#homestuck.pdf

[nekropsii]

Hello, pardon and I don’t want to be a bother but I would like to ask for your take on something. And if you’re not down to answer this question, that’s completely fine, you seem to make large opinion posts on a noteworthy basis so I understand if you don’t have the energy or motivation to give an opinion right now.

But I wanted to ask for your take on the ethics of enjoying Homestuck in the modern day. Many people such as myself and seemingly you as well enjoy Homestuck but are painfully aware of all the gross stuff in it. And as I see the comic pop up in more and more dni lists, with people claiming that enjoyers of Homestuck are supporting these things inherently, no matter the fact that most of us stand against Hussie and attempt to reclaim Homestuck as something to express joy and our identities in, it makes me wonder more and more the ethics of enjoying Homestuck. Since you seem to have thoughts on the matter, I was wondering if you’d like to share your take.

I once again want to stress though, absolutely no pressure to answer. I am not entitled to your time or hearing your opinion. You don’t know me, I don’t know you. I was just asking in case you wanted to speak about it.

Hi, Anon! This is a very interesting question, and you were right to assume I have thoughts on it. They might not be as long and complicated as some of my other essays, but they still exist, and I would quite like to share them. Thank you for the opportunity.

My opinion on The Ethics of Enjoying Homestuck is that I believe it's perfectly fine to do so. I also think it's perfectly fine to dislike, or hate, or not want to associate with it or any fans of it. This is a personal boundary set by and for the individual, and it's not my business to question, nor my place to cross it. However, I don't really agree with the way some people go about communicating or enforcing this boundary. I've seen some people put Homestuck and Harry Potter on the same level before. I've seen some say that enjoyment of either piece of fiction is, at least in part, comparable. I heavily disagree with this- and the fact that this is a point that comes up shows to me that there's quite a few people who don't actually fully understand why so many people are saying to stop supporting Harry Potter.

The conflation of the two things reads to me as if some believe that Harry Potter has been "cancelled for having a problematic creator"- and that's not wholly true. Yes, J.K. Rowling is, by definition, problematic, and she is the creator of the Harry Potter franchise, but people have drawn such a hard line against supporting the series not just because J.K. Rowling is Transphobic, but because she has honest to god legislative power. She is, as it stands, currently the backbone of the TERF movement, and is spending a lot of time and money to ensure that Transphobes dominate the government. Monetary support of Harry Potter pools into her funds, which adds to her ability to further Trans Genocide. Communal/Fandom support of Harry Potter increases her visibility as a public figure, which adds to her ability to further Trans Genocide. J.K. Rowling has made very clear statements saying that she takes any support of the Harry Potter franchise- any at all, including Queer/LGBT+ Friendly fan content- as support of her beliefs. Support of Harry Potter is a method of legitimizing and validating Transphobia, and is being used as a way to further Trans Genocide.

If J.K. Rowling was just an average Transphobe, the outcry would not be nearly as severe, and the line wouldn't be nearly as clear cut. It would just be disappointing, bring to mind the phrase "same shit as always", and many would make the personal choice to distance themselves from it. But that's not the reality we live in. We live in the reality where J.K. Rowling has sway on the government, and is getting real people hurt and killed.

Andrew Hussie, creator of Homestuck, however, is just some random asshole with no political power outside of his own vote. Yes, Homestuck is filled with plenty of unsavory elements- random out-of-place interjections of Hussie's own past bigotry included- but at the end of the day, Homestuck has no influence over government action. Hussie has no tangible political influence, and does not want to have tangible political influence. We don't even have evidence that Hussie still holds the same beliefs as he did during and prior to the creation of Homestuck. This is just some random indie comic, made by some random guy in 2009. J.K. Rowling is dangerously close to billionaire status, and using that power for evil.

It's fine to like something that's not very morally clean- or something made by a not very morally clean artist, during a not very morally clean point in time in a not very morally clean place in this world. It's okay. The fixation some have on this is OCD-inducing. The best that can be asked is that one recognizes the bigotry, and doesn't perpetuate them. That's all. You can read, watch, play, and enjoy just about anything, as long as you don't make the more unsavory elements out to be a good thing. Don't start acting like Racism is awesome, or Antisemitism is cool, or Transphobia is based, et cetera, and you'll be totally fine.

The ability to find value in something impure or unsavory is a valuable one. Some may not want to associate with that, or find the particular flaw in the work in question to be too uncomfortable to stomach, and that's fine, too. Not everyone can just sit through Era-Appropriate Casual Homophobia or Racism and come out feeling fine enough to keep going. I'd argue- hope, even- that most feel at least a bit bothered by such things. It's all about personal tolerance levels. No one's committing a moral crime by either enjoying it or not wanting to even look at it.

#homestuck #homestuck meta #homestuck analysis #cw transphobia #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.sms

[nekropsii]

🔥

Dancestors

[For the Unpopular Opinions Ask Game!!]

