lime-bloods:

it’s taken me however long it’s been between reading homestuck and now to realise that a “stem” (as in what sollux lives on) is also a part of a “brain”

went through the process of forgetting and remembering this a second time, it seems… i’ve been ruminating a lot on what exactly Karkat means when he says “[b]lood skims the voids in your porous cranial plates, as if grazing the hollow of a threshed stem“, which doubles as a reference to a plant stem (of the sort you might cut with a sickle) and to a hive stem (which you might find in an abandoned alternian neighbourhood). but it is also of a piece with his “porous cranial plates” inasmuch as it is another part of his brain through which his blood flows… so if this tract speaks to “the interconnectedness of the characters’ homes and their inner worlds” as I say, and the lawnrings separating Karkat from his neighbours represent the barriers separating him from his otherselves, it should be similarly significant that Sollux lives on what is a giant brain stem (or spine?)… I’m not sure if there’s some “mythology” regarding the brain stem I may be unfamiliar with, though, or if the actual biological function of the brain stem is relevant in some way here

lime-bloods:

lime-bloods:

it’s taken me however long it’s been between reading homestuck and now to realise that a “stem” (as in what sollux lives on) is also a part of a “brain”

went through the process of forgetting and remembering this a second time, it seems… i’ve been ruminating a lot on what exactly Karkat means when he says “[b]lood skims the voids in your porous cranial plates, as if grazing the hollow of a threshed stem“, which doubles as a reference to a plant stem (of the sort you might cut with a sickle) and to a hive stem (which you might find in an abandoned alternian neighbourhood). but it is also of a piece with his “porous cranial plates” inasmuch as it is another part of his brain through which his blood flows… so if this tract speaks to “the interconnectedness of the characters’ homes and their inner worlds” as I say, and the lawnrings separating Karkat from his neighbours represent the barriers separating him from his otherselves, it should be similarly significant that Sollux lives on what is a giant brain stem (or spine?)… I’m not sure if there’s some “mythology” regarding the brain stem I may be unfamiliar with, though, or if the actual biological function of the brain stem is relevant in some way here

despite a lot of the language used to describe troll brains making them seem quite alien in structure to our own, they do in fact have a brain stem, or at least something very similar:

MOST PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T HAD THEIR LOBE STEM CAUTERIZED ARE CAPABLE OF FEELING THE TWO PRIMARY EMOTIONS, HATE AND PITY.

the reference to a stem being ‘cauterised’ seems like a pretty heavy-handed reference to Sollux’ stem, which has the top blown off it and then ends up in a land of fire. the fact that all this happens as a direct result of Sollux tasting some mind honey and having a psychic reaction is also pretty heavy-handed in indicating that Sollux sustained some brain damage from this overexertion of his powers (which I guess would be retroactively-prefigured by Mituna’s acquired brain damage?)

to get my thoughts in order… Sollux lives in a giant computer, which Andrew hints at in the commentary for his introduction: “…he was built to be little more than a serviceable part of a big machine.“ when we first see him, he’s living in a room filled with beehouse mainframes; computers that run on the labour of worker organisms. then we zoom out a little bit later and see that Sollux’ hive is literally just part of a much larger version of that beehouse mainframe.

x, x

the computer serves a dual purpose in Alternian society, being part of the machine that keeps trolls hivebent, trapped in a simulated version of reality, but also the one link trolls have to the world outside their simulation, something that connects them to other trolls.

so Sollux severs the top from his computer, and in doing so severs his hive stem - or rather his brain stem. when Karkat says that having one’s “LOBE STEM CAUTERIZED” disconnects one from the primary emotions that drive interpersonal relationships, he’s really warning that destroying your computer will cut you off from the world. and just as Karkat’s neighbours, separated from him by porous cranial plates, can be seen as his otherselves, the workers in Sollux’ beehouses should be thought of as miniatures of Sollux himself; when the Sollux gets mind honey on him, he stares at the stains on his hands like Dave staring at the stains of his own blood, because whatever those machines run on is the equivalent of Sollux’ blood.

so the hive, as a macrocosm of the computer, has a twofold nature; Sollux’ hive stem isn’t purely connective, nor is Karkat’s lawn ring purely disjunctive. whether one allows the hive to be a prison or a gateway relies heavily on the individual: Karkat’s antisocial temperament and fear of interaction with his otherselves causes him to reject connection with others, and to insist that Jade turn off her own window into her other life. but just as the Yellow Lawn Ring was a boundary between the pre-scratch and the post-scratch, it was also the pathway that allowed connection between the two.

