hey how have I seen no one talking about how this "legendary victim" (presumably the deltritan equivalent to the sufferer?) is a trans woman?
at this point it's fairly undeniable that the nymphs are all or majority (assigned) female and vice versa for the satyrs. so what does that make this character, who seems to be known as a nymph, who has a horn, something the previous page depicts satyrs to have, and whose tentacle hair lacks eyes and seems to be headwraps shaped like a nymph mantle?
legendary *victim* also. goddamn. really hoping she comes back up, maybe as a satyr ancestor? we shall see.
Goodness it's been a long month between upd8s. I'm almost glad Homestuck has been so quiet to give us all time to breathe with TA:DC and Deltarune CH5 and such. I've been a bit worn down much of the month and still am, some illness/recovery (and some good HRT effects!) but I'll be doing better as time goes on. Definitely Tiredposting right now.
Last month's Artist/Writer Commentary caught up with present Beyond Canon, and now we have an update continuing from this conspicuous Baby Is You reference. Coverage start. ((EDIT: Slightly more information has been revealed about what we saw in the latest HS:BC Bonus Comic on Patreon, added to the bottom of my post.))
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Oh, are we moving on from Del'fi at that dramatic pre-battle standstill? I expected a scene-change but-- wait, from the next link, this may or may not still be Del'fi-- or wait, maybe Ly'lac, I didn't recognize her home arch and spires here at first, right next to Ly'lac's home:
> Be the baby.
OMIGOSH IS THAT A BABY NYMPH?!??!????
Did they seriously make proto-baby-squiddles even CUTER than squiddles??? Of course they did, oh gosh they're geniuses.
You cannot be the baby. Why in the world would you want to be a baby?
Especially one so unfortunate to be born during THE GREAT LOSS.
Oh, something bad might also be about to happen to this baby, especially because now that I think about it we don't know any with brown upper-organons yet. And this says it's happening during "The Great Loss", which is... lemme check the previous mentions of it:
(p819) Recently, the mere mention of it triggers a major vibal nosedive, and vaguely reminds you of the PROPHECY FORETOLD REGARDING YOUR "BIRTH". Something about a global calamity, THE GREAT LOSS or whatever.
(p1075) Some simply desired to be a part of something greater, while others saw it as a way to possibly circumvent prophecy; if only a few were destined to endure THE GREAT LOSS, the subsummation of their species all but guaranteed their participation.
Okay, so "THE GREAT LOSS" absolutely refers to The Reckoning coming down on Deltritus, and the meteors on the last page and this page are present day meteors. Meaning this is a present-day doomed baby. Ouch.
We've really gotta be closing in on our first Shurb Entry fast with the meteors getting this conspicuous. Isn't Ly'lac ages away from her house, and AA's present she still ought to retrieve from it somehow? Wait never mind, I'd forgotten that the second present landed right on her and she captchalogued it without opening it. So considering she already prepared for a long journey, Ly'lac might end up Entering from wherever she can next get to or concoct a computer that lasts long enough. (And Meemaw's definitely coming with, I hope, as a Kernelsprite or Guardian or otherwise.)
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Holy shit those doomed babies are so adorable.
What the fuck is that conspicuous damn Narwhal horn doing.
Her sisters seem to have unanimously agreed to take a doze in the middle of their shared birth. And on such a calamitous day!
Not that they have many thoughts about current events.
The lone fry, faithful to her instincts, makes her way to the sea, even as it begins to ache from the first percussive impacts of the song that will end the world.
Whoa holy shit, an [S] page!!! We couldn't be getting her entry so soon, could we? Unless that other present contained a working Farsphere or she has a spare unexploded computer at home and makes it there? Is she going to be carried back up from the depths on a Narwhal's back? Fuck, I'm nervous-excited, I'm not sure I'm awake enough to react to an [S] today but I'm gonna do it. No wonder the tweets said there was a newspost but I couldn't see it on the main page, it might be about the flash, unless this whole [S] is for a cartoonish drop sound effect.
FUCK IT WE BALL LET'S GOOOO
> [S] Ly'lac: Descend.
Oh my fucking god, her freaking out about this now-leisurely Meemaw descent is so fucking adorable.
Oh, is she falling asleep? Dream sequence upcoming?
