mmmmalo

[mmmmalo]

Insofar as the Genesis Frog is represented in its temple form as being orbited by numerous planets, does it represent a star? Despite officially being an entire universe... we eventually see a star composed of universes, but that's a bit flakey as a basis for collapsing the two.

I ask because I'm wondering whether Jade/Jake's island is an abstracted star-and-crescent ☪️, a symbol commonly associated with Islam. It would be thematically consistent with my post from last week posing the twin volcanoes as camel humps...? And it would form a clear line of association with the frog temples by Aradia (Indiana Jones > Egypt excavation) and Kanaya (desert oasis)

#literally occurred to me because I found a Homestuck post where someone misspelled island as islam #accidental error is a great way to discover possible puns #homestuck commentary #east mapping

[mmmmalo]

SOME SKETCHES👁️👁️👁️👁️

#a splendid rose

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[mmmmalo]

I wonder if her being a drug dealer is an "alchemist" joke too

The red scare motifs in Hiveswap persuaded me that the dog motifs around Elwurd were a Laika reference (a second L-word to complement Lesbian), but knowing now that the superposition of girls and dogs is sort of the point ("huge bitch"), I wonder if its (also?) a Full Metal Alchemist reference -- there's a certain dog-girl in there famous for saying "Edward". Hence her relationship with Bronya Ursama (Armored Momma Bear), whose clapping gesture references the alchemy of Alphonse Elric, a boy who was often armor-pregnant (and was under frequent threat of armor abortion).

Also even if "Edward" is positioned as an dog-girl's enunciation, having "Alphonse" break up with "Edward" adds a vague incestuous overtone to remind us that trolls usually share the same mother, which is nice.

#elwurd

[mmmmalo]

I was listening to an Eastern Orthodox rebuttal to iconoclasm on youtube and he pulls up near the end with a "If it's evil to depict the idea of God as an image instead of word, what do you have to say to logographic languages? Are you calling Chinese bibles demonic?" Lovely countermove

[mmmmalo]

is the earth being engulfed in flame from the meteors like a phoenix thing, with new life growing from the ashes? also, the earth was engulfed in green flame thanks to Bec.

Sort of...? The pheonix goes through its rebirth unchanged, but Homestuck is fixated on the anxiety that rebirth means change or corruption -- Rose checking herself for cat atoms after going through the transportalizer with Vodka Mutini, for instance. Caliborn invokes the pheonix but alters the site of emergence, "like a pheonix from the asses" he says, again giving a sense of contamination to the proceedings. This is where the comic's xenophobia themes set in, since outsiders are posed as the instigators of destructive change.

Another way to put it is that Homestuck is built around the "social anxiety" that contact between the Self (in-group) and the Other (out-group) is apocalyptic

#homestuck commentary #the pheonix suits the comic's oriental theming but doesn't feel quite right

[mmmmalo]

Meteors from the Veil are both stoning and insemination -- both death and life. But insofar as the surroundings of a session can represent the audience (like Dave's ring of crows), perhaps that becomes the same as jeering amd cheering? And the Rings of Void and Life respectively send things off-stage (jeers and stones > boos and tomatoes) and on-stage (clapping restores Tinkerbell to life).

#homestuck commentary #4th wall

[mmmmalo]

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[mmmmalo]

#sleepless and restless #have some old psycholonials art

[mmmmalo]

Anatomy of a Pin-Up

© Annie Sprinkle

#illustration

[mmmmalo]

I think Rose defacing the portrait of Freud in such a way that **his face is obscured** is the counterpoint to her finding the Zazzerpan statue repellent. Her entire spiel is about how glorious it is to gaze upon the face of Zazzerpan, how "to behold the wisdom concealed in the furrows of that venerable face is to know the ceaseless joys of bewonderment itself", before changing tack and condemning the statue as a "grisly abomination". It's precisely because the face has been deemed holy that its image is reviled. The poster is an (ironic?) declaration of Freud worship, or else a gesture at the dynamics of veneration and censorship that only functions on a meta-textual level.