I always thought that if Hivebent had been written with a more comprehensive world in mind the lawnrings should probably have been hexagonal combs, but last year I came across some research that indicated bees really just make circular combs that shape themselves into hexagons organically when they’re pushed up against each other… which was a little bit sad to learn, but if an Alternian neighbourhood will naturally shape itself into a hexagonal comb as it’s populated with more and more interlocking circular lawnrings that’s even more fun, even if it is entirely a coincidence

final notes on Sollux’ hive for today that don’t really have a home anywhere else:

• Sollux’ room being filled with dollhouse-like miniatures of his own hive recalls the Honeybee Professor’s interest in fractals and recursion… (obviously it’s a ‘beehouse’ instead of a 'beehive’ because on Alternia hive means house, but I wonder if it’s also supposed to deliberately evoke 'dollhouse’, which was another recursive element in Problem Sleuth)
• 'the trolls live inside their computers’ naturally makes the mind wander toward 'the trolls live inside the kids’ computers’, which naturally makes me wonder if the trolls’ living quarters are intended to evoke the computer setups of the humans in any way, though just at a glance i don’t think this is a line of interpretation that particularly leads anywhere

it’s kind of unstated fact that characters in Homestuck can’t literally pilot each other around like robots, they can only influence each other’s actions by influencing the narrative and nudging them in one director or the other. this is even true of the Condesce, who only really brings out parts of Jane and Jade that they might not otherwise show; even though the Condesce is using the exact same powers Vriska used to seemingly get people to do exactly what she wanted. which is a train of thought that always leads to the pretty unfortunate implications that, say, Sollux really wanted to kill his girlfriend, or that Tavros really wanted to jump off that cliff

after several years of peace and quiet this page is getting passed around once more with the suggestion that it depicts a ‘grimdark’ Eridan. it doesn’t; he’s normal 7 pages beforehand and looks perfectly fine 6 pages later. but the fact that enough people thought of Rose’s grimdark phase when they saw this panel means I should probably at least consider that a deliberate allusion was being made here.

it has been suggested the 'grimdark’ colour scheme being used here is to suggest that Eridan is ideologically grimdark, or in a grimdark state of mind. the fundamental assumption in this case is that grimdarkness is malevolence, which is demonstrably untrue. the very origin of grimdarkness is in moral ambiguity; grimdark Rose was not in touch with malevolent forces, but merely forces with their own agenda in opposition to the destruction of reality. Eridan, of course, has his own agenda; but there is no such ambiguity in his. his intentions are purely ill-willed.

the truth is that there is a troll who went 'grimdark’. her name just happens to be Kanaya.

there can be no suggestion that a troll might deviate from their path by aligning with forces nocturnal and needlessly-dramatic. trolls are by their very nature nocturnal and dramatic. Rose’s transformation, the touch of dark gods cloaking her body in shadow, evokes Problem Sleuth’s undead creatures of indeterminate alignment. to suit their photophobic nature, the bugbears of Alternian lore are instead vampires bathed in a white glow.

