I was recently reading about heirs and how their aspect protects them.
So my question is: how far will the aspect try to protect the heir before it fails?
According to canon, *very* far.
We see John receive an unprecedented level of freedom -- freedom from the narrative itself -- in order to protect himself and his friends. The other two canon Heirs don't fare quite as well, but they also didn't give as much to their aspect in return.
By the time John gets unstuck from canon, he's saved a planet from a radioactive firestorm, ascended to God Tier, Scratched a session, and traveled across reality itself to another universe. He also completes his planet quest before gaining full control of his powers.
Maybe if Equius had progressed as far, the Void would have shielded him from Gamzee; if Mituna's session had gone according to plan, perhaps Doom would have befallen the mysterious threat before he had to burn himself out fighting it.
Basically, the stronger a Heir becomes, the more their aspect will do to protect them; if an inexperienced Heir tries to rely on their aspect without really understanding it, they will probably fall through.
This is dirkweek #3 folks, homestuck is dead and gone but we’re still here, appreciating the human disaster that is Dirk Strider.
This year there is only one mod, me, Mod Squarewave, you can find me at @slothdads!
Be sure to check out the FAQ page before contributing, to ensure that this remains a place just to have some fun.
THE WEEK
Monday / Day 1 - Panel Redraw
Does what it says on the tin, pick a panel from homestuck featuring Dirk and make something, it can be a full redraw, a piece of writing based on it, your headcanons for how it went down, anything.
Tuesday / Day 2 - AU
Same as above, pick an AU and create something!
Wednesday / Day 3 - Ship
Dirkjake? Johndirk? Platonic Dirkroxy? Go wild! Create! (Remember to check the FAQ for what isn’t allowed)
Thursday / Day 4 - Angst
Make that boy sad!
Friday / Day 5 - Splinter
Create content for any one of his splinters, be it Hal, Sawtooth, ARquisprite or Brain Ghost Dirk!
Saturday / Day 6 - Outfit
Draw him in an outfit, write about how much he hates his godtier clothes, headcanon his favourite thing to wear on a lazy day, whatever tickles your fancy!
Sunday / Day 7 - Free Day
Any Dirk related content you want!
Have fun guys! And remember to spread the word. -Mod Squarewave
this is kind of vague, but do you have any ideas about a dersite breath player? breath feels like a pretty prospitian aspect, at least to me, (and only prospit dreamers have been breath players in canon which doesn't help) so i'm having trouble thinking of ways their traits could intersect. the only idea i have is that doing what you want (breath) is sometimes not doing what authority wants you to do (derse) but that's such a shallow interpretation
A way I like to interpret lunar sway is that a player's dreaming moon affects which traits of their aspect they think are "good" and which they think are "bad."
Accordingly, the player's personality and actions will tend to lean in a way that emphasizes the "good" traits and minimizes the "bad" ones, unless they are intentionally playing a villainous role.
Prospitians, in general, favor traits that have immediate benefits, especially when those traits benefit them personally, and those which encourage action and creativity.
Dersites prefer to "play the long game," favoring traits that play defensively, pay out benefits over time, and focus on introspection and self-awareness.
For example, consider Vriska and Rose: both Light players but with opposite sways. The Light aspect is about knowledge, luck, and notoriety. Vriska, a Prospit dreamer, favors the elements of luck and notoriety, but finds academia boring. She cares a lot more about a story being entertaining, and about making her seem important, than about it being accurate.
Rose, conversely, hates relying on luck and puts a lot of emphasis on acquiring knowledge, even at personal cost to herself.
Breath is about freedom, change, and detachment. It's true that Breath and Prospit sway mesh together especially well, but Derse sway brings out some really interesting things about this aspect. A Dersite hero of Breath can be frighteningly self-focused; they are an unstoppable force who will take advantage of every opportunity to get what they want.
Nothing deters them from their own whims; criticisms from their friends, society, laws, or perhaps even the physical rules of the universe -- they float above all of these, untouched. They believe in the adage of Murphy's law, "whatever can happen will happen," and seek to make sure that the things they want to happen are the *only* things that *can* happen.
