Homestuck/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

**** I thought Terezi's dreamself was first woken during Vriskas Double Psychic Reacharound and Blindness Jamboree...

**** There is (or was) a popular theory among some that since one of their apparent main purposes is to act as extra lives, the dreamselves can only be woken by someone's death--be it the owner's waking self (Vriska, Sollux), Jade's dreamself (he didn't wake up until after she died), or someone who died off camera long before the story started (anyone who was already awake). I guess that doesn't explain Terezi though.

 

* Where do trolls get their names? The most obvious would be the parent-figure Lusus, but those can't speak.

** That's easy, they were named by their creators from the last session. That or by [[Captain Obvious|the readers on the forums]].

** They're probably assigned to them by the troll government. Or they pick their own names.

** According to AH, the first noise that is uttered by a troll's lusus once the troll is hatched is then translated to the closest combination on two 6-letter words.

 

*** At the very least, blood color definitely effects lifespan, stated [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/scratch.php?s=6&p=005968 here]. It's also been stated to directly effect BOTH a wiggler's chance of manifesting psychic powers, AND how susceptible they are to having such powers used on them, in both cases inversely related to how high/low on the hemospectrum they are (I.e, for a Troll of Vriska's relatively high caste, it's probably very rare to manifest powers, and also very difficult to effect her with them, whereas for Sollux's color, psychics are probably a dime a dozen, and {{spoiler|it was pretty easy for Vriska to mind-control him}}.)

*** Some also theorize that color effects body temperature in a sliding scale from lowest/warmest to highest/coldest (Making the Condesce a literal Cold Blooded Bitch?), but there's no biological basis for that in ''our'' universe, at least. The red color of most Earth vertebrates' blood comes from the iron used to transport oxygen through the body; many invertebrates use a copper compound that causes their blood to be blue-green, but this has nothing to do with the temperature.

** It's probably vestigial; the genes for blood color varies (sort of like how our skin color varies on what genes we have for it), but everything else is the same.

*** Hussie stated on Formspring that their blood and tears (and later eyes) are both colored by a pigment, the equivalent of melanin for humans. Presumably, the genetic cause of this coloration is also what causes their various psychic powers and tolerances, as well as their lifespans.

 

* How did Jade go God Tier? Yes, she has a live dreamself in the form of Jadesprite, but Jade herself had already died before she was placed on her Quest Bed. CD killed her with the shaving cream bomb, then Jack... er, Bec Noir carried her dead body to the quest bed. I thought it required you to die on the quest bed to work?

 

* What do trolls have horns for, anyway?

 

* Okay, I've had some gripes with this one, but I think they said that in a scratched session, the same players can't play. Logically, that would mean that if the alpha session was reset, it wouldn't mean that the alpha guardians would scratch again and become generally the beta kids again, right? Or does that mean that it switches between ectokids? If the same people can't play a session twice, that means technically that different people ''besides'' all eight ectokids would play at one point in a reset session. But then predestination comes up...

*** We are given no information on their interface. We do not know they are psychic.

 

** Better yet, how did god!John and Grimdark!Rose talk to each other just before the fight with bec-noir if they couldn't talk untill post-scratch? I guess it could be said that the trolls got it off-screen, but we know for a fact Rose and John didn't have it yet.

*** Gift of Gab specifically refers to characters talking OUTSIDE of interactive sequences. John and Rose first met in an interactive sequence.

 

* What's the point of the Daedric alphabet? When we see troll chat client on their own screens, they're done in the Roman alphabet, just like the humans use. Karkat's posters are also in the Roman alphabet. This might just be a translation convention, but when Karkat gets John's bucket-delivered note, he seems to have no problem reading human script. So then, why does Daedric even exist?

 

* Where and when is it said that trolls are bisexual? When John explains homosexuality and Karkat responds "HOW IS THAT EVEN A THING", why is this taken to mean that it's not taboo for trolls? Maybe it just ''doesn't exist'' for them.

** In summary, there is loads of evidence of same-sex attraction between trolls as a default bisexual race both in canon and straight from the author's mouth, in spite of the most prominent couples being opposite gender.