Kanaya choosing a wizard of white science to play rival to Rose’s dark magic exemplifies this mirror relationship. Eridan was never in the running to be the grimdark troll. so the purpose of the infamed 'grimdark Eridan panel’ should understood as expressing his connection to the true grimdark troll, Kanaya.

a rainbow drinker is a vampire that feeds on blood and daylight, and much commentary has been made on the kiss from a knight of blood that preceded Kanaya’s transformation; but relatively little attention has gone to the blast of light that kicked it all off. to 'fill someone with daylight’ is an old euphemism for riddling them with bullet holes, which seems fitting in the circumstances; and in fact it got some mileage in Problem Sleuth, where our zombie and vampire plagues started off. so let’s take another quick look back in that direction.

x, x

Mobster Kingpin’s FILL 'EM WITH DAYLIGHT comb rave is, put plainly, a hope blast. but it is such a hope blast that it tears a rift open in spacetime. to strengthen the connection to Eridan’s blast; opening these kinds of rifts in space is the specific purpose of a wand! Calliope uses her wand to open up black holes, like the one she spent Act 6 hiding in and the one she opens in Act 7 to swallow up the green sun, and Echidna, who herself lives in a burrow that appears as a rift into the void, bestows upon her heroes the quills needed to Scratch reality.

just as Calliope uses her wand to turn the black hole symbol on her chest into a real vortex, Eridan’s blast turns Kanaya into a rainbow drinker by opening a rift in her guts. fittingly, a black hole, as a singularity from which light cannot escape, is the ultimate 'rainbow drinker’; a piece of trivia alluded to when Mobster Kingpin’s black hole absorbs the sun, “filling it with daylight.”

• we’re led to believe the angels have blessed Eridan with divine power; but really the energy just runs through him and goes straight into Kanaya, just as Lord English tried to possess Cronus “8ut the evil spell was deflected”. the Ampora sign of two arcs of lightning possibly hints at their status as mere conduits of power.
• Eridan’s wand turning Kanaya into a vampire would make it awfully similar to a vampire’s fang, like Lord English’s candy corn teeth slash antennae. i’m pretty sure Droog also had a weapon that was literally an antenna he hit people with so now I’m wondering what the hell that’s got to do with anything

lime-bloods:

saw Videodrome. what’s there to say… James Woods, a nonchalant enabler of the sexist establishment, is caught in the male gaze of the television screen (“the retina of the mind’s eye”), which feminises (appearance of the vagina on his stomach) and emasculates him (his gun literally being sucked up into his body)… chauvinist establishment take ownership of the feminised Woods, repeatedly molesting him with video tapes, using him for their own goals; then he receives enlightenment and fights back with his pussy power, right down to a far-from-subtle use of vagina dentata. feminist movie!

saw Cronenberg’s The Fly. got the impression very early on that it would be of a piece with ‘drome, and Goldblum proves me right very quickly with his tirades about “The Flesh”. while ‘drome is pretty clear in its message of shedding the male Old Flesh and growing into the female New Flesh, though, I’m not so sure what Brundlefly’s fixation seeks to achieve.

Brundle seeks to understand the flesh, and then seeks to make his computer understand the flesh, and then at the very climax of the film is himself fused with his technology… the computer kind of stealths its way through the film as a major character, having dialogue but no given name. all we know of its nature comes from offhanded comments from Brundle implying it has its own creative mind; so the Brundlefly metamorphosis was really the computer’s idea, echoing the feminisation-by-technology ‘drome’s James Woods undergoes? I really want to try and see eXistenZ, which I understand is Cronenberg’s other film about the body horror of man laying with machine… would love to see if this narrative continues.

and of course Brundle plays opposite Stathis, who has his own form of obsession with the Flesh, completely unable to take his mind away from Ronnie’s body; even in the more grim scenes he can’t stop himself from making seemingly nonsequitur remarks about putting his hands on her

lime-bloods:

lime-bloods:

saw Videodrome. what’s there to say… James Woods, a nonchalant enabler of the sexist establishment, is caught in the male gaze of the television screen (“the retina of the mind’s eye”), which feminises (appearance of the vagina on his stomach) and emasculates him (his gun literally being sucked up into his body)… chauvinist establishment take ownership of the feminised Woods, repeatedly molesting him with video tapes, using him for their own goals; then he receives enlightenment and fights back with his pussy power, right down to a far-from-subtle use of vagina dentata. feminist movie!

saw Cronenberg’s The Fly. got the impression very early on that it would be of a piece with ‘drome, and Goldblum proves me right very quickly with his tirades about “The Flesh”. while ‘drome is pretty clear in its message of shedding the male Old Flesh and growing into the female New Flesh, though, I’m not so sure what Brundlefly’s fixation seeks to achieve.