If they spot a weak point where something could go off course, they will close it off. In this vein, when their plans do come to fruition, it will seem like they were really the only possible course of action all along.
They are not as fickle as their Prospitian counterparts, nor do they find randomness and unpredictability fun or comforting, but they fully embrace the inevitability of change and are quick on the draw to make sure things change in a way they find favorable.
At extremes they might act drastically under the assumption that the ends will justify the means -- even if they aren't entirely sure what exactly the ends will be. For all their plotting and scheming, the Dersite Breath player doesn't actually have a final destination in mind; their goals tend to escalate exponentially and there is always a "next step" waiting for them.
In their personal relationships, a Dersite Breath player is the kind of person that everybody *thinks* they know a lot about, but in actuality this person is very careful about what information they give out. No one would suspect them of keeping secrets because they seem very open and talkative, but this is a precisely crafted facade.
The Dersite Breath player is very savvy and pays attention to who they're talking to, and will create a new version of themselves for every situation. Everything you know about this person, you know because they *want* you to know.
This makes them an impenetrable fortress to their enemies, but sort of difficult to be friends with. They struggle to trust others, and make themselves deal with all their heavy emotions alone out of fear of vulnerability. If they decide a relationship isn't working out, they will cut it off instead of trying to fix it.
Their social circle is a mile wide but an inch deep -- they prefer to have lots of casual friends and contacts, but shy away from forming strong attachments to any of them. They don't like other people trying to take care of them and prefer to do everything themselves in order to minimize uncontrolled variables.
At points they might seem cold and uncaring, tending to view people materialistically in terms of what purpose they can serve or what they are "worth" in a given situation. Of course, the player's class will influence a lot of this information; which parts they act on and which parts they suppress or hide, the particular decisions they make, all of these depend on class and their unique personality.
I think this is a pretty good foundation on which to build a character, though.
Do you have any thoughts on denizens, e.g. how they are assigned to players? :o
I think about denizens uhhhh a completely normal amount I promise. do not look in my notes folder it's fine (/j)
But seriously, I find them really interesting. We see so little of them, but they're deeply important to Homestuck's story and the function of Sburb. Canon gives us a few hints about how they're assigned to players, but there aren't really any hard rules.
The piece of denizen lore that is stated most explicitly in the text is that Yaldabaoth is the deadliest denizen, appears very rarely, and is "usually designated for the most naturally gifted warriors." There is a ton of room for interpretation for who exactly Sburb considers its most naturally talented warriors -- we know it counts Dirk and Caliborn but not Vriska, and presumably none of the other trolls whose denizens were never revealed.
My personal reading is that Yaldabaoth is given to the players with the most set-in-stone morals (not necessarily good ones!) and high ambitions, and being a good warrior is just something that happens to be correlated with those traits; if you have a character who is a hardcore pacifist but rises immediately to any challenge and never backs down, they might end up with Yaldabaoth.
The second most direct piece of denizen lore is that Echidna is assigned to all Space players. Echidna is one of the more benevolent denizens, and appears to have a lot of stake in the players' victory.
She offers Choices that can get them out of dire circumstances, but the terms she asks for can seem impossible to fulfill. According to Jade, Echidna's Choices are usually about facing mortality, and her most powerful abilities may require the player(s) to directly sacrifice themselves (as was the case with Alt-Calliope and the Beforan trolls) in order to enact drastic change.
Players can just kill her, though, if they are unwilling or unable to make a successful bargain, and doing so doesn't seem to have any major consequences. Beyond that, everything we know about denizens is inferred or speculated.
Karkat claims that his denizen might've been the opposite of Yaldabaoth, one reserved for the weakest fighters. Fanon holds that this denizen was Abraxas, but this is unconfirmed (personally, I don't subscribe to that theory, but if it works for your story then go for it.)
We also see that Cetus is associated with Light players, but that leads me into my Hottest Take, which is that denizens probably aren't associated with aspects at all (possibly besides Echidna.) Denizens are much more closely tied to a player's *element* than their aspect.
