May 2024

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lime-bloods:

can’t help but wonder recently if Vriska’s “[e]ach class has a huge alpha8et of signs, so when someone shares yours, you know you have a lot in common” line is implicitly about aspect symbols? like in the same way a troll’s sign doesn’t actually determine who they are but can be used to draw two trolls into a shared destiny, she’s saying an aspect has no intrinsic meaning of its own but serves to draw lines between heroes who share that aspect. Aranea seems to imply something similar when she talks about Cronus’ destiny, which could be “passed on to his descendant, or if his descendant proved to be as much of a failure as he did, then perhaps on some other Hero of Hope.”

it feels particularly indicative that Vriska uses the word “class” as a synonym for caste here: each “class” has a “huge alpha8et of signs” in the same way each class has twelve aspect variations within it. this confusion of RPG class with social class is echoed later on in Caliborn’s literalism (LOWLY PAGE versus A LORD’S WORTHINESS [and] NOBILITY) - which seemingly went on to influence Alternian society (THEY’RE ALL MEN. BECAUSE I SAY THEY ARE.) - and was realised in an even more literal sense in the extended zodiac, which divides trolls into “sign classes” with “aspect sways”.

another obvious clue I only just picked up on; Aranea and Calliope use the exact same langauge to describe gender imbalances in the caste system (jadebloods are “an almost exclusively female caste”) and in the class system (some “lean more toward male assignment, while others are exclUsively male, and jUst as many are exclUsively female”), respectively. Aranea even says that Porrim “challenged [gender] roles wherever they existed in 8eforan society, as well as where she found them woven into our session, in […] class assignments”!

seemingly the message here being that we should view discussion of class roles - particularly but not exclusively gendered ones - with the same skepticism with which we approach gender and class roles on Alternia? and more broadly, this seems to be further suggestion that Calliope is guilty of the very same kind of biases that Caliborn is; she sees Sburb’s list of twelve classes and can’t help but compare it to the “classes” she was raised to be familiar with, be they classes of blood, or sex, or an intermingling of both. (taken in this context, even the idea that Sburb’s classes might sit on a spectrum from “most passive” to “most active” smacks of similarly arbitrary spectrums of “most psychic to least psychic” or “most female to most male” that we see in the hemospectrum!)

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the fact that the “passive” and “active” alignments for classes are so nebulously defined that you can kind of interpret them as meaning anything kind of makes me think of the radically different ways caste was interpreted on each side of the scratch too. like that highbloods are ostensibly the more physically powerful trolls made them the ultimate manly warriors on Alternia, but on Beforus that was taken as making them more suited to playing a nurturing, supportive role toward the other classes

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dingodad:

dingodad:

i’m still so mad at how disastrously hiveswap managed to seemingly un-worldbuild the jadebloods. like pre act 2 i could have told you with pretty good arguments from the text what the role of the jade caste is in alternian society but now i struggle to get anyone to give me a straight answer on whether jadebloods even live in the caves taking care of the mother grub anymore. like can you tell me?

ok a disclaimer that our sources on this do largely come from i) doc scratch’s ancestor intermission and ii) act 6 information about beforus. so i’m going to preempt any comments about how this information may not be reflective of current-day alternia: THERE IS ESSENTIALLY NOTHING NEW IN PARADOX SPACE. EVERYTHING THAT CAN HAPPEN IS EITHER A VISUAL OR SUBSTANTIVE REPRODUCTION OF SOMETHING THAT HAS ALREADY TRANSPIRED ON A TIMELINE. alternia, beforus and scratch’s fanfiction thereof are all reflections of each other, intended to weave together into a universal truth which broadens the reader’s understanding of the text!! which is to say in simple terms: unless the text outright tells us or gives us some other reason to believe alternia has changed in the time since the dolorosa and kanaya, I am going to assume the information we are given remains meaningful.

TO THAT END: since this isn’t the first time i have made a post along these lines, once and for all on the record, here is my assessment of the role of jadebloods as outlined by homestuck 2009-2016, in which there is a lot more to go off than people often seem to believe (“homestuck has no lore!!” - the clueless poster 2009-ongoing).

the Dolorsa belongs to “the rare class assigned strictly to serving the mother grub in the caverns, forbidden from visiting the surface”; from Act 6 Intermission 1, part 1, they are “the caste almost solely devoted to tending to the mother gru8, hatching the young and proliferating the 8rood”, and according to Kanaya they “Tended To Spend A Lot Of Time In The Brooding Caverns Where A Convenient Source Of Light Was Often Handy” (A6I3, part 3). the last part is important; basically the entire point of rainbow drinkers, as far as Kanaya is concerned, is that they glow because they live in dark caves.

