calliope’s grand influence on the story, of the way she shapes reality every bit as fundamentally as Lord English, and not merely by shaping him through his hatred of her.
But that theory is not yet certain, and I do not know precisely what form it would take, were it to become such.
Dirk Strider has a PR problem. Now, that’s not exactly his fault, in fact he oftentimes seems to bend over backwards to work his way around it, to soften his appearance to the reader as best he can, and generally behave in every regard as a well and proper through and through stand up gent. Nevertheless, it is so deceptively easy to miss that, so distractingly simple to latch onto any of a number of alternative possible interpretations of him.
Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first. Dirk Strider as a character is preceded by thousands of pages by his estranged twin brother, Dirk Strider, aka Bro, aka the dictionary definition of a broken household, who spends and has already spent so many scenes tormenting his adoptive/biological son Dave Strider, aka probably the most beloved character in Homestuck, that Dave’s entire character arc can arguably be summed up as gradually breaking free of the damage wrought by this thoroughly destructive character dynamic. Indeed, one of the highlights of Homestuck’s final stretch was watching Dave Strider explain in sufficient yet far from exhaustive detail to Dirk Strider the injustice wrought by Dirk Strider.
Let’s move ahead (or are we retreating). At the very beginning of Act 6, in arguably the first trace of Dirk Strider’s personality, we find two rabbits, gifted to Jane Crocker by her fellow alphas, Jake and Roxy; each perfectly emblematic of the other’s personality and connection to Jane in particular. Dirk’s gift, however, is withheld, in its place an ominous note that, whatever it is, it is not quite as inoffensive a thing as the other two.
Indeed, Dirk Strider himself is absent from much of the earlier pages of Act 6. When Jake attempts to contact him, he receives in his place the tragic figure, doomed to darkness and misfortune, Dirk Strider, aka Lil Hal, aka AR. Dirk Strider proceeds to antagonize Jake and, albeit but briefly, convinces both Jake and indeed the audience themselves into thinking he is actually Dirk Strider.
And so is Dirk Strider robbed first of his fame, then of his good reputation, and finally of his first impression by the structure of the narrative, as well as the malicious actions of his preceding hobgoblins, Dirk Strider and Dirk Strider. And all this before he is allowed to speak a single word in his defense. In the face of such forces, who could help but take a dim view of the man. It is a poor man indeed, to be Dirk Strider.
There is a particular pattern running through the Life Aspect. A pattern of rebellion against authority. Indeed, a pattern specifically of rebellion against the Alternian Throne, against Her Imperious Condescension.
But I do not believe this to be an innate, necessary trait of those linked to the Aspect. Rather, it appears to be emergent from the particular classes of those heroes, in tandem with the properties of Life.
Life, in my view, connects to one’s circumstances of livelihood (i.e. your status, your home, your stuff, etc). Feferi, the Witch, bringer of change, wished to change these things, for herself and as a result for others, redefining the purpose of the empire itself from a cruel engine of conquest and destruction into something kinder, redefining the title of Empress from a tyrant to a caretaker.
Meenah, the Thief, destined for a throne she perceived as “a glorified slave” (Aranea’s words), chose instead to run away to the moon, to abandon her present circumstances for another, potentially more favorable set, to, well, steal her life back. Indeed, we see this tendency later, when, presented with the opportunity to steal John’s Ring of Life and regain power and glory in the world of the living, chose instead to refuse this potential course of action and advise John to keep it safe from her for her own sake.
And then there’s Jane. Poor, long-suffering Jane. Jane, who does not change, nor steal, but simply create. Jane, a Maid, member of a class that seems ever-destined to be pressed into service by outside forces without their best interests at heart. Jane does not rebel. The thought doesn’t seem to occur to her. The Condescension has done her very best to define the limits of what Jane Crocker is capable of conceptualizing, and as it seems so very difficult for her to think of things outside of her present circumstances, to break out of, to destroy, as it were, her extant frame of reference, Jane Crocker does not particularly rebel.
To her sorrow.
P.S. yes, with the help of her friends she breaks gradually out of her brainwashing, I know that, but the fierce spirit of rebellion we see manifest in the Peixes cluster seems absent from her emotional makeup, is what I’m saying. D.S.
What do you think of the time aspect? Specifically a Seer of Time? And do all time players have to have some interest in music?
Time is a valuable thing. :D
A Seer of Time might study ancient things, or might have an intuitive understanding of things like the alpha timeline and how it functions. They might have a grasp on the nature of inevitability, or death. They might know a thing or two about narrative progressions, or archaeology, or any of a number of subjects, and use that knowledge both to guide their allies, and to perform straggering miracles and tricks. They are somewhat likely to learn how to shoot those weird rainbowy time lasers.