 

** Scratching is a metaphor for a hard reset, i.e. wiping the save file and starting from scratch. Those other features don't necessarily have to exist you know!

 

 

* As someone mentioned higher up, there is a Save function in Sburb. If you saved and scratched, would you be able to gain advantages from where you last saved?

 

* Okay, this has been confusing me. If the Prince class is the one who actively destroys things through his aspect, then why is Gamzee the Bard if he's the one who actually did so? According to UU, he's only supposed to allow things to be destroyed, but when he sobers up, he goes out and actively destroys things, while Eridan just let his aspect to be destroyed by destroying the matriorb and killing Feferi.

** Dreambubbles are a transitory afterlife designed so that recently deceased players can help their alive companions, sort of like a limbo of memories and events. Afterwards, they move on to a genuine afterlife, the specifics of which are unknown, though Jadesprite was there and Jade might have some knowledge of it. Presumably normal people go there as well.

*** Was that ever stated? Considering the timebending nature of the Furthest Ring and the fact that other dreamselves have been shown to go to the dreambubbles when they die, isn't it more likely that Jadesprite was merely in the dreambubbles for several years, and that the dreambubbles are the only afterlife?

*** ...Whereupon they immediately start thinking about how they're dead, and at least a few express the desire to live again. Jadesprite's "contradiction" is that dreambubble selves have been shown to be fairly relaxed and well aware of what's going on, in contrast to Jadesprite's near hysterical babbling when she was revived; even the most clueless dead self we've seen, John, only took a little bit of prompting to realize his death. Also as a sprite, Jadesprite would know that dreambubbles can totally be visited by alive players, which doesn't seem to be the case with whatever afterlife she went to. A few other suggestions, like Feferi and Aradia's comments, further reinforce the transitory nature of dreambubbles.

*** Except Jadesprite wasn't sad about being dead. She was sad about being brought back to life and being ripped from the afterlife she was clearly enjoying, back into a situation that seemed hopeless to her. Jadesprite might also not qualify as an 'alive player' considering that she's a sprite, and she would therefore be unable to join them.

*** We do actually though; Vriska outright tells John that his Dad can't appear in Dreambubbles, and [[Word of God]] is that only players are in them. Well, and [[Andrew Hussie]], but that's a joke more than serious. Addressing the original Headscratcher, there are two things. There is known [[Cessation of Existence]] for players killed in a Scratch, and it is implied that is the normal death for people. Players have access to Dreambubbles, but it's more of an eternal Limbo than a true afterlife, and they are ultimately at the whims of the Gods as to whether they continue to exist or interact with others. The discussion above was a disagreement on whether Jadesprite's actions were reconcilable with the behavior of people in Dreambubbles, not actually too much conjecture either way. The point does still remain that Jadesprite's reaction was incredibly incongrous with how dreambubble selves have been seen to act, but there's a strong chance we'll see more information about dreambubbles going into the future, meaning that may be explained.

 

** As Rose points out, not many infertile sessions ended up creating the Green Sun. Just because the session is infertile doesn't mean they can't win! Let Rose finish explaining. Besides, a Scratch isn't an option anymore, there are no new Time players and the Beat Mesa has already been used.

*** And Rose now has confirmed it's not completely null.

 

** Rose was probably just joking a bit. The implication is that the Beta Session is unique, as given other sources, like Jade, there is only the one Green Sun, and we already know that the chain of Troll and Human sessions and Alpha Session themselves are pretty much unique. English's entry to a Universe and the Green Sun's creation presumably are unrelated; though it was the case with Doc Scratch, we don't know that it's ''always'' the case.

*** Doc Scratch explicitly said he never failed to summon Lord English. He never said anything about failing to summon the Green Sun.

*** ..I have no idea how I missed that.

**** But then, how can The Handmaid have red lips and eyelashes when she was still just a ''grub'' ?

 

* How can Rose possibly afford all the stuff she just created? If the bandwidth for receiving from the Grist Gutter is the same as for leeching, she would only have to have napped for a little over 2 hours, but the real problem is her cache limit. It would have to be at least 7100 -- almost as high as John's -- and she had only fought one enemy, which she didn't kill!