Okay, this may come across to some as harsh, but I don’t care. You asked for Unpopular Opinions. This is one of them. It’s heated. It needs to be said.

The way people continuously searched for reasons to get mad at the Alpha Trolls and still to this day continuously search for them to the point of literally fucking making shit up is embarrassing. The fact that people- fans!- use them as their little scapegoat for “everything wrong with Homestuck” is embarrassing.

The way people will make up and pass around straight up lies about the Alpha Trolls just for the sake of Outrage Farming is embarrassing. The fact that these are all taken as truth, more so than the literal text of the Alpha Troll plot lines, simply because people didn’t have anything else to yell at that week, is fucking embarrassing.

I once watched a pretty good Homestuck video essay on YouTube. It was a great time. The premise of it was basically a retrospective on Homestuck and it’s plot in broad strokes, and why the whole thing is good and cool and you should read it. Very nice. The speaker had a lovely voice. And then, for some ungodly fucking reason, right at the end, they started going on some very long winded, incredibly wrong diatribe about the Alpha Trolls and why they’re the worst thing that’s ever happened- parroting, with rage, common lies I’d seen for years and sprinkling in some brand new brain fungus, all like it was fact. The dude called Porrim, Porrim fucking Maryam, an MRA. Porrim fucking Maryam was reduced down to a whiny Men’s Rights Activist who didn’t know shit, and Kankri Vantas was correct about everything, suddenly. Horuss’s main problem was that he was a mockery of Otherkin people. Otherkin people! As if the fact that he’s a mockery of Systems is less important!! The reason for this is clear- that motherfucker, and every god damn other person making essays about how the Alpha Trolls are The Worst in the whole ass 2020s, have not actually read or played through the Alpha Troll segments for shit. They have no go damn clue what they’re talking about, and they don’t care. They don’t care about being right, or making good points and observations, they care about being mad and getting engagement. It is literally completely performative.

It completely ruined the entire essay. And for what? And for fucking what? The Alpha Trolls are, for the most part, wholly irrelevant to the story, sans Aranea and Meenah. You can skip over them and miss nothing. They are not “the worst Homestuck has to offer”, they are a skippable fucking footnote, and everyone needs to get a god damn grip. Holy shit.

At this point, it really feels like most of the anger and hatred is only still parroted around blindly because it’s just tradition at this point. No one knows what they’re talking about, and no one cares. Why would they? This is what gets them the little guaranteed dopamine rush of other idiots just looking to be angry agreeing with them blindly, just for the sake of being really mad at something that doesn’t matter and no one will face check. God damn. Grow some eyes and read the comic you’re criticizing before criticizing it. Grow a damn spine and get your own opinions. This is not hard.

The Alpha Trolls are rife with things worth criticism. No one is talking about any of them, because no one cares to actually read it and gather an insightful, meaningful opinion on them from literal direct observation and analysis. They just care about being mad, and saying something very outrageous confidently enough that they seem right. It’s not that they don’t have anything worth criticizing, it’s that almost everything people are criticizing them for either doesn’t matter, is wrong, or is a lie.

#homestuck #homestuck analysis #homestuck meta #alpha trolls #beforan trolls #dancestors #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.sms

[nekropsii]

VERY IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: I am saying this as someone who has Vriska as one of my favorite characters. She is a deeply complicated, very well written character who, yes, has done a lot of fucked up things... But she was ultimately a severely troubled 13 year old girl who grew up on Alternia who, in being completely disabled from the ability to heal from abuse and trauma, perpetuated the cycle of abuse because it was all she ever knew. I love how she is written. I think she is a very good character.

With that out of the way...

A major reason why the position of "Vriska did nothing wrong" provoked such a harsh reaction from fans back in the day doesn't just have to do with how controversial she was as a character. It doesn't just have to do with people already hating her, or thinking she's irredeemable. It's not irrelevant by any means, but there's a lot more to the reaction than just "Vriska Bad, and I disagree with you" than I think a lot of younger fans especially do not realize. The online culture in and around the 2000's and 2010's was rife with extremism and bigotry. Yes, it still is, but it's genuinely hard to compare how things are in the online political landscape right now to how they were in the 2000's and 2010's. It was fucking severe. Naziism was a substantially more open and honest part of meme culture, and shockingly bigoted phrases were parroted left and right like it was a serviceable punchline. A major part of what contributed to this culture was 4Chan, particularly /pol/- these were back in "the glory days," when 4Chan was considered an internet giant that wasn't to be trifled with, rather than just... A bunch of anonymous nerds on an imageboard.

This exposition is necessary, but I won't keep you here all day. Onto the main point.

"Vriska did nothing wrong" is a troll position. It has a lot of... Political charge behind it. Intentional political charge.

