Feferi Is Problematic?

[aspiringWatcher]

Meenah and the Empress seem to be somewhat different. Feferi and Jane want to enforce stability, while Meenah and the Empress want to wreck how things are for their own vanity and ambitions. The empress being even worse as she has zero interpersonal connections to keep her grounded and she has flown off the handle so far it would take eons to return to it. For as bitchy as Meenah is she still cares about her social circle and those that become her friends. In her own way at least. She is rather Vriska like. Except she has never maimed anyone intentionally. Though she used similar tactics to try and toughen her friends up for the challenge ahead.... And she literally gets beat to death by a Rusty for her troubles. Just like Vriska!

I don't think that's the best (whatever best even means in a story as abstract and vague as Homestuck) way to read the Peixes. I do think the Condesce was meant to have sympathetic traits, and Alternian was certainly orderly- it was so strictly ordered that it was an authoritarian nightmare, but the Alternian empire was certainly well-ordered, with each troll having their place, no superfluous or unnecessary members of society (on account of all the culling), the efficient, if tedious, tangle of bureaucracy implied by the legislacerators. It could almost be said that the reason Alternia was such a hell planet is because the Condesce was too orderly and stable.

I do also think the Condesce has very positive, personal feelings about Alternia, she's just too unhealthy as a person to be able to act on those feelings in a rational way. I may be wrong, but in Act 6, after she conquered and flooded earth, wasn't she mentioned as crying in pain and desperate to revive the trolls? Even though her approach is twisted beyond all recognition, I do think she has some kind of bizarre, obsessive interest in the well-being of her subjects, the same way Meenah cares about her friends but shows it by fucking everything up.

I remember her trying to revive the trolls but not her crying in pain or anything. Though it is possible that at that point she had gone rather insane from isolation.

Also literally, no, Alternia was an unstable cesspool of chaos that was only held together via Doc Scratch's intervention. Its even possible the rebelloins only failed because of his interventions and the Handmaid's.

Pal, Scratch is the reason Alternia was a cesspool in the first place. You're thanking him for putting out a fire he is supposed to maintain.

[Leddy]

I... i dont understand why she would be problematic. She just wants... a better place. Sure shes not to smart about how to make that better place but that doesnt make her a bad person just cause shes not smart. She has good intentions and at lesst tries to carry them out. Since when did we start calling people who want a society without ruthless murder and oppression problematic? Please.... just let the fish girl be. Shes dead anyhow

I'd put it this way:

Good intentions are not a guarantee of benevolence.

The system Beforan Feferi installed on her planet is not really pleasant to live in, given how Latula (who can't smell - a relatively non-impactive condition, IMO) would be culled and excessively coddled under it, i.e. treated as if she needed to be taken care of.

Porrim also mentions how the ruling class is predominantly male despite the empress being a female troll, so write that down too, probably? I remember something about Porrim's dissatisfaction with the system not caring what the subjects think about it?

She wanted to take care of the weak, sure, but she... doesn't care what the people she takes care of think. (Sollux seems a bit unnerved by her attitude when they're dating.) In other words, while she might genuinely care about others, she thinks her standards are universal and she...doesn't see them as equals.

Oh, and: throw a zebruh into Beforan crucible and he'd feel right at home there.

Considering her circumstances and the differences in troll culture, at least Fefer is actually peaceful even if Beforus is not a place you may want to live. It at least shines compared to Alternia, although that may be because we don't have a ton of details about Beforus. Characters like Rufioh show that even serious mutations can draw attention and not get you immediately culled liked that, he was able to run off with the weebs even after his wings pupated and others took notice (as far as I'm aware).

Compared to all other members of her caste we know of, and the caste below hers, she's absolutely not as much of a trouble maker. I think Feferi has good intentions, something akin to Democracy has probably not been thought of to her, she doesn't see what's wrong with the Hemospectrum because she doesn't suffer from it, and things like that. We know that even then, Beforus was more peaceful than Alternia, culling wasn't actual outright murder, and that while not perfect it is again a huge scratch up from Alternia.

Using Beforus as a measure of if Feferi from the Beta Universe is problematic seems counter-intuitive. That isn't our Feferi from Alternia. That's Feferi from Beforus. There are bound to be differences.

I still feel that the simple logic of how she things applies and can be defended here. She's young and hasn't had the time to seek out the knowledge of why the hemospectrum is so busted yet and hasn't experienced it because she's on the top, nor been exposed to any better form of government that isn't just murdering, so wanting and being willing even on Alternia to change that into something nicer, albiet a twisted nicer, shows Feferi's colors well. I don't think Feferi is problematic, at least compared to a lot of other characters. I wouldn't call Feferi someone that's explicitly problematic to a degree that it needs to be called out, because a lot of the characters in Homestuck are problematic in some points, and hers are far more mild and tame than some others' problem points.

