#dirk got things his way with the agency

[zan0tix]

Pleaseeee tell me more about that homescryption au

A little something between you and me and everyone else who happens to look at this post. Im working on a lineup for the four scrybes :D

Roxys design is subject to change and you guys have already seen D1rk. Jane and Jake are in progress!!! (Also D1rk and Harley are the names for dirk and jake but weve been struggling to come up with appropriately fantasical/magical names for Jane and Roxy that align with magnificus and grimora😞 Harley feels old-manish enough that it fits in well… im sure well get there but if anybody has ideas feel free to comment ✌️)

But yes i can tell you more!!! ILL PUT IT ALL UNDER THE CUT THIS POST IS GOING TO BE LONG o7

Working with cyrus repliiku to flesh it out x3 he was the one who got me into the game and im CRAZY NOW!!!!

The four alpha scrybes methods of inscribing cards are that Harley uses his magic blunderbuss and the things he shoots become cards, Roxys cards are the fantasical characters she creates in her stories, Jane will be a detective of death, uncovering how cards die and writing up a casefile in her detective agency about them (might give her a magic magnifying glass. Well see), and D1rk were trying to figure out something with Sburbs captcha card + ghost captcha system like how Po3’s cards are printed from real robots

The students/the scrybes underlings are going to be other homestuck characters or splinters!

D1rks will be the robots (aradiabot, arquius (wanted him to me more unique than just brobot + hal so he gets to be a robot) and jadebot.

Harleys will be jake-ish splinters rather than new characters. Thered be the Adventurer (prospector), the Hunter (trapper/trader), the Sailor (angler), the Ectobiologist (mycologists), and the Actor (woodcarver) and his campaigns would be more Action packed like jakes action movies type stuff hehe

Janes will be the dead trolls, nepeta, equius and feferi. Not much to say besides them being dead lol 😭

And roxys were still figuring out but nerm. Viceroy/Casey, Rose (maybe goobert but they are actually nice and kind to her) and Eridan….(lonely wizard he was banished to the shadow realm for being annoying 😁👍)

Luke Carter is going to be Calliope and Satan in the greater scheme of the daniel mullins-verse will be Caliborn/Lord English because i think itd be very funny for him to just. Be making video games and thats his evil plot. LOL and Sado would be Gamzee. (Will not expand to pony island or the hex this is just clearing up the ending of inscryption)

Kaycee would probably be Aranea but like just some normal girl. Not all that sure abt the OLD_DATA tho ??? Maybe just all the wrong doings Lord English has committed and influenced culminated into the files or the code that brought him into the universe I DUNNO.

Retconning the drawing i did when i first scribbled this AU, i believe when harley turns the other scrybes into preexisting cards d1rk would become a seagull (kingfisher replacement) roxy would become a jaguar (wolf replacement) and jane would become a jackalope (pronghorn replacement) 😁

And the way harley would be defeated would be using his blunderbuss on him with a special bullet instead of film. Po3’s decapitation fulfilled the Dirk prophecy too LOL

I think that of the gameplay/card gimmicks themselves would work basically the same but i might try and come up with more creative homestucky twists on them

Im planning on finishing the designs and making sprites and more mockup screenshots :3

I might write up or draw a comprehensive ref sheet for this au someday but for now heres what weve jotted down 👍

#homestuck #inscryption #homescryption #my art #zan0tix #daniel talks #IM GLAD PEOPLE ARE LIKING IT SO MUCH ITS SO FUN TO THINK ABOUTTT

[crazyexdirkfriend]

Hi Tony i want to ask something of you. In fanon more often than not i see Jake becoming slightly more unhinged and unnerving as he gets older. Do you think this would hpapen canonically? Or are all these fanartsits and writers just projecting what they want from jake on jake

This isn't a hate on it by the way, I just realised the other day I see more often the idea of Jake becoming more unnerving as he gets older alongside Dirk and that i'd accepted it and I'm unsure if its canonically viable or not.

I actually think the nature of Jake is that people project what they want on to him-- be you an author, an audience, or a character within the text. It's an interesting concept because Jake is a character who is never afforded free will and even in fanfiction and transformative works made to give Jake free will, he's still a character doing an author's bidding ultimately.

There's a bit in Meat that discusses this with Calliope and Dirk iirc. Calliope wants Jake to have free will, but Dirk argues that Jake is incapable of free will. And truly, even on a metatextual level, the existence of a narrative voice renders basically everyone, but especially Jake, incapable of free will within a narrative.

I don't know if you've seen Revolutionary Girl Utena, but there's an exchange in Utena that I believe they're referencing intertextually here between Utena and Touga about Anthy. Utena insists that Anthy does not want to be the rose bride, and Anthy confirms this. But when Touga defeats Utena and takes Anthy as the rose bride himself, Anthy claims being the rose bride is all she's ever wanted. Touga then says Anthy is incapable of free will and her expressions of "wanting to be a normal girl" when with Utena were just Utena projecting her own wants on to Anthy and claiming them to be free will.

(pinch of salt, I haven't rewatched Utena in a few years, but this is how I remember the scene)

In many ways, this is what Calliope, and us as authors, do to Jake, and what in text Dirk is criticising as a concept. He's like, well I'm projecting my desires and wants on to Jake and you say that's bad but at least I'm being honest about it. I'm treating Jake like a puppet, but that's all he's ever going to be anyway.

Er. I think I've got wildly off topic from your actual question.

I think getting older in many ways is realising that being 14 is a state of mind and that's just who you occasionally are for the rest of your life. So yeah, I think ageing does come with this element of derangement. I have a lot of thoughts about Jake as effectively this ageing child star, put on a pedestal on Earth-C at 16 and it becoming insidious, exploitative.

Jake is self aware of his lack of agency on a literal level within the narrative, perhaps even of the narrative itself-- like a gilded bird cage of his own making and he probably could slip out between the bars but then who would he be, where would he go, would everyone hate him and abandon him? He'll just stay trapped, stay pretty on display, stay hurt until everyone probably leaves anyway because an audience is a very very fickle thing.

And I think that does sort of lead to an angle for me of Sunset Boulevard, tearing the yellow wallpaper, the starlet breakdown. Which is the depressing, almost Swift approach to it. And then you have the Ultimate Jake approach to it, the Snap. And yeah, I think historically Jake takes and takes and takes and bends and bends and bends and is called selfish for that and eventually that would snap anyone. If on top of that, he's aware of Dirk's actions and of the narrative, of being on display constantly even if he escapes that little bird cage, if the only way to ensure people stop fucking looking at him is to destroy the audience itself-- yes, I would accept that story as viable for his character.

[callmearcturus]

For the choose violence ask game: 8, 9, 10, 11!

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

Jake English is the most emotionally intelligent person in Homestuck and everyone who disagrees is wrong.

9. worst part of canon

jesus fuck that's a fucking question and a half, lemme think

10. worst part of fanon

ksdljflksdjfl i don't know how the answer can be anything but vriska, honestly. actually, no. no. i'm gonna say what the fandom did to tavros, basically throwing out his entire character to justify why its actually not that bad that vriska broke his back and then tried to make him apologize to her for being a "cripple" fuck off, leave tavros alone

already answered 11 so uuuuh

worst part of canon..................