A part of why it invoked such a nasty response was that it was directly and intentionally echoing an oft-repeated phrase at the time, born directly from 4Chan's /pol/: "Hitler did nothing wrong."

Again, I need to stress this: This parallel is intentional. It was literally part of the bit. That was the entire meme, that's why people said it- it was extremely shocking to say, not just because of how contrarian it was, but because it was literally parroting Neonazi Rhetoric. I see a lot of people using that phrase as a defense still, or saying it as a joke, but from the way people talk about it, it seems like the history behind it has been forgotten.

This post is a reminder. This is not an attempt to stir the pot, this is not an invitation to start more Vriscourse, nor is this post Vriscourse in itself. I am reminding everyone that this phrase is loaded for reasons that have nothing to do with Vriska being controversial. Tread a little more carefully. At the very least, be aware of what joke you're making.

#homestuck #homestuck meta #homestuck analysis #homestuck fandom #beta trolls #vriska serket #vriscourse #cw antisemitism #vriska.pdf #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.txt

[nekropsii]

Not to be controversial, but I do think it's quite silly to knock on Homestuck: Beyond Canon for having references to internet memes in it, saying that this will "inevitably date it", and calling that an inherently bad thing. I understand if that's just not your personal taste, modern pop culture/online culture references is definitely something that will turn a lot of people off, but... Homestuck itself was filled to the brim with those same kinds of references. It's truly just keeping in the spirit of the original work, people only find it jarring now because they aren't experiencing it in a state of being a beloved time capsule.

Homestuck, as a piece of fiction, is fundamentally extremely derivative, referential, and reactionary, completely chock full of inside jokes and references to at-the-time modern media and memes. The level in which HS2 is engaging with current memes and media is honestly substantially lighter than Homestuck itself was. During early Homestuck in particular, it's difficult to go even one page without some kind of reference being present in it, especially considering a major point of the setting design and character writing is their relationship to other media. The posters on their walls, the games they play, the fact that Dave is living in a Saw trap, et cetera.

I find this train of criticism to be particularly fascinating, as to me it shows that, in some way, it doesn't really feel like a lot of people ever look at Homestuck as something that was ever new. The time period it was made in is almost never taken into consideration when analyzing the work. Homestuck never was, it just is. HS2 has current-day meme references because it is a current-day Homestuck story. This is exactly how things should be. This is just how Homestuck is.

#homestuck #homestuck postcanon #homestuck^2 #homestuck beyond canon #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.txt

[nekropsii]

man what I hate about the fandom excusing the Dave blog with the n word like "it's not IN the comic so it's not canon" is that in THE comic, Hussie was way too obsessed with having Dave rap about segregation and slavery as quips one of the first raps even referenced the slur negro, which textually went over many people's heads (because "it's just "black" in French") when the context was racist white men in segregation-era and how they pronounced that very closely to the well-known slur, pronouncing it with "knee" these types of raps weren't just in Act 1, it was even in Act 3 it's so uncomfortable considering Hussie said "I just type out how I'd talk" when it came to Dave's dialogue, considering his humor and how those raps and the blog came into light it's so annoying how people keep suggesting it's not IN the comic at all- like it's giving "read it once 5 years ago and never freshened up on it while still debating it", y'know?

I'll give as many sources to what you said here as I can, just so people listen more. Wasn't able to track everything down, so some things are more up in the air, but overall, you're on the money.

[Blog of Dave Strider- February 17, 2010.]

I heavily agree and identify with your frustration. Just because it's "not in the comic" doesn't mean Hussie didn't write it and that it's not worth evaluating. This isn't a case where you can disregard it for noncanonicity reasons, like Post Canon. This was written concurrently with canon, and therefore it reflects the political mindset of Hussie during the time of writing Homestuck. That much is valuable information. What I will point out is that the next paragraph here contains yet another phrase that is rather telling of Hussie's... Racial vocabulary.

Definitely not the most comfortable thing in the world, to put it nicely. Haven't personally seen it get mentioned, and I feel like it's apt to bring up here, since this is the closest I've seen Hussie get to the big Hard R. Typically, they default to Soft A, which doesn't make it less racist, but does have a different... Vibe, so to speak. It's more hateful sounding.

Moving on.

[Andrew Hussie's Formspring- Feb 24, 2010 - Mar 7, 2010. Exact date unknown.]

The fact that Dave is a near exact emulation of Hussie themself in speech mannerisms, down to the lifting of entire chatlogs, is telling. As we've seen from Hussie's past work, he was clearly... excessively comfortable with throwing around the N-word, as a white man. Why would Dave be any different? It's hard to argue that Dave's racism is "not indicative of Dave's flaws, but indicative of Hussie's", when Dave as a character is both a product of Hussie's mind and a direct extension of her. You can't truly divorce the two. Dave is racist because Hussie is racist. Dave is an extension of Hussie.

[Homestuck, Act 2, page 294- June 23, 2009.]

