#I do really like literally all of the main homestuck cast | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

1007xf · 10 months

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With the 4th of August just around the corner, I was thinking about a little something The Tapestry does that I really like and that is its portrayal of how it is to be a weird lonely little nerd.

Warning comically huge rant. I wasn't planning for it to be this long. I do not know what possessed me. It's 2:30 in the morning.

In Homestuck proper, the beta kids are also lonely kids who only really have eachother, however Homestuck's setting kind of obscures this fact because Beta Earth, really, truly, feels empty. Unless there is something I'm forgetting (I haven't read actual Homestuck in a while, oops. I should really re-read.) Beta Earth is just normal 2009 Earth. And you can see that if you look at all of the cultural references in it. Earth Beta isn't empty because all of John's shitty movies had to have been produced by someone, because someone had to have been frequenting Bro's weird puppet porn website, because we literally see other human beings talk trough the Internet on Dad's PDA and such (I wonder whatever happened to fedoraFreak haha). Beta Earth isn't objectively empty, of course. Yet it feels like so, because its main cast seems to only superficially exist in it. You could probably assume John, Rose and Dave all went to school (funnily enough I looked it up and April 13th 2009 was a Monday. Damn brats, skipping middle school so they can contribute to the creation of a new Universe.) because that's what kids their age do (Jade doesn't count for obvious reasons). Yet we never really seem to see or hear about all that. These kids only interact with eachother and their guardians (well, the living ones anyway), and so it's hard to see Beta Earth as a planet with a living breathing ~6880 billion humans on it. It's really more of a cardboard cutout of Earth, where the idea of culture and people is there, but none of the moving parts are present.

And so, it really feels like, even though Jade is the only one who is actually secluded, all 4 kids live in isolation, their only window to social interaction being their computers and the Pester Chum client. It feels like John, Rose, Dave and Jade are the only real individuals on Earth, because even their guardians don't feel like much more than placeholders or just vessels for one joke or stereotype. And this makes it seem like the kids are placed in this impossible full yet empty world, which is not something any of us are living in (I hope so!).

Most lonely people aren't alone . You can't say Homestuck's portrayal of loneliness, especially at that young pre-teen to teen age is accurate because it literally feels like the cast is alone (sans Jade bla bla I said this already) and so of course they'd be lonely. In any case, it portrays being lonely (take a shot everytime I write this word. Or don't! It depends on how suicidal you're feeling at this particular moment) all the same, just in a different (and less likely) way.

And with that bigger than I expected speil about Homestuck out of the way, let's get to the actual post. It has been said already the The Tapestry is an amazing MSPFA on so many fronts, but I'll say it again, just because it deserves it. The Tapestry is great, go read it if you haven't.

The main cast of the comic (sadly not counting Sedranovel, Limeweld and Expanaiver. I know they're technically also protagonists but they just.... don't really fit the idea I'm trying to portray here. Sorry!) is also 4 youths who play a God Damn Game. They're aliens too, but they're "like a human but..." type of alien, so their world is not all that different form ours. And a thing you'll notice right away as you start reading the comic is the emphasis that is placed on the worldbuilding, from the grand aspects like the the Solar System on the alien world and its geographical and political structure to the minute aspects like a mecha anime or the educational system of just one of many nations. Right of the bat, unlike Beta Earth, Siltsphere is bustling with life, culture, conflict. It helps that we also get to literally see other setyrs, lots of them in fact. It's nice eye candy, since they're usually part of the huge sweeping landscape scenery porn pages, but it's also a stark reminder of what is at stake. All of the supernatural fuckery afoot now affects not only the protagonists but also a planets entire civilization.

And yet, the main cast seems to gravitate towards eachother only. And unlike in Homestuck, we know that they have acquaintances and that they talk to others. Sosav mentions her neighbors, Handa makes friends with the pagan kids at his school, Deime tries (and fails) to connect with his countrymen. They have a form of social lives, each different, but they exist and they acknowledge the existence of a complex world with lots of real individuals. But they're all best friends with eachother. Oenia mentions that she doesn't really have friends outside of the other 3 and I think this is true for all of them.

Each off the 4 main characters is a bit weird and they're all definitely huge nerds. That is to say, they're all very passionate about their interests. And, sadly, intense passion, especially when directed at something not viewed as necessary to society, can sometimes be very alienating. Because most of the time it's hard to find someone who shares the same spark of love for that thing. I think Handa illustrates this problem the best, what with his... I want to say inferiority complex but that sounds kind of mean haha. He definitely loves history and art, and he is good at them too. Excellent, really. And yet, we hardly see him proud of his achievements. Because he thinks that his talents are a waste of time and energy, because they're not "necessary". Because those passions don't prepare you for a "real job". Because the world goes round thanks to the work of scientists, not artists. This is all really relatable to me personally, to a scarily accurate degree. And this sort of thinking is sisyphean, really. Because you'll reach a high where you think you did good, where you look at your art and say "wow, I've gotten better, this genuinely looks good!", but then the little shitty voice at the back of your mind will remind you that drawing won't help you solve cancer or launch rockets or whatever and therefore you're useless to society. And if this thinking sounds dramatic that's because that's how it is. Sosav literally calls Handa out on this, which shines a light on the fact that, since Handa lives in an almost-utopia society, he really shouldn't have to worry about stuff like that. And he shouldn't, but he does, because this line of thinking doesn't make sense anyway!

I wrote all that just for one of the characters! Imagine if sat down to dissect the others too. I could write 3 different posts just about Deime. But I won't because then I'll probably forget what the point of the post actually is. Yeah, there's a point. Remember the point? Jesus.

The point about being a lonely stupid nerdy kid. Like I said before, being super into something can sort of isolate you from your peers, because it's just hard to connect with those you don't have a lot in common with. But that doesn't mean you won't talk. You'll greet eachother, have meaningless conversations about whatever during recess, maybe you'll even hang out outside of school. But, really, there will never be anything there. Because it just feels like your brains are wired differently. Of course, I feel like the parallel to neurodiversity is starting to become obvious here. I'd say more, but I'm not an expert and while I do suspect that I am neurodivergent myself, I was never and probably will never be diagnosed by a professional, so I can't really say I'm in a position to write about this.

That's how you become lonely without being alone. And it's worse, because you'll see the people (or setyrs, I guess) in front of you and they're your age, and they're just like you, and they're going trough the same life experiences, but there just isn't any spark there. The thread to connect to them just isn't long enough.

That's why you need other weirdo nerds in your life. And thank fuck for the Internet. Because otherwise, where would I be ranting into the void about some fancomic to probably one or two people, or maybe just myself? Hah.

The main characters are all into very different things and they're from pretty different environments, yet they seem to click together anyway. And it's because I think when you're a passionate nerd, seeing someone just like you makes you admire them. And they don't have to be way better or more skilled than you, they could be just at your level, yet you feel enamoured by their passion nonetheless and they feel the same for you and that's friendship! Handa admires Sosav for her physics knowledge and Oenia for her art improvement, Deime, despite his bickering with Handa, definitely recognizes his (comically potent) art skills and Oenia is amazed by Deime's "search engine skills". It's all really cute. I love it when in bigger groups of friends you can tell that everyone is friends with everyone and they all have unique relationships with eachother.

That being said, I believe that, miraculously, I may be reaching the end of my... whatever this is. This thought vomit. This is mainly just me writing down whatever came to mind with only a rough idea of what I wanted to say. Is more or less a clusterfuck but I did manage to say some things I had on the brain. High chance there's grammar or spelling mistakes in here I didn't catch on my proofread, so sorry for that. Good night 👋 and read da damn comic.

#I'm almost embarrassed to tag this self indulgent word soup #almost #the tapestry mspfa #homestuck #I promise my brain is huge and full of great ideas it's just so hard to get them organized #there was a sturgeon moon tonight I think that's what influenced me to write this lmaooo

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enriquemzn262 · 1 year

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Have you guys ever checked back on the webcomics you used to follow? Back in the day I had a ton I was actively following, when I was in deep denial about my weebness, and the other day I decided to look back on some of them.

Raccoon Girl: It’s still active, I actually ended up going back into it, a fun little comic about a bunch of idiots trying to be superheroes, lead by the titular RG. It’s been doing a slow but steady shift from just funny moments into a more serious story, with the art improving alongside the shift.

Miss Melee: It stayed on hiatus for almost 2 years, but it recently came back, a kickass story about a mom superhero and how her personal life starts to get mixed with her superhero one, in the form of her daughter.

Poppy Opposum: A once fun adventure comic about a mom living in a magic world where her possum race is heavily discriminated against. The world building proved too much for the author, and after a short sting at turning it into a sort of light novel to try and tackle the overly complex setting, he finally gave up and dropped it for good.

(He was always kind of a dick too)

The Meek: A once promising adventure story with three different perspectives, all apparently meant to come together eventually. Author was more focused on selling the shit out of the few chapters produced rather than actually working on the story, so it quickly stagnated with literal years between updated, today currently standing at 3 since the last update.

Skadi: One hell of a fun ride about a barbarian princess in a quest to eat from every animal, and the only webcomic in this list that actually had a proper ending. Sadly the webpage where it was hosted no longer works, so it seems to be lost media.

Endtown: A weird but interesting anthology comic about former humans living in a post-apocalyptic world. The current arc has been ongoing for years, and, at least for me, proved so convoluted I dropped it altogether. May return to it one day if said arc actually ends.

Paranatural: A coming of age story about kids fighting supernatural beings. It used to be really fun but then it suddenly began to focus less on the main cast in favor of these bully characters I never liked, and that plus a constant string of hiatuses made me drop it. It’s still being actively worked on, but now as a light novel. Author always seemed like a pretty cool guy.