Brundle seeks to understand the flesh, and then seeks to make his computer understand the flesh, and then at the very climax of the film is himself fused with his technology… the computer kind of stealths its way through the film as a major character, having dialogue but no given name. all we know of its nature comes from offhanded comments from Brundle implying it has its own creative mind; so the Brundlefly metamorphosis was really the computer’s idea, echoing the feminisation-by-technology ‘drome’s James Woods undergoes? I really want to try and see eXistenZ, which I understand is Cronenberg’s other film about the body horror of man laying with machine… would love to see if this narrative continues.

and of course Brundle plays opposite Stathis, who has his own form of obsession with the Flesh, completely unable to take his mind away from Ronnie’s body; even in the more grim scenes he can’t stop himself from making seemingly nonsequitur remarks about putting his hands on her

Brundlefly thinks of himself as the offspring of Brundle and fly, rather than just Brundle in a new form, but seems to make no note of the fact that it is his computer who physically birthed him through the telepod… so in the climax, where he seeks to fuse with Ronnie and his unborn child to become the “ultimate family”, there’s perhaps a touch of irony in that it is instead the telepod he is fused with? a return to womb et cetera.

mmmmalo:

…confirmation bias speaking, but Hussie removes the troll horn headband when shrugging off narrative commands. “Get back to the story jackass” > *removes horns* > “Oh I’m sorry, am I not going fast enough for you?” Puts the horns back on, shrugs off a command that is posed as a question (Recap?), then obeys the command “Reel it in.” So that’s fun…

Videodrome treats the feminine flesh as more of a prison placed around those who fall in the male gaze of technology, but to Brundlefly the ascent to femalehood is a direct upgrade… though I suppose whether ‘drome’s New Flesh is a good or a bad thing depends largely on how much we trust the priestess of the New Flesh, and whether Woods’ suicide at the end of the film is really just that or if it in actually represents an ascent to a final form, akin to Brundlefly’s final metamorphosis. I might have to confirm this for myself sometime, but apparently in directorial commentary Cronenberg indicates that he did consider an epilogue for ‘drome where Woods wakes up from his suicide in a form of heaven, and then decided against included it because it conflicted with his own atheism toward the existence of an afterlife… so I guess this ambiguity is kind of baked in?

(almost certainly related: an epilogue for Cronenberg’s Fly was fully realised in which a baby hatches from a chrysalis as a beautiful butterfly and flies away into the light, but was cut from the final release because test audiences hated it!)

possibly in line with O’Blivion’s theory of technology as the retina of the mind’s eye and the ability of a television signal to transmit biology into an organism (Videodrome), the original 1958 Fly is concerned with the consequences of transforming a living organism into electrical signals to be transmitted (literally ascending a cat beyond physical form in this way, though by accident to be fair). in Cronenberg’s remake, the idea of being transformed into electricity evolves into the more modern (perhaps even ahead of its time?) concern about being transformed into data, which is not only intangible but totally subject to the whims of a computer.

so I suppose both ‘drome and The Fly express the same concern that evolving into a new form comes with new forms of control; Brundle’s computer has very much the same male gaze as Videodrome’s television camera does. the New Flesh isn’t Woods or Goldblum’s end-all; it’s a chrysalis to be retreated into and then broken free of. the way Fly ends with Goldblum breaking out of his telepod and then immediately becoming fused with said telepod feels compositionally strange, affected… but perhaps breaking free of the computer’s womb is the only way to become one with the computer / God?