I believe this is what you were talking about in reference to that particular version of the N-word being used, as well as the references to slavery. This is in Act 2. I couldn't find much in Dave's other raps, outside of his fixation on the idea of Black presidents as a novel concept... Other than this.

[Homestuck, Act 5 Act 2, page 2825- November 1, 2010.]

Apparently using the term "Urban" to refer to Black people, culture, art, and music is a recurring Hussie-ism, even in Homestuck. Rose also uses this a couple times, notably more than Dave does. It sees more usage in Problem Sleuth as well- unsurprising, considering it is an older work than Homestuck is.

[Homestuck, Act 4, page 1590- March 17, 2010.]

[Homestuck, [o], page 3879- July 2, 2011.]

[Problem Sleuth, page 62- March 15, 2008.]

TL;DR: I don't think there's any real excuse to leave Hussie's racism out of genuine discussion of the contents of his works. It's obvious. The only valid defense for leaving it out of analytical conversations is ignorance, because... Well, some people just aren't that observant. Homestuck does not exist in a vacuum. Hussie did, in fact, write this, and Hussie is, in fact, bigoted. Bigotry shows throughout their works not because they're spinning a grand narrative of overcoming your moral failings, but because they kind of just suck. Dave isn't an exception, and shouldn't be divorced from the context of having been written by Andrew Hussie. There's no debate to be had over the existence of Hussie's bigotry, because contesting such a clear cut fact is pure stupidity. It's like arguing that evolution isn't real because you, personally, do not understand it, or don't find it comforting. Hussie's bigotry is one of the only things we can be 100% sure is a real part of his personhood, rather than another figment of his ironic online persona. The level of "Well, Actually"-ism people will engage in over this is mind-numbing, quite frankly.

Thank you for the ask- people being aware of the racism in Homestuck keep me sane. Have a lovely day.

#homestuck #problem sleuth #homestuck meta #homestuck analysis #beta kids #dave strider #rose lalonde #john egbert #andrew hussie #cw racism #homestuck.pdf #dave.pdf #dave.prtsc #rose.prtsc #john.prtsc #nekro.pdf #nekro.sms

[nekropsii]

on the topic of Hussie's racism translating into the comic itself: the origin of lil Cal's name came from a racist comic Hussie made in his TeamSpecialOlympics line It's titled "Rollin with lil Cal" and depicts a black character adopted by a white dad that just goes "Shit! I be 29 years old mutha-fucka!" he either re-used this character itself throughout these comics or was just lazy, but what appears to be the same og lil Cal was in his comic "Underground Funk Railroad", which ended with "Slaves Recaptured: funky swagger to blame" as well as mocking systematic racism and segregation with the racial slur negro (which, historically by white people in that time frame, was pronounced similar to the well-known n word [re-stating out of habit to keep clarification of why it's bad/an actual slur])

From my research, "Lil' Cal" as a name actually seems to extend a little farther back than that. Looks like the origin of Lil' Cal as a character- or at least as a name belonging to a Black character- dates back to around 2005-2006, with the creator being Andrew Hussie's brother, Byron Hussie, also known as Byrobot. You'll see that username a lot when poking around archives of Team Special Olympics comics. I give the estimate of 2005 or so, because Byrobot's Lil' Cal strips predate Hussie's, and not only was Hussie's edition of "Rollin' Wit Lil' Cal" posted in (late-ish) 2006, but Byrobot closed his website in around early 2006, which is where that strip was originally hosted. Plus, I've seen a couple anecdotes that it was around 2005 when that first started being a thing... Either way, though.

Unsurprisingly, Lil' Cal wasn't exactly illustrated with much... Class. Here's Byrobot's first Lil' Cal strip. This is the first iteration of Lil' Cal ever posted online.

Yikes. Yikes on bikes.

To fortify your points, though, I'll post the strips you're talking about here.

Here's Hussie's "Rollin' Wit Lil' Cal", which depicts exactly what you said. This was posted on 08/01/06, as a part of the "Scribblettes" series on the Team Special Olympics website.

And here's Hussie's "Underground Funk Railroad", once again depicting exactly what you said. This was posted on 11/02/06, but is the same story otherwise.

I understand the anxious urge to do it, but I don't think most people really need an explanation as to why any variant of the N-Word is bad. Though, since you brought it up...

Have this. 12/20/06. I needed to curse someone else with it. Same story again, this is still a part of the Scribblettes series.

Regarding the speculation on whether the reusage of Lil' Cal was an act of laziness or not: TSO's Scribblettes have many recurring characters and recurring bits, Lil' Cal just happens to be one of them. Now, applying that same train of thought to Lil Cal's appearance in Homestuck... Homestuck is chock full of references, both to random things/media, and to Hussie's older works- like Problem Sleuth, Humanimals, And It Don't Stop, et cetera. Lil Cal, the puppet, was named the way he was as another throwback for longtime fans. Lil' Cal, the TSO character, was reused during the runtime of Scribblettes just for fun.