........

Like. I logically understand why the Retcon and the accelerated ending of Homestuck happened. I do. I understand that Hussie just needed the story to be over at last, and as a writer, I respect that deeply and it was entirely their right to do it the way they did imo.

however

the actual execution of the Retcon has aged really badly for me.

The one and only part of it I can look at and say I liked was Terezi. I love how Terezi changes the universe by changing herself, and I think it's one of the most powerful and profound moments of the entire story, truly. The way she.... breaks herself and remakes herself into what she has to be to alter the course of reality is staggering.

But.... I have tremendous issues with the actual technical execution. The entirety of Vriskagram leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

(Which, some people might say "but it's the thing that made davekat canon" and my brother in karkat, davekat was already canon pre-retcon, that was the direction their relationship was going, it wasn't even subtle, i didn't need vriskagram for that)

That Vriska solved the Gamzee issue, fixed Rose's alcoholism, saved Terezi, got ahold of the music boxes to hop around and fix the prototyping, she fixes the Strider problem, and the way she supplants Karkat's entire point in the story honestly is so fucking aggravating. Vriska was a duplicitous turnways manipulator and she's flattened into a bandaid for the entire story. It sucks. It flattens everyone.

And on some level, thematically, it makes sense? She is the Thief of Light, and Light is Agency, so her greatest triumph is stealing the agency from everyone until the spotlight is hers alone and it washes her out. Its a triumph for the Alpha Timeline and its a tragedy for Vriska herself as she loses all of the progress she made as a person.

sighs

And also the fact that... Rose and Dirk never talk, no one defends Jake from Vriska's bullying, the way Jane and Jake's character arcs hard stop and never get resolved, the way the whole Roxy Died thing is just not dealt with-- so many balls get dropped because of the compressed ending, and on a technical level, I feel like the quality of HS post-retcon drops like a rock tossed into a canyon. And the glory of Dirk And Dave's conversation cannot singlehandedly fix that. Esp bc while its the perfect dismount of Dave's character arc, it's not the end of Dirk's. Out of the four alpha kids, only Roxy gets a full arc and it sucks.

DEEP BREATH

yeah that's the worst part of hs

#interropunct #long post #whomstve #ask arc

[glittter-skeleton]

Dirk headcannons (feat. Brotzly):

I’m not even sure this one isn’t canon, we never see him sleep any other way. He sleeps like a soldier and it takes a long long time for him to grow out of it. Mostly because he can’t cuddle Todd like that. But for a while it was Todd’s leg over him and maybe his arm while he lays straight. The first times he stayed over he made sure to wake up before Todd so he wouldn’t notice.

Again, this is canon I think but his power isn’t being a detective, it’s getting pulled into messes, surviving and some extra way of seeing connection. The whole detective thing is an identity he created to be useful with his gift, not it’s purpose

He’s terrible at uno and always getting dealt awful hands in cards. All the intuition is for the cases

His sleeping routine is hideous. He wakes up when the universe wants him to but we made breakfast plans, you asshole! Wake up!

His hair burns easily, that’s why it’s darker after blackwing. Give him some sunlight and we’ll get the almost ginger look back. Or maybe we see it dyed in s1

One of his love languages is physical touch but he never knew that cuz he never really got it in his life. Mostly just sitting super close to another person, he loves it

He got so good at the daydream thing at blackwing that sometimes he makes comments about outings and happy memories that didn’t actually happen. Everyone is initially confused but after he confesses about the dreams to Todd and Farah one night it all falls into place

His memory is amazing. He can recount everything he he’d had for breakfast for the last 2 weeks

If pressed, he’ll say his favorite band is the Beatles because there’re the only ones he know more than two songs from. He really enjoyes their sillier ones, sometimes hums them under his breath. Todd decides to be cute and plays Yesterday and Hey Jude (remembered from his younger years) for him but in that way people cover songs that makes them sound sad so Dirk almost cries and doesn’t get that these were meant to be something specifically for him to enjoy. “They’re too sad, Todd! Why would you play a song about a breakup to me!?” After that Todd makes more of an effort and learns “Here comes the sun” and “Obladi-oblada” so they can sing together

Dirk also enjoys any song that has a lot of words to remember. He knows all of “we didn’t start the fire”, “it’s the end of the world as we know it” and “one week”. The only person vaguely able to keep up is Amanda

I strongly disagree to the notion that he only watches cartoons. His cinema knowledge is goes from “Who’s this again? Oh, obi-wan kenobi, okay” to “I’ve seen every movie with Pierse Brosnan” so through movie nights the agency slowly goes through the classics and he enjoys a lot of it. My pics for his favorites would be “Little Miss Sunshine”, “Knives Out” and “Big Fish” but I’m not too much of a movie buff to truly know.

He always guesses the plot twist btw

#also this thing!!! forgot to post it too #dghda #dirk gently holistic detective agency #dirk gently #todd brotzman #brotzly #dghda headcanon

[hms-no-fun]

Sarah, Do you hate Rose Lalonde? Not in like the heavy malicious way people associate with Andrew and his relationship with hussie but like, as a fan of godfeels for probably the wrong reasons (my autistic ass really likes the way you approach the character and also me when someone writes Dirk and doesn’t make him a irredeemable piece of shit and a active creep) something that’s stuck out to me reading your tumblr and thinking back on the story is that rose is, to me at least, one of the most unluckiest characters in godfeels, both from a writing and in character perspective,m.

she’s the first to display the kid’s transphobia and thereby the first to get reality checked by June (which, to be fair to both June as a character and your reason for that scene in your godfeels video, she deserved) and therefor the first forced to learn the lesson of “you can move on and continue being friends with people but still not forgive them for the shit they put you through” (which I will admit I might be wrong on) and I’m pretty sure the first one to die when June does the whole kill everyone (or at least everyone that’s considered gods) on earth c thing, and besides that, unless I’ve misremembered something, besides the first chapter of divergence syndrome, she doesn’t really do much until she gives her final message to kanaya and well, the shit all goes down.

I’m not a big big fan of rose Lalonde, but it just feels like there’s something like, there, like there’s something about rose that you’ve never agreed with, and thinking back on it I don’t hate it, but it feels like sometimes rose is a means to a end, which is what all characters are but I mean like, a means means to a end, “how do Segway into the beta kids transphobia of June” through Rose’s constant biased Psychoanalysis failing her in the worse way possible, “How to keep epigone in after Dirk’s absolute asskicking” possessing her corpse, “how to finally get Gerald’s halo out of the story” get her dead, “how do I pronounce death to all endgame ships” kill the lesser used part of the pair, it just, feels like there’s something there, not something outright malicious, but something just, there, like the reverse of the hussie Vriska stuff, creator’s Chew toy stuff.

