2023-05-07 17:40:58 ¶ ●

since i’ve been talking a little bit about game mechanics elsewhere… I brought up on this old post, which seemed to pique people’s interest, the possibility that the planets in the incipisphere could have their own breeds of frog that all contribute something unique to the universe they ultimately create - e.g. a session like B1 with a cave planet and a lava planet might produce a universe with the unique traits of a cave frog or a lava frog. Dave’s “ruby contraband” was the obvious impetus for this, but the fact that Hussie calls this “frog-themed treasure” in his commentary threw me off the scent and i turned to focusing on grist instead.

> AG: John! Is that a frog I see there?

so I was pleasantly surprised to stumble back upon this page, which explicitly tells us that yes, there are in fact frogs to be found on every planet. John’s calling up that this is considered “illegal contraband” even implies that Dave’s ruby frog really is just a frog - possibly its crystalline complexion is even one of its adaptations to LOHAC’s inhospitable surface? in any case, this clinches it - the universe a group of gods aims to create is born from the genes of all of their lands, in more ways than one.

perhaps more crucially, Vriska’s pointing out that finding frogs on the heroes’ other planets is apparently something for the later stretch of the game calls to mind the final frog, which Kanaya spent the final stretch of the game searching tirelessly for but could not locate, and which notably comes from a planet very far away from the incipisphere indeed. so does the fact that the Genesis Frog descends from frogs from a variety of planets, who need to feed on particular kinds of grist, offer us some clues about this white frog, which remains possibly the greatest of Homestuck’s unsolved mysteries? perhaps a frog from the old Earth was what our heroes needed to recreate the Earth in another universe and to break the old cycle of death and rebirth? and does Karkat and Kanaya’s failure to find a frog native to their own world speak to the inevitability of Alternia’s demise and the futility of their quest to recreate what they had?