Though to respond on what I am thinking of doing with the circles...I am not sure yet beyond my obsession with copying things of that like down. I like to cover things in holy symbols and such. Partly because it psyches up me personally and partly because I do think there is a sort of value behind it? Little rituals, pictures, phrases, and gestures can do stuff. So probably working out and thinking about what the various Aspects mean and how the fraymotifs were used in Collide. And then applying some sort of symbolic meaning to them and/or function. Like the Karana Mudra is used to ward away demons and disease. Basically a hard fuck you to them.
A thought on Dirk's sword breaking: I've always assumed that that sword is itself a juju of some sort, which means that, beyond the symbolic aspects, two factors could lead to it breaking. (Indeed, I've always assumed that there are a lot of jujus in the comic that aren't explicitly called out) The first, simply, is that it was in contact with the jujubreaker crowbar. The second is that it has a clone: Roxy's sword. Given that, IIRC, only one copy of a juju can exist, I can only imagine the lost sword lost it's power when Roxy took the second copy from Bro's grave. Of course, that would also mean that ownership passed from Dirk to Roxy. What symbology can be read into that... is for someone else to say.
So I just ordered a calendar because they're on sale today, and also because I wanted one to commemorate The Year It Ended, and that is the exact moment I had my very first actual pang of loss and wistful nostalgia. I'm sitting at my desk at work trying not to cry and I am emotionally compromised over a web comic.
At least one person I know seriously believes that the Homestuck forums being down is an inside job. WP's silence on the issue is not helping at all.
Because something needed to crash for the update, and if it isn't YT, the next best target is the forum because they can control it.
