Nightmare Fuel / Hiveswap Friendsim

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

When was the last time the wrong choice in a visual novel led to the mass murder of an entire nursery?

There's a reason this game has a much higher age rating than Hiveswap...

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• Simply doing something as innocuous as patting a newfound friend on the back or suppressing an urge to dance with your friend can lead to horrific, unthinkable consequences such as the MSPA Reader accidentally snapping someone's neck and killing them, or being forced to try executing a troll who can't protest due to having his tongue ripped out. And then there's the endings where you die...
• Ardata runs a red room in her basement, mind controlling her captives into not attempting to leave their unlocked cages, and forcing them to build their own torture equipment (Without necessary tools, no less) in a manner fans have described as an IKEA from hell.
• Apart from the violent aspects of Troubling Unchildlike Behavior in the game, Diemen looks distressingly young for someone who casually tries to lure a total stranger into making out with him, and unlike the violence, this is not normal for trolls. He's also too old for it to simply be a cute kiddie thing, and in a society with no parental supervision and a reproductive deadline it's unlikely many kids would remain naive for long. What happened to the poor kid to make him think this was a normal way to greet a new friend? Probably nothing actually intended on the writer's part, but unsettlingly possible to interpret as "something extremely not funny".
• Cirava Hermod gouged out their own eye to suppress their psionic powers. Eye injuries are a recurring theme in the Homestuck universe, but however Cirava's happened, it seems to be more horrific than most, with yellow veins streaking across half their face...
• As shown in the page image, Bronya's bad endings can either involve you accidentally sitting on a grub, or trying to stop a lusus rampage, resulting in you causing the deaths of many grubs and lusii. And in both of these endings, Bronya's expressions can be terrifying.
• Going outside for more than a few minutes in the Alternian sun can quite literally cook you to death, and we see this happen in a Game Over route. It's played for laughs there, but later a troll suffers mild burns just from having one arm outside for a few seconds. The damage that could do to a person... eek.
• Some trolls, one who may or may not have been Kuprum, snuck into Poylpa’s house, murdered her lusus, broke her legs, and left her for dead. She got better, thanks to Tegiri, but it’s clear what happened to her wasn’t out of the ordinary.
• The bad ending for Kuprum and Folykl's route involves you participating in a non-consensual psychic three-way, before being completely drained of energy and left for dead.
  • Without Kuprum or another similar psionic’s energy, Folykl will literally die. Her usual attitude about it makes even more disturbing when the drones attack them and we’re reminded she can’t be any older than eighteen.
  • The fact that voidrot is common enough that the two expect the Reader to have heard of it means there are at least millions of other gold bloods who are forced to live like parasites, surviving day to day off of the energy of friends or quadrant mates at best or just dying in agony at worst.
• The scene where Konyyl massacres the bandits causes the Reader to suffer a breakdown, because it's finally registered in their mind both that the multicoloured mess is blood and that all the trolls killing each other all the time are still children.
• In one of Tyzias’s bad routes, she loses notes on censored information about history. Her panic cuts through her sleep-deprived lethargy to emphasize just how dangerous what she’s doing is.
• In the bad ending of Chixie's route, blabbing to Zebruh about her difficulties headlining gets him to strongarm the owner of the club out of his property and let Chixie lead as much as she wants - so long as she obeys everything he says. By this point in the game, the Reader already knows that Zebruh does nothing for free and now Chixie is even more in his debt, thanks to you.
  • Her nervousness around him is kind of heartwrenching to watch. She has to play nice to the creep or he might ruin her career, but he clearly makes her very uncomfortable and it's not hard to guess why.
• Clown church is revealed to be a mundane activity, with Purplebloods getting high on Faygo and glittery incense while giving random sermons... if not for the fact that some lowbloods are forced to attend in chains, presumably to be used as sacrifices. The church hall itself is covered with blood splatters of various colours, and in one of the routes, you end up getting sacrificed by one of the followers after an accidental cut reveals your red blood, and being told that it's the "highest honor" the church can bestow; but considering this is right after you give a really well-received sermon at the church, it's left deliberately ambiguous whether you're being sacrificed because it's genuinely the highest honor this twisted religion can bestow; or because you're being sacrificed for your mutant blood color, and being added to the morbid collection of stains on the wall.
  • The Grand Highblood himself making an appearance. And... complimenting the Reader’s legs. It’s a funny moment if you can get over the fact he’s personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions (if not billions or even trillions) of trolls.
