Ardata Carmia, the Witch of Life

Now Ardata presents us with a problem unique only to her and another one of the Trolls shown to us so far, Marvus. This problem is that their Signs seem to be obscured or hidden in some manner. Paired with the problem I described with Xefros, about Trolls’ tendency to be pushed towards roles fitting with those of their True Sign, it makes for a difficult to decipher puzzle. With her kidnapping of Trolls and streaming the feeding of her Lusus, you can see the influence the Thief of Light’s role has on her. Taking them away, streaming it, gaining fame through these bloodthirsty shows. But as we know, this is not the life for Ardata, she suffers because of this role she’s been made to follow, even if she definitely has it better than most other Trolls on Alternia, she has a big identity crisis.

I thought she could be a Heart Player, given the struggle with her Self, with her Identity, but I wanted to look for clues in the actual text. Friendsim’s exposure to each character’s personalities is more limited than what we get in Homestuck by far, we only interact briefly with each of the Trolls, with some few exceptions, which makes them that much more difficult to pin-point, but that’s exactly why even the slightest implication we can get from the text is invaluable. There’s some implication about Ardata thinking about her self, her place on Alternia, but identity crisis aren’t exclusive to Heart Players. However there is one thing in her route that seems oddly consistent.

Food.

She kidnaps the Trolls to feed her Lusus for the camera. She beckons the MSPA Reader into her Hive telling them they seem hungry, and that she’ll give them something. We first see the Kitchen, before heading downstairs. We feed her in the Good Ending- And hell, she even worries her superiors will ‘eat her alive’ if she were to scale down on her bloodthirsty content. This made me think about Life, and beyond food, what it represents. Wealth and power over others is something she even talks about, with her being ‘so superior to others’, and Life as Agency, as Growth, ties in to her identity crisis, being forced onto a role, with no agency to stop doing what she’s doing, with no ability to grow. Paired with the lack of Life Players in Hiveswap, this seemed like a perfect match.

The issue then would be finding what Class matches her the best, and I had some ideas, but ultimately it seemed to come down to the Maid and the Witch. Maids usually struggle with their Aspect, bound by it and having to push past it- As we see with Aradia’s Fatalism or Jane having her agency stolen by Condy, or even before that, struggling against Jake’s romantically oblivious nature forcing her into a position she doesn’t enjoy being in. However, while she technically does create content for her followers, she doesn’t seem to Create more than she Manipulates. Then again it could also still be just a trait of her being influenced to be a Thief! 

But then, the Witch. Control, Manipulation, definitely fits her schtick of subtly manipulating and pushing the MSPA reader to do her bidding. While she could easily control their body as she does when going up the stairs, or when stabbing her own hand, she only completely takes them completely during extreme circumstances, and otherwise subtly pushes, nudges at them. Takes away their agency, tries to make the MSPA reader become a servant for her. And while Witches do struggle too, they struggle in a different way than the Maid does. As you may remember from my talk about Joey being a Heir of Life, Heirs and Witches are often related to Magicians and have Familiars.

While there’s no in-text comparison between Ardata and a Magician, her sign is covered by a cape, a cloth of sort, almost emulating the way a Magician would cover an item they’re about to make disappear as an act. She does, however, have the tie to the Familiar. Or, Familiars in her case. We could just list the Tick Lusus and be done with it, but as we see with Vriska, being made to feed your Lusus does not a Witch make. No, there’s something more. Two something mores in fact. The MSPA Reader could be seen as her familiar in training, with her trying to push them to be a perfect little servant, pushing the role of a Knight on them to Serve her, manipulating their agency to make them a Familiar, seems like a big red flag, but there’s something more, the tug-of-war, the back and forth between a Witch and their Familiar! She doesn’t seem to struggle too much with her Tick after all! So… What am I getting at?

Her viewers. Her stream. The people watching her video, they are the Familiars. They are the ones who make assumptions about her that take away her agency to express herself in different ways. They are the ones wanting more material of the Tick feeding, which forces her to keep going on and on. They provide her with fame and recognition, at the price of her own ability to express herself.

And that, to me, completely sets Ardata as a Witch of Life.