Time has an association with music, but they are not synonymous. Aradia may have music box land and a music box time machine, but there’s no real signs she herself is into music much. And on the flipside, there’s plenty of non-Time heroes into music (for instance, all of the beta kids)
Another Seer of Time speaking! Do you have any idea what I could do that would be helpful or powerful during a session?
Seers bear the mantle of prophet, speaker of truths and bringer of miracles. Shrouded in Time, they are likely to find the secrets of success in the ancient past, the ticking progression of some vast mechanical construction, or the circumstances of a death. They may have an unusual intuition concerning events future or past, the temporal mechanics undergirding processes like scratching, the alpha timeline, or temporal loops, and use that knowledge to both guide their friends down mysterious paths as well as walk them themselves. They are likely to stumble upon the secrets of immortality, especially for the sake of others (a lover, perhaps, or a sworn friend).
Alt or alpha, which calliope do you say inspired/defined space as you described?
Both. Primarily the alpha, though, I think. She’s the one busily obsessing over every nook and cranny of the story, imbuing it with meaning by seeking to understand it.
Got this a while ago and it posted oddly, so I’m trying again.
Breath is an Aspect that perceives not its own shadow. Its heroes are blessed with ignorance, and so cursed with innocence. They have trouble taking things seriously, and can struggle when their simplistic perceptions of reality are challenged.
Tavros is probably the best example of this. Faced with the reality of his shattered spine and the endless harrasment of Vriska, he retreats into games and constructs an elaborate mental representation of his own self-confidence, that he can pretend it’s not really him facing down his problems. When the game escalates things to the point where that’s no longer enough, when Vriska tries to force him into performing deliberate murder, he retreats further, and spends much of his time in dreams. He sics Bequerel on Grandpa, and doesn’t consider until later that Grandpa might have had a reason to be near Jade’s house. As many have observed, it takes a lot to drive Tavros to confront what he doesn’t want to confront. Also noteworthy, when he finally does confront Vriska, he does so by mentally sorting her from the “good guy” bin into the “bad guy” bin, once again betraying a fairly simple understanding of the world.
But John, too, is bound by innocence. Few things shake him, few things undo his simplistic perception of reality. He soldiers on in the face of impossible odds, because “there is always hope for someone who has good friends to count on”. He ignores or represses his feelings in the face of his father’s death in favor of the fight at hand, and he is of course legendarily bad at picking up Dave’s hints about his and Karkat’s relationship in the ending.
Rufioh, the Rogue, seems less bound by his Aspect in this regard (similar to Roxy, this might be a trait of Rogues), and does half-heartedly confront Horuss about his relationship problems, albeit to little effect.
As a note, some have pre-emptively assigned Dammek the role of Thief of Breath. If this were true, then Dammek, with his atrocious housekeeping, precariously situated elevators, habitual ordering around of Xefros in spite of his supposed commitment to the class struggle, and countless half-finished projects, picked up, worked on and discarded on a whim without the force of will to finish what has been started, likely steals Tavros’ spot as the embodiment of this particular side of Breath.
Why is it that Jake was able to bear Caliborn? Couldn't he just travel back and prevent Jake's birth?
Jake was able to beat Caliborn because he had big glowy shit, and also because there was a prophecy that he would do so. Caliborn couldn’t just travel back in time because, well, ultimately because that wasn’t the way the alpha timeline went. The alpha goes both ways, Caliborn can no more go against it than anyone else.
I should, however, note one key fact. Caliborn getting beaten up by Jake wasn’t just cathartic and important to Jake, it also led to exactly what Caliborn wanted, since it was only after he was beaten that Dirk sealed him (along with Arquius and half of Gamzee) in Lil Cal and Roxy sealed Lil Cal in the Void, which was the process by which the actual Lord English was created. So, really, getting the snot beaten out of him by an angry kid in tiny pants was the best thing that ever happened to Caliborn, from a certain point of view.
Could you explain the fraymotif between Dirk and Dave?
I’m not entirely sure what happened myself tbh, especially since it kinda looks like whatever it was trying to do failed to work. It kinda looks like they’re stunning him with Time shit, then trying, iunno, break him apart somehow? Possibly suck the English out of him, or destroy it or something. Whatever it was meant to accomplish, it probably didn’t, is my guess.
my favorite side effect warning is for antidepressants
pros: you won’t want to kill yourself
cons: you might want to kill yourself
Back when I was in a psychiatric hospital, and was offered antidepressants, my mother had declined them due to that apparent side effect. So the staff actually explained about this effect antidepressants have, that give reason to that warning. When first taking antidepressants they raise up your energy first. So that you have the energy to do the tasks you might have avoided doing due to your depression. Because of this those who were already suicidal, now have the energy to go do so. Which is the ones this warning is given for. It’s not that a side effect of antidepressants magically makes you want to kill yourself, it’s the energy it gives those who were already struggling with suicidal issues, to actually attempt the act.