I apologize for the rudeness this ask may give off, I do truely love godfeels and read up to date anything about it that gets released, this just has been negging the back of my mind for so long.

spoilers for godfeels 3 here but i guess that ship's kinda sailed if you read the question lmao

i don't hate Rose at all! i mean i think freudians are all cranks and it really bugs me how much mid-century and contemporary marxist theory is couched in freudian/jungian/lacanian bullshit, but that's not really got anything to do with Rose lmao. i can't say that i hate any of the characters in godfeels the way andrew seemed to hate, say, Jake English (though there *are* homestuck characters i dislike and wouldn't enjoy writing, which is why they're not in the fic). i'm of the mind that every character sucks in their own unique ways and that's precisely what makes fiction fun to read. that Rose doesn't have a ton of direct agency in the narrative just comes down to, in part, this being a story focused primarily on June. that i didn't really understand how to write Rose in gf1-2 certainly doesn't help. but it's also related to how i interpret her role as a Seer of Light.

her role in gf3 onwards is defined by the Epilogues, where she either needed to transfer her consciousness to a robot body that could contain her ultimate self before her physical body died, or otherwise exist in a universe untethered from canon where connection to her ultimate self is irrelevant. she's had visions of, presumably, a great deal of the events of chapter 8, and i think understood that VV's whole gambit (whether or not she knew it was VV specifically playing this game) was to split the difference between Candy and Meat by disconnecting from Homestuck canon while still maintaining existential relevance in the shadow of some other story.

a lot of the best narrative premonitions/prophecies, especially in Homestuck, use them for dramatic irony-- that is, by trying to avoid a projected future, you only end up creating it. classic macbeth shit. if there's anyone in this story who viscerally understands that vicious narratological cycle, it's Rose Lalonde. so rather than pushing back, warning her friends, trying to rally the troops, she instead accepts that her universe's survival requires sacrifice, namely Major Character Death.

in this way, her so-called suicide wind is an echo of Dirk's own suicide in Candy, albeit towards existentially opposite purposes. and in that sense it's an equally selfish act, because who knows! maybe they *could* have done something substantial to prepare for Epigone's coming if Rose had bothered to warn anyone! but such is the passive nihilism of our beloved Seer, whose death could never be anything less than a dramatic tragedy. this was, in fact, an exercise in absolute agency-- Rose chose to accept her fate rather than fight back against it, perhaps even vibed with how poetic it was to be decapitated by her own beloved wife.

all of this is very relevant to the future of godfeels-- i didn't put her at the center of a load-bearing polycule just to have her death be meaningless. :)

#sarahposts #godfeels #rose lalonde #spoilers

[fanficfanattic]

Word game Wednesday! *Glances around my room wildly* cool, write, window? (I like giving three, I feel like that's good odds for at least one)

You have stumbled upon gold m’dear. Five responses below the cut.

Cool

From Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: Todd and Amanda have their first real, big fight after they’ve reconciled.

Todd is secure enough in their relationship that he doesn’t hold himself back. From another perspective, all her time with the Rowdies has eroded Amanda’s impulse control and she carries a wand.

“Amanda, what the fuck?” Todd is trying to look at his back and see if she’s given him a tail or something. She cackled at his accurate impression of a beautiful, dumb but loving golden retriever.

“Seriously, this isn’t cool. What did you do to me?”

She answered in a syrupy sweet singsong “You’llllllll seeeeeeeeee.” The satisfaction, the peace in her soul, the way her boys and Beast will roar with laughter when she recounts this later...she should have done this the day she got a wand.

Write

1) From my constantly evolving platonic a/b/o fic, Georgie meets the gang and has a heart to heart with Ted about how long it was just her and Jamie against the world. (Also this was started before realizing that Georgie must have wanted to keep the house Jamie grew up in and they just used the right to buy scheme.) (There is also a bonus because your third word also appears in this one.)

“You know how I met Simon?” Georgie asks. She knows he doesn’t know, because before the two of them walked in, he’d only known Jamie had parents in the theoretical sense. The question itself was rhetorical, though, and if Jamie were conscious he might have something to say about all the fancy sounding words.

“When Jamie got his first few checks, he followed Pep’s suggestions to the letter. How much to save, how much to invest, what kind of early purchases were responsible splurges. Apparently everyone gets a fancy wash bag? The fuck did we know about any of that?” She snorted, hand still moving softly along her son’s upper arm. Before pointing to his crossbody bag that probably cost as much as that first bag did.

“Then he got me a fucking house. A house!!! We were in a council flat his whole life until then, and he asked what I wanted, which was for him to be secure. But he insisted, and he was going to be with me for at least 2 more years, yeah. So fuck.

And we didn’t know anything about that sort of thing, so it was Pep advising again. Which included getting all sorts of inspections and the like. After it were done, I didn’t know what kind of upkeep that means, yeah? And we were definitely the poorest family on the team, at least before then, but it weren’t like everyone were rich either. So I asked around. Couldn’t be more embarrassing than if we burned it down not knowing something normal folks do.

One of the older lads’ parents said that windows, gutters, and roofs are all things that need to be looked at kind of regularly. Which sounded mental to me, windows? But I got the number of a company and sort of threw myself on their mercy. And they sent Simon round, right?”

And Ted sort of nodded, because she obviously meant to be agreed with, regardless of how only the three of them could have known that.

“And he said to me that everything was new enough the only way I’d need to replace the windows was if I didn’t like something about the ones already there. Or wanted to remodel. We picked the damned thing out because we already liked it as it were.

But I appreciated he didn’t try to con me into something just to make a sale, and asked if he knew much about all the ins and outs of home repair. He said he did, and I offered to make him supper if he could help me write everything down so I wouldn’t miss a trick.

Had Jamie when I were only 16, so I didn’t finish school or nothing, and some men like to make you feel stupid for not knowing what they know. But not Simon. He were sweet to me. And Jamie were the only other person who’d ever had anything nice to say about me cooking. So he were two-fer-two on being respectful.

I waited about a month and then called him up to ask about plumbing or something. Can’t remember now, it was mostly just a chance to talk to him again. And we were married by the time Jamie were done with academy.”

2) And from the investigative journalist fic:

“I only had one coach I ever thought maybe I could talk to about how bad me brain sometimes got. Tried to even.”

“How did that go?”

“Said I couldn’t train cause I were hurt, guess I didn’t realize that’s not the word you use when its something inside who you are.”

“You didn’t get a chance to explain?”

“No, not really. Started yelling at me, cause he thought I were throwing a strop.”

“But if you’d cut him off-“

“That’s just it though. Da’ got me all trained up in that being a dangerous fucking thing to do. Interrupting a man what has power over you. When they’re already angry? So the same thing that happens when me da gets like that happened.”

“And that is?”

“Whatever makes me…me? Just slips away for a bit.”

“You dissociate?”

“Fuck, that’s the word! Me therapist used it the other day and I meant to write it down. D’ya mind?”

Window

1) From a DGHDA fic where a boobytrap hits Todd with a curse. Within this you get to see my greatest party trick, where I mean to look something up and put a placeholder in the spot. (Also I do not remember what I was planning with the idea of Loki’s Marble because so far as I know I entirely made that concept up lmao).