[Notchine]

not really sure what you mean by "problematic". unless you're referring to how she says the r-word like once during one of her first seen conversations with kanaya. hell, she basically wanted a better society for trolls without all the needless culling and stuff so im mostly just confused lolol

[thorondraco]

I don't think that's the best (whatever best even means in a story as abstract and vague as Homestuck) way to read the Peixes. I do think the Condesce was meant to have sympathetic traits, and Alternian was certainly orderly- it was so strictly ordered that it was an authoritarian nightmare, but the Alternian empire was certainly well-ordered, with each troll having their place, no superfluous or unnecessary members of society (on account of all the culling), the efficient, if tedious, tangle of bureaucracy implied by the legislacerators. It could almost be said that the reason Alternia was such a hell planet is because the Condesce was too orderly and stable.

I do also think the Condesce has very positive, personal feelings about Alternia, she's just too unhealthy as a person to be able to act on those feelings in a rational way. I may be wrong, but in Act 6, after she conquered and flooded earth, wasn't she mentioned as crying in pain and desperate to revive the trolls? Even though her approach is twisted beyond all recognition, I do think she has some kind of bizarre, obsessive interest in the well-being of her subjects, the same way Meenah cares about her friends but shows it by fucking everything up.

I remember her trying to revive the trolls but not her crying in pain or anything. Though it is possible that at that point she had gone rather insane from isolation.

Also literally, no, Alternia was an unstable cesspool of chaos that was only held together via Doc Scratch's intervention. Its even possible the rebelloins only failed because of his interventions and the Handmaid's.

Pal, Scratch is the reason Alternia was a cesspool in the first place. You're thanking him for putting out a fire he is supposed to maintain.

Keeping that incarnation of Meenah in charge is assured to keep it on fire. He just needs to keep it from complete self immolation.

[Drinosi]

I think she's one of the least problematic of the trolls. She wanted a better everything and had the right blood color to be able to do it. However, I do think she would be problematic for HIC as Feferi's way of wanting to do things is polar opposite of how the Condesce does things, so I think she is only problematic to the Condesce because her way of doing things would change a lot about Alternian society.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

It's not the R-slur that bothers me so much as these lines put together

CA: at this point all you need to knoww is its important to me
CA: and im doing it for us
CA: i mean our kind
CA: nobody understands not evven you
CC: T)(is is t)(e last time I will say t)(is.
CC: W-E AR-E NOT B-ETT-ER T)(AN ANYBODY!!!!!
CC: GLUB. >38(
CA: pshh

https://www.homestuck.com/story/2448

GG: i can hardly read what you type and its giving me a migraine
CC: GLUUUUB oh fine.
CC: I will suspend my neato quirk just for you.
CC: I hereby renounce the royal mark of sea dweller supremacy in the interest of INT-ERSP-ECI-ES DIPLOMACY.
GG: what about the -E thing, can you stop that too? it is also annoying and stupid
CC: JEGUS JADE.
CC: Look! It is like a cool trident I throw sometimes.
CC: oooooo ---------------E
CC: How is that not awesome!
GG: meh :\
CC: Okay, you win. I have officially humbled myself before you. Entirely glubbing peasant-IFICATED for your pleasure.
CC: Shall I clip my fins for you as well, your majesty?

https://www.homestuck.com/story/2850

Her belief in equality is just another way to prove that she's superior to the lower colors.

[JakeMorph]

that seems... like a kind of bad faith reading of what Feferi says there? like I hardly think she's a perfect infallible woke bae but her stating the symbols in her quirk for what they are - symbols of the Alternian monarchy - in a kind of snarky way doesn't necessarily mean that's all she cares about or even something that means a lot to her.

[calamityCons]

Here’s a question about Feferi and the unfortunate implications caused by Hiveswap and Pesterquest:

If Tizzia is a fuchsia blood and can command the drones to do her bidding on Alternia, then it would be reasonable to assume that Feferi has the power to make the drones stop being forces of evil and instead do good in the way she wants to do. However, in Karkat’s route in Pesterquest, the drones are still a major threat to him.

If the reasoning for this is because Feferi is too busy feeding her mom to do any major changes like this, then why is Trizzia able to do this? If the drones are under the command of the fuchsia blooded trolls, why doesn’t Feferi automate the feeding process completely? If there is no other way to feed Gl’bgolyb but with the bodies of lusi, why does Feferi think getting Eridan to kill them for her is okay but using drones to do it is not? Did Eridan volunteer? And also, did Tizzia use drones to feed Gl’bgolyb? If not, and Tizzia could feed her mom and be a supervillain with drones at the same time, then Feferi could theoretically also be capable of feeding her mom and actively making changes to the drones’ orders.