Prequel Adventure: From the height of popularity of Homestuck came this interactive comic about the unluckiest cat lady that ever lived in the world of Morrowind(?). Used to be really creative, but the author’s refusal at ever breaking away from “now let’s make our hero fuck up again for no good reason” finally got to me so I dropped it. It seems to still be active, albeit at a very slow pace.

Fanboys Online: The only videogames webcomic I’ll ever admit to follow back in the day (the other one I’ll take to the grave), what started as another painfully unfunny (in hindsight) gamer humor webcomic slowly evolved into a witty character study on the three protagonists it had, not to mention the art kept improving as it went on. One day the author quit cold turkey, and now it seems every page that once hosted it is now gone.

Man, looking back, I honestly had a preference for webcomics with female leads.

#rant #webcomic #webcomics #art

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shjiyemis · 1 year

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saw ur post about givin the black-coded highbloods (am i using that right) more depth to their intention and im sitting here w/ popcorn. please expand and if it is also about how imperialism and the empire sucks i am coming onto the stage and giving you one bajillion gazillion dollars

I legitimately have A LOT in mind on this specific topic, I think there are def specific characters, I'm like ALWAYS thinking about the purple bloods specifically with how heavy their coding is that even goes straight down to how they live.

The fuschias are (specifically Meenah/The Condense) are like literal caricatures of black woman. I feel how they are, specifically in behavior, isn't bad. But their behavior mixed with the fact their supposed to be the HIGHEST on the hemospectrum and ALSO described as FISH HITLER ???? It's like WEIRD???

Also if you look at the whole caste of Homestuck. The characters that are HEAVILY coded as black ( The Makara/and honestly purplebloods in general, Meenah/The Condense) are the most demonized and written as aggressors. YES, there are many aggressors in Homestuck that are mains but these characters actions are usually the ones that get highlighted most. (Honestly, ESPECIALLY the purples)

Like idk how to tell y'all how FUCKING WEIRD that is if y'all don't get it at this point.

My idea of writing into these characters with more depth is to not put all of them in a good light but to just give them DEPTH, more depth then just "the aggressive black" that has always been a huge stereotype in general on black ppl as a whole.

I've had the makaras on my mind since I was a baby so I ALREADY have shit in my head for them, the fuschias are another story bc even tho I can think and understand their characters I haven't thought about all the plot holes I need to fill, I also don't remember too much in their story bc I never really paid too much attention to them except Feferi (still not as much as I do with the characters I'm super invested in)

I actually have a whole post for the GHB bc I'm honestly super tired of the common "EVIL MURDERER THAT CRAVES VIOLENCE AND IS PROBABLY A R*PIST" interpretation for The Grand Highblood, not too mention it feels weird now due to the explanation i gave already. Let's also not forget the fact that the Grand Highbloods abbreviation "GHB" is also a shortened term for a commonly used date rape drug 🤨

Here's a link to that lil GHB Ted talk

Like the thing is I GET why ppl see the GHB as such once again it's still fucking weird like c'mon guys.

There's just so much but I cannot say everything rn bc I'll actually kill you with my words and my brain will actually die if I go on too long FHCFHCHFCGJCHFC but this is what I'm saying rn lolol

(also quickly includes this bc I feel like SOMEONE will pick at me for this, I didn't include Feferi in my lil parentheses due to the fact if it wasn't for the inclusion of Meenah and some more detailing of how the condencse is, no one would read her as black specifically bc of many reasons including that audience being racist whether it's intentional or not, she's still black and coded as such due to her ancestry and them being black caricatures)

#marv3l-drag0ns #shye speaks #homestuck #gamzee makara #kurloz makara #the grand highblood #meenah peixes #the condesce

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katapotato55 · 1 year

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Why I am not a fan of the interns from psychonauts 2 in terms of writing

spoilers for most of the game. please play this game it is very good. spoilers begin after the cut. Disclaimer 1: I love this game. If I hated it then I wouldn't be talking about it. I criticize the things i love because I believe in improvement from fair criticism. Disclaimer 2: If you are personally attached to said characters and feel as though you are being attacked by reading this, politely piss off. I don't know you personally, and if you think my opinion on fictional characters is some slight against a random stranger, then you need to touch grass instead of spamming my feed. With this in mind, this is my PERSONAL OPINION as to why i dislike these characters from a writer's standpoint

1- they are pricks. i have been told "hazing is just a normal rite of passage!" hazing is a dick move created as an excuse to prank newbies. I don't care how many fond memories you have of your frat house: hazing is something only assholes contribute to. and you know what else is a dick move? bullying a 10 year old kid for no reason. it is very normal for teenagers to group together with people that are the same as them, so i can believe this is a group of snobby little shits. If being bullies was the intended purpose of their characters I would be fine, but it conflicts with the story the writers want to tell. which brings me to my next point

2- We barely get any time for them to develop at the beginning of the game they are introduced as a group of little shits who bully kids for no reason. not great but i can forgive giving characters flaws so they progress. People like that do indeed exist. the problem: they don't seem to learn anything and they just randomly decide Raz is their friend during the casino mission. (and then later randomly shown up to save the day at the end even though they were missing most of the game) "don't forget how i taught you how to grind rail raz!" what???? you didn't teach us anything! you barely talk to us skateboard kid! Raz knew how to do that at the summer camp! and like, this scene is very cool. the artistic style and the characters popping up like comic book panels but none of that matters cus i have no reason to like any of these kids. "but Raz proved himself that he is capable during the lady luctopus fight so they respect him!" thank you for pointing that out obvious straw man I created to make up for my shitty argument skills. but the thing is: just because these kids were proven wrong does not equal character development. They didn't learn anything other than to not mess with Raz specifically. Which:

3- If you asked me their names, I can't tell you who is who other than sam (and we will get to her later) let me describe these characters to you -skateboard kid -kid who is in a really cool lawn chair hover thing -kid who got all of her clothing by stealing from construction workers and rodeo cowboys -the other bitchy one but with a beanie. - darius rucker with a yoyo -and sam. this shit is all i know from these characters. At best I know traffic stop clothing kid and the other one are sisters, but i literally only know that because Raz randomly pointed it out. (and personally, i think those two are the most unlikable of them all) "ah you probably hate them because they are teenagers" listen man. I am an original homestuck fan back when the main cast consisted of 13 year olds. The characters ages do not matter to me, but rather how interesting they are. in Psy 1 the campers were full of personality and depth, BUT they didn't shoehorn them in expecting them to suddenly be all buddy buddy with raz. They were designed as fun background characters, and they served their purpose. The interns problem is that they have the personality of very boring background characters, but they are not given enough time to develop as characters and are expected to be treated like a main characters. We spend all of our time with the Psychic 6 and not them (and i fucking love those guys!) the Psychic 6 are the ones we spent our time with. THEY are the real main characters because we understood their struggles and got to learn about them. I was closet to THEM because i spent time with them. I feel as though most of the interns were shoehorned in to appeal to a younger audience ok now we can talk about sam

4- I think sam is only interesting because she is attached to Dogan (please don't kill me i promise i am going somewhere with this) If you don't know, sam is basically the explodey head kid's sister. She has personality because she is attached to the most wholesome man of all time, and the weird kid from the first game with murderous tendencies. As a result of this, Sam has to be just as weird as her family members to make sense. I guess her character wouldent change if you removed her familial status with the Boole family, but also consider sam is basically pinkie pie. and Mable pines. And Molly McGee and basically every single quirkyyyyyy overly energetic female character in media with animal abuse sprinkled on top for comedy. there is nothing wrong with this. I think sam is fun too. But also she stands out like a real person in a room full of mannequins, mostly because her friends have the personality of mannequins. The poor writing of the rest of the interns essentially makes sam worse by the law of association because sam is grouped with these losers. in case you are curious, the "where did you get the milk" line cracks me up every time. poor Raz needs a hug.

5-They overplayed agent Forsythe a little bit too much and that does not help the interns in contrast. first: i love Raz's arch about learning not to affect peoples brains like it's nothing. It gave me emotional whiplash because i played the first game right before this game, but the games have a 16 year gap between each other and times have changed. I won't blame the game for that, AND the whole "mental health is a serious issue" grew on me. very good story this game has. Point is: Raz's consent arch was a really good thing for his character. but also agent Forsythe is kind of a bitch. first: your two agents brought you a kid who is enthusiastic about the psychonauts and your immediate instinct is to put him up with the mailroom clerk as his mentor? really? Thinking Cruller is a fucking nut and not validating Raz's honorary psychonaut status? yeah fair. she has no reason to think Ford isn't batshit insane. Getting on Raz for being late to class? also fair. She is a very strict teacher and needs to instill onto her kids that punctuality is important. but then some things rub me the wrong way. like you are an adult, how come you are letting these kids bully Raz? surely you saw the footage on the security cams? Or how come Raz got blamed for invading her thoughts when it was the interns that shoved him into it? How come you are targeting the kid for this and not everyone else who was involved in this? lets give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she didn't know about those things. Raz's story about him apologizing and learning from his mistake was still very good. Then sasha and Raz have a very charming fatherly moment about learning when to bail from a dangerous situation. made me smile. but then after all that emotional drama, you then talk to her and raz apologizes AGAIN and the emotional drama tries to continue. Lady you already had a talk to Raz about consent, why are you making him explain himself again out in the open? He is 10 years old and already learned his lesson, chill the fuck out.

and then later on she implies that she thinks Raz is the mole just because his family is from a fallen country related to the current issue. I understand not liking Raz, but is the racist remarks necessary? Do you seriously think some random kid kidnapped the head of the psychonauts? I know it is a serious issue but come the fuck on the kid barely knows how shapes work. i know this is about the interns, but Forsythe rubs me the wrong way and i feel like she is the reason why these brats are the way they are. I feel like she makes my distaste for the interns worse because she comes off to me as a sad fuck who targets kids to fuel her fragile power tripping ego. her level was good, and her arc with Raz was good, but she could use a bit of retooling. I feel as though I can forgive her nastier flaws if she acted more like an adult and gave the teenagers the same amount of lip she gave Raz. Perhaps if she had stepped up the interns would be more likeable because they and raz could have a nice bonding moment over their mistake. Tldr: Forsythe needed to act like an ADULT and discipline the interns just as much as she did raz instead of enabling them.

