#hiveswap heiress

[marvus-xoloto]

What you think would happen if Marvus broke a leg….

brought out back and shot in the head like a lame horse unfortunately 😔

[meraki-sunset]

i have a question about hiveswap as im just getting into it, considering that the events of hiveswap and hauntswitch both take place in the late 1900s, whats the point exactly?

we already know whats going to happen and that all of the characters are doomed fail on their goals and then die no matter the outcome. the caste system is never abolished, HIC stays in power, both earth and Alterna get destroyed, and doc scratch continues his plan without a hitch

none of it seems to really matter or serve any purpose other than worldbuilding for 2 already doomed worlds (3 if you count the cherub portal implying a lost society of cherubs)

Well, it is. It is worldbuilding, that’s what precuels are. They add extra context to events you already know will happen, they add to how they happened, how we got there. That doesn’t make them pointless.

It may seem irrelevant at first glance, but Hiveswap actually has a very important role.

It sets the stage for the arrival of the players on both Alternia and Earth-A

The events of Hiveswap are happening with an equivalent distance in years between both Alternia and earth

Which means the Beta children are about to arrive in their meteors (1995 - 1996) a little after the time when Joey and Jude are having this adventure (1994), which means the Alpha trolls will get to Alternia soon too.

Both timelines are mirrored in time, they both have the same exact amount of time before the end.

We know the Beta kids hadn’t arrived yet to earth during Hiveswap because it’s 1994, and that the Alpha trolls hadn’t arrived either because Trizza is the heiress, and there can only be one at a time, so Feferi isn't there yet.

This series of events are necessary for Doc scratch’s plan, otherwise he wouldn’t have intervened, giving Xefros a surveillance free communication channel, so Joey and him aren’t detected by the authorities.

He needs them under the radar so they can (while trying to send Joey back home) connect people with each other, cause necessary problems, kick start important events.

All which will set the stage for the 12 troll player’s arrival.

What do I think it’s the most important event Doc Scratch needs Joey and Xefros to make happen?

Trizza has to die. There can only be one heiress at a time, and if Feferi is about to arrive, then Trizza has to go.

The events of Hiveswap/HauntSwitch will cause the death of the heiress, either fighting against the Condesce, at the hands of the revolted trolls Joey and Xefros will influence, crushed to death by Feferi’s own meteor, who knows. But if this is the "equivalent to 1994 on Alternia" and all that is happening it’s really happening as a mirrored version of Earth’s timeline, then the 12 trolls should be to arriving at different dates during the following year. Which means she doesn’t have much time left, as we know Feferi was the only heiress on Alternia during Homestuck. And we’re 13 years away from the end of the world. It needs to happen now.

It's the same tactic Doc used with Rose, Vriska and Terezi

The only reason he ever “helps” anybody it's because he needs them to make things happen.

He needs Joey and Xefros alive, he needs the rebellion to go through (even if it fails, it'll fail in a way that it's usefull for him), he needs Trizza gone so Feferi can come to Alternia and so the final stage of this plan of millions of years connecting dots and manipulating people to create a hostile planet for the new players to grow stronger that their predecessors, can begin. The rise of the new players.

I personaly think Tyzias might be the one to intercept Karkat or at least be involved in it.

It could be her, Joey or maybe someone else, but whoever intercepts him will have to know about the signless and according to Tyzias’s password (69) she already knows about him and she knows his symbol, and seems to be a follower in the down low. Tyzias also must knows how the singless promised that there would be another troll like him, and according to Doc scratch's explanation:

The followers of the summoner decreased enormously, but the Doc said himself that there were still some of them hidden and I think he was talking about Tyzias and her alies.

Sometimes we forget that there was intervention from the suferer's followers to ensure Karkat's survival

That’s why he has the sufferer’s symbol, someone who knew it gave it to him. And we know Tyzias knows.

The ectobiologist and team leader also seems to always be the last one to turn 13, (as well as the last to wake up as their dream self) so Karkat should be the last one to arrive, ending that chain of events.