The conclusion I come to that makes the most sense is that Feferi is not honest or sincere in her claims to do good for Alternia. Why doesn’t she actively do things such as create and enforce No Caste Zones with the drones? Why doesn’t she deactivate the drones’ culling procedures to prevent them from seeking trolls to cull? Or reprogram them to care for and protect those about to get culled?

Is Feferi just unaware that she can do this? Why? Did the actions Tizzia took not standard for the fuchsia bloods? Is Feferi just not that smart? Is she not allowed to just turn them off? Who has the authority to stop her, when she is literally the most socially powerful troll on the planet and nobody would dare cross her deliberately?

[JakeMorph]

argument 1: the visual novels aren't strictly canon and already have stuff in them that contradicts andrew's own intentions in homestuck, so karkat being in extreme drone danger in one episode isn't necessarily reflective of what feferi actually does with the drones in homestuck if she does have control of them

argument 2: it's entirely possible that trizza isn't the one (or the only one) in direct control of the drones, and that she needs help from coconspirators to make them do her bidding. it would make sense that feferi has less high-up supporters than trizza given their radically different approaches to the position of heiress. i would have far more faith in trizza as a potential successor to the throne than in feferi.

argument 3: i'm 90% sure the pretty pink drones in hiveswap are referred to as trizza's personal elite drones, which could quite likely suggest that trizza only has control over SOME drones, and the rest of them are automated or controlled by some higher power in the empire. the ones that pick up genetic material and hunt out genetic aberrations would make sense in this latter category, since the heiress could quite easily fuck up the entire thing the empire has going if she had the power to just change the tightly controlled regulations on what goes into the gene pool.

[calamityCons]

Thanks for the detailed response! The situation is too ambiguous for any concrete answers, but I can understand better what the reasoning may be for the discrepancy. Without making Feferi look like an insincere or performative ally.

Hopefully this can be addressed somehow in the future by the official homestuck team.

[rookie1978]

There's always HIC. Maybe she hard-coded some culling in. Whatever the visual novels are doing shouldn't be too closely examined, to be honest. They make a fine effort to clear things up about alternian culture and let us in on some cool details about troll society, but pertaining the original homestuck comic, troll society was never supposed to be this closely looked into. We were introduced to the trolls nearly right when they started playing sburb. The way their race and customs were so fucked up were supposed to be comedic, like how every movie title is just a plot synopsis. Like how quadrants and by extension nepeta exist to make fun of homestuck shippers, who instead latched onto the idea immediately. Trolls and their planet were made back when homestuck was more corny funny jokester than serious dramatic oh no, so a majority of troll culture was written just to be silly and strange. Because that's how it is.

By taking the silly and strange, and making it real and described, it directly invalidates a lot of what the original comic's purpose for trolls were, beyond being plot devices that explain how the game works to the kids and by extension the viewers. It's not that I don't like it- I actually think it's very interesting. But the harder you look the more the original comic won't make sense. Like how all these people are friends and just happen to each be a different color of the blood caste, with no duplicates, not explaining how they met, or why these highbloods keep mingling with lowbloods so hard, etc.

[calamityCons]

You’re completely right and I was using my original line of questioning to highlight that. However, that doesn’t really mean I can stop myself from asking these questions and being emotionally affected when the answer to interesting lore or story prompts like one of Karkat’s bad endings in the visual novels is nonsense, or invalidated by internal inconsistencies and poor/lazy/shallow and comedic initial worldbuilding. I’m the kind of person who just can’t help but think deeply about things and ask questions and pursue rabbit holes. The troll lore is very, very broken. I find it annoying and upsetting sometimes.

[JakeMorph]

out of curiosity, which aspects of troll lore do you find noticeably broken? feferi stuff on hand aside obviously

[calamityCons]

> Television being a new invention for the Troll race despite films, computers, and video games being older technology. This was explicitly a facet of lore created for the express purpose of telling a joke, in canon text, but it still creates a huge amount of questions about how video technology works for trolls, and why troll films have the synopsis instead of punchy titles, etc. How can the trolls be so cavalier about the ability to watch each other on video or have Trizza send selfies to troll instagram if television/live video/serial media is so new?

> many of the traits of the original twelve trolls that were introduced as unique quirks wound up being broader parts of troll society later. This creates huge questions about why, for example, Gamzee is shunned for his religious beliefs when all Purplebloods are expected to be part of clown church. Why are so many olivebloods feral? Things like that.

> Is Alternia the only planet where grubs are born? Why? Is it somehow impossible for the mother grubs to be anywhere but Alternia? If this is not the case, where are the troll kids from other planets? Why can’t they communicate with each other? If teenagers are forced or expected to produce the genetic slurry, firstly what the actual fuck, secondly why don’t the adults contribute to the slurry and mail it to the mother grub? There are so, SO many logistical problems with Alternia having no adults on it. It’s a really difficult thing to worldbuild around without the use of magic, and it’s clearly a reference to Neverland, Peter Pan, and Hook, anyway, which makes it another example of humorous or less intense worldbuilding needing to be expanded upon because it’s the setting for two visual novels and an adventure game now.

