The Corruption



The Corruption refers to disconnect between Cool and New Web Comic and Homestuck.

The world of CaNWC appears as a poorly drawn parody of Homestuck, populated primarily by characters of similar quality, with a few inexplicably preserved. These characters seem to be the only ones who notice the change, and remember the world before it became like this. How and why this shift occurred is one of the big mysteries of CaNWC, especially the storyline of Rose Lalonde and her investigation into this phenomenon, which she details in her walkthrough.

According to G0dhead Aradead, Cool and New Webcomic is somewhere between an offshoot of Homestuck and an alternate universe. The events of Homestuck are not exactly canon, but neither is this a complete alternative universe where it is considered non-canon.

As the comic goes on, it becomes clear that it is actually the normal characters who were changed, not everything else. John Egbert didn't turn into Jhon Ebgret. Roze Lallonk turned into Rose Lalonde. Consequently, it is somewhat inaccurate to call this event a "corruption," even if it is a corrupted version of Homestuck on a more meta-level.

From the perspective of the "normal" characters, they have been improved, making this an Enhancement. However, some "corrupt" characters like o maintain their superiority over their Homestuck versions, and maintain that Roze was indeed "corrupted" into Rose.

For consistency, the Homestuck versions of characters will be referred to as "normal," and the SBaHJ-style characters as "corrupt," despite the potential inaccuracy.

Corrupt Attributes
The Corruption follows the rule of funny. Anything can happen, no matter how illogical, so long as it works as a joke. Any rule then will come with exceptions in service to the work. This is true even in Homestuck, of course, which often also defy real world physics or have characters accept ridiculous elements like an inventory system, but with the Corruption this takes a far more ridiculous and absurdist approach. Deterioration: The most obvious difference is the visual one. Objects appear as rough, discontinuous, and undetailed, and will continuously change over time.

Cartoon Logic: The fundamental nature of objects has changed, working in unpredictable ways. For example, a planet stopped its orbit because it was placed under arrest, and therefore not allowed to move.

Observer Effect: Things become worse the more they are directly observed by a normal character. Some objects, like keyboards, are only operable by a normal character when they do not look at it. When Whyte Wordes Guy's television broke, he remarked that "corrupted" items have nonsensical internal circuitry, and that it functions at all is well-nigh miraculous.

Body Distortion: Corrupted characters show incredible abilities to stretch, contort, and manipulate their own bodies in ways that should be impossible, or at least lethal. Jhon can stretch his arms, mouth, and legs, as well as open up his own chest cavity to remove a kidney. Jaed showed similar abilities by being able to eat her dog, and Dadd has the ability to steal faces. In spite of these abilities, corrupt characters can be harmed and killed by fairly mundane means, like Swet Bro getting hit with a pickaxe/hammer, Jaed being stabbed, etc.

Stupidity: Reason and consistent grammar have severely degraded, making characters extremely gullible. For example, Dadd hides the body of Swet Bro from the police by baking it into a cake. And it works. The only thing that seems to be grammatically consistent would be proper names, and characters will even correct misspellings. However, this "stupidity" matches the functioning of the world itself, meaning it does not impair their ability to function, while a normal character can have trouble doing something as simple as opening a book.

Blue and Orange Morality: Corrupt characters are twisted parodies of their Homestuck counterparts, Jhon being the most wildly out of character. Ethical standards have not disappeared though, but are merely nonsensical. While Jhon's murder of Swet Bro is consistently condemned as depraved, corrupt characters will accept incestuous, pedophilic, and fetishistic sexual relations as normal. Random actions like "hiding large hams" are considered terribly rude. There is a profound respect for governmental law.

SBaHJified: The characters and events from Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff are canon, save for slight alterations to their names.

Enhanced Attributes
Few corrupt characters have commented directly on enhanced characters, and only respond in confusion when asked about the supposed shift.

The major exceptions so far have been the author o himself, and Smupp8deadswetsprite^3, who as an ultimate ultimate self was made one with all minds, including normal ones.

Hecka Jef has some understanding that Rose is planning on making everyone else "like her," but it's not clear how much of that he understands. Still, corrupt characters do have some consistent comments on normal characters.

Attractive: Many corrupt characters have noted the attractiveness of normal characters. Jhon and Jaed have consistently emphasized how hot they find Rose, and Jhon is on record as finding Jack Noir to be kind of hot. While this might be dismissed as Jhon and Jaed's preoccupation with sex, Waynerd Vagibong had picked up on this as well. This might simply be the best way that corrupt characters have to describe the visual distinction. o has commented that Rose is "unnaturally smooth," a description Jhon had also used for Jack Noir and Smupp8deadswetsprite^3 used for Kanaya Maryam, and that G0dhead Aradead used to describe Aradia Megido, also saying that it was sexy.

Boring: Corrupt characters usually find normal characters to be oppressively boring. Even friendly and extremely powerful beings like Bg'ogubmom'ibulsprite share this complaint about Rose. Similarly, White Wordes Guy cuts himself short when talking with Jhon to not frustrate him "with my relatively formal linguistic style". Corrupt characters simply cannot stand listening to lengthy, detailed analysis, instead playing fast and loose with logic and consistency. It is also possible that corrupt characters, with the exception of o, are incapable of noticing any difference in the first place. They may still see Rose as "Roze" and cannot process the distinction. However, this is at least not true for all differences, as they are at least capable of understanding the difference in speech and writing.