Very informative…
Wow. I’m so glad you explained that. Now I understand
My high school choir/psych teacher actually told is about this. She also said if you have a suicidal friend who starts seeming like they might be getting better because they have more energy, that’s the time to be cautious because that’s when they may still be suicidal but they’ll actually have the energy to go through with it
THIS. a thousand times THIS. I had it explained to me in my AP psychology class in high school. super fucking important.
THIS IS SO IMPORTANT and I wish my doctors had explained it to me this well when I first started taking them.
JUST GONNA REBLOG THIS AGAIN TO ADD that my younger sister in law recently started on anti-depressants among other medications in juncture with therapy to help handle an extreme case of OCD and anxiety, and I was the one who had to explain this to her. Her doctor only explained the risks, and not WHY they would actually be considered risks, which put her off of taking medication for most of her life. I explained it, and she understood, and THAT is why she is now on medication that is significantly improving her life. DOCTORS NEED TO TELL US THIS SHIT.
Best description of why ‘increased risk of suicide’ is included in the warning for anti-depressants I’ve ever read.
Could you talk about the Time aspect like how you did with the Breath aspect earlier?
Hm. Don’t have all that much worthwhile to say about it for the moment. Time and Space are pretty bare-bones Aspects, centered around basic cornerstones of how we perceive reality.
Maybe if/when I come up with a good thing to say that I feel hasn’t been said better elsewhere.
Karkat Vantas can not stop fucking thinking. It seems that every moment of every night his brain is running at full capacity, constantly calculating, contemplating, considering. One might consider such a mind to have trouble sleeping, and indeed he is said to have spent his entire session in a state of wakefulness.
Karkat does, of course, have a lot to think about. His blood colour makes it all but impossible for him to survive adulthood under the violent Alternian regime, and this fuels his paranoia with keeping himself clean and unblemished, his fixation with emulating the proper behavior of an upright Alternian soldier, his love of the Thresh Prince, a story about a member of the (relative) underclass breaking into highblood territory and proving himself worthy.
But these habits make themselves known in other places. Notably, Karkat is one of the teenaged protagonists possessed of the unusual ability to keep his room clean, which he does with such extraordinary proficiency that it can perhaps even be called spartan. He keeps track of his team, too, and in the middle of the endless, uncontrollable noise he constantly spews at himself and others, there are orders, directions, and general coordination. Karkat, generally speaking, has a decent grasp of what the things are that need doing, and roughly who needs to do them, and he’s not afraid to tell them so.
But his powers are not merely situated in the present. When left alone, Karkat mulls over things, turns them again and again in his head, and occasionally hits on surprising revelations, like his understanding of Jack Noir as a metaphorical cancerous tumour in the universe frog he and his team created, aimed squarely at the frog itself (or his considerations on the nature of free will in a universe with an Alpha timeline).
It is Karkat who finally breaks the code of silence regarding the pre-retcon meteor’s plethora of growing issues. It is Karkat who figures out that chairs are handy to have, so you might as well keep one on your person at all times. It is Karkat who patiently tries to work countless others through their problems, with his mind always buzzing, spinning, and turning with the countless little details of the world, all the myriad little sticky details of life, all the endless ways things can go wrong.
And yeah, it’s unhealthy. Homestuck is full of people pushing through difficult situations by applying their mental problems and maladaptive coping methods best they can.
So here’s a thing about Time that I’ve been thinking about but I don’t know exactly how to put. Heroes of Time in Homestuck all exist fundemantelly entangled with the Alpha timeline, and in the case of the two ‘good guy’ heroes, Dave and Aradia, are positioned as a sort of caretakers for it, driven to maintain the existence of the alpha in order to protect their friends. And they do this in their own idiosyncratic ways, Dave threading together an intricate tapestry of careful loops and Aradia just kinda save-scumming whenever anything goes wrong. The way they interact with the Alpha says a lot about them as people, it is a key part of defining who they are, to the point that Time itself in many ways seems to be About the nature of the Alpha, a natural feature of reality.
So where does that leave us, vis-a-vis the fundamental nature of Time? What is the Aspect, exactly, absent the influence of this immortal demon? Is there an Aspect at all absent his power? Certainly, both Dave’s and Aradia’s arcs involve overcoming symbolic representations of LE and the Alpha, Dave by coming to terms with his abusive childhood, tightly linked to the presence of Lil Cal, who is actually Lord English, and Aradia perhaps more symbolically by overcoming her death and largely leaving the Alpha-defined story entirely thousands of pages before the rest of the main cast manages to. And, of course, Damara, more of a failed hero of Time, is in many ways defined by her allegiance to LE, and her desire to see him hurt her former friends, while Caliborn, well, I don’t think I need to explain how Caliborn relates to Lord English.
