#btw i know i hyped hiveswap 2 a bit

[evierie-puur]

I don't want to make a finished art piece ever again, here's a sketch of Her <3

[snowtimeisbesttime]

Thoughts and questions on Hiveswap Act 2– Part 1.

**DISCLAIMER** I haven't played through the entire game yet! I got to the intermission in the whole trial thingy, and will continue tomorrow! Therefore, I Am Not Looking at anything yet, only posting. I'll probably come back and edit this once I've actually finished the game.

-Did the default names for Xefros & Dammek's lusii change?? I loaded my Act 1 save, and I'm sure they had their default names (Zoosmell and Cornibuster) there, though I'm also pretty sure i accidentally unlocked the “name the lusii” achievement on that save by clicking on the text windows without actually changing their names so... Dammek's lusus is called Toothy now i guess?

-On that note, if Xefros' lusus died I'm going to fucking scream. Even though I'm pretty sure we've barely seen him on screen since like the end of Act 1 but Regardless.

-We see Charun's cave, and it turns out they were neighbours with Zebede all this time, but they're nowhere to be seen at the train?? unless they grabbed an earlier one... Charun did get a death flag the size of the pacific ocean, when interacting with their weird sculpture with a lot of legs and arms surrounding a mouth, but Zebede's just gone without a trace? The bees are gone and there's a hole in the side of his hive, but his lusus doesn't seem to be particularly upset? And neither is Charun's, assuming that huge bug near the cave is their lusus. (Idarat the canon fantroll #3 doesn't appear at the train either, but that's probably for the same reason there aren't any jade or teal background characters: to keep the court scene neat)

-The drones are supposed to be en route to the station, supposedly to fix the ticket machines but probably to cull whoever tripped the alarm on them... i sure hope they don't follow the train or anything orz

-Mostly everyone seems to resemble their respective Friendsims, more or less:

Fozzer appears to be scratched still, yet more philosophical. Also he's not in the train either.

Folykl seems just a touch friendlier than in her friendsim (and Kuprum's still just as hyped about becoming a helmsman as before, even if he seems to know more details about it now).

Chixie's more anxious, probably because it seems she's been doing stuff as The Mask for a while now, and she's going to fuck shit up at Jeevik Week. She says she's not alone in that, and considering it's apparently confirmed that the random troll from her good end Was Dammek all this time... is she also actively in the rebellion? Also is it just me or does her sprite look somewhat scribblier than everyone else's? Even the background characters??

Elwurd's pretty much the same, and it does seem her flirting with Joey was mostly to try and get her to buy something. Also... if her fake tickets were so good, why didn't she just use them, instead of giving them to Joey and Xefros? Like, I get Marvus and Boldir Knowing Stuff, but her?

Zebruh's paying attention to Marvus instead of Chixie, which. Small mercies. He's still a dick, and we're still doing the whole “clowns are peak oppressed” thing.

Marvus seems to still be perfectly nice to the main characters, and perfectly willing to let other people die in order to help them advance (getting Zebruh to sign up for Slam or Get Culled, Daraya if you fuck up in the trial thing, Hopefully Not Any More Cases...) He is helping Tyzias out with her defensive legislaceration experiments, though, and basically everyone who isn't Joey seems to think he might flip his shit and murder someone, as clowns do. At least people don’t seem to lose their minds around him anymore.

Vikare's basically the same, but Joey immediately picks up on his Jake Vibes and instinctively dislikes him.

Diemen eats people???????? as in, actively????????? wtf?????????

Skylla seems to be pretty much the same, but she's obviously worried because Ladyy's sick!! God I fucking hope we do get to help her out before the end of the game.

Marsti's also friendlier than she was in her volume, though I remember MSPAR was particularly prone to sticking their foot in their mouth in that one.

Cirava's surprisingly more trusting than they were in their volume (and also, their eye's light green and not teal). Also, apparently they gouged their other eye out on stream?????? as in live???? besides that, good to see not All of the powerful psionics get succesfully indoctrinated.

Polypa's also rather willing to help out, though we still don't know what the heck happened to her.

Boldir's suitably mysterious, and probably also involved with the rebellion... she does call Xefros “burgundy figurehead”.

Konyyl and Azdaja are still having relationship stuffs, but in the end they clearly care the most about each other. (he still doesn't seem to give a fuck about helm stuffs so far?) The question is, who exactly were they hunting down??