Overall, the interns are poorly written and I dread seeing them on screen. I am not attached to them in the way i am attached to the Psy 6. The story of Helmet and Bob touched my heart, Agent Boole's mission about social anxiety related to me personally, the story of Cassiopea coming to terms with her past and identity issues, Learning about ford's mistakes and the trauma he collected, everything! I love these characters! I guess the lesson is that just because a character is superficially the same as you, does not mean they are relatable. I am in my 20's. I am not a teenager anymore, but I am not elderly either. I am actually closer to the interns in age than i am to the Psy 6. And yet I relate to the Psy 6 more because these are human beings that i have grown to know and learn about. I am a girl who plays videogames. Shocker I know. and I have seen debates about "we need this and this and this or else i can't relate to the character!". There is not a lot of female characters in media and i agree that it would be nice to be represented more. but a character being the exact SAME as you does not equal relatability. I am not a grandfather with a tendency to make people explode, but i relate to Bool because we both share in our self judgement issues and the struggle to not want to hurt people with your personal problems. We have nothing in common physically, but we share in our struggles. and that is why the interns failed as characters when the Psy 6 succeeded. please don't spam my inbox about how much you disagree with me and how much you actually like the interns. this is just my opinion with writing advice sprinkled in it, much like Sam's personality.

#psychonauts 2 #psyconauts #writing advice #writing #writing tips #creative writing #videogames #video games #videogame writing #character building #character writing #analysis #writing analysis

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corvinearcher · 2 years

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Howdy, I'm CorvineArcher, and this is my essay on why Equius is actually a great character, no matter what someone else thinks. Because hussie plays favorites like a MADMAN. (Sorry about the formatting, tumblr is weird as shit idk how to fix it.)

So starting off, I'm pissed: Okay I understand that all of the trolls we're just insulting real zodiacs, but some of them TRULY piss me off. He plays favorites like a madman, seeing as Vriska was more of a main character than John somehow, and nobody other than a small handful like Equius, Tavros, and Feferi. (Feferi is fair, I'll make an essay on her later.) anyway, these are just my observations from my first and currently only read of homestuck, an I'm gonna be honest, I DID NOT PAY ATTENTION lmao. I only just now found out that the Executioner, (Ancestor of my favorite troll line) HAS A NAME AND IT'S EXECUTER DARKLEER. DARKLEER. THAT'S FUCKING SICK.

Anyway, a big reason why people don't like Equius, is because Hussie doesn't: (If I'm spelling his name wrong, then he deserves it.) anyway, he seems to hate him. When he was first going to get his introduction, HE SKIPPED HIM. Because he made him a fucking weirdo because obviously, making fun of the symbol of Sagittarius is absolutely hilarious. So he made him super weird and obsessed with centaurs and kinky as shit and awkward because, HE DOESN'T LIKE HIM. Which is lame. Same thing with Horuss, too. And also he get like no screentime lmao. Then again his aspect IS void, but still, he could've gotten to do a lot more. And when he DID do super fucking useful shit WHICH HE DID ALRIGHT? He got almost nothing after it. But the second Vriska breathes she's on for eighty more pages. (Still love her tho) anyway, he definitely plays favorites and it sucks because OUR favorites get the fucking gutter.

Next part, which is me being an extreme Zahhak Apologist: Listen, of course equius is going to be obsessed with the hemospectrum because he is pure blue blood. Second in line for land dwellers (on the hemospectrum). Now it's not just him, gamzee went crazy with knowing he's above everyone and MURDERED people over it. The only reason he's chill is because he was high off bed slime, then chilled out by Karkat. And VRISKA, who is also a blue blood, third in line, is obsessed with her ancestor, and killed people as well to reach her goal as strongest. None of the others really did this (to my memory) so obviously equius is going to struggle with the hemospectrum, it literally in his blue ass blood. And, add on the whole thing about his hormones (will get into it in a sec) and also being a fucking teenager, he's confusing the hemospectrum and his emotions. He goes crazy for it in a completely different way due to all of his incredibly heightened hormones. So he is a weirdo, and kind of a freak, but he really can't help it. He has a mix of shit that should not be mixed and he has to just learn to deal with it and act normal and like it's fine. And he suffers as a social outcast because he can't socialize. He confuses everything to a point of not even being able to have more than one friend. And nepeta, I love her. Because she admits he's weird, but still sees that he's a person who's fucking going through it and they are THE best morails, and are the representation of morails universally known in the fandom. And she wasn't his friend out of pity because she DIED for him. So that just proves how good of a person he is apart from being joked on and casted out.

And now, here's why I think the Zahhak family is absolutely fucking bangarang: For starters, I mean cmon, I KNOW the hemospectrum is wrong and terrible BUT THEY'RE HIGH UP LIKE, SECOND DIRECTLY BELOW THE GRAND HIGHBLOOD. THAT'S KOOL AS SHIT. and their blood color is fucking rad, not to mention their individual color pallets, which I will make soon. Anyway, they're all about archery and horses, which make them already sound like knights which is also kool as shit. And they've got their important thing with strength. Which surpasses everyone else's. And and AND THEY'RE FUCKING CREATORS. THEY MAKE SHIT. THEY PROBABLY BEND HUGE PIECES OF METAL WITH JUST THEIR TWO HANDS AND CALL IT A NORMAL TUESDAY. I'm sure what they all create varies on the timeline. Horuss with robots, and Equius with robots too, but I think that if Darkleer got to make things, it would probably be armor and kool ass weapons. I mean LOOK AT HIS FUCKING ARMOR GOTTDAMN. And his fucking bow CMON. IMAGINE EQUIUS WITH THAT. anyway, I just think they're neat as shit. And I wish we could've had mor content on them. Especially Equius because he doesn't seem to get much, like ever. Even for aspect plot it's still aggravating. Either way either way, he's still my favorite, and I'm not gonna stop making cringe content on the Zahhak line.

(Also their last name is kool as shit I MEAN COME ON PEOPLE)

Me rn ^^^

#homestuck #homestuck equius #homestuck headcanons #equius zahhak #executer darkleer #homestuck executioner #Homestuck Horuss #horuss zahhak

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wellofhavoc · 1 year

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i'll never understand people who say tumblr posts about teens who wrote essays on ships and fandoms are fake posts automatically because i can assure you that autistic hyperfixation combined with plucky-teen ingenuity can create many excuses to write about fandom related topics in class

examples below

ALL of my creative writing projects i ever did were "secretly" fanfiction- all of them, i think maybe one wasn't but even that, i'm sure was a reskin of some anime characters i can't remember now. my main muses were star trek characters.

there was one english teacher who actually encouraged open topic papers on things relating to the subject in any way you want (she gave the example of cookies being at a party in one scene so a student a previous year had written a paper on cookies and the history of cookies) so OBVIOUSLY i wrote an essay on shipping after reading romeo and juliet and i only got points knocked off because i didn't clarify why one of my sources (andrew hussie/homestuck) qualified as a good source on shipping quadrants. i also once wrote a star trek fanfic where they visited a planet where the events of animal farm had taken place and the enterprise crew just sort of how to deal with that (i might have this one on a flashdrive somewhere???)

i actually made a board game based on the oregon trail for a class.... and used the torchwood cast as the "pieces" and some of the chance/community chest equivalents would effect you differently depending on the character you were playing (was destroyed by some assholes, but we did get to play it in class, which was fun!)

my US history teacher actually banned me from using star trek characters because i used them as analogies for EVERYTHING (branches of government, representations of different historical figures in power points- we made a fake newspaper once and i called it the "Enterprise Daily" and filled some other areas to make it look more legit like an obituary full of names that mean "red" and of course a spirk marriage announcement) and i actually got sent to the principal's office because OBVIOUSLY i pushed the envelope too far by putting a transparent picture of william shatner over EVERY slide of an otherwise pristine power point presentation but the principal didn't do anything and sent me outside while he talked to the teacher. (i wasn't in TROUBLE, but i was still heavily discouraged from doing that again)

i was on a speech and debate team and literally acted out the sherlock reichenbach fall in a duos category- we never placed, but it was a lot of fun

none of these were an "and everyone clapped!" moment for me and were VERY cringe, but they were still super fun and... honestly a lot of them helped me engage with the material way better than i would have in any other setting. most teachers (save that US history teacher) didn't really care as long as i met the other parameters of the project (see homestuck shipping source not being sufficient) as that's the goal at the end of the day: to meet the standards of the rubric. i only totally bombed on one project, but the teacher let me redo it and the fandom stuff wasn't the problem. teachers don't want to see you fail most of the time. if you ever got a low grade on a project because it had fandom stuff in it, i guarantee you just didn't link it believably enough.

i would be surprised if anyone on this site hadn't snuck their fursona into an art project or an anime gif into a powerpoint or a pokemon into a diorama about the animal kingdom or some fanart into a brochure or- oh- well, you get it

#havoc blog

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wulvert · 1 year

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OK SO. HERES A BRIEF (HI. FUTURE ME. NOT BRIEF. VERY LONG. SORRY.) SUMMARY OF THE LOCKED TOMB SERIES AVOIDING AS MUCH SPOILERS AS POSSIBLE.

the locked tomb's setting is extremely fucked up space sci-fi with lesbian necromancers (the quote on the front of gideon the ninth, the first book, is quite literally "lesbian necromancers in space!")- tamsyn muir, the author, was inspired by homestuck when she was writing it. so. if that explains it better.

i cnat explain the magic necromancer system without feeling like im having a stroke sorry. but the way it works is you basically have to be born with the ability to see and manipulate thalergy (life energy) and thanergy (death energy). necromancy on all the planets is basically like a monarchy- if youre a necromancer, you're royalty. all necromancers have a cavalier- which is basically a brawn to the necromancer's brains. they all have swords or other sharp blades. also have a much more sinister purpose but thats a secret.

the orange girl is gideon nav, nicknamed griddle by the smaller one (harrowhark nonagesimus). gideon's a butch himbo who also happens to be the saddest girl in the entire universe by book 3. she wields a giant fuckin' haunted greatsword and absolutely hates harrow(hark nonagesimus)'s guts. also shes stuck on an amish, dying planet (the ninth house, might be pluto) and has been raised to be a soldier. oops. her adoptive mom is awesome though. has no idea whats going on at any point in time. harrow's cavalier.