• Lynera's general demeanor throughout her entire route. Special mention goes to the Nightmare Face she makes when she threatens to stab you to death after you lie about being Bronya's best friend - which is also the face she makes when you mouse over her in the route selection screen!
  • There’s plenty of Paranoia Fuel at play here: In her good route, the Reader brings Lynera to the same cafe that Elwurd frequents.
• When a drone captures the MSPA Reader, they’re brought to the Teal internship place where the sound of torture can be overheard. What makes this worse is that Alternia has psychics: they don’t need to resort to torture to make trolls talk. It could be that their powers don’t work that way, serving law and order is considered too low brow for ceruleans, or they just don’t care.
  • The cells there are very unsafe, having holes in them that can let in both dangerous sunlight and acid rain. Oh, and it has the Alternian equivalent of Roombas, but with blades attached to them, though that's Played for Laughs.
  • The Reader can accidentally get Tirona killed in one path of her route - you try to break into Tegiri's office, which is booby-trapped. The Reader dodges the trap, but Tirona doesn't...
• Boldir knows waaaaaaaay too much, especially in comparison to the rest of the trolls the MSPA Reader encounters. The fact she’s a green blood with a strange way of communication, wears white when we see her for the first time, and is a young lady is Paranoia Fuel at its finest.
  • Boldir's bad ending has her being shot with poison and dying, while the Reader can't do anything, and the ending image is pretty horrifying to look at. Even her good ending is still scary because she still gets poisoned, and while you can save her this time, it's still unsettling that there seems to be an assassin after her for whatever reason, the people in the cafe are unfazed by the fact that she's dying, and the ending screen just says "DIDN'T DIE" instead of "VICTORY" or "FRIENDSHIP" or some other happy message.
  • The bad ending also has the Reader having feelings about having lost friends before, and feeling confused about why they are feeling that way. Do they remember the bad endings of previous routes, and the deaths of Diemen and Tirona?
  • After the bad ending screen, a narration box appears and says "Again? Must I do everything myself?" It's unknown who is saying this, as the MSPA Reader has only been narrated in second person, but context suggests that it could be Doc Scratch.
  • It is quite possible the assassin was Polypa, given that she mentioned working with poison in her route.
• A subtle example occurs in Marsti's route where the Reader mentions that when trying to make friends, they'll either die, or the potential friends will leave them or make them go away. Marsti asks how the Reader dying could be possible, leading them to correct themself and say it was metaphorical. It doesn't help that the narration implies that they're having thoughts that don't make sense, similar to what happened in the bad ending of Boldir's route. And when the Reader goes to the same area where Boldir died, the narration says that for a moment they felt as if they'd been there before...
• In Karako’s first bad ending, the MSPA Reader runs away from the drones only to return and find him gone with no evidence of what happened to him.
  • The violet bloods the Reader encounters with Karako ridicule him and react violently if challenged. And he’s only one caste below them, even if he IS small. The encounter really enforces the idea that no one is safe on Alternia.
  • Karako's second bad ending is very scary and confusing. First of all, after getting angered by the Violetbloods, he'll become very angry and his eyes will turn red. If the Reader doesn't stop him from attacking them, they'll fight back and kill him, and unlike the deaths of Diemen, Tirona, and Boldir, his blood is actually shown. And he's implied to be the youngest Troll Call troll. But that's not all. After that, the sky seemingly opens to reveal a carousel with model trolls that come to take him away. Then there's some narration about how the Reader feels not just about this, but about who and what they are. They then decide to avenge Karako's death, trying and failing to attack the seadwellers. Then the carousel appears again and takes them away too, and no explanation is given for what just happened.
    • Knowledge of Homestuck softens this a bit by presenting the possibility that the carousel is part of the Dark Carnival from the Purpleblood religion come to take Karako's soul away and by dying trying to avenge him the Reader proves worthy of the same afterlife. It can get worse when you remember who the Dark Carnival is associated with.
• Possibly Paranoia Fuel, but there's something very unnerving about Lil Cal being in Charun's cave. Especially when you consider that Charun themself is a chilled out, possibly stoned, Rage-bound artist.
  • Charun's route starts with a brief line where the Reader remembers Karako's bad ending, despite the fact that they died too, and in Wanshi's route, the narration says they've been having nightmares about failing Amisia, Karako, and Tirona, the latter two of which had bad endings where they died. Just how is the Reader remembering all this?