** Pretty much [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004476 confirmed] now: she is blind there because while Vriska's and Tavros's injuries are a constant source of pain for them, Terezi has adapted to hers so much that she identifies with it and prefers her alternate senses to vision (mostly because of how it helped her bond with her Lusus and woke her dream self--though that does raise questions since she surely hadn't adapted to it ''yet'').

*** But it's possible that Vriska somehow shut down the vision centers of Terezi's brain, which might affect her ability to see in the dream world; or the shock of losing her sight could have made it difficult to accept the possibility that she could see in the dream world if she tried.

*** Skaia didn't blind her. She already explained that her dream self was blind for psychological reasons-- and if looking into Skaia could blind you, then nobody on the planet in its center would be able to see.

*** Maybe...If (and possibly a large if) a player's dreamself works more or less like their physical body, anything that would affect one adversely would also affect the other, in theory. If most trolls can't physically withstand staring into the sun, perhaps the same is reflected in their dreams, since Skaia is more or less the "sun" of that realm?

** The Troll Ancestors shed light on this. For adult trolls, apparently their first name is their title and their second name is their actual given name. Marquise Mindfang, Orphaner Dualscar, Neophyte Redglare... It's possible young trolls are simply given temporary names by their lusii and then get to choose their own name once they become adults and have an established position in society.

*** I thought her full name/title was Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, so she has both a first name and a title. Though it may be possible that Vriska made "Spinneret" up for herself. It's also possible that Redglare has a first name that we haven't learned yet, though "the Orphaner" does seem to be Dualscar's title or at least nickname. Regardless, it's a good point that surnames don't have to be family names.

 

* If trolls are naturally bisexual and gender is a vestigial remnant, why the hell do they have gendered clothing? Kanaya, Aradia and Feferi wear skirts, but none of the male trolls. Aradia and Feferi don't even have the excuse that they're interested in fashion, like Kanaya is specifically stated to be, because she's highlighted as the exception that proves the rule. Surely they should be wearing more functional clothes, particularly if they're engaged in activities like spelunking and swimming.

** Sometime after 2:42, Equius mentions to Nepeta that he believes they were just discussing his feelings in the roboti% pile for at least an hour.

** So, did Equius and Nepeta reply while they were in the middle of discussing feelings? Does Nepeta have weird lapses of memory? Is Vriska, despite the impossibility, manipulating an invisible Aradia to mess with the others' perceptions/timestamps?

* In this [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=005344 terrifying update], how is Gamzee making the honking noises? Both of his hands are occupied.

** I think it's more like a drama-enhancing thematic/visual thing than an actual literal sound he's making. Honking noises have been popping up in all sorts of impossible places ever since the Gamzee reveal.

*** Out of verse though, it's a clear mistake, and Andrew's changing of it was basically a [[Retcon]].

 

** Because we don't know exactly when the intermission takes places, it could take place maybe a month or more before the universe ends.

** The Intermission takes place in a split timeline. Compared to the actual events of the end of the Troll Universe, it seemingly takes place in the past or a couple weeks in the future. Hard to say one way or the other.

 

* Why does Dirk call Post-Scratch Dave 'Bro'? If both Post-Scratch Dave and Post-Scratch Rose are actually the ancestors of Dirk and Roxy, wouldn't it make more sense for Dirk to call Dave 'father' like Roxy calls Rose 'mother'?

 

* HIC's plan has been shown to be that she wants to ressurrect the troll race. To do so, she had to breed an whole heap of Lusus. For a lusus to raise a troll, they need to have the same blood colour. Crabdads have been shown to have candy-red blood; a colour not on the hemospectrum. Why did she breed these?

*** The explanation above about it being indicative of a flawed session is the most correct answer; ordinarily the player's sprites and consorts would have told the players stuff and they would've figured out the rest. However the Kids are Sequence Breaking the fuck out of their game

 

** Well, it's an act about the Trolls, so maybe it's deliberate trolling.

** Act 5 is reading like a bad crib on Hussie's own writing style for me. Its not just that its self aware, its just kindve a sloppy and unnecessary hash.

