the lack of reward for killing Eridan’s angels speaks of course to their being “THERE TO SERVE SOME OTHER GAME PURPOSE, NOT FOR YOU TO HUNT DOWN”; but I figure it’s also probably because they’re, you know, not real? seems to be made clear later on that an angel is just something that manifests from the power of Hope; a pure figment of belief. when Karkat says “THEY’RE LIKE GAME CONSTRUCTS OR SOMETHING” it’s probably safe to assume what he’s getting at is that they’re thought constructs: emphasis is on the word “construct”, because a “game” creature could apply to anything else encountered on a Hero’s planet.
and while the whole Land of Wrath and Angels should speak to Eridan’s psyche in some way, I think this particular part is telling; in the absence of opportunities for genocide, Eridan’s mind simply generates one ex nihilo. it makes any notion that Eridan “didn’t want” to do genocide seem patently absurd.
from a slightly different angle, though, and keeping in mind the magic powers also bestowed upon Eridan through his command over pure belief; given that we tend to think of the Prince as a Hero who “negates” his aspect through destruction, I wonder if our Prince of Hope tends to manifest things he doesn’t “believe” in; or at least, things he outwardly rebukes the belief in
god. here’s a realisation that’s been years in the making. alchemy in Homestuck follows basic rules along the lines of conservation of mass, though in the case of grist and captcha cards it’d probably be more accurate to think of it as conservation of ideas; any item can be broken down into its basic “essence” in the form of grist, and that grist can be reconstituted into another item of equal ideological value. nothing is ever created from nothing or totally obliterated; the concept of equivalent exchange applies.
but compression artifacts are a result of lossy compression, which “involves discarding some of the media’s data”! artifact grist is in fact the essence of lost information; performing alchemy involving artifacts does not, as it may seem at face value, create something out of nothing; it “creates” “destruction”, thereby maintaining total informational equilibrium!
maybe someday I’ll steel myself to attempt to analyse friendsim in any real way; in the meantime, though, malo’s comment here has woken me up to the fact that “manifesting things you fear” is explicitly the purpose of Gamzee and the clown caste; so it follows that a Prince of Hope would “invert” the purpose of his aspect to do the very same thing.
so instead of thinking of the Land of Wrath and Angels’ angel population as having been manifested because Eridan didn’t believe in them, maybe we should think of them as something Eridan manifested because he was afraid of them… and then promptly instigated a one-man genocidal crusade against them. certainly this angle lines up with talk of genocide and racial paranoia that’s been floating around lately… particularly if you take into account Sollux’ assessment that the purpose of an angel is “two u2her iinthe end”?
the fact that Terezi, whose keenest interest is dragons, reacts with disgust to Sollux’ description of angels with “awful feathery wings” is a cute little demonstration of the perverse Alternian cultural morality
the fact that Terezi, whose keenest interest is dragons, reacts with disgust to Sollux’ description of angels with “awful feathery wings” is a cute little demonstration of the perverse Alternian cultural morality
worthy of note that while Sollux says angels are what paradox space uses to “usher in the end”, it’s the birth of Terezi’s own dragon lusus that sets off Alternia’s doomsday timer…
I suppose it’s fitting in some way that olive and blue would be the castes without any explicit purpose in society, those being the castes of the rogue and the thief, the two classes with the least clear fit into Alternia’s class system… in that case, it must be worth pointing out that both Vriska and Nepeta coast through the Alternian life by riding Equius’ clout slipstream like they’re hiding in his pockets of void.
wonder if the “Nepeta’s blue hat protects her by association with a highblood” fanon is actually canon by analogy to Equius cloaking his moirail in a protective void… Equius’ blue blood of course being what Gamzee uses to void out the parts of Rose’s journal he doesn’t want being read.
I suppose it’s fitting in some way that olive and blue would be the castes without any explicit purpose in society, those being the castes of the rogue and the thief, the two classes with the least clear fit into Alternia’s class system… in that case, it must be worth pointing out that both Vriska and Nepeta coast through the Alternian life by riding Equius’ clout slipstream like they’re hiding in his pockets of void.
wonder if the “Nepeta’s blue hat protects her by association with a highblood” fanon is actually canon by analogy to Equius cloaking his moirail in a protective void… Equius’ blue blood of course being what Gamzee uses to void out the parts of Rose’s journal he doesn’t want being read.
when i talked about the Sylph as the “enabler” I wondered aloud if Aranea’s enabling of Horuss’ behaviour makes him “one of the girls” the same way Meenah is; I guess Mindfang harbouring Darkleer is an ancestral role-reversal of Vriska and Equius’ situation? weird that Vriska and Equius would be reversed and not Equius and Nepeta, though
is Ardata’s tick lusus a hint at the parasitic nature of the blue caste… I think Mallek gets a snake but to my knowledge we’ve not seen any of the other bluebloods’ lusii. though it seems like a given that someone would have a scorpion