He didn’t stir even a little bit while getting him into the backseat, where they had him slump against the door to stay mostly upright. At least Farah was well practice in getting a seatbelt on a passed out Dirk or Todd. Dirk would have climbed in after him, but Farah needed him to navigate them out of the forest. They were barely out of the dense forest area, back to roads that saw regular upkeep, when they heard Todd groan. Farah pulled off to the side, at a convenient scenic overlook with a little clearing for travelers to park. She and Dirk both turned in their seats to see him blinking owlishly and then put his hand to his head.

“Hey, how you feeling Todd?” Farah asked, keeping her voice low in case he had a headache.

He looked up at her curiously, and then looked out the window before whipping his head back to stare at them.

“Whe’we?” He tiredly slurred out. Farah and Dirk exchanged concerned glances. But they turned back and Dirk quietly said, “Just outside of BLANK forest.”

“Why?”

“Do you...not remember us looking for Loki’s marble?” He tried to keep the worry out of his voice but Dirk’s eyes were wild when he looked at Farah. She didn’t look happy but also didn’t seem quite as concerned as Dirk. But it did sound like Todd might have a concussion.

2) Also from something I just shared the other day. Season 1 Jamie exchanges himself for Phoebe’s safety and is being held hostage.

“He received this text at 7:18pm” and the screen showed a mocked up phone, enlarged, and with a click of a button, a photo appeared in the message field.

“It was from a number not saved in his phone, and traced to a woman in Poland. She has been cleared, so we suspect a skimmer was used to create a false number.”

The image was of Phoebe sitting at the dining room table of her home with Roy’s sister. It was taken through the front window into the room and had a crosshairs image over it.

#todd brotzman #amanda brotzman #dirk gently’s holistic detective agency #dghda #jamie tartt #georgie ted lasso #jamie’s mum georgie #simon ted lasso #jamie’s stepdad simon #ted lasso #alpha beta omega #a/b/o dynamics #a/b/o verse #mental health issues #therapy #dissociation #held hostage au

[itsbenedict]

ok so im reading through Almost Nowhere and i have Complaints about it's structure and wanted to vent but also not to the point of actually commenting on the thing itself. (its a Well-made story. this all comes from a place of admiration/love for the thing so i didnt want to put it in a public tag)

So after seeing you reblog the ending announcement i started reading it. current spot is chapter xxi, or sylvie vs hector's forces. (is sylvie just a jadesprite expy. is hector just a Dirk/Dave. is that what is going on. ugh it figures. anyway.)

pros: premise fills that timeline bullshit appetite, and has some fascinating evolutions of its timeline and the puzzle therein. the actual setup and climax of the Annes escape story was very exciting, and the notebooks are a fascinating conceit. and the entire story could be summarized as "hey aliens put everyone in mini The Matrix realities and people gotta figure out how to deal with that/escape?" which is a pretty good premise. the Annes were my favorite part.

cons:

due to being about timeline bullshit and specifically miscommunication causing disaster, it also is incredibly hard to parse even when it's trying to be clear. i get the multiple narrator conceit, and i get that Azad is glued to a thesaurus, but it feels like its getting in it's own way way more often than not. Its doing the "im using the more complicated word to sound smart rather than be accurate or communicate my message" thing, and its hard to parse how much of that is purposeful. I found it exhausting after a few hundred pages.

as time loops are a core aspect of the story, most of the characters feel like they have very little actual impact or agency on the plot. they're protagonists as designated, but grant and cordelia do very little of note- where i am now Grant's basically just a guy to get explained at and he got addicted to a sub-reality game for a while. he is important because sylvie is his dog, but beyond pining for Azad and getting things explained to him, Grant doesnt feel like he Does anything

however Grant is still my favorite character because he's the only one who actually says "what the fuck are you talking about, explain it better" which the entire text desperately needs.

its gotten to the point that the text's own coy obfuscation of itself has made me disconnect from caring about the characters- and that's Poisonous.

the story makes its Stakes either too big or too small. its either about a characters self doubts or its about finding a way to escape a reality by killing it's god. but theres very little in-between, or focuses on how one relates to the other. its hard to care when the stakes are too high (unrelateable), and its hard to care when theyre too low for too long (character feels whiny and passive).

its best done in the Annes story- her personal turmoil over her incredibly bizarre circumstances leading to resentment and action- killing her father-god- were united and flowed into each other. usually an escalation of stakes is accompanied by development of character. but beyond the Annes, i feel like there are no characters who have developed. theres no proactivity that feels like itll actually change things. its just characters that have been acted upon (not-entertaining). (and i get that time loop bullshit makes that point hard but its also sapping the enjoyment of reading the overall story itself and needs to be addressed.)

at this point i feel like the plot has become concerned with it's own telling, which is arguably what's actually happening- everything is being written because timeloop bullshit demands it and everyone caught inside is powerless to struggle against it, including the audience- but im not finding it entertaining anymore. I want to care about the characters more, but the text is reinforcing it's own disassociation-themes to the point where its getting unfun to read.

to be fair- i did read up to where i am over the course of two days, which is a Lot to take in at once. even on release this wasnt a story thats binge-friendly and im probably bouncing off of it's weirdness because i havent had time to digest it. However it's fascinating in its setups- in the questions it asks and the puzzles of the world, its just failing to provide characters that match. and maybe it has, and has just been presented deliberately obtusely and i missed the point- (which is an in-text theme! But also I can't explore that theme if the audience's participation is lost so it still is a Bad Thing!) which i would also argue is a Problem, not a success.

anyway anyway Flower that Bloomed Nowhere slaps and its mystery structure serves as a great device to convey the otherwise Intricate worldbuilding (and i like how said worldbuilding is usually introduced only as it has context to a Motive or as a Clue because it makes said worldbuilding feel meaningful which is nice) and im excited to see what happens next hope you have a good day byeeeee

hm- well, uh, i think a pretty good chunk of AN's readership is in my general orbit on here, so you're gonna get roughly the same effect as putting it in the tag, but-

i mean, the thing with AN is that... the main thing you're down on it for is sort of the whole game it's playing. first it introduces a concept in a bizarre, flowery, obfuscatory way that's playing around with language- and then it does that again, and again, from various angles, with different sorts of obfuscation, so you slowly get a picture of the concept through a sort of blind-men-and-the-elephant process. that's the fun of it, that's the game, doing a deep dive on the presentational tomfoolery to try and figure out what's going on before it just tells you.

that's what Grant's there for- he says "what the fuck are you talking about, explain it better", after it's already gone a few rounds of deliberately not explaining it clearly, and given you a chance to chew on it and try and piece it together for yourself. he's the answer key at the end of the puzzle, the way the story signposts "okay, so by this point you should pretty much Get this concept".

if you're just blasting through it to try to absorb the content as directly as possible, i can see the way the story presents itself kind of working against you, yeah. it's not trying to be obtuse for no reason- it's being obtuse because the process of grappling with the obtuse is the main selling point. if you don't like doing that, if it just bugs you when the story won't just say what it wants to say, yeah, it's not gonna be a good fit.

i kind of agree that some of the character arcs seem a little weak- like, i'm not entirely positive what Cordelia's doing here? what the point of her is? and- oh, god, don't tell Cordelia i said that, that's exactly what the poor thing doesn't need to hear.

but i think that's a product of... like, these aren't all supposed to be protagonists of a story. they're primarily lenses into the story, different perspectives on what's happening. they're part of the mechanics of the game, sources of new narration to use as part of the puzzle. grant doesn't really do anything, in-story, sure- but he's extremely active in nailing down concepts.