Kanaya herself might stand out as an exception to this, but I think there are obvious reasons as to why that would be. for one thing, she is the exception; she never came from the caverns in the first place, she landed on Alternia from space. she never underwent trials, she never went through the process of building a hive with her lusus - she lives in a copy of Jade’s home, grown from a seed - and even that she was chosen by her particular lusus is “an event so rare as to elude documented precedent.” she is in the truly unique position of having been raised by a mother grub rather than being the nanny of one.

(there is also some implication that Kanaya having been raised in daylight played into some deliberate plan on Scratch’s part: “What would you say if I said a dutiful girl raised in the daylight was protected by a bulb-headed guardian, and learned to glow in the dark after death?” this lines up with something we’ve known about Alternia’s undead from the beginning, which is that they “feast on the light and the living” - seemingly rainbow drinkers perform some kind of photosynthesis. this could be seen as contradicting Kanaya’s speculation above, or it could simply be that these vampires follow the same basic rules as glow in the dark stickers (and perhaps the very reason they’re usually kept underground is to keep them unpowered?) - but the basic premise that Kanaya’s living situation was specifically engineered and not the norm remains.)

perhaps more importantly, I also think it’s pretty clear within the context of the rest of the trolls that Kanaya is not yet in the position to be playing the assigned role of her caste. just as Karkat aims to be a threshecutioner and can expect to be sent off into space for this role when he reaches adulthood, working in the caverns is obviously something that awaits - or would have awaited, had other plans not intervened - in Kanaya’s future. crucially, it has only ever been the “vast majority of adult trolls [who] are off-planet”; there is some minority of adults who stay behind, and, being the smallest minority among the castes, the jadebloods are an obvious candidate for that. in short being isolated underground is the jade caste’s own version of being isolated among the stars (quite plausibly, I should reiterate, because being exposed to the sun offers them an undue advantage in the struggle of the castes(/sexes) of Alternia’s society). all the other big rules of Alternian society - chiefly that a) after the Summoner’s rebellion the Condesce decided troll adults and children were to be strictly separated from each other and b) that once a young troll pupates into their mature form they emerge from the brooding caverns to stake out a life of their own - make it clear that once they move down there, jadebloods are auxiliatrices for life. ultimately, Scratch’s remark about the Dolorosa being forbidden from surfacing only makes explicit what is already clear when you put together all the other pieces.

so when i see the word “cloister” used in reference to jadebloods what comes to mind is already pretty familiar to me; it comes naturally to draw connections between the sequestered subterranean jadebloods and catholic monasticism. i just don’t really understand what Hiveswap is saying when it uses that word. like, i would like to. it just is not clear to me like it’s clear when i read Homestuck

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What's the deal with the obscure cult thing

dingodad:

the trolls’ introductions give us an outline of each troll’s position in their society. we have to remember that, at the point of the trolls’ introduction, the caste system was only kind of just starting to be born as a concept. gamzee’s introduction on p. 2012, where we get the “You belong to a RATHER OBSCURE CULT” line, comes a whole 70 pages before we even get this exchange:

GC: SOLLUX, PL34S3 / GC: YOU 4R3 MR 4PPL3B3RRY BL4ST 4ND 3V3RYON3 KNOWS THOS3 4R3 YOUR F4VOR1T3 FL4VORS / GC: 3V3N THOUGH YOU TYP3 1N YUCKY MUST4RD / GC: WH1CH 1S W31RD >:\
TA: maybe there ii2 more two me than you thiink. […] maybe ii ju2t want two giive the red and blue thiing a re2t for a change and not make iit 2o iit2 liike, oh look iit2 that prediictable fuck wiith tho2e two 2tupiid color2, iit2 amaziing how much everyone fuckiing hate2 hiim.

of which Hussie has this to say in the published commentary (Book 4, p. 101):

Terezi says it’s weird that Sollux types in yucky mustard, even though his “favorite colors” are red and blue. It’s really not weird at all, considering literally everyone in his blood class types in that color. But this idea may not have been fully locked in yet as an ironclad canon fact. While Hivebent continuously provides the scoop on what the facts of this culture are, it is simultaneously exploring certain nebulous ideas before fully committing to them. This is a very good strategy when it comes to improvisational worldbuilding.

when Gamzee’s cult is described as “obscure”, it makes no sense to interpret this as meaning “obscure within his caste”, because the caste idea wasn’t even fully formed in the author’s mind at that point in time, let alone the reader’s. what that line is saying is that Gamzee’s cult is obscure within his society. and everyone seems to ignore the very sentence after that comment, which says exactly what i’m saying, almost explicitly:

The beliefs of this cult are SOMEWHAT FROWNED UPON by those dwelling in more common lawnrings.