But, well, I’ve gotten a couple questions from people making, like, fan characters or defining themselves in terms of the Aspects (and where the line between those things goes I do not know nor particularly care) about what the nature of Time is, and, uh, this is part of why it’s tricky to answer. Lord English is a dominating influence upon the story of Homestuck, but in terms of Paradox Space as a whole, that vast, nebulous existence of countless other stories to tell using the same basic mechanics? In terms of the Classpect system as used separately from Homestuck itself, to label fictional characters or even yourself? I’m not entirely sure how to position Lord English and his themes and nature in relation to Tumblr user Anonymous asking me about what it means for them, specifically, to be a Seer of Time. Like, where do you go with that?
Maybe it’ll get clearer for me in time, I feel like it kinda did already just writing this.
The power of the Page is to be served. It’s an ability that takes many forms, from the minor to the major, from the personal to the grandiose. It is Tavros getting Kanaya to keep Vriska off his back. It is Dirk giving Jake a sparring robot because he asked for it repeatedly. It is even more abstract things like Horuss deciding he suddenly can’t hear when Rufioh wants to break up, serving himself ignorance and Void in the face of the patently obvious.
For both our major Pages, however, the ultimate manifestation of this ability, however, takes a very specific form. As their power reaches its pitch, they call forth a great warrior, formed from the substance of their Aspect, to fight for their cause. For Jake, this takes the form of concentating his thoughts, imagination, and love, turning Brain Ghost Dirk from an informative if somewhat annoying hallucination into a god tier supersoldier completely devoted to Jake’s protection. For Tavros, it takes the form of cajoling and convincing a vast army of ghosts, creatures of pure spirit, into following his lead and fighting Lord English at risk of double death.
And I can’t help but draw a certain parallel between these events, and the Fate series with its Servant system. I mean, come on, they’re supersoldiers formed of magic, and they’re literally called Servants, there’s just a hint of a connection there. Hell, for added parallelism, Tavros calling forth his ghost army just so happens to happen in a desert, of all places.
Now, I’m not saying that this parallel is deliberate. I’d almost be surprised if it was. Deserts are a good place to show off armies, after all, what with all the flatness. But it’s still kind of a fun and interesting parallel.
How important are Seers in reality? I've gotten in discussions where many people agree that Seers are pretty much useless and powerless
Rose Lalonde killed an ogre armed with nothing but a pair of ordinary knitting needles pretty much immediately after entering the game. Rose Lalonde found the secrets of the Green Sun and of the Scratch, forming the foundations for the kids’ entire plans in Act 5. Rose Lalonde found love on a battlefield and her hands have wielded both darkness and light and turned them into deadly weapons. Rose Lalonde, trapped with her friends in the middle of literal nowhere with a demon dog hot on their heels, nevertheless found a way to not only escape, but to journey to a new, wondrous land. Rose Lalonde knows more about the setting than maybe anyone else, and the tome of her collective knowledge inspired Calliope, arguably the most important character in Homestuck, to believe in the potential of reality.
Rose Lalonde is utterly fucking dwarfed by Terezi Pyrope, the girl who can sunder time by asking a question, who can know with absolute certainty the immediate outcome of a difficult decision. Terezi Pyrope, the girl so dangerous, Lord English sent his right hand Makara on making sure she was kept off balance through mind games and caliginy. Terezi Pyrope, who is so wise in the ways of the world that she can understand and manipulate people so well she’s repeatedly stated as the superior of Vriska, who is literally a telepath. Terezi Pyrope, who fights alongside gods and not only matches them in prowess but outclasses some of them (Dirk had some serious trouble in that fight). Terezi Pyrope, trapped and surrounded by dead friends in an offshoot reality in the middle of temporal nowhere, who found a way to turn game over into an easy victory by writing words on a scarf. Terezi Pyrope, who absorbed all the memories of Paradox Space and knew the world for what it truly was. Terezi Pyrope, the true protagonist of Homestuck.
And then there’s Kankri I guess? Yeah, he’s kinda useless, trapped in his own head and incapable of seeing and wielding his true potential. His alt-self led a revolution, which went surprisingly well up until it completely failed because the odds were stacked against him in a truly preposterous fashion. Not his fault really.
Could the Alpha Timeline be considered as a sentient being? Kinda like the Genesis Frog but with Time instead of a new universe (Space) like a long sayyy centipede with its main body being the alpha and all the legs being branch offs/doomed timelines
I… guess that’s a metaphor you can use? The alpha timeline is mostly, like, this weird amalgamate of everyone’s wishes, every individual will pushing in different directions and whatnot. To the extent that it’s a physical thing it can arguably be equated with Skaia, also a big cloud of true information.