• On Wanshi's route, it turns out there is a room in the library with brains in jars that’s heavily guarded, with no explanation as to why it's there, or why it's guarded. One of the guards in the background wields a spiked club and doesn't look particularly friendly.
  • On the bad path of her route, Wanshi sees a dead body for the very first time. By this point, the Reader is used to the incredible levels of violence on Alternia, so seeing the same culture shock through the eyes of a troll really enhances the idea that this is not normal. Why SHOULD a twelve year old be expected to comprehend seeing a corpse?
  • Even after the above incident, the bad ending can be unexpected. When arriving at the convention, an angry bear shows up with blood of several colours all over it. The Reader manages to kill it, but ends up getting killed when the bear falls on them, while Wanshi looks shocked and terrified.
    • Once again, the memories of other endings are brought up again in the good route, where the Reader gets messages from Tegiri and Polypa warning them about the bear, and briefly feel that something could have gone wrong if they were there.
    • There's some potential fridge horror to the good route though. It's good from the reader's perspective because they didn't take Wanshi to the convention & get killed by the bear. But the bear's still gonna be there & the reader won't be around to kill it. How many children died in that version of events?
• The strange light in Fozzer's route. When the MSPA Reader gets close to it, they find themself back at the point where they just met Fozzer. Not only that, but the same choices as earlier as presented, but this time, give different results. Was Fozzer's change in attitude just because of him being a Mood-Swinger, or did the flash of light cause something else to happen to him?
  • The fact that the sound that happens just before the reset is described as sounding like a scratch...
  • The music that plays on this route gives an eerie feeling, and the various sound effects in the track certainly fit how mysterious and out of place the strange light is.
• The fact that Purpleblood concerts always end with almost all of the audience dead. Yet people still attend, despite this fact.
  • If the Reader goes along with Zebruh's plan to pretend to assassinate Marvus, the plan fails and the audience violently tear him apart. Sure, it's Zebruh, but it's still terrifying, especially since they must have a lot of strength to be able to do that to an Indigoblood, and especially when they almost do the same to the Reader. Luckily, Marvus is fairly nice to them despite what happened, but he seems to have an awareness of alternate timelines and the fact that this timeline might be doomed, especially when more bad things start to happen for no apparent reason.
  • If the Reader doesn't go along with the plan, they can almost get trampled to death. Marvus rescues them, but the audience wants him to kill them, and they are strangely fine with this. Thankfully, he fakes it.
  • It's a well established fact that in the universe of Homestuck, the more meta a villain is, the more threatening they are. Marvus discusses the nature of the friendsim timelines canonicity in shockingly frank terms, especially in comparison to his almost unintelligible slangy quirk.
  • Marvus and, to a much lesser but still noticeable extent, Elwurd both produce a level of hero-worship from the PC far out of proportion to anything they've actually done at that point, even by the PC's rather impressionable standards. It might seem like clumsy writing at first, but remember both of them are of castes which can use mind control. It's heavily, heavily implied that Marvus is influencing his whole audience to adore him as much as they do, drawing them to his concerts where they know full well they'll probably be killed. Elwurd doesn't have any of the physical cues associated with her caste's usual powers, but neither does Zebede and he still has some form of ability; Elwurd's also confirmed as a Hope player, the aspect of blind faith and unremitting positivity, which she might be inducing in the PC. It's also possible they're being used as a conduit for someone else's control. Either way, they are characters to keep a cautious eye on.
• Daraya's bad route has the Reader trying to convince her to rebel against her caste role and Alternian society in general, only for her to decide that nothing matters at all, start breaking things in the abandoned mall, and start a fire that she refuses to leave. The Reader is forced to leave her behind to escape the fire, and it's implied that she had no intention of escaping anyway.
• "Muscular Theater" in Nihkee's route is much more dangerous and deadly than real life wrestling, even if it is still staged. It's noted that a lot of the losing trolls end up badly injured and may not even survive. The Purpleblood shown in the cage at the beginning of the route also looks terrifying.
  • Nihkee's hive has what is supposed to be exercise equipment, but there are spikes, whips, a taser, a pool of acid, chains, and blood. The narration even compares it to a torture room. And this is the first thing the Reader sees after getting knocked out in the wrestling match.