Cetus, again, has only been seen with Light players, but the legendary monster it's named after has nothing to do with light -- it's a *sea monster.* Rose's associated element is water, and Scorpio is a water sign.
Likewise, Jade's associated element is earth, and Virgo is an earth sign, but Echidna's association to Space appears to override her association with earth when it comes to Calliope (the constellation the cherubim are based on, Ophiuchus, mostly overlaps with Sagittarius, which is a fire sign.)
Hephaestus is a fire god, and Dave and the Aries sign are both associated with fire. The alpha kids' elemental associations are not as clear-cut, but Jane's denizen Hemera has more to do with the sky and air than with Life.
Sometimes aspect ties in with element, as in the case of Egbert's Breath and air, but not always! The Nitrams are Breath players, but earth signs. If your character has a thematic association with something separate from their aspect -- one of the classical elements, a later element from alchemy or chemistry, or really any particular material or even color -- look there for denizen inspiration.
Design-wise, all the canon denizens have serpentine bodies with humanlike heads (or at least faces) and most of them are named after deities or creatures with a similar body shape.
You can always pick something with no existing snake associations and just draw it as a snake, of course, but Wikipedia has a whole category page for "Legendary serpents" from Apophis to Jörmungandr to Zhulong if you want to stay on theme.
The canon denizens have names drawn from Ancient Greek and Gnostic sources, but there's no reason I see to limit yourself in that regard. Denizens are an extremely powerful tool from a storytelling perspective.
They're very strong, very mysterious, and can serve as a convenient deus ex machina if needed (this is a good thing! Having a way to advance the plot swiftly and dramatically like this is *awesome.*)
Canonically, they have knowledge of all their alternate timeline iterations, which could allow a doomed future self to interact with the alpha timeline using the denizen as a proxy.
Denizens' power over the Incipisphere is, as far as we know, boundless and unparalleled. There is *so much* potential with denizens and I desperately want to see more of them in fanworks.
Consider what could happen if a denizen was prototyped into a sprite, or if a player had the ability to steal their denizen's power and use it for themself, or if two denizens had cause to fight each other directly... again, I think about this a completely normal amount. (/reverse hyperbole for humorous intent)
hello, core differences between bards and sylphs please? this might be an unconventional question (hope this isnt too hard to answer), but im trying to write a fan session for my friends and we hit a roadblock and we kinda need help. sylphs and bards do have different quests and personal journey but im more confused on what is the difference of their actions in-game.
my example, we plan our sylph of breath character to inspire a civil war on derse that upends the balance of the game simply because she was outspoken on how she hates that the king and queen in their session forces and threaten their citizens to be loyal to them and the war at all costs. but my friend said this is more of a thing bard of blood usually do, passively inviting destruction by ruining the team cohesion of their enemies. but i personally think this is more of a case of sylphs breaking the shackles and fixing the freedom for others but fucking up because their character arc and personal quest aren't done yet. what do you think?
This is an interesting case of opposite classes and opposite aspects resulting in two very similar titles. Both could play this role.
Sylphs and Bards are both passive classes, but Sylphs function more as coordinators and supporters while Bards are tricksters and wildcards -- things tend to happen *around* Bards, with less consideration for what they actually want to do.
A Bard's aspect may end up working against them, following the whims of chaos, while Sylphs are on much better terms with their own metaphysics. If the Sylph of Breath starts the war, it's because she acted hastily when she should have been patient; if the Bard of Blood does it, it's because they thought they had more control over the situation than they actually did.
The key difference is in order versus chaos. Bards naturally tend towards chaos, so for them trying to enact order would be what goes against the grain. If your Bard really thought they could handle this political situation, it could hardly do anything *but* devolve into a war, where the bonds they were trying to break might end up even stronger than they were before.
The Bard invites destruction by involving themselves in the fray, and the forces of Blood turn on them as a result. Opposite to this, Sylphs tend towards order. They want to do things cleanly and efficiently. In this case, the Sylph of Breath jumps the gun and acts before she knows all the facts, resulting in chaos and war.