Several items have also shown to be enhanced. Any clothing worn by a normal character during their enhancement changed along with them. Some other items changed as well, as with the jujus of the Felt. Other items did not, such as Jack Noir's knife.

Name Changes
Most proper names in Cool and New Web Comic have a consistent spelling. Corrupt characters will even go so far as to correct the normal spelling of these words, despite their otherwise constantly shifting spelling scheme. This apparently even applies to o himself, who once referred to Sad Timmy as Sad Tommy, and when someone pointed this out, admitted that he misspelled a word "once time." Normal characters will insist on using their name from Homestuck, but corrupt characters will still refer to them by their corrupt name (e.g. Jhon will refer to Rose as Roze).

Ethical Implications
The different perspectives on the Enhancement has raised certain ethical concerns, especially seen in the fight between Rose Lalonde and Hecka Jef.

Rose wants to save the friends from her memory, namely John Egbert, Dave Strider, and Jade Harley. This means she wants to "reverse" the Corruption to restore them to their sane selves, and has to protect their "corrupted" selves. This means defending people like "Jhon," even after he kills other arguably fictional characters like Swet Bro, for the sake of his innocent counterpart John.

However, if the world was never corrupted, there is no one for Rose to save, which undermines her justification. It's not obvious that there really is anything that distinguishes Jhon from Swet Bro in terms of personhood. Rose merely knows one and not the other.

It also raises questions of personal autonomy. Could someone be enhanced against their will? Are corrupted characters mentally competent enough to make decisions for themselves?

There is a strong argument for paternalism, given the mental incompetence of characters. Especially when they are destructive both towards themselves and to others. Jhon killed Swet Bro, and is recognized as a psychopath, even by corrupt characters. Momi and and Swet Mom are pedophiles. Kraket killed Dabros to use his computer. Even the moral "moral" characters like Femorafreack pointed a gun and shot at a child for building a rollercoaster without a permit and running away. Jaed committed genocide out of grief in a doomed timeline. Fefieri ordered all trolls to commit mass suicide because she was in a romantic "daddy" relationship with Vrasky. Enhanced characters who can remember their time during the corruption like Godhead Aradia describe it as a long nightmare. Even if the physical aspects of the Corruption could be dismissed, these issues cannot be.

It might be countered however that even normal reasoning is not a guarantee of morality. is normal, but remains one of the most evil people in existence. And even in normal Homestuck, some insane logic still comes into play, like a video game ending the world. Plus, even if corrupt characters have a distorted sense of morality, their moral sense is not entirely gone in everyone. Hecka Jef has a legitimate charge against Jhon, and is able to argue for his case passionately, despite his corrupt style.

That being said, Hecka Jef also seems to have a distorted perception of the Enhancement. He claims that Rose plans on erasing all corrupted characters and replacing them with Rose-like versions of them. While the Enhancement is not fully understood, this does not seem to be the case. As the name suggests, they still seem to be the same person, but merely a version that maintains physical and mental integrity. According to Godhead Aradia is anything to go by, it was explicitly the "Aradead" soul that was enhanced. Aradead was not erased; she became Aradia. The Enhancement does not seem to be a threat to their self-preservation.

However, the existence of a corrupted sense of self-preservation and sense of reason, even if distorted, seems to imply they should be considered real moral agents. We won't dismiss, say, the value of infants, even if their reasoning is underdeveloped. If the normal reality never existed before, it seems like we can't invoke the principle of paternalism and dismiss the value of corrupted lives. In Kantian ethical terms, they needed to be treated as an end, and not merely a means to an end.

This becomes a problem for characters like Rose, by her own admission. "It's this damn corruption. The cognitive dissonance is making me feel detached from reality. None of these corrupted people truly feel like people to me." Rose isn't entirely wrong either. Part of the joke-logic the world is built on involves people dying in silly ways. Even if corrupted characters have a sense of self-preservation, it is at the very least a distorted one where they will kill themselves if they are ordered to do so by law. And if SBaHJ is canon, then Hecka Jef has killed Swet Bro and Swet Bro has killed Hecka Jef. Hecka even references being shot explicitly here. Given that enhancing corrupt characters is the right thing to do, then it seems that corrupt characters need to be treated seriously. Rose's inability to empathize with these characters then seems concerning, including to Rose herself. Hence the cognitive dissonance.

This unfortunately leads to some situations where Rose sees corrupt characters as inhuman, and acts more recklessly with their lives of the people she is also out to protect. In the battle of Verticle Movements, Rose kills three babies in the Loyal Clone Army (as do Hecka Jef and Fresh Dark Germy³sprite, to be fair), six clones of Hecka Jef, and Swet Mom. Granted, these were members of an army that initiated deadly force against her so they can lynch a child, but surely any "criminally insane" defense of Jhon's crimes should extend to them as well. It seems that Rose should find a way to deescalate and minimize the use of force, but when reasoning with people is nearly impossible, and even the mechanics of the universe are inconsistent at best, can this be reliably done?