*** Yes, very. Thanks for asking.

 

** I always thought about it as more realistic personally. People die, and they don't always die in some heroic or fulfilling way.

*** It's also about thinning the [[Cast Herd]] and providing more concentrated impact of story elements. It was also preplanned, and Hussie isn't done yet, so throwing around bad writing is kind of silly. Moreover most of the DEAD characters are still in the story! The only characters that have been killed off for real with no counterparts or ghosts hanging around can be counted on one hand. Bec, AR, Doc Scratch, Snowman, HB, and that's about it, excepting the rest of the Felt given they were pretty much personality-less mooks.

 

** We already knew Kanaya was a badass, so it's not just [[Positive Discrimination]]. Think of it more like this; Jake and the others are certainly badass, but Dirk is simply the ''most'' badass. It seems to be a bit of a trait of Princes, as Eridan too was by far the most combat capable of the Trolls before entering. Also, the Brobot does some things that Dirk naturally won't be able to, like flight or summoning multiple arms. Dirk's machinations on Derse though are just his particular manifestation of badass, and don't forget Jade was just as active on Prospit!

*** The fandom isn't so shallow minded that they'll throw a fit when one character is stronger than others, or at least the vast majority won't. There's always the [[Unpleasable Fanbase]] elements but they're not the majority. Besides, we already know Roxy and Jane have been up to their own forms of badass actions. Look at it this way perhaps; Dirk as an active class is a more martially gifted Badass. But that doesn't mean that his teammates are any ''less'' badass, just a different flavor of it. Sure Dirk might be able to cleave a meteor, but can he stop time? Black out a session? Organize his friends as a leader and yet still be a good friend to them? Probably not!

*** If Dirk is anything like Dave, he'll have awesome martial prowess but end up falling victim to his own insecurities and self doubt. How the original four kids balanced each other out is a great part of Homestuck and hopefully that'll be continued into the next four. Dirk is like the Fighter in the [[An Adventurer Is You]] trope; strong in his own right, but lacking the skills to meet all the challenges that will befall him.

 

** It's more along these lines. While people ''can'' genuinely have free will and chose to be good or redeem themselves, the Alpha Timeline needs them to be assholes and for them to die. They can exhibit all the free will and choices they want, but it simply isn't what their fate is. Just for example, could Vriska redeem herself, become a genuine hero, and be happy? Yes she could have. But she needed to die because then otherwise the Trolls would never have made it to the Green Sun, where Dave and Rose needed a ride, because they're needed in the Alpha Session, etc. Everyone is not a "tool", because there's no greater power orchestrating these events with a sense of emotions; individuals are more akin to cells in you, or cogs in a clock. Events have to unfold the way they do for reality to continue. Of course the individuals have significance, but just as you are not cognizant of the deaths of individual cells in your body, neither are the deaths of a handful of trolls all that important to Paradox Space.

*** Again, morality doesn't enter into it. They simply were fated to die. We as individuals can feel strongly for them, but to mangle a idiom, Paradox Space works in mysterious ways. If Nepeta, Tavros, and Feferi, three kindly trolls, had to die so that billions of trolls could exist in the future, is that right? Paradox Space sees the big picture. Gamzee however isn't exactly getting off scot-free. Kanaya wants to kill him and only Karkat is defending him. Moreover people aren't simply defined by the fact that Paradox Space uses them and decides their fates. They still have emotions, are their own individuals, and their actions and words ''matter''; even Aranea busy being a fatalist points out the importance of Terezi getting closure with Vriska. They're just on a scheduled path through life. Out of verse though, Paradox Space might simply be a lampshading of the fact that as a fictional story, the characters naturally have no free will, beyond little unexpected variations that spontaneously spring up, major plot events are fixed.