"the plot has become concerned with it's own telling"- yep. that's what it's doing. it's kind of always been doing that. personally, i like that!

i might have a bias here due to... having been following it on a serial basis for years since chapter 1? like, that's a format that lends itself well to the way the story wants to be engaged with, the slow and meticulous reading that leaves lots of time for contemplation. i'm not sure if i can evaluate how well that all works archivally- whether this is just a matter of differing preferences in how to consume fiction, or if structurally it's somehow encouraging a shallower reading that it doesn't reward as much.

#almost nowhere spoilers #no quibbles re: flower you're just right

[4lph4kidz]

(Same Dirk Anon)

I def read Dirk's splinters as more uhhh 'possibilities' - this COULD be you, if you let it be, and they reflect certain truths about your character that you need to come to terms with.

I guess the way I tend to think of it is, like- Davesprite broke Jade's heart, and got angry at Dave about it in Game Over. It's pointless to actually hold Dave accountable for that, but there's no denying that had he been in Davesprite's position he could or would have acted the exact same way. In that regard, I find it pretty pointless to actively hold Dirk accountable for anything AR does independent of Dirk's awareness or control; but because Dirk is so willing to immediately assume the worst of himself and take some level of ownership over his splinters that Dave would never do for Davesprite (or Jade, Jadesprite) I see him getting conflated with his splinters a LOT more often.

Ofc, selves are a complicated matter in Homestuck. Karkat's memo shenanigans are pretty indicative of that, though those are less 'possibilities' and more 'closed time loops', I guess. But even then, they serve as a purpose for Karkat to learn more about himself, even if it's more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than Dirk and his splinters are.

On AR and Dirk's agency, the amount of control Dirk actually has seems somewhat limited - assuming you don't think Dirk should just straight up murder the AR, which is an argument I've seen made. I would say that AR goes to prove Dirk has a lot less agency than he thinks he does - I'm reminded of Dirk giving that whole spiel to Jane about how he's going to mastermind the session, but ends up running to Calliope for advice on what to do the second something went wrong.

Or his claims that he can control his Dream Self perfectly, but almost got killed failing to do just that and ended up zoning out so much he was too late to warn Jane about Roxy's bomb. The bomb thing is interesting, because AR also chose not to warn her despite being FULLY capable of doing so, which indicates to me that... yeah, they're on different wavelengths here.

Or - Unite/Synchronise once Dirk's actual plans to enter the session go very obviously to shit, but even that's left ambiguous as to who actually orchestrated it. AR makes the most sense to me, though. I'm reminded of Scratch's High Stakes Timeline Wrangling - I was masochistic enough to read Hussie's authors notes, and iirc he mentioned something about Scratch being so competent because one of his components was a supercomputer.

Honestly, I read AR and Dirk's convo as soft confirmation that AR and Dirk weren't accurate 1=1 reflections of each other anymore. The conversation starts with AR blowing off Roxy trying to call Dirk for help, and ends with him asking Dirk "so can suicide fix this problem?" Strider if he's afraid to die. AR is what Dirk could have been, but currently isn't, but still contains a multitude of truths about himself that are uncomfortable to look at. ...but that's not the conclusion Dirk seems to come to, which I guess is what I meant when I thought Dirk wasn't being meaningfully challenged on what his splinters mean about himself.

(...which is still all setting aside the Jake thing. Jake pretty accurately pinned AR as a Dirk with 'no accountability, that just wants to screw with him' which... Dirk isn't happy about, but dirk and jake and dirk's splinters is a whole other nightmare.)

This all checks out with me as reading Dirk as a kid that's not as smart as he thinks he is getting a succession of reality checks straight to the face during the session. And then he's just kind of left dangling with the last one, which doesn't... really feel like a conclusion to his arc, but it's still better than what Jake got? It really feels like they just barely dug into the meat of Dirk's character before. All that.

feel free to ignore this, i just like rambling about dirk because he's absolutely fascinating and yet... done so goddamn dirty by the narrative. he is the bug i have under a microscope. i want to read all the conversations kidnapped PQ!Dirk has with Ult!Dirk so badly.

there's a lot of great kanaya quotes but i think the moment i realised she was like, one of my forever faves, was. "Impromputations".

Yeah! That's very much the read that makes the most sense to me, though it is still a very character-focused perspective and I try to keep other ways of framing things in the back of my mind. And I'd be more likely to agree he was 'done dirty by the narrative' if you take post canon into the picture but tbh I think being a Jake-liking individual has sort of lowered the bar for me when it comes to Homestuck's character biases... At least the author thought Dirk was interesting enough to take him seriously and address his stuff with some depth.

Generally speaking HS's concluding arcs were so messy that pretty much every single character was left wanting in one way or another, with the exception of maybe Dave, but I do still think Dirk is actually one of the better handled/more fleshed out characters? Seeing as he's one of only a handful who even had an identifiable arc and got something approaching a resolution for the better. Not everything was addressed or wrapped up neatly of course, and he sure isn't in a very HAPPY place, but still. I still took it as an ultimately positive ending for him. Maybe that's just because I'm generally okay with the ending of Homestuck as a whole, despite noting its many faults, mostly because I think its a miracle something as convoluted as Homestuck even made it to the end at all. That doesn't mean I'm not disappointed and don't love seeing other people explore what the comic didn't, I'm just relatively at peace with the fact that resolving characters wasn't really a priority for the work I guess.

#feels like the charactersare trapped in the machinations of some impersonal system that doesn't really care about them as individuals #which is at least thematically apropriate #this is without even getting into the author vs character and author vs audience thing going on #anon #Hope you didn't mind me basically talking past you earlier you just brought up a topic I happen to find really interesting #really what's missing is a lot of the middle of dirk's arc i think. who's to say how bad his behaviour is when we only see so much of it

[bawdabaw]

What are your top three favourite actors and their characters and what is your current hyperfixation??

Thank you for the question! I have such a hard time narrowing it down. But these are the ones I got swirling around in my bonker lately. Very eye catching, like candy.

Chris Evans from Knives Out and The Grey Man. And those films specifically because 1. I like him playing an asshole and 2. He makes the mustache work. Not really into it when he's a goody two shoes or nice guy. I want to watch more of him being just a charming, arrogant prick to people.

Sam Rockwell from anything(he essentially plays this one character really well and honestly I don't hate it at all that it is the same dude in all his movies). But most recently from The Way Way Back and Mr. Right. He's charming, glib, immature, clever. And the scruff looks good. More of that weird geeky dancing that he thinks looks good, please. Heh.

Michael Eklund in EVERYTHING and Anything. Specifically, I like him in Dirk Gently's Hollistic Detective Agency and Wynonna Earp. But truly, this has been a years years long obsession with him that just refuses to go away. Tall, lanky, a knife of a smile, and he is versatile, can play villains, anti-heros, good regular guys, and bumbling buffoons.

