And Another One. This One’s A Doozy, And A Double Feature! The First Is What I’m Calling Genesis,

Reminder that the God tier outfits’s accent/shoe colors are not defined by their aspects’ color pallete, they vary for each character and depends either on their own color motifs, or on their teammates.

Also lemme zoom in for the sake of clarity

Heart Player Weapons

Actual Weapons

Heart players in Canon (Nepeta, Dirk, (kinda Bro?)) tend to use sharp weapons, weapons used to pierce and cut and tear. I’ll get more into this when talking about themes, but the use of these sharp weapons is very interesting due to phrases like “those words pierced my heart, my very soul” and other such phrases, which I think is fun.

Other weapons that might be appropriate would be Piercing weapons (like needles or lances), again because of their references to certain phrases, Weapons related to those who use their souls to further their goals, I.e. staff weapons due to their relation to monks (people that use their souls to strengthen themselves), candles due to their relation to mediums (people that channel souls), and books, specifically religious books due to their relation to priests (people that use these books to help strengthen their soul).

I suppose you could also use weapons with relation to romance (like chocolate boxes and stuff shaped like hearts, or maybe a bow that shoots heart shaped arrows).

Weapon Themes

A common theme in heart player weapons is of course having romance/love/valentines heart related weapons. While not shown in Canon, it’s like…. Obvious????? I mean, heart players are generally associated with shipping (Nepeta and Meulin are the most obvious, but Dirk has all the romance problems with Jake) and like, why wouldn’t that be reflected in their weaponry?

Anyway, moving on.

Another theme is related to emotions, and phrases involving the heart. Broken hearts might be related in like, the usage of broken weapons, or, non breaking weapons like Dirk’s katana representing his supposedly unbreakable heart (both of which break in Canon funny enough). Or piercing weapons like when something cuts deep enough to touch your soul or someone’s words pierce through your carefully constructed emotional shield.

Heart players are all about that stuff.

Finally is weapons and the soul.

I don’t know much about various themes of the soul in heart weaponry, other than the fact that various interpretations of the soul from various cultures (i.e. the Ba from Egyptian culture or the spirit in more western cultures, possibly even ghosts and stuff like that if you can logically connect the two)

Think about it, having a weapon that summons all the ghosts of failed marriages past, or splitting a foe into all the separate parts of their soul with one sword strike; heart players can incorporate various ways of messing with their foes metaphysical presence with their weapons.

~Weapons Master Blu

The lawnrings are empty. Blood skims the voids in your porous cranial plates, as if grazing the hollow of a threshed stem, or say, an abandoned cocoon.

The streets are empty. Wind skims the voids keeping neighbors apart, as if grazing the hollow of a cut reed, or say, a plundered mailbox.

lawnrings are presumably the closest thing trolls have to streets, and the setting of Karkat's rant takes place in his own brain rather than in his neighbourhood so that the line about wind can be replaced with one about blood (though it probably has some implications regarding the interconnectedness of the characters' homes and their inner worlds); but after using 'threshed stem' as a synonym for 'cut reed', it feels particularly pregnant that a cocoon is compared to a mailbox? particularly because we know by now that a cocoon is a bed, so that's not just their name for a mailbox. the very next page tells us trolls won't even have a word for mailboxes because they don't have mail full stop, so maybe those are just two parts to a joke, but trolls not having mail could be a part of this analogy too...

Vriska Serket, whose lusus constantly demands she feed it, received Cetus as a denizen, a monster known for eating every single fish on the Land of Light and Rain.

More obviously the number 8 is homophonic with the word ‘ate’ (and also takes the shape of the infinity, related to the ouroborous symbol depicting a snake eating itself), and in Homestuck’s symbology the sun - the symbol of the light aspect - is something that is meant to be ‘eaten’ by black holes.

Fancytiers! Kind of. I was mainly just trying to make the sillouhette’s more distinct, & add more apparent themes :P

i forgot to label some of them but I think u can still tell what they are! first unlabeled pic has the mage and the seer, & the last pic has the maid and the sylph

you are not alone but im curious to hear your view of how they're intertwined

a Seer of Light who can read the future and a Thief of Light who can steal "luck" are fundamentally interacting with the same force, "fortune"; one just happens to be a fortune teller while the other is a fortune stealer. and that's not just wordplay, the two meanings of fortune are literally the same! being "lucky" is just the name someone like Vriska gives to the idea of having a "good fortune"; literally just having a positive destiny or fate, which a Seer of Light would be able to read.

the synonymity of fate and luck are evident in the language we use to describe them; moira (as in moirallegience) and kismet (as kismesissitude) both mean "fate" but also "allotment" or "portion", to be lucky, or to be someone who steals fortunes, literally just means to take the good allotment for yourself and leave the people around you with the bad ones. this should be particular obvious in Homestuck, where possibilities are represented by branching timelines; if you're lucky, that just means the alpha timeline is the one where you got the best fortune, and if you're a fortune teller that means you can read these "fortuitous outcomes" into the future. this is only driven home by Aranea's plan, which does not involve "luck" or "knowledge" as we tend to think of them but rather the very literal twisting of fortune to make one timeline more fortuitous than the others.

