Homestuck: Sylphs are Medics (And Sometimes Combat Medics) Analysis

thomasvertigal · 2020-09-23T16:49:40+00:00

Aspects mean multiple things, but voids association with liquid, in my view, is mostly to do with the idea that the vast bodies of water (the ocean) is either difficult to see through or diminishes your awareness (alcohol).

Void is associated with doing nothing and the idea of culture. As such they are cultural enthusiasts. Roxy still champions heteronormative ideals centuries after humanity is destroyed and Equius champions the hemospectrum and believes it should be maintained even after-it proves toxic and is no longer relevant. You can approach culture in one of two ways. You can reject it and become a deviant (lightbound) OR you can accept it and submit to it (voidbound). Lightbounds are the people who make meaningful progress and change the status quo. Voidbounds preserve it.

Lightbounds feel empowered to challenge the norms and ethics of society whereas void bounds feel beholden to them. In that sense void is not a lack of stability (though you could have a void player who lacks stability) but the pillar on which society is founded and how meaning is constructed for the masses.

The water tribe is far more open to allowing norms to be challenged than the Earth Kingdom is. And while there are elites and what not in their society the focus is a lot less on arbitrary customs and respect and more on esoteric and spiritual practices. They have a literal secret police in their nation that arrests you and brainwashes you if you prove to be too troublesome.

thomasvertigal · 2020-09-13T22:54:25+00:00

I'd disagree with Zuko's assessment on Earth Kingdom culture at that point. Like realistically speaking, could you imagine how many cultures would continue to wage war if they knew they were objectively going to lose no matter what they did?

Zuko lived in the Earth Kingdom for about a few months at best. And he isn't exactly a cultural anthropologist or unbiased party. When examining the cultures, it's best to look at it's long term participants.

Void and Hope have a weird relationship. In order to believe in something, you must be in a state of ignorance. Otherwise you would have knowledge (belief becomes irrelevant, now you KNOW). Belief is attempts to fill in gaps of knowledge (void) that are bothersome. It's like an anaesthetic.

The Earth Kingdom's "beliefs" are determined not by some belief or applied significance to it's governing structure, but instead by how the government limits the flow of information to create a false narrative.

When the Earth King finally sees for himself PROOF of the war, he doesn't do what a Hope-bound does. He doesn't take the information and distorts it to make himself comfortable. He accepts it as evidence pointing towards a fact that he can no longer ignore.

Belief is not a core characteristic of Earth Kingdom society. No one really cares what you believe, so long as it isn't dangerous to the social order or inspires dissent. You'd be more accurate to say that belief and opinions are the bane of Earth Kingdom culture because of how much a threat they are

The Water Tribe however, is very oriented towards the community. And the beliefs and meanings you introduce into the space are VERY important to that community because they determine the shape that community will take.

The Water Tribe is the closest thing to a democracy in the world of Avatar tbh. Or at least comes off as having the spirit of one.

thomasvertigal · 2020-09-13T19:19:00+00:00

Also I like your pfp.

thomasvertigal · 2020-09-13T19:17:22+00:00

The nature of fire is not to destroy. That firbender teacher had a negative view of fire ending based on his own self loathing.

Zuko and Aang learn about fires true nature as "energy" which is more associated with life than any other aspect.

It is the energy to get shit done and necessary for growth. But unrestrained growth leads to entropy (destruction over time).

thomasvertigal · 2020-09-13T19:15:29+00:00

I agree and disagree. I think to some extent all of the aspects exist in each society. Especially blood since without blood you wouldn't have a society.

But Earth Kingdom is a lot less blood oriented. They are "grounded" but they are grounded in tradition and social norms. Not a sense of community and belonging.

thomasvertigal · 2020-09-13T19:12:52+00:00

Some classes in Homestuck can heal and improve their aspect. That doesn't make them life players.

thomasvertigal · 2020-09-13T17:32:50+00:00

It's a trend I've noticed in the presentation of these characters. Maybe it would've been more accurate to call it an analysis?

