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[Liber celi]

I only judge people who don't get my jokes.
Those Monsters.

[Rolan7]

Auspisticism and Moirallegiance are very important and common themes in human culture, we just don't call them romance.  The trolls may be biologically driven to seek out such relationships, but I'd argue that humans are too.  So yeah, the pale quadrants are just superficial alien bullshit, or at best a slightly unusual culture.

I wrote up a really terrible thing about examples of blackrom in human culture.  It was supposed to contrast healthy troll blackrom to unhealthy human blackrom, which always leads to regret or normal redrom (particularly in our fiction).  But then I realized two things:

1) Troll blackrom is incredibly unhealthy, except *possibly* the adults. 
    a)  Except Spades killed Snowman and the Summoner killed Mindfang and Dualscar killed Mindfang's slave and...
            i) yeah, everyone fails at blackrom forever.
2) Blackrom is kinda gross.  Platonic, insincere hatred is soooo much more fun. 
    a) Karkat and Dave are simply the best there are

[Soadreqm]

1) Troll blackrom is incredibly unhealthy, except *possibly* the adults. 
    a)  Except Spades killed Snowman and the Summoner killed Mindfang and Dualscar killed Mindfang's slave and...
            i) yeah, everyone fails at blackrom forever.
2) Blackrom is kinda gross.  Platonic, insincere hatred is soooo much more fun. 
    a) Karkat and Dave are simply the best there are

"Gross" isn't really objective. Contrast troll blackrom with, say, ancient Greek pederasty. Your cultural background affects which relationships you consider "healthy". From Dave's subjective point of view, black romance is kind of terrible and gross all the time, but from Karkat's subjective point of view, less so. Alternian troll society developed under the corruptive influence of Doc Scratch, and didn't really think murder as that big a deal. Maybe murdering a hatecrush is something like breaking up? Unpleasant for all parties involved, but hardly the end of the world. Plenty more fish in the sea, or worms on the land if you are lowborn scum.

The troll kids clearly do see murder as something of a big deal, though. Even Vriska, the murderous murderer whose done the most murders of them all, whines about how she felt bad about killing Tavros. I think this could be seen as a kind of fucked up and amazing reverse Lord of the Flies kind of thing. As the troll children are stranded outside normal troll society, their oppressive caste system rapidly breaks down as they stop trying to kill each other and fall back to their base instincts of cooperation and friendship, all along hidden beneath the veneer of casual bloodshed that is troll civilization.

We never get to see how the Beforans handled their blackroms, by the way. :/

[Dermonster]

I think I like the interpretation where blackrom is ideally some sort of Rivaltastic Foe Yay thing where you hate each other and simultaneously push each other to new heights of ability.

The ashen quadrant is supposed to be for out of control black things where you legitamately want to kill the other guy.

[Rolan7]

"Gross" isn't really objective. Contrast troll blackrom with, say, ancient Greek pederasty. Your cultural background affects which relationships you consider "healthy". From Dave's subjective point of view, black romance is kind of terrible and gross all the time, but from Karkat's subjective point of view, less so. Alternian troll society developed under the corruptive influence of Doc Scratch, and didn't really think murder as that big a deal. Maybe murdering a hatecrush is something like breaking up? Unpleasant for all parties involved, but hardly the end of the world. Plenty more fish in the sea, or worms on the land if you are lowborn scum.

The troll kids clearly do see murder as something of a big deal, though. Even Vriska, the murderous murderer whose done the most murders of them all, whines about how she felt bad about killing Tavros. I think this could be seen as a kind of fucked up and amazing reverse Lord of the Flies kind of thing. As the troll children are stranded outside normal troll society, their oppressive caste system rapidly breaks down as they stop trying to kill each other and fall back to their base instincts of cooperation and friendship, all along hidden beneath the veneer of casual bloodshed that is troll civilization.

We never get to see how the Beforans handled their blackroms, by the way. :/

Agreed, a lot of hivebent was subtly foreshadowing that Alternia's ultraviolence was unnatural.  I didn't get it at the time, but you know what they say about hindsight.

