2021-11-22 7:03:26 ¶ ●

obviously most things on Alternia are designed in a particularly slimy, chitinous way that gives them a uniformly alien (is that oxymoronic?) look, but I’m wondering if it’s more than a little conspicuous that a troll’s recuperacoon is basically identical to their computer.

I’ve broken down the basics of Alternian computing before, but the fact that the pus used in their insectoid computers seems to be the same stuff they sleep in has never been able to properly explain itself. the official line is that “the relaxing ooze helps assuage the terrible visions of blood and carnage that plague the dark subconscious of [trollkind]”; but considering Alternia’s governing class seem to have a vested interest in giving their subjects nightmares, we have to assume there is some misdirection happening here.

what has freshly occurred to me is that Jade, ostensibly the human with the most troll-like lifestyle, has a computerised bed of her own… and indeed one intended to monitor and affect the way she dreams.

it was already in the back of my mind years ago, writing what probably turned out to be my first ever proper Homestuck analysis, that there were insidious undertones to the fact that Alternia’s green slime of patriarchy seeps into every crack, right down to the beds the empire’s children sleep in. in Dave’s words, “your grandpa was a sick fuck why would he build a voyeurbot for a little girl”: it probably goes without saying that the subjugglators are kind of sick fucks for building voyeur puppets for little children too! the puppet as a voyeurbot is a well established tool in Dave’s own guardian’s repertoire (…I’m just now realising Dave is secretly relating to Jade with that line), and it says a lot that Dirk’s ultimate voyeurbot (slash fondlebot) took on a form almost identical to that of Jade’s (with Equius even trying a little bit of lowblood-puppeting of his own using another robot of the same type).

it must also be remembered that sopor slime is drugs, drugs is candy, and candy only serves to hide the grisly truth from the partaker. perhaps rather than “assuaging” the horrors of the troll’s dark subconscious, being hooked up to the slime merely masks the true nature of what has been placed there…

this brings to mind Karkat’s strange moment of seemingly unfounded paranoia about the Viewer, accompanied, in fact, by his own spontaneous voyeuristic fantasies about a certain little girl. the takeaway here is of course that the darkness lurking in the troll subconscious is none other than the Viewer, which is obviously true; all trollkind are merely the pawns of Lord English, the ultimate Reader-Author of their reality. but possibly also implicit is that if the Viewer lurks in the subconscious of every troll, then every troll is, themselves, deep down, a Viewer. which is also literally true! as the trolls watching the humans’ game unfold from their meteor laboratory act as yet another of the comic’s many audience stand-ins.

or in Persona Alchemy terms… just as the author of Homestuck imbued every character with an aspect of himself, every single troll in Lord English’s domain contains a little bit of ‘Lord English-ness’. in essence making them their own voyeurs, in the same way Jade is both the voyeurbot and the little girl?