She has good intentions, or maybe doesn't even intend to do anything at all but voice her own personal beliefs, but she behaves recklessly. The forces of Breath spin out of her control like she accidentally released an invasive species into the ecosystem. I think ultimately there's no single right answer as to which character is more likely to do this.
It depends on what would work best in the story. Consider, are there any particular themes you want to write about? The Bard's path here is one of dramatic irony, overestimating one's own ability, and consequences of getting involved with other people's problems.
The Sylph's path is about small actions with big consequences down the line, paving the road to hell with good intentions, and in a sense failing to "put your own oxygen mask on first" -- trying to help others but falling through due to lack of foresight.
They are similar, and the ultimate outcome is the same, but which path is best depends on the structure of the rest of the plot. For whichever character you don't pick for this role, consider what else they can do that's of equal importance to the narrative.
If you find that either one doesn't have any other opportunities to catalyse a major story beat like this, I would suggest giving them this one, and letting the other have the spotlight somewhere else.
How do you think dream selves would work for species with atypical sleep cycles? Like for example, an AI that doesn't really need to sleep at all if they were the main player instead of just a supplement for an actual player, or something like a dnd elf where they don't sleep but do have to consciously rest for a few hours a day.
Interesting question! I think the existence of the lunar kingdoms and dream selves are essential to the function of Sburb, so they would still exist in some form unless the game was extremely, fatally glitched, even if they didn't really make sense for the species playing it.
For a player who doesn't need to sleep at all, I imagine dream selves would function as an alternate state of consciousness that they could more actively shift into.
For some this could be like how pre-Sburb Dirk is awake as both his normal and dream self at the same time, but focusing heavily on one plane results in zoning out and losing awareness on the other. For others they could only be able to manage one consciousness at a time and whichever one they weren't using would be left "empty" in a sleep-like state.
Someone who is very observant, probably a Light or Mind player, might be able to access the senses of both consciousnesses but only move the body of one at a time.
A Breath or Void player, or anyone who often feels like they don't have control over their own life, could find themselves thrown from one consciousness to the other with no warning and have to come up with creative workarounds for suddenly dropping off in the middle of a conversation or even a battle.
For these players the process of awakening would be more like gradually becoming aware of one's existence on another plane, like experiencing déjà vu, recognizing symbols from the lunar kingdoms when they appear elsewhere, or getting distracted and "daydreaming" about another world.
For a player who doesn't experience sleep but still has to meditate or enter some other kind of low-energy state, the dream self would be something akin to astral projection -- being able to send one's consciousness into another body while resting in the normal world.
If they were startled out of their resting state, they would lose control of the dream self. The dream self may become totally inactive or it could continue to "sleepwalk" and act in accordance with the player's subconscious, which could potentially get them into a lot of trouble.
The process of awakening would be similar to that of totally sleepless players, with awareness coming on gradually, a vague recognition of another body on a different plane that progresses to conscious control.
For a player who totally lacks a physical form, like an AI, I feel like the dream self would still manifest as a physical entity. Sburb must create *some* kind of representation of the player to fulfill the functions of a dream self; if the player actively wants to have a physical body, then the dream self will take the form of that imagined body.
This is basically the same as how corporeal players' dream selves can manifest with different physical traits than their actual body if said player doesn't consider those things part of their "true self." If a noncorporeal player conceptualizes their true inner self as something that would be better represented as a physical thing, their dream self will appear as that thing.
On the other hand, if the player *doesn't* want to have a physical body, their dream self's body may appear as more of a "perfectly generic entity," like a featureless doll, or as a form of energy or matter that is non-literally representative of the player.
For example, a Light player may manifest as a physical being made out of pure light, a Void player as a living shadow, or a Life player as a person-shaped assemblage of plants. Being revived via dream self would work somewhat differently for these players; if the death of their main self doesn't leave behind a physical body to kiss, the transfer of consciousness to the dream self might involve something like another player saying a particular "magic phrase."
If the dream self is a physical body, then the deceased player's consciousness enters that body. But if the dream self is not physical, things are more complicated. If the player is an AI who exists as a decentralized computer process, being revived would be like using the dream self as a one-time backup to restore their consciousness to wherever it was originally stored.