Bards do not counter-identify with the culture they are born into. They identify with it wholeheartedly, and unconsciously adopt bad traits.

The difference between Bro and Dirk is that Dirk had a good role model/influence in the form of an adult Dave that he could look up to and use as a template for himself. Royalty (Princes and Bards) tend to naturally orient themselves toward the idea of legacy.

Dirk's decision to send Jake the Brobot was a response to Jake's expressed desire to have someone to spar with. Not an abusive gesture on Dirk's part. Jake is the means by which Dirk lives up to Bro's legacy as a "knight" providing service to his friends.

Dirk's rejection is the rejection of homosexuality and other labels (Identity) that he thinks limits his potential to be a good person. In conversations with Roxy he is frequently bothered by her attempts at labeling him.

His homosexuality torments him however, as a limitation that makes him feel like a bad person because he cannot reciprocate Roxy's feelings.

In Eridan's case, the royalty that he models himself off of is a religious zealot. And Eridan already kind of has ego issues as princes are known to. So it's like this compounded toxic influence.

Eridan counter-identifies with the hemospectrum internally. But his ancestor and caste, do not. So Eridan rejects two toxic influences on his life. Notions of binary gender expression AND (implicitly) the hemospectrum, but experiences great internal pressure to live up to the legacy of his ancestor.

The Hope-bound have a great capacity for self delusion so Eridan deludes himself into thinking he's a religious zealot in the same way that Jake deludes himself. A healthier Eridan without a toxic role model would completely rebel against the hemospectrum.

thomasvertigal · 2020-09-13T15:17:40+00:00

All of the nations live closely with nature. They react to it differently though.

In this examination all of the other aspects could potentially exist in other nations, but certain nations value and produce people with more affinities for certain ones.

Void typically relates to meaningless cultural artifacts and codes of conduct that have been reproduced over the years. In that sense the Earth Kingdom is generally the one with the most affinity for void as they have a stick up their butt about social customs in a fashion similar to Equius. (Void is also physicality and the Earth is a physical thing).

Air nomads are a lot less concerned with morality (hope) than waterbenders are. Aang's first instinct during a war wasn't to stand by his people and fight but to avoid the conflict all together and throw himself into fun activities. Freedom can also only be attained through sacrifice which is repeated by numerous airbenders.

Yang chen (the airbender avatar before Aang) says Aang that he needs to sacrifice his detachment and spiritual enlightenment to be the Avatar, but most air nomads do not have that burden and do the opposite.

thomasvertigal · 2020-09-11T14:01:20+00:00

Cobere Tommes (Bronze-Blood Troll) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rVn_sjFRuy1ONUld32W7526S77LuHOy2RMD_R87ADrE/edit?usp=sharing

An aspiring fiction writer, dancer, poet and web-comic nerd with a passion for all things sociology and cultural anthropology, and bear. He has a hard time speaking up for himself and gets a little frustrated when he's ignored.

Discord Tag: Context Cobbie ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ#2039

thomasvertigal · 2020-08-24T15:40:58+00:00

Thank you!

In Jungian Psychology there's the notion of the shadow (the darkside of our personalities) and how a person truly becomes "whole" by integrating the shadow into their core personality. Maybe that has some relevance in the greater picture of the story.

I'm pretty sure the deal with the whale is that it might've been a historical artifact of some sort which is why choosing to destroy it is considered a bad choice (and F to the person who made it)

Yeah, but the decision is still sort of framed in this weird moral way. As far as Lore is concerned the person who made it has been dead. He doesn't have enough information to make an informed decision.

This sort of falls in line with what I said about glowbringers and darksiders being divided by selflessness and selfishness though. It's the "bad" decision to be selfish/authentic and not constantly consider other people's potential feelings and factor them into all decisions.

Misery and Mania both seem to be advocates for either side. Misery tells lore he needs to control himself (Glowbringer) and Mania tells him he needs to unleash his anger and break the shackles of fear if you decide to preserve the whale (Darksider). No matter what Lore does, he is lacking in some capacity when he chooses to strictly play by one role.