The Lands kind of stick out as an anomaly in Homestuck’s cosmology. They’re not constant, like Skaia and the Veil are; they’re not evolved through prototyping like imps and carapacians; they’re not drawn from mythology like the Denizens; and they’re not made from Thoughtstuff like Prospit and Derse. On a cursory glance they seem to be the one example of something being created ex nihilo in paradox space, a realm that is supposed to contain “essentially nothing new”. So naturally, figuring out the genesis of the Lands would be a great stride toward unlocking Homestuck as a whole.

Obviously the logical first assumption is that the Lands are generated from the players themselves somehow; grinding metal for the swordsman, industrial pipeworks for the pipe smoker’s heir; and this makes perfect sense for as long as we see Sburb as a game whose goal is to guide players into adulthood. But that’s only one side of the coin; every aspect of the game, from frog breeding to prototyping, should also serve the game’s other primary purpose, which is as reality’s method of reproduction. So the question “why are the Lands the way they are” is just as important as the “what are they” question.

My first hypothesis was that if every one of the Lands in the Medium has its own breed of frog, then this could be a means of introducing genetic diversity to the Genesis Frog; a frog with lava-resistant genes, for example, might make a very different to a frog with genes from the Land of Dew and Glass. But I realise now that we don’t even need to introduce this new idea; the grist hoards in the center of each planet already act as a unique genetic code for each session’s Frog.

And since the grist essentially acts as the “essence” of each planet - oil grist for an oil world, chalk grist for a chalk world - we can also view the grist as the “essence” of its associated Hero. This is more pronounced in the trolls’ grist, with Tavros’ grists being brown-orange and Vriska and Gamzee having blue and purple respectively in [S] Make her pay. (We also observe here that Karkat has green grist, but you can make of that what you will.)

And I think this sheds some further light on how the Ultimate Alchemy ties into the alchemy of the self; the process of creating a universe involves the very alchemical components that make up a person. Using one’s inner essence to create an entire world could also be seen as a way of making the internal, external?

So the genesis of a new universe is the contribution of several individuals’ essences to be mixed in one central subterranean hub… i.e. exactly how troll reproduction works, indicating that the jadeblood is suited to the role of frog breeder even moreso than may have originally been thought.

Clownhood is masculine -> rage aspect is respresented by clowns -> rage aspect is masculine -> rage aspect is contrasted to hope aspect -> hope is feminine as rage is masculine -> hope is represented by cherub/angel wings -> cherubhood is feminine -> Caliborn overcoming cherub nature and transitioning to clownhood can be taken as a transition from feminine/female to masculine/male

it feels counterproductive to label cherubs as one particular gender, and counterintuitive to say that transitioning is overcoming cherub nature when it is in fact the very core of their nature... I'm also hesitant to say any aspect has a sexual sway outside of the fundamentally feminine space and masculine time, though I can concede that clowns being men in Caliborn's paradigm would lend itself toward Caliborn associating rage with masculinity (the same way Calliope genders certain classes based on her preconceptions?), and therefore making attempts to feminise the hope bloodline?

On Life, Light and HIC

@pagedelight said:

This thought arose from my memory about a post about Meenah and her unwillingness to allow things to develop or grow. I couldn’t find the original post for this, so I may be a bit off base.

Could the Condesce’s name and motifs (and to an extent the motifs of Life players since they’re super closely related) relate heavily to information. In particular, the Condesce’s name is a joke on Meenah’s tendency to reduce information to it’s essentials? Something along the lines of condensing information? 

The weapon of choice, a trident, would also evoke the imagery of a three hole puncher which she ironically uses to kill Rose. This relation between life and information is also semi-shown with the binder that HIC gives to Roxy to construct the matriorb.

Life, the aspect most strongly associated with power, would derive it’s power from the condensing of information. Which is exactly what trickster mode (life-coded grim darkness) is in hindsight. It is looking at characters who are complex and saying “Nope, screw that, I only care about what I want” and extracting that complexity from them. 

If trickster mode is oversimplification/reduction of information and grim-darkness is it’s only known counterpart, that would seemingly imply that grim-darkness would be an abundance of information/complexity rather than it’s presumed lack. It’s not instant nihilism. 

Meaning, Rose’s grimdark transformation wasn’t triggered by receiving meaningless answers alone, but receiving extremely dense, complex (indecipherable) information all at once (multiple answers show up in the cue-ball in [S] Descend). Jade’s grimdark transformation at the sight of Jake’s page outfit would be similar. 