> HIC is clearly evil, her empire is expansive to the extreme, and she has tons of colonies all over her universe and also tons of sweet loot. ... what the fuck are all the other adults doing. The Ancestors’ history is some kickass dark fantasy, for sure, but if Alternia is not supposed to have contact with adults, and adults are off conquering new planets, what do they DO with the planets they conquer? Destroy them? Colonize and exploit them? Adult trolls feature in films and television, and video games and magazines are allowed to exist, but that directly contradicts the whole premise of No Grown Ups Allowed on Alternia. Are ALL troll media sources just pirated by the children?

> The arbitrary similarities between troll culture and human culture such as bath tubs existing, toilets and indoor plumbing being a thing that exist. Who makes the plumbing work? The drones? Do the kids have to make plumbing happen through their hive construction social convention? How is it possible that Sollux or any other kid with tech and coding skills couldn’t get the drones to knock it the fuck off? The fact that things have been this terrible on Alternia and presumably throughout the troll empire for this long is obviously Doc Scratch’s influence and his puppety hands making all rebellions fail, but it’s still very difficult to swallow I guess.

I can’t think of anymore right now. Many of these questions can be answered in the future or might be answered in friendsim, which I don’t know any details about. They are, however, humorous grimdark and generic alien weirdness lore plunked in for shits and giggles rather than actual worldbuilding that has everything actually thought out and worked through behind the scenes and available if you look for it. Trolls are a planet of hats retroactively given more worldbuilding depth but on a fundamentally shaky and preposterous foundation. I find it difficult to appreciate troll lore when it’s the way it is, sprinkled with Peter Pan references.

[JakeMorph]

the first part is a decent avenue of questioning and the second point is a gripe i also have with the way the worldbuilding is currently going, but the middle and last points seem mostly a result of you conflating "no adults live on alternia" with "adults are never allowed to interact with alternia". as far as i know we don't have any reason to believe adult trolls DON'T ship their genetic material back to the homeworld, in the same way they almost definitely ship digital and print media down in order to educate and manipulate the children of the race. we also know alternia has droids that build hives, so the precedent is there for droids to also fix plumbing and electricity and whatever.

the point about sollux not being able to just make drones fuck off seems particularly weird to me..? like, why do oppressive cyber systems exist in the real world when hacker kids could just get rid of them, right? not to mention that we know drones are at least partially nonrobotic.

[rookie1978]

as far as i know we don't have any reason to believe adult trolls DON'T ship their genetic material back to the homeworld, in the same way they almost definitely ship digital and print media down in order to educate and manipulate the children of the race.

The biggest question is where the fuck they all are. Your telling me the Condesnce's entire crew died? She didn't try keeping any of them alive like she did the helmsman? Was she the last adult troll in the universe? What happened to all the other ships? What happens to the kid exile ships? Don't those kids eventually grow up? If HIC is attacking and assaulting a planet with supowerpowered beings, shes going to do it all fucking alone? No drones? No army? No military ships for backup? Just her and her mind-controlled Jane? What the fuck, lol

[JakeMorph]

did you like read the part of the comic where a horrorterror killed every troll in the universe except the condesce by psychicking their brains apart

edit: the condesce also wasnt attacking planets. her job was to cordially greet new races and then have one of her armies fly in after her and take over, in a much similar manner to her takeover of earth.

[rookie1978]

did you like read the part of the comic where a horrorterror killed every troll in the universe except the condesce by psychicking their brains apart

did you like know you can quote things to more easily formulate replies? anyways, there's dream bubbles and a galaxy a million ass spans wide. with how wonky death and life is in homestuck, there's certainly a way for the condensce to find a way to regain her status as the leader of an actual, genuine army. she went from chucking planets around to doing jack shit in Collide. at least do some cool shit like build yourself a new army to rule with, or literally anything other than stand still and get stabbed by a sword. she got nerfed hella hard

[JakeMorph]

it has been standard practice since the dawn of time to not bother quoting a post that's right above your own because it takes up unnecessary space. anyway that's more of a problem you have with the condesce than the alternia lore. you could say the same thing about lord english or like. anybody else in the comic

[calamityCons]

I suppose my misunderstanding stems from the bizarre behavior the entire collection of troll kids we see never even once interact with a grownup as far as I know. I had misunderstood the initial No Adults on Alternia thing and I understand that better now, but I still find it utterly bizarre that not only is Alternia the only planet where kids seem to be, they are incapable of contacting anyone off planet.

Sollux or other super hackers that might exist have the ability to make it impossible for the government to do shit to them through EMP Generation or other analog methods of cyber security. Why don’t they? If they do, where are they?