*** Keep in mind too that the exposition Aranea gave should be taken with a grain of salt, as it's flavored with her own opinion. It's highly possible that Hussie decided to have the theme finally directly, heavily addressed in comic because the characters are outright going to defy it and break free from Paradox Space. [[You Can't Fight Fate]] has been a theme of the comic since Act 3 at least, though up until Aranea it had never been directly addressed beyond a few loose comments of Rose's, so it may become a major theme of the comic after having bubbled under the surface for years.

*** [[Tropes Are Not Bad]]. Hussie didn't find a "loophole" to avoid "the normal flak"; [[Stuffed in The Fridge]]'s [[Trope Namer]] had some backlash to it but the trope itself has been used for ages, and he clearly didn't escape any sort of fandom complaints, as people threw ''massive'' fits when these characters died. Most people have simply calmed down since the characters died over a year ago (save Vriska and the handful of characters that have died since) and are still in the comic as ghosts anyways.

 

** LE is also still very nebulous, and very well could be necessary. After all, the story is a [[Coming of Age Story]] and what better way to reinforce maturity than by accepting death as necessary? LE also is probably ''not'' the final antagonist; as Vriska, Rose, and Aranea have subtly been hinting at the final antagonist is probably going to be Paradox Space (ie, Fate) itself.

*** Assuming LE isn't some sort of personification for Fate, which is highly likely.

***** And again; Lord English as we understand him seems to be integral to the process of Sburb anyways. Judging how the story is going to turn out at this stage with such a nebulous and mysterious character as Lord English is a bit hasty. Let's just calm down and see where it goes.

 

** Because she could look different, pre-Scratch.

** There's not much of a reason why she should look different. She's still biologically the same person in both incarnations, and Grandpa/Jake and Nanna/Jane have already set a precedent for consistent appearances across the Scratch.

 

=== Open ===

**** She chose to manipulate her way through fate so she could become the one responsible for bestowing Jack's latest powers onto him, just to dramatize Jack's death which she believes will be in her hands. So yeah, I'm guessing she does enjoy it at least to some degree.

***** And I'm not even mentioning how she also manipulated Tavros into the last fight he'll ever have for no survival-related reasons. At this point, its entirely reasonable to take her as the most [[Jerkass]] [[Complete Monster]] ever.

*** As of the future she's not really ''that'' bad, and she's more of a flawed character with a lot of problems than someone who can be hated blatantly.

 

*** He most likely never adopted Dave legally, considering how illegal most of his parenting seemed to be.

*** He does have full sideburns by the time he finds Dave, so at the ''barest'' reasonable minimum he had to be 14 or 15. There's not really that much of a difference between 27 and 31 anyways.

**** I like the theory, except Dad and Bec aren't related to the kids. Nanna and Grandpa Harley would have to have the wind and teleport powers.

***** The theory breaks down upon the revelation that the post-scratch kids have completely different elements.

*** It's because people legally need to be 18 to adopt, and even then that's in extreme cases. He does have full sideburns too, so he's at least in his late twenties, and could be as much as into his early forties

 

** It's overused, but Trolls could possibly use it as a euphemism for other kinds of death/killing.

** It's specifically used in the context of trolls to describe the Empress or other leaders killing off trolls, so chalk it up to bad fanfic writers.

** Moirail = Friends whose excesses cancel each other's out, leading to a balanced whole. ([[Red Oni, Blue Oni]])

** Auspitice = Mediator between two antagonistic parties. (If you've ever tried to keep two of your friends from fighting, you're an Auspitice!)

*** It's meant to be an extreme. [[Foe Yay]] is not Kismesis, that's just the closest concept we have to it. To them it's literally romance on par with human love, for us that's something that's usually pretty ''messed up'' and unhealthy. Likewise; nobody would consider Moirails or Auspitices in human romance to be on par with love. And your concepts for them are off still too; moirail ''specificially and'' '''''only''''' means [[Morality Chain]], while Asupitices only apply to keeping two other trolls out of Kismesisitude (which of course doesn't exist for humans). Naturally humans have equivalents; Homestuck is ''written'' by a human, of course human sexuality is in there. But again, it's meant to be a comedic extreme and you shouldn't read too much into it.

