Corruption Theory

The biggest mystery of Cool and New Web Comic is obviously the corruption. The deliberately awful style is not merely satirizing Homestuck, but is a plot point of the story itself, deeply disturbing the small cast of “sane” characters. They are heavily invested in trying figure out how this world went mad, and consequently so are we.

Like my classpect analysis, this post is based on a reddit post I presented a while back, and I’m quite happy that things like the existence of a corrupted “Roze” have been confirmed since then.



This will be spoiler heavy.

What does the corruption do?

The corruption seems to follow basic cartoon logic, following the “rule of funny.” Anything can happen, so long as it’s good for a laugh. In a sense then, it defies proper classification, and any “rules” for how it works would only exist to be broken. Still, there are a few consistent characteristics points.

Deterioration: The most obvious effect. Everything is low-quality, appearing rough, discontinuous, and undetailed.

Instability: Appearances are constantly shifting. Doorknobs switch sides, the third dimension comes and goes, etc.

Cartoon physics: The fundamental nature of objects have changed so that they now work in unpredictable ways.

Observer effect: Things become worse on further inspection. Objects are only operable by non-corrupt characters if they don’t pay close attention to them. For example, Rose’s keyboard seemed inoperable, but was usable when her attention was on the screen.

Body Distortion: Corrupted characters shown 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, they can be harmed and killed like normal, like Swet Bro getting hit with a pickaxe/hammer, Dadd losing his hand, Jaed being stabbed, etc.

Stupidity: Corrupted characters seem to treat all these strange things as normal and perfectly understand how things work and how to operate them, whereas Rose has trouble opening a book. Reason and consistent grammar have severely degraded, perhaps mixed with some degree of gullibility. For example, Dadd hides the body of Swet Bro from the police by baking it into a cake. And it works. Proper names have a consistent (mis)spelling, strangely enough, and characters will even correct that spelling.

Broken Morality: Moral reasoning has suffered in the same way as speculative reasoning, especially regarding sexual ethics. Jhon is the most obvious case as the most wildly out of character. Ethics has not been entirely abandoned though, as Jhon is consistently condemned as depraved by other corrupt characters for the quasi-accidental death of Swet Bro. Pedophilic relations and intense sub/dom relations however are taken as par for the course. In contrast, hiding hams is apparently something people do that others consider terribly rude.

Perhaps the strangest thing about the corruption is its apparent ability to make fake things real, mainly the characters from Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, yet even a slightly worse version of them as Swet Bro and Hecka Jef. More on this later.

The mechanics of SBURB however are surprisingly consistent with Homestuck, with a few notable exceptions. The most major one of course is SBURB having a roller coaster tycoon mode, although this is more a “different” version of SBURB than a necessarily corrupt one.

Beyond this, things are surprisingly tight, and where they’re not like a male player being a Muse, decent excuses can be made. Everything else like Skia, Prostit, prototyping, lands, consorts, they all are working as you’d expect.

Is it a “corruption” at all?

A growing possibility in CaNWC is that what Rose and Jack have been treating as reality being corrupted is really just them being enhanced. In other words, this world has always been low quality, and Rose and Jack are only noticing it now for some reason, possibly because they used to be corrupt themselves. Rose and Jack only think it’s the rest of the world that changed because they remember some high-quality version of history.

The main reason to suspect this is that CaNWC has a decidedly different history from Homestuck. The world does not seem to have been normal one moment and corrupt the next, but has been this way for quite a long time.

Dabe grew up next to Swet Bro and Hecka Jef.

Jhon knows Vrasky very well.

well. Jhon and Dabe began their sub/dom relation well before April 13th.

Jhon denies remembering any kind of change.

The troll session necessarily happened differently because Bec Noir will not exist.

Rose herself even remembers “Dave” having gone missing for the last four weeks. But perhaps the most damning piece of evidence is from the Dadd update in Act 3, where Rose as a baby is corrupt.

If this argument is correct, then presumably whatever transformed Rose and Jack also changed their memories so that they remember themselves and everyone else also being “high quality.” Otherwise they wouldn’t be so shocked or know people’s canonical names like “Dave” or “Courtyard Droll.”

While it might be inaccurate or presumptuous, I will continue to use “corruption” and “normal” because they are such convenient terms. Incidentally, questioning what we call “normal” is literally the first thing Kanaya did.

Why are some characters normal?

Regardless of whether we’re dealing with corruption or enhancement, the question remains why some people are affected and others are not. A few theories have been put forward, but none particularly convincing yet.

Aspect: If Rose is the Lord of Space, it would make sense for her to be able to “conquer” these metaphysical anomalies, and Kanaya as a Sylph of Space might be able to “heal” corruption. Jack and “white wordes guy” however cannot be accounted for by this theory. So while the reason Rose and Kanaya have been picked might be due to their classpects, it might not be the direct cause.



Intelligence: The normal characters seem to generally be smarter and more serious ones. But while intelligence certainly describes Rose, Kanaya, and “Doc Scratch,” it seems quite a stretch to call Jack an intellectual. He’s not an idiot, but he’s not more intelligent than plenty of other characters we’ve seen corrupted.

Doc Scratch Connection: In Homestuck, Doc Scratch took a special interest in Rose, Kanaya, and Spades Slick, manipulating them for his purposes, so he might have something to do with this. However, Spades Slick and Jack Noir are different people from different sessions, and Doc Scratch was in contact with Vriska as well, might even still be in contact with her from the looks of things, yet we have the corrupt “Vrasky.” Not to mention Jhon also seems to currently be in contact with him.

How are the normal viewed?

Normal characters clearly see other characters as, well, corrupt. But how do the corrupt see the normal? Do they notice as large a difference as the normal do of them?

So far no character has commented on this directly, but there are a few possibilities worth mentioning.

Hot theory: Whenever corrupted characters have commented on Rose or Jack’s appearance, it’s always to call them hot. This has mostly been coming from Jhon and Jaed who obviously have sex on the brain enough as it is, even going so far as to compete against each other, so that might mean nothing in itself. WV making similar comments lends this a bit more credence.

Or maybe Rose is just genuinely hot. There’s nothing particularly paranormal about that.

Boring theory: Corrupted characters have very short attention spans, giving up on anything too complicated. Jhon and Hecka Jef have both commented on how boring Rose is, and Doc Scratch directly commented on Jhon gets frustrated by his “relatively formal linguistic style,” although John felt similarly in Homestuck about the “Queen of Books”.



Corrupted view theory: It’s possible that corrupted people simply see any difference in appearance at all. No one is explicitly commenting on it, and Jhon represents Rose’s face in a corrupted format.

Incomprehensible theory: High-quality characters might be so far beyond corrupted ones that it’s literally impossible for them to fully comprehend the differences between them. This might imply something like the corrupted view concept, but it goes a bit further beyond it in how these characters relate.

The corruption will no doubt continue to be a central plot point, and hopefully we’ll learn more about it in the future.