HARROW. THE WETTEST MOST PATHETIC RAT OF A GIRL. into bones and corpses. necromancer of the ninth house. cant eat any food that isnt bland ration bars because of the autism shes filled with. mean fucking gremlin. bit my ass. also shes intrinsically so fucking tragic but i cant go into any more detail of her without spoiling something. she makes me feel so many emotions along with gideon.

brief summary of the rest of the cast that appears in the first book:

FIRST HOUSE (earth?):

there exists no notable residents of the first house. it is the earth post apocalypse- broken down and uninhabitable. except for the location the first book takes place in, the canaan house!

SECOND HOUSE (mars?):

judith deuteros - necromancer. army kid. because the entire second house is a military (called the cohort). honestly i dont remember a lot about her- only that she's kinda gay with coronabeth later.

marta dyas - cavalier. army kid. i remember even less about her sorry

THIRD HOUSE (neptune?):

ianthe tridentarius - necromancer. nasty fucking beast. cannibal just for fun. third house princess. complete fucking disaster. somethings going on with her gender. believes shes the main character of a risqué novel. shes my favorite but i cant elaborate further at risk of spoilers

coronabeth tridentarius - necromancer. ianthe's sister. sword lesbian. third house princess. a disaster but less so than ianthe. yea thats it sorry its so hard to summarize without spoilers

naberius tern - coronabeth and ianthe's cavalier. third house. male, meatstick, gender gets stolen

FOURTH HOUSE (saturn?):

isaac tettares - necromancer. he's just a kid and life is a nightmare

jeannemary chatur - cavalier. she's just a kid and life is a nightmare

FIFTH HOUSE (jupiter?):

abigail pent - necromancer. historian. academic. in terms of characters that are. "normal" she and magnus are the closest you can really get. i respect her so much but alas i cannot give the reasons. acts kinda as a mother figure to the fourth and even the ninth house (gideon and harrow are both 18 at the least- but neither of them have ever quite had mother OR father figures.)

magnus quinn - cavalier. abigail's husband. i dont remember anything about him honestly, but he's the epitome of a dad and behaves that way towards the fourth and even ninth house. dad jokes

SIXTH HOUSE (mercury?):

palamedes sextus - necromancer. if the entirety of the main tlt cast wasnt full of deranged lesbians he'd do numbers as a tumblr sexyman. librarian. nicknamed sex pal by gideon. reads a lot. also a doctor.

camilla hect - cavalier. sick as hell. dualwields. librarian. doctor. i cant give a lot of information about her but shes also one of my favorites

SEVENTH HOUSE (venus?):

dulcinea septimus - necromancer. cougar? milf? who knows. has terminal blood-born cancer but she's being so sexy about it. dont worry about the boss music you hear.

protesilaus ebdoma - cavalier. rly a kind guy- likes poetry nd flowers. just wants to protect.

EIGHTH HOUSE (uranus?):

silas octakiseron - necromancer. extremely religious. i dont remember anything about him honestly besides the fact i hate him.

colum asht - cavalier. probabl also religious. i dont remember anything about him either. i respect him more than i do silas.

NINTH HOUSE (pluto?):

harrowhark nonagesimus & gideon nav: u know about these guys

the most important thing to know about the locked tomb past my very long rambling is that its a story about love. it has been and always will be about love since the very first book. it is the core component of the entire series- in what way love changes, in the way it persists, in what people will do for it. the different types of love. this does not just refer to gideon and harrow being massive lesbians, but yea thats pretty important too.

also a fair warning if u DO chooseto read; the entire of the locked tomb series is an absolute mindfuck. absolutely nothing will make sense at first and sometimes reading more will make it even more confusing. when it all finally clicks at the end though u'll never be the same ever again. it WILL leave a lasting scar on ur psyche

(homestuck spoilers. i guess)

i see u gave up on the replies fair enough this is more than 450 characters

i bought the first book before hopping in the shower, It'll arrive tuesday. i have returned 2 this ask- A LOT OF NAMES, so anything i could absorb as a spoiler has left my mind immediately- HOMESTUCK. Interesting, I didn't know that, i hope i can absorb the lore better than i did for homestuck which wasnt at all , then i got a headache from the text colours then lost my place after the cat girl died.

I will read it, I hope the orange girl and the smaller one are okay after reading this im worried about them. how did naberius' gender get stolen what happened to them who stole it. fiddlemouth just commented abt the audiobook. probably shouldve gone for that. also fiddlemouth if ur reading this we need to play minecraft again sometime

#asks

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themageofblood · 1 year

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(sorry for long post and fake blog i don't actually use tumblr) i agree with most of the takes you put on ur main post. as a indigenous/white person it did make me reconsider how i view some of the characters. i always knew to a certain degree that gamzee and meenah were offensive but since a lot of the fandom didn't care it just slipped from my mind. tho, i was always aware of how white coded the alpha and beta kids were, i always interpreted all the black hcs as andrew hussie slander cause he did say that all the kids were aracial but they were not black (i thought that was bullshit also even tho it's not canon i REALLY enjoy black jade. i really do think it fits her even if not canon), and since i personally do not care about nor read hs2 so i don't really consider it canon so your jane point doesn't make sense to me (i think hs2 a total mischaracterization of her character from original canon). tho, i did want to ask, what race would u rather hc meenah and gamzee as? i think that in order to actually hc them as black you would need to write out all of the racist ass stereotypes, but in the end i think you can tell really interesting humanstuck stories. also. sorry for all the hate ur getting dude.

It's not the headcanons that are the problem it's both hussie and the Fandom way of putting black people in a monolithic way. I see gamzee and meenah as white because they were written to be the troll equivalent of white supremacists. But what really irks me and rubs me the wrong way is that the reasons people claim certain characters to be black, they don't apply to other characters. For example: roxy uses aave. Well so does rufioh more than most other characters in fact. But I've seen Nothing about him being black coded from the Fandom. Another one is Gamzee has an "afro" as insulting as it is to have his hair be compared to a black hairstyle, no one in the Fandom hc the captors as black because mituna canonically actually has an afro, not to mention the whole slave story arc. Speaking of slave story arcs the entire jade blood caste are literally wet nurses and don't get me started on the Dolorosa her entire story is a racist black coded allegory and agin the Fandom completely ignores it. There are several black coded characters in homestuck but the fact that the Fandom collectively agreed the gamzee meenah and the strilalondes are black due to stereotypes that don't just apply to black people rubs me every wrong way. I get that hussie is a racist and the Fandom wants to do a big fu to him by claiming them as black but at the same time they're promoting the idea that black people are a monolith. It's like the whole tiktok "megamind is black because he understands how fucked the prison system is" all o er agian. I hope this makes a bit more sense

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crockersbian · 2 years

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Experience the true horror.... Zanathan refusing to edit and proofread her work more than once

people talking about the intricacies of discussions surrounding the heinous shit some of the homestuck characters do versus their ages and lack of chances for self-improvement due to homestuckmurder (especially regarding eridan and equius, since vriska despite technically qualifying does actually manage to have opportunities to learn narrative-wise TWICE) is a fuckin attract'r beam for my own homestuck discourse brain. its like. on one hand i think people are completely correct to point out that characters being 13 and coming from a hellplanet does in fact mean that they cannot be held to the same standard as grownass adults. and that really should fuckin inform a lot of discussions about their behavior! trying to understand and still somewhat sympathize with a child in that situation is perfectly reasonable. Anything that i say past this isn’t *actually* disagreeing with that btw i’m just. spouting my own @#$#

Those conversations ignore the fact that they’re.... all fucking aristocrats. Literal blue bloods two of ‘em, the other a purple bc blue wasn’t even high-class enough. Vriska’s the only of the three (/four counting gamzee ig) “main” shitkids with a direct external force making her participate in The System*. Eridan’s implicated in lusus-killing for the sake of ol’ Glubby but that does NOT excuse his classism and generalized incel barely-even-crypto-fascist shtick. Equius has so few exterior reasons for his cultural attitudes aside from general conservatism that he doesn’t even *follow* his own cultural attitudes most of the time. If they actually got to live full lives outside SGRUB they’d be insulated from the harm they were responsible and any character growth they had would be incidental from that point onward bordering on unlikely. even presuming an alternative homestuck where they lived, i struggle to imagine PLAUSIBLE FOR HOMESTUCK development where they meaningfully develop away from their shitty shitty SHITTY attitudes given... well, Vriska got two chances and she got there halfway once and then the powers that be decided that a better outcome would be her NOT getting the (death-based) punishment