I have nothing profound to say about any of this. This guy sucks, lol.

#homestuck #homestuck meta #homestuck analysis #team special olympics #andrew hussie #lil cal #cw racism #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.sms

[nekropsii]

do u have any links to resources about the beta and alpha kids' characterizations and personalities if you have any? i am interested in writing for them and i just wanna know what makes them them iykwim

The Beta + Alpha Kids are... By no means my specialty, as everyone knows, and I personally have zero interest in writing them. That said, I'm pretty sure that most "guides" like that are written by and for writers of lighthearted, canon non-compliant roleplaying, and all the ones that I've seen... Aren't good, and are typically incredibly biased. They definitely tend to want the reader to portray the character in whatever light they see the character in, rather than... How they are in canon. For example, some lean heavily into making Dave a soft, perfect victim, Rose into a tea-drinking lesbian, Jake into a lowkey villain, et cetera.

This is about to get pretty long. It's been a while since I've had to put something under a Read-More... But here we are. Let's get going.

Content Warning: Long, Whole Lot of Rambling about the Technical Aspects of Writing.

There tends to be interjection of headcanons, unnecessary opinions, and ham-fisted attempts to make characters look better or worse than they actually are. Context is missing, sources are missing, so on. Oftentimes when looking at guides to writing characters, I wind up just questioning what comic the writer read, because it doesn't feel as if we read the same one. Their writing and critical thinking skills are often called into question as well, given the way these guides tend to approach characters as a concept.

There's often a distinct failure in being actually analytical or observant, and they tend to view characters more as People than they do... Well, Characters. Which may sound like an odd distinction to make, until you realize that when you're writing a character, you need to understand what role they're fulfilling in a narrative before you focus on who they are as a person and judging their morals. Characters aren't anything more than narrative devices. They're strictly there to drive the plot forward. Yes, since characters tend to be people, of which are often in situations, you tend to judge their morality, ethics, the way they handle their circumstances and other people with average human judgment... But at the end of the day, moral arguments and personhood matter less than what they are meant to do, what they're supposed to represent, and how they're supposed to drive the plot forward. To focus on who and how they are as People- how righteous they are, how much their morals align with yours or those of the real world- is to focus on Form over Function.

Characters are Tools. A tool can be painful to use, or painful to watch in action, but it's still a tool. Sometimes pliers are for pulling teeth, and sometimes they're for twisting wire. You can't effectively pull teeth with a wrench, and you can't effectively hammer a nail with a screwdriver. You could, theoretically, and I'd love to watch someone try, but it's not recommended. It's ineffective. You need to know what a tool is for, how you could use it, and maybe even how you could make your usage of them surprising. A hammer is typically used for driving nails into place. Usually with the head. This doesn't mean you can't drive the nail in with its side, and it doesn't mean you can't use it to break fingers.

What this "Form over Function of a Tool" means in practice is... A lot of "guides" to writing Dave will go over the fact that he is the Ironic Cool Kid who has suffered a lot of Abuse at the hands of Bro Strider, and interject that headcanon of his character arc "being about overcoming Internalized Homophobia and/or Toxic Masculinity" (neither of these are true), but fail to mention that he is essentially a Tutorial Agent, and how his whole character hinges on how he absolutely does not want to be a Main Character. Everything he does is grounded in the fact that he's a Tutorial Agent, and therefore an NPC. He's a regular kid with a rough home life, and wants nothing more than to keep playing his role as just a random NPC. He doesn't want to be a Main Character. He doesn't want to fight, he doesn't want to be in an epic, he just wants to be Some Guy. He wants to be normal, and he wants to be able to be forgotten to the sands of time.

They focus so much on Who he is as a Person that they tend to fail to recognize What he is as a Character. It's not effective. You don't really need to worry about who they are as people. You don't need to focus on the paint job on a tool. You need to know what that tool is, and what it's being used for.

It's best to not consult guides written by other fans. It'd be best if you read through their dialogue yourself, and really dissected them and how they function... Find out what makes them tick.

Luckily, there's a blog out there that does have just about every line of dialogue in Homestuck sorted by character, so that's pretty good for ease of access. Good for you and good for me. I use it all of the time. Here you go.

#homestuck #homestuck analysis #homestuck meta #beta kids #alpha kids #dave strider #rose lalonde #jake english #writing advice #dave.pdf #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.sms

[nekropsii]

I still find it deeply painful to the point of hilarity that whenever people bring up the issue of the Makaras being written with Anti-Black coding, they just about never bring up the fact that Hussie himself was genuinely extremely racist before and during the time of writing Homestuck? As in, full blown saying the N-word level of racist.

