Carapaces Are People Too

[calamityCons]

In light of learning that Roxy Lalonde never saw the Carapaces as actual people (as evidenced by her PesterQuest route wherein she considers the MSPAR a "Velveteen Chess Guy" and thus implying that the regular Chess Guys are not real people) I have decided to make this thread in protest. I am absolutely sick and tired of these writers insisting to hell and back that the carapaces are not actual people who have feelings and can communicate and are capable of agency and influencing the story. It's made me furious, it's made me angry, it's made me sad, and it's doing nothing to benefit anyone except to piss me and all other chess guy supporters feel like garbage.

Here is a picture made by my friend Toxi in an attempt to make me feel better.

image0.jpg (126.42 KiB) Viewed 35681 times

[luigi]

[roxy is cool and the carapaces too i have nothing negative to say about anyone or anything ever because negativity is toxic]

[calamityCons]

You're breaking rule 6a with that last sentence there, luigi, but otherwise I completely and wholeheartedly agree with you because jesus fucking CHRIST where is all of this initialization, minimization, and outright ASSASSINATION happening to the carapaces even COMING FROM!? Why does Homestuck have a hateboner for the carapacians now!?

[thorondraco]

You know what makes me most sad about the Roxy PQ route? The fact that pre-entry she was a fucking saint to these people. She did her best to feed them and take care of them, and when the miles showed up she spent a good hour or two just running around (while hungover too) rounding up chess people so she could save them and bring them into the game with her. And when we see her in the game after that, during Jane's bday party she's hanging out with a bunch of chess dudes!

Fuck, the Peregrine Mendicant was a full character with an entire arc arguably more complete than some of our main fucking characters. She started off as a timid yet loyal mail woman, slowly became more hardened to the horrors of war until she was a certified leader and hero to all carapaces.

But no they're just retarded pets now I guess, and Roxy never saw them as being more than the mutant cats she accidentally cloned.

THANKS KATE

Dude Aysha is the one who is the head of the pesterquest stuff more or less.

[luigi]

[artistic integrity is dead long live mass production and rampant consumerism[

[calamityCons]

@luigi: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7 Please read the site rules.

[luigi]

[this thread got way out of hand fast]

[thorondraco]

You're breaking rule 6a with that last sentence there, luigi, but otherwise I completely and wholeheartedly agree with you because jesus fucking CHRIST where is all of this initialization, minimization, and outright ASSASSINATION happening to the carapaces even COMING FROM!? Why does Homestuck have a hateboner for the carapacians now!?

It seems to be less hate and more that as it turns out, carapacians can't communicate with people. They can communicate with each other but they can't communicate with people..

A way to put it is that they communicate exactly like the Problem sleuth guys. As in indirectly rather than with dialogue like everyone else. It seems like people can gain a bit of information from them and perhaps some of them CAN speak to a degree. But its clear that anyone's initial impression would be that they aren't super bright and can't talk.

Cause they are obviously a little bit dense, carapacians. Mindicant and Jack noir, Actually jack noir is the only carapacian we know of who has an actual name. along with that one other guy, are exceptions to this rule. Even our beloved wayward vagabond was not exactly the... brightest bulb on the shelf, but he had a lot of willpower for a carapacian and was able to motivate both species, so he had charisma.

A way to put it is that taller carapacians are Bishop pieces. Bishops are 'more powerful' pieces of the chest board with more complex moves and uses, also rarer. The others are pawns.... Basically invader zim logic. Still it shows how special the wayward vagabond is that he is so much more willful despite being a mere pawn.

That seems to be the factor here. These charactesr misunderstand the carapacians and only learn later that they are sapient beings. The sburb constructs seem to be a bit dim compared to a playe species, but carapacians are much, much smarter than the consorts.

[foreverFlummoxed]

While yes, I will agree that Carapaces are people, I'm one who will never forget WV got two armies united for one cause, and that basically everything that has been shown of Carapacians (barring some of the can town/mayor and meteor shenanigans along with my point below) has been that they are intelligent due to having a perfect ability of measurement, can communicate with people, (Karkat and Dave seem to be able to speak with WV fine, also IIRC Jade talk to Carapacians on her Prospit) and can read. (this is how WV learns manners and become someone who everyone can get along with)

I believe that the reason that Carapacians in Roxy's (town? board? area.) have a situation similar to Humans in the original Planet of the Apes (1968) where, over hundreds of years, they just lost the ability to communicate/have any thought that weren't primal. So that's what I got from the apocalyptic Carapacians in Roxy's chess board town thing, they got forgotten by the Condesce (I think that's actually said in comic?) and without anyone else there for communication, they lost it entirely making these Carapacians "less human" due to reverting to a primal state

[luigi]

OH YEAH I forgot they're basically geniuses when it comes to math and measurements. That got completely fucking dropped wow.

[calamityCons]

That's a fair observation, though seeing as the Carapacians in her neighborhood essentially raised her, it makes Roxy seem really pompous and rude and uncaring to make implications like "the carapaces are not people, MSPAR is different because MSPAR is like the Velveteen Chess Guy, because Chess Guys are not real people" to the people who fucking took care of her.

But this thread isn't about Roxy, it's about coming together and asserting that the Carapaces need to stop getting fucking shafted all the time, because this constant barrage of signals from Homestuck canon insisting that they are not and never were intelligent people on par with humans and trolls is making me extremely upset, and it just doesn't stop. I don't even understand why this is something the writing team is pushing so damn hard, I don't know why they're going out of their way in so many avenues to insist that the carapaces are not and never have been people. It feels like I'm being fucking gaslit at this point, because in spite of all the physical evidence that I can point to that proves that the carapaces are intelligent creatures on par with human beings and deserve to be treated appropriately, Hussie's commentary goes "lol no it was just game instinct lol" and then Roxy says shit like this and the writing team keeps calling WV the Mayor and only The Mayor.

