i will disagree with the notion that hiveswap’s worldbuild makes hivebent seem desolate and that there must have been some widespread social change on alternia between the two time periods. i think the fact that hivebent seems so desolate has very little to do with the fact that it’s set on alternia (though not NOTHING to do with it, mind you) and almost everything to do with the fact that it’s homestuck. hivebent’s selection of trolls live in rural regions and barely speak to anyone outside their tight knit social circle by design, the exact same way the human cast are… if you based your whole opinion of how human society works on john and his friends you’d probably find that pretty scary too!!
I guess this plays into some thoughts I had earlier about the integral differences between Hiveswap and Hivebent; Hiveswap is a story about a quest, which necessitates it taking place in a world with roads and freedom of movement, while Hivebent is a story about being stuck at home, hence the bounding “lawnrings” in place of streets.
in the tags for that post I begrudgingly accepted that this might be interpreted as a cultural difference between the two Alternian eras, but let’s keep ignoring that and focus still on the fact that Homestuck is about living nowhere in particular and playing a game called “suburb”, while Joey (who notably starts off in a mansion far from any friends) gets transported straight into the middle of civilisation…
all that in mind, it obviously strikes as significant that Dave and Sollux live city lives in such contrast to the rest of the cast… in both cases the “stems” that connect them to the rest of the world are inevitably cauterised upon entry to the Medium, but for what reason does Dave start off with his stem intact when Dirk’s was broken hundreds of years before his arrival on Earth?