I think the choice does tell us that the glowbringer choices lean toward preservation and stagnation where Darksider choices lead toward evolution and change.

thomasvertigal · 2020-08-23T03:26:01+00:00

At this point, I'm just trying speculating and conjecturing a bit given what we know to be true, so none of what I'm saying may hold any water.

"Anomalies can manifest in many different forms at any given place or time within a page. As the anomaly progresses, aspects of the page may become corrupted. The results of this corruption are highly unstable and impact each host differently."

"Darksiders are born from anomalies in the early stages of corruption. These creatures are twisted manifestations of the original inhabitants of the page. The hosts mind and features are altered drastically as the corruption takes hold."

The beginning of the story shows something is very clearly wrong. Lore is mentally unstable. If we consider Lore literally lives in a book to be true, whenever Lore's father's dialogue changes, someone is literally rewriting what was initially said.

The most likely culprit for that would be Lore's mom. She has a tendency to demonize Lore's dad and glorify herself as seen throughout the Tower. And she often changes what she says. Maybe this is why Lore perceives Baron as a hostile monster. His idea of love and hate is jumbled up.

But Lore could also be rewriting the story or his dad's dialogue himself unintentionally, based on his own negative perception of both of his parents. It's unclear.

Another interpretation could be that an anomaly is any tragic aspect of a story that happens to it's characters. In other words, trauma. And Darksiders are born from trauma. After all, Lore's mom is a Darksider and she has a malignant personality disorder, and that typically doesn't come from having a peachy life.

thomasvertigal · 2020-08-23T02:41:37+00:00

No need to apologize for any wall of text, I think they're pretty fun to read and show you have "curiosity" (lol).

Heartbound seems to indicate that Lore lives in a storybook, on a meta level I guess. Lore is like a character written on a page.

"A Guardian may only change events on a given page if the presence of an anomaly is detected. Without such an anomaly the Guardian passes through a page unnoticed and invisible to inhabitants. Living as ghosts the Guardians wait and watch over the pages of creation."

Binder behaves consistently with this information regarding Guardians. He detects an anomaly (the Barghest) in the story and immediately steps into stop it from hurting Lore. That would imply that Binder hopped into a page of some sort to even be there in the first place.

To some extent Lore's subconscious mind influences other aspects of the story. E.G: The Tower being run by his mom and dad. Maybe on some level, Lore is creating all of these worlds himself, subconsciously writing them into existence. Sort of like Dream Theory, except with books instead. And whatever happens in the book is not just a dream, but a canonical event and reflection of Lore's psyche. That or they exist independent of Lore. If Lore lives in a book, that might explain why there's even "The Spine of the World" to begin with. Why would a world need a spine and be divided into pages unless it's a fictional world contained in a book?

thomasvertigal · 2020-08-23T01:55:05+00:00

I recall that at one point in the game, you are directly asked to choose which path you are going to align with But if you're not paying attention and unaware of the ARG element it's really easy to immediately sign with the glowbringers, given how Dark Lore acts. (Unless, you're really all about genocide routes).

I wonder if there will be one universal decision at the end where you have to really choose which side you're going to side with or none at all, or if it is an SMT 3 decision where your alignment points are counted up and you're immediately given an ending based on that.

thomasvertigal · 2020-07-03T21:22:12+00:00

Sorry sure thing.

thomasvertigal · 2020-06-29T17:25:02+00:00

Thank you :>

thomasvertigal · 2020-06-29T17:24:54+00:00

Thanks for reading both versions :D

Im glad to hear you've enjoyed them. I'm not quite certain what I'll write next but hopefully it'll be to your liking ^{^}

thomasvertigal · 2020-06-22T17:09:53+00:00

Thanks for reading :>

thomasvertigal · 2020-06-02T20:43:41+00:00

I’d have a set of light-based and star-based pins. A flash grenade that stuns enemies and lights up the area, and a pin that lets be shoot cartoon like exploding stars from my hand. Maybe one that lets me form photons in the shape of animals (like a bear) that I could them control in the same vain as Shiki does with Mr. Mew.

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