The racial coding of the Makaras is an age-old debate, and I really feel like the arguments are constantly being shot in the foot by this seeming complete refusal to acknowledge that Homestuck was written by a person. A person with beliefs. Flawed ones. Deeply, deeply flawed ones.

You can argue that the Makaras were never intended to be Black for ages, but many fans certainly did and they did so for a reason… And the Makaras- especially Gamzee- line up so well with so many Anti-Black stereotypes that it’s genuinely painful. Juxtaposing this with the fact that Hussie was a known racist who loved to make Black people the butt of jokes, and… Suddenly all the Watsonian arguments dissolve into dust and are blown away in the breeze.

Like… You can cite as many sources as you want about the stereotypes in question. You can argue your points in defense of or against Homestuck’s handling of race and racial coding for eons. Searching for a mutual understanding with information or feelings that can be easily argued against will always be a total goose chase. You’re not going to reach a solid conclusion based on anything that can be easily called irrational, or pedantry.

(… Which ultimately shuts a lot of personally affected people’s voices out of the equation, as the closer a topic is to you, the harder it will become to maintain your composure in the face of someone arguing that attacks against you do not exist.)

At the end of the day… Your best proof will always be that Hussie was just a fucking racist, man. And there’s no beating around that bush.

You can argue semantics. You can’t argue a tangible reality.

#homestuck #homestuck meta #homestuck analysis #gamzee makara #kurloz makara #andrew hussie #cw racism #homestuck.pdf #gamzee.pdf #kurloz.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.txt

[nekropsii]

wait since when was hussie racist what

Since always.

#i definitely missed some but these are enough i think #homestuck #homestuck meta #homestuck analysis #and it don't stop #andrew hussie #cw racism #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.jpg #nekro.sms

[nekropsii]

this blog is awesome but jas the horroble side effect of making it so anytime i see alpha trolls stiff i get unreasonably mad like. They Are Not Like That. i saw someone call damara chaotic evil and it made mw sooo mad. like i GET IT i get it no one wants to read a billion pages but like. NO ONE IS MAKING U MAKE THESE POSTS... rauaugh. sorry lol

Inflicting you with the horrible knowledge that almost nobody in the god damn fandom actually knows anything about the Alpha Trolls, nor do they care to. And if they do know anything, they often strip them of most if not all of their traits- including their most interesting ones!- for the sake of shipping and/or making an OC with their face and name. It blows. Why do you think you just about never see me reblogging Alpha Troll content? I don't visit any of their tags because if I do, it's just beams of pure unadulterated psychic damage blasted directly into my fucking eyes. Genuinely it feels like people were better at handling them back when Homestuck was still running and the community was still actively a cesspit. At the very least there were some oases of people that had actual brain cells. They've all died out now. They were either chased away by Homestuck's Postcanon- which caused a very real and very, very large exodus- or by the absolutely horrific harassment you'd receive for liking the Alpha Trolls- ESPECIALLY Mituna.

Swerving off topic for a moment to talk about the harassment: I saw a significantly higher number of people that were genuinely normal about Mituna back in the day that handled his disability with more grace than God. Diehard Mituna fans- especially diehard Mituna/Latula shippers- were people you'd be getting intricate guides and long lists of resources surrounding TBIs- including genuinely helpful stuff like the care and treatment of them for anyone who had suffered one recently, that kind of thing- and some of the most touching portrayals of mental disability I'd ever seen. It's a shame a lot of their stuff is either gone or nearly impossible to find nowadays, on account of Tumblr's search system prioritizing new content, and... You know... The vicious harassment people would get for even saying they liked him in the first place. I'm talking, like, Cronus-tier shit. People were getting called slurs and being told to kill themselves, even when what they made was handled with the most tact physically possible. It still happens to this day, at least to me. It's pretty deranged! Always has been.

Back on topic, though... Urgh. Damara being read as Chaotic Evil... Me when I take the bait of a blatantly abusive misogynist with zero ounce of critical thought. Damara isn't evil, she's just reactive. There's a big difference. "Evil" implies she struck first and is totally unjustified in her actions, and is only doing them because she wants to. She's an incredibly tortured soul who is, in my honest opinion, reasonably responding to her situation. If anything, I think she should have done worse. I think she should have straight up killed Rufioh. Meenah too, but... Well, she definitely tried to do that, and almost succeeded, but Aranea put her in her Quest Cocoon, so... She's here and Godtier, instead of dead in the ground. Unfortunate. Damara both needed and deserved that kill more than anything else in the world.

#homestuck #homestuck fandom #homestuck meta #homestuck analysis #alpha trolls #beforan trolls #dancestors #mituna captor #damara megido #cw ableism #cw misogyny #cw abuse #<== all only mentioned. but still. tagging for those who dont wanna hear about that today. #homestuck.pdf #mituna.pdf #damara.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.sms

[nekropsii]

Every single time people try to heavily gender the Class and Aspect system, it just comes out sounding like the most sexist + cissexist thing I’ve ever seen. Can we please stop regurgitating that concept over and over… I really don’t think it’s that appropriate.