The jades and the teals are basically the same as their Friendsim incarnations, as far as I've seen. The one major change to the jades (besides jade lore which i'll discuss further down) seems to be that hatched2dance is now one of the biggest reasons for their fights, and Bronya does get a crunchy bit of Backstory (the jade from her past that got culled because of the Rainbow Hemotions saga, which is also the reason she's so hard on Daraya now)

On the teals, Stelsa and Tyzias seem to have a teensy bit of quadrant vacillation going on?? Tirona seems to be more focused on becoming a history revisionist than a memeagandist now, and it would also seem that Tegiri's the one into vampires now (or at least, Tagora's better at hiding it And a lot better at not getting involved with the whole mess that is whatever the heck the jades are doing)

-Psionics can have single-colored eyes!! tbh we'd already seen this back in Tegiri's route in Friendsim but it's good to Actually See it visually.

-Also, nice to see that Xefros *can* go toe to toe with the strongest psionic we know in all of Hiveswap! (95% sure that I've seen someone theorize something like this might happen?? I personally wasn't expecting it here but anyways Xefros you're doing amazing sweetie) What's not so nice is that he's only shown this strength when Azdaja hurt Joey (as far as i've played of course)... so unless he like unlocks his potential or something so he can do Big Psychics without seeing his friends get hurt beforehand we're in for some Angst.

-Also if Marvus got his ticket from Cridea (and Chixie won hers in like a raffle or something) then why couldn't she have given Xefros and Dammek some?? like, Dammek's been to one Jeevik Week already. Fiamet also told her about Joey, but by then they were already in the train.

-Me: Xefros' microphone's going to be important in act 2! Also me: *has to give it to fucking Zebruh to get his ticket*. Oh well, that's one thing for the Second Playthrough of Achievement Getting (plus: wearing the cone horns, having Joey introduce herself to Boldir, getting through the whole ace attorney segment without game overs...)

-We get the Quadrant Explanation #1000, sans auspisticism.

-It's vaguely implied that Dammek has also read some Soldier Purrbeasts books?? He's told Xefros the whole “death creates a bond deeper than matespritship or kismessisitude” thing, apparently! So if he's not secretly into troll warrior cats then. That sentence's more than mildly worrying??

-JADEBLOOD LOREDUMP PART THE NTEENTH: Okay first of all it's implied that More cloisters exist? Which in retrospect is pretty much obvious because you can't expect only six trolls to take care of All the troll grubs in existence. Also, the reason jades can't sneak out of the caverns anymore is “because they get Drone'd”, and it seems to be implied that they Can't go out At All*, which kinda contrasts with Friendsim (where literally all the jades snuck out of the caverns at least once: Lanque, Daraya and Wanshi in their own routes, Lynera in Vol 18, and Bronya in Vols 6 & 18). One of their tasks seems to be guarding Forbidden Literature, and Xefros states that they either cull or indoctrinate the most powerful psychic grubs.

-It's also stated that all of our jades were chosen for the cloister when they were basically wrigglers, while Lynera states in Friendsim that she's only been 2,43 sweeps in the caverns. (Considering Bronya's new backstory, it seems that capability to become a rainbow drinker ISN'T the qualifying factor for getting cloistered– depending on how exactly that jade died). It comes to mind that regular, non-cloistered jades might not really know about all these logistics, as it seems that at least Bronya wants to keep them secret– and therefore I don't have to go back and re-rewrite yet another chunk of Mirrorbent orz.

-Lastly, Xefros says they will all become nuns (btw, space church was mentioned in Lanque's route!) when they reach their Ordeals, and we already knew they'd be forced to live in isolation from Friendsim, but during the ace attorney thingy Lynera says she's NOT going to leave the planet because she'll become a midwife and tend to the Mother Grub (basically what we all thought jadebloods did back when we only had the ancestor stuff on Homestuck)... but either Daraya or Lanque told her that they weren't real? So either there's more jade propaganda that we didn't know about, or...

-*The one exception to this is, coincidentally, Jeevik Week, and it's apparently because Trizza herself made it so jades could go too, 3 or 4 sweeps before Hiveswap... why's that? What's so important about Jeevik Week that Trizza would do this? Iirc Cridea and Trizza were sort of set up as opposing forces (?? words), all the way back from the first bunch of concept arts we saw of them? The first thing we learnt from Trizza was that she was the “second best at memes”, and on Cridea's first appearance, when troll twitter was still Prongle, she said that some chick was stealing her memes... and now, Cridea has exactly one follower less than Trizza, who everyone in Alternia's forced to follow... would that person be the heiress herself?

