Various currencies exist throughout MS Paint Adventures.
Golds[]
- Not to be confused for members of the gold caste.
Golds are a currency collected - or rather, failed to be collected - in Bard Quest. A good codpiece with all the bells and whistles costs 10 golds, and while it's not clear how much armor +5 pulchritude costs, the Bard can afford none of this.
Spondulicks[]
"Spondulicks" is 19th-century slang for cash, and the currency used in Problem Sleuth's Imaginary City - singular spondulick.PS #927 Single spondulick coins are used for mundane everyday activities, such catching cabs and viewing strip shows at the dollhouse; Hired Muscle, meanwhile, are hungry for larger quantities, and stacks of it can be spent to summon allies to one's aide. Presumably the spondulicks dropped by the Mobster Kingpin's thugs are their own pay.
The various other resources used to perform actions on the Battle Menu can also be thought of as a form of currency.
In Homestuck[]
Currencies in Sburb[]
- Main articless: Boondollar and Grist
Two different currencies or resources are used in the Incipisphere; boondollars, earned through climbing the echeladder and plundered from chests through the game's planets, is used by the Heroes to purchase new fraymotif techniques. Grist is more of a natural source used to synthesize new items through alchemy, harvested through the defeat of underlings and found in the hoards of denizens.
Alternian currency[]
A Troll Caegar - roughly equivalent to a dime in value - is one piece of Alternian coinage. “[I]mperial beetle coffers” also factor into Terezi Pyrope's courtblock roleplay.
Concept and creation[]
"[The name of] Troll Caesar is spelled Troll Caegar, in the same way Troll Jesus is spelled Troll Jegus";[1] though Andrew Hussie also claims that the Caegar "has Caesar's face on both sides", it more likely depicts the goddess Venus, who was seen as an ancestor of the Roman kings and printed on Roman coins in the time of the Caesars.[2] The Troll Caegar depicting a female figure rather than a male king may reference the female lineage of Alternian rulers.
The one scratched side of Terezi's coin presumably alludes to the "two-sided" scratched and un-scratched nature of the trolls' universe. The scratched side also bears a resemblance to some of the promotional material for the 1979 film Caligula, which depicts a Caligula-faced coin with a bleeding eye; notably, caligulasAquarium's ancestor also has a "scratched" face.
Cal Coins[]
“"CAL COINS"” are “THE BLEEDING EDGE OF MODERN IMAGINARY CURRENCY” which Caliborn “MADE UP WITH [HIS] COMPUTER” to back his masterpiece. Caliborn's goal for the project, which ultimately cost “LITERALLY MILLIONS OF CALCOINS TO PRODUCE”, was one zillion; given the complete unknown value of a zillion, it is not clear if the hard work of Caliborn's minions managed to achieve his goal or woefully undershot the mark.
Concept and creation[]
Cal Coins are an obvious parody of the bitcoin phenomenon; Hussie briefly considered establishing a real cryptocurrency to go with Cal Coin's appearance in the comic, but perhaps reasonably decided against it.[3] The QR codes on the Cal Coin bills are functional; the public address codes redirect to the MSPA website, one of the private keys just reads "HAA HAA HEE HEE HOO HOO (...)" and the cutout code contains a real Bitcoin key.
References[]
- ↑ Andrew Hussie. "Most court proceedings are designed around the awkward fact nobody really wants to admit, which is that the judge is basically incapable of performing any formal judicial action, except for eating people. So prosecutors have to sentence criminals too. Here's Terezi's special coin. It decides much more significant things later on, aside from the fate of her stuffed dragons. It has Caesar's face on both sides, one blinded with a scratch. Troll Caesar is spelled Troll Caegar, in the same way Troll Jesus is spelled Troll Jegus. And Jegus was only spelled that way due to the SBaHJification of the word Jesus, in a conversation between Dave and Terezi. These explanations are getting pretty esoteric, and frankly, I doubt anyone has benefitted from this explanation at all. We'll be pretty hard pressed to discover information about Homestuck that is less useful than this. But don't worry, I will stay vigilant and let you know if I see anything." Homestuck: Book 4: Act 5 Act 1, p. 70.
- ↑ "Throughout his career Caesar claimed the special protection and assistance of the goddess Venus. The connection between the Julian family and the goddess was long established, and previous members of the gens had struck coinage showing the goddess (e.g. RRC 258/1, 320/1)." Macquarie University, Sydney.
- ↑ Andrew Hussie. "The bitcoin riff comes deep in Act 6 when Caliborn starts dabbling in his own cryptocurrency. I half-assedly tried to get some people to bring the calcoin to life, but it never really went anywhere. Which is a shame, because if I followed through with that, it almost certainly would have have accrued some appreciable value by now. I guess that minor endeavor was a microcosm of much of what Homestuck turned out to be for me: something which always confusingly blurring the line between being a complete joke, and a lucrative business opportunity. Come to think of it, that sounds like a pretty good tagline for bitcoin as well." Homestuck: Book 5: Act 5 Act 2 Part 1, p. 86.