Of course this all means that, by the time the end of the world happens, and asuming they’re all still alive, all Hiveswap trolls would be adults carrying duties off planet and would die the day of the apocalypse during the Vast Glub along with all troll Civilization.

The same would happen to Joey and Jude, assuming Joey is successful and returns to Earth. They would die on the 13th of April 2009 with the rest of humanity, not knowing they had a part in it or that their lost brother was the detonator of the end of the world.

It’s tragic in the end, but it’s necessary. Someone has to play that role.

They are the stagehands who prepared the stage for the first act of the play they were never meant to see.

And who knows, it may not be the end of them, maybe we’re too quick to assume they didn’t get saved somehow. By some random paradoxical event or deus ex machine that teleported them away from danger. We’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.

It's been a while since i wrote an analysis, i really missed that ^u^

[relaxxattack]

when he’s a total bitch but every once in a while you get hit with shit like this

mentally ill about dammek again

[friendsim2]

ok so ive been wondering this ever since the showcase trailer and i need to know

that coat is definitely dragging on the floor isnt it? the girl is positively smol there's no way she fits in that coat TwT

also important question, has Trizza ever been allowed outside of the tower? and how is it that the empire built her "heiress persona" exactly? considering all the merch of her and how suspicious it'd be if there were 0 photos of her online just """enjoying life""" (also just curious in general if like in HSwap she still owns a ship or not) (and curious also about whats her stance on memes)

(btw ever since the release of vol. 13 youve made me love Trizza sm, so thank you btw. REALLY excited for vol. 14!! ^u^)

Oh yeah, no, that coat is absolutely hitting the floor.

Trizza has been allowed outside the tower, but in a heavily-supervised kind of way. Think of it as a day trip by a prisoner more than anything else. But certainly a far more restricted life than the Hiveswap timeline allowed for.

[p0ssumkingdom]

does anyone else find the extended zodiac stupid? not the concept of it, but how it works. the fact that each caste has 24 symbols based on aspect and lunar sway and that castes have "true" aspects or sways just goes against everything that homestuck had established.

first off, true signs. each caste has an associated aspect and lunar sway that coincides with the twelve beta trolls (e.g prospit/blood for lime caste, derse/void for indigo, etcetera). does this mean that there is something special about these specific signs; some twelve cornerstone trolls, pioneers of the caste sign system? this implies that the beta trolls just so happened to be the representative trolls of the entire species (which yes, they ended up being, not because of their signs but because of the circumstances of sgrub), which further suggests that the caste system is not bullshit and isnt entirely based upon oppression which is like. WHAT?? the ENTIRETY of hivebent supported the idea that the alternian caste system was created to exploit the gifted lowbloods and keep highblood nobles and seadwellers in power!! but hiveswap comes and models every troll after their equivalent blood color troll in homestuck, which makes every bronzeblood related to animals, every purpleblood a clown, and the wordt one being that every goldblood is a powerful psiioniic which is STUPID because psiioniics are meant to be a rare mutation special to goldbloods but wgatever! make em all laser blasting gamers cus who gives a shit!!!! just make em all batteries why not!!!!!!!! ANYWAYS. true signs also imply that every caste has a special, deeprooted connection to a sburb aspect and moon? why? it just implies that every troll has some sort of quality about them because of their blood color! does a purpleblood HAVE to be connected in some way to rage and prospit?

perhaps true signs are simply a matter of perspective. the beta trolls all left an imprint on the human universe with the constellations, and calling them "true signs" is 1. because they line up with the traditional zodiac, and 2. because the trolls presented in homestuck are those signs. that still doesnt fully explain this little tidbit, but whatever.

one other mystery is how the signs are assigned? excuse me if i missed anything explained in homestuck/hiveswap, but how does a troll get a specific sign? are they just assigned based off a categorization system? do the signs define what your role as a troll is to alternian society? true sagittarius is given the title of "Sign of The Engineer", but taurus is "Sign of The Unfledged"? what is "The Unfledged"? it's clearly based off of tavros, as he was never able to spread his wings, so does every other taurus troll considered "unfledged"? this brings up another question, would two trolls of the same sign be generally similar? how many leo trolls out there live in caves with their lusii, making ship art? or facist bootlicking hipster aquariuses, desperately seeking a relationship with the heiress?

or maybe, just maybe, the extended zodiac is just bullshit. nothing to be taken seriously; empirical propaganda designed to put trolls into molds. an in-universe system, just like castes or quadrants. thats what i want to go with now that i think about it. the aspects and sways were replacements for other troll concepts our human minds cant comprehend, and there's no real purpose behind the extended zodiac. thats probably what it is. in-universe, of course.