--------& then further dumpster fire plans (that yes hurt a lot of people but they’re plans that retcon vriska literally approves of. retcon vriska even buddies up with the pedo and actually-literally-a-fascist fake punk that was ghost vriska’s buddy-in-arms on that) and that her continuing to vriska all over the place while purporting personal growth (personal growth not shown + her guilt-tripping tavros over deciding to sprite-revive him when SHE. KILLED. HIM. is just. jfc people who think retcon vriska is the moral and characterization superior to dead vriska are assclowns falling for a character comprised mostly from reappropriated extremely online niche quasifascist talking points). ZAN SHUT UP ABOUT THE RETCON

*cough* anyways. i forgot what i was saying. damn it. Eridan wouldn’t ever get better and its profoundly out of character to think he would i guess. While Equius has that strange inherent out-of-character soft(?)ness to him (ignoring the weird romantic shit he pulls which.... is probably linked to his strict hierarchical thinking regaurding castes -Aradia being a burgundy isn’t a coincidence- but frankly would take another fifty paragraphs jesus) and Vriska has the mountains of characterization dedicated to how she can do better and is aware of it, and Gamzee’s worse traits are buried in the arcane clusterfuck that is comprehending his “true” motives, eridan’s just... a piece of shit. even his moments of going-against-his-own-fascist-narratives are built integrally on *other* ways he’s basically entirely awful. the softer parts of his personality are used narrative-wise to further highlight the way he sucks like... *always*. Also the fucking insane person theories regarding his tranfem coding (that despite recognizing are.... fucking absurd I still willfully buy into bc they’re both interesting, about as credible as most homestuck meta, and fairly horrifying to contemplate considering his blithering incel shit and attempting-to-insert-himself-into-a-lesbian’s-quadrant-life but in the same grotesque way that i find yoshikage kira’s narrative parallels to The Closet compelling in a horror context. *ANYWAY*) and his actually goddamn official fucking pesterquest gender arc (seriously?????) that actually lends credence to the Magical Use As A Universal Feminine stuff leading him to be just... jfc this is the worst girl-thing ever created. I don’t even wish hate or anything on people who like Eridan than aren’t sex pests or nazis, that isn’t my point in this, i just think anyone who looks at canon eridan and goes “oh that can be redeemed” are fucking fools and people who look at equius vriska or gamzee and think “they just need to get older they’ll know better we all were bad as teenagers” are entire royal courts of jesters fsjlkfkldjsjfklds.

#title added in post #ALSO SORRY FOR CALLING THE WANDS THING INSANE I MEAN IT IS BUT I UNIRONICALLY BELIEVE IT THINKING BACK #LIKE IT SUCKS I CANT WRITE ABOUT IT WITHOUT GETTING SELF-CONCIOUS BC ITS FUCKIN FREAKED BUT????#ITS FUCKING CONSISTENT???? AT LEAST WITH THE ADDITIONS POSTCANON MAKES?????????????#admittedly the guns half of the symbolism is. a bit murkier. but no magic is a girls club in homestuck no amount of girls using rifles and t #then stopping will change that

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rosestthorns · 2 months

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I want you to know that you expressed a ton of the same thoughts I had about the Epilogues and post canon in general in that post. I thought it was well put, and honestly covers the biggest scope of their issues especially making cheap drama out of resolved character arcs or ignoring original arcs to add in cheap drama. I had a really good friend quote it well too. "The only way you can engage with hs2 is to make excuses for it."

Honestly I didn't even really cover my two biggest gripes with the comic, besides the absolute character assassination of literally everyone. Both the flagrant misuse of the narrative as a story telling tool and the absolute wasted potential of it all.

Let's start with the wasted potential; There are so many stories that have been told by fans in the Homestuck universe, but also plenty of really good official content that delves into stories we didn't see in the comic. I absolutely loved the paradox space comics, I thought they were clever in their use of doomed timelines or showing stories we only ever got the quick anecdote for in the main comic.

Telling short stories like these are not only funny but it doesn't contradict what we already know! Not only is the paradox space comics an amazing example but so are the games. Friend sim, pesterquest, and Hiveswap are other official examples of better told stories that either don't involve the main cast or tell a story through the lens of a different character. There's absolutely no need to "Go back into Cannon". Just tell a different story, there are so many interesting things within this universe that could lead to hijinks and conflict naturally without forcing characters to generate conflict for the sake of it. I mean hell, I'd even read a story about a second game starting post cannon! It would be so fun to see the descendants of the characters we loved so much go through similar trials, or even having the previous gods being able to guide them along to help save the world they worked so hard to create. There are so many places they could've gone and they chose the worst option.

And moving on to the misuse of the Narrative as a story telling tool. Homestuck as a story is insanely meta, but it's meta with a purpose. Everything in Homestuck serves some sort of purpose, from Doc Scratch, the website, the many iterations of Jack Noire, even Andrew Hussy himself and the MSPA reader serve a purpose! We were all part of that story and that served to push the narrative forward, same with Hussy. The thing about the Narrative though is it's not just some nebulous thing you can take control of if you're "Strong willed" or "My God powers let me", it's literally a physical item. The Narrative is a computer console that very few people have access to, and it's not all powerful.

The MSPA reader literally names John and he tells you to stuff it.

Not to mention the numerous instances of shit like this that the characters themselves refuse to do.

At one point WV took control of the narrative and tried to command John. It seems the narrative just appears as suggestions or thoughts being pumped into your head. Through these panels where WV is commanding John to "DO THE WINDY THING" John actively doesn't know what he means, or where these commands are coming from.

Even Claiborne takes control of the narrative after talking with Hussy and basically stealing the terminal. But because he doesn't like the story being told, he tells his own story leaving the main story to be told through the "Intermission" of his epic tale.

The point being is: Any time anyone has control of the narrative, they also have access to the computer that's required to control it. Neither Dirk or Jade-Calliope have access to. It completely spits in the face of an established mechanism in the story.

Homestuck was a masterpiece of its time and it still holds up in places. The epilogues and HS^2 don't even try to carry a fraction of the spirit or depth of its predecessor. We deserved better and Viz Media dropped the ball hard and just ditched when the project failed. We lost so much thanks to HS^2 and epilogues. You can't find official Homestuck merch anymore, For Fans by Fans delisted almost all of it. And because of that, I can't help but hate both.

Thank the gods Homestuck fans are dedicated enough to fill the void left behind by HS^2. You're all the real GOATs

#essay #Homestuck #hs^2 #spoilers #ask

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hms-no-fun · 2 years

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I guess this is less a question than it is a critique?

I love godfeels in general and I do realise that it was a story about more than just being trans - it was a brilliant dissection of just how little thought Hussie actually put into how fucked up the powers he was giving to literal children and the things he wrote them as doing were, but there was one point that kind of irked me.

Specifically it was the bit where Dirk, who is (at least in as much as godfeels is concerned) kind of a metaphor for transphobia actually sort of has a point? Because there was that whole thing where June actually did kill most of her friends, topple a building and massacre a bunch of innocent people. Dirk's point that "John Egbert never did anything like this, it's only June that did something like this" is... irritatingly valid?

Once it's revealed that Dirk can somehow remember retconned timelines, his initial actions become irritatingly justifiable? At first his actions have less to do with transphobia and more with the "holy shit this previously quiet, agreeable person suddenly KILLED ALL HER FRIENDS."

Yes, Dirk's manner of confronting June about it is creepy as hell. Yes, Dirk's core motivation is incredibly egotistical and shitty - she's incredibly powerful and these recent changes in her life put that power even further outside Dirk's ability to control it. But a timeline verifiably exists wherein, under the influence of Trickster Mode, she kills a bunch of people including some of their mutual friends. Dirk, as much as I despise him, had a right to be concerned about that.

Real transphobia doesn't have a justification like that? And yes, eventually Dirk does slip into the standard transphobia motivation of "you are not the person I need you to be for my world to make sense in my head." Eventually it's all just trying to beat the world into the shape he wants it to be. But it didn't start that way, it started with June actually posing a threat to people he cared about, and it feels... unpleasant? To have some avenue for "well, actually, he had a point" like that.

you’ve got some real chutzpuh bringing this to me, kid. i respect that!

this is a quagmire i was very aware of while writing gf2 and that i’ve gotten some pushback for in the past, and i’ve always tried to respond to it earnestly and in good faith. but this is a really complicated question to get into for me, more complicated than you might realize, so there’s gonna be a lot of stuff here that might seem irrelevant or dismissive and i’m definitely gonna repeat myself more than once. just try to walk with me here and if you’re still unsatisfied by the end, my askbox remains open. just know in advance that this is a LONG one.

so, to start, a couple quibbles:

first, i don’t agree at all with the idea that andrew didn’t put much thought into how fucked up it was for baby teenagers to have godtier powers. i cannot think of a single arc in the main cast that doesn’t, on some level, involve the character in question realizing how traumatized they are by the heights of power and corruption they ascended to before even being old enough to vote. act 6 is fully half the comic and it’s practically an academic exegesis on just how fucked up it is for teens to have godtier powers. how else would you describe the post-juju quadruple dialogue between the Alphas on their death slabs but as an exhaustive deconstruction of the aftermath of sburb-related godtier trauma? you’ve got Dave’s decision to stop using time travel, Rose’s whole thing about communing with the horrorterrors, i mean shit Alternia as a whole is just “what if kids had superpowers and could kill each other would that be fucked up or what,” not to mention two of the most important conversations in homestuck proper (at least for me) are Jade’s discussion with alt-Calliope about the crushing loneliness of being a Space player, and its immediate followup in Jade’s conversation with Davepeta about the unmitigated freedom of being an anything player. that’s a lot of tension for one dog to process! just because characters never come out and explicitly say “wow, isn’t this fucked up” doesn’t mean the author is unaware of how fucked up it is. but also isn’t that literally Dave and Dirk’s last conversation before the end of act 6?