as long as I’m recalling the 1958 Fly, one detail that doesn’t initially seem to translate over is that Delambre’s telepod creates mirror image facsimiles; a china plate passed through the machine will have its stamped lettering inverted when it comes out the other end. in proper Cronenbergesque fashion, Brundle’s telepod instead inverts a baboon by viscerally turning it inside out, so we’re led to think that the telepod no longer mirrors things. but each time Brundle goes through, the fly hairs on his back seem to switch sides on his body. I remarked out loud that this must mean Brundle is still being flipped every time he teleports, to which my dad remarked, “in more ways than one!”… the film’s focus on sexuality naturally made me wonder if Brundle being ‘inverted’ by teleportation referred perhaps to sexual inversion. which I suppose makes some sense if we see Brundle’s computer as ‘turning him into a woman’ the same way the retina feminises Videodrome’s protagonist?

maybe I was wrong to cast Stathis and Brundle as opposite foils; maybe it’s more appropriate to compare Stathis and the computer with each other? Brundle insists he needs to “[teach] the machine how to be made crazy by the Flesh”, and then programs into the machine the same male gaze that causes Stathis to go crazy for Ronnie. hmm

The Fly’s element-fusing machine couldn’t help but have me think of Homestuck’s alchemy machines (boooo! I know) and how The Computer in Homestuck is a kind of uncredited character in much the same way as Brundle’s. one of the roots of all the comic’s conflict is that characters are forced to interact with the world through a needlessly complex captcha-based inventory system; a system specifically designed to prevent computers from using it, cause god knows the last thing youd want was some web bot being able to figure out the code for like | a potted plant… and in commentary, Andrew posits that the reason Jade’s scribble modus keeps summoning ghost images of robots despite the intentions of its user is because it’s “a pretty sophisticated AI, with a whole personality and such. It just really wants you to build it a friend. :(”

struggle with artificial intelligence rises to the fore of the story in Act 6 with Dirk and AR, the latter of which then becomes the part of Lord English that looks like Terminator, the ultimate machine of human-computer conflict…

post script: Jade’s scribblepad being identical to Nepeta’s tablet makes me wonder if the AI in there is a little splinter off of Nepeta

saw Face/Off. that movie is way more concerned with how it feels for another guy to fuck your wife than with any of the actual ramifications of stealing someone else’s identity

lime-bloods:

saw Face/Off. that movie is way more concerned with how it feels for another guy to fuck your wife than with any of the actual ramifications of stealing someone else’s identity

as a terrorist in the body of a federal police chief, Travolta using quote “Gestapo methods” to wipe out his competitors gets a single line of acknowledgement. meanwhile a character that exists in two scenes and to my knowledge does not get a single line of dialogue still has a whole arc about how upsetting it was when Nic Cage fucked his wife and sister

Jake using the guns from Face/Off seems like it was probably intended to serve as another red herring indicating that English would take over his body; i.e. that he and Caliborn would have a Face/Off of their own at some point. but the fact that actually watching F/O reveals it to be a movie about The Horror Of Getting Cucked might be another clue that Jake’s destiny is just like that of his forebear Cronus, the ultimate cuck: English’s power is going to bounce right off him and go to his descendant instead.

the fact that Jake’s arc in the Epilogues mostly consists of him getting cucked all the time by Gamzee (who is Lord English) probably plays into this

i’ve been thinking of the scratch in the wrong way… I’ve been calling Jane and Karkat’s worlds the ‘scratched’ timelines, as in English has to 'scratch’ a session to mark it for entry. but of course that’s wrong; we don’t have scratched and unscratched sessions, we have sessions pre- and post-scratch. in reality, John and Kankri’s sessions are the ones that got 'scratched’; a 'scratched’ pool game is one you’ve lost, and to 'scratch that’ is something you do when you no longer have need for it. English doesn’t scratch the worlds he intends to enter, he scratches the ones that have outlived their purpose…

to that end, Cronus’ dual scars / two scratches aren’t a sign that he was marked as English’s host like I suggested in the past; they’re a sign that English tried to use him as a host and failed, like a disc put into the wrong player. so malo’s assessment, that Jake hitting his head and receiving brain damage is what 'scratched’ him and - much like the knock on the head Goku received as a child - prevented him from becoming an evil avatar of English, is probably more in line with my assessment of the situation than I initially gave it credit for?