If it was limited to one particular location, such as Hal existing only in Dirk's shades, a new copy of that object may magically reappear somewhere and the consciousness put inside it. If the player exists more as, like, a personified concept or some universal force given sapience... I don't really know what would happen? If "the physical process and force of gravity" played Sburb, died, and was revived... I guess they would just go back to existing however they did before.
This person is tasked with being a healer of what is by definition unhealable, and a protector of what is already inevitable. They are going to struggle a lot with finding a sense of purpose. Their quest might manifest as a huge impending disaster that all the planet's consorts beg the Maid to stop; but, as they explore the land and grow into their role, the Maid learns that the disaster really is inevitable.
Maybe it just really is beyond their power to stop it, or maybe it's actually a necessary step in beating the game, but the Maid's true quest is to figure out how to break the bad news to their consorts and endure the disaster. This planet would have a sort of eerie, melancholy atmosphere, unnaturally quiet and dark with only scattered consort villages and ancient ruins on its surface.
The weather is permanently stuck in that "just before a storm" state. I would call this the Land of Falls and Static. "Falls" refers to a physical landscape made up of dramatic cliffs and waterfalls, which makes the planet look stark and inhospitable.
Perhaps the land is also covered in autumnal plants, as in the season of fall. It also brings to mind phrases like "a fall from grace" and "whatever goes up must fall down," and even "learning to fall" -- learning not how to avoid falling, but what to do once you inevitably do.
"Static" also has multiple meanings: it refers to static electricity in the air preceding a storm, and to something that is fixed or unmoving. In this case it relates to the Maid of Doom's journey towards realizing they can't stop the disaster.
Other potential names:
Land of Ponds and Decay -- still, stagnant bodies of water that can be deceptively deep, and can preserve things at the bottom due to cold temperatures and lack of oxygen; decay can refer to biological decay (rot) or nuclear decay (radioactivity), both of which are inevitable physical processes
Land of Lead and Sediment -- lead is a dark, heavy metal that can be poisonous to the human body, and is also the element that most nuclear decay chains end in; sediment refers to material that builds up at the bottom of a basin and over time can turn into sedimentary rock, becoming "set in stone"
Note from Mod Dirk: This is a very long post, so I have provided a keep reading. Please leave thanks to Mod Squarewave for their amazing posts. Thank you for being patient, please enjoy!
For the Maid of Light:
The Maid of Light is a really neat title. They are full of light, and they spread light to everyone around them. It's also their role to protect that light, which they might struggle with because of how freely they share it.
Maybe someone else in their session is taking advantage of knowledge the Maid lets slip and using it against them, or the Maid themself is losing track of their own knowledge. They might be relying too much on luck and wittiness to get them out of trouble, and their carelessness is putting other people at risk.
The Maid needs to learn to pick their battles, and their quest will reflect this; they can't count on always knowing everything, or on coming up with solutions on the fly, regardless of how much they want to or how well it's worked out for them so far.
One way I can see this quest playing out is as a large puzzle with missing pieces; it takes the form of a large, central fixture on the planet that requires rune tablets to be collected from across the land and placed on an altar in some certain order.
However, the Maid eventually realizes that some of the tablets they're being told to get just don't exist, and the instructions for how to arrange them are nonsensical and contradictory. (If this session also has a Void player, they might be a lot of help in getting the Maid of Light to realize this :] )
The Maid also can't solve the puzzle just by guessing random combinations of tablets. This is endlessly frustrating to them, and it might take them a long time to finally accept that their tried-and-true methods won't work here.
The real solution might be breaking into the puzzle with brute force, or waiting for it to open on its own, or reaching a deal with the planet's denizen to have them open it. However it goes, the Maid learns the limitations of their inner Light, and also comes to understand how that Light can reveal other paths to victory.
The structure of this planet would be very bright and mystical, something appealing to the Maid and making them want to explore it thoroughly. I like the Land of Runes and Electrum as a name for this one.