Gamzee’s beliefs are strange to commoners. the very clear implication being that among the upper echelons of Alternian society, being a juggalo isn’t that frowned upon at all! sometimes Hussie leaves things unsaid about the world of Homestuck because they’re not important or to deliberately leave them up to interpretation, but quite often things go unsaid because when you read between the lines they really should speak for themselves. the fact that Alternia’s upper castes are more and more uncommon is one of these things (but to drive the point home, there’s this comment from Formspring: “lower classes must be much more copious than higher classes. The lowbloods die off much more quickly, and so must be spawned in greater numbers.”).

it’s odd that this particular “obscure cult” line has become a sticking point, because Kanaya’s intro does the exact same thing when it describes her as “one of the few of [her] kind who can withstand the BLISTERING ALTERNIAN SUN, and perhaps the only who enjoys the feel of its rays.” we all seem to understand that this isn’t claiming daywalking as a unique power of Kanaya’s, but merely hinting at the fact that Kanaya is part of a rare caste with that ability. I guess many don’t make the comparison because Gamzee’s caste is never explicitly singled out as a rare one?

from there, what limited background we do get on the Alternian regime hammers home the point. “subjugglator” (this has the word juggalo in it. a lot of people try to get out of this one) and “Highblood” are used as functional synonyms in Scratch’s intermission:

p. 4054: The highbloods were livid over the unprecedented heresy, and soon, a massive sectarian war followed, spreading across the planet and throughout the galaxy. The conflict was lopsided of course, with the Highbloods given full support from the Condesce and her sea dwellers.
p. 4063: [the Condesce] could use her leverage to delegate oppression to the subjugglators, whose unique abilities and exceptional brutality made them natural enforcers. They too would delegate in their governance, exploiting the pride and loyalty of dangerous bluebloods beneath them…

the fact that the guy literally called The Grand Highblood is a massive clown is basically garnish; but the fact that the word Highblood with a capital H, even outside of the context of Gamzee’s ancestor, was basically used exclusively to refer to purplebloods in the comic seems to have been largely forgotten. this only continues into Act 6, even when a lot of the fandom’s misconceptions and reconceptions of the lore started to seep into the comic proper:

You’re not really up on Alternian history, but apparently at some point the empress got fed up with the Subjugglators’ stranglehold on the soda market, and released a drink that was said to be more loaded with sugar than even the wicked elixir itself. The Highbloods considered such marketing reports to be blasphemous lies, however. (Act 6 Intermission 1, part 2)

emphasis all my own, to make clear that basically no distinction is made between Highbloods as a political institution and the subjugglators as a religious authority. but really, Act 6 is when the whole clown thing should have started to become really obvious, anyway, with lines like “There was this sense that [the Condesce] just loved the idea of delegating the extreme subjugation of the world’s population to a pair of demented clown rappers” and the increasing inescapability of Lord English’s influence on the story only entrenching that the presence of these juggalos on Alternia had real significance and was not some one off joke.

years ago when it was at its peak, the idea that the subjugglators “were only ever meant to be an obscure cult” seemed to me to have originated among troll enthusiasts who dropped off the comic around Scratch’s takeover and didn’t really care for overarching plot points like Lord English taking prominence into Act 6. but I guess now that troll discussion has started to center the design process that went into the Hiveswap trolls, the argument has circled back around into the mainstream? but basically to answer your question the deal with the obscure cult thing is that it’s bogus. people wanted to make fantrolls who weren’t juggaloes because what they fundamentally forget is that a race of juggalos controlling alternia is actually meant to be, and is, really fucking funny

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Since we’ve been told that the cobalt / cerulean caste is predominantly male , and Mindfang is a female pirate that exists in opposition to the Alternian “rule of law”, i assume she’s a deviation from the standard of her caste’s expectations. what do you think the predominantly male law abiding cobalts do in Alternian society?