WHO THE FUCK IS THAT FLYING PEGATULP FIGURE OF CHAOS
WHY DOES THAT LOOK LIKE A STRIDER-GLASSES MEEMAW-ALIKE ASCENDING OUT OF THE OCEAN ABOVE THE NYMPH DELEGATION
WAIT THAT'S THE CAGED UP OVERGROWN UNINYMPH AFTER ALL THESE YEARS ISN'T IT? THE NYMPHS MADE A DEAL TO TAKE HER HIM BACK AND THEN LOCKED HER HIM UP IN THE NEARBY DEPTHS ALL THESE YEARS.
Holy shit that was a beautiful little flash. Let me grab some screenshots...
The uni-nymph grew up incognito among the Satyrs after being given a headdress with fake (or actually not?) Satyr ears and tail. A spy that looks winged, possibly a Nymph (unless it's the later Pegatulp with grinning eyes, preparing to make an entrance having found out the secret), is hiding behind a pillar, presumably verifying his location for his further abduction. (I forgot until I checked back that Del'fi described the "Uni-Nymph's chronicle" using he/him for the figure. Possibly just the depiction of the figure in "OURAN GYMNASIKKOU HOST CLUB" and the actual figure used different pronouns, but from the wording of the page I assume Del'fi was talking about the actual historical figure.) There's also a Light aspect symbol highlighting this ancestor in this one shot, whether significant or not, possibly referring to his secret being observed or his truth being divined from afar alike. Could Rose have been involved? Would she orchestrate something so cruel? I don't particularly think so-- I'd assumed their race had simply been left to it. Light symbols are bound to be used in preponderance surrounding the race that Rose created, even as deeply connected to Void as the race may be, as per the allure Void has always held for Rose.
And then there's THIS ASSHOLE. It's clear from the cadence of the flash that this cheery Pegatulp, probably an Ancestor of one of our Satyrs, sparked off the announcement of the presumably mutually agreed deal between the Satyr and Nymph factions to capture the Uni-Nymph back into Nymphkind's custody-- from Del'fi's abridged retelling:
Despite being a largely popular anime, the show was ended after only one season, though a part of you was grateful for that. There's no way she could have translated The Council's "reclamation" of the Uni-Nymph and the slaying of Barley Frat in a school AU.
From the way this figure is flying in as a dark, cheery avatar of descending death, I'm also reminded of one of Swiss's book covers:
--Oh shit, and BOTH mention the Barley Fraternities!!! So that possibly-upside-down flying asshole in the top of that book cover is definitely the SAME Pegatulp asshole. For some reason the [S] Peruse Librarium page isn't loading properly for me on any browser, so I'll pull the text of Swiss's description of the book from the Wiki:
Rise and Fall of the Barley Fraternities
The Fraternity System, historically, has been composed of 3 tiers. Honey tier fraternities are the highest-achieving, highest-funded, and highest-power communes your society has to offer. Oat tier fraternities are one tier below, but still quite respectable institutions. Some of history's finest have been oat-tier dark horses. Grass tier fraternities are... well. You want to keep things diplomatic, so you'll just say that if you were only able to make it into a grass-tier fraternity you'd have to perform steppuku.
For a brief period, there was a fourth tier; a reclusive, monastic order of socially anxious isolationists. They spent the majority of their existence in unremarkable obscurity, contributing basically nothing, but their final decades were marked by a profound change: a commitment to revelry so infectious that it went on to fundamentally change the nature of satyr society, prompted by the appearance of a man who flew across the sea from the uninhabited Cursed Land, Australia. He catapulted their order to the highest echelons of power and influence, which you always found weird because he was just a savage degenerate.
At any rate, that didn't last long, because at some point their so-called "revolutionary" danced them all into the sea. So you guess maybe he wasn't such a fucking cool guy after all.
Connecting these two sides of the same historical events, it's unclear EXACTLY what the Pegatulp's appearance had to do with selling out the Barley Frat to be dragged into the ocean and drowned by the Nymph Council, and whether he was culpable or as much of a victim as the rest of the Frat, though the [S] we just watched definitely implies some sort of culpability. (Pegatulp-ability.) Though the hidden Nymph from the earlier panel implies The Council already had eyes on the Uni-Nymph before the Pegatulp's arrival. Did the Pegatulp trade the Uni-Nymph away from Satyrkind and sacrifice the Barley Frat for the sake of further fame and influence with Satyrkind in general? Was undermining and destroying the Barley Frat perhaps an intended goal of his, even?
