#weaselking233

Another commission I kinda forgot to post here. Whoops!

I assume you mean hiveswap XD

I imagine the hives seem huge because a) cramped spaces make for bad visibility and a bad point-and-click 2D game, and would require extra background angles and assets and general complexity that just wouldn’t improve the general experience anyway, and b) Alternian culture was entirely based on preparing the 12 players for the game, and that includes building their hives up to Skaia. Tall hives would be encouraged! Not to mention have you seen drones? They’re huge. A wee troll may give instructions but who’s to know the drone doesn’t build it up in relation to its own height?

As for everything else... well, yes, I always found it strange, in the comic itself as well, that the trolls seemed to have access to such a wide range of tech-- but as a friend once told me after I posted that big thing about transportation infrastructure in Alternia and the mess I expected it to be, Alternia is basically a parody of suburban America, so it’s got to have things that suburban america does...? So if every suburban household has a computer, every Alternian household has a weird, bulky, ugly carapaced bioputer (while Feferi and her alone has an actual and highly incongruent ipad), which by necessity must be accessible to all castes since the game will be played by one member of all castes and access to a computer is paramount...?

Xefros’ trophy room must have been a small room he had available before he started playing 5P0RN75, so I don’t find it strange that he has one. It was a room for something else, and he made do, and as a clean and organized troll he made it look as nice as he could. Even the safebox he stores his lusus treats in is not actually appropriate to his (low) level of psychic power, and comes across as something he had no choice in selections when obtaining, and which he’s forced to make do with. (It’s also incredibly ugly and garish and tacky and doesn’t seem to match his actual taste in decoration.) As such I don’t find them out of place in a futuristically-backwards alien world that’s been manipulated by ill-intentioned outside forces into matching a very specific, very bizarre set of circumstances while simultaneously playing to its secret overlord’s bizarre and disgusting set of fetishes.

oh, i’m not talking about “active/passive” in the way which calliope categorizes classes - i’m using the words in a very frank, unsymbolic manner.

personally, i’m partial to the “aspects are split pairs from the fundamental pair of time and space, and become more specifically split as the number of players increases” theory, which was near-confirmed by alt!callie’s recent statements. my personal theory actually has life and doom as the two direct child aspects of Time (while light and void are the direct child aspects of Space.)

that being said, homestuck is a story. and as a writer, i can tell you that worlds aren’t built logically, they’re built thematically. that’s why space can be “creation” and time “destruction,” while both instruments of change in life (life and doom) can fall under the purview of time. that’s also why a subversion of death can be considered within the purview of space, because this particular subversion (ghosts) brings proliferation from destruction. and it’s why an aspect referred to vaguely as “mind” can have insight about this - it’s about the emotional weight of this, and how thematically tied the emotions of loss and reunion are now to the process of death. those emotions are fundamental to the “mind.”

the role of doom and life in these metaphysics, however, is dubious. simply because there are no players with those aspects in a thematic position to influence the metaphysics. feferi, mituna, and meenah are dead. sollux and jane are the only living players of those aspects. neither is thematically suited to play a part in metaphysics. really, with few exceptions (john and terezi perhaps, but not even vriska) no standard players are in a thematic position to influence metaphysics. john only has that position due to the plot hole, and terezi only because of her extensive arc about realizing her powers, and the setup from that flash.

This seems pretty spoilery; it would probably be better to let her discover that herself.

This definitely seems spoilery; the bit about gender not affecting reproductive capability isn't really stated until the troll romance exposition.

I'm not really sure what the stuff about gender parity and "a really good plot reason for existing as male" are referring to, but… well, it's obvious the kids and trolls are balanced male/female, at least, so it doesn't seem super spoilery.

I did consider prole, actually! Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite fit with the particular image of Alternia I’m going with, although Orwell’s use of prole in 1984, twisted to fit the totalitarian regime under IngSoc, comes pretty damn close. I just couldn’t get the origin of prole out of my head, though - for me, the proletariat are more aligned with the working poor than anything else, cogs in a machine. And, like you said, that illusion of independence still exists - theoretically, if you’re working poor, you have the “freedom” to quit, or to call in sick, or find a new job, but anyone who’s worked retail or food service knows how much of a joke that is in reality. I feel like the wage-slaving was a really important part of the dynamic in 1984 - the work was how IngSoc kept control of its populace, both in product and process. The strict control of goods, as well, combined with the pittance of a wage, and Airstrip One clearly becomes a place where most of the country is of the proletariat. There’s still a very distinct divide between prole and not-prole, though; the ones In the Know and the ones fooled into perpetuating their own ignorance.

Subject works better for me in terms of the Alternian Empire because that illusion of independence and that distinct working-class don’t exist*. There’s no people-who-know-the-secrets and people-who-don’t, because the Empire does what it says on the tin. It is a completely militarised, totalitarian society with ranks built in from the DNA up. You’re part of the Empire, you do the Empire’s bidding - and there’s no or else, because the Empire doesn’t need an or else. If you don’t comply, you’re a deserter, and you are culled. I suppose, technically, there’s still the freedom to choose compliance or culling, but if you were to ask any particular troll about deserting you’d get a blank look. As far as they’re concerned, the Alternian Empire are the only sapient race in the universe, and the Fleet is so far-reaching and enmeshed in that world that there is absolutely zero potentiality for escape. Deserting seems ridiculous - where would you go? There’s nowhere that isn’t the Alternian Empire. This, as far as they know, is it.

So they’re subjects of the Empire, because they’re subjected to the Empire. The Empire says jump and they don’t bother asking how high, because you’d damn well better be giving your best. They don’t, technically, even get paid - there’s a system of credit, allocated by the Empire, but it has less to do with the work of any particular person than it does their blood. The Empire is... rather indifferent, compared to IngSoc. IngSoc desperately wants to keep the proletariat machine running, with re-education and propaganda and spies and revisionism. The Empire doesn’t give a fuck about what you believe, because it knows that this is all there is, and the entire system is designed to ensure that its subjects understand that before they understand anything else. In the early, planetbound days, prole would have fit a lot better - but Condesce has streamlined the Empire into a ruthless, unthinking hierarchy since, and the very idea of worker classes and class anger and the like so wrapped up in the identity prole is something that would be intrinsically foreign to the Empire. There’s the haemospectrum, of course, but that’s something far more complex than working classes, especially in Alternian society.

(Slave mostly comes in with the stripping away of that illusion of choice, especially in a psionic context. There’s no purchase, since the Empire takes the view that these trolls belong to them from the get-go, but provision? Well. Yes, technically, inasmuch as any exploited, enslaved class has been provided for, which is to say the bare minimum that lets them do their duties. The Empire is big on optimisation.)