Mostly it’s evil and poisonous because it’s been twisted into that shape by the immense, overriding will and machinations of Lord English, who bludgeons reality into shape by his very existence (his complex, winding time loop of an existence). It’s unclear which shape reality would have without this will, but probably something more branching and complex.
Metaphoring Lord English as a caterpillar absolutely makes sense and I encourage this. Also useful metaphor for his winding existence: snakes, which are basically caterpillar-shaped anyway.
Other useful metaphors for reality would be trees (with their branches and whatnot) and circulatory systems, with arteries branching off of veins (Aranea actually uses this metaphor once).
How do Bard's work? Some people say that if they are in a session that they're there for a reason
Bards are passive destroyers through and of their Aspects, archetypally associated with a notion of royalty. They are said to be capricious, and to accomplish unexpected things. I’m not sure that there’s that much more special to them than that. Of the Bards we’ve seen, one was an English worshiper to the end and just about the worst trash imaginable, and one was poisoned by toxic masculinity to the point of paralysis (possibly due to sabotage by, oh, let’s say Kurloz, why not).
Possibly look up the Force and Flow article on them, that’s always useful.
Against three gods and a vampire, a teleporting catgirl and a girl with the power to bring back the dead?
Not in particular no.
I understand the concern, though. There’s a bit of a whiplash, especially if you’ve been reading the story as it updates rather than by archive, when the retcon happens and the story suddenly flips from tough and emotionally draining to suddenly throwing confetti at you over and over.
But, well, sometimes things work out. It does happen. Especially when you have Terezi Pyrope on your side.
How do classes relate to royalty? And since they relate to royalty, what do aspects relate to?
The Bard and Prince specifically relate to royalty in the sense that those are archetypal myths that Bards and Princes draw upon to establish their symbology, in the same vein that Maids and Sylphs draw upon fairies, Heirs and Witches draw on magicians, so on and so forth. Read Force and Flow, all will be revealed.
What is your thing about Homestuck? And what do you think of all the new trolls being introduced now?
Don’t really know what the first question means. What I particularly enjoy about it? I guess I’d say the character dynamics probably. Lot of cool and varied characters, interacting in all sorts of weird ways. “Kids being friends on the internet” will always be my favorite hs summary.
Do you think a bunch of really smart Homestuck fans could get together and make a kinda Homestuck Declassified where essentially everything is explained in detail/speculation from aspects, classes, to Skaia itself, the Alpha Timeline, trolls, and the game itself? I'd love to read that, maybe some Tumblr's should get together and do that
My good friend @revolutionaryduelist is actually doing that right now, with his Homestuck Explained video series. You should check out his latest video on classpects.
One thing I really like about Homestuck is its treatment of furries. Like, not just that it has them, and celebrates them being who they are and drawing strength from it, though it undoubtedly does that, but also its sheer variety of characters who can all be plausibly described as furries, yet are completely different from each other in their approach to furrydom.
For starters, let’s look at Jade. Jade thinks that dogs and wolves are really rad, and kinda wants to be one. She admires their powerful sense of smell, their powerful bodies, their soft fur. She thinks they’re beautiful, and shows a deep affection for her pet/guardian Bequerel. She does not show any particular interest in fursuits, because she doesn’t want to dress up as a dog, she wants to be a dog, and a fursuit would allow her to mimic almost none of the qualities she so admires. For Jade, furrydom seems to be above all about the power trip. Indeed, when she ascends to doghood, her transformed state has very limited animal traits, just a pair of ears really, but in return she gains access to the animal traits she most admires, like an absurdly powerful sense of smell, soft furry ears, and the ability to channel the unfettered energies of an incomprehensibly vast extradimensional ball of fire. Just like dogs do.
Nepeta, on the other hand, never shows all that much sign of wanting to be a cat. She loves cats, she roleplays as one on the internet, she wields cat claws as a weapon, she hunts wild beasts and dresses up in their pelts. She does all these things, and she clearly enjoys them, but shows no sign of Jade’s desire for transformation, and doesn’t go on about how great they are. Animals are just a part of life for her, and while she loves them she doesn’t place them on any kind of pedestal.
Then there’s Equius, with his, er, fine art and his, let’s say sweaty reaction to it. Something something the only transformation he desires is for one of his adored and beloved sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet musclebeasts to step on him, killing him instantly.
Judging by the pictures in his apartment, Dirk has a strong interest in fursuits and related gear, and probably some kind of desire to either be or be with either some sort of anthropomorphic animal, or a dude in a fursuit, or both, or all four. Hard to tell, he keeps a bit quiet about that side of himself, regarding it as embarrassing.