[homestuck-fanauthor-coalition]

@jonayariley

The Era of Her Imperious Condescension in Exile The Town of Separation, Alternia Eridan had given everyone clear instructions — the Undine, which had been shadowing the Marquise just inside of close wireless range, would continue to the north and link up with Heiress and bring her on board with her personal guard. Eridan would stay aboard the Marquise, now an RAE ship, and drive hard up through a small passage that led through the mountains and into a small slot of space called the Hollow. Eridan had heard stories about it — about the creatures that lived inside — and he was prepared. He would brief the crew further once they were ready to make the run through the Hollow — that would be an interesting discussion to have. Before that, they needed to dock at a small town that served as a port of call to the few landships foolhardy or brave enough to travel into the Hollow. The Marquise set into the town’s main dock just as the sun was starting to lose its level behind the horizon — dusk was kissing the whole place a deep purple. It reminded Eridan of something he’d seen in a dream recently… or perhaps it wasn’t a dream to begin with. He leaned up against the ship’s railing and watched as the landship was tied fast, keeping its repulsors on idle, allowing the ship to float fifty feet in the air. “Hey!” Vriska’s shout interrupted his pondering. Erdan turned and made a what gesture. “Uh… Admiral? Is that what you are?” He shrugged — it didn’t actually matter much to him. On the Undine, perhaps, the chain of command and discipline was important… here, out on the edge of the frontier by the Free States on a ship run by a pirate, it all felt less serious. “You can call me whatever you like — Eridan is fine. Admiral is fine… if you insist on formality.”

Chapters: 37/?

Rating: Mature

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence; Major Character Death

Category: F/F; F/M; Multi

Fandom: Homestuck; Hiveswap

Relationships: Meenah Peixes/Aranea Serket; Porrim Maryam/Aranea Serket; Jade Harley/Rose Lalonde; Porrim Maryam & Kankri Vantas; Meenah Peixes/Kankri Vantas; Jane Crocker/Roxy Lalonde; Roxy Lalonde & Dirk Strider; ?????? Elwurd/Porrim Maryam; Jane Crocker/Jake English; Kanaya Maryam/Aradia Megido; Kanaya Maryam & Karkat Vantas; Eridan Ampora/Vriska Serket; Terezi Pyrope/Vriska Serket; Eridan Ampora/Feferi Peixes; June Egbert/Dave Strider

Characters: Aranea Serket; Meenah Peixes; Porrim Maryam; Beforus Feferi Peixes; Jade Harley; Rose Lalonde; Dave Strider; John Egbert; Lynera Skalbi; Charun Krojib; Kankri Vantas; Stelsa Sezyat; Rose's Mom | Beta Roxy Lalonde; Jane Crocker; Roxy Lalonde; Jake English; Dirk Strider; Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley; ?????? Elwurd (Hiveswap); Cronus Ampora; Daraya Jonjet; Latula Pyrope; June Egbert; Damara Megido; Doc Scratch (Homestuck); Karkat Vantas; Aradia Megido; Kanaya Maryam; Tavros Nitram; Feferi Peixes; Eridan Ampora; Vikare Ratite; Ardata Carmia; Terezi Pyrope; Konyyl Okimaw; Boldir Lamati; Skylla Koriga

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe; Alternate Universe - Modern Setting; Alternate Universe - Fantasy; Alternian Empire (Homestuck); Beforus (Homestuck); Modern Era; Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk; Cyberpunk; Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse; Alternate Universe - After College/University; God Tier (Homestuck); Derse and Prospit; cosmic horror; Beforus Culling (Homestuck); Private Investigators; Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy; Attempted Sexual Assault; Heist; Imperial Drones (Homestuck); Alternate Universe - Steampunk; Alternia (Homestuck)

[ask-warmer-hues]

What kind of planet do the Warmer Hues trolls live on? And what are the jobs of the Highbloods Xefros and the other lowbloods serve?