second, i want to challenge your read on where Dirk in gf2 started. yes, there’s an element of his attack on June that is “you are a danger to my friends,” but it cannot go unstated in any discussion of this work that at this point in the narrative Dirk is explicitly preparing for the events of the meat-timeline of the homestuck epilogues. which, you know, involved more than his fair share of below-board friend torture. this isn’t a trivial fact, as much of what occurs in gf3 is a result of godfeels not being the epilogues (hence the subtitle Divergence Syndrome). so we need to understand that, like June, his decisions are never motivated purely by altruism. yes, he’s worried about his friends, but specifically what he’s worried about is that they won’t experience the specific series of traumas that he thinks will make for a better story. just because WE don’t know that for sure until a bit later doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.

but these quibbles are largely surface-level and don’t, i think, get to the core of your criticism. what we’re really talking about here is interpretation, and i think more broadly we’re talking about media literacy-- which is NOT me suggesting that YOU SPECIFICALLY are in any sense illiterate! but rather that this particular line of criticism, i must admit, always comes across to me as woefully shortsighted. it’s a criticism filtered heavily through a post-tumblr lens, and i promise i don’t mean that entirely dismissively. it’s a lens i used for a very long time myself, and it still colors a lot of my approach (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse). so i’m coming to you now as someone who has grown out of that approach, and who genuinely wants to suggest an alternative. but i’m getting ahead of myself.

the chief disagreement i have with your criticism begins when you say that Dirk “is kind of a metaphor for transphobia.” you’re not wrong here, of course, but i think you’ve stopped at one circle inside a much larger venn diagram. Dirk is only kind of a metaphor for transphobia insofar as the entire cast of godfeels 2 is kind of a metaphor for transphobia. including the people who aren’t violently retaliatory!

what really motivated me to write gf2 in the first place was my dissatisfaction with the black & white morality tale quality of most conventionally popular transgender narratives. i identified with John Egbert the most of all the cast of homestuck, but when June hit critical mass in 2019 i really felt that a lot of the depictions i was seeing just... weren’t all that genuine to my experience. and look, i’m not saying there’s anything wrong with a “June comes out and is accepted by her friends and gets to have a nice time” fic. i’m glad they exist and i’ve read & enjoyed a fair few in my time! but that wasn’t the kind of story i wanted to write, because as a trans woman that just wasn’t my experience of coming out.

my experience of coming out was that no one was ever outright transphobic to me. my friends were initially very encouraging! but as time wore on it became clear to me that their surface level acceptance belied a deep almost metaphysical rift between us, an inability or unwillingness to understand what was actually going on with me. by the time a year had passed, we weren’t on speaking terms anymore and i blamed myself for all of it because those were the terms they couched our conversations in. they saw me as mentally unwell in ways that they insisted had nothing to do with my gender, and they said i needed to “get help” for reasons that had nothing to do with my gender. gender never even came up.

and the thing is, i have no doubt that’s what they genuinely believed. but the fact that it only came to a head the way it did after i came out is really hard for me to ignore, you know? this is why Rose’s “I just have some concerns” comes up over and over again-- a lot of trans people aren’t in the best place when they come out, so it’s easy for well-meaning friends to question whether this is genuine or if it’s just another part of their mental illness. i sometimes wonder how much my friends actually believed me when i told them i was trans, because i was so goddamn depressed and i’d had so many supposedly life-changing revelations in the past that led to absolutely fuckall. from their perspective, how was this different from any other time i swore up and down that i was on A Better Path?

now, obviously they were WRONG, and i wish they’d supported me better. but they also had full-time jobs, they had their own lives and mental health struggles to deal with. so i understand, you know? i’m still mad about it, and i can’t ever really forgive them for how much it hurt me, but i don’t hate them. and i certainly don’t think they’re transphobes. it’s just that most day-to-day transphobia isn’t a conservative saying “you’re not a real [gendered noun],” it’s little shit that no one but you even notices and if you try to bring it up, nine times out of ten you get told you’re just reading too much into things, you’re making everything about gender when it has nothing to do with gender, etcetera etcetera. but it all adds up for us, you know? that’s microaggressions innit

but this gets us to the real sticky part, the part you’ve probably been silently saying muttering “this is a copout you’re not ACTUALLY addressing my question” over: retaliatory violence. and here’s as good a place as any to say that if you haven’t watched my video about writing everything before gf2.3, i suggest giving it a watch as i discuss this topic pretty thoroughly there. i imagine i’ll be saying many of the same things now, just with a bit more perspective.

let’s start with mental illness.

i’m on medications for bipolar and adhd. i wasn’t always. in the years before i came out, i was a bitter, lonely, confused mess of a person. as a child and teen i had anger problems, i had violent fantasies, i felt a really deep desire to react to the smallest injustices delivered onto me by my bullies with cartoonishly over-the-top violence. not all or even most of these fantasies were justified. i was an edgelord teen who loved quentin tarantino movies, of course i was shitty. the friends i mentioned above, like i said, i do understand where they were coming from. they didn’t have access to my mind, they had their own lives to live, and just as they weren’t communicating with me, i wasn’t communicating with them. at the time i blamed myself for everything that was turning sour in our relationships, but i still had nightmares and fantasies where i’d scream in their faces for some kind of recognition or acknowledgement only to become outrageously violent when they failed to do so. i felt guilty for those fantasies, they reminded me of being 17 thinking to myself “man if i weren’t so anti-gun i’d make a really good school shooter.”

that’s a vile thought, right? that’s the kind of thing if someone said it to you out loud, you’d probably have a few concerns.

but i didn’t say it out loud. it was just a thought that popped into my head from time to time. what matters, what really matters in any material sense, is that i never even came close to acting on it. a thought isn’t real, an image of fake violence isn’t real, an unacted-upon desire to inflict violence isn’t real. fiction, too, is not real. and through my entire adult life, the only consistent outlet of any worth i’ve had has been fiction.

the question of how “acceptable” it is for traumatized people to process their trauma in fiction is, i must admit, rather obnoxiously contentious. i’ve seen ostensible leftists genuinely say without a hint of irony, “yeah, okay, fine, you have every right to explore your complicated feelings about [traumatic event] in fiction, but you shouldn’t post it anywhere.” so, what, people who have flawless, frictionless transitions are allowed good representation, but when a messy transition is depicted that’s just universally bad representation? if a queer character isn’t shown to be unambiguously good and correct, then that’s... that’s bad? why doesn’t it count when i say that i feel better when i read a story that reflects how fucked up my life is? why’s it gotta be that every story needs to be for everyone? why’s it gotta be that my story that i started writing for my own reasons with no expectation of getting paid for it, no expectation of any kind of substantial audience, ought to stand as an unimpeachable argument in favor of trans women’s infallibility? trans women aren’t infallible. charlotte clymer exists. caitlyn jenner exists. it flattens and diminishes the humanity of marginalized people to insist that it’s a flaw when a story doesn’t make it unambiguously clear that not all marginalized people are bad. it’s not my job as a trans woman to make sure you, the reader, know that not all trans women are bad. i assume that you know this. i assume that you can look at the circumstances of the narrative and understand that this has always been a speculative scifi story about a world that operates on very different rules than our world, about people who are capable of things that no one in our world is capable of.

you know how sometimes you’ll have a conversation with someone and they’ll say just the most catastrophically stupid shit, but as much as you WANT to roast them for it you know it’d be rude and unproductive? well what if you could roast that person, get it out of your system, and then retcon the whole exchange out of existence? as i’ve said in other answers, the horror of retcon is that it puts you in the driver’s seat of your own personal groundhog day, unlimited and consequence-free throughout time and space. i know this probably seems utterly irrelevant to the substance of your criticism, but to me it’s everything. the feels in godfeels have always been rooted in the dreadful existential weight of knowing that you could get away with doing absolutely anything you wanted with terrifying ease.

homestuck is a violent story. how many times do we see those teens get stabbed to death? so for me, as gf2 soared out of my hands and grew in scope, it felt obvious and natural to take that premise and combine it with the messiness of my own coming out. to explore gender and violence together. when i wrote the scene where Callie gives June her juju, i knew that i was stepping into REALLY dangerous territory, because June is transgender, and a trans person who kills her other queer friends for being above-average in their transphobia is bad transgender representation.

right?

i think that’s the core of what you’re driving at with your criticism-- that Dirk, the emergent antagonist of godfeels 2, the guy who’s essentially demanding that June detransition Or Else, has a point when he says that June is dangerous and can’t be trusted to have anyone else’s best interests at heart. you point out that, in real life, transphobes don’t have a point when they attack trans people, and that’s true. i agree with you.

the first thing i’ll say here that i think will drive you up the wall is that tried and true age-old canard: depiction isn’t endorsement. June Egbert is a character making choices; Dirk Strider is a character making choices. they have their reasons, some good, some bad, but i tried very hard not to make it so the narrative took a side as such. obviously to an extent that’s impossible when our perspective is so thoroughly fixed through June’s eyes, but i tried to show in Dirk’s narration (especially in his fight with Roxy) that he’s not a mustache-twirling villain over this. he’s a guy with a plan who doesn’t know how not to have that plan anymore when something essential to the plan changes. he has his own doubts about what he’s doing. in fact i think you could make a very compelling case that, from Dirk’s perspective, June and Terezi systematically turned all his friends against him for their own diabolical ends. and like, hey! arguably the realityquake is a direct result of June refusing to do what Dirk told her to do. that’s kind of fucked up, right? to which i say that nowhere did i ever promise that June would be The Good Guy of this story. no one who has that kind of power over others is ever ever ever simply The Good Guy.

