More of me babbling about limebloods because I have no self-control
Been thinking/rethinking about the themes of the Avysos and my personal take limeblood lore in general. Lots of rambling below.
I like to imagine that the limebloods were a pretty chill caste and a monument of a time where trolls were a peaceful race, evidenced by Lilith’s mostly-laid back and chill nature and Karkat’s affinity with befriending others and not being a violent guy at his core. Of course, after many years and when the Condesce came to rule, the peaceful, nature-oriented ways of the Limebloods became irrelevant in a more technological, violent world, and Condy, seeing no use for their caste (powers too chaotic and uncontrollable for helmsmen, defiant to her beliefs and rules) saw them as a nuisance. But since they left her alone, she figured they were too cowardly to fight back.
The Wretched/ Guardian Echosong was the antithesis of that belief, and proved it in a fight with Condy when she was made aware of there being a surviving limeblood on Alternia. Echo pretty much wiped the floor with Condy, and would’ve been down with ending her, but Signless’s beliefs, something Echosong didn’t share, and the unfortunate fact that Alternia had been back into a corner where it needed a ruler like her, she decided to spare Her Imperial Condescension. The peacefulness and empathy Condy looked down upon was what saved her from what would’ve been a pretty brutal death.
In the Limestuck timelines, the limeblood extermination began shortly before the Signless hatched and ended shortly after he began his journey, but never reached full-blown genocide until after he was killed due to a fear sown by Doc Scratch that they were planning the same thing. Echo survived the early attack on her colony long before Signless became well-known due to a curse cast by Apofis, as her unique abilities attracted his interest, and with some help from her mentor, who used the last of his powers to cast a protective shield over their shared hive. She grew up in the ruins of her colony, and left when she was eight sweeps old. She was only four sweeps old when she lost her friends and father figure, and over time, got to watch her kind slowly be killed, tortured and experimented on, all because of something that probably would’ve never happened.
On Beforus, pre-Scratch Lilith was like the matriarch of her caste, being old, if not older, than the Empress due to the immortality/healing factor old-age limebloods like herself had. When the coddling ways on the Empire resulted in some more-than-insulting accusations towards her caste and got a few killed, she had the limebloods abandon Beforus altogether and hide away. She was killed by some of the Empress’s followers after trying and failing to better negotiate terms with her.
Lilith stands as a testament to the previous “weakness” on her version of Alternia, something ol’ Condy would be all too happy to sweep under the rug if she ever found out that a limeblood still walked the planet. Meanwhile, Jacoba exists as a testament to the flaws of a utopia, but neither of them really care. They have simply run out of energy to do so.
Echosong was also a passive observer to the ancestors due to her fun immortality curse, and basically got to watch them all die. Most of the limebloods were simple watchers to Alternia’s shift into fascism and were like
Which brings me to the next idea I had in a 3 am brainrot fever: the theme of the Avysos. Every troll has some sort of motif (luck, duality, life, death, etc.) and the Avysos are no different. Their theme is Null/Nothing.
Hear me out.
Lilith and Jacoba used to be Heart players in their previous drafts, but over time I began to realize that I could not for the life of me figure out what Aspect or Class they fit into. They simply exist. They have no influence on Homestuck’s actual narrative during the events of their own story, making Aspects or classes worth nada, and Liminal Space exists in a place where those kinds of things don’t matter. So the Avysos, in a way, don’t really matter.
God that sounds mean.
I mean, they’re not canon, so they hold no power on the currently-existing story of Homestuck. They are neutral balancing points, blank slates, plain-as-dirt individuals who just want to vibe that have been swept up in a torrent bringing them to a relevance they never really wanted in the first place. Albeit with a different villain, but still.
This is funny to me because I imagine Lilith would adjust to Earth C the quickest, and the Beta trolls would take her place as monuments to their species’... unfortunate past.