#repiton

[scalding-homestuck-confessions]

The point of mutants is that they're not on the Hemospectrum and can have whatever signs or bloods or whatever if they're not caught

Your mileage may vary depending on whether you use the Alternian canon hemospectrum, the Repitonian hemospectrum, the Aleph Null hemospectrum, or a random hemospectrum you found on the internet.

[hms-no-fun]

Was the weird, monstrous troll Mary and Lenore saw based off any specific troll design or did you just come up with it yourself?

well i should say first of all that the Mary/Lenore scene in B1 Verse 2 was written by Zoe (she just wrote up a thing about her work here) and touched up by me. so the big monstrous troll was her idea. i asked her for a response and this is what she gave me:

"I just sorta rolled with like, we already know that old highbloods can get pretty gnarly looking so it's gotta be a step beyond that, enough that it would stand out to Mary as remarkable, and I liked the idea of trolls that are more like fantasy trolls, just these hulking monsters that live underground.

the idea of the evil moon hurling rocks at the planet's surface was influenced by some other worldbuilding we've done, the solar Judgments of Fallen London, and maybe most prominently the insane sapient Psychedelic Sun from The Star Beast (Doctor Who). Actually in retrospect the idea of them living under the surface was probably partly ganked from Axile in Fallen London, which was scorched by the system's sun because it found the inhabitants repugnant. so it's sorta pulling from a bunch of sources in this sort of psychedelic science-fantasy mode."

my only addition would be that over the years there've been a lot of cool troll designs. insect versions, furry versions, softer versions, sharper versions, etc. i've always really liked the interpretive versatility given to audiences by Homestuck's abstracted and constantly changing artstyle. in a darker age there were many heated debates on the subject of troll biology, particularly among those desperate for a singularly Canon truth. no such truth can or should exist, but since when has that stopped fandom?

one of the big reasons i wanted Mary on the crew with Dare and Dave is to get an Alternian troll in the same room with a Repitonian troll and just, y'know, see what happens. there are a lot of canonical differences in their biology and cultures that i find fascinating, but in a larger sense i think they do a lot to build on some of the core ideas of Double Album. as often as possible, i want to avoid a reductionist reconciliation of differences in favor of an expansionist one. instead of having these two trolls come into conflict over, like, which troll species is "the real trolls" or whatever, i think it's much more interesting to instead say "actually there are infinity troll species and they're *all* real." and i think Zoe and i both wanted to fold fanon troll designs into that, to explicitly say that they're not all necessarily bipedal humanoids but that they can in fact be weird and monstrous. so of course, Zoe's fucked up subterranean hulk troll fit the bill perfectly.

[approximateknowledge]

Repiton and turning the uncanny vally upside-down: a rant pretending to be an analysis

Vast Error does a great job at making its main world, Repiton, feel truly broken. but more so than in grand shows of devastation or shambling quasi-undead, it shows in the daily lives of the characters. in the mundane. the familiar.

because here's the thing; it's too familiar. that's the genius of it all.

let's step back a bit; i don't think many non-homestucks read Vast Error. it might not be directly connected to it plot-wise, but it is on framework- and worldbuilding level (and technically also directly via the whole Midnight Crew/ Dead Shufflers intermission overlap). you're supposed to know how things are "supposed" to be.

which brings us to Alternia/Beforus. the place trolls came from in "canon". the place where expectations about what is normal formed. both versions of the world have massive differences, but the one thing they have in common is how absurdly a alive they are. Alternia was a death world, but anything but a dead world.

and what's often overlooked is that the drones and biotech and intertwined systems of automation and symbiosis on both versions of these worlds made them functionally post-scarcity! the enslaved alien races under the Alternian Empire were hatesinks, not labor force. all manual labour is automated and done by drones. drones they co-evolved with. i don't think it's far-fetched to claim trolls functionally *evolved* in a post-scarcity environment!

so what's at the core of troll society?

-unstable intraspecies dynamics that turn violent easily, and are often fatal, which makes some sense considering (see next point).

-a complex eusocial r-selected (<explains the ease of killing from an evolutionary perspective) reproductive strategy with 3 ""sexes""; drones, mother grubs, and trolls.

-technology, society, and ecology/biology form a continuum, much more so than it does for humans. computers are alive, hivestems grow.

and by the time you finish Homestuck, even if you never cared much about worldbuilding in such a way, you pick up on that. maybe not the details, but at least the aesthetic, the vibe of it. and despite how weird much of it is in comparison to the human baseline, your brain adapts.

because you know how people often say this story alters your brain structure? this is one of the ways how. when trolls are involved, it flips over the uncanny valley graph, subjectively speaking.

and the bottom of the valley becomes the peak, and that's where Alternia resides (forgive the horrble drawing, im doing this on my laptop's touchpad)

so where does that leave Repiton? on Repiton, there are no mother grubs or drones. on Repiton technology is dead, made of metal and plastic. on Repiton there's ads. there's shortages. Repiton is more familiar from a human perspective than Alternia or Beforus could ever be. and that's why it feels wrong. because the graph is still flipped.

it's way down in the valley that used to be a peak.

im not entirely sure how much sense i am making here but so be it.

[naarcisssus]

rypite koldan drinks i love my girlfriend juice while his girlfriend... well she just drinks

[sophiestrollhell]

My vast error/repiton oc Nancil Chifon, face and founder of delicorp. Corporation that creates cakes, sweets and ready cake mix for consumers.

[deconreconstruction]

Almost an entire year in the making, pragmaticNihilist’s solo album 'Repiton' is almost here! The album will be releasing on Friday, May 25th and it stands tall at 16 tracks with 1 bonus track for the road. I can't stress this enough when I say it is one of my favorite things that we have worked on so far.

The album cover you see above was done by the one, the only, @xamag-homestuck. Which, if you don't know, was a major collaborator on an astounding number of heavy hitter Homestuck flashes such as Cascade, Openbound, Vriskagram and Collide. She is also basically one of the biggest Homestuck fan artists of all time and I'm still not sure how we were able to get her here and to like our comic but hey, I won't complain. Please though, go ahead and give her your support, she continues to constantly deserve it. 

[rigamorole]

Here's the cover art I made for @pragmaticnihilist 's grand finale "Only The Begining" to his album Repiton that he made for @vasterror !! I love this album with my whole achy breaky heart it's a masterpiece ♡ and I was honored to work on it!!

The whole album is on YouTube now, check it out!!! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBKFsSMpX3ut49CRMmcCH_dq6onS8hF7q

Repiton - YouTube

Repiton - YouTube

[greaserparty-ve]

Drew some of my trolls older!

In order: Ciekta, Slashe, Ranpol, Vedeen, Diania