This is an excellent first question for lore purposes.

The Warmer Hues AU is set off-planet in the Empire Central Colony, which is essentially a hub planet for the wider Empire. I imagine it to be like a massive, planet-wide, futuristic city with a few dead zones on the outskirts. There’s no actual place names like ‘Outglut’, the Central Colony is just split into different sectors/districts, all dedicated to different bloodcastes. The cast of Warmer Hues, all being lowbloods, live in Sector RBN-0718 (Rust Bronze North 0718). Since there is a higher population of lowbloods in general, they have the largest number of sectors, but the least amount of resources. I imagine that some of the newer lowblood sects are being built into dead zones, making them more dangerous.

Warmer Hues takes place 3.5 sweeps (just over 7 years) after the events of Hiveswap Act 2 and beyond, meaning that basically every troll is off-planet.

In terms of jobs…

Xefros and Dammek are both butlers, as they were being trained to be in the original, but Xefros is the only one who can actually hold a job. Xefros works for an indigoblood in a nearby highblood district, while Dammek is actively putting off job-seeking in order to focus on planning his next rebellion.

Marsti and Chixie are both nurses at Sector RBN-0718’s Mediculler Unit. While this is a rare position for lowbloods to get into, it’s not impossible, as a lot of the work revolves around cleaning up and checking in on patients. Their position is extra important in the lowblood district as the midblooded doctors and specialists only really do the bare minimum for lowblood patients; as long as they’re okay to work without much agony, they’re good to go. It allows the two to keep on helping people without putting themselves in too much danger.

Fozzer’s job doesn’t really have a title, but the long and short of it is that he gives speeches and seminars to lowblood workers to keep them motivated and make them feel like they have a purpose. He also works alongside higher-blooded propaganda officers to produce posters and other resources to keep the morale high amongst his fellow lowbloods. This wasn’t his first job though, as he was initially responsible for body disposal, but had to be let go due to personal circumstances. He got his new job after the Heiress took a liking to him.

Vikare is another troll who’s shifted jobs, but not so severely. Initially, he was a pilot for the Empress’s intergalactic fleet; engaging in space dogfights with interstellar threats and all that. Unfortunately, he ended up getting in a nasty incident, which led to him losing a leg. His reputation allowed him back into the workforce quickly though, but nowadays he just does supply runs to other colonies or Central Colony sectors that require aid.

And finally, we have Skylla, who is a lusus wrangler. She is essentially responsible for going to dead zones, other colonies and even sometimes return to Alternia to capture and domesticate lusii to get them ready for their jobs as custodians. This job has taken a toll on her though. Outside of all the injuries from wrestling with the beasts, she’s also garnered some emotional wounds, especially when it comes to dealing with lusii that have been ‘returned’ due to poor treatment of their wards. Skylla herself had a good lusus, so seeing them act so cruelly has made her reconsider a lot of things.

[overtrolled-liveblog]

F&K 2-1

> take it lying down

"You gotta roll with it or get out of town. And since you can't go anywhere, you just roll. And you really want more friends. Addiction is a powerful thing. "

Eyy they said the thing!

"She gives his hair another yank, like it's reigns and he's her horse."

Oh I just know there's some kink fic on these guys.

"Kuprum grins, showing a bunch of big, blunt teeth"

Not very blunt IMO.

"You think I would just have eyes like some kind of normie" very funny line but I'm not doing her typing quirk bc this phone auto inserts periods whenever I do multiple spaces and I'm not going back and undoing that anymore.

And then we have a description of a disease called voidrot. I actually was introduced to the concept by a fanfic, I think, but obviously it comes from one of the hiveswap games.

And kuprum clearly likes the current heiress, and folykl thinks this is annoying. "Trizza is basically [] the third member [] of this relationship [] considering how goddamn [] horny you are [] to get her [] cybernetic tentacles [] up in you." Ah. Yep. This guy is a Kinky fucker then.

