Fraymotif

Jade and Dave performing Adagio Redshift.

Fraymotifs are special abilities or attacks from Homestuck that are musically related. Fraymotifs are optional components to successful sessions, as indicated by Aradia. She also mentioned that the trolls had the strongest fraymotifs boondollars could buy, which was part of how they were able to defeat the Black King (who was much more powerful than he should have been due to the prototyping of Feferi's lusus).

They appear to be accessible through shops on the kids' planets. In the John: Enter village Flash, a shop with fraymotifs can be accessed, but John cannot afford any of them, since he only has 9,413,612 boondollars, having given his first boonbuck to Dave. They seem to be based on the characters' titles, and all of them have musically-themed names. It is unknown how the alpha kids would have obtained their fraymotifs, although they used some in Collide.

Dave, after making a killing on the LOHAC Stock Exchange bought all of his fraymotifs and presumably used them to get to the top of his echeladder. The names of these fraymotifs are mostly unknown, save for Adagio Redshift, a fraymotif Dave and Jade used against Bec Noir during their strife.

The fraymotif menu from Collide.

Though there is no particularly developed formula, it appears that each player has at least 3 personal fraymotifs, and each player has a fraymotif with another. For example, John has 6 fraymotifs: 3 of his own, and one with each of the other players in his session (Dave, Rose, and Jade). If this were true, then that would mean that the kids have 18 fraymotifs (4 × 3 individual and 6 in combination), while the trolls have 102 (12 × 3 individual and 66 possible combinations). Collide further complicates this, with fraymotifs existing for three or more characters, and even characters across sessions.

Known Fraymotifs

• Feathercadence (John)
• Pneumatic Progression (John)
• Breathless Battaglia (John)
• Ivories in the Fire (John + Dave)
• Mixolydian Maelstrom (John + Rose)
• Fantasia's Inhale (John + Jade)
• Adagio Redshift (Dave + Jade): Not much is known from the effect other than not having harmed a target with First guardian powers.

Unnamed Fraymotifs

The following abilities appear in Collide. In order of appearance

• John + Rose + Roxy: Roxy conjures a Zazzerpan statue and a tornado with light beams is created, hitting the target with all three. A callback to [S] Enter..
• John + Rose: A combination of blasts of winds and beams of light hit the target.
• Rose + Roxy: A cube of generic objects seize the target.
• John + Rose: A controllable gust of wind with light beams inside.
• Rose + Roxy: A combination of light and void beams hit the target.
• Terezi + Dave: Dave and Terezi examine some timelines and place themselves in another where Dirk is alive. The effect also merges all Dirks from these timelines through his aspect and brings an additional Golden Cuestaff to the scene.
• Terezi + Dave: Dave and Terezi's consciousnesses travels back in time to their bodies.
• Dave + Dirk: A combination of freezing a target in time and ripping its soul.

Trivia

• The concept of fraymotifs may have been inspired by Mother 3's battle system in which pressing the A button in time with the background music triggered a combo attack.
• It may also have been inspired from Chrono Trigger's battle system, in which individual characters can combine their techniques to make "Double Techs" or "Triple Techs" during a fight.