English doing his possession through the crude act of cutting people’s eyes out and swapping with them is definitely very Face/Off now that i’ve seen it. I hope if we ever get Caliborn taking over John’s body we also get John stumbling around in Caliborn’s form at the same time

lime-bloods:

lime-bloods:

saw Face/Off. that movie is way more concerned with how it feels for another guy to fuck your wife than with any of the actual ramifications of stealing someone else’s identity

as a terrorist in the body of a federal police chief, Travolta using quote “Gestapo methods” to wipe out his competitors gets a single line of acknowledgement. meanwhile a character that exists in two scenes and to my knowledge does not get a single line of dialogue still has a whole arc about how upsetting it was when Nic Cage fucked his wife and sister

implicitly Face/Off presents a narrative about seeing how the other side live; in Travolta’s body Castor lives it up as an authority figure with absolute impunity, while Cage-as-Archer suffers abuses at the hands of the prison wardens he thinks should be the good guys, and the very idea that he might wield some power over anyone - “I’m going to have you fired” - is laughed at. so the fact that Archer gets cucked a) while in Cage’s body, and this other guy, Dobbs, gets cucked while b) in prison (the line which Nivola reads as “had a sex sandwich which his wife and sister” is in the script as “You porked his wife the day he was arrested”) would seem to be hinting that living in the body of a member of the lower class or a criminal is like living in a prison… in which case “those in power will fuck the wives of the guys without power” is probably just longhand for “those in power will fuck you”………? unless the elites fucking your wife is a Scientology thing I don’t know about

miomediator:

GolgothaTerror: What’s behind this name, and what does it tells us about Jake

So, I’ve been musing while looking at Jake’s chumhandle.
golgothaTerror

Golgotha, those who might or not know is the place where Jesus’ skull is buried. Most people reaction is “oh yeah, Lord English motif, Jake loves skulls” and that’s that. Others might even link it to Christianity, with all the angels shebang, (Jesus of course) and the cherub species.

But I may have a deeper (or parallel idk) theory behind it.
Let’s put some facts on the table where everybody can see them:

Keep reading

in a similar vein, I’ve wondered if timaeusTestified might be literally identifying Dirk as one whose existence was testified by Timaeus, i.e. he IS the demiurge

user davestriderpostscratch raises an interesting point that I’ve so far not really been factoring into my assertion of Cronus as English’s first intended host:

…i wonder what english’s preoccupation with hope players is though […] it’s obvious that caliborn has a Thing about jake (stole his name etc) […] so i’m… assuming that’s why caliborn would try to use cronus as a host?

when English’s possession spell bounces off Cronus, “the legacy of defeating the evil magician would have to 8e passed on to his descendant, or […] perhaps on to some other Hero of Hope.” so to us, looking at the story “linearly”, Jake is a Human Substitute Cronus. but from Caliborn’s perspective Jake isn’t a “substitute” anything; he’s The ideal host. so following Caliborn in his backward time travels, it’s really Cronus who becomes the Troll Substitute Jake, a demonstration of symmetry in alchemy. which is perhaps the secret reason behind Cronus’ identification with humans, or at least his particular phrasing that he “vwas actually a human "born” in the body of a troll“?

could even be that this is yet another case of Aranea’s biases bleeding through into her storytelling; she thinks of herself as an ancestor to the rest of the trolls, so it’s natural that she’d describe time as flowing linearly from Beforus in the direction of Earth. but again, Caliborn isn’t in the business of starting at the beginning; he comes in at the end and then goes backward. so is it instead that Caliborn tried to inhabit Jake’s body first, and then failing that, sought substitutes among the trolls as he travelled back? (in the tags on that last post I said I "need to start thinking of the scratch as a 1 dimensional line between timelines or worlds”, with the implication being that the scratch is like a signpost English puts down to delineate that which is within from that which is without his domain: but if we think of English as a backward traveller, maybe the scratch - represented, remember, by the scratches on Cronus’ face - is more like a ceiling that he hits his head on, preventing him from going any further?)