Rose has a squid girl desktop background. There’s probably something to that, given how incredibly ridiculously gay she is (she has arguably flirted with every single girl she’s ever met who wasn’t her mother, for one). She also seems to be really into becoming a catgirl, though like Dirk, the non-catgirl version of herself rejects this as embarrassing.
Jake isn’t into furrydom in your traditional sense (afaik) but he shows a strong interest in the Na'Vi from long-forgotten blockbuster hit Avatar, fantasizing about being one and about being with one, not to mention dressing up as one.
There’s a staggering number of different approaches to the same basic concept on display, a dazzling variety of ways to interpret a single basic notion, a notion known as Furry.
And that’s without mentioning Calliope, Cronus, Horuss, Meulin, Dave, Vriska, or Terezi.
Earth C is a tantalizing possibility, albeit one that might require too much explanation to those who haven’t read Homestuck. But Paradox Space is huge, and there’s plenty of time to establish a way for these kids to find somewhere to run away to and escape the various terrors threatening their respective civilizations. Perhaps another universe, somewhere far away. Perhaps a familiar place, recontextualized, like Beforus or the dream bubbles or an entire new universe created somehow by the combined effort of Joey and Jude and all their friends.
The possibilities are endless, and in their endlessness, somewhat difficult to quantify for now.
So here’s a thing about Time that I’ve been thinking about but I don’t know exactly how to put. Heroes of Time in Homestuck all exist fundemantelly entangled with the Alpha timeline, and in the case of the two ‘good guy’ heroes, Dave and Aradia, are positioned as a sort of caretakers for it, driven to maintain the existence of the alpha in order to protect their friends. And they do this in their own idiosyncratic ways, Dave threading together an intricate tapestry of careful loops and Aradia just kinda save-scumming whenever anything goes wrong. The way they interact with the Alpha says a lot about them as people, it is a key part of defining who they are, to the point that Time itself in many ways seems to be About the nature of the Alpha, a natural feature of reality.
So where does that leave us, vis-a-vis the fundamental nature of Time? What is the Aspect, exactly, absent the influence of this immortal demon? Is there an Aspect at all absent his power? Certainly, both Dave’s and Aradia’s arcs involve overcoming symbolic representations of LE and the Alpha, Dave by coming to terms with his abusive childhood, tightly linked to the presence of Lil Cal, who is actually Lord English, and Aradia perhaps more symbolically by overcoming her death and largely leaving the Alpha-defined story entirely thousands of pages before the rest of the main cast manages to. And, of course, Damara, more of a failed hero of Time, is in many ways defined by her allegiance to LE, and her desire to see him hurt her former friends, while Caliborn, well, I don’t think I need to explain how Caliborn relates to Lord English.
But, well, I’ve gotten a couple questions from people making, like, fan characters or defining themselves in terms of the Aspects (and where the line between those things goes I do not know nor particularly care) about what the nature of Time is, and, uh, this is part of why it’s tricky to answer. Lord English is a dominating influence upon the story of Homestuck, but in terms of Paradox Space as a whole, that vast, nebulous existence of countless other stories to tell using the same basic mechanics? In terms of the Classpect system as used separately from Homestuck itself, to label fictional characters or even yourself? I’m not entirely sure how to position Lord English and his themes and nature in relation to Tumblr user Anonymous asking me about what it means for them, specifically, to be a Seer of Time. Like, where do you go with that?
Maybe it’ll get clearer for me in time, I feel like it kinda did already just writing this.
This is amazing, but I feel like it has glossed over one of the most important aspects of the Alpha timeline, namely, if you get there from any other timeline, you’re marked for death.
There’s never an explanation for this, and there’s no clear mechanism for how the universe conspires to kill you. Nevertheless, it’s one of the most important restrictions on time travel, and if the concept of an Alpha timeline is tied to Lord English, that restriction evaporates as soon as you leave his influence. Being a time player, then, would essentially be the same as having John’s retcon powers. You could travel back in time, change something, and continue to exist in this new timeline, along with yourself who was already there.
What I’m saying is, I like this theory, but I don’t think it makes sense to talk about paradox space without having one Alpha timeline, no matter what.
I kinda deliberately glossed over the whole notion of how and why the alpha belongs to English because, like I said, I’m not the best at explaining it. What seems reasonably clear is that English’s presence warps and shifts the flow of time, forcing the path of the story to conform to his will.
But essentially, yeah, it’s vague how time works outside English’s domain, and it might very well be something radically different from what we presently know and understand. Perhaps there still is an alpha, but one more easily yoked by the will of ordinary people without English’s overriding will dominating it. Perhaps the timelines simply branch off endlessly with each decision and possibility, rather than withering each path that does not conform to English’s design. Perhaps something else entirely. I’m not entirely sure, though I’m leaning toward the second option, especially since, on a metal level, it conforms beautifully to the structure of a fanfic universe, endless possible ways for things to turn out coexisting harmoniously rather than one dominating as the ‘true’ way things happen.