Whose ancestor was the Pegatulp? (Tentatively "The Revolutionary", or was that more sarcastic?) He was too important to not be one of them, and was smiling too wide to be a disguised Dirk. In the running are Swiss's (catapulting their order to power and influence), and TC's (always shown in shadow, giving into mirthful revelry, hailing from an unknown/isolated land, Australia being "down under"). Insubstantial, possibly specious ties, frankly, not enough for firm conclusions. Either one sounds weird, as these Ancestors were clearly VERY different from their descendants, even if there's a chance they share an Aspect like Del'Fi and The Great Combiner seem likely to do-- we don't know enough of the story of this Pegatulp ancestor to say for sure, nor have enough hints of the other Ancestors to narrow it down. We know The Grey Rain was brought about by a Satyr "tyrant king" and Nymph "enchantress" working together, who now that I'm looking for mentions of the same terminology is possibly the same one who brought down The Great Combiner:
But when all seemed lost, the neptunian golem of a certain long excommunicated enchantress appeared. Then apparently she just wagged her finger, shooshed her to sleep, and tossed her back into the freaking ocean.
--and is certainly the same pair of Satyr "omnicidal madman" and Nymph "megalomaniacal heretic" who invented the ~PTH programming language together. This gives the Grey Rain pair parallels to Ly'lac and TC which may mean the Tyrant was TC's ancestor, not this Pegatulp despite the mirthful characteristics. I wouldn't be incredibly surprised if the ~PTH/Grey Rain ancestors weren't precisely Ly'lac and TC's, though. We need a little more information to suss it out.
I know for a fact people made the Grey Rain Couple -> ~PTH Couple connection earlier, but I wonder how many made the Barley Frat / Uni-Nymph Incident one since a couple updates ago, tying it together with that Rise And Fall bookshelf book? Either way I'm glad I've at least belatedly hit on it now with these more blatant hints.
There was another screen that showed the one member of the Frat shaking hands with a Nymph to seal the deal while other frat members who hid him amongst them being subdued and pinned to the ground, but I'm not fetching every frame, and in terms of what I want to analyze... On to the last big relevant screenshot of something that went by too quickly:
Is that the Dirk Strider glasses-moon in the distance visible above the shoreline, or a darkly-glaring slightly-less-ancient Meemaw? Or maybe even some Orb-like robot of Strider's / The Exemplar's overseeing the events? It's genuinely difficult to tell. Also the Nymph guards leading the Uni-Nymph back to the sea look just like the crystallized Abyssal Anchoress, which makes me wonder how they all got their Upper Organons in that shape or if they're wearing some sort of Shell over them; their "hair" below the helmline actually looks like hair more than tendrils, in this shot, though I'm probably reading too much into that.
Then Uni-Nymph's betrayed eye, teary.
Finally, no need to screenshot it, but we ended the Flash sequence on the present-day absolutely gigantic Uni-Nymph behind bars, his Narwhal-like horn thrust so high that the tip is obscured by the ceiling and possibly drilled into it. It could even be drilling and thrusting up and out of the ocean somehow, though if that's the rising spire on the previous page it'd have to be even bigger than I thought. Oh, and he's DEFINITELY awake and observing Ly'lac and Meemaw's arrival, which makes me damn well hope Meemaw wasn't the one in that earlier screenshot overseeing his "reclamation".
Gosh we got so much more out of that [S] page than I was expecting, especially in proportion to its length and complexity. Incredibly well done. Now then, on to the next page:
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OH HAHAHAHAHAH OKAY MEEMAW IS WIDE AWAKE AND KNOWS THIS MIGHT BE BAD NEWS UH OH XD
Fucking hilarious. Gee, I really really hope you weren't a part of that delegation, Meemaw! You don't want to be made all dead and Kernelsprite-Ready so soon!
Gosh I never expected the Uni-Nymph to get so much relevant play so soon as to be ACTUALLY RIGHT HERE about to be discovered. Never saw that coming.
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OH GOODNESS. She died of shock!!! D:
Those Xs above her eyes-- were her "eyebrows" her upper organon's extra eyes all along?
Poor, sweet, dear, precious, Meemaw. She was so damn old.
All that's left is to honor the deceased with a tradition that's been passed down for generations.
NOOO, DON'T EAT HER YET! KERNELSPRITE, KERNELSPRITE! Augh, none of you have any way of knowing about that yet! D:
I hope the Uni-Nymph is going to interrupt them before, well, feasting is done. Though Ly'lac looks a little too small to eat an entire Meemaw in one sitting, so maybe that'll save her for the kernelsprite (I want Meemawsprite so bad).