lately my assessment has been kind of leaning towards the idea that, in the sense that all of the castes were designed specifically to produce the 12 homestuck trolls; maybe the grand cosmic role of the cobalt caste is that they deviate?

beyond the fact that Vriska’s job aspiration is seemingly to be a “gamblignant” (which unlike any of the other trolls’ aspirations is very clearly not a real occupation), basically the one suggestion of a cerulean culture Hussie gives us is this line of commentary from Homestuck: Book 4, page 192:

The fact that [Vriska and Equius are] neighbors suggests there isn’t that big a divide between blue and indigo in terms of status and daily life. Both classes probably cluster together somewhat in a kind of snobby symbiosis, since they’re one notch below purple-blooded clown hell […and] one notch above the jade and teal middling classes…

i’ve interpreted this symbiosis before as “man and wife” castes, as the cobalt caste having become vestigial or ornamental out of a lack of any other purpose of its own. and if Caliborn separated the trolls out into twelve classes in a mirror image of Sburb’s twelve classes, it makes sense that the caste designated as the “Thief class” would be peculiar in this kind of way. Hiveswap’s bluebloods being jobless malignants described as “vriskas” of varying kinds seems to play with that kind of idea.

but the blueblood symbiosis manifests itself in different configurations, and for a while it’s Serket who harbours Zahhak; because Mindfang isn’t merely a malignant outlaw. she’s a Marquise, she’s royalty! at least for a time, it seems that the gamblignants were allowed to operate as a nation of their own. so there’s a historical precedent for at least some cobaltbloods operating as free agents while still filling a niche within the broader troll social paradigm.

presumably with the decimation of the gamblignants and the establishment of the modern Alternia, a lot of this potential for freedom disappeared; hence Vriska’s shrinking into Equius’ cultural shadow. but as Hussie suggests in his commentary, while the middling castes “revolve around more functional, municipal services”, the bluebloods are true nobility, so there’s probably still a lot of freedom available to them in terms of what roles they can fill as law-abiding citizens. if the primary role of the indigo caste is to uphold the regime of the purple bloods above, there’s surely plenty of jobs that need doing in that sector, and so far as we know a troll of cerulean blood has the same opportunities to take these jobs; just with perhaps a little bit more ridicule and a little bit less social cachet.

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i’ve always thought that the name “gamblignant” stuck out among the other alternian job titles as really unworthy wordplay. what is a “malignant” even supposed to mean in this context? how is it at all equivalent to an “executor” or “eradicator” or “assassin”? but with one of their forms of romance literally being intended to foster violent rivalry, i guess it doesn’t seem so out of the question that “an evil guy” really is a real occupation you can have in the troll world? like, so long as “storytelling-as-law” is English’s rule

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puzzlewagon:

dingodad:

dingodad:

like for the longest time i just took it as read that the violent nightmares trolls have that force them to sleep in drugslime were completely just trauma from the violent baby war they were forced to participate in from the moment they were born. no supernatural chucklemagic or eldritch shit required

when vriska asks if tavros even remembers the trials and he says no and she says well you probably got a stupid easy trial by mistake i was reading between the lines and assuming that meant he never went through the trials at all? and that was why he was so averse to violence. which made complete sense to me with the knowledge that none of them were even born in the caverns, they landed on alternia’s surface from space, so how would they even end up there… the comic ends up basically handwaving this by stating outright that the dolorosa found the signless in the caverns somehow but even looking back it still feels like that vriska/tavros convo is supposed to be indicating something

this is pretty fascinating. i like the idea that (at least some of) the other trolls have completely fabricated memories of the trials because youre Just Supposed To Have Those. i mean of course you see a lot of characters pretending they’re more well-adjusted than they actually are in homestuck - i think it’s very relevant that the only two trolls who suggest that they remember their trials are karkat and vriska - but imagining trials that never happened would be a level of self-delusion on par with john and his clown drawings. it’s an interesting thought that, to survive on alternia, you have to retcon your own personal history…

fwiw, because the tavros/vriska conversation in question involves tavros trying to commune with game constructs to avoid violence, i always assumed that that was what he did as a pupa, too: he didn’t get “easier” trials, he just asked some nearby lusii for protection or something. maybe he never realised he went through the trials because he was always kept out of harm’s way. this would also tie back into the summoner/ghost army arc; tavros was the only one who thought to go and ask others for help