And then mspar makes it about the fact they are pale and not pitch as they initially thought, and we get our next decision tree.

Before we get to that, a few thoughts in the next post.

[dailytanine]

(art above by mod button)

well hI there! my name Is tanIne zavIll (emφasIs on the nIne)! I appear to have stumbled on an InterdImensIonal capsule oφ knowledge… In φact thIs sIte remInds me oφ grumblr except you all have strange accents! and no one types In theIr blood color here! just φascInatIng!

as φor IntroductIons, I should start by tellIng you about myselφ, rIght? hmm... well, I enjoy chatting with people and Indulging in the latest φashIons. but most oφ all my φavorIte thIng Is to share storIes! φantastIcal ones oφ raInbow drInkers and heIresses and the beautIφul sIde oφ the world!

regardless oφ cultural dIφerences Im sure we wIll get along just φIne so long as we are both respectφul. I would lIke to update you on my day-to-day lIφe, and perhaps make some new φrIends or create new storIes. I'm so excIted to chat with you adorable creatures! please φeel φree to ask anythIng you want or "tag" me In posts you want me to see. I promIse I don't bIte, you can trust me :]

check my blog bIo to see the current status oφ my Inbox and queue. Ill see you around!

welcome to DAILYTANINE! here's a word from our mods:

// TANINE ZAVILL (she/her) is a cerulean-blood alternian troll. she's a prospit dreamer. she has no set age (aside from being 16+ yrs), gender/sexuality, classpect or quadmates yet. her bio can be found > here! < spoiler warning for things that may appear on the blog in the future.

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// current admins: button (they), scarf (he), jazz (she/they). asks can be addressed to us or tanine. tanine was created by mod button, but we all agree on every decision made for her.

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// rules for asks:

NO explicit nsft (canon-style lewd jokes or comments are fine)

NO outside discourse

BE NICE

// #dailytanine for all posts, #taninemail for ic answers, #modmail for ooc answers, and mods tag their posts with #mod [_] (e.g. #mod button)

// tanine exists in her own canon-compliant universe, and DOES NOT have the rest of her story planned. additional characters and lore will be created as we go. that said, not everything on this blog is lore-accurate.

// absolutely NO drama here, especially surrounding ships or the epilogues. you will NOT find any ep/^2 content here. only homestuck is relevant and the lore for tanine is different to that of hiveswap and beyond.

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// lastly, our main blog for non-daily stuff is @taninesmodmail !

[suboptimal-xenobiologist]

I need to redo this post. I forgot condy wanted the heiress dead. I got hiveswapped again.

Headcanons About the Fuschia Caste

Aka Alternia is. So genocidal.

Fuschiabloods have insane lifespans spanning hundreds of thousands of years. This one's mostly canon but I'm not sure we ever got a number range other than "way too long"

For lack of better terminology, Fuschias have ridiculously high attack and defense stats, but ridiculously low hp. For example, it'd take a lot of effort to stab them because their flesh is practically impenetrable, but once you get the blade in, they're dead immediately. This is a well kept government secret for the most part.

All alternian fuschiabloods other than the heiress are culled at birth. Beforus didn't do this, and instead had a different method of choosing an heiress, but honestly I could make a whole other post about that.

Fuschias are incredibly territorial, spending most of their lives geographically isolated despite their ever-expanding empires. Part of the afformentioned Beforian practice was a long training on how to resist murdering everyone in the same room as them. Their similarity in violent and territorial instinct to red cherubs is of interest to all who study either species.

Oh yeah it's worth mentioning that even before Alternia's genocidal manifest destiny deal, the empire was fucking massive and encompassed hundreds of solar systems. There are so many fucking planets inhabited by trolls, some of which were populated in the Beforian era and have no association with Alternia whatsoever. The Condesce's insistence on reforming Earth instead of one of the many planets already under her control was 80% a Lord English thing and 20% an expanding the empire thing.