"Runes," as mentioned previously, refers to magic or mystical symbols carved into the quest tablets. It also sounds similar to "ruins," as in ancient buildings for the Maid to explore. "Electrum" is a bright pale metal that was historically used to decorate the tops of pyramids and obelisks, and what the first known metal coins were made of.
It's also what the present-day Nobel Prize medal is made of; the Nobel is a symbol of knowledge and scientific or artistic achievement. LORAE would be covered in glittering metallic monuments decorated with runes, which the Maid of Light can't resist trying to decode the meaning of.
Another planet idea I really like is the Land of Knots and Crosses. This one is a pun on "noughts and crosses," another word for the game tic-tac-toe, which is easily solved once one knows the strategy.
Because it is so easily solved, people have come up with many more complicated versions of tic-tac-toe to keep challenging themselves; it's also a model game for teaching game theory to artificial intelligences.
"Knots" are a symbol of wisdom in many cultures and can be functional or decorative "puzzle knots," knots that require knowledge and persistence to tie/untie.
"Crosses" in this case refers to bridge crossings, which could form fantastical knot-like structures, and are often the subject of logic puzzles themselves, such as the many variants of the "dog, sheep, and cabbage" puzzle. There is also the famous "Seven Bridges of Königsberg" problem, which was proven to have no solution by the mathematician Euler.
For the Maid of Hope:
Like the Maid of Light, the Maid of Hope radiates their aspect everywhere they go. They are full of hope and positivity, to the point that they have a severe lack of logic and objectivity.
In their eyes, everything they do happens because they believed it would, and anything they fail at was just because they let themself down and didn't believe hard enough. They start out with a very shallow understanding of Hope, keeping the idea detached from reality and basically operating in an alternate universe of ideals.
They're walking through an imaginary maze that doesn't line up with where the walls are in the real world, basically. This could lead to them being seen as naïve or stubborn; either way the Maid of Hope needs to learn how to focus their Hope into meaningful action, even if it means compromising on some of their surface-level ideals.
An actual maze is the most clear-cut way for this quest to manifest. It could take up the whole planet or just part of it, but it's very large either way, and the walls are constantly shifting around the Maid.
Crossroads are marked with choices the Maid must make, like which of two opposing consorts they should side with, or which gate they should open with a single-use key.
To the Maid these choices seem either totally obvious or totally arbitrary, because they aren't thinking with any kind of long-term strategy. They find themself being lead in circles and losing progress, never getting any closer to the end of the maze.
It's only once the Maid slows down and takes the time to really examine the situation, weighing the pros and cons of each option, that they are able to make any headway. By the time they reach the end of the maze, the Maid has learned how to put their hopeful attitude into practice and use it to help others.
The Land of Weights and Mirrors is one possible name for this planet. "Weights" refers to the weights that balance a scale, symbolizing practicality and justice in the Maid's choices, and also to the metaphorical "weight" of their consequences, as the Maid must take responsibility for their actions and beliefs.
"Mirrors," of course, are reflective surfaces, and the concept of a maze or "house of mirrors" isn't a new one, but I like the idea of a gallery of mirrors that all show slightly different versions of reality, not so much like "funhouse mirrors" but rather windows that allow the Maid of Hope to see things from other people's perspectives.
They are also literal "opportunities for reflection," where the Maid can look at themself and think about the choices they've made and what they have accomplished.
Other potential planets for the Maid of Hope: Land of Glass and Roses -- as in the expression "through rose-colored glasses," meaning to have an inaccurate and falsely positive perspective on something due to nostalgia;
roses and glass also symbolize frailty and are common motifs in fairytales, which present a morally-simplified view of the world Land of Thread and Ivory -- thread as in the expression "hanging by a thread," and could also refer to tapestries that show the planet's lore and the Maid's decisions as interpreted by the consorts;
ivory as in "up in your ivory tower," meaning someone who doesn't know the real state of the world and appears to have unrealistic standards of morality;
ivory is also a historical symbol of luxury that looks beautiful but comes from poached animals, representing the consequences of ideals (death and suffering as the consequence of prioritizing aesthetics)