or maybe both interpretations are true, and English’s failure to possess Jake OR Cronus has him pinging back and forth along Homestuck’s timeline, an eternal loop perhaps connected to the one Calliope seals him in by trapping him in that black hole in Act 7…

or maybe having a human soul is what stopped English from possessing Cronus’ body in the first place. because humans can’t be mind controlled 😔

English’s journey through time taking him back and forth from Beforus to Earth over and over and over ad infinitum via the power of a symmetrical (al)chemical reaction obviously makes me think of Primer, whose back-and-forth time travel is inspired by the symmetrical back-and-forth behaviour exhibited by electrons as per the Feynman diagram. so that made me wonder if there’s a chance this is deliberate, and that maybe Primer gets referenced somewhere in Homestuck.

from what I can tell it doesn’t, and the word “primer” only comes up in Andrew’s book commentary… but he exclusively uses it to refer to time travel? not just once but three separate times? which is a totally insane coincidence but also absolutely not intentional, right? like, Primer is such a quintessential “difficult to understand time travel movie” that it would make perfect sense for him to do this as a gag, but the fact that he never calls it up in any way makes me really hesitant to think of it as a deliberate gag

hrm hrm hrm. it follows from Lord English’s TARDIS being a coffin that he’s probably dead when he’s inside it, which would suggest a Schrodinger’s cat-type quantum aspect to his time travel, maybe?

I say the Hussie avatar’s conspicuously orange fingers are orange because they’re really Dirk’s fingers: in the vein of troll horns being disguised mind control antennae, malo suggests that if Dirk is the puppeteer, it’s probably significant that the horns are orange, too.

this would imply that Caliborn plugging the candy corn tooth into his skull isn’t making himself the vampiric master over the story, but rather becoming another vector of control for Dirk: in any case, if the orangeness of the candy corn vampire’s fangs has any significance, I felt it should have some significance, too, that Lord English eventually replaces both this fake tooth AND his robotic leg - the other “lovingly imbued mechanization” he receives directly from Strider - with gold-coloured versions. in essence, gold should also be seen as the symbol for Lord English’s poisonous bite.

if there is any merit to the idea of ‘psychic antennae’ at all, the evidence is in the Condesce’s golden tiara, a tool she hooks up to her own brain and with which she channels various psychic powers, but which, when placed on Jane, becomes a tool for puppeteering: viewed retrospectively, ‘the twist’ is that the device the Condesce has been using as a weapon actually works both ways. the implication becomes that, like English, the Condesce has disguised her mechanizations under a veneer of gold.

(this image is also discreetly racialised; just as English’s gold tooth and walking cane serve his “pimp” image, the Condesce’s associated “bling” contributes heavily to her caricatured image. when Porrim says “the empress […] was really just the Lo+rd’s slave all alo+ng”, this is a statement projected through her feminist lens; the story in Act 6 is that the Condesce is Lord English’s wife, so Porrim thinks being a wife is a form of slavery; but in the Condesce, the feminist and the racial readings cross over with each other. Act 6 is also punctuated by repeated attempts by one character to propose to another with a gold ring; implicitly, the wearing of gold jewellery is associated with bondage.)

prominently, despite the precious metals worn by the regents of the Human and Carapacian Kingdoms, the princes and princesses of Earth C’s Troll Kingdom renege on the royal Alternian tradition of gold tiaras in favour of grey crowns much more in line with the organic troll esthetic. previously I’ve made the simplistic observation that in a world without Alternia’s royal hegemony gold would have no real cultural value: but of course it is also true that the concept of ‘value’ is the work of Lord English’s corruption of the natural world to begin with. indeed, mind-control-through-gold is as effective a metaphor as influence through candy and drugs; the magic gold ring of Tolkien didn’t strictly need a special enchantment to influence its wearers, but could corrupt through the power it provided and the awe it inspired alone.