And I mean, it’s not like the sort of thing you describe hasn’t already happened in canon. Didn’t take all that much for Davesprite to avoid destruction, after all.
Could you tell me more about the role/function of Seers in the game/Paradox Space (specifically a Seer of Time if possible). I'm working on a project and reblogged where I got the idea from but I need as many detailed descriptions about my class, aspect and/or my classpect. I'd appreciate the help :)
Didn’t we already do this? Like, a couple days ago?
Karkat Vantas can not stop fucking thinking. It seems that every moment of every night his brain is running at full capacity, constantly calculating, contemplating, considering. One might consider such a mind to have trouble sleeping, and indeed he is said to have spent his entire session in a state of wakefulness.
Karkat does, of course, have a lot to think about. His blood colour makes it all but impossible for him to survive adulthood under the violent Alternian regime, and this fuels his paranoia with keeping himself clean and unblemished, his fixation with emulating the proper behavior of an upright Alternian soldier, his love of the Thresh Prince, a story about a member of the (relative) underclass breaking into highblood territory and proving himself worthy.
But these habits make themselves known in other places. Notably, Karkat is one of the teenaged protagonists possessed of the unusual ability to keep his room clean, which he does with such extraordinary proficiency that it can perhaps even be called spartan. He keeps track of his team, too, and in the middle of the endless, uncontrollable noise he constantly spews at himself and others, there are orders, directions, and general coordination. Karkat, generally speaking, has a decent grasp of what the things are that need doing, and roughly who needs to do them, and he’s not afraid to tell them so.
But his powers are not merely situated in the present. When left alone, Karkat mulls over things, turns them again and again in his head, and occasionally hits on surprising revelations, like his understanding of Jack Noir as a metaphorical cancerous tumour in the universe frog he and his team created, aimed squarely at the frog itself (or his considerations on the nature of free will in a universe with an Alpha timeline).
It is Karkat who finally breaks the code of silence regarding the pre-retcon meteor’s plethora of growing issues. It is Karkat who figures out that chairs are handy to have, so you might as well keep one on your person at all times. It is Karkat who patiently tries to work countless others through their problems, with his mind always buzzing, spinning, and turning with the countless little details of the world, all the myriad little sticky details of life, all the endless ways things can go wrong.
And yeah, it’s unhealthy. Homestuck is full of people pushing through difficult situations by applying their mental problems and maladaptive coping methods best they can.
smells like some ADHD is mixed in there, too
Oh yeah shit I forgot anxiety is a technical mental health term and not just a colloquial description of a common emotional state. I have no real position Karkat’s nature vis-a-vis the DSMV. Medical anxiety problems, ADHD, both sound somewhat plausible from my perspective I suppose, but I also know I’m bad at identifying mental illnesses so I’m not going to say anything really.
I'm planning on making Classpect guidebooks, and am currently making a draft for a Seer of Time based off this post I saw on Tumblr where someone had a dream with classpect guide books so I thought, hm I should make this into a thing. So I made a chapter index and it's called A Seer's Guide To Time (it was prenamed in the post). So if I ever ask you to help me out is that okay? Btw this is @greetingstoeveryone
Yes I saw the post about the journal in the dream. Feel free to ask whatever whenever, though of course I reserve the right to change my mind.
I’m… unsure why you’d make an anonymous ask then tell me your name, but I’m going to assume tumblr bullshit.
So if the fabric of Paradox Space is made up of all aspects interwoven together, could aspects be potentially broken down into different aspects especially since it is currently being torn apart by the black hole? And if this is true, would that make certain fan aspects technically canon?
There is potential for Aspects to be broken down in different sub-Aspects, given that all of them mean a variety of things- So perhaps something like Blood being broken down into Pulse and Bond, and the like. There’s really nothing Canonical implying they could be sub-divided like that though, nor leave much room for extra Aspects to be made that wouldn’t be somewhat redundant and overlapping heavily with already existing ones in Canon.
That being said? Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t subdivide Aspects or make up Fan Aspects because it’s ‘not canon’, playing around with concepts like that can be really interesting and fun! Even Hussie has done it with little Joke Classpects such as the Gent of Piss or the Huss of Lips.
Important note on this. Alt-Calliope says, to paraphrase “the fabric of paradox space is made up of all the aspect pairs interwoven”. She never says that those aspects are exactly the twelve we know of and only those twelve.
So I’m a bit suspicious about troll romance. About its neatness, and how well it seems to fit with the society in which it exists. About the way it’s propagated through endless media bombardment (at least if your name is Karkat Vantas). And I’m especially suspicious with the idea of “troll serendipity”, the notion that every single troll can and inevitably will find an appropriate partner in every single quadrant.