By Alternian law, the only trolls who can become the heiress are Piceses(es? Picesi?), but due to the urgent need to have one on planet at all times, usually the government just lies about about the heiress's sign.

There were quite a few heiresses before Feferi, she was just the one that happened to be on the planet during the events of Homestuck. Needless to say none of them are alive anymore.

When an heiress dies, her name is completely erased from history, to the point where saying it at all is a cullable crime.

[shelbybunny]

The only confirmed screenshots from the now-lost Grubtube Excrement of The Thresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Tesh Pince of Blair by CgruboProductions. The creator, a rustblood, was swiftly executed for making it, and anyone who attempts to reupload it will be executed in turn. It is said Cgrubo's ghost stuck around due to his potent psychic abilities and made The Tesh Pince of Blair 2, but not even a witness report of it has surfaced.

[pasteldustart]

Old but I’m still proud as hell of this sprite edit I did of Trizza I can’t wait for act 3 honestly.I HOPE we get to see the entirety of Cridea’s Hive because those backgrounds are NIIIICE

The fact that we know so little about seadwellers and what they tend to do canonically makes me so so interested in em

[heuristicallyinclined]

MallekWeek: Day 1 Crockertier

Rating T | Word Count 828

__________

If this were your husktop, you’d know what to do. 

Fuck, if this were your husktop, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place. 

You have have firewalls, you use secure connections and proxies, you don’t click stupid shit, you know your security is good enough that something wouldn’t just slip through and easily bypass everything and execute a file allowing remote access to your machine. This kinda of thing just wouldn’t have just happened. 

It’s different when it’s your pan though. You are becoming intimately aware of that as you can practically feel the tiaratop searing through your skull.

The first thing that you can even think to compare it to is mind control. It isn't that. Not by a long shot. you're cerulean, that shit wouldn’t work on you. It shouldn’t at least. But you can still feel that tug, the thoughts that you’re having that aren’t yours and the ones that are you can feel becoming less and less yours. It’s not the same as when you do it to the drones. They’re not the same, they’re not alive, not like you. It’s getting harder to tell yourself that when you can practically feel it embedding itself into your pan and starting to twist what’s already there. You think about how viruses work, about tech and how organic it really is, sometimes to the point of uncanny valley, how much intersect there is between the two as your heart races and your hands go numb as you try to tear it off. 

You have no idea if being aware of this rewiring of your electrical signals makes it better or worse when it doesn’t change how fucking screwed you are.

This was always a possibility. You knew this. You know how the game goes when you constantly reach into places that you’re not supposed to be in and take shit that isn’t yours, eventually someone wasn’t just going to try to grab back, but succeed. You had back up plans, plans on top of plans, but this is a situation you just couldn’t imagine was possible. Why would you even think to plan for or figure out how to get out of tech based mind control? 

Why would you ever think to plan for or figure out how to get out of tech based mind control? 

Fuck, but you couldn’t pass up at least trying to get in. It was too big of an opportunity, a direct connection to some of the empire’s most guarded information. Yes, the drones were involved and you’re not going to pretend that it wasn't an extremely tempting part of it, but it wasn’t even close to everything that you could have accessed through using it, you mean, that you can now access. 

You didn’t fail at getting it. Not really. You still got access and you can see all of it, delivery routes, movement patterns, active tasks, threat management, and resource acquisition. You can even see it and understand it in ways that you never have even dreamed of before. You just happened to get more than you bargained for and that wasn’t necessarily an issue, not if you used it right. You’ve been trying to do this, to get this level of control, for sweeps. You couldn’t just let it go to waste, Not when all of this was right in front of you, not within reach but actually in your grasp. 

Could you really just waste it?

You had never had this kind of chance before and now it was yours. How often do you really just get what you want, what you really want? Someone else was going to come along and take it eventually so why not have it be you? Would they even know what they were getting, how much they had actually gotten access to? You were the one that found it, who had been working for this, who had been lucky enough to figure out what you were working with anyways. You would never have developed the technical skill required to even come close to doing this before. You know you wouldn’t have, because now you learned exactly how much you actually didn’t know and how what you did amounted to jack shit.  

That's not an issue for you anymore though. 