Revisiting early Rose

Should Oglogoth (dark ogle) be lumped with "blind seers" and "black oracles" as a scornful reference to prophets... the panel where she uses the book to elevate her laptop always struck me as a strange action to emphasize, but if it's blasphemy the playful grandiosity would make more sense to me as a comedic gesture

Oriental rugs in the living room -- weird how that information would not have mattered to me in the least not 2 months ago. They complement the prophet-wizards nicely, though strictly speaking the flagrant idolatry of all these portraits/statues is heretical if the doctrine at play is aniconic

Rose giving Mom a vacuum cleaner has some sort of resonance with John giving Rose a sowing kit, as vaguely passive-aggressive (if ironic) feminizing gestures? Maybe the earliest incident of that sort of rhetoric attaching itself to Rose -- oh, she describes the PRETTY PRINCESS DOLL as a passive-aggressive gesture on the very next page. Rose celebrates her own triumph over the ribbing (making the doll a tentacle beast) but is unable to understand that Mom bronzing the vacuum was a similar retort. Funny that

I should probably read/watch the Taming of the Shrew -- the biggest cultural footprint of Rose's fridge epithet is literally a narrative about browbeating a headstrong girl into servility, which is the basic spirit of the preceding gifts

#i read a lovely book on blasphemy today and it left me charged #note how this dynamic parallels Jade's invective against fursuits #homestuck commentary #rose #faith mapping

[mmmmalo]

Boris Sveshnikov - Window, 1980

Pencil on paper, 37 x 27 cm

#illustration

[mmmmalo]

Untitled (Horse)

Maqbool Fida Husain

oil on canvas

#this gentleman came up in my blasphemy book for a nude of Mother India that angered the Hindu Nationalists #but oh my god he has painted so many kickass horses #illustration

[mmmmalo]

A documentation from the artist's webpage of the exhibition and its censorship. The figures upon the red crescent and red cross are herself and her sister -- she seems to be dancing between their functions as symbols of medical intervention and the social tensions embodied by the juxtaposition of these sister-faiths, which can bring about injury. I imagine the cabbage and cauliflower likewise refer to divergent evolution from shared roots

#illustration #faith mapping #katarzyna kozyra

[mmmmalo]

Amidst the blasphemy I think Dave using yellow droplets to alchemize that monster puppet encased in amber might be a reference to Piss Christ, but the puppets aren't exactly holy figures afaik... there was that bit in Rose's erotic puppet poem that seems to associate them with camels, which provides a hint of orientalist flavoring, but I never found more to corroborate that reading vis-a-vis puppets. I suppose insofar as the Chuck Norris / Mr. T puppets are used to signal anxieties around race mixing (they produce Lil Cal), transposing that dynamic onto the racialized conflict of West and East would turn Mr. T into a symbol of Muhammad...? Hence the Piss Christ reference is shortly followed by a foam fetal Mr. T in jar.

Mind you, the artist behind Piss Christ, Andres Serrano, has stated that his intent was to reinstate the image of the cross (which he saw as cheapened by its widespread, commercial usage) with a visceral sense of the suffering it entailed, the blood and piss Jesus would have passed over the many excruciating hours of crucifixion. This offers a certain counter-weight to the sense of desecration ascribed to it -- you might say the point is that crucifixion was already a desecration, piling gruesome indignities upon the holy. I'm reminded of Dave pouring out a bottle of apple juice over the eviscerated body of Lil Cal -- a gesture of respect in its imitation of alcohol, and a gesture of disrespect insofar as the apple juice can represent piss. You can't always cleanly extricate the two...

Incidentally, did you know that Muhammad passed away amid an illness characterized by intense headaches and fever? In the wake of the 9/11 references in Sollux's introduction, I do wonder if Sollux succumbing to the Glub upon entering the Land of Brains and Fire (and perhaps his general propensity for headaches) act as allusions to the prophet.

#homestuck commentary #east mapping #faith mapping #sollux #dave

[mmmmalo]

Revisiting early Rose

Should Oglogoth (dark ogle) be lumped with "blind seers" and "black oracles" as a scornful reference to prophets... the panel where she uses the book to elevate her laptop always struck me as a strange action to emphasize, but if it's blasphemy the playful grandiosity would make more sense to me as a comedic gesture

Oriental rugs in the living room -- weird how that information would not have mattered to me in the least not 2 months ago. They complement the prophet-wizards nicely, though strictly speaking the flagrant idolatry of all these portraits/statues is heretical if the doctrine at play is aniconic

Rose giving Mom a vacuum cleaner has some sort of resonance with John giving Rose a sowing kit, as vaguely passive-aggressive (if ironic) feminizing gestures? Maybe the earliest incident of that sort of rhetoric attaching itself to Rose -- oh, she describes the PRETTY PRINCESS DOLL as a passive-aggressive gesture on the very next page. Rose celebrates her own triumph over the ribbing (making the doll a tentacle beast) but is unable to understand that Mom bronzing the vacuum was a similar retort. Funny that

I should probably read/watch the Taming of the Shrew -- the biggest cultural footprint of Rose's fridge epithet is literally a narrative about browbeating a headstrong girl into servility, which is the basic spirit of the preceding gifts

#homestuck commentary #rose #bubbles