Classes are literally just a label defining your relationship with your Aspect, and your Aspect is just your core principles- or, what matters the most to you. It’s a magic system that’s heavily tied to the self. Can we please stop being gender essentialist about it? There are more things that define you in life than your gender, and gender isn’t something that can be so cleanly and neatly categorized. It feels kind of weird to say that only people of a certain gender can have X or Y Class, or A or B Aspect. Reductive, even. There’s… So much more to people than their gender or sex.

#homestuck #homestuck meta #homestuck analysis #homestuck fandom #classpect #classpecting #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.txt

[nekropsii]

why are the prescratch trolls the alpha trolls if the prescratch kids are the beta kids

Because the "Alpha" and "Beta" labels aren't based on Scratches, they're based on the version of the game they played.

The Beta Kids and Beta Trolls are who we're first introduced to, and they played the Beta version of SBURB/SGRUB respectively. The Alpha Kids played the Alpha version, which makes sense, because they're Post-Scratch Kid versions of the Beta Kids's Guardians- Dirk is Bro, Roxy is Mom, etc.- meaning, technically speaking, they came before the Beta Kids. The Alpha Trolls follow the same logic. They came before the Beta Trolls, since they're Pre-Scratch versions of the Beta Trolls's Ancestors, and Alpha comes before Beta.

#homestuck #homestuck meta #homestuck analysis #alpha trolls #beforan trolls #beta kids #beta trolls #alpha kids #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.sms

[nekropsii]

As a Homestuck fan, Homestuck has completely deep fried some of y'all's brains with lethal amounts of irony poisoning. This fanbase is fucking weird about minorities and the source of it probably lies in the work and fandom itself normalizing that kind of behavior. There's a lot of reasons why I go out of my way to not follow many Homestuck blogs, but that's definitely a big one. A lot of people need to learn that a bigoted joke is still bigoted. Making that joke enough times will lead to internalization of its contents. It'll get normalized to you whether you like it or not, and that satire will become unrecognizable as such. Irony poisoning awaits.

Weirdness about minorities extends beyond jokes. Many people try to fix Homestuck by internally increasing the diversity within it, but don't take a step back to process what needs to be fixed in the first place and why. They don't evaluate what bigotries Hussie held that influenced the ways in which he wrote things. There's often no effort made to mitigating or evaluating the racism in any real capacity, and oftentimes when people do make an effort to do so, they're shut down. Painting bigotry in progressive paint with no efforts made to reconcile or be critical of it is about the same as dousing a shit in glitter. The smell's still there, it's just prettier to look at now. It doesn't get rid of the problem. Don't like it.

#sorry not sorry! #many claim themselves progressive but dont take a step back to examine the work and its bigotry critically #and evaluate how it affects and has affected their worldview and how they interact with and see different kinds of people. #homestuck #homestuck meta #homestuck fandom #andrew hussie #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.txt

[nekropsii]

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge how fucking hilarious it is that people will decide and then assert that I’m white whenever I point out that there is racism in Homestuck. Especially the Anti-Blackness.

I would also like to point out that it is kind of disgusting to assume that scrutinizing the writings of a white author who is known to have been racist both before and during the writing of a particular body of work is somehow indicative of whiteness on behalf of the analyst.

It is frankly horrendous, considering this fandoms long, sordid history of silencing critical Black voices within its community. A big reason a lot of Black creators + analysts aren’t saying anything about the racial aspects of anymore is because so many other Black people got brutally harassed off their platform if they dared to breathe even one criticism in the direction of Their Lord And Savior, Andrew Hussie. People still get sent torrents of hate and threats if they speak their mind, especially if they approach it with any level of emotion… Even though Anti-Blackness would be something that affects them directly.

Which is… Both tragic and unsurprising. Black people are hardly ever afforded the right to their emotions when speaking about the racism that affects them every day. They’re often not allowed to be passionate, not allowed to get heated. They have to be calm, professional, and, most of all, palatable. Non-threatening. Words can’t express how much this sucks.

Here’s the thing. I know if I was an openly Black creator, I’d be getting a lot more shit for saying the things I do. People will reject what I’m saying based on the false assumption that I’m white, sure… But I can’t help but think that there’s also a lot of people who are only accepting what I’m saying… based on that same false assumption that I’m white. When people see criticism of Anti-Blackness in media by someone who is openly Black, they take that as them painting a target on their back. Racist people take Black people speaking their mind as an opportunity to pull the trigger on a gun that they were already aiming.

There’s absolutely plenty of normal people in between, but I’ve been in this community long enough- hell, I’ve been on the internet in general long enough. People just fucking hate listening to Black people about their concerns.