And my current hyperfixation is Boyd Holbrook, specifically prompted by the Corinthian and Clement Mansell. But I've been doing a special dance with him for years. But now I can't put him down. He's getting so much work right now and my eyes are glued to the screen.

This list typically shifts every 6-10 months. Sam is a recent addition because I saw a thing the other day and he bit me again. Chris has been on there ever since I saw Grey Man last year and couldn't stop rewatching it. And like I said, Michael is cemented in place, a veteran of the list.

#boyd holbrook #michael eklund #chris evans #sam rockwell #bawda talks #celebrity crushes

[capriciouslyterminal]

Self Rec Game

Shout out to @flashyysins for tagging me into doing something I always want to do but NEVER feel comfortable with (talking about my work). Thank you for tagging me!

Rules: recommend three of your own fics (1 most popular, two hidden gems) then tag some people!

Most Popular

It is almost a relief to see that it's Eddie Munson on the chair and not some huge random guy. That is until Eddie's eyes crinkle open and his face goes from blind terror to bemused, the way he's curled up like a bug at the noise slipping into something languid and easy.

It's almost a relief until the prick smiles like a lunatic and Steve has to think of course, this fucking guy, because Eddie Munson may be the weirdest person Steve's ever met.

AKA Two Years of Lifeguarding, One Morning of Finding Eddie Munson Asleep on a Deck Chair

The one that started it all lol. Asshole Steve + Asshole Eddie + The Odd Twilight Intimacy of a shirtless lifeguard and a pot-head who needs to get a watch. They don't kiss but do they need to?

Hidden Gems

The Rowdy 3 is a name they give themselves, stitched together from words they collect in the underbelly of Project Blackwing and the way they live as four in one over the course of five years. It's better than Project Incubus but it starts with just Martin and Cross and Gripps and Vogel. It starts in Project Blackwing. Well it really starts with Martin meeting a suit in a bar.

It starts with Martin on the road. A song in his gut that rhymes with hunger that three other voices know too.

And it keeps going from there, just as The Universe intends.

(AKA The Rowdy Three in Project Blackwing).

Not Steddie but listen I think this is the best thing I've ever written. Okay if you haven't watched Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency then that's a hidden gem for you. It's...the perfect show? Two seasons of the zaniest most well-connected story telling I've ever seen. Featuring The Rowdy 3, some almost vampires who re-wrote my brain chemistry so hard I cry about them whenever I'm like...real drunk. Last summer I kind of...went off the rails and wrote essentially a novel about them/Project Blackwing (a secret government prison). This is that novel, my magnum opus. My manuscript I'd save from vikings because I spent my whole life on it. A friend says I should submit this to graduate school for applications and sometimes I'm tempted lol.

If they had a Van Helsing it was Nancy Wheeler, and if they had a leader Eddie would honestly say Henderson was giving them all a run for their money (God help them when the kid got a drivers license and didn’t need them anymore). And all Steve Harrington seemed to do was make Eddie want to save the world to spite him. To say stand back dipshit this is how you do a heroic sacrifice notice how my hair’s messed up in a way that isn’t tantalizing even while dripping with muck and I’m still wearing my fucking shirt.

So, no, Steve Harrington sailing in at the last possible second wasn’t on Eddie’s death bingo card. And yet, here it was. A one man army. A guy who once earnestly wore a baby-blue sweater wrapped around his shoulders and definitely was part of the goon squad that once flew Eddie’s gym bag up the flagpole and left him naked in the locker-room. One of the last people Eddie Munson would have ever expected to save his sorry-ass life.

And honestly it was kind of hot. This causes its own new kind of problems.

(AKA Obligatory Steve Harrington Sailing in to Save the Day Fic. AKA Eddie Munson develops a crush at the worst possible moment of his life and starts to get it).

When it comes down to it this is my favorite of my babies so far just in how specific the detail work is and how...pretty it got to be. Super shout out to this just being born from the fact that Eddie would be a horn dog for Aragorn and how he visualizes his fictional crush would entirely be changed by someone actually saving his life. Also just the work I got to do with Wayne.

And that's all of them. I'm tagging @fastcardotmp3 @courtjestermunsonestereddiemunson and @sparklyslug (though if you've been tagged before it's my bad and if you wanna be tagged just let me know).

#my fic #fic rec post #Stranger Things fic #Dirk Gently fic #my precious too wordy babies #Thank you for tagging me!

[seavoice]

6, 10, and 12 for the book thing!

6. Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?

Piranesi by Susannah Clarke and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. Also I had planned to reread Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but it didn't happen :(

10. What was your favorite new release of the year?

The Education of Yuri by Jerry Pinto, it was exquisite <3 Loved it.

12. Any books that disappointed you?

So many, unfortunately. Great year for the hater part of me. The worst offender definitely was The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph because everything I'd heard about it made me think it would be great + people whose taste I adore loved it + I ENJOYED THE FIRST BOOK I READ OF HIS. which had a premise I didn't care for!!! so ugh that sucked. Runners up but more in a gentle dislike way, as in expectations were not met: Normal People was not up my alley and Greywaren...you know my thoughts on Greywaren. Not the way you end a series.

#thank you mwah <3 #doughfaceddcpig #asks

[namimikan]

what’s kind of aggravating about lex luthor, defender of the human race, is that his trajectory to see himself as a protector for earth is there, it’s used so often to begin with! he wants to protect people against lionel, if clark comes to him for help, he always does find a way to protect and look after people. lex luthor would rather let himself die than other people, for most part. like, look, the word protect is kind of -- one of the most important words in lex’s vocab since s1. 

so him seeing himself as the chosen protecter, like he theorizes about sageeth being the only one who can fight against naman, it’s... there.

but! i’d also feel like it’s half-baked.

yeah, i think the show does an okay job at lex gradually getting disillusioned with aliens, i think it’s fairly good at lex being xenophobic bc like. he keeps on being taken advantage of, clark, brainiac, zod, etc.

what i can’t quite figure out is when he decides that it’s... kind of okay to make humans expendable to. why it becomes okay to treat lana like shit.