  • NIHKEE'S SECOND BAD ENDING. If the Reader hesitates to let her train them, she'll send them away, but they'll refuse to let the screen fade to black and then fade into a game over screen with the sad music by James Roach. So they go to visit Stelsa and get her to train them. When they think they're ready, they drive to where Nihkee is, but take some time to listen to some calming sound effects, only to start remembering previous routes and their bad endings, showing the images and text fading into each other. The background music even changes to an extended version of the title screen music. They then start to have visions of Nihkee being angry to see them again, losing her other leg in the ensuing clusterfuck - implied to be because of the Reader accidentally dropping/throwing a weight on her leg - and then Nikhee following the Reader in fury, only to get hit by a train. After that, the Reader tries to get help from Polypa, Tegiri, and Mallek because Nihkee somehow survived and ended up being turned into a cyborg who follows the Reader nonstop for a year, forcing them to flee into the wilds and abandon their friends- and even after all of that, the cyborg catches and kills them. After this vision, the Reader decides to just go back to Stelsa's hive. Were they just overthinking what could go wrong, or were they having a vision of the future and what would happen if they did go back to Nihkee?
    • It doesn't stop there. The narration that appears during this montage implies that the person who Tirona says she runs errands for is Doc Scratch, and that she is being used by him, and that Polypa and Tegiri were killed in their attempt to stop cyborg Nihkee. Since the narration for this part appears outside of the usual boxes, in white, it's possible that it might have been narrated by Scratch himself.
    • The name of the extended title theme that plays during this part is "END OF FRIENDVANGELION". Anyone familiar with the anime movie that title references would understandably be disturbed.
• A meta example: The last several examples on this page gave fans a lot of Paranoia Fuel for what would happen on the routes of Lanque and the Soileil Twins. It didn't help that James Roach said he was working on four tracks for the last volume rather than the standard one or two he usually did. Though in the end, one track was made because Lanque's route had two versions, and the other was for the epilogue.
• The Soleil Twins. Their route starts with the MSPA Reader coming across a scary-looking house. Any attempts to move away from it just take them back there, giving them no choice but to enter. When they do, something causes the Reader to pass out, and they wake up in a different room of the house. They meet the twins upon leaving the room, and their quirk is very similar to that of Gamzee after he stops eating slime pies. And when they talk together, their speech is the same as Gamzee's original quirk. After they disappear, blood of different colours appears on the walls, and the paintings get glowing eyes.
• If the Reader decides to find a different door to the ones the Twins told them to go through, they fall into a pit of knives.
  • Going through the door that the Twins told the Reader to go through takes them to a dark room where the Twins tie them down and prepare to cut them with a chainsaw... only for them to wake up back in the room from before. After leaving, they meet the Twins again, who introduce themselves the same way and claim not to remember meeting them before, and the Reader is tortured in a different way before ending up in the room again. And it happens again, and again, and again, each time having a different dangerous thing done to them.
    • The music on this route does not help at all. It starts off as a slow piano piece, and eventually gets faster and turns into Creepy Circus Music before slowing down again and coming to an almost abrupt stop, possibly representing the numerous times the Reader is put through leaving the room, meeting the Twins, getting tortured by them, and then starting over...
  • Eventually, the Reader decides they've had enough. If they choose to leave, they'll escape the house, only to end up coming back to it over and over, and realising that they'll never be able to escape its presence.
  • The good ending reveals that all the torture the Reader went through was just an illusion caused by the Twin's chucklevoodoos. They appear to be quite young, yet they're still very powerful, leaving one to wonder just how powerful older Purplebloods with this ability can be...
    • The Twins also say that while their acts of torture and the blood that appears on the walls were just illusions, the house itself wasn't. So whose house was it, and why was it trying to trap people there?
• The epilogue of the Friendsim, where the MSPA Reader is approached by none other than Doc Scratch in the flesh. And if Scratch is involved, then somebody else is already here alongside him...
  • The drive for friendship was created by him. The results of taking it away leave the MSPA Reader confused, lonely, and absolutely terrified of the implications.
  • Speaking of the MSPA Reader and Scratch, seeing the two characters next to each other raises several questions. Why do they look similar?
  • Scratch says that Fozzer’s mind is likely irreparably damaged, and that Boldir’s been causing trouble for him, the latter of which raises SEVERAL questions. Remembering the bad ending where she dies, it's implied that despite the trouble she's causing him, he still needs her alive for some reason, especially if he was the one who asked "Must I do everything myself?" before fading back to the title screen.

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