1. This is really strange timing: not two days ago, I was browsing the SomethingAwful MSPA thread and found a post from like 2012 musing that Feferi’s Land of Dew and Glass might be a joke on condensation, linking her the Her Imperious Condescension. I was kind of skeptical tbh, but the way you’re putting it here is making me reconsider cause like..

Recently, it came about that Dirk’s supply of orange soda is characterized as the ‘distilled’ orange essence of the pumpkins Roxy has… 'distill’ being the word of choice because Dirk associates Ben Stiller with the Mobster Kingpin, who runs a moonshine distillery. This set up is probably a result of Dirk 'being’ glasses, the matter of only having orange color is part of being a detached gaze, color is what the eye drinks. (Tangential: Dirk’s picture of Ben Stiller is next to Rainbow Dash)

This aligned with the independent supposition that 'rainbow drinker’ doubles as a euphemism for the eye, with Kanaya’s penchant for boiling complex subjects down to their basics being an act of 'distilling’ analogous to the object > essence work performed by the gaze.

“Her Imperious Condescension” is itself a reference to the domineering gaze of authority, which together with your 'condensation’ reading puts it perfectly in line with the Dirk and Kanaya stuff. What’s more, the first time we see the acronym HIC is an advertisement on John’s TV for the literal fruit juice! The ghostly essence flavor no less, Ectocooler Blast!

So agreed re: condensing information

(Tangent: All this talk of eyes and distilling is making me associate the death of Mobster Kingpin with the skewered olive in Mom’s martini… or Rose stabbing eyes out, for that matter)

2. The thought of HIC using her 2x3dent for paperwork is adorable. Endorsed, even though I’m not sure about the binder’s applicability to everything here.

3. I think the topic of essences goes beyond the Life aspect (as in various aspects intersect with the matter), and I don’t know what to think of the dichotomy you pose between Trickster Mode and Grimdarkness, but I don’t think I can dispute the bit about information density from the cueball, given how many images flash on screen in that last second before Rose’s eyes darken…

Something to keep in mind!

The Aspect Triads

Now, first of all, before reading this I highly recommend you go watch optimisticDuelist’s videos on the aspect wheel, they are very informative and super interesting!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqRoIBNcboY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgAQLMJJrHw

On his latest video, OD talks about the aspect wheel at the view of color theory, noting how related heroes of an aspect are to their other split-complementary aspects. In the end, he notes how this means that there might be triadic, square and tetradic aspect relationships and as the classpect maniac I am I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. I got some interpretations on some of the aspect triads that I’d like to share. These might be a tad far fetched, though!

On to the first triad!

(sorry for the simplistic quality)

This triad was the easiest one to gather some meaning from, as the relations between the traits of its aspects are easy to see. I think this triad is more personal and is one to represent individualism and one’s withdrawal from society too, as well as escapism. These aspects tend to be very individualistic, as Breath has a big trait of disconnection from company and reality, Void is irrelevant to society and thus has to bring themselves their own worth, and Heart couldn’t care less about it, finding their own personas much more important.

This one’s also pretty obvious, as it might represent society and institution in a way. Clearly Blood is one to share traits of materialism and society, besides being one of a helper and an aspect of progress. Light brings the knowledge accumulated through centuries of studies that is crucial for civilization and Mind takes up the intellect that made possible the formation of civility and advancement of humankind. This theme of society is in direct contrast to the first triad’s theme of escapism.

Now come the trickier ones! A lot of people might not agree on these two, and that’s cool, because even I am still skeptical of these last ones.

In the other triads the cardinal aspects of Breath and Blood have clearly been central to their themes, so I am gonna believe it to be the same for Space and Time. For this triad I believe the theme to be creation, and possibly even the creation of the universe (or maybe just creation). The symbolysm with Space is solid, as not only does it also signify creation it can also mean form, essential to some sort of formation, as well as Life’s trait of birth and growth, to an extent. And Rage, I believe it signifies as how we can see the beginning of existence as pure confusion and meaningless, until we get our own meaning out of it, but, at the same time, it can’t be anything more than true, with no falsehoods to be created yet.

This triad is the ultimate end, death and the armageddon. The symbolysm with Time and Doom are pretty straight-forward, both represent decay in different ways. Hope shows a contrast of the incessable faith of turning your back away from death, the belief of constant medical pursuit that might grant you a long life, and the belief in an afterlife or of a higher meaning in death.

I also have some other interpretations for these last two triads but I think this can suffice.

Now, I don’t think these are definitly what the aspect triads mean in the aspect wheel, but I hope these loose thoughts can help out some of the more professional classpecters out there. Sorry if this text wasn’t very eloquent, english isn’t my best language for sure.