the second thing i’ll say to this point is that growing up queer in this world is messy. i’ve already enumerated my mental unwellness, now let me add that many of my trans friends share a similar spread of ailments as well as a similarly messy upbringing. something we never really talk about, for i think pretty obvious reasons, is the fact that just by virtue of how awfully closeted queer people in general are treated, a lot of us do have really checkered pasts. to be clear this is by absolutely NO means a universal generalization, i’m not saying all or even most trans people are like this. but a number of us are. and i’ve gotten so many messages from trans people who read godfeels and felt seen by it, felt seen by the very problem you’ve astutely identified. what’s to be done with their testimony in this conversation? is it irrelevant? are they wrong? would you go to them and tell them, well, sure, i guess you can say that, but it’s still problematic and needs to be...

needs to be what? that’s what i’m really trying to understand now. what is it, exactly, that you want from me. if you’re saying the moral quandaries of gf2 need to be interrogated, yeah, i agree. you see something problematic in godfeels 2, and i agree with you that it’s problematic. i put it there on purpose. i thought a lot about that choice. i did it because my life has often been problematic, in ways both fair and unfair, and because most of those problems just don’t have easy answers. sometimes there are good guys and bad guys, sometimes someone is absolutely in the wrong. but a lot of times the reality is a lot greyer than that. and just because we’re seeing painful pushback against even the meagerist of trans rights on a global scale doesn’t mean that my depiction of a problematic trans woman is somehow immoral or counterproductive for “the trans community.” which i know is not what you said, but it’s hard for me not to jump to this conclusion when this is always where it leads. if i seem overly defensive it’s because i’ve had to field a version of this question SO many times over the years, and while you may think yourself disconnected from any wider critical perspective (i have no way of knowing this, obviously), i see an undeniable continuity in terms.

i put scare quotes around “the trans community” because there are plenty of trans communities where i have never felt particularly welcome. as a non-passing trans woman who leans butch, there are so many pillars of the lgbt spectrum that’d criticize or disavow me it makes my head spin. generally i’m okay with that. not every space is or should be for everyone, just the same as not every work of fiction is or should be for everyone. and i don’t want a fucking thing to do with transmed gender essentialist circles anyway.

godfeels is not for everyone. it is a story about violence, ignorance, trauma, guilt, and a whole charcuterie board of other messy emotions besides. i have never been interested in looking at a fictional character and saying “this is a purely bad thing in a cosmic sense that they’re doing,” because i just don’t find that interesting to write about. someone can choose to hurt a lot of people in an act of what could be accurately described as evil, but that person still CHOSE to do what they did. their actions made sense to them, even if they don’t make sense to us. even if they scare us. and i think it’s important to decry the actions of real people in the real world when innocent people get hurt. but fiction is not the real world. yes, obviously fiction effects reality in some ways- it shapes how we view the world, how we view each other. but so often in these conversations, there’s simply no sense of scale or severity. what negative social affect can be attributed to a homestuck fanfic written by a trans woman when huge swathes of the american populace are using fuckin marvel movies to justify escalating the war in ukraine? what about jk rowling weaponizing her gargantuan fanbase against trans people? i cannot fathom holding up even the truly vilest of fanfic as representative of some grave social ill or as setting back perception of a marginalized group with any kind of longterm conviction when we are surrounded on all sides by corporate propaganda that cynically puppets the corpse of the liberal lgbt movement to lend their worthless backwards trash an air of Progressive Clout. like i’m supposed to be impressed that there’s a trans person in the background of an otherwise pro-imperialist nightmare of bad CGI and rampant labor exploitation. did they employ trans people? did they get a trans person’s perspective on that character or on the narrative as a whole? did they even talk to any trans people? who gives a shit about depiction or representation, we could have a million trans characters in cinema and still be completely fucked as a demographic if those characters were all written by cis white men who think the feminine essence theory is good feminism. what i care about is whether or not trans people can stay fed and pay rent, and that includes trans people whose lives and stories don’t mesh with the popular narratives about trans people. if your politics involve telling problematic trans women to shut up, to hide their trauma, to get out of the limelight lest our enemies use us as ammunition in their war against all of us, then i’m sorry but you’re just a conservative censor doing the job of a GOP politician for free at absolutely no one’s behest and to everyone’s detriment including your own. when the conservatives come for queer people, they won’t care who among us is “respectable.” queerness itself is their enemy, and they’ll kill the based just as surely as they’ll kill the problematic.

and that’s where it really comes down for me, you understand? i’m totally aware of how soupy this moral dilemma is. i fucking wrote it! i think it’s an interesting tension to have to sit with a character who knows that even though they had (what at least felt like) a good reason, even though it literally hasn’t happened anymore, they still did something terrible that they regret and that they’ll remember for the rest of their life. the flashbacks we see in 2.3 of June going door to door to get folks on her side are explicitly framed by a recurring guilt and doubt that June feels at every step of the process. she knows that she fucked up with the retcon, and she knows she made everything worse by dangling Dirk over a volcano, but she doesn’t know how to talk this out, and Terezi just sort of assumes that their only option is a full-on combat scenario. also, man, once again no one questions Terezi’s role in this! the eponymous “good plan” of 2.3 is HERS. the only part of that plan that’s genuinely June’s is her choice to take Jade to fight Lord English, and it’s the part that ultimately saves the day.

Jade, of course, having had her own past meddled with retcon-ways by June’s own admission in gf1. so we have a June who in the past tried to intervene in someone else’s life to make it “better” from her perspective, now turning around and intervening in that same life for essentially the same reason. only this time she’s giving Jade a choice. or is she? does Jade have a choice? did I as the writer give her a choice?

again, you’re seeing the same thing i’m seeing. you’re seeing that June and Dirk both Made Some Points. you’re seeing that June is not a paragon of virtue even though she’s transgender. the difference is that you think your reaction is not the intended experience. yes, i say, it is problematic, it is uncomfortable, it is unpleasant. but problems exist to be solved, and i’m not the person who can give you the answers. if June isn’t a perfect trans woman, if she did in fact Do Some Things Wrong, then that just makes her human (which, as you’ll recall, was a question very much on June’s mind in gf1). i’m not interested in saying whether or not any of these events are Good or Bad in a cosmic or moral sense because, yet again, that’s just not interesting to me as a writer.

and this is what i mean when i say that you’re coming at this from a decidedly post-tumblr perspective, because again, you’re seeing what i’m seeing, but you’ve stopped at a smaller circle inside a larger venn diagram. this is not a story about how trans women are unambiguously good and correct at all times, it’s a story about lateral violence among queer friends who also happen to be unfathomably powerful gods. these are not normal 23 year olds! if we are to tell a story that even remotely attempts to explore the minutiae and consequence of what these characters are capable of, we simply cannot relegate ourselves to the realm of what is possible and/or acceptable in our reality. the whole point is that it’s not possible in our reality! it’s fiction! and the circumstance that June and Dirk find themselves in in gf2 does not resemble any real life circumstance that exists in the material world. yeah, transphobes in real life don’t have a point and they can get fucked. but if Dirk was like a texas neocon, if Rose was more explicitly TERFy, or if June hadn’t literally murdered her friends and then retconned it, would that be better for the story? like yeah, sure, a TERF would be an obvious villain, a texas neocon would be an obvious villain. despite all appearances i do in fact know how to write a trans character who is not hashtag problematic, i just don’t want to do that. i don’t want to write obvious villains. i don’t want to write obvious conflicts.

all of my favorite art sits balanced on a razor’s edge of some taboo or other, and stares you directly in the eyes and demands that you reckon with it for what it is. i like art that makes me uncomfortable, that pushes into weird difficult messy philosophical territory, because at least when it happens in fiction it doesn’t result in me becoming homeless. that’s the kind of fiction i want to write. and i know full well that we don’t live in an environment that is particularly friendly to that kind of fiction. right now everything in life feels like a mortal peril, all our rights as queer & working people are being slowly pulled back, our very bodies demonized, our youths tormented by cruel governments, so it’s natural i think to react to fiction flirting with this difficult territory in ambiguous terms the same way you would to this shit in real life. that’s the smaller circle in the bigger circle, get it? you’re correct in your acknowledgement of a problem, but the tumblr lens is one aggressively opposed to reading that problem in any terms other than outright dismissal and condemnation.

it’s a binaristic lens, you understand? it’s checking a work of art against an abstract scorecard on a pass-fail basis. and it leads to the elevation primarily of children’s media, which tends to be binaristic in its morals. and that’s not strictly bad! i love steven universe as much as the next gal. and it’s fine if someone doesn’t want to engage with more difficult media, i totally get it! sometimes i’m in the mood for garbage. i talk all kinds of shit about marvel movies but i fucking LOVE thor ragnarok. the thing is that when i talk shit about marvel movies i KNOW who i’m pushing back against and i know why. i can have my annoyances with writers, directors, actors, etc, but the real problem of the mcu is its ideology & its status as above all else a product for mass consumption, which is the problem of hollywood and the problem of america. virtually all american media is produced by a small handful of corporations who have unilateral control over what gets made and what doesn’t. the result is a media culture built around an ideology that TRIES SO HARD to make itself invisible because of course americans don’t want politics in their media. but the politics are there, because everything is political. and when every movie, tv show, and news broadcast tells you to be afraid of black people, to be afraid of trans women, to be afraid of russians, to be afraid of chinese, that gets us to now, that gets us to a culture that simply has not been given the tools to analyze media in any terms other than those dictated by the selfsame corporations that produce that media. so the tumblr lens, the social justice lens, it can identify a problem in a text but it always falls short when it tries to find a solution. and it falls short because it’s not materialist, it’s not based in any kind of class awareness or political dialectics. it’s not even really based in a particularly feminist politics! hell, the sjw keystone that is the bechdel test originates from a comic and artist that absolutely refuses the binaristic ideology that has led to its popularity.

