HOMESTUCK ASPECTS ARE MEAT AND CANDY
HEAR ME OUT. i am going to go on tangents but i PROMISE i am getting somewhere. i'm COOKING I SWEAR. skip to the red text that says "analysis part starts here" if u want to not hear my dumb tangents and build up.
so i was in the shower. thinkin about homestuck classpecting, as you do. and i was thinking about how the aspects are all different, well, aspects, of storytelling. obviously.
and i was thinking about how "meat" and "candy" aren't just the epilogue names, but actual terms that hussie uses when talking about writing. iirc in one of the author commentaries in the print versions of homestuck they talked about how meat was like the sensationalistic game-changing plot shit (it was commentary about jack: ascend) and it follows based on what we see in the epilogues that candy is the shipping, setting, setup, etc etc. etc.. meat is powerscaling son and candy is shipping daughter. you get it. we know this.
and i was thinking about opacifica's aspect theory, which is (mostly) what i base my aspect understanding on, and how it divides aspects into "expansive" and "contractive" groups---breath, void, mind, space, life, and hope are "expansive" to either the meaning (first three) or the material (last three) of the narrative, while blood, light, heart, time, doom, and rage are "contractive" to the meaning/material of the narrative.
i disagree with the split, a little: i think heart is expansive and mind is contractive. but the general framework i like.
(in short if ur interested, the logic of whether an aspect is expansive or contractive is as follows: space is about story conception and creation, life is about story growth, hope is about the rapid growth of random bs in the story/suspension of disbelief; breath is about novel meaning-making and freedom from tradition, void is about there being no one meaning and it Not Necessarily Being That Deep, Guys, and heart is about personal interpretation and whims of the, well, heart. these expand the material (space/life/hope)/meaning (breath/void/heart) of the narrative. the contractive ones are their opposites, based on similar logic).
anyways. i was thinking about how it's a little weird that meat and candy are these symbols that hussie uses to understand storytelling, but she didn't include them in her list of symbols that make up storytelling. and then i realized.
it's not "expansive" and "contractive" (or at least, not just those)---it's "candy" and "meat"!!
this is where the analysis part actually is.
Breath, Void, Heart, Space, Life and Hope are all the CANDY of the story. they're the setup, the setting, the shipping, the smiling, other s-words. And the flipside of that is that Blood, Light, Mind, Time, Doom, and Rage are the MEAT of the story. they're doing shit, man. they're making shit happen.
and this largely fits with what we see in the epilogues/hsbc. i'll get to counter arguments later, but: Dirk is in charge of Meat---Dirk, the Prince of Heart, the one who destroys Heart, and he brought with him to Deltrius a Seer of Light and a Seer of Mind. All aspects of Meat. Who's flying on the ship to fight him? Jade, Space. Kanaya, Space. Roxy, Void. Jane, Life. Dirk, Hope. (i'll get to the other two later!!)
And then in Candy---it's protected by alt. calliope, Muse of Space. earth c, in the candy timeline, is being run by Jane, the Maid of Life. And who's fighting against her, who's actually doing the rebelling and making the shit happen? Not Roxy, the Void player. Not Calliope, the Space player. Not Gamzee, the one who destroys Rage. Jake, Hope, is with Jane until literally the last minute. instead, it's Karkat: Blood. Rose: Light. For a while, it was Dave: Time.
Now. Granted. this is by no means perfect. Obviously, Karkat and Dave are going to fight dirk. I could try and pull something out of my ass about how Knights struggle with/fight their aspect, and while that may be kinda true, i do admit it's a stretch. And also, obviously, Kanaya, Jade, and Meenah are fighting against Jane, despite both being space players.
However, i do think there is a pattern, even if it's not totally perfect. on team ult-dirk, we have a 3/0 meat/candy ratio. I'm counting bards/princes as the opposite. dirk (heart, destroyer), rose (light), and terezi (mind).
On team kill-ult-dirk, we have a 2/5 meat/candy ratio. karkat (blood), dave (time) / kanaya (space), jade (space), roxy (void), jake (hope), jane (life).
on team battermaid (after 8r8k, and plus neutral peeps, since dithering centrism to not stir shit up is absolutely candy behavior) we have a 1/4 ratio. sollux (doom) / jane (life), roxy (void), calliope (space), and gamzee (rage, destroyer). I'm counting gamzee even though he's dead 'cause that's where his allegiances did lie.
on team rebellion...ok, these guys are not great for my theory. it's 4/5. dave (time), karkat (blood), rose (light), vriska (light) / john (breath), kanaya (space), jade (space), jake (hope), meenah (life).
and then there's also the peeps on alt. calliope's ship? and that's another blow to the theory, since it's 2/1: dave (time), aradia (time) / calliope (space).
ok. so it's nottttt....perfect. but i do think it means something that the candy of candies (jane's team) is 1:4 and the meat of meats (ult dirk's team) is 3:0. maybe it's just confirmation bias, though.
and, tbh, i don't really know what the implications of this are...? but i think it's interesting, and worth pointing out.
SO!! what do you think?? did i forget something obvious? am i being stupid?? tear into me if this sucks ass, i want to hear it!!!!! /gen!!
