#repiton

well i should say first of all that the Mary/Lenore scene in B1 Verse 2 was written by Zoe (she just wrote up a thing about her work here) and touched up by me. so the big monstrous troll was her idea. i asked her for a response and this is what she gave me:

"I just sorta rolled with like, we already know that old highbloods can get pretty gnarly looking so it's gotta be a step beyond that, enough that it would stand out to Mary as remarkable, and I liked the idea of trolls that are more like fantasy trolls, just these hulking monsters that live underground.

the idea of the evil moon hurling rocks at the planet's surface was influenced by some other worldbuilding we've done, the solar Judgments of Fallen London, and maybe most prominently the insane sapient Psychedelic Sun from The Star Beast (Doctor Who). Actually in retrospect the idea of them living under the surface was probably partly ganked from Axile in Fallen London, which was scorched by the system's sun because it found the inhabitants repugnant. so it's sorta pulling from a bunch of sources in this sort of psychedelic science-fantasy mode."

my only addition would be that over the years there've been a lot of cool troll designs. insect versions, furry versions, softer versions, sharper versions, etc. i've always really liked the interpretive versatility given to audiences by Homestuck's abstracted and constantly changing artstyle. in a darker age there were many heated debates on the subject of troll biology, particularly among those desperate for a singularly Canon truth. no such truth can or should exist, but since when has that stopped fandom?

Vast Error does a great job at making its main world, Repiton, feel truly broken. but more so than in grand shows of devastation or shambling quasi-undead, it shows in the daily lives of the characters. in the mundane. the familiar.

because here's the thing; it's too familiar. that's the genius of it all.

let's step back a bit; i don't think many non-homestucks read Vast Error. it might not be directly connected to it plot-wise, but it is on framework- and worldbuilding level (and technically also directly via the whole Midnight Crew/ Dead Shufflers intermission overlap). you're supposed to know how things are "supposed" to be.

which brings us to Alternia/Beforus. the place trolls came from in "canon". the place where expectations about what is normal formed. both versions of the world have massive differences, but the one thing they have in common is how absurdly a alive they are. Alternia was a death world, but anything but a dead world.

and what's often overlooked is that the drones and biotech and intertwined systems of automation and symbiosis on both versions of these worlds made them functionally post-scarcity! the enslaved alien races under the Alternian Empire were hatesinks, not labor force. all manual labour is automated and done by drones. drones they co-evolved with. i don't think it's far-fetched to claim trolls functionally *evolved* in a post-scarcity environment!

so what's at the core of troll society?

-unstable intraspecies dynamics that turn violent easily, and are often fatal, which makes some sense considering (see next point).

-a complex eusocial r-selected (<explains the ease of killing from an evolutionary perspective) reproductive strategy with 3 ""sexes""; drones, mother grubs, and trolls.

-technology, society, and ecology/biology form a continuum, much more so than it does for humans. computers are alive, hivestems grow.

and by the time you finish Homestuck, even if you never cared much about worldbuilding in such a way, you pick up on that. maybe not the details, but at least the aesthetic, the vibe of it. and despite how weird much of it is in comparison to the human baseline, your brain adapts.

because you know how people often say this story alters your brain structure? this is one of the ways how. when trolls are involved, it flips over the uncanny valley graph, subjectively speaking.

and the bottom of the valley becomes the peak, and that's where Alternia resides (forgive the horrble drawing, im doing this on my laptop's touchpad)

so where does that leave Repiton? on Repiton, there are no mother grubs or drones. on Repiton technology is dead, made of metal and plastic. on Repiton there's ads. there's shortages. Repiton is more familiar from a human perspective than Alternia or Beforus could ever be. and that's why it feels wrong. because the graph is still flipped.

it's way down in the valley that used to be a peak.

Almost an entire year in the making, pragmaticNihilist’s solo album 'Repiton' is almost here! The album will be releasing on Friday, May 25th and it stands tall at 16 tracks with 1 bonus track for the road. I can't stress this enough when I say it is one of my favorite things that we have worked on so far.

Here's the cover art I made for @pragmaticnihilist 's grand finale "Only The Begining" to his album Repiton that he made for @vasterror !! I love this album with my whole achy breaky heart it's a masterpiece ♡ and I was honored to work on it!!

The whole album is on YouTube now, check it out!!! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBKFsSMpX3ut49CRMmcCH_dq6onS8hF7q

Drew some of my trolls older!