Now, first off, the troll relationship of matespritship seems, if not entirely innocent, then relatively reasonable? It is, of course, noteworthy that trolls seem to refer to the driving emotion behind it as ‘pity’, which is a bit of an oddity, doubly so when you note that none of the actually functional troll matespritships seem to really feature anything we’d refer to as such, near as I can tell. The troll notion of serendipity plages it, of course, which, I’m sure lots of people can attest to the negative effects of living in a society that considers it self-evident that everyone will at some point in their lives find true love and settle down. That out of the way, let us address the most obvious fly in the ointment, the caliginous quadrant.
Hoo boy, the caliginous quadrant. Heh. “Cal”-iginous. How’s that for a coincidence? Now, how precisely kismesissitude is meant to function is a topic for some debate, and with limited canon info to go on, there’s plentiful speculation abound, the most popular as far as I’ve seen being that it’s supposed to be a sort of rivalry, both parties using their hate as a spur to drive themselves to new heights. Sort of a Goku and Vegeta thing, I suppose. Now I’m not sure how much of that is true, and how much is false. What I am sure of is that a relationship based in mutual revulsion seems like an excellent way to cover up harassment. Look at the sort of things people say when accused of harassment, sexual or otherwise. The presence of caliginy makes “I was actively trying to piss you off” a valid excuse. Caliginous relationships may or may not be intended to ultimately benefit both parties, but from the outside, a hell of a lot of them are liable to be virtually indistinguishable from abuse.
And if you’ve been paying attention to recent news, you might have an inkling of how that might be useful for a brutal empire filled with deeply rooted class divisions.
Hey, chums! This time, we take a look at the Hero Titles, also known as Classpects. Let me know what your Class and Aspect is in the comments, and say whether Classpect videos on different characters sounds interesting to you!
Also, an announcement. After December 1st, I’ll be changing the Patreon to charge per video post, rather than monthly.
The ashen quadrant is a marvelous thing. It dictates a societal role in which an individual witnessing a caliginous relationship going off track may step up and take on a role as mediator between the individuals involved. In this, it is one of the most insidious social constructs I have ever witnessed. Not only does it absolve society as a whole of the task of keeping track of careening relationships, it even manages the impressive feat of lifting this burden from the very people doing the careening. It is not the job of your friends to make sure you don’t make bad relationships decisions where kismesissitude is involved, and it is not your job either. You, after all, are filled up with caliginous feelings and can’t be held responsible for your actions. No, rather, and auspistice, a third, otherwise unrelated individual, is meant to recognize what happens and be driven by mysterious forces of troll serendipity to interpose themselves between you and your unfortunate paramour for the good of society.
I’m not sure I can really articulate beyond simple description of the phenomenon how fucked up that is. Just, what the fuck. How do you fuck up this much? Just, one thing. When this precarious clusterfuck of a quote unquote “safety net” inevitably collapses (as we’ve seen it do several times in Homestuck, mind), who do you think is usually going to pay the price? The higher castes, with their social clout and stranglehold on the legal system? Or the lower ones, whose deaths are mere footnotes?
And then there’s moirallegiance. Like matespritship, it’s something that we’ve seen can genuinely work out, and work out for both parties. Still, like with auspisticism, I can’t help but shake the feeling that it’s a reshuffling of responsibility, an invitation to dump all your problems on someone who might not be in a position to handle them, not to mention
As a final note, I’m not saying these institutions can’t be reformed, can’t be dealt with in a healthy manner. I’m just saying that they exist in a particular context, and that in that context, they all seem suspiciously arranged to serve the purposes of power.
I’m also saying that as I wrote this, I realized that a lot of it was heavily inspired/cribbed from one of @stormingtheivory’s articles, so I’ll link that here.
idk if you can call Damara a failed hero of Time just because she supported Lord English... there is a mountain of evidence she god tiered, for one, and she chose to destroy the Beforan session of her own volition, so her success in that regard is arguably evidence of her strength as a player rather than her weakness. She also managed to break out of the constraints of Hussie's openbound game where none of the other dancestors were able to, something that fits with her Witch of Time title
I call Damara a failed hero because she’s fucking miserable and nothing has ever worked out in her life. The only person she can hold a meaningful conversation with is Rufioh, and he gets weirded out by everything she says, plus I’m getting some vibes she’s still not really over him, so that adds to it.
Sure, she’s powerful. But her power mostly helps her serve English’s goals, she’s not able to actually use it to find happiness. She’s just sitting around waiting to double-die.
Also, since you mentioned god tiers, I want to note, as @revolutionaryduelist often enthusiastically does, that the only Damara to ever be shown actually wearing godrobes actively fights English (so, probably a splinter who’s led an entirely different existence).