** Yes, these things are like troll romance, but consider a few things:

{{quote|There are many parallels between human relationships and the various facets of troll romance. Humans have words to describe relationships of a negative nature, or of a platonic nature. The difference is, for humans, those relationships would never be conceptually grouped with romance. Establishing those sort of relationships for humans is not driven by the same primal forces that drive our tendency to couple romantically. But for trolls, those primal forces involve themselves in the full palette of these relationships, red or black, torrid or friendly. Trolls typically feel strongly compelled to find balance in each quadrant, and seek gratifying relationships that each describes. }}

 

** It's more a case of [[Unfortunate Implications]]. Trying to make gay people straight is not only psychologically harmful, but something that still happens with alarming regularity in [[Real Life]]. Any attempt to justify or perpetuate that, even if just in fanfic, is often seen as a threat to queer people's right to their sexuality on a broader social scale because that is exactly how it's been used. Lesbians especially have had a hard time getting their orientation to be seen as legitimate and not a performance for men. Straight people on the other hand, especially straight guys, have not had this problem. In fact, gay panic is still seen in some courts as a justifiable reason to murder gay and transgender people. Writing a straight character as queer doesn't have quite the same social baggage given the prevalence of gay people who stay in the closet or try to pass for straight, and the prevailing attitude of straight as the default - or straight until proven guilty.

*** That does not mean straight people's orientations should not be respected of course, but simply that it's not as widespread and a social issue. In a perfect world yes, shipping either with a guy would be seen as equally wrong, but people have hang ups and cultural interpretations that play into sexuality heavily.

*** As a counterpoint however; shipping Kanaya with a guy isn't really queer erasure, since her lesbianism caries about as much weight as a preference for blondes in humans, and there's no real indication that she wouldn't make exceptions for the right troll, or that her preferences might change when she gets older. Point ultimately is that applying human hangups to trolls doesn't really work. In a manner of speaking, Kanaya really isn't even a lesbian, because Trolls don't even have terms for monosexuality and it's basically meaningless in their society. It's debatable whether Kanaya's sexuality deserves respect and treatment equal to that of a human's, or if because of Troll Culture it is simply a minor thing that isn't that important. What doesn't help is that there is no indication in canon that she ''is'' a lesbian; the only confirmation is from [[Word of God]], and Andrew is a [[Teasing Creator]]. However we can all agree that pairing John with a guy does disrepect his chosen sexuality, but again there's no indication that he might not change his preferences, and it's frustrating to canon purists and somewhat resonate of [[Unfortunate Implications]], but is ultimately mostly harmless.

**** The problem that comes now though, is that Dirk is going to be treated in the exact same way. Already at the beginning being a [[Badass Gay]] (and of course, being the younger Bro Strider, outstripping every other character simply by his existance which is unfair, by the way), everyone is going to go nuts over him and completely ignore the strong and consistent heterosexual relationships which are present. Such as and inculding John/Rose which is already hitting quite the canon as is, John/Vriska which only really works because John honestly believes she's a good person without taking any real objectivity into what happened to him, and Jade/Dave, which is really strong since they don't seem to have that strong a connection with trolls outside a friendly or familial relationship. Personally being someone who thinks John identification as straight should be respected, Dirk and the [[Fan Dumb]] are going to have a field day, and I'm not going to enjoy it.

 

* Why do people say that an Ophiuchus troll would have to be a blue-blood, because it's between Scorpio (Vriska) and Sagittarius (Equius)? By that logic, Karkat's blood color would have to be some shade of green-yellow because Cancer is between Gemini (Sollux) and Leo (Nepeta).

 

* Okay so... What is up with John and Jade's last names? All of the human kids besides them have four letters in their first names and seven letters in their last names. All of the trolls have six letters in both their first and last names. John and Jade, however, have four letters in their first name and six letters in their second name. Seriously, what is up with this? It seems too deliberate to be a coincidence.

** Also, each of the kids' names are 4 letters. Their last names are 7 and 6 letters. 7 + 6 = ?

** Homestuck Beta was posted on April 10. 4 letters in John's first name, 10 overall.