What did it matter if you had to do a few jobs on the side to keep it up? Having a few side projects was the norm for you and you could actually do what you wanted to do. You were going to be stuck doing some sort of military shit for the empire no matter what you did, so why not enjoy having a job that suited you better, where you didn’t have to think so small and could have everything the empire knew right in the palm of your hand and get to use it? It was a pretty sweet deal.

Especially with how much control you have now.

[relaxxattack]

you guys didn't ask for it but you're getting it:

stuff i found lying in hiveswap (part one, maybe?)

dammek buys a specific snack in bulk that's called "oishii mushi", which seems to mean delicious bug in japanese (according to google). based on the packaging i'm reminded of ramen, but it's probably more of a microwave meal based on the picture.

this is a more well-known fact, but i'm putting it here anyway for completion: xefros drinks a highly popular beverage called grub juice, that supposedly boost psionic energy and powers. according to him it's somewhat thick and doesn't taste amazing, but is still better than the new heiress-endorsed grub juice flavor "clawgunk".

dammek prefers a drink that is more simply branded as "i" (or perhaps "il"?)

another two drink brands dammek has lying around his hive. one juice still in the packaging which seems to be called "BUOY __ST" (mast?), and one which has branding of just a symbol... perhaps the troll version of monster energy. boy likes his drinks i guess.

dammek's vandalized drumset reads "the grubbles", except with "the" right-side up and "grubbles" upside-down. presumably to make it harder to read. what am i going to do with this kid 😭

a family-size bottle of grub juice stacked by the fridge.

a bug that looks like a kind of squash, next to cans of something else... i can unfortunately only make out the "IC" on the label. is it worth noting that their can-openers cut hexagonal?

tucked behind a movie poster is this paper which reads, "lorum ipsum dolor sit amet adipiscing elit sed do eiusmod tempor..." and it continues. i imagine they didn't expect this one to be read

two books in xefros's room called "you can SING!" and (in a really fancy font that i think is awesome), "Manners for Royal V."

and a (cooking?) magazine he has called "vine gri___ry" (i can't puzzle out those letters for the life of me)

[argentconflagration]

"But you get the sense that a lot of time has passed between now and then, and it doesn't seem like Alternia has gotten much better. In fact, it may have gotten worse!"

"It seems like, whatever it was your friends tried to do..."

"They failed."

Unpopular opinion(?) but I think MSPAR is wrong here, that Alternia hasn't improved between Tyzias's time and Terezi's.

MSPAR has just encountered Karkat, who appears to be actively hunted by drones, and Vriska, who's murdered a truly staggering number of trolls in order to feed her lusus. But both Karkat and Vriska are pretty exceptional cases. MSPAR never encountered any off-spectrum mutants in Tyzias's time or anyone with a demanding life-or-death situation that would provoke mass murder like Vriska's.

They did encounter trolls who seem to be in the same cull-on-sight boat that Karkat is, like Folykl, as well as trolls who are serial murderers just for fun, like Ardata. I would say that the general level of death and murder is pretty unchanged from Friendsim-era Alternia to Homestuck-era Alternia.

The big difference, I think, is the level of segregation. In Friendsim, trolls mostly socialize with trolls around the same caste. The largest caste-difference relationship in Friendsim is Tagora♠Galekh, who have one caste (cerulean) between theirs. All other relationships are either within-caste or between adjacent castes.

Meanwhile in Homestuck, the most caste-obsessed of the main cast is a highblood in a relationship with a low-midblood (Nepeta♦Equius, separated by three castes). Sollux and Feferi have a matespritship with seven castes between them, not including lime. And in general their social group spans the entire hemospectrum, and this mostly goes without comment.

Segregation is really really bad. I hope this isn't something I have to argue about, but segregation in and of itself is really bad. All other things being approximately equal (and they seem to be), the less-segregated society of Homestuck-era Alternia is preferable to the more-segregated Friendsim-era.

And I'd like to think that Tyzias and friends had a hand in accomplishing that.

[pumpkinofthedale]

When your date makes even you, the most desperate of trolls, uncomfortable