So I can’t help but think there’s some kind of… Ulterior motive to dismissing my criticism with the assumption that I’m white. I don’t have my race in my bio, so I haven’t painted the appropriate target on my back. If I haven’t said I’m Black- someone easy to harass into silence- then I must be white- something easy to label as ignorant to the struggles of any and all People of Color. I am neither white nor Black. You guys need to realize that other races exist.

And you need to stop being so fucking protective of a racist white guy that you don’t even know.

Seriously, just how often do people have to point out the sheer volume of times this guy has said the whole ass N-word and utilized Black caricatures in his work for people to accept that maybe Hussie was just actually racist, and that this has a tangible impact on what he writes?

Fucking hell, this isn’t rocket science, people.

#deranged behavior #homestuck #homestuck meta #homestuck analyis #andrew hussie #cw racism #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.txt

[nekropsii]

Tangentially Related: The misconception that the Ancestors are representative of the Beta Trolls has done so much damage to the perception of every single Troll character in Homestuck. It’s made so clear that the Ancestors are Post-Scratch versions of the Alpha Trolls. I don’t know how this mistake still gets made. And yet it persists.

Whether you like it or not, The Psiioniic is Mituna, not Sollux. The Signless is Kankri, not Karkat. Orphaner Dualscar is Cronus, not Eridan. None of the actions of these characters really says anything about the potential in the characters of the Beta Trolls, because they literally are not the Beta Trolls.

If you want Ancestor versions of the Beta Troll cast, I have good news for you! They do exist! They’re the Beforan Ancestors. They are not the Alternian Ancestors.

#homestuck #homestuck analysis #homestuck ancestors #beta trolls #alpha trolls #beforan trolls #dancestors #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.txt

[nekropsii]

Hussie is not very good at writing Romantic Relationships.

[This is all Stream of Consciousness. Don't mind the meandering.]

On its own, this is fine, of course. That's a skill that sits squarely within it's own niche, and not every story needs romance in it. The trouble with this is how much the notion of Romantic Shipping is embedded to the story, down to defining its own unique Romance System... More than once.

Relationships are a key Narrative Device in Homestuck's storytelling- everyone is aware of this. The unique focus that Homestuck has on the interpersonal relationships that the cast has with one another is fascinating, and arguably one of, if not the biggest reason(s) why people are so enamored with the story and it's characters to begin with. So, that begs the question... If that's the case, why do the Romantic Relationships kind of suck, and why do so many people act like they don't? Moreover, why do so many people tend to push the blame onto specific pairings, rather than acknowledge that maybe... Hussie just wasn't equipped as a writer to write Romance?

Hussie's work has never been particularly focused on the idea of Romance. I can't think of a single piece of media he's released where that's even anywhere close to being on the table, outside of Homestuck itself. Their work tends towards somewhat High-Concept Fiction, with Lowbrow Surreal Humor tied to (usually Body-based) Horror- comics with a clearly communicable premise. Relationships are never truly the core focus- the premise is, whether that premise has the complexity of Whistles: The Starlight Calliope, or the simplicity of Humanimals. The focus was the absurdity of the story and premise itself. Hussie undeniably knew their niche. He knew what he was good at writing and illustrating, and they banked on it. Noting here that none of this is truly praise; think of it solely as a mild dissection.

The point is, to our knowledge, this would have been new grounds for Hussie, and the fact that it quickly became the heart of the story and the main appeal of the comic was most definitely a tricky transition. Luckily, since most of the audience was- and still is- so obsessed with Shipping, many people were quite willing to overlook the fact that the Romance is underdeveloped at best, and downright tacky at worst. From my scope on things, people tend to target Rosemary (Rose <3 Kanaya) in particular as the prime example of Poor Romance Writing, despite being one of the chief examples of Hussie's best work with Romance. The poorer examples tend to get swept under the rug, or even put on a pedestal, with people's mental image of the pairing far overriding their grip of what is and isn't actually canon- from Roxygen's (Roxy <3 Egbert) near nonexistence, to GamKar's (Gamzee <> Karkat) utter failure, to GamTav's (Gamzee <3 Tavros) existence as a joke.

I feel as if part of the issue is the scale of Homestuck's story. It's a Creation Myth that's saddled with a lot of thickly interwoven, tangled lore. The story is more something like a Power of Friendship kind of deal than a RomDrama. The grandiosity of the end goal makes it so that intensely focusing on the little details of these characters lives and their relationship with one another can be difficult to balance, especially considering the sheer size of the cast... Hussie put far too much on her plate as an indie creator to manage all these threads, even if they were good at writing relationships in the first place.

The real meat lies in the Platonic. Homestuck contains within itself a nice variety of very, very interesting friendships that are all but sorely neglected by the average fan, and it's quite upsetting...

#homestuck #homestuck meta #homestuck analysis #homestuck shipping #andrew hussie #homestuck.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.txt