Vriska had a messed up childhood even by troll standards.  I seem to remember her saying that killing Tavros was different than the countless offscreen murders she was forced to commit.  Probably because she knew him.  Even now she has no trouble killing off the clones because she doesn't consider them to be important people.

I think I like the interpretation where blackrom is ideally some sort of Rivaltastic Foe Yay thing where you hate each other and simultaneously push each other to new heights of ability.

The ashen quadrant is supposed to be for out of control black things where you legitamately want to kill the other guy.

This is my favorite interpretation.  I was looking for an example where it actually worked out, but couldn't find one.  Mindfang and Dualscar's relationship was like that, though, and seemed very healthy until Dualscar bizarrely got jealous of a different quadrant.  Dammit Cronus.

[Qmarx]

-Scepters of Orbs Fourfold - destroyed

Nope.  Black Scepter is destroyed, white scepter is prototyped with green sun and MIA


Note that Lord English has a suspiciously similar scepter.

[Aqizzar]

That is a 8itchin' panel.

And if I'm reading this right... Well, so that's where all the bubbles are coming from, and why.

[Max White]

Oh Vriska, like you give even a single fuck... You just want to kill the big bad for the lulz.

[penguinofhonor]

+1 to the amount of Skipper Plumbthroat references

I am satisfied with this update.

[Jim Groovester]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

VRISKA: 8y 8eing me.

And then the wickedist edition of Spider's Claw starts playing, and all anyone can do is stand by in awe.

[Liber celi]

Vriska is so gonna die now.

[Devling]

The artifact is probably the friendship inside of us. They will harness it's emotional power and shoot fucking rainbows and kitten unicorns at lord English.
Or it will be the duedly gun that slick shot up Snowman with. That's my guess.

Edit: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=006761
Look! In the hand! The gun!
IT'S ALL THERE

[hops]

I have just had an epiphany today. I think I have just realized another aspect of the Prince class. It might be coincidental, but still... I always doubted that Prince is the same as Bard. This is probably all speculative bullshit, but I need to share it.

IDE: the Prince class will oppose/subvert the aspects of others they interact with, including themselves.

So, let us list out the people Eridan had explicitly interacted with in the comic:

Himself
Feferi Peixes
Karkat Vantas
Sollux Captor
Jade Harley
Rose Lalonde

There are the others, of course, but they're not very important. Let us see here:

Eridan: The parallel of the Prince class with the Bard, as stated countless of time. Eridan destroyed the matriorb, destroying the hope of the trolls reproducing. End of story.

Feferi Peixes: Feferi was a Life player. Instead of knocking her out like Sollux, he just hope-blasted her. She is now a dead player.

Karkat Vantas: This one is a bit of a stretch, but Eridan (and other trolls), messed up the structure of Karkat's memos by talking on them. It was speculated that Blood has to do with structure and leadership.

Sollux Captor: Instead of killing Sollux, Eridan knocked him out. Of course, the latter didn't know the former was still alive, but that's neither here nor there. Sollux was Doom player, he kept harping about the impending doom and that other bullshit. When he was blinded, the voices stopped, and he finally cheered up for once. His ability as a Doom player was negated.

Jade Harley: Nope, he barely does anything with her beside pissing her off. I have no idea why I included Jade, but he sure isn't giving her enough space... *shot*

Rose Lalonde: Eridan was not directly involved in Rose going grimdark, and as speculated, turning into the Witch of Void. But it still should be noted that he talked to her before she was subverted.

[Blade Master Model 42]

This update is freakin' perfect.

[Liber celi]

IDE: the Prince class will oppose/subvert the aspects of others they interact with, including themselves.

I think that is more of a Hope thing; Hope is all about making things slightly less fake and bullshit, and as a Prince of that stuff Eridan could have inluenced the Aspects of others to become more fakey and bullshitty.


I don't want to reduce everybody on their Claspect though, I am pretty sure SBURB is supposed to work the  other way round.