#which sucks for the hs trolls specifically because their heiress is feferi who is pretty chill

[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.