The extended zodiac bugs me, because it’s 288 signs including Karkat’s. But Karkat’s was never a real sign, it was the Signless’ shackles. So they’re one short for limebloods.
The Signless didn’t exist on Beforus, though, and Kankri’s still 6-ing and 9-ing letters. I’m not sure if this implies that he has the same sign as Karkat, but it’s a possibility it existed beforehand.
Oh, hmm.
The fact that Aranea wears it as a nod to her picking up the Signless teachings makes me think it’s not Kankri’s? But then Kankri’s quirk is way more based on it than Karkat’s is, so I don’t even know.
It would seem a little weird for trolls to adopt as a religious sign something that also belongs to one 288th of the population?
I think it’s also fairly likely that the extended zodiac, while a more extensive list than we’ve ever seen in the past, is still not an exhaustive list of Alternian bloodline icons (let alone panuniversal). I have a hard time believing that even Vriska would be this obnoxious about her grand ancestral destiny if one out of every 24 trolls her color share her exact sign. And the lower castes are much more populous – I think it’s likely we’re missing dozens or hundreds of lime signs.
(I mean, for that matter, there’s no guarantee that this is even a complete list of Aspects – if we decide to take Hussie’s comments about the the squiddle session that created the troll universes seriously, and we assume Aspects do not repeat within sessions, then we’ve been shown, at most, a quarter of potential Aspects.)
I’m not certain we can in good conscience say that anyone was raised by Jake Harley. In the custody of might be closer.
Anyway, Joey seems to believe that Roxy has a home and probably a family elsewhere in the area, but on the other hand I absolutely wouldn’t put it past Jake to house his meteorbaby ward separately from his biological children for no goddamn reason, so I’m not sure that’s really an argument against him serving as her guardian.
You know, beta!Roxy’s parenting style suddenly makes a lot more sense in the context of her having seen the specific ways that Jake Harley was a shitty parent and deciding to avoid all of his mistakes as hard as possible.
That’s the point, really. You can’t really build a functional relationship with another person, let alone a person who is dependent on you, by focusing on not doing things. Even if the things you’re not doing are objective negatives. Not being a specific flavor of shitty parent doesn’t automatically shake out to being a good parent.
I’d definitely agree that Rose was neglected, but she was neglected in an entirely different way than Joey and Jude were neglected. Rose self-isolated because she was showered with so much generically positive attention that she stopped trusting it, and Roxy either didn’t understand why Rose was withdrawing, or didn’t know how to fix it, so she just doubled down. Roxy hid a lot of aspects of her life from Rose and presented an empty caricature of domestic motherhood as hard as she could to try to compensate, and all it taught Rose was that she ought to hide anything she cared about at any depth, too. Roxy kept the house so spotless that any area that isn’t Rose’s private space seems almost sterile, and the constant senseless housekeeping made Rose uncomfortable moving around her own home. None of these mark a healthy relationship! But they do all read as reactionary overcompensations for Jake Harley’s behavior toward his kids – the frequent extended absences, the passive exposure to his “trophies” which Joey, at least, seemed deeply upset by, the complete emotional distance with which he treats them, the lack of concern for their living conditions.
(And sidebar, but with how Joey doesn’t know anything about her long-term babysitter’s family and doesn’t feel comfortable asking but suspects that it’s not a happy situation? Yeah, I agree with Joey’s suspicions; Roxy probably didn’t have a lot of good parenting role models at home, either, whoever was raising her.)
The point isn’t “not being Jake justifies Roxy’s parenting,” it’s "a lot of healthy interpersonal dynamics are learned skills and the new canon contextualizes why Roxy doesn’t seem to have learned them despite appearing to have good intentions.”
I believe it’s been implied (maybe in the commentary in the Homestuck books?) that Roxy was actually raised by Jake Harley, before he had his own kids. So Jake is possibly all her direct parenting experience, except maybe observing Joey and Jude’s mom before she died.
Cheloneuniverse 