(and yes, fine, he does say that a lot of it was to protect her, luthors will do morally dubious things to protect people, clark will do a lot of damaging things in order to protect people/himself, but this goddamn show and it’s double standards about x can have secrets but no one else can, and then y comes along and tries to do the exact same thing, and they’ll get into an argument and not get a resolution, and the choice about secrets, agency and respect never fully do come in alignment bc someone is gotta be in control, and who that is, and who the right person is, is never given a good reflection on tbqh, and they will always, always use the whole but i was protecting you argument which feels like bs, after a while.)

you’d think it would be when he joins luthor corp, both dismantling his father’s projects, and then also creating his own projects. bc, i do think he could have had an arc similar to ken’s in dirk gently’s holistic detective agency, ymmv, but, i enjoyed how the more he read up on the company files, the more he was like. invested in what else his company had to offer, what else he could change. so when bart tells ken that the voice (instinct? higher power?) says that she should kill him, he understands, but he’s almost so rationale about it that it doesn’t matter, she’s locked up, and he’s in control of a company that will continue to do more and more experiments bc he’s fascinated by what results can be gained. always gutted this show did not get a s3 tbh. but basically, lex’s fascination could have maybe been given more depth, in this sense, but it felt too offscreen and like i’m supposed to give more merit to a couple of lines here and there than i actually do.

but i’m just. finding it kind of difficult when trying to find the part where lex does ultimately think that in order to protect humanity, the more extreme decisions he makes, where humans do get hurt, is worth the risk. in order to protect humanity, he must sacrifice humanity.

bc like, he should still be protective over meteor infected people.  they are humans, infected or not. they are citizens of the world, that lex should believe that he has the right, the chosen role, to protect. metahumans, he should protect them as well. they’re all earth born.

clark and kara, tho. on the other hand. are not. 

in the world where lex believes himself the hero of the story, and clark and kara and others are the enemy, the invaders... why shouldn’t he turn against them? he is not the villain in this version that exists in his head.

and i’m just not convinced the show quite got there, but the threads are there.

#sv talk

[being-of-rain]

I think the best (and funniest) example of Doctor Who’s hilarious approach to canon and consistency is the series of 4 animated webcasts posted on the BBCi website in 2001-2003. They were official and at the time they were the closest thing to televised Doctor Who.

Death Comes to Time (2001-2002)- Stars the Seventh Doctor. Despite being made as a pilot for the series of Doctor Who webcasts, it takes a wildly different and contradictory approach to the Doctor and his species than the actual show, and then kills the Doctor in the end. Stephen Fry plays a Time Lord in it who got a non-BBC spin-off audio series in 2011 (no longer played by Fry).

Real Time (2002)- Stars the Sixth Doctor and his companion Evelyn Smythe, a character from the Big Finish audios who receives no introduction or explanation in Real Time for those not purchasing her audios. The story’s ending reveals that Evelyn will eventually become the future leader of the Cybermen... a cliffhanger which has never resolved, and probably never will considering the character died in an audio released almost a decade later.

Shada (2003)- An adaptation of the unfinished and unbroadcast 1979 Doctor Who story of the same name, a story which has received a truly ridiculous amount of adaptations before and after the 2003 version (perhaps most famously the original Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency novel, which itself has received many adaptations). This version of the story inserts a completely different Doctor into the sotry, the Eighth Doctor, as the original Tom Baker was not accepting Doctor Who roles at the time (Tom Baker later acted in a different animated version of Shada in 2017). As a bonus feature, characters from Shada 2003 were animated dancing to a Kylie Minogue song (youtube link here).

Scream of the Shalka (2003)- Stars well-known British actor Richard E. Grant as a completely original Doctor, and when it started production the story was intended to be the official continuation of televised Doctor Who. This title was taken from it a few months before its first episode aired, when plans for a live action Doctor Who revival headed by Russell T Davies were announced by the BBC. David Tennant had an uncredited role in Shalka with 3 lines before dying.

Just... the wild, wild discrepancies between these stories that were supposed to be one series. Imagine living in 2003 and trying to get into Doctor Who with these. The show doesn’t have a consistent canon and this series still rips it in 4 different ways at once. Impeccable.

#Doctor Who #big finish #scream of the shalka #shada #evelyn smythe #etc #I'm sorry but I was thinking of these stories recently and how they technically supposed to make one series and it's just hilarious #my posts #six #seven #eight #shalka #ace #evelyn #romana #alison

[h3rmitsunited]

Ao3 First Lines

Got tagged by @hbdttg Thanks!

Rules: post the first lines of your 10 most recently published ao3 stories (if you have less than 10 fics posted, post the first lines of all your fics)

For Whom the Bell(Hop) Tolls - Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency - WIP - 8.6k

It was a name like any other name, and by that, he meant it had letters and was words that were meant to refer to a person.

Backdraft - Stranger Things (Steddie) - WIP - 14.0k

Steve was sitting at the lunch table, two weeks after the start of school.

Leaky Pipes - Stranger Things (Steddie) - Complete - Rated E - 8.1k

There was an awkward moment of silence when Eddie swung the front door open and came face-to-face with what was most likely the hottest man he had ever seen.

Stolen Pleasures - Stranger Things (Steddie) - Complete - Rated E - 3.1k

He was panting like he was running a marathon, fingers scratching and digging into Eddie's back, lips hanging open and eyes squeezed closed.

Tiger Stripes - Stranger Things (Steddie) - Complete - 1.8k

The Party gets used to looking out for signs that Eddie is hurt.

A Blanket Bed in the Corner - Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency - Complete - 2.1k

They get to Hobbs’ small house late that night.

Silver & Honey - The Witcher - WIP - Rated E - 68.6k

Geralt shoved through the crumbling remains of the door, stumbling into the space that the portal had just been.

Just Wear the Blue One - Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency - Complete - 2.9k

"Todd, relax," Dirk said, wiggling his feet on the floor as he sat watching Todd from the end of the bed. "It's going to be fine."

The Valentine’s Bunny - Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency - Complete - 2.6k

Todd woke up, mostly as he usually did, bleary-eyed, aches and tight muscles shouting at him, because as much as he would like to think he was still a somewhat young man, he was in his thirties and people in their thirties apparently didn’t get to wake up without some part of their body reminding them of that fact, and letting out a half-groan/half-yawn that Dirk loves to make fun of him for.

We’ll Never Let You Go - Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency - Complete - 1.5k

Dirk watches Todd walk away.

I was surprised to see that these were all posted (almost) in just the past year (plus like a month and a half). I feel like I’ve been in such a slump, but also I’ve written, and actually posted way more than I had in a lot of my other years on Ao3, so like, kudos to myself lol.

Tagging (if you want to or you haven’t already been tagged somewhere else because I don’t pay enough attention to this): @generalized-incompetence @clockworkcheetah @goatyoat @krikkiter68

#dghda #steddie #geraskier #dirk gently's holistic detective agency #the witcher #stranger things #dirk gently #ao3 first lines #fanfic #writing #jaskier

[wakraya]

Hey Wakraya, I got a question that's kind of serious? It's about how we interrupt fictional characters. So like I don't really care one way or the other about June, she doesn't effect my well being simply put, but I wonder why it's easier to make June a character instead of a new character? Well she is new by technicality, she's not "John", but a version who transitioned. You can interrupt pretty much any character in Homestuck or any other fictional work however you want, because that's the freedom of choice and people like having fun. The only time I see that being not the case is say you take a character like Kanaya, who only ever is seen liking girls, and have her go on a cute date with any of the male cast as fanart. Ultimately that piece of art won't radically change who she is, a girl who likes other girls, but the mere sight of it's existence will probably rub some folks the wrong way because it's like erasing Kanaya's clearly homosexual/homoromantic identity. Meanwhile you could take, say Dad Egbert/Crocker and have him in a relationship with Bro and that's just dandy. To go back to June, she hasn't made her debute in canon yet, but as the team has said before, or encouraged, Canon is yours to make of it. By that same logic someone can just make Kanaya bi or Dirk ace, which at best would be met with indifferent shrugs and at worst throw more infighting among the LGBT+ community. So my question is; if your fictional character is cis do they not have the same agency over their identity? Because anyone who identifies as heterosexual/heteromantic has nothing to lose, from a fictional stand point. I mean it's for the better to have more lgbt so just make more trans characters off of previous characters. Who would it hurt? Why not take it further and just make a whole trans universe within Homestuck? I don't think there's a simple answer, but I still want to here your input as someone who's had a lot of passion for this kind of stuff. 🤔

