October 2020

fiamet discussion is coming back, so i feel it’s probably a good idea to bring back my thoughts from the wake of the very first act of the game.

obvious things that have been talked to death out of the way first: concept art for hiveswap from very early on included a first guardian-esque axolotl monster. beta appearances of the fiamet character had them represented by an axolotl character from animal crossing, and associated with the colour green. if an axolotl is still somehow present in the game - and a drawing in jude’s treehouse would strongly suggest this is the case:

- then it would seem to be a given that fiamet is somehow connected to it.

now for my own observations: the game seems to be hinting at a third, green troll allied with dammek and xefros, yet to appear.

joey’s simon says game features buttons in orange-yellow, red, green and fuchsia. orange lights up first, then red, then green breaks before fuchsia can be reached.

underneath the lusus book, dammek’s table is carved with two signs; the one on the right is undoubtedly his, but the one on the left is less clear. at the time i hypothesised that its structure, with a circle in the middle and several tails coming outward, suggested an olive sign; since then the extended zodiac has come out and this would appear to be basically confirmed.

and then, of course, there’s the painting of three beasts. the two beasts on the land at the top can be easily associated with xefros and dammek’s lusii; on the left, a sluggish, groundhugging creature like a sloth. on the right, a carnivore with antlers. and then the third creature on the bottom, in the sea: an axolotl. joey’s comments on this monster are particularly thought provoking. doesn’t that description sound like it could easily be applied to a first guardian, or a monster similar to one?

new screenshots seem to have fiamet associated with violet, rather than green. this does make sense; moving through the land of the land dwellers and with the ultimate goal of a battle with the heiress, of course the protagonists would be headed straight for where the sea dwellers live, and the characters they plan to meet would have to be there also. and the axolotl is an amphibian, so a sea dweller makes sense… and so does a troll who confuses us as to whether they live on the land or in the sea.

it’s being pointed out that ‘fiamet’ could come from ‘fiametta’, a ballet meaning ‘little flame’ but also sometimes called ‘the salamander’. to me, though, fiamet evokes tiamet; a primordial babylonian goddess of the sea. this forms a pretty good pattern with our current thinking: xefros as in ‘zephyros’, a god of the wind, and dammek possibly from ‘adama’, the earth. dammek’s ‘tetrarchy’ suggests an important group of four characters, so why not the four elements? fiamet being connected to two of them could easily connect to the character’s dual land/sea nature, and the fact that a salamander is a water creature associated with fire (illustrated by the axolotl in the concept art having fiery breath).

i could be totally stretching myself thin trying to connect ‘fiamet’ to ‘tiamet’, because obviously if any of the main hiveswap characters would be the water goddess it would be trizza tethis, right?

but tiamat is specifically the goddess of saltwater, with her consort abzu being the god of freshwater. likewise, tethys is a goddess of fresh streams and rivers, while the salty sea is the dominion of her husband oceanus. so maybe i’m not totally crazy?

back when the first act of hiveswap came out there wasn’t a whole lot for us to go off of when it came to jude’s conspiracy theories. was it really likely within the homestuck universe that members of the US congress could be involved in cult activity? could this really have anything to do with vampire children, man apes, the jersey devil?

the skaianet systems documentation that’s come out since then kind of recontextualises this. jude’s research goes all the way back to world war ii, which we now know the condesce was at the very least around for. and in calamity the game has another major player that we couldn’t possibly have known about at the time of hiveswap’s release. it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to guess that this cherub who has had her hand in american politics for hundreds of years might have something to do with what jude thinks he sees.

rummaging around in my old hiveswap theorycrafting has also dug up something that i thought was amusingly similar to something i could have thought up today: joey’s attachment to the game Second Mom = somehow an allusion to the concept of a ‘second guardian’, which the axolotl monster may represent?