a truly materialist critical analytic lens would understand that, like in activism, a diversity of tactics must be supported. you do not have to like the art made by every trans woman to understand that you have more in common with the most loathesome working class trans woman you’ve heard of than you do with anyone who has ever sat in a position of real political power in your lifetime. a materialist lens would understand that selling out the problematic in favor of the acceptable is the cutting off of one’s nose to spite their face. when you create an environment where the first thing an artist must consider is whether or not it tics all the right representational boxes, all you really do is put a chilling effect on subversive, difficult art. you don’t have to like subversive, difficult art. you don’t have to like that Dirk kind of has a point about June’s actions. but when you come to me with this criticism as though there’s anything i can do about it, as though i’ve somehow messed up, that doesn’t feel the same as other criticism to me. if you say “parts of chapter 8 are too long,” i can take that and use it as feedback in the future. if you say “i don’t like how little agency June had in gf3.1,” i can disagree and present my own case as to why lack of agency is such a persistent theme in godfeels, but i also understand that it’s a difficult story and that one can certainly get The Point while also not necessarily enjoying the experience. but when you say “this is bad because it looks bad in a real world political context,” i mean, god, what do i even DO with that? again, for the millionth time, you’re not telling me anything i don’t already know. i wrote it. i made you feel these emotions. i wanted you to feel these emotions. there is a reason i wanted you to feel these emotions. but they are, fundamentally, YOUR emotions, not mine. only you can understand them.

so sit with them. reflect on them. ask yourself why this part of the story makes you uncomfortable, why you feel compelled to read it the way you do. don’t worry, no one can read your mind. i mean it, anon. there’s no wrong answers here. what’s beautiful about fiction is that it lets us sit in uncomfortable, taboo emotions and events and situations without fear of retribution or judgment... unless, of course, you problematize the very existence of difficult art. unless you create an environment in which everyone is afraid to tell ambiguous stories of any stripe lest they be subject to a vicious harassment campaign. that’s the environment that ruthlessly attacked Isabel Fall over ‘i sexually identify as an attack helicopter.’ that’s an environment so shortsightedly, bloodthirstily fixated on whatever problematic thing they notice first that it is practically designed from the ground up to annihilate all outsider art and leave only the most corporate friendly pro-empire propaganda in its place.

to close out here (fucking finally lmao), you might say i’m putting words in your mouth here, but i’m just trying to follow your logic to its conclusion. if it is a strictly negative problem, a pure flaw in the work, that June can in some sense at least be partially blamed for the violence done to her, what do you suggest is the solution? in the event of a rewrite, what would you suggest i change? are you looking for an apology? an admission of guilt? maybe it’s something else, i don’t know. maybe you haven’t even thought that far ahead. i’m just asking you to understand that your criticism exists in a context that, whether you meant it this way or not, has a demonstrable chilling effect on the very art you claim to love. i get scared when i get criticism like this because it’s framed like an accusation. it’s framed like i did a crime, which implies the specter of punishment.

and trans women, as we know, are the favored whipping girls of social media harassment campaigns.

anyway, i hope that gives you a thing or two to chew on

#homestuck #godfeels #fiction affects reality #problematic characters #problematic media #materialist media analysis #lateral violence #writing advice #i guess #lmao #marvel cinematic universe #sarahposts

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maybe-homestuck-now-or-something · 3 years

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I really wanna talk about homestuck in relation to this post but like, idk if I wanna add to it because it might be a total derailment of the topic but homestuck is such a weird apocalypse narrative.

like... the way it handles it is so odd because earth itself is not very well characterized before the characters leave it. the characters themselves are massively well characterized, and that takes up the bulk of the narrative, but like... we never even hear them talk about school? or much of anything more than their shared interests and what's immediately happening to them. and in a way, that is kind of authentic. because when kids get together to hang out, the last thing they ever wanna talk about is dry, boring stuff about their mundane lives. they'll mostly just yell memes at each other, talk about anime, play video games... it's possible to simultaneously know nothing about your friends, but feel closer to them than ever, because you're mostly around for the parts of their life that they want to experience when they're having the most fun. you see them as they are when they have the most agency to choose that. and that might be totally divorced from the reality of how their day-to-day life unfolds.

in this way, homestuck presents these characters as people who have shed that mundane portion of their lives. they are now left with only the part that they typically share with their friends. and in reality, if a SBURB type apocalypse were to literally happen to you, it'd be traumatic as hell. but this is the place where homestuck chooses to ask you to suspend your disbelief. let's just believe that John didn't have any other friends or family to think about when the world ended. let's pretend they left zero people of any interest whatsoever behind. all they are shaking off is the society that they were obligated to participate in so mundanely. they no longer have to make any compromises with anyone... they get to fully center themselves.

okay, so that's obviously not entirely true... playing SBURB is a cooperative experience, and being friends with someone doesn't always mean that your relationship is easy. but homestuck allows the narrative to become self centered. it's about one individual and the tiny sphere of influence they have, among solely the people they've developed meaningful bonds with. it allows them to become a case study.

so when the world ends, the world is not necessarily what matters. what matters is the identities of a few specific individuals who we spend a lot of time cultivating our own connections with as a reader.

and that all becomes incredibly interesting when you consider classes and aspects.

basically, in terms of the post linked above, classes and aspects are the harry potter houses, the factions, the "what bender are you" or MBTI type... they're not the only way you could categorize the characters, but they're the most universally applicable to all of the characters that are important in the narrative. and what's interesting is just like... what classes are for, and how complicated it actually is to know what aspects are, or what they mean.

starting with classes, these are basically a series of archetypes that are specialized so that everyone has a role to play that makes them uniquely valuable to a collective. if we're considering this in terms of DnD, you can think of what classes might make for a balanced party, and how having a balanced party makes it satisfying to play the game. no one player could handle everything on their own, and at the same time, everyone feels needed. nobody is useless.

this already seems fundamentally different from some of the means of categorization that I listed above. a lot of these systems are meant to divvy up the characters into societally recognized in-groups and out-groups... people who can be identified as allies or enemies. even if the groups are ascribed certain archetypal skills, the goal is rarely so explicitly for the archetypes to work together, or cover each other's weaknesses. Avatar is probably what comes the closest to this idea, with its underlying endeavor to find harmony between the elements, but homestuck uses classes both as a way to communicate unique specialization, and as a way to unify the characters by their need for support.

and that's a little weird isn't it? these characters just shed all of their obligations to a broader society, and we're taking that as a freeing event... right? but there is a difference between society and community, and while homestuck might use the destruction of society as a catalyst for adventure, it uses the formation of community as the driving force behind the story's progression. the characters are all motivated to work together and help each other... and that doesn't always mean that it works. even within a community, one person's drive to center themselves and their own personal growth can trample others who were trying to do the same thing. perhaps not everyone in the community consents to being cooperative. perhaps the difference in archetype could drive someone to become competitive instead. and these are all value-neutral observations... no archetype is specifically acknowledged as being evil, even when they have friction with one another.

basically... this is character writing. and I find it funny that these broad categories that kids like to identify themselves with are seen as ways of flattening characterization into broad strokes like "the brave one" or "the sneaky one" or what have you, because in the case of classes, the characterization becomes deeper. and I think that's because the categories are used well... the characters all have specific relationships with the stereotypes they're ascribed by others, and the archetypes they're told they must fulfill. the classes don't define them, but they do give them something to contend with. can they fulfill their role? can they live up to their purpose? is there a place in the story for someone with an archetype like theirs? do they want to be this?

aspects get even trickier, and for this I might just link to a video I really love that covers a lot of the thoughts I've been having. it's kind of front loaded with a lot of technical talk about computer science and philosophy, and tbh I love that homestuck does actually link up those concepts with so much of it's presentation, but the main bit that intrigues me is the way the video talks about aspects as irreducible components of thought. like the periodic table of elements, but for ideas.

this drastically elevates the importance of each character's assigned category, and makes it function so much better as a tool for characterization. because, like, the aspects are actually really abstract. when someone says their aspect is "wind" or "light" you could take that 100% literally if you wanted to... but by the time you've read enough of homestuck to connect those to John and Rose, you probably understand that it's not that simple. and other concepts, such as astrology, have taught you that this is the sort of system that you're supposed to interpret, right? what is a capricorn if not a loose collection of traits that give you a certain vibe? that's what we're working with when it comes to aspects. otherwise, how would you know what void, or doom, or mind are? tbh it's actually pretty genius that astrology was worked into the comic as an aesthetic element, just so we'd all be mentally primed to do this kind of categorical interpretation... hell, even the actual signs themselves constitute a framework with which you could analyze the characters, like, how does Nepeta display typical leo traits, or how is Vriska a stereotypical scorpio... it all still works, even as you understand that each individual is more complex than the traits which support that interpretation.

in this way, the aspects are never really explained exhaustively verbatim, and are almost solely defined by the traits you've observed from individual characters, who act as representatives for what these categories actually are. or at least how they function in this instance, which is what's relevant. it's not just superpowers, and it's not just archetypes... it's both at the same time, and you come at them from a character-first perspective when you're trying to figure out what they mean. the characters inform your knowledge of the categories, and the categories act as a framework for analyzing the characters. and I love how homestuck tricks you into assuming that it has a lot of little rigid categories for the characters to slot into, and how quickly it becomes apparent that everything is way more abstract than it first appears. and yet, it all still means something. and it's really interesting to, say, compare two different time players to try to piece together what is typical for that archetype, while also accounting for their class, and trying to understand how that changes the roles they play and the ways they behave. and then you have the trolls' caste system on top of that, and the astrology angle I mentioned earlier, and there are honestly so many overlapping ways to think about it all, and I think that's the point.

#homestuck #classpect #my rant

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