I think you're phrasing all of this in a really complex and confusing manner. First of all, let me answer: Fictional characters are fictional. None of them have agency, because what we see from them in canon is decided by whoever wrote them or drew them to be that way. This is not a problem with Agency, but Interpretation. Fandom can interpret characters in various ways, but we live in a very bullshit society that says that certain things like 'Straight', and 'Cis' are default. When a character is trans, or gay, or bi, or ace, or anything, that is a deviation from the standard we're used to. Sure, things have gotten better, but they have not gotten Amazing. You will still find stereotypes, and people complaining, and erasure- And that's kind of the issue? If you take a character that's straight and make them gay, literally a majority of characters out there in media can fill their place. If it affects you that, I don't know, "Oh no, Spiderman kissed a boy-" ask yourself WHY that bothers you exactly, because I can think of very few reasons other than homophobia and being a canon elitist that can only think of Spiderman with his Classic Waifu for that to be the case.

But also, let us go back a little bit. You are mistaken. June is not 'A different, transitioned version of John'. June is an exploration of the very same character. She's not being 'changed to be trans'. She's the same exact person. She's being expanded upon and explored through a trans lens. There's a massive difference. This is not a change, not a retcon, not a shift. This is trans writers, identifying with a character's vibe, reading their story and what they're going through, and saying, hey, I vibe with that too. What if she's an egg? What if we write her like this? Of course you can make a new character and make them trans. But why is it bad or different to expand a character like this? There's no reason why June should be cis. There's no reason why most characters are cis, really. A majority of characters that are presumably cis, simply do not deal or talk about gender stuff. Hell, for all of Homestuck, June is between 13 and 16. I was pretty sure I was a cis, mostly straight guy when I was that age. I had not even a concept of WHAT being trans was. What is so unrealistic or immersion breaking or weird about a character figuring out their gender feels?

So my question back at you is- Does it bother you for a character you thought was cis/straight to be written otherwise? If it doesn't bother you, why even delve into a discussion like this? And if it does bother you- How do you feel queer people with way less representation feel when they can never see themselves in media without going through hoops and difficulties, if at all?

#Representation #June Egbert #Trans #ask #media #homestuck

[somerabbitholes]

Hi!How are you ? I wanted to ask you about something. I would appreciate any info you can provide on this or anything related to this. If you're busy i totally understand. No worries.

I learnt about this today.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CTXNm8psak1/?utm_medium=copy_link

Why was this history never taught, never spoken so much. Like it was non existent. It broke my heart to read about this. What do you think about this and the lack of knowledge about this? Don't such stories matter? Is it because they were women? The boisterous freedom speeches describing colonialism, our history textbooks so many media outlets but i hear this story today!!!??

Please suggest any books that i can read to learn more about this and stories most of the history books leave out.

Thank you.

hello! i’m sorry this took long, it’s festival season and i’ve been busy at home.

if you mean why it wasn’t taught in schools, then that’s a tricky question. because on the one hand these are obviously very important stories and school textbooks have typically had biases that need correction, but also on the other hand, school textbooks would typically be devoid of the nuance you learn in college while studying labour and everything. this history is taught in college, and has in fact been a pretty big deal for the past fifty years when you’re studying colonialism and gender or labour histories. there is also always new research being done on this in academia, and always new books being written on this. feminist and subaltern history has in fact done wonderfully well in indian academia. so, you know, we talk about it all the time in college.

not all of it always translates into popular histories — which i’m guessing is what you mean by why this is never talked about — and why that doesn’t happen is complicated. sometimes there is obvious politics, like how with the freedom movement the congress occupies most of the space (you can guess who that helps), or how tribal leaders are hardly ever mentioned; or how with medieval india the north is prioritized and the south or the northeast largely ignored. but also, more importantly, there is always new work being done, there are always new sources that someone accesses, and in that sense no work of history is complete, because something more could be discovered that changes everything. and because the time we live in changes, older sources are always being read and reread and lead to new interpretations: like recently queer histories have grown, so we’ve gone back to ancient hindu and indic writings and combed through them again with a clearer picture of what to look for.

and that’s something that has been happening lately; there have been more diverse stories written and brought into the mainstream over the last seven-ish years. these are the most recent ones that have been well-received —

the coolie's great war: indian labour in a global conflict, 1914-1921 by radhika singha: about the non-combatant indian labour that was part of the first world war; looks at how the war was fought on the backs of such labour

lady doctors: the untold stories of india's first women in medicine by kavitha rao: how women became doctors and accessed medicine in the 19th century; looks at how they navigated caste, family, gender tensions

makers of modern dalit history by sudarshan ramabadran and guru prakash paswan: short biographical collection about people who have been important to dalit history; also looks at how dalit agency worked in modern india through these stories

 ayo gorkhali by tim i. gurung: it’s about the gorkha kingdom, the people, and particularly how they were militarized during the encounter with the british

most of these build on the academic work that has existed since about the 1980s in india —

elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial india by ranajit guha: looks at how peasant consciousness developed in colonial india, it’s a pioneering book, and ranajit guha gave birth to subaltern studies so a classic, really. his other work is great too, and if you want a more theoretical work, check dominance without hegemony

labour matters: towards global histories by sabyasachi bhattacharya: an anthology about global labour and also about how history needs to be transnational, especially while studying things like mobility

castes of mind by nicholas dirks: about how caste identities and categories were created/reinforced in colonial india and its implications for modern india

an endangered history by angma dey zhala: it’s about the chittagong region and how religion, colonialism, culture, and ethnicity interacted and how european encounter changed (or not changed) the region

ayahs, lascars, and princes by rozina visram: about indians in britain during the empire days, probably the most relevant to what you asked

thuggee by kim wagner: about banditry in 19th century india and how it emerged in the specific context created by colonial socio-economic policy; how it was further criminalised

for popular histories you can keep track of publishers, that way you’ll know anything new that’s being written. aryan books does indic histories, navayana is great for all writings on dalit history; then there are the big ones who are better with popular history (penguin, harper collins, rupa etc). academic publishers (oxford and cambridge university presses, springer, brill, routledge etc) are also good if you’d like conventionally academic writing.

and also lastly, the instagram page that you got your story from is great! there are so many of these coming up lately who bring history and heritage into the mainstream and they’re every bit as important! here are some favourites — 

ancient indian art

itihasology (bonus points because they’re friends!)

pangsau history project

the heritage lab

india lost and found

i hope that helps clear things up for you :)

#anonymous #book recs #resources #india #answered #ask