[foreverFlummoxed]

That's a fair observation, though seeing as the Carapacians in her neighborhood essentially raised her, it makes Roxy seem really pompous and rude and uncaring to make implications like "the carapaces are not people, MSPAR is different because MSPAR is like the Velveteen Chess Guy, because Chess Guys are not real people" to the people who fucking took care of her.

But this thread isn't about Roxy, it's about coming together and asserting that the Carapaces need to stop getting fucking shafted all the time, because this constant barrage of signals from Homestuck canon insisting that they are not and never were intelligent people on par with humans and trolls is making me extremely upset, and it just doesn't stop. I don't even understand why this is something the writing team is pushing so damn hard, I don't know why they're going out of their way in so many avenues to insist that the carapaces are not and never have been people. It feels like I'm being fucking gaslit at this point, because in spite of all the physical evidence that I can point to that proves that the carapaces are intelligent creatures on par with human beings and deserve to be treated appropriately, Hussie's commentary goes "lol no it was just game instinct lol" and then Roxy says shit like this and the writing team keeps calling WV the Mayor and only The Mayor.

Oh, uh, using "Roxy's town" was supposed to be like an adjective because "carapaces on earth" could describe beta exiles, the feral Carapacians in sea hitler's water apocalypse, or earth C which is just alpha earth but at a later point in time. And chess board is their whole aesthetic so using Roxy as kind of the only main difference was the only way to differentiate between the battle field (a huge chess board) and "Roxy's" town (a huge chess board)

It is stated (in homestuck) that the "chess guys" are not very calm unless they are given some sort of peace offering to calm them down (food, most likely pumpkins because of having the property of being very easy to appearify) and I'm sure that not everyone can be fully expressive of how they feel about feral Chess People when they are known to be drunk, were drunk, and is in a hungover state, with the first "person" besides them to actually speak a word and not chitter at them (whoops the second post became semi-about Roxy) Maybe I'm just trying to say any thing can be degraded over time to the point that people (unintentionally probably) lose sight of what the purpose of it was in the first place. becoming jaded can happen to anyone or anything and sometimes it might be awhile before things get better, but holding on to the hope that things will get better and actively (and constructively) working towards a solution, with what ever power you have little or large, is all one can really do.

wow, did I just write that, um, Carapacians are great, Spades Slick deserved better, PM gives me hope for better care for mail and packages, and i think this really got away from me for a moment there

[calamityCons]

Haha, that's fair. I can understand if you relate to or can sympathize with Roxy's situation more than I can. And you're absolutely right, Carapaces are great and they deserve so much better than to have their entire story behind a paywall (with Problem Sleuth 2) or to be mistreated and minimized so damn often.

[foreverFlummoxed]

Haha, that's fair. I can understand if you relate to or can sympathize with Roxy's situation more than I can. And you're absolutely right, Carapaces are great and they deserve so much better than to have their entire story behind a paywall (with Problem Sleuth 2) or to be mistreated and minimized so damn often.

I'm just one who looks into every detail of something before making an assessment, because missing something integral could ruin an entire point of a statement/ possible argument (not that this was an argument mind you), which is also why I haven't really said much about Carapacians (or anything really) in the epilogues or Homestuck^2 (which i have read but not the bonus stuff and, without the epilogues, no context really)

(also is it carapaces? I thought that described what was their outer-shell, not the species. eh, I could be wrong)

(also also, Problem sleuth 2? did I miss something here?)

[TomDickAndHarry]

THANKS KATE

You know, I try to respect the opinions of people who take issue with how the new homestuck content is going, but that's really hard to do when they don't even give enough of a fuck to pay attention to who's writing what.

[VASKA]

Game constructs got shafted in general. When was the mast time a consort got a pesterlog?

[TomDickAndHarry]

Yeah, I want to know what Gcatavrosprite was up to on Earth C. Or the Nannasprites.

[calamityCons]

I can't tell if those last two posts are ironic, but please take that goofiness elsewhere, this is not the place for you to make fun of the opinion that Carapaces Should Have More Respect.

@foreverFlummoxed, Carapace and Carapacian are interchangeable terms in-comic so I use them interchangeably. Also, yeah, Problem Sleuth 2 is basically just a series of small joke panels in the Bonus HS2 updates, with no relevance to anything at all and yet it still requires money to see it.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

I played Myststuck and the expository messages left by the salamanders were really sad. They're created just to die, to further a main character's personal growth. It's tragic shit because they're born from a game that doesn't care about them. (and the story not bothering to care about them in spite of the game sucks worse)

We never really get to see examples of turtles or iguanas talking. That sucks.

I think it's wrong to say Carapacians aren't people, even if they behave in ways that are alien to us. I heard that the reference to exact senses of measurement are a reference to them being based on ants, so that's more of an instinct, but they use this sense to solve puzzles on a computer screen, which is very cool. I mean, they're also people in the sense that Vriska's mind control works on Carapacians. Vriska also controlled Hussie somehow? I don't know what that says about her mind control only partially working on humans.

I think they carapaces lack dialogue because they're telepathic? Consuelo realized that carapacians wouldn't be able to speak human language because they lack lips, and i guess telepathy would be preferable over having a speech impediment. But that doesn't explain the radios. Maybe they speak at frequencies that are too high for most to hear? This is confusing.

I hope this doesn't count as goofiness? VASKA has a point about consorts and I don't know why you think of that as "making fun" of carapaces.

[calamityCons]

That's why I said I didn't know if it was ironic giggles or not, because I'm genuinely confused by what Vaska means there.