[snowtimeisbesttime]

Thoughts and questions (remix) on Friendsim Volume 13.

Boldir:

-THE SONG FROM THE TRAILER!!!! // Old Secret Hype Babey!!! We'll finally get to hear it in full and in context (+ getting it in the soundtrack!) in Act 2, and I personally can't wait!

-Boldir’s outfit under the Coat of Gun seems to be a white robe, and she has both a calming aura and a “hiding” aura… might she really be a limeblood in disguise?

-And yet more implications that the MC being on Alternia might be a Big Thing.

-Regarding paradoxes, we already know of one: our resident Leiborn, Charun Krojib.

-What does Boldir know for someone to want her dead so badly??? and WHO THE FUCK wants to kill her??? Doc Scratch?? // looks like it. In her cameo in Vriska's PQ route, highly implied to be her astral projecting into MSPAR's mind, she basically has to be pulled back by force and puppet strings by Scratch, and she still manages to reassure them of their real power to change stuff for the better despite that; if she can pull off that stuff and Knows he's out there, it's no wonder he's trying to get rid of her.

-I feel she knew that she was going to die… she wanted to talk to the MC before the end, and she did stand out in the open in her bad end…

-By the way, what exactly happened in her bad end? Did the MC somehow become aware of all the different routes where someone bit it? Also Who talked at the very end??? // if Scratch is actively trying to kill her, but her death breaks reality... was that MSPAR's doing? The breaking reality bit of course, perhaps subconsciously ensuring that she Would Not die that day... they do go on to become the Guardian of a Locked Timeline after Pesterquest... o shit does that mean they finally can reach a version of their friendsim pals???

-(she was sitting in the middle of a spiral when we found her…)

-Boldir knows (and hates) Ardata… from where, we don’t know yet. (ardata did have “probably vriska” in her troll call, and we all know what was vriska’s main source of information… before it blew up in her face and took her arm and eye, that is. Oh would you look at that it’s Time To Hope I’m Wrong About This!) // with Ardata losing that particular bulletpoint, only time will tell what will come out of them knowing each other...

-Regarding Boldir being Heartbound… if she’s looking into the green moon and Scratch, she might know something about SGRUB (and its inevitability), and the events of Hiveswap probably being meant to set the scene for it – which may be why she said that she’s not important (she is wrong, btw. she IS important, in my heart.) // Her troll call bulletpoints weren't changed either, just like Tyzias' and Charun's (and Chahut's as well, caprinius rights.)

Stelsa:

-Alternia has acid rain. (why’d you throw out the umbrella mc…..) Luckily it doesn’t seem to melt trolls.

-Stelsa is Tyzias’ mysterious matesprit!!! aaand they’re both workaholics. // no but really... shes never heard of having downtime for hobbies and relaxing and stuff...

-Even if she doesn’t agree with Tyzias’ views, she still wants to cover for her (kinda part and parcel of the whole “hardcore ignoring the problem” thing she does, but regardless) and is concerned for her. And if Tyzias wants Stelsa to acknowledge the rebel stuff, she probably trusts that she won’t rat her out.

-Looks like what Stelsa fears is society breaking down… it’s likely going to happen somewhere down the line, at least a little. Besides that, she doesn’t seem to have that much faith in the hemospectrum. She is Bloodbound, after all; she might join the rebellion, if only for Tyzias.

-Stelsa’s got three bad endings (iirc only Vikare had 3 as well?). Horn touching being an intimate thing is canon.

-Did Remele buy the fucking museum???? (will we ever get to see her webcomic?) Looks like the thing with Trident Media and Tagora went well for her, though… (confirmation that stelsa doesn’t work at the same place as the other teals? one would think this would have come up sometime)

-The MC has what, 3 moirails now?? (Polypa, Chixie, Stelsa)

-“You both yell as the scuttlebuggy nyooms downwards at full tilt.”

-There’s a Xultan Matzos figurine in the car I think!

-Stelsa's new Troll Call bulletpoints also reinforce her Friendsim characterization, particularly her insane amounts of business (as in being insanely busy) and her organizedness, which is good because one of her old bulletpoints only was a response to one of Marvus', which has also been replaced. Her being Troll Jewish has therefore been left out, though there's still a reference to her fashion sense in her new bulletpoints (though differently than the old one, which could be taken to mean that she didn't mind going around dressed in hot pink or that she was originally going to be an accountant).