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OH COME THE FUCK ON
I miss Meemaaaawwww!!!!!!! (T o T)
(It's so Homestuck to mix such a tragedy with such an ace visual gag, I'm upset but I'm also dying this is too perfectly hilarious.)
On another dark note that just occurred to me... I wonder if creating an entire race who immediately eats their own dead was, in part, a morbid way of reflecting Rose's childhood-bred distaste for Funerals by averting the practice altogether.
> Ly'lac: Turn around.
THE NARWHAL wants to speak with you.
As suspected from the flash/[S], Ly'lac's long-dreamt-of Narwhal and the imprisoned Uni-Nymph are one in the same. I suppose he's taken a "seahorse" form in Nymphian wild adult-build variety. Holy shit.
That's all! What a banger update!!! Holy shit that was... SO good. So many disparate pieces coming together, so early, and giving us just enough of a taste of the lore to be craving even more to come. I'm still busy mourning the loss (barring regurgitation) of any Meemawsprite chance, but The Narwhal being (potentially!) prototyped would lead to some significantly more visually interesting and intimidating prototyped monsters.
Before I go I ought to find that news post they tweeted about...
Yup, I should've expected more warning and explicit preparation before the Big Probably Ly'lac's Entry Flash/[S]. Oh, and cool, they'll be offering more Patreon benefits than just the monthly Commentary and Art, possibly some streams?? Asking people to contribute if they can so they can do more for us and with the comic. Happy Pride, etc-- you can read the news post yourself. If they post any bonuses on the Homestuck Discord like they promised there, feel free to tell my askbox or replies, or even maybe add me on Discord and let me know. (The Homestuck Discord gives me a headache so I prefer to check only when absolutely necessary, get content exported from there to me by others in screenshots instead of natively, etc.)
See you for the likely beginning-of-month Patreon Commentary that'll likely go into even more juicy details on the flash we just watched!
((EDIT: I won't embed the image of the latest HS:BC Bonus Comic on Patreon, since you have to either pay to unlock it now or see it publicly once it's been 57 days since release, but it shows The Narwhal / Uni-Nymph still looks back somewhat fondly upon the absurd always-grinning character that was the psychopomp/Hermes-dressed Pegatulp "revolutionary", which may or may not point against intentional betrayal on his part. It also shows The Narwhal experiencing the tragedy of losing his fingers into hooves as he reached advanced Nymph age and transformed into a locked-in form.))
((EDIT: the latest HS:BC Bonus Comic on Patreon (visible if you've paid to unlock it or in 57 days otherwise) gives us more information and context on what we saw in the latest [S] page, I've edited in details about it to the end of my latest liveblog post.))
okay, making a more in-depth post since I have yet to see anyone talking in detail about how the narwhal/uni-nymph could play into this update.
the update strongly implies that the narwhal, or some version of them, is (one of) the voice(s) speaking in ly'lac's mind, from out in the furthest ring. the dream bubbles as a prison/refuge for the gendered abject is nothing new, this is just continuing a pattern first laid by calliope.
logistically, there are several ways this could work out, given the hs1-era "only players leave bubble ghosts" rule:
1. this rule no longer applies. I will be acting as if it does for the rest of this post, but I don't think this should be taken as a guarantee.
2. this is the original narwhal from ly'lac's iteration of deltritus, who has used horrorterror magic to make a bubble specifically to preserve themself, despite not being a player.
3. this is a version of the narwhal that played the game, originating from some alternate deltritus. this could indicate that the meat timeline as we know it is post-scratch, which would be a bit out there but within the wheelhouse hsbc is working with.
4. this is both the narwhal from our current universe and a player, because the narwhal is in fact someone we already know. this is a bit crackpot, but there is another notably deceased gendered abject we know will be reentering the story relatively soon, whose fate post-death has been entirely unelaborated on. not at all likely but I'm allowed to have a little fun.
a few other things worth noting: if the narwhal escaped death by disappearing into the furthest ring, inhabited by the aquatic-inspired horrorterrors, this parallels the barley fraternities story on swiss' bookshelf, in which a satyr and their followers all vanished into the ocean, never to be seen again. also, the "narwhal is a player" theory would imply that the narwhal is an ancestor, likely swiss' if troll ancestor rules continue to apply. this has a pretty decent shot at being true even if this particular theory isn't.
